Logic & Morals

Does anyone actually read this thing anymore? Hah. That's why I can write this here.

There are very very few right-wing conservative people in my social circle. All of the 2 or 3 are former coworkers, which is not by choice. Plus one elementary school Facebook friend whom I haven't seen nor talked to in 30 years. Not that I choose people based on political leanings but that choices of everything else, from education to moral values, ended up with this result.

My comments today are about morals. It's too small a sample size but unfortunately, still, people made it what it is.

Right-wing former coworker #1 who posts things on Facebook that even normal right-wing people would be disgusted by. Sometime near the beginning of my job, he sent me a picture of a disgustingly fat naked lady on top of a naked man in bed, via the company messaging system. Well, unlike most women, I'm actually not offended by these sorts of things, not because it's not offensive, but because I just think the sender is an idiot for sending it. So I thought for a couple seconds how to respond or not, and I just replied, "Gross." (Hm... am I referring to the picture or you for sending it... hahahaha.) I'm not avoiding it out of fear, not engaging with it either, and not reacting to it emotionally. So, interestingly, nothing like that ever happened again. Another time, during a group lunch outing, we ended up alone at the table for a few minutes while everyone else disappeared to the restrooms or something, and suddenly he started squirming, looking quite uncomfortable, and couldn't make any conversation.

Right-wing former coworker #2, then in his 50s or so, convinced my boss to let him dump all his COBOL tasks onto me while he "learned Java" or something which I didn't ever see come to pass. This makes no sense and was not beneficial to anyone nor the company. Being in my 20s, I had never seen COBOL before, and more importantly, never been exposed to whatever, I still don't even know, programming paradigm it is in. My boss said I was only to spend 10% or 20% of my time on it. A week or two later, coworker started somewhat passive-aggressively getting on my case for not having finished all of the COBOL tasks that he had had sitting in his queue for years. Um, I still don't know what COBOL is. And he was getting on my case for not updating some tracking system with a comment about the status of each of dozens of these bugs daily. It was manual and each comment would take several minutes to click through the system and enter, even with copy-paste, so if I actually did this "policy", it would take several hours daily to comment on each bug to say that I hadn't had time to work on it yet. So I'd have to spend my 20% time completely on typing that I haven't had time to work on each bug, which is beyond ridiculous. Other times, in the beginning, my boss told me to kind of shadow him to learn how things work on the team and I'd spend half a day watching him poke around, not figure anything out, and end up having one of our consultants give the solution. And then wonder why jobs were going to Indians or India.

Nope, no other people have ever sent me naked pictures or such.

Right-wing elementary school classmate was and still is literally the whitest white boy and among the richest of the rich in the richest town in America, where I have had the privilege to grow up and reside in, and had their own street named after them. Yeah, the party of forgotten poor rural white folks, just like Trump. Facebook postings much like coworker #1. The logic literally does not work. Maybe that's why his computer work never went anywhere.

One more... conservative older married male Chinese taiji friend... the repression just comes out like obsessive-compulsive disorder. Teacher says don't do something and he immediately does exactly that. He's snuck in comments on Facebook messenger about me becoming his girlfriend, and accidental typos or not, being in bed with me. I completely ignore it and continue chatting about taiji. This is anyone's stand-up-looking Chinese dad. Logic of Facebook "likes" literally doesn't work also. Maybe that's why he's been out of an IT job for decades. He blames it on age discrimination. I'd blame it on logic is required.

Nope, (ok, almost) no other married men have ever tried such with me. The other guy, I don't know his political leaning, but if it's liberal/left, that would make the stats 1/2 conservative/right married men vs. 1/200 or so liberal/left married men in my lifetime social circle with enough opportunity to try such who have tried such. And if the other guy is conservative/right, well, that makes it terrible stats at 2/3 vs. 0/200.

So we have 3 or 4 of 4 conservative right-wing men (yep, that is all I have ever known) who are repressed hypocrites trying to sexually harass a woman and/or trying to hide whatever crud they're trying to sneak in under some guise of propriety.

While Facebook categorizes me as extremely liberal, I can actually get on board with actual conservative positions such as small government, pro-life, free markets, whatever. But the people are telling me that conservative right-wing is the party of the morally deficient.

Big Bad Mouth

Many of the things I wrote about my old TJ teacher were wrong apparently.  I left his class over a year ago after he physically abused me with some seriously psycho QN and not for demo-ing PH but to punish me for "disrespecting" him.  There's one old blog post where I actually wrote that I thought I knew that he would never punch a girl even during PH.

I have had my big toenail pretty much ripped off by a very absent-minded lead with an iron heel during a Waltz Week, and the psycho QN was way more painful than that as well as held for a long time.

Thank goodness, I had enough sense to leave, but it took me a year to disentangle my mind.  I learned that there is such a thing as traumatic bonding and it appears to me that 99% of his students go through that over the course of 5-10 years.  I was apparently very fast, a half year to one year.  But thank goodness, otherwise I would have spent a good fraction of my life in it.  Now I can see all the current students, limbo students, and gone students in the various stages of the process.  It's really disturbing because this is really your everyday class at every local community college district and recreation center across the peninsula (literally), and the students are normal everyday people, a cross-section of society, not especially stupid people.  But 99% of those who are serious enough to stick around to learn TJ get embedded in this twisted abuse matrix.  I think there is one old student, a woman nearly my age who started classes when she was in community college, who sounds like she had her life ruined.  People won't talk about that one.  And others.  So then I don't know if what is hinted is made-up gossip or possibly true.  I say, geez people, you need to talk about it, so a million other incoming students don't end up going through the same thing.  Not talking about it only protects the abuser and abuse.  So I'm the only one with a big bad mouth enough to talk about it.  I write way too much on my Facebook notes to my TJ list.  90% of my former classmates avoid me.  The way that abuse works is that they fawn over the abuser and I'm like the bad one because mouthing about bad behavior is apparently the bad thing instead of the bad behavior being mouthed about.  Maybe it is bad for me to badmouth, but I say that I just mouth and whether it's badmouthing or goodmouthing is determined by the doer not the mouther.  I sure wish someone had told me so that I could have saved myself a year and some trauma.  TJ mistress #N unfriended me even before my mouth got that big.  I said a little too much too soon because she unfriended me before I could write what I really wanted her to read.  If you enjoy looking like a married man's mistress and other such stuff, I guess you would need to unfriend me.  My current thinking is that if you look like one, it doesn't matter that much if it is or isn't, cuz there's something really screwed up if you look it.

I would suggest to current students that they go rip out both of their big toenails at the same time if they want to keep following and supporting this teacher.

Some visits to my blog apparently inspire 6.0 earthquakes 10-20 minutes later.  Sometimes I have to wonder about the spirits.

I haven't blogged here in a long time.  Partly because I was sorting out my own self, trekking all over the Bay Area looking for a new TJ teacher which is more than my health can keep up with, shifted a bit to Facebook, and yikes, I haven't read any blogs for over a year simply because Google canceled their Reader and I never got around to transferring elsewhere.

I'll write the good stuff in a separate post.

Warrior Spirits

The image of him pushing hands with another guy after class brought to mind a bigger struggle, like he was fighting something in the spiritual dimension.  I saw my teacher looking at him.  I was thinking about this image and planning on writing about it already.

The Facebook posting came sooner than I was expecting, tonight, for my friend from elementary school.  I hadn't seen her since the 4th or 5th grade but remember her as one of my best friends during elementary school.  She and her twin sister were one grade above me and it was special to have these "big sisters" befriend me.  When she friended me on Facebook a couple years ago, I was too sick to reconnect with her.  When I got better, she became sick and I didn't want to bother her.  I cried for a week when I found out that she had ovarian cancer even though I hadn't seen her in 25 years.  Today I'm not really sad or crying.  Maybe I knew it was coming, maybe I was sicker back then, and maybe it was because I knew she was suffering back then.

I remember her as one of my spelling partners, running up to her during recess and yelling, "What level are you on in spelling?  What chapter are you on in math?"  She told me that she liked that I didn't say "hello", just yelled her name with a big smile and launched into these excited questions.

Previously, this guy, dark skinned, wearing a tank top and headphones, listening to music in the sun during class, saw me sitting on the grass and eating when I arrived to class.  He told me that I was like him and needed to gain weight.  I asked if he could eat anything and not gain weight and he said yes.  At the time, I was just laughing at having an inefficient metabolism.  Recently, Teacher told me during one of our carpools, that this young guy was a cancer survivor and recently on chemo.  Oh....  Then I remembered that image of him pushing hands, fighting with a warrior spirit, skinnier than he used to be but still muscular and virile.

Yes, the reason I am a bit skinnier than normal for me, sit on the grass and eat during class, and Teacher doesn't mind, is because of my health situation.  But it's not the same....  It's not all worse or better, but it's not the same.

There was a moment last year when I was in my other teacher's class and we were learning the most difficult move in our repertoire for one of the first times.  Her husband walked across, turned and stood to face me directly across the room, watching me for a minute.  At that time, I was so tired that perhaps only a Shaolin monk who has gone through that training could see the severity of my fatigue, when my muscles were shaking and I was still standing because of very good balance.  It was like he could also see that there was an actual image of a demon in front of me, between us, and I was fighting it with that warrior pose, bow stance, with one hand in front below the tip of my nose.  He in a black coat, tall, strong and straight posture, was like an embodiment of another spirit, there with me.

To be continued....

Noodle Proposition

A few months ago during class, I noticed that Teacher was facing an older man instead of me this time while leading the meditation exercise.  I had heard that he was getting treated for prostate cancer or something.  So this confirmed for me that Teacher had not been facing me, at least not entirely..., for some "scandalous" reason such as looking at the cute and pretty girls but because of my health.

A couple weeks ago, he said that he would take me out for noodles after class if I went to the MV class.  Well, I went to the class for the demo practice but left before any noodle opportunity presented itself.  Hm, eating noodles alone with Teacher at like 10pm...?  He already gets home every night after teaching at around 10pm.

The next evening, I was standing by while he was referring to a story to M.  He said this is a good story for me to hear.  When he was on his TJ trips in China, after getting back to his sifu's house after class around 10pm, his sifu would ask if he was hungry.  He said no.  This happened several times and then he realized his sifu was hungry and wanted him to cook noodles for him.  I guess he wanted to eat and talk with his beloved disciple.

So I was thinking his noodle "proposition" was not as "scandalous" as it might have been.  I might be to him somewhat like he is to his sifu.  But the fact that I am female makes things different.

I did e-mail him to say that I didn't think it was appropriate for him to send me a link to a Chinese love song (that also happened to be that the two singers were an older married male teacher and younger female student).  He returned many explanations (excuses?) which are actually probably true but I think all the guys I have been friends with would refrain from sending me (only) a song about romantic love even if it just happened to be related in another way to something we were talking about or they just really like the song and singers.  Sometimes I don't know if I'm too much or not enough.



Apparently, thanks to Google Translate, the singers are very good friends and he sounds very happily married.  The next time I got a ride with Teacher, he had only instrumental music playing, hah.  But he ended up telling me about one of the first songs he heard from the singer, which he had said he better not tell me, but I was too curious.  I looked it up myself later on YouTube and it is a very romantic (in the Chinese cheesy pop sort of way) song, lyrics, and video.  I hope that's what his wife did for him. ;-)

Whizdumb

Teacher: "I think she's probably very smart in certain areas..."
Tiger: (smugly) "But not too much wisdom..."
Me: "Who...?" (In my head... I'm not too sure about the wisdom of someone who smugly says someone else lacks wisdom when I haven't seen wisdom in the speaker. I'll say this at the risk of doing the same thing in this very blog post.)
Tiger: "T... you know... she has all these crazy ideas."
Me: "Oh, I don't know, I don't see her that much."
...
Teacher: "I think she may be very creative."

The only conversation I had heard between T and Teacher was something like:
T: "I caught someone's energy. What do I do with it?"
Teacher: "...depends whose energy! Is it mine?"

Yeah, that's a crazy idea, if she were being literal!

Teacher: something something "...G..."
Tiger: "G is pretty smart."
Teacher: "I haven't seen it." (Funny, and I understand based on a "bizarre" story he told me involving her.)
Me: "Smart people can recognize smart people..."
Tiger: "Oh my God!... M!" in a tone of voice that sounded truly shocked.
Teacher: "Yeah, see, I'm not smart."

Me thinking, um, some of us are just making dumb jokes... although I do think it's true.... I thought she was offended because she thought that I was implying that Teacher is not smart. Later it occurred to me that maybe she was "smart" enough to recognize that my joke would end up being an insult to her if she thinks G is smart but I was joking more with Teacher at the time.

I started going down to the LA park after the SM park class to learn the spear. As I am too tired to participate in the whole class and drive back, I decided it was okay to get a ride with Teacher after certain incidents of getting to know him better. Tiger offered to drive me down the second time.

Tiger: "I don't tell people how long I've been doing TJ for anymore... because some people have told me they've done it for 20 years and..."
...
Me: "I don't know if it just takes practicing... it must take some intelligence too... I mean, I know some people who practice every day and..."
...
Me: "But even when people are really smart and learn really fast in the beginning, isn't it still not really possible to get the depth in the beginning?"

Tiger was saying something that Teacher had said earlier, that some people are "too smart" and pick it up really fast and sometimes get bored and leave or think they've learned it all after a few months.

Me: "But if people are really smart, wouldn't they stick around and know there's more to learn?"
Tiger: "That's a different kind of smart... that's wisdom. The smart, that's like competence..."

Okay, to me, that's too trivial to be called wisdom and if people think they've learned something that takes a lifetime to develop in a few months, I don't think those people are even "smart". Yeah, let me pick up a cello and imitate Yo-Yo Ma after a few months and then say I'm done.

Me: "I think your TJ is like your English. How do you get it so... perfect?" When I first heard her speak, I thought she was born here even though I had already seen her CV. This is what makes me say she is very smart.

A while ago, we had this conversation where she told me that CXW and Teacher have "small circles" while CB and she have "medium circles". I was thinking, are you really comparing your TJ level in the same sentence to CB, nephew of CXW, the "most famous" TJ GM of this style?

Two months ago, I saw the video of her competition performance and thought it was amazingly good. Now, a year after starting classes with Teacher, I am starting to see things that make me think that maybe her TJ is not "that" good. Maybe Teacher is too perceptive and knows it too because last week, while her demo group was "performing" for us, I was able to watch intently and started seeing more things that I didn't like, and then he stood next to me and commented on what people were not doing right, including her on the basic opening move of every form. A simple correction that isn't really a matter of "skill" but that is a first, to hear a critique on her TJ.

A few weeks ago, she asked me to be one of four for a performance. I wanted to decline because I don't even have enough energy to practice. She could be in it instead. She said she didn't want to be on stage. Teacher suggested adding K to make five. "No, the guy cannot be in the center. That's my thing." The group ended up opening to anyone who wanted to participate. I went to the first practice to see. She ended up putting herself in the performance, front and center, and at the end, shooting out through the center with flying leaps and landing in front. I dropped out because it was too much energy expenditure but also because it wasn't worth my time as most of the focus wasn't on the TJ but the formation and "dance" choreography and we kind of suck compared to the demo groups seen in last year's video who mainly just show good TJ and KF. Teacher has gotten really "relaxed" and has been letting her take half the class out of class for several weeks. I'd rather not miss class. They "performed" for us at the next class with a new formation, a triangle, with her front and center. Okay, it does help for her to lead the group but this is one of many instances of saying one thing while doing the complete opposite. I commented to J next to me that the two guys were placed in the back on either side. He said he noticed that too. I jokingly mentioned that to Teacher who said it was symmetrical. "It can be symmetrical in other ways...." I'm so mean....

At the end of class, I sat down next to Teacher as my bag happened to be next to him and we were talking and joking. Tiger was showing R a dao movement and accidentally smacked R's dao along the gym floor, so hard that I guess she bent the tip. "Sorry!" Teacher, sitting next to me, said, "So mean...." The jealousy seriously comes across the entire gym. The literally destructive nature of jealousy demonstrated by damaging almost $100 worth of dao and who knows how much in gym floor resurfacing in an instant.

Another time... "She told us this is the Valentine exercise because it's shaped like a heart."
Teacher: "She's very emotional," as she arrived. "You came just in time for the Valentine."

In my head, uh, half the class already thinks you're having an affair and the other half I just haven't heard from.

I don't consider jealousy to be an emotion. It involves feeling emotions but itself is not one. Emotions are: happy, sad, angry... jealousy is a thought process and behavior. As I was yapping with M a while ago, she is the most jealous person I have ever seen in my life, literally, not exaggerating, even after having been the best friend of someone who pretty much had some degree of borderline personality disorder, in which extreme jealousy plays a prime role. Anyway, I don't think soul-defining jealousy and wisdom really exist together.

According to Wikipedia, I think my understanding is not bad:

"Wisdom is the judicious study and application of knowledge. It is a deep understanding and realization of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgments and actions in keeping with this understanding. It often requires control of one's emotional reactions (the "passions") so that universal principles, reason and knowledge prevail to determine one's actions. Wisdom is also the comprehension of what is true coupled with optimum judgment as to action."

But Teacher still loves her (in what way, it's still not entirely clear...) and gives her hugs that seem a little too friendly and her arm and shoulder touches seem territorial. I wonder if he would do that in front of his wife? What is the difference between a close friend and an emotional affair?

Tiger: something something "tango.... I went back a month ago.... You should come try it."
Teacher: (smiling but the body language seemed to say, um no.)

Paying Dues

I've been taking a yijin class since November in the city of pearl milk tea (or I should say quality pearl milk tea), basically stretching tendons and muscles.  A TJ brother recommended it to me as he knew it helped someone with rheumatoid arthritis.  He told me this guy teaches out of his home during the day so it's mostly housewives and retired folks.

I do not know why but I did something I have never done before which is go into a strange man's house alone for the first introductory free private lesson.  I did do my Internet background search beforehand and scoped out the house.  It's a nice house in an upper middle class neighborhood with big windows viewable to the street.  One of the first things I noticed when he opened the door was that he was wearing a prominent cross around his neck.  The other impression was that he looked like a "lower class" Chinese person than I usually encounter in these settings but I did not feel at risk.  He has children including a fourteen year old daughter who has advanced math textbooks on the dining table and looks like your average high-achieving Asian kid.

Last week, he shared that he had been in prison for four years when he was "young" for getting in a fight and beating up another guy who eventually died of his injuries.  So this is the only person I know who has killed a person.  Of all the times, this is the one time for some reason I had gone alone to a strange man's house and it turns out he had killed a person violently.  He said he did not get convicted of murder, he was "not proud" of what he had done and has to live with it for the rest of his life, and he had paid his dues.

The news was strangely nonreactive for me and I just continued doing the exercises with the class while peacefully wondering if I would have to quit over this.  Suddenly the current TJ drama with my TJ teacher paled in comparison.  The teacher was the same person he was a minute ago.  Some of his students probably already knew but nobody seemed shocked.  Some go to the same church.  Others go to different churches.  The old Chinese ladies, people who could be my mom's friends, seem like they accept it and him, but I really doubt my mom would.  One lady commented that his demeanor and the way he speaks is so soft now.

He said he was "young", in his late twenties, I think.  Where I come from, I expect anyone older than five years old to understand the consequences of killing someone and anyone younger than five years old to be incapable of killing someone.  Someone in his late twenties has been an adult for a long time already.

He said he had "paid his dues".  When he got out of prison after four years, he really liked open space.  I thought, he lived a much better life during those four years than I have during the last seven.  I suffered a lot physically and mentally especially during the first several years, beyond the comprehension and imagination of anyone reading this blog and I haven't even written about the worst parts, and I don't think what I went through would be enough to "pay dues" for killing someone.  With the exception perhaps of guilt and prison abuse, being able to watch TV, read, take correspondence courses, and whatever one can do in prison sounds a hell of a lot nicer than how I spent the last seven years and I'm not paying dues for anything.

This coincidence makes it seem like the cosmos is presenting me with some sort of lesson.  What does it mean to forgive?  I'm not sure what, and I'm not sure what to think, but never go into a strange man's house alone is the simplest, and never meaning never.

Maneuvers

My week consists of 5-7 hours of TJ class between two teachers, 2 hours of yijin, 1 hour of orthopedic massage therapy, ~5 hours of driving, and going to the grocery store which is still like a field trip to me.  Basically, TJ is my life and I get a lot of my socializing and most of my people watching done there.  Thus the redundant TJ drama posts.  I shouldn't be blogging critically about people without their knowledge but oh well.  I generally reserve that for nutty or abusive behavior, the latter of which I think abdicates their right to privacy.  The former, okay, I am bad.

On Saturday after class, we were walking to the parking lot.  From left front to right back- Tiger, me, and Teacher (and E who wasn't really in the conversation).  Teacher was starting to ask if I wanted to go down to the next class in LA with them and hang out for lunch.  Tiger asked, "How about Sunday?" I don't remember exactly but obviously a day I would not be there.  Then she slowed down and positioned herself such that I had to move left or crash into her and so she was in the middle.  Then she turned around and walked back the other direction towards Teacher, like blockading him so they hung back and stopped.  "I wanted to talk to you about...."  Oooh, secret.  I couldn't hear the rest because I kept walking with E.

Sometimes when we're walking (from left to right- me, Tiger, and Teacher), Teacher sometimes moves around to the other side (Teacher, me, Tiger), which is okay, but to insert yourself in the middle of two people in the middle of determining plans is rude and weird.

Despite the jealous and possessive behaviors, Teacher seems to respect her the most.  I've only seen him tease her once and it was positive.  I've seen him looking at her admiringly.  They also seem to have a bond.  But I'm wondering about the married person having lunch alone with an opposite gender friend who displays jealous and possessive behavior.

Among the TJ people, M has lunch with A alone sometimes and there is clearly no issue.  I talk to her husband F for a while sometimes and there is clearly no issue.  I'd have to say that with most married or attached people I see interacting with opposite gender friends, there is clearly no issue.  But somehow with Teacher, it does seem like I have to tread carefully and not get pulled in like Tiger because I'm not sure he has no part in maintaining her jealousy and possessiveness despite that I think he's ultimately a committed person.

Then a replay of a similar conversation a few months ago.

"We can give you a ride."
"She has her car, doesn't she?"  (Um yes, but she knows my fatigue and driving that far don't mix well, and by the way, she carpools to our other class.)
"You can carpool down and Tiger can give you a ride back."
"I can give her a ride."
"Oh but you don't live down here."
...
"You can sit in my car...."
"I didn't bring any food."
"We can go get lunch after."
"Oh but I'm hungry now."
"Okay, next week?"
"Uh... I can't do next week."
"How about the week after?"
"Maybe."

Last Sunday after class, he went up to a group and asked, "Hey, are you guys going to yum cha?"  Then as I was walking to the parking lot with Tiger, Ir, and D, he called after us, "Are you guys going to yum cha?"  He seemed to want to hang out.  That was the first time I've heard him mentioned lunch.  I guess I'm moving into the friend zone.