Positivity Jenga

/Ecology is more like Jenga. You could remove a brick and the whole shebang might hold together. Or it might not. Only one way to find out but no way of turning back — methinksnot, Dec 07 2011/

Or is there no way of turning back? Here at BUNGCO we have pondered this, in the context of a vague dissatisfaction with Jenga. The removal, the reduction, the paring of a thing down to its fleshless sensualless skeleton. It seems post-apocalyptic. The survivors, hopelessly picking away the edifices built by their ancestors. Using the pieces to build their shabby lean-tos.

What about the making! we shout at each other in the brightly lit BUNGCO bunker. The building! The adding of a stone! Culture grows! There is a way of turning back - put a piece in instead of taking it out! There is some word in English that carries the right connotation; something combining the notion of reproduction and fertility with the notion of inserting your piece. It is of the "sumer is icumen in" vintage. My coffee fueled flight of ideas prevents it from surfacing. Help me, island keepers of the language.

In any case - positivity! Fecundity! In this Jenga you add a piece. And maybe they would all be little rectangles of similar size. But no: those are there, and some big and small ones, triangles, and rounded pieces one can never of set anything atop. In fact they are a gaily colored block set repurposed from beanangels daycare. Stack them! But don't stop there - hang that slotted spoon from the curved piece! The kitchen is full of interesting stuff; add that in. What about the study? There is stuff there too. Add it!

But so dissatisfying when it topples and the pieces revert to mundanity and must be picked up and put away. Mortality. despair. especially if you are the one who has to pick them up. The solution: incrementalism, and adhesives! In this communal Jenga effort, a piece is added every day and any means necessary is allowed to affix it: nail, staple, twine, glue, putty. Eventually, objects available for the purpose will be depleted, more distant ones having gone to their own more local edifices of Positivity. The entire amalgam has become Art: it can be named (possibly "Shoggoth", or "Thing from No. 4 Vat") and sold, the proceeds being used to purchase new slotted spoons and other such.