No point mentioning these bats… (Part 2)

Now then, where was I? Ah yes…the parking lot, after escaping from Hades itself. I stood there for quite a while, indulging myself on the fresh air…the freshest air I have ever experienced, in fact. My mind continued to leap around, though all of the sinister overtones that had dominated the experience inside the building were completely washed away, replaced instead with what I can only describe as a divine presence. The symmetry of things around me seemed emboldened, and emphasized; the deliberate spacing between the planted city trees, the number of windows per floor on the buildings, and so forth. Immobile things moved, but yet they didn’t move…if I looked at anything, the dimensions of the object would bend and sway…bulge, and sink, but all the while with an enchanting reassuring quality– complete and total peace.

We saddled up the jeep and took off for the country…as the drug didn’t affect motor skills or reaction time, driving was on our side, though the complete lack of depth perception made the experience rather interesting. Streets that were once completely familiar to me looked long and alien, and as we drove I found myself completely lost until we came to an intersection. It wasn’t that things looked too strange to tell where we were, it was that the overriding sense of noticed symmetry made all of the streets look completely identical to one another. We kept to our compass bearing, however, and eventuality finally brought us out into the country, and into the network of comfortable abandoned logging trails. We laughed, and conversed, and just putzed around enjoying the experience. He dropped me off at home a few hours later, though the effects of the drug were still on me as hard as ever, so I took a walk in the growing dusk, down to the water front. A fog had set in, and strolling out to the breakwall light house was as magical of an earthly experience as I could ever hope to enjoy. I nearly felt like I was flying through a dream, the old cement walkway stretching on before me into eternity, with the rest of the universe clouded in gray. Wrapped up the evening later by watching Mulholland Drive for the first time…which, in my diminishing state of mind, made a remarkable impression on me.

The last time I ever did them was at a weekend music festival, and it is because of what happened that particular evening that has prevented me from ever doing them since. I got to the festival early, and parked my car in the day lot, even though I had planned on staying the entire evening in one tent or another. The forecast called for rain, so I purchased a rain coat on my way out there, which turned out to be a fantastic idea, as it began drizzling almost immediately. The festival was set up as follows; the main stage area up front, near the day parking, with a large patch of open field for people to pitch chairs and watch the entertainment. Behind the people were the vendors, and behind the venders were the woods, where most of the people who were there for the music made camp. Behind the woods was what was known as the back 40, which is where all the people that just went there to party made camp, in an extremely large field. Most of my friends were back there, as they could care less about hippie music, and were just there being social-whores like almost everyone else. Although the drunken loser frat boys in the back vastly outnumbered the hippies for whom the festival was actually for, the event always had, for lack of a better term, like real positive vibes, mann. It was my plan to enjoy those positive vibes with another peanut butter and mushroom sandwich, which I ate in the dryness of my car shortly before dark, after strolling around for a while. Things were a bit drab, and I was getting somewhat bored, and I thought that it might perk things up a bit…which may very well have been the worst judgement call I have ever made in my life.

By the time the effect kicked in I was completely soaked from head to toe, freezing cold, and without anywhere in particular that I wanted to be. The rain had begun to come down harder, and the paths that were made to the fields for the cars to drive down had turned into trenches of mud that were knee deep. The main gate that people had been coming in was closed, and littered with tilting campers that were stuck in the sludgy mire, which also happened to be the only way out. I was sitting with some friends in the back 40 when it hit me, right around the time that I decided that they were all way too annoying to stomach. I couldn’t sit still and listen to their inane drunken conversation, so I set out again to cross the field, stroll through the woods, and warm up once again in my car…but the fact that I had descended into a complete nightmare made this journey extremely difficult and frightening. I couldn’t make out any subtle details in the terrain…all of the trails had vanished on me, somehow. There was no privacy, and no escape, and all the screaming and glow sticks and bumping car stereos were maddening in the wet darkness. The rain kept pouring down, and I was only aware of my own physical misery…I felt like I was in some kind of terrible dream about an evil carnival, fueled by the horrible noise and the dark leaning campers stuck in the makeshift road ways. The grass had turned into a fern-like pattern in front of me, and I couldn’t distinguish any bit of it from the next. Consequentially, I plowed into the woods at a random point, which was haunted by camp site lights, and after stumbling around into branches for a while, I had to just turn around and walk back out into the field. I just wanted out of there…some peace and privacy. I tried going into a urinal for a moment, but someone was at the door in a matter of minutes trying to open it. Finally, I just walked around the forest, and back to my car, where I sat in a very very dark state of mind, feeling trapped and miserable, cursing myself for even being there at all. I decided that I was going to get out of there, somehow, and started my car, which was alone in a patch of un-mudded grass, but surrounded by trenches of deep black nastiness on all sides…somehow I found a place to cross into another part of the field that was still drivable, and all of a sudden there was a man in front of me with a flashlight, pointing to some boards that someone had laid out in the mud. He was like an angel, sent from heaven, and after a quick dip down and around, my tires finally hit the pavement of the main road, and I was home free…speeding off down the highway at 3:30 in the morning, in a state of unprecedented euphoric liberation.

The effects of mushrooms are, in a word, astounding. Their direct influence comes from a poisonous toxin, which infects the brain and causes it to hemorrhage…flooding parts of it with blood that otherwise go unused, and activating them. Everyone who tries it will have a different result, as it caters to the individual…if, like me, you are of independent mind, and feel most comfortable alone, then you will have a strong need to be alone when you do them. A common misconceptio

n is the idea that you have no control over what happens to you once you do them, when in fact you have complete control…though it’s a different sort of control than one is used to. You can only sort of push your thoughts and perceptions in the direction you want, which should be good enough to avoid diving into bad places….unless, however, you find yourself foolishly trapped, and without the means to acquire the sorts of surroundings and comfort that you desire.

Little is actually known about the substance, and studies on it have only recently reopened after a several decade hiatus. A John Hopkins university study recently revealed enormous positive potential for the drug, reporting that over sixty percent of the people that sampled it in a controlled study reported substantial increases in life satisfaction, positive behavior, and an overall sense of unity and happiness…no one was worse off because of their participation, according to the report:

http://www.times-standard.com/davestancliff/ci_11710419