Valis

"You have once again shown your inability to do anything."

The distinction between sanity and insanity is narrower than a razor's edge, sharper than a hound's tooth, more agile than a mule deer. It is more elusive than the merest phantom. Perhaps it does not even exist; perhaps it is a phantom.

Ironically, Fat hadn't been tossed into the lock-up because he was crazy (although he was); the reason, technically, consisted of the "danger to yourself" law. Fat constituted a menace to his own well-being, a charge that could be brought against many people. At the time he lived in the North Ward a number of psychological tests were administered to him. He passed them, but on the other hand he had the good sense not to talk about God. Though he passed all the tests, Fat had faked them out. To while away the time he drew over and over again pictures of the German knights who Alexander Nevsky had lured onto the ice, lured to their deaths. Fat identified with the heavily-armored Teutonic knights with their slot-eyed masks and ox-horns projecting out on each side; he drew each knight carrying a huge shield and a naked sword; on the shield Fat wrote: "In hoc signo vinces,"which he got from a pack of cigarettes. It means, "In this sign you shall conquer." The sign took the form of an iron cross. His love of God had turned to anger, an obscure anger. He had visions of Christopher racing across a grassy field, his little blue coat flapping behind him, Christopher ru

In addition he several times wrote:

Dico per spiritum sanctum. Haec verltas est. Mihi crede et mecum in aeternitate vivebis. Entry #28.

This meant, "I speak by means of the Holy Spirit. This is the truth. Believe me and you will live with me in eternity."

One day on a list of printed instructions posted on the wall of the corridor he wrote:

Ex Deo nascimur, in Jesu mortimur, per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

Doug asked him what it meant.

"' From God we are born,'" Fat translated, "' in Jesus we die, by the Holy Spirit we live again.'"

"You're going to be here ninety days," Doug said.

One time Fat found a posted notice that fascinated him. The notice stipulated what could not be done, in order of descending importance. Near the top of the list all parties concerned were told:

NO ONE IS TO REMOVE ASHTRAYS FROM THE WARD.

And later down the list it stated:

FRONTAL LOBOTOMIES ARE NOT TO BE PER FORMED WITHOUT THE WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE PATIENT.

"That should read 'prefrontal,'" Doug said, and wrote in the "pre."

"How do you know that?" Fat said.

"There's two ways of knowing," Doug said. "Either knowledge arises through the sense organs and is called empirical knowledge, or it arises within your head and it's called a priori."Doug wrote on the notice:

IF I BRING BACK THE ASHTRAYS, CAN I HAVE MY PREFRONTAL?

"You'll be here ninety days," Fat said.

Outside the building rain poured down. It had been raining since Fat arrived in the North Ward. If he stood on top of the washing machine in the laundry room, he could see out through a barred window to the parking lot. People parked their cars and then ran through the rain. Fat felt glad he was indoors, in the ward.

Dr. Stone, who had charge of the ward, interviewed him one day.

"Did you ever try suicide before?" Dr. Stone asked him.

"No," Fat said, which of course wasn't true. At that moment he no longer remembered Canada. It was his impression that his life had begun two weeks ago when Beth walked out.

"I think," Dr. Stone said, "that when you tried to kill yourself you got in touch with reality for the first time."

"Maybe so," Fat said.

"What I am going to give you," Dr. Stone said, opening a black suitcase on his small cluttered desk, "we term the Bach remedies." He pronounced it batch. "These organic remedies are distilled from certain flowers which grow in Wales. Dr. Bach wandered through the fields and pastures of Wales experiencing every negative mental state that exists. With each state that he experienced he gently held one flower after another. The proper flower trembled in the cup of Dr. Bach's hand and he then developed unique methods of acquiring an essence in elixir form of each flower and combinations of flowers which I have prepared in a rum base." He put three bottles together on the desk, found a larger, empty bottle, and poured the contents of the three into it. "Take six drops a day," Dr. Stone said. There is no way the Bach remedies can hurt you. They are not toxic chemicals. They will remove your sense of helplessness and fear and inability to act. My diagnosis is that those are the three areas where you have blocks: fear, helplessness and an inability to act. What you should have done instead of trying to kill yourself would have been, take your son away from your wife -- it's the law in California that a minor child must remain with his father until there is a court order to the contrary. And then you should have lightly struck your wife with a rolled-up newspaper or a phonebook."

"Thank you," Fat said, accepting the bottle. He could see that Dr. Stone was totally crazy, but in a good way. Dr. Stone was the first person at the North Ward, outside the patients, who had talked to him as if he were human.

"You have much anger in you," Dr. Stone said. "I am lending you a copy of the Tao Te Ching. Have you ever read Lao Tzu?"

"No," Fat admitted.

"Let me read you this part here," Dr. Stone said. He read aloud.

"Its upper part is not dazzling;

Its lower part is not obscure.

Dimly visible, it ca

And returns to that which is without substance.

This is called the shape that has no shape,

The image that is without substance.

This is called indistinct and shadowy.

Go up to it and you will not see its head;

Follow behind it and you will not see its rear."

Hearing this, Fat remembered entries #1 and #2 from his Journal. He quoted them, from memory, to Dr. Stone.

#1. One Mind there is; but under it two principles contend.

#2. The Mind lets in the light, then the dark; in interaction; so time is generated. At the end Mind awards victory to the light; time ceases and the Mind is complete.

"But," Dr. Stone said, "if Mind awards victory to the light, and the dark disappears, then reality will disappear, since reality is a compound of Yang and Yin equally."

"Yang is Form I of Paramenides [sic] ," Fat said. "Yin is Form II. Parmenides argued that Form II does not in fact exist. Only Form I exists. Parmenides believed in a monistic world. People imagine that both forms exist, but they are wrong. Aristotle relates that Parmenides equates Form I with 'that which is' and Form II with 'that which is not.' Thus people are deluded."

Eying him, Dr. Stone said, "What's your source?"

"Edward Hussey," Fat said.

"He's at Oxford," Dr. Stone said. "I attended Oxford. In my opinion Hussey has no peer."

"You're right," Fat said.

"What else can you tell me?" Dr. Stone said.

Fat said, "Time does not exist. This is the great secret known to Apollonius of Tyana, Paul of Tarsus, Simon Magus, Paracelsus, Boehme and Bruno. The universe is contracting into a unitary entity which is completing itself. Decay and disorder are seen by us in reverse, as increasing. Entry #18 of my exegesis reads: "Real time ceased in 70 c.e. with the fall of the Temple at Jerusalem. It began again in 1974. The intervening period was a perfect spurious interpolation aping the creation of the Mind.'"