During Tai chi today, I had the pleasant sensation of waking up stiff and stumbling into the office to do the qi gong forms, and feeling my body gradually unclench itself, working out the kinks and challenges one by one, then two by two, then three by three.  I tend to get tighter and stiffer over time (don’t we all?) and yet I find that tai chi is proving to be an adequate way of loosening myself up in the morning.  And everything loosens up: internally and externally, I’m not the same person at the end of the tai chi forms that I was at the beginning.  I mean, sure, people will see me before and after, and assume I’m the same person, but I’m not — one is stiff and tight, and the other is flexible and loose.  One is tense, the other is relaxed.

The last few days of relatively enforced inactivity, caused by the snow and the ice, have gotten me down; but I  was able to spend part of the time at my artist’s desk, working on a valentine’s day card for my lady:

It didn’t turn out badly, really.  It’s this really odd combination of tightness and looseness, actually.  The TARDIS on the second page was quite challenging, and required me to summon up the tight, stiff, formal me, the pre-tai chi me; while the bow-tie and the heart at the end required the post-tai chi me.  The card reads inside:

“Fezzes are red, The TARDIS is blue, Bowties are cool, and I love you.”

The poem is not original to me, but all the artwork is.

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