Horselover Fat 1

Dear Philip K. Dick,

Your work is disjointed, so much so that I don't know what to say to you now that your mind has, most likely, been healed. Maybe you won't understand. I'll try to explain.

Your mind was open, if nothing else. It was so open at times, it troubled you. It gave you trouble. People - all sorts of people - acknowledge the relationship between madness and brilliance. It is only one small step most often. And so there were times your very intelligence drove you mad. At times, you were in ancient Rome, while you were elsewhere, maybe watching television, probably watching television, bring another pot to boil.

It isn't without sadness that one reads your books; your major works are laden with multiple languages (Latin, German, French, and Spanish etc), conspiracy theories spanning thousands of years, Gnostic research, religious fervor, madness, and existential awe. And, yet, so taken with lofty ideas, your writing is clear and succinct. There was skill in your net casting, dragging in everything and anything - almost desperately, as you tried to find something that might explain anything, anything at all; everything was unreal.

Your writing was bizarre and fitful but beautiful and convincing. In Ubik, a spray-on reality shifter was beside a Latin conspiracy regarding the birth of Christ. Or, Valis: truths in truths in truths. And The Transmigration of Timothy Archer begs for what it means to even be alive.

Some people are unaware a science fiction author existed such as you. However, you were never sure where to point your fervent beliefs. That is clear.

You had visions - visions which included ancient Roman landscapes and obscure religious symbols; that seemed to tell you that this world was not reality. Diagrams of light and geometry came into focus. In a dream, you search for that magazine. You push aside issue after issue. You say to yourself, The empire never ended. Over and over, you say the same thing. You are a Roman guard, a slate-tongued whiner.

More than anything else, you wanted to become a mainstream author over one devoted to science fiction². You struggled all your life with this, giving up and taking back. You constantly fought against your place in the science fiction world, wrote books split in two: the crack artist and the genius. You never knew which to believe. And your own mind split in two. But, unlike others who may have suffered, you were able to dissect and stand apart from your madness³. And now I read your books when I can't bear the thought of reading Thomas Mann or any of your idols. I'm so sorry.

Take care of yourself,

---

¹ Horselover Fat is one of many pen names Dick used. Horselover is derived from Philip, which, in Greek, appears as Phil-Hippos commonly, meaning horse lover. And dick is German for fat. Horselover Fat is the eponymous narrator of Valis. Other pen names included Jack Dowland and Richard Philips.
² Dick composed several non-science fiction books in the beginning of his career. They were quickly rejected. Confessions of a Crack Artist was the only to be published in his lifetime.
³ Dick suspected he was schizophrenic.

Jung at Heart

Dear Carl Jung,

I have had this awful feeling lately¹. But I have also had this undeniably good feeling². And that is about right.

Your idea of life: that one hand can be bludgeoning the dog while the other caresses it - as one is (outwardly) supposed to do³. You were accepting of this gap between what was meant to be done (according to society, morals, religious proclivity etc.) and what might be the physical urge, which includes any number of things: mental, emotional, spiritual. Life was cleaved; on one side, there was yourself and, on the other, yourself again. When you look into a steamed mirror, one is looking in at the other - though both perhaps are looking out. You couldn't say. There were two of us.

You were a dualist. I imagine you hated yourself for saying so, that you wished to keep it a secret but knew you could not - it was wrong (the moral right to say so) and, once you realized you knew, someone else, somewhere in the world, realized it too. A dirty trick really.

You, sitting in your lush-green garden behind your house, your hands, Carl Jung, folded in your lap and your glasses resting beside you on the arm of a wooden chair a distant relation made for you. From there, you cursed yourself many times. A young woman approaches you by pushing aside a fan of palm leaves with the back of her hand, she smiles at you, pouts in an incredible way not out of sadness or distress but love for you, though you have no idea what her name is or where she came from. She sits down in the matching chair beside yours; your relative made several chairs for you. Then you ask her who she is, though every part of you tells you not to ask because then you'll ruin it and you want nothing else but to not ruin it, whatever it is. You curse yourself again, your head cast back against the chair top.

You never admitted death was an end. In fact, you believed that it was not an end⁴. You were criticized for secular beliefs, your combination of scientific facts and religious facts. You said, "Because, you know, there are these peculiar faculties of the psyche that [aren't] entirely confined to space and time. You can have dreams or visions of the future... Only ignorants deny these facts." And this is what amazes me.

I imagine you sitting in the dark, contemplating the very depths of yourself, of your friends, of your neighbors and enemies, and you had time still to contemplate what you still didn't know. This, in general, has always amazed me - and not only about yourself: the human need to see beyond and beyond that. This is not about death but what is very present in the day-to-day. How does one address himself last in all the things in the world? You took the logical path, the internal struggle of identity, and exploded it into a personal disaster - as one might call death - but simultaneously redefined it to be the complete and eternal opposite: birth. Well, done.

I wonder sometimes how deeply some personal ponds run. I mean by this, specifically, that I wonder how often co-workers contemplate themselves, their lives, the people they love, and what that means⁵. Sometimes I become overly concerned with this. What if they are not considering themselves at all?

You believed that the mind of men is naturally religious. You claimed art, philosophy, religion, music - everything - could be linked to man's well-being. I listen to people speaking, to music in other offices, and imagine these words and sounds penetrating the skin and bumping up against some flimsy, ghost asleep inside. How could I not laugh?

Take care of yourself,

---

¹ I will be fired at any moment, I will be framed for a brutal crime I wouldn't dare commit, I will fall from a considerable height onto the top of my head and not die, I will comically slip in front of everyone, I will be caught lying about something not worth lying over, I will overhear someone say something awful I would feel guilty not telling someone else etc.
² I will be informed by telegram of anything, I will hear of a disaster well before it happens so that I might easily stop it from happening, I will be invited to appear on live television and have a prior engagement, I will wake up one morning with incredible agility and athleticism etc.
³ Jung advocated the dualism of almost every aspect in life - every action was both good and bad, in a way.
⁴ Jung proposed that death was just as important psychologically to a person as his own birth. Therefore proposing that death was not an end of consciousness but a beginning of a new sort. In this matter, one might view life as preparation for this end or beginning. So, how should one prepare oneself for a birth so great, it requires years of practice? I ask this while looking across the hall to a man asleep at his desk, one hand grasping loosely a pen, which is aimed over a half-completed crossword puzzle.
⁵ Through the cubicle halls, I can often overhear any number of shameless phonecalls. How am I supposed to feel when I hear a young man, not much older than myself, scolding his girlfriend for not doing the laundry or the woman complaining to the government for alimony and child support unpaid or the general yelling that is done?

Seen Together on the Weekends

Dear Eva Braun,

I took a book about your life out of the library so I could try to understand you. I had always held that you were misunderstood. I took on loan two other books that I'd already read because the young librarian seems to be interested in what I read, though more so because I often wonder if there is a flagging system in use - one that would mark me as potentially deranged, politically noxious, a dilettante, or Catholic etc. These additional books, which I immediately returned through the drop-box outside - to the confusion of those watching my account - were to guise my historical interest. Reading about American prohibition informs global teetotalers via flashing red lights on their desks, I know.

You were - I learned - a free woman, only trapped by your own doing, your own ends, your own humble ambitions, one of which was your own death, in fact¹. There isn't a more humble, attainable ambition. But it couldn't come fast enough for you, not at times.

You were thirty-three when you killed yourself in his bunker. And, in those thirty-three years, that was not the first time that you wanted to end your life but the first you succeeded. I wonder what it was like to knowingly enter that bunker, aware of what was coming for you, what you, by association, justly deserved, and be happy about that, smiling your winning smile because you had, in the end, gotten exactly what you wanted and won. That is true despair, one that hides behind a content, photogenic grin.

I learned your parents had comedic name: Fritz and Franny², like a stand-up duo, one tall and sickly thin while the other is short, fat, stupid and well-fed. It surprises me how much of your life can be considered comedy though it was often so tragic - but the truest form of comedy is often tragic, true, and absurd. I imagine the first meeting between you and him, the awkward silences that were never filled, the tea shared in an office of all places, and the strained distance of letters³ - especially in such a time when the world seemed so small, so insignificant that people could all be gathered, cornered, and taken. And then that stiff, cartoon-like walk, and you flowing beside it like a fun-house mirror to his gait.

I believe you when I imagine you sobbing it into your bedclothes and saying no one would understand you even if you had lived and tried to explain - for whatever that would be worth. You had taken a liking to death - in so many ways - even early in life, when you tried to shoot yourself in the neck⁴ and, later, when you had trouble sleeping⁵. Neither of those worked so you attached yourself to death in your own life in a way, attached yourself as inextricably as you could, killing yourself in that way too. You were so dedicated to death and dedicated to death himself that you followed him underground, burying yourself as it were, walking headlong into your own grave. And I imagine again that smile.

You, Eva, walking through the forest, walking a large dog that strains on the leash, a bit of makeup on your face - though he thought that wrong - and a lit cigarette wedged between the first and second of your fingers - though he disapproved of that too; you didn't care. And by the beach, you take off all your things and lay there, the sun beating down on you - this was the way you liked it. The dog breaking the slow, lapping waves of some hidden lake, yapping as they came to meet the shore. The sunlight attaching itself to you. And no one knew.

I know someone who is talented at solving the Rubik's Cube. In seconds, he can rearrange the cube so that similar colors are all sequestered to one side. But he approaches everything in life with the same concept he uses to solve the problem. He memorizes the possibilities, the combination, the equation to exactly undo what a mess the thing has become. Everything must fit into a place and be surrounded by like things, but I don't believe that's right. You must be surrounded by everything, like or not. You were just on the wrong side, surrounded. You were a laughing photographer, and they were not.

Take care of yourself,

---

¹ Eva Braun attempted to kill herself on numerous occasions, both before and after she met him. Her final and most successful attempt was begun that very moment.
² Freidrich "Fritz" Braun and Franziska "Franny" Kronberger.
³ Their relationship began innocently enough in her place of business: a photography shop. Together with the shop owner, Eva Braun would dine with him.
⁴ At the age of twenty, in 1932, Eva Braun attempted to kill herself in this manner.
⁵ Three years later, she tried again, this time with sleeping pills.