The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

Imagine walking down the street, passing the other pedestrians. While doing this, you are a participant in their life and they are participants in theirs — from this basic interaction, this exchange, all other things in our society become possible — though we can never completely close the circle, and there are always both solipsistic doubts and actual failures of the parallax view, evolution of our mindframes have converged so as to allow us the Common Language and Common Mental Field upon which that language rests so that we can communicate with each other and help each other with our sand castles.

The drug — that strange chemical which changes the variables and alters the field — damages the common field, and while subjective experience is heightened, the community suffers in that one man has chosen to go alone. An ethical question arises as to the extent the community as a community should censure the anti-social whose only harm to society is his willing non-participation — nevertheless, the problem as a problem is a real one without any judgments made.

This is why it is so difficult to talk to your girlfriend when you are high, why you wouldn’t want to raise or deal with children with such a state.

The next obvious question is whether mutual drug-taking restores the communal field, within the bounds, or whether it is the (SAT analogy) mutual masturbation to regular communication’s full-fledged intercourse. If a tree falls in a forest, but I’m the only one to hear it, is ther a significance to it?

Is there a significance to the larger individual qualia that can never be validated by outside experience? Clearly, Western Culture, with it’s focus on the building of tall buildings, emphasises the common and deemphasizes the individual — ironically, considering the persistence of that fierce individualistic meme still so prevalent in 21st American Culture — but is the inner intoxication (and let’s expand this intoxication to those induced sua sponte by sages, mystics, bodhidharms, and the like) devalued because it cannot be shared? Or can it be shared? While the initial drugtaking experience may be scattershot and result in a endless multifurcation of parallax-views as every one and harry pursues their own private giggles, perhaps with repetition and training, the landscape of the new field can be explored and systematized so as to allow the shared experience that we use to structure our Quotididian Business Affairs can be reimagined in the Mental Pyrotechnics Arena.

The issue of danger is a real but separate one. My interest here is only the isolating effects of the intoxicant, and how, perhaps, they can be overcome. If overcome, what skyscrapers, what Towers of Non-Babel will the psychonauts, fellow travelers, construct for themselves. The 1960s? Second Summer of Love, Manchester? 100,000 Phish fans in the Everglades? Black Rock City, ra ra ra? New rules, new civilizations; new crimes; new pains; old world loses its luster.

In the foggy dark of twilight, a dirty empty diner on the industrial edge of the Vast World City, I wait, trembling, nails bitten down, jittery, grinding at my back teeth, untouched coffee before me, scratching at my nicotine patch.

The whiteman walks through the door, impossibly tall, stooping to come in, he is white, but he is dressed in cream, and he walks up, sits down across from me, and smiles at me with yellow teeth. He opens his mouth  and takes out an albino cockroach and hands it to me. It tickles at my hand as the voices at the edge of my mind begin to talk over one another, screaming quietly, I can hear the fear in their voices, tickling, white legs on my palm, the whiteman’s hand covering my own —

He opens his mouth again, about to say something, and the cockroach in my hand is gone. He nods at me, rises, and walks out of the diner.

Just like they said, I think. I corral my legions, and they go silent. I open my hand. In it is a page ripped from a book, thin, like drug paper. I look at it. The page number, 362, is highlighted, as is the chapter title, Corinthians.

An address. A clue. What I sought.

Crystal Ball. Location TBD. Women in cubist Spring 2009 Comme De Garcons dresses, you cannot see their faces. Noise rock blaring from potted plants. Nude waiters and waitresss passing out pills and philtres. Lights blink in rhythm. Young Vagabond Debutante-Son, in a black and white three-piece, laughs uncontrollably as he turns a flute of liquid over and over — it clings to the glass, it is non-Newtownian fluid, ooz, Mirrors surround the room, come up and down like stalagmites and stalactites, forming columns — the guest list is exclusive, someone famous is in the corner, lighting the hair of a model on fire as she laughs uncontrollably, dark drugs are at work in this place — a naked girl walks past, bleeding from a thousand cuts, eyes red and tear-stained, but she is silent and elsewhere — and old woman, in a large Queen Elizabeth dress looks on, as a young dark-skinned man goes to work under her skirts — she talks all the while with an impossibly old old man, attended by his own young dark-skinned man. Flamedancers dance in the middle, as young howling lordlings take deep drinks of kerosene and spit at them, the dancers dart out of the way, but flames lick at their feet. Uproarious laughing.

Took a boat to Spain. Disembarked in view of Gibraltar. Began walking. Up the way of Hannibal. Past two mountains. Into the great valley. Green autumn woods. Cities. Roads. Disappear. Clocks run backwards. Differentiation falls away. Animals attend my trail. Suspicious watchings. Eyes blinking. Deer. Rabbits. Wolves. Once there were others, other speakers. Now I am alone. I speak to myself. To the animals. I name them. I am the first. I am the last. I am the watcher. My eyes encompass the forest. Beginning with my own body, my limbs, which I can feel, and then beyond, the world extends. One experience. I am Man. Being. Knowing. Knowing I walk, without knowing why.

I come to a crumbled snakeskin. I continue past it.

Hef and Hut sit down down to a tea party after twelve o’clock two, and flipbook through a picturegame of the Great Masters of Old 20th and make figurative small talk to each other while the time runs out.

Hef says “I like reds and blues” and

Hut says “I like greens and boxes”

Hef says “The rain grass is lovely”

Hut says “Swans all around”

Hef says “drops on a polychromatic slick dream”

Hut says “dream?”

Hef says “dream green dreams”

Hut says “trees?”

Hef says “very old, the oldest”

Hut says “change your eyes you’ll change the art”

Hef says “trade an ear for some eyeglasses?”

Hut says “broken lady down the stairs”

Hef says “knights in shining armor”

Hut says “ten indians in a row”

Hef says “custards’ last stand churns its own butter, with cows brought in from Ithaca”

Hut says “Penelope waits”

Hef says “who gives her pleasure?”

Hut says “I I never thought of that, forgot about her ladyparts”

Hef says “How can you forget, I’m master of revels”

Hut says “dance of the visible, ineluctable modalities”

Hef says “how do you remember that, Hutty?”

Hut says “prodigious memory or an angel touched my philtrum”

Hef says “After we are dead all will be remembered”

Hut says “You’ll sit with Jesus and I’ll sit with Mom”

Hef says “if it could only be”

Hut says “the weight of nothing”

Hef says “apophatic”

Hut says “what’s that button on your chestbump?”

Hef says “brandmark for the squashedbugs”

Hut says “squeaky voices cry out from the rocks?”

Hef says “old goatmaster is at the returns counter for store credit”

Hut says “gold melts down to lead cannot reverse the process”

Hef says “sure just play the tape backwards”

Hut says “cant”

Hef says “synapses?”

Hut says “know any jokes?”

Hef says “a fox burying his grandmother?”

Hut says “an old chestnut”

Hef says “dance of the sugarplums?”

Hut says “darwindance did it”

Hef says “hot potatoe”

Hut says “spelled wrong”

Hef says “nopenope”

Hut says “think so”

Hef says “should we go?”

Hut says “not going to play that game, we won’t”

Hef says “waiting for a bus to come”

Hut says “it comes, the schedules are printed”

Hef says “you can’t read in your dreams – wrong side of the bed”

Hut says “I don’t believe in brains. My thought proceeds by way of gravity forcing water through a sieve”

Hef says “equally plausible, granted, without finer instruments”

Hut says “the instruments are strong”

Hef says “which is essential, player or played?”

Hut says “riddles within riddles. brass or woodwind?”

Hef says “bassinets and oboes.”

Hut says “a superior ursus is dormant til post meridian”

Hef says “Ho, scaliwag, defend your post”

Hut says “the foundations are pegged in quicksilver mud”

Hef says “safe, quicksilver defies entropy”

Hut says “holy god of shortcuts”

Hef says “the shorter route”

Hut says “does it come?”

Hef says “no, it does not come, just death”

Hut says “what then?”

Hef says “darkness”

Hut says “what then?”

Hef says “darkness”

Hut says “afraid”

Hef says “just dreamless sleep”

Hut says “do trees dream?”

Hef says “green dreams”

Hut says “do trees dream?”

Hef says “green dreams.”

Oft, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
Fond Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.

Humans are just monkeys, and monkeys aren’t smart. One monkey, particularly dumb, unweighing of consequences, short-sighted, in pain, jealous, rises up, takes a weapon, easily obtained, and shoves it into the soft underbelly of a smarter man who does not expect to die.

The pain is sweet in the smart man’s mouth, sweet and unexpected, his head is light, looking down at his shirt and watching the blood bloom out — and then the pain becomes unbearable and the man slumps down — looks up at the dumb one, dumb one looking back — smart man begins calculating at breakneck speed, trying to rationalize his way out of his predicament, trying to identify the chain of mistakes that led him to this moment, dying on the sidewalk. He feels hands going through his pocket, grabbing a music player, and a wallet. He tries to speak but cannot muster the strength — it’s becoming increasingly hard to think, though he realizes what is happening, realizes he is dying, the fear is overwhelming his rational mind, still, grasping, hoping, maybe an ambulance will come — maybe someone will see — but no, the street is empty and he is bleeding quickly —

He reaches out and trys to grab the dumb one’s arm but doesn’t have the strength. The dumb one slinks away from what he did, from his brother on the ground, the voice of your brother sings, he thinks, old sundayschool memory, and he runs into the shadows.

The fear overwelms the smart one; it goes, it goes, it goes, he thinks of his wife, his children, his parents, he thinks of them again, trying to hold on to that, tears running down his head, maybe maybe maybe he’ll be ok, screaming, screaming if he could, he goes, he goes, he goes, oh, oh, oh, oh, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts oh it hurts oh it hurts oh it hurts so much angie angie oh it hurts angie come back to me oh angie come back come back oh oh oh oh oh

This is how you lose:

1. Don’t want to win.

2. Try real hard.

3. Then give up right at the end.

Do these things, and you’ll never have to deal with the existential pain of success.

Young bird on the wing chirping chirp chirping,
bright-shined robin chirp chirps back,
and feathers flutter fly

some moons later,
birds goes down to the morning wormfield,
and putters for his bread like Old Cursed Adam Farmer,
brings back happy ribbons to drape across
the earlocks of the stranger
lying next to him in his big double bed

eggs are in the oven, warm