Sorry for the radio silence in recent weeks. I received a dream commission to work for one of the higher profile RPG properties and to put my usual writing process to work, I had to hide, completely petrified with fear, and get nothing done for several weeks. My process is highly efficient, as you can see.
Last time I spoke about my friend Henry Darger, it was to discuss his name-sake, the real life Henry Darger. Of all the attributes Real Henry Darger possesses, My Henry Darger shares his anonymity. Few will ever know My Henry Darger, and he seems pretty content with that. It was only through the magic of the internet that I was able to discover him and though I know he will always be distant and aloof, his eccentricities are endearing to me and I am quite glad I know him.
My Henry Darger (who I will now simply refer to as Henry, please try to keep up) suffered some water damage to his home. A few years ago, there were some storm-water issues in Chicago and water backed up into his tiny townhouse and ruined several books he had been storing. Henry possesses quite a library, if you are into pulp fiction, serial fiction, gothic literature, or horror. (I hate Byron, but love Shelley.)
One of the books that Henry lost was Isaac Asimov's Annotated Paradise Lost. Turns out that this book is a bit hard to get a hold of unless you're willing to lay out five hundred clams. I should know, I did. Paradise Lost is one of two books that I feel had a dramatic effect on my young mind and heavily influenced my current opinions on religion. Isaac Asimov is brilliant mind and self professed "humanist" and in his annotation of Paradise Lost helps illuminate all the disparate allusions densely clustered in this epic poem.
Unwilling to part from this book, Henry went to the internet and through a website dedicated to book trading, found me. Paradise Lost is dense and difficult to read and when I was contacted by this man who clearly shared my esteem for the epic poem, I was excited to find someone else who was able to penetrate its steely hide and extract its delicious, metaphoric nougat.
After setting up the details of the trade (I would receive a first edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) we arranged to meet. Since we didn't live incredibly far from each other, we decided to meet in person to exchange the books.
Even from that first meeting, it was clear to me that Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, and John Milton were more real to him than even me sitting right in front of him. These are men he had been having conversations with, deep, philosophical conversations and they existed in a reality apart from the one I inhabited.
Reality is the correct word to describe this world, I would learn. It is as real and coherent as mine. People may talk about how the truth is different based on the perspectives of those who view it. I'm reminded of the movie, "Rashomon." Henry say the world from a distance, as if through a fog. Much more clear and real to him, was the world interior. Douglas, Isaac, and John (all men who are deceased in this exterior reality) inhabited this world and the doorway into their insights were the books he had collected.
Far more than real people, Henry valued the relationships he had with his book. At least that was my initial impression. Over the years I would discover that it wasn't these books he valued so highly, but the fantasies they inhabited in his own internal world.
"These dreams go on when I close my eyes
Every second of the night I live another life
These dreams that sleep when it's cold outside
Every moment I'm awake the further I'm away"
-Heart
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