Blind Anticipation and Chi Sao

We're on the cusp of fall here in Vancouver. The skies are clear, but the morning sun has lost her sting. I can sit by my window in direct sunlight, but the window's closed if I want my shirt off.

Little Corn Island

I'm heading to Burning Man this Saturday. In my typical fashion, I'm withholding all expectations--good and bad. I have a small pocket-full of easily attainable fantasies based on someone else's photos from someone else's year, but I don't expect to be spiritually transformed like some people have suggested; and I don't expect to be so thoroughly shocked by the environment that I breakdown on the 3rd day in fits of tearful homesickness. Instead I'm cultivating a strange denial of next week. "7 days in the desert? Sure. Sounds fun." I find myself looking back on my last trip to Nicaragua and wondering how it's possible that it happened at all. But it did and so this should be evidence that I should take next week seriously.

Little Corn Island

I'm a last-minute man by nature. For some reason I only feel motivated to do anything about anything at the very final hour. But this is not unique. What is perhaps unique is that I only feel creative when I should be doing something else. Why am I blogging when I should be packing? Why do I work on dub-techno when I should be combing through sound libraries for content suitable for the ages of 4-12?

In Kung Fu we practice Chi Sao--which roughly translated means: Sticky Hands. Another fundemental principle is Forward Intention. When we practice chi sao, we feel rather than see a way forward through our partner's structure by sticking our arms and hands to theirs. We are often encouraged to practice it with our eyes closed. By simply focussing on maintaining our own correct body structure and a forward intention, it's a waiting game, and all of a sudden, there's a way forward. When it happens there's no thinking, only effective forward movement.

Little Corn Island

I try to apply this Chi Sao and Forward Intention principle to my life. I figure if I maintain a correct structure and balance in my life, pick an intention and stick with it, when there's a way forward I've already taken it; eyes closed, unquestioning, unthinking; in the direction I picked long ago. The difference these days seems to be that it's my conscious self picking the direction instead of my sub-conscious. Or maybe, I'm just consciously aware of the fickle whims of my sub-conscious. Either way, if I know where I want to go, I'll get there, because it's all about intention for me.

Granada cafe

So back to this Burning Man business. I have no idea, why I'm blogging right now--and in broader view: why I'm creative almost only when I ought to be doing something else. But maybe it's got something to do with the Chi Sao of my brain. But instead of sticking to an opponent, I'm sticking to an idea of what I want to be doing and waiting for that moment when circumstance aligns from an impossibility to an open door that I've already walked through. Maybe my lack of expectation is not the indifference that I fear it is. Maybe it's just being ready for what comes--expected or not.

Los Cardones