8th grade 3rd period Altered Time

Somewhere I read that certain people couldn’t see things of which they didn’t have the concept or experience. I remember a description of a ship coming in from the sea. It now seems I made this up; I can’t find the reference; or did I simply fill in a gap? If true for some people, and true some of the time, then there are playful opportunities of seeing and understanding. At a certain stage of retinal development if the visual cortex isn’t stimulated the mind can’t learn to see. It does seem to be true for remembering certain details of a story. We end up changing aspects of time and other details when we retell certain stories. In retelling a story we playfully fill in missing gaps with or without awareness, just as we do in most acts of comprehension. We want to include this type of construction and deconstruction in our play.



Time Exercise#3: Lucky Love Perspective

Another playful practice develops around found money on the street. Pennies do seem to fall from heaven or at least frequently from pockets. The practice follows these simple instructions. Each time we find a penny heads up, it reminds us of our good luck. Find tails, then presenting it to someone else brings good luck to them and us, reminding us to be generous. I also like to borrow from a story I heard on the radio about a tradition of folding pennies into the clothes of a loved one who travels away. These pennies, called ‘I love you pennies’, fall out of the clothes when the clothes are subsequently unfolded. These pennies represent a simple type of simple souvenir. Write messages on the pennies or write a date or location when or where you find them with a very fine tipped marker. I recently added the ten-digit zip code to my writing since in an odd ordering system that describes where I am in a postal national ordering system. The pennies span the time from their casting, through the time of their casting off until discovery. A friend told me he likes to remember a story from the year when the coin was cast. Time suspends itself in some aspect. We inhabit a looser time and space continuum.