Author: erainbowd

O, where?

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While I feel pretty sure that this wouldn’t be the first question I would ask upon learning that a loved one had drowned, I do recognize that many unlikely questions or thoughts arise in a moment like this.

I mean – let’s say I heard my beloved was in a fatal car accident. The street it happened on wouldn’t be nearly so important as what happened – and how it happened. But I suppose the question of where does help us place on unfathomable event. It helps us imagine the unimaginable. If I cannot imagine my loved one dead, at least I might be able to imagine the place. If I cannot believe it, at least the place will ground the sense of it SOMEWHERE.

Drown’d!

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In a writing workshop I took a while back, we were tasked with writing a first person account of our own death. At least, I think that’s what the assignment was. Or maybe it was just meant to be a fear? Anyway I wrote mine as if I were drowning – and the memory of writing it is almost as visceral as the times where I thought I might drown. I don’t know why drowning is so potent for me. A past life death perhaps?

The fear of it was once so strong, I didn’t really learn to swim for fear of taking my feet off the bottom for more than a moment or two. Which I know isn’t logical. One would think a fear of drowning would make me want to know how to avoid it. But pretty much the extent of my anti-drowning skills were several variations of the Dead Man’s float.

Your sister’s drown’d, Laertes.

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The Queen just cuts right to the chase. She’s not stalling. She doesn’t start with “This is hard to say.” And some other gearing up phraseology. No, she just comes right out and tells Laertes the terrible facts.

If she weren’t the Queen of Denmark, she’d make a pretty good cop or a doctor.

I’d like this sort of person to be the one to tell me bad news.

One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, So fast they follow.

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This is one of my favorite lines. It manages to express the feeling of troubles stacking up relentlessly as they do tend to do, while simultaneously personifying that trouble in an almost whimsical way. I see the woes as bedraggled soldiers walking along a dusty road and they keep giving each other flat tires by stepping on each other’s heels. And the one who has been trod upon looks back at the trodder and gives him a steady glare and a fist shake, as well as a few choice swear words. The trodder apologizes, tries to ingratiate himself to the one he’s stepped upon and is very shortly trod upon himself by the man behind him.

How now, sweet queen!

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There are things I used to long for a man to say and/or do to me. Principally, I remember really wishing some romantic partner would take my face in his hands, look deep into my eyes and then kiss me.

I no longer find this taking a woman’s face in a man’s hands particularly romantic. Now it strikes me as a bit possessive and patronizing – which is definitely the thing we are taught to find attractive in male partners.

I’m not sure if I’d like to be called a sweet queen anymore. I just don’t know. I suppose it would depend on the context. This context is not it.

When in your motion you are hot and dry – As make your bouts more violent to that end – And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepared him A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping, If he by chance escape your venom’d stuck, Our purpose may hold there.

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Now Claudius is telling Laertes how to fight?

Like, basically, he wants him to wear Hamlet out so that he’ll get thirsty and then drink from this chalice.

I mean, it is the literal definition of overkill.

Laertes has a perfectly logical plan to cut Hamlet with a poison blade and Claudius is like – Yes, And – make him so hot and tired he’ll also drink some poison!

In a way, it’s a little insulting of Laertes’ plan.

If in fact we can think of one’s murder plans as something one can be proud of and therefore insulted about.

If Claudius wants to kill Hamlet himself why not just do it? Why’s he got to insult Laertes and implicate him as well?

I guess the Chalice is his insurance policy – both against Hamlet and Laertes chickening out. But it is a 2nd murdering – when he would, theoretically, be murdered already.

I ha’t.

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What a shame this contraction never really caught on! We’d have people walking along getting ideas saying I HAT! Which surely would yield to some variations like I COAT! (short for I coa(s)t) or I PANTS! (short for I pant after his pants.) But no, we let “I ha’t” go – to contract with us no longer, leaving jokes un-made, crazy contractions un-contracted.

We’ll make a solemn wager on your cunnings:

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What I would bet on, cunning-wise:
Understanding motivations underneath behaviors or words
seeing inside hidden things
talking with children as if they were people
putting my finger on the thing we’ve been talking around
making something complex, simpler
singing something shitty and patriarchal in a way that it turns it upside down
Making someone who feels bad about something, feel a little better (Exception: my partner, for whom I have rarely been able to do this)
Untangling a Rainbow Twirler

Let me see:

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When I found out that my vision was inaccurate – in fact, has probably always been more or less – it shook the very foundation of my sense of self. The thought that my brain doesn’t allow me to see some things as they are was distressing. I always thought of myself as seeing things clearly, at least metaphorically, if not actually – so finding out that my vision has always been compromised made me uncomfortable. It didn’t help to realize that none of us are actually seeing things entirely accurately – that our vision is constructed in our brains by both what is before us and what we imagine.

I do eye exercises now. I practice with a mirror, seeing both before me and behind me at once. I practice seeing double in the background and I practice seeing double in the foreground. I practice bringing a lens toward me and away, transforming what I see from big to small, from blurry to clear. It takes practice to see accurately.

Soft!

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I think I’d really enjoy a Renaissance of using “soft” this way – as in “hang on a minute,” as in “Wait!” as in “Hold it.” Soft is – so much softer than all of those words and in these hard times, I’d very much appreciate a softening in moments of revelations.