I took Bowdu to Cesar E. Chavez today, where the kite flyers were out in droves. I haven't delighted in flying my own kite since I was maybe six years old, but I do admire the array of shapes and colors set against a clear California sky. So many creative possibilities crafted from paper and nylon and mere plastic sheets! As I was passing underneath a purple dragon with intricately layered translucent gold and pink wings, I heard a sharp male voice bark out from behind me,

"THOMAS. GET over here, or you won't LEARN anything."

And this prepubescent kid with his hands stuffed in his hooded sweatshirt pockets and a bored pout pasted on his face followed the kite line back to his father, who continued to chide him for standing there slack-jawed and useless (he actually used that word) -- for not appreciating the inherent aesthetic and scientific wonder of kite-flying, I guess.

For some reason, the incident instantly brought to mind Lu Xun's story, "風箏 (Kite)." The narrator harbors a deep disdain for his little brother's fascination with kites, particularly the way he always stands and watches in dumb fascination when the neighborhood boys fly them out on beautiful days. One day, he discovers that his little brother has secretly constructed a butterfly kite, and in a fit of tyrannical rage, the older brother destroys the kite. Decades later, in adulthood, the narrator comes to realize that child's play is an essential component of human development, and that play itself can hold educational value. Chagrined, the narrator apologizes to his little brother, but the latter has completely forgotten the incident already. The apology is impotent. "Without hard feelings, forgiveness is a lie (無怨的恕, 說謊罷了)."

Anyway, the connection I made here was something along the lines of how well-meaning elders with ultra-rationalized conceptions of how one should spend their time will inevitably rob childhood of its most sacred, carefree moments. Because there SHOULD be times when you're allowed to just stand in the sun, silent and useless, doing nothing at all... Even now, I waste so much energy fighting mental sluggishness because I forget that part of the trick to "learning all the time" is not insisting on the educational value of every millisecond and allowing some of those moments to pass unnoticed and unaccounted for while your mind and your blood adjusts to inertia.

Did I ever learn how to play uselessly as a child? The closest I might have gotten might've been those hour-long sessions of propping myself upside-down against the back of the couch while I imagined walking around the entire apartment on the ceiling. Or no-handed bike riding in endless circles on a vacant and newly-paved parking lot, doing that as long as I could until sunset. Is this concentration, the focusing of attention upon a fine and repetitive task, or more like meditation, with a dissipation and release of self-awareness that I consider the opposite of concentration? Either way, I could do with a better grasp on one or the other right now.