Eros

I discovered MDA.

Over the course of the last month, I've ingested this interesting amber crystal on 3 occasions. With most experiences of these kinds, things are forgotten and words are poor substitutes. Nothing will compare to you experiencing the experience. As is frequently the case, Terrence McKenna articulates it well. 

I'd like to plant a flag before we go on this dance. The word “drug” is bloated. You do drugs. You ingest drugs. You are drugs. Drugs are chemical structures your body knows how to metabolize, and the metabolizing causes changes in consciousness. Sugar, alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine are drugs. They are drugs that are more poisonous than many schedule 1 drugs, like LSD, Psilocybin, Mescaline, and that herb we all hear about. The bedrock I'm trying to dig into is that drugs alter your perspective, and your perspective, that is to say your nervous system, is all you have, and you are doing your life a monumental disservice waving off entire families of chemicals because a reactionary government passed a law almost half a century ago.

Do your research. You have the world's knowledge in your pocket. Tinder will still be there.

Okay, drug stories.

October 10th

A beautiful friend gave me a gram of a crystal called MDA or Sassyafrass. (I'll try not to use the word beautiful too much. It'll be hard.) Enduring the teasing of my girlfriend, I did hours of research before agreeing to put these little geometric structures inside me. Erowid, PIKHAL and Reddit, when used with care, are amazing places to find quality information.

This chemical has an effective dose at 100mgs. It takes about 60-90 minutes for your sensations to start altering. Taking another does of 100mgs every hour or two is a common way to amplify the effects. Taking more than 100mgs at a time or taking more then 2 or 3 additional doses can lead to a feeling of nausea. Don't over do it. The neurochemical flood will come.

Krishna and I were playing Smash Bros while we waited for Sassy to start talking to us, which takes about an hour. After taking our second dose of 100mgs, we found ourselves unable to attack each other in the game. Now it needs to be clear, when sober, Smash bros is a vicious battle where my lady and I share no love. We are immortal enemies destined to battle throughout the aeons. It was hilarious. We couldn't attack each other. We weren't laughing though. We noticed our consciousness changing. It was time to turn off the game.

We each sat on one of two couches and just were. The lowering sun and beautiful Texas evening sky poured into your little home. The sun was setting and the light coming through my window was the stimulus for little visual hallucinations. It was about 7 pm. We were two hours into the trip. The sunlight beaming in looked like sparks, but the visual effects are the least important angle of this drug.

As we were enjoying the fireworks the sun was casting on my wall, I became acutely aware of the drug. I believe drugs have personalities. MDA felt like fluffy, warm Aunt hugging you at a holiday gathering. She was wholly accepting, energetic, and actively seeking to comfort.

The feeling I experienced on this first peak with MDA is a feeling I genuinely understand I will never experience again. You can't experience novelty twice. Words are trite representations of the emotions I felt but I felt real, almost palpable, bliss. I kept repeating “This is beautiful,” “Wow,” and “Oh my God.” For hours. I've never been in that kind of state for so long. I'll reminisce about it the rest of my life.

I felt content. A supreme, total acceptance of the moment. I have a really hard time being content. I feel like I always need to be consuming information, processing information, creating information, or helping others. Content is foreign to me.

There was also an energy in my body that felt gooooood. Like it made you want to say “oooooooooh.” I felt like I was grounded in myself. My body felt whole. It is a difficult feeling to describe. When I'm sober, my legs feel separate from my arms, my arms separate from my neck, and so on. While on Sassy, my body felt integrated. I really enjoyed this.

Of the three trips on Sassy, this was the most emotional. The chemical opens communication up. This is the greatest aspect of this and MDMA. You will be able to say and express things you have never thought were even there to express.

Krishna and I talked for hours about ourselves, our families, how they effect us, and we extracted quite a few gems that I hold to me still. I remember saying a few times how I needed to give this to my family. Now sober, the idea still interests me.

The day after, you will cry. Something will cause you to cry. Enjoy it.

October 17th

We wanted to share. Krishna brought a close, curious friend with us for our next experiment. Lets call her Daisy. I don't know Daisy well but there is a lot one can infer from a very attractive, but very quite girl. There is a sadness there. She had never done a psychedelic before. This would be a good chemical to begin with. She was going to have a special time.

We dosed ourselves the same as last week, same room, and same time of day; two doses of 100mgs, my living room, and around 5 pm. We did tweak the setting with some music, Bon iver and Phantogram.

Krishna, Daisy and I positioned ourselves around my living room on various couches and relaxed while our bodies did the alchemy.

I love being with people who take powerful substances for the first time. I'm fascinated by how they attempt to articulate the experience, how they react to the emotions, and I like helping if it is needed.

Daisy was reacting as anyone would. The magnitude of the love and warmth you feel would shake tears from anyone. We all have so much we hide, censor, and judge about ourselves. Even a moment of true relief is enough to bring anyone to tears. She told us she didn't know why she was crying. I can never begin to guess what happened to her over the course of the next 6 hours, but there was crying.

We talked about her ego, her family, her relationships, and her life. We complimented. We cried. We all fell in love with each other. We were, for a couple of hours, what the word family aspires to mean. We all did some healing that day.

The day after, we all had our moments where we cried. It happens. Enjoy it.

Oh, and the transference from the drug to the music we listened too now makes Bon Iver and Phantogram some of the best artists I can enjoy at the moment.

October 30th

There was a third gathering. 5 of us. That story I'll share another time. 

Pour Out, Then Receive

Slow down.
S l ow  d o w n..
s  l  o  w    d  o  w  n...

You don't control anything.
Your individuality is an illusion.

Since you have such a hard time understanding this,

you can call "it all," you. 

The most ready word you have for this idea is
God.

Take a moment to feel
the resistance you just felt
just perceiving those words.

Remember Wilson when he said
there is no "is"
There are maps.
And God is as good a word
to represent you.
Everything.

This was a diatribe to say
Relax human.
You don't control anything.
Control is an illusion resting on the assumption that we are individuals.
But then, so is most of our language.
It'll drive you crazy
If you can't just
Relax.


But those words don't change the fact that
Your dreams
Those stories you've chosen will be yours
all need
the myth to continue
that you are an individual.

Still Children

I think the most important social issue is how to keep stupid people from reproducing. I'm swinging the word stupid around pretty aggressively too. I'm too stupid to have a baby.

I mean, I think this is a good snapshot of the human enterprise at the moment:

We all share a planet with limited resources.
The economic myth rules all of us.
The global economic myth is rooted on an assumption of continuous growth ad infinitum.
We all support, through buying shit, companies that are destroying the earth.
We either are ignorant to this schizophrenic behavior, justify our actions with old patriarchal books and their saviors, or we transfer that myth onto technology and think it will save us.

Why do we do the things we do?
Why are we so quick to get married and have children?
Why do some of us unflinchingly never question dogmatic religions?

If you are reading this and you have a child, I love you for the sacrifice you will have to make in order to raise a child that will help the planet more than hurt it. I know you'll try your best. I think raising a child is the most important thing most of us will ever do.

This is a rant. I appreciate the seven of you who skimmed this. 

Soma with Krishna

The more I write about these experiences, the more I understand word’s limits in trying to capture the feelings that fill the eight or so hours the fungus metabolizes. Clichés will be hard to avoid. They will appear. Every adventure feels as if it is the most significant one yet. This one is no different. Lets see how I fair trying to capture the memories, locking them in words, and chaining them to the page.

Paige had made cookies. Dac had started his journey a few hours ago with his love, Ashley, followed an hour or so behind. Paige had just ingested her sacred plant. About forty-five minutes later Krishna and myself chomped down on our fungal sprinkled chocolate chip treats. All cosmonauts where accounted for. 

Setting the setting as the mantra mandates; Carl Sagan was the narrator. Youtube provided The Pale Blue Dot, The Sagan Series Part 1, The Most Fascinating Fact and It is Always Now for the hour it took for the mushrooms to start taking effect. 

Krishna and I ended up on the driveway looking at the night sky. There weren’t many stars visible but there was a bright half moon with enough clouds between our just recently dilated eyes and that reflecting rock to allow for visual tricks to start. 

The first alteration to my visual perception I noticed was the view of the sky. It looked larger. It seemed panoramic. I was like seeing through a kind of wide fish lens. It was so beautiful. Also, everything appeared as if it was in 1080 pixels as oppose to the 720 of sobriety.

Still sprawled on the driveway I looked at the goddess to my right and saw a faint image behind her appearing to hide itself in the concrete. I knew this was the drug. I was excited. Other psychonauts talk about seeing hieroglyphics or Incan or Egyptian symbols on surfaces. This wasn’t what I saw. At first the pattern was faint but after a little concentration on the driveway the images developed in sharpness. It was an intricate and complex pattern. It didn’t appear to be any language. It reminded me of patterns I saw on my first DMT trip. It reminded me of Alex Grey.

It reminded me how much I love this plant.

Krishna and I then felt compelled to do yoga. After failed poses, laughs, successful poses, laughs, and tear inducing laughter, we were dancing in the kitchen. I had never taken a psychedelic with a romantic partner. I was enjoying it.

We eventually found ourselves in the garage. Paige, Ashley, Dacorey, Krishna, and myself. I had never mixed the mushrooms with any other drug. Tonight would be different. As the herb made itself around our tribe a few times…

Shit. Got. Real.

I couldn’t speak. My consciousness had left the room. My eyes were fixed on the ceiling. As the consciousnesses around me made noises with the part of their flesh sacs we call mouths, the ceiling would morph and change into subtle symbols. A deeper part of me was communicating with the shallower me that operated my flesh sac on a daily basis. This game, where the deeper part of me created symbols on the ceiling for my shallower part to decipher went on for maybe twenty minutes. The truths I can recall from this experience are

 1) We still construct our social lives as our ancestors did, as tribes. Many people have vast tribes due to social media but they lack real connections. The idea that 2 parents raise 3 children and all of them spend the majority of their time in a little box with air conditioning and television isn’t ideal for your social circuitry.  

I was happy with my current tribe. 

2) The subconscious is real. I’ve learned about this concept for years. I believed it. This night, I felt it. It felt like God. It may have been God. I felt, for maybe three minutes, what I would call a religious experience only because I feel that will best convey the feeling to other readers. I felt like I was being given a universal truth. The truth was that the subconscious is real: that there is a universal, collective, subconscious. I felt the experience tell me that that was all I was going to be given at that moment so return to the physical bodies around you. Return to your tribe. 

I did return. Me and Krishna retired to my room. Once we got into the boarders of my room and it was only our two consciousnesses interacting, the experience ascended to a level of psychedelictry I had never been before. 

A common negative loop I go to when particularly high on weed is my body feeling misaligned. I’ve had surgery on my right rotator cuff and multiple back injuries. I believe that I can feel the muscular and connective tissue issues and I try to fix them. I started dancing in a way I felt would help my body. Without having to speak, Krishna began moving with me. Whenever I’d lose my balance she’d be in the exact place she’d need to be to help me back to balance. 

I kept calling life a dance.

An interesting note about this part of the night is when I’d start faltering in my movements; Krishna--because she needed to be—became a strong, stern teacher. She’s much younger than I, but in these moments she felt, and for all purposes was, much older, wiser, and more positive than I. 

We were so fucking connected at some points. The most connected my consciousness has ever been to another. All I care to write about this part of the trip is she saw me at my most vulnerable and met it without judgment and returned my negativity and paranoia with love, compassion, and patience.

Just as I had my moments of weakness, she did too. She had met my insecurity and suffering with love, and so I attempted to do the same for her. This culminated in us laying in bed, holding a gaze for what felt like at least two hours, exchanging raw thoughts. I could see The Void in her eyes, the place that is the context for all creation, and it was. We cried for each other’s suffering. Smiled at our ‘us.’ And eventually became sober enough to consume the processed garbage that is Subway. 

Once fueled. We made love. 

Best trip yet. 

Still Lost.

I feel a little lost in life. 

I know its not a unique perspective. The one where the economic promises that enticed our parents and their parents simply don't allure us. The promise that if we work hard, likely at a spiritually unfulfilling position, we will be able to afford a home -- pending the grace of a morally sound loan lender. And with this new home and debt, we will have a place to raise a family, and everyone wants to raise a family.

I'm even less fit to be a parent then I am to be a meal preparer. Why is it that there are more societal  requirements to allow an 18 year-old to make someone a McDouble then it is for that same 18 year old to summon a soul from nonexistence? I'm talking about fucking. I'm talking about that thing scientists claim genes use our flesh sacs for (1). I'm talking about procreation.

We do not give enough attention to the idea. The responsibility of raising a child is monumental. Especially now. We are living in a world that is changing, growing in complexity, at a quicker rate than any recorded time in history. We don't have brains equipped to grasp the width of depth of useful, even common, knowledge. More content is being created in 2 days than what existed throughout all of mankind since recorded history up to 2003 (2).

What chance does your child have, spending hours every day being raised by an blue screen, to understand our world? We've got social taboos for little Jimmy to memorize. We have an arbitrary economic system Daisy better understand quickly if she doesn't have nice legs and a Freudian fascination with lollipops.

I used to think my ultimate goal was to be a good father. A part of me still wants that, but what if being a good father is choosing to not ever become a father? No over emotionality here. Pragmatically, is this a world that needs a partial genetic copy of me? A partial genetic copy that will absorb all my bias and bigotry and stupidity? And my debt. Or can the planet use a generation of mankind choosing to hold off on fucking copying themselves. Or is the earth going to be okay, and its us who could really use a generation to not reproduce. (3)

Most of us don't grow spiritually beyond 18. We still completely identify with the ego as self. We still take offense. We are emotional children. We want and expect. We get upset when reality doesn't meet our expectations. We are petty. We, etrophy ridden material bags, waste priceless and finite time on saying rude shit about other flesh bodies. The things we say about other people that we intend to be insulting reveal our own pettiness, the narrowness of our perspectives, as quickly as genuinely shouting nigger or sneering faggot. We have no moral high ground. We are all equal, standing zombified on The Plain of No Self-Awareness. To be fair, some are passed-out-drunk.

If you have a child, this is not an attack. It is only a stream-of-consciousness. In my infrequent moments of self-awareness I wouldn't judge you. Thats genuine. I do hope that you selflessly give yourself to the task of raising this child as best you can. I mean, the data shows you only need to be on your best performance those first 6 years (4). Its funny how sound logic, statistics, and behaviorism can proclaim that last sentence with seriousness and ladened positive intentions.

I'm doing too much telling. We are too prideful to be told. We want to be shown.


1) In Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene, he argues that humans are a byproduct of the natural compulsion of genes to reproduce. Genes are the puppet masters and we are the puppets.

2) Eric Schmidt wrote an article on this idea. Information may be defined vaguely in his article. I don't know how useful my Flappy Bird High Score is, but that counts as information. Not quite Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake.

3) "A child born in the United States will create thirteen times as much ecological damage over the course of his or her lifetime than a child born in Brazil"

4) For a shot of science on the issue of raising children, check out this infographic. 

Sirius

I saw Sirius.

I wonder if I should take him serious,

Robert Anton Wilson I mean.

A cosmic joker.

An occupation I'd love to have...

Sirius is serious.

The star of The Ancients.

It's significance

The synchronicity  

The feeling of a conspiracy 

that the entire universe is

fucking

waiting for me to say "I'm ready"

and my dreams will begin to blossom. 

Well, I am ready. 

I know there is no perfect time to start

and now is all there is

and now I have my chance

to start living life.

The goal know,

remember this

tomorrow.

1,000 True Fans

Unless artists become a large aggregator of other artist's works, the long tail offers no path out of the quiet doldrums of minuscule sales.

You should know about The Law of 1,000 True Fans

I fucking hate television. I’m not a fan of “culture,” if such an ambiguous word even contains meaning. Television is made for the average American. A statistical homunculus with one testicle and one fallopian tube that causes most television to be a bland, watery remix of stories that serve as the bread that sandwiches the advertising that is force fed down millions of American’s already gluttonous, drooling mouths.

That escalated quickly.

What’s beautiful is seeing my peers creating. We are at a unique age. We’ve been out of high school for a few years and coupled with social media, we can see the growth of our peers. Some have been growing faster than others. Some have flat out withered away.

*As a quick side note, we need to grow enough to not hate on the high school stars who have fallen, but be mature enough to feel compassion for them and maybe even reach out to help, but I’m getting off topic.

I see genuine music creation, quality video and photography services, and some sexy apparel products. These are our peers! Not some impersonal corporation. We are seeing their companies and creative expression in its infant stage. We can help raise them.

Cancel your television service, ask for only Internet, use this reference. There, you’re saving at least $50 dollars a month on your cable bill and your brain isn’t being fucking raped by shitting commercials. Use that spare money and mental clarity to support your peers.

Musc (both of these links are for-fucking-real)

Kidschiz- http://kidschiz.bandcamp.com/

VitaVersus - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8IOdJaUhIk

Photography

Ashleigh Rudser http://rudandcamera.weebly.com/

Daniela Cowan http://www.danicowanphotography.com/

Clothing

London Lost http://lavishhabits.bigcartel.com/

*If you're reading this, and you're creating something and its not here, just talk to me. You not being on here may be a sign that you aren't giving enough attention to promoting your creativity.