Intelligence having fun
This man had as much fun balancing rocks as we had watching him!
San Francisco, February 2003
“Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun.” — George Scialabba
Have you ever heard of rock balancing? Neither had I until I saw this guy. One beautiful sunny day in San Francisco, he was practicing his hobby for all passers-by to enjoy free of charge (though some were leaving him tips). I don’t know who thought up that pastime, but I’m glad someone had the imagination to look at a pile of rocks and see what could be done with it, just for fun.
Have you ever found a new use for an everyday object, or created something whimsical from odd materials you found? Do you make up silly rhymes or scrawl elaborate doodles in the margins of notepaper during boring meetings? Have you ever made up any funny words or names for things, a sort of secret language that you share only with one or two family members or friends? The possibilities are endless.
Let your brain have some fun – your imagination is smarter than you think!
One year ago today:
This post was first published seven years ago today. The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.
- Posted in: Uncategorized
- Tagged: challenges, creativity, fun, games, hobbies, imagination, intelligence, mental exercise, play, puzzles
Defeat Despair 
Good morning, Julia! Suddenly, my yard seems to shout, “Intelligence lives here!” I wonder if anyone else sees it that way? Patrick has placed odd-end-cuts of stone in creative fashion in various places around the yard. I don’t mind the sculpture-garden effect, but I did keep removing the colored hula hoops from the plum tree. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken them down. They looked whimsical, which isn’t all bad, I suppose. Like a tree growing giant Fruit-Loops.
I guess whether or not I removed them would depend not only on how much I liked it, but whether the nearby neighbors found it tiresome or tacky. Having lived in several homes that were under a set of fairly strict HOA standards, I’ve learned how widely people vary about what constitutes “pretty” or even “acceptable!” 😀