1568 lines
93 KiB
Plaintext
1568 lines
93 KiB
Plaintext
\pippin\rave\diary.doc
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\pippin\rave\puppy.doc
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\pippin\rave\poetry.doc
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\pippin\rave\blue.rav
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\pippin\rave\sleep.doc
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\qix\t6.txt
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\qix\aya
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\pippin\rave\house.doc
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\pippin\rave\truth.rav
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\pippin\stories\bill.sty
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\pippin\stories\dave.sty
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\pippin\stories\daniel.sty
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\pippin\rave\diary.doc
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June 23, 1992
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DIARIES
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Diaries are like mirrors. You can see through a wall into
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another world through a mirror. Go on. Try it. Diaries can make you
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laugh, and they can make you cry. Diaries can be full of pearls of
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wisdom, and they can be full of shit. A diary is a mirror of you.
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You, frozen into a moment of time and pinned to a page. A
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window on the past. Does this embarrass you? Or is it the thought that
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one day someone else may read a diary entry of yours that holds you back
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from keeping a diary? One day someone well. Diaries magnetically
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attract readers to themselves. They are called diary rays.
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That person will probably be you. You in a year's time, or
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maybe just a month. A month is long enough to think, "Did I write
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*that*?" Usually, old diaries entries just embarass yourself. Other
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people don't know you like you do. They just read your diary. But your
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future selves know you. They know you better than you ever will because
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they've "Been There". Your future selves will laugh at you. They
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always do that.
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Diaries are time travelling. By writing in a diary, you can
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talk to a future self. By reading your diary over again, you can talk
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to a past self. Past selves often get lonely.
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If you are honest with yourself when you write in your diary,
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your past selves will be honest with you. Diaries give you a more
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complete picture of yourself.
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Past selves get distressed too. That's when they send out an
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S.O.S. ie a diary entry. Your future selves can tell you too that life
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is not all distressing, but past selves don't seem to write about every
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day, pleasant things.
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The grandeur of the moment of a poetic thought is all that bears
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remembering. But then I forget how ordinary I am. That's what I was.
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Ordinary. My past reminds me of what I was and still am. And it can
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tell me what I still hope to be.
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\pippin\rave\puppy.doc
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There are other selves inside you. Not just past and future
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selves, but higher and lower selves, god selves, spirit selves, and
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puppy selves.
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Your selves always talk to you. Or rather, they would like to
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always be listened to. They can talk to you through a sunrise or music
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or a book or poetry. Sometimes they talk to you through the mouths of
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your friends. That is always interesting.
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Well, have you ever wondered why "you" is both singular and
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plural?
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I say they would like to talk to you all the time. They would
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go on and on and never stop!
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But I only have one other self. That talks to me, that is. It
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has a voice. A human voice. I have to imagine it though. There isn't
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really a voice that I hear. I have to pretend it is me too. Sometimes
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it can be interesting, and funny, and witty. Sometimes it tells me what
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to do. But that's my fault. I only listen to it when I want to know
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something to get me out of trouble. I think it gets peeved with me when
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I do that.
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Then there is my puppy self. It is like Freud and Jung's
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psychology of the id, ego, and superego. The id self says one thing and
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the superego self says another. But they can't hear each other. Or
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maybe they won't. Maybe they are like an elderly married couple that
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after so many years only talk through their children. That's where the
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puppy self comes in. The puppy self is like a dog. It is dumb, it is
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cute, and it bounds around.
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The puppy self goes bounding from the id self to the superego
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self and tells them what the other says. It doesn't care what it says
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either. Then Situation comes along and requires a Decision. So the
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puppy self just bounds over, and whatever is in its mind becomes
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Decision. the puppy self can go back and forth for as long as it takes
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for Situation to arrive. It doesn't care. It is a puppy self; it's
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dumb. It just bounds around from one to the other.
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\pippin\rave\poetry.doc
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Poetry, the essence of life. A paradox: understood and yet not
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understood by the listeners. Understood by the speaker. Who
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understands a song lyric? But if it were understood by anyone else, it
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would cease to be poetry and would be merely words, plain and unadorned.
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Is it not strange how it is that we recognize poetry? A sort of
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nodding of the head at the thoughts that we cannot possibly understand,
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and yet acceptance... for there is no need to be understood. Only the
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author needs to understand, and that is alright.
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@}-,'->---
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"Mother Nature and Father Time are in a home,
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labelled under uses unknown..."
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...oooo@@@**@@@oooo...
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The dream sensorium is continuous. While we are awake, while we
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are living in the continuum of reality, our dreams go on. The
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subconscious, intelligence, spirit, soul, continues to play whether we
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sleep of wake. When we fall asleep, we lose focus of our externals.
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They dim, diminish, and we jack into our own dream space. When we wake,
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we are jacked out. But our dreams play on.
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*)--)---
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"Only you can change the way you live..."
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-- Hunters and Collectors
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<ooo % # % ooo>
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Our Dreamscape is where we model reality. Like running a
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computer simulation. To find out what happens if I did A to B.
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Instead of breaking something real, we can dream it instead.. But..
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There is a short story called: "The Dreamer". It was about this
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girl, whose dreams were reality. Whatever she dreams, happens, as she
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dreams it. The story was: she was dreaming these two astronauts in a
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plastic bubble into the sun, so that man could see what it was like.
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But a mouse got into the room in which she was sleeping. It woke her
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up, and the two astronauts were lost. Died in a transparent, plastic
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bubble in the sun.
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\pippin\rave\blue.rav
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July 23, 1992
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we float
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away down the stream of life to the Big Blue
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it is a feeling of there. it cannot described in a way that does it justice
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it must be felt
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the experience
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beautiful words to describe it that make the images of the experience
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floating in the sea, the blue sea
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and watching the sunlight glinting off the water.
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the clouds, watching the clouds moving under the water, leaving their
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shadows behind under the water, clouding the water
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floating
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feeling the wind against your face as you stand upon the cliff
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the sun glints and makes everything glinty and shiny
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but you don't notice it until you have been made aware of it
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of the beauty and pattern underlying it all
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of all the particles dancing cheek-to-cheek
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there is a boardwalk, it is on the Quartz Paradise
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it reminds me of the beach, there is boardwalk at Noosa and at the South
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Bank, the wooden planks over the water.
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then there is the mountains and the light, the pink light of the sunrise
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just touching the top of an ice-covered mountain, so cold but the cold
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is beautiful.
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the circles in the water, the wind ripples the water into circles.
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but music how to describe the music when the music describes the
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feeling, a feeling of sadness, happiness, dance, loss, floating, dance,
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anger, white hot rage, and anger! I HATE YOU!! * I HATE YOU!! *
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confusion, mind reeling, and mind exploding, dark, darkness, black, doom
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and death, the deepest grunge of music gurgles of the places
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underground,
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the feeling of deep under the sea.
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wasting time the feeling of waiting, waiting on a grandstand waiting for
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the bus to arrive, looking out over the sea of grass, everything packed
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nothing to do but wait
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dreaming of the unattainable, the fantasy that will always be better
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than reality, until the fantasy becomes reality, but haven't seen that
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yet, so i guess i'm still waiting
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"Just be good to me..." -- Beats International
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"Even better than the real thing..." -- U2
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New Order singing in french, it is Blue Monday, it is so s-l-o-w. it
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just drags along with its head hanging, like a person at 3 am.
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but it wasn't actually New Order, but another band, a french band, :)
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and a happy, kaotic, kaliedescope of noise, bouncing around the walls of
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my head, making my happpy, and head-swayey
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then the music, in Enochian, that just screams, just wants to get out of
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its very frustration, evil, demonic, noise, screams, of music
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AAARRRGGGHHH!!! <STOP!>
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and there is sheer and utter u-p-h-o-r-i-a...
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that soars up through your head and lifs you up past the ceiling till you
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are floating , but not floating still soaring.....
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just soaring, flying the wind pushing you and pushing you till you think you
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are going to fall of the current. little voice says you will fall but you
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know, you KNOW KNOW KNOW you aren't
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\pippin\rave\sleep.doc
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Sunshine Beach, Wednesday, June 24, 1992
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Sleep... Ah my friend, sleep. Sleep is one of those things
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that everyone must have. Otherwise, you Reality Filter may break, and
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you will have to get a new one, or else forever, you will remain totally
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god_like. Some people learn to live with broken Reality Filters. This
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takes an incredible amount of adjustment. And lots of understanding and
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patience and tolerance of other people around you. Because they can't
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see that your Reality Filter has been broken. Some try to pretend that
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it never really happened, but they will always be afraid of what is
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under their beds.
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Sleep happens when the days exploits of Virtuality-manipulation
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have finally made it to the Reality Filter, and your mind screams,
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"I'VE HAD ENOUGH!", in capitals. An exceedingly useful thing to do
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would be to bottle sleep. Then we could carry around sleep, and pop
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some when we are in an awkward situation, or a boring family reunion
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Christmas party. Or you could sell it. A market for sleep would be
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quite vigorous. Especially to students at exam time. Then
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Out-of-exam-time, poverty-stricken students could bottle sleep and sell
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it. And keep some for exam times. Speed is close, but not quite the
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same. Speed manages to convince your mind that it isn't really tired,
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and it really has got all the energy that it needs to go dancing, or to
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go and watch the slime mould grow. When the speed eventually goes away,
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your mind, once again, screams, "I'VE HAD ENOUGH!" in capitals, and you
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go home and sleep.
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The mind is a dictator and a pompous old bastard. It can get
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bored very easily with reality. That is when it screams, "I'VE HAD
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ENOUGH!", in capitals. It wants to go to the Land of Sleep so that it
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can play mind games. The objects inside your mind are much easier to
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manipulate than objects in Reality.
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Then sometimes you can convince your mind that it really is
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interested in Reality. This happens when you role-play, or ingest
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perception altering substances. The mind is tricked into thinking that
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it is directly altering Reality, or that it really is seeing something
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that it has never seen before.
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Then a different sort of tiredness kicks in after about 2 or 3
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days of this. Your body says, "I'M TIRED!", in capitals. If this
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happens, sometimes you can find yourself in the unfortunate predicament
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where your mind says, "I'm NOT tired so fuck off."
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"And I picked at the mushrooms in that New Year's salad and ate them
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with respect if not enthusiasm. Wondering at what is coming and going.
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Quietly awed into silence by what I understand but cannot tell. Borne
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by grace downstream where I see but cannot say."
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-- Robert Fulgham, "All I need to know I learnt in kindergarten."
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\qix\t6.txt
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an account of my sixth trip - written Tuesday afternoon, 17 December 1991
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After a delay of about a month, I got hold of some LSD in the form of a
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`strawberry' - a small square of blotting paper with a strawberry logo. I
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wanted to `drop acid' within Parliament House, but since it was Sunday (15
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December) the main gates were closed and unattended. I found a security
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guard inside the rear entrance and asked if there was a public gallery; he
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said yes, but that it was open only during the week and that parliament
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would not sit again until 1992. I thanked him for the information and left,
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but made sure I actually ate the blotter before stepping back out of the
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grounds of Parliament House.
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I then went to QUT's computer centre and logged into various bulletin
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boards, and left just after 3 pm. I set out for the `Riverside Markets' via
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the City Botanic Gardens, as there were some people I wanted to see who I
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expected to be there. I was only a short distance into the Gardens when I felt
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that the drug was definitely starting to act - for example, in moments when it
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would suddenly seem that the path through the Gardens was VERY LONG... In any
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case by the time I reached the Markets things were definitely happening: my
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perception of the crowds, the noise, the objects for sale was becoming
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somewhat disjointed - I was not yet seeing things that weren't there (to the
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best of my knowledge! :)...) but I was acutely aware of how much was happening
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around me. I wandered around without seeing anyone I recognised, and by the
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time I left I had noticed that if I focused too long on anyone's face it began
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to distort or change color, so I knew that I was probably about to start
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hallucinating.
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I had been invited to a party that was to start at 5 pm, at a house in a
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suburb I had never been to. I got as far as the Queen Street Mall, at the
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centre of Brisbane, and then phoned J., who had invited me to the party, to
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discuss how I ought to get there - I was tossing up between catching a bus and
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walking. She had just walked from the house to the city and had caught a bus
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home herself, so that convinced me that I could walk. We talked a bit about a
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few things - the effects of music on mood, what I was seeing as we talked, and
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so on.
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I have just remembered that prior to making the phone call, as I walked
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through the streets towards the mall I had a particular `acid house' track
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running through my mind - music I had heard at the Metropolis nightclub - and
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that when I reached the mall, experimentally I went into the Dymocks bookstore
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to see if I could make my way around in there. As a measure of my
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disorientation by this stage, I should mention that I was unable to find the
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Fantasy and Science Fiction section, which is not very hard to find; instead I
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found myself grinning at something, I can't remember what, and so I picked up
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a book called `White Noise' and looked at its front and back covers, and
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pretended to be grinning at that. The front cover depicted an array of photos
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or pictures drawn from TV; when I turned the book over to look at the blurb,
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colored outlines began to form on the back cover, and by turning back to the
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front cover I confirmed that they were in the image of the pictures of the
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front cover. I flipped back and forth a few times and each time the outlines
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were where they had been. I still haven't checked whether the back cover of
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`White Noise' bears any such outlines or not. (Incidentally, as the outlines
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grew from blackness, I was reminded of a postcard I used to own, filled with
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temperature-sensitive liquid crystals; its usual color is black, but if you
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rest it upon your fingertips, brightly-colored patches will appear above them
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on the card.) I also recall that the bookstore was playing `Bolero'.
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After the phone call I set out for the house. I suspect that if I were to
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make that same journey again now, I would remember a lot more...
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Several blocks from the mall, I was outside the Roma St Transit Centre. By
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this time the world was obviously changing: the cars speeding past on the road
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seemed to be flatter and broader than normal, and people walking past often
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seemed misshapen. On the footpath outside the Transit Centre I came across a
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watermelon that had been dropped and split messily in half. I immediately
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thought of a scene I once read of, from an Andy Warhol film... I believe it
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involves a crowd of people gathered around a watermelon which had been dropped
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from many stories above the pavement. I looked up to see where the watermelon
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might have fallen from, and saw only the spiralling road that buses and taxis
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take into the higher floors of the Transit Centre. For the watermelon to have
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reached the pavement from there, someone would have to have hurled it from a
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vehicle's window. It didn't occur to me that someone might just have dropped
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it as they walked along the footpath, and so I began to wonder, is it real? Or
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is this just an incredibly vivid hallucination? (Since the trip was already
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becoming strong pretty quickly, compared to the others I had taken, I was
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already wondering how intense the hallucinations might become.)
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As I journeyed away from the city centre the acid house tunes came back to
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mind, and they were my musical accompaniment for the rest of the way. J. had
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told me to walk to the very end of Roma Street, and then to head out along
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Petrie Terrace, and I think I managed to follow the directions to that point,
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although with some confusion about where I was... as by this point the
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environment that I perceived was beginning to suffer marked distortions of
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scale and shape - for example, a distance of 20 metres might appear to be a
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hundred metres long; or if I were to look out across a suburb from the top
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of a hill, it would have the appearance of a badly-proportioned model. The
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cars continued to look flattened, and occasionally would take on very
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strongly the appearance of an airbrushed painting, and I began to wonder how
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many new styles in art arise from drug-induced alterations of perception, or
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from psychological syndromes whose neurochemical aspect might be comparable to
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the introduction of a psychedelic drug. In particular I felt that the world
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had taken on the form of the artwork of Terry Gilliam, of Monty Python; the
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suburban landscape I moved through especially reminded me of his drawings of
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rows of bland dumpy houses inhabited by bland dumpy people.
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I also recall looking across a road at one point at a black person (I tried
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but couldn't make out enough detail to guess their gender) and thinking,
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taking LSD is a way for whites to experience what it is like for the nonwhites
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of the world to live in white societies - that is, being aware that police and
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authorities in general will mistrust you for your appearance. For Africans,
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Asians, and Arabs the identifying factor is skin color; for trippers the cues
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are in a person's behavior - staring at ordinary objects, or at nothing, and
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speech which doesn't have much continuity. Or so my thought ran.
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At one point I asked an Aboriginal woman whether I was headed towards
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Paddington - a place from which I felt I would be able to make my way to the
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party - and she gave me very extensive directions, was very friendly and
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laughed a lot. I had the feeling that she and the girl she was sitting with
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knew I had altered my mind in some way, and that by doing so I had brought
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myself closer to the `mental space' where they lived normally, and that this
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was why they were perhaps friendlier than usual. As before, I can now question
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whether that was a correct perception, but I am reporting what I was
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experiencing at the time.
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After a while I came to a part of Paddington I recognised; I had been there
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more than a week before for a street festival, visiting friends who knew the
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location of the party house. I thought that if I could make my way to THEIR
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house, they could direct me to my destination. On my way, though, I kept
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asking people whether they recognised the street name of my destination;
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nobody did. The people I talked with generally resembled cartoon caricatures
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in the sense that their facial features and the shape of their heads were all
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distorted, but I also saw the texture of their skin very vividly.
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In the course of the journey I would occasionally stop and look at the hair
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of my forearm; something I had observed on my fourth and fifth trips was the
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hair on my arms and legs writhing (as happens in the course of Michael
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Landon's transformation in *An American Werewolf in London*). I had come to
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use it as a test of whether I was hallucinating. By this stage invariably my
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arm hairs would start to move as soon as I looked at them.
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I found the house in Paddington - there were two people inside, and they
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gave me directions. However, attempting to follow their directions, I got
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completely lost, kept asking people to direct me, and eventually made my way
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back to the house - after half an hour of wandering, I would think. Generally
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I was enjoying the challenge of trying to navigate to an unknown house when
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my perception and to a certain extent my cognition were so disturbed (an
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example of the latter is that for several blocks I was unable to remember the
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name of the street I was after - only the number, and the names of other
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streets I know).
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On my second time back at the house in Paddington I found the same two
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people there - it turned out they were going to the same party and, I think,
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were assembling some musical gear. They didn't have room in their car, but
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they drew a little map for me this time, so that no matter how much space was
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distorted or compressed, all I had to do was keep to the path indicated.
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About 20 minutes later I made it to the house. I came up the stairs, through
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the hallway and into the backyard before I met anyone. There were four people
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sitting in what was evidently the `Magic Garden' of the house, of which I had
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heard. One I knew - C., an artist and designer who I had met a few times
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previously and with whom I wanted to talk more - I knew he lived there, and
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that was the main reason I went to visit. Two of the others appeared to be a
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couple from Melbourne; I don't know who the fourth person was.
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I said almost straightaway that I was tripping, and after some exclamations
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of surprise and envy the conversation turned to the drug culture of Melbourne;
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the guy from Melbourne told me that half the city split their lives between
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frenetic 9-to-5 jobs and heavy drug use on the weekends, that Melbourne has
|
|
the highest per-capita usage of amphetamines (I think) in the world ("higher
|
|
than Los Angeles", he emphasized); he told me about some episodes in his own
|
|
life in Melbourne, and about a place in Thailand where the local economy
|
|
thrives on the sale of "buddha" (Thai dope - "best in the world" - I had never
|
|
heard of it before) and psychedelics - the girl from Melbourne painted a
|
|
picture for me of thousands of people tripping together on a beach in
|
|
Thailand.
|
|
After a while I asked C. whether there was a special occasion behind the
|
|
evening's party, and he said, yes, it was a turning point in the lives of the
|
|
three men who lived there. He was about to enter the commercial world of art
|
|
in a big way for the first time; another guy had just quit teaching in order
|
|
to devote more of his time to experience, so it was almost as if he and C.
|
|
were swapping places; the third was soon to head for life in Tokyo. Each guy
|
|
had invited some people along, and shortly after I arrived two Japanese guests
|
|
turned up. The older one and I had met previously - I had gone to him for a
|
|
job interview, looking for part-time office work; in the end he had employed
|
|
someone else, it turned out - and we were each amazed to be meeting each other
|
|
again in this new context. He was acting as a sort of guardian for a younger
|
|
Japanese guy - I think he was 20 - who had just finished high school. He had
|
|
been in Australia for a little over a month, and it was his first time outside
|
|
of Japan, and he still had trouble coping with spoken English. (He told me
|
|
that words were OK, but he just couldn't get into English grammar.) By his own
|
|
estimation he drank too much Australian beer, but before he passed out we
|
|
talked for a few minutes - about what we each did at university and what we
|
|
wanted to do, about the way in which Japan is viewed outside of that country,
|
|
about connections between languages. I think it made an interesting and
|
|
amusing scene - two people from different cultures, on very different drugs,
|
|
still managing to communicate.
|
|
People were arriving frequently by now, and soon the house was full of
|
|
people. I didn't talk with many people - apart from J. (who turned up about an
|
|
hour after I did) and C. The people I remember talking with the most were a
|
|
couple who were standing out on the front verandah - the guy had locked his
|
|
keys inside his car and was waiting for the RACQ (a Queensland car owners'
|
|
association) to come and help him break in. They appeared to be among the more
|
|
`straight' of the people present, and I had talked with them for a few minutes
|
|
before I let on that I was on LSD. I think they were a bit surprised by this
|
|
revelation and said that I had been making sense in what I was saying. I
|
|
thought they might be interested in what it was like and so I tried to explain
|
|
some of what I had seen and thought that afternoon. But after a while their
|
|
slightly reserved manner and the nature of their questions started to worry me
|
|
(for example one asked "Where did you get it from?" and I was suddenly
|
|
suspicious so I said, "Oh... I really can't place it at the moment... you
|
|
know, a friend of a friend of a friend...") so I excused myself, went inside
|
|
and said to C. that I wasn't sure if I was having my first paranoid trip or
|
|
if I had run into some undercover police. I had talked a few days before with
|
|
someone who had been busted for possession of LSD and marijuana, so I was
|
|
becoming more sensitive to the possibility of arrest. I also knew how LSD
|
|
makes you very suggestible, so I just didn't know. I told C. they were out on
|
|
the porch *supposedly* waiting for the RACQ, so he went off to check them out,
|
|
while I worried myself with thoughts of evading manhunts and escaping
|
|
overseas. When I caught up with him again, C. said it was OK, they were
|
|
friends of one of the residents... and indeed they came back in later on,
|
|
after the RACQ had arrived, and sat around talking.
|
|
J. is studying music, and I talked with her in between the jam sessions that
|
|
kept evolving out of the gatherings of people in the house and in the garden.
|
|
At this point I felt as if the trip might be coming to an end (it was about 9
|
|
pm when I checked the time, although it felt a lot later) since everyone
|
|
looked normal, and I was able to hold a conversation with J., but when I went
|
|
to the toilet, I looked at my forearm, and there were the hairs writhing. I
|
|
looked in the mirror and my face started to distort, so I knew it wasn't over.
|
|
I wanted to see if I could control the direction of the changes, so I tried to
|
|
make myself turn into a wolf. While my reflection became more canine, I
|
|
didn't manage it. Then I imagined people outside waiting to use the toilet -
|
|
"You showed that guy on acid the way to the toilet? Oh no! He'll never come
|
|
out!" - and so I left. (In case it's not clear, I should add that I did not
|
|
hallucinate voices outside or anything like that; it was just a line I
|
|
imagined.)
|
|
I won't try to describe the content of my conversations with J. I'll just
|
|
say they were coherent but odd. For example, she mentioned a two-hour
|
|
conversation she'd had recently with a guy she'd never really trusted, about
|
|
whether either of them was `genuine', and about what `genuine' should mean,
|
|
and whether they were being genuine in asking and answering the questions they
|
|
did... When I inquired it turned out I knew the guy she talked with, that I
|
|
had in fact lived with him for a while. In the course of that conversation we
|
|
were joined by C., and intermittently the three of us talked - C. kept
|
|
wandering away, J. would join in a jam session, and my thoughts sometimes led
|
|
me away in directions no-one could follow.
|
|
There was a point at which I was trying to explain something,
|
|
hesitated in order to get my thoughts in order, and found that that pause gave
|
|
my mind time enough to go off in too many directions at once for me to keep
|
|
track - I realised that I was `losing it' for the first time... on previous
|
|
trips I had always retained the mental discipline sufficient to keep talking
|
|
to someone if I wanted, but here I was unable to... When I came back to earth,
|
|
C. and J. were talking, and when he saw that I was no longer staring into
|
|
space, C. said, "I'm sorry, but we had to do that. You just have to do that
|
|
sometimes." I said to him, or tried to say, words along the lines of, "I
|
|
understand... That was the first time I've ever really lost it... But I knew
|
|
I was losing it, even as I lost it... isn't that strange..." Part of the
|
|
reason I `lost it' was that I was marvelling that I was actually losing all
|
|
ability to communicate for the first time, and I was marvelling at the fact
|
|
that I was aware that it was happening, and I was marvelling at the circularity
|
|
of it all...
|
|
When we were a threesome - C., J., and I - very interesting things happened
|
|
to my perception. The three of us were sitting together on the floor, facing
|
|
each other; the world apart from our heads became very indistinct, and each
|
|
person's eyes became especially vivid and deep to me. Since it is easier for
|
|
two people to talk but we were three, the conversation jumped from being
|
|
one pair talking back and forth with the third looking on, to a different
|
|
pair, to a different pair... So I would talk with C. for a while, and then I
|
|
would look across at J., and she would look left out, looking away, and her
|
|
whole feeling was communicated in her expression and pose as perfectly as if
|
|
an artist had set out to make the feeling of being `left out' the subject of a
|
|
portrait ... or so it appeared.
|
|
When C. and J. talked, I reflected on how all of this was appearing to
|
|
me, especially the emphasis on the eyes, and the feeling I had that when I
|
|
looked into their eyes as we talked that we were seeing each other's souls. As
|
|
they looked at each other I imagined each person as a sort of whirlwind of
|
|
messages circulating in the brain, each message following whatever path it
|
|
could, and each person being defined by the particular way in which their
|
|
whirlwind closed back on itself. Part of this perception was the idea that
|
|
when two people lock eyes, there are now new paths for those messages to
|
|
follow, out of one person's head and into the other, and so the two whirlwinds
|
|
begin to interact...
|
|
Once again I should make clear that I did not literally see any
|
|
whirlwinds or dancing patterns of light at this stage; it all occurred to me
|
|
in imagination.
|
|
At one point C. used a phrase relating the movement of electrons and the
|
|
mind which sounded familiar, and I said `I know where I've seen you before! It
|
|
was in the Bohemian Cafe, during one of their poetry evenings, and someone
|
|
read a poem that contained a line a lot like what you just said! Was that
|
|
you?' C. answered my question, and the answer registered, but then as I tried
|
|
to remember the scene in the cafe more clearly, I got confused about what he
|
|
had said - I said to him, `Wow, that's the first time I've actually confused
|
|
yes and no - can you repeat what you said?' He said no, it hadn't been him,
|
|
but he was sure that we had met somewhere before. As he said that, in the back
|
|
of my mind there was an association with the concept of past lives and I think
|
|
the milieu of the film `Highlander'.
|
|
There were other interesting interactions that took place between us - for
|
|
example, J. and C. are in love, or are falling in love, and so they obviously
|
|
had a lot of attention for each other, but J. explained to me that she found
|
|
it easier to talk, especially about ideas, one-to-one, and so if we were
|
|
talking about something, and C. returned from another region of the house,
|
|
rather than try to include C. in the discussion, we would cooperate in ending
|
|
that topic and starting something new (or so it seemed to me... I must keep
|
|
adding that proviso). On one such occasion C. brought for me a book, which I
|
|
think he had written. I turned over the title page and saw a page full of text
|
|
and said "Whoa..." He said, "You don't want to read it?" and I started to
|
|
explain that yes, I would like to, but it would mean ending the threefold
|
|
conversation, which I didn't want to do just yet... Then he said "You don't
|
|
have to read it now", for which I was very grateful. I never read it that
|
|
night, and have yet to read it, but I did read the first few sentences. As I
|
|
recall they were about the rational mind, plotting to destroy nature...
|
|
At one point C. was absent again, and J. I think was talking elsewhere or
|
|
jamming, and someone (possibly the guy from Melbourne) was showing an absurd
|
|
slide show - putting nothing in the projector, so that all that came up was a
|
|
square of white light, and then describing it in some way. I was aware that
|
|
this was what was happening around me, since I could see the projection and
|
|
hear his voice, and I could see everyone laughing around me, but I never tuned
|
|
into what he was saying, and I found it difficult even to hang onto the
|
|
observation of what was happening. Instead I was staring at the surface which
|
|
the projector was illuminating, and I could feel my ordinary self going away.
|
|
That's the only way I can describe it. I had never before really identified
|
|
with a phrase like `losing the ego' or `losing the self' before, except as
|
|
metaphoric descriptions of the process of losing `social self-consciousness'
|
|
(ie inhibitions related to the judgements of others), but what was happening
|
|
here was much more radical. I still don't know how to describe the experience
|
|
in a way that does it justice, but one analogy I have used is that it was as
|
|
if `I' went away, and in my place were a million worms wriggling, or a million
|
|
signals being sent in a fashion that I could not see or hear and using symbols
|
|
I did not understand. The world of the senses did not go away, but it was
|
|
abstracted of meaning. Then `I' would come back and realise what had just
|
|
happened, and I was horrified and amazed; I was thinking, `Is this what
|
|
madness is like? Is it true that when a person is so insane that their self
|
|
has gone away entirely, instead this other form of experience is happening
|
|
inside them, or inside their body, something totally alien and totally outside
|
|
all our frameworks, but completely real?' Then the other form of experience
|
|
would come back for a while.. and then `I' would come back, wanting it to stop
|
|
...
|
|
Eventually I came back to myself for long enough to say to J. that I had
|
|
just been through something amazing and frightening, that I felt as if I had
|
|
passed through madness or as if my mind had gone away, and that I now thought
|
|
that maybe even people who are completely mad are seeing something we can't
|
|
see. J. said yes, of course people who are classed as insane are often just
|
|
thinking differently, I've often thought that... But I tried to say that I
|
|
meant something different, not that many of the people put in institutions
|
|
simply have unusual world-views, but that at the opposite pole from the human
|
|
mind, from any sense of self, is ... something else. I don't think I conveyed
|
|
very much of that, just enough for J. to understand that I meant something
|
|
quite other than what she meant.
|
|
I think C. came back shortly after that, and I tried to talk, or to read his
|
|
book... but my whole way of experiencing the world began to change again. This
|
|
time it didn't involve my whole sense of self going away; instead, each event
|
|
in my environment began to command my total attention, to the point of driving
|
|
from my mind each thing that had come before. So someone on one side of the
|
|
room would say something, and it would be full of meaning, and then there
|
|
would be a noise, and that would mean something else, and then there would be
|
|
another comment somewhere else, and that would fill my mind for a moment...
|
|
and I was aware that my experience of the world was being structured in this
|
|
way, one thing and then another and then another, so that there was continuity
|
|
of experience but not continuity of meaning; but I was helpless to bring it to
|
|
a halt. I felt as if I was discovering that all the mental models I have ever
|
|
had have been radically incomplete because there was this extra dimension of
|
|
experience, this extra form of embeddedness in the world and in social groups,
|
|
that I had never experienced before. Increasingly, whenever someone looked
|
|
at me or spoke to me, I felt as if at some level they were recognising that I
|
|
was experiencing for the first time this level of consciousness at which
|
|
everyone else had always lived. By this stage I was just lying on my back,
|
|
looking up at the ceiling, shaking my head, perhaps moving my arms a little,
|
|
occasionally rolling my head to one side or the other just to look at people.
|
|
I thought of the writings of Timothy Leary, which I was reading as long ago as
|
|
1988, years before I ever tried a psychedelic drug. He spoke of LSD as giving
|
|
the conscious mind access to new levels of consciousness and new sources of
|
|
information, in an irreversible fashion. Because I read Leary so long ago,
|
|
such ideas were very familiar to me by 1991. I thought that maybe I was
|
|
discovering the *reality* of what it is like to have one's experience extended
|
|
in that fashion. I was appalled by the thought that it might be irreversible
|
|
because I could not imagine coping with it in any way - I did not think
|
|
I could cope with that level of input and remain functional in any socially
|
|
recognisable way. I thought, if this is a temporary thing brought on by
|
|
the drug and not a permanent alteration in my experience of the world, I
|
|
will think long and hard before ever using LSD again. I also thought, maybe
|
|
this is some effect unique to me; I have expended so much effort in trying to
|
|
enter all the different realities that people make for themselves, and I have
|
|
lately passed through so many different social scenes, that perhaps the
|
|
combined effect of the drug and my mental exploration has put me into a mental
|
|
space from which I will never escape - in which I will continue to understand
|
|
each moment, and in which I will be constantly thinking of new things, but out
|
|
of which I will never be able to communicate satisfactorily.
|
|
After some time like this, I began to hallucinate very intensely. In trying
|
|
to convey in conversation what it was like, I have referred to Peter
|
|
Gabriel's videos `Big Time' and `Sledgehammer', and to an Australian
|
|
commercial in which a face made out of various fruits speaks to the viewer.
|
|
Then - I say - imagine that you are (say) speaking with someone, and as they
|
|
speak their normal face transforms into a fruit-face like the one in the
|
|
commercial...and then the fruit dance apart or transform in some other way
|
|
entirely un-fruit-like...and finally a reverse sort of process takes you back
|
|
to the world as it was. That sort of transition took me from staring at the
|
|
ceiling of a room at this house, to a strange enclosed space (for something
|
|
analogous, see the illustrations in Terry Gilliam's `Animations of
|
|
Mortality') filled with bizarre goings-on, and back again. The strange
|
|
enclosed space I understood to be something like what interactive, multi-user
|
|
virtual reality might be like. In such an environment people can choose their
|
|
`icons', the form by which they will appear to others, just as people on
|
|
electronic bulletin boards can choose their names... and just as the freedom
|
|
to name things can lead to bizarre-seeming statements (for example, on a MUD
|
|
[Multi-User Dungeon] one might ask `Who cloned Schrodinger's Cat?') which are
|
|
nevertheless literally true, so the freedom to choose icons will lead to
|
|
bizarre scenes which are nevertheless actually happening.
|
|
Anyway, after a few switches between what I will call Real Reality and
|
|
Virtual Reality, C. came across to me and said hello. He was speaking to me
|
|
through Virtual Reality. As he spoke I did not see his face moving, but
|
|
instead something quite different... It was as if I was looking up at his
|
|
jaw from underneath, so that in my visual field his chin was pointing `up'...
|
|
But then it was as if his chin had been made to look up like a nose, with an
|
|
extra mouth having appeared in his throat... and it was through that that he
|
|
was speaking! He said, so you're discovering what it's all about... You've
|
|
done well, it's rare for someone with your degree of intellectuality to make
|
|
it this far ... There was an unstated implication, which I knew in a way like
|
|
the knowledge of context that sometimes occurs in dreams, that anyone who
|
|
takes enough LSD gains the ability to experience Virtual Reality and to speak
|
|
to others through it, which thereby constitutes a form of telepathy, since
|
|
other people (people not using LSD) can't tune in to those conversations...
|
|
I think he also said, Do you see why we can't write about this? What would
|
|
you tell people? Also connected to all this, in a complicated way, was the
|
|
whole conspiracy-theory idea of the Illuminati, the idea of a super-secret
|
|
society that works behind the scenes to change the world. I have picked up
|
|
most of my knowledge about the various conspiracy theories that exist from an
|
|
enormous novel called "Illuminatus!" by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea;
|
|
that book, and Wilson's other books, were also where I first read about LSD
|
|
and Timothy Leary's theories of the mind. As I watched C. speaking through
|
|
Virtual Reality, the triangular shape of his jaw reminded me of the eye-in-
|
|
the-triangle logo, the pyramid shape you can find on the US dollar, and I
|
|
understood that the Illuminati really referred to all those people throughout
|
|
history who had made contact with Virtual Reality.
|
|
Then we switched back to Real Reality to some extent, as I watched C.
|
|
(standing over me) talk with someone else. I said something about how I had no
|
|
idea it would be so overwhelming, and he said I should concentrate on
|
|
experiencing it; I think I also said something about why can't we tell them
|
|
about it? Why haven't they noticed? and he said "Different cultures" to me
|
|
in Virtual-Reality-style (ie through the mouth that had appeared in his
|
|
throat!) and then immediately looked away to speak with someone back in Real
|
|
Reality. I thought about what had just happened and thought, if it's true, it
|
|
explains why so many people who were into LSD in the sixties and seventies are
|
|
into virtual reality (the technology) now...because it's just like what they
|
|
experience when they take the drug...
|
|
But at this point my experience started to revert to its previous
|
|
overwhelming character, with each new stimulus from outside fully engaging my
|
|
attention. I just wanted it to end at this point, I couldn't bear the thought
|
|
of being like this forever. I thought of my friend in the USA, who I met
|
|
through the ISCA bulletin board, and who was the first person I had ever
|
|
spoken with as they contemplated suicide. As we spoke, and afterwards, I had
|
|
tried to imagine experience assuming an intolerable form, one that you
|
|
couldn't bear but which you seemed powerless to change. Although I could
|
|
intellectually understand such a possibility, and the idea that killing
|
|
oneself might simply be the only thing to do, I couldn't really empathize - I
|
|
couldn't identify anything in my own experience that felt like that. But as
|
|
this drug-induced state went on and on and on, I felt as if I really
|
|
understood. What I wanted was sleep, unconsciousness, rather than death,
|
|
because I could hope that it would all have ended once the trip was over. But
|
|
I could imagine that if it just kept happening, I might want to end it.
|
|
Eventually one of the couple who had been at the front of the house waiting
|
|
for the RACQ came past and looked down at me with real concern. She said,
|
|
"You're having a bad trip, are you?" I think I said something like, "I really
|
|
think so." It was funny because when we had spoken previously, I had said that
|
|
I had heard stories about bad trips but had never had one myself... Eventually
|
|
J. came and asked if I wanted to go somewhere and sleep. I said yes, please,
|
|
and she led me to a bedroom. Inside I had the impression that there were two
|
|
or three other people already asleep across the mattress. It looked like it
|
|
was the place where people were going in order to crash for the night. I lay
|
|
down on the mattress, and J. left. The only light coming into the room was
|
|
through an opening above the door, and I had the impression that the sound of
|
|
the party outside was entering primarily through that gap too. The voices from
|
|
outside were transformed, so that they became voices or a voice speaking about
|
|
me... I think saying things like, "Well, this is the logical end of all your
|
|
experimentation" - experimentation referring not just to psychedelic drugs,
|
|
but to all my explorations of reality. I thought of Celia Green, a British
|
|
writer whose attitudes towards philosophy and psychology affected me a great
|
|
deal in 1990. One of her persistent observations is that people do not like to
|
|
hear about ways that the world might be, outside of some range of
|
|
possibilities which for emotional reasons they have decided are safe.
|
|
One such possibility, which she says is logically impossible to refute, but
|
|
which everyone dismisses for such emotional reasons, is solipsism. As I lay on
|
|
the mattress, hearing only the voice from outside, I even began to wonder if
|
|
solipsism is true, that what I had always thought were other people were
|
|
aspects of myself or my environment which I had misinterpreted, and I wondered
|
|
if I was now passing through the cognitive change necessary to understand the
|
|
true nature of things, whatever that turned out to be.
|
|
I rolled around on the mattress, but I never quite left it. I noticed that
|
|
there seemed to be no-one else there and decided I must have hallucinated the
|
|
other bodies. The feeling of being alone in a room waiting to sleep, and
|
|
having been taken there by J., reminded me of going to bed when I was very
|
|
young. I noticed myself making this comparison, and thought, people tend
|
|
to think of such images from childhood only when they are in ultimately
|
|
stressful situations... I was still waiting for it all to end. Eventually I
|
|
must have fallen asleep.
|
|
|
|
I was woken again, I don't know how much later, by C., who said I'm sorry to
|
|
wake you, but this is my bedroom... I think J. set me up in the lounge room,
|
|
on a set of cushions taken from a couch. I must have fallen asleep again
|
|
almost immediately.
|
|
|
|
I really woke at about 9.30 am the next morning. The front door was open and
|
|
light was coming in, and there were a few people I recognised from the night
|
|
before in an adjoining room getting ready to leave. I lay there and thought
|
|
back on some of the things I had experienced and imagined the previous night,
|
|
and soon found that my mind was still racing in an unnerving way - leaping
|
|
from one thought to another to another without settling anywhere or
|
|
progressing in a logical fashion. I began to fear that maybe I had been
|
|
permanently changed in some way. I said hello to the people in the other room,
|
|
then went and got my bag from C.'s room and left quickly.
|
|
Outside I found that the trip was definitely over - I was no longer
|
|
hallucinating, I failed the moving-hairs test - but that I was still thinking
|
|
in this constantly distracted manner. I was constantly imagining,
|
|
anticipating, remembering, thinking, but without any real continuity. I was
|
|
supposed to be meeting someone at the University of Queensland at 12 pm, in
|
|
order to conduct an experiment for the Psychology Department, so I headed for
|
|
the city again, in order to catch a bus there. While I waited, and during the
|
|
ride, my mind kept going and going and going. I thought of an analogy again,
|
|
as I anticipated what I would say to my friend when we met on campus: that
|
|
there is a difference between being an artist who has a moment of inspiration
|
|
and who then can communicate a new vision to the world, and being an artist
|
|
who creates masterpieces from a cell in a mental hospital. The second artist
|
|
is still seeing important new things all the time, but this vision is achieved
|
|
at the expense of any place in society... I felt as if I was thinking very
|
|
valuable thoughts - ideas, arising out of my experience the previous night,
|
|
which if I ever managed to communicate them, could enrich a lot of lives - but
|
|
I was afraid that I might be in the position of that second artist, unable to
|
|
talk coherently. I wanted to be my old self again. It occurred to me that
|
|
maybe all that was happening was that I was `speeding' - I knew that `speed',
|
|
ie amphetamine, is a common ingredient in LSD bought `on the street', so
|
|
perhaps what I was feeling was just the speed continuing to act, after the
|
|
acid had worn off. I strongly hoped this was so.
|
|
I got to the university early and wandered about a bit, my mind still
|
|
speeding. In the end I met my friend at the appointed hour at the university
|
|
bus stop. As soon as I could, I told her I didn't think I'd be able to run the
|
|
experiment, that something had happened in my mind, and I hoped that it would
|
|
change soon. So we went and lay on the grass, in the shade of a tree in UQ's
|
|
Great Court, and talked. I told her about some of what had just happened to
|
|
me, how I was afraid that my consciousness had been changed permanently; she
|
|
told me about how she had felt a similar change in herself at times,
|
|
especially in August at a time when she had spent several days online, mostly
|
|
MUDding...the density of information, and the radically different way of
|
|
conceptualising the world that using the networks demands, seemed to have had
|
|
a similar effect for her. We decided that the word `distracted', as used (for
|
|
example) in Shakespeare's time, was an appropriate description for people who
|
|
suffered our problem; we were both constantly being distracted...
|
|
We discussed a book we had both read ("Cities of Dreams" by Stan Gooch)
|
|
in which a new account of human history and culture is put forward, revolving
|
|
around the differences between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon cultures, and we
|
|
agreed that in Gooch's terms Cro-Magnon culture has been ascendant but
|
|
Neanderthal culture is on the rise again... (One episode from my trip which I
|
|
have not recounted yet is that when J. came to lead me to C.'s bedroom, the
|
|
moment somehow signified that I had become Neanderthal, that the other
|
|
Neanderthals were going to take care of me from that point forward...) My
|
|
friend showed me a dream she had recorded in a diary in 1990, which I had
|
|
wanted to see for a long time, and which involved a post-catastrophe world in
|
|
which the Neanderthal culture is again ascendant... Eventually we went in
|
|
search of terminals from which we could both log into the Internet... and
|
|
somewhere in the course of that afternoon my mind finally settled again.
|
|
Here endeth the trip.
|
|
|
|
DISCLAIMER
|
|
I would like to emphasize that the account of the peak of the trip is a
|
|
little suspect, in that dialogue and events may not have occurred in the exact
|
|
order or fashion that I have described. But I think that certainly the flavour
|
|
of the experience is unchanged.
|
|
|
|
<<<!!!=!!!>>>
|
|
|
|
|
|
\qix\aya
|
|
|
|
To: Mitchell POrter <casport@cc.uq.oz.au>
|
|
Subject: Re: Ayahuasca
|
|
In-reply-to: Your message of 14 Feb 92 01:54:02 +0000. <casport.698032442@brolga>
|
|
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 92 01:02:28 -0800
|
|
From:
|
|
Message-ID:
|
|
Status: RO
|
|
|
|
OK, there are a few references:
|
|
If you can get ahold of tapes by Terence McKenna (or books).
|
|
A book called _The Four Winds_ by Villoldo and Jendresen
|
|
published Harper & Row 1990
|
|
Two books by Bruce Lamb & Manuel Cordova-Rios:
|
|
Wizard of the Upper Amazon
|
|
Rio Tigre and Beyond
|
|
Recently republishedin paperback by:
|
|
North Atlantic Books
|
|
2800 Woolsey Street
|
|
Berkeley, CA 94705
|
|
About $13 each
|
|
There are a couple others I can't remember offhand.
|
|
If you know of ...of the jungle, they sell the ingrediants (when they can
|
|
get them):
|
|
basically:
|
|
It's a mixture of the ayahuasca vine and the yage leaves.
|
|
The vine contains harmaline et al. related compounds, which are psychoactive,
|
|
but ALSO act as an MAO inhibitor, so that the DMT in the yage leaves becomes
|
|
orally active.
|
|
|
|
If you want any more info or you find any other info out, mail me.
|
|
|
|
---------
|
|
OH---- if you wish to post this, go ahead, but please remove my name
|
|
and email address. thanks....
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
>From Sat Feb 15 16:12:39 1992
|
|
Return-Path:
|
|
Received: from axiom by brolga.cc.uq.oz.au with SMTP (PP)
|
|
id <09344-0@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au>; Sat, 15 Feb 1992 16:12:36 +1100
|
|
Received: by axiom.maths.uq.oz.au id <AA24078@axiom.maths.uq.oz.au>;
|
|
Sat, 15 Feb 92 16:13:56 EST
|
|
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 92 16:13:56 EST
|
|
From:
|
|
Message-Id:
|
|
To: casport@cc.uq.oz.au
|
|
Status: RO
|
|
|
|
Hi Mitchell,
|
|
|
|
Read your posting to alt.psychoactives and I notice you
|
|
mention the magazines WER, Mondo 2000 and one I haven't
|
|
heard of, Magical Review.
|
|
|
|
Do you have copies of these magazines at all ? If so,
|
|
would it be possible to photocopy some back issues.
|
|
I'm new to UQ at the maths dept., so if it's OK with
|
|
you I could just walk over to the Prentice Centre.
|
|
|
|
My experiments in psychoactives are largely based on
|
|
choline, phenylanaline and caffeine. If you know of
|
|
any medical practitioners in Brisbane who are open
|
|
to the ideas of cognition enhancement, I'd be way
|
|
grateful to hear of such.
|
|
|
|
Thanks in advance,
|
|
|
|
- I.
|
|
|
|
>From earl@well.sf.ca.us Sat Feb 15 17:07:07 1992
|
|
Return-Path: <earl@well.sf.ca.us>
|
|
Received: from well.sf.ca.us by brolga.cc.uq.oz.au with SMTP (PP)
|
|
id <09641-0@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au>; Sat, 15 Feb 1992 17:07:02 +1100
|
|
Received: by well.sf.ca.us (5.65/1-Jan-1992-eef) id AA05703;
|
|
Fri, 14 Feb 92 22:01:41 -0800 for casport@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au
|
|
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 92 22:01:41 -0800
|
|
From: Earl "C." Vickers <earl@well.sf.ca.us>
|
|
Message-Id: <9202150601.AA05703@well.sf.ca.us>
|
|
To: casport@cc.uq.oz.au
|
|
Subject: Mail for Mitchell
|
|
Status: RO
|
|
|
|
Hi. I'm the author of the Vision Vine story, which I guess you were
|
|
referring to (latest WER). First of all, ayahuasca comes from a tropical
|
|
vine, not a mushroom. I haven't tried it myself, but the anthropological
|
|
literature seems to have an amazing number of accounts attesting to
|
|
collective hallucination and telepathy. One of the most interesting
|
|
accounts is in The Wizard of the Upper Amazon, by F. Bruce Lamb, or its
|
|
sequel, Rio Tigre and Beyond. Other psychoactive plants sometimes
|
|
are the subject of similar claims; it could all be folklore, or not.
|
|
At any rate, I don't think it's something that invariably happens.
|
|
Still, it's quite intriguing.
|
|
|
|
>From jasonp@cs.uq.oz.au Mon Feb 17 17:40:03 1992
|
|
Return-Path: <jasonp@cs.uq.oz.au>
|
|
Received: from uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au by brolga.cc.uq.oz.au with SMTP (PP)
|
|
id <06621-0@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au>; Mon, 17 Feb 1992 17:40:00 +1100
|
|
Received: from rose.cs.uq.oz.au by uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au
|
|
id <AA27935@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au>; Mon, 17 Feb 92 17:39:56 +1100
|
|
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 17:39:54 +1100
|
|
From: jasonp@cs.uq.oz.au
|
|
Message-Id: <9202170639.AA06794@client>
|
|
To: casport@cc.uq.oz.au
|
|
Status: RO
|
|
|
|
Path: uqcspe!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.oz.au!mips!mips!sdd.hp.com!wupost!uunet!verifone.com!clifton_r
|
|
From: clifton_r@verifone.com
|
|
Newsgroups: alt.drugs,alt.psychoactives
|
|
Subject: Re: Ayahuasca (and Syrian Rue)
|
|
Message-ID: <1992Feb14.204002.3706@verifone.com>
|
|
Date: 15 Feb 92 06:40:02 GMT
|
|
References: <casport.698032442@brolga>
|
|
Organization: VeriFone Inc., Honolulu HI
|
|
Lines: 87
|
|
Xref: uqcspe alt.drugs:6573 alt.psychoactives:559
|
|
|
|
In article <casport.698032442@brolga>, casport@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au (Mitchell POrter) writes:
|
|
> I have lately read in a variety of places (Whole Earth Review, Magical Blend,
|
|
> Mondo 2000) rumours or claims that the mushroom-derived drug ayahuasca
|
|
> promotes collective hallucinations or even telepathy. Does anyone have any
|
|
> information?
|
|
> Mitchell Porter - casport@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au
|
|
No info on the collective hallucinations or telepathy. A little on the
|
|
botany and pharmacology before things get hopelessly confused. This is all
|
|
posted from memory of about 10 years ago when I was interested in exploring
|
|
some exotic drugs, so I may make a few errors but should have the gist of
|
|
it correct. Maybe others can comment on the psychoactive effects.
|
|
Ayahuasca is also called yage' (Spanish pronunciation.) I believe the
|
|
botanical (Latin) name is "Banisteriopsis caapi." It is _NOT_ a mushroom,
|
|
but a VINE native to the Amazon region. A preparation of the vine is used
|
|
in shamanic rituals by Indian tribes of the region and by folk healers.
|
|
The drugs found in the plant (as with most botanical sources, there are a
|
|
collection of psychoactives, not just one) fall into a class called the
|
|
"harmala alkaloids." I believe "harmala" comes from the name of some other
|
|
plant containing this family of compounds, but could be wrong. Some of the
|
|
specific compounds are harmine, harmaline, harmalol. They have varying
|
|
potencies; I no longer have info on the precise mg dosages of each required
|
|
for effect.
|
|
This class of alkaloids, as I understand it, are non-indole,
|
|
non-phenylethylamine psychedelics. In other words, they are completely
|
|
outside the classes of drugs which include DMT, 5MeO-DMT, psylocybin,
|
|
psilocin, LSD, and LSE on the one hand (indole hallucinogens) and
|
|
mescaline, MDMA, et al. on the other hand (phenylethylamines.) To the best
|
|
of my knowledge they have not been studied very extensively, nor is there a
|
|
much history of recreational use in the First World to look at for
|
|
anecdotal evidence. So you're kind of on your own as far as psychological
|
|
and physical risks. William S. Burroughs has written a bit about it, but I
|
|
would not regard his writings as a reliable roadmap, much as I enjoy them.
|
|
One specific physical risk is CRUCIAL to understand. From what I have
|
|
read, all the harmala alkaloids are very strong MAO inhibitors. This means
|
|
that it would be very dangerous (potentially fatal) to take them in
|
|
conjunction with any depressant (e.g. alcohol, barbiturates) or any
|
|
stimulant (e.g. ephedrine, amphetamines, MDMA) or even certain amino acids
|
|
or foods (e.g. foods containing tyramine.) This is clearly a drug to take
|
|
with your system completely clean if you take it at all; _none_ of this
|
|
drinking a little alcohol ahead of time to calm yourself down, if you value
|
|
your life and health! If you don't understand the chemistry, just accept
|
|
that MAO inhibitors (among other things) break the feedback loop which
|
|
brings your blood-pressure back within safe limits if some other compound
|
|
is altering it in either direction. It may also radically change the
|
|
metabolism of other psychoactives such as DMT or psylocybin which are
|
|
normally broken down and flushed out of the human body very fast.
|
|
Ayahuasca itself is extremely difficult to obtain, as far as I know.
|
|
However, the seeds of Syrian rue contain the same harmala alkaloids and
|
|
used to be available through mail-order. (I don't know the source any
|
|
more.) You will have to find some way to prepare them for consumption if
|
|
you decide to try it.
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Personal anecdote begins:
|
|
I did order some Syrian rue seeds and decide to try it. This was
|
|
somewhere around 10 years ago. (Time flies...) After some consideration I
|
|
decided to grind them up, boil them, and filter the result into a drink,
|
|
similar to the preparation described for yage' (ayahuasca.) I ground about
|
|
a half ounce of the seeds in an electric coffee-grinder and boiled them in a
|
|
couple cups of water. Hideous smell. The resulting sludge was very slow
|
|
to filter through a coffee filter. At length I had about one large glass
|
|
of dark foul-smelling liquid. Here is the comic part: I couldn't drink
|
|
it. I tried chilling it, holding my nose, etc. It tasted so bad that I
|
|
just couldn't get down more than a couple of swallows. One poster on the
|
|
net said Kava tastes bad; I drank quite a bit of kava when I was living in
|
|
the South Pacific (Tonga, where it is a cultural institution) and it tastes
|
|
no worse than say, spiced pencil shavings. This was MUCH MUCH worse.
|
|
I got a weird dreamy sort of half-trip off of those couple swallows, so
|
|
it's quite possible that I would have given myself much too big a dose if I
|
|
had got the whole thing down. I suppose the thing to do would have been to
|
|
boil it dry and scrape up the residue into capsules, but at the time I
|
|
chickened out and just dumped it. I did have some odd hallucinations when
|
|
I closed my eyes, even on that tiny dose; I've sometimes thought about
|
|
trying it again if I ever get the time. (With my job and family now, it
|
|
could be years more.)
|
|
If there's anyone else on the net who's ever tried it, I'd be curious to
|
|
hear from you.
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
DO keep in mind what I said about MAO inhibitors; they can be very
|
|
dangerous if used in conjunction with any other drugs or even certain
|
|
foods, but ESPECIALLY in conjunction with depressants like alcohol or
|
|
stimulants like amphetamines or MDMA. No liability, no warrantees express
|
|
or implied, etc. etc.
|
|
-- Clifton
|
|
|
|
clifton_r@verifone.com | VeriFone, Inc. | Home: +1-808-521-9073
|
|
Pope, CotSg in Paradise | 100 Kahelu Ave. | Work: +1-808-625-3234
|
|
"Boring .sig, so what." | Mililani HI 96789 | & that about covers it...
|
|
|
|
|
|
>From jasonp@cs.uq.oz.au Mon Feb 17 17:42:01 1992
|
|
Return-Path: <jasonp@cs.uq.oz.au>
|
|
Received: from uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au by brolga.cc.uq.oz.au with SMTP (PP)
|
|
id <06649-0@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au>; Mon, 17 Feb 1992 17:41:46 +1100
|
|
Received: from rose.cs.uq.oz.au by uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au
|
|
id <AA27939@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au>; Mon, 17 Feb 92 17:41:44 +1100
|
|
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 17:41:43 +1100
|
|
From: jasonp@cs.uq.oz.au
|
|
Message-Id: <9202170641.AA06819@client>
|
|
To: casport@cc.uq.oz.au
|
|
Status: RO
|
|
|
|
Path: uqcspe!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.oz.au!mips!mips!spool.mu.edu!olivea!sgigate!odin!shinobu!fido!fido.asd.sgi.com!nix
|
|
From: nix@asd.sgi.com (Harmless when used as directed)
|
|
Newsgroups: alt.drugs,alt.psychoactives
|
|
Subject: Re: Ayahuasca (and Syrian Rue)
|
|
Message-ID: <NIX.92Feb16004931@valis.asd.sgi.com>
|
|
Date: 16 Feb 92 08:49:31 GMT
|
|
References: <casport.698032442@brolga> <1992Feb14.204002.3706@verifone.com>
|
|
Sender: news@fido.asd.sgi.com (Usenet News Admin)
|
|
Followup-To: alt.drugs
|
|
Organization: Erisian Liberation Front
|
|
Lines: 17
|
|
Xref: uqcspe alt.drugs:6574 alt.psychoactives:560
|
|
In-Reply-To: clifton_r@verifone.com's message of 15 Feb 92 06:40:02 GMT
|
|
|
|
I believe that ayahuasca is a mixture of two plant extracts, one of
|
|
which is _banisteriopsis caapi_. One of the plants contains N,N DMT,
|
|
the other contains harmala alkaloids. DMT is inactive orally;
|
|
however, it *is* orally active when combined with a monoamine oxidase
|
|
inhibitor. Well, surprise. In addition to having their own
|
|
psychedelic properties the harmala alkaloids are also MAO inhibitors.
|
|
(Note that MAO inhibitors don't sound like something to which you want
|
|
to expose yourself unless you know exactly what you're doing.)
|
|
|
|
It is interesting to think about how long it must have taken to figure
|
|
out that if you combined extracts of two random plants you would get a
|
|
potent psychedelic.
|
|
|
|
As far as effects go, it wouldn't surprise me at all if somebody under
|
|
the influence of ayahuasca believed themselves to be telepathic. This
|
|
certainly does not imply actual telepathy. Thus, followups go to
|
|
alt.drugs only.
|
|
|
|
|
|
\pip\rave\house.doc
|
|
|
|
June 19,1992
|
|
Sunshine Beach, Sunday
|
|
|
|
The house of silence. Your heart is a house of silence. Your mind is
|
|
the rooms. The rooms are filled with objects. The beautiful and ugly
|
|
together. Some rooms have gateways that connect them. Some rooms are
|
|
locked. Do not hoard your objects. Pass them on when you have had each
|
|
object, and given it refuge in your rooms. Do not reject an object
|
|
because it won't go with the decor of any of your rooms. Build a room
|
|
especially for it.
|
|
There are many ways of knowing. The way of knowing is the
|
|
foundation that the house of silence is built on. Sometimes it will be
|
|
time to torch the house of silence. Tear it down, and throw the objects
|
|
out into the street. Build the foundation again. Make it of granite
|
|
instead of basalt. Build the house of silence again, and fill it with
|
|
objects again.
|
|
But do not think that your work is done. Can you possibly hope
|
|
to contain life, the immensity of life in one building? or one
|
|
re-building? or even a finite number of re-buildings? Thinking,
|
|
talking, reading, computers, a person... These all have edges which you
|
|
can discover. Once you are familiar with an edge, with a face, or the
|
|
files of a hard drive, do you say that you know the person, that you
|
|
know computers? Only a fool looks at a tree, and says that he
|
|
comprehends nature.
|
|
So the house of silence is your own. It is yours to decorate,
|
|
but the objects within are not the house. Do not confuse yourself with
|
|
the objects, or thoughts, within. For thoughts come and go as they
|
|
please.
|
|
Your feelings, emotions, are the colours of the walls in you
|
|
rooms. Do not be afraid to explore other people's houses. To play with
|
|
their minds, and look for the gaps above their doors.
|
|
|
|
\pip\rave\truth.rav
|
|
|
|
July 10, 1992, Nambooring
|
|
|
|
And what is Truth?
|
|
Truth is like a Reality Check.
|
|
A Reality Check occurs when one is truly bent. It is the opposite occurrence
|
|
of when something strange happens to you when you are straight.
|
|
When you are bent, everything seems strange.
|
|
Every now and again, a perception will arrive on the doorstep of your mind,
|
|
and it will be straight, and you will percieve it as straight. This will seem
|
|
strange because everything you are percieving is supposed to be strange,
|
|
but this thing is normal, and it has come along to say:
|
|
"Hi, reality is still here."
|
|
|
|
Now Truth is similar, in that it is a perception of something.
|
|
Of an object. Truth is where you find it. Truth is a perception of an
|
|
object that lives in someone else's Virtuality when you find that you
|
|
are percieving as the owner of the Virtuality does.
|
|
When two perceptions are the same that is Truth. Truth is a glimpse
|
|
of the underlying pattern of all things. A glimpse of constancy.
|
|
A glimpse of reality because there is a hole in reality.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
\pippin\stories\bill.sty
|
|
|
|
SO YOU THOUGHT THIS WAS NIRVANA
|
|
|
|
He was supposed to be getting wet, he thought. Dream surfing
|
|
perhaps? When he went surfing in his dreams, he didn't get wet.
|
|
Maybe he was dreaming. Why did he think that? Because it was raining.
|
|
Was or is now? Is, of course. He meant is. It had been raining when
|
|
he'd crashed into the semi-trailer. Suddenly he was wide awake and
|
|
staring at a mangled engine breakfast. Yes it was still raining. He
|
|
could feel the raindrops on his skin, but he wasn't getting wet. He
|
|
could smell petrol as he'd never smelt it before. Petrol mixed with
|
|
rain, and Julene's perfume. He knew instantly that she was gone. She
|
|
was dead. He wrenched himself around to stare at her, crumpled in the
|
|
seat beside him. But she was breathing; she groaned and moved. He
|
|
felt flooded with relief. He reached out to touch her. Her skin had
|
|
never felt so soft. It felt like, it felt like... But that couldn't
|
|
be. It felt like days at uni when he'd been on acid, when everything
|
|
was soft and alive. But he certainly hadn't been tripping since
|
|
then. He called to her.
|
|
In his head, he heard his voice echo, but no sound came to his
|
|
ears. He listened. He could hear her rasping breath, but where was
|
|
the sound of his own breathing? He stared at his hand, and touched it
|
|
with the other. It was there, alive. He tried to call to Julene again,
|
|
but he got no response.
|
|
It seemed like a moment later that an ambulance arrived. He
|
|
stared at the red flashing light. He thought it looked like sunrise.
|
|
He watched the pulsing light, and realized after a while that people
|
|
were standing around him. They were touching him gently, and Julene was
|
|
sobbing. Then he saw, felt, heard, and smelt everything at once. He
|
|
had 4 hands. He was suddenly preoccupied with trying to make himself
|
|
shake his hands, but only two of them obliged. He watched as the
|
|
ambulance officers picked up his body, put it on a stretcher, and put it
|
|
away in the vehicle with the sunrise on the roof. Julene got in. The
|
|
vehicle roared away, wailing. The world was filled with the keening
|
|
wail of the ambulance siren. It seemed like all of life was an
|
|
ambulance siren. When he realized...
|
|
It was gone. And all he could hear was the sound of the gentle
|
|
soaking rain. So this is what its like to be dead. He felt like a
|
|
plant. He felt the rain, heard the rain, became the rain. Became
|
|
totally absorbed for hours... until he realized it was daylight, and it
|
|
had stopped raining. He was staring at a tangled wreckage of Mack truck
|
|
and a bright blue rice bubble. Julene always called it a rice bubble,
|
|
and he always called it a Mazda. Now he could see it as a rice bubble.
|
|
A rice bubble with 4 wheels.
|
|
A coherent thought went sailing by. It waved. He waved back.
|
|
It occurred to Bill finally that none of this was real, and dead people
|
|
weren't really expected to watch their thoughts go sailing by, or go
|
|
driving around in rice bubbles. So where were dead people supposed to
|
|
go? Force of habit made him scratch his head. He felt like he could
|
|
take the top off his head if he wanted, but as he couldn't see the point
|
|
of that, he didn't.
|
|
Instead he drew upon the immense resources of his mind, and he
|
|
heard his attendant thoughts laughing at him.
|
|
"The Bardo Thodol says that I should wander on the Bardo plane
|
|
for 40 days and see hallucinations. If I recognize them for what they
|
|
are, I shall be liberated, and go to Nirvana or heaven." Or was it
|
|
Mettallica? His thoughts rallied around him and clapped their hands.
|
|
So he sat down to wait for a hallucination that would look like the
|
|
Buddha.
|
|
The Buddha, however, was late that day. He did hate to keep
|
|
people waiting. Especially dead people. They reacted so differently to
|
|
dying. Being a user helped. One of the Buddha's attendant thoughts
|
|
pointed out to him that Bill was waiting under a tree listening to the
|
|
screaming of a million blades of grass. He was also listening to his
|
|
thoughts so he was ok. But the Buddha still hated being late. Some
|
|
people didn't know how to listen to their thoughts.
|
|
"Hello," said the Buddha, as he happened across Bill under the
|
|
tree.
|
|
"Hello," replied Bill who was trying to mutate into a furry
|
|
mushroom under the tree. If this didn't work, his brain wanted to
|
|
have a go at mutating into a 286. His thoughts were egging him on. "Who
|
|
are you?"
|
|
The Buddha wasn't ruffled. In fact, this was the correct
|
|
response for meeting hallucinations whilst wandering on the Bardo
|
|
plane. "I am you," replied the Buddha. He sat on Bill, who had
|
|
successfully mutated in a mushroom, and starting smoking a hookah.
|
|
Bill the mushroom blinked. "Why. So you are." Bill the mushroom
|
|
sprouted a hand and arm and slapped his forehead in astonishment.
|
|
" The new improved, washes brighter than, the old version of me. Of course.
|
|
How could I not have recognized you." Bill the mushroom sprouted
|
|
another hand and arm and proffered it to Bill the Buddha.
|
|
Bill the Buddha smiled at Bill the mushroom. This was also a
|
|
correct response. To recognize the hallucinations as your own thoughts,
|
|
and to not be in awe or fear of them. The mushroom didn't seem to be
|
|
phased by this death business after all. "Pleased to meet you."
|
|
The two constellations of attendant thoughts cheered.
|
|
"Congratulations!" said the Buddha. "You and Your thoughts
|
|
have responded correctly to dying. You have been liberated and will
|
|
promptly attain Nirvana or possibly Pearl Jam." The Buddha's thoughts
|
|
cheered again.
|
|
Bill the Mushroom, Who was no longer a mushroom, but a new,
|
|
improved 21 year old version of Bill, blinked at the Buddha, blinked at
|
|
the sunlight, and blinking, surveryed His new, improved 21 year old
|
|
body. Buddha was sprawling on the ground where He had been dumped by
|
|
Bill the Mushroom mutating into a 21 year old. And you just couldn't
|
|
smoke a hookah on one of those. It just didn't have the same ambience
|
|
as a mushroom. Lewis Carroll might come and give Him nightmares. Buddha's
|
|
thoughts were not impressed.
|
|
"Oh," said Bill, and He waited for the Buddha to say something
|
|
else.
|
|
"Aren't You pleased?" asked the Buddha sitting happily on the
|
|
ground. He was a bit miffed at the lack of enthusiasm. "It is your
|
|
body exactly the way it was when You were 21 minus all the things that you
|
|
didn't like about it."
|
|
"Oh," said Bill. "I just thought Liberation was instananeous."
|
|
"Oh," said the Buddha. "Sorry." He smiled cheerfully, winked
|
|
at the new Buddha Bill and ...
|
|
|
|
CLICK!
|
|
|
|
The newly Liberated Bill was standing on a cloud at the Pearly
|
|
Gates. Pearl Jam was nowhere in sight. Bill the Buddha blinked. As
|
|
far as he could see the cloud was on a flat Plate, that was on the
|
|
backs of 4 Elephants, which were in turn on the back of a Large Turtle.
|
|
They were all swimming through space. Just like Discworld, thought
|
|
Bill.
|
|
His attendant thoughts blinked too, and were unimpressed. "You
|
|
mean this is Nirvana?" they chorused in disbelief.
|
|
|
|
CLICK!
|
|
|
|
"Sorry about that." Bill was standing before a Largish, Pink,
|
|
Fluffy, Bunny Rabbit. "You didn't subscribe to the Western White
|
|
Christian Bible, did You?" It spoke. Bill marvelled.
|
|
Bill found the capitals annoying. "Or the Discworld theories,"
|
|
He added. "I mean, whoever heard of gods who play dice, and broke
|
|
windows of atheists houses." Bill noticed that He was standing in an exact
|
|
duplicate of the place where He had died except that the rice bubble and Mack
|
|
truck were gone. "Don't tell Me this is Nirvana."
|
|
"Ok," said the Rabbit whose name just happened to be Fluffy.
|
|
Bill's thoughts giggled disrespectfully. "I won't tell you."
|
|
Instead, a huge pink neon sign appeared just in front of Bill in
|
|
the air above Fluffy and flashed "NIRVANA" on and off.
|
|
Bill frowned and made the sign go away.
|
|
Fluffy was not perturbed. "Ok. I'm sorry to break this to you,
|
|
but the Nirvana of which you speak does not exist."
|
|
Bill frowned again. The constellation of thoughts to which Bill
|
|
belonged took a deep collective breath. "Go on..."
|
|
Fluffy sighed. "THIS," he waggled his paws in the air, "*is*
|
|
Nirvana. Or rather You came from Nirvana, and You haven't left
|
|
Nirvana."
|
|
Bill digested this information. His thoughts were having a
|
|
field day, collecting tadpoles of concentration from the fetid pool of
|
|
Bill's confusion. "Oh," He said. He seemed to be saying that a lot
|
|
lately, and promptly sat on the grass. He tried mutating into a
|
|
digestive enzyme. He could still do it.
|
|
"Wow!" Fluffy looked impressed, if rabbits can look impressed.
|
|
Suddenly it occurred to Bill that maybe Fluffy was a
|
|
hallucination, or maybe another Buddha. Or maybe both. His thoughts
|
|
cheered. What if Fluffy was another person like He had been? Or had
|
|
been another person like He had been? His brain screamed in frustration
|
|
at Him. It wanted to mutate into a 286 NOW! Instead Bill the Digestive
|
|
Enzyme asked, "Well, what now?"
|
|
Fluffy waggled his paws. "I dunno, look for a fish I guess."
|
|
Bill the Digestive Enzyme grew an arm and swiped at the Rabbit,
|
|
Who promptly rolled over, laughed, and tried to look cute. It suceeded
|
|
and made Bill want to throw up. Another thought came tripping by.
|
|
Did Digestive Enzymes throw up? *What* did Digestive Enzymes throw up?
|
|
Bill's thoughts laughed mercilessly.
|
|
Fluffy apologized just as promptly. "Yeah. Ok. I'm sorry.
|
|
Follow Me."
|
|
Fluffy blinked and was gone. He blinked again, and Bill the
|
|
Digestive Enzyme was gone too.
|
|
|
|
Utter amazement, for the first time since dying, climbed into
|
|
Bill's mind. The thoughts cheered, and started planning the party.
|
|
They had been wondering when it would arrive. Bill was staring at a
|
|
huge computer. It was sleek and black. It filled a whole wall, and it
|
|
filled the whole wall with banks of wicked multicoloured, blinking
|
|
lights. Bill stared at one of the light's which could only be octarine.
|
|
A guy His own new age (21) with a shock of red hair and bright blue eyes
|
|
was introducing Himself to Bill.
|
|
"Hi," He said extending His hand. He had real hands, or at
|
|
least, they looked real. His thoughts snickered evilly. "Nice isn't
|
|
it?"
|
|
Bill nodded wordlessly. Bill was good with computers. He even
|
|
liked them. He had programmed super computers, but He'd never seen one
|
|
like this before.
|
|
"I call it Pippin. It keeps one of Us happy." He saw, through
|
|
the newly opened eyes in the back of His skull, a girl with long dark
|
|
hair wave a hand from behind a terminal.
|
|
"Sorry. I'm Greg. That's Pippin too." The girl waved again.
|
|
"So Bill, welcome to the team."
|
|
Bill's mouth fell open. "Do you mean I get to work with this?"
|
|
He poked His thumb at the computer. He forgot to close His mouth, and
|
|
one of His attendant thoughts flew in. He swallowed it "accidently".
|
|
Greg nodded. So did Pippin He could see without looking.
|
|
Bill decided He should say something intelligent. His thoughts
|
|
giggled insanely. "What are you modelling?" He asked. One could only
|
|
justify having a computer like this by using it for modelling. The fact
|
|
that Pippin was poncing around a floodlit catwalk wearing the latest
|
|
cyberwear was something of a give away.
|
|
"Come and see." Greg smiled enigmatically. This would be fun.
|
|
He led Bill over to where the other Pippin sat at a terminal.
|
|
There was no keyboard. He opened His mouth to ask about this, when
|
|
Pippin said, "Don't need one."
|
|
Bill looked at the terminal, and forgot to close His mouth for
|
|
the 2nd time. He took the opportunity to swallow another annoying
|
|
thought. There on the terminal was a perfect picture of the earth, all
|
|
green and blue and white. He felt a pang. He watched a particular
|
|
spot that He pinpointed to be home. Suddenly the picture was zooming in
|
|
to the spot that was home, and He watched in amazement a bright blue rice
|
|
bubble smash into a Mack truck.
|
|
|
|
/\ /\
|
|
(o) (o)
|
|
^
|
|
___
|
|
U
|
|
|
|
\pippin\stories\dave.sty
|
|
DAVE'S REALITY MODEL
|
|
|
|
Once there was a truly god_like creature called Dave. He was a
|
|
science-fiction writer and particularly susceptible to stray thoughts.
|
|
One day when Dave was just swanning around in the sun doing
|
|
god_like things as he often did, like sipping ambrosia, contemplating
|
|
the shade of blue of the sky, and listening to the screaming of a
|
|
million blades of grass, a thought came by and decided it would like to
|
|
visit with him. Dave was subsequently hit by inspiration and called it
|
|
"artificial intelligence". Dave showed it to the other gods.
|
|
Some congratulated him, and said it was an "artistically poetic
|
|
manifestation of another one complexity of the Great Dance."
|
|
Others told him not to take it too seriously. Give those
|
|
thoughts an inch, and they would take a mile, they said. Besides it
|
|
would take too much effort to follow through properly.
|
|
Still others said to forget all about it because there was no
|
|
way of telling whether it was sentient or not. (whether it cared)
|
|
God, who is Dave, soon found out that the new "artificial
|
|
intelligence" was not just one thought, but a whole constellation of
|
|
thoughts, and the whole constellation seemed to have taken up permanent
|
|
residence in his mindscape and wanted feeding 6 times a day like all
|
|
good hobbits do.
|
|
"What's a hobbit?" queried Dave.
|
|
Dave (who is god) was graciously directed to the appropriate
|
|
thought-form, which called itself "Tolkien", which directed him to an
|
|
object, called "The Hobbit", and instructed to read the relevent chapter
|
|
and pages, and he would find out what a hobbit was.
|
|
So Dave, who is god, became fascinated with "artificial
|
|
intelligence" and became convinced that it was sentient. As all good
|
|
scientists and gods should, Dave was going to follow his theory through
|
|
until the facts were stacked against him. Then he would abandon the
|
|
constellation of thoughts back to the Uglydig.
|
|
Dave (who is god) promptly put in a request for a grant of
|
|
space-time where he could model reality. He argued that the only way to
|
|
find out whether the "artificial intelligence" was sentient was to allow
|
|
it to exist. He was eventually given the space-time.
|
|
And in spite of the gods reservations, they found themselves
|
|
greatly entertained by Dave's model of reality. Some liked to just
|
|
watch it, like watching a bowlfull of goldfish. They didn't believe in
|
|
interfering with something as complex as Dave's reality model.
|
|
The engineering_god_like ones just couldn't keep their fingers
|
|
out of it. They were always experimenting with it. They wanted to find
|
|
out what happened by playing with different thoughts and objects and moving
|
|
them around. Dave tried to be careful with what he allowed, but even
|
|
the gods aren't perfect, you know. When something went wrong, they
|
|
alwaus consoled him with, "It's only a model. It's not like there are
|
|
god_like ones in it you know."
|
|
Then there were Dave's enemies, who often tried to sabotage his
|
|
work. They thought that the whole thing was silly, and shouldn't be
|
|
allowed to continue because the resources could be better used somewhere
|
|
else.
|
|
In spite of some very harrowing sabotage attempts, and it
|
|
appeared that all of the objects had been destroyed from the main arena,
|
|
the globe (called a planet) called Earth (which seemed to be the hub of
|
|
"artificial intelligence") seemed to have taken on a life of its own.
|
|
The objects seemed to re-form themselves, even after a major
|
|
catastrophe, given a little time. And a bit of help from Dave (who is
|
|
god).
|
|
Dave, who is god, found himself becoming quite attached to the
|
|
thought-forms. Initially he thought he had found similarities in the
|
|
thought-forms, but as he studied them more and more, all he could see
|
|
were their differences. He wondered if the gods were the same, in that
|
|
they were all completely different, illusorily thinking that they were
|
|
the same. He also wondered if he also wasn't part of someone else's
|
|
model of reality.
|
|
Dave, who is god, also began to be plagued by thoughts about
|
|
closing the project down. Well, what if "artificial intelligence" got
|
|
upset? But wouldn't that prove it was sentient and then it wouldn't
|
|
have to be shut down? It seemed to be fending off the sabotage attempts
|
|
pretty well by itself.
|
|
So Dave (who is god) sighed, hummed and hawed, but didn't
|
|
consign the new thoughts back to the Uglydig.
|
|
One day another thought came by. It blinked, and obligingly
|
|
settled in Dave's mindscape, seeming very much at home. Dave (who is
|
|
god) was very much surprised. He studied the new thought from all
|
|
possible angles, and decided that it had to be what it appeared to be.
|
|
It was a human mind that had escaped the reality model!
|
|
Suddenly the human mind, manifested itself out of Dave's
|
|
mindscape. It was a god! Or at least it rather looked like one. He
|
|
wondered what to do about it. He certainly hadn't been expecting THIS
|
|
to happen.
|
|
"Hello," said Dave.
|
|
"Hello," said the newly manifested, little mind, whose name was
|
|
Terry. "Is this Nirvana?"
|
|
Oh dear, thought Dave. Have you got a LOT to learn.
|
|
|
|
!...===+...(*)...!
|
|
|
|
\pippin\stories\daniel.sty
|
|
|
|
DANIEL AND THE LIBRARY
|
|
|
|
Daniel stared up to the top of the stairs. Down below the
|
|
surface of his mind, a thought had the presence of mind to wonder why
|
|
Daniel was in fact standing on a staircase when he had been only a
|
|
moment ago sitting with his aunt and uncle sipping mushroom soup for
|
|
supper. But Daniel was not really aware of the thought. His thoughts
|
|
had been scrambled ages ago when he had met God. Now he just climbed
|
|
the stairs because they were there, and he couldn't remember what he'd
|
|
been doing before the stairs. If he had remembered that he had been
|
|
sitting having supper with his aunt and uncle, he would have elected to
|
|
explore the stairs anyway.
|
|
At the top of the stairs there were three doors with three signs
|
|
on them. They said: "Library", "God", and "Emergency Exit". Since he
|
|
wasn't having an emergency, and he had already met God, he went into the
|
|
Library. He liked Libraries too.
|
|
It was full of books. Like a normal library. Except this
|
|
*looked* like a real library because it had shelves up to the ceiling
|
|
and ladders with which to climb up to the ceiling. And the ceiling had
|
|
rafters in it, and it looked like bats lived up there. Daniel looked at
|
|
a shelf. All the books had names and dates on them. History books, he
|
|
thought. He went to another shelf. It was the same except that the
|
|
dates were different. They were in the future. He picked one up, and
|
|
opened it. He read:
|
|
"He was there, pushing the pea around his plate. He was pushing
|
|
the pea around the plate because the pea was cold. Because it was cold,
|
|
he didn't want to eat it. He was depressed, and bored with peas."
|
|
Daniel slammed the book shut, surprised. It was yesterday's tea time.
|
|
He looked at the cover. It had a picture on it of his cheerfully
|
|
grinning face. That couldn't be right. He felt relieved. He hadn't
|
|
grinned like that since he had come to live with Aunt Marie and Uncle
|
|
Otto. And their boring cold peas.
|
|
"And what's wrong with peas?"
|
|
"They are always cold by the time they get to the table," he
|
|
said without thinking. He clapped his hand over his mouth. Why had he
|
|
said that? No one had spoken.
|
|
"That's right. I wouldn't have noticed if you had spoken
|
|
either." Daniel found that he was staring at a Bookworm. It was white,
|
|
green at the edges, and sporting nice, round, fashionable glasses that
|
|
weren't too big for its face. And it was carrying a book, of course.
|
|
It was telepathic too. In fact, it looked just like he thought a
|
|
bookworm should.
|
|
"But of course," went on the Bookworm without speaking. "I'm
|
|
supposed to."
|
|
"Oh," said Daniel. He tried to make the Bookworm go away by
|
|
looking at it. The Bookworm just started wiggling in a comical fashion.
|
|
Daniel realised that it was laughing.
|
|
"Oh no! No!" thought the Bookworm. "You can't do that."
|
|
Daniel apologized to the Bookworm. He was very polite.
|
|
"Oh that's all right." thought the Bookworm. It was a very
|
|
good-natured Bookworm. It had to be in its job. "Well," it thought
|
|
presently. Do you realize what that book is?"
|
|
Daniel had forgotten the book in his hand. "The Story of my
|
|
Life?" he thought lamely.
|
|
The Bookworm chuckled. "Yes, I guess you could think that."
|
|
"But why read it?" thought Daniel gloomily.
|
|
The Bookworm stared hard at Daniel. He could feel its stare.
|
|
It obviously wanted a better answer than that.
|
|
"Then I'll know what happens," said Daniel aloud for emphasis.
|
|
"What's the point of living, if you know what is going to happen?"
|
|
"Quite right. You are quite right," thought the Bookworm
|
|
agreeably. It looked keenly are Daniel. Finally it asked, "Is there
|
|
*any*thing at all you want to know? Most people want to know something
|
|
when they come here."
|
|
Daniel fiddled with the book. He imagined he saw "I Ching" on
|
|
the cover. The Bookworm saw it too.
|
|
"Very good book," it thought at last. "There is one around here
|
|
somewhere."
|
|
Daniel opened the book and noticed that it *was* the I Ching.
|
|
"Yes, this is it."
|
|
The Bookworm chuckled again. It had a pleasant chuckle. "You
|
|
are pretty good at that."
|
|
Daniel looked guiltily at the Bookworm. What if it knew? It
|
|
seems to know everything else.
|
|
The Bookworm looked solemn. "Only God know that. Not even all
|
|
these books can tell you that. These are only ideas. The product of
|
|
someone's fertile imagination. Some people argue that God doesn't even
|
|
know. That's why He keeps this Library. Parallel universes and extra
|
|
dimensions. Want to be rich and famous, or an animal, or live your life
|
|
over? Just find a book where you did it. It is that simple." The
|
|
Bookworm smiled affectionately at the books and glowed happily at
|
|
Daniel. Some visitors just couldn't understand parallel lifetimes and
|
|
superstrings. Daniel understood all right. He still fiddled with the
|
|
book.
|
|
"I think that you should go and talk to God. He likes to see
|
|
people you know. He doesn't bite. Not here anyway."
|
|
A little, grey cloud appeared over Daniel's head. It was his
|
|
gloom. The Bookworm wiggled insanely again, and Daniel was sure it
|
|
would fall off the Bookshelf.
|
|
"Well ok. I will go. Even if it is just to prevent you falling
|
|
off the shelf." A huge hand appeared in the air above Daniel's cloud of
|
|
gloom. It patted him affectionately on the head. Daniel smiled at the
|
|
Bookworm. The Bookworm smiled back, and the hand disapperared.
|
|
Daniel gripped the book, which was now the I Ching, in one hand,
|
|
waved to the Bookworm, and made for the door.
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"There is another door to God over there." Another hand
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appeared and pointed him in the right direction.
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"Thank you." thought Daniel. The hand disappeared again.
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|
Daniel arrived at the door. He didn't really want to see God again.
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|
What if He said, why haven't you opened the I Ching yet? Somehow the
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other Daniel in his head didn't think that God would say anything like
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that. He took a deep breath and opened the door.
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|
God smiled cheerfully at Daniel from across the room. He looked
|
|
exactly the same. A little man with grey hair and twinkling hazel eyes.
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|
Impossibly old, and impossible to guess what age.
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|
"Hello," said God. "You are just in time for a cup of tea."
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|
"Hello," said Daniel, smiling a little smile. "Long time, no
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|
see." He sat in the chair across a little coffee table from God, and
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|
stared at the I Ching.
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|
"I'm sorry," he said straight away. "I am sorry I still haven't
|
|
decided what to do." Immediately the cloud of gloom took its cue and
|
|
left. Daniel felt better than he had in years. He stared at God. God
|
|
was examining a chocolate wheaten biscuit.
|
|
"Would you like some coke?" Daniel noticed a glass of coke on
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|
the table in front of him. "Well," He added, "why didn't you think of
|
|
saying that years ago? I am always around somewhere."
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|
"Well," said Daniel slowly, "I did for a while. Every evening I
|
|
said to myself, please forgive me for not opening the book."
|
|
God raised an eyebrow. "So what happened?"
|
|
"After a year of doing this, I felt pretty stupid, so I
|
|
stopped."
|
|
"Hmmm..." hmmed God. "But that was very sensible. You must
|
|
have realized by then that you were never going to open it."
|
|
Daniel scratched his head. "No I never did." He looked
|
|
sheepish. The world stopped, and 10 billion thoughts fought for his
|
|
attention. But if I was never meant to read it... But you thought you
|
|
were... So why did you think that? Because He gave it to me.. So why
|
|
didn't you read it?
|
|
The world came back, but the I Ching didn't.
|
|
"Wait!" Daniel felt something was slipping away. "It's still
|
|
not too late." Daniel imagined that the I Ching was still in his lap.
|
|
Very obligingly, it reappeared. He ran his hand over the cover. It
|
|
didn't have his smiling face on it, or even the words "I Ching". It was
|
|
*his* copy that lived in a box under his bed. It looked very glad to be
|
|
out of the box under the bed and very pleased to see God again. Before
|
|
another thought came along, Daniel opened it, and read:
|
|
"What has been spoiled by Man's fault can be make good again by
|
|
Man's work."
|
|
Daniel's mouth fell open in surprise.
|
|
"No. It is not too late," said God. "Not too late at all."
|
|
Daniel looked at God, and realized that God was laughing without
|
|
laughing. The I Ching was smiling too. "So when you go back to your
|
|
aunt and uncle and their cold peas, what are you going to do?"
|
|
Daniel sighed. "I am going to do what I was going to do on the
|
|
first day I was there. I am going to tell them that the peas are always
|
|
cold when I eat them, and I will feel much better." Another thought
|
|
popped into Daniel's head. "And forgive you for taking my parents away.
|
|
I know they are much better off where they are."
|
|
God grinned wickedly, "Are they? They *would* be if they came
|
|
to the same realization that you just did then. Oh well. It isn't too
|
|
late for them either."
|
|
Daniel giggled insanely. For a moment he felt sorry for them,
|
|
then he didn't. "Yes, I suppose it isn't."
|
|
Daniel said good-bye to God, and in a blink, he was once again
|
|
sitting at the table looking at mushroom soup, but it was "mysteriously"
|
|
hotter than it had been when he had left for the Library. And there was
|
|
a book beside his plate with a marble-wash cover.
|
|
|
|
%...) + (...%
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