Haven’t you left yet?
Haven’t you pulled your feet up out of the mud
Shaken them free of the sucking ground
And moved?
From the outside
It’s all so clear
That movement is all that is required.
But inside
It is more than the mud that keeps him standing there. There are pulls from everywhere.
From gravity
From desire
From history
From heaven
From the liver
From the wrist
Pulled in every direction
You cannot move to them all.
Author: erainbowd
Occasion smiles on a second leave.
There are endings and there are endings.
Some things feel over before they’re done
Some things end before they feel over.
We left last night. They locked the door behind us.
The woman with the dark lines painted on her eyelids
Cried to see it end.
I rejoiced a bit.
We leave.
In a few days
We will leave somewhere else
And this second leaving
Will leave us really left.
A double blessing is a double grace.
And this is also a double
Because blessing and grace
Can be synonyms.
One says grace or a blessing
Over a meal –
So this double is a double doubled.
I stay too long.
This has never been my fault.
At least not to my knowledge.
I’m much more likely to leave too early –
To pull up my stakes
Just in time
To shake the dirt off of my roots
And dance off into the sunset.
I once quit a job two weeks after I started
(for me, that was holding on, I wanted to leave as soon as I arrived)
and when I told my boss, he said, “Alright. Get onto your horse and ride.”
I was a cowboy hero
Making a grand exit and even the man in the black hat
Knew it.
But like a cowboy, I didn’t really have a home –
I was more at home moving and when I stopped
I had to figure out how to stay
But I have yet to stay
too long.
But here my father comes.
No, not this time.
He won’t make this show.
Or the one before –
Though he did come to New Jersey that time
To see that one
I was so unsure of.
There are shows
That I wish he could have seen
That one across the country
The one on that Tuesday
But this time, I don’t mind him not coming.
Perhaps it’s because I don’t mind
People not coming in general, this time around.
I used to measure friendships and love
According to who turned up to see my work.
It was a kind of emotional blackmail for ticket sales
Either turn up to see this thing I made
Or I will take you off the list of my heart.
I don’t do that anymore. I won’t. I can’t.
People who want to see
Will see.
Here will come the people who could make it this time.
Here will come the people who can.
O, fear me not.
Aren’t we always only ever giving advice to ourselves?
Sometimes, recklessly. I have given someone counsel
That crossed a line
Because I believed it so passionately for myself.
I wanted him to find a better way
Because I so desperately wanted a better way for myself
But he already had a voice
Whispering to him to find that better way
Mine only pushed him further into the shadows of fear and stasis.
If he were to have said so
To have pointed out that truth to me.
I might have deflected it simply.
If he’d offered up the truth
I might have flippantly said
He had nothing to fear from me.
But, good my brother, Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven Whiles like a puffed and reckless libertine Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads And recks not his own rede.
This is the most amount of backbone
We will ever see from Ophelia.
After listening patiently to an extremely righteous sermon,
She subtly but pointedly points out the possible hypocrisy
Embedded in it. Very probably, Laertes has his own intemperate affairs
And has not employed a watchman to his heart.
I wonder if he thinks she doesn’t know.
He dismisses this idea rather quickly and swiftly
Such as did not previously seem to be his style –
And then tries to make a hasty exit.
I think she’s on to something here
Laertes is certainly puffed (see this speech prior)
And reckless (see his impromptu attempt to seize the throne)
And his father thinks that he might be running around with prostitutes
And if he were, that might not be the worst thing, he thinks,
As he’s charged his spy to ascribe that fault to him.
Laertes probably thinks Hamlet’s a dog because he’s something of a dog himself
And surely his sister knows it and can call him on it.
It’s too bad no one can really reck his own rede in this play.
Poor dears, they all end up on that steep and thorny path and most of them fall down it.
I shall the effect of this good lesson keep As watchman of my heart.
The watchman of my heart
Is a portly fellow
With a big brass pocketwatch
That he consults while he rocks back and forth on his heels.
He has a jaunty hat and a round face under it.
Sometimes he’s a little over zealous in his work –
He’ll keep something or someone out if they don’t provide exactly the right paperwork
And sometimes he falls asleep at his post and misses the black-hearted villain with a sharp weapon walking by.
He sings jolly tunes
When no one’s nearby to hear him
And sometimes he’ll even do a jig
At the entrance.
Youth to itself rebels through none else near.
An aphorism that never took hold – tried, though it might.
Imagine, a mother in a house coat and curlers
Shaking her head at her moody teenage daughter
And bemoaning ruefully these words.
Ah, that old saying!
What is youth rebelling to itself?
Youth rejects its youth
And starts wearing cardigan sweaters
And combing its hair in the middle
While watching its soaps on the TV
Before taking its meds, and
Wishing its grandchildren would visit.
Best safety lies in fear.
Fear, like a straight jacket,
Will certainly keep you from actively hurting yourself
Or the people and world around you.
It can keep you from running
From dancing
From singing
From getting booed off the stage.
It can keep you from loving
And lord knows that’s a good way to be assured
An avoidance of devastating heartbreak.
Certainly, certainly, let fear keep you safe.
Arms tied to your body
Never reaching out
Never holding anything to your chest
Never letting rhythm or melody
Steal into your limbs
To wave them or shake them
Or beat them on drums.
It is very safe
To sit very still
Letting fear keep you from harm.
The Hamlet Project 