From time to time, if there is a rough start in the morning (up too late the night before, or just waking up in the middle of the night), the tai chi routine will be… there’s no easy way to say this… disordered. There was such a morning today, because last night I performed in Anne Cubberly’s production of NightFall as a fire-breathing squirrel (this woman makes amazing giant puppets and masks and mysterious contraptions… quite in awe).

During the course of Eight Pieces of Silk, my body stopped moving the way I was telling it to move. I lost my train of thought, and then I wandered away from the office where I was doing tai chi, and into the bedroom.  Then I thought, “no, I don’t want to go back to bed.” So I wandered into the kitchen, through the living room.  “Nope, not here.” Bathroom.  “No.  We’re doing tai chi.  Like we’ve been doing for 221 days so far…”

And… my body plopped me down at my computer, turned it on, and found the tai chi entries for September 20, and September 21 (but see the Update at the bottom of the entry), and September 22. Wait, there’s no entry for September 21.  I consulted my paper diary, and the little diary app I have on my phone.  Meeting with my boss, check.  Note about meditation.  Going to an Equinox ritual.  My energy was pretty good that day… and I had a great dream the night before… But did I do tai chi that day?  Is today, “day 221”, or something more like “day 25” of a new cycle?

I don’t honestly know.

Thinking back to that day, I can recall thinking, “Oh, I’ll write the entry later — I’m running behind, I’ll have to do it later today.” And then having the day run away from me. Fridays are busy, busy, busy at school — first period is my weekly check-in with my boss, followed by classes all the way to the closing bell, followed by debate club.  Too much to do.  The work of writing an entry could easily have slipped away.

But did the work of doing the tai chi also slip away?  Is this really day 222?  Did I write an entry and then it got deleted?

At this point, my body closed the computer, and together, my ego and my physical form, wandered back into the office to finish the tai chi forms.  And I DID do them, today, beginning to end. It’s just… there was this moderately upsetting moment in between start and finish, where I was shown that maybe, “I” am not really in control of this process of practicing tai chi at all, and maybe I never have been.  What does one do with an awareness like that?

Brief Update: after I posted this entry, I decided to check draft entries, and discovered, yes, I had done the tai chi on September 21. But because I was running so late (36 minutes of snooze button later!), I apparently planned to finish the entry later, and never got to it. C’est la vie!  So, I’m now on Day 222, or I have two entries for day 199… Day 199a (the 21st September), and day 199b (the 22nd).

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