Mission to Play

-
play__1

I want to talk about play. Yesterday afternoon on our regular walk Diana and I passed the school yard at 321 where we used to spend warmer evenings with our sons. Today they're teenagers and play on their own, and we no longer while away hours watching them go up and down the slides.

Yesterday evening my younger son phoned from the subway platform to double-check his direction: "should I go toward Manhattan or Coney Island?" And feeling his dislocation in space brought me close to my dislocation in time. From the outer edge I'm watching him expand into wider circles of friends and confusion where I can't follow, but where I've been before.

The snow is gone today; it's bright and sunny and February-warm at 35 degrees. But I remember when we'd forge through white-out conditions, all booted and bundled, stiff with layers of thermal underwear, focused and intent on cutting the first sled-way on the big hill in the park. My friend Ed and I, grumpy about the stinging needles in our faces, would laugh begrudgingly and acknowledge that we should soak it up, enjoy the time now, because they wouldn't want us with them for all that much longer.

talkingtoday_feb16_2009_3

I hope my sons will continue to learn about play as a release from their work, their studies, their obligations. More, I hope they'll learn about play as a way of learning about life, both the hard and the easy. These days, for me, play is an unexpected moment to explore a frame of light falling on week-old roses, a conversation with my wife, a joke told by a neighbor, and the slightly woozy dizziness that comes with not knowing exactly what comes next.

talkingtoday_feb16_2009_2

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tech Thoughts on Teaching & Learning

-
Image
© 2011 Doyeon Kim A question we keep coming back to: how do we balance skill-learning and skill-teaching within the multifaceted conversation about ideas, history, and practice that makes up art education? If you're studying photography, design, new media, or art in any of a dozen guises, this question is at the core of what you're doing — whether you explicitly ask it or not (because the folks who run your course have asked and answered it for you). And if you're teaching photography, design, etc., it's even more critical — because your answer affects, de facto , the lives of everyone who studies with you. There are several ways to divide this up, and many different rationales for arguing this side or that side, but the equation basically comes down to two options: either skill is more important than history and theory, or vice versa. And perhaps a third option — oops, almost forgot — skill, history, and theory might be equally important. Abandoned © 2011 Yar
Read more

Connecting the Learning Process

-
Image
photo by Becky Olstad We're zooming through another session of intro and intermediate photography at the ICP and the avalanche of worry and frustration is beginning to feel overwhelming. Apertures, shutter speeds, focus modes, flash ratios, bias controls, clipping indicators, framing options, not to mention working with the scene, feet on the ground, paying attention to light, texture, detail -- and how about actually talking to your subjects? Forgetaboutit. Lightroom? Photoshop? Printing? C'mon.... What are we learning when we learn photography? Let's back it up a bit and take a breath. photo by Colleen Mullins I recently reconnected with a friend from a previous orbit whom I haven't seen in a long time. Colleen Mullins directs the photography program at Art Institutes International Minnesota and we caught up with each other at the Photolucida reviews last month. Her story inspires me to keep inventing the process, to keep challenging the norms. At root she wants to
Read more

Tree Project, Winter

-
Image
Tree Project, Winter My gingko is asleep. Last month all the leaves turned, finally, and winter crept inside. We're connected; the cycle reaches through us. At first I wondered if, somehow, my small tree was somehow exempt from the gray hibernation settling on the neighborhood. In fact, I was worried that maybe keeping a gingko in the house had somehow ripped it from the seasonal fabric that it needed in order to survive. I didn't think it could be so, but week after week the small leaves remained green, long after all the trees outside had become bare. Now the transformation is complete, finally, or nearly so. That is, the gingko leaves never dropped, though winter's desiccation appears complete. I'm watching the snow melt outside and anticipating the first new buds of spring, which I know will emerge in about a month, and I'm hoping that this small tree is, in fact, asleep, merely, and that it will awake when the cycle turns through again. For more, se
Read more