I remember when I first got into the band XTC. I was tickled that the band’s name was pronounced a little like ecstasy. I mean it was definitely X T C – but I felt it was very clever that XTC sounded like ecstasy. (Also, I loved the band. Still do.) This was before ecstasy was a popular drug. In those days – ecstasy was just an experience you could have – a good one – maybe while listening to music or dancing with our friends.
Then those things turned into the drug. You took ecstasy instead of feeling it.
And now if you’re having an ecstatic moment, someone might describe it as “being on ecstasy” the references reverse – the drug was named after the experience and now the experience is often referenced by the drug.
I’ve never taken the drug myself – though certainly have been touched (literally, of course) by a lot of people on it. Maybe if I had felt the ecstasy of Ecstasy, I wouldn’t resent the drug for co-opting a very nice and useful word. One that used to be a part of some clever word play.

And now it’s time for questions about Danish architecture – or rather questions about English architecture with a Danish lens. I think of a portal as being:
First: a submarine or cruise ship sort of window
Second: an inter-dimensional space/time travel door

But this portal is obviously neither of those. Unless it’s sort of the 2nd.
I assume it’s a window – or a gap in a wall – but it’s a very specific word to use –
Not one of Shakespeare’s regularly used window/door references.
It’s not even a casement.
There is only one other use of portal in all of the plays – so I feel like it’s a little bit unique. It’s not just a regular door. I think it MAY be that Shakespeare’s suggesting that the Ghost has made a rather metaphysical exit here. (The portal In Venus and Adonis has a similar flavor.) It could be that he’s floating out a window or a special Danish castle door or somewhere that’s just a bit more specialized than just a bit more specialized than just turning a handle and walking out.

How do the ghost authorities decide what clothes the ghost will do his haunting in? In this case, he gets his war outfit, including armor and helmet. One assumes this is not the ensemble in which he died. (Unless Hamlet Sr. liked to take refreshing naps in his orchard fully armed and armored up.) It’s probably not even the clothes they buried him in. For a king, one might be more likely to go with a crown and royal mantle.
But these ghostly authorities, like the Queer Eye for the Dead Guy, said – “For this one, I think, metal! Let’s go with a war theme, everyone. I mean, you looked good in everything, King Hamlet, don’t get us wrong. We could have chosen your nightshirt and you’d have looked majesterial and fabulous – but I think your best look was always the warrior one. Don’t you guys think so? And wear that beaver up. It shows off your eyes.”

The ghost is all he, him, his – a person, Hamlet’s father in all his fatherly power and terror. And then suddenly – he is an it stealing away. I’m very curious about this transition from subject to object – from personhood to an “it” and an “it” that steals away, no less.
I assume that when Hamlet calls the Ghost “it” he is thinking of it as “ghost,” as the thing he is and when he calls him “he” or “my father,” he is thinking of him that way. Perhaps it functions as a kind of reminder to himself that the ghost is the ghost of his father and not his actual father. Maybe. I’m just curious about it.
From he to it. That’s our journey, huh?

There’s something about teaching Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement that has me thinking a lot about how we direct people’s attention. When we tell them what to look for, the mind becomes slightly less open than when we tell them where to look.
Here, for example, Hamlet is directing his mother to look in a particular location. He’s leaving it open. He’s allowing for her to see whatever she might actually be seeing. He doesn’t start with what or who. He starts with where.

I try to do the same in teaching. I try not to tell people what to look for at first – because if they DON’T see it, they can get into a space wherein they get anxious that they’re doing it wrong. It’s a looking there first. Look you there at your heels! Then more information. See if you can sense them moving. If you can’t – no big deal. Just look around down there.

Hamlet does the same. He starts with the open question and then goes to the specifics after.

I was listening to a podcast about early childhood education and part of it discussed what happens when babies get cochlear implants. They hear for the first time but not right away. For a little while, it’s just noise. It takes a while for them to sort out one noise from another. Because we don’t hear with the ear, with the technology – we hear with the brain. So the nothing that babies hear at the beginning means that their brains don’t know how to listen at first. They don’t know how to go from nothing to a whole lot of something.

We were watching a TV show in which the characters can leap into one another’s worlds at will – but they are invisible to everyone else. When two of these characters who’d been flirting with one another for some time finally hooked up and made out, it was almost inevitable that someone was going to turn up at one location or the other and see the person making out with the air. It’s a joke too impossible to resist. We predicted the wrong location and the wrong observer but we knew that there would be an interruption of some kind. No one asked this question – the invisibility of companions had already been well established but – the seeing nothing was a funny something.

I imagine a war in which, instead of trying to shed each other’s blood, warriors just tried to make one another cry. They’d suit up with tissues and arm themselves with onions and sad movies. They’d head out into the field and instead of slicing each other open with blades and bullets, they slice open their emotions with stories like Old Yeller. On the field, they leave behind watery trails of tears.

Then, a special kind of battlefield plant evolves, that thrives on the saltwater of tears. All over the world, you could recognize where battles were fought due to the fields of these special tear flowers.

Children pick them to decorate the graves of all the men who died of old age.

Is Hamlet’s father’s ghost looking at his son with love? Is that what his piteous action is? Is it compassion? Is it regret?
Whatever it is, it touches Hamlet in such a way that he fears he’ll lose his edge.
But why does he need his edge right now? He’s with his mother and the ghost of his father. Can he not let himself soften a bit with the two people who made him? Apparently not.
And it is, sometimes, funny how children steel themselves to be with their parents. There is a stiffening of the body, a contracting of the muscles, a holding tightly to one’s self that can happen – especially with adult children. Whatever self we form, whatever patterns we have, they kick into overdrive with the family of origin.

I write this on the week of Thanksgiving and I expect my Feldenkrais clients to increase significantly due to the all the ways they go home and deal with family.
I’ll see stiff necks and aching shoulders. I’ll see immobile pelvises and aching ankles. I wonder if we all have a little Hamlet in us that doesn’t want our parents to convert our “stern effects” – that is, we don’t want to be shaken from the selves we’ve tried so hard to cultivate since we left home.

It’s too bad that that’s not how this ghost chooses to spend his time. Like, if he were just out talking to stones – just being like, “Hey, stones – I’m a ghost. And I’m back from hell to tell you, this shit is real. Get to moving, fellas. It’s time for a stone dance. Let’s go.”
And instead of crying out for revenge and ruining, not only his son’s life, but his wife’s as well – not to mention destroying his entire kingdom – well, instead of doing all that, he could just make a bunch of stones VERY religious. And okay – even if he still wanted revenge on his brother for his murder, maybe he could just get those stones to take care of it. They rise up, become capable, and then off they go to bash Claudius’ head in. No other deaths required. Done. Clean. Efficient.