Here. Now Here. Nowhere.
“Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,”
I took the above quotation out of context because I don’t want to think about weird sisters or damn spots. This isn't about Shakespeare's words but about his silence. It's about the tension between the end of one line and the start of another.
here,
But here,
The line break is a punctuation mark in poetry. A demarcation of a conscious decision regarding line, emphasis, rhythm, meter, meaning, and a million other things. A line break is every punctuation mark in one stroke, visually cancelling each other out and leaving only the white space of intention. The only punctuation mark that comes close to the significance of a line break is a dash -- . A mark that elides one’s whole life.
1969 -- . The typewriter’s Grim Reaper. Simply waiting.
Next Friday is my birthday. I won’t tell you how old I am, but I did give you a hint. I’m in no way morbid about my birthday--I love it, actually--and tend to forget the issue of aging because I get caught up in the party. It is my personal holiday wrapped up in a major holiday that is about memorializing the dead and launching the summer in the same day. It’s just so Gemini.
Birthdays, like punctuation, are markers of change. Sometimes signposts of achievement: 18, 21, 100, and sometimes milestones that compel us to course correct: 30, 50. But the only birthday that was really, really about anything was the Big 00--that day you were actually born and left the space occupied by only you and opened up to a world with so much more. Nothing more dramatic has ever happened to you. And it happened in the line break.
(you were) here,
But (now you are) here,
A number of years ago, I participated in a blocking activity at Chicago Shakespeare Theater using Macbeth's full soliloquy that included these lines (without the parentheticals). We had to walk around and speak these words aloud and physically turn 90 degrees each time we reached a piece of punctuation or a line break. If I hadn’t done that exercise, I don’t think I would have really understood the weight of breaking the line at here.
(I’m moving toward this moment and see the destination before I get) here,
But (I don’t get to stay long before I have to turn again; I was never really) here,
Shakespeare puts a comma before the end of the line; he makes you look over the edge before he pushes. Bastard. Without the risk of falling, nothing really happens.
- here, but here
- here--but here
- here,
But here,
Yes, it is the same here, but here. The first repeats and the second stumbles. The third makes you step through everything and brings you back to where you
were,
But changed.
here, (pause, experience every punctuation mark, the anticipation of a life, and turn)
But here, (let out your breath and take it in)
The first here is on the cusp; it is filled with anticipation, but the second here holds the view. How do we inhabit that now here/nowhere after one line ends and before another begins?
I'm looking at that space between here and my birthday and find myself trying to fill it, but it is already brimming. When I step into my birthday and look out over the year to come, I'll remind myself of what my mother said to me on the Big 00, "I am so glad you are here."
