Monday, November 9, 2015

Hallucinations








I have never, to my understanding, experienced hallucinations. This is not for want of trying. In my youth I was an avid user of (the poorly named) hallucinogenic drugs. At least some of my motives in my ingestion of LSD, Mushrooms, Peyote, and the like, was in the hopes of seeing things that weren't there. That seemed sort of fun and interesting. I eventually understood that seeing things that weren't there was the opposite of what those drugs actually allow for. On the contrary they excel at showing things that are there. Lots and lots of things that are there, all in great, excruciating detail.

I was already pretty good at seeing that.

So now I try and look in between the things that are there. I try and find the cracks. I peer into the cracks, and though I do not find any hallucinations, there is definitely something fishy going on back there. Maybe it is just this:

If you look carefully behind the things that are there, into the secret recesses of the Universe, you just keep finding more things that are there.

Perhaps that is the good and bad of the Universe in a nutshell, you can't get away from it.










6 comments:

  1. I am a bear. You are seeing me right now. Don't worry...I mean no harm. But I am here. Right here. I am looking at you. I am a brown bear. A large one, standing and looking you in the eyes.

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    1. Alright mr. GA. Let me just say the longer incarnation of this piece- one that would not come together, delved into the night of the Peyote, a story I may soon tell here. What was the spectral figure on the side of the road Mr. Bear? Hallucination? Vision? I don't know. It was not mine...

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  2. It scares me a bit to write this, but I recall three things very vividly: one was going bowling after we were convinced it didn't work; then as we bowled, I heard a kind of incredible "click," and a kind of light going off and on. I turned to you and asked if you heard that. You said yes. We left. Two: At your house the posters in your room switched places and next thing I knew we were downstairs. Three, and scary: Your brother was driving us though the chaparral canyons in the dark of night and I saw a man in a flannel shirt just standing there in the darkness and I screamed because he honestly did not seem real.

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    1. So interesting! Yes, I absolutely remember bowling, and though I recall no click for me, I do have the sense of a slightly terrified understanding that the peyote worked after all and we were really in for it. Funny I said yes then about the click- so maybe I heard it or something like that on some other level. Of the driving the canyons, which brings up a very on-point issue of hallucinations, I very much remember you seeing the man on the side of the road and your arguing vociferously (in general and with my brother) that he was truly there. I wasn't arguing, my brother was, in his chiding way, but I did not see the figure, which seemed very interesting, but appeared to pretty well freak you out. And I remember you deciding to go home, which was a terrible drag and disappointment to me as I was left to rattle around in my suburban parents' home bedroom, blazingly high, for another six or seven hours, which was hardly the original idea when we started off earlier in the evening to the wild bat caves back beyond your house.

      I can't say I fault you for leaving, under the events of the situation, but I don't think it all reflected on our best handling of the overall circumstances of our one peyote trip!

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  3. The thing is I didn't actually go home. Once I got downstairs I played with your golden retriever and then your grandma and I watched HR Puppenstuff and dressed up in costume. She cooked me some swordfish that came to life inside my stomach, then a balloon monster came and took us both away. We lived in a balloon land for several months before they got bored of our constant cheating in cards and delivered us back to the living room where time had indeed not progressed. I bid her a lovely goodbye but she insisted on accompanying me back home and singing Mary Poppins songs until the sun rises, after which she will make her own way. I know I should have told you all this a long time ago, but this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

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    1. At the risk of sounding eeyorish, that's pretty much what I imagined. Oh well. I was in my room staring at my closed shutters.

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