I thought I had my lines pretty well down the other day and then I got in front of the class. I had dinner at my parents house the other night and at the end I looked at my mom and gave her the, “Our revels are ended…” and at first she was smiling and then she listened. My mum is a therapist and I like to harass her as much as possible because she can be uptight most of the time. My dad who’s a pharmacist and a smart ass, didn’t say a word. Then this morning my dad said how he should probably read a little Shakespeare. My dad reads a book or two a week and is one of the best read people I know, so I was a little surprised he was going to take a break from History and non-fiction. My problem with Shakespeare right now is that I see Shamanism everywhere and in everything. Since life is a stage, I’m just going to keep going with it while I have the two hours.
Shamanism
Zach Stenberg
Shakespeare
4-14-12
Shamanism
Today when one brings up the subject of Shamanism, the conversation often goes to indigenous people living in the Amazon, where they’re doing psychedelic and hallucinategenic drugs, chanting, and trying to talk with the spirit world. Shamanism is suggested to have origins all the way back to the Paleolithic period, or somewhere around 40,000 years ago. Shamans can be women in some societies, for the most part though they’re men. Shamans can be a magician, healer or doctor, priest, and even an evil Shaman. Mircea Elieade defines shamanism as, “First definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be Shamanism= technique of ecstasy (Eliade, 4). The technique of ecstasy is the ability to get into a trance and communicate with spirits when someone is sick, dying, missing, funeral rites, or other rituals of the community that the Shaman performs. For the Shaman, “the Shaman specializes in a trance during which his soul is believed to leave his body and ascend to the sky or descend to the underworld,” (Eliade, 5).
The Shaman can also be a psychopomp, a guide to escort the souls to the afterlife like Hermes; they also can serve as guides through the various transitions of life, such as Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Shamans are separated from the community, they are chosen either hereditary, a call from the spirits, or an election (Eliade, 13). Shamans are of the “elect” and as such they have access to a region of the sacred inaccessible to other members of the community (Eliade, 8). In some societies, they are not just a priest, but also an actual messenger to the spirit world.
Before one becomes a shaman, he/she has to have a call or a sign, and then must have an initiation. “Before he comes a Shaman and begins his new and true life by a “separation” that is, as we shall presently see, by a spiritual crisis that is not lacking in a tragic greatness and in beauty,”(Eliade, 13). Physical signs at first are epileptic fits, an actual epileptic attack initiation of the candidate is equivalent to a cure, (Eliade, 27).
Among the Tungus of the Tranbaikal region, he who wishes to become a Shaman announces that the spirit of a dead Shaman has appeared to him in a dream and ordered him to succeed him. For this public declaration to be regarded as true, it must include a considerable degree of mental derangement, such as epileptic fits and a sickness on the brink of death, (Eliade, 16).
For the Yakut, the perfect Shaman, “must be serious, possess tact, be able to convince his neighbors; above all, he must not be presumptuous, proud, ill-tempered. One must feel an inner force in him that does not offend yet in conscious of its power,”(Eliade, 290). In some ways, the ideal Shaman was a Renaissance man as in Europe of old. A man, who could do anything and knew everything, yet was humble in temperament. The Yakut Shaman also had a poetic vocabulary that contained 12,000 words, whereas the ordinary language-the only language known to the rest of the community has only 4,000, (Eliade, 30). We can still experience something of this magnitude with Shakespeare where most of his 25,000 words “(more than twice as many as Milton, his runner-up) had never been heard before by most of his audience, (Hughes, 25). And sometimes Shakespeare only used these words once or twice, but he was able to convey them where both the high and low classes could understand him. The Shaman had the same ability to communicate to both humanity and the spirit world in a poetic-trance prose.
The traditional scenario of an initiation ceremony can be summed up like the life of Jesus Christ’s last days: suffering, death, and resurrection. One of the most vivid initiation dreams is that of the Samoyed Shaman. “The candidate was sick with smallpox, the future Shaman remained unconscious for three days and was so close to death he was almost buried. He remembered having been carried into the middle of the sea. There he heard his sickness speak, “From the Lords of the Water you will receive the gift of Shamanzing. Your name as a Shaman will be diver.”
The candidate came out of the water and climbed a mountain. There he met a naked woman and began to suckle her breast. The woman, who was probably the Lady of the Water, said to him, “You are my child and that is why I let you suckle at my breast. You will meet many hardships and will be greatly wearied.”
He was then given two guides; an ermine and a mouse to lead him to the underworld. When they came to a high place, the guides showed him seven tents with torn roofs. He entered the first and found the inhabitant of the underworld and the men of the great sickness, syphilis. These men tore out his heart and threw it into a pot. In other tents he me the Lord of Madness and the Lords of all Nervous disorders, and even evil Shamans.
He was then carried to the shores of the nine seas. He went to the sea and many islands learning herbs, plants, and many birds. He heard voices that said, “You shall have a drum.”
He was given a branch with three forks; three drums were made from it, to be kept by three women. The first drum was for Shamanizing women in childbirth. The second drum for curing the sick, and the third drum for finding men lost in the snow. He was told that he must marry three women.
Then he came to an endless sea where he found seven stones and trees. The stones all spoke and he stayed with them for seven days to learn how they could be of use to men. He came to a rounded mountain with a bright cave, covered with mirrors in the middle there was a fire. He saw two women naked but covered with hair like reindeer. One said she was pregnant and would give birth to two reindeer where they would be the sacrificial animals for different tribes. The woman said she would give birth to two reindeer, which would aid man in all his works and supply for food.
After three days travel, he came upon a naked man working a bellows. On the fire was a caldron as big as half the earth. The naked man saw him and caught him with a huge pair of tongs. The man cut off his head, chopped his body into bits, and put all in the caldron where he was boiled for three years. There were three anvils and the naked man forged the candidate’s head on the third. Then he threw the head into one of the three pots that stood where the water was coldest. He then revealed to the candidate that when he was called to cure someone, if the ritual water was hot, it would be useless to Shamanize, for the man was already lost. If the water was warm, he was sick but would recover, and cold water meant a healthy man. The Blacksmith then fished the candidate’s bones out of a river, put them together and covered the bones with flesh again. He counted them and there were three too many bones, so he made three Shaman costumes. He forged his head and taught him how to read the letters inside it. He changed his eyes so when he Shamanizes he sees with mystical eyes. He pierced his ears so he could understand the language of plants. Then the candidate found himself on top of a summit with his family. Now he can sing and Shamanize without ever growing weary,” (Eliade, 42).
What is so rich and epic about this initiation dream is how it has all of the makings of an epic according to Fredrick Turner in his latest book Epic. Turner says, “But the basic elements of shamanic practice are found everywhere-the vocation of the shaman, the shaman’s call, the suffering of illness of the initiate, the use of drugs from alcohol to psychedelics, the shamanic musical instrument, rhythmic chanting or drumming, rites of passage including ritual death, the trance, the spirit guide (animal, human, or divine), the healing function, the shamanic journey (usually both through the air and under the ground), the conversation with the dead ancestors, the shaman’s power over acquaintance with natural spirits, the use of talisman, the shaman’s social role as diviner, seer, moral judge, storyteller, and myth archive, and the shaman’s subjective experience of flight, ecstasy, and sparagmos, or fragmentation,” (Turner, Epic, 180). This then is an “epic” initiation dream of a Shamanic dream. Sparagmos is depicted in fine detail of the tearing apart of the candidates body and matter, so he can be resurrected into a divine shaman.
Turner says, “The basic elements of shamanic practice are found everywhere.”
The deeper we look, we can see a Shaman’s presence everywhere; Ovid, Shakespeare, and our day-to-day life. Our very own personal dreams could be guides to the spirit world if we so choose to do so. Carlos Castaneda has laid out a blueprint on how to this in his books where he was taught by Don Juan and the most poignant one: The Art of Dreaming.
Ted Hughes calls Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis as a shamanic initiation dream and says, “It would be an interesting and not particularly difficult experiment to narrate the plot and details of Venus and Adonis to various primitive groups, or at least to groups that still hang on to their old ways of dealing with the supernatural. They would all recognize this poem as a classic example of the dream of spontaneous shamanic initiation, the dream of ‘the call,” (Hughes, 97). Shakespeare, whether knowingly or not, wrote about the Shamanic world as if he was the psychopomp of the day and was our guide. Perhaps Shakespeare’s greatest creation of this sort was Prospero.
The Tempest opens with a storm that is a creation by Prospero and Ariel. Prospero shows us that he can control two of the cosmic zones in the beginning; the sky and the earth by staging a storm to cause the ship rack and put his master plan to work, revenge. Miranda pleads with her father Prospero, “If by your art (magic), my dearest father, you have put the wild waters in this roar, allay them,”(I.II). Prospero consoles his daughter and then she helps him take off his magic robe.
Many Shamans have certain costumes they wear when shamanzing. They also use drums, scepters, music, and a guide or teacher to help them learn the ways to communicate with the spiritual world. Prospero has his magic robe, his scepter, and his books. According to Caliban, Prospero is nothing without his books. Prospero seemed to have his “call” to books. His initiation was in putting all of his time and efforts into studying his magic books rather than ruling his dukedom. Prospero’s banishment with a couple of books allowed him to perfect his magic so that he would one day have his revenge. Yet, Prospero must have had some hope in life by naming his daughter Miranda, Latin for wonderful. Prospero did not pass his art or magic down to his daughter, instead he raised her and cared for her. He also tried being kind to Caliban until Caliban tried raping Miranda.
This is another trait from Shamanism, Prospero did not just perform magic all the time in a state of ecstasy, but he was the leader and ruler of the community, albeit the community of two others on an island.
Though Prospero does not teach his magic to Miranda, he uses it on her to help her remember her past. When he asks her what she remembers about the past, she replies, “Tis far off, and rather like a dream than an assurance that me remembrance warrants,” (I.II). Prospero has the ability to make sleep come over Miranda and put her in a state of dreaming. When Ariel enters while Miranda is sleeping, not only does Prospero communicate with spirits, he enslaves them, as Ariel is his slave until he/she does the last job, and then Ariel will have his/her freedom. With the aid of Ariel, Prospero calls on Jove’s lightnings and Neptune’s waves to make the tempest and rack the ship. Prospero is the Chapello of the island and pulls all the strings. He is the puppet master and has his spirit Ariel lead Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, and Gonzalo right to him.
When Miranda and Prospero go to Caliban for more wood, an argument ensues between Miranda and Caliban. Miranda reminds Caliban how she once pitied him and taught him their language and Caliban replies, “You taught me language, and my profit on’t is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you for learning me your language,”(I.II). Prospero then shows that he can use his magic to inflict bodily harm, “What I command, I’ll rack thee with old cramps, Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar that beasts shall tremble at thy din,”(I.II). Not only does Caliban obey, but he shows us just how powerful Prospero’s magic is, “I must obey. His art is of such pow’r it would control my dam’s god, Setebos, and make a vassal of him,”(I.II). Not only is Caliban afraid for his own physical sake, but of his god Setebos’s sake.
Prospero sends Ariel off and has him/her play music and sing to Ferdinand to set him into a trance or alter his state of conscious. When Miranda first sees Ferdinand it is love at first sight, just as Medea fell in love at first sight with Jason. We will see more references to Medea later. Miranda asks her father if Ferdinand is a spirit and Prospero explains to her that he is but a man. At this point in the stage I think Prospero reveals that this ship rack is not just about revenge, but to give Miranda to Ferdinand as a wife and to give Miranda happiness. Prospero turns away from them and says, “It goes on, I see, as my soul prompts it. Spirit, fine spirit, I’ll free thee within two days for this,”(I.II). Prospers says that their eyes have changed and gives Ariel credit for this and promises to give Ariel his/her freedom. Ferdinand agrees to become Prospero’s slave; Prospero is excited how the spell has worked for both Ferdinand and Miranda as Prospero keeps exclaiming to Ariel that it works.
“Ferdinand’s description of his enchantment (“My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up”) returns the play to the pervasive theme of dream and waking, as well as to the cognate pair of freedom and bondage,”(Garber, 867). Prospero’s way of being a shaman and a pychopomp on the island is by controlling the residents and visitors of the island by sleep and dreaming. Before Antonio and Sebastian can kill Gonzalo, the king with their swords, Ariel appears in Gonzalo’s dreams and sings, “While you here do snoring lie, open-eyed conspiracy his time doth take. If of life you keep a care, shake off slumber and beware. Awake, Awake!”(II.I). Prospero can see the present and the future, so he manipulates it as he sees fit.
When Caliban meets Stephano and Trinculo, Caliban sees them as his savior to be free from Prospero’s bondage. The plan is to kill Prospero, but first they must get his books. As Caliban says, “for without them he’s but a sot, as I am, nor hath one spirit to command,”(III.II). With the sounds of the isle and the music that plays, Caliban encourages his conspirators with possibly some of the best lines of Shakespeare:
“Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give off delight and hurt not.
Sometimes o thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I than had wak’d after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.”(III.II)
Stephano and Trinculo don’t appear to be moved by Caliban’s words, but Prospero can be generous in the art of dreaming.
Prospero and Ariel put on an illusion for Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, and Gonzalo so they can fall under Prospero’s power. The charms work and Gonzalo has the longing for his son ever more. Prospero claims victory, “My high charms work, and these, mine enemies, are all knit up in their distractions: the now are in my pow’r;”(III.3).
After Prospero has inflicted the fear of god into Ferdinand to not break Miranda’s virgin knot before marriage, Prospero offers a wedding present. Prospero and Ariel call upon the spirits and show Ferdinand and Miranda, Iris and Ceres. The gods give their blessing of the marriage to be and that they may increase in number. Prospero is the shaman calling onto the spirits here, and also the pyschopomp by guiding the two lovers in the transition of their lives to marriage. Miranda and Ferdinand want more, but Prospero has other matters to attend to. Before attending to these matters, Prospero gives them an explanation of what life is all about:
“Our revels now are ended. These our are actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with sleep.” (IV.I)
Medea fell in love with Jason at first sight and gave up everything for him only to be betrayed by Jason. Miranda fell in love with Ferdinand at first gaze. Shakespeare began to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses at the age of nine, and it is told that it was his favorite book. In act V.I, lines 47-57 are a paraphrase of Medea in The Metamorphoses, book 7, lines 263-289. Prospero is about to give up being a shaman and says:
“Graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let’em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure; and when I have required
Some heavenly music (which even now I do)
To work mine end upon the senses that
This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book.” (V.I)
Prospero turns his back on his art, his magic, and forgives those who wronged him, yet he also asks for their forgiveness as well. Prospero the human being seems not to be liked by readers and that he is nothing but a selfish-crazy-spiteful-man. In some ways, he reminds of the great warrior Achilles who said he just wanted to be loved and live on a farm at home. Prospero in the epilogues tell us what his aim was:
“Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please.”
With Prospero’s art, all he wanted to do was please others whose little life is rounded with sleep.
Works Cited
Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism. First Princeton/Bollingen Paperback Printing, 1972
Hughes, Ted. Essential Shakespeare. New York: Harper Collins, 1991.
Hughes, Ted. Shakespeare And The Goddess of Complete Being. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2009.
Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare After All. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 2005.
Turner, Frederick. Epic. New Jersey, Transaction Publishers, 2012.
Montaigne
Reading a fair amount of commentary on The Tempest lately for my project led me to Montaigne, probably my favorite writer of all time. The conversation between Miranda and Caliban where Miranda said she pitied Caliban the savage and taught him their language, and now he swears and deserves to be in prison or worse. And in today’s language Caliban responds, “Tough shit bitch, I didn’t ask for your pity or to learn your language. But now that I do, go fuck yourself!” Or something thereabouts. Montaigne’s essay The Cannibals of Brazil is in the Norton Critical Edition. I found this interesting because there is a lot of commentary whether Shakespeare was making references to slavery, colonialism, and the native people of these lands. I have no idea and no way of knowing, but in The Swerve apparently Shakespeare was a big fan of Montaigne and that is why Shakespeare started reading Lucretius. Montaigne in his essay talks about who is really the savage? The people in the Amazon who live into their 80s, know no diseases and plagues, don’t have a word for property, and by all intents of purposes live happy lives.
The word “savage” is used a lot in The Tempest and as we’ve talked a lot about, Shakespeare was very deliberate in his choice of words. So perhaps Shakespeare was making a pun or illustrating to the audience who was really the savage; the great Europeans with the greatest religion of this world to spread their message of the good news and their diseases as well, or not.
The more Shakespeare, the cloudier it all gets, at least for me.
Turner
I’m glad my maiden poem recitation was brilliant. I brought my aunt Ann with me who has a PHD in Literature and has had a large impact on my studies. The poems were incredible and I admired Turner’s quick witticism when he was asked that bizarre question on being a reactionary person outside of poetry.
I went to the Einstein event last night at the Emerson. It was pretty damn good and they combined dance, music, and film in describing Eisenstein’s theory of relativity. They had a world re-known physicist and asked him a series of questions. Two of them jumped out at me: What is time? and How does nothing come from nothing? Time is measured by clocks and physics today is working on what is time. Ok, weak answer. Nothing from nothing is the big bang theory which was possibly preceded by some crunch theory before. I was thinking after those responses that they maybe should have had Turner there.
To be fair, they did have a lot of different disciplines there working together to bring science to the public. In my humble opinion, the sciences have a long ways to go in communicating science to the non-scientist.
Rampant Madness = Clarity
I was perusing Marjories Garber’s take on King Lear and there was a lot of mention of nothing, bond, and other economic terms. Interesting, but we’ve already been talking a lot about that. In class, there has been a lot of discussion on craziness and madness. In the first couple of scenes, Lear says and prays out several times to not go mad. Then he finally does go mad or so it seems. Garber suggests that Lear’s madness becomes contagious and an emblem or touchstone. “Most evidently, and perhaps most importantly, madness permits the maddened victim to speak the truth, like a licensed fool, and be disbelieved. A madman or madwomen is a sublime version of a fool-in the confines of theater,”(678). So for us to get to the truth or see the truth, everyone has to get over themselves and get mad to do so. In scene IV, Edgar says,”O, matter and impertinency mixed-Reason is madness!”
So even though it seems that they’re all going crazy, they’re actually seeing with clarity for the first time in the play. Lear decides that he can take on the role of the fool himself, and to a point does a pretty good job. The world isn’t as grand as it seems to be in retirement. I’m not sure why I like this line so much, but I do. Lear,”When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.” Are we all fools?
Need versus Want
When talking about needs in class on Friday, this got me thinking about the need versus want. I used to pretty much equate the two as the same thing. A few years ago when I read Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kasey, which I think is one of if not the best American novel. Anyways, after getting past the superficial aspect of thinking about wants and needs, I think this book draws it out best. In a relationship, job, or school, sure you could do what you “need” to do to get a job and be another sheep in the flock. I’d wager that we’ve all heard someone say,”I need you.” When I think about that though it seems half-hearted at best and lacking much. When I want to be with someone, for me at least has substance and cause for a pause. In the end though, we don’t need anything but water and sex to keep the species going. In the meantime, might have to prioritize the wants and define the needs.
Lear
Hughes in Shakespeare And The Goddess of Complete Being calls King Lear : a triple Tragic Equation and the plot and sub-plot in the play. Hughes has the idea that Shakespeare’s plays have an equation and go back to Venus and Adonis and they all build onto each other to fulfill the equation. Thus, I think that’s what Hughes is getting at. King Lear has the Tragic Equation and the theme of the Rival Brothers. Hughes says, “Lear goes through the ‘double vision’ and rejection and madness not once, but three times.”
Lear gives his daughters the love and goes into it thinking that they’re one big happy family and that they all love each other. But, like Sexon says, two of the sisters are real bitches and have sinister intentions. Hughes calls the three women,” the Goddess who incorporates, in some form still hidden from him, the Queen of Hell, but who mainly embodies the love on which his sanity depends.” Cordelia loses because she says the word “nothing” and by her bond and is banished. Lear thinks that Cordelia doesn’t love her and banishes her. He thinks he still has two daughters and that’s all he needs for the retirement he craves. Goneril then shows her true self and Lear seems mad,”Hear, Nature, hear, dear Goddess, hear… Degenerate bastard (Bitch)! I’ll not trouble thee: Yet have I left a daughter.”
Regan then does the same and Lear goes off the deep end and the madness kicks in,”I will have such revenges on you both-That all the world shall-I will do such things-What they are yet I know not.” I may have underestimated King Lear. Hamlet talked about death and seemed to know that it was only a matter of time, but the interim was his. Lear went off into the wilderness to live and resist the Boar’s attack.
My Grandma is 84 and everyone in the family coddles her and treats her like an invalid child. I like to harass her a little and talk to her like I talk to anyone else minus the F-Bombs and she appreciates it. She recently told me if I quit messing around with French and English and started taking Business classes that she would help me out with tuition. Over spring break I told her that business classes would be a waste of money and if I keep reading Shakespeare I’ll learn about money. She just laughed and shook her head when I told her that I dropped Honors Econ. At the end of the day, at least I’ll have my honor.
Sonnet
Not being a poet, I was starting to fret that I might have to turn to some stimulants to get this done, but luckily I came up with something.
Why must you insist that we are to always chat?
Is not a couple of times a day sufficient?
For it surely is for me; hit me oh bat!
For if we parle too often, it shall be deficient.
No text, no talk. Let birds, wind blow, stillness
for some brief spell to enrich the words to speak.
If only miss Athena would bark at your pettiness,
Then I could at least have a break!
But o how you are filled in this great folly
of insanity. Now is the time for me to run,
or play a sudden illness. Maybe one more jolly,
yet, then the circle will go round again.
Alas, all great flames die out sometime,
If only this fire could have ended sublime.
Death
All the talk last week on death at first glance seemed rather depressing. I don’t consider myself an optimist nor a downer, somewhere in between I guess. In Act 3, scene 2, when Hamlet is giving advice to the actors, to me it is more than advice to the actors, but could be advice to everyone in life. Hamlet is describing the art of speaking with a bit of rhetoric perhaps. I really liked the last sentence,”For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at first and now, was and is to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of this time his form and pressure.” I certainly know at times in my life, had a mirror been in front of me I probably would have toned down my behavior, no, actually I would have probably ratcheted it up several notches and overplayed my hand as I often have. Hamlet seems to be a perfectionist and if it wasn’t perfect, then it was shit. Steve Jobs was notorious at Apple of telling people what he really thought, which wasn’t pretty if you were being told that your product is ultimately shit with a bunch of F bombs.
After reading Hamlet and still missing several points, I read Marjorie Garber’s take on Hamlet and came across a gem,”The split between words and thought, words and meaning, is essential to the way Hamlet works. When the everyday language of human beings cannot be trusted, the only “safe” language is deliberate fiction, plays and lies. The only safe world is the world of imagination, not the corrupt and uncontrollable world of politics,”(483). This could be interpreted to a call to some serious shenanigans, or to live life to the fullest and on your terms. Life is short and the only thing certain is that life will end at some point, so might as well enjoy it. Since in America something like 70 percent of congress is lawyers, maybe if the Secret Service suddenly got hypnotized by Shakespeare and killed all the lawyers, then politics might not be as corrupt and uncontrollable.
I’ve been slowly reading Joyce’s Ulysses and with the hope to come out of it with about 10 percent of the book. Hamlet has been popping up quite a bit and the message I’m getting is to LIVE. Maybe I should go skydiving.
Dream
I don’t remember my dreams very often but I did today, or this morning. My dream started off in the morning and I was looking at my checking account. The IRS put $90,000 in my account. I almost spit out my coffee and thought the best thing to do was to go buy a car and put it in my sister’s name. I went to a dealership and some bimbo saleswoman kept showing me all these sports cars. I told her I wasn’t interested in any Government Motors or UAW made vehicles and she asked if I was a communist. I replied that I prefer Marxist, but I’m not the one selling subsidized vehicles by companies who were bailed out by the government. She stormed off and I grabbed a hot dog from their snack shop, which is odd because I don’t eat hot dogs, and then I drove away in Team Suburu with my dog. I woke up and all I could say was,”What the fuck.”
To be, or not to be: 