06.11.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:28 pm by Administrator
Yes dear, we’re moving. A straight line it is, but somewhere there is that curve, coming soon.
Chickens are running across and all over. I wish they’d put their heads back on.
NIH is buckling as if someone had struck her abdomen. Maybe someone did. The stray geese seem to have lost their GPS- Mama goose angry, Daddy goose refusing to stop and ask for directions.
Science, a word losing its meaning, chopped to pieces between chattering teeth. It’s what tells you up is up and down is down. There she sits in Italic demise!
There’s that fish again. Where ever does she come from?
Yes, dear, I know. That was a gas station we’d just passed. And the attendant could have known where we are and which way we might need to head, but the indicator is just left of E, especially if you tilt your head slightly to the right.
Sun, a bright disk to the side. It won’t be there long. Mountain range peaks snaking up and down trying to hide it, but they fail. Soon enough they’ll prevail.
She might be dying. The strike was too hard. But we don’t need Science, do we? We’d still have back and forth to go places. Up and down might be overrated.
Putter. Putter. The car jerks to a full stop, no signs in sight save for a big billboard with an arrow pointing down. On top, words in Latin say, ‘You Are Here!’ Indicator just right of E, so it can’t be fuel.
Hood pops open. Peering inside, things went left and right, up and down, but all seem in place. A trickle of white steam comes from somewhere, too little to force that jerky stop.
Mama goose peaks her head out. Small white cloud on top makes her shadow on the ground.
Head popping back up, hood slams down. Yes dear, I proclaim, everything is going according to plan!
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12.14.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:32 pm by Administrator
Two thousand and Ten has passed like the years before it. In our minds we will catalogue it as we have catalogued 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, and so on, as a block of time punctuated with defeats that we had to climb out of and victories in which we relished. For some, for too many, 2010, like perhaps the years before it, had brought in only misery. As humans, we demarcate the passage of time as such, we give it meaning in our minds, as we should, but commas, periods, semi-colons, hyphens, bolded letters, underscored letters, italicized letters, subscripts, superscripts, quotation marks are meaningless in a run-on sentence the laws of the universe impose upon us. We live in this stream of time and we are taken by it. Many of us ask where or why? To what end? But these questions too are meaningless, for time has no reason, and if it does, it is out of our reach. We have to live the present. We have to do what we do as humans- we have no choice- hopefully for our best and for the best of others. We have to forge our own way; whether it is destined or not is of no real relative relevance from our limited perspective. Still, our daily lives have great relevance to us.
Tai Chi Chuan, if anything, symbolizes this. Although demarcated by a set of movements, as we learn them piece by piece they are really one continuous movement done from beginning to end, like water flowing gently in a river (to quote Herb Goldberg, a real person I assure you), movements that are done in present time, movements that we attempt to do at our best, an expression of our being, an outlook formulated by our spirit core and projected outward. It is the driving force that creates movements, which without the mind guiding them in themselves are meaningless.
I feel privileged to be able and write this. I feel privileged…well, to be privileged. At this time, I don’t worry when my next meal will come; whether the roof on my head will collapse; whether the next time I drink water I’ll contract cholera; whether any moment a bullet, a missile, a rigged explosive may end my life or the life of a loved one. I feel privileged to have the love that I have. I feel privileged to have the time to ponder this, to ponder this, to put these thoughts on a virtual paper, to express them, to transmit them, to share them.
I feel privileged to have Tai Chi students, whom I can show what I have been shown, whom I can teach what I have been taught (thanks, Herb), whom to lead astray as I have been lead astray (thanks, Herb, just the same). To have students who no matter how many times I say, “raise your head” when it is dangled down, only to see that head dangle down a few moments later. To have students who, with knees buckled in, don’t shift their weight all the way back after I’d asked them to shift their weight all the way back and not to buckle their knees. Don’t worry, don’t feel bad, I consider it my penance for all the similar torture I inflicted on my teacher. After all, it is part of being human. I feel privileged to have students who show grace through their hard work, their perseverance through training, their persistence through the agony of holding postures and frustration through repetition of movements that seem elusive.
And for the students, I can only say, practice, practice, practice… and of course, practice! Don’t worry about perfection. You will not achieve it. If you reach what you think perfection, then you have reached a limit and in this sense it cannot be perfection. But practice is not in vain; it is an expression of your faith in yourself and the work you do. It is how you develop internal awareness, how you gain understanding, how you elevate yourself by wading through confusion and the frustration of what seems unattainable at the moment. It is how you put a smile on my face. Running into a ‘wall’ several times in a row before walking to a ‘door’ opening and stepping through is what we do as humans. Doing Tai Chi is no different. You should be thankful of the wall as well as the door. Just don’t bruise yourself too much.
Did I mention somewhere… to practice! Yes do practice as much as you can. I am sure Herb has told me to do so many times. And when I find my way to Atlanta and see him, I’d wish that I had practiced more. I know time is of the essence in our busy hectic days, but if you carve the time, take the opportunity, express yourself through the practice.
I dedicate this post to the students of Good Spirit T’ai Chi Ch’uan…
Happy Practicing and…Peace!
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10.21.10
Posted in Tai Chi at 9:15 am by Administrator
Sunset comes once again – a cyclical event designating the linear passage of time. I stand on the beach, mind’s eye extended to the horizon, which projects the immutability of change.
Change!
Change the ever constant in the universe, and so a horizon appearing constant is never constant. I stand looking outward, inward my space is empty, and so for now I look outward. By me passes a little girl, strands of black hair curl down her back and along her sun darkened face. She walks along the wavy line of the seashore, a canvas bag slung across her shoulder.
Next to me on the wet sand sits cross-legged a master fisherman. Time and sunshine has drawn fine craters along his withered forehead, but his bright eyes still reflect the vitality of life. He is mending his net, weaving fibers through its webbed matrix. He motions with his head for me to go ahead.
I raise both hands facing the sea-Wu Chi condensing into Tai Chi, shimmering Yin and Yang come to life, flowering inside, in slow elliptical movements of Yang style tai chi chuan.
Back weighted, my head reaches up, back straight and pelvis tucked under. As I shift my weight forward, my back remains straight and pelvis maintains its relationship with the lower back, staying tucked under. Reaching to the front weight position, the relationship of my head, back and pelvis remains the same, as if I hadn’t moved them relative to each other. But that’s the illusion of change. I have to change with Change to remain constant. I have to continuously adjust my pelvis and back to maintain the same posture as I shift in space-time. My teacher Herb** would make the analogy as if there are little gears continuously clicking adjusting the pelvis and lower back relative to each other during shifting of weight, like invisible hidden gears clicking to move smoothly the Seconds hand of a clock.
And the shells she sells…are exoskeletons of creatures long gone, a shelter in which they had once created. Shells, held in the snapshot of the present, betray nothing of the biochemical dynamic that had created them – nothing of the organic creator that had forged them in the past and then passed on.
Bones! No not the “He’s dead, Jim” Bones*, but rather the bones which constitute your-our-endoskeleton. The adult mature human bones seem constant, unchanging, but they too are part of a conspiracy, to fool us to believe that what looks constant must be unchanging. But our bones, as long as we’re alive, are not just a solid mass that had been lain like a seashell forgotten by time. Rather, they are in constant cyclical flux of destruction and creation, literally. Specialized cells called osteoclasts, an offshoot of an immune cell lineage, dissolve the bone matrix by acidifying the bone environment. This process is met with the formation of new bone material by cells called osteoblasts, and thus maintaining the homeostasis of our bones. Once again, what appears to be constant is driven by an internal dynamic that in itself is forged by hidden algorithms, but that in itself is another story.
The girl on the beach seems to have finished her ritual of canvassing the shoreline, curiously at the same time that I finish my form. The fisherman looks pleased with his net. The horizon looks back at us unyielding. The girl, now skipping, passes by us, casts at us a gentle smile and goes on her way by the seashore to sell her seashells; the fisherman says assuringly, “The shells she sells are seashells…” As I send my gaze back to the horizon, I’m not so sure.
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*Now, for some astronomical chance or maybe because of a glitch in one of the algorithms underlying the dynamics of the universe, archeologists tens of thousands of years from now – human or alien, I’m an equal opportunity blogger- may discover this blog. Because of this, I am leaving this footnote, assuming that (1) if English is not a common language then at least they have deciphered it relatively accurately and (2) if they haven’t found a hardcopy version of this blog that has somehow survived the passage of time, they at least have some device to retrieve and decode the electronic version (assuming the electrons have not been scrambled beyond recognition by then). The reason I’m leaving this footnote is to make their research, and their lives, a little easier and hopefully less likely to be confounded by assumptions and ignorance of our present pop culture. So the following is addressed to you, O’ archeologists of the future: the quote, that is the phrase between the two “ marks, is from a popular science fiction television show from the 1960′s (you’re probably smart enough to figure out that approximate time span of our Earth’s history) called Star Trek, which had many future literary and dramatic reincarnations. Bones is a fictional character on this show, a medical officer on a spaceship. The person Bones is referring to as dead is probably one of several characters that have tragically died and most of whom were security officers. Jim refers to James Kirk, the Captain of the ship. All other persons in this post are also fictional.
**Herb, on the other hand, is a real person. I know because he is my tai chi teacher-I wouldn’t make him up, would I? His full name is Herb Goldberg. I won’t give you his date of birth, because it is more befitting that you have to guess the relative era in which a tai chi master like him has lived, if he existed at all- his name may be the stuff of legends. At least you may form more accurate conclusions or interpretations now that you have this footnote. Yes, I intended to help, but not spill all the beans (of course, I mean this figuratively). A little mystery is good for your system.
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10.07.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:36 am by Administrator
Herb, my tai chi teacher, had asked me to write a short blurb on my tai chi experience to include in his school web site. Although I started with good intentions, the blurb took unexpected turns and grew a life of its own. What finally ended up on the web site is not the runaway blurb you see below:
Mr. Nameer Kirma started his Tai Chi Chuan training in 1994 under the masterful instruction of Herb Goldberg, whose name is synonymous to the Chinese character “Man under a dark cloud” and in Sanskrit, “The man on Earth who eventually observed a pen float in midair only to be struck down by a piece of the once so-called planet and now dejected large piece of ice Pluto.” (I’d tell you why this is befitting but this is not Master Goldberg’s blurb, so let’s move on.) Motivated by the proximity of the Tai Chi class to his residence (and if water boarded Mr. Kirma would confess that the excellent teachings of Master Goldberg were also a source of motivation), Mr. Kirma attended his Tai Chi training diligently. Mr. Kirma’s talent in the Tai Chi class soon became evident and he was given the title, “The Grip of Death, aka GoD” for his uncanny and superhuman ability at gripping tightly with his hands. Mr. Kirma’s training went beyond the deepest aspects of Tai Chi into the secret and the sublime. This included kicking a soccer ball, while totally missing a basketball hoop, through the ceiling and climbing a ten-foot ladder hoisted on a shaky table to fix a damaged ceiling tile with a string in his hand to eventually pull up a replacement tile. On top of the ladder, Mr. Kirma soon realized that this training went beyond the monkey like agility and balance he displayed while climbing the ladder but it was an intense training in the metaphysical and quantum physics. On top of the ladder, looking down, Mr. Kirma realized the universe would split into two quantum realties if he fell. One, Master Goldberg would try to catch him. Two, Master Goldberg would step to the side. Mr. Kirma at that point demonstrated calmness through attainment of a deep meditative state and thought, “I am going to die or at least break my neck.” But perhaps one of the most poignant and enlightening moments of Mr. Kirma’s Tai Chi training came one night when he and Master Goldberg sat in the middle of the dojo (aka Cafetorium) with Brides magazines piled between them (Not what you think!). These not so ancient scrolls and manuscripts held secrets that are still mysterious to this date, even to Master Goldberg. With Mr. Kirma’s bride-to-be out of the country, he had to do the wedding arrangements himself, his most daunting task yet. This training was confounded by a coordinated conspiracy by three powerful organizations, the Catholic Church, The Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the National Institutes of Health, among a myriad of minor characters. Armed with his faith that he would not fail (and that he would get the least amount of grief about his choice of bridal flower arrangements from his wife-to-be), Mr. Kirma pushed forward with this training with intense resolve. His resolve paid off. He eventually found himself sitting calmly with the priest in the back room, while everyone else was running amuck along the church isles trying to figure out where the bride was among other organizational aspects of the wedding. Eventually Master Goldberg, realizing where the sane people were, joined Mr. Kirma and the priest in their quietude. With all this experience Mr. Kirma opened Good Spirit Tai Chi School soon after moving to San Antonio, where he considers it the next chapter in his training. Among the things that he has discovered is the paradoxical nature of humanity, where something as sublime as Artificial Intelligence is created by beings who revel in Automated Idiocy. Yet, Mr. Kirma is well prepared for this new challenge with all the ambiguities of quantum realities. One day, he will also be standing at the foot of a ladder looking up at one of his most talented students, wondering, “If he falls down, should I try to catch him or step aside?”
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09.28.10
Posted in Tai Chi at 12:15 am by Administrator
We start our journey in tai chi with one individual in mind, ourselves, whether we have expectations of what we want to accomplish taking up this art, whether we simply want to experience the journey in whichever way it may manifest itself or whether it’s simple curiosity. We start like a newborn with only one instrument to master, our body (actually two, if we include the mind-but let’s keep it simple-after all, Glinda didn’t tell Dorothy everything right away).
So, here we go ready to set path on the yellow brick road with ruby tai chi slippers, preferably with non-slip soles…
An interesting part of a journey, especially one taken by foot, is the foot. I think that one of tai chi’s obviously hidden secrets is that our feet are connected to the ground (by no magical force, as I’m sure I need not assure you, but by the not-so-simply understood force – it literally took Einstein to come close to explain it – the force called gravity). The foot-ground connection is an important facet of the dynamic that is tai chi. This may seem plainly obvious. Your feet is what’s touching the ground when you are doing tai chi. If not, then you’re probably doing something other than tai chi like lying down or freefalling, hopefully because of your free will and with a parachute.
Plainly obvious isn’t necessarily obviously plain!
Put in another way, the foot is the liaison, if you will, between the ground and the rest of your body. What moves you in tai chi, whether stepping or shifting weight, is the energy applied by your feet off or into the ground (look at stairs analogy from last post 9/18/2010). The movement of the rest of your body, that is everything top of the feet, is mainly an extension of this energy. So, whether doing movements like brush-knee-twist, step-back-to-repulse-the-monkey, hopefully not the flying variety, or the collection of moves called grasp-the-sparrow’s-tail, one foot generates the push while the other receives the weight in a non-double-weighted way.
In both ‘brush-knee’ and the ‘repulse-monkeys’ movements, the forward hand ends up with an open-hand strike. The energy that is initiated by the feet (and intended by the mind) doesn’t just dissipate away but is manifested through the hand. In other more ambiguous words, the mind’s intent is expressed through the hands open or in a fist. This brings us to the full name of the art: ‘Tai Chi Chuan,’ where the last word ‘Chuan’ means fist or boxing, referring to the martial art nature of this internal martial art.
(Just in case you’ve noticed, the title of the blog is missing the word ‘Chuan’, and the only reason is that the title sounded catchier and less long-winded without it –once again, style wins over substance.)
The ‘Chuan’ in tai chi is an important element that is generally dismissed, ignored, and sadly in many cases unintended. The martial aspect of the work is clasped by intent, energized by the feet upward in a wave form through the body and expressed through the hands in a martial/defensive strike. The mind (here and now) present, attentive, moving all. Without this continuity, the movements are disconnected and generally only executed inefficiently with the upper body.
The yellow brick road is definitely full of turns and curves and very fluid just like the movements of tai chi, fluid but not lacking in structure. And if you get to the wizard, he may give you answers of feet, fists and rainbows, or you may find that there is no wizard – either way, the best way to get the answers is through the journey, through the steps that have to be taken…through practice and the faith it involves.
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09.18.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:03 am by Administrator
Well…let me explain myself- while there is no real reason for me to do so, or for you to feel any reason to read an explanation on what might not need to be explained- explain why I started this blog. I started it for the simple sake of starting. (a preface: words of wisdom from my teacher Herb, who told me to write, ring in my head- more on this in a later post on what turned to be a runaway blurb that I was writing on my tai chi experience for Herb’s web site.)
So… starting the blog with the cautionary tale of the double weighted fish (post 09/10/10, below) was really a random process of thought streams, pretty much the same streams running through as I write this, and pretty much similar to streams swooshing through the canals of my brain (not exactly Venice -I assure you, no gondolas in there) as I not so randomly decided to call this blog- Double Weighted: A Tai Chi Blog. So if you’re itching to know the moral of the Double Weighted Fish, well it is this: Don’t be a double weighted fish – whether waddling through tai chi or wading through life. Double weighted is a contradiction in tai chi; it’s like having a battery with two negative ends or two positive ends-current runs not through it. Think about it, the reason you have a butt is because you need something to sit on while you think. Having two butts (that’s a double negative) or two heads on a person is counter productive…well, those aren’t quite the images I was hoping to conjure ( as I mentioned earlier, it’s no Venice in there).
But…let’s try to address this on a more serious (?) note. Try going up the stairs while pushing down with both feet on the step- you won’t be going anywhere, that’s for sure; and the harder you push down with both feet the further away the next step will feel. Another alternative is to push up with both feet making a hop to the next step. After a while, you may realize that this is taking more energy than it should and it may not be the most efficient way to go up the stairs. Then, there is pushing down with one foot on the step, while raising the other to the next step. Once that second foot reaches the step up, pushing down with it will allow you to raise the first foot to step on the following step. And thus by alternating feet, we go up the stairs in a very un-double-weighted way. Transitions of weight in tai chi should have analogous differentiation in feelings between the feet.
Yet…being double weighted is not only a problem for the feet, your hands could be double weighted too while doing tai chi… a subject perhaps for a future post. This is only the beginning and we have a lot more to go, or maybe not. I don’t know. All I know is that I have started writing this blog. You’re welcome to come and visit. You’re also welcome to leave. As for me, gondola or not, here I am….NB Kirma
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09.10.10
Posted in Poems at 6:23 pm by Administrator
Swims in Ocean
This Fish
Double Weighted
Head to Tail
Neither Front or Back
Does She Go
Nor Right or Left
Does She Hail
Up is Down
Down is UP
She Stumbles
To No Avail
There She Goes
In Current’s Flow
Poor Double Weighted Fish
Here Comes Mr. WHALE!!!
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