Sunday Writing

There is a very strange scent in our backyard...we suspect a neighboring ginkgo tree failed to get lucky this year, the poor thing. Besides this odd scent that wafts around the yard every now and again its absolutely quiet outside. I am supposed to be working on my dissertation. Believe me, I do want to be writing my dissertation. And I promise, I will, this will be a fairly short post. But I wanted to mark the beautiful quiet Sunday morning, the dog at my feet, dreaming in the freshly cut grass, my garden growing next to me, the rose bushes in full bloom, and the umbrella up shading us all from to much sun.

All of this I want to mark. And, I also want to note that I am in a writing mood. So, I am working on my dissertation. Only, I have so many questions while I am writing today.

And it is these questions that stop me from writing, do I go here or do I go there? Do I answer the metaphysical questions before the ethical? Do I bracket the turn towards history which will be neccessary? When do I leave the literature behind and move towards my own writing? This is why it is difficult to write on Sunday mornings. Not because one doesn't want to write but because the task seems endless like the blue sky above me.

Okay, I'm going back to writing the dissertation now.

The next door neighbors have turned off the radio and the birthday party across the way has silenced the karaoke. The neighborhood sounds are winding down. They have not ceased they are simply responding to the rising moon by allowing quiet into the night. Soft music can be heard in the distance and mothers calls their boys inside. Only one boy is left. The back light of his porch illuminates his backyard basketball court. He bounces the ball, swivels right, than left, he shoots and misses. The ball bounces into the shadows and he quickly retrieves. Again, bounce, bounce, swivel, pivot and shoots. He makes it with a swoosh. The ball bounces back to him and he jumps up, grabs it, bounce, bounce, bounce.

This is a lonely boy. He is not called inside. He turns off his back light when he wants. He roams the neighborhood streets. Sometimes he is picked on but mostly he remains on the outside of the group, simply waiting to grab leftovers of play from the gang.

This is a street of many kinds and the children here play hard with one another. Some of them are simply playing. Some of them however, seem to be playing at playing. What do I mean by this? I mean that some of them play so hard that it is a kind of labor - not work, for they do not produce beyond themselves, nor do they create something in their play. But it is as if, for some of them, playing is difficult, hard, mean and cruel. They labor as the factory man labors, as the retail store manager labors, as the school teacher in the testing society labors. Their play is a tool for getting into the group, for getting fed, for having amusement that doesn't occur within their houses.

They are different than the children who play. Children who play are light. Children who play dance with their words and throw the ball because throwing the ball feels good. Children who play go beyond the world of this street. Their eyes are sparkling. They feel joy and not simply pleasure while playing. They will probably not remember all the balls that they will throw because children who are playing are already moving into the future. They have no need to remember what it feels like to cannonball into the pool because the next cannonball splash is already forecasted.

But yet, on this street (as is probably the case in many of the streets of the world) the children who labor at play and the children who play are thrown together in pools, streets, and backyard courts. And while the children who play at playing are very good at what they do. They work hard to be players the children who play know the difference between they and them.

So it is not strange that when seen in the shadows playing basketball by himself that this boy seems lonely, without friends, even though he played outside my house all day with 12 other young boys. To live in the world as a laborer is to live a hard life. It is to be grounded daily. It is to live without spirit without movement towards the future. It is to live without hope and without care.

The difficulty will be is that as adults this loneliness will pervade all our lives. We will all become laborers -we will labor at play, we will labor at work, we will labor with each other.

This is not to say that we must recover our childhoods. To do so would be to labor at play, to play at playing. We do grow up. We are not children. We must labor. But I think if we do not begin to question how we play we might be missing something about ourselves that is very important.

The video below is a picture of Rayne eating puffs. This is a fairly new activity for her and one she enjoys a lot. She has developed the ability (finally! as my sister would say) to eat puffs now while also doing other things....such as watching our conversation about minimum wages during this economy.

We spend a lot of time in our society trying to have our children eat well, eat correctly, eat with us, eat new foods, etc.

We don't spend a lot of time in our culture though (I think) talking about what our food means to us once we have the decision to buy and make that food for ourselves. We spend a lot of time sharing recipes, making grocery lists, deciding what foods are healthy and what foods will add to our waistlines but we forget to talk about what food and eating means to us.


Why do we eat? What is the difference between eating alone and eating together? What does it mean to be human-as-consumer? We tend to think of people who ask these questions as gourmands, hippies, or radical foodies but in general I think that one of the most basic activities of our life should continue to make us question throughout our lifetimes. Michael Pollan is an awesome writer and thinker who I follow. I can't or won't always share his practices but I enjoy the way that he pushes my thinking about eating in different ways!

But I want to leave these questions for the moment and share another video of the little niece! The video below is Rayne discovering Balloons for the first time. She had tons of fun with them!

I have two delightful memories about balloons but I'll share only one of them today.

I'm not sure how old I was, I'm thinking about 6) but I remember that my family was eating dinner (or just finishing). We were in the back and all of the sudden there were shouts and screaming from some of the neighbors. I remember my dad calling out "HOT AIR BALLOON" and then I don't remember getting to the front of the house but I do remember all the neighbors converging on our driveway. The balloon was landing right in front of the house -on the street! This is one of those memories where there isn't much sound or color left in my mind. Its one of those memories where you simply close your eyes and there is a picture- a scene almost, as if from a stopped motion picture. I can see the big wooden basket in the middle of the street. I can see the sun setting behind a house on the far right corner behind the basket. I can see lots of small children (I must have been one of them) converging on the ladder to the balloon.

But that's it. The memory stops there. I must have climbed into the basket? Certainly we must have talked to the balloon men? I'm sure that I at least touched the basket? But that's where my memory stops -although I remember being completely amazed by that balloon and I remember thinking that the sky was so big and that the basket looked much bigger on the ground than it did in that big sky.

I wonder how much Rayne will remember of her childhood when she grows up. Will she have a fascination for balloons that she can't explain? Will she have a memory that is simply a splash of color in her mind as she closes her eyes. In any case, I hope, at the very least that she retains memories of wonder and discovery.

Rayne's Baptism

I tend to think that matters of faith should be a private matter. For me, the hierarchic public nature of the church defeats spirit...usually. In this case however, as all the various parts of Rayne's family stood around the baptismal font I was struck at the beauty of the baptism ceremony (minus the exorcism!)

How nice it is to celebrate that a child is raised and brought into being by more than one or two people. A community does raise a child and I think it important for communities to take on this responsibility -both in our smaller familial roles and as citizens in the wider communities in which we live.

I'm not sure if I would baptize my children but I do think I might consider having a ceremony which celebrates the community that would raise them with me.

Year 29

Beginning Year 29 With a Visit to Ohio