Taomeow

I think this, like most things taiji, is misunderstood both in terminology and in application by quite a few. My teacher had me fajin him vs. fajin a pillar supporting a beam in his practice room, by way of explaining the difference hands on. Yes, of course you can fajin without an opponent, who's to stop you if you have the know-how. And no, that pillar didn't give me anything to use against it, I could only rely on my very own resources. Whereas a live opponent is going to give you something you can appropriate and turn against him (if you have the know-how of course.) Don't use your own resources is the golden rule of good push-hands. The highly skilled practitioner won't give you anything though. Moreover, they will create a perfect sensory illusion of "nothing there" -- try using fajin against a cloud, a swath of fog, a tactile emptiness... Very educational. So that pillar does give you something after all -- its own hardness which it is unable to soften, let alone to the point of disappearing from all your senses except your eyesight. Are you familiar with the "bu fa" technique?

Thanks. That's very impressive. Sounds like a lot of work but you must be having fun with it or you wouldn't do it, right? The fish pond with plastic sheeting to home edible fish... I'm no fish expert by any stretch of imagination but what immediately occurred to me was that microplastics might have a ball leeching into that water. Microplastics are the scourge of modern life (we have an average of a spoonful accumulated in the brain! doing our brain functions no favors... and a lot in all other organs, harmful all of them -- hormone disruptors, carcinogens, mutagens, teratogens... They are hard to avoid in everyday modern life -- but I think the ones that have the best chance to degrade under sunlight and heat and leech into water are perhaps the most dangerous ones. So I would look into some more traditional options if I were a fish in that pond building something like this. I know they exist, but of course I've no idea about the $$ and labor involved. Just a thought though.)

So where I thought of something clean, you thought of something dirty. Someone has a dirty mind commendable sustainability on their mind.

Since SC the author of that tantalizing mystery is responding with I'm tempted to take a wild guess: it's The Once and Future Swimming Pool

Yesterday I made these two lamps They were very old mismatched ones, both different colors and both colors ugly. I spray painted the base of each the same dark bronze color and used two Ikea stainless steel kitchen utensils holders to make lampshades, by flipping them upside down and installing hardware. One of my hobbies, finding a new (often unexpected) purpose for an old and tired object. I like simple projects that I can finish on a whim in a short time.