"Character"

       “Character” comes from Latin character, from Greek kharakter, from kharassein, “to inscribe” or “scratch” or “engrave,” from kharax, “pointed stick."  Shakespeare’s Polonius uses the word in a verb form that conveys its original meaning when he says to Laertes:

                And these few precepts in thy memory
                See thou character.  Give thy thoughts no tongue....
                                             Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3


Character is not a mask.  It is engraved, it is etched into you.

       In "Weathering," Alastair Reid speaks of his

                         father’s carved face, the bright eye
                he sometimes would look out of, seeing a long way
                through all the tree rings of his history.


Time may “delve the parallels in beauty’s brow,” but in the way we act and live...in that is inscribed character.