Hamlet comes in many forms...

It is just a Thursday night, nothing too special. My roommates and I went and had dinner with friends at The Garage. Such a great place to just relax and hang out. Get a beer and some good food with great company, what's not to like?On our way back home, one of my roommates started to tell me things about herself that I hadn't realized before. Things that I had lived with for months and hadn't noticed because I thought that she had been upset with me....slap to the face.
We started talking and got into a pretty deep discussion: mostly about life and the worries we both have, the future and the way our society is going, and how we are to change such things. And then she said this amazing bit (paraphrasing here and not as wonderful as how she said it), " We are all so small and insignificant and the things we do are so small but the way we are taught to think about everything is so big! We're ignorant for thinking such things matter, even though such things matter so much to us." Like I said, I can't remember how she said it exactly but I think this is the gist of it. Here we are having this deep conversation and all I can think as I sit there is "Wow, that was the best piece of Hamlet I've ever heard!" I think I ruined the moment by saying that out loud but it was true and I think that it is something that Hamlet has to deal with as well. I think it is something that all young people have to deal with; having to see the future in a bigger picture and then realizing that much of it really doesn't matter in the end..
Interesting thought.

"When that poem would be coming like a freight train..."

The dreams that occure in between alarms

"Sleep is the best meditation."- The Dalai Lama

We've been talking a lot the dreams that we have and also the ones that the characters have. I think it's interesting that there are two sides of the perception of dreaming: Do we look deeper into our dreams and find the meaning, or do we simple see them as a portal into our imaginations? The mind is vast isn't it?

Recently I've been noticing my own dreams. Maybe because I see faces a little more clearly and remember them or maybe it's because the colors are a little less vivid and some of the dreams are black and white. I noticed with one in particular that I seem to have it more in between when my first alarm goes off and when the second alarm goes off for me to get up in the morning. These dreams tend to be more abstract than regular REM sleep dreams but this one is nicer. I see faces of friends and family that I haven't seen in a while. they tend to usually be pretty happy and I think I'm usually some where that is familiar to me, or at least I have the feeling that it is. Somewhere like my parents house or my middle school. For what ever reason these are the dreams I tend to hold on to. Even though many of them are disturbing or just plain strange.  

Language

So, while walking in Walmart this afternoon, I tried the insult from Shakespeare Insult Kit. It was just to my boyfriend but it did the job non the less. Stunned and baffled that I would even use such words but it was hilarious. Thou goated, hedge-born, harpy. I think he thought I may have been cussing him out. I had to explain that I wasn't.

I think when something is said that someone doesn't understand or they can't hear, it puts them on a defensive mind set. Just the way Clayton thought that I was cussing him. Language is funny in that we all speak it but we never seem to speak the SAME language.

Here are two video that I high recommend you watch. And if you have seen them, watch them again and think about it this time.

PBS is a great spot for understanding a little bit more of the ideas that are sometimes a little coded in their meaning.

As much as I would like to say I'm an auditory learner, there are the times I need the diagram to see how things are going even if it is out in the open. I have been having the same issue as Austin, I feel that my posts are at the bottom rather than the top with the rest of the class. Something that I have realized in class is how connected most literature is. I am currently in the Southern Literature class and constantly get see the lines from Shakespeare. I am going to rework this post but wanted to at least get something down. I'll come back and revisit. Soon. 

"And when love speaks"

This post is very much over due, "slacker" should be my middle name.

But this post is really about language. My roommate and I are sitting in a downtown coffee shop working on piles of homework. The interesting thing about being here is not so much the steady stream of people coming in and out getting their daily dose of legal stimulant, but what I truly find intriguing is how they interact and speak with one another. I recently watched the video that Eutrepe Brooks posted on her blog, and heard the line " Shakespeare used over 50,000 words, were as the modern American only uses around 3,000".  I'm sure that many of you have done the whole "people watching" thing: Sitting in a public area watching others walk by performing daily tasks, going to lunch or dinner, holding hands and just enjoying the simple pleasure of being in the presence of a loved one. The sun is shining or the clouds are passing, you get a tune stuck in your head that seems to put your experience into a serendipitous scene out of a movie.   

Next time you get to experience this cosmic moment, listen to what the passerby's are saying. Not just the words they are saying but how they are saying them. Listen instead to the tones and the melodies in the voice. This is what being in this coffee shop on Martin Luther King Monday is like. There is a woman and her friend sitting behind us. The woman directly behind me has a voice that is low pitched, very serious, and very musical. Her friend: a mild and dry voice. There is a little girl sitting with her loving mother. Her voice mirrors that of a spring song bird: high pitched but full of beautiful tones. "Hi, and My colors" seem to be her favorite phrases. 

I believe that Shakespeare new that such tones and rhythms were important to the language that he was "creating". Ted Hughes says Shakespeare, along with creating his own language also created his own "translation machine". I believe that this was something extremely important because it put a melody and rhythmic patterns into a system of language brand new to the time that was going through a cultural change. 

"The complexity of knotted metaphor melts, that is into a musical complexity , a sinuous, melodious orchestration of tones where words have resumed their simple directness with out losing their amplitude" . Next time someone speaks, count out the timing of a sentence, or find the melody in their voice. 

Onto the next big adventure!