I am at the Tai Chi beginners class because I know that some of the advanced students will be there and I have forgotten the sequence to the sixth. I sit to the side as the class concludes.
Then as I leave, a man walks with me into an adjacent Victorian style room. The room is empty but sun filled. It has brilliant white walls, with white crown mouldings, tall open stash windows and pine wood flooring.
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The man throws his hand back in a sweeping motion, over his head but I don’t recall that move.
I try to mimic him. “I don’t remember that anywhere.”
“Try it again,” he says, and again he throws his hands up carelessly and bends backwards, pushing forward his pelvis.
The class is fully wrapping up now and people are flooding into the room. I stand over to the side.
Some men, young and lithe in black bicycle pants and bronzed naked chests are being flirted with by the women.
I see a different woman through the crowd, her back to me. Her skin is pale on a silk ivory dress with thin shoulder straps. Her legs are thick and also the color of ivory. I prefer her coloring, though I confess I am a little jealous of the ripped bodies of the younger men and women.
Then another woman in a simple white dress and wavy blonde hair enters through the doorway. She is being toasted for her presentation. She has been somewhere exotic and has just gotten back.
“I had to do that because they wouldn’t let me go on to Guatemala,” she says to the crowd.
The projector shines her slides up on to a white screen at the front of the room. It shows an architectural drawing with lines and points mapping the intersections of buildings of what may be an archaeological dig. I want to call out to her that I’ve been to Guatemala but it was so long ago and it would sound pompous.
Instead she comes towards me. She stands to my left against the window while the others in front admire her presentation.
I am aware of her presence, the whiteness of her plain cotton dress lit by the sun, her white skin. The blonde waves of her hair frames and partially hides her face as she tilts her head forward.
She holds up her right hand directly in front of her, as if to reach out to something. I reach out too, brushing the palm of my own right hand across the back of her hand. Suddenly I am overcome with a fear that my palm might be clammy, but she turns to me at a slight angle, her face still in shadow from her hair.
In the shade, I can feel her breath on mine as our lips part slightly to meet.
Leaves and Insects series by Qi Baishi, via WikiMedia Commons.
The name of the Yang Style 108 movement is Retreat to Ride the Tiger.
