Behold, I Give You Thai Chi: Metahistorical Soul-Massage.

On Monday I started my academic quarter with a “what?” followed by excessive eye rolling and nose scrunching. Let me explain. I took a Thai Chi Chuan class in Modesto with Julie and we rocked the class. We were so enamored with our skills that late one night in downtown Modesto, right outside of Fuzios, we embarrassed our husbands by making them watch us do our set in plain, public view. What can I say? We were centered in our centeredness and we were energy-balanced gals, and why keep that to yourself? Master N, our instructor, would belt out CHI!!!! in a guttural and imposing voice and that meant “begin.” I think he insisted on the belting for effect. He was cool, I liked him and in my brain’s puniness I assumed that all Thai Chi instructors would have the same vibe.

I paid for this assumption with almost two hours of abject boredom and simultaneous disbelief that I was attending a Thai Chi Chuan course at The University of California. The guru was a total crackpot. If he wasn’t butchering the English language by asking the class if he should use the word “metaphysical” or “metahistorical” to describe the way Thai Chi feels in your soul, he was telling us that he isn’t a Thai Chi Scholar; he is a Thai Chi half-scholar. Of course, a half-scholar. Exactly. It was even more shocking that half of the class was nodding in that “yeah man, I catch your drift” kind of way. Were they all high? Um, never mind.

I think my reputation has been one of anti-religion in my circle of friends and that’s true in many ways, however, I’m not the kind of person who says “I just have a problem with organized religion” because, give me a break, show me a religion that isn’t organized. Religion, by definition, demands some kind of order or pattern and that is organization. I will scrunch my nose equally at a far-right fanatic and a practicing pagan. I think its all mumbo-jumbo, albeit beautiful, fascinating, and functional mumbo jumbo. Monday’s class, however, produced some of the most un-beautiful mumbo jumbo I’ve ever heard and I have no patience for sentences like “You know, the energy of Pung is like a cornflake and the mixture of the cornflake and your inner center creates a kind of cornstalk of love.” I think the only time I’ve prayed in 8 years was in that class, I was asking God to save me from Thai Chi.