Author: erainbowd

If he be now return’d As checking at his voyage, and that he means No more to undertake it, I will work him To an exploit, now ripe in my device Under the which he shall not choose but fall:

erainbowdLeave a comment

Claudius! Is this how you think? Are we seeing a Claudius thought being formed as you talk? Is that what’s happening here? I mean – this is one long meander-y sentence. I feel like Claudius must be one of those people who just starts talking and hopes he’s worked out what he’s going to say by the time he gets to the end of his thought.

It makes me think of a bit of advice that Anne Bogart gave in her book about directing. It was to just start talking – to say “I have an idea!” and start walking to the stage and just do whatever occurs to you as you go. I feel like Claudius is doing that here. His wind-up is the stuff about Hamlet’s return and then boom – he’s at an idea – a device. OR – he’s at the moment where he declares he has an idea but is probably not yet clear what it is.

To thine own peace.

erainbowdLeave a comment

I suppose this is all any of us can ask for. The world is full of chaos and discord. To find peace outside of ourselves may well be impossible. To focus on all of the disturbances out there – the wars, the political unrest, the catastrophic weather somewhere. There will always be something to disrupt the peace. But our own peace – that is more possible. It becomes less and less possible the closer any of those things comes to home. To find thine own peace in a war zone is a real feat of internal peace-making. To find mine own peace while my government implodes and causes chaos in the whole population – well, it’s not as easy as it once was. The things outside of us do impact our own peace – but I suppose that’s the work. That is what the job is – to find thine own peace even when it seems as though there is none to be had.

I just watched a video of Nelson Mandela coming out at a Johnny Clegg concert and when asked to say something, said, “It is music and dancing that makes me at peace with the world and at peace with myself.”

That’s a man who knew how to find his own peace when it was not easy.

Ay, my lord; So you will not o’errule me to a peace.

erainbowdLeave a comment

A peace is an interesting construct. In more quotidian speech, most of us might be more inclined to say “make peace” here. It wouldn’t take any more syllables and could be spoken with the same emphasis if necessary. But A peace is compelling in its one of many sense. There are many peaces that can be made in the world, of which this would be one and there is also The Peace, which is more broad ranging in some ways and also more local in that it is almost always used in the sense of keeping the peace or disturbing it. But Laertes is not interested in being led to a peace. That’s probably just one peace of many but the most significant one with Hamlet is his main concern.

Will you be ruled by me?

erainbowdLeave a comment

There are only a handful of places I like to be ruled.

1) in a clown show. Because the sterner the authority is, the more fun it becomes to subvert their authority
2) in games – because a good set of rules can be freeing
3) in an improvisation (see #1)

Otherwise, I much prefer to set the rules than be ruled. It’s why an actor’s life was not for me. Writer’s? Yes. I can write my own rules. Director’s? Yes. I can set the rules for the room. But actors just submit and submit and submit.

How otherwise?

erainbowdLeave a comment

I just published a blog about what it’s like to be a woman in public. I noted particularly that when I’m away from the city, I am usually an anomaly as a single woman. What’s hilarious, though, is on this first day back in the city, which I expected to be a refuge from that phenomenon, I am in a café that happens to have nothing but men in it. And one of them has seated himself in the table across the way, seemingly so he can stare at my cleavage. So. It is not always easy in the city, either. This is a Moroccan café and perhaps it attracts more men than usual because of its origins? I don’t know. But… the irony is thick due to my strong need to feel back in a safer environment.

As how should it be so?

erainbowdLeave a comment

Claudius starts to get real vague here. When a person starts getting vague in Shakespeare, it’s probably a signal that a murder is getting planned. I mean – sometimes it’s obvious – but sometimes when a character wants to get another character eighty sixed, he starts to get really cagey.

“As how should it be so?” is really pretty cagey. It requires following the logic from Laertes getting to tell Hamlet something to his teeth. But it does not automatically follow that that should lead to his death. Claudius is getting vague and crossing a line but not obviously.

If it be so, Laertes –

erainbowdLeave a comment

No one names their kid Laertes
Even though he’s a perfectly decent guy
Who gets manipulated by the king.

They’ll name their kid Horatio
Or Francisco or Bernardo
But I’ve never met a Laertes.

Come to think of it, though, I’ve never met a Hamlet, either. Even though
He’s one of the most human, complex, interesting characters to be found.
His ending is probably
Prohibitive for child-naming.

Maybe that’s why I’ve never met a Polonius either.

What’s curious, though, is that that prohibition
Does not seem to apply to women.
I have met Ophelias and there have been other famous Gertrudes:
Lavinia’s end in Titus has not prevented parents from using her name –
Nor Cordelia. Nor Emilia.
I guess as women we’re expected to have tragic ends.

It warms the very sickness in my heart, That I shall live and tell him to his teeth, ‘Thus didest thou.”

erainbowdLeave a comment

Heads up – I wrote this two years ago. This news is old. But the darkness in it remains the same. Luckily, I still have health care. And so do lots of other people, still. For now. The fight continues.
*

My actual sickness is in my head, where the climate is stormy and cloudy most of the time. And today I also have a sickness in my heart because I saw the news. And the news tells us that our governmental body has voted to kill all our health care. It is, by most accounts, a cruel piece of legislation which will likely result in 24 million people losing their healthcare. I may be among them. And the fact that people with immense privilege can play dominoes with our health care – well, it does not instill much confidence in our future. I feel despair thinking about the callousness that must exist in these folks to be so cavalier with all of our health.

One representative is reported to have said if you’ve lived a good life, you won’t need health care. He makes plain an underlying idea that somehow illness is a moral failing – that anyone who gets cancer, for example, deserves it for some reason.
No one deserves it. Although there would be a kind of beautiful irony if that guy got it.

But let him come;

erainbowdLeave a comment

Ever since I donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center, I have been subscribed to their publications. The Intelligence Report featured so many articles about hate groups – because one of the things they do is monitor them. One of the articles featured a guy who’d been undercover with the FBI in one of these groups and he said it was important to just let them spew forth in whatever corner they hung out in because it was when they felt their spewing forth was limited that they began to want to get guns and get violent. His advice was to let them go a little bit so that they would not let go a LOT.

The other thing I learned was about a march slated for a post-election KKK celebration. Apparently, they planned to march down the main street of some town, loud and proud of their hateful heritage. Counter protesters amassed great crowds to minimize the impact. But when the time came, two of the leaders ended up in prison after coming to blows among themselves and the march ended up as a quick drive down the street, in trucks with confederate flags on them. In the end, the counter protest was much bigger and the hate march was laughable. The article in the Intelligence Report called them Ku Klux Clowns. No disrespect to clowns – but the KKK, when given the space to clown themselves, did a rather good job of it. Free speech and the right to assemble gave them space to make fools of themselves. Maybe the thing to do is to let them come and then laugh at them.

I’m lost in it, my lord.

erainbowdLeave a comment

I have just come from my third eye doctor this year. (Ha. Third Eye Doctor sounds like someone who is looking after my third eye rather than the third doctor I’ve seen for my eyes.) The first doctor I saw back in July proclaimed my eyes the picture of health and put me in progressive lenses that made me want to puke. Five months later, I saw a more specialized eye doctor who marveled at the depths of my suppressions, who proclaimed my convergence insufficiency quite entrenched. And now this third eye doctor who tells me my convergence insufficiency is compensated and that given that I’ve gone all these many decades without a problem, I may not need to treat it at all, though if I were his wife, he’d have me do the vision therapy.
I’ve had people suggest that the headaches and migraines that have plagued me this year were eye related and some say yes, others say no. The most recent doc says if I don’t get headaches after reading it’s not eye related.
The world of the body is complex and confusing. What is muscular? What is chemical? My migraine medication is an anti-depressant and works like a magical charm. What is the cause? What is the effect? The eyes, when disturbed, make me want to throw up or give me a headache – but most of the time, they’re just doing their best. What is what?? And how to proceed?

And since I wrote this a couple of years ago, I have since seen a fourth and fifth eye doctor (though they were at the same center) and I have had Vision Therapy and had my eyes thoroughly re-educated. At my last check up they told me I was good to go.

My vision is a lot more coherent and it’s cool that I learned how to see double. I still get the migraines though. They’re a LOT better but they probably weren’t eye related. More like hormones and blood vessels. Still lost in it.