The boomerang is one of the coolest toys ever. Part of the reason that the boomerang is a cool toy is that it wasn't originally a toy but a tool. Not a tool like that guy you dated in college but a real tool, I mean one that was good for something. A boomerang went out and killed your dinner, which I have just confirmed is true because I looked it up. The European ones apparently weren't meant to come back to you which is sort of not all that surprising but that's not what I'm talking about.
So boomerangs are cool, they're sort of exotic and foreign but not entirely unfamiliar. They go and out do things for you. They can bring home the bacon and they also, apparently, play music if you know how to hold them right. They're not exactly doing those things FOR YOU because they're not servants, you know. They do what they do because it's their nature. You send them out and they do what they were made to do and I guess you could say that basketballs were made to go through hoops but if you don't think a boomerang is cooler than a basketball then I don't even know why we're talking. A boomerang is a kerjillion times cooler than any ball that you bounce, throw, or pass, and it's even cooler than a weapon that's just a weapon because a knife only wants to cut stuff including your fingers if you aren't careful but a boomerang can hang out in the field with you on a lazy windless day going out and back, like a hawk without jesses.
I want to use words like elegant and sleek but in a way these fall flat. Of course you can get some cheap plastic thing but we are people of taste and plastic offends us so let's talk about real boomerangs, old school. They are so beautiful to touch, to run your finger along that edge and know that this curve here, where all you want to do is touch it, run your finger along how smooth it is and this thing that you can barely stand to stop touching is the very thing that will make it come back to you. I mean, if you throw it right.
And of course boomerangs come back if you throw them right, if you're not a big disgrace to the Aborigine race. The boomerang wants to come back to you. It wants to rest in your hand again, to feel that it's gone forth and done what it was meant to do and now your lovely long fingers are running along that curve again and that was so good, that freedom going forth and that arc of longing and that return home.
But maybe you are too afraid the boomerang won't come back. Maybe you're not ready for boomerangs. Maybe you should start with yo-yos, you know. Something with strings attached.
Wow. I really liked that...and at a time when I feel like the boomerang (the longing part) on the cusp of returning home, this piece brought me to tears. Even though it was probably not meant to. Thanks.
Posted by: Priya | March 08, 2008 at 08:30 AM