***Trigger warning*** (The following post contains violent verse and some 1980s era animated violence and sexist imagery. Always trying not to offend anyone while walking the line of potentially offending everyone.) Not Shakespeare’s heart, but instead from the American writer Stephen Crane. In the Desert In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said, “Is it good, friend?” “It is bitter—bitter,” he answered; “But I like it “Because it is bitter, “And because it is my heart.”* Which brings to mind an old Blue O ..read more

Angel of grief* We typically think of angels as protectors and companions. Sometimes, they may be warriors. Destroyers of evil. Walking beside us. Keeping us safe. But there are other angels who are not guardian angels. Not angels of “now I lay me down to sleep”. Not springtime or summer’s day angels. Not by a long shot. Not someone to watch over you unless it be to watch you weep. Angels of sorrow. Angels of loss. These angels are angels of uneasy nights. Of guilt, confusion, angels whose soul (sole) purpose seems to be to observe the senseless–tragedy, downfall, ruin. Loves gone wrong. Fortu ..read more

Relief showing Helios, sun god in the Greco-Roman mythology. From the North-West pediment of the temple of Athena in Ilion (Troy). Between the first quarter of the 3rd century BC and 390 BC. Marble, 85,8 x 86,3 cm. Found during the excavations lead by Heinrich Schliemann in 1872, now in the Pergamon-Museum in Berlin, Germany. Public domain. Enter Juliet alone. JULIET  Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, Towards Phoebus’ lodging. Such a wagoner As Phaëton would whip you to the west And bring in cloudy night immediately. Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, That runaways’ ey ..read more

Calanish Stones. Outer Hebrides, Scotland. Author photo. Even as Hamlet laments the horrors his father’s ghost describes, so the prince is already becoming a ghost himself. HAMLET  It waves me still.—Go on, I’ll follow thee. MARCELLUS  You shall not go, my lord. [They hold back Hamlet.] HAMLET  Hold off your hands. HORATIO  Be ruled. You shall not go. HAMLET  My fate cries out And makes each petty arture in this body As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve. Still am I called. Unhand me, gentlemen. By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me! I say, away!—Go on ..read more

Tribes. All of us. How we see ourselves. Others. Angels. Demons. Gustave Doré’s 1866 illustration of Satan Yielding before Gabriel, for John Milton’s 1866 epic poem, Paradise Lost. Hatfields. McCoys. The family of Devil Anse Hatfield against the family of Ole Ran McCoy, although both sides had fought for the Confederates against the Yankee Union in the American Civil War. We are the quick. The dead. The moving. The still. We. They. Us. Them. We are them. Montagues. Capulets. Aufidius. Coriolanus. England. France. Oberon. Titania. Theseus. Hippolyta. Ineffectual Democrats. Heartless Republicans ..read more

Magical ‘theory’ may be dismissed by scholars as too nebulous. A theory in the proper sense of the word, after all, explains facts, events, or observable phenomena. Yet magic is not a fact. The existence of magic cannot be verified, neither do its purported effects seems to be observable or reproducible. After all, human history is replete with legends, myths, stories, and ideas which aren’t based on scientific observation. The volumes written on magic may easily be relegated to mere superstition. There’s no proof to it. The worlds of Harry Potter, Merlin, Gandalf, and their kind are merely fi ..read more

[***Trigger warning*** This post contains violence and rough language–in some ways similar to the weather in a changing climate.] Shakespeare and aging? Old. Yep. How well we know it. As we know him, the old one. Old scratch. The ancient adversary. Everything about him familiar, and all old. Old as the salt we throw over our shoulders to keep him behind us. Old as the hills, with eyes or without, whether with Steinbeck’s dark inhabitants or seemingly empty. Old as kisses. Old as angels. Devils. Demons. All the same. Old. The old earth. Author photo. Old as the earth and older. Older than the s ..read more

“Time means nothing to a ghost.” Well, that’s not always strictly true. Sometimes life gets busy. While we do not wish to set friends aside, even temporarily, sometimes we must do so in order to attend to other things. Still, the corridor remains, the long hallway of the familiar, punctuated by various doors and shadows. When we do walk it once again, it is like a field, different even while remaining the same. Familiarity itself may not be a mytheme like a tree or a shadow, but in the vernacular, it is still a thing. The familiar may be an old friend or even a group of friends, but it may als ..read more

Driftwood burl. Author photo. The title line for this post is misleading because it is incomplete. Spoken by Cardinal Pandolf in King John, the opening phrase suggests a dissolution, a complete disintegration of form, order, and (as Pandolf deliberately implies) meaning. The whole line underscores something else: All form is formless, order orderless, Save what is opposite to England’s love. Therefore to arms! be champion of our church, Or let the church, our mother, breathe her curse, A mother’s curse, on her revolting son. France, thou mayst hold a serpent by the tongue, A chafed lion by th ..read more

In memory of David Gould. Shakespeare Institute Garden in spring. Author photo. In Richard II, the gardener addresses one of his assistants: Go, bind thou up yon dangling apricocks, Which, like unruly children, make their sire Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight: Give some supportance to the bending twigs. Go thou, and like an executioner, Cut off the heads of too fast growing sprays, That look too lofty in our commonwealth: All must be even in our government. You thus employ’d, I will go root away The noisome weeds, which without profit suck The soil’s fertility from wholesome flo ..read more