Beyond the mushroom.
During my first eighteen years of waiting, I have attempted to write many books. I have woven grand stories in my head, none of which I can remember. Numerous people have probably been murdered in numerous gruesome ways, and too many good people have probably had many unfortunate things happen to them. A great number of men have probably struggled with dilemmas no one should have to deal with, and a great many empires have probably fallen only to rise again. No doubt, creatures from other worlds have taken over ours, and creatures from ours must have done the same. I could go on, but as I have already mentioned, I can remember none of these stories. I find writing a book difficult to deal with in the same way that a psychedelic experience can be difficult to deal with. Let me explain.
When I say ‘a psychedelic experience’, I should clarify that I mean a mushroom trip. Just about every psychedelic drug puts you on a road to the same destination. You invariably get lost on the way, and no one ever makes it. But we try. It is, as they say, about the journey.
I generally try and go into the mushroom trip with a plan. I find that the three or four hour window into wonderland the fungus gives you is only enough to lend the taste of something you need a harder drug to swallow. It is, if you will, the equivalent of making music with one of those tiny battery powered keyboards (this would make marijuana one of those websites on the internet that teaches you about notes and chords, but perhaps I am taking this analogy a bit too far). I usually feel that a plan is essential for a mushroom trip because it sets you off in a particular direction, and if you’re looking for something more than a really fun time, direction helps. However, what I find is that this plan invariably falls apart.
When the future becomes the present, nothing is right anymore. You find there are variables you have not taken into consideration. You find you cannot tie your shoelaces to go to the park, or maintain a train of thought to watch Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. You get distracted easily, and are confused about many of the things you are feeling. You try to keep your cool, but in reality, you are praying that the cool keeps you. The interesting thing is, however, that there needs to be a plan to fall apart. Without a plan, I find it is much harder to derive anything meaningful from the trip. The plan is crucial, but only to break down for a higher purpose. This is what happens to me when I sit down to try and put the sagas in my head on paper (or the blank white space filling my screen above the taskbar). Everything falls apart, and I end up with a collection of words that form sentences, and a record of abstract ideas. Come to think of it, I mostly only brought up my attempts at writing books so I could talk about mushrooms for a while…mostly.
You see, I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, and every time something happens that makes me doubt this, I quickly ignore it and carry on with the insanely epic profound thought I was mulling over before the interruption. I guess I simply need a place to dump the thoughts that have been brewing in my head during my eighteen years of waiting. I guess I’ve decided to stop approaching this like a mushroom trip, and approach it instead, as an acid trip – welcome the insanity and chaos, which will hopefully all fall in place and make sense in the end.
