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.
Author: erainbowd
As how should it be so?
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 –
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.”
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;
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.
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.
Can you advise me?
The problem with going into the arts – well, no – one of the problems, is that there are very few people who can advise you with useful thoughts. You can get advice from ANYONE – even from people who have NO IDEA how your field works. There are no shortage of bad ideas – or tired ideas – or ideas you already tried ten years ago. But someone who can ACTUALLY advise you, with ACTUALLY useful ideas, that’s a person to cherish.
And in a postscript here, he says ‘alone.’
Are there other postscripts Claudius is not reading?
P.S. alone
P.P.S. That means you by yourself, King man.
P.P.P.S. I know what you did.
P.P.P.P.S. Sometimes ghosts talk
P.P.P.P.P.S. Watch your back.
Naked!
It is funny how humans have such an intense relationship to nakedness. There are many cultures that don’t have naked hang-ups. But – no other animal covers its skin with something else. No other animal averts its eyes in front of another naked animal. No other animal body polices other animals saying who can reveal what when. I wonder what it would be like not to have any self-consciousness about naked bodies.
‘Tis Hamlet’s character.
Maybe it’s because I am a writer but I like the link between how someone uses the written word and their personality. That handwriting might express the person as much as the person expresses the writing. I think this is why handwriting analysis is so compelling – that we are our characters. It’s also probably wildly inaccurate. It’s probably pretty much a crapshoot to understand a person based on how they form words with a pen. That said, I have had clients that I understood everything about long before I met them due to how they filled out their forms. I looked at a form, the ink large and jagged, the pressure through the page enough to chisel stone and I knew I was in for a doozy of a client. And I was not wrong.
The Hamlet Project 