Passing from the bedroom, where there’s an air conditioner, to the office where there isn’t, was moving from cool comfort to a sauna. The office turns out to be in the direct path of the midsummer sun, and it was hot in there. I almost retreated into the darker, cooler parts of the house to do tai chi. But then I thought, what will I tell my readers? And that seems to be one of the large benefits of telling you all this story on a daily basis about my tai chi practice; because if I shrink from it, I’ll have to tell it to the world, or at least as much of this world as cares about it.
(Right now, a squirrel has passed by on the ledge outside my window in that direct sunlight, his silhouette a perfect caricature of what a squirrel ought to be… shades of Plato’s Cave, which keeps coming up in conversation these days…)
So, mindful of what I’d say to readers, I did the form. I got sweaty, but not too sweaty. Heat really isn’t as bad as we make it out to be. It’s just the ways in which we modify our environment (air conditioning, for example), that cause us to experience the difficulties going back and forth between heat and cold too rapidly. At least this is my theory. (When members of my family do it in winter time, flying between New England and my mother in Florida, we call the stress of moving from cold to warm or warm to cold temperatures, Climotrauma. You knew you needed a word for that, didn’t you? You’re welcome.)
I’m not talking about the form very much this morning, am I? I like to keep these posts short, and I’m rambling. Five Gold Coins, the Form, Eight Pieces of Silk. Aside from the heat, easy and yet slightly sweaty.
