God's Yellow Face

I practice T'ai Chi Chih this morning in bright coldness. The sun shines even as clouds drape themselves across the sky. I stare into the light and invite it to enter my eyes as if I could direct its brightness into the very center of my being.

I remember a passage from the novel, Room. The book is written from the perspective of a five-year-old boy who spends his first five years trapped in a single room with his mother until they both escape. Here's how Jack describes his natural surroundings after he finds freedom (p. 268):

God's yellow face has a cloud on top. Colder suddenly. The world is always changing brightness and hotness and soundness, I never know how it's going to be the next minute.

That's the way I feel living in the middle of the woods. One day--or one hour's--collection of weather, atmosphere, sun, wind, and clouds constantly shifts, changes, reorganizes. It's up to me to adjust to what is.

My right shoulder aches during my TCC practice. I remind myself to relax, open, and release any stress I hold in that area. And, again, by practice end I feel better, quieter, more relaxed, and ready to depart for my world of work....