Monday, April 26, 2010

116

That's an obvious one. People play Cat's Cradle because they enjoy making increasingly complex patterns. But they don't only enjoy making patterns -- the enjoyment is coupled with another enjoyment: the enjoyment of power. People who play Cat's Cradle enjoy learning how to create complex patterns and how to control these patterns. Further: not only do people enjoy the patterns and the control granted by getting good at the making the patterns, people who are true Cat's Cradle enthusiasts enjoy using other people to help in the process of control and mastery of the complex patterns. Move this thread here, loop it around there. Spread both hands apart. And then, when all is finished, or you run out of thread, one loop is loosed, and the whole three-dimensional pattern network falls limp upon the shag rug. She had a shag rug. It was orange and red with some yellow thrown in, here and there. He would play the yarn game with her and wonder why it was called a game. Could you win? But he never wondered about the game further than this. He never tried to learn the patterns for himself. He just liked watching her manipulate the yarn. He enjoyed hearing her voice and listening to what it wanted him to do. And he enjoyed doing what that voice wanted him to do. But he never learned the patterns, even though it occurred to him that he could learn if he liked.

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