The Grandfather of all Forms
Sundays have slowly become the day I love the most. The only day with nowhere to be and nothing to do — a rare gift in a world that rarely stops asking.
I moved slowly beneath the warmth of a winter sun that seemed to revitalise my quieter self, step by step, as time passed unhurried and undemanding. There was something in that unhurriedness that felt almost medicinal.
By evening, I was genuinely relaxed — the deep kind, not the kind you have to convince yourself into. A friend and I walked through the park until a beautiful old tree stopped us both without either of us suggesting it. It swayed gently in the warm breeze, indifferent and patient, and we sat beneath it and talked in the way that sometimes happens between people who haven't known each other long but have, for whatever reason, decided to be honest. Subjects surfaced that don't usually find their way into new friendships. Something about the afternoon made it feel safe enough to let what was being felt simply be expressed.
It was simple. It was enough. Perhaps the perfect ending for a Sunday that asked nothing of anyone.
Now rest is arriving, and beneath it, quiet as a tide beginning to turn, thoughts of a new form are softly surfacing.
I think it is time to begin Tai Chi 108 — the grandfather of all Wudang Tai Chi forms, a thirty-five-minute journey from the first raised hand to the last. I have been putting it off for a while, if I'm honest. Not from fear exactly, but from a kind of deliberate delay — waiting for the noise to settle, for the distractions to thin out, for the moment when beginning felt less like an imposition and more like an inevitability.
That moment appears to be now.
Tomorrow I step into what feels like an endless and somehow beautiful cycle of beginning — carrying the knowledge that very soon I will also be stepping into six months of revision. Two things starting at once, pulling in the same direction.
It was always going to happen. I was simply waiting until there was nothing left to wait for.