Nietzsche
Last week, in level three T'ai Chi, K-chan discovered that my knees are extra-sensitive to people playing with my energy. Mark has known this for quite a while and loves to circle his fingers around my kneecap just to drive me insane.
Tonight, I tried playing with her qi (AKA bioenergy for those of you who don't keep up with my T'ai Chi adventurings)...and failed miserably. It's possible that she's not very used to feeling her qi since she's been unable to take a T'ai Chi class for several years, but it's also likely that I can't penetrate her mental defenses. Instead, as we were alternately standing and sitting next to Leslie (who was in English with me last semester), I started playing with the qi in her back. She was concentrating on Joe, so it took her a couple of minutes to notice that it wasn't just her imagination--someone really was screwing with her. This resulted in much giggling. It was driving Leslie a little too crazy, so I concentrated on Piper's knee for a few minutes. She really has the best expressions; it looked like she was going to cry, but she never said anything.
As a pun/in-joke, Cai and Mark and I tend to call this playing with each other's Nietzsche...because knee qi sounds exactly like it.
Also, Joe was talking about extending qi into things like swords and pencils tonight. To test us, he drew a "grass-style" Chinese character on the board and said it was "tao." (Yes, as in "Tao Te Ching" in Chinese as well as "judo" and many other -do martial arts in Japanese.) It was so cursivized, though, that if he hadn't said that's what it was, I never could have guessed. I have a hard enough time with hand-written Chinese characters as it is; learning their cursivized forms is probably impossible. It looked like a long squiggle. Maybe if you're imaginative, you'd see Jabba the Hutt outlined in it...but it was squiggly. To test our abilities, we were to copy the character onto the chalkboard ourselves, three at a time. Gebus, who is quite flashy about his forms, was flashy in writing, but his alignment was tilted sideways. Same with Tom, though his character's alignment was less tilted than . Many of the girls were more nervous and got the squiggly parts right but you could see their nervousness in it.
Then K-chan, Leslie and I came to the board. All three of us have had some Japanese language courses, and no one yet had shown much individuality. Standing between them, I held my chalk and wrote my character...box-style. (If your browser can view Japanese fonts, it looked like a more disconnected version of this: 道; anyone else can click here to see a bigger version.) When the three of us stepped back, the class took note of what I'd done and began clapping. Joe was amused and made a few notes about what I'd done, drawing a box around it and stating that a calligraphy instructor would rip my work to shreds more than the more subjective view taken of grass-style calligraphy. I wondered if I should bow to everyone.
Piper and Greg, her boyfriend, went up after K-chan, Leslie, and I. As soon as Piper had finished her character, she turned and fled from the board to the end of the line of students. I hugged her and assured her that it was all right...or tried to. I believe most of us could benefit from some instruction in calligraphy. I know I could. After all, it's one of the Five Excellences--the pillars of good T'ai Chi.
(Here's another example of Grass Style calligraphy, but Joe's was even more formless-looking. Joe admits that his calligraphy is not the best.)
Tonight, I tried playing with her qi (AKA bioenergy for those of you who don't keep up with my T'ai Chi adventurings)...and failed miserably. It's possible that she's not very used to feeling her qi since she's been unable to take a T'ai Chi class for several years, but it's also likely that I can't penetrate her mental defenses. Instead, as we were alternately standing and sitting next to Leslie (who was in English with me last semester), I started playing with the qi in her back. She was concentrating on Joe, so it took her a couple of minutes to notice that it wasn't just her imagination--someone really was screwing with her. This resulted in much giggling. It was driving Leslie a little too crazy, so I concentrated on Piper's knee for a few minutes. She really has the best expressions; it looked like she was going to cry, but she never said anything.
As a pun/in-joke, Cai and Mark and I tend to call this playing with each other's Nietzsche...because knee qi sounds exactly like it.
Also, Joe was talking about extending qi into things like swords and pencils tonight. To test us, he drew a "grass-style" Chinese character on the board and said it was "tao." (Yes, as in "Tao Te Ching" in Chinese as well as "judo" and many other -do martial arts in Japanese.) It was so cursivized, though, that if he hadn't said that's what it was, I never could have guessed. I have a hard enough time with hand-written Chinese characters as it is; learning their cursivized forms is probably impossible. It looked like a long squiggle. Maybe if you're imaginative, you'd see Jabba the Hutt outlined in it...but it was squiggly. To test our abilities, we were to copy the character onto the chalkboard ourselves, three at a time. Gebus, who is quite flashy about his forms, was flashy in writing, but his alignment was tilted sideways. Same with Tom, though his character's alignment was less tilted than . Many of the girls were more nervous and got the squiggly parts right but you could see their nervousness in it.
Then K-chan, Leslie and I came to the board. All three of us have had some Japanese language courses, and no one yet had shown much individuality. Standing between them, I held my chalk and wrote my character...box-style. (If your browser can view Japanese fonts, it looked like a more disconnected version of this: 道; anyone else can click here to see a bigger version.) When the three of us stepped back, the class took note of what I'd done and began clapping. Joe was amused and made a few notes about what I'd done, drawing a box around it and stating that a calligraphy instructor would rip my work to shreds more than the more subjective view taken of grass-style calligraphy. I wondered if I should bow to everyone.
Piper and Greg, her boyfriend, went up after K-chan, Leslie, and I. As soon as Piper had finished her character, she turned and fled from the board to the end of the line of students. I hugged her and assured her that it was all right...or tried to. I believe most of us could benefit from some instruction in calligraphy. I know I could. After all, it's one of the Five Excellences--the pillars of good T'ai Chi.
(Here's another example of Grass Style calligraphy, but Joe's was even more formless-looking. Joe admits that his calligraphy is not the best.)
