Shakespeare Without Tears – 2021

Apparently, Shakespeare’s birthday was a couple of days ago (nobody really knows for sure when it is) and I missed it.  That’s okay really; I don’t care when Shakespeare was born.  Nor for that matter do I care to wander into the great discussion about whether he wrote his own plays or not.  As far as I’m concerned, they could have been written by Fetchin’ Gretchen, the German barmaid at the Golden Hind Hotel.  Shakespeare’s plays exist: if a local boy from Stratford didn’t write them, so what?  Somebody did.

Actually, the only reason there’s any debate at all about who quill penned what for whom is scholars can’t figure out what else to do with Old Bill, now can they?  It’s not like there’s a nerdy little war going on in the Ivory Towers about whether Shakespeare is crap or not.  Rhetorically speaking what do Shakespearean scholars do all day — sit around telling each other how great he was?  That’s the point: Shakespeare is the greatest writer in the English language and nobody disagrees except sophomores trying to be difficult and people who’ve never seen the plays.  Everybody knows Shakespeare is the best, but I would venture to guess that 8 people out of 10 haven’t got a clue what he’s talking about.

Shakespeare appreciation runs into a bunch of trouble in the 21st century.  First of all, unless your education was terminally New Age, you got stuck with the guy sometime in your high school career.  Since modern education means kicking the delight out of everybody but the janitor, chances are good Macbeth was ruined long before Macduff got hold of him in Act V.  Besides, I’d bet even money that the person running the show in Lit. 12 probably didn’t know much more about the Bard than you did.  In those days, Cliff Notes worked both ways.

The other problem is Shakespeare wrote his plays in Shakespearean English, and we don’t speak that language anymore.  A lot of the clever stuff and the beauty of it is simply lost in translation.  For example, “But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?/ It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.” doesn’t mean much if you don’t know anything about courtly love.  And that’s the major problem: Shakespeare is talking about things people in the 21st century know nothing about – love and power.

These days, we have reduced love to its lowest common denominator: the relationship.  This is a cerebral little device that cuts our emotional well-being off at the knees.  Having a relationship is akin to owning a small kitchen appliance like a juicer.  You buy the thing, make juice at every opportunity for six weeks or so, but slowly by slowly, it ends up largely unused, sitting in the kitchen, getting in the way.  Occasionally, if guests come over, you might crank it up again, but eventually it gets stored somewhere out of mind until it’s time for the yard sale.  Shakespeare didn’t think that way about love, neither did his audience.  They knew love for what it is and wanted to hear the words that spoke its name.  They didn’t talk about “having feelings” for someone or “taking the relationship to another level.”  (What is this crap?  Angry Birds™ with benefits?)  No!  The Elizabethans were engulfed by love; that’s where “swept off your feet” comes from.  They felt it: they didn’t think it.  They looked forward to it and mourned its passing.  To them, it was what life was made of.  Even though we proclaim our sensitivity at the drop of a puppy, we just can’t get there from here; we don’t know anything about it.

Nor, for that matter, do we know anything about power.  In a world that no longer recognizes obscenities, the mere mention of power can still cause an embarrassed hush.  Power is to us what sex was to the Victorians: a slightly icky necessity of life that nobody should ever speak of.  It’s considered ill-bred to publically pursue power, so we dress it up in altruism and team-building.  Demonstrations of power are the last faux pas in our society, and people who have power are somewhat suspect.   They are always the villains in our stories.  They weren’t in Shakespeare’s time.  His four great tragedies are all about power.  They show the obligation powerful people have to wield it wisely and the consequences if they do not.  It’s not power itself that corrupts Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear and Othello; their demise comes from a deep flaw in their own character.  Their tragedy is magnified by the height from which they fall, not caused by it.  At the end of each play, they die, but the institutions of power are cleansed with their blood.  It is the province of the powerful who remain to set things right again.  In the Elizabethan Age, power was, for the most part, a benevolent force sometimes corrupted by the people who manipulate it — not the other way around, as we see it today.

It’s a shame that a lot of the contemporary “feelings” we have for Shakespeare are just talk.  Unfortunately, it’s too difficult for most people to enjoy Shakespeare these days.  However, it`s not impossible.  But start slowly; Shakespeare’s plays are a big chunk to take in one chew.  You don’t have to sit through an entire play to begin with.  Just go to YouTube and check out Marlon Brando delivering Mark Antony`s “Friends, Romans, countrymen…” speech, or Kenneth Branagh (as Henry V) calling his troops “a band of brothers,” or anything Shakespearean Lawrence Olivier ever opened his mouth for.  Me?  I like to curl up with a bag of Doritos™ and watch The Lion King which is Hamlet without the blood bath.

Originally written – 2012

It’s Spring – 2021

Thank God it’s spring!  It was a little late this year but finally I think we’ve got the real meal deal.  Mother Nature is changing her clothes, and Father Time is watching.  We mere mortals are only a small part of what they both have in mind, but, like every year since this planet was a baby, it’s going to be spectacular.   As of today, the birds and the bees are back, and they’re feeling frisky.

Unfortunately, spring doesn’t carry the kind of punch it used to.  These days, it’s mostly living on its rep.  We all know it’s spring, but in a world of central heating, air conditioning, mega-malls and concrete canyon streets, how many of us really care?  In the 21st century, we generally ignore the world around us until Mother Nature gets pissed off and starts slapping the crap out of everything in her path – then we pay attention.  Primitive humans weren’t this arrogant; that’s why they treated spring with some respect.

Back in the day, winter in the northern hemisphere was nothing to be trifled with.  Our species never physically adapted to the cold the way some of the other animals on this planet did.  However, despite our natural tendency to freeze to death, we insisted on living in climates that were inhospitable for four (or more) months of the year.  The only recourse for this stupidity was to outsmart Mother Nature, using the tools at hand – fire and the skins of more practical animals.  Plus, our instincts told us to hide in caves when a hostile world starting howling for our bones.  This strategy worked and we survived long enough to understand that — even though Mother Nature spent a good amount of time trying to kill us — eventually she would relent and treat us like her special children again.  And this was cause for celebration.

As we evolved beyond beetle-brow tough to early-human clever, we must have realized that these constantly changing seasons were not random.  They had a pattern.  When winter was over, the leaves came out.  From there, only a Neanderthal wouldn’t put two and two together and realize, once the leaves started to fall, winter was coming back.  (That’s why there are no more Neanderthals, BTW.  Just sayin’.)  With that in mind, it wasn’t a Cro-Magnon leap of intelligence to figure out that, with a little planning, we could gather food and firewood during the good weather, store them away, and a smart cave family could sit out the winter in relative comfort.  Thus, instead of hanging out in the cave, shivering and getting skinny all winter, we had some leisure time to put that big brain or ours to work.  We watched the sun, we watched the moon, we noticed when the ice started to melt, when the birds came back and when the bear two caves over woke up grumpy, hungry and looking for a fight.  This was all important stuff, because the more we knew about the seasons, the more likely it was that we’d be around to see a few of them.

Unfortunately, climatology hadn’t been invented yet, and so humans simply filed all these various discoveries under “Mother Nature: Whims and Idiosyncrasies.”  But Mother Nature was real.  She made the flowers bloom, the warm breezes blow, and warmed up the sun.  So, when winter was over, it made sense for primitive humans to take a minute, be polite and say thanks.

These days, we don’t much care for Mother Nature.  After all, for the last two hundred years or so, we’ve been fighting with her for supremacy on this planet.  There are some who say we’re winning and some who say we’ve already lost.  Unfortunately, the majority of us don’t seem to give a damn, either way.  Our egos are so secure we no longer thank her — or anybody else — for our existence.  However, on a morning like this one, in the first sunlight of what’s going to be a perfectly gorgeous day, I tend to get a little caveman-humble.  I hear the birds putting on the brag, see an ambitious green sprig forcing its way through the sidewalk and maybe — just maybe — sniff a sweet change in the air.   And it all tells me something special is happening again this year — and it’s going to fantastic.

Thanks, Mother Nature!

Written some years ago and reproduced every time I’m overwhelmed by the magic of the season.

The Next Time …

Life is a minefield full of ambushes.  We are constantly getting caught off guard by thoughts, words and circumstances.  However, the mark of a smart person is someone who tries not to make the same mistake twice.  (We all do that, BTW!)  So, as a public service, here’s a quick and dirty guide to making the wise choice the next time something happens.

The next time somebody tells you that someday machines are going to go total Terminator and take over the world, remind them just how effective Autocorrect is. 

The next time somebody talks about how nice it will be when everything gets back to normal, think about how comfortable your pajamas feel.

The next time somebody’s Eagerly Offended by a book, a cartoon character or a dead European, laugh your ass off and get on with your life as if nothing’s changed — because nothing has.

The next time you think you should ask a woman when the baby’s due – don’t!

The next time you think you’ve got the only dysfunctional family on the planet, open a bottle of wine and ask your neighbour about her mother-in-law.

The next time you think you’re smart, remember your old friend algebra and try to solve (x2 + y2) – (x + y) = 3.  That’ll teach you some humble.

The next time you’re having a bad day, take a marker and put comic faces on all the eggs in the fridge.  You’ll be surprised how much better it makes you feel.

The next time you’re walking around and have an uncontrollable itch somewhere below your bellybutton, remember: cellphones!

The next time you’re mind wanders beyond your current relationship, take a good hard think about how you look naked.

The next time someone says, “You can do anything you set your mind to!” keep in mind you still haven’t figured out the difference between Auto Cook and Auto Reheat on the microwave.

And finally:

The next time you think it’s a pain in the ass to wear a mask, just imagine how uncomfortable a ventilator would be.