So this is jetlag. I shouldn't say it like that - like it's never happened to me before. It happened for the first time about 10 days ago, when I landed in Canada. Actually, I can't say with any sort of reliable degree of certainty when this thing happens. Did it happen as I was crossing the Pacific, sitting next to a sweaty mouth-breather? When I landed in Toronto, smelling of old laundry and older coffee? When I got under the covers in a strange bed, and stared at the ceiling for 3 hours? I really don't know, but this is a confusing state to find myself in.
The really strange thing is that I'm not even trapped in Eastern Standard Time, which would at least make a little sense. Nope. I feel groggy right around 2am in Belgium or something. Yesterday, I finally passed out at 8am here, which is 7pm in Ontario. Not even fair. So, for the last couple of days, I fall asleep at inappropriate times for a few hours, then wake up refreshed and start doing regular awake-guy things, only to fall down again a couple of hours later.
The main reason I'm writing this is because I find myself in an unfamiliar situation in my own apartment. I can't sleep (it's 8:30am, and has been for several hours), so I'm trying to short-circuit myself. I think. It must be that - why else would I be eating oatmeal and drinking peach drink, while alternating between The Jesus and Mary Chain & Gordon Lightfoot on the stereo? Sure, Psychocandy and Gord's Gold are both fine albums, but they mix like peach drink and oatmeal.
In an attempt to bash myself to sleep, I re-read a Philip K. Dick book last night. This is my third reading of this particular book, and there really weren't any surprises left. I figured my mind would say "Yeah yeah yeah…we all know how this one ends, so let's shut 'er down". No dice. Still, a great novel - "Galactic Pot-Healer", one of the two books that I have read in my life that actually creeped me out. This one has that effect if I even think about the story. The Glimmung is, without question, one of the great lumpish, doomed, benevolent/malevolent, possibly divine characters of the second half of the twentieth century. That's quite a thing, if you think about it.
(Oh - the other book that really put the thick blackness on me was David W Elliot's "Listen to the Silence" - the story of a 14-year old who is sent to an asylum instead of an orphanage. I read it for the first time when I was 14, and it seems to resurface at regular intervals in my life. I challenge you to read it without developing a keen sense of creeping dread.)
Those who know me well may skip the next bit - it's my usual harangue about the brilliance of Philip K. Dick, and the injustice of his being relegated to the Sci-Fi shelves of book stores. I have nothing against the genre, mind you - I've been hooked since J.G. Ballard's "The Giant" leapt out at me from the pages of a short-story collection. It's just that most SF is (justifiably) regarded poorly, and the chunks of genius on those shelves are pooh-poohed because they have zap-guns and buxom futurebabes on their covers. I had an American Literature professor who wouldn’t even entertain the notion that there could be anything of worth between the covers of a book labeled SF. I found out later that one of his favourite movies was 'Crash', based on a story by the aforementioned Ballard, an accomplished 'SF' writer. I kept it to myself.
Anyway.
If the astronomical prices for Dick's titles in used book stores are any indication, people are starting to notice. The entertainment bastards noticed - 'Blade Runner' is Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"; 'Total Recall' is Dick's "I'll Remember It For You Wholesale"; "The Man in the High Castle" has been turned into three different ignored films; that shiny new Tom Cruise thing, "Minority Report" is based on the Dick story; some group that my friend Tim listens to lifted the title 'Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said' for a song; Dick's 'Confessions of a Crap Artist' was turned into a French film called "Barjo"; several of his works have been performed on stage by theatrical groups across the U.S.; and I just found out that Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze (the screenwriter/director team that bestowed 'Being John Malkovich' upon us) are developing Dick's "A Scanner Darkly". Buy stock in that one, by the way - with a story like that, and a screen team like those two, it can't miss.
I've been known to shout loud and long about the filmic treatment of these works. Dick wrote over 50 volumes of fiction and non-fiction, as well as a 1 million word philosophical journal called 'Exegesis'. 99% of these writings center upon three main questions : "What is reality? What is sanity? and What is human?". Gigantic subjects, those, and we can barely blame him for choosing one of the most wide-open and fertile genres in which to explore them. My problem with the film adaptations is that Hollywood has decided to concentrate its efforts on 'handsome men shooting robots' when putting Dick's material on the screen. I realize that it's difficult to portray paralyzing identity crises in an action movie, so I hope the films make a few people go out and pick up the novels. Then again, maybe people don't need to peek inside a crippled logos as much as they need to see Harrison Ford grimace and chase Darryl Hannah.
The trouble is the old one - unappreciated in his own time, raped mercilessly after his death. Dick died poor in 1982, eating cat food and babbling incoherently, just like a big handful of our literary giants. One thing I've forgotten to mention - Dick was pull-your-pants-down-and-claim-to-be-your-own-nose-hair insane. I mean crazy. Decades of ill-advised drug use and a healthy dose of honest-to-goodness blaring madness created the soup that was Philip K. Dick. By his own admission, many of his writings were descriptions of his own spiraling dives into lunacy. He spent a good part of the 70's believing he was someone named Horselover Fat, and quite often had a little trouble understanding that there really wasn't a satellite relaying messages from God, directly into his own scrambled cranium.
Oh well - I know people that believe if they hold their hands just so, and close their eyes real tight, they can talk directly to God. At least Dick had the good sense to stick an amplifier in a satellite in order to guarantee a clear signal.
I wish more crazy people would take a little time off from discussing things with their shoes and put some of their ideas down on paper. In an age in which it seems all the original work was done 300 years ago, we need an injection of looney notions. A lot of themes and stories are dog-eared - we've used them all up. Time to stop merely 'playing in our own muck' (A.J. Farmer's line - disgusting and appropriate here), and begin appreciating some of the ignored classics….
I decided awhile ago that when my last cigarette was gone, so would I be. That has happened. See ya.
Word/Phrase of the Day : "Tadaima" - "I'm Home!"Posted at Friday, August 16, 2002 by chris
