seconds: note eleven

Eleven

No eleventh note. I have fallen into a hole. A hephalump hole from memories of winnie the pooh.

How come I don’t know how to engage the playful side of other people?

Well, before I posted the last note a friend sent me a link to a site where a young boy played the ukelele and sang an English song. Only he doesn’t speak English, which only added to the layers of cuteness. An acquaintance joined me on the porch where I was sitting watching and writing and she passed along a friend’s aphorism. Cute feeds us. I thought about little babies, new to life, reaching, or simply resting. Somewhere in the midst of this I heard a young child playing a word game where she repeated some refrain. She was out on the street and I could barely hear her. She seemed to be both playing with someone and playing alone.

I think of the wonderful things people say in childhood as they are learning the way into language before all the rules apply. I suppose these are the wobbles in the spoken word. “Whose this is this is?” my daughter once said. I kept repeating it, until I could write it down. I was charmed. I kept that slip of paper for many years as a token to remind me of the layers of cute.

I have been wondering about the solitary nature of how I play. How I am amused by how things fit, or almost fit. How they remind me of something else or almost remind me. How I am pulled to make language wobble a bit, keeping meaning.

What was that hole I fell in? It was the report card category called "plays well with others." I am sure I always got a check mark. My brother didn’t always. When I spend time observing the habits and choice of spoken content of others, I rarely notice a quality of playfulness. How do we hide from our playful nature?

I wish there were a playful way to object to a lack of playful intent. I’d like to have some quip like the friend’s friend’s aphorism that melted the resistance. I’d like to be the person in the crowd who politely objects. Not enough playfulness here; but, of course, it is not in objecting at all, that’s just digging in deeper.

I’ll just have to keep playing and improvising, saying yes. After listening awhile I’ll have to charm the snakes out of the trees, as a friend said. There are many avenues to playfulness.

But I’ve come to admit that as an adult, I play by myself.

seconds: note ten

What is it about my spoken voice that gets left out of my written word?
How come I can charm and convince and even lead with my spoken word, lines that simply flow out of my mouth from my mind; but I can’t accomplish these feats with the written word?
Sometimes I like the sound of my written word, but I can’t figure out the discrepancy. I am equally surprised when my spoken words produce laughter. I am delighted but unaware of the source of humor.

I was asked to make an announcement at a gathering of artists and I was struck that the people who were speaking in front of the group used what I would call a timid voice and far too many words to convey the point. I didn’t have a timid voice; I spoke succinctly with authority. Not because I felt like an authority, but so people could hear over the hum of creative conversing. I felt this as a form of translation, as though the timid were speaking a foreign language. I began, “Let me translate that for you.” The room pealed with laughter. Was it the unexpected frame and the charm in my stance? Add this discrepancy to my wobble collection.

seconds: note nine

The surprise in play
is how captivated I become
by some detail. In this case
it is the wobble.
After all the word play can refer
to that little give and take
within the machinery of gears
that mechanically allows for the whole thing
to get going.
I am curious about a collection of wobbles.
They are my affirmations of play.
The earth wobbles;
the moon wobbles;
the north pole wobbles;
and the surface of the sun wobbles.
And my,
as I try and accomplish some task,
memory wobbles.
I am so pleased with all these wobbles.
The tide wobbles.
The splinter in my finger wobbles.
Some wobbles are miniscule.
Some wobbles are enormous,
but in the realm of wobbles,
wobbles tend to add something
without destroying the integrity
of the material or the system.
Maybe that’s what I like about them,
and maybe that’s at the heart of some ineffable explanation.
Maybe.

a note on the image: this is a wobble totem. I made it over a decade ago at the Eno River Festival, Durham, North Carolina, out of a small worn piece of river wood, 2 rusty iron washers and a bit of fishing line found as I walked around. I placed the washers around the wood and threaded the line through the washers to catch a hook of wood. I continued walking around the gathering, dangling this pendulum of sorts.

seconds: note eight

How odd, I clearly was close to something and it evaded me. Even though I had a sense of it, it didn’t stay. But like a lost thread of a dream, elusion stands. I don’t know when it will return. I am aware of waiting. Well, I wait, then. I wake the next morning and here it is; it is a sigh. A breath that reorients me to what is in front of me, around me, what offers to engage me. I am here. Sighs are sometimes interpreted as impolite, so we are socialized to stifle them. But I think it realigns our inner and outer worlds, or can do that, given a chance. It is a type of mini-meditation. So yesterday was about sighing and being present.

Yawns aren’t about being tired but are probably a realignment of muscle groups. Sometimes we only let ourselves realign at the end of the day. And why are yawns contagious? Can we hear them? Perhaps it isn’t visual.



Sigh

seconds: note seven

One afternoon in my last semester in design school, I came back to the studio to work on what was not working. I joined two other classmates. I don’t remember how our attention fell on Lottie’s sculptural solution to our assignment. But this women who didn’t seem to have the same attitude to design had arranged on her desk the most beautiful collection of foam-core surfaces that met the challenge of the assignment in a way that was so simple and understated it took my breath away. One of us called it to the attention of the others. Enviously we admired the structure. It dawned on us that perhaps she hadn’t yet attached the elements together. There was a tension and energy in the room and a sudden burst of laughter as we disbelievingly finally touched the structure to test our perception. And then the whole hypothesis dissolved as each one of us through gales of laughter realized this was just a discarded pile of material. I laughed so hard I had to hold onto the door jam to get my side to relax. And then we stopped laughing, like you do when you can’t stop in grade school, as Lottie came in with a new pristine sheet of foam-core from the supply store.

The memory still fills me with such playful delight and joy. I sense perception dancing, casting a spell over the room. That sense of each of us drawn magically right along on each other’s coattails. I hope we didn’t hurt her feelings. I can’t imagine how we could have explained the event. I think we three just went away playfully transformed.

seconds: note six point sevenfive

6 and 3quarters

In the course of what I lightly call writing my book some amusing playful resistant twists occur. I was writing about repetition as a method of being playful. The first draft got deleted by mistake. I slightly unnerved. The second draft seemed to miss the point. So did the third. I noticed that the playfulness entered through slight variations that occurred when I repeated something. I had done that in writing the chapter over and over again.

I stopped on the point and stacked rocks on the old fishing pier pilings. I liked how a few rocks could form a stone cap. A series of stone caps were conversing with each other; they observed the waves and the coming and going of the tidal water. I played. There are still some pieces of metal from a previous game I played of metal placing. Along the route home I collected a few beer cans as a civic duty and ended up spilling some liquid on my bag and sweater. Played washing bags and rags to get rid of the smell, though back in the yard I discovered a neighbor had dropped off a shredder from the hospice thrift shop across the border. I was very confused, and thought someone else had brought it, as it was already in my kitchen, when I met him at the door. I came from the back yard and had just moments before been at the kitchen door myself, as apparently had he. He insisted he had bought it for me, as I had asked him. What also confused me was that I had asked him if he had one. And he said he hadn’t.


Play doesn’t happen as an imagined activity; it is happening all the time as it unfolds. It is the work of my eye and my hands, stacking or weaving or placing something in relation to something else. And my goal without doubt is to save the planet bit by bit by recycling everything we throw away, turning it into something that is reexamined, recycled into something that amuses, until it can be reused for something else.

seconds: note six

From within comes resistance to being told anything. Two paths cross. “No, I won’t.” and “No, no, no.” How odd to write this and sense the familiarity with how a friend reacted to an exercise I suggested in a previous draft. Here it is, her response coming at me from within. I know this stance. It isn’t playful, but can be played with. I see so many of us still as youngsters pouting and all but stamping our feet, saying I won’t play with you. What I am not saying is that you are hurting my feelings.

The first path has to do with presentation of a request. I have to slip it by my judging mind. See if in some way you would like to do this sometime. When it fits somewhere in your plans or your activities, try it. Feelings are hurt, but then there’s not wanting to miss the out.

The second path is like running up against a solid wall of opposition. I will not and never will. In this position something has to dissolve and be transformed. The entire play universe recreates itself. To do this I imagine throwing myself down on the floor as if to tantrum. I do just that, on the carpet. It seems melodramatic and surprisingly a little fun. I end up looking at the dust and cobwebs under the bed. I play dead. After I play dead a partially reconstructed universe forms.

Right now, between reading in several books and jotting down these thoughts, I give up, and play dead. It might last a while. I can sense the resistance to the project of living my life and am curious to discover any path of return to engage my playful nature.

Even the tone of my writing voice seems distant and disengaged. Am I lecturing myself? Some separation settles in and that calls forth the tantrum.

This is the very nature of it. I am not remembering a time like this. I am experiencing it right now. And in a way I am resisting it even in describing it.

This is when the event jumps up from the page and takes over and shuts the reflection down. Hey, I’m really not playing. I am not. You can observe all you want, the transformation won’t occur, the playground is closed, period. Go take a nap.