Make and Believe
I remember lying on my stomach on my bedroom floor
and driving the Adventure People in their safari Jeeps
and their motorcycles through the landscape of my room-
the caverns beneath my bed, the hills and valleys of pillows
and comforters- a terrain of LEGO bricks and orange
Hot Wheel tracks and all the plastic elements of the various
toy universes that filled the gaps between Saturday morning
cartoons. The colorful, sweeping vistas of the heroic milieu.
It's interesting now to reflect on how adeptly the child me
could switch between tasks, between the acts of building
exotic spaces in which dramas naturally unfold, and
understanding the limits of its inhabitants, the mechanics
of the light saber that extends through Darth Vader's arm
or the maximum reach of a fully stretched Armstrong,
and the weaving of extended narratives that might include
an alligator and an X-Wing fighter and the $6,000,000 man.
How do we not notice the competence of children to play
their many complex and simultaneous roles- actor
and director, hero and villain, lost and redeemed, God.
How have we missed as adults the lessons of play:
that our stories are collections we assemble and construct,
that the consequences of narrative can shift with context,
with the deliberate movement from one spot to another
of this Lincoln Log or Tinker Toy or Super Ball or with
the introduction of some unexpected item that flips
the script from imminent failure to sudden success?
Why do we come to forget that the world is ours to mix?
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