Thursday was the first rain, right at the start of November, as if the weather was reading the calendar and decided to cool the city down to match its really early holiday merchandise.
There's something I've noticed with contact lenses that still delights me. You can watch raindrops sprinkling down until they land in your eye, on the lens, where they stay, shining in the streetlights, until you blink or they flatten, the cool dissipating as the water spreads and gets absorbed by your eye.
I was afeared of wushu practice because ever since taking off for Europe, and then coming back and spending a mad homeless dash all over San Francisco trying to secure an apartment, filing paperwork to get my boyfriend a visa to live in the United States, moving, starting school and a full time job, I've been far too tired on weekends to get up and drag my increasingly flabby sedentary body to wushu class. It had been at least five months since my last workout. And while the soreness or pain of getting back into shape is bearable, it's the worried glances and "Are you okay?"s from your much more athletic compatriots who are wondering if you are dying as you lie heaving air into your lungs on the gymnasium floor that really fills me with fear.
On the bus ride over, a young lady asked me about the sword and whether I did wushu or taiji. I still haven't gotten used to people knowing what wushu is up here. Matt claims it's because he had to explain to every citizen of the greater Bay Area what his UCI team jacket meant for four years. Anyway, the young lady practiced kempo and was the friend of a fellow named Ed, who was in a movie I saw recently a few blocks from my flat, Contour. My former flatmate Alex told us about it, so the entire flat went to see it.
It turns out that the young lady had been at the movie that night too, and was telling me about how cool Ed was and what she liked about wushu when her stop came and she had to disembark.
So when I get to practice, I turn around and Erika introduces me to... "Hey, your name is Ed, right?" No no, we've never met, but I met a friend of his on the bus not ten minutes ago.
As it turns out, Ed knows Alex from myspace. He asked me which school I came from, and then it turns out that Lawrence, the feller I used to occasionally give rides to SCWA to when he started at UCI, is his wushu hero. He trained with David at Wushu Central, where I used to train with Lawrence and David when it was a garage and Sacramento had no wushu schools. The wushu world is still small and connected all over the place. I like it. :D I was already feeling pretty happy and settling back into home when the other folks there claimed to be out of shape too. Relief!
So we kicked and jumped and stretched, did basics and stances and forms and it was feeling pretty good. Kicks are still high, though they don't have the power they did before. As I walked to the bus stop, my legs started to tremble. I laughed with the freedom and unrestrained joy of the slightly deranged. I am being made whole again.
And oh god did it hurt to move Friday-Saturday. Hahahahaha. It doesn't really matter, though. I can stare at it, unblinking, until it dissipates. How delightful!