Life's Trials Are Only Temporal, Grasshopper

"If you cannot be a poet, be the poem."

Thanks to my son Micah, I've gotten hooked on the old Kung Fu telly series. When it first aired I was a widowed, 21 year-old single mom who worked a factory job. I enjoyed the lessons the show espoused and the tranquility it lent my hectic week, and since I wasn't being asked out on dates, well, I spent an hour every Friday night with Kwai Chang Caine...

Watching Kung Fu brings back so many memories, both happy and sad. I was living with my parents so that I could get on my feet and so that my mother could watch the baby while I was at work. I got very little sleep in those days, because Joel was plagued with colic and respiratory ailments. Up early, I spent the bulk of the day with him, then commuted to the medical supply factory where I stood, dressed in a sterile lab coat, cap, and gloves for eight hours at a pipette machine, feeding the tips and ends into large steel wheels that rotated noisily and relentlessly. In the middle of the night I commuted home, got myself an hour of personal time, then went to bed. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. No friends, no life, a seemingly wasted youth.

Kung Fu gave it all a sense of spiritual purpose and helped me to hang in there, assuring me that it was only temporary. And it was. Six months later I was on the road on a six-state concert tour and performing up and down the state of California. The next step was my move to Hollywood, about which you can read on my website.

It was this novel, quirky TV show that inspired me in 1979 to study Tai Chi Ch'uan, something I wish I'd kept up with. I'm considering re-teaching myself. It's always better to have a master, but because of where I live, I guess YouTube will have to suffice.
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Quote by David Carradine.