Sunday, September 26, 2004
Shaolin Snow Monkey Style
The weather has turned to autumn here in Iowa. Autumn is our most beautiful season, and I look forward to it all year. Autumn means snuggly/warm clothes, football, colorful leaves, Thanksgiving, hay rack rides, bonfires (which are about the single most fun thing a person can ever do), Halloween, and much, much more! But, being a true pessimist, my thoughts turned to winter.
Boy do I hate winters in Iowa. They are miserably cold, icy, and we get a lot of snow (which I hate). The leaves are gone, leaving skeletal looking trees, stretching like bony hands into the grey sky. The sun gets up late, and goes to bed early. Snow makes it hard to walk, hard to drive, and hard to wear your shoes without ruining them. Winter means I have to get up an hour early so I can scrape off my car, and maybe even dig it out of a snow drift. Then I have to start the engine and let it warm up for about 15-30 minutes. And pray that the heater holds out (at least well enough to defrost the windows). No flowers, no cook-outs, and no outdoor exercise. Did I mention that I hate winter?
As I thought about winter, I thought about when I was a child and loved snow. Every day that we got a substantial snow, all of the neighborhood kids would rush out to play in it. We would build forts, play football, build snowmen, and have snowball fights. And of course, cold days playing in the snow meant a treat of hot chocolate and homemade sugar cookies.
(By the way, I bought a sugar cookie yesterday and when I ate it, I realized I was happy. It wasn't that I was enjoying the cookie, it was that it was making me happy. It was a very nice feeling, sort of like being 6 years old and getting candy or a new toy! Sugar cookies only mean good things: they make me wistful.)
For me the snow meant two more things: pretending that I was on Hoth (the snowy planet in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back), and practicing to be a ninja. Ninja? Even back then, I loved kung fu movies and stories about samurai and ninja. A common theme in martial arts movies (both Chinese and Japanese) are that the practitioner can often train himself to achieve superhuman powers.
As anyone who has seen the mainstream movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon can recognize, most kung fu experts can fly. This is done because they can internalize a great deal of air. They fill their lungs like bellows, and use their focused chi (or Qi) to leap about as if there was no gravity. I would spend hours trying to master this in my yard.
After a good snow, when the ground was still virgin and undisturbed, I would try to walk ever so carefully without sinking in the snow. I would try everything. Slow, agonizing steps. Fast running. Widening my base. Lowering my dan tien (center of gravity). meditating (well, the way a child would meditate anyway... I mimicked the Shaolin monks that I saw on Shaw Brothers movies). Nothing ever worked.
But I didn't stop trying, until I was in (blush) high school. The result was always the same: for a split second my left foot would be perched on the semi-icy snow... until I started to transfer weight off my right foot. Then the snow would start to "crunch" as it packed down into the freezing fluffiness below. As my body sank, so did my heart, and my hopes of ever mastering the 36 Chambers of Shaolin. I guess I'd never be a ninja either...
So I guess in the end, winter isn't so bad. I do have some good memories regarding snow: that nasty, cold, white, wet... never mind. : ) If only Iowa had penguins... Let's pray for a long autumn!
See ya!
Boy do I hate winters in Iowa. They are miserably cold, icy, and we get a lot of snow (which I hate). The leaves are gone, leaving skeletal looking trees, stretching like bony hands into the grey sky. The sun gets up late, and goes to bed early. Snow makes it hard to walk, hard to drive, and hard to wear your shoes without ruining them. Winter means I have to get up an hour early so I can scrape off my car, and maybe even dig it out of a snow drift. Then I have to start the engine and let it warm up for about 15-30 minutes. And pray that the heater holds out (at least well enough to defrost the windows). No flowers, no cook-outs, and no outdoor exercise. Did I mention that I hate winter?
As I thought about winter, I thought about when I was a child and loved snow. Every day that we got a substantial snow, all of the neighborhood kids would rush out to play in it. We would build forts, play football, build snowmen, and have snowball fights. And of course, cold days playing in the snow meant a treat of hot chocolate and homemade sugar cookies.
(By the way, I bought a sugar cookie yesterday and when I ate it, I realized I was happy. It wasn't that I was enjoying the cookie, it was that it was making me happy. It was a very nice feeling, sort of like being 6 years old and getting candy or a new toy! Sugar cookies only mean good things: they make me wistful.)
For me the snow meant two more things: pretending that I was on Hoth (the snowy planet in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back), and practicing to be a ninja. Ninja? Even back then, I loved kung fu movies and stories about samurai and ninja. A common theme in martial arts movies (both Chinese and Japanese) are that the practitioner can often train himself to achieve superhuman powers.
As anyone who has seen the mainstream movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon can recognize, most kung fu experts can fly. This is done because they can internalize a great deal of air. They fill their lungs like bellows, and use their focused chi (or Qi) to leap about as if there was no gravity. I would spend hours trying to master this in my yard.
After a good snow, when the ground was still virgin and undisturbed, I would try to walk ever so carefully without sinking in the snow. I would try everything. Slow, agonizing steps. Fast running. Widening my base. Lowering my dan tien (center of gravity). meditating (well, the way a child would meditate anyway... I mimicked the Shaolin monks that I saw on Shaw Brothers movies). Nothing ever worked.
But I didn't stop trying, until I was in (blush) high school. The result was always the same: for a split second my left foot would be perched on the semi-icy snow... until I started to transfer weight off my right foot. Then the snow would start to "crunch" as it packed down into the freezing fluffiness below. As my body sank, so did my heart, and my hopes of ever mastering the 36 Chambers of Shaolin. I guess I'd never be a ninja either...
So I guess in the end, winter isn't so bad. I do have some good memories regarding snow: that nasty, cold, white, wet... never mind. : ) If only Iowa had penguins... Let's pray for a long autumn!
See ya!
Comments:
Haha, thanks buddy! I'm sorry the winter in Iowa's so bad... You should come join us in North Carolina - Hurrican Jeanne's about to pay us a visit! And the sugar cookies you wrote about made my day - sugar cookies rock my socks too!
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