August 13, 2006 by annemarie.

did you notice the sky today? 

 “It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of all creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more, for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. There are not many of her other works in which some more material or essential purpose than the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their organization; but every essential purpose of the sky might, as far as we know, be answered, if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great, ugly black rain cloud were brought up over the blue, and everything well watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with perhaps a film of morning and evening mist for dew. And instead of this, there is not a moment of any day of our lives, when nature is not producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual pleasure. And every man, wherever placed, however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has this doing for him constantly… the sky is for all; bright as it is, it is not “too bright, nor good, for human nature’s daily food,” it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart, for the soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, it is surely meant for the chief teacher of what is immortal in us, as it is the chief minister of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal. And yet we never attend to it, we never make it a subject of thought…”

John Ruskin, ‘Of the Open Sky’ Modern Painters I, Part II, Section III

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August 4, 2006 by annemarie.

There are at least two kind of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.

A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.

Finite players play within boundaries;
infinite players plays with boundaries.

Surprise causes finite play to end;
it is the reason for infinite play to continue.

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained.
To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.

The finite play for life is serious;
the infinite play of life is joyous.

The joyfulness of infinite play, its laughter, lies in
learning to start something we cannot finish.

No one can play a game alone.
One cannot be human by oneself.

Our social existence has…an inescapably fluid character.

…we are not the stones over which the stream of the
world flows; we are the stream itself.

Change itself is the very basis of our continuity as persons.

Only that which can change can continue: this is the
principal by which infinite players live.

James P. Carse
Finite and Infinite Games

are you an infinite player?  can I add this title to my business card?

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