This is so beautifully written and powerfully true! When I remember playing as a child I think of making mud pies, splashing in streams, catching tadpoles and frog eggs, and getting pummeled by waves while boogie boarding in the ocean. I think the throughline in all of this is making contact, in a very physical sense, with the world. I can see that has endured in how I play as an adult. I still get covered in mud while making pottery, I love to garden without gloves, and I have recently rediscovered the magic of jumping into freezing cold creeks, even things like ecstatic dance have helped me "make contact" with my own body in a way I had forgotten how to do.
Such an inspiring article, Lena. Thank you. It is so lovely to read your words about play and to be invited to think about play in my own life. I remember playing across spaces as a child: twisting through the new worlds of tree branches, digging through leaf mould or sand to expose other landscapes, and diving under water and through waves in cold seas, listening to the muted sounds there. But while I was immersed in these places I was always also in adjacent ones that they sparked in my imagination. Decades later, I can return to these places (the felt and the imagined) in my memories if I am not fully there in body (sometimes I am :)). I feel like these experiences have shaped me so that I still imagine and explore in the work I do as well as my more private creative endeavours and daydreams.
How beautiful Suzanne, truly. Our imaginations are so powerful, and I feel like nature can be a doorway into ourselves. Your stories feel like Alice in Wonderland! I’m so curious, what kind of work do you do? It is good to tend those imaginal realms inside of us, they are just as real as our waking life, we move from them. Your description of your childhood play feels so dreamlike, like I can feel the presence of your other worlds in your words. I’m so glad this inspired, and thank you for reading and commenting and sharing your beautiful perspective.
Thank you, Lena. I love the thought that my stories feel like Alice in Wonderland to you! I'm fairly restless in my work, so it tends to be a patchwork of teaching, researching, writing, and volunteering. I explore, mostly with literature and stories, ways that we might teach, learn, read, and live as part of the more-than-human world, rather than experiencing ourselves as apart from it.
This is so beautifully written and powerfully true! When I remember playing as a child I think of making mud pies, splashing in streams, catching tadpoles and frog eggs, and getting pummeled by waves while boogie boarding in the ocean. I think the throughline in all of this is making contact, in a very physical sense, with the world. I can see that has endured in how I play as an adult. I still get covered in mud while making pottery, I love to garden without gloves, and I have recently rediscovered the magic of jumping into freezing cold creeks, even things like ecstatic dance have helped me "make contact" with my own body in a way I had forgotten how to do.
Excellent article. I am too interested in animal behaviour and play.
Such an inspiring article, Lena. Thank you. It is so lovely to read your words about play and to be invited to think about play in my own life. I remember playing across spaces as a child: twisting through the new worlds of tree branches, digging through leaf mould or sand to expose other landscapes, and diving under water and through waves in cold seas, listening to the muted sounds there. But while I was immersed in these places I was always also in adjacent ones that they sparked in my imagination. Decades later, I can return to these places (the felt and the imagined) in my memories if I am not fully there in body (sometimes I am :)). I feel like these experiences have shaped me so that I still imagine and explore in the work I do as well as my more private creative endeavours and daydreams.
How beautiful Suzanne, truly. Our imaginations are so powerful, and I feel like nature can be a doorway into ourselves. Your stories feel like Alice in Wonderland! I’m so curious, what kind of work do you do? It is good to tend those imaginal realms inside of us, they are just as real as our waking life, we move from them. Your description of your childhood play feels so dreamlike, like I can feel the presence of your other worlds in your words. I’m so glad this inspired, and thank you for reading and commenting and sharing your beautiful perspective.
Thank you, Lena. I love the thought that my stories feel like Alice in Wonderland to you! I'm fairly restless in my work, so it tends to be a patchwork of teaching, researching, writing, and volunteering. I explore, mostly with literature and stories, ways that we might teach, learn, read, and live as part of the more-than-human world, rather than experiencing ourselves as apart from it.