At the dinner, there was a small group of people praying in a circle. We did a whole group prayer at the start of the meal. These folks seem to have a relationship with God. They want him with them at all times. But given the capriciousness of most gods and especially the Judeo-Christian one…it wouldn’t seem as though one would WANT such a god with you…he might decide to punish you for reasons beyond your understanding. Maybe send a plague of frogs or whatever. It seems to me that one might do better when the Gods are NOT paying attention to you. A god who has the capacity to be so punishing is not someone I want paying attention to my very move. I’d prefer benign neglect.

Language is amazing. Have I said this before? I surely have. But – yes – garrison.
I hear garrison and I think of the name of a dorm where I went to college. I think of Garrison – which was surely named Garrison for some guy called Garrison, presumably some guy called Garrison who had a lot of money and gave it to the college. But that guy called Garrison had many relatives, also called Garrison, presumably…and the first one, the first Garrison was likely called Garrison due to his having something to do with a garrison or the act of garrisoning? Was the guard of a garrison called Garrison?
And here, this tiny worthless plot of land is garrisoned. It is defended before the Norwegians even show up.

And a year and a half after I wrote this post, I met a woman who asked me if I knew of a place called Garrison at my college. I said, absolutely. She said she knew Mr. Garrison when she was young and went to a ceremony to honor his name being put on a building at my college. Strange coincidental world.

We are a funny species. Fighting for things with no real value just because…
just for the statues, for the symbolism of the thing.
Animals fighting for worthless territory – Just the IDEA of territory.

I used to think I wanted to live and make theatre on a farm. I’m not sure why I thought I wanted to – I grew up in the country, I know how unromantic it can be. Yet somehow – with all the stories of Bread and Puppet Theatre or the letters from a theatre maker who worked on a small farm in France, I thought, “Oh! How picturesque! Theatre surrounded by goats and chickens!”
Then I went to visit that farm in France where they sometimes did Commedia dell’ Arte. It was dirty. So dirty. There were flies buzzing around the sticky face of the baby. The chickens came to peck at one’s feet when emerging from the car. It was hot and sticky and smelly. I didn’t even want to stay for tea, nevertheless forever. We hightailed it out of there so fast, we might have left skidmarks.
So, yeah, I wouldn’t pay 5 ducats to farm anywhere. I just ain’t a farmer.

This is one of those lines that gets pulled out every time some army goes to war over something no one understands. The Falkland Wars come to mind. And it is interesting that it is the captain that reveals this truth to Hamlet, not knowing of course, that he’s speaking to the Prince of Denmark. He speaks to him in the way of a friendly stranger at a bar, letting spill his secret thoughts about the silly job he has been tasked with.
It suggests that Hamlet does, indeed, have a way with people. It also suggests that people have been going to war for dumb reasons for centuries and of course those in the middle cannot be fooled.

And why is it that Fortinbras is the nephews? Is he such a force that his single nephew-hood becomes plural? Is plurality a kind of respect? Or is it a punctuation error? – As in the nephew’s to old Norway. As in the nephew is to old Norway. Or a printing error and there should be no s there at all?
Or – is it that Fortinbras is really two brothers and they are collectively, the Fortinbras Bros.
it would be funny if there were two of them. And they’d kind of have to be twins. And it would be cool because when they came in at the end of the play, it’d be like, only two guys can take the place of Hamlet.

And, of course, only some editions have “nephews” others have “nephew.” What I need are copies of the folio and both quartos to get to the bottom of this!

The day after the Brexit vote, I visited with several friends, all of whom were immigrants to London and all of whom felt devastated and nervous about the vote. I went and met one of them at the Polish Cultural Centre where she had a rehearsal and we chatted about many things, not just the vote. She did, though, share with me that everyone there was very anxious about what might happen to them. Much of the anti-immigration sentiment in recent years had been directed at Polish people so they could only begin to imagine what might be ahead. Especially considering their history. My friend had fled Poland after WW2. She escaped a place depleted by the Holocaust and found a home in London. She was nervous about the future.

Two days later, I read that the centre had been vandalized with horrible anti-Polish graffiti on the very doors I had only just gone through days before. And I read that someone had pushed hateful messages in both English and Polish through the doors of an elementary school. The trouble that that hateful person took to do it is the thing that disturbs me the most. He must have found a Polish translation of his hateful message and then he laminated the cards. They were laminated! Laminated hate. Against Poland. Or the idea of Poland. Or Polish people. Or the IDEA of Polish people. It is shocking in its mundanity. I cannot help but picture him in the printing shop, standing by the laminator, waiting for his message to emerge. Or, worse, maybe he works in a school. Somewhere with a laminator in the office and he used the school’s resources to print out his hateful message and then, what the heck! Laminate it. Perhaps while some small child stood by and watched and learned to hate.

I have a friend from Norway. Before I met her I had no particular interest in going there but since I adore her, I assume I must adore her native land. This logic does not hold however. I’m not sure I am the perfect representative of my native land, for example. And if one were to judge my native land by Donald Trump, for example, I’m sure no one would want to go there.
But I suppose meeting someone from a land you’ve never thought of is a good way to begin the investigation and then you find out for yourself if the person is representative.

I am going to be away for a rehearsal I was supposed to run and I found myself struggling with what to call the person I wanted to be in charge while I was gone. I searched and searched but in the end what felt most satisfactory was a military term. I went with Lieutenant. I felt like the lieu in it had a nice correlation with something being in lieu of something else. Also – the nice thing about military roles is that they are still imbued with authority. If someone is my lieutenant, they may be under me in authority but they still have quite palpable authority to those s/he’s leading.

What’s hilarious, though, about this preference for a military title, is how un-hierarchacal, un-regimented, un-authoritarian I actually want my processes to be. But maybe that’s why it’s funny. Because you never saw a less militaristic group ever.

Captain wouldn’t be as useful a word. Because without a military context, it could be the big big boss, the top banana. A lieutenant’s authority is both clearly subject to a higher authority and incredibly authoritative.