Games Archives - The Pure Life of Dreams

December 15, 2022June 7, 2024

How to Make Chi Flow in the Room

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.

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.

July 14, 2022November 21, 2022

Bad Hot Dogs and a New Route to a Lost Car

We were just coming back from a football match in Manchester and I was trying to find the car.

To get to the match we had to walk a lot. Liam had brought a friend but even so, we were going to arrive very early. Nobody else was even making their way. And we were lost cutting through a suburban estate.

Middle class, wide roads curved left and right, sided by red brick houses and manicured lawns. It wasn’t very exciting.

I told the boys to hang back, ”We don’t want to get there so early”, but they went on ahead.

And when eventually we did get close to the stadium, only a few stalls were opening up for food.

I wanted hot dogs but the woman gave me a palm-sized Saran wrapped banana leaf that contained the dog inside. I wanted the greasy kind. Still she told me, ”There are seven layers of leaf so you peel them to get to each bite”.

I ate it in one go and went looking for another.

The next stall I found also had bad hot dogs; this time the greasy kind and that’s what I wanted.

“Give me the sandwich bread,” I said pointing at a line of cut pieces of baguette. And the man landed the dog onto a baguette slice like I asked.

Returning from the match, Liam and his friend walked off to do their own thing, and Siobhan and Lizzie joined me to go look for the car.

I’d had to move it because a traffic warden told me that, though legally parked, they were towing the area anyway. I had moved it but I couldn’t remember where.

We tried an area in front of an abandoned field that was surrounded by a wire fence. Overgrown uncut grass. Siobhan and Lizzie tried the red brick lane adjacent and together we tried the place where I had originally parked, but there were no cars left.

We even wandered the streets where no cars could drive, where there were only narrow walkways with cute white Greek houses decorated with bougainvillea.

Some one told me Shawn from work lives there, pointing down a side street lined with olive trees and flower boxes. That’s certainly nice, I thought. I was surprised he could afford it.

Then we stepped back out onto the roads and kept walking, until we were further from the city center. Until, finally, I recognized a street, Queen’s Parade, which curved to the right, townhouses on one side, the park on the other. Just before the road curved leftwards once more, I recognized our car so we hurried past the other silver SUVs. Until we were close enough to see the decals on the back of our own Highlander.

When we got there I saw the tyres curbside had been punctured, as if someone had stabbed each tyre, the rubber crunched between road and hub cap. Sitting in the car with the convertible top down were three Chinese girls. One sat on the drivers headrest, her toes up on the steering wheel; she was reading a magazine. The other two were in the back.

“What are you doing? I’m going to calls the cops.” I said. And we had a little argument, clipped teenager tones between them, before they agreed to mend the tyres. Their mechanic came by, his feet bare and swollen like balloons, but he unscrewed the tyres and rolled them away and the girl in charge said he’ll be back at seven.

As they were leaving a parking attendant reassured us it would be OK, and we walked back the way we had come while the girl went off with the mechanic. Then it struck me that I had not got a cell phone number so I caught up with the attendant to ask her. She knelt on the pavement and started writing.

“I‘ll give the number of both the mechanic and of the girl. Though I suspect the number I have is for a burner phone and she’ll have changed it by now,” she laughed.

Photo of hot dog stand by cjuneau and of Naxos village by Marko Verch both via Flickr

June 28, 2022May 9, 2023

More Than a Writing Dilemma in a Tarot Card

Where can I fit destruction into my story?

About my trip to Lantau to see the tarot card reader, when I had to first cut the cards after shuffling them to get a start point. And the destruction card came up, its unfamiliar tower struck by lightning. Maggie French took it and immediately discarded it without analyzing it; even though I knew that it had viciously provided the truth at that moment.

March 16, 2022March 20, 2024

A Trip to the Game Provides a Detour

The four of us are off to see England play at Wembley. And this time I have also brought Mama with me. I park the car in the daily parking lot and we walk some distance to the looming grey stadium before ascending to find our seats.

We climb high up into the rafters but the view is constrained by thick mud brown walls and brick sized holes through which you must look. Otherwise, to see the game, you can leave your seat and go to the balcony to peer over.

“Neither view is good, it never is.” I explain. “You are there for the atmosphere more than anything else.”

We walk around but there is not much to see regardless of which brick hole you look through. It is difficult to view more than a small rectangular patch of green at a time. And the players don’t come into the field of vision. It was the same view the last time I came, and I wonder if I could have paid for better seats.

When the game is over we get into the elevator to return to the car, however somehow we are now separated. It is only Mama, Lizzie and I left. Siobhan and Liam are gone.

I press the button to go to the ground floor. Supporters are getting off at different floors, but we have pressed a different button, a button wider than the others; and instead of depositing us at the bottom, the elevator slides onto a rail road track, and rolls out into the open.

I recognize that we are in Boston, and still stuck in the elavator car, which is clearly taking us to its home for its regular cleaning and service. Above us, either side of the tracks, are silver grey skyscrapers and in front, the leafy green elm trees of Boston Common. When the elevator arrives at its destination, it is at a place called Waystar. I need to get back to Siobhan and Liam. Siobhan will worry about us.

The manager, a portly man with ruddy cheeks, comes out of his office to greet us. “Sorry about that. You didn’t press the wrong button did you?” The office is a wooden shed inset by the front gates to the service station.

“No we didn’t press the gold one, just the white, ground floor button,” I replied.

“Well here is a card for a free dry cleaning service,” he says, as he pulls out a large blue tag from his thick woolen jacket and hands it over.

“No, we are only in Boston for a visit, we don’t need that. We just need to get back home.”

“Ok,” he says, and he hands me a brown skinned wallet. I open it. ”Don’t worry, there is enough in there.” I see a fair number of bills in the pocket fold.

“Thanks,” I reply.

We leave through the gates and head for the metro.

“Lizzie, take care of Mama,” I tell her, as Mama wanders off like a bird, taking little bird steps, one foot in front of the other, like a metronome, without pause. Lizzie steers her down the dark grey steps of the metro, taking care that she doesn’t fall. She nudges her gently to adjust her direction on each turn down to the platform.

Finally I can call Siobhan to say we are on our way.

Picture by Alexius Horatius, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

February 23, 2022October 22, 2022

Two Yins For a Yang

Rain buckets down onto grey tennis courts, puddles coalescing into lakes.

On the football pitch the Spurs goalkeeper, a new guy from Thailand, makes a hash of the pass back and balloons the ball into the air. I want to flick his neck on the TV to see if he reacts. Somehow the ball lands at the feet of an opponent but when the attacker tries to kick the ball into the open net it goes to the straight to the goalkeeper. This time he makes decent pass down the right flank into midfield. The referee calls it a foul anyway and awards the ball back to the other team.

I want to yell at the ref too.