For Rose There's a woman who loves me pure and clear and that's fine though sometimes I don't know why she'd want such a hassle as loving me,... Me, who wants to be free and sure and wise and strong... she loves that...the prideful stupid fool... and me, I'm just amazed at my grace to have such a woman. Ah, but love's so simple, why, she's been whispering it to me for years at night and I'm just now getting wise... going on to do it myself I was.... and she was patient. Love is my gift and its fine. gallagher 7 jul 73 Long Beach
— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —
It is this bond between a man and a woman, and my observation of it, that long convinced me Paddy Chayefsksy’s “Altered States” (as conceived by John C. Lilly & directed by Ken Russell) had to be about you and Rose (with William Hurt, in his debut film performance, capturing “you” to a tee). The three of us saw the film together in 1981 and I remember making that declaration, to your scoffs, at the time. Rose, I think, at least understood why I thought so — she was disturbed (and flattered, I think) at the resemblance to your lives. That poem and screenplay treat of the same relationship I find heartening and reassuring, if now dated: man, a moth drawn to the blaze of the universe, saved by his only anchor to earth — and thereby to meaning — love of a woman. Uranus and Gaia personified. Tentatively, I’ve accepted that this tale has been lived by others before and since you, but a suspicion still lurks that once upon a time you and Lilly shared trance, and you read him this poem…