Hamlet in a nutshell: a man whose words tend to be pretty full of meaning.
Even when he’s trying to be nonsensical, he tends to sneak in some sense. Pregnancy may be the perfect analogy because Hamlet could be the kind of pregnant that remains a secret, small and hidden in the self or the meaning could grow, pushing itself forward until no one could mistake its shape.

Even out of the air, though, there is still air down there.

There isn’t much, I’d imagine, not enough to breath, but enough to speed along the process of decomposition.

Air and water, too – such key ingredients to maintaining a life – seep into a grave and magnify a death, taking a body further and farther away from its form.

But even then, water and air are encouraging life – worms and maggots and beetles and bugs thriving on the water and air in the body, in the ground, eating, drinking, breathing their way through a death – with their life.

Fresh air, right? He’s suggesting a nice walk outdoors with some high quality refreshing air. Walking out OF the air complicates it somewhat but also makes it more interesting.

Because it could be about walking out of the current air, too, I suppose. Like a conference room full of smoke, or a place full of tensions and discomforts. Just walking OUT of that air could really do a person some favors.

Fresh air, though, that’s the really good stuff. Is there some scientific study on getting some fresh air? Like, what does fresh actually do for us? Is there a biological benefit to the air that we escape to, when we’ve been inside breathing one another’s air for too long? Is there more oxygen out there? Of course there would be, right? There’s more space for it to circulate and all that oxygen’s just bound to be better for us.

Everything has a logic, albeit one that is not clear to the outside world. There is even an internal logic to most madness, a belief system, perhaps, that leads the mad person from Point A to Point B with astounding logic, whether that is Daisies = Mother’s Meat Hook = The Florist is trying to Kill Me. We don’t see all the steps and associations in between but the mind is inventing its own rules.

Liars are said to have more neural pathways in the brain, allowing them to more speedily invent another reality. And despite the fact that madness seems random sometimes – it doesn’t often widen the possibilities of the mad, it tends to narrow them. Movement vocabulary tends to diminish, a compulsive gesture can be repeated and repeated. A socially inappropriate phrase bubbles up on repeat rotation.

There is always some kind of method, whether it is conscious or no.
Hamlet’s madness is, of course, quite conscious in that it is not madness at all. Polonius isn’t stupid, he suspects something’s up. He’s dealing with a confirmation bias, though, so he cannot dwell on those suspicions.

You can tell a lot about a person by what s/he reads. Today in my inbox. I got the reading list of my latest Goodreads friend (a friend from elsewhere but Goodreads just figured it out and made us friends here, too.) If you knew nothing else about her but that she had given MULTIPLE books by Nietzsche 5 stars, you’d know an awful lot about her. The Jane Austen and the books on symbolism probably round out the picture.
I have another friend on Goodreads whom I have never met. I have never seen a picture. I do not know where she lives or even what her name is. But I know what she reads and what she thinks of it, which makes me think that we have a lot in common. I’m pretty sure that if I met her, I’d like her.

This is like a double-triple of misunderstanding and a perfect comedy nugget, obscured, perhaps by the triple confusion.

We read this sentence in this era and we might think Polonius is asking after Hamlet’s mental state as if he were upset and he were asking why.

We eventually determine that he’s referring to the content of Hamlet’s book but it is a rather curious way to ask a person what he’s reading.

Now we’d say, “What are you reading?” or “What’s it about?” or even, “What’s the book?” if we’re being casual.

So the joke might be on us, because Hamlet misunderstands (on purpose, we might assume) in a way that is similar to the way we might misunderstand in thinking of matter as a problem but he complicates it as if something the matter were only something that could happen between people.

And so Polonius breaks it down for us, for him, eventually. But for any of us to understand this now, we’d have needed this bit from the beginning.

And that’s partly the genius of the thing. If Hamlet answered as we’d expect, he might say, “Nothing’s the matter. I’m just fine. . .” or “I don’t know what you mean.”
All of which would kill any hope of comedy.
For it to be funny, misunderstanding is necessary.

This is what I read: My List on Goodreads

My friend spent months campaigning for me to join this site. I shrugged her off again and again saying I was involved in too many social networks already.
“I already HAVE a couple of MySpace accounts!” I cried. “I don’t have time to deal with this book thing!”
But I caved. And I found I loved writing about what I was reading and the friend who’d asked me to join loved reading what I was writing. In a way, I wrote them all for her. For a while, I wrote about almost every book I read. Then I got behind and now I only manage to post when I get inspired to, despite the hundreds of snippets of what I would say, running around in my head.
I think, too, the friend who implored me to join had a baby and understandably didn’t have much time to read or to read about reading and so I lost my motivation for sharing all the thoughts about books.

You need a little armor on when talking with a crazy person. His attack will not be predictable; He’s breaking rules of the social contract left and right. So you gotta get a little creative with your armor. Strap on an astro turf welcome mat, extra protection from one with a plastic flower. String some butter dishes together. Put a colander on your head. Pull on your rain boots. Wrap a measuring tape around your wrist. If you have a sandwich board handy, definitely get into that. Boxing gloves will help you. So will a clown nose. You might just have to don these in your mind but it will be worth it.

The young Polonius was heartsick. For months he had been pining for Calpurnia. Well, he called her his Calpurnia, though that was not her name. He met her at University while preparing for his role as Caesar there. She was charmed by him. He was an excellent talker. He knew things and liked to share them. He was funny too, sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident. He asked if he could escort her out and she agreed. He would plan elaborate outings, meticulously planned and orchestrated. He even arranged the occasionally chance meeting of friends who would speak well of him to his Calpurnia.
He started calling her his Calpurnia not long into their courtship. She found it amusing though she didn’t understand the reference. At least she hadn’t until she came to see him play his Caesar and she found she did not LIKE Calpurnia and that she did not LIKE the idea of being a politician’s wife, even in jest. And she could tell he relished the role. She could see that he WAS ambitious and that he would ignore his wife’s wisdom and plunge straight into a political blood bath.
The next time he came to call, she refused him. And the time after that and the time after that. By the time he understood what was happening, his Caesar had closed and he was back to finishing his studies and they all seemed meaningless without his Calpurnia. He would stand below her window and shout Roman poetry. He would stand where she walked and he would cry as she passed by.
He was surly to everyone. He stopped going to class. Eventually, he holed up in his rooms and shouted at anyone who came in. Usually, he spoke to them as if they were characters from Julius Caesar. He called his teacher a cobbler and his landlord a senator.
It all turned around, though, when his friend came by with his sister. She’d been warned of his affliction and she found it interesting so when he saw her and said, “Is that my Calpurnia?”
She smiled, held out her hand and said, “Caesar. I never stood on ceremonies.”
And her took her hand and kissed it.
When she blushed, he suddenly knew himself again and found that he wanted nothing more than to know her, too and not as Calpurnia but whomever she happened to truly be.

This is one of the metaphors for crazy that seems right on. Someone on the crazy train does, in fact, seem gone, as if they went on a trip somewhere and left a copy of their body to carry on in their place.
In some cases, it feels as if the person hasn’t gone so far. You think you could snap your fingers or clap and find them returned to you. But some people are very far gone. They disappeared off to Borneo, or off to (opposite of Borneo) if you lived in Borneo.
And they usually go without a forwarding address or a phone number where they can be reached or even findable on the internet.
Sometimes a person is so far gone, you can only reach them by hiring a plane and flying messages over the mountains in smoke.