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So I’ve been a bit silent lately. No particular reason other than I haven’t had an super inspiring things to write about. I haven’t made much headway with the story I began writing. I’ve read it a few times but haven’t picked a path for it to go down. I also haven’t had much time to sit and write.

Part of that is due to my usual Tuesday t’ai chi class. But last night was spent evaluating a Web site. I’ve picked up a little freelance gig for the weekend, and it could turn into something bigger and more regular. Stay tuned…

[intermission:: sorry, I had to go outside for a few minutes. Sitting hear typing I heard a familiar call - the hawk was back. I grabbed my camera and dashed outside. I manage to get a couple of long distance shots (we’ll see how they turn out) and as I was setting up for another, she took off and flew right over head. What a beautiful bird.]

As for t’ai chi, I’ve got a problem. My right knee has bothered me since the beginning. Nothing harsh mind you, just slight soreness. Until last week. In my practice last Thursday I had a sharp pain and couldn’t finish the form. On Tuesday in class it was much more sore than usual and my legs don’t seem to have any strength in them, particularly the right. Again with practice tonight, sharp pains in and around the inside of the kneecap. I’m not liking this very much.

On my way home from work I was listening to Evanescence Fallen CD. When I heard the line “In my field of paper flowers” (from the track “Imaginary”) the sentence “Paper flowers bloomed all around her” popped into my head, and I knew I had the first line to a new story.

I’ve been working on it for a couple of hours now. I had some writers block. I had that opening line and an image for a later scene, but no idea of how to get from one to the other. I finally got started and have made some progress, but now I’ve got a quandary as to how I want to handle her particular gift. Something will work out.

This past weekend I read Johnny Public by Sean Frost and Wendi Strang-Frost. The concept is brilliant and the art work is fantastic. Wendi’s use of negative space is (as my friend at work said) akin to Magnola’s. And the color covers are really cool (my favorites are 3, 4 and 6).

In other words, I enjoyed reading the seven issues and am looking forward to the next. (Hurry up you guys! Oh, and now that you have a color printer I’m going to greedily suggest a color version of Mr. Public….)

For the rest of you, visit the Web site. Buy the comic. Enjoy.

That is an order.

A little photograhic fun with the cat. All photos via Herman.

Learning T’ai Chi is just as much art as doing T’ai chi. Instead of waiting for T’ai Chi to come to them, many students want to suck the life out of T’ai chi too quickly.
— Ralph A. Johnson, from T’ai Chi, Dec. 1999.

I just read an article, “Using T’ai Chi in Everyday Life,” and it reminded me of something I said, I believe in this column, some time ago: you can learn all of the postures of t’ai chi in about a year’s time. After that you can begin to learn t’ai chi. After a couple of years of that you can begin to see everything you don’t know.

Last week my teacher was talking about opening up our hips; a very important and difficult thing to do. And yet, it should be easy. For example, curl your hand up into a fist. Now, put your mind in that fist and think “relax.” The fingers release their tension and the fist uncurls. Now do that same thing with your hip. Can you even get your mind inside the hip? Can you feel the joint, let alone the individual muscles there? Probably not.

And yet it is your body just as your fist is. Why isn’t it as easy? Mostly, I suspect, because we don’t think about our hips in those terms. (Or our elbows, shoulders, knees, ankles, etc.) In fact, as a beginning t’ai chi student I couldn’t think in those terms. Now that I am starting my fifth year of study I can begin to put my mind into those various places and learn to control the minute parts of my body.

Today was a prime example. I had a very bad headache at work today. So bad I left early. (It was just shy of migraine status, which meant that I could still drive.) The pain caused the muscles at the back of my skull to tense up. This pulled on my jaw (at the joint), my shoulders and up around my ears. By putting my mind in the back of my skull (a bit redundant, but I think you know what I mean), I was able to release that tension. In so doing I could feel my shoulders drop, a rather large hunk of meat we have all experienced. I could then feel the finer muscles relax and the tension left my jaw, allowing it to relax and slide back to its normal position. Finally I could feel the extremely fine muscles and the skin on the back of my head, up towards the top and behind my ears relax.

The headache in that area subsided greatly. (The extreme pain in my eyes continued, however.) I had to keep coming back to this as the headache wasn’t gone — if I wasn’t careful the muscles would tense right back up again — but I at least had some control. After a nap, the rest of the headache finally dissipated.