Space for Play

This is going to be hard to describe. I was sitting in the sunshine in the park the other day and thinking about frisbees.

I sat underneath the pine trees on the green grass in that South-East Como Park and watched these two guys play head into the park to throw the 'bee. For a little, as they wandered into the field, they were throwing the disc back and forth between the row of pine trees, the plastic disc caroming off the trunks every once in a while. It was like threading the pine needle. Very contracted, very prone to delicacy.

Then they moved over to the big ballfield and really let it fly, running in the wide open grass.



I guess it made me think about how these two people were connected. Firstly, through this flying piece of plastic. The movement of the disc back and forth connected the guys along a constantly changing line, back and forth stretched out like a thread or a shoelace or a piece of uncooked spaghetti. They were joined by this disc, and had to move back and forth, now farther apart now closer together, depending on its flight. It's just like a conversation or a dance, only operating through a game, through a particular flying material with particular abilities to curve, float, and soar.

But, too, they were formed by the field. Without the wide open space, they couldn't have had this frisbee conversation. The field was so important.

Then some folks showed up to toss a baseball, and a whole new conversation took place. I really wouldn't want to live in a place without parks, even small ones. I wouldn't want to be without wide open spaces. Even little parks in the middle of homes make a big difference, and allow for a large variety of kinds of life, of kinds of activity, of play

So here's to parks and fields and frisbees! Now's the time to get out of the house and enjoy the feeling of running, open-ness, and grass underfoot!