The playfulness of creativity
I am struck at times by the sheer diversity of life here on earth. Take for instance the ladybug; one landed on me a few days ago. My six-year-old and I marveled at its design. Built like a mini-turtle, with a hue that Crayola could never contend with. And those spots? Each one placed as if by a child’s paintbrush. Their imperfection adding to the charm of the bug. When it opened its wings to fly, I couldn’t help but think that the wings looked like the husk of popcorn kernels.
Or consider the Japanese Beetle, the bane of all gardeners. These almost uncontrollable little pests will annihilate a garden (not to mention the milkweed on the side of the house), and yet, they are startling beautiful. Their copper-plated wings shimmer in the sunlight, and the green humpback behind their head would make a necklace lovelier than pearls.
And it is not just bugs that shine with the glory of God. Our eldest son is a veritable Arliss Coates. Just this summer he’s caught and tried to tame baby bunnies, a painted turtle, a bird, clams (can you tame clams?), fish, frogs, and tadpoles, among other critters. These critters, all caught near our urban home, reveal something of the great variety of life.
This range is also seen in landscape and climate. Over the past few months, we’ve spent time on Florida beaches, the North Dakota Prairie, and the Arizona Desert. Talk about diversity.
"Fireflys, lightning bugs in the pasture at dusk" by Otto Phokus is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
But nowhere is the diversity of life more clearly visible than in the human creature. Recently, my wife and I went for a walk in our neighborhood. Now, I must confess that one of the curious paradoxes about me is that although I thoroughly agree with the likes of Chesterton and Belloc regarding the need for subsidiarity, and solidarity, and the importance of “knowing your neighbors,” and developing, “small, thriving communities,” and such things, in reality, I actually prefer anonymity. I’d just as soon not know my neighbors.
In any event, we were out walking when we came upon an elderly man sitting on his front steps. Now, if it had just been me, I would have quickened my pace, given a little head nod in his direction to acknowledge his existence, and then briskly walked past. That’s if I was feeling friendly. More likely, I’d have pretended to be looking at a bird, or a cloud, or a UFO across the street and desperately not make eye, whatever you do, don’t make eye contact!
But of course I wasn’t alone, and my particular peculiarities are not shared by my wife. She rather enjoys people. So she paused to say hello. I don’t precisely recall the progression of the conversation, but remember that within a sentence or two, the man (who looked a bit like a 1950’s Disney cartoon character, tall and lanky with a nice little comb-over), was explaining the joys of radio technology—transistors, shortwave, and otherwise. He had an antenna attached midway up his house aimed “between the tree line and rooftops” that allowed him access to hundreds of radio stations. On some of those stations, he could hear children chirping away on their walkie-talkies. One of his pastimes, he let us know, was to go to Dodge Nature Center (a farm and popular place to go for a stroll) a couple miles away and see if he could record himself back home (I lost the string of the technology being talked about at this point, but somehow the statements he made at Dodge on a little handheld device were recorded back at his home by way of his antenna). My wife asked him what he was recording, nature observations? No, he responded, just testing out the technology: “Alpha 1 to Beta home base, do you copy,” that sort of thing.
Then one of those rentable scooters - perpetually trying to kill, maim, or frighten me and the rest of the walking world – scooted past. The man said, “I have one of those. He’s going 10 miles per hour on a 200-watt scooter. Mine goes 15 on 300 watts. I rode it all winter long. You see my van there has 230,000 miles on it. Not worth it to fix. And I don’t go very far anymore. Just mostly over to the store there, Oxendales you know? Made it all the way to Aldi once. But you don’t want to get too far from home. I went to Henry Sibley, the high school, one day, but when I turned it around to go back up the hill, I ran out of battery.” So what did you do? “Had to push it all the way home.”
You lived here for long?
“I grew up in this house. Moved back with my brother to take care of my mom and she made us joint tenants in the property in her will. Boy did that make my other brother mad. But we were the ones who took care of mom after all. When he died, his wife got rid of all his guns. He’d stashed hundreds of them all over his house. He even had a couple of mine that his wife got rid of. But thankfully they weren’t my best ones. He killed himself. So his wife got rid of all the guns. Looking back, we can kind of see the signs. He used to talk with his doctor at Regions Hospital there in downtown about the best way to kill yourself. The doctor’s brother had committed suicide. The doctor said don’t try to shoot yourself in the head; you might up getting paralyzed. Said he knew someone who had shot himself direct in the forehead, and the bullet passed between both hemispheres of the brain and went right out the back of the skull. Guy was fine afterwards. Can you believe that? The doctor said the best way to do it is to shoot down here” (indicating below the ribs), “less messy and a surer shot. Hey watch this.”
I didn’t quite know what to make of the preceding monologue, told with such matter-of-fact directness. I thought we probably should be going, continue on the way, get on home. But then the man stood up, grabbed a carrot from the container beside him on the stairs, and walked quietly to where a rabbit was resting on the man’s concrete walkway by the side of his house.
“Not sure what he’ll do, might be too afraid of the dog” (indicating a woman down the block who was walking her dog), “here you go Snickers.” He walked right up to the bunny, held out the carrot, and in astonishment I watched as the wild rabbit took the mini carrot right out of the old man’s fingers. Who was this man?
The man sat back down on the front steps. “Snickers has been around for three years. The other day I thought, ‘surely he won’t take a carrot out of my mouth, will he?’ So I tried. And sure enough, he took it right out of my mouth. I discovered later he didn’t eat the nub that had been in my mouth; cautious around new things.”
Had St. Francis returned from the grave? What other tricks did this man have up his sleeve?
“Animals trust me because I talk to them all the time. I’ve had deer in the backyard that I can feed right out of my hands. And a little blue bird that used to perch, right over there on the side mirror on my van. It used to sit there and I’d talk to it. But I think what it really liked was watching its own reflection in the mirror. Vain little thing.”
Although utterly intrigued by this one-of-a-kind human specimen by this point, I knew that we really did need to get going. Our boys were at a wrestling camp, and we were getting dangerously close to being late for the pickup; and we still had a couple of blocks to walk home. So I gently said something like, ok, well it’s been nice meeting you. But we’ve got to go pick up our boys from camp.
“Oh alright. Yes I used to know everybody on this block. See, I had a paper route. And I knew half the people on your block too. You said you lived on Cherokee? That house across the street, it’s the original. And our house wasn’t too far behind. Always been in the family. I bought two speakers a couple of years ago, the same ones that the Beatles used to record with. Fifty pounds each! Had them in the back of the van for two years. See what happened was I took a corner too sharp, and they slid, and my microphone stand popped a hole in one of them. So I thought, surely they won’t work now. And they were heavy. So they just stayed in the van. But then my brother said, oh they’ll still work. So we hooked them up to a little radio inside the van, and you wouldn’t believe the sound! Didn’t even attach a subwoofer. I have about 14 subwoofers. We like to blast each other, my brother and me. I thought the sound would be tinny, but it wasn’t. You see, with our shortwave radios…..”
We had now come full circle. I perceived now the man might continue in this vein until Kingdom come. I’d also observed my wife slowly sidling down the block, baby steps at a time. But I also knew that in our eleven years of marriage, I had never witnessed my wife end a conversation. Not once. She lacked the capacity. There was always another question to be asked. So you like plumb pudding, is that a fact? So I took the initiative, exclaiming well it’s been really nice meeting you, but we really must be going to pick up our boys now. See you later. And off we briskly walked like two thieves fleeing a break-in.
As we walked home, my wife and I perceived there was something oddly wonderful about this old man. He was unusual and eccentric certainly. Probably lonely. And most definitely an individual.
In a recent interview I conducted with novelist Jim Shepard, I asked him what advice he would give to inspiring writers. He said “to stay in contact with the spirit of play: with that passion that we all access in childhood that enables us to try what we might not try, to find joy in the process of what we’re doing, and to not find failure at something we’ve attempted to be devastating or defining.”
To stay in contact with the spirit of play. I suspect this advice is equally true for all of us human beings. How vital it is for us to keep the spirit of wonder, awe, and playfulness. If it is true – as Hopkins poetically waxed – that Christ plays in 10,000 places, through the features of men’s faces, then I suspect he’s having a heckuva fun time doing it. Including in the face of the unusual old man down the block.
