I don’t have to go to school today; we take the day off for Good Friday and Passover, so there’s an unexpected window this morning. What do I do? Sleep in? Laze around? Not so much. I’m up, doing tai chi. In fact, I did the tai chi form twice this morning.
I almost walked away from doing it a second time. But as I walked away, thinking about what I wrote, I realized, I’d left some things out. Grabbing the Needle On the Sea Floor came to mind, and then I thought about other things that I wasn’t happy about in the moment. Poised in the doorway, I turned around, and did the whole form again.
Human memory is a curious thing. You can deliberately and consciously remember a list of historical events using a palace of memory technique, but you can misunderstand, and mis-remember, a car accident you saw right in front of your eyes. The body’s memory is the same way; the muscle memory wants to do things the easy way, and leave things out — the mental memory must provide the frame of the action, and do it again if it’s wrong.
When you’re not satisfied with your work, return to it.
