The Hamlet Project

May all our hearts remain so –
Soft and open
Unbrassed
Uncovered, ungilded, unhardened, unencased.
May the habits, patterns and relentless difficulties of our lives not become so overwhelming
That we have to do metalwork on our hearts.
Brass. Iron. Whatever casement we might need
To keep the softness safe.
Because the trouble is – once the case has been built, it is terribly hard to pry open again.

The storyteller comes to the town. She is a stranger there, though not unknown. She has come to town before but it was so long ago, none of the children had been born. The children that were there the last time were now the parents and they remembered her.
They hurried her into the town center. As they went, they told her little bits of news. The town, it seems, had fallen on strange times. The people had grown intolerant of each other – complaining of their neighbors and talking of bringing in a new leader who would be tough on such things.
The storyteller listened to their complaints and their plans, these people who, when she last saw them, had been children. Last time, they had clambered for stories of elephants, and funny crocodiles. Something had happened. They were calling their children to come listen to these sorts of stories again – but the storyteller held up a hand and suggested they wait.
“I have a story just for you first,” she said.
“We’ll have the children next. You first.”
The parents protested – no, no, they wanted the stories only for their children.
Then the storyteller told them what she was going to do.

Poor Gertie. She’s just watched her son murder a man someone, who, while she may not have liked him (or maybe she did) was close enough to trust with important things, intimate things.
She’s watched a man die at her son’s hand. Then her son is relatively cavalier about it. Polonius’ blood is probably spilling out all over the floor and Hamlet is unconcerned. She didn’t raise him to be this way, did she?
If I saw someone kill another person right in front of me, in my bedroom, no less – you can bet I’d be wringing my hands. I’d be pacing, too. And trying to breathe deeply.

I found this out pretty early, myself.
In high school, I got myself into every possible theatrical activity I could find. At one point, I was doing four shows at once – on top of going to school.
It was madness. But also a lot of fun.
When you’re first in love, you can do all of it.
But when it stopped –
When I stopped
I realized all the things I’d been missing.
I had no time to process.
I missed out on some meaningful events.
I failed to have a social life.
When I got to college – I was much more cautious about how much I took on. I didn’t do just any show. I only auditioned for those I really wanted to do so as not to get overwhelmed with all of my schoolwork. But I misjudged a few times and chose the wrong show. Why in the world did I not do that all woman Julius Caesar?
But I was trying to avoid the danger I’d discovered in previous years.
It is a dance.
When I was working as an actor, I was so busy, I failed entirely to develop a life. I was driving up and down the East Coast, auditioning – booking gigs fairly regularly. . .but not booking a life. So I quit. Moved to NYC to get a life.
And discovered a new kind of busy.
The dangers are everywhere.

Let’s see. Let’s look at your palm, Polonius – see what’s ahead for you. Hmmm. Interesting. It’s death.
That’s what you’re taking with you. That’s all that’s ahead.
Well – put that pulse-less palm aside – maybe let’s look at some tea leaves. Tea leaves are nice.
Drink up.
Oh, sorry. I’ll get that for you.
Okay. Let’s look at the bottom of the cup.
Right, death. Coffee grounds? Death.
Numerology? Death. Crystal ball? Death. Tarot cards? Death. Bird Migratory patterns? Death.
Bones? Death.
Runes? Death.
I Ching? Ambiguously phrased, neither good nor bad. .. Death.
Looks pretty clear cut from here.

This is rich coming from Hamlet.
Is Claudius really better than Polonius?
Pretty much in status only.
I mean, we don’t know – maybe Polonius also killed a king? Or plotted to kill a prince?
But odds are, as slippery as Polonius might be – he is, morally speaking, a better man than Claudius.
Given how Hamlet feels about Claudius, this feels like a double slam – after killing the man, Hamlet calls him names, including someone worse than a murderer. Up to a wee bit of victim blaming, are we, Hamlet?

What a eulogy!
Goodbye, Polonius! I’m always sad to see you go when you die in this play. Whether you are, indeed a fool or too clever for your own good, I enjoy your presence immensely – if only as a foil for the hero, an opportunity for him to mess with you.
You may be entirely misguided – you may do such questionable things as send someone to spy on your son while he’s away at school or make your daughter break up with her boyfriend but you often add a sense of levity to this place, which can otherwise get kind of heavy.
I rather wish he’d been true to his word and gone off to farm with his horse and carters.

I have an idea of what I want to write here but I cannot make it connect up. I had some thought of being, like, cute – and writing a list of questions, the answers to which would all be, “Ay, lady, it was my word.”
But that went nowhere fast.
I don’t have a list of times that my word kept me honest or involved in something. My word is pretty solid but it isn’t rigid. I don’t hold it up as some shining example so I can’t think of any time wherein it was particularly hard to keep it.
I was after a more expansive sense of my word – maybe my words – and how it was my leaning into my writing that did something or other. But there is no magic there. There isn’t a good story about how my writing saved me. It did. It does. But it does it everyday so it’s not terribly dramatic.
It would be like a story in which the heroine was saved by breathing every day – of course she was – as we all are – but it’s not a particularly unusual tale.
Every day she breathed air, ate food, drank water and she wrote and so she was saved.
The end.