Story: Stalling

"That's about all I could do," said Dan, sliding a packet of papers across the table.

The young man sitting opposite to him took the packet, leafed through it.  Dan sipped his coffee and waited.

"I can't read this," said the young man after a few minutes, pointing at a hand-written mark on the page.

"Which one?" asked Dan.

The young man pointed.

"Oh," said Dan.  "I can't tell what you're referring to in this sentence."  He took out his pen.

He marked more clearly on the page what his hand-written note meant.

“So what does it mean,” said Dan.

The young man asked what Dan meant.

“That sentence,” he said.

The young man looked uncomfortable and said he wasn’t sure.

“Okay,” said Dan.  “I would talk the paper over with someone, someone who knows the material.  When you can explain it to them in person, then write it down.”

"Write what down?" said the young man.

"However you can explain it out loud," said Dan.  "If it makes sense when you explain it, that’s what you should write."

The young man seemed to consider this, and frowned.

"That won't work," he said.

"Why not?" said Dan, seeming surprised.

"It doesn't sound as good when you say it out loud," he said.  "It sounds dumb."

"Well write it down once,” said Dan, “then write it over and over until it sounds smart.  You've got time, don't you?"

"A little," the young man said warily.

"Do you have a thesaurus?" asked Dan.

"No," said the young man.

"Do you have the internet?" asked Dan

The young man looked baffled.  "Of course," he said.

"Then you have a thesaurus," said Dan.  "Try it if you can't figure out how to make what you said sound smart."

"How do I know what to--" the young man began.  He was interrupted by the arrival of Ben, who strode up to the table and eyed with a sigh the pair of crutches leaning against the side of the booth Dan was sitting in.

"It's alright," said Dan.  "This is the other guy."

"What?" said Ben. "Who says?  You're the other guy."

"Ho boy," said Dan.  He turned back to the young man sitting opposite him as Ben moved the crutches aside and slid into the booth beside Dan.

"You were asking me something?" Dan said.

"How do I know what words to use the thesaurus on?" asked the young man.

"The ones that sound dumb," said Dan.

The young man continued to leaf through the packet.

Ben flagged down the waitress and ordered a coffee.

As he read, the young man's cheeks reddened, then returned to normal.  At last he looked up.

"How much?" he said.

Dan told him.

"That's not what you said before," said the young man.

"I told you roughly what it would be," said Dan.

"You didn't even fix it," said the young man.

"I don't rewrite," said Dan.  "I just advise."

He named a lower figure.

"I'll pay what you said before," said the young man.

Dan reached out and pulled the packet back to him.

The young man made a sour face and pulled crumpled bills from his jacket pocket.

Dan exchanged them for the packet, and the young man left.

"Ready to switch?" Dan said.

The waitress appeared with coffee.

"Sure," said Ben.

Dan gestured.  "Two beers please," he said.

The waitress sighed, put down the coffee, and walked off towards the bar.

Ben turned to Dan.  "Do you mind?" he asked.

Dan looked at Ben.

"This is my side," he said.

"I'm injured!" said Dan.

"You've got a minor sprain," said Ben.

"Which you caused," said Dan.

“I did not,” said Ben.

“It happened,” said Dan, “because of what you said.”

"I said try taking a walk," said Ben.  "Not go fall down hard."

"I wouldn't have fallen down," said Dan, "if I'd stayed home and watched TV."

"It happened two weeks ago," said Ben.

"And it's still hurting," said Dan.

"Everybody knows you can get around without those things," said Ben.  "And it's my side of the booth."

Dan sighed and scowled.  Ben didn't flinch.  Dan scrambled and rose, hobbled elaborately to the other side of the booth and sat again.

The waitress returned with the beers.  Ben thanked her.

"You're starting early," said Ben, gesturing with his head to indicate the young man who'd left.

"Thesis review," said Dan.  "Early draft.  He's not defending until next year sometime, I'd guess."

"That kid is on his thesis?" asked Ben.

Dan shook his head.  "Proxy," he said.  "That's why he didn't want to pay higher than the estimate; the guy who really wrote that's probably on vacation somewhere expensive until the term starts in a few weeks."

"He seemed pretty worked up if it wasn't his paper," said Ben.  "I saw him turn red."

"I put a note in there to get his attention," said Dan.  "I think it worked."

"What was the note," said Ben.

"His boss's name," said Dan.

"You know him?" asked Ben.

"I know the writing," said Dan.  “It was a guess.”

Ben pursed his lips and nodded.  “I guess you were right,” he said.

Ben did not inquire after, and Dan did not offer to reveal, the name of the young man or the person whose paper he was ferrying.  It was a matter of professional discretion.

They sipped beer.  Ben alternated with his coffee.

"How's the new project," said Ben.

Dan grimaced.  Ben didn't comment.

"It's actually okay," Dan said after a moment.

"Stalled?" asked Ben.

"Not really," said Dan.  "But I've got a new idea and it's eating up my time."

Ben nodded.

"How's the ancient elephants?" asked Dan.

"Amebelodons," said Ben, suppressing a pleased smile.

"Right, those," said Dan. "Still tromping around?  Or are you onto something else?"

Ben shrugged, finished his beer.

"Stalled," he said.

Dan looked surpised.

"You said yesterday you'd done what, two thousand words?" said Dan.  "In one sitting?"

Ben shrugged.

"That's stalled?" asked Dan.

Ben shrugged again.

Dan scowled.  "Speak," he said.

"I'm not really happy with it," said Ben.  "I'm not sure it's working."

"Two thousand words doesn't sound like not working," said Dan.

"It's not about how many words," said Ben.  "It's about which words.  And I think they're wrong."

"How so," said Dan, who on an average day would kill for the undivided attention needed for two thousand words.

"I think I'm just stalling," said Ben.  "The story isn't moving forward, it's just circling."

"Well what's going on?" asked Dan.

Ben told him about what he'd written most recently.

"So have him find the herd again," said Dan.  "He swims across the river, he doesn't get eaten.  His mom's there, she gives him a trunk-hug or whatever.  Story over, roll credits, you can work on something else."

Ben frowned.  "There's no build-up that way," he said.  "It's like everything that's happened happened for no reason."

Dan said, "You're investing too much in it."

He guestured at the waitress, and she ignored him.

"Maybe," said Ben.  "I just want it to be right.  It's got such a strong beginning."

"When everything was new," said Dan with an ironic tone, "and everything was under your control?"

Ben shrugged.  "I thought of that," he said.  "I'm not sure that's it.  It's probably partly that, but it's also... I don't know."

"You're the only person I know," said Dan, "who can get writer's block and still turn out two thousand words in a sitting."

Ben made a wry face.  "Maybe," he said.  "I'll keep at it, maybe I'll find the spark.  Whatever doesn't fit I can cut out later."

"I wonder how much time we lose," said Dan, looking at the bar, "when we cut stuff out entirely."

"Instead of?" said Ben.

Dan looked at him.  "Saving it somewhere, to use later."

Ben considered this.  "It's possible," he said.  "It would be confusing to me, I'd have too many associations with the old stuff to make anything new out of it."

Dan looked thoughtful.  "You don't have problems with associations when you, what, 'draw inspiration' from other people's work."

"That's different," said Ben.

"You didn't discover the Elopodan, did you?" said Dan.

"Amebelodon," said Ben.

"Right, those," said Dan. "You didn't dig the first one up, did you?"

"I don't know the first thing about digging up bones," said Ben.

"Right," said Dan.  "Other people's work, tons of associations."

"Yeah, but that's not me," said Ben.  "The associations are useful, I get to see where they lead for me.  Starting with my own old stuff, I'd just go in circles."

Dan gestured with his empty glass.  Ben ignored him.

"Maybe you're on to something," he said presently.

"Might be worth a try," said Dan.

"Meanwhile," said Ben.  "You're on to project seven."

Dan shook his head.

"Project two," he said, seeming pleased. "I got a new idea for it."

"So you're re-writing the beginning?" asked Ben.

Dan shook his head. "The middle, actually, I'm picking up where I left off for once."

Ben raised his eyebrows.

"How's that going?" he asked. "Did you reread th old surf first?"

Dan laughed. "God no," he said. "It's still awful."

"Well,'that's something anyway," said Ben.

He lifted his glass as if to toast, noticed it was empty.

Dan gestured again with his empty glass. Ben gestured at Ben in return, with the skill of imitation by long observation.

Dan frowned.

"The plight of the disabled is no laughing matter," he said.

"I agree completely," said Ben.

The waitress appeared at Ben's elbow.

"Need anything?" she asked.

"Could I have another of these please?" Ben asked, holding up his glass.

"But of course," said the waitress good-humoredly, taking the glass and heading for the bar.

"I'd like a beer too," Dan called to her receding back.

"Bars over here," she called.

Ben snickered.

"You want me to go get it myself,"'Dan said accusingly.

"It would probably get her back on your side," said Ben.

"Come on, man," said Dan moodily. "The line's a a mile long."

"I was about to go wait it out," said Ben, "when mine hostess so graciously obliged."

Dan, muttering and pretending to wince, got to his feet, got his crunches under him, and hobbled to the bar.

A moment later, the waitress returned with two beers. She stopped short and stared at Dan's empty seat. Ben pointed to the bar with his thumb, and when she looked her eyebrows shot up. She nodded approvingly as she set both beers down by Ben and slipped away.

Ben sipped his beer and thought a little, them drank some and thought some more. Glancing at the bar, he saw Dan's way was blocked by a wall of familiar shoulders. Ben chuckled and drank some more, finished the first beer, thought some more. He considered sinking the second.

Dan came back on one crutch, hobbling and carrying a tray on which were perched two glasses and a plastic tray of nachos.

"You're using the wrong crutch," Ben said.

Dan paused to looked down, but unfortunately did not stop his feet from moving.

The one with the air cast got caught on the over somehow, and as Ben started up too late to catch him over he went, nachos beans tray preceding him to the floor.

Ben, the waitress, and two people who had been sitting at the tables helped him up, made sure he was all right, got him a towel, and saw him safely stowed in he booth again.

Without comment, he took off his air cast, shoved it and the crutches aside, paid for his beers and nachos, tipped the waitress, and limping slightly with the cast and crutches he left.

A moment later he returned, sans limp, went to the bar, said a few words, and came to the booth carrying a other dish of nachos.

The waitress stopped by a moment later, with a fresh beer on the house.

"I was thinking,"'said Ben, helping himself to a nacho without comment, "about what you said before."

"Which?" asked Dan.

"About stalling,"'said Ben.

"Oh right, with your Amebelodons," said Dan.

"Ameb--" Ben started, then stopped himself. "Right, those. I was thinking that's not a bad way to put it."

"Thanks," said Dan, drinking beer.

"I mean," said Ben, "I've still got the story, I know where it is, I know where it's going, I just don't have the drive to get it there."

"You should tip the nose down," said Dan.

"Hm?" said Dan, setting down his beer.

"You said you feel like the plane is stalled,"'said Dan.

Ben blinked. "Actually I was thinking of a car, but go on."

"When a plane stalls," began Dan, "it's because it doesn't have enough forward momentum to keep generating lift."

"I'll have to take your word for it," said Ben flippantly.

Dan's expression sagged. "Hear me out, Mr. Long Walks."

"Point taken,"'said Ben, holding up a hand in apology. "Proceed maistro."

"My point is," said Dan, "when a pilot of a plane that's stalling wants to get back the forward momentum to regain lift, what does he do?"

"I believe your metaphor was," said Ben, "to dip down the nose."

"Exactly," said Dan. "Cut your altitude a little to get back some speed."

"How does his relate,"'said Ben, "to an ancient elephant who's lost his mother."

"I'm saying," said Dan, "things might be going too well for him to be interesting. You need to raise the stakes a little. Have something awful happen."

Ben considered this. While he considered, Dan kept talking.

"Tolkien was stalled for a long time, he says,"'said Dan, "by the side of Balin's tomb in Moria. And in he end, what happens next?"

"You  said the T-word," said Ben, finishing his beer, "so we're talking about the hobbits the hobbits the hobbits the hobbits?"

"Cut it out," said Ben.

"So what happens next?" said Dan.

"Never read the books," said Ben, in the same tone he'd said it ninety-nine times before, "saw the movies when they came out."

"You have no soul," said Dan.

Ben shrugged.

"No accounting for taste," he said, and got up for more beer.

"So what happens next?" he said, coming back with two glasses. He slid one to Dan.

"A giant fire monster comes," said Dan, "and kills the only guy who rely knew what the were doing."

"Oh, right," said Ben. "But he came back right?"

"That's not the point," said Dan. "The point is he made something horrible happen, and it gave his story the edge back."

"I've tried reading it," said Ben, taking a drink, "and I'll dispute you on the edge thing. But in see your point: kill the hope to get the interest back."

"Right," said Dan.

Ben thought more. Dan drank beer. After a while Ben frowned.

"It doesn't fit with my plan," Ben said.

"We'll there you go," said Dan. "This is why I resist plans as much as possible."

Ben laughed and clapped a hand to his forehead.

"You have ten boxes," he said, "of old notes on Titans of Rebirth in your house. I've helped you move them twice!"

"One, it's Titans of Renewal," said Dan. "Two,'that's not the title anymore."

"Right," said Ben. "I keep forgetting."

"Three," said Dan, " notes aren't plans, they're just notes. They're just ideas. Just because in wrote them doesn't mean anything, I'm not one of the characters."

Ben shook his head.

"Every time I think I understand how you work," he said. "How's the ankle?"

"It smarts," said Dan.

"Come off it,"'said Ben. "It was two weeks ago."

Dan started laughing. "No," he said, "the other one hurts now."

He laughed and kept laughing. Ben shook his head and joined in.

===

More Ben & Dan

Comic: To Each Their Own

Previous Comic   |   Next Comic

On Procrastination, Middle School Projects, and Engaging with Life

I think procrastination might be the worst thing you can do to your soul.  At least, when it comes to creativity, I know this is true for me.

photo by Jonas Nilsson Lee
courtesy of unsplash.com

When I was in seventh grade we all were assigned a social studies project about the Iroquois Nation.

I'm originally from western New York, and the Seneca were peripherally a big deal in most of my elementary and middle school social studies classes.

This project was the Big Project for the year, it would be a huge part of our grade.  If I remember correctly, it consisted of 1. a diorama/model or paper and 2. a presentation to the class of the same.

And I did no work on mine until the day it was due.

Not the day before it was due, not the night before, the day of, or to be specific, the night after the day of school that it was due.  Final deadline: monday, I handed it in Tuesday, having done all the work Monday night.  I did none of the work before the literal time it was supposed to be handed in.

The sad thing is, I'm not bragging about this.  It's probably the worst I've ever procrastinated on something -- procrastinated past the due date without starting it -- and it was not a particularly good time.

The diorama (a paper in one night? come on!) I wound up making was a pretty poor excuse, especially, as my own best friend pointed out to me when I turned it in, compared to the cathedral I'd built for our Medieval Fair projects the year before.

But to be honest, getting in trouble with my parents over it, having to do two or three week's worth of work in a single night, the contemptible product I turned over and the disgraceful grade I got for it, none of these were the worst part.

The worst part was the last two weeks or so before the project was due, when I found myself locked in a strange sort of silent battle with my lack of inclination to get going on the work.

Hey, that thing is due in a couple weeks, I remember telling myself, and I should start work on it.  But I didn't.  Two weeks!  What I could have done with two extra weeks of time.

Instead I said I had plenty of time left, if I worked hard once I got going, or something similar, and I emotionally rolled over and went back to doing whatever I wanted to do.

This obviously went on and on, and the short version is I remember the night before it was due, Sunday night. 

Having been tortured inside that whole day, that whole weekend really, with the knowledge that I couldn't really start the project without explanations to my parents of what I was working on, and when it was due, I suddenly realized that I hadn't been thinking of it for a while, hadn't been tortured with the idea of having not started it yet, for a while.  This feeling washed over me that it was almost all over.

I was watching a movie in my parent's bedroom, I'm surprised I even remember this, I think it was Thunderball.  It was something about the guy who'd had plastic surgery to look like the real fighter pilot, or something.  And it suddenly hit me: a feeling of I did it, I really pulled it off, only not in a good way.

The realization that soon Mom would tell me it was time for bed, and I would be stuck, and would have no time left.  What would I do then?

That was the worst part, realizing that I really was out of time, that I had used it all up, and what was I going to do now.

So.  Why drag all this up?

We all have projects that are important to us.  And we all have things that we're going to get to, but haven't got to yet.

Maybe it's refinishing the shed out back.  Maybe it's going through those old photos before they fall apart.  Maybe it's writing that novel that's been in the Shoeboxes of Noncommittal of your imagination for six or ten or twelve years.

Worse, there are projects that are important without being meaningful: you have to do the dishes, update your license, talk to your insurance agent, make sure your resume is up to date just in case.

These are the things that give the real zest to life when we procrastinate over them.  "I'll let myself off the hook tonight, I had a lousy day.  Let's just get take out and eat TV until bedtime."  Lord, what a time to be alive.

But in the long run, this sort of behavior only really makes me miserable.  I sit there, trying to enjoy my undeserved slacker food, and I try to pretend that it's other things that are bothering me -- the heat, not getting my way, not having just the right song to listen to in the car -- and I really know what's wrong the whole time.  And I know how to fix it.

Whatever it is, do it.

I can't tell you how many times I've felt a general weight over me, and known exactly what it is, that project I need to do and haven't made time for.  Maybe it's gotten out of hand, how long I've been putting it off, and now I'm a little embarrassed to even remember that it's supposed to be done.

This actually happens surprisingly often.

All I can say is, the feeling of getting things out of the way, or even starting them well, is a thousand times better than the little rush we get from indulging in what feels good for now.

I will never stop procrastinating.  Procrastination is one of life's greatest pleasures.  If possible, I intend to put off shuffling off this mortal coil when the time comes, not for greed or fear of dying so much as wanting to be consistent.  "Die today?  Eh, brush that off, it can wait until tomorrow."

But if I learned anything from when I was a kid, it's that there really is a time when it's too late, when there is no more time left to do a thing.  Unfinished sheds fall to pieces in time, so do photos.  And novels that aren't written never come to be anything, never get read.

Worse, ideas that aren't written fester, and moulder, and eventually die, and are not replaced.  We forget that we were even able to have great ideas in the first place, or even good ones.

We forget how to feel like we are alive in the things we make.  We start to think that we were never good at making things at all.

So pretty please, if no one is reading this but future me, Future Me, listen, pretty please, whatever it is you're not doing, stop reading this article and go do it.  

I'll wait.

Author's Sketchbook: Sight

drawn on an iPad 2 using a Wacom Bamboo stylus in SketchBook Pro

Decoding Hamlet in Three Questions (August 02: 02)

Continuing my review of favorite works, specifically stories as puzzles, here's a new look at one of the greatest plays ever written.

Henry Fuseli's Horatio, Hamlet, and the Ghost (1798)
image courtesy of wikipedia.org

Death.  Madness.  This is how a kingdom destroys itself.

Forget all the famous speeches. Forget the endless phrases turned so well they have worked their way irrevocably into the lexicon. Lay aside the speculations on the nature of mankind, on the love between a mother and son, the duty of a monarch towards his kingdom.

Put all of this aside, and consider only three questions.

Question One. Is Hamlet experiencing reality, or is he going out of his mind?

Hamlet:O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself aking of infinite space—were it not that I have bad dreams.
Act 2, Scene 2

Consider this one question with the emotional imperative that "who did it?" would have in a good mystery, and everything else in the play will take rank around your answer.

How do we tell when someone is crazy?  They see and hear things that aren't there, hearing voices or receiving instructions from persons no one else sees or hears.  They behave in a way that reflects paranoia,  believing they are in danger from strange or immaterial sources.  They suffer from disorganized thoughts and delusions, they behave erratically and in a way not in accordance with reality, sometimes becoming a violent threat to themselves and others.

For newcomers, the plot of Hamlet is both simply and devilishly tricky, depending on how closely you look.  The short version is Hamlet is the prince of Denmark, and his father, the king, has died while he was at school before the play begins, and is now the Ghost.  His mother, Queen Gertrude, has married his father's brother Claudius, who is now the King, within a month of his father's death.

The first scene of the play is our first hint as to whether or not Hamlet is insane.  In it, two guards and Horatio, a college friend of Hamlet's lately arrived in Denmark, witness the appearance of the Ghost, a spectral warrior walking Elsinore Castle's walls in the middle of the night, in the shape of the dead king.  They resolve to tell Hamlet about it, as he may be the one person the Ghost will speak to, and so find out what it wants and why it haunts them.

Right off the bat, it seems like we're on solid footing.  The whole scene is about Horatio not believing the two guards when they tell him about the Ghost, and then his stunned conversion to a believer when the thing really shows up and walks by.

Strange things are happening, yes.  Few of us have seen ghosts, fewer have been invited by others to go see a ghost and then have it actually turn up.  But if there's one way we feel sure about being not crazy, it's if other people agree that what we're seeing is really happening.

So they go tell Hamlet, who enters the play moodily, raving about his grief over his father's recent death and muttering about his mother's marriage, and who does he meet?  Horatio and the two worthy guards, who tell him exactly what he wants to hear, that his father is alive, at least in Ghost form, and wants probably to talk to him.  So he goes and does so.

But do the guards go with him?  No.  He and the Ghost go off alone because it beckons to him, and he is the only one to hear the Ghost speak.

What does he hear? Exactly what he wanted to hear.  That the man who married his mother, his uncle, is the one who poisoned and killed his father.  Furthermore, the Ghost is now a doomed spirit locked in Purgatory for who knows how long because he was killed without being first shriven.   Finally, it's now up to Hamlet to kill his uncle and get vengeance for his father's death.

So his father's alive, or at least he can still talk to him, and his uncle's to blame for everything wrong in his life, and there's something Hamlet can do to help his father out: act violently against the person he already felt the most violent against.

The problem is, his uncle is now the King, and a wily one at that, and people don't tend to take assassinations very agreeably.

So what does Hamlet do?  If you've read the play you know: he spends the next three and a half acts, most of the play, trying to decide whether to kill the King or not, and how to do so.

Step one is to conceal everything: swear the guards and Horatio to secrecy, try and tell the girlfriend what you've heard but decide not to, and start acting crazy so that no one can guess what's really on your mind.

Step two ought to be simple: get the king alone, and get it over with.  But what does Hamlet do next?  After from a lot of chatting with other friends, who I'll mention later, and some speeches, he resolves to trick the King into confessing to the murder by staging a play, which will feature a man poisoning his lord for his estate and later getting the love of his victim's wife, and watching his reaction.

Why does Hamlet do this?

He says it's because the Ghost may well have been not his father but some demon trying to trick him into damnation by compounding one act of violence with another.

But we can easily see a deeper meaning here, instead of Hamlet's worrying whether the Ghost he saw was an angel or a demon.  In addressing the earlier while they were alone, begging it to speak to him, he actually said 

"Be you spirit of health, or goblin damned, bring with you airs from heaven or blasts from hell, though comest in such a questionable form that I shall speak to thee, I'll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane, oh answer me!" 

Act 1 Scene 5

So it wasn't so important then that the Ghost be legit, and not some evil spirit loosed to do him harm.

I think it's fair to judge that Hamlet's real concern was whether he saw anything at all, really heard those things the Ghost said, and whether he really has to go through with this violent act, or if there's a way out of it, if his uncle isn't really guilty of the murder.

And even if his father's Ghost was real, and really beseeched him to seek vengeance, that does not make the planned murder of the new King any less of a murder.

Hamlet stages the play, and low and behold, the King jumps up after the critical moment and runs away saying he needs a light.  (All his dutiful followers race after him to help.)

So Hamlet has his confirmation.  What does he do?  He gets the King alone, while his royal highness is in confession, and -- chickens out.  Since the King is confessing, he reasons, his royal soul is spotless and ready to go to heaven, and killing him now would be a favor, compared to how the King treated Hamlet's dead father.

Ironically, at the same time, the King has an inner monologue about how repentance is impossible for him, since he is unable to feel sorry for inheriting the kingdom and his lovely Queen, but Hamlet hears this not.

Hamlet puts it off the violence until he might catch the King in some guilty deed, perhaps in bed with his mother (his words), and swears he'll get his vengeance then.

What's the next thing that happens?

Well for starters, he accidentally kills Polonius, his girlfriend's dad and the King's windbag advisor, while talking with his mother.  He hears a man moving behind one of the curtains hanging in her bedroom, whips out his sword, and without a speech stabs at the first thing that moves.  Polonius drops dead.  More on this later.

But more importantly, when he turns and interrogates his mother for her part in the old king's death, the Ghost reappears and reminds Hamlet A. to seek vengeance and B. not to drag his mother into the matter.

And the Queen cannot see the Ghost at all.  Or at least that's what she says.

So is the Ghost in Hamlet's mind?  But Horatio and the guards saw it.  And if it's not real, then how did Hamlet know his uncle was guilty before he staged the play?

So is the quest itself just a figment of Hamlet's imagination? He just killed a dude over it, and a pretty important person as well.  It's way too late to go back on it now.

But how do we tell when someone is crazy?

They see and hear things that aren't there, hearing voices or receiving instructions from persons no one else sees or hears.  They behave in a way that reflects paranoia,  believing they are in danger from strange or immaterial sources.  They suffer from disorganized thoughts and delusions, they behave erratically and in a way not in accordance with reality, sometimes becoming a violent threat to themselves and others.

Hamlet is acting out exactly what he wants to have happen.  He is the rightful heir to the throne, or was before this guy came along.  He loved his father, or says he did so repeatedly now that he's gone.  He judges his uncle as an unworthy successor, and the few scenes of the King's performance in his duty could be construed to show him as more concerned with the benefits of being a king than with its moral obligations.

So who's to say that the young prince, overwrought with the grief we meet him under, hasn't just snapped, as he pretended to be all along, and started killing people because it's the only way he has left to make sense of the world?

Ultimately the play is invincibly ambiguous about whether or not Hamlet is (at least a little bit) crazy.

Meaning we have perfect freedom to see it the way that makes the most sense to us, to interpret it the way we see fit.

Story: Out of the Trashlands - Part Three

Part one - Part Two

I fell down twice on the way to the front, but I clutched tight to the chair backs and Shimmy gave me his hand.  I leaned against the paneling under the front eyes and looked.

Two rails ahead and below, running in a long gentle curve off into nowhere, more dry dead earth.  I couldn't look just ahead at where they dissappeared under us without feeling dizzy again.  There definitely were hills now, distant and low and all around the horizon.  The ones directly ahead, where the rails ran, were sort of flat-looking, and odd in the light, but I saw nothing more.  I asked Shimmy what I was looking for, and he said to wait.  The hills in the distance began to change in their oddness, and then I saw long lines of light runnign up and down between them.  And I realized that it was City.

City is a word that everyone knows, I think.  Cities are what people used to be, where they used to live and run the world from.  Cities ran the world, Cities were important and big, they ate from the land around them and did not have to give back, because they were where all the people were.  And Cities were gone now, only their great bodies were left, places of fear and danger, where treasure hunters went and did not return.

Even if I hadn't known what City meant, I could have figured it from thinking about Our Town and just making it bigger in my mind.  But figuring a thing without seeing it, and seeing it in front of you, are two different things.  This City was big, and it was getting bigger every second.

The thing I remember most are the walls.  Enormous, staggering heaviness of rock and eyes and lines of metal, stretching up and up and up into the sky as if they were actually hanging down from it.  We moved like creepers in the shady valleys between the the un-knowably high walls.  And everywhere, above and ahead and to either side, were the enormous wide flat glasses of eyes.

No wonder the people of the Cities had all fallen apart long ago, with that many eyes to see them all the time.  Who could stand up under all that weight?  Our Town would have fit, all of it, into just the shadow of one of these smooth-walled monsters.  I wished oddly that the Revs would find out about this place, they would get lost in this maze like a clot of rot in the Trashlands and never be seen again.  Then I thought about who might already be living in these buildings, out of sight, and I thought about asking to close the two doors again.

I wasn't looking forward when we went into the mouth of the earth, but suddenly all was black and the day was gone and I gave a little shriek and fell down again.  My head was getting sore, maybe from everything trying to fit its way inside it, maybe from hitting the ground so many times.  Shimmy told me it was alright, that it was a tunnel.  He went back to the engine, and soon I felt the house stop moving, there in all the dark.  It was overwhelmingly terrifying.  I stayed on the floor.  I could not move.

I was wishing, suddenly and desperately, that I hadn't followed Shimmy that morning.  The worms were still in my pocket, they were probably nearly spoiled now.  The nestlings would be hungry.  I had found the nest in the corner of a busted house a few weeks before; I watched for a day and a night, but the mother bird had never come back, and the little ones were being noisy.  I knew it was only a matter of time before someone found them and ate them, 

Now that I'm older, I know that very few people have had days like I had that day, packed full of wonders from one side to the other.  I don't expect to have another while I live, the the wide world is weird, and I won't say never.  Anyway, of all the things I'd seen that day that I'd never seen before, what happened next is what I seem to remember most, and what I love to remember.

Out of the dark, darker than any night I could remember, there was suddenly a light, and it was in Shimmy's hand.  He was holding, he must have had it in those baggy clothes of his, something that burned bright enough to almost sharp my eyes if I looked right at it, but not like a campfire, steady and clean and white, powerful.  Shimmy held it, and he helped me up, and he said it would be alright, and that I should follow him.  It's no real mystery why I remember that so well.

We walked through the dark, and Shimmy got me to understand, after many times telling me, that we were inside and under one of the enormous stone walls, and that there was a way to climb up to the top and get back out into day.  I didn't really believe him, but I followed him.  We walked through long, wide, echoing hallways, with no light but the one Shimmy carried.  I kept close by him, imagining horrors behind every door we passed and listening as hard as I could.  After what seemed a long time we turned aside, found a narrow room, and started walking up steps.

Never again will I walk up so many steps.  I won't say that I'll never come across that many, because the world is weird and anything can happen, but I ever do find them, I will never walk up them.  I had never thought so many could be piled together in one place, having never seen more than a handful in one place at one time in Our Town.  The space we walked through was full of strange echoes, and the light only went as far as the next turn of the wall.  We'd walk up, turn, walk up, turn.  There were doors at every other turning, but Shimmy would look at them in the light and keep walking.  It seemed like it would never end.

It was only after hours of this, when my legs were cramped and burning and my throat raw, that it occurred to me that these steps weren't just piled along side each other, but that they were stacked together, all in a straight line from the ground to the sky.  I was walking up the same ground again and again and again, getting higher and higher all the time.

I groaned and almost stopped, then decided to put it out of my head.  I said it was impossible, and in my mind's eye I went back to walking up the stairs that were piled together, like a great spiral or a strange heap.  It was easier to remember there would be a top that way.  I kept my eyes on Shimmy's bent legs ahead of me in the dark.  Maybe these stairs were why he'd started shimmying at all; walking in a straight line along the ground seemed impossibly easy now.

At last, after too many doors to have imagined counting, and many stops to rest, we came to a door, and Shimmy's light went over it, and he did not keep walking.  He paused, we rested again, and then he opened it and went through.  I froze in the soft light from the other side, then followed when I saw the door was closing on its own and I'd be shut alone in the room of steps.  It was a heavy door, I hauled it open and stepped through, and it closed with a bang.

We were in a quiet hallway. It was cool and very clean, like everything else had been since we'd left the Trashlands and Our Town far behind.  It was about as long at the metal house had been, and it ended in a wooden door, very smooth and very clean.  The light was coming from discs set in the ceiling, and was warmer than the light Shimmy had carried, if not as warm as a fire woudl have been.  The air was cool and without any smell, which I immediately mistrusted.  The floor was covered in an even, skin-colored cloth matting that hugged my floppers as I stood.

Shimmy didn't look good.  He was still panting from the climb, and seemed stooped and worn out.  His legs were shaking a little.

"You alright?" I asked.

"Give me some water," he said flatly.

I stared.  If he had pulled out his knife and tried to stab me right there, I would have been less surprised.

It is difficult to make this plain now, but in those days you didn't, ever, ask another man for water from your fours.  You carried your own, and you made due.

In a very short time that day I had come to see Shimmy as a very different kind of person from the others in Our Town.  Diggers, Weeders, Revs, kids, everyone; no one knew what Shimmy knew, no one had been where we had been.  If anyone else knew the secret, it was buried at least as deep inside them as Shimmy had buried it.

But even so, looking at him as I did with awe and wonder, I have to admit now that it changed the way I saw him even more to hear him ask for water.  It makes me unhappy.  I saw him as a taker, as someone who couldn't be trusted as well as I'd trusted him a moment earlier.

I don't know how to make the feeling come through now, things have changed.  Back then, someone who would ask for water was someone you couldn't trust.  I like Shimmy, and I was in awe of his powers after everything that had happened, but I realized I did not trust him.

I gave him the water.

The funny thing is, if someone asks for water, you have to give it to them if you've got it.  He drank.

"I'm sorry to ask," he said, handing it back to me.

I felt unhappy.  Here I was, somewhere in the middle air of a great stone prison of walls, and I had no idea what we were doing or why we were there.  It was as if a spell had fallen away; while we were traveling I had not asked where we were going or why, because I had been caught following Shimmy in the first place, and hadn't felt like asking questions just to be told to be quiet again.

But now I couldn't help it.  Those little nestlings had gotten into my head again somehow, squeaking for food.  The worms were still and drying in my pocket.  I took the water back from him.  When I spoke, it didn't sound like me.

"What is all this?" I said.  "What are we doing here?"

Shimmy looked unhappy also, and very tired.  He drew himself up, his eyes just a little higher than mine.

"We are here," he said, "to see a very old man, and a very important one, and to see what he wants.  Unless you are spoken to, do not speak.  Follow me."

He walked down the hallway.  After a moment I followed him.  I dreaded that door for some reason, all the dark, sharp things that had hidden from me in the shadowy building below us seemed to be welling up behind it.  We reached it after a moment.  All was still.  Shimmy opened the door without knocking.

The second I saw inside, I shrieked again and almost slid to the floor.  The room beyond had no walls.

The sun was setting.  I knew this because from the floor to the ceiling was nothing but horrible, staring eyes, big, tall, with bars between but open all the same.  Any second the floor was going to push sideways and tilt me out, a gust of wind would lift me out, I would fall out.  The city outside was sleeping in the setting sun, and it was a very beautiful death coming to get me right now.  I did slide to the floor.  I could go no further.

"Calm down," said Shimmy tiredly.  "They are all closed tight, you can't get out that way."

He tried to pull me up.  How did I know they weren't about to open?  There was a wild sound in my ears, I was terrified, I could not move.  Slowly, inch by inch, Shimmy pulled me up from the floor.  I pressed myself against the wall for support.

On the wall there was a small metal bulge with a screen glowing on it. I hadn't gotten a good look before I'd seen into the room, and I wasn't going to look away from that false wall to look now.  It was buzzing and frizzing like a large creeper.  I nearly put my hand on it as I moved along the wall.  

"Don't touch that," said Shimmy, startling me.  

"Will it bite me?" I asked, almost in delierum.

"You'll break it," he hissed.  He moved my hand away with his and pulled me past it.  We edged through the doorway into the room.  I stayed pressed against the wall.

There was a short narrow space on the other side of the door; I hugged the wall as we edged along down it.  When we got out into the room, I began taking darting glances around the space I was in, but kept returning to those huge, staring, treacherous eyes where the wall should have been.  They were certainly shut very tight, there was no breeze, but I knew that eyes are made to be opened, and I did not trust them.  We edged along.

We turned a corner, and the wall behind me changed.  I did not look, but I felt under my a row of flat objects, very smooth, some feeling almost like cool dry skin, others like cloth.  I halted, felt very carefully for a moment, pulled one of the objects free and stared at it.  It was flat, square, and very smooth.  I folded it at one side like Dad had, God rest.  Inside were many pieces of paper, flat and cut in squares and very clean, but covered with those neat little rows of creepers.  I realized I was blinking back tears.  Shimmy touched my arm and I dropped the book, we moved on.

The walls, I saw, or at least the one I walked along, were lines with books, top to bottom.  What treasures, all asleep and unused.  There were tables with papers on them, and strange engines glowing and clacking in the corners.  It was a very high, very wide room, and there were the warm false light discs in the ceiliing and false torches on the wall.  I noticed another door on the far side of the room, but it was part open and seemed to lead to a smaller room, no escape there.

At last, Shimmy guiding me by the arm at first, we parted from the book wall and walked out into the space.  In the middle of the cloth-covered floor was a circle of buzzing engines, with thick cords like snakes runnign from the walls on all sides.  There was a water bottle on a coat stand in the middle.  Below the coat stand I could see a bed.  Every heartbeat that passed without the world falling over and me flying out the false wall made me feel stronger, but more suspicious that some other terrible thing would happen.  Nothing did.  We walked to the bed.

On the bed lay a very small, very wrinkled white-haired man.  He had no beard.  He had false eyes over his real ones, as I'd seen a tradesman once wear when I was little.  The eyes behind the false ones were closed.

"You took your time," said the old man suddenly, clearly.  I had thought him asleep.

"I took the stairs," said Shimmy without ceremony.  "Hello, Boss."

"Good evening," said the old man.  "Why not take the lift?  I powered it for you."

Shimmy chuckled in an ugly way.  "I didn't enjoy getting stuck last time," was all he said to that.

There was a pause.  The old man seemed sick, but did not cough or wease or suffer at all.  The humming engines all around him were doing the coughing and suffering for him.  I wondered a little blankly if he were going to die.

"Who have you brought with you?" asked the old man.  He spoke slowly but firmly.  "You know I don't approve of guests."

"One of your children," said Shimmy.

"Eh?" asked the old man warily, his eyes opening and I felt myself gasp.  There were no eyes in the sockets, just startling red wells that I couldn't look away from.  But even without eyes to see, I felt his look fall on me.  I felt instantly that this was a man worse than the worst Revs, I might fall out of the world after all.  "Is your mind finally gone?" he asked at last, and the wells shut themselves again.  "I have no children."

"One of the children of your world," said Shimmy flatly.  "He lives through what you made, he is him because you are you."

"You bring me this filth," the old man muttered.  "I can smell him from here."

"He smells like the world," said Shimmy.  "You want to shut me out with him?"

"Enough of this," said the old man.  "You received my message."

"Yes," said Shimmy.

"Then you know what you have to do," said the old man.

Shimmy seemed to hesitate.  "Where are the lifters?" he asked.

"Gone," said the old man.

"Gone," said Shimmy.  "Gone where?"

"I told them all to fly away, to leave me in peace," he said.  "They're somewhere over the ocean by now, or under it."

"You disabled the safe return," said Shimmy, as if to himself.

"I told them to cross the sea," said the old man.  "With full charges they would never have made it.  None of them had full charges."

"After I kept them running," said Shimmy.  "All those years."

"They were no longer needed," said the old man flatly.

"How long ago was this?" asked Shimmy.

"Three days," said the old man.  "I thought that would be enough for these things to wear out, but here we are."

"Yes," said Shimmy.  "Here we are."  He examined the water hanging on the coat rack.  I wondered if there was any more around the old man wouldn't miss; it's wrong to ask for water, but there's no problem with stealing it if you can.  "Plenty of saline, I see," he said, staring at the bottles there.  "But no more morphine.  I see why it's so urgent, eh?"  He smiled.

"I said in my message," said the old man, his voice rising somewhat, "that I was weary.  How long will you make me wait?"  He shifted in position somewhat, seemed to settle again.  He said flatly, "You've got a job, now do it."

"Oh, I never said I would do the job," said Shimmy, just as flatly.

"Why are you here, then?" demanded the old man.  "Why do you bring in this filth?"

"He's my guest," Shimmy said.

"Oh," said the old man.  "Brought him along on a sight-seeing tour, eh?  Come to see the old man in the tower?"

I didn't realize he was talking to me.

"Speak up boy," said the old man.  "Have I got that certain look you wanted to see?"  He used a word I don't remember when he said a certain look.  I don't know for sure, but now I think it was prelapsarian or some other word no one actaully knows anymore.

"You look old," I said intelligently.

The old man cackled.

"Behold the inheiretors of the earth," he said to on one.  "So much for the meek, but maybe they meant the intellectually meek.  Tell me boy can you read?  Read one word to me and I'll give you any book from that wall."

"Exit," I said, pointing to a glowing sign near the ceiling.  It was a word I knew without reading, you saw those signs everywhere in the trash heaps.

"Very good," said the old man, and I wanted to hit him even though he was frail.  "You may take your prize.  Is this why you brought this filth here, Shingler?  To do little tricks for me?"

"I brought him here," Shimmy said softly, "to do the job for me."

The old man made a strange croaking sound that I suddenly realized was a laugh.

"Very good," he said.  "I always knew you were cruel but a coward.  Can he do more than gauge out people's eyes when they're not looking?"

"He's killed men before," said Shimmy.  "He can do it again."

"He's a boy," said the old man dismissively.  "He's not a killer."

"I am not a killer," said Shimmy.  "But the boy is."