I just ate a rather dodgy grapefruit half. Grapefruit and cottage cheese are my favourite morning food. I don’t like mornings and I certainly don’t want to eat anything when I get up, but on the days when for some reason I wake up hungry I like to consume the pampelmousse. Also partial to two [insert any type Pepperidge Farm cookies here] and tea with lemon in the morning, but alas, I have not been to le supermarche in awhile. Hey what is up with all these French references? I am reading a few French blogs (ah, wait that would be blogs of English-speaking-and-writing folks who live in France because I am a terrible, horrible, crass American who can barely translate Latin and knows no other languages — does my mother make up for this, because she speaks four?) and really enjoying them. However, that is no cause to make an idiot of myself right here on the public Internet weaving in references to languages I don’t even speak. Tres faux, Chanelbaby.
Somebody please stop me.
What an odd mood I am in today, rather playful. This notion of play has been much on my mind lately. Yesterday I watched the most FASCINATING PBS program about the genetic evolution of dogs. I was riveted. I actually went hungry (which is patently unheard of, in the evening anyway) because I did not want to get up from the couch for ONE SECOND and have to miss anything. (Don’t worry, I made Indian food after the show ended.) Learning about theories of and research into genetic selection that provide possible explanations for the unsolved mysteries of life — why do dogs have floppy ears? how did human beings invent language? why is shopping for a bathing suit such a scarring experience? — was so interesting and dropped catalysts into all kinds of pots of thought that begin to bubble and fizz over in my brain. One of the things I began thinking about was the place and importance of playing in the genetic evolution and social development of animals and human beings, and in their success as a species. Children play games to contact and understand adult ideas, to enter social groups, to grow as people, indeed to grow up into maturity. Dogs play games — well for basically the same reasons. Except they grow into adult dogs. You know, in case you were wondering.
But I started thinking about the games that adults play and immediately my thought took a different cast, a darker cast, a wait-that-isn’t-so-great cast. Adults play games with each other and some are healthy, like football and Yahtzee. But we also play games to manipulate each other and get what we think we need, like attention, or power, or praise, or attachment. Sometimes whole groups of people get together and play games with other groups in a collective, constantly shifting web of alliances, scandals, name calling, and deceit in which nothing is actually accomplished. This game is called politics.
But seriously, everything in human endeavour involves a certain amount of game playing, a certain kind of politics. It’s inherent in our genes apparently. But interestingly we also appear to have a longing for the lack of games, for honesty and plain dealing and truthfulness. Why do we long for something that seems to contradict part of our genetic make-up and remain beyond our reach as a species? Is this longing, too, an evolutionary meme? Does it serve an evolutionary purpose? Or does it augur the existence of other forces shaping our experiences and our destinies? Might these two kinds of forces operate at the same time?
I stayed up late into the night talking about all of this with Bartender Dude which is one of the reasons I love him so much, and all we were left with was a bread crumb trail of questions that continued long after I fell asleep.
Now here’s a good question for you: when will I ever quit blogging and get back to work? Ideas? Thoughts?
Peacock Blue 