Alle Guten Dinge Sind Drei

Dear Quicks,

I neither forgive nor forget the trespass. This is not because I think you have done any wrong. It is perhaps more a matter of what I have been made to remember as a consequence of your tidily enveloped submission to Castle Denmark. I make many associations I neither have the courage nor the interest to reveal. So long as you are in touch with the conscious and unconscious flow between us, you will find that I perceive both more and less than the material world actually enables me to validate without distortion in my world without a father.

You might be expecting that I will follow up on your suggestions regarding positive thinking. Nonsense! I prefer to go against common wisdom and would like to share with you how negative thinking can actually be a benefit. The fact is, negative thinking is a kind of protection against disappointment (such as that feeling I refuse to shake regarding this by now ubiquitous letter to my mother - if only she had read your pages as often as we speak of them. She might have interpreted my defenses as based entirely on intrapsychic conflicts, and decided to place the entire responsibility on the patient and finally let me alone). The negative thinker expects nothing good to happen and is not disappointed when nothing good does happens. I care little for anything, but this is a difficult hallucination to maintain. I mobilize my defenses using fact and intellectualizing, contributions slashed at context junctures - which is why it is not at all surprising that you wrote my mother. Instead of embracing this with the therapeutic grace and thankfullness of the grateful patient, I dove deep inside and remembered the following:

Dear Queen, the letter began. I had intercepted the document at the gates, expecting the latest installent of "Hueffer's German Painters Expurgated & Explained," but discovered only a pile of envelopes in special packaging. The patrolman grinned coconut shy, relieved in the knowledge that another prince might have beheaded him for failing to produce the expected printed materials at the desired time. Instead, I shook his hand, and left him with his dreams of being a puppet used as a target in juvenile yardgames.

On the top of the pile of envelopes I recognized the handwriting of Oafelia. She was in Abscheroot at the time, where they often tied her to the wall with soft rope and wrapped her skull in padding. She would drool and smash her head against the walls, pausing only to scribble when crayons and paper were set in front of her. In my rooms, I played with candles and steam, removing the seal as imperceptibly as possible, hiking the folds with the utmost care in order to read that:

Hamlet imposbl
to git a pipSQueak out of
BUT i still indicate that I
am in course of perusin'yr
ult - mummyQueen
As to mistaking your son
For my brother
that is a pinwheel
at times stuck in yr
formidable hat to catch
a new cronie king

i did see Ham
quoted on a poster
statement of which
by other witnesses
confined to Ghosthouse
SHOULD BE CONFINED
IN OBVIOUS MANICOMIO
along with clowns of the limey variety
and the kind (if yu insist on the term)
that gets grain grown so that a country
need not sink into debt the variety
that does get the grain to grow
fixation, in short
death of mind

I'll be the first to admit, Dear Q., I have no idea what Oafelia refers to, beyond the basic references to my name and certain agricultural matters I often dabble in managing. Her concern for my vegatable responsibilities strikes me much less than her need to communicate all of this pap to my mother. What befuddles me even more is the care I took in disguising my intervention, painstakingly reproducing the seal, and dusting off my fingerprints before slotting the letter in my mother' s round tube pigeonhole.

Perhaps you, great friend, hold interpretation of these lines. Worry yourself not on them, but if your freebase this wretched alphabet, share with me your deluded dreams.

I am sending you a book, but will need time for extensive research to find just the tome you need. We maintain a special library in the dungeon, which will be more profitable than the dry columns kept above ground. The question is: what can I smuggle out of the castle? Books are bloody bricks, and do not travel unnoticed. I will likely have to hide your requested texts along with some artillery things. Several shipments move out every day, and they are increasingly richer and fuller, so I don't imagine the viscera of a book or two will garner much notice. In the meantime, I have recently acquired a few divination cards from a Frenchman (more of that mysterious figure later). Allow me to cast down for you a spread of three. I do not know what meaning they hold for you in your situation, but as you consider their message, allow yourself to imagine and visualize the things they bring to mind, the weight they place on your soul.

H.

Past Influence - Le Soleil (inverse)

Signs are of a troubled relationship, or the diminishing of a partnership. Broken engagements and contracts. There may be an abundance of activity, but all of it seems to lead to failure. Happiness hovers on the horizon, but even at the present moment, seems relentlessly delayed.

Present Influence - Le Bateleur (inverse)

Confusion, hesitation. The inability to make choices. Something prevents you from making use of your talents (this could also be speaking directly to me!) Giving up seems all to easy, and yet, mastery of the material world is close at hand. If only the persons referred to by this card could recognize their abilities and potential, the control of the weather would seem easy by comparison.

Future Influence - La Justice (inverse)

More delay. Complicated negotiations. Dear Q., I sincerely hope this isn't true.