Transflamoozled

Down in the groove © Rick Griffin Estate

Lots of transformation in the air by the looks of things. We have one Barack Obama, who has aspired to be our first transformational president since Ronald Reagan. I am not exactly sure about this whole transformation business but it sounds very, very important. And I think we all know by now that he will always be the smartest man in the room.

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If you get a chance, get a copy of this month's Rolling Stone. I stopped reading it years ago, since I fail to recognize eighty per cent of the musicians they now write about, but I read the issue at the Escondido Library yesterday. A great article on one of the other smartest people in the room, Bob Dylan, by Mikal Gilmore. Dylan talks a lot about being transfigured. But only a select group of people even know what that means and if you have to ask, you evidently aren't, so don't even bother. Something about him switching places with the other Bob Zimmerman, the young biker who once took a rival's eye out with a chain and then was killed in a freak accident he foresaw in 1961. He may have been bodysnatched by this doppelganger, I'm not really sure.

I gather that it is a spiritual thing, wherein he joins the ranks of the pantheon of saints or something like that.  Dylan has given the world so much, a veritable Ghandi in our midst, but at times he sounds like a poopie old man who needs to change his depends. Needs to lighten up and not be so fucking serious all the time. Last guy you would want to invite to a party with his ever grumpy punim.

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Calvin of course, started the whole transformation wave with his transmogrifier.

I checked out a copy of a new book on one of my favorite writers, Philip Dick, titled The Exegisis of Philip K. Dick.  This book explores Dick's own end of life tranfiguration based on a vision he had in february and march of 1974. After receiving a dose of sodium pentathol at the dentist's office, Dick slips into a fugue state he calls anamnesis and eventually visits a red and gold plasma entity that he names Ubik.

Dick spends the balance of his life sorting out this Ezekielian revelation, drinking lustily from the cosmic fount, with one foot barely touching ground. I have barely brushed against this book but remember from Divine invasion that he then sees christian stories from the bible playing out before his eyes, in real time, in an Orange County gas station, or something like that. Sounds visually rich, but like Dylan, a bit oppressive. A transfiguration phase loop, or cosmic passion play, destined to cycle over and over again until who knows what?

Then again, who hasn't been stranded once or twice in cold outer space, looking for one warm rock or another to call home?


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Got a bunch of strange hits on the blog this morning and went to have a look. Now you type Jesus into the google search engine and you just might get, voila, the Blue Heron Blast. Jeezus...This ought to be great for my ranking.