Patrick Watson: A glimpse of a T’ai Chi Chieftain

After salvaging my legs, which had been the reason for taking up T’ai Chi, and getting them back into shape, I realised the good work I’d done would be wasted if I slipped back into old lazy habits; to insure against this I was determined to do a round or two each day and keep up with my weekly class; this would serve as basic maintenance. If I persevered, the odds in favour of reaching old age with a pair of properly functioning legs looked promising. There were no alternative therapies I was curious about, no other options I wanted to explore; all I needed to do was continue what I was  doing: T’ai Chi before breakfast, class once a week and the possibility of some intensive study if time and money allowed.

Professor Cheng Man-ch’ing, the renowned T’ai Chi master, said that without perseverance you have nothing, and though I achieved little else at this time, I did stick with the programme. But in contrast with this sliver of self-discipline was the shambles that was the rest of my life: the overwhelming tedium of my job oppressed me with a gloom I could conceive of no way of escaping from; and my relationship with the woman sharing my life with was going off the rails – again. I avoided facing reality the way I usually did, by sousing my brain in cannabis fumes, which I did every day. Thus I sank. However, there were occasions when I bobbed to the surface and breathed clear air.

Within my befuddled brain an incipient mindfulness was making itself felt (very low wattage compared to what I thought my T’ai Chi teachers possessed): I was beginning to feel that T’ai Chi could offer more than just physical restoration, that other kinds of change were possible, but most of the time I was too out of it to analyse this shift in my thinking in any depth. My teachers existed in a well ordered universe, worlds apart from the disarray of the one I inhabited; and when I appraised my fellow students – bourgeois, upwardly mobile young men and women as different to my working-class self as I thought it was possible to be – in my attenuated state I felt like a wastrel in a party of vicars. But it never occurred to me to look for another school to study at; I had an uncomplicated modus operandi that seemed to work: I turned up each week for my hour-long class, absorbing, I hoped, some of what was taught, and then tried to remember as much of it as I could before the next class the following week.

It was during my first intensive training, in Amsterdam, that I emerged, albeit briefly, from a decade-long pot habit, and it was then I saw Patrick Watson up close for the first time, the man who taught many of the teachers I studied with in the ensuing years. He was a big man, in more than just stature: with his bushy beard, full head of ginger hair, and the elemental magnetism of a Celtic chieftain, he did not resemble what I thought a T’ai Chi master should look like. My contact with him in Amsterdam was slight but I got to know him a little better during a second, residential T’ai Chi training in Holland at a rustic location so nondescript I can’t recollect a single feature of it. I remember sitting in the audience of students and teachers during the crowded general meeting that kicked off the two-week programme: at one point volunteers were being solicited to take on responsibility for a range of assignments to ensure the smooth running of the training – dish washing, floor sweeping, table clearing after meals, that kind of thing. The most menial chore on offer was the cleaning of the communal toilets and bathrooms, a task so unappealing a reduction in tuition costs was offered as a sweetener. The concession on the course fee was the clincher: up went my hand; when I looked around the room to see if I was competing with anybody else for the job I saw I was the only candidate.

For two hours every afternoon I buckled down to my cleaning duties. With a mop and bucket hanging off one arm and another bucket filled with sprays, detergents and cotton rags hanging off the other, I attacked my chores: bathroom surfaces were sponged and scoured, sinks and toilet bowls bleached, tissue kept track of, soap supply monitored, mirrors sprayed and wiped, and floors swabbed. When I toiled in the block Patrick was lodging in he’d pass by occasionally and would invariably pause for a minute or two to pass the time of day. Without his coterie of acolytes about him he was surprisingly amiable, but being face to face with the teacher of my own teachers was not without tension on my part: his sudden appearances made me nervy and I was, I regret to say, never able to contribute more than platitudes to our brief conversations. How much of his bonhomie derived from witnessing my conscientious toil at very humble business I can’t say, but I suspect it earned me brownie points.

The gossip said Patrick Watson was an irascible, demanding teacher who alienated as many people as  as he befriended; nevertheless, it was an observable fact that he was one of those charismatic individuals who could enter a room and by his mere presence draw all eyes to himself. He was a near total stranger to me at this time, but even I could sense that his somewhat shambolic air camouflaged the true measure of the man. The little I did know of him came from what I’d heard about his talent for Push Hands – a two-person interaction revolving around the principle of yielding to force rather than repelling it and redirecting it to unbalance your opponent – a discipline in which he was reputed to be exceptionally able. His martial training had begun when he was very young. In an interview he gave to the T’ai Chi Press he harked back to his childhood and spoke of how he’d had to look out for himself as a student at a predominantly African American school in the old Fillmore district of San Francisco: he was, he said, “the toughest kid” there, and owned up to being “a good street fighter”. Some years ago during a T’ai Chi training in New York I heard him recount what must have been a well-oiled anecdote about a presentation he’d given with some of his senior students to the cadets at West Point, the US military academy in Orange County: the specialist in unarmed combat who had organised the visit threw out a challenge to Patrick, presumably in anticipation of a display of his own skills. With reflexes honed from a life dedicated to the development of his martial prowess it’s not difficult to imagine Patrick as a big cat, ready to pounce at any moment – which he did in the instant the challenge was issued and taking out his surprised opponent. His dismissal of the specialist’s reaction to being so quickly neutralised was emphatic: “He whined that he hadn’t been ready!”

A similar episode to the one Patrick described to his students that day can be found on the website of the Cheng Man-ch’ing Official Biography Project (http://www.chengbiography.blogspot.ca/). It’s a brief account of Patrick’s beloved teacher, Professor Cheng Man-ch’ing, receiving as his guest an unarmed combat specialist from West Point – possibly the same fellow Patrick referred to, though I’m unable to verify this:

In December of 1967, Cheng Man-ch’ing welcomed guests from West Point, the  United States Military Academy located in upstate New York. Led by John Kress, instructor of unarmed combat, a group of officers and cadets visited the New York Tai Chi Association studio on Canal Street in Chinatown. Kress and his group exchanged ideas and demonstrations with Cheng and his students. Many years earlier, Cheng himself had taught T’ai Chi at the Whampoa Military Academy, China’s ‘West Point’.

As Tam Gibbs, Cheng’s assistant and translator later recorded, “Mr. Kress demonstrated some Army field fighting techniques. All were helpless against him. Strong as a bear and as fierce as a tiger, he crouched in a stable posture, quick and light on his feet. Coolly concentrated and never initiating an attack, he took advantage of the slightest opening. Each of those to face him was sent staggering; no one could penetrate his long arms, which seemed like flagpoles with the hugest hands at the ends of them that I have ever seen on a man.”
The T’ai Chi students also gave demonstrations, and to everyone’s delight, Kress and Cheng Indian wrestled. Cheng, a half-foot shorter and much lighter, bested Kress, but was worried, as he could sense Kress’ high skill. The two men came away with a great appreciation of each other.”

The New York T’ai Chi Association on Canal Street, the principal thoroughfare cutting through Chinatown, was where Professor Cheng was based before he started up his own school, Shr Jung, on the Bowery. This was where Patrick Watson studied under Professor Cheng and experienced up close the unrivalled skill of his teacher’s martial ability:

Here I was, in my prime, and this guy who was in his late sixties bounced me around like I’m a toy, and I should be able to take him out easily. I mean, he’s a little old man, right? God, it was like nothing: I was breaking out into a sweat, he was fine, he was moving faster than I was; it was amazing. Because at that level, as Oscar [Ichazo] says, it’s pure consciousness. There’s no technique, there’s no strength, it’s pure consciousness . . . T’ai Chi Press, Vol.I, issue IV

Given that Professor Cheng developed his incomparable skill under the tutelage of the legendary Yang Cheng Fu it’s no surprise he ‘bested’ the West Point instructor (In addition to his virtuoso martial talents Professor Cheng was also a poet, a painter, a calligrapher and a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine –  typical activities of an old fashioned Confucian scholar – hence the attribution ‘Master of Five Excellences’). The respective encounters of the two T’ai Chi masters with an unarmed combat expert and their reaction to what unfolded reveal telling contrasts in character: Professor Cheng, as one would expect, is respectful and chivalrous; Patrick is contemptuous and dismissive.

When he saw me sipping a cup of coffee as I stood at the freezing street corner an old panhandler, killing time like me, said a drop of scotch would warm us up; I asked him if he had some, but he shook his head and grinned stupidly. We were idling at the edge of a fast flowing stream of anonymous men and women hurrying to their jobs, faces bleached by the cold, shoulders hunched, eyes down, every one on the way to work.

The phone had rung at 7 a.m. with an offer I didn’t know how to refuse: an invitation to breakfast in Noodletown with the founder of the School of T’ai Chi Chuan. I misjudged the travel time from Williamsburg, on the other side of the East River, and arrived way ahead of time. I strolled around the frigid streets of New York’s Chinatown, buzzing even at this early time of day. On a nondescript thoroughfare I lingered at a roadside stall, attracted to the Buddha figurines being sold by a rosy cheeked Tibetan; we chatted for a few minutes, then I continued my walkabout until it was time to go to meet the Master.

Patrick was sitting in a rear corner of the restaurant, demolishing a bowl of noodles. I took a seat opposite him, undid my jacket and ordered some tea. He slid the Daily News, across the table and asked me to read something from it to him: I found a story about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the two American communists executed in 1953 for passing atomic secrets to the Soviets, then regaled him with titbits of local news as he ate.

His skin was the colour of parchment and had shrunk off the cheekbones, and his once thick hair was now more wire brush than the gingery mop it had once been; but his mind was sharp and he quizzed me on the initiatives shaping up on 13th Street, listening intently but saying nothing. Since illness diminished his ability to stay involved in the day-to-day running of his school he drew his information about the business from the different people who worked there, and I was being pumped just then. I wasn’t involved in the administrative side of things, but I had my ear to the ground and was privy to some of what was going on.

After putting away a second bowl of noodles he made signs that we should go; I stood and helped him into his layers of clothes and handed him his walking stick. We walked a little way in the direction of Canal Street, the air glacial and biting; me slowing my pace to match his and watching his every step as he manoeuvred around the patches of dirty ice covering the pavement. When we reached the corner I hailed a cab for him and we said goodbye; it was 10 a.m.

As the months went by he grew more enfeebled and morose, and I came to dread his calls. One morning he asked me to drive him around the Lower East Side; social interaction minimal, street directions maximal; each stop, a pawn shop; I trailed after him as we tramped in and out of the cluttered stores in a vain search for a 16mm movie camera, though what he expected to be filming given his fragility I didn’t inquire about. On a couple of occasions I drove him to the Saturday Farmers’ Market in Union Square to get some of the soda bread he was partial to, and some hot mulled cider, then dropped him at a nearby cinema so he could take in a matinee. My last driving job was to take his wife’s car, and himself, to an Upper West Side garage to get some minor work done on it; when we returned to pick up the car I was ordered to walk while he negotiated a receipt-free payment with the mechanic. After that I drove him downtown for a late breakfast at a restaurant he favoured in Greenwich Village. After we’d taken our seats he left the menu unopened and told the young waiter serving our table what he wanted to eat, but when the food arrived it had to be returned to the kitchen because something on the plate didn’t tally with the order he’d given. When it came a second time Patrick was quick to berate the waiter: Why had he been given this kind of bread when it wasn’t what he’d asked for? The youth, becoming flustered and red-faced, blurted out how hard he was trying to be helpful; none of his colleagues, he said, wanted to serve him because he was such a difficult customer. It was an embarrassing scene, politely ignored by the other customers; Patrick took his reduction in silence.

As he ate I couldn’t help looking at him: he was in steep physical decline, all skin and bone now, his clothes were hanging off him and his charisma was long gone; it was like sitting with a stranger. His illness had made him needy and dependent, which was understandable, but his misery was contagious and the empathy I felt toward him because of what he was having to endure drained away when I accompanied him on these jaunts. I waited until he’d finished eating before I told him I had to get going, there were things I needed to do; he was disappointed, he’d expected me to keep him company, but I couldn’t face being his dogsbody for the rest of the day; I was determined to slip away. Time with him in the condition he was in stretched into tedium, which was what had prompted my lie – there was nothing demanding my attention. As we left the restaurant and began to inch across 8th Street he held on to me for support; when we reached the pavement he stopped, each of us cocooned in awkward silence; he was very frail and in obvious discomfort; but I was fretting about how much longer I would have to stay with him. In a voice barely more than a croak he confessed he’d become too weak to do his daily Arica meditation; his head dropped and there were sudden tears, his struggle to keep a grip on a remorselessly contracting life suddenly in plain view.

I dropped him off at a delicatessen a few streets away from his apartment, drove the car back to its parking lot then returned to hand over the keys. He’d been busy with instant lottery cards, the kind where bits of foil are scratched off to reveal a winning or losing number. I dropped the car keys on the countertop and watched him for a minute as he scraped away, then turned and left the store. Walking the short distance to the school on 13th Street the shame of having lied to him took hold; I thought I might find something to do there, anything, to distract me from my guilty conscience. I’d behaved badly, I knew, but I couldn’t help it: I was ill suited to the role of gopher; it made me feel like a lackey, and I disliked it intensely. With these miserable thoughts filling my head I pushed open the street level door to the school and there he was, leaning on his walking stick at the other end of the narrow passage, waiting for the elevator to descend; without missing a beat I went into reverse, but as I was retreating I glimpsed a reflex turning of his head; what he must have thought of my oafish behaviour, I can only guess. I made my doleful way home to Williamsburg and was never to spend time with him again. Not so long after this wretched day he took the decision only a warrior could: to discontinue the dialysis he needed to keep his kidneys functioning. Death was not long in coming and he died quietly at home, with his wife and some of those who loved him at his bedside.

Patrick Watson (drawing by author)

 

 

 

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