We watched the season finale of Doctor Who last night. There was a dark, foreboding looking planet, black crust with fiery currents beneath. It was a fictional planet, of course, but it put into relief the goodliness of our own planet. In the previous episode, the Earth shone brightly above the moon’s horizon, blue, green, inviting.

In the hubbub and difficulties of daily life it is hard to remember that our planet looks like that – that it is teeming with life, with greenery and water.

When life kicks me around, the earth is only cement and tornados and broken dreams. It’s hard to remember the oceans, the forests, the grasses, the flowers and all.

Depression? Anxiety? I can’t work out which. I read a list of symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder. The book said that three of them were enough to be diagnosed. I self-diagnosed right then and there, despite the fact that this was more a business book than psychology. Then I kept reading. An absence of flow (as defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) leads to this stuff. Just two days of No Flow activities, and the subjects began to exhibit signs of anxiety. They had to stop the study for fear of doing real damage. So – maybe it’s just a general lack of flow.

Have I lost ALL my mirth? I don’t know about all. A LOT. MOST. I hope not all, I just haven’t seen in it in a while. This cartoon about severe depression showed me the inside track of that experience. I feel bad, but luckily, gratefully, not that bad.
Lost mirth is a much more accurate way to describe a feeling than any other diagnosis. Even No Flow. Even. . .anything. It makes sense that this is one of the famous lines. It says something we needed an expression of, obviously.

If this means what I think it does, this line (so often cut) is both kind and cagey. He’s saying he’ll tell them why they were sent for so they don’t have to reveal any more, so that they can safely report back to the King and Queen without fear of being discovered to have revealed anything. It’s kind because he’s attempting to keep them safe. And cagey because it’s a way to get them to reveal more. I’m not sure which it is. Moult no feather is a pretty fun expression. I’m assuming it’s like ruffling feathers in meaning, that it implies no disruption of the feathers of the royal couple in any way.

Fact is, I usually can tell you why, though I rarely do. My armchair psychoanalysis is mostly unasked for and would likely be unwelcome in most cases. Whether or not I actually know why is another thing but I really think I do. I won’t say much but I’m watching and filing away all kinds of behaviors out there in the world. Sometimes it makes me anxious and uncomfortable, sometimes it’s reassuring – It helps explain why someone is an asshole rather than just having to respond to the asshole behavior.

The times I get really wound up are the times I cannot explain. Those two years I spent so lonely and miserable were partly so miserable because I could not explain why. I wanted an explanation of what it was for – some good in all the unhappiness, but I never found it and the absence of the why was the worst of all of it. I like for things to have reasons. But there isn’t a reason for everything, is there?

Some people need cold hard truths from their friends. They ask them to give it them straight, to not hold back, to cut deep if they have to.

I do not need Cold Hard Truths from my friends. Truths, sure, but more than cold truth, I need warm waves of love. I need assurances and validations. I need my friends to remind me of my greatness, to show me my better self when the world seems to working so hard to make me forget it.

In one of my student scenes today, once the actors finished their lines and/or had been killed off, they started fucking around. They threw their paper swords at each other, pretended to cut each other’s throats. It’s such a curious lack of awareness of the eyes on you. They seemed surprised we could see them. Sometimes we think that if we don’t want people to see us we are somehow invisible.

With my students, I think, there are many among them who are used to not being seen at all. They have an invisible status at home and so can sometimes be unclear that their voices and movements and choices have an impact on other people.

Hamlet’s choosing Rosalind’s way here. She tells us at the end of As You Like It that her way is to conjure us. And she begins with the women. For me, conjuring conjures up images of magicians and smoke and potions and spells and an unreasonable amount of handkerchiefs. It brings to mind pulling things out of thin air.

I guess conjuring isn’t that far from writing. You bring to mind something that wasn’t there, pull the image of a giraffe playing basketball, for example, right into the forefront of your consciousness. Or in this case, Hamlet conjures up the memories he and his friends have in common. He wants their camaraderie, their affection, their shared history all in the room with them. So if Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are going to betray him, they do it with their past and their consciences and their memories at hand.

How to ride a bike.
How to knit.
How to crochet.
How to change a tire.
How to do the Australian Crawl.
How to pick someone up off the floor.
How to paint with oils.
How to use Photoshop.
How to raise funds.
How to hold my own in the face of an extrovert’s strong energy.
How to dance salsa.
How to invest.
How to make enough money to invest.
How to tour the world.
How to do the Lindy.
How to do calligraphy.
How to have faith again.
How to dream again.
How to, once more, surge forward in the face of impossible odds.

Might this be an ironic “good”? Or the kind of good that you use when you want to hide what rat bastards you find the King and Queen to be? Or perhaps just a formal good ? The kind of linguistic extra word because it scans well. Like, is King Wenceslas actually good or does it just help the meter when you’re talking about him? Seems like good is the sort of word you add when you’re talking to a king trying to convince him to do something nice for you.

I wish I could call people on their stuff as well as Hamlet. I see a great deal more than I can ever say. I catch people lying. I see people hiding. I see exactly what they really meant. But I rarely say anything. I just note it and move on. On the occasions that I say something, when I catch someone out, they will often call me a mind-reader. But I don’t read minds. I read bodies. I see the confessions in the muscles and contortions of the face.