To thine own self be true

(This is a repost of the 1st blog entry posted back on August 26, 2012. If this topic interests you, you might want to start reading this blog from the beginning since it has unfolded organically and sequentially. The blog’s themes begin there ‘from the ground up’, so if you are looking for basic and orienting entries to reflect on, the beginning (on p.p. 21-22 or click ‘August’ on the right side of monthly archives.) might be the place you may want to travel to next.

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“Oh, the glory of growth, silent, mighty, persistent, inevitable! To awaken, to open up like a flower to the light of a fuller consciousness!”–Emily Carr, “Hundreds and Thousands”, The Journals of Emily Carr

What is it that makes ‘you’ uniquely you, quite apart from your soul, spirit, and heart? You were born with a brain and sensibility to perceive and experience this world. Ever since you were young, you have experienced this world and everything in it in terms of consciousness. That is how you understand yourself, others, situations, and the world at large. Generally speaking, you are conscious of various things and experiences, or not. You have acquired a fair bit of consciousness (and subconsciousness) already, though sometimes there are things you choose to put ‘out-of-mind’, out-of-consciousness.

Think for a moment about your life. You are either alive and conscious of that aliveness, or not. You may be a few weeks old and vaguely conscious of a mother feeding you, or a teenager conscious of having done something wrong, or an old person in hospital, listening to and conscious of the machines that may be keeping you alive. Maybe at another point in your life, you hit your head, and lose consciousness. Or maybe you actually forget something and someone you used to know well, or in an extreme case, develop consciousness-damaging dementia.

Consciousness is that important, (self-)defining state in which one is aware of oneself and that which is outside of self. Essentially, it is how we experience each day and how we interact with others and our various environments. It is where we spend most of our days and time, whether we’re sleeping, remembering, or imagining. In life, consciousness always goes with the territory. It is truly who we most and each are. At any given moment, it is summarily the total of what we know, have experienced, and have learned or are learning in our busy, ephemeral, transitory lives.

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In terms of what matters, is most important, or relevant to our lives as individuals would be consciousness or conscious awareness. Watch a baby in its third month starting to become aware of his toys and try to imagine how that baby might feel or how you might have felt with those same toys at that age. Recall an important lesson you learned from a favorite teacher. Remember how the death of a pet or wild animal may have affected you. Recollect your first job and how you learned to work with others.Think back to when you graduated from high school, college, or university. And all the things that stood out or are memorable to you. Perhaps you can even have some recollection of how those moments felt and what specific things you suddenly became aware of.

“Consciousness” is also a good old ’60s word. Back then, when I grew up, young people were all interested in increasing consciousness. For some, this meant a political consciousness as in women’s lib, civil rights, or gay lib. For others, it emerged through such physical things as long hair, different clothing, drugs, and a questioning of or rejection of ’50s-style adult authority. For still others, the consciousness sought was to be found in new writing of the day and different emerging genres of popular music.

But as the third paragraph of the piece states, consciousness is truly larger and more fundamental than some things that emerged in a specific decade in the western world. What I find most interesting about any other individuals is what they know and what they are aware of. Beyond whatever behavior and action, consciousness is what defines who they are, every bit as much as their values or character.

Worth noting, in passing, is that consciousness can be physical (such as in our response to massage therapy), emotional (such as in our learning from the feelings evoked in relationship conflicts), mental (such as in transcendental meditation), and spiritual (such as in our response to religion or cultural rites). Consciousness is palpable in a number of ways, on a number of levels or dimensions.

In the earliest entry on “Individual Process, Briefly”, I spoke of how so many of us seek missing information, often things we want or need to know and are curious about. That information when found, in turn, satisfies and expands our consciousness, knowledge base, and understanding of ourselves, others, and the world. When we expand our information, we expand ourselves and become ‘larger’, metaphorically speaking. The more we are conscious of, the more we grow innerly–a core manifestation of expanded consciousness.

Later, as we age and look back, we may see that our lives were not just about the things we did and the relationships we had. Instead, we might come to realize how important, basic, and significant consciousness was in defining what we essentially were and in understanding or appreciating what we learned from life and others.

(4th in a series of movie reviews from my 2004-2005 film classification days)

FAST, CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL (1997)

Stars: Dave Hoover, George Mendonca, Ray Mendez, Rodney Brooks
Directed by Errol Morris

“I wanted to be a Clyde Beatty.”

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control is a bizarre, complex, fascinating, and mind-expanding documentary based on a series of interviews with four men with very unique professions: a wild animal trainer, a topiary gardener, a mole-rat specialist, and a robot-scientist. Their talk is overlapped and juxtaposed with images from their work along with old B-movies and circus footage. Ideas and metaphors bounce around throughout the picture, and the filmmaker has edited his material in such a way that the viewer is shown unusual, unexpected parallels between the four superficially different subjects.

One motif is obviously animals, whether these be the topiary animals created by gardener George Mendonca, the circus act lions trained by Dave Hoover, the mole-rats studied by Ray Mendez, or the pet-like robots of Rodney Brooks. Morris suggests that human beings have an inexplicable passion to understand and manipulate nature, and, in particular, have a strong desire to shape and modify nature and its behaviors.

Each man is experimenting with structures and routines associated with his passion. The lion tamer talks of the variable factors, such as power outages, which affect his lions’ attitudes toward him. The mole-rat expert experiments with display house structures to learn more about mole-rats’ “purpose.” The gardener obsessively prunes his garden animals. while the scientist sets new, more complicated tasks for his robots to accomplish.

A related motif is that of the circus performer, a pattern made obvious by inclusion of the lion tamer. But all of the other men are performers in their own right. The mole-rat expert sets up displays to entertain the public in museums. The topiary gardener originally created his green animals for his eccentric female boss’s pleasure and these remain available for public viewing today. The robot-scientist entertains, as do the other three men, the movie’s viewers with demonstrations of what his robots can do.

Each man has a specialized knowledge that, ironically, seems to suggest that they will become ‘extinct’ and irreplaceable. The aging lion tamer has a young apprentice, but he worries if she will learn enough to prevent a fatal error. The gardener’s work has taken fifteen years of slavishly dedicated work, requiring a patience not found in the new generation. The mole-rat expert also appears to have no one to pass his knowledge on to. And the scientist may himself become extinct as the silicon-based life (his robots) threatens to supplant carbon-based life (him). They are all like Clyde Beatty, the animal-trainer and B-movie star who is referred to throughout the film. Like him, they are so specialized they are on their ways to becoming unique legends of the past.

As interesting as the juxtapositions and parallels created by Morris’s editing are the questions he raises:
•To what extent are people like nature, animals or robots? Do nature, animals, and robots have consciousness?
•What do ruling passions and obsessions have in common?
•Are individuals really needed for any group’s survival?
•What is the role of the specialist in our culture?
•Given the facts of change, nature, evolution, death, and other limits, will
all human beings eventually be ‘phased out’?

Like the robot invasion of the solar system fancifully imagined at one point, chaos ‘the enemy’ threatens the stability of these men’s lives and our own lives. Fast, Cheap & Out of Control is certainly a movie that inspires awe and wonder about the human race, its fate, and our various compulsive enthusiasms.

THE MARCH OF THE PENGUINS

Director: Luc Jacquet
Classification: General

The March of the Penguins is an unexpectedly moving documentary about a year in the life of emperor penguins that manage to survive impossible odds and the brutal conditions of the South Pole where temperatures can flirt with -128 below zero. The adult seabirds instinctively take 70 mile walks during the breeding and chick-rearing season, which explains the movie’s title.

Many scenes and penguin facts are remarkable or just plain awesome. Prospective mates somehow find each other in the huge flock once they get to their appointed destination. Parents identify the chicks by vocalizations and can find them when they return from food-gathering to spell off one another. For four months and without food for themselves, fathers mind the chicks tucking the newborns on their feet.

It is quite clear that the filmmakers lived with the penguins for a year and endured the same rough conditions as their subjects. But they never interfere with or try to stage scenes, letting the action unfold naturally. And so, appropriately, there are no human actors (except for Morgan Freeman who lends a warm, gentle, non-intrusive commentary), no hunting scenes, no bloodletting, nor ‘deep’ ecological messages to taint or spoil a viewer’s reaction. Even Alex Wurman’s beautifully understated new-age soundtrack avoids the cloying emotional cues of lesser nature-flick fare.

Parents of very young children should be advised, though, that there are a few potentially upsetting moments: a long shot of a sea lion catching a penguin underwater, a bird pecking at a singled-out helpless pup, and a glimpse of a frozen chick, its distraught mother trying to steal another mother’s chick. These sadder scenes are honest, but relatively brief and low-key.

In fact, the viewer will be struck at times by the similarities between penguin and human families or behavior, all the while being aware that the birds are very much their own creatures cued by mysterious instinctual forces, but behaving decently and responsibly. Their sense of duty, family, bonding, and caring are models that will impress and inspire viewers of any age.

Having said all that, if you and your youngsters like real, cute-looking or huggable baby animals, then this movie is highly recommended on an ‘Aaah’ basis alone. March to the theatre for likely the simplest and most entertaining movie to play here this summer.

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One movie avenue I also explored was film reviews for families–the kind of information not typically offered in newspaper reviews.

CAPOTE (2005)

Director: Bennett Miller
Stars: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener

“All I want to do is write the ending and there is no ending in sight.”

Based on true life events, Capote is a quiet-toned film about the 1960s period when writer Truman Capote covered the famous Clutter family murder case in Kansas. Capote (Hoffman) with the help of Nell Harper Lee (Keener) thoroughly and doggedly researches the case that led to his best-seller masterpiece In Cold Blood. Although Capote clearly exploits and repeatedly lies to his main storyline character–the murderer Perry Smith, he finds that he cannot remain detached from the horror of the killings and the trust that his killer-source has placed in him as a ‘friend’. In a strange, parallel fashion, the movie suggests that Capote’s life also ends with the execution of Smith.

Capote is a classic about how things often turn out differently from what one expects. There is much talk early in the film about true to what one is and the importance of honesty in one’s writing and life. As much as Capote takes James Baldwin to task about that author’s work, Capote himself is later challenged by Lee and Jack, his writing partner, about his motives and responsibility to Smith who blindly and naively trusts him.

Capote’s involvement in the Clutter case is a fascinating oddity, beginning with casually reading a newspaper account of it and spontaneously deciding to cover it. Likewise, his reactions to examining graphic photos of the dead and stealing a look into a Clutter coffin are chillingly impersonal: “I found something so horrifying, it’s a relief.” There is, too, a superiority and snobbery in comments such as “he’s given me absolutely everything” and “he’s a gold mine” following his first interviews with Smith. For Capote, the case is just a means to an end–the making of his own personal reputation and commercial success, “When I think of how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.”

On the other hand, like Capote’s friends and publisher, the viewer sees that Perry Smith deserves far better than the egotistical writer is not giving in return. Smith himself is a pathetic figure downing large quantities of aspirin, is a product of a miserable childhood, is someone who has already been abused and exploited many times before he befriends Capote. Despite his irrational violent crimes, the audience can sympathize with him; unlike his confidant, he is at least capable of shame.

Capote toys with Smith, lying about how much he cares for Perry, his book’s title, how much he has actually written, Smith’s sister’s feelings, and how he is trying to save the killers from death row. But it is only later, as he wishes for Smith to die, that it becomes apparent that the case, Smith, and Capote’s betrayal of Smith have all gotten to the writer. Cracks begin to appear—friends refuse to let Capote off easily and the writer begins a long road to alcoholism.

In the end, the film becomes a study not just about the betrayal of others, but the betrayal of one’s self, and the realization of moral responsibility in one’s work and relationships. Is Capote his ‘friend’s’ keeper? The epiphany is a painful one because of the honesty required to admit to one’s selfish motives. When Capote says “I did everything I could”, Lee answers with a truth far exceeding the professed objective truth of Capote’s nonfiction novel, “the fact is you didn’t want to.” Intimacy always implies responsibility and there is a terrible price to be paid for dishonesty to and betrayal of others as well as one’s self.

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When I worked as a film classifier for the province off and on from 2001 to 2006, about 90% of the movies we/I screened were not worth the time, energy, or eyestrain. Less than 5% of the films I saw were well-made and had no false steps; e.g., A Very Long Engagement. Capote is an example of a smaller, but thoughtful well-made movie that we saw very rarely.

KLUTE (1971)

Director: Alan J. Pakula
Stars: Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland

“There are little corners in everyone which were better off left alone.”

Klute is a classic thriller about three very different people engaged in a common search for identity. One is Bree (Jane Fonda in an Academy-winning performance), a nervous, insecure prostitute who is being stalked by an unremembered previous client. The second (Donald Sutherland) is the private detective who seeks to track down a longtime friend gone missing in a big city. The third is the enigmatic stalker himself who remains mysterious until the end of the film, despite his identity being revealed early on.

What makes this film special is its focus on the minefields of vulnerability, intimacy, and caring. Who can one trust when one has been exploited as much as the unstable Bree? Can people who are damaged ever recover and make lasting positive changes in their lives? How can she open to feeling ‘normally’ about a quiet stranger who is honest about everything and caringly protective of her?

The real protagonist of this film is obviously Bree, and she is laid bare to the viewer in quite a different way from her chosen work. She has aspirations to be a model or an actress and wants to improve herself, going to regular sessions with her ‘straight’ buddha-like female psychiatrist who says little as Bree, onion-like, peels her own way through monologues toward a clearer view of herself. Probably the most telling line is when she confesses a desire to go back to “the comfort of being numb again.” As things turn out, Bree holds the key to the other two male characters who mirror her and participate in their own separate, though related quests.

John Klute is a serious, determined friend of the missing man’s family who volunteers to find Tom and vindicate him of police charges of perverted harassment. He ends up learning more about himself in the process, his uptightness, and his own vulnerability and the unexpected need for someone else in his life. His natural instinct to do good and help others is the key that opens up his life even though Bree repeatedly rejects him and tries to destroy their developing connectedness.

The movie is named after him and in many ways he remains the most simple, yet fascinating character—caring for the woman who stubbornly tries to maintain rigid control over her own repressed feelings. Klute represents pure altruism and is the mysterious kind stranger that terrifies both the killer and his victim. He is the agent who initiates the action and centrally resolves the conflicts of the other two characters.

The third character is the sexual deviant lurking at the edge of ‘opening up’ in Klute. Like the other two characters, he too makes a breakthrough in understanding the price paid for repression and obsession. As he puts it in the dramatic climax, there are “sicknesses and weaknesses” that should never be exposed. Although there is the terrible price of numbness that Bree has paid for maintaining control over her clients, there is also a toll for the bogeyman of this piece who amasses four murders, to cover his essential sadism. A startling reminder of all the Jeffrey Dahlmers and Boston Stranglers of our modern world, he symbolizes, memorably, the potential dangers unleashed in the ever-apprehensive transaction of ‘opening up’.

In short, there may be reasons to let some devils remain locked up, though for many—the Brees and Klutes of the world—there are very good reasons to, as Bree puts it, “let it all hang out.” Klute exists to show us that opening up and trusting others who really care for us is a risky business at best. But that the resultant emotional growth and truly deep, personal benefits are far too great to go ignored or unheeded.

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During two past periods, I explored the possibilities of a film studies textbook and movie reviews. I may include some other samples from this period here and there along the way…

Freedom is universally acknowledged to be a good, desirable thing. There are the large en masse freedoms for the many, such as the end of a war or a dictatorship. As seen on tv news, people are usually quite happy to be free from the many limitations that those negative contexts impose. On the basis of utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s greatest good for the greatest number, these examples might be considered strong instances of freedom at its obvious, maximal best.

There are other freedoms available to individuals that are more familiar to most of us, albeit on a smaller scale. There is the freedom given to a baby or child to wander and explore his or her environment. There is the freedom to pursue whatever pleasures, pastimes, hobbies, and passions in whatever leisure time people can eke out in their busy lives. There is the freedom to pick one’s friends or where one wants to go to school or university, or to decide what one finally wants to do to make a living, career- and work-wise.

As is always the case with freedom, there are always limits, limitations, and restrictions that hold people back from being free to choose and act. A child may have to go against parental wishes or leave home in order to have friends or a freely-chosen career or lifestyle. A wife may have to go against her husband’s wishes and work in a job in which she earns her own money and makes more of her own choices. A man may have to leave a marriage in order to find himself and do more of the things he is interested in, perhaps things he once enjoyed and were ‘more him’ in his youth. Individual freedoms, then, which people choose and decide for themselves can be very liberating and lead to the realization of dreams, plans, goals, and self.

But what of the freedom shared between two and with another? Sometimes when we fall in love, we may find that we are stretched such that we are moved beyond many familiar limits (including the ones we place on ourselves) to experience and embrace new ways of living and loving that free us from the same-old. In such shared moments of coupledom, we may find that we are reborn anew, changed, and enhanced by this revitalizing two-ness. Our minds, bodies, feelings, and souls are released to experience the life-changing liberation that can only come through the open-heartedness and intimacy that are only possible through close contact with another.

There is a proverb that says “Love laughs at locksmiths.” Indeed, true, deep love unlocks the many limits and limitations that we and others place upon ourselves. At its best, it is the ultimate liberation: the shared, mutual, simultaneous experience of multi-levelled heart, mind, and soul connectedness. It can change the way we live and experience, and free us forever from a monolithic ‘single’ way of living and allow us to know and realize our life with and through others to the fullest. And so it is that the best freedoms might be the ones that consciously connect us deeply and meaningfully with at least one other person. And that the best freedom that most of us will ever know will be beyond that experienced as ‘one’, and encompass at least one more person, likely someone whom we love and become very close to.

(previously published Oct. 23)

My grandson (14 mos.) wakes up from a nap. He is a bit groggy but happy to see me and ready to get going. Holding him, I open the drapes with one hand and point to the house next door, the trees, and blue sky, naming these aloud. He is interested. I gesture with one arm to the toys, books, and clothes in his room, telling him what he is looking at. I hold him over his crib and he drops his clutched giraffe and soother in the crib. A routine. We are done with his room and its immediate possibilities and enter the living room–his gated world, literally.

He sees what an adult sees–the usual furniture, draped window, rug, shelves, tv (never turned on while I am there)–and then his eyes fall on all his preferred and remembered images–the toys on the floor and shelves, his playpen, his toy vehicles, the tent in the corner, the Bichon-Shitzu dog–what he likely considers to be his next possibilities for the day.

I put him on the floor and he goes to his favorite–the colored plastic stacking cups–to begin taking them apart and then reassembling them in his preferred order. This is his more obvious first structured play routine–aside from turning pages of books–that intrigues him as a recurring play possibility from which the rest of his playtime can proceed.

Later I will crawl into his tent to wait for him to bring me cups or other toys, maybe even one of his vehicles pushed in, nose-first. Or some good old peekaboo play with the flap over the tent entrance. All these interesting, fun possibilities. Later in the day, the dog may go into the tent and he will follow to offer the dog her bone, once memorably being caught in the act of moving the bone up to his own mouth!

Possibilities. The possibilities of play, what a day might be like, and–imagined–a life might become ahead long-term.

I used to play with my two kids when we went to the restaurant. I would have them close their eyes before removing one item from the table. They would open their eyes and try to guess correctly which item had been removed. Pure simple fun arising as a spontaneous non-structured play activity in a random context. For me, looking back, this is the way I have lived my life, how I taught, how I performed, and how I played with others along the way. Always, the possibilities. What might be possible if one imagined and then created in process, spontaneously. The memorable fun that arose for me and others. As simple as killing some time in a restaurant or in the process of babysitting. Playing, performing with and for others. I still enjoy it.

In my own only-child childhood, I was lucky to be often left to play by myself and I, imaginatively and creatively, made my own fun. My own tent was two sticks in the ground with a rope in-between with a mogey-smelling blanket hanging over the rope. My own mongrel dog played with me inside. In winter, I was/became two hockey teams playing on the rink my Dad flooded for me over the driveway (we had no car). I played long into the blue darkness after school, skating and play-making free and blissfully happy. What Wordsworth called “delight and liberty” in his most famous poem “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”. The same thing I see, 56 years later, in my grandson in a world gone e-techno-nuts.

“Unknown” once said that the impossible can always be broken down into possibilities. Certainly that is an approach I have always used in many situations when faced with problems, crisis, and seemingly impossible obstacles. What is still possible here? What might happen next? What are the enjoyable/fun possibilities via play and performance? How can this situation be made better or improved? What learning possibilities might occur if I/we….? How might this possibility move me/us ahead somehow? What structures or approaches might be tried? Can fun, freedom, or order be created from this apparent boredom, chaos, or staticness?

Back to my grandson. He has learned to pull his books out of the book basket, to open them on the floor by himself, to push them across the floor, to drop them behind the hassock. He has also learned to put even large books on the table or couch, to stand and look at them while turning pages. He has a world, but it is one in which he is quickly achieving a mastery of environment and of the things therein. He explores different possibilities for these things as he plays, even with the same old cups. “Delight and liberty”, indeed.

I will do my best to change things up for him as will all the other family and friends. I will put his big rabbit on his car and push it across the floor. He will smile to see his rabbit driving/riding on his own. An interesting new possibility in his environment, very much like the ones he creates already himself for his own amusement. Possibilities. Simple fun possibilities which open up a larger world of experience. Along with the encouragement and support for such and playing with a child.

Outside our shared world, I know there are many other possibilities. I ponder a few. The children who never go outside all summer or after school. The children who are given screens, by my grandson’s age, to help prepare them for jobs and our brave new e-media world. (Questions in passing: Do babies and toddlers need screens, or to be ‘screened’? Do they need e-media advertising?) The ones whose parents stare at and into screens of smartphones and tablets and don’t speak to their children. The ones who are left to fend for themselves or told to go play with their own screens. A different approach. A different attitude. A different kind of play. A different kind of freedom and separateness.

And what are the possibilities implicit there? What is the learning? What is the interaction, care, connection, and love? Do the children ever get to play the old-fashioned way? Do the children feel “delight” and a range of imaginative possibilities that they themselves can generate naturally on their own? How might both kinds of children turn out in later life? What kind of personal world will they later choose, create, and live in? And how will parents of the future play with the children of the future?

Yes, that many possibilities.

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William Blake once spoke of the necessity of creating his own “system” (or world) rather than being enslaved by another/’s. My own life has evolved from that basic tenet and a preference for and belief in a world of unlimited possibilities. As I have commented earlier, I am very much a possibilitarian. I hope my grandson is his own person, too, ultimately. I don’t know that the same can be said for a lot of folks today who have turned their lives, autonomy, minds, hearts, souls, and spirits over to screens primarily or exclusively. I sometimes wonder and fear what their “range”, depth, irony, humor, perspective, caring, balance, autonomy, and internal richness are like.

“It is described as being unique, even supernatural, a bearer of the spirit and guardian of the soul.”–Owls: Art, Legend, History

My personal bird totem since 2008–I would support the above statement. Owls are essentially spirits in physical form and they speak to and of the possibilities of the human soul. For me–simply put–they are brethren of perspective and natural wisdom.

Above photo: 3 owl ornaments in front hallway.

On Political Parties in B.C.

“It’s like your choice of dates–you either go out with someone who lies and deceives you and then makes you pay for everything–which is the Liberals. Or you get someone who is bombastic and pushy and starts swearing at you–that’s the Conservatives. Or you get somebody who like drinks all your booze and eats all your food and then vomits on you and that’s the N.D.P.”–Brent Chapman (March 6, 2013, The Source (Ezra Levant show)

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Much as I’m relatively apolitical these daze, I still appreciate a great quotable quote regardless of subject matter.

Very challenging and demanding. Quite exhausting, too, over seven hours! The thing to remember is to see the world through his eyes and context. What is the environment he typically plays in? Then consider the possibilities which are embedded in the situation and do some of these, inviting him along with you. He will watch and- if you make the play open-ended and collaborative–will automatically jump in, too, to join you, sometimes putting more, new twists to the outside-the-box play you have initiated.

Combining toys in new and different ways demonstrates what kinds of things can be done that are more imaginative or creative, such combining block and ring play. Toddlers this age, learning to stand and walk, like movement also. They like being pushed on a toy vehicle of some kind. but always it is important to be supportive in comments and touches to let them know they’ve done well or are moving forward in whatever ways. A variety of play is good, too, Often they will move from one toy or play area to another as their fancy chooses or changes.

It is good to be on their levels, physically, on the floor though sometimes they will need ‘alone time’–after feeding works well–to play separately, such as in a playpen with perhaps a large book, an oversized stuffed animal, and a toy which plays a number of tunes–classical tunes–all work very well. The most essential thing is to play with the child on his level, imagining and thinking as he does, all the while introducing other, slightly different possibilities to show that the context (and the greater world) contain many possibilities, especially if you try different things. These are the first basic steps toward nurturing creativity and imagination. And, of course, what will happen is the child will begin to introduce his own nuances and types of play.

I should add a word about performances. Children perform as they play; they try out roles and parts and the parent or grandparent should, too. Children enjoy performances, the simple efforts to entertain and relate to them. The only thing an adult performer needs to be is to think and imagine like a child and to admit the child into the performance with some give-and-take, leaving possible roles for the child. The performances may include everything from simple whistling, handclapping, unconventional hand and finger movements (especially for infants), to singing or recitation.

A word about books. Simply making available cardboardish page books, opting for books that don’t necessarily have words, oversized books, books with moving parts or unusual physical constructions open up an interest in reading. Given the above, children will go to books on their own, pulling them out of book baskets, pulling them over to you to read with them. They will read by themselves, opening the books and turning the pages on their own once they are shown how that works. They will drag books everywhere to couches or tables to read while standing, They will treat them the same as toys. And they will soon start making sounds if left by themselves with books in playpens, for instance, in their own worlds, beginning to explore language vocalizing.

Yes, playing with a 14-month-old is full of learning and growth possibilities. And the role of parent or grandparent is to help open up these possibilities through play, collaboration, performance, modelling, and a little teaching. Did I mention that playing with a 14-month-old is ultimately a test and challenge of oneself, one’s own imagination, creativity, and free thinking and feeling, as opposed to customary, limited, limiting modes of adult sensibility and response?