These are the kind of odds I could win at, too – the kind where I don’t exactly win, just don’t entirely lose. Those are the kind of odds wherein I get a few choice hits in and we call that success.

If feels like that’s what aging as an artist means – figuring out what our odds are that allow us to redefine success. Once you know what the winnable odds are – then you can play THAT game.

The Genius note expressed some skepticism about the veracity of this claim. Certainly, we haven’t SEEN Hamlet continually at fencing practice. But that doesn’t mean he’s not getting some practice in.

I mean, he’s preparing to revenge his father’s death by killing Claudius. What other kinds of preparation for murder might there be?

And when he does get the opportunity, he hits Claudius with just one blow – so he’s got some muscle memory in this department.

If I had plans to kill someone, even if I didn’t plan to murder them with a rapier and dagger, I might find rapier and dagger practice useful – just to get me going.

I feel like it’s easy to think Hamlet is being uncharacteristically optimistic here. He thinks he’s going to win this?

But – he’s not saying he’s going to win the sword fight. He’s going to win at the odds – that is, the wager that Claudius has is that he’s not going to lose entirely – that he’ll get a few hits in. Which he does. Sort of.

It is a funny wager though – I bet you’re only going to lose a LITTLE bit.

I keep thinking about Theresa Rebeck’s play about Sarah Bernhardt playing Hamlet. I did not much like this play but I occasionally consider a recurring idea in it wherein the character of Sarah Bernhardt is convinced Hamlet is, like, 19 and not 33 as is customarily assumed. I don’t know whether that was actually Bernhardt’s take or whether that’s Rebeck’s – but it is an interesting notion. I’m inclined to go with what the text suggests in the gravediggers scene because I’m a text junkie. But a case can be made for a teenage Hamlet. He’s at University. He’s not King. He’s not married. He’s under his parent’s thumb.

But this line leans me toward an older Hamlet. A teen might respond to this request from his mom with annoyance and frustration. He might say, “Gawd! She is so annoying. I was ALREADY going to do that! I was just SAYING that. Come on!”

But he doesn’t. He says, “She well instructs me.” – which feels like something only an older son could say.

I would love it if folks who worked in service started to use this. Like, if you asked for an extra spoon at a restaurant, the server could say “In happy time.” And the good thing about it would be that they could mean it sarcastically without it sounding so necessarily – so it could stand for a kind of cushion of time. It could SOUND like “right away, sir” but could MEAN “just as soon as I get around to it and it might be a while.”

Because happy time is likely to mean different things to different parties.

The journey of “fitness” from a quality of being suitable, to the ideal physicality of the body is very interesting to me.

“Fitness” as we use it today first came in to play in the 30s and you know, I’m a little uncomfortable about that timing. Fitness as an ideal physicality is a little close to the Nazi ideals of supermen and perfection – genetic superiority and such.

The word once meant something akin to appropriateness and the fact that we shifted that idea to bodies is a little disturbing. In the ever striving for “physical fitness,” so many strive for an unattainable ideal instead of, just, like, being able to do stuff.

Fitness conjures images of women with no fat on their bodies in pastel leotards and shiny tights.

My training in Feldenkrais leads me toward words that have more possibility. Instead of physical fitness – I’m interested in physical readiness – physical potentiality. The more stuff you can do, the more potential for movement you have, the more choice.

It’s not: Can you join the army of genetically identical warriors? But – Can you learn to do a somersault with a child if you want? That’s readiness. The readiness is all.

Once upon a time, I could not fathom what it might be like to be a king, catered to on every point. I did not know what pleasure might mean for a king. To want things and have them delivered seemed so far out of my perceived experience. My cultural conditioning taught me to give pleasure, not receive it. Then, I would have said my only desire was to please others.

But now I know that that’s because I had not learned to recognize my own desires. It took purposeful attending to myself to learn my actual desires. Now I think I could even articulate some. I could call out orders like a king.

But even so – every so often I catch myself still catering to the kings instead of being one.

Yesty is interesting. It would seem to be connected to Yeasty – which I suppose calls to mind a self-expanding substance that pushes itself into any empty space. But Yesty has a big YES in it as in a Yes Man saying yes no matter what is presented to him, which also rather neatly represents Osric. He is both Yeasty and Yesty. Yessy?

I wasn’t clear what the bubbles were doing in this line at first – but then I thought some more about yeast and realized that when yeast is at work, it does create bubbles. Rising dough is full of bubbles. That’s why you knead dough, to bring it all back down to earth by bursting the bubbles.

I mean. Would this be so bad? Can you imagine a baby so considerate that he considered the feelings of his mother’s nipple? I mean – this feels like a whole different issue than his behavior with Hamlet.

Like, baby Osric checking in with his mom, like, “Dear Mother, would you mind very much if I fed from your breast now?”

Whereas Osric’s real issue is that he embroiders the facts and is socially awkward in building up the wrong people in status sensitive situations.
I can’t help feeling that this line rather reverberates with misogyny. I mean, the mother’s nipple is entirely disembodied and belongs to her son.

It would be a little bit sad if there were not one single person to speak well of him. There are many truly terrible people in the world and they usually have someone to commend them.

I would have thought no one in the world could commend Trump – but, in fact, there are thousands, maybe millions who do. I mean – to me, he seems one of the most odious human beings I have ever seen. I heard his voice this morning while brushing my teeth and I almost threw up, my gag response was so strong.

But there are many to praise him.

Likewise, Osric may be a suck-up or a lapwing or waterfly – but I would be surprised if he didn’t have a whole crew of people to commend him. There’s always someone, I think.