"If you want to make something smarter, teach it to play."

"Play was evolution's way of building brains, and any creature with a [highly developed] brain ... sure used it. 
If you want to make something smarter, teach it to play. "

 --Playground, (2024), Richard Powers 

I'm enjoying this ^ novel, mostly for its info about ocean life, but it feels as if it were assembled from a kit. 
The characters are like forms to hang beach-combing finds on--and flotsam about play. Just glimpses.
More enjoyable than engaging.
_______________

Marz drove away early this morning, back up north. 
I miss her already. 
It's invigorating to be around her: She is made of play. 
(This is not to say she is happy. Curious that those things don't necessarily go together.)

We did a lot, by my standards, in the two days she was here. 

I made the shako, and Marz made her first linoleum print--for the coming lunar new year.
Here's her Creature and the Fire Horse.

She said the Creature is saying, "Never give up". 

Because she was leaving the next morning and oil-based ink wouldn't  dry in that time, I gave her water-based ink, which doesn't print as well. 
Still pretty cool.
___________

We saw an exhibit of Chinese pottery at the art institute.
Some of the pieces were so recognizable, of the moment. . .
This moment.
In front of one case, Marz said, 
"IKEA sells something like these."
Steal from the best!

ABOVE: The sheep on the left are 5,000 years old.
The vessels on the right look 20th-century modern to me, but are from the 11th–15th centuries CE.

_________

Last night I was reading Playground on the couch. My apartment is cold, and I bundle up. Marz took my picture for the colors.

Marz is almost done reading Moby Dick (speaking of ocean life).

At one point last night, she leaped up--
"This passage is about how ambergris is only found in sick whales, and I thought of Paracelsus"––(she'd written a paper on this Renaissance alchemist last semester)––
"and in the next line, Melville mentions him!"

There's so much life going on in her life.
She and Q are driving farther north for a vacation in Grand Marais, on Lake Superior, almost to Canada.  
Then she starts her fourth semester at the U. After that, she'll only have one more year.
I look forward to attending her graduation June 2027. 

Poster ^ from the 1930's WPA New York State Art Project, from
nyheritage.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p277601coll5/id/62/rec%E2%80%A6