An attempt to bring this all to light

On the preference of dark over light, the obscure over the clearly visible, and the dangerous over the prudent...

2008-06-30T14:39:00.003+01:00

There was, from the start, a sort of playing-with-fire aspect of all this, you know. I knew it, too.

Returning to the beginning... returning...

I woke with a start last night. A sharp wind, arising suddenly, billowed my sheer curtains and swept into my bedchamber seeming to howl more aggressively than possible.

My window had been open, of course, because of the recent balmy weather, which encourages me to overcome my ever-present paranoia and leave the windows and doors thus in order to permit the penetration of the moving (and usually gentle) currents of air that bring my discomfort its only relief (other than the cool compresses I have the new maid lay in my head--but I despise her bubbly nature and the sight of her... 'effervescent' physicality makes me want to retch), even though these communicating points also allows entry to the spectres and haints that torment my feverish rest. Thus, I toss and turn in the throes of a hideous nightmare, rather than in the sweaty embrace of the sweltering heat of a closed chamber's stagnant air,where I would be further tormented by the constant presence of the over-perfumed body of my young housemaid, the discomfort of which I can generally avoid by exposing myself to the cooling influence of the night's graces.

As I stated, this unseasonal wind woke me suddenly, though I was momentarily unaware whether I had, indeed, woken, or whether this was a maddeningly real nightmare that mimicked my waking life down to the merest detail (had I found the book of my life, or an alternate one placed next to it on the shelf?). Ultimately, I determined that I had woken, if only because this determination was the least confusing and ended speculation on the issue. Still, despite my definitively being awake, decidedly dreamy things took place.

A horde of spiders pored over the sill and onto the floor, carpeting it with a silent flood of black bodies and innumerable arms. They as quickly receded into the cracks and crevices of my aging manor, never to be seen again, and no trace to be found, and no sooner had they disappeared, than a man in a dark cloak slipped in gracefully through the open window, his face sheathed in shadow by the gleaming moon over his shoulder. I cried out for my only attendant, despicable though I find her, only to discover, again, unexpectedly, but fortunately, for once, the Noble Ghost of Panza standing over me instead of a nubile and precocious village girl.

In a moment, I was desperately wrapping what protection my sheets and blankets offered about my scantily-clad body while the invading presence battled Sancho to their mutual death in a hail of spectral clashes of steel that was cataclysmic in its violence. Their paired corpses, entwined in the strange passions of battle and too-quick departure from it, then evaporated in a puff of sweet-smelling grace, and exited through the window, pulling closed the drapes again.

So tired from the assault and my fortuitous escape from it, I found I was again asleep within a few minutes and did not wake to report the incident to my housemaid until the morning was already late and the dew of the previous night had evaporated. She was skeptical, of course, because she suffers from that mental density common to her class, the dominant aesthetics of which prize generousness of body over commodiousness of intellect. I dismissed her with a wave and immediately sat at my table to pen my notes on the encounter on a scrap of paper laying out on my pupitre, which quickly developed into this letter to you (forgive the hasty scrawl and rough edges of this found papel), which leads me to wonder if my subconscious impulses are telling me more than my conscious mind has yet allowed to cross the green pastures of its fertile valley. Where were you last night?

I ask in humble suggestion without brazen accusation,

Don Quixote de la Mancha

Now in Possession of the Scroll of Power, the Wand of Capability, and still questing nightly for the Parchment of Insight.

refigured in language

2008-04-15T14:55:00.004Z

I have, in this long radio silence, continued to be obsessed with death and dying.

C'est au cause d'un souvenir, pas-invitee, qui m'approcha d'une nuit noir. Un souvenir d'un ami, qui s'appelle quelque chose... je ne peux pas me souvenir, ironiquement. Il est quelquefois mort, cet ami.

It's not the one you think, another in that long sentence of three objects (3 actually written, the others assumed, always present in their absence), of which one does not belong, and into which you read the correspondence I bid you not (to).

It's another friend. I think you've met his ghost, often found in the space between pages 143 and 144. He lurks there, activated in death, forceless in life. And before buying his summer home on the far shore, he watched his many friends and colleagues make the same investment, and always said "maybe next year" until it was too late.

And now it's next year, or we're on the banks of it, you and I. And summer homes with glistening porches and silly fetes with banal conversation we imagine to be earth-shattering dazzle us through our binoculars because we can only see and not hear. And, disappointed with the slim-to-none(xistent) portfolios our brokers oversee, we meander back and send letters among those of us that are never dead, relishing the time we spend in the hoary places and whitewashed rooms (and panelled ceilings and theaters with the little swiveling desks on the chairs) with those who are only sometimes it.

Then again, your sister. Send her my regards, pick something for her, she likes blue, they remind her of another prince (neither of us). Dump them overboard with my wishes.

I had the value meal, filet-o-fish.

Elsewhere (not to say, "nowhere")

Don Quixote d.l.m.

Fair Weather Friend

2007-12-11T18:32:00.000Z

Rain again today. The weather patterns have reversed. I'm inclined to read into it.

I don't think your second gunman was mine. At least, not of my knoll. Mine was unarmed. As are we all, I suppose... I indicated as much with that comment about hiding and cathexes (and fruit, or something...)

--But, don't let that stop you from posting the remains of the incident. Even if it won't help you avoid the scandal, I always like a good body. I'm something of a necrophiliac and a scientist. And anyway, it's awfully lonely around here. Only spectres and ghouls and myself (don't make undue conclusions from the organization of that sentence). And those revenants are less than talkative now that I've dispatched their hero, S.P. with my silver trowel.

I suppose, in thinking more about it (that's all I have time for these days, though I have loads of time for it), I'm glad you executed him. It was the greatest kindness you could have rendered him. I thank you for your courtesy to him on my behalf. Maybe one day I'll impose on you to mete out the same gentleness on another messenger, myself in disguise, bearing missives of misfortune I can never rid myself of--wrong zip code--no such name--insufficient postage--the bureacratic thumb screws of a whittled-down personality.

Listen, there's another matter.

I... saw your sister yesterday. Afterwards, I thought it chivalrous to take her to the opera (she wore a charming shift of pale blue with not much form to it--gauzy, limpid). We saw Giovanni, of course... beautiful as always.

I'm not sure how much to tell you of the encounter. This last sentence and markers in the ones that preceded it indicate less-than-full disclosure. A titillating mode used under the guise of modesty.

Take me at my word

Don Quixote de la Mancha

A Pepper Grinder Full of Mashed Potatoes

2007-11-26T01:29:00.000Z

The last time I saw the White Cliffs, the king of france was bald and the glass was where. I relish your letters but loathe their distraction from the real issue at hand. I think that when you put on the cardboard helmet and don your pretenses, I forget who it is you're hiding and why he can't be out in the open. I mean, sure it may be a matter of sufficiently cathecting all these bombarding energies, but let me tell you something, meister, sufficient cathexes are a fairy tale, like Greek olives, terse billy-goats, American imperialism, and sand-bottom reservoirs.

A Wednesday morning is the most flavorful fruit. I suckle it as I reluctantly awaken, allow the juice to trickle through the coarse hairs on my chin. Mites drown in ambrosia. A man comes to collect tickets and I avoid him, slink down below the covers until he leaves. His breath smells like the dining car. The ghost of Sancho Panza takes pleasure in disrupting these perfect moments of mine, and he takes this opportunity to stroke his delight.

"How long since you made that promise to me, Don?"

"How long, indeed, cur."

Fortunately, Elias, the groundskeeper, has left his trowel on the nightstand and I am able to excavate the wicked heart of Panza before he can strangle me.

I had to have a special messenger deliver it, please tip him well, he's my brother's brother, a sad old man with watery eyes, or one, at least. I trust you'll put it on the shelf with the others in the room you're preparing me. I trust you're preparing it. Certainly it won't be long now. I'm certain to get out of bed one of these Wednesdays. Now that I have thrust the Heart of Panza far from me, tying another knot in that silver chord. Sancho follows after it disentangling, never deciphering.

Listen, can you send me a Pepsi? I mix it with arrowroot to quell the tremors, but it's getting harder to find them here.

Then, after a long silence, the drummer beats four, and the guitars erupt:

Don Quixote de la Mancha

Aswan High Damn

2007-11-20T15:10:00.000Z

"Ohh...," he (I) lets (let) the last few "h's" suffer out and expand until they are several and none: a long drawled sigh indicating his (my) exhaustion.
It was always a slow day. Now, barefoot, I read the veins, now vericose, on those fleshy paddles on which I walk. They tell me imagined stories written there. They tell me fables, but in the garden of memory, now wilted, they offer up only the folklore of blood travelling from toes back to heart. It is a textbook now. It is a pied-ual. The second volume erupts from my forearms, but I refuse to study further. I don't like what I'm learning.
Instead, I return to the letter I write, a cartographic experiment in directing you to my heart. I worry that those same circulatory labyrinths hide not even a minotaur. I am less than beast at bottom. I am only maze.
But then, I run around away from you, building; I lay the bricks in the walls in spirals so that I never have to erect stories. I prefer to remain close to the foundation, one floor high, a distance from which I hope to be able to fall more than once.
"Ohh...," he (I) lets (let) the last few "h's" suffer out and expand through winding passageways until they are several and one: a long scrawled sigh indicating his (my) exhaustion.

I.F.
D.Q.
d.l.M

On Tuesdays, the clock reads 6, on other days, I see 5

2007-09-06T15:07:00.000Z

wake up wake up wake up. it's time to get up.
wait.
wake up wake up wake up.
Is it Thursday already. jeez, the time really flies when you're sleeping perchance to be dreaming.
I had a wonderful that where things fell up, apart, a wonderful picture where things were declared not to be things.
I had a wonderful.
And now it's time to wake up wake up wake up.

Breakfast in the morning, resetting the gastro clock for a day of doing dueling, doing doing, doing doo. Cleaning the clocks of the ghastly beasts who roam these parts, who flee when I sleep and leave me be. The inverted nightmare, a terror upon waking. (The light I am attempting to bring here? Maybe this strikes close to the heart).

And that leaves us in a pickle. A pickle of responsibility--how I loathe it. All of those prepositions and objects: for whom?, to whom?, about what? and anyway, isn't everything a contradiction, so why am I bound not to contradict myself when I contradict it. The simple fact is that there are no simple facts. My kingdom for the head of the next preposition who walks through--
--aha! guards!.
"My kingdom for the head of the next preposition who walks -xough that door." Ahh.
Delightful.

When you get back from wherever it is you went, find me well.

Good night.
Fidelis,
Don Quixote De La Mancha

In Which a Stiff Wind Blows and Uproots the New Growth in the Garden.

2007-06-05T13:15:00.001Z

"See about writing you more"?!

This is some kind of crack about my new blindness, isn't it? As if I could write with my eyes even if they were still around for my use. The thought of it (and your insolence) drives me to rend my garments and gnash my teeth. If I weren't already doing it because of the betrayal of that louse, Sancho, that is.

Last night I could hear him stealing into my room to pour poison in my ear. I think he wants to marry my wife.

But I got the better of him. I had cut off my ears the night before and covered the holes with leaves and spider webs. I have a man in Omaha who can stitch them back on. I'm enclosing a letter for him, perhaps you can forward it to him on your way to Cal-fortress.

I am also preparing to venture out again. I'm hearing the calls of Dulcinea in the holes in my head, which seem even more sensitive to her voice than the old fleshy ones I had until the day before yesterday (maybe I won't have them reattached).

Anyway, I have really to prepare my beast and my burden and my self. I embark shortly. Perhaps in the night.

In the mean time, I sip brandy from the decanter, and chew ginger root I had brought in from the Orient. I know it will boost my strength. And freshen my breath.

Don Quixote De La Mancha

In Festive Attire, I remain undaunted.

In Which Don Quixote Lives a Delusion as if it Were Real Life

2007-05-11T23:01:00.000Z

I recommended you head to los Angeles in your new found freedom from real estate. I meant that. And not only because the film industry is situated there. Sure, you could get famous there with a keen look in your eye and a fresh face. Rosy cheeks and some savvy on the casting couch could get you far.

I'm sure a kid like you with big problems in his head could work them out there. Probably do a lot of cocaine and see an expensive shrink. I think it could work for a young gentleman like you. Remember to pack that fresh face.

And your sister, if you can dig her up, she could make friends, too. Honest men out there are always on the lookout for a young girl to perform honest services for them.

If not Los Angeles, Bangkok.

Also, I notice that you have not written since I wrote yesterday. I'm aching for your letters, they are a sort of anchor in the murky sea of life on which this body of mine floats like an abandoned skiff.

And now I think there is blood in the water.

Sancho howls leaning off the roof with one hand on the chimney. I hear it whistle down the chimney and haunt my thoughts. I wish he'd shut up, but then I might not know he was here. I've been blind for days. I can't remember if I lost my eyes somewhere, or forgot to put them in when I woke up, or simply stabbed them out with forks because I couldn't stand all the stupid sensory information yelling at me all the time.

Maybe I've never had eyes. That's what the evidence seems to support.

Don Quixote de la Mancha

In Which Don Quixote Loses His Lustre

2007-05-11T00:42:00.000Z

Are you thinking of moving? I think you should head to Los Angeles. Maybe there you could get back some of the international cultual predominance you bemoan having lost. And yet, like you say, we're famous. Well, you anyway.

Me, I live in the antechamber of fame, waiting for it to call me in for my audience, which I hope will be long, but probably won't be. And during which I'll have to find a way to tell my long story in a short time. Perhaps no more than fifteen minutes.

There once was a man from Nantucket

With a broom and a mop and a bucket.

You know, a crushing sort of sadness keeps me from finishing this verse.

A real crushing kind of

sadness.

I wish Sancho was here.

to at least mop up the tears.

Which run...

Also, There was man I was trailing a long time ago. Odvallo. A hunchbacked sorceror. with wickedness in his veins. I killed him. It was bloody. His wickedness oozed out of him and got all over me, I think. And it was more difficult than I imagined. In a lot of ways. And it made me reconsider a lot of things.

It was... not what I expected.

Give me a minute. I need to collect myself. And more paper.

Find me somewhere, I'll be sure to be there.

Don Quixote De La Mancha

These Many Months

2007-05-04T15:39:00.000Z

These many months ‘neath starry skies and sun-scorched celestes I have wandered through moor and heath and plain and wood, never sure if I be pursuing or pursued. And now I’ve caught up with it, or it with me, and tired, ragged, unsure, I stumble homeward in a shambles.
There, I find a stack of letters, duly sealed and signed. On paper that smells of drafts and fogs and family romance. Written in the screed of a sad man whose faculties are not always reliable. Mixed in, indistinguishable, are some I meant to send with those I was meant to receive. I read them all as if they were yours, and smile when you say curious quixotic things. I laugh that you have become so close through our letters that you begin to write like me, in my hand, of my life.
Sancho Panza is somewhere. Either he lurks in the kitchen cooking something smelly, or maybe that is just the food in the larder going bad. Maybe I left him somewhere and should have nothing to eat tonight. I wish I hadn’t, though, because I’m terribly hungry.
And in this cold, o’er-large house with rooms boarded up, whose contents I’ve forgotten, there are a great many things I wish were different. Maybe in those old rooms there are the things I’d like to know, the people I’d like to see, the Don Quixote I’ve been looking for. I think I’ll rifle there among the cobwebs.
Maybe there will be images of beginnings, of the origins I seem obsessed with, which turn out always to be empty rooms full of the things I left in there, only older, decayed, mildewed and made the kingdom of rats. I still imagine them, though, as sparkling parlors peopled with dangerous and inspiring souls and things that can tell me something about being. Bright with a light coming from nowhere. A farce taking place about someone’s hair and violation, or a devot with a funny alliterative name. I believe the dusty disguise. I tell myself that I don't recognize my own furniture, but only see it in inklings of how I came to be what I am. And I'm not altogether wrong, anyway.

Blood and suffering and electricity. There seems to me to be no reason to differentiate registers in the humors. The material of the body, of my body, is multiplex. A multiplex.

Nothing burns like an effigy.

Slumping on my writing table under the weight of it all
Don Quixote De La Mancha

Tell Me Your Story, I'll Tell You Mine.

2007-02-21T03:26:00.000Z

You keep luring me into this discussion of our stories, of our writing, of our letters, their content, their form, their purpose, the nature of their purpose, the form of their purpose, the letter of their form, the content of their nature. If the path of my writings, of my life under your eyes, is composed almost exclusively of these ramblings, it is because I am blown along before you by your tempest, that is to say, though I precede you across the frontier, it is you who pushes us into that wilderness where neither of us exists.
I admit, readily--I know too well--that I seem unable to write of anything else. It consumes me. Leaving it behind me is another of my resolutions, to go along with my determination to write in candor and good faith. Still, the more I try to turn my feet towards that road of truth, the more I find myself on this one again. Look! I am doing it still. The more I try not to think about it, the more I think about it.
So... Where are we? Are we? Do we have this genesis you mention? Do we find it at the end, as you suggest? Where did we meet? I remember an inn built around a courtyard and the smell of sandalwood burning and lilac. A woman with a torn shirt spoke to me in a voice I think of as smelling like orange-blossoms from Casablanca. And there was a young Danish prince there, with toussled hair and the wet stink of fog all in his clothes. He was always staring into objects, inducing them to speak, flashing a mouth of teeth that seemed inexplicably odd-numbered. I was already old then, and outnumbered. You took her hand and danced while I watched with the impotent jealousy of the withered. And she meant nothing to you but the warm reminiscences of a place you couldn't recall ever being, but to me she was the sweet just-departed memory of a beautiful forgotten future just beyond the horizon.

Everything else to me is lost in the tangle of brambles that is memory. Maybe we will find a full accounting of our beginning in our end. Maybe finding a full accounting of our beginning will be the end of us. Look at me, I have lapsed back, found myself walking again the forked path of paths in your garden, writing a letter about letters. Silly me.
I sound like a madman, less well known to my parts than yours. If any of the spies you envision reading our letters in secret in order to censor them or communicate their contents to enemies abroad, they must surely think me quite without sense. There are, I know, white-suited gentleman who would condemn such talk without restraint. I have great sympathy for those poor men; they labor under a genteel insanity. Still, I seem insane to myself--and yet, my sanity must be beyond question. And it is their invested, serious nature that needs so much respite in the snuff and lace kerchiefs of Southern nobility to seem reasonable.

Incidentally, I have left Panza to himself for a time. He will return, I have no doubt, with his amiable rambling and his supplications, his dissembling. I know this is abrupt. Under the influence of a certain sign, recently, I was taken with a foul humor, and needed solitude. His presence began to irritate me, and I felt my ramblings would be more productive (or less, which amounts to the same thing) with him temporarily out of the picture.
Fear not, though, he will delight you again. Perhaps he does so even now, as in his absence from me, it could be he who visits you in the land of fog, and not I, and it is perhaps those same fogs, or those more ombrous and aetherial wisps that disguise him for you in the image of the one you wish truly to see, that is, myself. For it is me you wish to embrace, isn't it? My sparkling naivete, my gift for having the wrong thing to say, for borrowing other people's words and making malaprops of them--these are the qualities avec lesquels tu veut faire les bises. And you would rend the literal vestments of Materiality in order to reveal her naked flesh, and erase that paper distance that makes my person and its characteristics always intangible to you, silly paper tigers, like the curious far side of a coin which you feel with your fingers, but which, upon becoming visible, hides its reverse, and incites your curiosity anew.
Beware: you an see me, or everything else, but probably not both. That world and mine do not coexist, and you cannot in them both survive. There is a crystalline pool of water that serves as a border between them, rather, into which you can peer; and perhaps you will see there a most beautiful fool in armour, mounted sadly on an old nag, with a murdered father and an adulterous mother, and a sister in an insane asylum somewhere beyond the reach of reason.
Why, again, must I always speak like a madman? I see in these words translations of your own. Is this the spinning disk you spoke of. Are we merely mismatching metaphors at each other? I hope we are. Madness again. Madness again. If I say it, it won't be true. Madness again.

Do I remember Ovid in my rationalizations of your constant tete-a-tetes avec Monsieur Mesmer? Was it not necessary, for some other, as well, to be held by the hand along a dark path before one was finally to see the higher planes? Alas, these are the things I tell myself to assuage my fears that Mr M is leading you into Perdition. I remember that the way of things is long, often twisting. One cannot always tell where it leads, and it is probably best that way. In any condition, that man frightens me, even in hearsay. But I've so related a million times. I'll cease if I can. But, of course, I know very little of what I "can" and "cannot" do. These days, I wander with little knowledge or concern for where my steps take me, not knowing where I tread or why. There was once a man I meant to challenge, Odvallo. He is gone from me now. I don't know where. Perhaps he was never here. Perhaps I will find him again. There are, you see, these rampant, violent fits of incoherence.... Do you detect them? Do they upset you as they do me? I fear them terribly, and yet, I know no way to stave them off. There is a man nearby, an alchemist, an apothecary, a writer and a priest. I'll seek him out.
But this madness, of which you are either the cause or the victim, it is what keeps me from my duties, it is what keeps me from Sancho Panza, and from Dulcinea.
It is what I must vanquish first.

humbly, exhaustedly,

Don Quixote De La Mancha

In the Shadow of Earthquakes

2007-01-27T19:37:00.000Z

Your double-speak (and triple-same), I assure you, is as distressing to me as my silence is to you. The surplus of transmissions nearly overwhelms my recovering tongue as it strives to regain its footing. I endeaver to regain my composure and compose, in several parts, a missive that moves us forward as it recapitulates what is behind us. The mission, then, a quixotic one. One I perform in the shadow of earthquakes, as I shake myself. These tremors will kill me.

Orderliness is next to sane-li-ness, thus I proceed:

1.) in which Don Quixote re-dress-es his last letter:
My last letter was... strange, I know. But I would tell you that I mean it in earnest. I intend in all good faith to establish a field in my letters in which you may believe that what I expound is what I think, and what I relate is what I know. This zone of honesty, contained within the edges of the parchment on which I write may be a citadel at the heart of the otherwise aggressive sphere of the subjective that lays the seige against it. But those of us within its high austere walls will never surrender, and we will not cease to resist until we cannot lift our arms. This is the least honor my lord Truth deserves, and I would give him more if I were able.
Within the walls of this castle, on the lines of these pages you will receive from me, all will be as it seems, whether it bring me fame or infamy.
In any event, it should be much more the former than the latter, because destiny takes me onward along the course paved by other brave knights errant, and it leads only to glory. For it is our lot to right wrongs, defend the defenseless etc etc. And opportunities to make use of the skills I have been given by right of my rank are certainly not wanting in this world. I eagerly anticipate being able to send you fantastic news forthwith, perhaps even a little of it will be anticipated at the end of this letter with its many parts.
I know you doubt my method though you have faith in my conviction. I suppose time will distill which of our tacks is the better, though perhaps we should merely remember that each man must follow his own path, and while I momentarily tread down yours of late, I quickly became infirm, crippled, non-ambulatory, lost. The course to which I redirected Rocinante, then, is my own, and while perhaps leading to the wrong destination, it is the longer road. And that may turn out to be the more important consideration. Directness leads me the more circuitously to the end, and it is a long journey I long for. What of your own goals? It seems headlong is your style, precipitous your approach to you-know-not-what-and-profess-not-to-care. Pull hard on the reigns, look through your glass towards your goal. Reconsider what is "enough".

2.) in which Don Quixote responds to Hamlet's first letter:
Your death would be unwelcome by at least one, and I suspect Sancho Panza would also be loathe to see you shuffle off this mortal coil too soon, as my being in communication with you saves him from the obligation of performing one of his squirely duties, which is to enliven our constant journeying with song--something at which he is no great hand (thus, really, you save us both).
I mean in no way to prod your dirk, but I should convey my thoughts on right death to you. Most certainly one of your own doing, no matter the reason, would be ignominious, and you are right to assume that your legacy would be tarnished--with your own hand. This, of course, because the moment of death reserves the lion's share of the right to write the history of the man. I sense that you care not for your memory, though you linger on it in your letter. But still, know that a glorious death will allow your soul to live eternally in light, while a wretched one will force your soul into millenia of darkness. Each holds the key to immortality, but the cast of that life-after is in your control. I wonder if, before laying down for that long drowse, you might use your divining devices to consult your father on the import, consequences, ramifications of death and the manner of its assault.

3.) in which Don Quixote responds to Hamlet's second letter, the epistolary stutter of impatience:
You say I wish you would not lie. but it is a fiction. I entreat you to lie. Do not misguide yourself about the truth of myself any more than you do about the truth of yourself. Here on the other end of your letters, be assured that as I profess my own honesty, nothing conveys it to you but my words, those same words that conveyed so adroitly my lies. I write truth for its resonance on my end of the circuit. There is no such--can be no such--resonance on your end. And I read your letters in the same vein, though I will momentarily deny it. There is one truth to our communication here in La Mancha. The truth or dishonesty of it in Denmark is of your making for your own purposes, and I do not begrudge your fashioning it as you see fit. Artifacts of transferrence in your alcoves or ashes of emissions in your hearth, it matters little to me. I wouldn't even know it if you didn't say it, perhaps I don't know it even as you do.

Though I would insert a brief comment about a clean country: France is no such land. Search your library for her beloved Balzac as well as her step-son Beckett. Le pays peut rester propre sans l'invention toujours de nouveaux methodes de le nettoyer. You can throw the new invention on top of the old, and make your molehill instead of sweeping it bare. The land can be clean without being a desert.
I will disavow this existential interlude. I must for the sake of my sanity. I wonder if I will be able to resist making them in future, as I intended earlier in so many words. I was coaxed into this deviance, and regret it.

4.) in which Don Quixote apologizes for the lateness of this reply, which was the reason for the afore-mentionened stutter, for which he takes responsibility:
I nearly tire as much of writing these as I expect you tire of reading them, but I must again apologize. This time for the lateness of my response to your first letter, which made necessary your second (and third). My gratitude, to you, sir, for your continued patience while I find my way to the right living that will unburden me of my continuously falling into the obligation of begging your patience and conveying my gratitude. That life beyond reproach, I assure you, is already taking form outside our epistolary conduit; I have only to insinuate it here.

5.) in which Don Quixote responds to Hamlet's third letter expressing his fright and apprehension:
Are you casting spells? Can they be cast so, with a configuration of bizarre characters? I glean from them, though I am loathe to regard them, that you have been transformed. Your continued descent into frightening circles of mysticism leaves me in fear for your safety.

6.) in which Don Quixote brings us up to speed on the convoluted progress of his campaign against the Vile Odvallo, wonders if such an ordered account amounts to anything useful, protests, again, that Sancho Panza can neither read nor write, and concludes his letter:
My nemesis Odvallo will be challenged outright. While gathering reconnaissance continued fruitfully for some time over the past weeks while I have been in silence, I soon came to regard it as less than worthy of my station. Convinced of the despicable nature of Odvallo, in no small part because of the terrible character of those he chooses to employ, I have decided to end the intrigue and do battle with him forthwith.
A young page boy I found playing at being a goatherd on his lands was dispatched by myself with strict orders to convey my meaning to Odvallo. I intend to dispatch the wicked Baron and send him in servitude to my lady. His lands I will likely grant to Sancho Panza, who bothers me continuously about the meaner spoils of chivalry, those of material rather than fine virtues.
If the Baron is a man of any remaining honor, we will battle at dawn, hence. If he is the worm I suspect he is, I should be forced to storm his keep single-handedly. Rest assured, I will prevail.

This new method I have provisionally adopted, of arranging my writings numerically, categorically, in small segments introduced by a brief description of their contents--can it convey a coherent message? Does it make sense to you? Or is it too dissociated; are its elements too disparate? Do these numerals imprison my story with their Oriental arrangment of lines and stops? Why must a continuous thread be cut for better transmission? Does that ruin the garment? Or must the bolt of cloth be snipped so that it can be better tailored? Is there any story but a mangled one, where the mutilation of the narrative is passed off as the story having been fashioned into a stylish saharienne?

I sense some lingering suspicion on your part about the corpus attached to the hand that writes these words. I assure you, Sancho Panza can neither read nor write. The man that composes this letter is
Your humble servant,
Don Quixote De La Mancha

A Confession of Sorts, to Break the Monotony of Recriminations and Begin Anew (for real this time)

2006-12-28T21:27:00.000Z

Oh now this is a real injury, your assessment of me against my avowals. Certainly a man should be able to define himself, in his own history at least, or at least I wish it were so. You will see below that even as I write this, I am not sure of its possibility, and doubt, like you, those avowals I mention with such reverence. Similarly, my readiness to sustain injuries to my pride is perhaps a symptom of the illness this letter hopes to cure, and the way it harries my soul, as I will explain. Still, I maintain that others may act from interest alone, while I, on the other hand, hearken to an age when chivalry was not yet slain, when one saw it more often than in the mirror. My motives are purely for the glory of Dulcinea, and whatever excess falls to me shall be my only reward. Of that much I am sure.
If it weren't for the conciliatory attitude I've adopted for this letter (which is appropriate to some of confessions I have later to bare), I would certainly be tempted to call you, my most loyal friend, a villain, and spur Rocinante to Denmark (if we are not already in those environs, as earlier speculated) in order to avenge my honor and that of Dulcinea Del Toboso, that most fair of ladies, from the spurious calumnies that have vexed both of them from out of your own sweet mouth (as it is translated through your hand and its pen-attached). To be enseinte with such venom as these insults warrant and such guilt of a single moment is too much for my heart, particularly now, when I am full in the flush of adventure, entwined in the righting of wrongs, and thrashing the wildest monsters in pursuit of honor (and an island for Sancho Panza). The most salutory explanation for your attitude in the opening of your most recent letter, the explanation which most puts my mind at ease and allows me to forget the barbs, wounds, and thrusts of our recent verbal battle, is to assume that you, and perhaps myself as well, are under the spell of some evil enchanter, probably this Odvallo I am preparing to vanquish. It is likely that we are made pawns of his foul magic in order to distract my mind, that it will therefore be unable to guide my arm against him, for he knows that he can never corrupt my martial ability nor match me in honest combat, and so lays into the coward's last refuge of dark means and trickery to divert me from my goal entirely. Perhaps, though, it is only me who has been charmed. Your letter betrays in its successive passages a lucidity I long for, but which escapes me, buffeted as I am by emotion, the moment, and some passion I can only feel and not see. You are correct, I no longer take enjoyment from this chore of writing and reading. Though I remember a time when I did, like the nostalgia for youth.
And so, let me begin the process of untangling the astral thongs which are binding us and making us spin uncontrolled, you and I (perhaps only I am thus launched; the vertigo is such that I cannot tell whether it is I who is spinning, or you, or us both), around an unbalanced and wobbling axis founded on the inability of this letter-language, or our use of it, to re-present what-really-is, and its tendency to portray things as-they-certainly-are-not, and possibly -as-they-cannot-be. Worse, it is a tendency to carry facts on a cloud-vessel of emotion, perverting that former's power of reason and evidence with that latter's eloquence of persuasion.
The first thong to be worked on is the one whose bind is the most crippling, of which I have complained of late, and the knot of which is the most remote from our current state. It is, perhaps, the uber-thong of our current row and its linguistic character(s).
Coming more directly to the point, I will say that I have unhappily discovered the root of my recently-adopted illanguage. My illness, whose symptoms seem intricately allied with our communiques (they correspond to our correspondence), whose effects leave me babbling, speaking ciruitously without ever reaching the center, whose ravages have rent the fibres of my mind in its attempts to weave my historical tale for you, may be approaching the horizon of remission, if I can spur it on with a slight act that nonetheless fills me with fear.
Some time ago, you suggested, perhaps in jest, perhaps merely out of your suspicious nature (which we have already examined), that a letter bearing the signature of my squire Sancho Panza was in fact written by me, and that he and I had switched roles briefly.
I confess it was so. You had reason to doubt, for, truth, Sancho Panza can neither read nor write.
On those days, shortly after defeating the Ogre, I set to work reconstructing the story for your benefit. Only, upon reaching the end, I was stricken unreasonably with a fear that the tale sounded too self-aggrandizing, and that such congratulatory autobiography was unbecoming a knight errant. I have been infected with such reflections on the possibilities of conveying my history properly ever since I began to write our letters. I hastily signed my squire's signature to borrow his ostensibly objective perspective, hashed out several phrases to disguise my identity and insinuate his, and sent the letter to you as if it were an outsider's report of a great deed, which, I hoped, would amplify its own greatness by assuming the mantle of objectivity, by imparting the appearance of truth to that which seems terrific, and by implying much through feigning to say little.
The next letter following that one found me guilty and self-recriminating, and the expression of these sentiments was to diminish the significance of the battle with the Ogre (which was, in truth, a great victory for me) so that the entire incident might slip into obscurity and be forgotten by you, and I might never have to answer for its curious appearance in our document-ary
This attempt at concealment, too, was unbecoming a knight, and I have truly suffered the lashes of my conscience as it worked itself upon my linguistic faculty (through some odd displacement of my ego, and the substitution of my language for it). To it, I beseech mercy, and on behalf of myself, I beseech you forgive me.
That act, an effort to avoid a conflict with you, was also an effort to avoid responsibility for what was then a relative trifle that has since transformed into an epistolary cataclysm of a proportion that virtually obscures its own origin. I have, with such a "trifle" managed to undermine the aura of candor and honesty that underwrote what we wrote, which, I fear, has undermined our ability to write. I fear this new unstable space where we cannot say what we mean, even when we say what we mean. I am unsteady in this new zone (this "stage", to conscript your metaphor for my war) where things may be what they seem, but are never so in our reading the report of them. Where we are in shifting and unsure levels of performance and observation. I want to find our way back out of, or hasten our way through the shadow of earthquakes where we find ourselves (if such is possible, once one becomes accidentally aware of its omni-presence), and I would enlist your help.
And, if your graciousness affords such a luxury, I propose to begin anew for myself, in a new state of openness and candor with respect to my adventures, to embark on a firm-ground uni-directional journey of objective reportage, to cast off the veil of metaphor, the entanglements of dishonesty, acting, levels, representation, and attempt to recover with these avowals some of your faith and naivete in reading my narratives (whose objectivity you have no doubt come to ... doubt--though you say you will approach it with infant eyes). I want to know who I am, want to believe what I see in reading your narratives, in taking in and adopting all those narratives that form the foothold of a life in this world.

So, here's the rub: I propose an end to lies. This begins a new phase in my relation to my history, in which I will strip it of fantasy and embellishment, and tell it like it is.
Thus, with your blessing, I will begin Part Two of the History of Don Quixote De La Mancha.

Your own letters, haphazardly connecting the drama of the prince of Denmark, I will receive with the naivete I ask of you, and so, remain amazed at the powers of your Rasputin: M; and similarly at your donning the mantle of genealogy, a noble act, not only because in your case it happens to be literally so.

More to follow, in a lighter vein,
In supplication of forgiveness,
In anticipation of leave to continue as I see fit,
In understanding that probably there will be recompence to pay,
In genuflection,
In promises,
In nobility,
In righting of wrongs,
Don Quixote De La Mancha
Assisted by Sancho Panza, who neither reads nor writes.

Having Come out of the Dark Tunnel, We Enter a Timeless Truth

2006-12-21T20:22:00.000Z

When I began to write the letters of this letter to you, they melted into the page like water into loose soil, and I had to coax them back out of obscurity by enacting an intense pressure on my eyes and mind. Writing (and reading) is becoming very difficult. I think it's some symptom of our communicable disease. Somehow, in the rhythm of this task, the music of language has been preserved, but its specific content escapes me. And, while I continue to write, to pin down and entrap meanings in these marks, I feel as if I have no vanquished foes to send to pay homage to you. I feel as if I have nothing to say. And instead, I can only listen to the music of the pen waltzing mechanically across the parchment, immerse myself in the cacaphonous ballad of the words as they clatter together in my imagined ear, as I imagine they will do as they speak to the spheres behind your eyelids. What is this disease of illanguage I begin to suffer? Perhaps the solution, as I so often propose to you, is to throw myself all the more into the fray of life, that I might be counter-infected by its haleness.
Before so doing, however, I will, as seems perpetually necessary, linger a moment to advise against your present course of action.
This particularly on the subject of your melancholia, the diagnosis of which I have withheld from you for some weeks for the sake of decorum, though having suspected it, and from which you have recently sought succour. A symptom of foreclosed grief? What love are you unable to mourn? What loss of your own ideal? Where your self is made victim of your split ego's critical faculty for having come too close for comfort in its perceived similarity to some improper object. It was never Polonius. Perhaps his noble son, possessed of the simple but righteous passions of a dull youth of mediocre birth, that has a certain appeal to it, I can see. Perhaps the atmosphere of the field camp and your R and G.
Still, whatever your astute observer and too-close analyst of the infamous initial ("M.") reads in your person, I shall be skeptical. His mein is sinister, his methods maniacal and I dare say magikal. It is as if he were the voice of the very phantom I myself am hounding (or that you are that composite phantom in your newly twain psyche of analyst and and analysand, critic and critiqued). Only you seek him for your salvation, and I seek him to provide for the salvation of those, like yourself, under his spell.
Perhaps my low assessment of his talents and his character (and my desire to see him as a part of you) are the effect on my rhetoric from the other half of my own dichotomous persona, the emotional faculty. For I do sense that, while my opinions so expressed are no doubt an accurate description of my feelings about him, they are salted with a bitterness one does not often taste on savoring my letters. Probably I feel jealous that, having found my own commentary on your sorrows, desperation and other neuroses less than sufficiently insightful, you have turned to another ear you find more appealing.
Still, do not, on account of finding the hallmarks of this jealousy in my words, think that my admonition is therefore unfounded, for I fear that in your turn, you have alit on a dark course, one in which your more destructive urges will be unbound, even if only with the intention of rebinding them in other, stronger ropes. One can never truly contain the demons one has summoned to do one's bidding, whether they are of the hoary realm below, or the hoary realm within. Be warned.
I think that, so far away here in La Mancha, occupied as I am chasing down those who wrong my honor or Dulcinea's, I shall be unable to come to your aid, the distance from Spain to Denmark (or wherever you have been cast ashore after being battered by the stomry seas of your somber proclivities) will be too great for the sympathy in my heart to o'ercome, no matter the strength of the will, or the speed of Rocinante's worthy hooves.
In any condition, I feel your man "M" must be leaving important things out of these "notes" he sends me crumpled into tiny packets with your letter. They seem fragmentary, and either he has a remarkable memory and does not need a complete record for his purposes, or he is merely stringing you along with the appearance of therapy while padding his purse with the rights of Denmark's youth, for which purposes he would not desire a complete record. Or, thirdly, they are meant only for my benefit, to tease me or make me curious without creating a full account of a subject of obvious interest. No matter the reason, they are more grounds for suspicion, and I hope to make an infection of mine that it might serve you, who are in the most danger from this shaman.
Still, the wound you have dealt me in this infidelity of confidants will probably hang with me. It will be one of those hardened scars my portraitist will have to gloss over. If he can. The blows you are wont to deal me leave their marks on the soul, and can be read in the eyes and the gait and the posture, and their manifold expressions cannot be obscured, even by the most skillful brush.
To say nothing of the hypocrisy in your sending another's letter with your own. There is a certain parallel in your inviting him into our discourse and the much decried letter to your mother I sent so long ago. And then again, the unjustice I suffered on your discovering a letter penned by Sancho Panza in my stead. How, then, I on receiving one from Mesmer?
Alas.

On to a more reasonable account of recent business, though I find I have little heart for it.
Sancho Panza and I continued our surveillance of the monstrous Baron of the local realm (I call him Odvallo, though I learnt yesterday that I have been mispronouncing it, and not according the surname the proper Andalusian twang, since the Baron's family hails from that area, though they have been in possession of their current plot for some generations--in local mouths, the middle syllables are swallowed or mangled in the epiglottis, and the word comes out as a strange sort of garble between the initial and final vowels; I can hardly pronounce it, much less devise an orthographic representation of this assault on the ears for your edification--perhaps this difficulty, or the infiltration of the one dialect into the other is a cause or symptom of my linguistic infirmity, mentioned above).
The Baron Odvallo haunts, as I said, the twixt hours, and during the day and night retires to an interior room with no windows in a large and stately manor house on the north side of a small hill, round the base and up to the crest of which grows a thick hedge on three sides. This hedge is formed into an intricate geometry and stands higher than a man's head, making it into a labyrinth, at the center of which is this minotaur, Odvallo. I have, these past weeks, been making forays into the maze during the safe hours when the lord is withdrawn, for the purpose of tracing a map of the correct path, so that when the time comes I should be able to penetrate the house without announcing my approach unduly with wandering and cursing, and then, after, I should be able to retreat without muss. I am, shame, without a long enough bit of string for the conventional approach, and so this method will have to suffice. The constant need to draw, strike out, and redraw this diagram is, also, the reason that I have been without paper enough to write you. And so a longer interval than you are used to elapsing between receiving envelopes from me has had to pass. I apologize for that.

As always in humble service
Don Quixote De La Mancha

A Real Revelation, This Time for Real

2006-12-09T20:22:00.000Z

How fun to imagine there were a secret level to my descriptions. As if, by changing the names and locations, I might decieve you and put you off your guard, all the while circling your ramparts with Sancho in tow, perhaps disguised as a fishwife, mystic, or several sparrows and a damsel fly. Who, then, the cthonic monstrositiy I describe as my local nemesis (of whom I should tell you more to aid your bibliochase in the undertombs of your clan's halls)? Who then, his sniveling familiar?
This speculation enmerries the humid, sweltering midday in which Pancho and I can do little but listen to the torpid deluge assaulting the walls of our tent and absent-mindedly lay bones on the moist earth under our feet, wiling away these hallucinatory hours until the cool psuedo-respite of dusk, when we emerge to carry out our reconnaissance. It is during this half-life that we collapse our tent and crouch in the brush to await the perambulations of the object of our interest.
Often, as Sancho searches the mist and shadows, I scribe my stolen missives to you under the shelter of my cloak. I ferret these documents away in close, double-sown patches of calf-skin such as are used in making wineskins. It is there I hold them until I find a merchant or tradesman on a northward journey, and I give him a coin to keep it safe and--here's the rub--dry. I use a simple mud-coal ink, and any more water than necessary would blotch the letters and make their decipherment more difficult than it already is. I suspect these dear patch-pockets never make it you. They are a novelty and not inexpensive. I promise them to the carrier, so long as he doesn't remove it until the weather breaks where he goes. Well, that's a plausible explanation anyway. And I'd have to be clever to invent it if destiny hadn't paraded it in my field of vision.

On the subject of speculation in general. I find it takes up more and more of my time as the oscillation of our coversation between the apogees we represent speeds up exponentially. I speculate more than I live it seems, and I have passed the event horizon of your psychic world which inverted the polarities of "real" and "imagined". But then, horizons are relative, and there is always another to be crossed over.

I will come to the subject of our surveillance in a moment, but first I turn to another phantom. Have I told you about my mother? She came to me last night, as if to remind me that, while she had been present in my thoughts often, she had only rarely been present in my words. I should rectify that lack, of course: a mother's reproach is a hard thing to bear, as you know.
My own mother, though, is a far league from yours, I think. I hesitate to mention the comparison that leaps immediately to mind of our two mothers, so different. I fear, of course, that it will reawaken that reproach I have suffered these many weeks, on account of a certain inappropriate congress between your mother and myself.
Still, I must answer my ghost in its time, and perhaps answer to you in another.
So on to the subject of my mother. I remember most of all her smell--common, I know, since smell is that most historical of the senses. She never cooked, and so it is not the smell of some comforting cuisine that comes to mind. Instead of the kitchen, she spent most of her days in a languid humor in her even more languorous boudoir while my father was away on some errand or another for our lord. In this sensuous study, my mother would engage friends of both sexes with little concern for decorum. She was of a character so beyond reproach that she was able to entertain men in her private quarters, and I never nothed a word of slander from the lips of the servants--something no lesser woman could have accomplished. I would often sit outside the door of this salon and read books, waiting for those blessed moments when the door would open, and in a fragrant bloom my mother and some acquaintance would emerge, she in some shift, and he in riding gear, or perhaps it was a handmaid in a stitched bodice. The stranger would depart, and for a few minutes, I would sit with my mother in the humid air of her boudoir and breathe that strange scent that was both alive and dead--both sparkling, and somehow hollow and dusty--which I attributed to a conglomeration of the perfumes in the many half-full bottles that sat on the vanity. That smell is the one that haunts me when I think of the beautiful face of my mother, forever suspended in the peak of her youth (in my imagination). There, in that boudoir, in that mixed aroma, she remains always possessed of a flushed beauty that seemed without cause, and always just beyond description.

On to the origin, Odvallo. Sancho saw him on our latest bivouac, and we were able to come within a short distance of the path of his revolution and remain unseen. I heard him expounding, as if dictating some theory for transcription, though only the ears and lips of his assistant recorded any of it. To my own gathering devices, nothing was intelligible; it sounded dark and slippery, as if he was philosophizing in some alien submarinal tongue from the bottom of the sea where no light penetrates. His milky eye gleamed uncannily in the new moonlight.

Suddenly our information gathering was at an end. I thought I saw his apostle hold for a moment as they passed in front of us and sniff the air as if he were a hound on a trail. I caught my breath in my throat, and stifled a gasp as the cold hand of fear gripped my heart. Fortunately, after an interminable moment expired, the fiend appeared to dismiss whatever sensation had overcome him, and hurried to catch up with his lord who had continued unabated and unaware ahead of him. If this servant is as observant as his master is oblivious, it is a good service the latter garners from the former, and one he needs dearly.

Tomorrow, we should be careful to remain downwind, and to steel ourseveles in order that we should be able to continue our observations in the lunar shadow of fear cast by this trailing apparation and guardian figure. This gatekeeper may present the more significant challenge of the two. Though I still suspect that larger, more imposing creature to be mixed up in daemonic alchemy, and such arts are never stable, and so never without their danger.

Yours,

Don Quixote De La Mancha

A Long-Overdue Transfiguration

2006-12-08T20:21:00.000Z

It's been a long time since I spent any real time looking up at the sun on an overcast day when its brilliance is cloaked in silvery clouds. There are, on the surface, of course, beasts drinking tea, perusing pamphlets on politics, leading much commoner lives that we on the less extraordinary orb. It is ironic, you know, that on a celestial body that only reflects light emitted by some foreign element--that this same light should be transformed into so many myriad forms. Those opposite dark spots, composed only of shade on a field of light, going about their business of monotony, and we, here, in the light of their shadows, run in a million directions, on a million errands, in a million guises, all just little captured beams of light waiting to refract and dissipate.

musing. forgive. I think I mentioned something about not being myself. Is that correct? Even if unsaid, its truth resounds as if said.

Negative thinking as defense against disappointment, A Critical Analysis in Limited Time:
One recriminates others in secret for their optimism. One suspects the bonificient of being baleful. One renders the joyous uncanny by remembering hallowed moments that preceded it, or by suspecting its permanence or motives; fusing dark memories with light so that they should always call forth somberness, tinting eternally all passions indiscriminately with the dark brush, so that whenever they are represented in the mind, they hearken back to despair. You perceive, not receive barbs and slings. Does not the fortified castle call out for siege, exist only in siege and never at peace? Does not "tinder" beg to be set afire, while "twigs" inhabit a different destiny?
It is, more likely, as a defense against joy that you prepare for pain. In expectation of sorrow and wrong, there is suffering as martyrdom, righteousness accrued from circumstance. In joy, one must forge one's own righteousness--a difficult task, as you know. It is one's sense of righteousness in joy that one must defend constantly; one's righteousness in pain is assumed. And so, happiness is the spoils of courage and requires it. Pessimism repeats itself, lives in itself, and foreswears all else.
And, tangentially, the most misanthropic soul is often the most susceptible to recriminations from without. It is, perhaps, what sowed the seeds of mistrust in him. I suppose I chalk it up to intrapsychic forces. I know not whether I make use of this, or act in reverence towards it, we are poor judges of our own character always. In any case, I seem unable to let the patient alone.

Your sister's unheimlich verse puts me in mind of a novel I read recently. In it were a terrific menagerie of impossible people. Intersections of types and nations, strange monstrous conglomerations of bodies stitched together as characters running in front of my reading eyes like acrobats, trapeze artists. The author was a woman, I can't remember her name. I think Ophelia is right. You are an impossible creature. And I myself as well. I only wonder in what rings we perform, and if you and I are in these distant rings, what centerpiece is being staged between us in the intervening circumference. I hear it thundering; I can hear the pipes of the accompanist; I hear the applause; but, trained as my eyes are always on my own act, careful not to miss a beat or a trick or an "ahh" from an observer's lung, I cannot steal a glance towards it, nor hope to discern your own routine on its far side. Are we always to be so consumed by our own performances that we miss the main attraction?
This is perhaps all I can say of it. I have never been one for poetry that does not concern chivalry. Sometimes I fear my humble intellect is too fallow or too frozen to understand messages not couched in narrative.
Still, it is not you only she seems to be apostrophizing, but some function of yourself in relation to her mother and herself. Perhaps a reference to some social contract between you three (we are truly in mind of contracts, no?). Have you broached the subject, I wonder? If it is professions of love that came to you secretly, perhaps this is the cause for your shame, love being loathe to bring itself into the sun for fear of being left shivering unembraced. Surely this is not your situation, but the behavior takes on the character of habit by a young age. One always blushes, after all, whether love be requited or no.

Your three cards describe my life, my story, my stories.
I wish I had paper enough to describe to you their pertinence, but I seem to have run out, damnably. It is so cursed hard to come by sometimes out here on these journeys. Perhaps your next missive could contain some of that in addition to the tome you mention sending? (I impose too much, I am sure, but the threat of a cessation of our correspondence will no doubt induce you to find a way) The book you have already sent is a delight. I read it daily in small amounts in order to preserve the pleasure I derive from it, in order to prolong it, and forestall its discharge. I do have to pass the time while I await and consider my intercourse with the local Don, whose sinister visage is ever present in this hamlet. It is as if all the children in the village share one half of his brazen dichotomy, each of them complete yet grotesque, he motley and terrible.

Sancho and I are staying put for the time being. An interminable rain has made traveling difficult, not only because it has eroded our initiative.

Stick to your painters, they do your image justice.
Don Quixote De La Mancha

Dark Nimbus

2006-11-25T20:21:00.000Z

I wish you would move to forget my inquiry after you to your mother. You seem intent on reading in it only trespass of your confidence, instead of the nobility of motives I profess. It is as if you would make of me an enemy, perhaps so that we might explore another, more ombrous humour than friendship in these letters. Still, antagonism is a friendship of sorts. Perhaps only one side of the same coin...
Disregard. I was lost in some darker reverie, and I rarely allow myself to so wander. I think I am not myself. Allow me to recast a lighter nimbus...
Ah, the stage. It is your arena, not mine, I suppose. Though it intrigues me to wonder how my life might be translated into art, drama, verse, and then exit the mouths of those skilled in rhetoric (or in imitating it). Delightful. How would I be cast, I wonder? Would you be able to find a player with the right turn of his moustaches?
You have elicited my sympathies in this matter, for I do think that if my letters can transport some of La Mancha's sunshine into the dark dales of Denmark, then some good will come of it. I ask only to be left out of the composition. I think it should be difficult to live nobly, all the time thinking of my audience. Valor of spirit, it seems to me, comes from the knowledge that only conscience sees, and that it is never blind. Instead of composing for you, I will package vignettes of my life for your treatment. Do with them as you will.

On the subject of my stories: Do you remember Pancho Villa's story of the Ogre? That fool lives in hyperbole. It was hardly a goblin. I slew the vile thing with a single stroke. It seemed a meagre vengeance for the honest magician. I must remind Pancho to be more realistic.

Could I call on your library for something? There is a baron nearby where Pancho and I are camped, surname Odvallo. His nature is so composite as to be inscrutable. He sleeps both during the night and day, and leaves his chambers only during dawn and dusk. His left eye is pure white, with no pupil, while his right is large and dark. The hair on his head is bright crimson, but that on his chin is sooty. He walks with a cane that is solid ivory from the Orient, carved into the horrible figure of a snarling beast with green jewels set into the sockets of its gleaming skull. Each of his features speaks something contradictory, to the effect that is possible to say any one thing about him without having to say the opposite at the same time, and so the sum is that one says nothing at all.
In addition, accompanying him on his interstitial perambulations about his house is a sort of minister of the occult, a dark-cloaked figure standing stooped at only a handfull of cubits tall, and shuffling with a slow gait always a few steps behind his lord, moving his lips as if he were speaking to unseen spirits, but in a voice so low that none can hear him. His fingers trace the contours of an invisible icon interminably.
Is it possible that the genealogies of your collection (or your father's) hold some key to this man's heritage and the source of his title? Or perhaps a bit of lore on the subject of his servant. I seek some advantage, I have no shame in telling you. He is sure to be engaged in something sinister, and I wish only to be prepared when I am forced to resolve his monstrous dichotomies for the good of humanity.

Always in humble service and friendship
Don Quixote De La Mancha

A Brief Epiphany Brings to Light the True Nature of Things

2006-11-25T20:20:00.000Z

Friendship is not fragile. Illusions are; affectations are; machinations and schemes and intrigues and self-interest are. But true affiliation, wherever it occurs, is impervious. So much so as to be a true wonder, persisting through time and trial as a lump of coal does in the womb of the earth, only later to be unearthed, brushed off, and discovered transfigured, transformed into the brightest of jewels.

Ages hence, another eye behind a jeweler's lens will judge if ours was this true feeling. I think it is, but have not the authority to judge it so. I find the critical gaze to be the most persistent, but most vacillating phenomenon in existence. Perhaps in one age, under some eyes, you and I will be friends, in another you will find me a villain, in some distant future we will never have known each other. We should persist in what we ourselves know to be true, and give them over to their own silly conjurations. Such are the many minds of those who would speculate on things long drifted into the sea of obscurity of all that is non-present. So give no heed to those who would say what a "Hamlet" is. Those who write your epitaph will have their inevitable victory over your memory, do not cede your life to them as well. Live for yourself, you have no choice but to die for everyone else.

None Taken

Don Quixote De La Mancha

A Rare Moment of Lucidity in an Otherwise Chaotic Mind-Space

2006-11-25T20:19:00.000Z

I should apologize, then, most sincerely for having damaged not only your gentle emotions, but our fragile friendship. My interest in having Sancho Panza write my promised letter certainly was not to divide our twin spirits further, but to ensure that the still-emerging bridge between them should not suffer from a gap in time. For it was my understanding at that moment that it was not only candor, but duration and repetition that spelled friendship. That the writing of letters--however mediated--was not solely a method for transferring presence over distances, but for forming that very presence. Thus, I did not want my absence (in the form of indisposition) to damage the structure of that friendship we are building by obstructing my role in its construction, and in my absence I enlisted the skill of a trusted replacement to fulfill my duties. I seem to have won the opposite of my desire effects in so doing. I hope my apology and excuse can serve to splint the damaged beams of this bridge we are either building or traversing (however it is conceived, by myself or you). Perhaps you can find my absolution in your conjecture that Sancho and myself inhabit the same person. If this phantasy were true, then there would have been no crime; it would have been I writing the offending letter in another guise, and not, therefore, an interloper allowed into our congress of spirits.
And yet, I fear that my words my be taken in by your alchemical eyes, perhaps immune to vision. I worry more now that you are dabbling in this odd sorcery which bewitches your faculties. While you describe splendid sights, it must be remembered that the firmness of reality is the most fertile bed both for happiness and prosperity, both of which I wish for you.
And while you say that your current state inhibits your describing narratives, I must implore you to enter into the task for its therapeutic purposes. Not only can a good story elevate you from your dismal surroundings, its telling, I suspect, holds the power to allow the mind to construct and communicate its hidden motives. Truly, when it comes to the mind, an artful tale--like a dream--tells more truth than the most sober description. Speak sense man, and it will infect your soul. Speak madness, and you are already there, fox or no.
Perhaps marriage would soothe you (both). Be careful in seeking such a union, for while I do not doubt the sincerity of your feelings, I fear the violence of your passions.

Your metaphor of a horse calls to mind a most striking event of which I was a witness and an actor of late, and which I will relate to you. It is, I think, something I should have related earlier, because it has had a great effect on me since.
Upon being waylaid by my mount's having thrown a shoe, Sancho and I were wandering without aim through the gypsy camp where we had been forced to stop. It would be some time before a smith could shoe the horse, on account of his having to forge nails for the purpose. This particular band of gypsies, it seemed, was in the business of staging spectacles with animals on the outskirts of towns and cities for the benefit of the populace (and a small fee). It was a sort of traveling circus. When we encountered them in the middle of the countryside, their only performance was in training and practicing for the better part of the day, and our walk was ornamented in brief moments in which we would dally to watch the exercise of some great feat.
One act, in particular, caught my attention. Under a large tent, a kind of ring-master was training a young maid to do acrobatics on the back of a muscular black stallion that was racing in broad circles. As the man stood in the middle of the large ring, he drove the girl's horse endlessly with cracks of his whip that assaulted our ears. The young woman was obviously possessed of a remarkable talent in addition to her stunning beauty, but the training went on ceaselessly despite the perfection with which she carried out each of the ringmaster's commands. In addition to the feats of agility, he was also barking at her harshly, telling her to remember the audience and to smile and wave at them as if the whole thing were simple and pleasant. And to see such a sight, as the girl made a great show of happiness and whimsy, blowing kisses to the audience composed only of Sancho and I, and at the very moment tears were streaming down her rouged cheeks because of her exhaustion--it made my heart break. For truly the greatest injustice is not to be unhappy, or tortured, or driven on into a superfluous routine whose very pointlessness erodes the fine elements of the soul--no, the greatest injustice is to be subject to all these things, and to be made to act as if it were not happening.
Sancho stood with an odd mixtures of looks on his face, now laughing, now frowning, now crying out in pleasure or in offense. Yet above all, he was transfixed, merely bringing to life the myriad horrors or delights of the spectacle in the features of his face, while the rest of his body remained petrified. I resolved at that moment to break in, to assault the ringmaster or snatch the girl off the horse. Whatever it was, whatever action I conceived, I had to put a stop to that unholy tragedy.
And no sooner had I resolved to act, than my actions came into being. As if animated with some other-worldly power, my body, independent of my own control, surged forth, killed the ringmaster with a swift thrust of my dagger, and, grabbing the horse's reins, brought the beast to heel. The girl, even prettier close at hand than she had seemed from afar, thanked me and fell immediately feinted into my arms.
There is, essentially, nothing more to tell after this point.

And so, here, at the end of my tale, I leave you again in darkness, again alone at that great distance which forever separates us.
Your Friend
Don Quixote De La Mancha

On the effects of the weather for good and ill

2006-11-21T18:54:00.000Z

It is curious, sir, that you should choose this moment to speculate about the relationship of your friend and his humble servant. It is on this occasion, in fact, that the honorable Don Quixote De La Mancha has asked me, Sancho Panza to take up his epistolary obligations in his stead for a term as to whose duration we can only guess.
My liege is engaged presently in a pressing matter (which I will describe later at some length), and while he is unable to continue your shared exchange, he was anxious that it should not die or lose its vitality solely on account of his indisposition. Thus, it has fallen to me to bring to life the adventures of which we have taken hold, and the grievous wrongs it has been our good fortune to right. I will, as well, communicate to him the contents of your letter on the subject of false theatre, the vigour of folly, the inclement weather of your home country, and the latest ocular prosthetics, but I feel it is not my place to comment on them myself. I should, rather, remain contingent to this discourse, and endeavor, like all good storytellers, to allow myself to fade and be eclipsed by the words I speak, rather than to contribute to my own grandeur by them. I leave that to other scriveners, if it be their nature. I essay merely to transcribe.
As for the tale I will tell: be warned, however, that here in the balmy climate of La Mancha things are born, live, and expire which would test the theories of your more northerly alchemists. It is a much different land than your own, so you must bear with my description. While it may seem fantastic, the natural laws of our realm allow such things to take place, even if they are suspended when one crosses the Rhine.
And so, I begin the tale Don Quixote has entrusted to me for this letter:
On a pale morning when the peals of the lark's song were clarion clear because of the thinness of the air, Don Quixote awoke earlier than normal. He emerged from his tent and surveyed the valley in which he and his manservant, Sancho Panza, had spent the night. Their fire had continued to simmer through the cool night, and beneath a crust of white ash, red embers sparkled. Eager to be on his way, in spite of the small hour, Don Quixote roused Sancho Panza and instructed him to prepare the horses.
Presently, they embarked towards the north, from which a rich wind was blowing, and with it the smell of smoke and a sense of foreboding. They were, at this time, on the way towards a small roadside hut of a mystic whom Don Quixote had been instructed to visit in furtherance of his quest to slay a marauding Ogre that he had been tracking, but which had eluded the knight. Hoping to approach the mystic's hut in the light of day, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza camped early the night before. Perhaps if they had not, and instead pressed on, they would have reached the man's dwelling in time to save both him and their hopes after the talisman they were promised at his hand. As it turned out, though, they were too late. Only the dirt walls of the hut remained, and the thatch roof and wooden furniture had been consumed by the blaze whose smoke they had smelled from afar and which seemed at first to have been spawned in a low hearth along the wall. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza shuddered to think that it was some philter or reagent for their benefit which was the catalyst of his misfortune. And yet, such a thought is hard to expel from the mind.
While standing in front of the smoking rubble holding back tears of guilt and sadness, Don Quixote pricked up at the sound of a faint cry from a nearby grove of elm trees, and it was there that the shaman had crawled to breathe his last breaths among the fallen leaves. Leaning over him, Don Quixote appealed to god for his life, to no avail, and the man died there on the ground amongst the smell of detritus and moss, but not before slipping into the knight's hand a leaden pendant on a thong and beseeching him to wear it, that it should help him avenge the arson and murder of which the mystic had been victim. By a stroke of ambiguous fortune it had been the very ogre the adventurer hunted who had committed these misdeeds. And with renewed enthusiasm, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza embarked, knowing they were near to their goal.
The two continued on the trail, and soon heard the savage sounds of the great beast feasting on ill-gotten game a short ways into the woods. They withdrew to prepare for what was sure to be an epic conflict.

Don Quixote, in fear for my safety has abandoned me here in our camp, while he engages that brute at this very moment. I hope soon to have news of victory and glory, and that the dying shaman's talisman has vouchsafed my lord's passage. Still, it is difficult to maintain an air of strength when I can hear the terrible din so near at hand.

Be well. I hope Don Quixote De La Mancha can resume his correspondence soon.
Sancho Panza

Seven Times Around the Track, Another Lap

2006-11-15T21:32:00.000Z

It may surprise you to hear this, but I often find myself envying you and your misty world of melancholy and intrigue. Sometimes the bright spaces of La Mancha and the straightforward order of my spirit leave me feeling, frankly, bored. Upon closing the covers of a well-worn romance, a tale of inspiring chivalry, I look about myself and feel disheartened by the disspassionate character of my homeland. I think, then, of your own surroundings and can't help but find them more fertile for the happenings of drama (let us hope it be comedy) than my own country. I almost suspect that if adventure doesn't happen upon me soon, I should have to force it to appear.
Perhaps this envy is simply an effect of the epistolary nature of your Uncle's kingdom, that is to say, it, like exotic Alexandria, exists for me only in letters, and you, like Roland, likewise. I am assured by receipt of the key to your castle that your such a fortress does indeed exist, somewhere, and that with it, should the road I travel wind eventually thence, I should be able to vouch for your own existence as well therein.
I entreat you to be more generous with your mother, she no doubt has your best interests in mind. I have great faith in the holiness of her station as descended from the Madonna, though I confess some reservations about your own mother's readiness to marry your uncle so soon upon hearing news of your father's death. Methinks the marriage was ... . Well, I should refrain from saying, on account of the censors at end of this letter's voyage.
Of the ghost: beware! Revenge is never easily gained, and never at a mean price. And yet, neither is the justice which promises to be bought with it. If only there were room in that exchange for tranquility of the spirit, I should be much happier with your prospects. As it stands, though, this spectre seems to be directing you along the long, dark path which is often the surest, if not the quickest or safest route to that ultimate end towards which we all hurtle.

As I anticipated, and contrary to your admonitions, Sancho Panza and I were forced to cross through the stream that ran along the plot of land on which sat the inn of our recent lodging, rather than upon the bridge spanning it which turned out to be too narrow. Frankly, I am happy to have done so, for it allowed us to stray from the path in a most productive way. It has reminded me that one is not always obligated to progress in the customary ways, that one must not always search out the sturdiest bridge. Instead, there is often a course of action looking one boldly in the eye, which can be seen--not by focusing more intently, but by relaxing the gaze, by insisting less on the methods to which one has become accustomed and allowing a new method to present itself. It is a new freedom, really, which we have gained at the cost of wet boots. I think that, rather than being the beginning of our decline, it shall be the inauguration of our ascent.
I embark with a light heart.

Don Quixote De La Mancha

Give It Another Shot, Always

2006-11-11T21:26:00.000Z

Your talk of ghosts is harrowing, and the abrupt end of your letter leaves me in some suspense as to your safety. I hope you do not mind my writing to your mother to inquire about your health. I did so quite reservedly, though, and you need not fear that I have divulged or suggested anything to her that would be unseemly. I think she needs no such suggestions. If something has followed you from that sinister inn and has done you harm, I feel it should be on my head and would weigh heavily on me. Of ghosts one must be wary. There is much in this world that lurks in the interstices between the living and the dead: souls misdirected on their passage, hateful spirits enchained in hallowed ground. We may often encounter the incredulous among our peers, but you and I are kindred in our courage to admit to the existence of these beings, and it is this courage, so often belittled by those around us, which will afford us the fortitude to face them when they threaten and to heed their will if it be righteous. I trust this courage has not failed you.
In order not to wring my hands, I should turn now briefly to other matters in the hopes that when this letter reaches you, you should be safe enough to enjoy lighter fare.
This sanatorium you mention where Ophelia has gone: though I do not doubt the good intentions of your self or your family, I think there must be places more conducive to the health of the spirits than the place you describe. Certainly Zurich (and no doubt the Alps in general) are ideal, where one is able to stroll the narrow paths that climb the precipices and descend into the pristine valleys in which nothing disturbs the tranquil satisfaction of nature as it admires itself in the mirror of a still lake. But in another institution perhaps she might find better company, instead of dying soldiers, she might meet a painter, or someone nice.
But my reason for mentioning her in my previous letter is as enigmatic to me as it is to you. I can only say that the woman whose acquaintance I so intimately failed to meet, simply called Ophelia's name to the lips of my mind, as if it wanted me to invoke her being without my own will playing its customary role. And at this point, I can put it no better. In time, maybe.
As for my voyage, Sancho Panza has fallen a trifle ill and we are held over in a quaint inn that bears no resemblance to the ombrous lodging that has recently benefited from your patronage. It sits on the bank of a quiet brook over which spans a bridge so narrow I think we shall have to wet the feet of our mounts when we depart. There is a blind old man who I believe is the grandfather of the housemaid, and who sits all day by a fire n the main room whittling the most extraordinary creations out of the supple yew branches I fetch for him. Some of the figures are so fine and so ingenious that they seem to dance when the wind blows through the open window. The man also whets my appetite for adventure as he tells me stories over his carving of the vicious beasts of the nearby forest, which he describes in the most meticulous detail from memory. I sate my anticipation in drawing these monsters while I wait for my comrade to recuperate.

Rest assured our correspondence is guarded.
Faithfully,
Don Quixote De La Mancha

Sleep

2006-11-11T01:33:00.000Z

Index, indices, the moving object. An integration of functions into static forms. So that my less-restless eye can find in your mind's flux a certain return. The movements of your ever-wand'ring mind (and the nature it belies) are, at heart, circumscribed by walls thicker than those of your father's keep. Its musty halls and corners (and libraries) that never see daylight are the perfectest assurance that, safe from siege, your melancholia will flourish most ingeniously. Your retreat should be a retreat outwards, not only into your own hallowed lands, but perhaps further, somewhere beyond the veils of that damnable fog. Once its vapors recede, I would think you should see a great many things more clearly.
Of course, it is also untrue that because I wander wide here beneath the sun, that my own journey is not circumscribed in some way. I hint of course at what I cannot describe. I am not my subject, after all, and as painter can only trace the model, not myself. I leave that, perhaps, to you, though I will here give you the outline of one of my features so that your portrait will be the more complete (though perhaps not one as titillating as you had hoped:
The woman whose image I impressed upon you in my last letter (and which had impressed me in turn), is, I was later to learn, the daughter of the local landowner, though by illegitimate lineage. I was unfortunate enough to be the guest of this boor for a rainy evening during which he treated me badly as if I were an imbecile and gave my man and I only the meanest quarters in which to pass the night.
During that night, shivering with cold, I was roused from my half-sleep by a beautiful voice like a siren singing a song I did not recognize and which I do not recall. I looked out the window of the house and saw, wand'ring below the bright moon, that same girl, clothed in a heavy cloak, making her way between the tombstones of the churchyard nearby. I was assured of her identity by recognizing her gait and a single moment when she seemed to look directly at me and in which her face was illuminated by the celestial orb's pale glow. She paused only briefly at a small headstone and then departed after tracing her fingers over the lettering, all the while still singing that lovely song.
I memorized the location of that monument, and, the next day when I was reading the name I found there, a short, bald padre interrupted me and inquired about my interest in that particular resident. I explained my uncanny tale to him sheepishly, and he was good enough to provide me with that information about her parentage I have already recounted, augmenting it only with this: that the grave at our feet was that of her mother, who, upon being betrayed and forgotten by her lover, had died of grief.
Apparently the girl was struck with a kind of hysteria that only expressed itself under the full moon, and which compelled her, as of she were a somnambulist, to trace the letters of her mother's name and to sing to her the very song her mother had sung to her as a child.
I am reluctant to say so at the risk of opening a painful wound, but I think there is something in this girl which reminds me of your sister. Perhaps it was this unnatural resemblance which caused her to stick in my memory, and which compelled me to mention her to you, even though I was reluctant at first to do so in full.
This was more a recounting of where I have been than an account of where I am going, but they are all that, and so it will have to suffice.

I hope this letter finds you better if not well.
Don Quixote De La Mancha

Ess

2006-11-10T16:27:00.000Z

It was always in your nature to find conflict where there was none. or to locate it slightly left of its truth. I entreat you to retreat, reconsider, view your adversaries with an eye to see if they are also your enemies. I think you will find they are not.
In any condition, if you must continue the "fight", please do in mind of your health. I would hate for this mental warfare to deplete what tenuous reserves you have, the short extent of which I know too well.
Of myself, I can only say that I continue on the road I have been walking: long, winding, gorgeous beyond description. This week, I am at ease. Along the way, I have often found cause to investigate events, peoples, and places that strike me, but of late, they are of little note. Only one will I recount. I met a woman: slight, dark, with lively eyes like I imagine under the brows of Sappho . She waved to me from a small garden in front of a house whose meanness became to me a function of her beauty, which even at the distance I was, radiated so powerfully that I could not help but stand dumbstruck for a moment staring at her, until she blushed and ran through the dark portal into the shadows of her dwelling. It has been a number of days since then, but I am still unable to banish her image from my thoughts. I wonder if I shall see her again in the flesh, but I think not. I am bound to a certain straight-forward movement that prohibits me retracing my steps, even for such a one as she.
I am not lonely, though. I would lend you my man if I could, that the joy I find in his enduring support could be yours. I am, however, sometimes convinced that the fog that envelopes Denmark is too thick to be penetrated by our lovely southern winds, no matter what form they take, or from whose lips they emanate.