Play & Nothingness

I'll start out with nothing. That is the religious "aught" of nothingness, that is a blank un-notable, "fully abstract" element of empty existence.

Take nothing. Do the hands grasp at nothingness as if grasping for it's own lack, or do they sit open in the lap, in an expression of giving: just the giving of what you are.

Religion is just one response to nothingness. Religion asks: what am I worth? Play as a response to nothingness throws an unlikely shape: uncasts the mind that was cast even in the direction of the fall and descent of nothingness into form. Let things fall where they may. Play is the "overcoming of the spirit of gravity" without the cruel, harsh demiourgic philosopher asserting his "Will to Power (!)" over existence.

"'What is play?'" responds the zen master to the direct inquirer. --the tinkling crash of a porcelain vase with pink cherry blossoms on it.

Play is the perfection of form: like being taken away with the Beatles into the Kantian sublime of their Limousine. That is play.

My wife Deborah interrupts me to show me a video of a man lighting his own pubic hair on fire. He is accompanied by howls of chimpanzee like laughing in the background from the subtle dormitory-style educated photographer. He douses himself as soon as his little tuft is ignited: so no harm there. But these chimpanzees, playing at their profound stupidity poses a problem for this play: there is always an outside to play. This "outside" or "margin" of play then constitutes the Hermeneutic obligation to bring it into play. We always need to bring into play: in fact that is the task of the father in the best instance: he brings the outside into play. He knows how to guard against it. But he also knows how to invite pieces of it in that will be helpful and nourishing to the children and their mother. This is not playing here (where before I might have asserted that I struggled with a grief of not having a father who could let enough in for me to adequately grasp and understand it, now I can only assert that good fathers must protect their families and admit a little of the other in: begging for kindness and loving. This too is a kind of extremely painful admission that I can find no other way than this dogma, which itself might limit play: but there is always a wound, a tender spot in play, where the play needs to ease up: where the play needs to recede so the wound can heal a little better. Play plays until it gets to the edge of the wound: the lady in the lake ("farcical aquatic ceremony" Holy Grail, Monty Python, but this is to extend to another very wonderful limit of play, for a brief, shining instant): the lady in the lake plays out of the wound of the lake: she is the anima of the wound: and she hurls forth the blade of Manjushri.

There is always an outside to play, thus the problem of play at the expanding horizon. I try to incorporate my wife's discourse: be it horrible or different from the Beatles getting in their limousine (notice how the last sentence borders on the insensible: this is where we are up against the limit of "sense").

The outside of play: outside of the garden (there are always walls to the garden, even to the ovum itself): presents the problem of the exteriority of Levinas' Other.

This is how Levinas plays with the history of philosophy: he suspends it in the face of the Holocaust. It is a single suspension or bracketing. It says: "Now we deal with the unknown."

The closest thing to nothingness is the "unknown." These terms then relate deepest to the term "unconscious." Nothingness is the full range of possibility in a given evening.

A response to nothingness is religion, and a response to nothingness is play. But when we use the term "religion" we must be speaking of our anima attachments to the "history of philosophy." Play in contrast has none of the anima attachments, and in this respect remains the poorer of the two. For religion is the full blown, most articulated expression of a collective culture, whereas play can easily be done in a ditch with sunlight and a few children in early summer. This may be the best of play, for play can be in the sewage of despair in the bombed out ruin of a once shining city as well. Play acknowledges possibility. The danger of play is that somehow the sweetest hint of the candor of the hour will be forgotten by brazen and uneducated children.

And we might let them! Let it be! Let the lot of my tutelage be cast into the ocean for the sake of play. What I held to was love. Love to make it through this brief transition from my intimately fallible "meaning" to your play with nothingness.

Religion is needed, particularly for those who have shed something: some part of their relation to the world. Religion is good for births, for those who have shed the experience of birth. Religion is good for adolescence, for those who shed secure childhood and are just stepping into the radiant nucleus of adolescent life. Religion is good for marriage, for those loving the nucleus enough to help to make it stick. Religion is for death, for those who have shed the task of living.

But Religion is also a response. Pick it up or put it down. It is always the best response, and the response with the most meaning: "offer it all back to God." The thing with play is that it experiences the innocence of nothingness, whereas Religion dwells in experience. Religion articulates the sound, the name: "Nothingness." Play has ever taken our worth, our essence, our work as something novel. Play explores. Religion praises.

The charity behind allowing play is the ability to sit back and let another play or speak. The charity listens. It does not promote cruelty of play, and always stands to conscientize the expression of pain if pain is caused by play moving too close to the wound.

It is not enough to just play. One has to play consciously. One is aware that one has to let oneself and the Other... go. But the play has it's boundaries in the gentleness of the act. Without this gentleness cruel play, Dark Eros (referring to Thomas Moore's book) threatens to overthrow, capsize the fragile instantiations of play. May I say simply that I have seen enough of cruel play and wish to work against it, knowing it haunts another aspect of the work, at least among those who are adults. The child however is always present in the shadow of adulthood, as innocence and experience give way to each other in a constant play, as in the play of land and sea.

Play wants to be "One," but there is always an outside. This outside becomes a parenting, "adulting" force. It is wrong to ask all play to be conscious, but one must negotiate consciousness where it arises in the midst of play. And one must ask for some gentling of the play beyond its blindness. Blind play is not enough. A shout, a vision, something coming in and shaking one's very soul but leaving it whole, aching, asking to help and to be helped.