What a shame this contraction never really caught on! We’d have people walking along getting ideas saying I HAT! Which surely would yield to some variations like I COAT! (short for I coa(s)t) or I PANTS! (short for I pant after his pants.) But no, we let “I ha’t” go – to contract with us no longer, leaving jokes un-made, crazy contractions un-contracted.

What I would bet on, cunning-wise:
Understanding motivations underneath behaviors or words
seeing inside hidden things
talking with children as if they were people
putting my finger on the thing we’ve been talking around
making something complex, simpler
singing something shitty and patriarchal in a way that it turns it upside down
Making someone who feels bad about something, feel a little better (Exception: my partner, for whom I have rarely been able to do this)
Untangling a Rainbow Twirler

When I found out that my vision was inaccurate – in fact, has probably always been more or less – it shook the very foundation of my sense of self. The thought that my brain doesn’t allow me to see some things as they are was distressing. I always thought of myself as seeing things clearly, at least metaphorically, if not actually – so finding out that my vision has always been compromised made me uncomfortable. It didn’t help to realize that none of us are actually seeing things entirely accurately – that our vision is constructed in our brains by both what is before us and what we imagine.

I do eye exercises now. I practice with a mirror, seeing both before me and behind me at once. I practice seeing double in the background and I practice seeing double in the foreground. I practice bringing a lens toward me and away, transforming what I see from big to small, from blurry to clear. It takes practice to see accurately.

I think I’d really enjoy a Renaissance of using “soft” this way – as in “hang on a minute,” as in “Wait!” as in “Hold it.” Soft is – so much softer than all of those words and in these hard times, I’d very much appreciate a softening in moments of revelations.

Blast in proof calls into being a kind of glass photographic studio. It is a house built of glass, the walls are photographic plates and they are pulled into focus by the way the sun hits them – then printed in the setting of the sun. The house is full of images, proofs. Then – one day, some apprentice mixes the wrong chemicals together and a terrible explosion creates a blast that can be seen for miles.

*
And how interesting that Claudius calls the murder of his nephew a PROJECT. This establishing a centuries old tradition of hiding destructive activities in the language of creative ones. Claudius would make an excellent CEO in just the way he would make a terrible one – in just the way so many are terrible.

It is surprising to me that getting one’s drift is as old an idiom as this. There’s a way that “if you get my drift” can still sound very of the moment. According to Etymology on-line this sense of drift (i.e.: What ONE is getting at, alluding to, suggesting) is as old as the 1520s. Does it qualify as an idiom?
I mean, if it’s been this long, does drift just mean “meaning” or “intention” at a certain point, with centuries behind it?
It must come from the sense of things drifting towards or away on water or floating in the air…but now? Is it just it’s own definition?

One of the things I learned from my years in theatre education is how to shape the energy, mood and focus of a room full of people. There are stages when you want to excite them and stages when you want to calm them down and knowing when to employ these tactics was one of the most useful kinds of learning I got.
Bring them up. Bring them down. Open it out, Rein it back in. That sort of manipulation is kind of necessary for a group of disparate individuals to have a good experience. I don’t think I’d ever manipulate a person that way, though. It would not occur to me to do so.
But that appears to be exactly what Claudius seems to be doing to Laertes, throughout this pair of scenes. Claudius placates, quiets, calms Laertes – then stirs him up – then once he’s seen that he’s stirred him up, he calms him down again. He’s like “What are you going to do?” and Laertes is like “Kill him in Church!” and once they’ve got the whole hyped up plan in place, Claudius is like, “Let’s take a second to plan.” Up, down, in, out.

On Medium, they post a ballpark figure for how long it will take you to read a post. My posts on STFSA tend to be about four minute reads, four to six, really. But in the last few months, I’ve become immersed in writing about my generation, Generation X.

And just when I think I have exhausted my thoughts on the subject, something new emerges.
For example, after I posted my blog related to film depictions of masculinity in the 80s, my boyfriend pointed out that most of the movies about young people in the 80s, the movies about Gen X-ers, were made by Baby Boomers. This led to the question of who the Gen X filmmakers are and how they might be influencing the subsequent generations. We felt like we had an epiphany in thinking about the influence of Wes Anderson on the current crop of young folk.
All these ideas are underdeveloped as of yet – but they bear further thought. There’s always more to consider.

As I was looking up “unbated” on Etymology Online, I worked out for myself its roots. Of course…the opposite of unbated is bated. And bated is usually heard in relationship to breath, a withheld breath, a limited breath is bated. So a sword in fencing is usually bated – that is held back, blunted from its usual fullness to a limited version of itself. So this sword meant to kill Hamlet is unbated, un-leashed, unbound – the full expression of sword-ness.

Claudius suddenly gets real clear and direct once he starts planning. He’s all double talk and long clauses in longer sentences until a plan kicks in and then SPLAT. This is it. Crystal clear. As if he had it ready. But he can’t have had this plan ready, can he? He didn’t seem to know about Laertes’ return. Or Hamlet’s. He thought this was all over. And then Laertes turns up, ready to claim the throne and while Claudius is putting out THAT fire, Hamlet sends a letter that he’s back and ready for a reckoning.

All these years, I’ve thought of this as just a plan to get rid of Hamlet but it occurs to me now that this plan is ALSO a clever way to get rid of Laertes, who is also a threat. He can either get rid of Laertes by accusing him of murdering his nephew once the deed is done – or by getting him killed with an unbated sword in the duel. Maybe even slip Laertes the poisoned drink when he’s not paying attention.