I missed my mother’s wedding.
I was not even a zygote then
But I did see my fathers wedding,
Some 12 years later.
They bought me a stiff blue dress made out of some polyester fabric that hung on me
Like wet paper. They straightened my hair and walked me down the aisle.
I think I had something to say like “I do”
Because ritually, I was agreeing to the ceremony, to the union.
Believe me, I “didn’t” but I understood what was expected of me.
For years the sound of Pachelbel’s Canon filled me with dread –
A march down the aisle toward darkness
Toward silencing myself
Toward defending against wild irrationality
Toward watching people I thought were strong cower in the face of barks and manipulations
Toward pretending pretending that everything was going to be alright
When I knew full well it wasn’t.
Even now, thinking about that walk, my jaw tightens up
Like a screw in a hinge, closing the gap
Attempting to hold back the flood of words
Waiting to stream out.
If you made a flip book of the wedding photos, the ones you’d find me in:
I wonder if you could see me getting smaller and smaller
Shrinking into myself
From the aisle, to the altar, to the dinner, to the dance floor, to the posed family photos
Smaller and smaller
Shorter and shorter
Pulling inward like a snail.
Author: erainbowd
I prithee do not mock me, fellow student.
I’m going to teach this line to all the kids I work with
Who inevitably endure more than their fair share of teasing.
I’m going to get them to memorize it and say it in multiple tones
With gravity and with fun.
They’ll try it with pomposity and irreverence.
Then, their assignment,
Their real homework,
Will be to say it, full out
When the painful words start flying.
I wish I’d had it on hand when I was ten
Sitting in the back of the bus
Getting called “Fatty Fatso”
While my friend was taunted with “granny granny glasses.” Or at that slumber party
When that straight haired girl called me a cow.
I’ve tried counseling children in tears
When someone has called them
“hairy arms” or “big head”
or whatever other uncreative slurs that children invent.
I try to explain how the taunts work
How it has nothing to do with
Hairy arms or a big head
But I know that no matter what I say that that child will likely be
Self-conscious about her forearms from that point on.
I don’t know what would happen if a ten year old
Suddenly quoted a Hamlet to a taunting bully
But I suspect it might shock an unsuspecting teaser.
If nothing else, he’d be likely to laugh and switch his taunting
to that crazy thing you just said
which won’t be your fault
it’ll be mine for teaching you such a funny phrase.
My lord, I came to see your father’s funeral.
It sounds like a show put this way. Like there’s an admission charge
And a box office to buy tickets for the ritual.
What if people did buy tickets for funerals?
What if they were spectacles for which you angled to get a comp
Or got a wealthy patron to make a donation so you could accompany him to the funeral?
Theatre is a ritual, too.
But it’s a very expensive one around here
And after I’ve paid my admission fee, it often feels like an empty one
Like the funeral of a man that no one liked but we still have to go.
We’ll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.
Who has written the paper about Hamlet and alcohol?
Whose dissertation looks at his attitude to drinking?
Here – he could be a frat boy
Welcoming a freshman to his party.
The next time we see him
He spends almost a page breaking down how bad it is
For the country to be seen as drunkards,
That Claudius’ drinking ritual breaks down international relations.
Bring on the drinks
No don’t.
Drinks for our friends
Abstinence for our enemies.
But what is your affair in Elsinore?
He has to ask this question three times to get an answer.
This makes me wonder if Horatio was sent for too
Or if Hamlet suspects he was sent for.
Have I wondered this already?
He’s already asked.
I’ve already wondered.
The third time he asks, though
He changes the focus. He asks “why did you leave?” twice
Before he finally asks what he really wants to know
Which is
“Why are you here?”
We do this.
We adjust our language, shift it and make it more direct
Til we finally learn what we need to say to get
What we want
Or need.
In a way, though, I wonder how much Hamlet really wants to know.
He interrupts himself the first time he asks and the third,
He keeps talking after he’s asked the question.
The effect, though, is one of easy camaraderie
The flush of greetings
Wherein everyone talks at once
Wherein there are so many things to say
We have to say them all at once.
I know you are no truant.
How we talk to ourselves sometimes
How we label ourselves
So falsely
And then a friend
One who sees us truly
Who sees us better than we see ourselves
Sometimes
Can deny our our own mislabeling
No, you are most decidedly NOT
An asshole
A jerk
An idiot
A fool
A lazy bones
A philanderer
A lay about
A louse
A jackass.
Malign yourself all you want but I know the truth.
I would not hear your enemy say so, Nor shall you do my ear that violence To make it truster of your own report Against yourself.
Despite my experience of things said to me
As violent,
It is striking to hear Hamlet
Speak of having violence done to his ear
With something so small as a polite misleading.
It is hyperbolic surely.
Surely much more serious violence has been done to Hamlet’s ears
Than to hear his friend called a “Truant.”
Surely much more is about to be done in this play.
But he is ready to prevent Horatio’s enemy
From calling him names.
What will he do to the man who murdered his father?
Are we primed to think of Hamlet as a great defender?
Next to me in the café
A boss is reading the riot act to his employees over cupcakes.
He’s not talking to me
But hearing him reprimand his employees
As if they were children
Does my ears violence too.
A truant disposition, good my lord.
Is this a joke?
Did Horatio just make a joke?
Did Hamlet not get it?
Or is it a sort of self-effacing comment
Meant to lower his status in the eyes of those around him?
We’ve all just met Horatio and we already know he’s the least truant-y man around.
Is it perhaps a very bad lie?
Is it an attempt at evasion?
Was Horatio sent for?
Hamlet never asks him and Horatio only volunteers
That he came to see the funeral.
A truant disposition – well, no one with an actual truant disposition would say so.
Those that wriggle out of their obligations and slip the hook
Of their responsibilities would never own up to their evasiveness.
A slippery fish, once caught, will slip free again
Very easily
Sliding from a hand to the floor, to the water
Again and never look you in the eye.
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?
Repetition
Repetition
Repetition with slight variation, rather.
The repetition makes things sound so naturalistic-
Like you and me chatting about the weather
And the variation makes it familiar and new all at once.
In the Feldenkrais training we talk a lot about
The brain’s attraction to variation. As we repeat the movement,
It is the slight variation, the novelty of the small change
That keeps us curious.
The brain
In its seeking for elegance and ease
In its search for the best, most efficient way,
mileposts with variation
A head turning,
Eyes looking up:
“But in faith” replacing “Horatio”
all helps us bookmark these bits of learning.
Good even, sir.
And a very good odd to you.
I’ve always preferred the odd numbers
Probably because I am a bit off myself
I think I seem odd
I’m very clearly a three, not a two or a four
A nine, not an eight
I knows eights, I like them, even love them
They’re good evens.
The Hamlet Project 