Short Story

The Words of the King:

On the Cause of Thunder and the Smells of Mortality

“It’s a strange country, this being old.”

–Frederick Turner

“If you’re going to write about madness maybe you should be a little mad yourself.”

–Michael Sexson

     “You speak the words, but I know what they mean. Don’t try to tell me I speak them incorrectly, you goddamn footstool.”

     “Okay, dad.” The young man sighed and turned back to the book in his hand.

     The old man felt an insane smile spread on his face and his son felt it pestering the side of his own. “Why are you here?”

     The boy answered without looking up from his book, “Because I want to see you.”

      “You come in my room—this sanctuary you have locked me in—and you open your slim books and you read in your own head. Why are you here?”

      “What would you like me to say?” The boy, as though it were such a great inconvenience, closed his book, one finger still holding his page, and crossed his arms against his knee, leaning toward his father.

     The old man erupted. Laughter sprawled out of his mind and it stole all the air from the cramped room. Through the rolls of thunder, he spoke, sputtering but strong, “The Ham and the King are the same.” The boy looked puzzled, angrily, hating his inability to explain his father away with madness. The man stopped laughing: cut off as with a sword. His pointing finger cut the air and smacked his boy in the face without ever touching him. “And you, boy, you smell of mortality.” The boy, for the first time, allowed concern to show in his eyes. “Why are you here?”

     “Do you want me to leave, dad?”

     The old man sat back in his stark bed and nodded solemnly, as though to himself. His eyes gazed far afield. “So it goes with God.”

     The man barely noticed as his son conspicuously collected his items. The man was no longer present in the room; he was in another state entirely, and many years in the past. Noticing this blankness in his father’s demeanor, the boy hesitated for a moment just on the threshold. He looked over his shoulder, hand on the doorknob; his brows furrowed as he shook his head and closed the door behind his disappearing form.

     Sun streamed through an open window and fell onto a glowing tabletop; the light reflected from the glass and lit up the already beaming face of a young woman. She chuckled at something I said. In a moment that felt like an hour she blinked, reveling in the humor, and looked up from the table—right at me. She looked up only with her eyes, her face tilted only slightly in my direction. And then it was over and she was just smiling at the tabletop again. The sun matched the color, but was seemingly more dull than, her hair. It couldn’t touch the strands, but painted a halo about her head. Then I heard my own voice—stronger and more resolute then—say, “I have to leave for work soon.”

     She kept her eyes on the table—I think she had papers laid out there. “I know you’ll have a wonderful day, Sweetheart.”

     Why didn’t I tell her I loved her? I should have, right in that moment; I should have let her know in every single breathing moment, but I waited until later, right before I stepped out the door. And she smiled, everywhere. She smiled in her eyes, in her laugh, in her cheeks, and she said, “I love you too,” and she kissed me ever so slightly on my lips. I went to work.

     “Hello, Mr. Leon! How was your visit with your son?”

     Sun streamed through the open window and fell onto a stark bed sheet—too crisp and too white. “Close the blinds, will you?”

     The nurse kept her smile plastered to her face, and sauntered toward the window. “Of course, Mr. Leon. Would you like to eat something? It’s noon.” She turned from the window to see the old man’s eyes gazing far afield. She shook her head slowly and crossed the threshold, leaving the man alone. In the hallway her voice broke through the door, “That man is losing it, Sharon.”

     Inside, the old man laughed. He stretched his hand off the ledge of the bed and clasped the air. “She thinks I’m crazy, Honey.” The woman with glowing hair smiled back at him. Letting her hand be surrounded by her husband’s, she lifted his fingers to her mouth and kissed them. “She smells of mortality.” The woman nodded. “They act for me, Elisa. The nurse comes in and she plasters that smile on her face and she squeaks at me, but I can hear her offstage. She’s a bad actor.” The woman nodded, grinning amusedly from her glowing eyes. “And my boy, he comes in this spick and span room and he sits there and he smirks at me. He pretends this doesn’t hurt.” He growled. “It hurts him.”

     The woman’s eyebrow rose, tears behind her eyes. “Do you want to hurt him?”

     The old man settled into his white pillows, grumbling tiredly. “No.” The woman patted his hand, his voice turned soft, “I don’t want him to hurt.” He tore his eyes from the woman and turned them to space.

     She spoke just barely. “You just don’t want to die.”

     His eyes were still directed toward space. “Readiness is all, Dear.”

     “Ripeness.”

     He smiled, uncontrollably.

     A minute cough sounded in the hallway. The man cocked his head as if to listen better. “Did you hear a cough?” There was a matching, tiny knock at the door; it opened, stage right. In shuffled a small—only for her slouching—young woman, radiant even through her shyness. The man sat up, face filled with light. “Ah, my nothing!”

     She smiled and entered the room wholeheartedly, “Because nothing is everything.”

     The man nodded. “Would you close the door behind you, please?”

     Having already journeyed toward her father, the young woman turned back, placed a soft hand to the white wood of the door and pushed it shut. “The nurse says you’re zoning out more often. She thinks you’re losing it.” She spoke almost mockingly, but still with a small voice.

     The man spread his arms, cocked his head, and grinned. “Why that’s because I have lost it; I’ve gone mad, Honeybee.” He leaned forward and whispered, “I’m crazy.”

     Shrugging off his torments she grabbed a book couched on the stiff armchair in the corner of the room—shoved as far into the corner as possible, the chair was a bright teal contrasting the white walls wondrously. She tossed the book toward the bed. It wafted through the air, “Yeah, you seem far out of your wits,” and landed in his lap.

     He lifted his decrepit copy of Hamlet. “The mad ones are the only ones who can really read. You must know that.”

     “Whatever you say, Hammy—if you ask me, you’re putting on an act: all the world wouldn’t you say?” She walked toward his bed and sat in the empty chair waiting for her.

     A shuttering whisper (an image of golden hair) boxed his ear, “Do you love her?” His smile faltered and for a moment he felt cold, alone.

     A knock at the door and a nurse peeked in, “How are you in here?”

     The young woman, eyes locked on her father responded immediately, “Stark-raving.”

     The nurse pushed further into the room, “Ma’am?”

     The young woman laughed, looked over her shoulder at this stranger and spoke, “We’re fine, thank you.” The nurse plastered a plastic smile on her face and left, shutting the door behind her.

     My car pulled into the driveway just after the sun went down; the sky was still lit, but it glowed from every heavenly square rather from the one celestial body. Elisa looked most beautiful in this light; I pictured her as I sat in my frozen car. Only after I stepped from the metal frame did I realize it was raining; it might not have actually been raining, but in my memory it was indeed pouring. I ran into the house without realizing just how dark and still it was. It was dead: no dinner, no light, no noise. Then the telephone rang, and I don’t remember much afterward.

     “What are you doing here, Stephen?”

     The man spun about in the dark; he felt his body grow old again, no longer the spritely youth of his memory. He stared in shock at the golden-haired woman lounging in the love seat below the now ominously glowing window. He stared from his stooped and weakened form. “You weren’t here, Elisa; I know you weren’t.”

     “Stop it, Stephen.”

     “Why are you angry, Elisa?” The man’s voice shook.

     “I want to know why you’re here. There is nothing here.” Her eyes locked on him from across the room, until they were suddenly right in front of him; they seemed to have grown three sizes and the force pushed him back. “There is nothing here.”

     “I didn’t mean to come here; I just—“

     “You just wandered off? You couldn’t control it? Maybe you really are going mad.”

     “It’s the mad one—“

     “It’s the mad ones who understand the world.” Her voice squealed in mockery, cutting off the smaller voice of her past love. “You want to know why I’m angry, Stephen?” Her question was contemptuously soft and low, a delicate whisper. He didn’t nod, too frightened to move, but curiosity—and concern—showed in his face no matter how he tried to stifle it. “I’m mad because you have a family and I don’t.” She wandered about the dark room slowly, eyes stuck to the old man all the way. Her fingertips grazed each piece of furniture as she passed it. “But that in itself doesn’t pester me so. I hate that you hate them: all but the one, your precious, little nothing.”

     “Go away.”

     Her laugh galloped through the house until she suddenly cut it off; her eyes blazed. “You get out; this place is mine. You moved on and left nothing.”

     “You’re not mad, Elisa, you’re insane; you don’t understand.”

     “I don’t understand nothing? I am nothing, Stephen.” She sauntered toward the old man until they stood nose to nose. “I don’t exist.”

     “Dad?” The young woman nudged her father. “Dad, wake up.” The old man’s eyes fluttered open to find again the stark, frozen room. Then they landed on his daughter. “You fell asleep on me.” She chuckled and pushed his shoulder playfully, a slight nervousness behind her eyes.

     The old man smiled. “I have nothing here, Honeybee.”

     His daughter pulled her chair closer to his bed. “No, Hammy, nothing is here.” She touched a finger to her father’s forehead. “And here.” And again to his chest.

     He laughed softly, a rumbling deep in his lungs. “No one here understands, but you.”

     “You were born to the wrong period.” Laughter leaked through her voice.

     At this, his own mirth boiled out of him wholeheartedly. “No I wasn’t, Dear. I was born to study the words, not to live in them.”

     His daughter leaned in to his scruffy ear. “You’re mad.”

     He put his lips to her ear in turn and whispered, “I know.”

     It was late, or early; death tends to muddle time. The old man was alone in his now silver room; he had asked earlier for his blinds to be opened to their greatest extent so as to allow the moonlight free reign. He was doused in it. There was no son with him, no daughter, no golden haired ghost. He had nothing, and then he passed only further into it. It was not violent, or showy and dramatic in any way: he simply allowed the nothingness to finally overcome his mind. When his heart stopped beating, no one could ever determine for sure, but it was not in that initial instant. He felt nothing for whole moments; he was conscious in nothing—a sensation allowed only to those on the cusp of a dream. And then he fell into the grandest dream of all.

     On the bedside table, moonlight illuminated a shining scrap of paper. On this, one sentence was scrawled.

I hope one day you can go mad, Honeybee, and understand the world; I have full faith in you.

     And no one ever understood what it meant: except for the one, his nothing. 

Explication, Discussing the King

Discussing “The Words of the King”

An Explication

     Before explaining my personal interpretations of “The Words of the King” and what ideas I attempted to portray I would like first to say that this story was an experiment. I wished to write a paper discussing Shakespeare, but could not narrow down my topic. I obsessed over too many themes and details present in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest. I wanted to discuss moonlight versus sunlight, madness, old age, nothingness, but it couldn’t be done in just one paper. So instead, I chose to write a short story that encompassed all of these themes and motifs. This form doesn’t allow for much assertion, but it does require an important understanding; if one doesn’t fully comprehend the meaning and purpose behind a motif, it cannot be used in turn to much fruition. The following explication of my intended purpose is not, obviously, the definitive interpretation; it is simply mine. Feel free to find, in “The Words of the King,” whatever you wish to see.

     From the beginning there are a few obvious allusions to works of Shakespeare. The subtitle, “On the Cause of Thunder and the Smells of Mortality,” was formed from two lines in King Lear that I found most striking. In Act 3, Scene 4 in the midst of a wondrous and devastating storm (and plenty of thunder) Lear speaks only directly to Edgar as Poor Tom, at times completely ignoring Gloucester; nearly every time Lear speaks he asks a question or wishes to ask a question. He poses, “Is it the fashion that discarded fathers / Should have thus little mercy on their flesh?” “Is man no more than this?” and eventually, “What is the cause of thunder?” To this last, Lear receives no answer. In “The Words of the King” I sought to find the cause of thunder. Now read again the following excerpt: “The old man erupted. Laughter sprawled out of his mind and it stole all the air from the cramped room. Through the rolls of thunder, he spoke, sputtering but strong, ‘The Ham and the King are the same.’” In this, I hoped to convey that the thunder, or the whole storm itself, served to allow, or force, man into realization. The storm brings understanding; in “The Words of the King” the thunder was represented by insane peals of laughter to develop the idea of the storm as madness. Therefore, true wisdom and enlightenment are found in madness, a theme prominent throughout Shakespeare’s works.

     The subject of true wisdom, then, brings us to the second part of the subtitle, “the Smells of Mortality.” In King Lear this phrase is fleeting; Gloucester asks to kiss Lear’s hand and Lear says “Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality” (Act 4, Scene 6). Here, he speaks of his own flesh as literally mortal, but he is disgusted by it. Hamlet feels the same in Act 5, Scene 1 as he reminisces about poor Yorick, the court jester and holds his skull. This is where the theme truly shows its truth: as if the later King Lear were an echo. Hamlet holds Yorick’s skull and says, “My gorge rises at it;” his memories of his old friend’s jests are tainted and disgusting; the image of mortality taints the wisdom of foolishness. These two moments together, form the idea of true wisdom as immortal. In “The Words of the King” Stephen Leon (the old man) uses Lear’s phrase twice: once to describe his son and again to describe the nurse. In both these instances he decries the two in a way that suggests he himself does not smell of mortality, even so on the brink of mortal death. However, he is the wisest of all the characters; it his wisdom that is immortal. Stephen’s wisdom lasts his body in the form of his note to his daughter. Ultimately, the two ideas present in the subtitle of “The Words of the King” claim that true wisdom is madness and that madness is immortal.

     The Shakespearean theme pertaining to the meaning of “nothing,” I think, was made clear in “The Words of the King,” if only to say that there are two different kinds of nothingness: empty, purposeless nothing and infinite, creative nothing. The first time we hear Stephen speak of nothing is when his daughter walks in and he calls her—instead of my everything—“my nothing.” This use of the word is much like that in Theseus’ speech in Act 5, Scene 1 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “The poet’s pen / Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name.” This use of the word is an example of the infinite, poetic, creative nothing. Later on in “The Words of the King,” Elisa tells Stephen to leave their house of his memory, “There is nothing here.” This instance is a static one, for it could mean either nothing, depending on how one reads it. Elisa could be claiming there is literally nothing useful, only emptiness in Stephen’s memories; she could be saying there is infinite nothing and the infinite nothing is no place for Stephen’s morose remembrance to abide. This all depends on the reader’s opinion of Elisa, but thinking on her earlier conversation with Mr. Leon (His eyes were still directed toward space. “Readiness is all, Dear.” / “Ripeness.”) and its echo later on from the definite wise daughter, it seems Elisa could easily be considered a wise character; her nothing could very well be the creative. The final and most important use of the word nothing is used in the last scene, the scene in which Stephen dies. “He simply allowed the nothingness to finally overcome his mind.” I was extremely careful with the wording of this sentence, because I wished it to be the culmination of the whole “nothing” idea and I wanted it to match that of Shakespeare. The key, here, is that the nothingness did not envelop his body; it enveloped his mind, because that is where true infinite nothing—as well as madness—comes from. The final sentence, “And no one ever understood what it meant: except for the one, his nothing,” most obviously speaks to his wise daughter. Yes, but it also speaks further to the idea that madness can only be understood in nothingness. This, ultimately, is what Shakespeare strove to teach us.

     Perhaps the most easily understood and the most archetypal motif in “The Words of the King” is the idea of sunlight versus moonlight. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream moonlight is used most prominently to embody magic and illusion; sunlight, in turn, represents blatant reality. Remember though, that Hamlet learned the truth about his father by moonlight, speaking once again to Shakespeare’s idea that magic and illusion are true reality. Therefore, sunlight would have to be the foolish fool’s (i.e. Polonius) reality, not the absolute. To speak to this in “The Words of the King,” Stephen asked the nurse to close the blinds in order to shut out the sunlight; the sunlight that lit up Elisa and made her so beautiful, was reflected and skewed by the glass table so it was not true; Stephen claimed later that Elisa was most beautiful in the twilight; and finally, he died and entered nothingness while bathed in moonlight. Moonlight, magic, dreams, and nothingness are where true beauty lies, where absolute truth can be found.

     If I had to label my story—a tragedy, a comedy, a romance—I don’t know that I really could. Before I started, I wanted to make a combination genre to exemplify the presence in Shakespeare’s works of tragedy in comedy and comedy in tragedy. I suppose by writing a genre-less story, I have accomplished that, but in the end, my story was written primarily on instinct. That’s how writing is done; a writer may have a goal at the start, but I can guarantee that in every good work, that goal will change into something else—usually more real—by the end. Knowing this, I can respect Shakespeare ever more, because he built his writing on beautiful ideas and imaginings that he must have already had in his mind. While I agree with Stephen Leon’s claim, “‘I was born to study the words, not to live in them,’” I do think it would be absolutely wonderful to speak to the man who held all of these ideas in his mind on the instinctual base. Shakespeare functioned with a mind full of nothing, and gave it to us in poetics.

The High and the Low

     I just finished reading Life of Pi for the third time. For simplicity's sake, Yann Martel tells a story about a boy lost at sea with a tiger in a life boat. Every time I read it different lines strike me - so it goes, I guess, with any story. In this reading I found an excerpt that I would like to share.

"High calls low and low calls high. I tell you, if you were in such dire straits as I was, you too would elevate your thoughts. The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar."

     Obviously, you will see the connection I'm meaning to make here. I read this short passage and was halted at its unbelievable connection to one of the most prominent themes we've discussed this semester. There is a further connection, though, that this allows me to realize only after writing my final project. The quickest connection between the high and the low is madness. In madness, or wise-foolishness as Euterpe so deemed it, a supreme understanding is found; in her presentation, Euterpe used Puck as an example, "the only one who understands dreams." In the moment cited above, Pi is delirious, driven mad by his experiences at sea: and he finds clarity and sanctuary.
     It is an epiphany I am, perhaps, quite late in seeing, but it's one of the most important, I think. Shakespeare uses madness as the highest form of wisdom in every play we've read this semester; he especially uses the "sane" character's labeling and ignorance of the madness as a tool to show the high's being blind to real wisdom. The low are high only because they are mad.

Frederick Turner and Infinite Nothing

     When Frederick Turner drew in class the diagram of All (the known world) and Nothing (the unknown) he drew from the cusp of the All circle a figure eight that circled back into All and out into Nothing. This served to represent the journey of the poet who is blazing a trail into the world of "airy nothings," but needs still to remain in "local habitation." He pointed out as he drew it, "It's a sort of figure eight movement." What he did not point out (but I assume he noticed) is that this shape represents infinity. I thought that was most interesting. It seems, eventually, that science must end; one day, it should strictly define all the known world, right? Isn't that the point? Turner said, "The poet goes to the edge of the world to understand 'nothing.'" The poet infinitely pushes to the edge of definitive-ness and defines even more. The poet's journey is infinite. Turner drew this without even initially realizing it's true importance for me, and again, I thank him for his contribution.

Frederick Turner and Old Age

     There are quite a few thoughts I have been meaning to get up here, but just never did. The time is ripe for it, I think. I don't want to smash all of these separate ideas into one post, so consider the next three or four pieces belated responses to the last couple weeks.
   
     At his poetry reading Frederick Turner said something, almost as an aside, that struck me; it seemed so important at the time that I scrawled it on my ticket, and I don't even remember the context now. He said, "It's a strange country, this being old." And that's a beautiful image, isn't it? I immediately thought of all the older characters in the works we have read this semester and how they function, how their age factors in. Probably quite obviously, King Lear stuck to the forefront of my mind, and it was King Lear who most inspired the short story I wrote for my final project. In his old age, he searches for assurance: assurance of his daughter's love, yes, but also of his entire purpose, his manhood. The scene I most obsess over in the explication of my short story (titled, I might add, "The Words of the King") is Act 3, Scene 4 with Lear and Edgar lost in the tempest. In this scene every single time Lear speaks - excepting four short instances - he either asks a question or wishes to ask a question. It's as if only in the midst of a great storm (the real physical representing his mental state) does Lear realize all of these questions he holds unanswered. Only in the midst of a great storm does he realize he doesn't, in fact, know everything he wishes to know. His old age acts as a shove - a desperate indicator that he has so little time to learn. He ignores Gloucester and the other men attempting to "save" him from the storm, berating Edgar, "[his] philosopher," in hopes to obtain the answers he's so desperate for as quickly as he can.
     Without Turner's fleeting comment, I could not have written the short story that I did, and I thank him.

I did it.

I finally wrote a sonnet.

Sonnet 4
I was never supposed to fall in love.
Forever, I thought, I'd cower and run.
Forever, I thought, I'd look down on above,
But I got it in the end; love's won.
I've read all these books, and I know all this
Language not to be used 'round you. Bespoken
Cannot explain or tell truth. Gone amiss
Are the days I knew my true emotion.
You speak to me numbers not in my thought.
That's why I need you; you know what I don't;
You say what I can't; you are what I'm not.
Lacking courage to say the words, I won't.
I cannot speak it, so I'll sing my love.
Come fly with me to see worlds from above.


I'll send it in the mail presently, and hopefully I'll have an entertaining story to share later.

Sisyphus

     Still trying to write a sonnet - still not working. For this one, Bob Dylan and Hamlet served as inspiration.

Sonnet 3
Oh jingle jangle morning, disappear
Silhouette by the sea. I know of days
When in just one small moment you will fear,
And you will leave in applause of a praise.
Appraisal and reprisal please. Just sway.
For on what Earth, no matter, matter's not.
You, driven mad oh bawdy bodkin. Stay.
Just leave the love you desperately sought.
Just join me in a jingle jangle morn.
Forget about today 'til our morrow;
Leave behind sunken swelling horror sworn.
Just join with me, and sing it all in sorrow.
And in the jingle jangle morning sing your song.
And in the jingle jangle mourn. Get along.

Jebrina: The New Hamlet

     Over the weekend I participated in a lifting competition with my friend, Jenna. As we stood on the starting line, waiting to begin the half hour performance, one of the officials turned to us and asked, "Are you ready?" Laughing, my friend and I turned to each other. She said, "Are we ready?!" And I responded, "Of course we're not ready," or something of that sort. It was at this moment I wished I had the ready wit and language of Hamlet. What would I have said if I could?

Official: Are you ready?
Jenna: Are we ready? What is it that we prepare for?
Sabrina: Surely not this bar and this weight.
Jenna: Ah, but to complete it in time.
Sabrina: And is it this short half hour with which we fight? Or is it grander? Isn't always grander?
Jenna: So, Official, what you ask us - are we ready to fight against the grandest essence and stretch of life? I suppose we must be.
Sabrina: For what other choice do we have? What other choice do we have but in pushing this bar from ourselves to shove the constraints of time from our minds?
Jenna: Then is this short half hour merely an allegory for the rest of life and the time that wastes?
Sabrina: Or a test! To calculate our handle on't. Is this your test of which you question us, Official? Are you the umpire and the king? Or am I?
Jenna: Or am I?
Official: It doesn't really matter at this point. The contest is over. We're cleaning up; you should probably go.
Sabrina: Ah, it doesn't really matter.
Jenna: Did you hear? Quantum Mechanics has disproved matter. It does not even exist!
Sabrina: Ha! Official, do you hear? It does not even exist. No matter.
[Jenna and Sabrina wander off stage as their continuing discussion wanders with them.]
Official: Someone should probably take them to the student health clinic. 

 Jebrina: The New Hamlet

For Want of a Nail

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

I came across this proverb in another class and thought it very Hamletian.
It also brought a new light to the quote from Richard III, "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse."

Sonnets and Sonnets

     As we discovered in class today, I have a finite mind. As such, I have to write rough drafts of dead words. Wow, that's so morbid. I haven't tried applying the whole iambic pentameter thing yet, but anyway, here's my sonnet as it is today.

Sonnet 1
For you, shall I climb up on this mountain?
If I shout your name to the cascading valley,
If I finish this wonderfully ambiguous quatrain
Will these desperate pleas, will they make you love me?
And if love be such a beautiful thing,
Will the valley shout back rejoice?
As this speech echoes, listen to the valley sing.
When I tell you I love you, listen to the valley voice.
The falls cascade to their far deep baths
The land left awash in this echo of mocking
And listen now, for at these words it laughs.
A valley voice performs the infinite, and at this love it's balking.
But if I tell you I love you, at the end of this couplet,
Will you tell me you love me? Won't you settle this bet?

Sabrina

A Small Epiphany for a Wednesday Afternoon

     I've tried blogging once before only to discover I fail miserably at it. My roommate and I made a blog at the start of this school year, expecting to share all of our knowledge and adventure with the world. Still, to this day, there is but one lonely post dated November 5, 2012. I've been told for years that blogging is a great way for writers to write daily, so I was a bit disgruntled to find my blogging skills so dramatically lacking (unfortunately, one must actually post in order for a blog to be successful). While Redeeming Shakespeare has still been difficult to keep up with on the daily, I have found it much easier to find subject matter. My other blog (we'll just call it RSA) was deemed an "anything and everything" blog; my roommate and I did not want to be tied down to any strict subject. This, however, was the first and biggest mistake of our blogging career. If I am writing about everything then it follows logically that I am writing to everyone. Beside the fact that this is impossible for nearly every writer, I didn't even want to write to everyone. I wanted to write only to those who cared about the adventures in my life - and that's a small number. The second problem, then, was that we did not know who we were actually writing to. Dr. Mark Schlenz taught me that if I ever want to be published in any format, I must be able to visualize the audience reading the final product. This is why Redeeming Shakespeare is so much easier than RSA, because I know all of you and I know what you expect to hear.
     Now, I said above that "nearly every writer" finds it impossible to write to everyone because there is one writer who did write to the audience of everyone, and I think you know where I'm going with this. Shakespeare wrote to the gods, the kings, the commoners, and the chaotic, and was completely aware that he did so. This, above every other accomplishment, is the reason Shakespeare is the greatest poet in history. Shakespeare's plays were written to the world, and I still cannot fathom how he managed it. If a writer can discover, once more, how to write to the Globe, he might be the next greatest: but I think the key is to just not try so hard.

Write on,
Sabrina

Imagination

     Unfortunately, I cannot remember why we were talking about Samuel Taylor Coleridge a few classes ago, but I do remember that we were trying to find the full quote of his "primary imagination" spiel. Well, I found it.

"The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation....it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead." 

      Coleridge goes on to say, "[A poet] diffuses a tone and spirit of unity that blends and...fuses by that synthetic and magical power...the imagination."  One well worded interpretation of this statement, written by Katherine D. Harris, reads as follows, "As soon as the poet decides to write down his or her poem...the work is inevitably diminished." The solidity of the words written remove the idea from pure and perfect imagination and turn the idea into an object, which Coleridge claims is then "fixed and dead." This is all well and good - and true, in my opinion - but Coleridge did not say it first. The following you'll remember from A Midsummer Night's Dream:

"The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, / glances from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; / And as imagination bodies forth / the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen / turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing / a local habitation and a name." -Theseus Act V, Scene 2

     In Theseus speech, Shakespeare claims just the same; the poet turns imagination into object.
     In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein Mary Shelley wrote, "My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings."
     John Cage, primarily a composer, once said, "[Art is] an affirmation of life - not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living." Or, perhaps, the very dreams we're dreaming? For what is life if not fueled by dreams?
     And finally, Allan Kaprow, a painter from the 50s and 60s, claimed, "'Anything' was too easy....If anything was art, nothing was art."
     So what does all this mean? Why did I decide that all these quotes fit together and create meaning? I have no idea; you tell me.

Sabrina

REM Behavior Disorder

     Yesterday, when I was searching for Charcot-Wilbrand syndrome, I found something else just as interesting. When we are children the part of the brain that keeps us from "acting out" our dreams is not fully developed yet. In most cases, this leads to mild sleepwalking or simply moving around while asleep, and eventually our brains learn to paralyze our bodies while in REM sleep. However, if the brain experiences trauma in this area before it fully develops - or after, if the trauma is severe enough - the brain will not be able to paralyze the body. In this case, patients actually "act out" their dreams: jumping out of windows, running, speaking, dancing.
     If that isn't the most Shakespearean sleep disorder in science to date then I don't know what is.

Sabrina

Keep Dreaming

     I had an elaborate, and cheesy, post planned on the subject of dreams. In it, I would have first admitted to only remembering my dreams on extremely rare occasions; but don't worry; I would have gone on to explain that a writer thinks only in dreams, in stories, and in this way, I can dream. In all honesty I was not at all excited to write it.
     I was then so lucky as to come across something interesting enough to replace that fluff. I just finished watching a television show in which one of the characters had a brain disorder that made him unable to dream. I googled the disorder, and while the name in the show was falsified, there is actually a real-life condition. Charcot-Wilbrand syndrome is a condition in which a person is unable to revisualise images or memories - their brain just doesn't record them - so they have no substance with which to build dreams. CWS is extremely rare, but it is caused by severe brain trauma, most often strokes.
     The character in the TV show explained the disorder thusly: "Do you know what that's like? Not to be able to dream? You never rest, not really. It's like being awake for fifteen years." This is an interesting idea, that we can only rest in dreams, in falsified worlds that allow us to leave the solidity of Earth. So, if dreams last for mere seconds, in our six-nine hours a night of lazing our minds recover only in those last few moments. I'm not claiming that we all shouldn't sleep. Sleeping is fantastic, and our bodies need the rest of those hours to recover. But, if we were unable to dream would our minds ever get a break? Do you think at some point they would just give up? We survive in our dreams.
     But what of bad dreams? Hamlet claims in Act 2, Scene 2 to have such dreams: "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams." Does Hamlet claim, here, to literally have frightful dreams, or is he admitting to simply dreaming poorly? I don't remember my dreams often; does my lack of recall mean I am a bad dreamer? I still have dreams; my brain functions just enough to build worlds, but not often does it remember its creations, and this brings us to the most important idea in this whole revelation. We survive in our dreams - our minds recover their sanity as they construct novels; our minds can act alone in this, and we do not need to be aware of their discoveries in order to recover our conscious sanity. We must simply bask in our own creations.
     It is when we try to understand them that they become Bottom's Dream. No dream has a bottom.

Keep dreaming,
Sabrina

The Big Bad Wolf

     In fifth grade I played the Big Bad Wolf in my elementary school's production - you might remember such famous lines as, "I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down." I tormented the pigs and I roared at the crowd - much like Snug in a Midsummer Night's Dream. And also much like Snug and the gang, I believed myself to be terrific: I was the greatest Wolf to ever saunter the stage.
     I distinctly remember running up to my mom at the end of the show and begging for assurance, "Was I good? I thought I messed up my speech." And she, and my grandma, and my grandpa, and my dad all tore down my doubt; they claimed I was fantastic. The family sitting beside them even chimed in, and if I thought I was great and my family thought I was great then, by God, I was great! Who's to say I wasn't?
     Now really, I was awful. I'll be the one to say I wasn't great; I was in fifth grade and I'm no prodigy, but in my ignorance I competed with all my idols. Shove off, Mickey Rooney, Sabrina Hayes has just stepped on the scene.
     Ignorance breeds confidence. In some adults, this may be dangerous, sure, but in children and in fools it becomes art. In A Midsummer Night's Dream Philostrate says of the coming play (put on by Bottom and friends), "[It] made mine eyes water; but more merry tears / The passion of loud laughter never shed" (5.1.147). He's warning Theseus against watching the play, and yet the rehearsal still brought him enjoyment, so where is the fault? Theseus demands to see the play; he says, "Never anything can be amiss / When simpleness and duty tender it" (5.1.149). This is the crux: we work with what we have available to us, like Quentin Tarantino and our friend, Shakespeare. When the skills and the language are lacking, but we still try to function in our simpleness, to form something beautiful, it is poetic; it is art. That's the beauty of the chaotic, and Shakespeare saw it too; he encouraged it.
     We all celebrate our greatness even when we are so clearly not, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Be mindful, Mickey Rooney,
Sabrina Hayes, The Big Bad Wolf

Engagement and Detachment

     I'm currently reading Maynard Mack's Everybody's Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies. So far, the entire piece is forcing me to rethink some important aspects of Shakespeare's oeuvre: the themes found from looking at the entirety of his work and its function in our modern society. In Mack's first chapter he discusses Shakespeare's presence in our world today. In direct opposition of my last post, he says, "Shakespeare is the only writer in world literature who actually comes close to belonging to the world." While I stand firm in my claim that the majority of the population doesn't allow Will to be as present as he should be, Mack focuses solely on the relatively subconscious additions to our culture: the phrases and words that the Bard contributed to our language, the inspiration and aspects of story he has given history's writers, and the themes he has taught - especially "what it means to function as a genuinely humane human being in a harsh and often wholly incomprehensible universe." I simply desire a stronger consciousness of these contributions in our culture - I only wish the general populace realized the importance of the literature.
     Reading earlier today I came to Mack's discussion of Shakespeare's constant theme and encouragement of engagement and detachment in his audience. "Most of the transactions that take place between an audience and a play are ultimately grounded in two...familiar psychological states...engagement and detachment." Mack claims Shakespeare was conscious of these states and that he encouraged them through his abundant metaphors comparing the stage to life (i.e. "All the world's a stage"). What surprised me was Mack's definition of these two psychological states. He explains engagement as being so immersed in the image and language of the play that one does not have time to think - we see the characters as real people in danger, in love, in despair; detachment, according to Mack, is the state which allows the audience to sit back and reflect on theme, to find a deeper, applicable meaning. In class Dr. Sexson has discussed our own detachment and engagement as applied to his class and this blog; to him, engagement consists of many meaningful posts relevant to Shakespeare, because from that we can find more meaning and gain further understanding. For Dr. Sexson, it seems, it is in detachment that we do not learn. Do these definitions differ only because of the separate arenas to which they are applied - a play and a class? Both explanations make sense; I can accept both as truth in each scenario. Does this mean the states of engagement and detachment are defined only by the situations in which they are applied, or do they have to have strict definitions? If so, which is correct?
     These psychological states, though, were not the reason I felt a need to post today; I haven't even gotten there yet, so stick with me. The reason I need to share Maynard Mack with you is the following paragraph:

"However used, the effect of the stage and world comparison is to pull us in both directions simultaneously, reminding us of the real world whose image the playhouse is, but also the playhouse itself and the artifice we are taking part in. If the traveling players in Hamlet solidify the realism of the play by the lesser realism of the fictions they bring to it, they also nourish our sense of the play as an artful composition made up of receding planes where almost everybody is engaged in some sort of "act" and seeks to be "audience" to somebody else. Conversely, if we sit looking down with detached superiority on the lovers watching Bottom's play in A Midsummer Night's Dream, because they in turn look down with detached superiority on the antics of Pyramus and Thisbe without realizing that they are watching the very image of their own antics the night before, we are forced...to understand that there is another play afoot, in which we are actors as well as spectators."

 It seems obvious upon reading this that Shakespeare's abundance of plays within plays serve to represent us - the audience. In reality, then, Shakespeare's plays within plays are actually plays within plays within The Play (that is, life), and with this, "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players," becomes quite literal. According to Mack, the playhouse is an artifice representing the real world, but if the real world is a stage isn't it all artifice? So, what distinguishes the real from the imagined?
     Shakespeare was real; his words are real; the playhouse is a real place where real people "act." If it is in the acting that we find the falsity, but we're all acting in The Play, then none of it is real. I prefer the opposite: everything is real. This leaves me at a philosophical impasse, though; I will have to further contemplate this and get back to you.

Thank you,
Sabrina Hayes

Redeeming Shakespeare

You may have noticed I changed the name of this blog from the rather elementary "Journeys with Shakespeare" to "Redeeming Shakespeare, From Time." While the actual title was inspired by a class (or lifelong) assignment - to redeem, from insignificance, the time - the change was inspired by a simpler thought.
I had been pondering the state of our current society's romance genre, and became severely disappointed as I thought of the cliche, the formulaic, the bland options we have spewing from Nora Roberts and her peers. And I became even more upset when thinking of the art we have lost over the years: it's not simply the bland that we have, but the poetic that we have lost. We have lost Shakespeare. Perhaps he hasn't been completely lost to me, or to you, but we - the culture - have lost the Bard: because we simply do not try, we simply do not care enough to study him. Every time I mention the fact that I'm in a Shakespeare literature class, I get the most sympathetic, worried looks; when I tell these people that I actually enjoy Shakespeare they look as though they're bursting to ask me if I need a ride to the nearest hospital. The majority of our culture treats the Bard with a stigma; he's ever present, but he's not to be read, and certainly not for entertainment. Instead, what we do read are novels of the least literary merit imaginable; we read Twilight, and The Notebook, books that wouldn't even have been comedic in Shakespearean culture. And it makes me sad.
So, in studying Shakespeare this semester, I hope not only to learn more of his artwork for my own sake, but I hope also to learn enough so that I can encourage my friends, my peers, and society to embrace the poetic. Here goes nothing.

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion."  -John Keating, Dead Poets Society

Your Hopeful Redeemer,
Sabrina Hayes