That the subtitle of my book,
Savage Park: A Meditation on Play, Space, and Risk for Americans Who Are Nervous, Distracted, and Afraid to Die, seems more apt now than it did when it was first published last year is something I have noticed with some dismay.
Savage Park is not about current events per se. It takes an adventure playground in Tokyo as a jumping-off point for writing about space, risk, and play.
For readers who may not know, adventure playgrounds are a type of playground first developed by landscape architect Carl Theodor Sorenson in 1943 in Copenhagen, when that town was under German occupation. These types of playgrounds, beautiful in their radical simplicity, are composed of three elements: a vacant lot, donated tools or scraps, and a playworker who is there to facilitate children's play but not to direct it. At the time my family and I visited Japan from our hometown of New York City, I had never encountered a playground like this. I wanted to write a book that paid homage to the space and its playworkers, and that acknowledged some of the difficulty in, and resistance to, being present in the way that this place encourages and provides for it.
I am writing this in December 2015, and the recent events in Paris, Colorado Springs, and San Bernardino have reverberated here in New York. There is heightened police presence in the city this holiday season, as well as an increase in the number of times a disembodied voice on the subway platform reminds me to say something if I see something. Walking past the policemen posted at my subway stop in midtown Manhattan, I have thought...