I call Tuesday our Friendship day, at 1 p.m., I drive out to Pompanuck Farms with Red and Scott and I meet for our Tai-Chi writing lessons. It was a beautiful day, soft and warm for late October, we sat outside. I was in a lot of pain today, and Scott’s broken back was tender as well, we focused on writing, and then did as much Tai Chi as we could. I have learned four exercises now, and I do them before I write, there is so much going on with my body right now that I can’t really tell if the Tai Chi is  having any effect on me but I will continue, we are just beginning.

Scott is at a critical point in his writing, he is struggling to write about some of the painful events in his early life, and it is chewing him up a bit. At some point, every writer wonders if his or her stories are important, and if anyone will ever care about them, Scott is at this point, I hope he breaks through, I think he will. Scott and I listen to one another, we trust one another. Trust is the foundation of learning, I think we are both teaching each other a lot, a rare thing among men.

I told  him writing, like Tai Chi, was internal, not external. It is about feeling and  honesty, if something wants to come out, it needs to come out. One has to set up a boundary, you write for yourself and  you hope it has meaning to others, but when you write, you write only for yourself, you cannot be thinking about what everyone else might feel or say. Creativity is a coming out, a leap of faith, it is neither simple nor easy, but it can be profoundly rewarding. Scott has had some hard experiences, some painful things to write about. Like many children who suffer greatly, he feels ashamed and afraid, all the more reason, perhaps to do it.

But writing, I told him, is personal, you have to want to do it, you have to own it yourself. Ultimately, it is his decision, surely not mine. Scott and I have been meeting like this for more than two years now, and our friendship has deepened and matured. It is the kind of friendship I have wanted for a long time, I think Scott has more friends than I have had, he is more open and accepting perhaps. And his life has been more stable, although he has done many different things, he has been in one place while I have been in a dozen or so.

I suspect we both have landed. My body needs Tai Chi, not just because of my surgery but also because it is, like writing, an internal path to a healthier body and a greater connection to spirit. I need these things, and I am hopeful. Tai Chi has not connected yet with my interior self, I don’t quite get it and am not yet really comfortable doing it. Scott says this will come in time, be patient. I will if you will, he says. We shook and hugged on it. I talk to Scott almost every day, I spent a good chunk of my life in his cafe, the Round House. But Tuesdays at Pompanuck are special, the geography of friendship and connection, two friends teaching one another what they have learned, what the other is hungry to know.