Tai-Chi in the Rain…
Ξ October 3rd, 2007 | → | ∇ General |
He hugs his family goodnight. They smile and head inside. One to go to bed, the other two returning to another home, to perform acts which he could imagine, but doesn’t bother to try. Perhaps they’ll just go to bed. And sleep.
He holds a journal in his hand and sets off, turning out of the alley and onto Magnolia. He reaches back and pulls the band out of his hair, releasing it to the wind. The brown hair reaches almost to the center of his back when let down, but now rises in the strong wind and floats around his face, as though it were charged with static.
He hums loudly in the back of his throat, a purr of pleasure as the wind whips up and down his body, sliding right through the thin fabric of his t-shirt, and up the legs of his loose shorts. He pads by the Walgreens in his sandals, and across Broadway. He lets his feet take him down the street towards the lake front, a path he has walked often recently.
The restoration building on the other side of the El has lost some of it’s guttering. It lays in the sidewalk, decrepit. looking as though it had been deserted their for decades rather than hours. Already the street is sparse. It’s not yet eleven thirty, but people sense that what they perceive as hostile weather is coming in, and they remove themselves from the influence of those forces, shutting themselves indoors behind windows, with the curtains drawn and the lights on. As if pretending the wind wasn’t blowing would make it so.
He ignores them, and curiously notes a pair of homeless men making their camp in the underpass for Lake Shore Drive. He smiles sadly to himself, compassion recognizing the humanity and pain of their existence. The park reaches out in front of him, and the wind dies down suddenly, no longer trapped by the buildings of the city, and not needing to prove it’s power to him.
He moves into the sparse trees, thankful that they at least block out the worst of the incandescent street-lights the city insists on littering nature with. Again he curses his cultures fear of the natural world, knowing that however complicated their reasoning was, it almost always returns to the simple issue of mans fear of that which he does not perceive he can control.
There are a pair of men sitting on the bench where he usually sits. He sits on the next bench over, at the other end. His lower back is causing him minor pain, muscle tension. The sandals are not really good for walking in. He sits down and watches the clouds blow by above him, moving swiftly across the sky and horizon as the wind gathers, expends, and rests.
The gentlemen in his usual seat stand up and leave, walking north along the lake front. He smiles as they go, the wind is picking up, teasing his hair around his face, into his eyes and mouth. He climbs down the concrete steps until he stands at the waterfront, looking down at the small white-tipped waves that crash against the submerged cubes of concrete before hitting the base of the step. The water is 10 feet below him, and he can smell it in the air all around him. A sheet of rain and wind slaps him from behind and vanishes. He lifts his arms to the sky, and feels the thrumming heartbeat of the wind, the vibrating resonance that is carried in each breath of air, in the harmonics of the clouds as they rush above him. He stands there for minutes, murmuring to himself, some words in English, others in tongues diverse and beautiful.
He draws himself back up the steps and movs into the grass as the rain begins to fall in earnest, cool sprinkles of water turning larger, into fat droplets of moisture, streaking his hair. He pulls his shirt off and empties his pockets, placing the journal, wallet, phone, keys, pen, and oil into it and wrapping them tightly. He places his sandals on top of the pile at the base of a tree where it will remain relatively dry and steps back into the falling water.
He pulls the tongue of his belt to tighten it slightly around his hips and enters the clearing between three trees, giving the sky an unobstructed view of him, and he lets his eyes flutter between the water and clouds as he finds his center. His hands come up, right hand in a fist, the left open, and they touch. He bows slightly and steps forward with his left foot. His hands draw the energy of the earth into Tan T’ien and he breathes into the storm.
He centers and stretches, rolling his back as the water soaks his hair, sticking it to the side of his face and neck. His tongue placed in the center of his soft palette, he draws his hands to a ball before his abdomen and turns it to the left, then the right. His motions parting the water that falls upon him, separating himself, the earth, and the sky even as his motions connect them. He turns his body left and lets the waves move in his body, then to the right. Every easy action soothing the cramp in his back and filling him with the sweet silver light of the storm.
The rain grows heavier and heavier, until when he is done, his entire body shines with a sheen of moisture, the glow of diffuse light, and the strength of his heart. His hands rise again as he steps back on his left foot. He bows slightly, then turns and walks under the tree. His lips murmur soft phrases of calming, of thanks and praise, of beauty to the storm. She abates as he pulls his shirt on over his head and straps on his sandals. Stepping out from under the sheltering arms of the tree, the water ceases to fall, and he is left with the wind, whistling along his cheek and neck, wrapping around his ankles as he begins to walk home, feeling refreshed, cleansed of the challenges of the world.
