We don’t do nearly enough leave taking these days. I can’t think of a single instance in which I have ever said or had occasion to say, “I take my leave.”

And unfortunately, this lack of discussion of leave taking means this joke can fall a little flat on contemporary ears. If I can call it a joke – it’s more a witticism and a boldly rude thing to say, I guess. Anyway – it all leads to this little lemon drop at the end of this sentence and points to just the kind of mad Hamlet is hoping Polonius will think he is.

Why particularly does Hamlet want Polonius to think that he’s suicidal? What advantage does he gain? Or does he genuinely feel this way? Before he meets the ghost, he’s definitely got suicide on the brain, he wishes the everlasting had not fixed his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter and does not set the price of his life above a pin’s fee – but after the ghost, he’s a little giddy, more energetic, not so morose. One would think he becomes more intent on murder and less intent on self-slaughter and maybe this whole “except my life,” “grave,” and “to be or not be” stuff is a smoke-screen, to help throw the politicians off his trail, to seem as if nothing has changed when everything has changed.

I introduced most of the characters of the play to my class today. They didn’t have many questions. Many of the logical things are logical and the outrageous things are meant to be. But one student asked me, “Why is there a gravedigger in the play?”
I let him answer his own question but it is a good one and the presence of a gravedigger before you understand the story is provocative. What is a gravedigger for but to dig graves? And his presence, at the ready to do his job brings a certain ominousness to the proceedings.
Do we need him now?
Is it time for the gravedigger to appear?
It might be interesting to start a production with a gravedigger, make it clear what his position is, and have him idle at the side of the stage, or rather, at the ready, like a vulture waiting for someone to die so he has a grave to dig.
This seeming non-sequitur of Hamlet’s might be fun provocation of the gravedigger, who might get his shovel ready to dig and then realize it’s a joke. The mention of a grave is like that a bit, it stimulates the gravedigger in the audience’s mind. The words create the grave that Hamlet walk out of the air with and suddenly, in the audience’s imagination, there exists such a thing as Hamlet’s grave and a part of us is waiting for him to end up in it.

1. I learned from a Smothers Brothers song that crabs walk sideways (and lobsters walk straight) so I’m not sure what this backward walking crab is all about.
2. Do the old really want to grow backwards? As much as I get the occasional anxiety around getting older (“Ack! I’m almost 40! Am I having a baby or what? It might be too late. . .”) I also don’t much envy those that are younger. The anxiety of youth can’t be beat by the experience of age. At least I don’t think it can. Or can it? See, I’m not quite old enough yet. I still wonder, still question, am still so unsure. But would I be willing to grow backwards? Only if I could take all I learned with me because if I had to go backwards without it, I’d just have to make the same dumb mistakes all over again. Would Polonius want to be Hamlet’s age again? Hamlet’s reported to be, what, 33? Polonius is the parent of similarly aged children, making him at least 53. Would he take over 20 years off of his experience to scuttle backwards like a crab?

Some truths might be too painful to write or rather, they might be too painful to HAVE been written, that is, too painful to read. I was asked to write someone’s story for her, which I did – but reading it for her was hard and overwhelming and I fear may have reinforced the trauma or reignited it. Maybe she oughtn’t to have read it. Maybe it should have been for other people – the ones who need to know about it, the one who have done her wrong. But it didn’t seem right to publish her story without her permission, without her looking it over and sending it forth.
So now the story rests in in limbo doing no one any good.

Hamlet making fun of old men here doesn’t really help him in the like-able department. At least not to me, today. I mean, old men can be funny no doubt. I have found that the one (almost universal) type that every student is happy to dive right in and play is an old man. It’s a release of some kind, a very clear physicality and very different from a young person.
However, there is an old man in my life, approaching a century on the planet. His face is wrinkled (no beard but his hair is white) and his legs are much weaker than they used to be. His wit, too, has faded, along with his hearing. And it’s just not funny at all. It’s painful and all I can do is be amazed how he’s survived this long. The indignities of age are such that it just adds insult to injury to mock the aged.
The self-important? Okay. But not the people already losing everything.

She told me a story and asked me to share it. I wrote it down for her because that is what I do. She hasn’t been able to tell it herself and when his version of their story makes its way back to her, it is always a convenient bastardization of the truth. It is the version of the story in which what he did is not so bad and was maybe a little bit justified. These slanders.

And this story did not happen in a vacuum. In telling it, the question becomes whether or not to share the names of the parties involved. Despite the fact that this story is true, she is worried that we’d be accused of slander.

How funny is it that actual slanders run rampant and truth is muzzled for fear of slander? Not terribly funny, I guess.

There is something the matter between me and the boss. And between me and the supervisor. And between me and the business. And between me and my fate. And between me and that family member. And between me and that security guard. Maybe it’s me.

Words, written and written well – with purpose and such or words, spoken, artfully crafted and beautiful or words, sung, like a surprise or like a feeling.
I love those words.
I don’t love all the words though.
Out in life, most of the time, I wish people wouldn’t use quite so many, that they’d just shut up and stop talking so much. Sometimes I resent having to use words at all.
These words here, being famous words and such succinct ones makes it feel harder to find good ones to use in response to them. Or it. Because after all this is just one word repeated. But a famous word it is.

Did she ever tell her parents what happened that summer? Do they know how close to death she came, in battling that conception. A few years later, she was married, that much I know and maybe the passage of time released the intolerance of her parents. Maybe, once her child was born (I assume she conceived again) she could look back on that first awful conception and find her own parents more compassionate.

I wonder about those parents who judge their daughters so harshly that they feel they must go underground, risk it all to be free of the shame or the imperious morality. I wonder about the parents of those daughters who lost their lives to coat-hangers or unsterilized instruments or perilous circumstances. Do they wish their daughters had been less afraid of them? Wish they could have supported their children instead of sending them to the knife under the dark of night?

The moment when this started to be true for the women around me, I knew we had grown up. The first time a friend happily let me know she was pregnant, I discovered that I was primed for a different response than joy. For so many years, news of conception spelled trouble – big trouble – big time – NOT a blessing. But then, friend after friend began to feel blessed with conception instead of cursed and there we were, all grown up.

Still, though, no matter what the age, many a conception can go either way so one has to read the signals carefully. One woman’s blessing is another woman’s curse.