Re: play-in-framing

Judy Diamondstone (diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu)
Tue, 20 Feb 1996 11:14:33 -0500

I have at last the opportunity to take part in this brilliant (in the sense
of filled-with-light) discussion on play. There are more than a few bits of
this discussion that I am fuzzy about, so my comments and questions are
likely to be fuzzy. Still, I hope that Jay or Bill or Rolfe or any other
participants in this discussion will note what's confusing, because I would
like to understand the _hypotheticals_ posed here and their possible
derivations.

Let me start with what I take as key assumptions, because not everyone seems
to share them. I assume (with Jay and Bill, at least, I think) that there's
no activity that is fantasy free. There's no sociocultural "real" that's not
defined against the not-real. Play and semogenesis go hand in hand, and
that's because (?) semogenesis is a material, historical _process_ . There's
play in process - has to be, or the system wouldn't be able to regulate itself.

So when we talk of "play" we're not talking "process," we're talking
_play-in-framing_, the work we are apparently obliged to do to make sense
(we are obliged to make sense against non-sense, to figure the real against
the not real, etc). And we fall into either-or traps, as if we "shuttle
between" play and not-play, real and not-real, which of course we seem to
do, but only because our moments of reflexive awareness cut the arc of what
is in fact an always contingent gradient ...? with meta rules going
something like -- well I'm not sure, but the rule-making would entail some
negotiation between that which is imagined or desired and that which is more
subject to the historical, "what has been," perhaps, and the "what is" --
the hypothetical real -- emerges as a range of possible possibles at the
moment. [- There's half a dozen fuzzy notes right there.]

What I'm trying to say is that the play-in-framing that the Heyoka/coyote
make visible is ongoing always, but probably because it's a bit disorienting
to be poised always so near to meaninglessness, most of us mortals get
caught up in the deceptively stabilizing either/or.... In the semiotics of
the culture we are part of.

The Heyoka/Coyote play the meta-stabilizing role within their respective
communities. They show the non-sense/sense relations of the culture to be
subject to play, _though not according to the sensemaker's inclinations_.
It's very important that crazy medicine makes it possible for the sensemaker
to see and know the sociocultural historical real, it seems to me, to derive
from crazy medicine a playful (light) way of orienting/ framing it. This
paraphrase may not do justice to what Heyokas & Coyotes actually do, but it
is allowing me to frame my questions.

What does a Heyoka/Coyote do in postmodern times? I was always impressed by
Suzuki Roshi at the Zen Center in S.F. when I was in that area - It was
something like embracing-contraries-with-a-twinkle that made him seem like
someone with something to teach. One important difference between the Zen
master & the Heyoka/Coyote is that the sensemaker chooses to follow Zen,
while the Heyoka/Coyotes participate in the everyday life of those who
derive wisdom from them. But all these figures have in common apparently a
world "shared" with those who use their medicine. I'm not sure if that's
important if what is being offered is a light touch toward whatever Is is. I
suppose not, after all this typing. But I'm not sure....

- Judy
Judy Diamondstone
diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu
Rutgers University

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