V-2nd, Chap 7

[David Morris]

On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 12:12 PM, Ian Livingston
<igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
> Never saw anything that wasn't there
>[...]
> Always wondered what was the big deal about hallucinating.

My trips were nearly all in the 1969-1972 period, and nearly all with
visual hallucinations, some very intense.  BTW, I was between 13 and
16 at the time.  A few years ago I decided to try it again, but it
seems what passes for acid these days isn't at all the same drug I had
back then.  More like strong X than LSD.

I guess if you've never hallucinated on acid, all you can do is wonder
about it.  I never considered any of them "spiritual."  In fact many
were clearly influenced by R.Crumb comix, as well as Madison Avenue
advertising imagery.  Some of the hallucinations transformed existing
"real" objects into other things (trees into giants).  Other times
things could materialize out of nothing, occupying a space that was
actually empty.  Only one time did I so slip from reality that I lost
track of where (& who) I was, and that was frightening.  Thank God I
found myself fly back into my body on terra-firma after a brief scare

>From certain passages in GR, it's clear to me that Pynchon is
describing, at least indirectly, some his own visual hallucinatory
experiences on either acid, shrooms or something.  The scene under the
mountain where Slothrop is examining cave painting of miners on the
moon that expand in detail the longer he examines them is very much
like an acid vision.

David Morris