you talkin' to me?

pardon me
you heard me
no, really, I didn't
I said, "to be or not to be"
that's what I thought
so you did hear me
point taken
I'll say it again
I dare you
"to be or not to be"
let's face it, that's pretty fuckn grandiose
how
c'mon
it ain't grandiose, it's basic
like "back to basics"
I've never understood what that meant
it's elemental, fundamental, mental, unsentimental
now you sound like early Dylan
nothing wrong with that
it's alright, ma
elementary, my dear Watson
he never said that
not exactly
anyway, where were we
right here
right here is where we always are
nowhere, man
now here
clever
slow down, you better slow down
break it down
when you said, "to be or not to be" were you serious
of course I was
serious as in suicidal
what, where do you get that
well, you're standing alone all serious and shit
it's a fecking play, I'm a character, on a stage
all the world's a stage
bingo
the play's the thing
how 'bout "play's the thing"
as in juggling, like the king's Fool
not that kind of juggling, more like thi
jousting
joisting
James Joyceting
ca-ching
bada-bing
to be
or
not to be
sproing
back to Square One
exactly
approximately
approximately King Hamlet
that's rich, even royal
royal manna
give that man a cigar
he she it them
that, too
 

The Unkenneling

My favorite word in all of Shakespeare is "unkennel."

"If his occulted guilt / Do not itself unkennel in one speech, / It is a damned ghost that we have seen . . . "  

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2 

A Le Moyne College professor noted that word more than fifty years ago. I remembered. 

Unkennel. You can picture it. Angry, growling dogs. Barking, drooling, panting with ravenous rage.

We used to use the term "go viral." That video went viral on YouTube. The tweet went viral in minutes. Their Facebook post went viral.

Viral? 

Coronavirus killed that. Or should.

The unkenneled coronavirus.

by any other name

Heroin.

Is the word part of the scourge? Is it a swish of the sword?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, Heroin as a word was coined in 1898 in German as a "trademark registered by Friedrich Bayer & Co. for their morphine substitute. According to tradition the word was coined with chemical suffix -ine (2) (German -in) + Greek hērōs 'hero' (see hero (n.1)) because of the euphoric feeling the drug provides, but no evidence for this seems to have been found so far."

So what if the name were changed? No, no, no, we're not talking about the myriad demimonde, street, underworld, pop culture, and user-driven slang terms. Not that. Change the name. A new coinage. A coin of the realm of hypnotic transport and molten reverie.

Do words matter? In ancient times, identity was conferred by the very act of naming. There was a power to it. The Hebrew Bible is rife with examples of this.

What would the new word be?

Could such a word have such powers as to be salutary, salubrious, and beneficent?

And even if that were true, would such a move erase allure? Because after all, danger, menace, and perilous risk are part of the game, part of the ritual, yes?

What would that word be? The opposite of "hero"? Hardly.

As the Bard put it in Romeo and Juliet, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.” As if to say, "Call heroin by any other name, and you get the same results."

Is it so? How would we conduct a peer-reviewed study to find out?

In "Sacred Emily" in 1913 (year of my father's birth), Gertrude Stein wrote: "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." (Did you know that in one version of this immortal declaration Stein put it in a children's story, carved on a tree trunk, round and round?) So, does Gertrude Stein side with Shakespeare on this semantic matter, or is she saying, "It's futile; it's beyond description; it is what it is"? (Or something else entirely.)

Heroin is heroin is heroin is heroin. 

What do you think? What do you feel? Tell me more. Especially addicts. Weigh in on this. 

Do words matter?

How much?

The Clementine Chronicles, continued

Murder on the Disorient Express

Dramatis Personae:

OldWhiteGuy stereotypical converted-loft dweller, goatee-adorned; spectacles-wearer; enough head hair to comb except on the sides owing to stylist's shorning the week preceding; 5'10"; 169 pounds; blue jeans; blue T-shirt; blue-green-purple flannel shirt not tucked in; fragrance: Luna Rossa by Prada; Euphoria by Calvin Klein deodorant; unshaven for several days

Three Ravens pecking at unseen morsels on the roadway or bickering on the chain-link fence or telephone wires

DismemberedClementine* Jackson Pollocked (except for color; goldenrod-clementine-flesh yellow-orange backgrounded by burnt umber wetted, ergo Mark Rothko'ed except for the scatteredness; picture a spherical descent bursting onto the concrete, tossed from an upper-story window; motive and perp, unknown) into 22 segments and/or fragments of said segments, on the sidewalk [see below] by the side exit of the brick former knitting mill; a splayed and still glistening ink-blottish stain artistically placed on the snow-bereft sidewalk as a place setting or as a result of the Capital Citrus Murder (CCM)
*cf. The Laughorist blog post of 2 December 2018

DismemberedClementine Peeled Skin (absent, nowhere to be seen; unknown if peeled in one fell swoop or not)

DeadFish (scales on; head attached; accusatory cyclops-ish eye; absent corpse, nowhere to be seen; cf. The Laughorist blog post of 2 February 2019)

62.8 CCM Suspects (40 apartments, average of 1.5 residents in each minus 1.0 LaughoristDweller [a.k.a. OldWhiteGuy], plus 3.8 happenstance, random street-cred pedestrians) 

Ghosts of Bob Marley & The Wailers

Scene 1: 

Enter OldWhiteGuy, exits building, turns right, spots DismemberedClementine (rest in pieces, R.I.P.), halts, retreats, pivots left, inspects crime scene, counts segments, makes mental notes, turns right again, walks on ice- and snow-ridden sidewalk to car

OldWhiteGuy (posing as Hamlet Lear) (sotto voce): "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the skin!"

Enter Ghosts of Bob Marley & The Wailers singing: "One love, one heart... Let's get together and feel all right... Hear the children cryin'; give thanks and praise to the Lord ... Is there a place for the hopeless sinner who has hurt all mankind just to save his soul? One love, one heart ... Let's get together and feel all right!"

Exeunt Omnes

L'eau de lune

"I read the news today, oh boy . . . "

Actually, I didn't read the news; I heard it on NPR. (Who reads news anymore anyway? Sad.)

The news I refer to is that scientists studying stuff brought back decades ago from the Apollo missions have found molecules of water (water-bearing minerals, more accurately).

One scientist said, "This is not your grandmother's water." It's not oceans, or even puddles, or even liquid. Nor is it solid or gas. It is something else.

And surprising.

Surprising.

One scientist said she was so surprised she thought her instruments needed to be calibrated.

Water. We thought we knew you. We thought we understood intimately this building block of life. In our thirst for knowledge, we thought the word "water" in its infinite connotations and denotations quenched something. We were cocksure that, well (pun intended), water was at least wet, and close to solid in the frozen north, as solid as "meaning." But, alas, Water, we hardly knew you.

Water. Just a word, just a concept.

And how many other watery definitions will slosh down the drain of certainty as our world, our cosmos, rocks us with surprise?

How many other words turn out to be just like, um, water?

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
-- William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "Hamlet," Act 1 scene 5

New Year's Resolutions, 2010

Why wait till 2010?

Let's do a dry run now; see what works; or doesn't.

I hope this starts a movement. What would we call it? The Pre-New Year's Post-Last Year's Quasi-Resolute Resolutions?

1. Run the Bhutan Marathon 2010.

2. Do the dishes every day. Maybe every other day.

3. Give up cigarettes. (Wait. I'd have to start!)

4. Meditate. Especially if someone is yelling at me; go into a deep trance.

5. Eat haiku.

6. Chew.

7. Walk.

8. Skip, at least once.

9. Write.

10. Sleep. (Perchance to dream.)

11. Nap.

12. Revise.

I need to revise my list.

But, as I said, I've got time to work on it.

Put back on your head those too-small, colorful cardboard cone hats and resume twirling your little noisemakers.

Cheers.

Happy 2010!

(Just practicing.)

(What would Kierkegaard say?)

Happy Birthday, Will Shakespeare

Notice the vocative comma in the title of this post.

The Winter of Our Discontent?

Being an English major (LeMoyne College, 1970), I know that "Now is the winter of our discontent" are the opening words to William Shakespeare's play Richard III, a tragedy whose eponymous cinematic portrayal by Sir Laurence Olivier I still remember.

I confess my simple mind has sometimes been confused by those lines. Um, let me see: if it's the winter of the discontent, then it must equal the season of content, right? Huh? Yeah, Pawlie.

I am taking these lines terribly out of context -- and Richard III is a villain -- but my prayer is that it may indeed be the winter of our discontent and that it may indeed be true that "grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front."

God bless Barack Obama on his journey, on our journey.

And here's some majestic footage to enjoy.

Order Out of Disorder

Had some success this weekend in the Order vs. Disorder Department. I tackled Mount Sweaterest, as referred to in a recent post. I kept true to my word, pretty much, and tended to my side of the street, or mountain, in this case. What I mean is:

1. I disassembled the pile and laid it all out on the bed, to get an inventory.
2. My Spouse was working, so I could not rant or point fingers even if i wanted to. Besides, that would not be very Zen-lke now, would it?
3. Results: Approximately 78.9% of the articles of clothing were hers, not mine. No matter.
4. Part of the, um, problem is that the edifice no longer consisted of sweaters only: sweat pants, t-shirts, a sports bra or two, pajamas, and one pair of undies somehow crept onto this cloth column.
5. No matter.
6. I got into it, in a binge fashion. I took two bags of my stuff (including some very nice sweaters, a very warm and thick sweatshirt, pajamas, etc.) to the Rescue Mission. I threw out a bag of my clothes. It was time for them to go. Very purgative. No, i did not commit the suicidal act of throwing out any of her clothes.
7. In doing so, I freed up space in my bureau. I did not have to buy any new shelves after all. Very minimalist, just like the experts said.
8. Yes, the problem is me.
9. Very rewarding. What will be my next target?

I have no illusions, though. This is all part of my binge nature. On the same day, I did four of five loads of laundry, went shopping, walked the dog, did dashes, and took a brief nap.

I capped the day by attending a rather good rendition of "Hamlet" by the Syracuse Shakespeare Festival. Mark Allen Holt, playing the eponymous character, was especially good.

Never before had I viewed "Hamlet" as such a telling example of self-will run riot.

Oh, and I (and possibly a fellow in back of me) was the only person to chuckle at Glamourpuss's favorite dirty line, when Hamlet, lying in Ophelia's lap, saucily asks her if she thinks he was speaking of "country matters." (I probably would've ignored it, were it not for this fellow blogger's alert to it. We are all about haute couture here.)

A full day.

Will the Thrill

San Francisco Giants fans dubbed Will Clark with the moniker "Will the Thrill." But as thunder rolls and a spring rain cascades, I salute a with a different will, Will (The Thrill) Shakespeare, on his birthday, or at least what passes for it (we can only deduce his birthday is April 23, because he was baptized April 26, customarily three days after birth; curiously, he also died on April 23).

The unfortunate thing about The Bard is that I can tell you as a former English teacher we mostly ruin him. "We murder to dissect," to quote Wordsworth. In other words, we often kill all the fun by dissecting his works for "meaning" and "interpretation." And we forget his plays were for seeing, not reading. And it wasn't high-brow stuff; more like professional wrestling than, say, educational TV. (This comes out nicely in the movie "Shakespeare in Love.")

In junior high (they call it middle school now), we had to memorize soliloquies of Shakespeare, from "Hamlet" or "Julius Caesar" or "Romeo and Juliet," among others. It was arduous but rewarding, even if we hardly had a clue as to what we were memorizing. (Do kids memorize anything anymore? he asks like an old curmudgeon.)

Of course, as with the Bible, out of context much of Shakespeare seems startlingly rude and violent and impolitic (like life). A guy named Thomas Bowdler tried to clean up Shakespeare and the word Bowdlerize (Bowdlerise, for Brits) survives. Did he venture the same effort on the Bible? (Apparently not, but he did so for The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon.) (Bowdler changed "Out, damned spot!" to "Out, crimson spot!" Imagine him going to town on some contemporary hip-hop lyrics; examples invited, Mr. Russell Simmons; see, The Laughorist is as up-to-date as a headline only hours old!.)

Shakespeare came alive for me as an English major in college. We did skits of various portions of "Twelfth Night." We played with it, we goofed around, we had a ball.

Just as Will did with the language.

"Unkennelled" [referred to in a post last week] was just one of thousands upon thousands of lustrous language gems Shakespeare played with. Ah, but I just made the common fatal error, elevating him to a dusty place on the bookshelf and forgetting all about "play."

So, all you readers, go commit some foreplay and chalk it up to Will the Thrill.

"Ripeness is all" --

now there's a juicy start, from "King Lear," thanks to Mr. S.

p.s. Shakespeare is of course often quoted out of context. My favorite out-of-context quote is

"To thine own self be true"

which is said in "Hamlet" by Polonius. But people forget he's a supercilious blowhard referencing what was surely a cliche even in Shakespeare's time.