Yesterday I went to Toastmasters, my regular club meeting, and I did tai chi for them as one of the speeches toward my next CC (Competent Communicator) award. I think I did better than OK, and I got credit for my “your body speaks” speech, which I think is #5 in the CC manual.
One of the other speakers told a folktale from Norway, about the Nisse in the barn. The nisse are a traditional faerie folk, rather like the garden gnomes with their red hats — except that nisse wear pointy green caps, and green leather jerkins, and smoke from little hand-carved pipes. The speaker told how every night the little girl put out milk and honey for the nisse, and rice pudding at Christmas and other feast times.
As she did so, I wound up doing my own ‘offering’ of sorts to the nisse (plural nisser), by doing this sketch in my notebook of the nisse she described. I emailed it to her last night, and received a thank you this morning. You don’t have to be a professional artist in order to give people art; the art doesn’t even have to be perfect to achieve certain goals, like delight and goodwill. It just has to be made and given.
Four tai chi forms this morning, after two qi gong forms, and all is well.
