"I stopped the thought before its grip became insistent"
Wish I had done that a couple of times.
"You don't use words like that St. Louise is listening"
Just hip hopping along to Soul Coughing this fine afternoon.
Alright, more on Philip K. Dick folks. Like you care.
First off his conversion story: He had just had some wisdom teeth removed and had dry sockets, which in case you didn't know are extremely painful. My Mom said dry sockets hurt worse than labor, and she didn't do an epidural either. Just to show you. So he orders the painkillers from the doctor, and a young lady comes to the door with the paper bag in her hands. As he's grabbing the meds he catches sight of her necklace, which he recalls being a fish, of the kind the early Christians used in their symbolism. Next thing he knows he's getting hit by a pink beam of light. And all this had something to do with Christ. Don't ask me.
He claimed to have been infused with knowledge by this pink beam of light. An interesting story, sorry no snopes on this one, is that he received knowledge of a congenital birth defect present in his son, similar to a hernia, which could have killed him. After telling the doctors of it, they investigated and found the defect, exactly as he said, which was corrected.
He also started writing aphorisms, and those aphorisms make up the better part of his first of his last three books, Valis. The other two are The Divine Invasion, and the one I'm currently reading, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.
Valis is the one people usually talk about. Personally, the aphorisms are more crazy than insightful, the real Gnostic books are far more interesting. I for one know how easy it is to write scores of provacative aphorisms while one is losing one's mind. And it seems that at the time of Valis, Philip K. Dick felt he might be going crazy. Judging from the aphorisms, I'd say he was mixing uppers and downers and giving himself a good dose of psychosis.
Yes Philip K. Dick was a drug user. I make no claims about the truth of any of this stuff. He might have been making it up, or been deluded. I don't really know. I can tell you, that I have had experiences of God's presence and infused knowledge, minus the pink beams of light. Not that I've ever done anything so miraculous as discover an undetected physical ailment.
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is also about madness, but Dick's narrator is much more grounded than the main character of Valis, and I assume Dick was at the time as well.
Alright so I can't go without quoting a hard-hitting passage of the book. Bishop Timothy Archer has just had his son commit suicide and is now he and his mistress are convinced that they are being visited by his son's ghost. The author makes the point that she will never be able to out-argue Tim, he's the king of arguing, and that once his mind is set, it's all over:
"Tim could admonish me about hysteron proteron[read: circular logic] reasoning to his heart's content - and then fall victim to merely occult nonsense - stuff of popular paperback books. He might as well have believed that Jeff had been brought back by ancient astronauts from another star system."
And not only does he believe it, he is going to ruin his career as a Bishop and a human rights activist by publishing a book about he and his mistresses experiences of life after death.
Another interesting thing. Bishop Tim's Mistress Kirsten, has a son named Bill. Bill is a schizophrenic, as I've told you guys I have a schizophrenia related illness and the portrayal of Bill interests me.
Now there is a test they do on schizophrenics, which I always fail utterly. Remember that I am smarter than 99% of the population and well aware of it. Basically they give you a saying:
"A new broom sweeps clean."
And you are supposed to, in a reasonable amount of time, tell what it means. What a normal person would say, it took me about a half hour to figure out, might be something like "Fresh experience freshens life." What I and any other schizophrenic would say is along the lines of what Bill says in the book: "New brooms sweep better." In other words, there is no ability to abstract a simple sentence. Humbling as fuck my friends.
Like I said, it takes me thirty minutes to come up with an abstract answer, and when my shrink does it, I get nervous and just tell them "New brooms sweep better." Thank you Mr. Schizoid do not pass go, take your meds or its off to the hospital with you.
"And I laugh at God, I thought; I make no sense out of what Tim teaches and believes, and the torment he feels over these various issues. I am fooling myself; in my own labored way, I do understand. Look at him serve that ignorant cat. He - this child - would have been a veterinarian, if they hadn't maimed him, shredded up his mind. What had Kirsten told me? He is afraid to drive; he stops taking out the garbage; he will not bathe and then he cries. I cry too, I thought, and sometimes I let the trash pile up, and one time I nearly got sideswiped on Hoffman and had to pull over. Lock me up, I thought; lock up us all. This, then, is Kirsten's affliction, having this boy for her son?"
That's me folks, shredded mind, in and out of the hospital for the rest of my life unless I play your little games, you bastards. Go to hell.
Tim.
Wish I had done that a couple of times.
"You don't use words like that St. Louise is listening"
Just hip hopping along to Soul Coughing this fine afternoon.
Alright, more on Philip K. Dick folks. Like you care.
First off his conversion story: He had just had some wisdom teeth removed and had dry sockets, which in case you didn't know are extremely painful. My Mom said dry sockets hurt worse than labor, and she didn't do an epidural either. Just to show you. So he orders the painkillers from the doctor, and a young lady comes to the door with the paper bag in her hands. As he's grabbing the meds he catches sight of her necklace, which he recalls being a fish, of the kind the early Christians used in their symbolism. Next thing he knows he's getting hit by a pink beam of light. And all this had something to do with Christ. Don't ask me.
He claimed to have been infused with knowledge by this pink beam of light. An interesting story, sorry no snopes on this one, is that he received knowledge of a congenital birth defect present in his son, similar to a hernia, which could have killed him. After telling the doctors of it, they investigated and found the defect, exactly as he said, which was corrected.
He also started writing aphorisms, and those aphorisms make up the better part of his first of his last three books, Valis. The other two are The Divine Invasion, and the one I'm currently reading, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.
Valis is the one people usually talk about. Personally, the aphorisms are more crazy than insightful, the real Gnostic books are far more interesting. I for one know how easy it is to write scores of provacative aphorisms while one is losing one's mind. And it seems that at the time of Valis, Philip K. Dick felt he might be going crazy. Judging from the aphorisms, I'd say he was mixing uppers and downers and giving himself a good dose of psychosis.
Yes Philip K. Dick was a drug user. I make no claims about the truth of any of this stuff. He might have been making it up, or been deluded. I don't really know. I can tell you, that I have had experiences of God's presence and infused knowledge, minus the pink beams of light. Not that I've ever done anything so miraculous as discover an undetected physical ailment.
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is also about madness, but Dick's narrator is much more grounded than the main character of Valis, and I assume Dick was at the time as well.
Alright so I can't go without quoting a hard-hitting passage of the book. Bishop Timothy Archer has just had his son commit suicide and is now he and his mistress are convinced that they are being visited by his son's ghost. The author makes the point that she will never be able to out-argue Tim, he's the king of arguing, and that once his mind is set, it's all over:
"Tim could admonish me about hysteron proteron[read: circular logic] reasoning to his heart's content - and then fall victim to merely occult nonsense - stuff of popular paperback books. He might as well have believed that Jeff had been brought back by ancient astronauts from another star system."
And not only does he believe it, he is going to ruin his career as a Bishop and a human rights activist by publishing a book about he and his mistresses experiences of life after death.
Another interesting thing. Bishop Tim's Mistress Kirsten, has a son named Bill. Bill is a schizophrenic, as I've told you guys I have a schizophrenia related illness and the portrayal of Bill interests me.
Now there is a test they do on schizophrenics, which I always fail utterly. Remember that I am smarter than 99% of the population and well aware of it. Basically they give you a saying:
"A new broom sweeps clean."
And you are supposed to, in a reasonable amount of time, tell what it means. What a normal person would say, it took me about a half hour to figure out, might be something like "Fresh experience freshens life." What I and any other schizophrenic would say is along the lines of what Bill says in the book: "New brooms sweep better." In other words, there is no ability to abstract a simple sentence. Humbling as fuck my friends.
Like I said, it takes me thirty minutes to come up with an abstract answer, and when my shrink does it, I get nervous and just tell them "New brooms sweep better." Thank you Mr. Schizoid do not pass go, take your meds or its off to the hospital with you.
"And I laugh at God, I thought; I make no sense out of what Tim teaches and believes, and the torment he feels over these various issues. I am fooling myself; in my own labored way, I do understand. Look at him serve that ignorant cat. He - this child - would have been a veterinarian, if they hadn't maimed him, shredded up his mind. What had Kirsten told me? He is afraid to drive; he stops taking out the garbage; he will not bathe and then he cries. I cry too, I thought, and sometimes I let the trash pile up, and one time I nearly got sideswiped on Hoffman and had to pull over. Lock me up, I thought; lock up us all. This, then, is Kirsten's affliction, having this boy for her son?"
That's me folks, shredded mind, in and out of the hospital for the rest of my life unless I play your little games, you bastards. Go to hell.
Tim.