Performing at the Chinese New Years Festival

On Sunday the Tucson Sino Martial Arts Group performed at Centennial Hall for the Chinese New Year Festival. TSMA has been together since 2006. This was the fourth time the group has performed for this event. I am the newest member of the group, joining in October of last year, and the only senior citizen among them. Even though I have over thirty years of experience in the Chinese Martial Arts, I have never been part of a performance group.

We were just a small part of the overall performance, our time on stage lasted about seven minutes. Our part of the program was scheduled to begin at 2:30 pm but we arrived at the hall at 10:30 am to get ready. On the sidewalk in front of the hall, we went through our routine a half dozen times. We were joined by Feng, Junjie a Chinese Shaolin Kung Fu and Tai Chi master who currently lives and teaches in Phoenix. Just before noon we took our turn on stage to go over the routine one last time. The people running the show made sure all the details and loose ends were taken care of, like where we would stand on stage, the exact placement of our swords, the lighting etc.

We started training for our seven minutes of fame last November, meeting for 2-3 hours of practice at least once every weekend. The routine put together by our Sifu, Zhao, Shuping, contained an entire Chang Chuan sword set, a Tai Chi fan set and a short Chen Tai Chi routine. These three sets were surrounded and embellished by short Tai Chi and Kung Fu movements. It all had to be timed perfectly and set to music. It was apparent to me early on, that I had joined a professional group that knew what they were doing. The broadsword set and Chen Tai chi routine were new to me and I had to learn them from scratch. The Fan routine was performed by the women only. When I joined the group I was delighted to learn that the only other non-Chinese member, Rob, coincidentally had spent years studying and teaching two of the same southern Kung Fu styles that I knew. Sifu Shuping asked us to put together a short group of movements from the Hung Gar style of Kung Fu. We chose to each do a segment from the famous Tiger and Crane form. Simultaneously Rob performed the tiger section while I did the crane part.
The entire New Year’s show lasted well over two hours. There were dancers and singers and musicians. It was quite an extravaganza. I would have liked to have watched it from the audience. The people I know who did, told me it was spectacular and well worth the admission price. I watched as much of it as I could from behind the side curtain on stage. It was exciting being back stage with all the performers.
Besides performing with our group, Master Feng performed a Chen Tai Chi routine accompanied by Shi Yi on the flute. My wife, Katie, who was in the audience said, “It was so beautiful, I cried”. Master Feng also performed a solo routine, a drunken Kung Fu Form. This highlighted his incredible strength and flexibility. His interpretation of the form was both inspiring and humorous.
I am not an experienced performer and have a fair amount of anxiety about it. When I was in the seventh grade I was part of our annual Middle School Christmas Pageant. While standing in the front row singing Christmas Carols with the group, I passed out cold and fell to the floor. When I woke up, all the other kids were standing over me. It was humiliating. Even as an adult, that young boy who fainted in front of the whole school pops up when I least expect it.

I missed much of the first part of the show just prior to our group performance. I sat by an open door breathing in the cool fresh air and trying to stay calm. We were the sixth act to go on. The women in our group had applied their makeup, put flowers in their hair and I thought they all looked very beautiful. The whole seven minutes of our performance went by in a blur. I have no idea how we did as a group, but I do know I spaced out for a few moments and missed a few moves during the sword form. Others assured me later that it was hardly noticeable. Being in my 60s, I’ll write it off as a senior moment.

While the Centennial Hall show was still going on, the TSMA group walked over to a local Middle School to repeat our performance for the Vietnamese Lunar New Year presentation. The stage was very small. I was on the end and during the performance got tripped up in the electrical cords, lost my place and experienced an even longer senior moment. By this time however, I was so tired I didn’t care and no one seemed to notice anyway. The audience clapped and hollered loudly when we were through. They rewarded us with delicious Vietnamese sandwiches for our efforts. I ate mine with abandon. I realized I had hardly eaten anything all day. Just prior to our performance at Centennial Hall, we were fed us lunch which consisted of pizza and water. I ate one piece of greasy pizza and the fearful little boy inside warned me, not only might I faint on stage, but if I ate another piece of pizza, I might throw up as well.

Performing for the Chinese New Year’s Festival was all in all, a rewarding experience, but I’m relieved it’s over. Now our group can get back to learning and practicing the Chinese Martial Arts that we all love.

^{To see more pictures from the performance and other pictures by Jack Zhang go to the following link.}

https://picasaweb.google.com/102776910731860589428 

Our Tedious Thoughts

In the Jack Kornfield book “The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology”, Jack describes the below cartoon. I love Buddhist humor. Katie, my artistic wife, re-created it for this blog post.

In my Tai Chi classes, the people who have the hardest time learning the movements are those who first process the moves through their minds and then try to translate it to their bodies. As adults, we all have a tendency to do this, some more than others.  Most of  my students these days are older adults and this phenomenon seems to get worse with age. Younger people have less trouble watching and doing. Children very easily imitate what they see without having to think about it.  “Monkey see, monkey do” is not difficult for them. With many older people it becomes “monkey see, monkey think about, monkey ask questions and then monkey get very frustrated and possibly quit”.
When a person sticks with practicing Tai Chi regularly, it gradually becomes easier for them to get out of their heads and simply reside in  body awareness. Getting over the initial frustration that results from this tension between head and body is the hardest.  Abandoning the “thinking step” to learning Tai Chi allows the person to more easily “go with the flow” as we boomers used to say.
The concept of consciousness being separate from our  thoughts is  not  something most people understand.  Buddhism teaches that thinking is the cause of suffering. More accurately, out of attachment to thinking arises suffering. When we are conscious of our thoughts, thoughts then become a tool of consciousness.
We tend to believe what we think about ourselves and the world around us. Our thoughts and beliefs are interpretations of reality, but not reality itself. Thoughts and beliefs give rise to emotions. The alternative to unconsciously riding the waves of thoughts, beliefs and emotions is awareness of an alive stillness within us. Only in the present moment do we find true freedom. Even when there is chaos all around, there is a space within that is calm and still, like the eye of a storm.
Almost everyone has at one time or another experienced a deep sense of peace and joy that arises from totally letting go and being present. Like after a hard days work, when you finally get a chance to sit down and relax.
Practicing Tai Chi is only one way of cultivating the ability to get out of our thoughts and rest in this deep sense of peace, There are many other ways: religious faith, meditation, yoga or just totally accepting one’s self and one’s life.

A Quiet New Year’s Eve In Green Valley

I woke up early on New Year’s day, 1 or 2 in the morning, and realized I’d slept through New Year’s Eve. It’s not unusual for Katie and me to go to bed before midnight on New Year’s Eve. What is unusual is not being startled awake by fireworks and people yelling and then having a hard time getting back to sleep because erratic explosions continue on into the wee hours of the morning. In Green Valley, the land of retirees, however, I didn’t hear one firecracker or one person yelling. It was blessedly quiet all evening. One could make the conclusion that New Year’s Eve is a holiday for the young. There was a time when we would at least stay up and watch Dick Clark or someone ring in the New Year on TV. But we’re not even interested in that anymore. Seeing a bunch of inebriated people jumping around and yelling is not my idea of a good time. Last New Year’s Katie and I were in Hawaii, staying at her son’s home. This was by far the noisiest celebration I have ever witnessed in the US. A ban on aerial fireworks was going into effect the next year, so people in Hawaii went nuts. I hated it. It actually started many days before the 31^st, building to a crescendo around midnight and then carrying on days later. On New Year’s Eve the smoke from all the explosions was so thick in Nuuanu Valley, we had to close all the windows, because we were all coughing and choking. I remember the very first time I was allowed to participate in the New Year’s Eve craziness. It was in the 1950s in Ferguson, Mo. My parents decided to let my sister Karen and me stay up. Dad told us that when midnight came, we could go outside and make as much noise as we wanted. He gave us each lids from pots and pans and instructed us to hit them together like cymbals and yell at the top of our lungs. I couldn’t believe we would actually be allowed to do that. Our dad was always telling us crazy stuff and invariably mom would put a stop to it. But when I looked over at mom, she just smiled at me in approval and took a sip of wine. Just before midnight, we stepped out onto the front porch. I looked up and down the street and to my surprise our neighbors were all standing out on their front porches too, well almost all of our neighbors anyway. I noticed a few dark houses, like our next door neighbors, Mr. & Mrs. Howard, who were in their 70s, and the family down the street who belonged to that strange religion. At 12:00 we all began yelling and knocking our pan lids together. I thought it was great fun and over much too soon. The worst New Year’s Eve of my life and the one that soured me on the holiday from then on was in 1967 in Vietnam. I stayed in my hooch that evening quietly drinking and smoking a joint with one of my buddies. At midnight we stepped out the screen door to watch countless tracer bullets and flares fill the dark sky. The sound was intense, not unlike when we were under attack. I didn’t enjoy it. Someone shot one of our Vietnamese interpreters, Chang, that night. For years I assumed the culprit was our redneck supply sergeant. He was crude and prejudiced. He called all Vietnamese “gooks” and along with our first sergeant was behind the movement to not allow our interpreters to eat in the mess hall. I stopped eating there as well in protest, but nobody cared or even noticed. In just several weeks from that night, we would experience the ’68 TET offensive and be the intended victims of a much bigger and more lethal barrage of aerial ordnance. A few years ago, I attempted to get in touch with anyone from my former unit over the internet. I received one reply from a guy who worked at my base camp at that time. He was in communications and knew many of the same people I knew. He told me he was actually there when Chang was shot. A bunch of them, including Chang, were up by our headquarters hooch and at 12:00 all began to shoot their rifles into the air. One of the sergeants, not the supply sergeant, lost his balance and fell over while firing his rifle. The automatic weapon sprayed the whole area and this guy told me it was lucky they weren’t all killed. However, one of the bullets hit Chang by accident. They immediately arranged for him to be medevac'd to the Division hospital. All these years I thought the evil sergeant did it on purpose. I’m always glad when New Year’s is over. Waking up at 2:00am New Years morning and experiencing the quiet made me thankful I’m at this stage of my life. It seems like a long time ago when I banged those pot lids, yelled like bloody murder and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Wisdom of St. Frances

The western Saints tell us, what matters most is what we “Do” in the world.






To the eastern mystics, what’s most important is to mindfully “Be” in the world.

Frank Sinatra sang, “Do, Be, Do, Be, Do”, Very Wise.

Pop, Rock & Soul On PBS

I like watching the PBS music specials, especially when the artists are from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Last night the special was called “’60s Pop, Rock and Soul (My Music)”. When PBS puts these concerts on, it’s always during a pledge drive so we have to suffer through the very long segments when they beg, plead and cajole us for money. Usually they have one or more of the musicians being interviewed by the regular PBS folks, so that keeps me watching. The two musicians hosting the show were two Brits, Davey Jones and Peter Noon. Both looked amazingly good for their age, which has to be around 60. Both were young looking even back in the day, so they had un unfair advantage. Davey didn’t bring the other Monkeys with him and Peter was devoid of the Hermits. There were almost 20 different acts on the show and all of the groups had at least some of the original members. That’s probably a rule. The most noticeable absentees were, Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders, Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane/Starship and Smokey Robinson of the Miracles. I have to say the stand-ins were quite good at imitating the originals. The young blond woman who sang “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit” was quite a babe and even had Grace’s fast vibrato down. I recognized Paul Kantner and Marty Balin from the original Jefferson Airplane. I was hoping Marty would do a song, but he didn’t. The worst of the 3 stand-ins was the blond guy who sang lead for the Raiders. He was a good singer, but no Mark Lindsay. Other lead singers sans their groups were Mitch Ryder without the Detroit Wheels and Roger McGuine without The Byrds. I think Mitch sounds better today as an older man than when he was young. Eddy Floyd who sang “Knock on Wood” and Percy Sledge with “When a Man Loves a Woman” were amazingly good. Poor Percy had this huge hit,  most of it  sung in a high register. He’s doomed for the rest of his life to hit those high notes, but he did a good job. The strangest group was ? and the Mysterians. They sang their biggest hit “96 Tears”. A Mexican American garage band from Detroit and Flint, Michigan, today they are thought of as Proto-punk, a precursor to Punk Rock. I never liked the song, but it was obvious that they were still having fun playing music. The most notable one hit wonder band was the Kingsmen. They sang “Louie, Louie” just like it was recorded, the lead singer slurring his words so they were barely understandable. He even copied the mistake on the record where he comes in with the verse too early, stops and then starts again. The audience loved it. Most of us boomers know what the real lyrics are by now, but at the time it was popular, there was an FBI investigation of what the FBI thought were graphically explicit sexual lyrics. The song was originally written by Richard Berry in 1955 about a Jamaican sailor returning to his girl on the Island. It became a popular cover song around the Northwest. Paul Revere and the Raiders, another Northwest band, also came out with a version about the same time, but it wasn’t a hit.  There was a movement in Washington at one time to make “Louie, Louie” the official state song.  I ‘m not sure if it was all the original Kingsmen on the PBS special or not, but they must be damn tired of doing this song. For me the highlight was Chad and Jeremy singing “A Summer Song”. In a pledge break interview one of them said it’s been 40 years since they’d played together, but these aging Englishmen, each playing an acoustic guitar, sang the song  sweetly and with tight harmony. As a kid watching the Ink Spots, Rosemary Clooney and others of that era, I thought their music was old-fashioned and corny. Well now it’s our turn to be old and corny. I didn’t realize back then that rarely are the most popular artists on these kinds of shows. But I enjoyed seeing  them all and there are always enough of the ones I Used to like to keep me watching.

My Personal Profile

On the left hand side of this Blogspot  page there’s an “About Me” section. Under it is my picture and along side the picture a link that says “View my complete profile”. I need to let everyone know that this actually is not my complete profile. As I think over my 64 years of life, it’s apparent to me that I’ve left a few things out. This is the “facebook” section of the blog. I’ve never been comfortable with Facebook. I’ve been invited by “friends” to join , but always decline.
Social networking is a huge phenomenon. Mark Zuckerberg was an intelligent college guy, but awkward around girls. He discovered how to enhance the college dating atmosphere, creating a way for fellow students to put their profiles out there for other students to see. The blog profile feels to me like an extension of this mentality.
Right next to my picture is the category “gender”. I dutifully put “male” in there, but I suspect the mustache gives it away. If you need both a picture and label to help people identify your gender perhaps you should choose another medium for social interaction. The next most important thing it tells you about me is that I’m a Libra. Nobody ever asks me my astrological sign anymore. It happened a lot in the ‘60s and ‘70s. I take that back. When we’re vacationing in California sometimes someone will want to know. I’ve never put my sign on a resume though.
The other most important info about me according to the profile section are my favorite movies, music and books. There are no categories for politics or religion or for that matter my favorite car, my favorite food or psychologist. Katie has a favorite kind of garlic press. I think the “my interests” category is meant to cover all these other areas.
I suspect people put down only what they want others to know. Social networking then becomes an extension of our egos, or more specifically, our personas. The whole truth about ourselves is yet to be discovered. Few people are going to put down that they suffer from anxiety, have a bad temper, are addicted to prescription drugs, have hemorrhoids or hate their bodies. Those things are to be discovered later on in the relationship.
I like thinking and talking with others about favorite books, movies and music. I mostly choose favorites from the past, when things tended to have a greater impact on me. Having a favorite anything is an interesting concept. What I like changes over time. At one time in my life, my favorite book was Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine. It was a great book about a boy who invented a machine that did all his homework for him. I rarely have current favorites of anything. Actually I don’t think much in terms of favorites anymore, but I used to. I often have trouble choosing one thing over another. My favorite food tends to be whatever I’m eating at the time.
I’d like to add another category to my profile, “religion”. For my favorite, I choose Hinduism because it has something for everyone. It has plenty of Gods and Goddesses, and many different paths to God. In a sub-category of favorite Hindu Deity, it’s a tie between Krishna, the young good looking dude who played the flute and had groups of adoring young Gopis following him everywhere (not unlike my favorite rock ‘n’ roll star which would be in another category) and Hanuman, the monkey warrior, who was the devotee and protector of Rama. He was one fierce and devoted dude.
Under the sub-category of favorite style of Zen Buddhism, I would have to go with Soto Zen. Practitioners can just sit and mind their own business, whereas in Rinzai Zen the master silently creeps around in the background and then whacks you with a bamboo stick when you least expect it. I hate that.
Under the sub-category of favorite New Thought writer I would go with Joel Goldsmith. This New York Jew and renegade Christian Scientist created The Infinite Way. His teachings cut to the chase and can be summed up: Every moment of your life, practice the presence of the Christ within.
Under the sub-category of favorite  saying by a Guru that could be put on a bumper sticker I choose Meher Baba: Don’t worry, be Happy.

Briefly Marching With OWS

 
Katie and I were in Tucson a few weeks ago for the Tucson Meet Yourself Folk Life Festival. After I performed with the Chinese Martial Arts Club, we walked around to take in the rest of the Festival. We ran across the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters who were marching through the streets of Tucson, so we joined them. I didn’t know much about the movement at the time. We thought it had something to do with the rich getting too rich and too powerful in this country and influencing our politicians too much. We agreed with that so we entered the slow moving stream of people.
I don’t like being part of any large movement or organization. There is always something I don’t agree with. I’m sure it’s related to my experience in the Army and more specifically in Vietnam. We wreaked havoc on that beautiful country and its people and I was part of that effort. When I got back and decided to join the protest against the war, I found out that to the protesters I symbolized what they were against. I didn’t feel welcomed by them and didn’t like many of the things they were saying.
I recently allowed my membership in the American Legion to lapse for that very reason. For example, I didn’t agree with their efforts to amend the constitution giving Congress the power to prohibit the desecration of the American flag. The Legion is very hung up on the flag. I don’t want to burn a flag, but I believe in my right to do so. If I can buy one and own one, then I can burn it. Strangely I supported the right of that wacko preacher who wanted to burn the Koran. I also have a right to burn a Bible, which I don’t especially want to do either, but I don’t think the preacher would have agreed with that. The issue is individual freedom of expression. The flag is a symbol of that freedom, not the freedom itself.
When Katie and I fell into step with the marchers, I felt slightly uncomfortable. There was a young man directly behind us yelling about the greed of the fascist capitalists etc. and he kept stepping on my heel, causing my shoe to come off. He did that twice. Finally I turned around and gave him a dirty look. He looked back at me, but didn’t seem to care. He was too busy yelling nasty remarks for the cause. I feel these demonstrations should be peaceful and not have any destructive behavior or aggressive words, at all. But my wanting to turn around and knock that asshole down on the ground and give him a memorable experience with my shoe, didn’t seem in harmony with my message. So instead we dropped out of the procession.
The Occupy Wall Street movement was started by a group out of Vancouver, BC called Adbusters. I’m not sure how it made the transition from Canada to the US, but on Jul 13, 2011 they put out a call to those who read their website and publications to: Occupy Wall Street!, and the following statement:
In Solidarity, and as a response to this call, a planning group was formed [occupywallst.org], and an info sharing site established. The participation of every person, and every organization, that has an interest in returning the US back into the hands of its individual citizens is required.
Our nation, our species and our world are in crisis. The US has an important role to play in the solution, but we can no longer afford to let corporate greed and corrupt politics set the policies of our nation.
We, the people of the United States of America, considering the crisis at hand, now reassert our sovereign control of our land.
Solidarity Forever!
The first OWS protest was on September 17, 2011. Wikipedia says that within one month there were similar demonstrations in 70 major cities and 600 communities around the country. World wide protests similar to these have happened in over 900 cities.
This movement has obviously struck a chord with people and during the first month it grew very fast. The protestors call themselves the 99%ers. This alludes to the fact that 1% of the population has a disproportionate amount of the wealth. The 99%ers believe that because of the way our politicians are elected, they become beholden to those with the most money. This highly influences how these politicians govern and the laws they pass. We can’t trust the government to change this because they are the very ones perpetuating it.
Only time will tell whether this movement will continue to grow and affect some kind of change. Much of the third world is rapidly trying to become more capitalistic while the OWS movement is saying we all need to be less capitalistic. The western world has lived this wasteful consumer lifestyle for a long time now. We are in no place to tell the billions of people in the third world they can’t have it too. It seems pretty clear that if the billions of people in the third world do become affluent in the same way that we are, the earth will not be able to sustain all the waste and pollution and the energy demands will be astronomical. It’s apparent that we are heading for a big change.
With all these huge problems facing the world, do we want big business calling the shots? Capitalists are most concerned with making a profit and less concerned about the welfare of the people and the environment. So even though I support much of what the OWS movement stands for, I don’t think I’ll be marching with them again any time soon. Well maybe I will if they get rid of those angry, nasty, shoe destroying assholes.