Roberto, Roberto Thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful.
The idea of needful things is a problem that has plagued me since adolescence. I have always been concerned with everything, down to the finest minutia of detail. This kind of living can become tiresome and aggravating. Looking at this is an example of why I disagree with Turner's assertion of the minds capability to contain the universe. Just too much day to day trivial shit can drive a person bat shit crazy. However I do agree with Turner in another way. I do believe that the mind is a universe in and of itself, that the possibilities and combinations of thoughts are endless. I do believe that human beings do not access the brains potential. I believe that we do not access the creative potential of the mind. To hold the external universe on the inside of the mind for me lends the mind to a storage device rather than a creative device. In this way I feel that it is not what shakespeare's stories that are so captivating, because as we have proven it is all recycled material, however it is how the story is told that makes Shakespeare genius. The cauldron of stories and plot lines already exist and will continue to exist while the manner in which those stories are told will continue to change and evolve. This is where to creative universe of the mind is most important. The same story could be told in an infinite number of ways. Different settings, characters, actions, and TIME. A love story can be told at a glance a split second exchange of eyes, or it can be told over the course of a life time, even multiple life times.
Oh how I digress, from even writing of the needful thing, let alone doing the needful thing. For me the needful thing is "Contentedness." To at any given moment see that which I have and that which is good and to be contented with it. To live life in the here and the now, lightening my mind of the loads of the past and the future. Some like St. Francis quite literally lightened their loads. From what I have heard and read St. Francis renounced all of his earthly possessions humbly himself amongst creation, freeing himself from the bondage of the external. To loose his earthly bonds. I read in a 'book' that St. Francis went as far at walk upon the earth with his bare feet. In King lear I kept thinking about St. Francis and the notions of nothing. Nothing may be nothing but if I can write nothing and you feel nothing, see nothing, perceive nothing, then nothing is something. I felt that in King Lear nothing was freedom, nothing answers to no one, you cannot take nothing from someone. You cannot go into nothing, nor become nothing. Like in physics of energy there is the law of conservation. Energy cannot be destroyed it can only change form. In that way nothing is something.
Nothing as something is like Cordelia's love for her father, both in the world of King Lear and the world of William Shakespeare. Her love needs no explanation because it exists regardless of explanation. In some ways this go against the grain of how love typically operates in William Shakespeare's work. When someone is in love typically there are these long and intricate overtures to the loved. Examples can be seen in Venus and Adonis, and a Midsummer Night's Dream. Yes they are Comedies however there is prophetic love in the dead horse "Romeo and Juliet". Yet here in King Lear Cordelia has this honest and unwavering love yet she says nothing (not nothing but not much). That said is the real act of love that which we see in Cordelia or the other characters in Shakespeare's work. I find that the Cordelia love is much like the love that we find that Mary has for Jesus. She does what she can were she can and enjoys it and that is enough, there are no grandiose acts to perform, or oaths to take in order to show ones love. While an individual the likes of Martha is laboring to impress Jesus, all the while suffering, acting in contradiction to the needful thing.
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