Search This Blog

Monday, August 6, 2018

the wisdom of the east

I'm sure I must have heard Gisele Mackenzie belting out Mr Sandman on Your Hit Parade.  How cool it would have been if all the singers had Lucky Strikes dangling out of the corners of their mouths while they sang?  But I digress.  I was surprised to see it was first a hit in 1958, it has more of a big band, 30's, 40's sound to me.  But she is a cutie and what a pleasant expression on all of her four faces.  I would have liked to see a little more variations maybe even a couple of them getting into a little spat while the other two look on out of the corners of their eyes, but maybe it would be less about the singing then.

The thing about QAnon is they believe that Mueller and Trump are in league to take down that unholy triad of Obama, Hilary, and Soros, so how does Trump's castigating of Mueller work in?  Oh that's right Trump is playing three dimensional chess.  These conspiracies they are a little fascinating because they are outrageous, but then as you look into them they get cloudy and merge with other conspiracy theories, and it's all the same crap.  Once you lose Occam's razor you are prone to all kinds of junk.

Speaking of junk, I went to a tai chi class this Saturday.  I do a lot of walking and I go to the gym three or four times a week, and I guess that's all fine, but I am not as limber as I ought to be.  If I drop a quarter on the ground it takes a long time to bend over and pick it up, long enough for me to loose my train of thought and wonder why am I bending over?  Oh right the quarter, my fingers are only inches away so it shouldn't be much longer than a few minutes.

This woman started having yoga classes in the towers.  A lot of people do yoga, my sister is a big fan, I know it requires all these wacky poses with wacky names, but you know, twisting yourself up like a pretzel would likely limber up the limbs.  But it turns out that it is more about breathing, that's right the stuff I've been doing since the doc held me by the feet and gave me a big whack.  You'd think I'd have it down by now.  But you are supposed to be thinking of weird stuff while you do it, your third eye and your chakras, shit like that.  And most of the time you are on the floor, rolling hither and yon and bringing your right knee to stomach while stretching out for the godhead I think, and all the while you are breathing in and breathing out in some kind of rhythm that I could never get in tune with anymore than I could find the beat while trying to dance.

So much for that shit, but I also have friends who do tai chi, and I remember when I was subbing in Bridgeport walking on the edge of Chinatown in the dawn and these groups in the park doing these like kung fu motions, but slower, more graceful, this seemed more like something I wanted to get into.

My watercolor class being on August vacation a couple Saturdays ago I wandered down to the Cultural Center, but when I got there the class was cancelled.  I wandered down to Millennium Park, and there on the great lawn were all these people doing rhythmic motions more or less in unison while peppy music played.  This looked good, what was it?  It turned out it was Zumba.  It was nice.  Some people were executing snappy dance steps and some were just standing there dreamily waving their arms, but everybody was in it together and having a good time, and I would have joined them except it was too fucking hot.

But tai chi was on the next week.  I was a little pumped but then the guy started droning on about meditating and that damned third eye and that stupid breathing.  Oh for fuck's sake.  We did get to stand but we had to think about some center in our stomachs and another in our chests and the third eye of course, and some kind of ball of energy which was coursing in and out of us.  Way back when I was taking piano accordion lessons I had just learned to tell time and I knew that once the big hand completed a circuit I could toss off that sweat-soaked instrument of torture and go out and join my buds slaughtering each other with toy machine guns on the sidewalks of Homan Avenue.  But damn that big hand moved slow.  As it did last Saturday.  There had been some talk early in the session about doing forms in  the second hour and that sounded more like slo mo kung fu and I was waiting for that, but once the hour was up. the guy said let's all sit down and do chair meditations and I was out the door like a flash.

So I have to tell you dawgs, if you ever thought that yoga and tai chi couldn't possibly be as stupid as they look or else so many people wouldn't be doing it, they are exactly as stupid as they look, and if you want to take up something stupid take up QAnon because what the fuck.  Me, I'm leaning towards zumba.

No comments:

Post a Comment