I stood at the French doors overlooking an overgrown garden.  Unkempt hedges lined cobblestone paths that crossed in the center of the circular garden, creating a neat cross.  Three small bungalows stood on the far side of the garden.

"I think we're being watched," said the man. 

I resisted an urge to turn around.  The woman responded, "I think so, too.  I’ll go look them over."

"That middle one is empty.  It got flooded a few weeks ago. If there really is anyone, they'll probably be there."

I felt a minor panic set in; I knew for a fact that someone was in that building, and they were watching.  I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out my phone.  It was too risky to call, of course, but I needed to do something to warn him.  I flipped the phone open and held it in front of me as they said their goodbyes and he warned her to be careful.  I took pictures of the garden while trying to get the sun to reflect off the surface of the phone.  If he saw the flashes, he might get the hint.  Probably not, but it was the only thing I could think of.

I heard him step closer to me, so I turned with a grin and said, "That’s really a nice gard..."

That was as far as I got before he lunged at me with his knife.  I got only a glimpse and was already dodging, but too late; the knife sliced into my right side.  I jumped at him, knocking him off balance, and the knife fell from his hand and skittered across the floor.  He gripped me with both of his arms and squeezed; this combined with the cut in my side caused my sight to dim and I struggled for breath.  I gathered as much strength as I could and brought my knee up sharply.  It missed his groin but hit his thigh hard enough to make him grunt and loosen his grip.  I chopped a hand into his exposed throat and thrust away from him, then limped as rapidly as I could around the corner and into the first room I came to.  I closed and locked the door, then found I had closed myself in the interior bathroom.  I crouched beside the tub to minimize the chances of being shot, should he decide to attempt such a thing, and pondered my next move.

When Writing Goes Astray

The good news is that I have had some flashes of inspiration, and I have begun writing once again.  The bad news is that the inspiration does not have anything to do with the book that I want to write; it’s for something completely different.

But at least I’m writing.  Nine pages in the last two nights, in fact, which is a veritable avalanche of words, coming from my fingers. 

My inspiration comes from what might seem an unlikely source; Dragonball-Z.  You know, the old anime series that was popular way back in the 90’s.  Or possibly early aughts; I’m not actually sure when it originally aired in the US.  My 15-year-old remembered the show with a reverence usually reserved for religious experiences, so I bought him season one for his birthday this year.   We watched the entire season over the course of two days.

The series is a mass of paradoxes.  The animation is crude, yet engaging; the writing is often quite hilarious (in both good and bad ways); the characters range from one-joke caricatures to complex psychological specimens; the “acting” ranges from pure cartoon to true pathos.  Whoever wrote it was clearly making things up as he went along; the show contradicts itself, almost gleefully. 

The plot of the entire series (I bought all 9 seasons off of Amazon and we watched them in the space of 2 ½ months) is repetitive: heroes face bad guys who are surprisingly strong; heroes get butts whipped; heroes call on reserves heretofore unknown to them; heroes come back and win the big battle, some of which drag on in their own repetitive mini-cycles for an entire season.  Each time a new menace arrives, they are purported to be the strongest (and cruelest) beings in the universe.  No one could stand up to Frieza; but Cell was even stronger.  And even the Kais could not defeat Majiin Buu.  In the coincidental nature of serial television, all of the most powerful and evil creatures in the history of the universe happened to show up within twenty or so years of each other, and all of them found their defeat on, or at the hands of, people who lived on Earth.

This is not to say that the series is totally Earth-centric.  Humans, in fact, turn out to be among the weakest species in the universe.  If it wasn’t for the fact that aliens who looked much like humans had, for one reason or another, taken up residence on Earth, the planet would have been doomed several times over.  The strongest Earthlings can’t hold a candle to the most powerful Namekians, who themselves are no match for the crazy-strong Sayians.

The part that most intrigued me, and was the spark behind my most recent spurt of attempted novelization, was the powers that the characters had; or, rather, not the powers themselves, but the way the power was generated.  The energy bolts or waves that they used were created within themselves.  They didn't draw power from outside sources (except for the Spirit Bomb, which is an example of an exception proving the rule).  The rules are based (extremely loosely) on the Asian concept of chi, or the body's energy, being externalized and then manipulated for various uses, such as flying and the inevitable laser-beam-like attacks.  Master Roshi, according to the DBZ booklets that came with the movies, was the first human to figure out how to bring that inner energy outside the body.

And that is what interested me.  I have a very (very very) rudimentary understanding of the way chi is supposed to move around the body.  I could picture that actually happening.  Logical steps followed that revelation: using that much energy would be exhausting.  Someone would have to be in really good shape to do it more than once without passing out.  And probably eat a lot.  Both of these describe the characters in DBZ, or at least, they describe the main character, Goku. Despite all the silliness that is rampant in DBZ, it seems to possess a certain appealing logic.

Thus is was that, while mulling these things over, a scene gathered in my head.  As these things usually do, it twisted and turned and grew as I explored the paths it opened.  When I had some time, I wrote it down.  It came out a little differently than it had appeared in my head, which is also normal, but it holds the essence of what I was aiming for.  Rather than focusing on the first person who was able to manage the technique -- I imagined it would take years, if not decades, to realize it could happen -- it is about a student who takes the technique and attempts to find practical uses for it, rather than using it simply as a meditation technique, as his master does.

Let me know what you think.

***

“Once you have mastered the movement of your body’s energy, it is not such a hard thing to externalize it.”

“Externalize it?  What do you mean?”

“Externalize.  To bring it outside your body.  Just as it sounds.”

“Yes, I realize that, but…”

The master sighed and interrupted, “How about a demonstration?”  Which shut me up right quick.

He sat still for a moment, and I recognized the signs of his meditation; his body relaxed, except for his forehead, which wrinkled even more than usual as he concentrated on his inner chi.  He slowly raised his hands and brought them together at arm’s length in front of him, palms about two inches apart.

I heard a distant humming, like a swarm of bees, though the sound seemed to be coming from the master’s hands.  A faint glow emerged then grew stronger incrementally, coalescing at last into a pure white mass of energy that crackled and seethed as if seeking to escape his grasp.  The master took a deep sigh and released it; the energy vaporized into the air, leaving only charged particles that made my hair stand on end and the faint smell of something smoldering.

It took me a moment to get words to pass my lips, and I regretted them as soon as I saw the grimace with which he responded.

“How did you do that?”  I asked.

Then came the grimace.

“I already told you that.  I thought you were supposed to be smart.”

I felt myself flush, and bowed my head in acquiescence; and to cover my embarrassment.  “I apologize, master.  May I try?”

He snorted.  “You may try.  It took me twenty years just to feel warmth between my hands, so don’t expect too much too soon.”

I felt excitement surge through my heart despite his caution, and prepared myself.  I took deep, steady breaths and internalized my thoughts, letting everything go, one by one, until all of my concentration was on the chi paths that flowed through my body.  I tightened the muscles of my legs, then my groin, the fastest chi generator of the body, then guided the resulting energy up my spine, tightening and loosening the muscles as it went, adding the resulting energy to the chain.  I let it seep into my head, but didn’t let it linger, as I normally would; instead, I drained it out, down my chest, and let it settle in my belly, where it spun lazy circles, like koi in a small pond.  I breathed, relaxing my muscles, then did it again.  And again.  And continued to do it until I imagined I could feel heat simmering from my belly.  I raised my arms and set them in front of me, palms facing each other, as the master had shown me, then gently spilled the energy out of its holding place.  It pooled into the groin and guided it once more up the chain of my spine until it reached my shoulder blades; but instead of tipping it into my head, I eased it outward, through my dominate right arm, and into my hand.  This time the heat was not imaginary; I felt my palm warm as the energy reached my extremity.

Having reached a natural dead-end, the energy tried to rebound back up my arm, but I closed off the shoulder, causing it to rotate, like a snake following its own tail, along the length of my arm.  I concentrated on my right palm, feeling the heat generated by the proximity of the left palm, held opposite; the warmth inside my arm seemed to respond to the heat from without, and the air between my palms grew sharply hotter as I felt the energy unwind and begin to leach out. 

I sharpened my concentration, willing the heat to coalesce, but discovered that I could not; the energy was as slippery as wet eels and slid through my fingers, stubbornly refusing to gather between my palms.  I tried to stem the flow, to hold some back in order to try again, but once the release had begun, it was impossible to restrain.  It shot from my hands with a loud crack and, less than a heartbeat later, blasted into a fair-sized aspen.  I could barely see the resulting explosion and the toppling of the tree because of the residual glare the light from the energy had imprinted on my corneas. 

“That was excellent.”  I could barley hear his placid tone over the ringing in my ears.  “But you gathered too much to control.”

My mind was already going over the implications of what I had seen and learned, and I answered absently, forgetting for the moment to whom I spoke.  “It took too long.”

“Too long for what purpose?”

Too late, I realized my mistake.  I stammered, stalling, as I tried to think of an answer.  He forestalled me.

“You think to use this technique as a weapon, perhaps?  Even if your vow allowed for violence – which, as you well know, it does not – your opponent would have to be considerate indeed to stand still for the twenty minutes it takes for you to gather your energy.  Indeed, it is too long for such a purpose.  But I did not show you how to gather energy for violence.  There are far better uses for it.”

I bowed my head, feigning abasement, not willing to look him in the eye for fear he would recognize my insubordinate thoughts.  “What uses, master?”

“Healing, first and foremost.  You are already aware that one can share his chi with others through close contact, but the ability to externalize your own chi gives you the ability to use it align someone else’s.”

He talked on, and I gave him enough of an ear that I would be able to quote his words back if called upon, but my thoughts raced along their own path.

In order to be useful, it would be necessary to be able to bring up the energy quickly.  The only way to do that would be to keep a reservoir of it stirring in my body.  I waited in silent impatience for the lecture to end; for the first time in my years at the temple, I wished to be anywhere but with the master.

***

I woke the next morning with a hungering eagerness.  The morning meditation seemed the perfect time to build the reservoir, and I settled to my pose without even taking the time to use the chamber pot.  I gathered the energy, as before, and pooled it once again in my belly.  I felt it floating there, languid as a summer breeze.  The stomach is the body’s natural repository for potential energy; attempting to store it elsewhere is difficult under meditative circumstances, and even then can only be held for a short time before it turns kinetic. 

One the energy had been collected, I worked it down and back up, and finally to my hand.  I didn’t want to blast a hole in my bedchamber wall, so I kept the amount to the minimum I thought would be necessary to generate a spark.  It still took some time to cajole the chi up and into my arm, but I was certain that, with practice, I could have a handful of energy within the course of a minute.

My palm warmed as I willed the chi outward, and was rewarded with a faint glow.  My left hand responded to the energy, seeming to suck it toward itself, and soon I had a tiny spark dancing between my palms.  I moved my hands with care, watching with interest as the energy responded in different ways relative to the position of my hands.  I eased them apart, wondering how far they could go before the energy would dissipate, and got a surprise; when the left hand was about a foot away, the chi balled up in my cupped right hand and stayed on the palm.  I dropped my left arm cautiously to my side, but the energy stayed, flickering as if alive, warm to my palm.

With a growing sense of excitement, I eased more energy from my belly and brought it up my arm.  The ball swelled as the energy reached my fingers, as if simply holding the chi was enough to draw the rest out.  Soon I had a ball the size of a coconut dancing on my palm, and elation coursed through me.

Somewhere in the dorm, someone did something – I never did find out what – that created a boom that shook the thin-walled building.  I cried out, startled, and lost control of the ball of energy.  It shot from my hand and blasted the ceiling above, and I crouched and held my arms over my head as what was left of the ceiling crashed down on top of me.

***

I was given three months of kitchen duty as penance for the destruction of my bedchamber.  Fortunately, no one was injured in the blast, and I went about my added duties without complaint.  I did not stop my secret experimentation, however; every morning I built up as much chi as I felt I could hold in my belly.  At first I found it difficult to retain the energy; chi stored in the stomach does not linger there without constant supervision.  The body does not like any part of itself holding back from its efficient function and feels free to dip into pools of energy that it deems expendable.  I spent a frustrating first week trying to find time alone to replenish the reserves that had been commandeered for basic body functions. Then I spent several days constantly herding the energy, keeping it from wandering astray; this inward focus resulted in outward clumsiness, as I failed to pay close enough attention to my surroundings.  I endured several scoldings for laziness and general ineptitude, which I took with proper stoic consternation.

Finally, a little over a month after the master’s demonstration, I found that I didn’t need to watch the kettle all the time.  I had, somewhat inadvertently, taught my body that the excess energy was not for general usage, and my performance improved dramatically as I was able to pay attention to the outside world while still gripping the ball of chi within.

Keeping that much excess energy, I found, held problems of its own.  I was often short of breath, and was exhausted at the end of every day; sometimes, indeed, I found myself nodding off during the final group meditation period, something I had not done since I was a novice.  It was impossible for this to go unnoticed, of course, and I found myself the butt of many a sly sneer or jibe.  The master did not say anything about it, however, although it was ridiculous to think he hadn’t noticed.

At first I worried that holding the extra energy somehow meant that I was withholding it from vital parts of my body, and that I was causing myself to waste away.  But I knew enough about the human body, and about healing, to know this was not the case.