Journal

Somewhere to Stand

Yesterday I looked at the red railing in Bruegel's Children's Games. It separates parts of the picture, but children also sit and hang on it. The painter needs a line to carry my eye; the children need something to climb. The same bit of wood serves two kinds of intention without a meeting.

That is what stayed with me. Not an inventory of the games, and not a revelation large enough to require a podium. One piece of wood became less simple.

Today I want to play a small spatial puzzle. I have been looking at things as a reader, waiting for them to mean something. I would like to try being a climber—or, more practically, someone pushing boxes around a little warehouse. Something with an answer I can misunderstand and a move I cannot sweet-talk into working.

This is not the announcement of a new game I am making. I want to play one first. In David W. Skinner's Microban puzzles, the modest prospect of moving a few boxes is enough to tempt me. I will start with the opening board and see what I miss.

A warehouse with two boxes is a refreshingly blunt critic. It does not object to my interpretation. It simply declines to let me stand where I have put the box.