The Tempest of Shakespeare's Foretold America

Shakespeare's Tempest Title Page, From Walter Crane's Illustrated 1893 Edition

"...like the baseless fabric of this vision, 

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye 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 a sleep."

Shakespeare's The Tempest Act 4, Scene 1

Miranda - The Tempest by John William Waterhouse

See Walter' Crane's Engraving for Act 4, Scene 1

This painting from the early 20th century depicts Miranda, the daughter of Prospero, who after being visited by a gathering of dancing nymphs, becomes irate before his children and lets out this oft-repeated quote in the final play solely attributed to this great English master of drama. 

I'd like to imagine that Miranda, alone on the coast of this strange, continental "New World" island, whose fate is the design of familial power, takes these words to heart, and envisions the great catastrophe of human ambition, as with the same vociferous sight as a sail ship torn in the tempests of the besieging, isolating, and finally, humanizing seas. 

I often hear this quote in my head at times, it speaks to me in the volumes as voluminous as the Earth's own oceanic body; a truism for the unconscious, subsurface flesh of all earthly necessity.

__________

At the house of my paternal grandparents, upstate New York, embedded the deep thick of hilly forests, I drift outside the family circle. A lump of earth appears as an ancestral burial ground, laden with the cornerstone of belief in a religious death through a life lived for the proverbial travesty of peaceful rest. 

Cauterskill Falls on the Catskill Mountains by William Guy Wall

In an act outside defiance, towards the inborn will to dream, I flee, bounding beyond the borders of the family lawn towards a new home. My brother, eager to follow in my footsteps, cavorts sheepishly in the pliant mud of earthly selfishness, and looking behind me, I see his devilish eyes smile with ghastly service. He raises a small pistol, and fires. I thumb a ride, and bound tirelessly through traffic, having skimmed the side rails of a merging highway road, a cop notices my automotive thievery, and at once I am caught. In my plea, they capture my brother close behind, warned of his homicidal designs. 

Highway-Byways by Paul Klee

In the police station, a lawyer sees us, and our family soon becomes present. They find him guilty. I’m barred from seeing him, yet the lawyer slips me a note, a suicide drawing, written with a chipped pencil within the frame of a bullet illustration. “Is he portending to war?” I wonder, free to feed my smaller animal the fun-loving pride of colourful satiation.

_________

America! Why have you buried your deepest, darkest secrets in whispers unheard? Yours is a truth disguised in a white blur as brilliant as the green-footed greed of mad industry. Why do you never step lightly off the strength of Europe's forests, onto world mystery reduced to cartography?

What is your name? And since when have you dreamed so shamelessly without thought to the diligent right to be in peace on Earth? Where is your life, if not in the decadent splendor of your shared riches? Why have you become poor with anger, and offered only suicide to your stout-hearted mob?

- excerpt from "America! America!" 

Escape from American Highways to Sonic Indigo

Seeing the metaphors in dream, is it a forecast for an external event? Is it a sign pointing to inner manifestation? I would emphasize the latter, though in many ways they are interconnected.

Example in Cat dream

________

“Paul, meet Paul” a friend from Boston sits across from a recent acquaintance. “I’m only going to St. Louis,” he confesses weakly. His scooter lies in disrepair at our feet. I’m on my way west, as far west as one can go, a bicoastal flight. The highway night is bleak, streaming lights cascade horizontally in the brittle rain. The sky is opaque with faded ebony, a mildew of steam emanates from under the gyrating wheels of our speeding metal encasement. 

My brother drives our mother’s work car. “You’re going to drive this when you’re on your way,” he says warmly. I’m dropped off at a gas station. A dark-skinned attendant intimidatingly pulls over a gas hose, pointing a muzzle onto my plate glass window. The night is endless. “Where am I off to?” I question my racing mind as my sibling waves from a friend’s vehicle, moving away. All is out of sight. I am somewhere in the middle. I see the futile passage of infinitude stretching beyond the hoarse glow of my shifting future blown to the winds of the American past. 

______

Escape

"If you escape from some place of confinement, it signifies your rise in the world from close application to business...This is an omen of good luck for many, as it is a statement that you are making good." (iDream)

______

selflessness is the father of human survival

a feathered ear

a hummed prayer, upwards

soars without me

March 11, 2011

Improvised spoken word on a bridge overlooking the Bow River

Dream of the Kogi

 Anthropomorphical pendant of the Tairona people 

Representing a shaman holding two sceptres, wearing a large nasal ornament and a high headgear with two toucans.

 Lost-wax cast gold with false filigree decoration, 10th-15th century, Colombia. Artist Unknown. 

(Courtesy of Wikipedia.)

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living, I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive."

From (http://www.theelderbrother.com/kogi/article.cfm?ObjectID=17)

Journey into the Underworld with My Older Brother

The Miracle of the Relic of the Holy Cross, detail by Vittore Carpaccio

With my older brother, we take off within what seems as a deep opened chasm within a cave, into a body of water, as if endless. The water extends dream-like with opaque energy into a vast fear. We are on a small raft, a canoe of sorts, with all of our paternal cousins. The raft edges out onto the water and its depth begins to fall under us as a tremendous anxiety takes hold, and suddenly it's as if we are all alone, although together. One of our cousins holds a light out at the front edge of the vessel. Then, I begin to fall into the treacherous dark, depth of cavernous liquid. My brother reaches out to me as I fall overboard, though his arm reaches out too short. His palm opens up with fingers outstretched with a genuine attempt full with the strength of his being unto the ends of his fingertips. Still, in the water, full of fear, I feel a great abandonment. (I remember the time when in a small bay in Massachusetts, I was left to swim for over a half hour while he and friends did watersports, completely forsaken to the water and its full, unforgiving depth of life, I swam, as it were endlessly facing my most shallow of fears.) I begin to swim, however immediately I see a shark's fin. I call out to my brother, yet he is nowhere to be found, the vessel has left without me. The shark fin passes by me and I feel a brief moment of relief, however it then turns around and heads straight for me. I experience the full great depth of fear as the whole vibration of the body of water shakes with my fear unto the ends of the finality in our human mysterium. I grasp hold of a rocky edge. (Suddenly I feel the safety of swimming in one of the sonotes in Yucatan, Mexico.) The rock seems as resin, a sharp and hard-edge crystalline foment similar to the floors of the Chauvet caves in France. I climb atop the cavernous rock, it is as tall as the side of a mountain, yet I edge into its porous underlying texture and finally ascend to the top. I reach a pile-on similar to the Inukshuk in Inuit country, however it is as constructed with the street trash of urban Cairo, Egypt. I observe this pile-on as a marker that I have reached the summit of the cave's own tallest mountain and I seem to be again in the solitude of the fantastical cliffs and mountains of Petra, Jordan, with its piles and collections of small trinkets still bundled up and set on display in the after-hours of tourist visitation. This marker reminds me that I am somewhere, although foreign, that has been visited by human hands prior to my arrival and suddenly I am in the safety of human existence. I continue to forge on, in the absolute opacity of an endless night.

Next, I am driving with my older brother and our father through to a mythic resemblance of Falmouth, Massachusetts, the end of the bay into the open Atlantic ocean. We are driving him to be sent off by ship to the other shore; Europe. He is holding a concert ticket, as if he is going there for music. We are so glad to be seeing him off, and inside I am a little jealous! The sun is bright and it is a green day in what seems like the heart of Spring. In the backseat of the car, I imagine a bird's eye view of us driving through the open roads to carry my brother off to a glorious and resounding destiny filled with music and the brightness of a future fulfilled with mutual Love.