Hangin'

When I walked upstairs to the mezzanine of the North Market and saw a bunch of LDA folks sitting around a table, it all made sense. I had planned to meet Seattlepoet for lunch after church on Sunday, since she was in town for the weekend, and that was when she said she had time. So I was surprised to see our mutual friends Aikidogirl, Walkingstylebook, and Politicalmom there with her, and lunch turned into a mini-reunion. We all used to work together at Loopiest Developer Around, and I've been out of touch.

We all had some catching up to do: Aikidogirl is returning to technical writing at Huge Ohio Not Draconian Auto; Walkingstylebook and Politicalmom were laid off by ENC, an independent part of OSU that lost its funding; Seattlepoet got a new job working for Bill Gates in the far northwest while applying to an MFA writing program in the far northeast.

It's a small town in a small world. Jack Thunder's name came up a couple of times; my old taiji buddy Herb happened to walk by and say hello. Pretty people walked around the upscale downtown market, and I adjusted to the sight of all that well-heeled, well-dressed, young, old, and middle-aged urban wealth. Like the song says, I don't get around much anymore.

And that's what made this day different. Rather than ducking out after the sermon and the last hymn, I stuck around to talk about the music with Nathan the pianist, about drumming with Barb the newsletter lady, about publishing with Missy from the committee, about future music with Marlene, and then bought an NUUC tee-shirt. That's about a month's worth of after-church socializing for Sven the Reserved.

Then came the unexpected group vibe at lunch, which lasted until 3:00, so I decided to stick around for the 4:00 qigong gathering that happens right next door at Benevolence Cafe once a month, and fortuitously this was the day. Debra and the gang of eight did a familiar form in an unfamiliar way - four times without stopping - that built up a kind of momentum and had a nice centering effect. Then we tried a new exercise our teacher Luke recently introduced called Hanging. It turns out to be very similar to a Basic Movement I learned on day one from Huo Chi-kwang back in 1978, but much slower, more methodical, and more intense. After 20 minutes of hanging, I could feel a lot happening in my lower back (mingmen, gate of life) and might consider doing a hundred-day gong.

I went home and spent a normal evening reading and eating on the patio as the heat slowly faded. But all that unexpected human interaction was a breath of fresh air for this solitary camper. Note to self: Do this again.