Is the suggestion here that Ophelia is like a dead dog and that maggots will breed in her when the sun hits her? Eep. Gross. Or is it that whatever’s in her is gross and will come to light in the sun? Or that Hamlet himself has planted some maggots in her and the sun’s going to multiply them?
None of it’s very nice. Particularly to the father of your girlfriend, man.
I have tools for these moments when I look at the prompt for the day and begin to balk. When the voice kicks in and starts shouting, “Why are we still doing this stupid project that no one cares about but YOU?! This line is impossible, they’re all impossible lately and when have you ever written anything interesting in this context. . .” and so on.
I have things I can do.
First I started drawing my spirals. (The voice says, “You always do these spirals now. You think this is going to help?!”) I did them with more discipline today, the lines closer to each other, the lines steadier. And I thought of Lynda Barry who I learned them from (indirectly, through my friend, Matilda.) I saw Lynda Barry’s course on-line this morning. It’s on Neuroscience but it features doodling and drawing and it looks amazing. I loved the pictures that her students colored as they listened to the scientist talking. I can feel the wax on the paper when I look at them, silly though they might be. When I get home, I might do some coloring. That’s one of the tools.
Hamlet is asking questions he knows the answers to. You gotta figure he’s up to something here. It’s an interesting game. Polonius proposed it, really, by asking Hamlet if he knew him. Hamlet pretends he knows him as someone he is not, then brings the game around to someone that he is i.e., the father of his love interest. Now, this is curious to me. Why is Hamlet interested in toying with Polonius on the subject of his daughter? It would seem that the strategy of particularly convincing Polonius that he’s mad would feed more sensible in to Polonius’ role in the Danish Court. If he’s going to taunt Polonius about anything, the dirty jokes about his daughter, while surely designed to make Polonius uncomfortable, don’t necessarily lead directly back to the King.
I suppose this is where a study of Elizabethan madness might come in handy because both Hamlet’s feigned madness and Ophelia’s actual madness (FOOTNOTE: I assume Ophelia’s madness is actual, I’d be interested in a version of Hamlet in which hers is feigned, too) feature the crossing of sexual boundaries. Is madness in this era not really madness unless it does that? I’ve seen many varieties of madness in real life – one or two featured some inappropriate sexuality but the bulk of them did not. And maybe its only Danish madness that has to be this way. Lear and Edgar’s (actual and feigned) madnesses don’t really go so blue. Is Lady M mad? Or just sleepwalking? Who else goes mad in Shakespeare? What are the symptoms?
I’m gonna need some help with this one. I get how the sun might breed maggots in a dead dog. I mean, there’s the dead dog and when the temperature suits them, the maggots get busy and start multiplying so despite the fact that it is not the sun’s literal breeding of the maggots, their reproduction is connected to its heat. Sense made.
However – who or what is the good kissing carrion? The body of the dead dog? And is it good for kissing of the maggots? The corpse is like the romantic hotel for maggots? Is that it? I guess part of the difficulty is that Hamlet does not complete this thought so it’s not clear whether the good kissing carrion applies to what’s come before or more closely to what might come after which ends up being Ophelia and maybe the idea is that he wants to tie a breeding ground for maggots with Polonius’ daughter. Which is really shitty if you think about it.
Anyway, all I know is, I don’t know anyone who’d be into kissing carrion. Although I suppose there’s always someone. Gross.
Mostly, I prefer the mythical, the magical, the mysterious but I have been dabbling in non-fiction on my other blog. It is a place where I have been striving to tell the truth as rigorously as I can. It is, of course, only my own truth. And for many years it was a little like a truth tornado in a box, spinning and spinning in on itself, with the occasional viewer from the outside. Then my truth went viral and suddenly there was a world of affirmation for my truth.
Then last night, I had the opportunity to do the same for a truth sharer whose tornado had just burst forth from her box and stirred up a great deal of dust. The circle of support is necessary. It is sometimes important to know you’re not alone in your truth.
The honest man isn’t too hard to pick out. He’s usually on his own these days and as he moves through a public space, those that know him tend to get out of his way. If a stranger should, unawares, ask him a quick, “How’s it going?” you can watch his slow edge in the other direction sometime after the third or fourth sentence of the honest man’s answer. This is usually made more awkward as the honest man notes out loud that the stranger is inching away and perhaps is not really interested in how it’s going for the honest man, upon which he might be questioned on his motivations for nodding in a friendly fashion and asking a question he did not care to hear the answer to.
The honest man met the honest woman once and they managed to struggle through a one night stand but the honest man had to ask how it was for her and she had to tell him and while they admired one another’s honesty they agreed that that was about all either of them had to offer the other and so they parted ways acknowledging that none would ever have interest or occasion in calling the other ever again.
I met a man who gets things done yesterday. He’s a man in search of good ideas and when he hears one, he starts setting the wheels in motion. Though we’d never met before, he treated me with utmost respect. Then after leaving him, I went on to the job I’ve had for almost 14 years, where I can feel the judgment and the push towards the door, where despite all that I’ve brought to the organization over the years, I do not feel seen or recognized, valued nor respected. Sometimes seeing these sorts of things next to one another can be revealing. And also heartbreaking.
But my focus and energy are turning towards those that say “Ay” that give me YES and AND.
I read David Foster Wallace’s article about John McCain’s 2000 election bid. It is 2013 as I write this (and 2014 as I post this) so a lot of time has passed, both since 2000 and since 2008 when McCain was the actual nominee, not just the contender. It was an extraordinary look INSIDE the political machine, how things got done, what gets done and how it changes the people that are part of it.
There was a thing about honesty – a thing in which McCain sold himself as The Candidate who would Tell you the Truth, and in the beginning , in taking aim at uncomfortable truths about his fellow politicians, he did, in fact, seem to be doing that. But DFW points out that as soon as it became clear that McCain could win, he suddenly had something to lose and what was “the truth” began to seem a lot muddier. So what began as the campaign of an outsider telling truth to power evolved (or devolved) into the campaign of selling the image of a man telling truth to power, while getting closer and closer to that power himself. The Straight Talk Express was the name of the bus and “Straight Talk” the cloak that that political speech got cloaked in.
Then I would you were so honest a man.
Are fishmongers a particularly honest breed?
I guess it’s hard to lie about the freshness of a fish, though you could lie about where you caught it.
Not I, my lord.
Does Hamlet actually know any fishmongers? I don’t imagine the Prince of Denmark has a lot of call for fishmonger interactions. He probably doesn’t go out for shopping for fish too often. Or ever. He may have never seen a fishmonger. Maybe they do look like Polonius in his imagination.
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