Will he, nill he sounds a LOT like willy nilly and according to etymology on-line – willy nilly is a contraction of will, nill he. And what my brain wants to do is make will he, nill he mean the more modern sense of willy nilly. That is, for me, willy nilly doesn’t really mean with or without his will – it means a sort of here and there, an all-over-the-place, scattershot sense. But it is possible that all these years I have been using it wrong or misunderstanding.

But – phew – no – according to Merriam Webster its second definition is “in a haphazard or spontaneous manner” – which lines up with my thinking on it. The first definition, though, is this will he, nill he sense – the without his will sense.

On the Dear Sugars podcast, the hosts consulted Esther Perel about a letter they received. Because Perel has seen so many couples and counseled specifically on sex, she has a unique perspective on the relationship described in the letter.

The hosts were inclined to tell the letter writer to drop her sexless relationship – but Perel widened the dialogue. She pointed out that often in cases such as these when men weren’t sexually engaged with their partners that they tended to be really great men. They’re caring and generous. They make coffee for their partners. They empathize with their loved ones’ frustrations. They just seem to have a block about being sexually intimate with their romantic partners.
When Perel described these men, she said something like “These are good men.”
Here stands the man, good.

I like to think of water this way, as lying somewhere, lying between two banks, lying in a riverbed, lying down wherever it can find space.
There’s something rather peaceful in the notion of water just…resting anywhere it can.
It is especially nice to think about today as the 4th hurricane in a month barrels down upon Puerto Rico. That water is not lying anywhere today.
I like to think of water this way, as lying somewhere, lying between two banks, lying in a riverbed, lying down wherever it can find space.
There’s something rather peaceful in the notion of water just…resting anywhere it can.
It is especially nice to think about today as the 4th hurricane in a month barrels down upon Puerto Rico. That water is not lying anywhere today.

This is a phrase that I would very much like to bring back into common parlance. I particularly feel it would be useful for me and my fellow women. It would work like a Shakespearean “Reclaiming my time” – just, like, you’re interrupted and instead of having to say “Stop interrupting me!” You can just say, “Give me leave” and continue. Instead of the multitude of qualifiers many of us feel compelled to use before speaking, we could just say “Give me leave” and go. No more “If I could just raise a point” or “I don’t mean to refute you but – “ Just “Give me leave!”
Give me leave.
Give me leave.
Give me leave.
Not please give me leave.
Not. If it’s not too much trouble, give me leave.
Just. Give me leave. Give me leave.
I’m reclaiming my time.

I looked up “argal” in the dictionary – it says “therefore.”
Which, I knew…but my question wasn’t really what was meant here – it was “Is this a joke?”
Like – it feels to me that it’s possible that the gravedigger/clown means to say “ergo” and gets it wrong.

But there is this circularity in language and Shakespeare. We get words from Shakespeare so we define them by what the word is doing in Shakespeare’s text – meanwhile, the word may have been invented by Shakespeare, or was a common joke, or a slang version of something. And what once was a joke might become an actual word that serious literary people use as an alternative to “Ergo.”

Last night I saw Monica Bill Barnes’ show, One Night Only and I cried my face off and laughed, too. All day I have been grappling with my feelings and thoughts about it. I think I want to write something but I don’t know what. Usually, when I write something like this, it just sort of starts writing itself in my head and I really just have to catch hold and ride. Not this time, though. This time there is just a sort of empty space where I imagine words might go at some point.

Partly, this show hit me in the guts because it is partly to do with these branches of action – to act, to do, to perform.

As one who acts and does and performs in the artistic senses of those words, grappling with performance, acting, with doing onstage is a big grapple. From the moment I knew about actors, I wanted to be one. The desire feels almost as old as I am. I cannot remember a time before acting seemed enticing. I think I was four when acting and performing first made themselves clear to me. And while I did not yet know I wanted to BE an actor, I did know that performance was incredibly interesting to me, that pretending to be other people was liberating and thrilling and I was never happier than when making up a story to be acted, performed and done.

The show I saw (or imagined) addresses a bit of that lifelong desire. Or compulsion. And all that we sacrifice to fulfill it.

Dear Reader – I wrote it. It is here.

Hmm. Three branches, eh? Not three aspects or three elements?
No. Three branches. And it is, essentially, a branch that breaks and sends Ophelia into the water, if we are to believe Gertrude’s story. So nature weaves her way through the garden of this story – even unconsciously.

That is, if I drown myself with my wits, with self-knowledge, with myself, then it is an action.
But Ophelia would definitely qualify as someone who didn’t drown herself with her wits. So even if she meant to do it, she’d be in the clear on the suicide line.

I don’t think this pun is actually in play here – But I can’t help imagining the point as a sword, the point of a sword, just lying in wait somewhere for someone to reach down and grab it by accident for an unwitting hand to slice itself open on the blade.

I don’t know why my mind made this metaphor today. I suspect it has to do with a sharp thing revealing itself that I wasn’t expecting. I’d planned for a creative adventure and celebration on what is often a dark day but the darkness came and got me anyway, despite my best intentions, like a sharp sword, lying in a drawer.

Each time I put on a show, I am surprised anew at how much brain space it takes up, how much time even the smallest tasks can take. Even with a small thing – something improvised, for example or a reading with no rehearsal. I willfully forget how much such a thing will require…or maybe I don’t willfully forget. I do forget but maybe it’s like the way women forget the pain of labor so that they can have another child. The body might just facilitate the forgetting of such things. We just – pretend – or fool ourselves – into thinking that it will be a breeze, that we’ve reduced so much of the work around a thing that even though every other show we’ve ever put on demanded everything of us, this one will be different. And yet –