adjusting to your environment (2)

Another week, another business trip – ah, the perils of having found employment once again.

This time – on the train back up to Tokyo – ended up working through the opening of the second Sha family tai ji quan form in the space between two cars of the train.

This is not any train, but the Shinkansen, or “bullet train” which zips along pretty quickly indeed and which connects all major Japanese cities.

The prior week I had a full schedule everyday (up in Hakone, another Shinkansen ride away from Tokyo), then gong fu with my daughter on Friday night, special Liu Jingru Laoshi review session all day Saturday, special Sha Laoshi review on Sunday – and directly onto the train from the workout, my roller suitcase full of sweaty clothes and clean suits, and my head still buzzing with three days’ intensive martial arts training.

That week had been spent entirely within the confines of the training facilities, apart from the solace to be found on the rooftop (read about that in a prior post). The change from that setting to three days of Chinese martial arts was immense and much-needed, though I might have used a brief transition.

Again without transition, I plunged back into the work world, spending the next week (i.e. last week) on a mountain outside of Osaka, having boarded the train immediately after Sunday’s practice session. Upon arrival at last week’s facility, I was pleased to discover that we were completely free to wander outside in the forest. So off I went, early every morning and late most nights. I had parallel lives going – work during the day and workouts before and after.

I was stuck between two worlds in another way. It was easy to get lost in the forest as I ventured further and the trail narrowed and I started to worry about getting back on time – and then glanced up to find a giant power line overhead. A small clearing in the forest with both wildlife – the frog I almost stepped on, the birdsong overhead – and reminders of civilization, with the sudden appearance of a set of concrete stairs leading down to….nothing.

In that clearing and other, smaller ones, I worked through the tai ji and tai ji jian (sword) forms of the Sha family, trying to lock in the recent corrections I have absorbed. For a brief period, I could put aside matters related to work and do nothing but move slowly in the mountain air.

I have been transcribing my stack of practice journals into a more orderly and digital form, typing everything onto a computer for my own use now and for possible development into a text in the future (very maybe on that one…). The going is extremely slow but I hope to finish (most of ) an early version by the end of this year.

But in such a wonderful setting, it was not the time to hunch over a laptop and make notes about the wrist curling inward in the direction of the little finger….no, far better to get out and do it, learn with the body and all that. Remember, there are precious few spots of nature left in Tokyo, so I got fairly excited about the woods on the mountain with birds and frogs and – gasp – even signs warning those who stray from the path to be on the watch for snakes.

Back to the Shinkansen and civilization. The week’s work done, I was on the way back to Tokyo and watching the scenery whiz past while hunched over my laptop and making notes on the second tai ji form of the Sha family.

This was actually the first form of theirs which I worked on, started by fortuitous chance but left largely on my own to review during the long gaps between sudden bursts of new motions. I have always been a little shaky on the first sequence of moves, which involves a series of horizontal circles and strikes with the palms.

I had ironed out the sequence of motions back in the woods but couldn’t type out a description of the motions without doing them. And with staring eyes all around my motions were constrained in my seat. So I did the only reasonable thing and moved to the space between the train cars and drilled that section even further between trips back to my seat to tap out more notes.

I got it figured out somewhere between Nagoya and Shizuoka in that small, swaying space and it will be forever etched in my memory. We can’t always choose the best times and places to practice. Sometimes they choose us, and when it goes well, it is an experience to hold onto. Leaning back into another bagua-like palm circle, seeing another unremarkable town flash past out the corner of my eye, returning with a double-handed push to the front – I was far removed from the peace of the mountains, but had created my own brief period of tranquility in a very different space.