Jackpot of Nothing

Dear Q.,

Friendship, yes! Friendship has affected my life in at least three ways (and not yours alone - I have my guards, after all, and lately, I have this fearsome ghost, who treads so heavily inside my double mind). As a boy I would frequently wake up in the middle of the night with the effects of friendship troubling me. During the day I would often find myself thinking about possible solutions to the tricks of friendliness, devising new and increasingly complex routines - usually when I should have been paying attention to something else. My actual friendships, for instance. I have the same bad habit even to this day.

Second, friendship has given me the opportunity over the years to relate in a positive way to tens of thousands of people (by which I mean to refer to my subjects), and, in so doing, helped provide my family with increased financial security and an enteraining lifestyle. Until recently, my participation in matters of parliament have resonated and caused me great joy. I was part of the molecules in motion, but a critical one, which as you suggest, should have compound compiled the value of the demonstration. Now, I am in charge of pure restriction.

Finally, friendship has been a wonderful pathway to other friendships. Most of my enduring friends are physical, even those who publish my ideas in rotten council behind my back (I still cannot forget even your ludicrous conversation with my mother!), but still, my life on this earth would have been much different and much less profound with them. Particularly you, Don Q., my mysterious vaporization of parchment and wax. I was smitten from the beginning. I still am.

I find myself performing well over a hundred shows a day, half of them between vespers and the opening of dawn. I am confused by the knotted ends my gimmicked speeches create in the air before my eyes before suddenly disappearing. Just as quickly new ones reappear! The revelation is everything, as Polonius is fond to say, it is the heart of all things. Yet, the dynamic is always far away and gone, more like a bar stunt than a miracle, more liked a skinned mink than the magisterial mind my subjects allow of me. I would say expect of me, but since having been handed the role of minister of propaganda, I have learned to ellicit their appreciation, rather than stimulate or even earn it. Stimulation, you understand, is Claudius' only known modus operandi since taking centre stage in this, our humble castle.

Speaking of which, am I mistaken in discerning certain persausive elements in your missives to me in my woeful castle? The identity of your thought leads me to believe that I should extend your friendship to my employ - a risky proposition, I shall be the first to submit. Friendship, thick or thin, needs a boat and strong water for sailing in. However, I cannot help wonder on the ways you might help shuffle the untidy ribbons of power in Denmark merely by the slightest flex of your gestalt of enigmatic entertainments. You have such non-mechanical flair, and use little or no apparatus. I suspect you could be adaptable to very small or very large audiences (we often address Sweden as much as Denmark), and your submissions could be quickly set and reset by our printers into every different language. Lastly, you are efficient, and a lot of effect could be produced by minimal work. Methodwise, you might contribute substantially to my pitch to save this dying kingdom. The ghost stands behind me on this request and gives plot to all you can attest.

H.

Postscript. Things have smoothed slightly with Laertes. All have accepted my ravings as that and no more. None have offered to visit me in Zurich.

Woman in the Widow

Dear Q.,

I do not want to apologize in a manner that seems only to passingly console you for the pain I believe I must have caused by my accusations. It was only a dream - in reality I am a normal man like others. But rather, in our unconscious, in the real of our desire, we are all murderers. I was playing out something against you that in no way belongs to you, namely my suspicion against the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a monarchy, government, civilian population, or any segment thereof, for the purpose of insidious objectives. That you should fall under my gaze was a matter of timing and nothing more. There are those who subscribe to the view that I enjoy nothing more than using, abusing, and controlling my fellow human beings. This is why some observers have stated that Hamlet is a new breed, leaping on the notion that I am a prisoner, a predatory hitchhiker confined by the same walls he stalks exclusively. Well, they can talk! These same people claim also that if my plans go awry for any reason (I am thinking here particularly of my crimson mother), I tend to use friends as convenient scapegoats ... Of course, after you play that card, you have lost your friend forever, which I hope is not the case with you. It is generally best not to mix work with friendship, which, unfortunately, I fear I have done. You could put it another way, however. I am prepared for self-analysis, and my affection for you makes me willing to take chances.

H.

Contemporary Advertisements for Scientific Apparatus

Infectious condition! Reading this latest complex of paragraphs, I cannot help but wonder if my faithful Q. has broken with rationality all together. First the missive to my mother, and now this spirited collection of time and facts ... remarkable for its observational accuracy and objectivity, brimming with an intelligence not learned from books, but learned certainly ... I imagine you are going through a great process of validation, so I shall not peer too deeply into this doubleness, this mimicry, this allowance you have made between myself and your man, who I previously thought held for you only the value of managing your various anxiety and woes. If it is true that you have opened our shared - and highly private! - insight therapy to a go-between, then the meaning of our friendship has changed. The building blocks of our communication derives in large measure from distortions of reality to begin with, so I must prevent my worries and suspicions from draining the very ink from my quill before the verbiage in my head is spent. I have a hard time explicitly confessing that I am hurt, but there it is. Let me carry on and assail once again your eyes that are now so fortified against my stories.

In mentioning this, I am reminded of my recent trip to see my sister. For some reason, "the patient," as I have come to think of her, was attempting to place into me some of her own bad introjections in the form of her own masked communication. She shook as she spoke, part of the effort to place destructive energies within me. I do not hold memory sufficient to decide if I already doubted her veracity, but I know myself to be both solipsistic and marginal, so when my internal capacities mobilized her infernal messages - to cut to it: I am now gobbling the very same medication as she! I wanted them at least for their psychopharmacological effects, but also because they afford me the special gratification of numerous new visual and verbal associations. Witches boil it in black pots and it is interpreted by unsound priests. It knocks against the teeth when I swallow it.

How this happened, you may well ask, but I'm not going to tell you. My life is played out in scenes to the point where I cannot bear to dramatize these matters I mention, never knowing where or to whom this increasingly fragmented theory of our friendship will land. Like a bacteria, or a disease, I am no more that a poorly paid apprentice to experiments in deception. On second thought, I will provide you with a short narrative, perhaps the most disturbing of all:

I learned that Aleph is not really my sister! She belongs to Laertes! I have immediately embarked upon defense research, and have purchased a miracle of engineering, a protype of a weapon that is arguably the most frightful definition of protection and retrobution I have ever seen. The plans alone cost me in many ways beyond the monetary. I have a man of my own working on its individual parts, later its mass reproduction. It is scarcely surprising that I would fall in love with my own sister, but to suddenly discover that the fluids coursing within us bear no relation makes a monkey of logic. The statement that the head of a horse is connected to its torso by its neck no longer appeals to the academic expert within me. Nobody with ordinary training could explain why I run around half the time like a person with the mental age of eight, while holding a high pedigree of intelligence, and my conclusions about this matter cannot be overstated. I would not like it if she were trapped very much longer in that hospital, but I would neither appreciate the pressure of marriage, something she has already attempted to impose on me.

"You must be very ill," she said.
"For what? Why?"
"Posing. Pretending. I'm not your sister. Who would believe that you ever thought so?"
"Royalty is filled with such mistakes."
"Then royalty is filled with sick fantasy."
"I must make haste back to Denmark and make peace with Laertes. He sweats whenever I'm near him. Have you seen him?"
"You must be very ill."

No, of course the conversation didn't proceed just that way. But as a slice of event from my life, it gives you a taste of her raving. I wonder about the architecture in that place. So very far away, and yet incredibly the same. I wrapped her skirts about her head and drooled on her skin during the short recess between nurses and potions. Aleph controls them with their mind, I'm positive about it, and it really is the best explanation for how the pills intended for her consistently wound up in my mouth. R&G have no explanation for the increased melanchology, an enhancement of the drug, and now that we are back in the castle, I have done nothing but hide from Laertes and search the grounds for some kind of momento mori. Only then will I move toward reparations.

When I hear from you next, I may be dead. Conversely, I may have learned to control the weather or direct the flight of birds with my mind. My goals remain vague as excruciatingly certain plots unfold around me. Despite my initial moment of caution, I am glad you remain unpredictable.

H.

Dear DQ.,

You are realizing in your experiences and travels dreams I cannot actualize in real life. At the same time you make a vicarious claim on my nightmares. Strangely, this unexplainable movement heartens me. I shouldn't hold so stringently to the bleakness, you are correct. In all events, you may take my entire world without restraint, along with all of its mist. Fog the glass with moisture from your breath and then grind it like glass between your teeth. Perhaps only then will you experience the true grain of this haunted castle.

Tomorrow, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will escort me, in all their amusing theatricality, to visit Aleph for several days. It seems I shall see something of the road after all. I strongly hope that we are moving towards a final conclusion and resolution into normality. Horizons of significance -

My friend, I am neither feeling, nor being clear. Anon.

Cher Q.,

The toxicity of yesterday's malaise plays games with me even sillier than the daft confusions thrust at me by R&G. They are derivative human beings, and yet I experience much pleasure in my explorations of the connections between themselves, let alone between myself and them. I can hear them, fake-fencing outside the tent. They have no fixed priority beyond myself. We have travelled all day in rain and throughout I found no context stronger than a pine cone crushed beneath a carriage wheel with which to align myself.

But on to your wet boots. In our military, we have a saying that if one is going to die, one must die with one's boots on. The world has become an irrational and deadly nightmare when young men clutch sayings such as that to their chests, never dreaming about change or difference or the alternating currents of possibility lodged in places as simple as the dirt beneath a fingernail. Polonius postulated in my presence the possibility of an unestimable number of life forms, all thriving in a speck of mud. The lapels of my jacket are crusted with specks from the day's journeying. Please don't be alarmed if dried flakes spill from the creases of my letter. I hope you meet one of these fantasy organisms Polonius dreams of. I should also send you one of the devices used to peer into the private lives of progressively smaller and intricate things. At the very least, you will be spared the snow, which also marks our path. I am almost at times the fool, stepping out of the carriage, and slipping in the white and brown colors, as they fight to cancel one another out. G & R, full of high sentence, and more than a bit obtuse, clamor with all the grace of the living dead. They get their just desserts for the foolery, sitting out in the cold, warming each other with exercise conducted over the frictionating heat of wooden swords plucked from dying evergreens. I fear the futility of their theatre and yet I wish I could step into that existence which refuses awareness of itself. You've convinced me that, for the time being, the suffering associated with deep contemplation rewards the continuation of head up and shoulders back, but I would give freely all I have to join their ridiculous sport and truly cherish the mess of flushed cheeks and exaggerated breathing.

My best to your man. He seems literally swallowed up in the drama as you script it. Is there truly any difference between you?

H.

Chain Mail

Dear Q.,

As a direct result of your actions, I'm afraid the security of our correspondence has indeed been breached! I can hold you at no fault, since you appear to have been motivated to contact my mother for reasons you felt were genuine. Since the moment she received your missive, she has taken shallow pleasure in charging me one-third of the very pretty postage stamps used on every epistolary action I make - incoming and outgoing! I wish someone would send me a copy of the Bible, to see if she would tax the very book she is so fond of quoting from. Plus, she has installed censors at every corner of the castle to intercept the mail, so I am debarred from telling you precisely what I think of this place. However, if you turn to the Book of Genesis you will see that towards the end of the week God became awfully tired. It was in the last few minutes (when He was not feeling at all good) that he produced a country beginning with D. It used to be a Canaan, reigned by a King who was however only a commoner. A tough one, at that, but kind. He was my father. At any rate, despite your uncouth meddling, your letter cheered me up - it is excellent to be reminded that there is, somewhere, however inaccessible, a more civilised and intelligent world.

Speaking of my childlike mother and her longing to be delighted, allow me to return now to the matter of the ghost. I cannot forsee which of these words will escape the censors and reach you, or whether the letter will arrive at all. With sharks' jaws invisibly stationed everywhere I look, prediction lies dormant, if not dead. To that end, I am sending you the key to my kingdom. It will provide you three things: the luck needed to carry itself and this letter unharmed toward you, an airborne weapon, and access to this castle should you find yourself within proximity and requiring nourishment and a space for rest. It will be best if you keep the key to yourself. Show no one! Not even this man of yours. I admire him implicitly, as much as he deserves, merely by knowing you, but I can readily craft (albeit safely in my imagination) the same plans Uncle C. and my mother will make against you if they find out their security has been breached.

The ghost seems to want revenge. Typical of ghosts, particularly in the modern play. Thomas Kyd produced similar rubbish in The Spanish Tragedy, which has no doubt circulated widely in your land. He calls my mother an adulterate beast, and I can hardly disagree, but I doubt that I shall ever find the urge to revenge myself, let alone my father. Revenge always ends in bloodshed, and I am far more interested in building my illusions of harmonious country living than I am in sticking my sword into someone's body as a means of remembering the dead. Still, as a fan of augury, I am forced to experience the conventional expectation of revenge, and may well find myself teetering, sharing an edge with Ophilia over which I may well plummet. I must remember to speak about this with Polonius. He requires highly coded language from me, and given the tenor of our tempest, I will make a maimed rite of all that I say.

Remember, dear friend, that a bridge is a construction that ensures the unbreakable continuation of your path across a body of water. If you do get your feet wet, it has served as neither a road nor a place, and you would do better to avoid it. Still, your will to connect with the world and shape it with the might of experience must carry you on unbidden. Heaven forbid that you would ever be separated or censored from the solace of your pen. As long as you roam, you remain free of the definite.

H.

Aleph Ophelia

DQ.,

On your advice, I rode out far past the gates. Slightly farther than I intended to, deep into untenable fog and darkness. Our castle is not state property and can only be visited through the kindness and permission of its owners. It is one of the few privately owned fortresses remaining in the world, which perhaps explains why I rarely leave it. Having done so, I feel that I make a better ancient monument, and owe much to your noble suggestion, despite my fear of thieves, and strong feelings of disgust at the rotten apples I found clingling with relentless vigor to the souls of my fresh riding boots. They were stitched by Rolf of Regensburg, where there is only one inn. Staying overnight, friend traveler, I do not recommend. I have heard of regular seances there, in which borrowed items change in their relationship between persons and things. It is much the same with these letters of ours, don't you suppose? Borrowed and kept items (I at least keep them), from which hearty agons emerge, fully blown from the most minimal narrative pretexts.

Speaking of which, I cannot see how this girl even remotely resembles my sister. Ophelia, whom we have always called Aleph around the house, has been sent to a hospital in Zurich. I have refused to visit her on the ground that I must take extreme caution when dealing with all matters of psychological ... phenomena. As you no doubt realize, a lot has circulated about me (none of it true!) and if I am ever to help aid her healing, I mustn't bring any of my own list of supposed sicknesses into her resting quarters. Aleph is not only a talented madperson herself, but also served as secretary to the Danish Society for Advanced Aquatics before falling ill. I have heard from Uncle C. that the hospital is aristocratic in design and appearance, and stands in a spot where Aleph can see much of downtown Zurich. She has even sent me a drawing, showing a square, heavy-set stone structure with three stories, and a mysterious attic above the top story. In this attic, there is a window that doesn't want to stay closed - so she reports - and I understand that her attendants have a hard time keeping her away. She is determined to fall through the gap, they say, and fear that the foliage in the garden will not suffiently protect anyone foolish enough to defenstrate themselves. These stories depress me. Especially since the only company poor Aleph can keep - apart from the staff - consist of wounded soldiers who have come there to die. She has sent me the cap of one such warrior, and I wear it even as I write, unsure of whether this man lives or dies. I must admit I am unsure about dear Ophelia too.

A strange thing happened to me on my way back to the castle. Pausing outside the gates, I bid my men to copy me as I scraped rotten apples from my boot against the gate wall. Darkness and fog crept everywhere like an ethereal machine moving with libidinal intent beneath bedsheets of moon. Suddenly, an apparition was upon us. "A ghost," said one of my men, pensively, playing with the dreaded word. But upon this, I can say no more. I've heard a rattle at my door!

Anon!

H.

Recast Alles in Darkness

Dear Q.,

As we know that the eye follows the moving object, it is strange that you should find my nature at all, let alone its indexable contents, such as conflict, about which I haven't told you nearly enough. Judging this matter of my conflictual nature from the depths of my uncle's moderately comfortable throne, I cannot see the future allowing me any significant form of retreat. These letters give me a rare snippet of meditation. Beyond that, I still have my research. Over the past several days, I consulted many of the haruspex tomes lining Polonius' library. Using bibliomancy, I found myself elliciting images of military distinction, emblems and harolds sparkling my chest. I was alarmed. I should not like to spill any gore, as anyone can tell - certainly not in those heathen places such as the slopes and fields of war. Perhaps you are right. I should keep my palms well-away from the half-cracked sword left me by my father, and make hasty retreat. Plus, as you suggest, war would not be good for my health.

But retreat to where? I can admire your travels only at a distance, and imagine that you spend much of your time stopping with a notebook, preparing future compositions, deliverable directly to Denmark. This brings you closer to me, I think, although all news of a girl ultimately sends you farther away then ever - especially when you assure me you may never see her again. Do try and penetrate the meaning of some of this note. Your steps have already retraced you to this girl and retraced her countless times in the theatre of my mind. Don't be afraid of irritating me further by implanting me with these disadvantageous images of fecund women and their moist gardens, at least so long as you remain my most loyal and realisitic friend. Your taste for subdued description provides me with soothing pigment in this merely decorative world of sooty iron and modern brick. You own the pretty brightness of appearances, whereas commissions of darkness never stop ripening my internalized interpretations of my ongoing family romance here in our vain little castle.

But of that, anon! I promise. I am watching my health, as you say, and keep constantly on the lookout for malice. I now return to rest and set about predicting where you might be landing next.

Yours,


Hamlet

Dear Don Q.,

I am too weary of conflict to carry out the cultural battle plans announced in my last letter. The ensuing trench warfare convinces me that the community to which I belong will never be the same again and that all my surplus vigor is being bled away and stamped out. I have attacked them all sufficiently enough in what can only be described as dehumanizing fiction (hallways, rambling), and I live a life consonant with the austerity of my constant abstract visions. Before I knew quite what I was doing, I found myself scrawling with loving care yet another corporal signaller to you, to plant my words upon your ... let us first confirm that your address remains quixotic.

Yours,

Hamlet