tai-chi-one.com

“Tai-chi ch’uan means grand ultimate fisting,” the Professor informed his students to their amusement. He spoke in a soft sometimes hesitant tone. “In the following weeks we’ll try to cover the first section, the basic principles of tai-chi ch’uan, and some of its marshal arts applications.” I had no idea what he was talking about.
The first hour long class we were taught the swinging arms exercise or the Twist, the Beginning, a few basic principles of tai-chi and about breathing through the nose. Compared to everything the Professor did in his opening dance it was like learning a new language and learning to say hello. It did get my attention for whatever reason—the self defense applications, the breathing, the dancing or just something new to learn that was off the beaten track. Trying to keep the sacrum plumb erect was definitely a plus after carrying around heavy bottles all day.
What was most intriguing is the focus it took to listen and attempt to do something new properly. It temporarily took me away from the mundane grunt work and helped fill the space between creative projects—it was a creative project that I assumed would help my general well being.

After Polka Motion by the Ocean I received in the mail a flyer for continuing adult education, a flyer for tai-chi ch’uan instruction at Salisbury State University one evening a week for six weeks in the Autumn of 1989. The price seemed reasonable enough, forty dollars. I didn’t really understand what tai-chi ch’uan was except that it was a moving meditation, a dance of sorts. Being a self taught uneducated lout I was ignorant of most things until I inadvertently bumped into them by coincidence or casual guidance and otherwise not paying attention it had to be coordinated with some sort of self serving need—then came the obsession. My bad back and manic, impulsive nature combined with constant self reflection and panic struck a chord that vibrated me to the tai-chi class at the college in the dance studio where the floor was shiny hardwood and three walls were mirrored from ceiling to floor reflecting the twenty odd people gathered together for the dance. People removed their shoes and began swinging their arms with feet in place as though they were doing the Twist without passion or music or muscle tone. I joined in without knowing who I was supposed to dance with.
The teacher was a short, balding, older Italian man with a hawkish nose and large hands and he seemed to have a method to his dance. After a short time he turned around and bowed, said a few words, then very gracefully demonstrated the Yang Classical Style short form which is taught in five section and sold for a very reasonable price at: http://www.mayopia.com/TAI-CHI-ONE/tai-chi-one.html

Al agreed to read my novel and screenplays as did his wife, and then he introduced me to the Pendleton Papers upon which he based a novel.    Whether fact or fiction I could never tell nor was I told whether it be true or not was not mine to judge, for no premise is too outrageous, no conspiracy theory implausible and we are in history where absurdity rules.  What I read in the Papers was a brief outline how in the late sixties a bill was passed to fund a program to find a virus that attacks the immune system.   The CIA and WHO introduced the virus into a small control group in the Congo by way of the smallpox eradication program. IT GOT LOST. At this time there was a Russian defector who worked for the New York City Blood Center who was working on hepatitis B vaccine.  Voliska had free reign to collect blood from all over the free world.  He collected blood from central Africa.  Voliska conducted the hepatitis B vaccine trials in New York, Miami, San Francisco, Saint Louis and Dubuke advertising for gay men between the ages of 25 and 35.  In the meantime Haitian health care workers were working in Central Africa and they went back to Haiti.  Al asked that I write the screenplay based on his novel:  Norman Iland and Alberta Charles called the screenplay IMMUNE.

I soon bought my first computer. A whole new world opened up—Tetris and solitaire—that’s about it. A third screenplay VAGRANT and a couple of short stories popped out along with the refined script for TAKE A BITE OF THE APPLE. Barbara Bush was the first lady of literacy, the mayor of Baltimore claimed to have a city that reads and Tom Clancy turned out best sellers the way girls on Baltimore’s block gave hand jobs for splits of champagne. I gathered letters of support and carried heavy bottles of water and tended bar whenever I could pick up a shift at the convention hall in Ocean City.
I tried to convince myself that playing solitaire on the computer would help me become familiar with the computer but it was just another addiction that took time away from life that could never be retrieved. Always being in financial trouble—always looking for ways to make money—never achieving any sense of balance—only escaping from one moment to the next, this is all that had been achieved. Fortunately I had no television so I read many books and Joseph Campbell became a mentor and the I Ching a guide. Still I gathered more accounts in the slow painful process of one at a time through word of mouth or someone seeing the sign of IRIS and a phone number on the side of the truck.
I picked up several accounts in Rehoboth, Delaware, including a health food store and several restaurants. The health food store was owned by an ex navy seal and his wife a nurse and their son. The store was called Alice’s Wonderland. Al the navy seal claimed to have cured himself of a brain tumor—the reason he became a nutritionist with a health food store. He had spent quite a bit of time on nuclear submarines and felt that was the cause of his brain tumor though the navy never agreed with him.

The accident did nothing but end my weekend employment as a taxi driver. There was enough strain in my back and neck to provide access to a chiropractor and another bottled water account. I had to stop driving a taxi but I couldn’t stop loading and unloading and carrying heavy packages. The priority was surviving in a back breaking business that I knew needed only time and a little extra money to get to a point where it would be self sustaining. “Don’t take in any partners,” I was told. “Be your own man.” I wanted help—I needed help. I found a lady that did my books in exchange for water. An occasional friend would pass through and carry a few bottles. And the chiropractors would help me walk straight up for awhile. “Stop carrying those heavy bottles,” one of the chiropractors told me, “We need two today.” This is it—“Don’t do that.” But for now this is what we do with our limitations until other opportunities present themselves.
Mountain Valley was excellent spring water but it was very expensive and the market was limited and my profit margin was a percentage of what I paid for it before my labor and transportation. I sold expensive water to rich people and others who thought that the premium was a value. I noticed in the back of the warehouse where I bought Mountain Valley, however, bottled water, hidden from sight. I began to carry water that I could sell for less than half the price of Mountain Valley. I thought that this is something my supplier would want me to do so I could grow my business, but I discovered my well being was not his problem and his markup to me was as usual exponential —an American Value. I found the source outside Richmond, Virginia—Diamond Spring Water of Virginia that was owned and operated by the good Christian David. I could travel down the DELMARVA Peninsula and across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and over to the Spring, north of the James River to the Diamond Spring. Since the water was in plastic it was lighter and I could stack more bottles on the truck. I was a regular at chiropractors in Maryland and Delaware and they were all my customers.

Work at the race track was seasonal, and evenings only so there wouldn’t be any conflict with the water business. The track was also close to where I was living and it seemed as though it would provide the rent money. The job entailed taking bets at the two dollar window and paying off any winning tickets. The pari-mutuel clerk was allowed to bet on any races before the bell—the obligation was to cover any shortages from your cash drawer each pay day.
Fortunately I was still able to pick up a few shifts tending bar at the convention hall. When someone bets fifty bucks on a horse it doesn’t mean they know what they’re doing. Being at the racetrack and not seeing a horse while only dealing with bettors and cash and chance and faith and what was really going on with odds and payoffs and the fluctuation of odds being the most democratic way of money wagered on by people who never really got close to the horses or the jockeys for that matter. I never got a complete paycheck the entire summer. I wasn’t the only one. There were a few pari-mutuel clerks who actually owed money to the track after a week’s work and railbirds that never seemed to win but always had enough for another bet.
With a cool place to live and the water business growing I was inspired to turn TAKE A BITE OF THE APPLE into a ten minute animated short so I wrote the script and handed out dozens of copies of the song performed by the Troubadour who arranged the music for the song while I drove a taxi in the Autumn in Baltimore on weekends until rear ended on Christmas Eve while attempting a right turn in a light rain. A police officer was sitting at the cross-street and saw the whole thing. The taxi was pushed through the intersection. The cop turned on his bubbles, pulled to the center of the intersection, got out of his patrol car, approached me and said, “Merry Christmas. I saw the whole thing. I’m calling an ambulance.” I was off to the races.

Stopping was not an option. With borrowed money I put down the deposit on a year round rental—the bottom part of a house on the water across the creek from a farm where War Admiral retired, in site of night lights of the harness racing track out side of Berlin, MD. Built on a former wetland that had been filled in when no one was looking in the 1950s, the house was owned by a Baltimore slumlord and his Peruvian wife. Carlos had inherited the house from his father I was told. They only stayed in the top part of the house a few times a year and then only on weekends. Set on the back end of a peninsula far enough off the dead end county road to be quiet, with a small pier at the pointy end and an off limits garage that matched the house halfway between, it was a painting, a work of art, a home. The entrance was from a concrete patio through a sliding glass door to a commercially carpeted cement slab with a reasonable front room, a tiny cubbyhole with a small fridge and stove, and a bar type counter at the kitchen end of the front room, two small bedrooms and a narrow bathroom with a standup shower. Part of the ground floor was taken up by a foyer and stairs leading to the top floor with its separate entrance. On one side was a tidal wetland along the county road and on the other a small canal and boathouse buffering from the nearest neighbor who occupied summers in a modest one floor cottage. Across the narrow paved county road was a forest. Iris rested on gravel next to the patio out of sight from the road.

On the frequent trips to Baltimore to pick up water Sebastien was able to see his sister and we would take short adventures for the month. The truck was the only warehouse I could afford. As the Fourth of July approached I was told I would no longer be able to keep my camp site since the National Seashore Park became inundated with tourists to help feed the mosquitoes. The State Park next door sprayed but also had limitations on length of stay. I lost touch with Sebastien and Stephanie. The extra effort it took to find a campground that was affordable, maintain inventory, service new and old customers, spend time with Mom and block out the rest of the world did just that—block out the rest of the world.
A quick storm shredded the big tent that had become too cumbersome to carry so I bought a compact that could be stashed easily and I could move around so Iris wasn’t seen as a permanent resident in anyone’s primitive section. Most of the campgrounds were for campers and RVs. I camped out until October when most of the camp grounds that allowed tents closed for the season. I drove a taxi in Baltimore on weekends and made deliveries a few days a week parking outside the DUCK INN and sleeping between the stacked crates. As the winter progressed I began making enough money driving the taxi to where I could afford a motel with off season rates for two days a week. Mom died of liver cancer at the end of March, 1988.

As Spring ramped up the Café was sold; Decker and Felicity found a piece of property outside of Ocean City across Assawoman Bay. He called it DUCK INN and sold beer and crabs. When I made deliveries on the DELMARVA PENINSULA I was allowed to park my truck outside the INN and sleep in the back of the truck with the water jugs in crates stacked to the ceiling on either side of where I nested my sleeping bag.
When the weather finally warmed I found a campsite at the Assateague Island National Park where three dollars a night was affordable. I used a very large eight person tent I had gotten from Damien Rumsford. My mother had taken ill in Baltimore and was diagnosed with lung cancer—she chose to take treatment to give her time to get her affairs in order. The day she came home from the hospital she sat on the couch in her spot with a cat TUTU I had given her on her lap and she suddenly exclaimed, “The flap always goes over the top on the toilet paper roll.”
I spent quite a bit of time in Baltimore but could not let the water business fail so there was no other option for living quarters at the beach as the business expanded and took up more and more of the cash flow. Calling Tom Clancy an asshole to his phone voice did not endear me to anyone.
Rhoda Apple, an old friend and former owner of the Hope Springs Eternal Hotel in downtown Grantsville, Maryland had moved to a suburb of Baltimore after the historic hotel was sold at auction, purchased by an oil company and turned into a gas and go. Rhoda was doing well after cashing out and investing in coffee futures among other things. Rhoda had taken in two teenagers from Paris, France for the summer and thought that they may enjoy spending some time with me. I didn’t understand this since I was living in a tent at the beach and my bald headed Mom was surviving chemo therapy and radiation treatments. Sebastien and Stephanie also spoke very little American. I sold Evian but that was the extent of my French.
Anyway, I picked up the 14 year old Stephanie and the 16 year old Sebastien and gave them a ten cent tour of Baltimore and a two day trip to Ocean City where I introduced them to the library and librarian before dropping them at a customer’s house while I made deliveries. The customer had a pool and had been to Paris recently enough that she spoke of the waxing she had gotten there. At the end of the day we returned to the tent in the cheap, primitive camping area. We walked to the ocean while swatting bugs. We ate by the campfire while swatting bugs. We smeared ourselves in Skin So Soft while swatting bugs. The mosquitoes in the Assateague National Seashore Park were a bit radical for Stephanie and her protective brother suggested we take her back to Baltimore. Sebastien chose to return to the beach and deliver water.

I disconnected the phone at the farmhouse, and contracted with an answering service in Ocean City to where I moved the line. I no longer needed call forwarding as long as I had my phone card and a pocket full of quarters. I had a staff. Decker let me camp out in a room above the Café which had turned into a gathering place for many of the year round local residents. I was also given the opportunity to pick up a few shifts waiting tables and tending bar until the water began to flow a little more. The opportunity of living another summer in the Whaleysville farmhouse was kaput since there were windows and the place was cleaned up the owner wanted it back.
The Ocean City Library was the shelter for the Honly black homeless person in Ocean City and with the exception of workers who commuted there, the only black person. She wore many layers and very often would spend the entire day in the library. Otherwise she could be seen pushing a shopping cart—not very verbal—not really caring what anybody thought, making her statement as an activist for the homeless.
I continued my contact with Friends of Maryland Libraries and learned that book and author luncheons were a way to raise money for Friend’s groups and the libraries they supported. A librarian from Charles County gave me the home phone number of Tom Clancy whose book HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER had recently gone paperback and was flying off the shelves. She suggested that as a Marylander he may consider the luncheon. I attended a NO NUKES march in Washington DC and read the book for the first time on the train ride to the march.
Among others Carl Sagan of COSMOS was one of the speakers. After the march I called Mr. Clancy and asked as president of Ocean City Friends of the library if he would consider being the guest speaker at the book and author luncheon. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said. I told him I had read his book on the way to the NO NUKES march and he replied, “You’ve got to be kidding.” I told him Carl Sagan was one of the speakers. “Carl Sagan is an ASSHOLE.” He said. “Everybody is an asshole in some other asshole’s eyes,” I answered.
The head librarian Andrea contracted Rhea without Sunshine of Maryland Public TV fame as the first speaker for the luncheon that was to be held at Glasseye’s former restaurant.