Learning the Kata
This story by Mike Wilson appeared in Abrazos & Letters from the Self to the World, Writing for Peace, 2021
Every step is peace.
Carla was on flat ground beneath the speckled shade of a solitary sugar maple tree smack in the middle of a big field in Bent Creek Park. The field was empty this Thursday morning because schools were back in session for the fall. The place was a perfect natural dojo for tai chi, or moving meditation, as her sensei called it.
She was devoting her four-day staycation to the cultivation of mindfulness. No calls or texts from the law office where she worked. No mundane errands. No TV. Tai chi every morning. A vegetarian lunch. The rest of the day on the mediation cushion in her townhouse, placid as a lake of milk. By Monday, her mind would be a dustless mirror.
Carla slipped out of her sandals and wiggled her toes in waxy grass that tickled her feet. She walked around the tree, tuning in to the ground. With each step, the grass gave, then sprang back but not quite all the way, creating a wake of footprints behind her. She stopped and sank her weight, letting the earth’s energy rise into her body through the soles of her feet.
The ground around the tree was mostly flat and level. She visualized the space that would be needed to perform the full sequence of moves and chose a starting spot that would allow her to complete the kata entirely on the flattest area. She relaxed her shoulders, letting her arms hang without tension. She slowed her breathing, quieted her mind, and concentrated her attention on her lower dan tien, an area just below her navel. When she felt rooted, she bowed and began the tai chi kata.
Carla moved slowly, without effort, like a weightless image. The air was dry but soft against her skin, and the sun felt warm when the steps of the form carried her out beyond the shadows of the tree. A light sweat emerged on her neck and forehead.
Suddenly, the roar of an engine starting up made her jump. She stopped and turned to look. It was a man on a riding lawnmower, his hair long and wild like Medusa’s snakes, wearing a too-short Metallica t-shirt, goggles, and firing range earmuffs. He was coming straight at her and not slowing down. She backed away and let him pass. He ignored her, intent on carving a straight line through the middle of her natural dojo. The path he left behind was cropped to the ground, light brown showing through. The lawnmower man traveled a straight line until he reached the sidewalk by the tennis courts. Then he pivoted and began his return, following the edge of the first swath that he’d cut. The lawnmower backfired, and a puff of oily black smoke rose behind him.
She returned her attention to her body and her breath, tried to unify her chi, but found herself fantasizing about knocking the guy off his mower. When he passed by the second time, his belly fat jiggling, she glared, waiting for recognition from him that he was being rude. He ignored her. For Mr. Beer Belly in the Metallica shirt, nothing existed except scalping the earth and killing the grass. He was the Zen master of being an asshole.
“Excuse me!” Carla shouted, pointlessly, because the guy was wearing the firing range earmuffs. The lawnmower passed, leaving another brownish-green stripe along the ground like a dog wiping its butt across the carpet. She realized he would keep passing her tree every couple of minutes. She would have to move.
She knew of a spot at the west side of the field where the ground was even, but slightly sloped. She would treat the slant as a challenge. Tai chi masters could stay rooted on gable rooftops if they wanted, her sensei said. There was no tree on the west side to provide shade, but the west side would have to do. She slipped on her sandals and walked to the west side. As the noise of the lawnmower faded, the wrinkles in her mind straightened some, but she still felt anger vibrating in her chest.
When Carla reached her destination, she noticed that this part of the field bordered a subdivision. There were sounds of back doors shutting, cars starting, and garbage pick-up, but she was disciplined enough to ignore the noise. She surveyed the ground closely and plotted out a space sufficient to perform the kata over an area with the fewest bumpy places. She settled on a starting point and slipped off her sandals.
She relaxed her shoulders and allowed her arms to hang without tension, but the image of Beer Belly kept popping back up in her mind like one of those prank birthday candles that keeps re-lighting after you blow it out. She ignored the image and focused on dissipating the clouds of anger in her heart chakra. She slowed her breathing and shifted her attention to her lower dan tien. When she felt rooted, she bowed and began the tai chi kata, holding in her mind the thought that every step is peace.
When she was about one-third of the way through, she heard the lawnmower engine again, and when the sound of the engine grew louder, she stopped and looked. Beer Belly was driving his machine in what seemed to be an elliptical path. He wasn’t following along the edge of what had been mowed before. He was scalping an entirely new swath of ground and curving in her direction. As Beer Belly drew closer, it became transparent that he was aiming at her.
She stood, her hands on her hips, looking directly at him, defiant, like an environmental activist daring an ecosystem-wrecking bulldozer to run her over. But when Beer Belly showed no sign of slowing down, she backed away and let him pass, detecting, she thought, the hint of a smile on his face. He seemed to be joy-riding, driving through one part of the park for a few passes, then driving somewhere else for a while, and the blade on Beer Belly’s mower was so low that it sheared off some of the bumps in the ground and left scars. She wondered if he was on drugs. If Beer Belly was mowing the middle of the field and the west side, that left only the flat ground on the east side beside the parking lot. She noticed with dismay that the sun now was high in the sky. All this stopping and starting was eating up her meditation time.
Carla hurriedly slipped on her sandals and walked briskly to the opposite side of the park. She saw cars in the parking lot and two moms. One mom was un-collapsing a stroller she’d removed from her trunk while the other mom restrained a Labradoodle on a leash. There were a couple of little boys, too, ignoring the moms’ commands to stop chasing each other. She couldn’t tell these people to leave and didn’t have time to wait and see if they would. She mentally cursed Beer Belly and the noonday sun that reminded her she was behind schedule. She kicked off her sandals, turned her back to the parking lot moms and kids, and prepared to do tai chi.
She forced her attention inward and took deep breaths, filling her lungs deliberately from the bottom up, then emptying her lungs the same way, making the inhales and exhales match in duration. She relaxed her shoulders and allowed her arms to hang without tension. Every step is peace. She bowed and began the kata.
“Wahhh! Wahhh!”
The baby wasn’t just crying – the baby was screaming bloody hell. Carla’s mind greedily latched onto the silence after each wail of woe, hoping it was the last. No such luck. The baby was just gathering breath to deliver the next scream even louder. Carla became so distracted by the baby’s distress that she forgot where she was in the kata and had to stop. She saw that the baby’s mother had maneuvered the stroller onto the paved walking path. When the mom shoved a bottle at the baby, the baby screams finally stopped. The other mom was waiting for the Labradoodle to sniff every blade of grass until she found the perfect place to go to the bathroom. It looked like they were preparing for a walk on the walking path. Carla was relieved. In moments, she would have the east side of the field to herself.
She turned her back to the parking lot and tried to concentrate. She stilled her breath, relaxed her shoulders, and allowed her arms to hang without tension. She willed herself to be rooted. It wasn’t working, but she was behind schedule. She would have to work her way into the right frame of mind as she got into the kata. Every step is peace. She bowed and began the tai chi kata again.
“What are you doing?”
It was one of the little boys. She ignored him, stepping into the next move.
“Hey! Are you fighting?” one of them asked.
Where the hell are the mothers? She lifted her right foot to enter a one-legged stance, but lost her balance and almost toppled over. The boys laughed. She slowed her movement and tried to regain a low center of gravity. Suddenly, the two little boys were running in front of her, punching and kicking imaginary opponents in a kung fu movie. She tried to make her eyesight fuzzy so she couldn’t see them. When the boys tired of their sport, they ran to catch up with their mothers on the walking path. Carla couldn’t recall where she was in the kata, but she wasn’t starting over again. She just kept moving and recognized that she was performing moves from the middle of the form.
Suddenly the loud boom-boom of a bass speaker startled her. She glanced at the parking lot out of the corner of her eye and saw a parked vehicle with darkened windows shaking with the vibrations of the music. She tried to ignore the mindless pulsing punishing her eardrums and the anger building inside her like a pot about to boil. She was going to finish this frigging kata if it killed her.
As she stepped into the next move, turning to face north, she saw Beer Belly approaching on his machine. She stopped and stared at him. He was driving an elliptical path, a mirror image of the path he’d followed on the west side. Once again, he was curving toward Carla, the drone of his lawnmower punctuated by the boom-boom of the bass in the parking lot.
She visualized delivering a heel kick to Beer Belly’s face that would cause him to let go the steering wheel. She imagined grabbing his head with both hands and pulling down hard as she raised her left knee up to break his nose. She would jerk him off the mower and, as he sprawled on the ground, kick him in the groin, ribs or kidneys, depending upon which vulnerable area presented itself as the best target. She realized her fists were clenched and deliberately unclenched them, but with mixed feelings about doing so.
Beer Belly was thirty feet away, now, bearing down. She wasn’t going to back away this time. But when he reached ten feet, close enough for her to see the nail-impaled skull on his Metallica t-shirt, and showed no sign of slowing down, she leaped out of the way. As he passed, he seemed suddenly to see her. He smiled and waved. Then she felt something warm and squishy between her toes, and remembered the Labradoodle.
#
It was past eleven that evening. Carla was parked in front of the TV. The eleven o’clock news was on, but she wasn’t really watching. She was drinking bourbon and smoking cigarettes, both of which she’d sworn off months ago, and outlining her plan of attack on a legal pad.
Beer Belly had been stalking her – two or more instances of harassment coupled with an implied threat of serious physical injury. It was a felony because he was armed with a dangerous instrumentality – the lawnmower. She’d file charges tomorrow. She’d also sue for damages. It was a public park, so he was probably an employee of the city. Beer Belly was going to prison and the city was going to write Carla a big, fat check.
“And finally, tonight, a story about peace,” the newscaster on TV said. Carla stopped writing to watch.
“Today was the United Nations’ International Day of Peace and a Lexington minister found a unique way to celebrate it– by mowing a giant peace sign in the field at Bent Creek Park.”
The screen switched to an aerial shot of the field. Lighter lines contrasted with the dark green of the grass to form a giant peace symbol, like some hippie crop circle. The screen switched to an interview. It was Beer Belly, but instead of a Metallica t-shirt, he was wearing slacks and a white button-up shirt, his long hair combed back and fastened in a ponytail. His coke-bottle glasses were so thick you could barely see his eyes.
“A lot of planes fly over that park on their way to the airport,” he said. “When passengers look down and see the peace sign, they’ll remember – by giving peace we receive peace.”
Carla switched off the TV and stared at the empty black screen. After a few minutes, she took a deep breath, picked up her drink, carried it to the kitchen sink, and poured it out. Then, she went outside to the backyard. The night air was moist. The sky was pitch-black and clear. The stars were distinct points of light.
She took off her shoes. The grass was cold and wet with dew. She relaxed her shoulders, allowing her arms to hang without tension. She slowed her breathing, quieted her mind, and concentrated her attention on her lower dan tien in her belly, and then on the heaven of stars above her, and then on the earth below supporting her. She imagined a line connecting all three points, imagined herself as that line.
She bowed and began the kata.
