When I told Maria that I’d begun my Tai Chi lesson reading a Hafiz meditation on men to Scott Carrino, she said it was a good thing he wasn’t a women, or she’d make me stop spending time with him. I guess I never read a poetic meditation to a man before, with Scott I didn’t give it a thought. We always begin our Tai Chi lessons with some talking, catching up. Scott began talking about his struggles with writing, his love of writing music, his wish to start a blog and before we knew it, our hour was  up and we had not done any Tai Chi.

Scott reached into his pocket and returned my check for the lesson, and he proposed this: that we become one another’s teacher, that we split our hour in half, that I teach him about writing in the first 30 minutes and he would teach me Tai Chi in the last 30 minutes. He said we could pay one another, but I said that was a waste of paper, and so we agreed to teach each other for free. It was an exciting decision, both of us were excited about it, it felt good, not only in terms of friendship but our own personal development. I get help Scott get going again with his writing and music lyrics, he can help me embrace Tai Chi at a time in my life when I know it could become important to me. It was a very mutual thing, a bounded thing.

Scott was honest enough to recognize we were spilling into new terrain, and we trust one another and communicate so well we can help one another. This is especially important to me, who so rarely take the time and trouble to do this, to find friends, to make friends, to help them in a bounded and healthy way. I love the image of the two teachers, splitting an hour to share what they know. As I left, I remembered it was really three men. Red is always there.

Scott feels powerfully connected to Red, as do I. Somehow, his spirit is in this mix, I’m not sure how, but I feel it there.