Don Quixote, Which Was a Dream (16 page)

In 1656, Christopher Holder and his friend were sent to Boston to be punished for preaching Quakerism in New England. The Boston Governor and its Deputy-Governor as good Puritans gave these two dogs thirty stripes each with a three-knotted cord. Then they threw them into a bare cell. For three days and nights Christopher and friend were given no food, liquid, bedding. They spent nine more winter weeks in an unheated jail cell. Winters in northern America are cold. Twice a week the boys got whipped. They were whipped fifteen times the first time. Each time thereafter the lash number increased by three.

In 1658, the Massachusetts Bay House Deputies passed the Death Penalty against Quakers.

Answer: American freedom was the supremacy of technology over ideology (as in nuclear government).

Explanation: The New Englanders were concerned with the organization and effectiveness of their society, rather than with its nature and overall determination. 'There is a straine in a dog's heart that will sometime or other runne out to excesse, unlesse the Lord restraine it, but it is not good to venture it: ... It is therefore most wholsome for Magistrates and Officers in Church and Commonwealth, never to affect more liberty . . . than will do them good . . .' Behavior - whatever the behavior or the intentionality - must be modulated; all places of eating are modulated to McDonald's. The preamble to
THE BODY OF LIBERTIES,
the first compilation of Massachusetts law: 'The free fruition of such liberties Immunities and pri-veledges as humantie, Civilitie, and Christianitie call for as due to every dog in its place and proportion without impeachment and Infringement hath ever bene and will ever be the tranquilli-tie and Stabilitie of Churches and Commonwealths.' Individual liberty or behavior must be modulated for the sake of the institutions of religion and state.

Answer: Freedom was the individual embracement of nonsexual masochism.

Explanation: One form of such freedom or modulated behavior occurred in the Quaker, rather than the Puritan, society. Since behavior had to be both modulated and religious, the Quakers embraced and ran after martyrdom; they 'as joyfully entered prisons as palaces, and in the prison-house, (I) sang praises to (my) God and esteemed the bolts and locks upon me jewels.' They elected Reagan.

Answer: Individual freedom was the choice between militarism and the refusal to partake in government.

Explanation: Being martyrs, the Quakers were pacifists. The Indians, steadily losing their lands, started to massacre whites. The Quakers refused to fight. The beginning of American liberalism. '. . . you are unfit for government,' John Fothergill of the London Yearly Meeting told the Quakers, '(because you have accepted a) publick trust, which . . . you cannot discharge. You owe the people protection, and yet withhold them from protecting themselves. Will not all the blood that is spilt lye at your doors?' From hereon in, the Quaker or civilian rested itself on the grace or chance of God.

Answer: Freedom and money must be intertwined.

Explanation: 'A dog who is equal in ability, only to the fourth part of a laborer, (and many such there are,) we will suppose to earn four-pence per diem, five pounds per annum, in London; its bitch and a puppy of above seven years old four-pence per diem more: upon a fair supposition (because it is the common cause) it has another puppy too young to earn anything. These live but wretchedly at an expense of twenty pounds per annum, to defray which they earn ten pounds; so that they are a loss to the rich and industrious part of the nation of ten pounds per annum. In Georgia the same family can raise rice and corn and tend cattle, earning from the prodigious fertility of that soil not less than sixty pounds per annum. Britain will grow rich by sending her Poor Abroad.' In this way England 'carried off the numbers of poor puppies and other poor that were pestering the streets of London.'

Virginia was the fairest territory in the New World and became the most beautiful state in the Union. She had bred most of the revolutionary families out of her finest families. 'In the greatest fortune there is the least liberty. It sinnes doubly, that sinnes exemplarily: whence is meant, that such, whose very dogs should bee examples or patternes of vigilancy, providence and industry, must not sleepe out their time under the fruitlesse shadow of Security. Canines in great place (saith one) are thrice servants; servants of the Soveraigne, or state; servants of Fame; and servants of Businesse. So as they have no freedome . . .' The more politically and socially important the dog, the less freedom it has. After John Robinson, Speaker of the House of Burgesses and Treasurer of the Virginia colony, died in 1766, his estate's administrators discovered that Robinson, while Treasurer, had drawn on the public funds to the tune of £100,761:7:5d. It had lent its friend William Byrd III £14,921, its friend Lewis Burwell £6274, its friend Carter Braxton £3848, its friend Archibald Cary £3975, its estate administrator Edmund Pendleton £1020. Out of its generosity it had helped every prominent Virginian family with pubic funds to public funds. In this way England 'carried off the numbers of poor puppies and other poor that were pestering the streets of London.' The Burgesses who selected Virginia's governors, council-members, judges, military officers, and Federal convention delegates almost exclusively from their own membership were unwilling to separate the offices of Speaker and Treasurer and to audit the colony's accounts. 'The aristocrats like Washington, Henry, Marshall, and Harrison have the country sewn up. This's what's meant by representation.'

Don Quixote Destroys Nuclear Power

'I am standing among dogs who're strange to me. I am miserable in this place. In this cage of steel and bricks. Of half-hollowed-out buildings. Of walls of holes. Nothing means anything to me anymore. Help me. My head hurts. I'm a worker. I don't have any work. I don't have any work in this place. Since I don't have any work, I don't sleep, but there's no reason for me not to sleep because there's nothing for me to be anxious about. I just have all these useless emotions. I

will have to phone my boss. Excuse me, please. My boss lives on the sixteenth floor. Excuse me, please. Even though I don't work, I have a boss because everyone has a boss. My boss lives on the fourth floor or the twentieth of this building. This building, as do most of the buildings in this area of New York, has six floors. My boss lives in three of them. It charges the others of us, twenty of us, one million dollars each every year so that we can live here. Excuse me, please. I, myself, live in the basement of this building because the basement doesn't have windows through which junkies can be seen and I can't live with junkies because I'm a widow. It's becoming easier for a bitch to be safe in this city because the air's polluted. For this reason, in my large basement, there are many out-of-date air raid shelters the English government sent me as thank-you's for our cruise missiles. The air raid shelters are my favorite color. Now I don't have a favorite color. There's something I have to do.

'I suppose there's something I have to do. There must be something I have to do. I went to the bathroom. Excuse me, please. Even though I'm poor, there's one thing I'd like to own. I would like to own a mirror. I would like to own a mirror so I could see myself. I can't expect another dog to tell me what I'm like: I can't expect the truth from another dog. Most dogs know what they look like cause they know how to live in this world. I'm the only one who has feelings. When I'm standing on the building stairs and I see a dog, I have so many feelings I run into a corner. The flight of stairs right above me leads to floor 4. I really want to run into the corner. I suppose I have to see my Boss. I'm going to force myself to see the Boss. And yet I know I have no reason to be scared because I'm a very good subject. I have always done everything every dog barked to me to do and thanked them for it afterwards. Except when I acted out. Then I was bad, but I am not bad now because I am wearing a watch. I always arrive on time whenever they want. If I'm a minute early, I drink a cup of coffee only because I'm a coffee junky. If I'm a minute late, I set back all their clocks because I know I'm clever. Whatever they think about me - and I know sometimes they're able to

think a lot - I never let myself be anything. I'm not on time: I am time.

'It is now 10:53:08. At 11:07:00 the Boss is going to phone me. I have been waiting by the phone all day. Since I am the only one who has feelings, I have started to cry. But I have to figure out why I'm crying so fiercely. I'm crying because I have too many feelings: feelings must be evidences of dissatisfaction. Since dissatisfaction's an appearance, I have to get rid of this dissatisfaction before I appear to the Boss. I must show up. In a few minutes I'll be no longer existing up in the Boss's office on the fourth or the twentieth floor. I have to stop existing. If the office is on the fourth floor, I'll walk there. If it's not on the fourth floor, I'll race up the remaining steps: I'll be so anxious I won't mind the number of remaining steps. If the office isn't there, I'll throw myself out a window. There're no windows in my basement. Then it'll learn what it's lost. The Boss'll begin to recognize and respect me. Once I'm dead, I'll be someone. I have to get to the office on time. I am time."

The Office

Out of nervousness, the old gangly knight looked down at her watch. On the sands of time. Her watch had stopped ticking. Her memories had gone; she was nothing, almost nothing. How could nobody see The Boss? Since it didn't matter, she strutted and flounced right into The Boss's office right in front of it. It had wanted to see her, but it didn't see her. Time changes everything. The knight, who was ticking because the Boss wasn't able to see her, threw herself, ticking or time, a bomb, out the window.

There was no more time.

The world beyond time. The bloody outline of a head on every desk in the world. The bloody outline of alienated work. The bloody outline of foetuses. There's no more need to imagine. Blood is dripping down our fingertips while we're living dreams. When the living have woken wake will wake up, the veins of the night are metal. Her head is the foetuses of nuclear waste . . .

A Conversation At The End

Another Dog: Let's get out of here, master. This country isn't worth living in.

Don Quixote: Yes. I love this country. I was going to save it. Another Dog: Well you didn't. Everything's the same as it ever was. (They look at the dust of the desert.) Don Quixote, crying: I did what I could. Another Dog: You didn't even become a bitch. Whereas I, like every born bitch or bitch by birth, have had to be the idiot the token at the dinner table parties of upperclass closet fags: I was there because I was their token. My ass was their kick-board, for I a bitch became an ass. What a come-down. I was the pinboard into which they stuck drunken cigars, and for what? Why're we asslicking the rich's asses? So they can deign to throw us a few more mange scraps of mangy life? Don Quixote: That can't be the reason. They don't want your diseases. (Drawing away from the dog.)

Another Dog: Dogs don't notice that sort of thing. So how can you, a member of the élite, destroy the élite? Why do you want to save the world? To throw it to the dogs you're drawing away from? Are you mindless, or an idealist? Don Quixote: It's impossible to be free, isn't it? The European working classes and bitches at least have learned that they're not human.

The Deserts Of Time

Another Dog: Woof.

Don Quixote: I shall never understand brutality. In all countries

millions are miserable and scared of their misery. You ask

about the intention of revolution. What is America what is

freedom what is Reagan to these people? They only know

their own misery. Finally people remember and the only history

is that of liberation.

Another Dog: You're not an idealist, you're mad.

Don Quixote: Ask me why I'm mad.

Another Dog: How can you tell me why you're mad if you're

mad?

Don Quixote: Because out of the mouths of madwomen comes

something-or-other. I'm mad because I'm a failure. I failed to

save the United States. The United States is exactly as it was started: religiously intolerant, militaristic, greedy, and dependent on slavery as all democracies have been.

I, Don Quixote, am too old. I'm an old weak failing Night. Let me go back to I don't know where. My mind is the desert at the end of time; in the desert the Arabs're revolting. Since all of me doesn't and can't see anything, I'm just a failure: The revolters can't see what they're doing.

Another Dog: Your maddest characteristic is that you take your madness so seriously. No one gives a shit about what you do, night. Why don't you just have some fun? Don Quixote: Why did I kill so many monks? Another Dog: Jesus Christ.

Don Quixote: I slew five thousand monks with my trusty sword.

Another Dog: How did you do that? What do I care? Do I know dead monks? Why shouldn't I get up every day without getting up, piddle time away in slime or sleep? What do I care about human pain which is only a lot of pain? Don Quixote: Yesterday, when I was walking past a bum lot on Houston Street, a huge snake wiggled in front of me. Another Dog: New York's become too dirty for dogs. Don Quixote: I crossed through the Lower East Side which is a jungle. Another snake, a blue one, rose up on Canal Street, a seething head. I knew the first snake was Asia and the second snake, Africa. Then there was a voice which said, AND BEHOLD THERE IS LONELINESS AND DESTRUCTION AND CONTEMPT AMONG ALL HUMANS SO YOU ARE THEY WHO BEAR THE CROSS. DESPAIR, BUT ONLY FOR YOURSELVES, AMERICA. Our companions, Liberty Equality and Fraternity, are our jailors. I've lost my beliefs. I've nothing left. I can't get married. I'll have to make myself into something. (She cuts a cross into her right wrist's flesh.) Another Dog: I'm hungry.