Rollerblading at twilight. I'm gliding down the street, the trees and houses taking on the glinting light from the setting sun. The warmth of day mingled with the cooling breeze of darkness. Birds, dragonflies and butterflies, my fairy companions, as we occupy the same space at the same time, yet remain in separate worlds. My hair flows back behind me, my checks take on heat and color. I skate along to the music of my ipod, and I realize, I am happy. I feel both old and young in the activity. I am 39 and this is my version of going out on a Saturday night, which doesn't seem quite right, I tell myself surely I should being doing something more exciting, or something more dutiful, but as I search for other options, I realize there isn't somewhere else, or something else I would rather be doing at the moment. My husband is still at work. And my son is inside making his dinner; he refuses to eat what I make, though often employs me as his sous chef, and always as his dishwasher. It would feel different if my son was here with me, more of a legitimate activity, a family activity. But as I have taken up rollerblading, he has taken up learning htlm, and c++ code. Odd to think that as I have been outside doing something akin to play, he has been inside working. But of course I approach the skating as exercise, and he approaches computer code, as entertainment. And on that idea is where I have come to rest. How I view what I am doing effects how I experience it. So why don't I set down the calorie burning thoughts and think about fun instead? Well, because it would feel wrong, it would feel too luxurious to admit the truth, that I am playing. With everything that needs to be done, and all the things everywhere that have come undone, here I am, and like a child I am playing. And so that is the question of it. Work or play? On the one hand the answer is nothing of consequence, for the activity, the time it takes, what happens, is the same either way, but on the other, the way it feels, it is everything. Do I hold onto laps, and calories, and notions of cardiovascular fitness to legitimize my rollerblading, or do I toss that merrily aside and embrace freely, brazenly, playing.



by the bye,
writing. realizing the problem with the whole actual sentence thing. Feedback I got from cousin on Echo about how I try to push some nonsentences as sentences which of course makes no sense to her. So I did put IS and ARE in some sentences here to make them um...sentences, but for some reason they just didn't sound right to me, though I knew they were right. (The warmth of day is mingled with the cooling breeze of darkness. Birds, dragonflies, and butterflies, are my fairy companions, as we occupy the same space, at the same time, yet belong to separate worlds.) Yes, I suppose is and are should be there. But somehow they seem like pebbles, in the way of my skating wheels, something I would trip and fall over. Why? Of no interest to you I am sure, but I have to work this one out. Tune my ear.