Well, this was probably unavoidable. You are about to think some very dumb stuff about poetry, women, and dead Native Americans. This is a tradition, or affliction, that has been passed down to at least three generations of 17-year-old white boys and then foisted upon 15-year-old-white girls for just as many decades— girls your own age are way past this shit, stick with the sophomores. You are going to abuse the word “shaman” in ways that will violate international torture conventions. You’re going to think that something important and meaningful is happening to you, even though you haven’t left your room for three days. You are going to sit at the feet of the master of total self-regard, one James Douglass Morrison, the “Lizard King,” and think yourself the Prince of Salamanders and heir to a throne carved from your own bullshit.

This will all end in merciful disillusionment.

I would like to think that you saw Apocalypse Now and encountered “The End” during the opening scene, and that this is just an unfortunate side effect of an otherwise positive event in your cultural development. It is much more likely that TBS is just playing that fucking Oliver Stone Doors movie over and over because they picked up the broadcast rights super cheap at some kind of film studio equivalent of the unintentionally humiliating garage sale. It was in a cardboard box next to Harvey Weinstein’s old spandex bicycle pants. But, however it came about, you now think an affected demeanor of slack-jawed ponderousness is the same thing as depth and that depth is the same thing as being sexually desirable and the only way out of this thickening forest of misconception is through. There’s no going around.

And it’s going to be a dark time. Not dark in the way you are thinking of dark. Not romantic, gothy, leather-trousers dark. More your own asshole dark.

There’s more. Keep reading.