Thou shalt not play
Speaking of religions and their impositions on human beings…yesterday I hopped a bus to the other side of the city to walk along the lake –
– and I paused to allow a woman in full hijab carrying a child to cross the sidewalk in front of me. She too paused to wait for me so we did the politeness standoff for a few seconds but I wouldn’t budge, because she was the one carrying a heavy child. I smiled implacably so she went ahead. She joined a family or maybe a couple of families with several kids. The boys were in shorts and nothing else and playing in the water…and the girls were all in full stifling hijab, and not allowed to play in the water. I saw one girl being tut-tutted by a man – he called out to her and then literally wagged his finger back and forth like a parody bad cop parent. She had stepped into the water a little bit.
Arrrrggghh. It’s not new but I hate it all the same. It was a beautiful day, warm but not unpleasantly hot, bright, clear, sparkling, and there was the lake all temptingly spread out, and there were the boys playing…and the little girls, three or four of them, were all muffled up and not allowed to do anything. Why??? They weren’t old enough to be “a temptation” so there’s not even that bogus reason. It’s just goddy misogyny, that’s all it is. (Note also that none of the men went to take the heavy child from the woman. I guess that’s her burden.)
Beautiful lake; I would definitely want to be in it. It looks a lot like my favorite lake in Oklahoma, Lake Murray…at least from my favorite spot.
I hate that branch of feminism that would argue these women are empowered. So wrong.
It’s an absolutely gorgeous lake. If you walked past that tree and panned the camera to the right you would get the Cascades, and move farther right you get Mount Rainier. It’s the whole eastern border of Seattle and makes for epic views, as if Puget Sound bordering Seattle on the west weren’t enough.
Nothing like that in Lake Murray, though from certain spots you can see the Arbuckle mountains. They’re sort of short and not real impressive, but it’s Oklahoma, not noted for mountain.
I saw that too much when I lived at an apartment complex with a pool. Prepubescent girls watching their brothers play in the water while they were covered, 85 degrees and humid. It was really sad to see.
Speaking of Lake Murray, that’s where I learned to water-ski. It is a beautiful lake. I was always fascinated by The Arbuckles because as you drive through them between Oklahoma City and Dallas you get a sense of just how old this planet is. There are miles of layers of sedimentary rock that were lifted and folded hundreds of millions of years ago, so long ago that the mountains have eroded to rocky rolling hills. I don’t see how anyone can see them and still believe in young earth creationism.
I once stood in the Wichita Mountains in southwestern Oklahoma with one hand on the rock about waist high, and one stretched over my head. I was spanning millions of years of history. When I think about that, I wonder why anyone would WANT the world to be young.
I agree with both of you. Even living in a geologically ‘young’ country the age of the rocks and many of the landforms is pretty much beyond human conception. That, together with some understanding of the processes to create what we see, leaves me filled with awe and wonder, all without needing a god to induce the feeling.
For me, understanding how old the planet is, the sheer scale of the processes required to create the biosphere we have just emphasises how transient and small I am, how fragile life as we live it is, and strangely, how responsible we are not to fuck it all up. I think a lot of people hate feeling all of those things. They want to feel large, permanent, important, inevitable. It’s delusional, but it allows them to live a comfortable life without a challenging thought in their heads.
Swimming is one of he most important things I’ve ever done. In water, one can feel a whole new connection to the universe.
Not in misogynistically regulated clothing. What a prison. In a thousand years, if we are still here, they shake their heads at such a myopic worldview.