Dancing the dance (and I'm no Wu Li Master)

 

Don't Teach Dance, Dance

It is National All is Ours Day.  It is one of those ambiguous suggested days where it doesn't really tell you what it is for. It generically implies you should take this day to appreciate what is around you. This is, of course, after you ignore the Trump-it of doom and see what really matters. Which on one level isn't really about what is physically around you. 

I used it as an opportunity to try and hawk a t-shirt design.

This is pretty much like I dance. I've tried learning how to dance. Years ago I took a Swing Dance class (mainly to try and meet women).  Then a few years ago I took waltz lessons so I could dance with my daughter at her quinceañera. I had limited success both times.  Part of it was because I grew up in a time when dancing was just moving around to rock music on a crowded dance floor.  It took some of the angst away when I was in junior high and asked girls to dance at sock hops in the gym.  I got by until Disco came along in the 70s and fucked everything up for awhile.  John Travolta ruined many people's lives.

But I digress.

I threw in the Wu Li Master reference in the title of this post because years ago I read a book by Gary Zukav called The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics. Zukav had learned at a conference that the Chinese term for physics, Wu Li, can be poetically interpreted as "patterns of organic energy." But since Chinese seldom just means one thing, Wu Li can also mean "nonsense," "my way," and "enlightenment."  I kind of like that. 

Zukav postured that a Wu Li Master is someone who understands the essence of physics, not through rote learning, but by participation, intuition and experience.  So the Wu Li Master dances with his students instead of teaching them to dance. And they learn to dance. Or most of them do. Some people just can't dance.

Jeff Green

I didn't just randomly choose to read The Dancing Wu Li Masters. It was recommended to me along with Fritjof Capra's Tao of Physics by an Astrologer/Psychic I went to in my late 20s. His name was Jeff Green. He was recommended to me by the woman I was dating at the time who went to him regularly (she was into astrology, crystals, ley lines, and other metaphysical forms of self help and I in turn became interested in those things). He worked out of an astrology store in Seattle at the time called Astrology Et Al. He was a no nonsense (ironically) hippy looking dude who spoke with what sounded like a Norwegian or Indian Guru accent despite being born in Hollywood, California.  I found out later he wrote a best-selling book (best selling for Astrology books) called Pluto: The Evolutionary Journey of the Soul (so I imagine he was totally bummed when Pluto got downgraded from planetary status).  

He did an Astrological reading for me that he recorded on a cassette tape. Not too much of it made sense to me. I told him I was a PR writer at the time. He told me that I was a social documentarian and should be working in film or video because, "there is more to life than bank account and hamburger."  That phrase stuck with me because he stated it in his quasi Norwegian/Guru accent in a very patronizing manner. He also told me I should read The Tao of Physics and The Dancing Wu Li Masters because they would resonate for me though I probably wouldn't understand them. Jeff Green was a bit of a dick as well as a psychic. 

Regardless, I read both books and gained a fascination with Quantum Physics that remains with me today even though I couldn't tell you what any of if means.

I'm too busy dancing to the beat of a different drummer that no one else hears...mainly because they aren't listening.