Pale Fragments

The second time I took shrooms,

I had recently come off of my antidepressants. Grace brought, again, her own personal crop of magic mushrooms. We took a bit more this time, and I wasn't even a bit nervous. I'd been feeling good lately, then, like everything was in control and stable. I'd read someplace that ADs dampen the effects of psychedelics, but I attributed my success on my first trip with Grace to my own spiritual amplitude and resilience.

lol!

We were sitting in a hot tub a minute after forcing down the nasty handful of mold. It was the middle of winter. My toes felt like they were melting in magma, and within (what felt like) five minutes I felt incredibly nauseated, as if suddenly my soul's cheeks were pulled away from bone as its unexpected rocket flew immediately away from the atmosphere wherein it'd lived its entire life. My brain had only signed up for enduring through bad taste and texture for a moment, not this!

I felt myself shimmering up with the steam into the biting cold, and the lines of the wooden gate surrounding us danced along indomitably, mysteriously; as though staring me in the eyes with a blank expression, though somehow making me feel mocked. The perfect geometry appeared in incredible patterns waving on the top of the tub which seemed to reflect the sky perfectly in HD.

Though we'd only just gotten in, I threw my shirt over my wet top, running back into the cabin as though the world was tilting and I needed to run up the wall. Soon I was on my face, laughing insanely, Grace shouting, laughing, "Are you okay?"

Physically, yes, probably. Philosophically, less so. I'd forgotten to speak, so I just said, "Yep, damn I tripped while tripping, wow, so poetic!" And we both spewed snot and spit and little bits of the inside of our throats as we laughed.

I couldn't feel an identification with my body as I normally would. It didn't feel like the hands belonged to me, but as though I were in a stranger's body or there were some alien fleshy spiders moving along close to me, moving with their own wills.

The rest of the day is somewhat a blur. Weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, chortling, speaking in tongues (but what is really just gibberish to anyone else not inside the prophet's head), ecstatic beauty, every feeling and thought between Heaven and Hell, all within four hours that feels like an eternity.

It felt like the skeleton of my spirit had come to a chiropractor only to walk into the back room of his office to find a medieval torture device; and then, as Mr. Incredible, strongest man alive fighting the Omnidroid sent by traitor Syndrome, pulled almost to defeat, but he yells and he snaps, laughing, tearing the beast apart.

At first, I just wanted it to be over. When I closed my eyes, the visual patterns followed me there; and if I watched or analyzed them for a moment, it seemed to me a pain I'd been avoiding all too long finally taking my head in its hands and forcing me to look it in the eyes; and in each moment there seemed another demonic presence come to stare me into scared confession, willing to be executed for my sins. I looked up, down, closed my eyes, looked at the TV, looked up, closed my eyes, but there was no more avoiding anything at all. I felt in the spotlight gaze of some angry, jealous deity.

But then I sat alone and laughed to myself. It was dark, then; Grace had gone off alone somewhere outside. Before she left, she'd kept asking me if I was okay, but she was intoxicated, too. She kept asking me if I was okay as she looked away and wept uncontrollably, then laughing as though at some infinite jest. In the moment I couldn't decide if my laughter alone in the dark would look insane to anyone watching or listening, then I remembered that there is not always a need to perform, and most of the time everything is as it is even without eyes and ears pointed in there defining what it is; if the world doesn't need justification to exist, and I am part of the world, then neither do I...