This question dominated my youth.
I walked around wondering at everyone.
Curious about what made each who who.
And when there was no else around
I wondered in the mirror
Trying to work out who was reflected there.
Sometimes I managed both at once – looking at the who
In front of me and using the reflection as a mirror
To look at the who within.
I wonder what my question is now.
Sometimes it feels like it’s
What? What? What?
In all senses of Whatness.
Hamlet
Saw?
Report back
Explain the unexplainable
Try to capture a feeling in a word
A smell in description
The magicks of moments.
Worth the attempt, surely.
But will always be a wisp
A taste
A glimmer only
A glimpse.
But glimpses can tantalize
Scents can evoke.
The tiniest feeling of something
Might create its own transformation.
Take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.
I remember the moment I realized that “flaws” were precious.
His arm was across my lap,
From the wrist to inner elbow, a scar, the flesh uneven.
I ran my finger over it, wondering –
Wondering, not what had happened but wondering at the wonder
Of a bump in the body being so beautiful.
Were my own imperfections beautiful somehow?
In my mind, I was full of angry scars
Nothing but mistakes.
But in loving his scar
I saw how I could love my own,
Imperfections mingling with the rest, making the totality of a person.
In my mind’s eye, Horatio.
Inside the skull,
Somewhere between layers of cartilage and lobes,
There is an eye.
It doesn’t see the way the other eyes see. It doesn’t take in an image, then turn it around
So that we might make sense of it.
Our outward eyes are easily fooled. There’s a blind spot or two and with the right glasses,
The world can be turned completely upside down.
In the scientific experiments with these glasses,
People saw the snow fall up
The grass growing overhead and everyone walking
On the ceiling
But as soon as they could touch the world
As soon as they could feel the snow falling on their palms
The world righted itself again – almost in an instant.
The mind’s eye, though, disconnected from the palm
Could watch the snow fall up for days if it wanted but then too
It could create dragons and pits of cotton candy and buildings made of cheese.
It may never turn the world right way up but it can see beyond seeing.
My father – methinks I see my father.
He’s sitting in that old yellow chair
Watching his child run wild
Across the carpet.
He is so comfortable there and bemused
To see so much chaos outside of himself.
I bring him, whole cloth to the wedding,
Watching events transpire that might
Bring up a weaker man’s stomach
The chaos and the shame
Spiral out in front of him
But I want him to rise and take up that sledded pole-ax
With which he smote upon the ice
And I want him to start swinging it.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio.
Wouldn’t a Christian wish to see his enemy in heaven anyway?
Like, with forgiveness and all that stuff?
But I suppose it’s like having a nemesis follow you somewhere
Maybe become more successful
Like, if you’re swimmers and you meet at the Olympics
Except he wins the gold and you get the bronze and of all the people to encounter
in the pool, it had to be him. Damn it! He’s everywhere! And you hope, at least in death, you will be free of him
But then, there is he, already at the pearly gates
Wearing a designer halo
Handing out the wings.
The funeral baked meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
And weren’t the guests gossiping!
“Did you see that slivered boar sandwich?
So clearly the same boar we ate at her husband’s funeral.
Can you imagine?
Are those the same shoes?
The ones with which she followed her husband’s corpse?
Did she just dye those things to match her wedding dress?
How gauche! How uncouth!”
”I don’t know – – – why waste a good boar?
He’s already been roasted and everything
Throw it on there with the rice
Who doesn’t love sliced wild boar?
I could eat it for days.”
Thrift, thrift, Horatio.
It’s an odd line of fame.
Maybe it’s due to its brevity and the sly
Accusation within it.
Thrift, on most occasions being an asset
But here, seems to imply an insensitive penny pinching
Or perhaps an alternate reality
Wherein the reasoning behind an oe’erhasty marriage
Has only to do with saving resources.
Perhaps it did
Perhaps there is no joke
No accusation
No parallel existence
Just a remarkable ability to take advantage of
Leftover meat.
I think it was to see my mother’s wedding.
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.
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.
The Hamlet Project 