Talk Like A Pirate!

Poetry, Art, and Silliness all have clear and stable places in my consciousness. Today is "International Talk Like a Pirate Day." Really! Argh, and avast ye maties. (That is the extent of my pirate talk. I'm sure I'll hear more tomorrow. The little kids know about it. Keith Olbermann knows about it. Many of my company members do too.) Weird little "holiday" made possible by the internet, no doubt. Love it. Love the complete randomness of it and how utterly silly it is.

These communal efforts to play bring joy to our lives. I just joined "Mafia Wars" on facebook. Never thought I would, but my beautiful nephew invited me and I just don't know how to say "no" to him. Apparently I'm still playing "Vampires" because someone attacked me and I lost. There exists a whole other universe, a virtual place, I know very little about. I stand at the edge of a galaxy in this new, utterly strange arena and wonder at the inventive nature of our species. We PLAY. We want to PLAY. One of my sisters and I, when very young, used to spell it out so the younger sister wouldn't know where we were disappearing to. We'd say "wanna P. L. A. Y.?" then we'd hold up our hands and make the "OK" symbol. A little mean, but she was two and didn't really care to be away from Mom and the new baby.

We grow up and we still want to play. We play golf. (Well, not me.) We play tennis. We play badminton or volleyball. I don't really need to go through all the sports... we play scrabble and other board games. (My other nephew would say "bored" games. He plays video games.) We play cards and word games and horseshoes. We play in the pool. We play with our pets and our children. We play piano and guitar. We play with ourselves and each other. (Sorry, had to say it.) We go to plays. We do plays. We are players, all.

Playing is part and parcel of who we are. We are frantic to play.

I think this is good. I think playing keeps us on the road to happiness. We take pleasure in a group game or activity. We relax, or compete, or watch and enjoy. We grow and learn through playing, just like children or lion cubs.

Playtime. Okay, sometimes I prefer "nap time" but only because I have such interesting and entertaining dreams. I wake up refreshed, ready to go do my play. Tonight is Cyrano. What a gift. My work is a Play!

(I do appreciate the fact that much of this blog is a play on words. See how many ways we can play? Astounding.)

Okay. So today. PLAY! Talk like a Pirate. (Lights 204 Go, Argh!)