Early Thursday Morning

A five o'clock morning. But I went to bed a little early, at about eleven. Eleven o'clock used to be the routine, but I've been staying up to midnight and a little after for weeks. Nonetheless, I really needed another hour of sleep. I get up feeling tired instead of rested, again.

I was struggling with the thought that I should be somebody, that I had the brains. I should have went to the Ivy League. Should have been somebody.

I shook it off: if I was truly that smart, I should have gotten through law school. Only affirmative action could have gotten me into the Ivies. But I still couldn't fall back asleep.

Russia

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia emphasized on Thursday that the upper chamber of the Russian Parliament had authorized him to use military force if necessary in eastern Ukraine, and also stressed Russia’s historical claim to the territory, repeatedly referring to it as “new Russia” and saying that only “God knows” why it became part of Ukraine.

-- New York Times

Okay, things are still going swimmingly on that front. It appears that Mr. Putin will soon be making a grab at the rest of East Ukraine, after having added Crimea into his bag of marbles. The main question is whether Ukraine will make war out of the matter. Unlike in Crimea, the Ukrainians are raising their weapons, and there has been some fighting and some deaths. It could be a nasty summer over there, and you don't want to think about what it could spiral off into.

Pop's Home-Improvement Projects

About Pop’s little home-improvement projects. It occurs to me that he may be as emotionally invested in it as I am in my books and my blogging. It is how he justifies his days: that sense of doing something useful with his life. He probably always looks to see what to do next, and then he takes care of it when a day opens up for him, when he has no shopping to do or friends to see, which may be once every few days or so.

Hamlet (4,4) After the Long Night

Upon this meeting at the port, between the captive Hamlet and Fortinbras’ army, we are bid to remember on this dawning morning what a long night it has been. Hamlet sprung his mousetrap and snared the conscience of the king, then had a long drawn out argument with his mother, fighting for her conscience, during the course of which he murders the wrong man, the over-busy Polonius, and then Hamlet is sought after and caught by Claudius’s men, including Hamlet’s erstwhile friends, and now he faces this enforced exile to what dark end he can only imagine. It is one of those nights in which you age years, and he must reorient himself and find his resolve yet again, even as he must be feeling mousetrapped himself and out of options.

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Hamlet’s life seems to have spun more than ever out of his control. After a bewildering series of catastrophes, he’s become an exile and a murderer, but of the wrong man. The borderline between his assumed madness and his real disturbance has become very, very thin indeed. It seems to me he is trying here in one final attempt to assert his capability and godlike reason. He is trying to understand the volcanic emotion that he feels. He is hanging on by his fingers’ ends.

-- An actor quoted by Marvin Rosenberg, “The Masks of Hamlet”

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Afternoon Nap

That’s why it smells like rain! I let Sammy inside after getting up from my nap, and when I bent down to pet him, his coat was wet. It is raining. Albeit very lightly. More like a drizzle. A drizzle that already has fizzled out. But we will have to see if anything develops out of it in the next couple of hours, before I let the cats outside.

The Natural World

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