Bzz Bzz Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz

In the desert, you can do T'ai Chi outdoors at sunset in August quite free of insect harassment. No mosquitoes. The number of flies is negligible. There are bees and ants, but they mind their own business. It's an ideal environment for focusing the mind. Ideal in the sense that it's easy, because there's nothing harassing you to distraction.

New England, on the other hand, is abundant with sadistically harassing insect life. Today's practice at around 4:30 in the afternoon was an intense exercise in focusing the mind. During my warm-up, I had bugs buzzing my head incessantly. (My mom was watching my practice. I made a point of telling her later that the frantic flailing of arms about the head is not a T'ai Chi move.) You'd think that after they'd been whacked by a flailing arm a time or two, they'd find some safer place to buzz. But no. They were remarkably, and distressingly, persistent.

However, by the time I began practicing the form, I was grateful that my harassers had finally found some other way to amuse themselves for a while. I managed to have a pretty pleasant practice for 5 or 8 minutes.

Then, The Big One came. I don't know what this thing was--a horse fly? deer fly? moose fly? (elephant fly? blue whale fly? you get the idea.) Anyway, a Big Honkin' Fly. With a BIG BUZZ. And it buzzed my head, and buzzed my head. But I was doing the form, and really, really didn't want to interrupt it to frantically flail my arms. So I breathed and ignored it and kept doing the form. And it buzzed my hair. And it got stuck. Yes, stuck, where my bangs attach to the scalp, a few inches above my right eyebrow.

Now it was his turn to frantically flail. He buzzed and flailed in my hair. But I was almost done! Just a couple more movements! So, with nerves of steel, I breathed and continued to do the form, as The Big One flailed and buzzed furiously against my scalp, and eventually either wore himself out or gave up, and became still.

When I finished the form, I immediately ran my fingers through my hair with a great "Uuuggh" and a shudder. I freed The Big One, and he was outta there, at the speed of light. A whack or two of flailing arms may not be enough to make them find a safer place to buzz, but I guess being trapped and helpless was.

So, yeah, that was my first T'ai Chi practice here. I'm going to be here a week.