Twenty-seventh note

My parents had a guest tonight, and I also visited them, so I met him. He was very sympathic but his face looked very sad. He looked tired, and it seemed it is difficult for him to maintain his polite attention to his company. After a few minutes I had the idea that his wife probably died. And a few minutes later it turned out from the discussion that my intuition was right.

The work of the receiver

In the art school, where I study drawing there is a very special model. She is special because she differs from the most of the people in basic things, which are usually common for others. For example I saw her once coming to school in pair of sandals; it was wintertime, big snow covered the streets. Some say she is schizophrenic.

Once Noémi, our teacher asked her about her week-end. She said, she was working on the week-end in the Palace of Arts (a big cultural center, which holds a concert-hall in it). Noémi asked wonderingly what did she do. She said she was working with Fischer Iván (a well-known Hungarian conductor). He was playing, and she was helping him.

Noémi laughed, she said she never heard more beatiful sentence about reception.

Today I encountered a poor man on the bus. I dont know, if he was homeless, or just very poor. He had serious difficulties with speaking, probably his larynx was sick, maybe it was operated because of cancer. He wanted something, and he turned to people around him repeating one series of burble voices. Some looked at him for a while, than turned away. It was so visible in this situation, that the person who is listening should put energy in understanding, it was obvious that it would have been necessary by the listener make an effort for the succes of communication. All listeneres failed today. Gave up, haven't even really tried.

A homeless looking person appeared on the funeral of my grandfather. I was shocked, what is this man doing on the ceremony. He walked in the hall where the catalfalque stood with sticks. He was loud, when everyone was silent. He looked scruffy.

Later I got to know, that he is a priest; and he lived in the same elderly persons rest home as my grandparents did; he was a friend of my grandfather in his last year. My father drove him home afterwards, and in the car we got to know, we have common interest - I just started to study in the art school in those times, and he was an artist. Sometimes he crossed the town with his sticks using the public transportation vehicles; buses, trams and metro to get to the zoo to draw animals. He was dull of hearing, I needed to talk in his left ear. We became friends. Later I visited him in the village where he used to be a parish priest before he retired and moved to the rest home. It was january, and there was no heating in the parish, exept for one electric heater in the main room, where we slept. The foods in kitchen and water in the toilet were frozen. We ate frozen aspic, which contained almost only fat and cartilages, I barely stopped throwing up from the taste. I was helping him sorting out his stuff, since he was eliminating the parish. He gave me 2 or 3 boxes of books and plenty of paints, brushes, crayons and papers. I had fever after coming home. Before his death, he gave me many of his drawings. They are not in good condition. I should do something with them.

Instruments on willow trees

I just found a beatiful picture in a psalm:

"By the rivers of Babylon--
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our harps.

For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
"Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"

How could we sing the Lord's song
in a foreign land?"

Hanging the instruments on the trees, that's so individually expressing image of sadness, homesickness and resistance all togheter. The end of the psalm is shockingly cruel. It is number 137.

From my window

The Bell Jar

The voice of the girl, who tells the story, caught me. The strong personality of the main character in Sylvia Plath's novel, I would even say a little aggressive attitude combined with deep sensitivity is so simply natural, it creates the strange feeling that she lets me very close to herself, but stays in a great distance, which cannot be dissolved under any circumstances.

"When I am week, Then I am strong."

I was full of pity when she was escorted to the electroshock room, and it was a suprise, when she started to be more balanced after getting a series of regural electric therapies. I wouldn't say a happy suprise; more a silent release caused by seeing her release, which emerges from accepting the situation, she got into, and especially accepting herself in this situation. Her battle with the world around does not vanish, but it melts into the running of normal affairs.

Twenty-sixth note

I have heard many interpretations of Hamlet. Often they try to understand the characteristics of the Danish prince, why is he postponing to take revenge throughout the whole story, till the end, when he is already attacked by the king himself. They say, Hamlet is a hesitant person, he can hardly make decisions. The story goes forward, because we are curious if he will kill, and if yes, how he will kill Claudius. But he is slow to do the act, he almost does not get to do it. One says, he is melancholic, another says he is rather a philosophical type than a man of actions.
I don't know, if that is so.
But I know, it is not easy to kill someone. And I wonder why noone speaks about this.
If I would think, I have the duty, that I have to kill someone, I would suffer from this. It would be very hard.
I think Hamlet is a story about a person, who got a command, that he has to kill someone. Whereever this command comes from (the origin can be even in himself), he tries to face with it. The play tells the story, how he struggles with his duty. How he thinks over and over, and how he tries to bring himself to do it.
When I have to kill someone with my own hands, when I have to be present at the death of the person, who I murder, that is like killing myself aswell. We are created to be emphatic, and when someone dies in my presence, I experience death aswell, I project his death on myself, and I have to face, how it would be, if I had to die. I have to kill something in me, in order to be able to murder someone else. That's why in modern times armies fight with weapons, which kill the enemy in a long distance, far away from the murders. So they do not have to experience the death of their victims.
Of course, one could say: but he kills Polonius without any hesitation, and it seems this act does not turn him down.
But Hamlet kills Polonius by accident, and that is very important. And I think this is an important epsiode in the story, which can help the actor, to understand and to show, that there is a serious battle going on in himself, about committing a murder. There are two processes going on from this point in the story in him at the same time. These prosseses are reverse of each other. In one the protagonist is trying to face a murder what he has to do, before he does it, in the other he has to face and deal with it, after the act.
And we should not forget, that Polonius is behind a curtain, when Hamlet stabs him to death. He can not see his victim, and he thinks it is the king. To kill the king without seeing him, would be similar, how modern soldiers murder - without being a witness of their act. And that would solve his problem. Of course he can not kill the king, by accident. But he has to deal with the experience murdering someone, while he still tries to accept his role as a murder.

Extracts from a letter - three

When I was following the rehearsals in the town of Saint George, I learnt a new instruction, which I never heard before. It wasn't a seldom case, when an actor heard the director asking him to play his partner. You are not playing yourself, your are acting him. Sounded the instruction.
What does this mean, I asked myself, how does this make sense, what is the meaning if an actor starts to act something, which is not based on his own character, but on one different. And after hearing several times, I asked the director himself, what he meant by this.
It was a cigarette break, we were standing out on the cold and dirty corridor, it was under construction in fact, they repainted it for the premier. This play was performed in a small studio of theatre, which was based in a grey office-block, a department of the state health-care company. People, who came to take out or prolong their insurance were queuing up at the other end of the corridor, separated from us with a glass-door. They used a different entrance, but it happened, that clients due to some misconception entered on the gate of the theatre studio, and asked about health-care. After I asked my question, a middle-age lady entered from the street, a few steps above us. She looked upon us, and stoped at the top of the staircase. Excuse me sir, Administratia Asigurărilor? Althaught we didn't look at all as any administration office, people are prepared for unusual circumstances in this country. She didn't know, if she had entered to the high estimated office, or somewhere else, something unknown, who knows where, so she was as modest and polite, as possible. She was in need for something, so she had humilate herself.
The director showed her the way. She contatly descended on the stairs, and passed through us with eyes falled down.
You see, she was not acting herself, she was acting us. She didn't know who we were, and what she could expect from us, she went under us, she acted us. The man, who is the care-taker of the building, who came before the rehearsal, because I asked him to fix the circulation of the heating, as we were freezing in the past days, he was also acting us. He went above us, as he considers us as intruders in the health insurance's building.
Acting the other person, oh, that's a wise discovery. How rare is a man, who never plays others, but remains himself under any circumstances. How big is the tempation to act the one, who you face with, either beacuse you have more power, than he does, or exactly because you have less. There's a potency, which drives you to go above, to go under.
Just to fulfil the expactions, to follow the track, which is marked.
When one shows the sign of being above you, your path is marked, and the opposite works aswell, when you see people giving you the higher position, it is not simple to stay on the same level, your own level, a human being, equal to any other.