Mojo, The Bard, & Me

I do not think so; since he went into France, I have been in continual practice; I shall win at the odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here about my heart: but it is no matter.

-Hamlet

 Hamlet                                         Act V, scene ii, line 208

Horatio has just warned Hamlet that he’s going to lose if he goes up against Laertes in a fencing match and this is Hamlet’s reply.

I sat in the chair looking out at the birdfeeder a few minutes ago, and I was thinking about what bird I would encounter in today’s reading. As you see, there is none in today’s line. But just a few lines down…

Horatio asks Hamlet if he wants him to delay the fencing match to another time. Hamlet replies,

Not a whit, we defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all: since no man knows aught of what he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes? Let be.

So the answer is sparrow. And while that just seems to be Hamlet’s longwinded way of saying ‘whatever will be, will be’, it reminds me of a funny story: I had a job when I was younger at a place where my brother Phil also worked. It was a place where we would go out and clean smoke damaged houses. We would usually pack a lunch for the day. Well one day we were sitting outside eating our lunches, I think it was me, Phil, and a guy named Jeff. Phil had found a dead sparrow on the ground and unbeknownst to Jeff or me he had replaced the meat on his sandwich with the sparrow. So we’re sitting there opening our lunches and Phil opens his, and then looks inside the bread to see what he’s got, and says, ‘Oh, not sparrow again!’ Perhaps you had to be there, but it was pretty funny.

Here is a selection from my Audubon Society Baby Elephant Folio. It would seem to be an appropriate picture for the day.