appendices i-vii two hearts

Play gives to us a moment when we feel the whole puzzle shift, and we sense an important personal piece falling into place. It tucks right in. Our awareness takes on a new level of playfulness. In this timeless experience of play something shifts and gives way subtly to something new. The metaphor of a little bit of give that exists in a machine between gears seems closest to this subtlety. At one moment the machine rests still.


In the next the whole apparatus hums along. As direction overcomes inertia, motion begins; we pass through a state where play between parts exists. That state or that window occurs where some force initiates the next motion. We use the expression play for this. It probably wears the machinery slightly with use, and it also allows the whole mechanism to advance. In one sense it lurches into existence. Its nature represents the overcoming of inertia. We push through the veil. In another sense it reveals the elegance of potential flight. At one moment the bird perches and in the next the bird flies.


In my memory is an image of Charlie Chaplin, standing in the gears of the world machine. I see him there and think: there he stands in that moment when the whole thing starts to move. Motion plays him. Potential movement promises magic or whimsy. It promises play. It intimates delight.

In the puzzle sense we reach our finger tip just over the edge and pull up a little piece of reality and discover underneath the opening of another world.