Tangents on
Philip K. Dick, Journal #2
I was writing this in class yesterday. It has bits and pieces of the classes’ conversation in it, as well as just some tangential thinking into my own personal literary world/project.
Spoke the transmission, invigorated in post-apologetic desire, discontinued, slowly falling off of the shelves. The packing is worn, perpetually warm, the words fading and at last incomplete. The particulars remain unseen, unheeded. Uprooted, blast from aghast. Swollen tendrils, no tomatoes to top or topple. From this corner a tangle will arise, twisted—then laid straight, sixty hands (that’s 30 women with the heave-ho) and a mining town where the transmission was built.
A thousand of our agents cascade through the streets, input/output
asphyixiants attached to their hides, hidden—agents not knowing their own
agency—feed
conflict and resolution into the
populace, from which the original transmission was made, interspersed with
radio announcements and television advertisements. We’re interested in maintaining a certain
fiction in order to never divulge the
clemency of our
arms.
Tasmo sleeps on a parched boat going down
Heraclitus’ muddy river, one of many
paper boats. Ahead of him the water, creating a current to which Tasmo’s boat is a tense
resistance, feeding a metal grating. All the other
boats are spinning—there are no
skippers. Tasmo twists his craft, shifting the weight—all around him the rushing of water and nothing but—no west or east bank to make for—no west or east. Just
Heraclitus’ river, many pilotless paper boats and himself and his thoughts, approaching the drain…
There is a static world, in between many canvases. Lemmings, unattached by simile walk through paint and paper to arrive, bit by bit swallowed, inverted—another fuzz to the white noise static constant, dropping from one cliff into the bodies of other beings, in other dimensions. Sometimes two lemmings to a new container, what about three? And then all are behind the new eyes that see.
“Isn’t it weird to you?” she asked, “I mean, here we are trying to fit into these misshapen bodies, to be these things as if directed and somehow…”
“Somehow you’ve wound up with someone who finishes your sentences.”
“ But that’s just it! You aren’t that person! You’re just calling upon that part of your connection. You’ve pulled that trait from sure, sure…”
Experiencing other realities. I know some of them. I’ve only had glimpses. I don’t know how deeply I’ve sunk between. I know I’m part of multiple. From various experiences I’ve had, the layers of reality and been ripped. Much like Mr. Dick who said that everything they write is somehow part of these implanted memories. I’ve been through these thoughts. I’ve rolled on down Heraclitus’ River, or Chapel Perilous quite a few times. There is a plant that is unfortunately a secret to most of the world. Also fortunately at the same time. It is called Salvia Divinorum, and it comes from Oaxaca, Mexico. The possibilities with it are astounding. Even with experience with other substances, nothing ever prepared me for the things I’ve found in it. The relationship of static sounds.. electric buzzing, white noise, fuzz on more than just the brain but the makeup of what we call reality itself.. I’ve never been able to clearly talk about it. It shows up in my work all the time. I’ve known people who’ve had experiences with this plant whereas they “wake up” (it usually lasts about 15 minutes, and is sudden in its occurrence) in an alternate reality. Sometimes part of our own, sometimes more in a cosmic consciousness sort of way. One I know have has woken up to being a Tibetan Monk in an indeterminable age. He knew the Tibetan language for that time being, could speak in that tongue, etc.
Philip K. Dick’s descriptions of his exegesis experiences are digestible by me. I can imagine that intensity of what he has felt. But for the durations he was exposed to it—it is a wonder he did not go totally mad. Some of us are predisposed, in some way or another, to hold court with alternate realms. I am eager to read more about this time, this realization of chaos that he experienced.
E2: Someday, when I'm afforded more time, I'm going to be distributing a lot of this stuff into respective nodes about various Dick novels, coherently and less in a day log format. In the future...