Whatshot
Ode To Play
Ode To Play
Date: 2023-06-10
He picked up a pebble
And threw it into the sea.
And another, and another
He couldn't stop.
He wasn't trying to fill the sea.
He wasn't trying to empty the beach.
He was just throwing....(Small Boy - Norman MacCaig)
There is a young six-year-old girl called Puki who I have an incredible bond with. We love to play. When she comes to visit, the game is on - hide and seek, hanging her upside down, twirling, tickling. We dance, play intense chess games which collapse into laughter. For a moment I am lost inside Puki. My body relaxes, the giggles border on hysteria, the swirls and whirls merge into alleviation that Sadhguru would be jealous of. No matter the creases on theforehead, the shortening of the hamstrings, the challenges of everyday, tickle yourself a little and an inner child will emerge.
In March this year, I was lucky enough to be in the Atlas Mountains ofMorocco, hiking. I came across a family living in caves. Fire, stones, wool,tea. The essentials were there.
The two mischievous young boys, fired up on biscuits brought from the town below, began to run around, picking up goats and presenting them to me as gifts. Rough and tumble. Infectious energy. 80-year-old grandfather Ahmed looking on, quietly sitting on his cushion covered with a Shevchenko footballshirt. Even in the middle of nowhere, we are never far away.
Young Mourad and Ali's game was simple. Armed with small handmade sacks,they would scratch around in the stones and dust, filling them up. Then, with awhirr of their strong young arms, the sacks were whisked up into the air as they shrieked and giggled. They ran up the hill to reclaim the battered bags,only to start again. Over and Over. Like the merry-go-round of my childhood.
How do we grow old? Do we cease to wonder and wander? TS Eliot cajoles us that old people 'ought to be explorers/Here and there does not matter/We must be still and still moving/Into another intensity/For a further union and deeper communion.'
Slow down. Look around you. See the coming of winter not as discontent.But as beauty. The stillness of the clouds over Thompson's Bay. The intensity of Aunty Cindy's jackfruit pickle. The crispness of the morning as you take adip in the tidal pool. Turn your face to the setting sun and know that 'the way forward is the way back'.