Certainly the better I know others, the better I know myself. When I see others clearly, I see myself in counterpoint or in affinity. I recognize that a trait that I hadn’t even noticed in myself is not universal, that it IS a trait. When I see others behaving in ways I can’t imagine, I can see some of the ways I diverge from them and could never imagine making their choices.
As a highly empathetic person I have often been unable to distinguish between myself and others. I used to not be sure which desires were mine and which belonged to others, so fused with them I felt myself to be.
But the more specific one gets about people, the more our beautiful diversity and divergence comes forward.
Hamlet
I dare not confess that, lest I should compare with Him in excellence.
And, of course, he does compare with him in excellence. They are, in fact, fairly evenly matched and Hamlet knows it. But it suits him to play the humble man. He stands to gain more from that.
Well, sir?
You’d think those years of teaching would have taught me how to do a really high quality school marm look and tone. And I can do the voice. I can do the look. But even so, I find it hard to call it forth when talking to grown-ass men who need to be called out. It might be a little easier to conjure than the wolf growl I’ve been working on.
Yet, in faith, if you did, It would not much approve me.
I feel as though, all my life, I was seeking approval from those who were unworthy of my regard. Being thought intelligent by the unintelligent would not have been any great feat – or even being thought intelligent by the intelligent but clueless or intelligent but misogynist. If I had been thought of at all by these dudes in power, it would have only been due to my physical attributes – my fuckability, perhaps. So – their approval would not have much approved me.
I would you did, sir.
That is the thing that is so infuriating, really. It’s like – my whole life I’ve been aware of sexism and I have never not been a feminist. But the level of the way things are stacked against women, still, still…well, it is astounding. What I realize when I really look at so many of the statistics laid out is that my abilities are, in fact, completely invisible to those in power and those in power are almost all men. None of them know I am not ignorant – even with pages of evidence before them, they would still be blind to anything I have to offer.
I would that they knew I was not ignorant, just the way Hamlet would that Osric knew he was not ignorant despite having said so. But alas.
Of him, sir.
I like the way dialogue doesn’t always operate logically in time. That is – here in Hamlet answering Osric’s question with Horatio’s line in between. The timing is such that the through-line could probably hold between them but reading these sentences the way I do, that is, once a day, it takes a moment to figure out the through-line. That is, this line does not answer the line that came right before it – rather it answers the sentence before.
What imparts the nomination of this gentleman?
FratFace Rapist Kavanagh was just confirmed as a supreme court justice. The fact that he was pushed through the judicial process without permission, consent or approval from the American people is one of the biggest parts of the problem. His nomination was thoughtless, as most things are from the Donny Twimp in charge. He is very like the man baby at the top. Overly entitled. Prone to sexual assault. Gifted at both self-aggrandizement and making himself a victim.
The nomination itself was bad enough. The confirmation feels like the beginning of an American dystopia.
*
Update:
It is clear when I wrote this.
And when I post it, these years later, we just danced in the streets because the Twimp has been voted out of office. We are stuck with Kavanagh however. And the new horror show who followed him.
Why do we wrap the gentleman In our more rawer breath?
In other words. Why are we talking about this guy? But also – why are we coating him with words? We the less refined, the more coarse, the less remarkable, the not as noble.
Clearly we can not all be as amazing as Laertes is given all the words spent in his honor.
The concernancy, sir?
It’s too bad this word didn’t stick. A note I read was like, “Oh, this is a word Shakespeare made up. Ha, ha. Hamlet’s fooling Osric with a made up word!”
But Shakespeare made up words all the time and not just when he wanted to make fun of a pompous talker. Some of them really caught on.
So I’m sorry this one didn’t. I mean – really – just straight up “concern” would get the job done. The “ancy” is extra. But it does add something. It feels like not just the concern – but the whole concern situation, the whole cluster of things around a concern. A concernancy. Also – it’s so easy to work out what it is – even though it’s not a word that any of us know.
And who else would trace Him, his umbrage, nothing more.
In elementary school, I remember some art project wherein we traced our shadows. Well – we couldn’t trace our own shadows – every move would change them – but we traced one another’s shadows. It’s kind of a beautiful project. You get an artistic representation of yourself that is also not your self – a self/not-self at several layers of remove.
The Hamlet Project 