That’s the thing – you can’t expect a guarantee with repentance. You can’t be like – Before I repent, I need to know exactly what I’ll be getting out of this deal. You can’t make a contract and specify line times. You just need to give it a shot.
Try it.
Repent just to repent.
It can’t just be included on your goals for the week.

He wrote a piece of music for their wedding.
He thought through all the details for the processional, all the things they’d need and designed it to finish in such a way that it led perfectly into the ceremony. It was an artful, well-crafted, beautifully conceived piece of work.
And then the bride decided she wanted a pause in it – a pause – to give her a little something before her entrance.
And not a pause like a rest –
not like a breath –
like a full stop
like pressing the pause button on a recording-
it would have been awful
it would have sounded like a mistake
and was such a profound misunderstanding of the piece
as it was built
as if the piece were just audio wall paper
as if it were just atmosphere
as if it were a decoration you could just change the color of.

There was something about turning 40 that made me feel like my life was pretty much done. For reasons both cultural, gendered and personal, it felt like an ending. As a childless woman over 40, I figured I had a few years of invisibility to enjoy before the end.
Then I realized how long a life could be. Approaching my 20 year college reunion, I thought about how much had happened in 20 years, which made me realize how much MORE could happen in the next 20 years. And in the 20 years after that, I have lifetimes of life ahead of me.
I have a client who just celebrated his 80th birthday and yesterday, he told me that he’d fallen in love for the first time in his life.
This world is full of surprises –
you really don’t know what will be next –
especially when you think you do.

I’m curious about how this compulsion works.
So, the guilty sinner arrives at Saint Peter’s gate and instead of reading him his sins as is often represented in popular culture – Saint Peter goes, “So, anything you want to tell me?”
And the sinner shakes his head, trying still to hide his sins. And Saint Peter says, “Really?”
And then maybe, for fear of what might come next, or for fear of adding lying to the list, he might spill.
But there are likely some very intractable sinners – ones who’ve convinced themselves their evil deeds were all for the good or who’ve sublimated their ill works and forgotten them or who’ve been lying so long they simply cannot stop. . .
how does Saint Peter extract his evidence?
Does he bounce a tuning fork off their teeth that rings back truth?
Does he put one finger on the forehead that shakes forth all the ill deeds from the wind and sends them shooting from the mouths of sinners?
There are people in the world that are hard to lie to – maybe Saint Peter is an extreme version of that – where just his presence inspires confessions –
People confess to me all the time.
But I’m not hard to lie to, either.
No, saint Peter, I!

No cards
No feet
No Three Card Monte
No shell game
No exchanging of one item for another.
None of it up here.
None.

How do we know?
I mean, sure, it would be nice to imagine that the after life features justice and fairness – that the good will be rewarded and the evil punished – but what if it were just as corrupt?
Maybe they have a different currency – it’s, like, feathers or something. Angel Feathers. And the more angel feathers you have, the richer you are, and the richer you are, the more ability you have to bend things to your will.
I mean, if heaven is full of humans, it would stand to reason that it would be just as full of human behavior as the earth is.

But it’s God’s house, you might say – he wouldn’t let it be corrupted. Really?
And isn’t this earth under his eye as well? If he has the ability to keep corruption away from his children up there, why doesn’t he do it down here?
Is the idea that this earth is the Rumspringa for humans? The place where we can go crazy and do drugs and be corrupt or whatever and heaven or hell is the committed life. This is the practice life and that’s the real one?

The more things change
the more they stay the same.
What’s interesting about this particular take on corrupt organizations is that the person talking about it is highly corrupt. It’s like Bernie Madoff talking about the corrupted climate of world. I suppose, though, that the corrupt often find justification in the corruption. They create by saying, “Look – it’s everywhere. Everyone’s doing it. I’m not the problem – the corrupt currents are.”
As if people don’t make the culture
or organizations
as if action upon action doesn’t stack up to make
the water what it is.
It is remarkable, though, that these words are as true today as they were in Shakespeare’s time. Money can still buy you out of trouble can still manipulate the law.

UPDATE 2016:
I responded to this line, probably a year and a half ago. Wrote this down a year and a half ago. The world has changed rather a lot since then. My thoughts about this have not changed. But now the example is much more immediate. I would not use Bernie Madoff today. No, the best example is the man who cried and cried about corruption in politics while being the most corrupt politician imaginable. I mean… it’s laughable now. If it weren’t so horribly current.

Happens all the time, my man.
All. The. Time.
All of those bankers who got rich on the bubble that collapsed the world’s economies?
Are they on food stamps now? Nay.
There were a couple of cursory slaps on the wrist and some tiny fines – but essentially they said, “Oh, oops. We’re sorry.” Families lost their homes, people lost their jobs and the arts markets dried up like a salted fish in the sun. Doesn’t seem to be a problem for a lot of people to get a pardon and also get to keep the spoils of the crime.

There it is.
That might be enough to convict you in a court of law.
“I did the murder.”
It’s buried in there a little bit
but it is clear.
And not only do we have the confession, we also get the motive, or motives.
I’m interested in the distinction between his crown and his own ambition. How might those things be different than each other?
Are there things Claudius wants to accomplish as king? Does he have ambition to overhaul the Danish Health Care system, for example? Is he wanting to build some roads?
Get some buildings named after himself?
I might have thought that the crown would be the end result of ambition but perhaps there’s more.

Getting closer, Claudius.
Getting closer to confession.
But when you put your possible prayer in quotes, when it has a layer of impossibility in it, when you’re almost making fun of yourself for pretend asking for forgiveness for a murder…well, there’s not a whole lot of responsibility being taken.
If you’re theatrically asking for forgiveness but not actually asking, it doesn’t really count. It implies your guilt, sure, but it’s not the same as saying:
“I killed him. I’m sorry. I’d like to be absolved.”

I do wonder about the qualification of the murder.
This one’s foul but maybe he has some other ones, one’s that are, less foul –
ones he doesn’t need to be asking for forgiveness for.
I don’t really think he’s killed others
but he does have the personality for it.
And he has access to poison –
and several varieties, too.
Which raises a question for me.

Who is mixing these poisons for him?
Who puts the poison in Gertrude’s pearl, for example
and who gives him the goods for the regicide/fratricide?
Who is Claudius’ Apothecary?
[I want to write a story called Claudius’ apothecary –
and the whole of Hamlet is told from his point of view.]
Is Claudius his own apothecary?
Was that what he was up to while his brother was busy being the king?
I picture Claudius in a dark room of the castle, potions in glass bottles bubbling in the dark, a cloud of smoke still hangs in the air from a previous combination that went wrong. There is the occasional crunch of glass underfoot from the failed experiment. He has an ink-stained notebook where he keeps his unction recipes. He tests his work on the animals in the courtyard. Farmers eventually stop bringing their livestock in. He’s a dark scientist, awaiting his window.