The Philip K. Dick Name Game

Peter Stenshoel.

Sometimes I like to play the name game. Here's how I do it. Take a name. Any name... any Harry, Tom, or Dick, say, Phil Dick, Philip Dick. Philip de Jesus, one of 26 Japanese and European Christian martyrs crucified in February, 1597, in Nagasaki. It was this missionary's ghostly image which formed from reflections from my Egyptian god pendant as I stood inside the museum on the spot of his crucifixion. Philip de Jesus is one jump to Jesus Garcia, another famous martyr, the Casey Jones of Mexico, who drove a burning freight train loaded with explosives out of the crowded town of Nacorazi, Mexico, on November 7, 1907. From Jesus Garcia to Jerry Garcia, whom people claim can project sounds into people's heads before he makes them, whose lyricist Robert Hunter for the Grateful Dead appeared before me as the embodiment of all love, a kind of Sophia and Apollo and Christ wrapped into one, as I floated down behind Phil Lesh, a Phil again, and from Philip Dick's Christ fish to whale Moby Dick you get Philip Whalen, beat poet friend of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg in the Berkeley days, Berkeley being the home of Philip K. Dick for many years.

Or you can take the Firesign Theater's Philip Austin, and Philip Proctor, or UFO-hater Philip Klass, or Allen Ginsberg collaborator Philip Glass, bringing up J.D. Salinger's Ned Glass, whose dark end message was written on a looking glass, and the future, as St. Paul wrote, is seen through a glass darkly, or, as Philip K. Dick would paraphrase, through a scanner darkly.

Or maybe, you can just take the friends of my parents, Kay and Dick Hofflund, or as we called them Dick and Kay, who brought a wide-tied ambience to our pre-1960s home, and hair oiled and shades of lipstick my mother would never use.

Names. Is there any other game so fun to play?