PKD

[version]

One thing that really struck me back when I went on a big PKD reading binge in my teens was how vitriolic his dislike of (some) women was. He's a bit like D. H. Lawrence in that: some of his most psychically villainous characters are women who are portrayed as total energy vampires, poisonous neurotics, a menace to the well-being of all around them. It's something other than standard or straightforward misogyny (although I think it is misogynistic), because it meshes in a particular way with the paranoiac worldview. That which was supposed to be a source of comfort and nurture in the world has become its opposite, an intensely localised symptom of the wrongness of reality in general.

That went beyond the page, iirc. I've heard he was a wife beater.

[version]

And it doesn't take much to throw that off kilter and leave us stranded and afraid in a very different, oppressive, threatening universe. One that, as Mark says, is cheap, flimsy. Leering carnival faces from an Ensor painting.

A night or two on speed or coke and hurl me into those places sometimes for months so I'm not surprised Dick lived there full time.

I feel like that at least half the time and I stopped doing drugs years ago. Any public space can feel like being behind enemy lines.

[other_life]

No
A self crystallises around
No
A self is a discipline
A refusing

אַיִן: Name of the Highest Level, Above Height and Above Level. The pregnant emptiness, above even the very negation of limits. "We forget that the spaces between people and things are empty."

וְאָדָם אַיִן לַעֲבֹד אֶת-הָאֲדָמָה (Genesis 2:5)
"W'Adam Ayin" - "And the Earthling is Nothing..."

וַיִּפֶן כֹּה וָכֹה וַיַּרְא כִּי אֵין אִישׁ וַיַּךְ אֶת-הַמִּצְרִי וַיִּטְמְנֵהוּ בַּחוֹל (Exodus 2:12)
"Wa'yar'e ki Ayin 'Ish" - "and he sees that Not is the Mortal..."

וְאִם-אֵין לָאִישׁ גֹּאֵל (Numbers 5:8)
"W'im-'Ein la'Ish Go'el" - and if Not to the Mortal is there a Redeemer..."

no alien gods, no mysteries. show and prove that it is you.