At long last, I’ve set aside two afternoons each week to learn
T’ai Chi!
Though only a Beginner, thanks to my venerated Chicago
instructor Hau Kum Kneip, I now see how this low-impact
exercise lives up to its description as “meditation in motion”
– as well as – “medication in motion.”
I am besotted with the gentle movements within the short
forms I’m working hard to learn.
Increased strength, flexibility and balance are the goals,
for my body, of course, but even better, it turns out, for
my mind and spirit.
Speaking
of my mind,
in
September I lost mine when my Lenova Yoga laptop’s cursor and
touch
pad froze.
Tech-savvy
I am not; in fact, I’m an honest-to-goodness Luddite
who relies on the help of experts.
Enter GOOGLE and You-Tube videos, once I correctly phrased the
question
that addressed the issues.
“Who
knew?” I heard myself exclaim as I learned about my
keyboard’s
Function Keys (Fn) – and – top
row with all sorts of
varied
icons dubbed “hot keys.”
I
sure didn’t.
And
I’ve only been typing on a computer since maybe 1997.
After
unfreezing both touchpad and cursor, I celebrated by lighting
my
keyboard.
Using
GOOGLE and You-Tube videos to solve several of my
computer
problems has gifted me with a new independence when
technological challenges arise.
As for matters of the spirit,
alas,
an editor (or three) sent me what Richard Jackson called
“an
admiring decline.”
In
the past, I turned to children’s books for comfort and inspiration.
(Think:
I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.)
Fortunately,
Amy Gash and Elise Howard gathered nearly 400 wise
and
inspiring words from children’s classics old and new in their
lovely
new book Believe in the World, Wisdom for Grown-ups from
Children’s
Books (Algonquin,
2024).
Several of the categorically-grouped quotes restored my spirit and
had
me back on task in no time.
Indeed,
writing this post proved the perfect Rx, too, for keepin’ me
keepin’
on.
Believe
in the World included
Yuyi Morales’ words from Dreamers
(Neal
Porter, 2018):
“Someday we will become something we
haven’t even yet imagined.”
Thanks to Patricia Franz at Reverie for hosting today’s Poetry
Friday.
Here’s
to your New Somethings! Feel free to share them.
Esther
Hershenhorn