Others have houses and cars. They have children and rooms to put their children in. They have basements full of things they don’t really use but aspire to one day. They have vacations and trips to the country for the weekend.

All of which seems wondrous – and yet I recognize that all of those things could be mine, as well, should I choose them. I choose something else – something to the side – something that I didn’t realize was to the side when I chose it – but I recognize it now. I choose art and a kind of wild integrity to who I am. I choose a continual realignment with my values. I choose only that which leads to further integrity and better art. It’s probably crazy. And probably that is nothing. But I choose it with another artist who has made similar choices in life and so here we are with nothing but ourselves. But ourselves are not insignificant.

In the transcript of one of his eye lessons, Dr. Feldenkrais talks about the ways we habitually limit our vision. We tend to only look at things from angles that are familiar, so we are always getting a partial view. We improve our vision by expanding the possibilities of movement of the eyes. We learn to see more, to see the middle, to see where we typically skip over, see what’s been hiding in our blind spots.
We see more and more and more.
Expanding our potential with each layer of seeing.
To see it all, truly, instead of just thinking I see it all, would be powerful.

I had a world of things I meant to accomplish. There were emails to write, social media to manage, grants and jobs to apply for, postcards to make, decisions to settle on. You know what I actually accomplished?

Some people have an ideal reader. You can feel who they’re talking to. I read a novel recently that was definitively written to the author’s mother.
I’m not sure who these Hamlet writings I do here are for.
The audience changes every day.
Some days it feels like I’m writing to a friend.
Some days I’m arguing with a scholar.
Some days I’m talking to my family.
Some days – most days – it’s some unknown listener – some particular friend to whom I could explain it all at once.

This is good question to ask of someone who is seeing things you cannot see. It makes me think of a story my zen friend told me about a girl who believed she was covered in snakes. She was convinced that snakes were writhing all over her despite the fact that no one else could see them. They called doctors, who tried to show her that there were no snakes there. They tried any manner of healers who all tried to show her that there were no snakes, that she had nothing to be afraid of. Finally, someone came in – probably a zen monk, given the source of this story – and he says, “Tell me about the snakes. Help me see them. Describe them to me Let’s get to know those snakes.”
And of course, they disappeared.

It sounds like patience is a bit like rain. When sprinkled on fire, it has the potential to quench flame.

It would be great if we all had our own little patient rain cloud we could call upon when times were tough. You could feel your heat index rising, your face flushing, rage building in your belly – but rather than set fire to the tinderbox of fury, you call in the cool patient rain and the cloud comes to hang over your head, raining down on you just when you need it most.
I would very much enjoy having my own personal rain cloud. If it rained water in addition to patience, I would use it on hot days when there feels to be no relief in sight – and when I’d come in wet, people would say, “Is it raining out?” And I’d be like, “Just a quick local downpour” and smile mysteriously.

What does the Queen know about sleeping soldiers in the alarm? Why does the Queen know what soldiers startled awake look like?
It is a curious image to use. Or rather, it is a curious image for a Queen to use. Did she go on to the battlefield with her husband? When he was out sledding the pole-axe, wearing his beaver, doing his dread war-like duties – was she there? Was she in his tent to help dress his war wounds upon return? Did she see sleeping soldiers startled awake by the surprise attack? She seems to know exactly what their hair looked like.

And with incredible elegance, Shakespeare makes it clear that while Hamlet and the audience can see this ghost, Gertrude cannot. He doesn’t have to put in an explanatory stage direction like (The Ghost is not visible to Gertrude.) He just has her say this gorgeous line about what she sees instead. This is what someone talking to a ghost that you cannot see looks like. This is what an absence that feels like a presence to someone else looks like.

It does, too. And not just when she looks amazed at something she sees. No, no, not just before the ancient ruins or the wilds of Madagascar or a bear and her cub. Amazement sits on her for all the ways she is also amazing to the rest of us. A trailblazer, a champion, an explorer, a community builder, an advocate, a relentlessly good human.
Amazement sits on her from all angles.

It feels like, this whole time, this whole play, the Queen’s been pretty skeptical of this whole mad show Hamlet’s been putting on. She knows her son – knows the background and is generally pretty spot on about the general cause (aside from the murder of her husband part.)
But here, she sees her son suddenly start talking to angels and a ghostly figure and she stops resisting all of the voices that have been proclaiming his madness.
This is a surrender to what everyone has said. This is a bowing to the crowd. This is a resignation.