• Tag Archives Hamlet

  • The Undiscover’d Country

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                          Bloodroot Moon

    At times my past bleeds into the present, creating small emotional events, upsetting my inner equilibrium.  Right now is one of those times.  Many of us are heir to understandings of ourselves as malformed in some way, not quite right.  I certainly am.

    (Dante Gabriel Rossetti    Hamlet and Ophelia 1858 pen and ink drawing)

    These irruptions come in the OMG I’m not doing enough form or OMG I have not done enough or OMG I’ll never do enough forms.  My anxious self underlines and bolds these self-declarations as my mind races back to find the not enoughs in the past–no graduate school, no published books, never made it to Washington, the not enoughs in the present–Missing not revised, Loki’s Children not started, no time for serious in-depth reading, not helping out enough at home or making enough time for friends and then uses both of these information streams to predict a dire future:  no books published ever, no friends, no concrete results of any kind, then, wink out.

    If this line of thought continues, I’m going to have to visit my analyst, John Desteian.  In touch with him (and, now, Kate) I’ve been able to dispel these strong phantoms, learn to live with facts not illusion and get on with what is a good life.  This is, I think, as much due to faulty wiring as anything else, my family coming with a strong genetic pattern for bipolar disorder, though I don’t believe my issues rise to that level of dysfunction.  I know, not enough even there, eh?

    Not long ago I re-read Hamlet’s speech in Scene I, a scene I had memorized long ago for a dramatic presentation contest.  It’s baldly existential view surprised me, even shocked me. A line from it came to me as I woke up this morning and it captures my feeling tone right now:   “…the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”  This exactly describes me when I get into these episodes.

    In the lines just before this one Shakespeare refers to death as the undiscover’d country from which no traveler returns and identifies the dread of that journey as producing the pale cast of thought, thus rendering a person unable to act.  To be or not to be neatly summarizes all this.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Faith and Spirituality Feelings Health Third Phase 📎and tagged

  • Legacy

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                            Valentine Moon

    Writing.  Learning about the craft 20 years after devoting myself to it.  Yes, I admit it.  Kate was right.  Though I don’t recall, she says she urged me to go to the Loft way back, back in the days after I left the Presbytery.  Now I am.  To learn about publishing and about serious revision.  She’s often more clear about my vocation than I am.  Strange, but true.

    The third phase continues to shimmer in front of me, a veiled space not yet known, the part of life that lies on boundary with the undiscovered country which doubles its resonance as if a great bronze tocsin tolls; though still faraway, its sound grows stronger with each passing day.

    So. Legacy, then.  What will remain of mine when I cross the veil and enter that other world?  Of course there will be the vague collation of memories in children and grand-children, the sort of hazy recollection that fades with each passing generation.  Of course. There will be, too, the even gauzier remnants of actions taken:  those apartments and houses on the West Bank, a strengthened legislative program at the Sierra Club, work for non-profits and affordable housing through various groups, but in these my print lies barely visible, as it should be, but it means that connection will soon be lost.  If it has not been lost already.

    Where I have most hope lies in the words I have written, like my father before me.  No wonder then that as the third phase beckons and the life of the past recedes writing becomes more important.  There is a sense in which legacy is a thing of vanity only and in that regard insignificant, after all most of us travel that last ancientrail unknown soon after we have set out.  There is, though, another sense in which legacy matters because it matters; that is, the legacy continues to entertain, to provoke, to evoke, to engage not in the world of the hereafter but in the world that is here after we are.

    It is to this sort of legacy that I aspire and its persistence through time will depend on the quality of the work and thought I bring to it.  I know it seems perverse from some perspectives but I do not care about my legacy while I live.  Fame or money or recognition do not matter.  Only the work.  If any of them would come, I would choose money for the freedom it would give Kate and me to travel.  Recognition matters to me only as affirmation of labor’s worth.  But I value my work myself, so it is not needed.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Dreams Family Third Phase Writing 📎and tagged