Poetry Friday: Infinite Space

One prominent recently laid-off publishing big wig confessed to me the other day that, since he lost his job, he's been plagued by bad dreams. Me too. It's hard to see one's position change, one's ambitions evolve. So that line of Hamlet's kept turning over in my mind -- the one about bad dreams. Then it turned up on another friend's Facebook page, so I'm thinking it's in the wind. It's not truly poetry, but it's poetic, and it's late on Friday night, so I'll post it by your leave.

To go with it, a bad dream of my own, albeit with a serendipitous ending:

I'm in the kitchen. Lots of people are there -- we're preparing a meal. There's a white paper bag in the middle of the floor, and it's been sent to me by Angela and Tony DiTerlizzi. Everybody seems to think there's a bomb in it. So we can't touch the bag, or get too close to it, because it could explode at any second. Still, we have to get the meal made. But how? We're endangering our lives with every step.

But I look that dangerous white bag and I say: If it's from Ang and Tony it can't be bad. And, against all calls to the contrary and to everyone's vivid horror, I open it.

First I find...a note, from Ang. An early drawing of Tony's. And then, delicately wrapped in tissue, deep in the bag: AROMATHERAPY CANDLES.

Some bomb.

Hamlet
Denmark's a prison.

Rosencrantz
Then the world is one.

Hamlet
A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons. Denmark being one o'the worst.

Rosencrantz
We think not so, my lord.

Hamlet
Why then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison.

Rosencrantz
Why then, your ambition makes it one. 'Tis too narrow for your mind.

Hamlet
Oh God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

Guildenstern
Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the
shadow of a dream.


Hamlet, II, ii, William Shakespeare