Perceptions of a Desert trip

On March 20, 2016 By Terrapin - The JourneyIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Homage to Alan Ginsberg, poet laureate for the pioneers of meaningful enlightenment and Jim Morrison, The Lizard King. May they both forever Rock In Peace.)

A Yaqui medicine man by the sands of an arid graveyard treated Jim and friends for underdeveloped perception. He opened his bag of dreams and together they traveled through the eaves of perceptions in search of meaning. Like any mind bending trip created in the dark it’s truth would soon come to light…….

The desert horizon smiled broad at suns close

Atomic tangerine beams bouncing in chaos

Sanguine dreams scratched sensory trails

Across the hot steamy orange hazed sky

A mural of living poisons formed in a cloud

Painted by the brush of the cannabis queen

From a palette of peyote and mescaline hues

Hallucination dust was rising up in Mr. Mojo

Speeding shadows dash across the desert floor

Like amphetamine eating arachnids and….

Oh my God the cacti, the fucking cacti

Spiked emerald armies of angiosperms

Arms raised in communion with the Agave God

Stand in glory waiting the mushroom lords command

The shiny green skin oozed psilocybin fungus

Instant Zen

An obscured coyote pants curiously at Lizard King

Who slithers cautiously across the sun burnt sand

Mr. Mojo alight in a psychedelic rain of prisms

The coyote retreat to its den

Time for some more hashish

In agreement the with Lupine Prince they go

Another hit of acid will do the trick for us all

The seller of wares appears in a green convertible

Tambourine vials of moods happy and numb

I have songs I play so you can hear the vision

Notes to make your fantasies dance

But here in the once ocean floor palace

Some apparitions and a mirage I think

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide mixed with THC

The moodman put them On The Road with Dean

Cowboy Neal at the wheel of the bus

Kerouakesque travels along surreal highways

More hallucinogenic dust

An unscheduled stop for a roadside attraction

Chemical larvae hitching along Rt 66

Looking for the map to the doors of perception

The Lizard Monarch offered a sugar cube caterpillar

Whose cocoon blossomed into a strange but beautiful creature

The sun knelt and prayed then bid then adieu

An experience of great spiritual importance

Outside the lair of the coyote Mojo bows in homage

Gave blessing to the terra statue of Buddha in drag

The Lizard King salivates licking his eye

His vision blurred but never clearly obscured

And They all saw things they’d never saw before

The moment they stepped over the border

Past the chaos and disorder

Before I sink

Into the

Big sleep

I want to hear

The SCREAM

Of the butterfly

When the music’s over, turn out the light-J.M.-

The Day I Met Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

On October 18, 2015October 16, 2015 By Terrapin - The JourneyIn Uncategorized11 Comments

Life in 1966 was so damn Norman Rockwell I feared the entire year would be featured in The Saturday Evening Post. But ‘67 arrived and the cold winter ushered in an ugly escalation in the Vietnam war combined with continued civil rights issues including segregation and more riots. Thankfully ‘67 also ushered in the Summer of Love, a glimmer of hope for humankind through the youthful exuberance of believing life can be great. A time of free love, free thought, and free minds. The long hair freaky hippies had taken hold in Haight-Ashbury and The Greenwich Village scene offered up drugs sex and rock and roll to all who dared to try. Dangling candy in front of so many impressionable naïve children. And I had one Helluva sweet tooth.

Having already been introduced to hops and malts and ready something more the promise of mind altering alternatives sounded far too attractive to pass up. “Here man, smoke this. It won’t make your stomach all bloated, no puking in the woods, no head spinning frenzy. Just a nice calm mellow high.” Why not? After all, its all natural. Hey if God didn’t want us smoking the stuff why did he grow it? Funny I thought about God because I would later find out that the summer of love would end my nagging sense of spiritual emptiness. It would fill needs I hadn’t even realized existed. It would also be the summer I met Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

There was a lot of great things about growing up on Long Island but perhaps one of the best and certainly the most game changing was the fact that we could scrape together a few bucks and take the train into New York City. It opened up a whole new world free of judgments where we were actually encouraged to let our “Freak Flags” fly. Turn on and tune in. Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Stanly Owsley, and The Grateful Dead. They took over the roles formerly held by Roy Rodgers, Ward Clever, and the Kingston Trio. From Captain Kangaroo to Captain Trips at the roll of a joint. “Hey little man, you think that pot is making you feel good, get ready to grow up and go on a real trip. Just put this little dot on your tongue and let it melt your mind.” Mmm-mmm good!

My first venture into the drug netherworld was in Washington Square Park. What a cool place, jam packed with hippies singing songs, doing some sort of floaty dances, or just hanging out and smiling. A lot of smiling. My big brother had gotten us tickets for us to a place called the Bottom Line to see some dude named John Mayall. At the time I didn‘t know much about him other than hearing my brothers bluesy records by The USA Union and The Bluesbreakers. He also bought a tab of LSD for me to try. Even if I thought it was a bad idea, which I didn’t, I would have had to trip just to save face. We were with his three best friends who would be merciless when we got home if I wimped out. But I wasn’t bullied into taking it, I took it willingly. I wanted to see for myself what all the hype about mind bending sugar cubes the hippies were tripping out on. Didn’t realize I would be on a crazy ride without a seatbelt.

The park was a trip in itself. While I waited for the tab to kick in we wandered through the paths. A couple of dudes singing around a few guitar playing longhaired dudes with smiles glued to their faces. Not singing like Cumbaya, more like some folkie shit, some Dylan guy or something. Street actors, comedians, and plain flat out weirdo’s roamed the paths of the park and after about forty five minutes I broke out laughing. “What’s so funny little brother?” What’s so funny? How the hell did I know? What just because I saw some guy walk by carrying his head in his hands? Because the head was laughing even though it wasn’t attached? Well…..yea, so I laughed too. How am I gonna explain that, anyway? Some dude is walking around inside a Dali painting? Besides, when I looked back at the guy he was normal again “Fucking everything man. That dude over there just dropped his head on the ground and the fucking thing bounced back up. That’s what‘s funny!” The four of us started laughing with nary a one of us knowing why. Didn’t matter, the LSD runway was clear and we had taken off. Humor would be the fuel that drove our trip ship.

We walked around with what felt like surgically implanted smiles on our faces, so intense were those near creepy smiles that the next day my smiling cheek muscles would ache all day long. We laughed and watched. Peoples faces began melting, tree’s bent over to kiss the horizon and the blowing leaves made weird shapes that took to breathing. It was hard to walk because the ground kept moving. I was watching and laughing when suddenly I felt a hand of on my ass. A tiny little palm giving it a light squeeze. I cocked my head slightly not wanting to seem obvious which must have looked really obvious, but what I saw sent a rush of adrenaline from my toes upward stopping at the groin for a few teasing seconds. The hand belonged to a five foot two smiling young lass about three or four years my senior. That may not seem like very much older now but when your thirteen going on fourteen its an entire era. The amount of cred you got being with a sixteen year old at that age is astronomical. She had very long tightly curled jet black hair and was wearing a sort of gypsy dress. A flood of emotions fluttered through my body, passion, lust, sexual tension and awkward nervousness highlighted by the nagging sense that one false statement or move will reveal my junior status and negate all of those other electric plugged in and turned on sensations. She giggled softly so I looked her right in the eyes, smiled back and whispered into her ear something along the lines of “Gliddy gloop glooppy, nibba nappy noopie la la la low low” Startled she stopped in her tracks, looked up at me for four seconds before breaking out into an uncontrollable laughing jag. At first I was embarrassed, then slightly angered, until I suddenly realized she was tripping too and laughing with me not at me. An instant friendship was born. We were sharing the same bizarre plane in some alternate universe and frankly I forgot about my brother and his friends. I talked to her excitedly about the book “Siddhartha” and she shared the name of a new prophet named Carlos Castaneda. She opened my eyes by opening my mind and over the next year I would study a variety of spiritual alternatives. It was just tangerine trees, marmalade skies, me and the girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

Her name wasn’t really Lucy of course, and the Lucy in the Sky was more reference to LSD than anything else but suffice to say both Lucy’s and I had one of the most unforgettable evenings of our lives. Or at least I did. I gave away my ticket and told my brother I would meet him later. Lucy and I found ourselves laughing and crying and in some compromising positions. And smiling. A Lot of smiling. I called her Moss because we rolled around…..I called her Moss and that’s the name I’ll remember her by. It was a once in a lifetime meeting, a two ships in the night beautiful moment meant to share and enjoy before releasing the moment and returning to our previously scheduled lives. I had cancelled my subscription to Saturday Evening Post and graduated to Rolling Stone that night thanks to Moss. I mumbled something stupid like can I see you again but Moss had no intention of remaining in contact, she was just a traveler in time and space, another fucked up teen trying to make sense of a turbulent and confusion world. But I gotta admit, every once in a while I think about the night I met Moss and wonder, for a brief moment, what ever became of Lucy In The Sky.

Microdot Management (p.1)

On June 14, 2015 By Terrapin - The JourneyIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

The Night Before
JT Hilltop
Now I don’t advocate the use of hallucinogens (except in my case) but there was this one time when it did come in pretty handy. Not in an enlightened I see the truth sort of way, though that did occur often while under the influence of psychotropic shenanigans, but the time it basically saved my job. I was working as a dishwasher/cook for a Nursing Home back in my hometown in 1971. It was New Years Eve and I had to be in for the breakfast shift at 6AM new Years Day. At seventeen New years eve is a substantially important party and I was certainly not going to miss it just because I have to work early in the morning. I was hanging with my co-worker and good friend Randy-Man. We called him Randy-Man first because his mane is Randy but more importantly because one day he turned his apron around like a cape and I put a huge letter R on it. He was an awesome friend and was a sort of super hero to me and all the cool supernames were taken so it was Randy-Man became his moniker du jour. Anyway we decided we would bring in the new year tripping and then we would both go to work without sleeping. Sort of a pre-hangover/post-hangover arrangement. And so it goes.

So Randy-Man and I bought us a few hits of microdot mescaline. My Mom and Dad were out so we brought them back to my house to check out our stash of mind enhancers for the evening festivities. Purple Microdot. Tiny purple dots that looked kinda like purple poppy seeds or as we would soon find out like tiny balls of purple play-dough. They were tiny in stature but humongous in the alteration of the brain waves. In the dining room we placed our enhancifiers on the table to organize our highs. It consisted of a sizeable chunk of black hash, a dime or so of Panamanian Red weed, and ten microdots of mescaline. For me the difference between mesc and acid is that mesc is less physical hallucination and more color appreciation, and it planted a smile on my face for the duration of the trip which could only be removed using surgical techniques. It stretched my smile and laugh muscles to the optimum capacity and the next morning much like after doing far too many sit-ups made those muscles sore when using them. Not that I didn’t laugh on acid, but mesc just made everything even funnier. One of the things I liked about both was it gave me the illusion of having major insight, like I was an existential philosopher spending an hour enrapt at the various conclusions I came up with on my own. Like once while under the influences of blotter acid I reached the conclusion that it is impossible to stand in an empty room because it would have at least me in it if I was standing there. Whoa, mind blown! I still think about that moment of cosmic clarity. But back to the business at hand. I took part of the hash stash placing it in my chamber pipe and wrapped the rest in foil. Randy-Man being the superior joint person rolled a few doobs so we could stash what we didn’t need . Next the microdots. We planned to take one microdot each to start and wrap the others in a paper triangle for later orf maybe another time. Randy-Man accidentally knocked a few off the table onto a short shag rug. Much to our horror it was the same place my baby sister played with her play-dough earlier and the rug appeared to be full of multi-colored balls of the claylike crap that looked eerily similar to microdots. Time for a magic carpet ride. We consumed the entire array of colorful poppy like play-dough dots, hopefully consuming at least one microdot each. We opted to eat all the bits and pieces regardless of the play dough issue. I sure didn’t want the dust bunnies in my Moms vacuum cleaner to be tripping on my microdot tomorrow.

At any rate we now had an hour to wait for the concoction of mescaline and play-dough bb’s to get digested. I made a mental note not to freak out if my fecal deposits had a rainbow effect tomorrow. In the meantime might as well get started on the hash. After a lung bursting head exploding bowl Randy-Man and I were abuzz ready to take on whatever this New years Eve held in store for us. We always believed plans were a deterrent when tripping and short of a rock concert or a movie its best just to let the trip unfold how it wants. So off we traipsed into town to check out the local scene.
First stop was a pub called The Watering Can. Great jukebox, great bartender, great crowd. We grabbed a drink each and just grooved on the scene. One of the true benefits of tripping and smoking your high as opposed to only drinking your high is it lends itself well to the lifestyle of a pacifist which both Randy-Man and I were. Some of the others at the bar however found drinking lends itself more aptly to their more aggressive lifestyle and enjoyed the game of drunk bullying. We pacifist opted to take out our meager aggressions in the more mundane exercises such as playing foosball. A pair of drinking bullies saw that as an opportunity to berate a pair of longhair stoners and perhaps lure us into a lopsided confrontation. They sauntered over and placed the quarter on the table as a challenge. The mescaline was raging so we both laughed and told them to come on ahead and try cause we are on fire tonight! Now I was a decent Foosball player, not fantastic merely average, as was my Bud. However, on this particular evening the mescaline had super enhanced our powers of concentration and dexterity. It also loosed up our inhibitions removing all the stress of competition allowing us to play like champions. We showed the bully’s up by kicking their asses at Foosball with ease. I was making stops as if I already had the balls planned trajectory blueprint and Randy-Man was scoring goal with loud table slamming authority. I even scored one or two from my defensemen. We blew them away while laughing wildly a trait usually not etiquette approved in sports. As I said many of the senses become enhanced while under the mesc spell but as a result other senses often become minimized or dulled. One such dulled sense we acquired was our sense of danger or lack thereof. Usually while tripping that sense can only be awakened by a cop or a horror movie while tripping. Sometimes walking in a cemetery can have a similar effect but we just flat out didn’t realize the danger of showing up drunk ass jocks at their own game. Another dulled enhancement from the mescaline was our inability to control our laugh response. So it was we kicked their asses while laughing about it which apparently bully’s find in very bad taste.
The two alpha males feeling their territory had been pissed on disdainfully and had their manhood’s threatened by two weirdo hippie shits invited us to go outside with them. Not to smoke a joint like we would have done but to have our faces rearranged. We politely declined their offer which confused them for the moment but they were watching us like hawks. Feeling a might bit paranoid we decided to leave The Watering Can for another pub. The Cro-Magnon frustrated jock duo followed us outside stopping us when we went to get in my car. By this point the microdots took on a life of their own possessing even our bodies.
I learned a valuable lesson from this incident. It is extremely difficult even for a bully to punch someone who is constantly laughing and shows no sign of willingness to fight back. We laughed about rope-a-dope and the difference between kung fu and kung flu. They attempted to engage us in some basic violent male warfare by shoving us and getting in our faces. I asked my predator not to get to close because I had just gotten over Kung Flu which sent both Randy-Man and myself into a laughing frenzy. The bully’s looked at each other puzzled because they were more confused than when they were asked to chose #2 pencils for the SAT’s. The alphamost of the pair of confounded pit bulls with great distain in his voice said, “lets just get the fuck outta here, these hippie shits ain’t even worth it” to which the other bully apparently agreed with through a head shake. At least I think that was what made the rattling sound. I guess alpha male jocks find profound contemplation difficult so they just follow behind the apex male and sniff his butt. We stood there making our best attempt at composing ourselves as we watched the injured Dingoes fading into night. We had finally gained control of our laugh response when Randy-Man said, “I bet we coulda taken them.” At that moment we once again lost control of our laughter. It was the funniest thing in the entire world we had ever heard so we bestowed on it a most fitting accolade of non stop laughter we could manage until we could barely breath any longer.
The evening continued along those lines, dodging danger, laughing, drinking, smoking, and hallucinating. Like any other typical party night in town we were bar hopping staying as long as we could before it became ridiculously obvious that we were on something. We opted to go low key so we went to a fall back Irish pub, Finnegan’s Rainbow where life was all about drinking, playing pool, shuffle bowling, or pinball. All we need do was mind our own business and stay out of trouble. Good plan with good intentions until we noticed two young ladies looking our way. We had seen them around town but never got up the courage to introduce ourselves. But now here they are wanting to play shuffle bowl with us. There was a distinct aura in the air and all four of us recognized something mutual on a higher plane. When I looked into one of the girls eyes it hit me. They were tripping too! Not sure how, its not like we had a special mescaline users membership handshake or some sonic trip detector but I looked at the tripping young beauty simply inquiring, “microdot?” After three minutes of the four of us laughing she responded, “Are you asking me if I’m on microdot or if I want microdot?” After the perfect amount of pause I answered, “Both” then turned to Randy-Man and said, “Don’t worry I think we could take them.” The four of us began the longest laugh competition for which there would be no clear winner. It wasn’t funny and the ladies had no idea that Randy-Man had used the similar line earlier but that didn’t matter. Once one person laughs everyone laughs at least until they realize they don’t know why they‘re laughing to begin with. Then you’ll think about it an hour later and start laughing again. Like I said, mescaline makes everything funny. Long story short, the four of us became tripping companions, ingested more microdots, and had the time of our lives playing shuffleboard bowling like pro‘s. That is if laughing hyena’s could be considered professional.
Perhaps we were a tad over enthusiastic or as the bartender called it, unruly, but the time had come when we were no longer fit to be out in public. So the four of us jumped in my car, picked up some beers and got a room at The Muller Ridge Inn to party in peace. It was a double room with huge beds each underneath a large mirror. We had intuitively paired up and each couple chosen a bed to sit on where we planned to laugh in the New Year watching Dick Clark but circumstances had us dropping our own balls instead of watching the big drop at Times Square. Between the amphetamine rush giving extra stamina and the hallucinogenic properties making feelings extra intense the New Year was rung in a few times either without noticing ofr without caring that the other bed could hear and see everything. Then again, maybe we were all just to busy to think about it. We had such a great evening but before we even noticed it was 5AM. A quick shower (two at a time) we drove the girls back to their car in the village, got their numbers, grabbed a jumbo coffee, and headed off to the nursing home to prepare breakfast for the seniors. (No names were used for the fun and lovely lady friends we made because a few of the readers are from my hometown may try to figure out their identity the way they picked up on the real names of the bars we went to and the motel we stayed at)

Barrel Ride And A Butterfly (by JT Hilltop)

On February 12, 2015February 11, 2015 By Terrapin - The JourneyIn Uncategorized2 Comments

When it came to being irresponsible I was the king of never again. I just could never say no. If anyone dared me to guzzle 151 Rum I would give it my best shot until my throat and stomach were on fire forcing some of that near pure disgusting alcohol out my nose singing the nasal cilia hairs. I might be upchucking for the rest of the evening and consider stomach pumping because it bordered on alcohol poisoning but I‘d try it. You say did three Quaalude’s? I’ll do four. You took four oxy’s washed down with beer? I’ll do six and a bottle of vodka. “Yo JT, I bet I could do three hits of this barrel acid.” Big deal bro, I can name that trip in five barrel hits. That’s not exactly the way it went down but I did end up taking five barrel hits of LSD one night. Just chalk it up as another never again moment. I’ve had way too many of those moments with my head spinning and my stomach threatening to throw up my pancreas along with the chef salad of pharmaceuticals and liquors I consumed. Well at least this time I’m saying never again not because I’m puking up my internal organs but because I am over hallucinating after ingesting five count em five hits of Barrel Acid. WTF was I thinking? One is sufficient for your basic economy no frills trip but two will take you on a full color visually enhanced upscale acid journey. Taking three hits is unusual and far above the daily recommended allowance which can bring one dangerously close to going over edge of sanity to never return. But three barrel hits of LSD is not unheard of. Five?! That’s just fucking insane man, bordering on suicide of the mental capacities. Something that even the most seasoned tripper stacked to the brim with frequent flying miles wouldn’t do on purpose. But there I was going over Niagara falls in five barrels of insanity.
In my defense it wasn’t the usual idiotic dare that led me there it was a desperate attempt to conceal the fact from my Mom that I was in possession of LSD to begin with. What was idiotic was to lay all five hits on my desk. I was alone in my room, my normally parent-free sanctuary, and I had laid this weekends recreationals for me and my two best friends on my desk to admire. Five cute looking hallucination inducing barrels. Five barrels of fun. Two hits for me, two for Ray-Ray, and one for Bobby who did everything conservatively because he got high way too easy. I copped them from the big “Drug Dealer” in school and we would all trip this Saturday. The best laid plans turned asunder because my mother broke the cardinal rule of parenting and walked in my room unannounced. Before even weighing any options all five hits made a desperate sprint into my mouth. The very second my Mom asked me if my brother Jack was doing drugs I swallowed. “Wait, what? Jack doing drugs? No way Mom, why would you say that?” My mom held out a packet of EZ Wider rolling papers, “I found this in his dungaree’s while doing the wash.” Oh oh, Jack is busted but maybe I can save my older brother, Lord knows he’s saved my ass a number of times. “No Mom, no way, he smokes cigarettes and buys this rolling tobacco called Bugler.” Better he gets caught for cigs than weed, only thing is I need to remember to tell him before he see’s Mom. “Well, I hope so. You don’t smoke that Bugler stuff do you?” Bullet dodged, the lie came too easy off my lips, “Of course not Mom, no please, I have to do my homework.”
I was feeling pretty damn proud of myself, thinking so quick and coming up with that Bugler tobacco lie and….Oh shit! I just ate five hits of barrel acid. That’s when panic filled the room like a mountain fog. The thought hit me over and over. I’m about to go on the trip of a lifetime and I may never return. I called Ray-Ray and Bobby and they both acted like they were talking to me for the last time but I promised I would give them a full report if I’m still alive and sane tomorrow. Nothing I could do but wait it out and listen to the travel advisory’s in my head.
An hour passed in slo-motion until the cid began to kick in. What to do? May as well make this trip as hippie-worthy as possible and try to enjoy it. First things first, I lit some patchouli incense and turned on my blacklight to make my psychedelic posters burst with colors and movement. I pranced over to my cheap ass stereo to choose an album for listening pleasure Being in a Jimi mood I put on Bold As Love, side A. It starts off with a funny UFO spoof then quickly kicks into a typical Jimi Hendrix guitar explosion. The album was awesome and a premium tripping audio assault. I laid back on my bed and began seeing some very strange visions. The ceiling was normally a white blank but because of the LSD I perceived it to be full of images most of which were moving like a film strips. Popeye strangling Brutus, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote running in circles like a dog chasing its tail, and that sort of thing. High def bright and very colorful hallucinations that feigned reality to my numbing brain. I had to keep reminding myself that they weren’t real. Then I focused on one in particular of Wimpy humping Olive Oyl. The back stabbing hamburger eating freak was pumping away to the music. Popeye, Brutus, and an array of cartoon character I don’t even remember were all watching and cheering them on. Olive was panting and moaning her skinny and boney legs way up in the air, and Wimpy had lost some weight and was unbelievably in time with the music thrusting along with the chords. In the middle of pounding Olive Wimpy pulls out a trail of hamburgers and begins eating which made me laugh. Uncontrollably! Other characters were clapping, Olive was screaming “Ohhhh Popppppeye!!!“ and Wimpy kept saying “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a good fucking today” still pumping away as Olive squealed. I laughed out loud until I realized something strange. Not that the scene wasn’t already strange enough but this was scary strange. The music Wimpy was humping to was not the album I put on. As a matter of fact it was music I’d never heard of before filled with really weird electronic sounds. When I jumped up the hallucinations disappeared of the ceiling and my stereo began laughing at me. I made a mad dash across the room to investigate. The album was over and I had no clue how long ago it ended. I was audio-hallucinating which for me was new.
I shook my head trying to get straight and flip the album over. I was standing yet I couldn’t feel my legs, they felt like long pillows. Using all my resources I attempted to reassure myself, “Its just a trip JT, you’re tripping and everything’s okay. Only a trip, it’s the acid, none of this is real.” Feeling only slightly convinced my pillows walked me back to my bed. By the time I finally figured out how to lay down someone had stopped the album. When I looked over it started again then happened once more. I was certain my asshole brother had come home, knew I was tripping and thought it would be funny to goof on me by plugging and unplugging the player. Hey cut it out man, that’s not funny!” No response. I looked around. No sign of Jack, no one anywhere, but the music was now playing normal. I turned to get back to my bed when one of my posters, an American Indian chief with tie dye colors all around him began moving. His eyes narrowed as he glared at me breathing hard and flexing his muscles. Chief Crazy Brave was holding up a tomahawk in what I felt was a threatening manor. “Holy fuck! This isn’t fucking real man, it can’t be.”
The full force of the five hits of acid were attacking me now. I closed my eyes tight but someone or something kept popping them back open. The Indian chief climbed out of the poster as the walls began breathing. In and out they were breathing like a wave at a sports arena making eerie wind noises. I reminded myself I was tripping so I wouldn’t flip out but I had to do something, needed to get away from the breathing wall, errant stereo, and wherever he was hiding the tomahawk wielding Indian chief. I needed to get out of my room but could’t possibly risk running into Mom or Dad so my only alternative option was to regroup in the bathroom.
So I retreated to the bathroom hoping those walls hadn’t begun breathing yet. One of the odd things about tripping is it intensifies every feeling you have. If you have sex its like the first and best you ever had, if its hearing music the sounds pull at your soul and make it dance, and if its laughing it’s the funniest possible thing you could ever imagine. Even mundane things like taking a pee take on a whole new aura, it can even feel better than that life relieving pee you take during a long road trip in between rest tops. To be honest I don’t think I even thought about it but since I had arrived in the bathroom I just naturally started to pee. It had an oddly reassuring quality to it, helped me to forget the walls, the Indian chief, and the tomahawk. But there is another oddity when tripping and one thing we are always warned about is staring at ourselves for too long. When you see an image of yourself on psychotropic it often appears distorted so you need to focus and look away before you begin to freak out thinking its how you really look. As I turned from the toilet bowl I was confronted with a full length mirror that had a most frightening and imposing figure staring. Me!
Everything seemed to come to a halt, even time itself. I was staring at a foreboding image of myself painted like a warrior of some sort complete with a bizarre war paint. Split directly down the center of my face and body was a line, on the right side everything yellow except two stripes of dark brown war paint on my forehead angling upwards, a semi circle around my eye, and two more stripes on my cheek in a downward angle. My left side was a dark brown yang to the bright yellow yin. I must say I looked fierce. Fierce enough to take on that tomahawk carrying poster image that was lurking about somewhere. I stared for a few seconds trying to intellectualize the event and put it into perspective but my perspective had hopped on a train out of town and I wasn’t sure it would ever return. The war paint began breathing, or pulsating and changing colors. War paint of dark brown, bright yellow, and dayglo orange were spinning around my face. My cheeks were drooping, my nose twisted and my forehead protruded immensely. I was hideous, a nightmarish looking ghoul that went beyond anything in The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. I issued a long slow drawn out “Ohhhh…. My….. God” forcing myself away from the image. Like I was a Piccaso portrait escaping from a Salvador Dali landscape Nothing was real, I had never come close to hallucinating this hard. I trembled and forced myself to head back to my sanctuary feeling like I was stepping on feathered mattresses repeating “its not you it‘s the acid, It‘s just a hallucination. That wasn’t the real you.”
“Shit man, I gotta get a hold of myself here and start enjoying this again. Each step I took required concentration, my eyeballs must have been hanging out of their sockets, my cheeks were melting, and I was walking with Gumby’s legs. When I reached my room I started laughing uncontrollable when I heard someone say “What are you laughing at?” Not able to contain myself I answered in between laughs and breaths, I have no legs, hahaha and my tongue is made of cotton, hahaha.” Still in a fit of laughing I looked around expecting to see my brother Jack but it wasn’t him who answered me.” Well if you think that’s funny just wait until you see reality.” When you’re on a trip like this you don’t need anything to be funny you just find everything funny so I doubled over at the most recent statement. Once recovered I answered, “What do you mean until I see…Wait! What? Who said that? Jack are you goofing on me because this is not the time.” I looked for Jack but nowhere to be found. I surveyed my posters afraid the Indian chief had come alive but no. I looked to my stereo believing maybe the sound was coming from the speakers. “Oh Jesus now I’m hearing hallucinations.” I laid down and tried meditating when a butterfly fluttered in weird patterns in front of my eyes leaving trials of butterfly wings all over the place until it landed on my chest. I stared in confusion when out of nowhere it began to speaking to me. I say speak but it wasn’t actual speaking it was more like it communicated to me. I mean it didn’t actually move its lips to form words and there were no like butterfly sounds coming from it. It communicated directly to me in an unspoken language it called the language of the cosmos. “I am the Monarch of the universe and I have come to take you to worlds not yet even dreamed of, worlds where physics and logic have never existed. I am taking you to world of the Butterfly King.
TBC

An Unexpected Trip

On April 20, 2014 By Terrapin - The JourneyIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Today’s lesson, hide your drugs better!

Alan was feeling a little bit guilty about violating his son‘s trust. He respected Ian’s right to privacy but his suspicions were so deep he felt he had to infringe. He didn’t want his son smoking that evil devils weed or worse. As a devout Jesuit he was responsible to raise his son to be a follower of The Society of Christ and if he found Ian straying he could use that to send his son into a Jesuit school, maybe even go to Loyola someday. His wife Sadie was catholic and had opted not to upset the forbidden apple cart by converting and as long as Ian was swathed in the catholic blanket of Jesus they could compromise. The compromise was a typical agreement between husband and wife in the 50‘s, Sadie agreed to have sex with Alan and not cut him off and Alan agreed to just about anything uner the threat of the vaginal wrench. In truth that was the single bone of contention between them, Sadie insisted on Ian remaining a “Good catholic” and not a Jesuit so Alan gave in for now. That was the one and only time she dared to air any dissidence.
All Alan needed to convince Sadie that being a Jesuit would be in Ian’s best interests was to catch him in a sin. He was relatively certain his son was smoking pot and he wanted to find some evidence of wrongdoing that would give him the upper hand and release the wrench Sadie clenched on his desire. Alan was the man of the house and as such he should in theory have final say in major decisions, but in practice he opted for bedroom bliss over being boss on this one. He looked over his shoulder nervously and began opening the desk drawer as silently as possible. After rifling through the entire desk he was disappointed to not find any evidence but relieved his son seemed to be keeping his head on his shoulders. He wasn’t thinking about anything in particular when he placed the life saver in his mouth, it was more of a reflex. He had no way of knowing he had just unwittingly ingested a tasty tab of Orange Sunshine LSD. In fact it would be almost an hour until he even began to feel any effect, much too long of a time lapse to connect the two together even if he had suspected something. The rest of the covert search also turned up nothing so he left his son’s room and went to his secret haven, his escape room to relax before mowing the lawn. He locked the door behind him and sat down in his lounge chair, his hidden throne to enjoy a quick Budweiser before leaving his sacred sanctuary to begin the chore.
It had always seemed funny to Ian that his Dad spent so much money on a Cadillac but turned the room meant to keep that expensive car into a fortress of escape with no room for the car. A small fridge filled with beers, a lounger, a small TV and a radio all surrounded by his tools. That plus a hidden box full of two years worth of Playboy magazines. But that’s where you could find Alan whenever the stresses of suburban life got to him. He called it his palace. Alan needed to relax because he always stressed out at the thought of performing his most despised suburban chore. Lawn maintenance. People here in Hamilton New Jersey were judged harshly by the state of their lawns. A well kept lawn was the ultimate status in town and would make the homeowner a well respected man about town, but an unkempt lawn was a ticket to the lowest rung of suburban development and a surefire way to have yourself snubbed and ostracized.
But the yard had to be manicured and Alan dutifully mowed and trimmed his sacred acre of green pride with an unusual joviality which at times made him actually laugh to no one in particular. When Alan finished his dreaded chore he found his smile refusing to leave having found mowing mildly amusing and uncharacteristically pleasant. When he performed the finishing touch of edging it was so funny to him he laughed loudly. A thought came into his head so he talked directly to the yard, “I have to go so you’ll be all a lawn.” Nearly a full minute passed before Alan realize he was laughing with the lawn to his silly joke an the neighbors may see. A sudden wave of paranoia rushed over him which felt foreign. He decided he would be better off alone in hi sanctuary so back to the garage he went.
Alan sat down wondering what was going on, maybe he was catching some strange flu or something because he felt very different. A beer an a nap was in order so he opened one up before putting away his tools. He had done some very deep thinking while tackling this normally mundane chore and surprised himself having come up with some new concepts and theories about life. His life to be exact. He put away his lawnmower and edger and then sat back in his recliner to close his eyes and consider the implications of his newly gained perspective. As he laid back and relaxed a sense of serenity settled across his body and mind. Alan was meditating without even realizing. After fifteen minutes his cheek muscles began to move involuntarily forcing a rather large smile back onto his face. His eyes were closed yet bustling with activity as they entered REM even though he was far away from sleeping. He found himself inexplicably listening closely to all the sounds around him, the leaves gently tickling the ground a they danced clumsily across the cement floor, the wings of some kind of bug flapping melodically, a cricket scratching a tune on its hind legs. Sounds that were always around but never noticed, at least not is such a grand way. Alan was smiling and humming and the visions in his minds eye were churning up childhood memories. Cartoon characters. He saw Popeye and Olive Oyl, Mighty Mouse, Huckleberry Hound, Top Cat, and many more cherished cartoon characters all involved in some bizarre collective cartoon specifically portrayed for his entertainment. He was smiling a huge involuntary smile and he knew it. He felt it! He felt the muscles of his cheeks pulling upwards pressing up against his eye sockets, the corners of his mouth contract inwardly, and his jaw line stretch halfway around his head. He chuckled to himself understanding he was rising to a new conscientiousness.
For quite a while Alan merely sat back and enjoyed his trip as he contemplated his life and what it was all about. His smile began to desert him as he realized what a rut he’d found himself in. “What the hell am I doing? The same thing day in and day out, go to work, come home, have dinner, watch TV, and go to bed. What am I doing this all for?” He continued feeling morose and sorry for himself for living what others had convinced themselves was “The American Dream”. But what the hell kind of dream is this drudgery of existence? Why was he just going through the motions, why wasn’t he an international spy, or an astronaut or something exciting? Anything more exciting than a carbon copy of every other shit middle class robot in town. His mood was taking a dangerous turn from comedy to tragedy in mere seconds.
Alan clasped his head between his hands attempting to squeeze the bad thoughts from his mind. Bugs seemed to be buzzing around e3verywhere but one bug in particular was just outside his ear and singing a song to him. Not a song he recognized, more nonsense singing in a weird bug voice like “eyy ya ya dadada dadeedadee, dadada…..get outta my ear!” Wait, was the bug trying to tell him some profound truth? Could this be where he finds true meaning? Alan contemplated intensely what message this omen bug was showing him when he laughed out loud, “Get out of my ear? Hahaha, did some bug just fly in my ear and say get out of my ear?” He laughed some more, not startled or confused but back in a state of control, of understanding, as though tripping on LSD was his true calling and not some foreign experience impossible to understand. He opened his eyes and continued talking to himself, “Holy shit, I feel so strange. I’m not sure what in the Hell is going on but I think I like it. I feel like I‘m in some bizarre 3D movie or one of those optical illusion pictures” The bug continued to sing the same song over and over in his ear and much to his delight he was neither concerned nor puzzled, he was comfortable with it. Suddenly startled Alan thought he saw movement from the corner of his eye as he jumped up from his chair.
“Is someone here? Come on now I know someone else is here, I can hear you and I know you’re in here. Who is it?” Alan was still chuckling lightly but beginning to feel uneasy. The bug stopped singing and in a much deeper and human voice it said to him, “Its me Alan, Franco. You remember me don‘t you? Saint Francis from project Ultra. I sure as hell remember you, all of you. You guys all laughed and called me Franco. Then you did those things to me, those horrible things. I can still feel the pain.” Alan sat back down now suddenly frightened and uncertain of what was happening. An old buried memory he was unaware of was being stirred up and settling in his head as he flashed back to a room from the days he was in The Agency. The top secret Ultra Project, but what was it? Alan thought back hard, a repressed or even worse an erased memory. He was remembering, the room, the lights, the constant loud noises, and….and “Franco? Oh my God, I remember now Franco. They told us no one would get hurt, we never meant to”….. A knock on the door sent a shiver of paranoia erasing the memory and replacing it with profound worry. “Dad? Its me, Ian. Can I come in? I think we nee to talk.”

Monarch Of The Univers (episode II)

On November 1, 2013 By Terrapin - The JourneyIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Previously on Monarch Of The Universe: I thought I was alone but to my surprise I received an answer. “Maybe I can help.” I looked about the room, no one here but me. Oh Jesus now I’m hearing hallucinations. I walked over to the stereo thinking it may have come from the speakers. Nothing. I laid down and tried meditating when a butterfly fluttered in front of me and landed on my chest. I stared in confusion when out of nowhere it began to talk to me. That is to say it communicated to me, it didn’t actually move its lips and speak, it communicated in an unspoken language it called the language of the cosmos.

THE SCREAM OF THE BUTTERFLY
Skeptical? God damn right I was skeptical! I was sure this was more five hit of barrel acid hallucinating but this butterfly went on communicating and explained to me that she is speaking to me in a language of time, a language that can be found hidden in every living things DNA if one knows where to look. The communication DNA she called it, even predates the dinosaurs having been mixed into the primordial soup which became life on earth. The language of the cosmos was etched deep into Mother Earths DNA so every splice of living organisms contains the secret language. Okay, sounds like too much acid, I get it, but my butterfly friend assured me that this communication exists in every galaxy, in every universe shared by all living organisms on planets everywhere. She went on to explain how the DNA code is misinterpreted or misunderstood most of the time and thereby disregarded. Life is so pre-occupied with survival strategies and procreation it no longer hears it, and because my mind is so wide open from the unusual amount of LSD I took I’m able to listen. “Just don’t let clouds get in the way” she told me, “clouds refract the real truths.” She assured me that would make sense to me someday, when the Monarch of the universe rises again.” The communication was a kind of swirling current, like a vast ever flowing ocean current and right now I am in a rip tide so to speak. Or so to communicate to be more literal. She fluttered in front of me a danced about in the air until I understood the movements of her butterfly dance was the communication.
Through her graceful movements she imparted an “enlightening” of its transformation of life into my mind with nary a word. Unspoken yet as clear as any story I’d ever heard read aloud. The story was nothing I had imagined a butterflies life to be. They break out of their eggs as teeny wormlike creatures and have an unyielding hunger for milkweed leaves. With no legs, just a some suction cups and a voracious appetite they hang around eating these leaves all day. They have very soft bodies and are loaded with protein so they’re a favorite snack for larger predators. Being so low on the food chain, and moving in such a slow and odd looking way they are a target of bullying by other insects being called names and getting teased. They have strange bodies and they look like what bully insects describe as “fat worms with bad toupees“, or “grub worms going through puberty on steroids“, or just “hairy slugs.” They make fun of the way they hunch up to move calling them crawling baby camel dicks. The ridicule they receive from other insects is brutal and non stop. After a life of being tortured bullied and teased relentlessly they form warm cocoons where they can hide their shame.
Once inside this cocoon they begin to cry and because of the acidic composition of the milkweed leaves in their diets their tears become corrosive and dissolve their worm parts into a gooey liquid like substance. That’s when the magic happens, when a life of misery and shame is transformed into a beautiful free creature that is the envy of the avian world. As the cocoon cools down the substance takes the form of an insect with six legs, a thin yet strong body, and rolled up shoulders which contain no blood. Once outside they pump blood into their shoulders making them puff up with pride forming regal and beautiful wings. The wing are magnificent allowing the little creatures to soar up into the skies. Before they take flight they hide three secrets they learned in their former lives in the dust of the cocoon. Once the secrets are safely stowed away they loudly let out the scream of the butterfly announcing to the world that the Monarch has risen.
I was more than fascinated by the butterfly’s story and I was absorbed completely by its visual language. I understood its tale as though it had been inside my head forever. She spread her wings, circled the room three times before landing back on my chest. Majestic in every sense. Next she stretched out her wings and revealed a bright golden diamond on brown gossamer wings. I had no more images of Olive cheating on Popeye with Wimpy, no more inner warrior winking at me from the mirror, and no more mysterious music sneaking out of my stereo. Just me and the butterfly. The butterfly communicated soothingly assuring me we would meet again but for now I need just remember our communication, remember where the three truths were hidden.

Now I know that seems like just another of my bizarre hallucinations and truth is so did I, but a startling event that transpired cemented the reality of me hearing the scream of the butterfly. My best friend Ken came over bragging to me that he just got some blue cheer LSD and was planning on tripping this week. I had told him about my intense accidental trip, omitting the butterfly part, so he understood that for the time being I wasn’t gonna trip at all. I told him to enjoy but just do one hit at a time and he smiled a big huge shit eating Cheshire cat grin. “JT my man, I got something for you too. I know you don’t want no acid yet but my connection offered my some special pre-rolled joints for five bucks apiece. He called em ‘Cocoon Dust’ and said they are intense and kind of spiritual so I got six, all I could afford. Three for me and three for you good dude.” I was stunned, literally stunned and needed to make sure I heard him, “Cocoon dust? Did you say cocoon dust?” I felt paralyzed but he went on, “Yea dude, its supposed to be the best smoke high you can get, like not angel or green weed, its not like its PCP man, its something like more spiritual or something, kinda like smoking mescaline or peyote. Some Indian tribe in Mexico scrapes cocoon dust and mixes it with ground cactus root and rolls them up. I got you the three, you want em or not dude?” Cocoon dust, holy fucking shit man. I never told him about the cocoon dust and the three secrets and now he is offering me three joints of something called cocoon dust. One for each secret? I could still barely move but was enthusiastic. “Are you fucking kidding me dude? Of course I want them, you’re the friggen best friend ever bro.” He handed them to me and I placed them behind the foil of my Marlboro cigarette box. “When you wanna smoke them man?” Ken shook his head, “No man dude says ya gotta puff each one yourself, its not a sharing kind of joint. What I’m sayin’ is you don’t have to wait for me he says it’s a personal high. Its not the kind of joint you puff and pass, it burns real quick and you only get like three or four hits before it gone and you got take all the hits. Supposed to hit it super fast or something. Funny shit huh? Instead of chugging beers we be chugging a joint made from cactus and butterflies.
TBC

The Monarch Of The Universe

On October 18, 2013 By Terrapin - The JourneyIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Another never again moment. I’ve had way too many of them, late nights hugging the toilet bowl somehow empting more contents from my stomach than went in. How many times was I thinking I may have just thrown up my liver or pancreas? How may times have I said never again? Well at least this time I’m saying never again not because I’m puking up my internal organs from mixing every alcohol I could get my lips around. Nope not this time, this particular never again moment is because my hallucinations are over the top. Never again will JT take five hits of barrel acid, a favorite tripping substance for LSD users like myself. One is sufficient for a fantastic trip because barrel acid is pretty powerful, two is pushing it a bit closer to the edge and not normally recommended. Taking three hits is unusual and dangerously close to going over that edge but its not unheard of. But five?! That’s just fucking insane man, something that even the most seasoned tripper stacked with frequent flying miles wouldn’t do that on purpose. To be honest clinical insanity was what I feared most.
So how is it that I am laying in bed in a room I share with my brother tripping like McMurtreys cast of loonies in the cuckoos nest? Because in a moment of sheer marijuana driven panic I made an ill advised choice. My Mom came back unexpectedly and I had five hits of premium trip-worthy barrel acid on the table. I was looking longingly at my freshly acquired controlled substance contemplating who I would abuse them with when I heard the door open. In a rush of paranoia I grabbed all five and shoved them quickly in my mouth. Not in my pocket where they would have been safely stowed from sight but in my mouth! I heard her threatening heels clanking closer as she approached the kitchen and I did the only thing I could think of. I swallowed. Mom came in and glared at me, “What are you doing here in the kitchen? What are you up to now young man?” As I swallowed the tabs I nervously responded, “What do you mean up to? I ain’t doing nothing.” Mom believed that parenting was a responsibility in which she was obliged to constantly belittle me and correct my English. She was relentless at making me feel like shit, “You aren’t doing anything JT, and don’t lie to me I can tell when you’re up to something, you look like the cat that swallowed the canary.” I had recently smoked a joint blowing the smoke out my window and I almost chuckled thinking about Tweedy Pie and Sylvester but I needed to keep it together and switch the focus, “Okay, okay I’m not doing anything mother, just looking for a snack. Why are you back so early anyway?” she stared at me in an all too familiar way, deadpan suspicion “Yea well I forgot something and your dad is outside waiting. But if you don’t want to tell me what’s going on maybe I should just stay home.” Jesus Christ no! Just the thought of that made me shiver perceptibly. Time to use my ultimate teen weapon, the disdainful you never trust me sarcasm, “Yea sure Mom, I’m planning an mass murder, I was just in here choosing which of your knives will make the cleanest stab! Why is it you always think I‘m up to something? You never trust me.” I knew I sold it. Mom shook her head in mock disgust and started towards the door, “One of these days JT you’re gonna say something you’ll regret and someone will take you serious. For gods sake grow up. You stay out of trouble and we’ll see about lifting your grounding tomorrow. Go clean your room and then we can talk about trust!” As she walked out the door I sneered while under my breath I spoke bravely, “Yea fucking right, my groundation! What a fucking joke!”
I was pissed off because most everyone else I know is at the Civic Center at the Jethro Tull concert and I’m stuck here because I missed and assignment in social studies. Social Studies, another joke! Anyway this acid is gonna start coming on in a while so I need to prepare. Time to head up into my sanctuary away from this screwed up world. Up to my bedroom which I share with my older brother who just won’t move out so I can have it to myself. 22years old and still living home the damn loser. Not me man as soon as I turn eighteen I’m outta this shithole of a house. Fuck it, at least I will be tripping my brains out tonight. Little did I know how close to literal that would become.

The cid was kicking in so I got settled in. What to do? First things first. I lit some patchouli incense and turned on my blacklight to make my psychedelic posters burst with colors and movement. I pranced over to my cheap stereo to choose an album. Being in a Jimi mood I put on Bold As Love, side A. It starts off with a funny UFO spoof then quickly kicks into a typical Jimi Hendrix guitar explosion. The album was awesome and premium tripping material. I laid back on my bed and began seeing some very strange visions. The ceiling was normally blank but because of the LSD I perceived it to be full of images, most of which were moving like a film strips. Popeye strangling Brutus, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote running in circles like a dog chasing its tail, and that sort of thing. High def hallucinations. After watching these assorted hallucinations awhile I had to keep reminding myself that they weren’t real. Then I focused on one in particular, Wimpy humping Olive Oyl and he was pumping away to the music. Popeye, Brutus, and an array of cartoon character I don’t remember were all watching and cheering them on. Olive was panting and moaning her skinny and boney legs way up in the air, and Wimpy had lost some weight and was unbelievably in time with the music, thrusting along with the chords. Other characters were clapping, Olive was screaming “Ohhhh Popppppeye!!!“ and Wimpy kept saying “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a good fucking today” still pumping as if dancing. I laughed out loud until I realized something strange. Not that the scene wasn’t already strange enough but this was scary strange. The music Wimpy was humping to was not the album I put on. As a matter of fact it was music I never heard of before, filled with really weird electronic sounds. I jumped up, the hallucinations disappeared and I ran to my stereo. The album was over and I had no clue how long ago it ended.
I shook my head trying to get straight and flip the album over. I stood to reassure myself, “Its just a trip JT, you’re tripping and everything’s okay. Only a trip, it’s the acid, none of this is real.” Feeling only slightly better I headed back to my bed but someone stopped the album. When I looked over it started again, then happened once more. I was certain my asshole brother had come home, knew I was tripping and thought it would be funny to goof on me. “hey cut it out man, that’s not funny!” No response. I looked around. No sign of Robert, no one anywhere, but the music was now playing normal. I turned to get back to my bed when one of my posters, an American Indian chief with tie dye colors all around him began moving. He was breathing and flexing his muscles, holding up a tomahawk. “Holy fuck! This isn’t fucking real man, it can’t be.”
The full force of the five hits of acid were hitting me now. I slinked back into bed and closed my eyes tight but they kept popping open. I had to keep reminding myself I was tripping so I wouldn’t flip out. Can’t sleep, no one to talk to, I gotta see myself through this. But right now I have to take a pee. Off to the bathroom. One of the things about tripping is it intensifies every feeling, whether its making love like never before, hearing music that pulls at your soul, or even pissing. Even better than that pee held in during a long road trip waiting for the next rest top. But there is another oddity when tripping, when you see am image of yourself and its distorted you need to focus and look away before you begin to freak out thinking its how you really look. As I turned from the toilet bowl I was confronted with a full length mirror that had a most frightening and imposing figure staring back at me.
Everything seemed to come to a halt, even time itself. I was staring at a foreboding image of myself painted like a warrior of some sort complete with a bizarre war paint. Split directly down the center of my face and body was a line, on the right side everything yellow except two stripes of dark brown war paint on my forehead angling upwards, a semi circle around my eye, and two more stripes on my cheek in a downward angle. My left side was a dark brown yang to the bright yellow yin. I must say I looked fierce. I stared for a few seconds trying to intellectualize the event and put it into perspective but my perspective had gone out for a walk in the woods and I wasn’t sure it would ever return. The war paint began breathing, or pulsating and changing colors. War paint of dark brown, bright yellow, and dayglo orange were spinning around my face. My cheeks were drooping, my nose twisted and my forehead protruded immensely. I was hideous, a worse image than finding a face full of pimples the day of a date. I issued a long drawn out “Ohhhh My God” and forced myself away from the image. Like I was a Piccaso portrait escaping from a Salvador Dali landscape Nothing was real, I had never come close to hallucinating this hard. I trembled and forced myself to head back to my sanctuary feeling like I was stepping on feathered mattresses repeating “that wasn’t you. That wasn’t you” as my Mantra.
“Shit man, I gotta get a hold of myself here and start enjoying this again. Where the fuck is Popeye and shit?” I thought I was alone but to my surprise I received an answer. “maybe I can help.” I looked about the room, no one here, only me. Oh Jesus now I’m hearing hallucinations. I walked over to the stereo thinking it may have come from the speakers. Nothing. I laid down and tried meditating when a butterfly fluttered in front of me and landed on my chest. I stared in confusion when out of nowhere it began to talk to me. That is to say it communicated to me, it didn’t actually move its lips and speak. It communicated in an unspoken language it called the language of the cosmos.
TBC

Transcenental Medication

On September 1, 2013 By Terrapin - The JourneyIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Philosophy? I Got Nuthin

Nothing is the absence of anything. Anything is something so nothing must be something if its anything. Wait, how can there be nothing if anything can be nothing making nothing something? If its something then there can be no true nothing because the minute you name it nothing it becomes something. Man this shit is so confusing. That makes it impossible to be nothing right? Then what in the hell is nothing? The search for nothing is how I began my journey of ultimate discovery to answer the ultimate philosophic conundrum, why is there something instead of nothing. This is where the scientific wedge splits apart the theory of creationists and the creationist concept argues how everything began. Both sides of the discussion agree that at first there was nothing but one side believes God created the world, and the other side claims an explosion occurred creating a ripple in the fabric of time creating matter. Phew, glad that’s cleared up! But wait, if there was nothing, where the hell did god come from or what caused the explosion. Where did the two colliding atoms come from? That only brings us back to nothing. Everyone agrees that before the universe existed there was…..nothing. Nothing is so powerful Jerry Seinfeld made a successful TV show about it. Sometimes nothing is everything. But I have nothing to hide, nothing to fear, and nothing to show for it so off I went on a spiritual journey to find nothing.
I think Socrates summed it up pretty good, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing” So for me to be truly wise that’s what I need to know. Nothing. Lots of people have nothing to say and say it all day long but I don’t want to get into politics here I want to concentrate on nothing. Some people spend years on such spiritual journeys and others find what they are looking for on a quick puddle jumper. My journey began with a needle. Many needles actually, it was during an intense session of meditation while receiving acupuncture that nothing first became clear. A clarification here, this wasn’t an actual journey, I never set out on a search of nothing but nothing has always been on my mind. In truth I believe the journey began with my first chemically induced trip. An LSD trip that is, the drug that enabled me to pursue practices such as astral projection and dimension diving. I don’t recommend LSD to anyone that would be unwise but it certainly did open my eyes and mind to things previously unseen. I learned many things during my years of hallucinogen experimentation, the most valuable being an ability to enter into a deep trancelike meditative state.
While under the influence of this mind bending drug I entered into meditations in which I successfully separated my mind from my physical being. I never astral projected to ethereal other worlds or experienced any alien abductions but I did find alternate states of my own self which sort of put my brain on hold as it rebooted leaving the cortex clear of bullshit clutter and effectively giving my occipital a lobe job, if only for a short time. I was a line cook at Windows On The World where orders came in as fast as a bumble bee’s in-flight sexual experience so meditating was extremely helpful, and I always “tranced out” a half hour before service helping me to reduce and often eliminate clutter leaving less room for mistakes in my orders. A very powerful tool meditating, and a practice I continued long after I stopped taking tabs of mind expanders.
It was very effective but restaurant work pace was so brutal it left me with many physical discomforts. So after a life of hard work in high pressure fast paced restaurants I developed a common condition amongst chefs, chronic back ache. I tried physical therapy, chiropractors, pain management therapy and an old favorite, opiates, self medication, and alcohol therapy but everything managed the pain only briefly. After years of frustrating attempt’s to control the pain I opted to go for acupuncture. My theory was the combination of pins, needles, and meditation would have a long lasting effect.
Brimming with optimistic vibes I went to see Dr. Khandro, a Tibetan acupuncturist at The Shambala Clinic in the basement of his Tibetan Holistic Center, or THC as its known around town. Dr. Khandro was a rather short man dressed more like a monk than a doctor, but he was Buddhist after all so I assumed that was the norm. When I addressed him as doctor he put up his hand, “In here I no doctor Khandro, I Kha. It is essential we break down any barrier set by title. For purpose of effective session we are equal in room here, onry Kha and JT. Prease, put on gown and come back in room with open mind.” I was given a full length smock to put on which was remarkably comfortable. I felt like I was living a chapter of the book Siddhartha but I did as I was told and returned with an open mind.
I sat in a chair awaiting Kha‘s return. With shaved head and beaming smile he walked back into the room and asked me to lay down on a table covered with a thin mattress. “You haff come to seek separation from your pain. I no eriminate pain, I separate pain from body and mind. It is important to have not only proper treatment with puncture but to have serene surrounding to make sure mind is clear.” He called to someone I had not yet met, “Shodra prease light some Santal incense and play some music for JT.” He placed his hands which were bigger than I expected over my head and squeezed lightly. “Mr. JT I canna feel much stress inside yaw head now. I prace punctures in pressure points and you lay back and relax” With that he began inserting small needles at different points on my head. First on the top of my cranium, then a colony of little pricks entered my temples. Each one gave a tiny pinch and after five minutes my head, forehead, and ears had morphed into reverse porcupine features. He continues pricking me on my shoulders, then put about a dozen in the bottom of each foot. I had never seen so many pricks in one place before. Strangely though, the pricks relaxed me. “Now JT, you lay back relax. Let your mind free you from pain. I will return to remove pricks when ready.”
Kha left the room and I felt sure that when he returned my pain would have been separated from my mind and body. All I had to do now was to relax completely and just make sure I don’t roll over and force the damn pricks deeper into my body. The Santal incense smelled awesome and filled the room with a pleasant light smoke, the lights were dim, and the music was like George Harrison or Ravi Shankar. Maybe both. I closed my eyes and began my regimen of meditation. There are many styles and methods of meditating and I damn near perfected mine. I concentrated on each part of my body beginning at the bottom of my feet moving upwards to each new part as soon as I felt it relax completely. It was about 20 minutes before I finally had every portion of my physical being relaxed and entered into total trance. Everything was soothing.
As I meditated I was separated from my physical self and transported into a stark white room with nothing in it at all. The floor, the ceiling, and three walls of blank, the fourth wall being a water-like curtain. I noticed the smallest blank spot in the center of the streaming curtain and proceeded to get up to inspect it. I was very curious what was on the other side and I tried to peek through. I could see nothing at all so I placed two fingers inside the blank spot and the feeling I got almost knocked me over. Not a physical feeling, but a sort of spiritual feeling. I was certain my fingers had just entered into another world or better yet another realm. I gently pulled at the opening and it separated easy allowing my entire hand, then my arm into this ether realm. The feeling was nothing I had ever felt before. I just knew something special was here in this bizarre minimalist space. I looked through the hole which by now had grown much larger. In that other realm was smoke, but not a noxious smoke, more like an almost friendly and enticing smoke. The thought of sticking my entire head through the hole pulled at me. Then Kha’s voice spoke, “Come in JT, you have found nothing.”
TBC

Has Anyone Seen My Tab Of LSD? Dad? OMFG!!

On August 23, 2013 By Terrapin - The JourneyIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

A Trip Around The Yard

Alan was feeling a little bit guilty about violating his son‘s trust. He respected Ian’s right to privacy but his suspicions were so deep he felt he had to infringe. He didn’t want his son smoking that evil devils weed or worse. As a devout Jesuit he was responsible to raise his son to be a follower of The Society of Christ and if he found Ian straying he could use that to send his son into a Jesuit school, maybe even go to Loyola someday. His wife Sadie was catholic and had opted not to upset the forbidden apple cart by converting and as long as Ian was swathed in the blanket of Jesus they could compromise. The compromise was a typical agreement between husband and wife in the 50‘s, Sadie agreed not to cut Alan off forcing Alan to agree to just about anything. In truth that was the single bone of contention between them, Sadie insisted on Ian remaining a “Good catholic” and not a Jesuit so Alan gave in “for now“. That was the one and only time she aired dissidence.
All Alan needed to convince her being a Jesuit would be in Ian’s best interests was to catch him in a sin. He was relatively certain his son was smoking pot and he wanted to find some evidence of wrongdoing that would give him the upper hand and release the vaginal wrench Sadie clenched on his desires. Alan was the man of the house and as such he should in theory have final say in major decisions, but in practice he opted for bedroom bliss over being boss on this one. He looked over his shoulder nervously and began opening the desk drawer as silently as possible. After rifling through the entire desk he was disappointed to not find any evidence but relieved his son seemed to be keeping his head on his shoulders. He wasn’t thinking about anything in particular when he placed the life saver in his mouth, it was more of a reflex. He had no way of knowing he had just unwittingly ingested a tasty tab of Orange Sunshine LSD. In fact it would be almost an hour until he even began to feel any effect, much too long of a time lapse to connect the two together even if he had suspected something. The rest of the covert search also turned up nothing so he left his son’s room and went to his secret haven, his escape room to relax before mowing the lawn. He locked the door behind him and sat down in his lounge chair at his sacred sanctuary.
It had always seemed funny to Ian that his Dad spent so much money on a Cadillac but turned the room meant to keep that expensive car into a fortress of escape with no room for the car. A small fridge filled with beers, a lounger, a small TV and radio all surrounded by his tools. But that’s where you could find Alan whenever the stresses of suburban life got to him. He called it his palace. Alan needed to relax because he always stressed out at the thought of performing his most despised suburban chore. Lawn maintenance. People here in Hamilton New Jersey were judged harshly by the state of their lawns. A well kept lawn was the ultimate status in town and would make the homeowner a well respected man about town, but an unkempt lawn was a ticket to the lowest rung of suburban development and a surefire way to have yourself snubbed and ostracized.
But the yard had to be manicured and Alan dutifully mowed and trimmed his sacred acre of green pride with an unusual joviality which at times made him actually laugh to no one in particular. When Alan finished his dreaded chore he smiled having found it mildly amusing and uncharacteristically pleasant. When he performed the finishing touch of edging it was oddly funny for some reason. He had also done some very deep thinking while tackling this normally mundane chore and surprised himself having come up with some new concepts and theories about life. His life to be exact. He put away his lawnmower and edger and then sat back in his recliner to close his eyes and consider the implications of his newly gained perspective. Besides it was a hot one out there today and he was tired so a cold beer and a short nap would fit his bill. As he laid back and relaxed a sense of serenity settled across his body and mind. Alan was meditating without even realizing. After fifteen minutes his cheek muscles began to move involuntarily forcing a rather large smile onto his face. His eyes were closed yet bustling with activity as they entered the rapid eye movement state even though he was far away from sleeping. He found himself inexplicably listening closely to all the sounds around him, the leaves gently tickling the ground a they danced acros the cement floor, the wings of some kind of bug flapping melodically, a cricket scratching a tune on its hind legs. Sounds that were always around but never noticed, at least not is such a grand way. Alan was smiling and humming and the visions in his minds eye were churning up childhood memories. Cartoon characters. He saw Popeye and Olive Oyl, Mighty Mouse, Huckleberry Hound, Top Cat, and many more cherished cartoon characters all involved in some bizarre collective cartoon specifically portrayed for his entertainment. As if he had taken hallucinogens before he rolled with it not for a second letting the images upset or confuse him. He was smiling a huge involuntary smile and he knew it. He felt it! He felt the muscles of his cheeks pulling upwards pressing up against his eye sockets, the corners of his mouth contract inwardly, and his jaw line stretch halfway around his head. He chuckled to himself understanding he was rising to a new conscientiousness.
For quite a while Alan merely sat back and enjoyed his trip as he contemplated his life and what it was all about. His smile began to desert him as he realized what a rut he’d found himself in. “What the hell am I doing? The same thing day in and day out, go to work, come home, have dinner, watch TV, and go to bed. What am I doing this all for?” He continued feeling morose and sorry for himself for living what others had convinced themselves was “The American Dream”. But what the hell kind of dream is this drudgery of existence? Why was he just going through the motions, why wasn’t he an international spy, or an astronaut or something exciting? Anything more exciting than a carbon copy of every other shit middle class robot in town. His mood was taking a dangerous turn from comedy to tragedy in mere seconds.
Alan clasped his head between his hands attempting to squeeze the bad thoughts from his mind. Bugs seemed to be buzzing around e3verywhere but one bug in particular was just outside his ear and singing a song to him. Not a song he recognized, more nonsense singing in a weird bug voice like “eyy ya ya dadada dadeedadee, dadada…..get outta my ear!” Wait, was the bug trying to tell him some profound truth? Could this be where he finds true meaning? Alan contemplated intensely what message this omen bug was showing him when he laughed out loud, “Get out of my ear? Hahaha, did some bug just fly in my ear and say get out of my ear?” He laughed some more, not startled or confused but back in a state of control, of understanding, as though tripping on LSD was his true calling and not some foreign experience impossible to understand. He opened his eyes and continued talking to himself, “Holy shit, I feel so strange. I’m not sure what in the Hell is going on but I think I like it. I feel like I‘m in some bizarre 3D movie or one of those optical illusion pictures” The bug continued to sing the same song over and over in his ear and much to his delight he was neither concerned nor puzzled, he was comfortable with it. Suddenly startled Alan thought he saw movement from the corner of his eye as he jumped up from his chair.
“Is someone here? Come on now I know someone else is here, I can hear you and I know you’re in here. Who is it?” Alan was still chuckling lightly but beginning to feel uneasy. The bug stopped singing and in a much deeper and human voice it said to him, “Its me Alan, Franco. You remember me don‘t you? Saint Francis from the days back at the room. I sure as hell remember you, all of you. You guys all laughed and called me Franco. Then you did those things to me, those horrible things. I can still feel the pain.” Alan sat back down now suddenly frightened and uncertain of what was happening. An old buried memory he was unaware of was being stirred up and settling in his head. He was remembering, the room, the lights, the loud noises, and….and “Franco? This can’t be, it wasn’t real. But maybe it was. Oh my God, I remember now Franco. They told us no one would get hurt, we never meant to”….. A knock on the door sent a shiver of paranoia erasing the memory and replacing it with profound worry. “Dad? Its me, Ian. Can I come in? I think we nee to talk.”

You Say You Want A Revelation, Well Ya Know (another sick bastard bible selection)

On August 15, 2013 By Terrapin - The JourneyIn Uncategorized2 Comments

part one

The last one picked is the one no one really wants on the team and Revelations was the last one picked for the Bible. Coincidence? Maybe, or maybe Revelations was too fat, too slow, or too uncoordinated or no one liked it. Maybe it jut flat out sucked! Of course there’s only one way to find out. Investigation. So here it comes the Christian Scripture Investigators. The CSI team is here to find the DNA and other forensic tidbits hidden in the scriptures. Maybe even trace elements like epithelia’s, fingerprints, or secret documents to uncover the truth behind the book of all things. This episode we will investigate the truth behind the final frontier of the bible, revelations.
The main players in this tale of apocalyptic reckoning are somewhat questionable. Written by John of Pathos where he was known as the pathological prophet of Pathos. The story as he tells it includes the four headless horsemen of Sleepy Hollow, the Liar of Judah, angels, trumpeters, the beast, a dragon, a false prophet, an arched angel, and of course no bible story would be complete without a whore, this one straight outta Babylon.
The book of revelations is somewhat difficult to tell because its told in some unusual circumstances. The story was revealed to this tripped out dude John, who was locked up in prison in Pathos on a drug related beef. He was a prolific writer who had already had a number of stories published in the New Testament. A few under the epistle category, and a gospel song called Psalm 43 (The P has the right to remain silent). Many religious scholars say it was actually 3 different Johns but if I get into bible discrepancies I’ll never get to this investigation. The truth as he told it to me goes like this. One evening while studying in the prison library John had a visitor. A woman who looked alarming similar to Mary Magdalene though she denies it three times. This visitor had placed a very powerful tab or two of LSD (legal at that time) in her mouth and transferred it to Johns mouth in a disgusting public display of spit swapping French kisses. A face sucking tongue tangoing, snog toggle, The ultimate French kiss whose true purpose was to exchange the hallucinogenic treat. When John got back to his cell, and after his bulge subsided (Really don’t drop the soap now!!) he was visited and told a story by god. I had a similar reverse episode once, after ingesting a chemical mind tickler I learned that god took some acid and saw me! Another day.
So during his intense peeking (I think that’s what people on acid trips call it when the trip hit’s a crescendo), that was when god suddenly said to John, “Dude, you wanna hear about the future of mankind?” Stupid question, of course he did. He was tripping after all. So this story was how John best remembered the telling some 18 hours after the acid wore off. That’s some powerful shit there! This is the book of Reservations. Reverberation. Revolution. ….Sorry, The Book of Revelations!
Here it is in his very own paraphrased words as he told it to me one day back in the late 60’s:
“So Mary and I kissed and I could feel two tabs of something on her tongue. Yea I know she said it wasn’t her but she just didn’t want to end up on the front page of the Abraham Inquirer. An let me tell you the J-man was one lucky Jew she was one helluva kisser. Anyway She tells me to swallow, something you don’t normally wanna hear in prison, so I swallows the tab. Then she tells me I just took two tabs of Blue Cheer acid. Man I was stoked. I smiled all the way back to my cell knowing what was coming. I got to my cell and laid down on my stone cot. After about a half hour I hear this voice. I sit up an look around but there ain’t no one there. So I lays back down when the voice comes back, this time calling me by name. So I shout who’s that, who’s there? And the voice says ‘Its me John, God.’ Now I’m thinking it must be the acid kickin’ in right? I mean the voice was like soft and almost girly. Not the powerful deep voice you’d think God would have but he insists. ‘Really John, its me God’ Then he steps out from the shadows and sure enough it is God. Amazing how much Jesus looked like him. Spittin’ image. What else could I do? I sez, whats up God?”
“He walks through the bars, I mean right through, like they wasn’t even there. Then he sez, ‘John, I want to tell you a story. I want you to write it down and make sure everyone reads it.’ I sez to him, you mean like a bestseller or something? To which he replies, ‘yea, something like that. But first try and get the story into the bible, because this is the story of the beginning and the end.’ Now I’m really thinking the acid is slamming the insides of my brain but I figger I should like play along and sez yea yea sure Mr. Almighty, whatever you sez.”
“When I first created everything I had seven arch angels to watch over heaven and protect it. Six of these arches were cool, but one arch angel was just a real pain in the ba-donk-a-donk. Has to do everything his way and refused to follow my directions. Finally one day I caught him in bed with Gabriel’s teenage daughter and that was the last straw. I tossed his ass out and straight down to earth along with one third of the questionable residents of heaven. He went down to earth with them and they formed a gang calling themselves the Crypts. He goes to the garden of Eden and begins recruiting humans for his gang. So I had Gabriel, a very trusted angel form a gang up here because I knew there would someday be a major showdown. He formed the Bloods of my blood, after my sons prophecy. We call them the Bloods for short, and it created a rivalry that would be the mother of all rivalries. Positive vs. Negative, Life vs. Death, Good vs. Evil, Bloods vs. Crypts. One day we would have our gang lords get together for an epic showdown. This showdown will be called The Rapture.”
“Now I’m still tripping but I’m starting to think maybe this shit is real so I keep scraping away on my stones getting down his words so I could one day write the book for him. Being an ancient journalist of course I had questions, so I asks him to explain to me how this Rapture thing is gonna go down. Then something happens that may sound like a fairy tale or a hallucination. He floats up to the ceiling an sez come on up John it will be easier if I show you”
Now I’m flipping ya know? I’m like how the fuck am I supposed to get up there, but before I even thought about a strategy I was lifted off my feet and floating right next to him. Honest to god, from Gods mouth to my ear he whispers, ‘Watch this. These guys can really stir it up’ A light went on and I swear to you it looked like a giant flat screen TV in HD. The images seemed so real. There was a stage with seven musicians. Al Hirt,Loius Armstrong,Wynton Marsalas, Miles Davis,Chuck Mangione,Maynard Fererson, and Dizzy Gillespie. Not just ordinary musicians each stood with a trumpet in their hands. The seven Trumpeters. They jammed for about an hour and that’s when the real show started!”

Terrapin – The Journey

Tag: LSD