Guide to Local Gurus - A Special Feature of DCicive Magazine!
Chris Stomich's annual search for the hottest dispensers of ageless wisdom in the DC area!

Walter Milking

To residents of the "New U," Walter is familiar sight, as are the throngs of students who flock to his thrice-weekly Tai Chi class in the upper section of Malcolm X Park (also and officially known as Meridian Hill, for all you folks in the burbs). Walter moves with such fluid grace through the smooth, ritual motions of the Chinese Ritual that even advanced students in his presence look about as confident as fifth graders caught whacking off. He's like honey in a black saggy suit and flat canvas shoes.

He's also screaming at bystanders. An older couple stops to watch him pirouette and slide elegantly through his regimen. "Shit!" he yells at them, and bystanders see them visibly startle. "Fuckdamn!" he shrieks at two young men strolling through the late afternoon warmth. "Motherfucker!" he cries out at no one in particular. Not a flicker of disturbance passes through his controlled, harmonious movements. His students follow him in the ritual, utterly unfazed by his outbursts. He completes the slow-mo routine, and bows to to them. His students return the bow, holding it just a moment longer than their teacher, then they disband. Young mothers stoop to pick up water bottles; college kids gather up their backpacks; two Hispanic guys sit down on a bench and laugh at a private joke. Everyone seems at peace, particularly the man who only a few minutes ago was shouting obscenities at the world at large.

When Walter Milking was eight, he was diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome, a neurological disorder that profoundly affects speech and behavior. People with Tourette's may display repetitive and stylized hand movements, clear their throat or cough obsessively, or do or say inappropriate things in public. Walter had done all these as a child, and as a result had been kicked out of three different schools before doctors diagnosed his medical condition. The diagnosis offered more understanding, but little hope; few treatment options existed at the time.

At the age of sixteen, having earned his high school diploma through home schooling, Walter felt he had few prospects. He spent most of his waking moments watching his hands move like two alien forms: snapping fingers, clapping, and climbing an invisible ladder before his face, his hands moved constantly through a repertoire of ritualistic movements.

Walter spent considerable time hanging out on the downtown pedestrian mall in Charlottesville, Virginia, where shopkeepers and regulars got used to his occasional shouts and squeals, and pretty much left him alone. One day he was strolling the red-brick mall and happened into a martial arts store. This was in the eighties, when the ninja earned a brief cultural moment of cult hyper-fascination on the part of adolescent boys, and traditional Japanese weaponry was a popular accoutrement among tough-guy wanna-bes. Amidst the racks of spiked throwing stars and numchucks, Walter saw a flyer for a Tai Chi class. The store's owner, an avid martial arts practitioner, struck up a conversation. He told Walter that humans struggled all their lives against forces that were more powerful than they could possibly overcome. He said that there were forms of energy that obeyed only the most powerful universal rules of discipline. Aligning yourself with these laws would place you within the most profound and powerful streams of the universal life force. Walter drank it all in, his hands whirling and twitching around his face. And then as ridiculous as it sounded, the shop owner suggested that Walter give Tai Chi a try.

Walter laughs about it even now, settling back into the overstuffed sofa at Tryst with his decaf latte -- "caffeine tends to bring out the sailor in me," he says, referring to the tendency of stimulants to increase the fervor of his vocal outbursts. As we relax at the low-key Adams Morgan coffee bar, Walter's hands continue their restless work, but he is not yelling to anyone around us. He describes his appearance in a Tai Chi class populated largely by UVa eastern religion studies geeks and ninja-wanna-bes. They looked at him, the throat-clearing, twitching freak, like he was the bait for some perverse Candid Camera routine. And then it happened.

"We began the first movement of the routine," Walter explains, "which isn't so much a discrete part of the ritual as it is a detachment from the everyday world of unfocused motions. It involves sinking into your body, into a position of natural fortification, from which the center of gravity falls and the body becomes rooted to the earth. It is an extraordinarily powerful connection to the persistent powers that drive the celestial machinery around us. I felt myself change the moment I started." With the first move of Tai Chi, Walter felt a level of mastery over his wayward body that he had never experienced before. Suddenly, his muscles obeyed -- if not his will, then a will with which he could temporarily ally himself.

At the same moment, he felt something else slip out of his control. Walter howled out loud, jarring his fellow Tai Chi students. He was vocalizing with a determination that surprised him. But now he did it joyously, almost eagerly, as he experienced his first moments of control over his own movements.

Two days after our conversation over coffee, Walter is back in the park with his students. They come from throughout the metro area, drawn inexorably by the sense that this spare, twitching man is assembling something important, if still fragmentary. Walter spends twenty minutes or so before each class discussing eastern spiritualism and philosophy, topics he studied in great detail after his Tai Chi breakthrough.

Walter tells them that human beings occupy only limited space in the karmic world. We are like small rugs, he says, and we can only cover so much space at one time. When we try to exert control over one place, another area of our life falls into chaos. Shifting our efforts to bring the latter area under control will only lead to the onset of entropy in the former. We are in the grip of forces larger than we can possibly know or control. The key is to balance our control of them with our willingness to let them determine our fate.

After his talk, his students line up in rows before him. Silence descends on the group. Each individual prepares for the coming ritual. Then, his body falling into liquid perfection, Walter begins the first movement.

"Damnit!" he yells. And class is again in session.