Words, Words, Words

The play Hamlet is pretty well etched in my mind. I read it each year for nearly 10 years with high school students. Juniors and seniors. Lots of angst. Teen spirit, too. I’m not the memorizing type. I’m more of an improviser. Still, words from Hamlet often come to me.

There’s more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

What a piece of work is man, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel in apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Had I but time (as this fell sargeant death is strict in his arrest), O I could tell you–

Poetry! I could fill this blog with musings about these three passages that, incidentally, were not written by me. I could rant and rave like an English teacher. Like an associate professor of English Education, P.H.D. I could fill this blog with words.

Words, words, words.

Those three words are likely my favorite little chunk of text in the play. Act two scene two. Hamlet is stupidly accosted by stupid Polonius who is stupidly trying to investigate Hamlet’s sanity. Hamlet makes a joke of Polonius, of himself, and of literature in general. What are you reading? Words, words, words. The joke is beautiful. What are you reading right now, kind reader? Nothing, just words, words, words. That’s all we have to communicate about the state we’re in. This terrifying, beautiful, infinite existence. Words, words, words. Good luck making sense of any of them.

***

Words, words, words was a refrain in my best-selling science fiction novel The Person on the Other Side of this Book. And by best-selling, I mean worst-selling. I kept joking with the reader in that book and, if I’m being honest, with the main characters, that there was nothing to what the book was doing. Just words, words, words.

In the play, Hamlet goes on in the next line to use the words in the book he is reading to paint a mocking picture of stupid Polonius. Have I mentioned Polonius is stupid?

Polonius, trying to follow Hamlet’s sarcastic, irreverent, and angsty dismal of his question mutters this to himself:

Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.

That line captures The Person on the Other Side of this Book perfectly. Most of my writing, really. Creative, academic, or even these bloggy little vignettes. Mostly madness, but there is a method to it. For me, this line from Polonius also captures most of what I see other people doing as they move through the world. Really, this gets at the totality of creation too. Madness with some method. Let’s hope there’s method, anyway, because if there isn’t this whole thing is one big fat cosmic joke. That’s the sort of question Hamlet is addressing throughout the play. Is there a method to it all? Is there meaning? Is there purpose? Or is it all one big fat joke? Hamlet gives us a clue that he might have more to say about this existential question at the end of the play. If only he had more time, he tells Horatio, the things he could say. But then he dies. This fell sargeant death is strict in his arrest.

Vonnegut, my spirit animal author, wrote that Hamlet is a great piece of literature because unlike most canonical, popular, or even marketable stories told in the western tradition, it tells the truth. There’s no dramatic highs. No dramatic lows. Mostly, we’re unsure of who the good characters are and who the bad characters are. We don’t know who we should be cheering for. For Vonnegut, the play tells the truth and the truth is we have very little information about what’s going on here.

***

I’ve been writing lately.

Maybe it’s anxiety. Maybe it’s intellectual boredom. Maybe it’s a desperate need for a creative outlet. I don’t get to do improv every Friday night anymore. Lots of pent up creativity over here.

I’m not sure what I’m writing yet. I never am when I start. Sometimes it goes in the direction of memoir. Other times it is magical realism, theology, or science fiction, I can’t contain it. I just let it go. Improvisational writing. See what comes.

One of my closest friends read The Person on the Other Side of this Book when it came out. He wasn’t a huge fan. He told me he was really hoping for straight fiction. Instead, I veered into whatever it was I veered into. Madness with some method. I’m really happy with the book. Proud of it. But I can’t pretend it was a strategic work of fiction. Maybe someday I’ll pull off a strategic piece of fiction. Stephen King style. Octavia Butler style. For now, writing seems to serve a different purpose for me. I get hit with some energy and that energy turns into something wild.

Mostly, I’m trying to move through this terrifying, beautiful, infinite existence. With words. And more words. And more words.