(Not quite) New Christmas Music: Joseph Was a Good Man

Here is a (not quite) new Christmas song for you to enjoy. "Not quite" new because 1) I used a melody by Henry Richard McFadyn and 2) I wrote these words one year and one day ago...

I am the Tachyon Bombardment

This is my confession: I am the Tachyon Bombardment. I was born in 1975 – though that particular detail seems irrelevant to this story. Maybe this isn’t a true story, but it is a remembrance of time irreal. Or, to put it another way, maybe this is a true story, but only as a remembrance of time irreal.

I did it. It was me. I stole Philip K. Dick’s papers and blew up his file cabinet. I did it because Horselover Fat – who was PKD – told me I should. I did it yesterday, November 17, 2017. I stepped out the living room of my house in Newton, Iowa and into the study of his home in San Rafael, California in 1971, but don’t call it time travel.

“You’ll need these,” Fat said, “to open the time slippage.” He said to me this about a month ago, not long after he started showing up at my place.

“What are they?” The manila envelope of pills that he handed me seemed incredibly dubious.“I don’t take drugs.”

“They’re not drugs; they’re vitamins. Simple, water soluble mega-vitamins to improve the neural connections between the right and left hemispheres of your brain. Only when the two hemispheres of the mind are communicating perfectly is it possible to see the opening through the time slippage.”

Call it Time Travel by way of water soluble vitamins.

In addition to his own vitamin cocktail, Fat gave me recipes he copied from Psychiatry Today for homemade antidepressants and antipsychotics. Call it DIY Haldol. Call it 20 minute Lithium. He also gave me instructions for building a simple explosive device with items I could pick up at Wal-Mart. “I normally abhor violence, but the explosion will be small, and he [meaning PKD] won’t be home.”

Fat showed up, as I said, about a month ago. He was sitting on the chair on the front stoop of my house. “Hey, JC,” he said as if he knew me.

“Hey, Fat,” I said as if I knew him. “Do you want to come in for a beer?” And he said yes, but that he’d only recently started drinking beer. Until recently he’d only drunk wine. I told him that that was okay as I’d also only recently started drinking beer.

“What else can you do when the antichrist is returned?” he said.

There are many antichrists, of course. John’s first epistle tells us there are many. They are false prophets and completely without love. They lie. The liar lies. Richard Milhous Nixon is president again. The empire never died. The Roman Empire never dies. It comes to power again and again through legal means. Everything it does is legal.

“Why do you want to do this?” I asked him.

“I can’t remember,” he said. “It’s all gone. I knew it once. We all did. We knew the Truth – because the Universe is permeated by Truth. And Justice and Freedom. But the echthroi have trapped us in the chains of dokos. Maya. Illusion. It’s the Black Iron Prison of political tyranny and spiritual, moral, degeneracy. I need to remember what is forgotten. The forms are there, the remembrance of forms. I see them in my dreams. The pure core of reality. That’s how I can escape, how we can escape the illusions of this irreality, JC. We’ve forgotten all the important things. In the trauma of our births, we forget. We are made to forget. We are wounded by birth and bleed to death.”

So I started taking the vitamins Fat gave me. The DIY antipsychotics and antidepressants, however, I didn’t try. We went together to Wal-Mart for the items he said I’d need for the explosive device. “This place is scary,” he said.

“Tell me about it.”

“The echthroi are strong here.”

“Tell me about them, the echthroi.”

“They are the enemies, the spiritual forces of darkness. The Apostle Paul wrote of them. Authorities. Rulers. World Powers. They are organisms of spirit and plasma, evil intelligences that exist everywhere in the universe, invisibly. Though, as the connections between the hemispheres of your brain improve you’ll begin to see them. Usually they are somnolent. It doesn’t require much effort on their part to keep the world in chains. Most people are easily enslaved, willing victims. And so the echthroi sleep. Go through the time slippage as silently as you can to avoid awakening them.”

Gradually my eyes were opened, the scales fell away and I saw, as Fat said I would, the underlying reality. And soon I saw the outline of the opening through the time slippage. It radiated a pink light that felt warm, but not at all comforting. It felt precarious, like standing at the edge of a steep cliff, and dangerous like a surprised rattlesnake. Dangerous, but not malevolent.

“Are you ready for this?” he asked me.

“I’m not ready for this.” I said at the exact same moment.

“You’re ready,” he said. And I stepped through. It was that simple. One moment I was in Iowa in the year 2017, the next I was in California four years before I would be born. It had to be done this way; Dick had put multiple locks on the doors and had nailed the windows shut. So I had to enter from the inside. Dick had also bought a gun to protect himself from the forces that were threatening him. Fat neglected to mention this fact to me.

The police who investigated accused Dick of ransacking his own home and destroying his file cabinet for the insurance money, but Dick didn’t have insurance. The police did nothing to follow up. Soon after this PKD fled to Vancouver, Canada where he underwent inpatient drug rehabilitation treatment.  

It was me; I stole PKD’s files. I burgled his home, stole his papers and his checkbook. I blew up his fireproof file cabinet. I am the Tachyon Bombardment. The world is destroyed. They world is remade. I am not lachrymose; I lack remorse. This is my confession.

Horselover Fat hasn’t shown up today.  I don’t think he’ll be coming around anymore. 

Smoke and Wax

His regular 5 AM alarm woke him and he sensed it immediately. No fog of sleepiness, no lingering dreaminess, he just knew it - fully and completely. The world was strange, stranger than normal.

He waved on the bedside lamp and dressed quickly, quietly in the clothes he’d laid out the night before, the clothes he’d laid out when the the world still seemed sane. This was the routine of his mornings. In the kitchen, coffee was already brewing and english muffins were toasted by automated appliances. In the bathroom, an epilatory laser mounted on the mirror trimmed away his facial hair with its regular precision.

“I am smoke,” he said into the mirror as he rubbed his chin and stared at his reflection. “I am smoke and wax. I melt and drip and dissipate. I disappear.”

The Dew of November

The Scent of Green Peppers

The scent of green peppers is not so unpleasant, I suppose. It’s fresh. It’s clean, and it reminds me of my childhood summers when we’d visit my bearded, burly uncle Arthur, who lived in a trailer near the river. But here’s the quibble: who decides these things?

I mean, why did they (whoever “they” may be) decide that urinal cakes should have the fresh, clean, burly-bearded smell of uncle Arthur’s trailer?

Or perhaps the question should be: why is green pepper any stranger a scent for urinal cakes than say, cherry, or pina colada?

What other flavors (flavors? Is that really the right sensory description for urinal cakes? There’s no way I’m going to be tasting one...) were considered? Root beer? Coffee? Asparagus? (That one’s too easy, perhaps.) Do our consumer-commercialized overlords understand what it means to be human? Do they (whoever “they” are) think these things will appeal to our senses? That they will be attractive or enticing to us?

Nevermind. This is thixotropic dreaming; give me a vigorous shake and these distrait ideas will melt away.

Mikey Climbs

Mikey climbs, but not often...

This Was Prelude, but not the Beginning

Ward Samuel Washington had already worked a full day at Raymond Manufacturing International, where, as General Manager, he was responsible for the thousand and one daily details arising from employee, supplier, production, and record keeping issues, but he took the time to remove his grey sport coat, loosen his tie, and roll up his sleeves. He knelt down and scooped up a handful of dirt from the ground and rubbed it into his uncalloused palms.

“Give me the bat,” he said as he stood. “It’s my turn to take a swing. I want to break that bastard’s head.”

The moment had come. This was prelude, but not the beginning.

There would be no more apocalyptic visions; the time for dreams was over. Now it was time for deeds, for action, for full throttled movement towards the bloody climax of human history.

He had already put in a full nine hours and he was tired, ready to go home. He knew that his wife would have dinner waiting for him and that after dinner his children would ask him for help with their homework  - but for this he would delay his drive home. This was important.

“Give me the bat,” he said. “I want to break this bastard’s head.”

But don’t imagine that this act of brutality was a world changing event. Neither was it a life changing event for Ward S. Washington. This street-side assault, this battery which left his starched white shirt spattered with blood and flecks of bone changed nothing. He and the others who cheered him on, and who took their own swings with the bat, remained exactly was they were.

This was prelude, but not the beginning.

November Morning