feeding the psychedelic database

[Ian Livingston]

I wholeheartedly concur.

On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 3:43 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> Coming on, like a big wave, the mind and emotions suddenly drawn up into
> intense motion, the body strains in that strange stillness where incoming
> waters and outgoing waters raise a huge wild  form within that must, a
> swirl of energy that has to,  simply must break apart, take  its inevitable
> direction and move toward some now unimaginable shore.
>
>  1969 riding in Roger Ashodian's econoline with Benjy Burenstein headed to
> the Woodstock Music and Art Festival, first LSD trip,  first happy, then
> too happy, frighteningly happy, then Benjy starts shooting sparking  purple
> light out of his eyes which is clearly the most amazing trick ever
> performed and funny that he has kept this hidden talent to himself.  We
> come after a long crazy night to a sea of people swarming at the edge of a
> larger sea of people. I jump crazily off the roof of the van and dive in,
> soon impossibly lost from my friends. 2 days later, Sunday morning, I have
> parted company with a young woman and gone to stand in line for a
> portapotty. I  have an urge to turn around and so does Benjy at the same
> moment and we are face to face in a crowd of half a million.
>
> That same Sunday  night a smaller dose. I meet a woman next to where we
> are watching Country Joe.  Later that evening I ask her if I can wrap my
> blanket  around both of us and hold her and be warm in the chill air while
> we listen. She agrees and as the evening unfolds, my arms around her I am
> calmly, deeply happy just to be there drenched in music with someone to
> hold. I realize that love is not what I thought, not something you find, or
> get, or win or extort or seduce. That it must and can come from me. That I
> can love, and that this truth has entered my soul is what stuns.
> Everything I have ever learned is contained in that moment of amazement.
>
>
> I am on the downside of a mescaline trip with a friendly, crazy guy I just
> met named Forest and we are headed for the Sierras and a place where the
> Stanislaus River carves a huge hole through part of a mountain side.  I
> begin to use similes to be able to say and think satisfying sentences,
> Before that moment this would have been limited to attempts at  fiction for
> school or to cliches. I begin to perceive in a revelation that will
> continue to unfold for years the metaphoric nature of language and the
> freedom that comes with using it playfully, of pondering its structures,
> its origins, its limits, versatility, nuance.I feel like flipper, doing
> double flips in a sea of words.  The world has been permanently changed,
> come more alive,  more ephemeral, more luminous, the language of the
> universe, once dense and impenetrable seems to glance warmly,at times lean
> close and kiss like an eager lover.
>
> Many trips. the face of the Buddah composed of stars, feeling in my own
> blood the poisons we emit on an industrial scale,  a california condor
> sunning himself in the morning light over the southern sierras, telepathy
> for weeks, possessed by Pan, pink light over jade mountains, filling the
> streets of SanFrancisco to say no to Vietnam, learning to play flutes and
> whistles.  And finally a couple years later a sense that the medicine has
> done what it can.
>
> 30 years pass with only coffee and the occasional sip of communion wine.
> Post education, post theology, I come to realize that my art, my sense of
> the divine, my relationship with language, my marriage have all been hugely
> shaped by etheogens.  I have realized that certain inner transformations
> take many years to unfold, and that the role of something that has been
> labeled dangerous, and unreal has been almost entirely enriching for me. I
> am thankful for these substances and for anything that leads humans to the
> terrifying and  transforming power of love.
>
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>  I believe making such substances illegal even for research was damaging
> to  science, medicine, psychology, law enforcement, and possibly even human
> evolution.  As far as I can see this has nothing to do with limiting  self
> destructive addiction but an attempt to limit the range of experience,
> exploration, and healing practices available to the human family. These are
> very different from addictive drugs. For many people once is enough whether
> it is a time of positive transformation of just freaky oddness or terror.
> But there is a kid of natural limit to using them lightly.  It also really
> creeps me out that all countries have criminalized what is clearly a
> practice dating from the earliest human records.  -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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