This response could just as easily be uncommitted small talk type question, a way to continue conversation with someone who has been monologue-ing for some time. It would seem to not be that – because in two lines Laertes will identify said Norman. But…in that case – why ask this question? We have two lines of rather unnecessary information. Laertes re-states something Claudius has already said and Claudius affirms it.
Has Laertes tuned out during Claudius’ fawning raptures on this bewitching horseman? Is this his way back in to this conversation?

This is like a line that a straight man in a comedy duo would use. I can almost hear it like a “How hot is it, Lou?” That heads to a “It’s so hot, the frog’s legs are frying themselves on the lilypads!” Or something.
This is probably an old vaudeville structure, I’d wager. And vaudeville likely came from earlier comedy tropes. But of course this scene isn’t a comedy duo. (Though I would very much enjoy a vaudeville style version of this scene.) It is, though, a masterful shift in status and power. The last time we saw him, Laertes came in all ready to overthrow the king and by this scene, he’s playing the straight man to Claudius’ epic riffs. Claudius has skills. He’s a villain, sure – but like a lot of villains, he is skillful.

REJECTED PLANS for murdering HAMLET with LAERTES as the ORGAN

1) Claudius offers Hamlet pipe organ lessons. Laertes hides in the hollowed body of the fake organ and as soon as Hamlet presses the F# key, releases the pointiest pipe and runs it through him.
2) Death by a giant dressed up penis. Claudius rents Laertes a giant cock costume (like the one Russell Howard’s fan comes out in in his special) and Hamlet laughs himself to death while Laertes chases him.
3) Claudius puts Hamlet on the organ donor list and when someone requests a kidney, after removing Hamlet’s kidney, he replaces it with Laertes who has shrunk himself down to kidney size and wrapped himself in an organ disguise. Once installed in Hamlet’s body, he breaks loose and causes havoc as the Wandering Kidney of Denmark.
4) Claudius brings Hamlet to a giant map of the (as yet undiscovered) United States and they tour the many states of the future. Claudius has hired many people to dress up as each state and then discuss their qualities. Laertes, as Oregon, waits in the West to drown him in micro-brewed beer.

If I were a notebook, I would not be ruled. I would have clean pages – sometimes called plain. I would thrill at the possibilities that might emerge across my canvas.
Words, yes, it could be words. Words in any orientation – large, small, slanting up or down. Sometimes a mix of all.
But there might also be drawings, or diagrams or maps. Those things might be possible on ruled pages but the ruling will always hang out in the background – projecting the words that are expected to fit in between the lines.
Laertes will be ruled.
I will be open pages.

A peace is an interesting construct. In more quotidian speech, most of us might be more inclined to say “make peace” here. It wouldn’t take any more syllables and could be spoken with the same emphasis if necessary. But A peace is compelling in its one of many sense. There are many peaces that can be made in the world, of which this would be one and there is also The Peace, which is more broad ranging in some ways and also more local in that it is almost always used in the sense of keeping the peace or disturbing it. But Laertes is not interested in being led to a peace. That’s probably just one peace of many but the most significant one with Hamlet is his main concern.

Heads up – I wrote this two years ago. This news is old. But the darkness in it remains the same. Luckily, I still have health care. And so do lots of other people, still. For now. The fight continues.
*

My actual sickness is in my head, where the climate is stormy and cloudy most of the time. And today I also have a sickness in my heart because I saw the news. And the news tells us that our governmental body has voted to kill all our health care. It is, by most accounts, a cruel piece of legislation which will likely result in 24 million people losing their healthcare. I may be among them. And the fact that people with immense privilege can play dominoes with our health care – well, it does not instill much confidence in our future. I feel despair thinking about the callousness that must exist in these folks to be so cavalier with all of our health.

One representative is reported to have said if you’ve lived a good life, you won’t need health care. He makes plain an underlying idea that somehow illness is a moral failing – that anyone who gets cancer, for example, deserves it for some reason.
No one deserves it. Although there would be a kind of beautiful irony if that guy got it.

Ever since I donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center, I have been subscribed to their publications. The Intelligence Report featured so many articles about hate groups – because one of the things they do is monitor them. One of the articles featured a guy who’d been undercover with the FBI in one of these groups and he said it was important to just let them spew forth in whatever corner they hung out in because it was when they felt their spewing forth was limited that they began to want to get guns and get violent. His advice was to let them go a little bit so that they would not let go a LOT.

The other thing I learned was about a march slated for a post-election KKK celebration. Apparently, they planned to march down the main street of some town, loud and proud of their hateful heritage. Counter protesters amassed great crowds to minimize the impact. But when the time came, two of the leaders ended up in prison after coming to blows among themselves and the march ended up as a quick drive down the street, in trucks with confederate flags on them. In the end, the counter protest was much bigger and the hate march was laughable. The article in the Intelligence Report called them Ku Klux Clowns. No disrespect to clowns – but the KKK, when given the space to clown themselves, did a rather good job of it. Free speech and the right to assemble gave them space to make fools of themselves. Maybe the thing to do is to let them come and then laugh at them.

I have just come from my third eye doctor this year. (Ha. Third Eye Doctor sounds like someone who is looking after my third eye rather than the third doctor I’ve seen for my eyes.) The first doctor I saw back in July proclaimed my eyes the picture of health and put me in progressive lenses that made me want to puke. Five months later, I saw a more specialized eye doctor who marveled at the depths of my suppressions, who proclaimed my convergence insufficiency quite entrenched. And now this third eye doctor who tells me my convergence insufficiency is compensated and that given that I’ve gone all these many decades without a problem, I may not need to treat it at all, though if I were his wife, he’d have me do the vision therapy.
I’ve had people suggest that the headaches and migraines that have plagued me this year were eye related and some say yes, others say no. The most recent doc says if I don’t get headaches after reading it’s not eye related.
The world of the body is complex and confusing. What is muscular? What is chemical? My migraine medication is an anti-depressant and works like a magical charm. What is the cause? What is the effect? The eyes, when disturbed, make me want to throw up or give me a headache – but most of the time, they’re just doing their best. What is what?? And how to proceed?

And since I wrote this a couple of years ago, I have since seen a fourth and fifth eye doctor (though they were at the same center) and I have had Vision Therapy and had my eyes thoroughly re-educated. At my last check up they told me I was good to go.

My vision is a lot more coherent and it’s cool that I learned how to see double. I still get the migraines though. They’re a LOT better but they probably weren’t eye related. More like hormones and blood vessels. Still lost in it.

It is a little bit sad to me that I couldn’t identify the handwriting of my friends I’ve made since the information age began. The ones I knew before I know from their letters, their postcards, their notes.
Each person’s text messages look like every other person’s text messages. Each person’s emails look like every other person’s emails.
But the handwriting of the people I knew before, it’s written indelibly in my memory. If you were to put before me the handwriting of a handful of old friends, I could match them easily.
With new friends, I’d be guessing.

It will, too. But like those arrows Claudius just described, they’re going to turn right around and get you. Revenge is like that. One revenge leads to another.
And it often backfires in the process, bringing the revenge onto the person who attempted it. Revenge IS good for dramas in that it is an endless cycle of dramatic events. But for life? It’ll get you before it gets your target, most likely.