Author: erainbowd

As the indifferent children of the earth.

erainbowdLeave a comment

Has anyone written this sci fi novel yet? The Indifferent Children of the Earth would seem to be a big hit in the right circles. It’s probably a Dystopian story – one in which the children of Earth, at first indifferent to their mother, then become quite careless with her and then, with neglect and destructive behaviors, destroy her altogether. This is a story we read almost every day in newspapers and magazines. It is our latest narrative –the one of us, the indifferent children of the earth. It is such a popular story that many children actual children, you know, who play with toys and are cute and stuff. These actual children believe that this story is inevitable, that our indifference is inevitable, that the ultimate destruction of our planet is a foregone conclusion. And so dystopian sci fi turns to predictive text, almost non-fiction.

Do we have to be indifferent? Does Rosencrantz? It’s a weird position to take.

Do you know me, my lord?

erainbowdLeave a comment

In the show, the actress (playing herself, it would seem) declared that she knew people by their touch, by their hands. Because she no longer had use of her hearing or seeing. She could only know someone this way.

I wondered though, if I lost both my sight and hearing, mightn’t I also know someone by their smell, by their vibration? Mightn’t I sense my mother’s approach even if I could not see or hear her?

But perhaps I overestimate the other senses. Perhaps the darkness and silence is so total, there would be no feeling someone behind you. Maybe those feelings are micro-hearing or seeing sensations. Maybe when I close my eyes in an acting exercise and sense the movement around me, joining it without seeing it, I’m really hearing it, quietly, without knowing that’s what I’m doing.

The kinesthetic sense, the proprioception that feels like it leads to some understanding of the other, to knowing someone else, may be the sum total of the other senses.

Good lads, how do you both?

erainbowdLeave a comment

This is the safest way to greet a pair of people. Refer to them together and neither one gets preference.

Lads, though, you gotta be careful with lads. Here, in the hills, lads pretty much just means boys. Like, actual boys, like kids. So a greeting like this could either be condescending or affectionately familiar.

In the UK, lads have their own culture. Lad has found its way into an adjective, showing many men to be laddish – which, sure, could mean boyish but not in the red cheeked, child-like way. We might call a lad a frat boy here in the States, also a word that would suggest childishness but tends to refer to a rather boorish behavior. Lads drink too much and make too much noise at the game. They travel in packs and tend to not be terribly respectful of women.

But you know – people use both boys and lads to show affection to a group of men. My grandfather went out once a week with the Boys – even once they became the Romeos (Retired Old Men Eating Out.) I think Englishmen hang out with the lads down at the retirement home but I’ve never heard an American man talking about the lads. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard an American use the word lad without some affectation – without pretending to be posh or English or some combination of the two.

A case could be made for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern being any variety of lads.

Ah, Rosencrantz!

erainbowdLeave a comment

What has Rosencrantz done to make Hamlet say this? It’s not as if he’s not realized Rosencrantz is there; He just greeted them with “My excellent good friends.” Plural. So it’s not as if he’s suddenly surprised to see Rosencrantz. He’s just asked Guildenstern a question but he doesn’t wait to hear Guildenstern reply, his attention suddenly turns to Rosencrantz and then to them both.

Has Rosencrantz suddenly gestured in a “What am I, chopped liver?” sort of way? Has he pulled Guildenstern out of the way? Has he made a funny noise? Thumbed his nose and stuck out his tongue.

I do want him to have done something. It’s just more interesting than a generic “Ah.”

How dost thou, Guildenstern?

erainbowdLeave a comment

If I were Guildenstern, I’d be pretty pleased that my buddy. Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, asked how I was first. I’d be all, like, proud and ready to spill all my stories. I’d be preparing to tell him the story about my grandmother and the knitting club. I might even share some of my romantic troubles with him, cause you know, he cares, he asked me first. Right? I mean, Suck it Rosencrantz. I’m winning this one.

My excellent good friends.

erainbowdLeave a comment

So many of my dearest friends have moved away. I moved to this city because it had the highest concentration of excellent good friends. It was its chief recommendation. I had some great years with those excellent good friends, years when the friends became more excellent and the friendships more good.

They didn’t leave all at once. Almost every year there is another departure until only a few remain. They left, almost universally, with husbands – or men who would become their husbands. They left and got houses and children. This year, I’m due to lose another friend, with her wife and they will likely get a house and a child.

Unfortunately, all these excellent good friends get their houses in different places. If they would only concentrate in one city again, I might move again just to be surrounded, once more, with excellent good friends.

My most dear lord!

erainbowdLeave a comment

Rosencrantz would seem to trump Guildenstern in greetings, “Most dear” seeming much more affectionate than “honored.” Has anyone ever played these two as competitors? They seem always to be just bland indistinguishable friends of Hamlet.
What if they are pushing past each other in the manner of vaudevillians? What if they are not only stumbling over the duplicity of their task but also each other?

My honored lord!

erainbowdLeave a comment

I know I thought about honor already. I can’t remember now but I think I was wondering what it means to be honorable in this day and age.

My grandfather’s obituary calls him honorable and when I read it, a light bulb went off. “Ah ha!” I thought, “That is who is honorable.”
He was an honorable human and while I might not have thought to call him honorable while he lived, now he’s gone, there is almost no better word.

But is honored the same as honorable? If I were to win a bunch of awards, you could call me honored, but I’m not sure that would necessarily qualify me as honorable. Particularly if I cheated like hell to get those honors.

God save you, sir!

erainbowdLeave a comment

Good old God. He doesn’t save anyone in the end. Not from death. I guess the idea is that he’ll save your soul and take you to heaven. I guess that’s what God saving you is really about. But people are often saying God takes little children because he needs more angels in heaven. So by that logic, the people whose lives he saves til the very last, the ones who dodge bullet after bullet, who make it to the end of a century and get a foot into the next one, these must be the people that God doesn’t need for his angels. They must be the worst. Except I’ve met a few and they are definitely not the worst. But I guess this whole God thing really isn’t about logic. And this line isn’t really about God.

There he is.

erainbowdLeave a comment

With my crazy punctuation idea, one could continue this thought. Polonius could be pointing out the location of the Lord to Hamlet instead of pointing out Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
I mean – Hamlet doesn’t need to be pointed out to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, presumably they know how to recognize him.

Often, in performance, this line has a dismissive quality – like Polonius is done with Hamlet and he’s tossing this line off to shake Hamlet off – to foist him off on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern perhaps. Maybe he would have given them a formal introduction but instead just points Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the right direction and stalks off. I can’t think of any other way I’ve ever seen it done.
Some Shakespeare education colleagues told me about a production in which Polonius, as the Prime Minister, is so busy, he’s constantly being presented documents to sign and things to do, calls to take, etc. In that case, this line could act as a hurried passing introduction.

Or it could be a last attempt to connect with Hamlet. Probably not, though, but it would be worth an experiment.