Mine is pretty great. And I’m not just saying that because she might read this one day. She really is pretty great. It has been documented in many ways. She is beloved by many people and organizations – this person/organization the most. The Society of Loving my Kick Ass Mom.

It is a little piece of funny patriarchy that men find being called something feminine insulting. Hamlet calling his stepfather “Mother” is meant and understood to be a challenge. However, if Hamlet were to call his mother, “Father,” it would just be odd.
I love the meme going around that has pictures of men doing jobs like firefighting and astronauting…and then their name, age and “firewoman” or “spacewoman” as well as a quote implying that the firewoman understands that firewoman includes him too.

In a few weeks I will be in my beloved England. It gives me a little bit of relief to think of it. Whenever I return, I feel newly at home and it gives me a kind of peace. “Ah, this!” My system says. Something in me relaxes. It’s like I breathe more deeply somehow.

I kind of love the idea that there are little angelic children hanging around the Danish Court, seeing into people’s ulterior motives and such. It might be an interesting production to have them actually visible – not just in THIS moment but at other moments when someone is delivering a lie. We’d call it the Cherubic Hamlet and it’s just chock full of little chunky children with wings, checking out the scene.

The other thought I had was; What if cherubs are freshly born angels? That is – are they the newly dead? When a person dies and they go to heaven, what if they came in as angel babies? In which case, that cherub would be Polonius who would very likely in fact know what Claudius’ actual purposes might be.

News can be good. It is good to remember that sometimes surprises are good. One can get used to surprises that disappoint or upset but some of them, some of them are good.

For England I have love, like love for a member of a family – deep and complicated. I understand that it is not perfect but I feel at home there.
I don’t have the life there that I do in NYC, where I live now. It can be lonely, it can alien – but I’d drop everything in a heartbeat – For England.

I love the joking Hamlet. I do not understand the guys who play the super serious morose depressive romantic Hamlets. He has jokes! This one, for example, is a beautiful dark funny thing. It just begs to be played with a nice wry flavor. You could play it in a humorless way but why would you?

So where exactly has Hamlet stashed body? On a landing of the stairs? Seems an odd spot. Maybe in a nook by the stairs? Or a closet?
And I’m also interested in the architecture of this building. You go UP the stairs into the lobby? Why is there a lobby in this building? It is not a theatre or a hotel or an office building. Or is it? I find I need a lesson in the origins of lobbies. I think of a lobby as being a public open space that provides the introductory room to the rest of a building. The public aspect seeming to be the most significant part of that definition. And maybe this lobby is a public space.
And maybe it isn’t.
But it is definitely upstairs.
Which is unusual for most lobbies.

Lobby was, it turns out, previously a covered portico…like a loggia. And it evolved to be a monastic cloister. But again – we don’t have a mini monastery at Elsinore, I wouldn’t think. So this lobby upstairs is in this funny moment of evolution with this word. It would appear to be an architectural reference – and that is all. Not monastic. Not public. Just a covered open arena. I think.

Sick burn, Hamlet! Yeah!
This line always feels like such a perfect insult. It’s got the structure of a joke – all that set up …and then pow! A perfect way to tell someone to go to hell without specifically telling him to go to hell. It’s a perfect insult for a guarded world. And a slow burner. Like, the sort where you walk away thinking, “What did he….” Oh! “What?! That guy just told me to go to hell! Or at least implied that I would belong in hell in some way. Damn!”
I find it very satisfying for some reason.

It would be so cool if we could send a message to heaven. If we could be like…”Hey, so what’s up there? Who’s around?”

If there were someone we needed some thoughts from, we could send a messenger to ask. I’d have a lot of questions for Shakespeare, of course. But I’d also like some answers from Jane Austin and Mary Shelly. I’d like to get a message to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I’d also like to hear from Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin.
I’d have messages and questions for Charles Dickens and Remedios Varo. All of course, the recently deceased – the Princes and the Bowies and the Alan RIckmans. I suppose this is why we don’t have a messaging system with heaven as it might become just like email and all those dead people trying to take a rest would just be answering emails all day,