Einstein the Magician

Does anyone else think Einstein would have actually made a pretty cool magician?

Imaginations Of The Playground, Pt. 3

Isaac is a giant fan of the Playground. Ours, two blocks from the house, offset behind a school, features a long, vastly unkempt field one must traverse to get to the Playground. Isaac, excited and expectant, tries to get across the field. He never can. The ocean of grass is too large, too difficult. So he is inevitably carried to the destination. His energy conserved, he will begin to play on the smaller of the two playgrounds. Systematically conquering its slide by swinging dangerously back and forth then shooting himself down the slide. Only once has he overshot the slide. And did so with a great smile.

From this point, Isaac conquers the larger playground's slide. He climbs the half-parabolic wooden steps to the platform, leaps up to the next platform, then across the metal grating and onto the top of the slide. From the tippity top he yells "Hello" to all who will hear. He is on his mountain and looking down on us all from the apex of his incredible journey. Then, circuitously, he unleashes a glee-filled yell rife with static electricity as he plummets towards the slide's mouth. At this point, I either catch him or he semi-lands on his feet in the scattered and damp wood chips. Then, repeat.

Maybe we throw in a stomach-first ride on the swings. Perhaps a daring crossing of the metal, chain-linked ladder that lies parallel to the ground. And sometimes we just stand and watch and look around. And we always say "Goodbye" when we leave.

I am left to ponder this imagination. One that dares to see jungle gyms and slides and monkey bars and swings as jungle gyms and slides and monkey bars and swings. Not that seeing things as they are presented, as tokens and elements of immense joys, is naive perception -- it is, I realize, a great opposite.

Imaginations Of The Playground, Pt. 2

He has glasses. Those clear-framed ones with the semi-thick lenses. This little boy, no more than 10, wears un-boy like khaki shorts and a khaki button-down top. He also has a dark brown cowboy-like hat and a plastic, play-whip. And the playground, empty, except for his sister and Isaac and me, is his own installment of Indiana Jones.

There is the giant, looming snake pit that requires strength to swing across via the precipitous monkey bars. Evil-doers and monsters plague him, afflicting him with uncounted blows as he ascends and circuitously descends the red slide. Luckily he has this whip, store-bought, long coveted and undeniably needed, especially as they surround him at the slide's delta. He manages to escape and runs, swinging and whipping his arms about, across the cement desert to the more secluded and bastioned younger-kids playground. But his enemies follow. They chase and he fends them off, deftly managing to secure the prized artifact meticulously hidden by his now tether-ball playing sister. And back he runs.

He has his own sound FX. His own soundtrack that mixes plangently with the Star Wars theme. And I am left to ponder this modal imagination. Where the jungle gyms and slides and monkey bars and swings are grand artifices and obstacles and enemies that threaten to destroy humanity. Not that I think fending off imaginary bad guys is an un-heroic task -- in fact, I imagine, a great opposite.

Imaginations Of The Playground

Four kids played loudly out at the neighborhood playground. The one that sits in the cement lot behind the school, dedicated to a 10-year-old boy who must have tragically passed in 1990. These kids played their version of "House". The game that glamorizes adult-hood to pre-teen eyes. Each part of the playground was an aspect of the house. The mom requisitioned the slide set-up as her "room" of the house. The eldest girl, who decided, after much consideration, that her name was Trinity, had partitioned off the exoskeleton, shell-shaped jungle gym as her room.

The scene they re-enacted set-up like typical picket-fenced, suburbia magic. The mom and other daughter tended to the mundane tidying of the AM in their room, while, for her birthday, the dad (and only male in the troupe lest you impart a reverse Victorian scenario) had gotten Trinity a bike. He brought her over to it, stashed in the "living room" that typically was the picnic-tabled habitat of the warm afternoon school lunches of spring, fall and summer. He covered her eyes and she acted surprised while the mom and daughter shouted accolades and then other suggestions for better playing out the scene. Eventually, it all sadly broke down when Trinity folded back to her real-life persona, took her actual bike and sped off over a disagreement with the "mother".

I am left to wonder and ponder, standing in the dull brown wood chips, this modal imagination. Where the jungle gyms and slides and monkey bars and swings are merely appendices to a house where kids can enact the boring events of adult-hood. Not that giving your child a bike is a banal gesture -- in fact, I imagine, a great opposite.

Actually, I Loved It

Caught a rom-com (read: romantic comedy) on TV the other night: Love Actually. Quite an impressive movie (a caveat: I would not have seen had it not been edited). All-star ensemble casts are endeavors that do not guarantee success, but this one worked. And worked well. What I was most impressed by was the adeptness with which the idea of love was handled. Love is a many splendid thing, to be sure. It wears many hats and guises. There's the classical categorization of love into 4 categories. Those were present in the movie, but so were the sub-fields. The unrequited loves. The marriage love. The romantic love that exists when the physical is stripped away and in fact, transcends that aspect of Eros (done in a very interesting and counter-intuitive way).

It was the child-like love that I most appreciated and enjoyed. The storyline ran through the movie like a spine -- suggesting the writer/directors belief that this was the love we are to show others. Born out of tragedy it presented the truest, simplest and ideal form of love. Love that has no fear, has no comprehension, has no concern for convention, no selfishness, no motives, no strings attached, no regrets. It was just love. And if it hurts in the end, so what: "Let's go get our heads kicked in by love." We saw, in that perspective, the freedom that love can give a person.

Love is a battlefield? Love lift us up where we belong? All you need is love? In the name of love? I'll be loving you forever? Love, love, love?

Yes. Actually.

Alternate Version: How Isaac Got That Nasty Cut On His Neck

We walked along as steadily as a toddler allows. The road giving way to speed in places, treachery in others where the rocks jutted and mud, well, did whatever it is that mud does. Clump? Either way, the going, for the most part, was not easy. The woods of Maine piled high pines and maples on either side of our hike towards the "Monkey Bridge". As slow going as it was, Isaac was relentless in his pursuit of other family members ahead, and the greenery growing just off the beaten path. More often than not, as if he sensed danger or intrigue in the woods, he would be caught several steps into the underbrush. His sense of bravery showed itself early in those moments. A harbinger of the hero he would become.

Suddenly, out of the bark and wood to the right 100 yards down the path came charging a bear. At this point, Isaac and I were leading the way. I had run ahead with him on my shoulders and was just returning his little legs to the uneven terrain when the bear approached at an alarming rate. My initial reaction was to run, to grab Isaac and run. Isaac's initial reaction was also to run. But like his approach to squirrels, birds and dogs, it was to run towards the oncoming animal. Run he did, matching in proportion only the throbbing speed of the bear.

His courage and legs were aligned as they propelled him magnificently to the beast. He added the hand gesture he had recently learned: pointing. All this together threw the creature into a tailspin and it ceased his steady approach. In fact, it was the bear that froze as Isaac neared. In an unexplainable way, I was unable to catch up to Isaac. Either fear leadened my legs, or his courage emboldened his and he remained out of my grasp, out of my reach, and his actions beyond my worst of nightmares.

He came within yards of the creature, who remained locked in its spot of mud and rock. He, as he had been taught, made the sound of a bear. It was not loud but it was sure. Like a child he knew he was looking at a bear and knew the sound of that bear, but knew not, like us adults, the menacing and imposing will of it. The bear cocked his head and growled low and broken. It backed up a step, as if to run or leap or attack or cower. Isaac growled confidently again, the sound carrying out past his pointed finger to the hairy ears. The bear cowered for sure, but not before he extended his paw and claw like his foe. Then, with a mere flick of its frame, it reached and scratched Isaac beneath his chin before bounding off back into the forest. Isaac pointed and growled some more bearing the scar of his courage with a child-like obliviousness. It was a bear to him. To us it was fear, danger, death, and sheer terror. To him, it was a bear.

It is a three inch long laceration. A flesh wound only. But in the incision courage seeps out.

***This did not actually happen. True, we went on a hike in Maine over the weekend to the "Monkey Bridge" (a mere two steel cables over a creek) and we did walk through forests with the "threat" of bears (?). But we did not see any. Did not see any tracks or hear any noises resembling that of any creature (although Nate thinks he was tracking a deer). Isaac actually did cut his neck though. But it happened when he fell in a field of flowers -- wild flowers -- but flowers nonetheless.***