textfiles/drugs/ALT.DRUGS/mathematical-trees

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The first time I took acid was with friends, which is the best way to
do it. We were in a bar, drinking, and the guy (whose name shall
be J.) said he'd picked up the acid, and we should go do it now. I
said sure, and him, his girlfriend "L.", and I went down to the
basement of the bar, which was empty. There were some tables
there and we split up the goods: one hit each. I'd read up on acid
and its effects beforehand, mostly through the USENET FAQ, but I
remember thinking of another friend's words: that he hadn't known
what to expect when he first took acid, for all he knew he was going
to die. Of course, having thought this it occurred to me that I should
think of this kind of thing, 'cause it might bring on a bad
experience. Having thought this I wondered if knowing I should
have good thoughts would be enough to get rid of bad thoughts and
thus ward off a bad experience. Realizing I was floudering in a sea
of ignorance, I proposed we go back upstairs and finish our drinks.
My friends agreed, and I felt better immediately.
After we finished the pitcher we went walking around town a bit.
It was a late autumn night, and the air was cool, but still
comfortable. I was a bit tense, and paying attention to my every
perception. I thought I felt something so I asked my friends and
they said, no they didn't feel anything. We went to a party store to
pick up some whisky and coke-bottles to mix it in, then we headed
towards a park. We ran into a friend who had a very intense
personality, and L. said she thought it was 'cause he'd done a lot of
the drug that we were currently on. I thought about this a bit, but
wasn't worried about it at all, for some reason. I felt a light buzz
tingling my body, like something exciting was going to happen. We
went to the park. The moon was out and everything was clear, and
I realized that the night was clearer than I'd ever noticed. The tree-
branches were more clearly defined than I'd ever seen. We sat on a
hill and smoked some herb, and talked about stuff. We were no
different than any other people who might be sitting there talking
about life and the people we knew and our jobs and what we wanted
to be doing a year from then, only we were buzzing and everything
around us looked sharper and more alive. After a bit, L. got up and
said she'd be right back, and she took off running down the hill,
and ran around in a large circle through the park, her arms open.
Then she came back, and rolled down the hill, and came back. J.
was watching and smiling, and I was looking up at the trees again.
It occurred to me how much the trees did look like fractals, and
suddenly the mathematical beauty of the trees was clearer to me.
The complex mysterious equations that dictated how the trees were
pushed up out of the ground towards the sky were suddenly more
apparent; and I also realized how these equations dictated the growth
of the grass, the rolling of the hills, even our very bodies. I had a
sudden respect for the complexity of things, with an intensity that I
hadn't had before, and this complexity seemed sharper in everything
I turned my eyes towards. I made myself remember that moment,
and wondered if I'd have any more insights, but we just kept talking
and walking around, and everything was sharp and in focus, and
eventually we ended up going to our separate homes and that was
that. I didn't die, I didn't achieve enlightenment, but I did have a
good time and eventually wrote a haiku about trees looking like
fractals.