The rapturething

Ivan Terestchenko

always out there    

 

Go to any academy in the median swath of North America on any weekend day of the slightest clemency, and see if there's a quad where the air isn't filled with these things, implicating 2 hobbledehoys at a time in divine endangerment of the peace. We used to call these things the Pluto Platter, but the underworld conno-tation didn't stick, and the invention was sold to two fellows who called it, the frisbee.

To think, one could have been born into a world (as I was), where this thing did not exist, must almost be counted as desolating as my father's existence before the discov-ery of Pluto (now shamefully downgraded, as you know). But Pluto arrived at the right time for him, in his teens; and my infancy, likewise, took flight with the arrival of this toy. Now, several multiples of that age later, I can say that while the putter has sometimes infuriated me, and the tennis racquet maimed me repeatedly, the rapturething and I enjoy an unbreakable bond; and so does it, I think, go so much deeper, so much faster to inculcate a rapport between men, than the wine this 6th Century BC tondo would have floated. It's as essential to one's kit as any wine key.

The genius of the rapturething lies in its gift to everyman, of the power to overlay his imprint of joy upon the sight of any day. We observe, societies have conceived of means to compete with it, but this is not any signature of its own. It is the ultim-ate device for the recip-rocating inscription of bliss in thin air.

I know many who cultivate a style with it, a flick this way or that, a dancing catch, one way or the other. These gestures, too, exploit its genius, whence we see our public furnishings adapted to exertions for its praise. At Eliot House, we hear, they set the whole thing to Petipa, holding the line gamely against Balanchine. But in truth what we find is that the air is sovereign in this matter, and at least subliminally welcome to be. And who should be asked to tire of those excuses, the elements afford, now that we know Perth has entered Summer, or the other way around? How topsy, how turvy, the navy cured of scurvy are we like, the tarter to be carters of this news, they're tossing lambent flicker-ings in colours to amuse.

You may encounter someone while out surfing, who hasn't a board, or at Deauville, who's down on his luck. But you can not run into a guy at ease in any setting, who doesn't stir to the sight of the rapturething in flight. Oh, well we know, we may be hauled up for some infamy or other, to have mentioned it; such are the times, I suppose. Yet, as we speak, the air is brighter some-where for its toss, and everyman is glad to scan its arc from either end.
















Tricouleur, Terestchenko