What's play, what's fun?

I love the notion in the abstract, it’s the actual application of noodling around that I have difficulty with. Is baking biscotti play? Or is play an activity with no purpose but fun?

Recently a friend was telling me about attending a science fiction and fantasy convention, and her astonishment at the terrific costumes people had made to attend: there were fairies, elves, a Darth Vader, a bearded man in skimpy Superwoman costume, a child inside either an egg or a robot where the top popped back to show the kid’s grinning face, a moustached individual with an embossed shield who swirled a rich red velvet cape with an eye-catching black and white check lining. For two blocks outside the convention center, the streets were alight with these extraordinary apparitions.

I asked myself why anyone would go to so much trouble with sewing, makeup, time? The answer was for fun. These elaborately dressed individuals were having a blast and loving it when people around them would say, “Wow, great costume, can I take a picture of myself with you?”

My own bemusement at this made me think a) I spend far too much time working and b) to ask myself, in the steam-punk world of Jorrie and the Skyhorse, the magic book I wrote, “What would people in the big city of Cimarron be doing for fun?” The answer, of course, being as varied as the individuals themselves, playing music, growing flowers and vegetables, going to parties, leaving on scoopship voyages, and causing trouble.

Maybe they’d sew costumes in Cimarron too, or some would, but having a world divided into Talents, known as Ts, people with a magical affinity, would certainly divide a society into haves and have nots. If I were someone with no Talent, I’d be resentful. If I was a Talent, well, I might feel that I deserved all the good that came my way, and my idea of fun might be to play tricks, reach deep into the order beneath the surface of what-is, and tweak. The mayhem a Talent could cause would be enormous.

As Valdi the chef-T pointed out to Jorrie, there is, of course, the law of conservation of seithr, magic, which means don’t use your magic frivolously or one day you’ll wake up to find it’s sluiced away like water from a pond you’ve drained dry.

However, for those of us who forget to noodle around, if we don’t at least splash in the enchantment of play now and then, could we wake up one day to find we’ve forgotten how?

Do you have enough play in your life? If so, how do you manage?

Kira says this is definitely play. It’s the game Dog on a Log, in this case a bench. She gets rewarded with a small treat for jumping up.