Re-creation

Fall is fully here, which in San Francisco means no fog or wind or rain and average temperatures between 65 and 70. My wife and I decided to actually do something a bit different together other than our usual separate and together routines. So off we set on a 5 mile walk to the ocean through our beloved Golden Gate Park. A good deal of our route was on car-free JFK Drive, all set up and designed for human connection and communion. Consider:

 

Ten volleyball games in Robin Williams Meadow, the drummers gathered on Hippy Hill, the tennis and pickleball courts, the yellow Adirondack chairs spread around everywhere filled with people gathering, the Roller Skaters dancing to recorded music, the little live jazz band playing some Monk tunes, the ping-pong tables now multiplied to three and always full, the cornhole game that I almost always play alone, but today someone was there and I had two nice games with a stranger who now wants a re-match next week. 

 

He had just come from the outdoor Lindy Hop classes and further down was one of the three pianos on car-free JFK Drive with a singer and guitars and a crowd listening. Much of this was put together post-pandemic and consciously so, going through the democratic process of a voter’s initiative to close this section of the road in the park. It was a bit of a struggle, but we prevailed and we all are happier for it. So many more people than before are walking, skating, biking, jogging, dancing down the road painted with murals and dotted with sculptures, almost like an ongoing Festival feel. 

 

There’s more of the same as we walked on the new paths by a revived Middle Lake near the fly-fishing pools, a tucked-away Native garden and some older paths alongside the frisbee-golf courses. All this fun and fanciful recreation, which noting the etymology of “re-creation” does indeed go a long way to re-creating our playful, childlike and joyful selves in company with others who we already know or come to know through the activity. I have an upcoming post about “offense and defense,” the conversation between pro-actively creating and living the life we deserve and reacting to all the forces that work against it, doing the work to limit the power of the naysayers and the life-haters and the glum greedy accumulators. Seems like we can’t just do one without the other, tomorrow being a case in point. So much at stake and we’re all waiting to exhale into exultation. 

 

And when the future we deserve gets voted in tomorrow, that’s when the real work begins, building day by day a life a fun and fanciful and fantastically fabulous as a Sunday stroll through Golden Gate Park. Let it be so!!!!