The 4th of July

I awoke to dull, musky gray clouds covering the sky. July had just begun. After eating, showering, and mentally preparing myself, I popped 5 hits of double dipped, grateful dead quality acid. I got in my car, and drove to meet my friend, whom we will call him Jaguar. He had also taken the same amount of acid from the same sheet. I brought my backpack full of supplies.. including my laptop, mp3 player, incense, and a bottle full of jack daniels. We went to the typical place, the elementary school in town. But nothing could prepare me for the journey that day. Once you hit a certain point of strength with acid, material objects become completely worthless. In fact, they become a hindrance, which I will get into on a deeper level when I talk about my trip to Harvest Fest.

Back to the story though... Jag and I went to a local diner for breakfast first. We ordered orange juice (obviously) and eggs. However, almost immediately after ordering... I felt an extremely quick jolt to my consciousness. It felt like the equivalent of being hit unsuspectedly by a baseball bat straight to my temple. The wooden grains of the table started shifting. My orange juice started swirling as if it were a whirlpool. Jag poured cream into his coffee, and I could tell it had hit him as well.

We both stared at the coffee in an awestruck paralysis, unable to look away. The cream was being slowly absorbed into the coffee, indefinitely changing the texture, smell, and color. We looked at each other and knew: We had to leave ASAP. So we did a "dine and dash" without the dining. I felt like I was climaxing on a 2 hit trip after only about 20 minutes. This was going to be intense. We drove over to the playground, got out, unloaded, and sat in the grass. I put on some Red Hot Chilli Peppers in the background, and began wandering. Slowly my vision became brighter and brighter, and by this I mean in terms of the contrast on a computer monitor.

I remember going to climb up the slide, and feeling as if my body was shooting into the stratosphere. That was my last semi-comprehensible thought. I then returned to the grassy knoll that I had started on, and watched grass grow. I watched the ants move in perfect unison underneath my legs. I sympathetically took part in their struggle for survival. It was similar to that of a squad of delta force. Everyone had a role, no one more important than the other. The survival of all depended on all. No one quit. No on turned back. It was absolute. Ah, the life of an ant.

I lay down after this thrilling moment and gazed through the tree above me. I could taste the tree, and I knew, instinctively, what kind of tree it was purely from the taste. I went to take a sip of the jack daniels. I could feel it slide down my throat. I knew I was drinking. Yet, I could not taste all of it. It came in pieces. 10 minutes later I tasted another portion of the alcohol, and this continued on for about an hour. Next, I realized Jag was off and walking about. So, naturally, I followed suit. However, we walked in exactly symmetrical figure 8's at different speeds. When I wanted to talk to him about something, he would just say it. He brought up my thoughts in conversation, milliseconds before I could utter them. We separated when I felt scared or threatened by this, and returned together at the exact time I felt fine. All the while in our strange figure 8 pattern.

And then, it started to rain.... The drops fell in a slow, steady downward spiral like dance. I got all of my electronic together, and we retreated to the car. I put on techno, soft, smooth techno. Jag left, he had family things to do. I wished him luck. As he walked away, my eyes turned to the windshield. I could see individual rain drops splatter onto the surface, shatter into millions of pieces, and then recrystallize into a solid, diamond like structure (diamond in terms of crystalline appearance, not geometrical shape). My vision had reached a new high, something far beyond the previous HD I had been used to. It was virtual reality within reality. My vision was at an incredibly slow fps (frames per second) with an incredibly high clarity unlike anything I have ever seen.

The rain had almost stopped, when an elderly woman in a full pink windbreaker came over to my car from seemingly nowhere. She said, "The lips of the master are sealed to the ear of the unworthy. Ask, and so you shall receive." and walked off into the distance, disappearing before leaving my sight. I walked around for a little bit, slightly shaken by the old woman. Who was she? What could she mean? I felt something change. My fear had been unleashed, the horrific beast from which I usually shield myself.

I became locked in a portal dimension where time ceased to move. For what seemed days, I truly "tripped out". I imagined myself repeat the same scene, over and over. My mind had fried. I could no longer decipher realities. I was caught in between. I kept reaching into my pocket only to realize that I couldn't stop. My body twitched uncontrollably. Synapses were firing out of order, giving me charred thoughts. Thoughts that still came out, but were incomprehensible even to me. Pain gripped my entire body. I kept repeating the same moment, but it just got progressively worse and worse. I tried to fight with every ounce of mental and physical strength I had, but nothing helped. It was like some sort of strange, spiritual quicksand. The more I struggled, the worse off I was.

Then, all of a sudden, one clear and distinct thought occupied my mind. It was a thought or perhaps even a message from a zen master. I can't quite remember the wording, but I'll do my best. "Strive to live as though you are dead. Separate the mind from the body, embrace a physical death." The words echoed throughout my body, striking my soul with a sharply distinct precision. It wasn't necessarily anything new to me, for I had studied Buddhism, Taoism, and the like. This time though, this time I fully understood the words. There was no time. There was no sound, no light, no movement. I cut off all connection to my physical body, and in that one moment, I felt a euphoric joy unlike anything I could have ever imagined. Nothing even comes close to this, not true love, not adrenaline from skydiving, not even the childlike joy I get from acid. Nothing. And it was over. I returned to my car and attempted to drive home.

Surprisingly, it wasn't that hard. I had learned control. No, let me rephrase that: I was given control, granted control if you will. I layed in my bed, thinking about what had happened. I wasn't upset, but I wasn't completely at peace either. Had I narrowly escaped something far worse than death this day? Had I actually died? How far do the lines of reality go before I cross over? How far can I truly push the envelope? I could only come to one conclusion: No one was meant to go through this. No one, because no one else would want to. They would not accept the challenge, they wouldn't appreciate the experience. I was in awe.

For the remainder of the trip, I just lay there in my bed, thinking. Going over, millions of times, exactly what had happened to me. Thinking that somehow, if I thought about it enough, I could invalidate it. I could remember what really happened. Probably something along the lines of me curling up in a ball, shivering uncontrollably in the parking lot, then getting up and driving home. But where had the years I spent trapped in exile gone? The pain. The pain was the hardest thing to ignore. I took a nice, relaxing hot shower. Warm water always help me center myself. It's natural flow synthesizes with my soul. I then proceeded to take a warm washcloth and drape it over my eyes.

I then zoned out, listening to music in a dreamlike state until eventually passing out.

-Vicarious