Hold On…I Thought I Was the Freeman

By Jin-yeong Yi

“O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space—were it not that I have bad dreams.

—William Shakespeare, Hamlet

For Charles Manson, a jail cell is a private universe:

Since he doesn’t have access to psychedelics, I suspect that Mr. Manson is referring to lucid dreaming and/or astral projection. To have such silence and solitude, to have the leisure to explore the fathomless depths of one’s own mind…at times it’s enough to make one pause and wonder who is more free, those who are behind bars or those who are outside of them.