Things to swear by:
Heaven
Moon
Thy gracious self
God (and his wounds)
Stars Above
Earth
Sun
One’s honor
One’s modesty
One’s chastity
One’s maidenhead
Art
Our beards
The white hand of Rosalind
Blessed clouds
Your lady
Y’r lakin
And Saint Peter, too
Hamlet
Yea, from the table of my memory I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past That youth and observation copied there, And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmixed with baser matter.
Yellowing pages with looping script, bound in a scuffed leather,
A strong pliant waxed string , Hamlet’s book
Has steadily gotten inscribed with quotes and memories.
His poems, his musings, his wonderings scrawled
Lovingly over the crisp pages.
He has forgotten nothing
Left nothing unrecorded
But that which is unrecordable – thoughts without word or image,
Smells for which no metaphor will suffice,
Sensations that cannot be summarized.
What will wash these things away?
What could pull the ink from the page,
Unhinge the shapes that make up the words
And separate meaning from form?
What will make a river of ink
Leaving the pages empty?
All those words will go.
Only the words of a ghost will remain.
Will he write it on every page?
Or once, large, in the middle of the book or one letter on a page,
Filling the book with large insistent letters?
And which words will it be?
“Remember me?” or “Revenge”
Or both.
Remember thee?
Is there a way to say this without an exclamation mark?
Remember thee?! Remember thee?!
Seems required. As if a ghost could be forgotten.
As if a father could be forgotten.
As if the ghost of a father could be forgotten.
As if the revelation of the truth could be forgotten.
As if murder might be brushed under the rug
Swept out of sight of the emotions, of memory
As if a person could learn of the murder of this father and simply let it go,
Simply forget, simply pretend it hadn’t happened.
One could not forget the news, or the event, of this moment.
One could forget one’s name and what time one has to be at work
But this would stick
Because memory is inextricably linked to emotion
We are built to remember what hits us hard. It’s sensible for our survival.
Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a set In this distracted globe.
And how long is that?
Our memories get shorter and shorter
On this ever more distracted globe.
Having placed the burden of remembering upon my hard drive,
I have no need to remember what I used to.
I used to remember people’s birthdays.
There was some honor in doing so somehow.
I’d remember details of the party, the tone of voice,
The words spoken, the arc of conversation.
I’d remember facts
The weather
How to read an alto clef, which notes went where.
I used to remember the first few lines of the Inferno, in Italian.
Now, I just look them up.
I could remember what I was supposed to do, when I was supposed to do it
And with whom.
I’d remember my goals, my priorities, my dreams.
I have them written on my walls now because so often,
I sit down to chase them and find myself
Distracted
Hours gone
Days gone
Lost in the click, click, select.
The world becoming smaller, busier and spread thin.
Remember thee?
I’m sitting in a coffee shop on 86th and Amsterdam.
I don’t know whose iPod they’re running through the sound system
But they’re also running it through my memories.
That Van Morrison song called up my old boyfriend – made me remember –
Either his affection for me or maybe it was mine for him.
Anyway he learned that song – learned to sing it, too, for me, he said.
When it all fell apart,
That was the song that would make me cry
Whenever it caught me off guard
Because when it caught me,
I was always off guard.
Hearing it here now
Calls me to attention (off guard again)
But doesn’t call up tears.
It’s almost like a little ghost memory
Springing up out of the soundscape, saying, “Remember me?”
And of course I do.
Then the song was over,
The next one blended back into the hubbub of voices and cappuccino machines –
Maybe the next as well, I can’t remember.
But then up came the voice of an old friend
Singing a melancholy tune.
The first flash of memory
Was music of association
The next was the actual voice
Of someone I once loved
Someone whose voice I’ve not heard in person
For many years
But hearing it even now
Makes me seventeen again –
Dumbstruck and enthralled in a dark club
On an empty dance floor, in a deserted bar
And a little outdoor festival
When music struck me deeper
When longing was my primary occupation
When a voice like that wrapped me up
And carried me around like a swaddled child.
Even as I write these words,
The iPod remembrance pulls out another to remember –
One that spun around on my record player
While I lay on my back staring at the ceiling
Aching for the future to hurry up and get here.
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old But bear me stiffly up.
Has he fallen to the floor?
Will his body not obey?
Is the struggle here to get back on his feet?
Very often in productions, this bit gets a little –
ACTORY. He tends to be just pure reaction
Reaction. Hands held up to the sky –
A classic Actor-y “Why?!?!?!”
A physical obstacle such as one’s body
Ceasing to do what one asks of it
Might make for an interesting exploration.
The struggle could be to reconcile the facts he’s just heard,
Or, of course, to grapple with having seen the ghost of his father.
But when I get my hands on his play
Or rather when I get my body into this play,
I will want to see what grappling the body is doing as well.
Hold, hold, my heart.
Perhaps those super enlightened yogis
Can pause their hearts
Like a film stilled on an image.
Perhaps they can whisper to their hearts
To still, for a moment,
So that reason might sneak in,
Slow the heat rising
Slow the blood, beginning to boil –
Halt the heave before the heart
Rises up to their throats.
On the other hand, most yogis
Sit, in stillness, in a cave.
Those things that make a heart heave
Or the blood boil
Or the pulse quicken
Retreat to the inside
Toward a general stillness.
It may be fruitless for me to ask my heart to hold
But I like the dialogue – the relationship between me and my unruly
Unmanageable, uncontrollable heart.
O, fie!
Fie is awfully fun to say
Especially if it’s felt as “Fuck”
Or meant.
O, fie. O, fuck.
Fuck, Demetrius, Fuck!
Fie, fie.
I may just start replacing the “fucks” in my vocabulary with “Fie.”
It could give me the satisfaction of cursing
Without the potential for getting me fired were I to accidentally
Say it in the classroom. I never really slip there –
But in a puppet workshop for 2nd graders, in an attempt to say two words at once,
It came out “Fuck its” instead of “puppets”
Luckily, because they were 2nd grade Catholic school kids, they didn’t notice.
I wonder what I do to filter language like this – what sieve is in place in my brain
That allows me to switch code from one situation to the next.
Fie, fie, I do not know.
And shall I couple hell?
I can see you with someone who’s into skiing.
She should probably be a high-powered exec or something: well-dressed
In sharp but conservative clothing.
I bet her hair is never out of place.
I’m not sure how to write the ad for you, Hell.
“Fiery inferno seeks chilly companion to try out that restaurant in Tribeca. Me: the home for renegades and evil-doers. You: a put together mistress of cool.”
I’m not sure if it’ll work or if I can responsibly set up someone to date Hell.
Maybe, as long as I warn her first.
What else?
Besides heaven
Besides earth
Besides love
Besides wondering and wonderment
Besides looking up and looking down
Besides the eyes evolving to lead us
Besides the heart evolving from frog
Besides the body leaning into what it likes and recoiling from what it does not
Besides words
Besides music
Besides dancing
Besides singing
Besides pretending to be other than you are
Besides standing in a group feeling it shift
Besides the breeze blowing through a window,
waving the curtain and lifting your hair
Besides food
Besides trees shooting towards the sky
Besides lavender fields
Besides clockwork turning into itself
Besides bodies falling into each other and opening into surprise.
The Hamlet Project 