The Author on Long Ago Trips and a Book He's Reading and a Movie That's Coming Out

 Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

 How I wonder what you are.

 Up above the world so high,

 Like a diamond in the sky.

 -- From an English Nursery Rhyme

Mind gone, watching me and my mates from a distance. Back now, firmly tucked in with my physical being. Seriously tripping. Freaking out some picnickers whose gathering we walk through with my declaration that "I'm back, I'm back." We keep walking in and around and among the park.....Look at the trees, they're growing before my eyes, then shrinking again. Wow.

No, I'm not high, I am...experiencing...an....altered...state....of...........consciousness. Pyscho-Del-Ick! (Here's an interesting part of the deal: the present tense I'm is in high school. So this is like decades ago that I'm, is, are, doing this to my brain. Or is/was my brain doing this to me? Or is the world doing it to me and my brain. Or. Did it ever really happen. (NO question mark.) Or is life all an illusion. (No question mark.) And did I just blow your mind? (Doubt it. But I blew mine.)

One pill makes you larger

And one pill makes you small

And the ones that mother gives you

Don't do anything at all

Go ask Alice

When she's ten feet tall

-- From the song White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane

Less than a year before I had been laughed at in a social living class when I asked what the difference was between LSD and acid. Now I was on it which is them which is like look at all the colors and the hills are rolling and my God this is weird. No, really weird, like the definition of the word and I love....stuff. This is reality and fantasy at the same time and everything is different that's always be the same and there is only now no then or later and this now is so frickin' intense and beautiful and I see the whole world as like super real and a cartoon and none of these apparent contradictions bother me as my consciousness streams like rivers and oh my God. Far out.

My friends and I talked quite freely as we tripped. Subjects were intensely focused on with razor precision then vanished into the void as we skimmed along the rest of human thought that our 16 year old brains were capable of and the colors, man.

We drank wine too. Where did we get it? I wonder all these years later. Probably Mooney stole it. He was also stealing us booze. He died of a drug overdose at age 18. Other friend was Mark. He totally fried his brains on drugs. Last time I talked with him he seemed destined for the looney bin. I was an athlete doing all this stuff. A dyad. Or a schizo. Or really, really confused. Or not, I could never decide. I did all this pyschodelic stuff within one year and quit it forever. Lots of other drugs to come but no more of this mind bending. I didn't mind the bend of the mind, just didn't want to risk the break. Brain opened to new ideas all right. Pandora's box and all. Lid not going back on. But that last trip was a total bummer and I wasn't risking that again.

This all came back because I'm finally reading Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Took me dozens of years to be able to get this close to the Lysergic acid diethylamide again. And this is only reading about other dudes doing it. And check it out, yesterday I come to find out that there's a movie about the Merry Pranksters, those carefree lads and lasses the book follows, coming out in like two weeks. It's called Magic Trip. So this should be in     ter     est     ing.  Talk about the Sixties -- which I totally have, man -- that was a like a really big chunk of it. Turning ON. Seeing the world through a different pair of eyes, though ones that were in your own head...somehow. Wow. Brain spinning, looking out through your ear hole into the mouse hole and seeing the whole of it all. Not that you could ever explain it. But live it? Hell yes! And you saw all the phoniness and the bullsh*t and the f*cking war in Vietnam which was like the total worst thing ever. The opposite about what WE were all about. It was dudes dying and killing when this is a time people should be loving and living and being. To be. The verb. The m*therf*cking adjective: to be! That whole war scene was like the old dudes in suits in Washington and their cocktails and their old worn out values totally bumming this new trip and....

We were out to change the world and one way to do was to change our brain because old style 1950s brains DID NOT WORK. Square was just the beginning of it. We wanted no points, no edges at all. To be round like the tepee. Live like the Indi -- I mean Native Americans. They were cool, like the Black people and the queers and even the really old hip people and anyone really who wanted a newer better world. Man.

So where was I? There was a frequent question of the Sixties, exceeded only by, where am I? Also up there were: who am I? and who was I? But we were trying. Sometimes misguided. Sometimes selfish. Sometimes the other side of addiction leading to death like Mooney's or brain immolation like Matt's, but hey scramble eggs sometimes, ya know?

It was an effort to get away from straight. I'll defend it all my days. We were creative. We were thoughtful. We wanted nothing more than equality, love and peace. Argue with those. We also strongly suggested that people dig deep into their own brains and shovel out some of the crap that accumulates there. Be who YOU are not some version that fits in with some fantasy of what you think you're expected to be. Honesty. A move towards honesty.

Honesty.

"Everything in  everybody's life is...significant. And everybody is alert, watching for the meanings. And the vibrations. There is no end of vibrations." - From The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe.

You can take some pretty twisty paths to get there but hey man, the journey is half the fun right? Or should I say the...trip? Yeah, I really should.

I'm supposed to sum up now. Wrap up. Yeah. This post is over but the mind goes and goes. Even when you sleep it dreams. Wow to have waking access to your dream life that would be so cool. But I should say something profound. Or maybe not. Maybe just tell you I do not endorse EXPERIMENTING with psychedelics. It's dangerous, man. Then again so is mountain climbing in Winter or surfing in shark infested waters or driving a car or opening your front door. Pick your poisons, carefully.

I can't recommend what I did but I'm glad I did it because it was for me. Whoever I am. Still not sure...but the trip finding out is like nine tenths of the fun, with our without drugs. Dig.