January 1, 2001
Wow! It's here -- 2001! The first day of a new Millennium. If ever anything should be recorded and preserved it's our feelings as we start an entirely new era. It's really awesome. I got up at Dawn so I could literally see the dawn of a new day. It was a spectacular sunrise here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. OK. Well, I started this project -- putting my journal on-line -- in November of 2000. I know I won't use it every day, but I do keep a daily hand written journal -- or Morning Pages as Julia Cameron and Nat Goldberg call them. What I do want to do here is preserve some of my various writing. Not just the book, but poems and essays. Cause if anything happens to me, how would anyone find this stuff?
Uncovering the secrets of the BLOCK...
These are essays --
Lobrutto and the encouragement???
the DARK DAYS...
1999 - just a lot of Y2K hype!
2000 -- what excuse now??? I didn’t intend to write this book. Oh, sure, like a million other
wannabe authors, I thought I might write a novel someday. But this book wouldn’t take
no for an answer. It HAD to be written. "The story must be told." That’s the first
glimpse I got of the situation. It started when I took a trip to Denver in August of 1996. My friend’s husband had been bugging me for several years to read Philip K. Dick. As a late-comer to science fiction, I didn’t get into Star Trek until well into the second or third round of re-runs. I liked Ray Bradbury, but I hadn’t read any of the early sci-fi heavy-weights like Isaac Asimov or Theordore Sturgeon. And, I must confess, I had never even heard of Philip K. Dick until he suggested him. We were relaxing in their sun room one Sunday morning. John was reading the newspaper wearing a pair of those half-lens reading glasses, the kind that sit low on your nose. Without looking up he asked, "Did you ever read PK Dick?" Emitting a heavy sigh, "No, I still haven’t." He glanced up, looking over the top of the half glasses, "You really should." "OK. So, tell me again which one I should read first," I asked, remembering the guy had written a shit-load of sci-fi books. "Oh, ‘The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch’ or his classic ‘Man in the High Castle’. Just don’t bother with any of his late stuff because by then he was totally insane." Totally insane. That’s what stuck in my mind. I wondered what someone writes if they’re totally insane. Of course, I went right out and got the late stuff. Was Phil insane? Or, was the late stuff really his most insightful work? After all, what is real? You’ll have to read on and decide for yourself. By the way, the "K" in Philip K. Dick stands for Kindred -- his mother’s maiden name. Enjoy! -- ejm In Search of VALIS: When is the last time a book grabbed you – made you feel so alive that you had to jump up in the middle of the night and make notes. Not only make notes, but decide right there on the spot that you would write a sequel to it. That your life and the life of that author are so inextricably entwined that you have no choice in the matter – the story must be told; the book written. Wow, you say. I’ve never had that happen. Well, neither had I until I read VALIS, one of Philip K Dick’s final novels. I could hardly contain myself. I truly felt as though I would leap out of my skin and merge with the Vast Active Living Intelligence System that IS Valis. That inexplicable ALL which Phil has now become part of; that place we all come from and will return to when our Earth Mission is complete. VALIS – Phil’s perfect description of All that Is. So what exactly was the spark, the idea, that sent me flying to the keyboard that night in September of 1996? Was it the concept of VALIS? Yes, but even more, it was the sense of inter-connectedness, that all things truly are as One; a fleeting glimpse beyond the Veil that separates us from that eternal unknown. I saw beyond the Veil that night. I knew, for an instant, just for a moment, how it all fits together. The BIG picture. The How, the Why -- the meaning of it all. I ran to my computer and began to write, fast as my fingers could fly. I was so sure I could capture it, share it, just like Phil had tried to do while he was alive. We all know all this information. At times we remember and then we forget again. We were all part of VALIS before we became physical. Some believe we made a conscious decision to come here and experience Life – physicality. Why? Because in spirit form there are restrictions. Phil, spent a lifetime pursuing "the Other Side" -- constantly searching for what is real, what is human – our Essence. As though through his relentless pursuit of VALIS he would finally be free -- no restrictions, no limitations. But I suspect once he was there, he learned there ARE restrictions. You can experience anything, but you can’t always convey that experience. You can know what it is to be completely free, floating as a molecule – a photon – part of the Light. But, how do you describe it or share it with those in the physical trappings of our reality? Phil needed to tell the rest of the story, but of course, he couldn’t. He was dead. At least, what we call dead. So, what I felt that night was the essence of Phil spurring me to jump up and write about it. Share it. Explain it. And, I was sure I could. I started to… in fact I actually wrote 15,000 words during the next three weeks. And then the most amazing things began to happen. Whenever I needed a reference book, I would find it. Obscure out-of-print books would turn up in used book stores. Sometimes it would be old PKD novels, or books about Phil that I would later learn were extremely rare and hard to find. Or this: When I was writing about
Gnosticism and the Nag Hammadi Scrolls, I wrote that that the Nag Hammadi Codices pre-dated the Dead Sea Scrolls. I really didn’t know if that was true. But, the next day my friend, Maureen and I, were at a used book store. I was in the sci-fi section looking for more PKD books. Mo was in the religion section. Something made me wander over there to see if they might have something on Gnosticism. Right before my eyes was a copy of the Nag Hammadi Library a complete translation of the scrolls for less than ten bucks! And, the back of the book contained an Afterword on the modern relevance of Gnosticism with a lengthy description of Philip K Dick’s use of Gnostic references. In fact, the commentary points out that Phil’s alter ego in Valis -- Horselover Fat -- quotes from a section of this very book (the First Edition, © 1977.) The book store owner couldn’t even remember acquiring this particular volume. And, yes, the Nag Hammadi scrolls do pre-date the Dead Sea Scrolls. One incident was SO weird I actually incorporate it in my novel. I was writing about Phil’s relationship with Bishop James Pike and realizing my story is becoming very convoluted – a story within a story. Pike, you see, had tried to contact his son after he committed suicide. A few years later when Pike dies, Phil begins to feel he’s being contacted by the dead Bishop. Now, I’m writing about being in contact with Phil from Beyond and fiction is becoming reality, because at times I’m sure I am receiving information from him. Anyway, I needed to know more about Pike’s seances with his son. One of Phil’s biographies mentioned a 1968 book called "The Other Side" by Bishop Pike which details the experiences. I had to have this book, but it’s out of print and not in the local library system. So, as I’m driving down Fourth Street, I glance over at this creepy neighborhood used book store, which I never use because it’s full of perverts. On a complete whim, I pull in. The store is such a mess I don’t even want to look around, so I say to the owner, "I’m looking for an old, out-of-print paperback, it would be in the paranormal or occult section, if you have one. It’s called The Other Side by Bishop James Pike." Just then a woman screams. We both rush over to see what’s wrong. She is standing there, very pale and holding up a book. "This one?" and tosses it at me. It’s the Bishop Pike book. She continues, "I had just pulled it out when you asked for it." "Wow!" I say. "You don’t want it?" Still wide-eyed, she replies, "No, I certainly don’t." She walked out. The bookstore owner and I both shrug and kind of chuckle. I ask him how much. He says, "Are you kidding? It’s yours. Take it." This is synchronicity – meaningful coincidence. It happened over and over during the writing of the first draft. Times when I would be stuck, times when I had no idea where I was going with the story, I would find just the right information, or something would just pop in my head. But, even with all that help from Phil and the Universe, doubt set in. I began to question the way I was writing and even what I was writing. "You don’t know Phil," I thought to myself. There are people who have followed his work for years. Who do you think you are to write this? You haven’t read his other books. So, I stopped for three months. During that time I read, not all, but several of his books. I read biographies about him and an analysis of Valis called In Pursuit of Valis. More than ever I knew I was on to something. Everything I read was a confirmation of what I already knew. I felt closer to Phil and his quest than before and ready to go for the Grail and finish his untold story. So, I started again in March of 1997 (a significant time -- around the anniversary of Phil's death) and remarkably, I finished the entire first draft in about four months. The story was down on paper. Very rough and incomplete in places, but the main storyline was captured. I thought I could let it rest for a few months and then dive back in to edit and finish it up. HA! Little did I know the revision work would be ten times harder than the first draft. I couldn’t believe how difficult it was. All the times I had noted "fix this" or "add more here", now had to be fixed and filled in. And, now the layering needed to take place. All my ideas of incorporating Phil’s bizarre terminology, metaphysical metaphors and word plays -- actual writing and linguistic skills -- were just ideas. I could not make it work on paper. My writing sucked. I was sick. I would struggle and then put it away. Pull it out, struggle some more, cry and put it away. Where was Phil now? All that guidance that had seemed to pour out when I was creating the draft felt gone – vanished. Why would he leave? Why couldn’t he just do some automatic writing, polish the thing up and let us move on to publication? The answers weren’t forthcoming. Months went by with little or no progress. I would sit and stare at the pages or the screen and have no idea how to fix it. This was my first feeble attempt at novel writing. I had been a journalist, a business writer, not a free-flowing creative writer. HELP! I read every book I could find on creative writing, but nothing seemed to help. I was hopelessly and miserably stuck with a first draft that stunk to high heaven. And, this wasn’t just any stinky first attempt at writing. This was the book that had to be published – the story that must be told. Apparently I wasn’t the one to do the telling. Then one night in January, 1998, I had a dream. It was an awesome, incredible vivid dream like no dream I had EVER had before. I was with Maureen, and we were on our way to an event. We entered this unusual, round library. I can still see the violet florescent lighting and feel the excitement. I was very anxious about being there. The counter was in the middle, circular like the room, with people (librarians?) all standing in the middle part, helping people who walked up. I asked, "Where is the lecture hall?" A young man pointed down a hallway. I remember looking at Maureen, exchanging a look of anticipation, and then hurriedly heading down the hall. At the other end was a huge auditorium. The kind that slopes downward, into a pit, with riser-type seating – like a movie theater, only again this was round. We could see the auditorium as we walked down the hall. But as we approached the entrance, that’s when I knew. I wasn’t there to listen; I was there to speak. At that same moment, I saw the placard on an easel in front of the entrance. A large white sign and in big bold letters it read – A KINDRED SPIRIT
Anyway, the time line for AKS is as follows;
Now, what makes this fantastic is that until that moment, my working title for the book was "Biomorphic Madness."
Seeing that sign was such a shock, I immediately woke up and sat straight up in bed. I must have repeated those words, A Kindred Spirit, at least ten times before I got up and wrote it down. My hand was shaking so badly I could hardly write it.
Wow! Phil was back with a vengeance. There was no doubt about the title of this book. It was sublime because Phil’s middle name is, of course, Kindred. I had never thought of his perfect play on words.
As I write this now, my head is rushing and I can’t write fast enough to get this down on paper. The many, incredible events of the next few months are enough to make anyone’s head spin. For starters, that same month, I sent email messages to some of Phil’s friends and associates. In particular, Paul Williams, Phil’s former literary executor. They all wrote back. I was able to ask them about little details I couldn’t find anywhere. I would sense Phil was smiling. Then, an incredible opportunity -- a chance to meet with a senior editor from Doubleday. He was coming to Albuquerque for a writing conference. Several of us were allowed to submit material and then have a review session with him.
I mailed off the first twenty pages of "A Kindred Spirit" and had major anxiety attacks for the next month, waiting for his arrival. Finally, the conference and my appointment with him was scheduled for (you won’t believe it) March 2 , which is Phil Memorial Day. Phil died March 2, 1982 and Chapter One of my book begins on that day. Now, I had never heard of Pat Lobrutto prior to this, but in true synchronicity, he actually served as editor for some of Phil’s books. He loved the idea of Phil as a character communicating from beyond. He was less than enthusiastic about my writing. In other words, he could also see that it sucked, but he was too kind to say that. He was very encouraging and even gave me his card. He said the concept had great potential and he would consider publishing it, if (a huge IF), I could improve the writing, and if I could answer this question – why Niki? (Niki Perceval is my protagonist.)
I floated out of there on cloud nine. Paul Williams and other Phil friends cheered and assured me this alone was a huge accomplishment. If Lobrutto liked it, I could fix it. Yeah, sure, easy for them to say. They’re professional writers. Days grew into months, and I wasn’t making much progress. I’m truly ashamed to say how little progress I made over the next year or two. Why? I can’t answer that. I simply couldn’t figure out how to revise and improve the writing of that damn first draft.
But, finally, this past week, a miracle happened. I started writing again. The Prologue is new and hopefully much improved. And today I finally answered the burning question – why Niki. As Lobrutto asked it, "Why would Phil pick her?"
Paul Williams provides the answer at the close of Chapter Two of his book, Only Apparently Real. He writes:
"The most formative event of Philip K. Dick’s life was the death of his twin sister Jane, six weeks after they were born. He spent the next 53 years looking for her, reaching out to her, missing her, creating her."
Phil’s passion, his drive was seeking A Kindred Spirit – literally a KINDRED spirit.
His Mother’s maiden name and his middle name was Kindred. Philip Kindred Dick.
In death, from that unfathomable vantage point, he could see in Nicole Jean Perceval, what no one else could see -- the soul mate he had always sought.
Niki shares so many of his interests, especially his intense passion and quest for Truth. The loss of her parents at an early age, gave her the same motivations as Phil -- a deep longing for connection and an intense drive to understand death and what lies Beyond. Both had mystical experiences that fueled their fanatical efforts to know more about the Other Side. Both obsessed over matters metaphysical and philosophical and both are great Seekers of any and all religious explanations for the ultimate questions of why are we here and what is our purpose.
And seeking was not enough for either of them. Both had a drive to share their findings.
Again, Paul says, "He lived to communicate, and perhaps he communicated with such energy and passion because he was never quite sure he had been heard, or indeed, that he’d said what he wanted to say."
And, isn’t this true of Niki? She became a professional communicator, a newspaper reporter. At the time Phil discovers her, Niki is determined to cover the Ultimate Story - Doomsday, believing that she is uniquely qualified to cover the story of the Century. She is destined for great things and the now omniscient Phil can see that. He knows she will go on to become a famous writer, a novelist like himself. And he knows something no one else knows. Her ticket out of Ottumwa will not be covering the Doomsday story for the Courier, it will be doing what he could not -- sharing the Ultimate Truth about Valis and what lies Beyond. The story will be told and it won’t be a message of doom and despair. It will be one of Hope – that there is no death. That our spirits do live on.
So, the question is not why Niki, but how could it be anyone else!
And, as if to seal the deal, Phil is making sure I will finish this book. Now, I am going to California next month to meet Paul Williams. Phil helped manifest that, I just know it. Paul, a very prolific writer and published author, was Phil’s friend in real life. Now Paul is going to go with me to visit some of Phil’s old haunts -- PKD land, as he calls it. It’s a dream come true. Just like Niki gets the chance of a lifetime to meet her esoteric idol John Gribbin for a date with destiny, I am going to meet Paul Williams. The entire book is like a prophecy – everything I wrote is coming to pass. What is real? Who knows? Ole Phil knows and he won’t rest until this book is written. The story truly MUST BE TOLD!!
So, why aren't you writing that story?
WHAT EXCUSE NOW?
Read on...
LOST IN WRITING
I’m writing. Words are forming sentences on the page, but they’re not good sentences.
They’re tired, weary, boring sentences. I have a Dylan tune in my head but Barry Manilow
comes out on the page. In other words, it sucks. I know what I like and what I don’t. I like Phil’s style. He’s abstract but readable. You can follow his thinking and ideas. He doesn’t get so far flung, like Pynchon. Let me give you an example. Here’s the open of "The Three Stigmata"; "His head unnaturally aching, Barney Mayerson woke up to find himself in an unfamiliar bedroom in an unfamiliar conapt building. Beside him, the covers up to her bare, smooth shoulders, an unfamiliar girl slept on, breathing lightly through her mouth, her hair a tumble of cottonlike white. I’ll bet I’m late for work, he said to himself, slid from the bed and tottered to a standing position with eyes shut, keeping himself from being sick. For all he knew he was several hours’ drive from his office; perhaps he wasn’t even in the United States. However, he was on Earth; the gravity that made him sway was familiar and normal." That was Phil. Now, here’s Pynchon’s opening to "The Crying of Lot 49; "One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas same home from a tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch I the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. Oedipa stood in the living room, stared at the greenish dead eye of the TV tube, spoke the name of God, tried to feel as drunk as possible. But this did not work. She thought of a hotel room in Mazatlan whose door had just been slammed, it seemed forever, waking up two hundred birds down in the lobby; a sunrise over the library slope at Cornell University that nobody out on it had seen because the slope faces west; a dry, disconsolate tune from the fourth movement of the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra; a whitewashed bust of Jay Gould that Pierce kept over the bed on a shelf so narrow for it she’d always had the hovering fear it would someday topple on them. Was that how he’d died, she wondered, among dreams crushed by the only ikon in the house? That only made her laugh, out loud and helpless: You’re so sick, Oedipa, she told herself, or the room, which knew." Excuse me, but that’s too weird. The first sentence is one big green underlined grammar problem, according to MS Word. That alone wouldn’t bother me, but it rambles so badly you can hardly decipher it. That bothers me. Now, in contrast, here’s the current opening of AKS; "The world was supposed to end March 10, 1982 – obviously it didn’t." Niki banged out the opening line on her new word processor and then sat there staring off into space. How could she ever do this story justice, she wondered. She caught a glimpse of an ink smudge on one of her papers and the pattern pulled her in. The concentric circles of her finger print formed a miniature labyrinth. "Ha!" she laughed to herself, once you’re completely lost in there can you ever find your way back out to tell about it? Are you ever the same? Where does reality begin and end, she wondered. There is really only one important choice in life, she decided - whether or not you believe in magic. It’s not really a conscious choice. Sometimes it chooses you. Or, maybe it’s how you perceive your experiences. Whether you only deal in the tangible or if you are open to the mystical and mysterious things that surround us but are often much harder to identify; subtle things, things that can easily go unnoticed in ordinary day-to-day living, unless you pay close attention." Well, what do you think? Is there hope? Does it interest you I’m still not happy with the tone, style or even the basic writing of AKS. So, Kay suggested that I try to explain what’s wrong with my manuscript. Actually, she said to describe what it would look like if it was the way I wanted it. But, I’ll start with what’s wrong with it and work toward attempting to describe what would work. It’s too contrived. It doesn’t feel authentic. There’s a missing spark of authenticity. When I write those essay-rants, like "In Search of VALIS -- the making of AKS", that’s pure, from-the-heart stuff -- like writing a letter. Even this is no problem. It’s just me describing how I feel. But fiction is so much harder. When I’m lying down reading, I become convinced I can do it. I think, I’ve got it now. But somewhere between getting on my feet and into the chair I lose my conviction and confidence. When I’m lying there reading, I believe I can capture the spirit and style of PKD – his easy-flowing, no-holes-barred style. He just let it rip and clearly it was his mind on paper. Paul Williams claims Phil had a unique ability to have the experience on paper. He isn’t writing about an experience, he’s having the experience right before your eyes. Sort of like this. I’m unloading, or maybe downloading, right now. And, you can probably feel an authentic quality. It’s honest communication. That is not happening in the book. There it’s all contrived and awkward. It feels strained. My test of good writing is to get lost in the story and not even realize you are reading. In the best fiction you feel like you’re watching. Watching something unfold right before your eyes. You’re not thinking of point of view, if the dialogue is good or if there’s too much narrative. In good writing you don’t notice those things. Just like you don’t notice camera angles or technique while watching a good movie. You’re just absorbed in what’s happening. That’s what must happen in AKS. It can’t just be OK. It’s got to have punch or as Lobrutto said, be lively. I want someone to say WOW after reading the first chapter. Until then, it’s not ready. So, what would it look like if it worked. Well, Niki thinks, it would sound just like this. I would just explain what I’m thinking and feeling as I have these weird experiences. What it feels like to hear someone talking in your head and know that it isn’t your own thoughts. It’s like some type of invasion. As if I’ve intercepted someone else’s thoughts and ideas. But how? Who’s thoughts? So, in other words, I might have to try some multiple viewpoints. I’m thinking that it should bounce back and forth between her viewpoint and third person narrative. In fact, I’ve always believed there should also be sections where we experience Phil’s thoughts from the other side. I started that with his immediate experience of death in the hospital, how he sees his body lying there and realizes that is no longer him. So, how far-fetched is it to carry out that theme? For us to peer into Phil’s half-life mind as he first realizes he is now omniscient.
This is great -- absolutely fucking great! After all those years of struggling with multiple viewpoints, the occasional faux pas of authorial intrusion and the ghastly violation of limited omniscience, now I have the answer. It always bothered me. Stories told by some all-knowing, all-pervasive, yet unknown story-teller. Who was this person spinning the yarn? Only God could have such power of being omnipotent and omniscient, right? Wrong. Apparently dead authors are also granted this privilege. We can swoop down and see into people’s minds, tell you what they are thinking and feeling. At least I can. I guess I should tell you who I am, or was. I am the disembodied spirit of Philip K. Dick, a once obscure science fiction writer. A crap artist. A creator of pulp fiction, the real stuff from the 1950’s. I used to crank out a manuscript so fast it would make your head spin. I had to if I wanted to eat. It’s how I made my living. Oh, I’m not so obscure now that I’ve been discovered. Yeah, a whole new generation of geeks and nerds have found my stuff. Rich geeks who call themselves sci-fi "affectionados." They pay big bucks for copies of my old cheesy novels. Can you believe it? I’m alive again on the World Wide Web of confusion. Multi-million dollar movies are being made from my short stories! Great -- now that I’m dead and can’t benefit from the royalties. It goes to my ex wives – all five of them. But, enough of that. This isn’t about what I did, it’s about what didn’t get done. What I left behind when I stroked out prematurely. I was only 53 and I simply wasn’t done. My work was not finished. I spent my entire life searching for answers to the hard questions – what is real? What is human? Now I’m dead and have the answers but no way to tell the story. Well, that’s not exactly true. I’ve found a way. Now I am the friggin’ Omniscient Voice -- the hard part is finding someone to listen. And, knowing everything like I do, I also know it won’t be easy. People just don’t buy that a dead guy is talking to them. Oh sure, they think they would. But when it happens? No way. They question their sanity, just like I did when Pike started manifesting to me. And, he did, you know. I was sure I’d gone completely off the deep end. I even went up to Canada and checked myself into a looney bin. But I found out what crazy really is in there. Now those people were nuts. I was perfectly sane and finally I have proof. Pike really was trying to tell me how and why he died. Now I know what happened the night of the explosion. I know who stole my manuscript and why. That’s the story. Now who the hell is going to listen to me? Oh, yeah, and one last thing. I know what you’re thinking, it’s one of the benefits of being Omniscient. You’re wondering why I would pick an unknown like Niki Perceval to tell my story. With all my writer friends and publishing contacts, why would I pick some young, unknown chick who’s never written anything but newspaper copy and doesn’t even have dark hair? Well, remember I’ve got the advantage now. I can see into everyone’s heart and soul, know their deepest secrets and darkest fears. I know who will listen and who won’t. I also know the outcome. She is going to become famous – but not over some Doomsday article. You see, I know a Kindred Spirit when I see one! Someone described Valis as "A theological detective story, in which God is both a missing person and the perpetrator of the ultimate crime." In AKS it's Phil that is both the omniscient story teller and the perpetrator of Niki's dilemma. She's
a young newspaper reporter in Iowa, who is disappointed, disillusioned and in total despair. She had pinned her hopes on winning a Pulitzer for an event that would have killed her if it had come to pass. If Gribbin had been right about the "Jupiter Effect" and the gravitational pull of the planetary alignment had created massive earthquakes, tidal waves, and volcanoes, then she wouldn't win an award and become famous. She’d be dead. Everyone would be dead and there would have been
no one to tell the story. But, of course, the world didn’t end and Niki does have a story to tell, and so do I --
one of A Kindred Spirit.
Day by day Phil was gaining in popularity and I was losing ground. Steven Speilberg was planning to make a movie of one of Philip K Dick's short stories. I felt tremendous pressure to get my book finished. So much time was passing that all my research and familiarity with Phil's story was fading. I was still writing in the journal -- my Morning Pages -- a few short stories and poems and an occasional dissertation like these. I just wasn’t working on the book. I changed jobs, changed computers, bought and sold lots of shares of stock (a lucrative but major distraction to my writing) but hadn’t made any real progress on the novel.
I dreaded the approach of September 9, 1999 (9-9-99) with the big red circle on my calendar. It marked three years of work on the still unfinished novel. ----------
Snip...
More Thoughts on Writing a NovelWOW... I wrote that on May 14, 2000. I can do MORE of that! Good stuff, don't you think?I am blatantly stealing the following material from Annie Dillard because it so perfectly sums up the way I feel as I try to write AKS. First, her description of one's relationship to the work;
"I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, the way you would with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter the room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold it and hope it will get better. This tender relationship can change in a twinkling. If you skip a visit or two, it can turn on you. A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It can revert to a wild state overnight. It's barely domesticated to begin with and as it grows it becomes even harder to control. A lion in the study; a wild mustang that can't be caught or tamed. So, if you skip a day, you are quite rightly afraid to open the door to its room."
She's right, you have no idea what you'll find in there. One day you love this thing and believe in it. The next, you hate it and can't bear to go near it. Now, she describes the Vision. I capitalized this, she did not; "You shape a vision of what the projected work will be. The Vision is a marvelous thing: it is the work's intellectual structure and aesthetic surface. It is a chip of mind, a pleasing intellectual object. It is a vision of the work, not of the world. It is a glowing thing, a blurred thing of beauty. It's structure is at once luminous and translucent; you can see the world through it. After you receive the initial charge of this imaginary object, you add to it at once several aspects, and incubate it most gingerly as it grows into itself.Many aspects of the work are still uncertain, of course; you know that. You know that if you proceed you will change things and learn things, that the form will grow under your hands and develop new and richer lights. But that change will not alter it. You know that, and you are right.
But you are wrong if you think that in the actual writing you are filling in the Vision. You cannot fill in the Vision. You can't even bring it to light. You are wrong if you think that you can in any way take the Vision and tame it on the page. The page is jealous and tyrannical; the page is made of time and matter; the page always wins. The Vision is not so much destroyed, exactly, as it is forgotten by the time you have finished."
(Forgotten - it gives me shudders!) She goes on to say "It is replaced by this changeling, this bastard, this opaque lightless chunky ruinous work." And she claims this is how it happens;
"The vision is a set of mental relationships, a coherent series of formal possibilities. In the actual rooms of time, however, it is a page or two of legal paper filled with words and questions; it is a terrible diagram, a few names in the margins, an ambiguous doodle, a corner folded down in a library book. These are memos from the thinking brain to witless hope.
Nevertheless, ignoring the provisional and pathetic nature of these scraps and bearing the vision itself in mind - having it before your sights like the very Grail - you begin to scratch out the first faint marks on the page. You begin the work proper. Now you've done it. Now the thing is not longer a vision: it is paper.
Words lead to other words and down the garden path. You adjust the words. Passage follows passage, more sentences, more everything on drearily down. Time and materials hound the work; the vision recedes even further into the dim realms. In this manner you continue until hopefully you actually finish it. But, by now you've probably been forced to toss the most essential part of the vision. For before your very eyes, and stealing your heart, is this fighting and frail finished "thing" - entirely opaque. You see nothing through it. It is only itself, a series of familiar passages. It's relationship to the Vision that impelled it is the relationship between any energy and any work, anything unchanging to anything temporal.
The work is not the Vision itself, certainly. It is not the vision filled in. It is not the vision reproduced in time, were that even possible. It is, rather, a simulacrum - a replacement."
Simulacrum is a Phil word. I wasn't aware it was commonly used, but how accurate. The writing is certainly not the Vision. So, I come back again to the advice of a friend, how would it be if it was the way I envisioned it? Can I explain it?
It would be amusing, but poignant; it would be unusual but familiar. Not so far out as some of the avant-garde stuff that makes me crazy to read, but not trite or simplistic either. It would hold your attention and make you want to continue. You could relate to it and think to yourself, I've felt this way before.
That's how I felt reading Valis. When I first read that book in September of 1996 I was blown away because I had never read anything before that I could so totally relate to. It's scary, in a way, since so many people think Phil was crazy when he wrote it. I've since read some of his earlier work that others believe was brilliant, but I don't find it as incredible as Valis. Maybe because incredible is exactly the right word. Valis is incredible - too implausible to be believed; astonishing. But, that's what grabbed me. Phil was telling it in such a way that you had to believe that these things had occurred or that he perceived the events. Unlike his science fiction stories which are truly implausible to me, set in the future or on other planets, Valis is dealing with events occurring "now" on this planet. It's been called a theological detective story. I've referred to AKS as a metaphysical mystery. Both are dealing with the "in-breaking" of alternative realities into this dimension - what we know as our Ordinary State of Consciousness (OSC).
In Niki's case, she is no stranger to unusual phenomena. She grew up with Masonic rituals, Pentecostal glossolia (speaking in tongues), seances and Ouija board contact with "the Other Side." She had direct occult experiences after her parents died. So, the stage is set for Contact. But, who is it and what is the purpose of the incredible events that begin on the Spring Equinox in 1982? It's a wild ride through every conceivable type of metaphysical intrigue - ESP, spirit contact, transmigration, inner locutions, inter-dimensional interludes, Shamanic journeying, Ekankarian soul travel, even alien communication. In the end, though, it's a dead science fiction writer who wasn't done. He had one final, amazing tale to tell and Niki is the amanuensis -- the scribe.
Now, if you think that's odd, a young man was contacted in 1884 by an entity known as Phylos and asked to "follow him." The result is a book called "Dweller on Two Planets." He claims the manuscript was fully prepared by Phylos and simply dictated to him. I believe this, because, you see, in 1991 I had the same experience. A booklet was dictated to me over the course of a single weekend. I printed that little guide book called, "Beyond the GodForce" with only minor editing. I certainly didn't write it.
Unfortunately, Phil is not dictating my book. A Kindred Spirit will have to be my own words. The concept, while inspired, is mine and I am left to do the hard work of creating this novel. And, since I've come this far in explaining what I am trying to accomplish, I might as well admit one other startling revelation. Contrary to my statement about it being a dead sci-fi author making Contact, the truth is it's weirder than that. I believe that a transmigration occurred to Philip K Dick in 1974 and the soul of Bishop Jim Pike did in fact merge with him. I believe that he tried to deal with it in his thinly veiled account of "The Transmigration of Timothy Archer," the last book Phil wrote before he died. I also believe he had created an outline of a non-fiction book about this, which was stolen in the 1971 break-in at Phil's San Raphael home. The break-in fueled his paranoia and he put the project aside til the very end when he chose to deal with it fictionally, just as I want to deal with it in AKS.
At least I've documented this.
Paul W disagrees to the extent that he does not believe Phil was completely convinced that the "over-taking" of his spirit was in fact Bishop Pike. That is because in personal conversations with Paul he never made this absolute conclusion. And of course he would not. No one would state such a thing with absolute certainty, because no one is ever that sure. He speculated about it - that's documented in interviews and in his Exegesis. But, my own insights lead me to this conclusion. I absolutely believe Phil has contacted me, and at times it's an overlay of both Phil and James Pike. He has come to me in dreams and I truly have served as an amanuensis for this merged entity that is James-Philip. I have the transcripts and I have discussed it with friends, but have not stated this emphatically to Paul or anyone else, for that matter. So, you see, no one ever has the complete picture, because the contactee never knows for sure what is happening and can only speculate about such events. So, what does AKS look like? What is the Vision? It's speculation about an incredible series of events that are based on actual occurrences. Just as Stephen Hawking writes about the Big Bang, tracing back over the events to get to the Source. So, must I with AKS. My experience with Phil was also a Big Bang. The entire concept of the book was revealed in one instant. Now, the hard part is recreating all that in some kind of progression that a reader can follow.
Guess What... Paul Williams came through! He called me late this afternoon. I'm going --
really going to California and HE is going to be my personal, private tour guide of several of
the places Phil lived!!!
We're even going to Fullerton Library where Phil's papers are kept. Paul, in his capacity as
Philip K Dick's literary executor, assisted with the creation of the official PKD library.
Some things still need to be finalized, but he wanted to follow up and let me know that he
is definitely planning on my visit. Wow!!! Let's go over the list.
Thought for the day...
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, here's Paul and I on Moonlight Beach in Encinitas, California!!!
(never did post that pic, oh well)
March 21, 2000
You'll never guess what happened today :)
What? You're still here?
Are you crazy???
-- or just morbidly curious!!
That's right, writers LOVE this kind of blathering. Let's face, everyone does!
You're reading it, aren't you???
Wow! I mean... just, WOW!!! I was ready to wash my hands of the damn book when Phil came to me in a dream...AGAIN!!! Yes, once again something too bizarre to ignore. (enter the dream about Liz and I at the community center here)
Inspiration!
I've just done a major update to the PROLOGUE.
I am completely DISGUSTED with myself!!! I can't believe I'm making NO progress on this )&*&!*!(*&!!! novel. (and that's all I have to say.)
THE RED LETTER DAY!
Jal,
Well, it's been FOUR long years and the book is still not done. There are only
two possibilities left;
1. It will never happen.
2. I'll go insane and won't know or care.
jami
I wrote a poem today. It's about HOPE . What else is there??? "Angels & Demons"
By creating this on-line journal and putting my intention out here for all the world to see, I am putting myself on the line -- forcing the issue. What is stopping me? I know enough about the process to write a book on that. I know what I SHOULD do -- write every day, even if I don't feel inspired. Sometimes when you least expect it, something really good manifests. (boy, isn't that true of life in general!) And, through all this writing I've gained a lot of insight as to why I'm not working on the novel.
So, I promise that I'll try to keep this journal as current as possible, and more importantly I WILL continue working on the book. How can I drop it after investing all this sweat equity into it? If you have any inspirational ideas (or any comment) please send it my way. Just click to Comment. Maybe I'll figure out how to post them!
Remember, this is just one woman's humble attempt to record the agony and ecstasy of
attempting to write a novel. Once again to write to me just click above or on my name below.
THANKS FOR SPENDING TIME HERE!!!!
Take me back to Z'Metaverse now (please!)