Play

I'm being haunted by play. It all started at The Beast of the Noor party. I was munching tasty fairy cakes and a friendly fairy came up to me and threw petals over my head and spoke a book blessing. After that I pulled a petal out of a bag and a word was written on it in a lost language that could only be translated by the fairy. The word was play. I was charged by awesome Janet Lee Carey to go forth and play. After that I went to church and instead of a regular sort of preacher there was a football player -- Ronnie Harris. And what did he say? You need to get out and play more. So I went for a quick trip to Mount Rainer and Lake Mowich and I took pictures of flowers. But I hadn't played enough. No, not yet.

After that I read from a book of essays because I was shanghaied by a bunch of teenagers, forced to drive them to the marina so they could watch the sun set and then wait as they watched. I opened to a random essay in Writers on Writing, Volume II, a collection of essays from the New York Times. I began to read "A Retreat from the World Can Be a Perilous Journey" by Johnathan Rosen. What did I find?

"Keats referred to the poet's 'diligent Indolence,' a state of suspended activity necessary for creativity. . . Play, after all, is hard work; Anna Freud called play the work of children. And perhaps of writers, too.

Play is work; inside is outside; indolence is activity. One might add that the imaginary is real, and introspection is actually a form of social research. No wonder I have to take a nap from time to time. Eventually one must put aside the paradoxes and the explanations and simply write."

I'm going to watch Star Trek: TNG. All this knocking on my noggin by the Universe is wearing me out. After my Star Trek fix, I'm going play AsoBrain at games.asobrain.com and then I'm going to read more of Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins. Perhaps I'm moving toward 'a satori, a mystical, wordless moment of understanding about Music and life'. I feel unfinished like Hector, still in process. I think I still have time.

After all this play, I'm going to snooze. After that, I will drag my bones to yoga, and then I will stare out the window.

Play really is hard work and writers have to play a lot.