Cumulative

This piece contains drug use, language and philosophy. C’est la vie. Choose your Tea.

Lots of weird “Did that just happen?” stuff has happened to me in my life because one time, over a couple of decades ago, a friend warned me not to do acid one night.

Sitting on the floor in my dorm, I was seriously considering it. Then she explained, “It took us forever to find that shit and you wanna waste it sitting in our fucking dorm room?!?!”

She had a point. I’d read enough Tom Wolfe to concur that my little beat-box cassette player didn’t have nearly the amperage to transcend us without breaking cheap dorm room walls mostly replastered in mint-green tooth-paste. Or worse, creating a situation where we would be acknowledged by other people. So, we saved the hits for a couple of weeks.

We searched for a really Wow “Let’s do this!” thing to do before hashtags were a thing. Somewhere between 3 hours and infinity, George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelic were touring and we had enough gas money to get us there. We had some shaky ideas of how to return and one “if we must do the needful” for-sure way of making it back up the mountain ‘home again. Road trips are most definitely my favorite mind-gear process. They help me shift through my own shit and find Zen, leeching my day blaring music at top volume, then sliding into songs that simply release. (Side note: I also dj’d at that very conservative college very late at night, exploring new music that I’d “just found in storage, I swear!” tho no one ever asked me about it. I assume everyone was asleep but that was okay. I’d play Bush’s “Everything Zen” immediately followed by Jane's Addiction’s “Ted, Just Admit It.” The freedom in finding wordplay lyrics between songs kept me looking for weirder things I could do to not get bored. I both had freedom of not living at home and a weighing sense of not having a clue as to who I really was, though I kind of thought I just wanted to be left alone to be me. I was the first child in our family to go to college right after high school, according to “the plan,” though it broke my Mother’s heart to see me go. She got better every time I dropped out again. C’est la vie.)

I’m rambling. I’m thinking in song.

So, we journey to the arena with hidden-hat OJ and meet up with friends outside. This was an age before cell phones. We would all reverse-Waldo ourselves to stand out in the crowd. In particular, I had somehow obtained a massively large “Cat in the Hat” floppy candy-striped felt-hat that was almost as tall as me. Plenty of room to hold snacks with the juice. That hat still gives me joy though I don’t remember where it went or when or to whom.

Laying near the grassy pavilion, (agreed upon in advance so that we all had a grounding point should we lose one another,) we all looked up at once, having agreed to state our intentions to the Universe, something I’d picked up from Psych 101. Then we waited, and chimed in to develop new animals and spirits and beings in the clouds, interweaving their stories in the wispy cumulus~wavy sky.

The ground started to sink in just a tiny bit, /as warm as a lost lover's pillow, one who’s still a friend, who’s with what’s her name now, with a puppy!/ The air slipped through us, welcoming and whispering, “Watch.” The lights started to fade as the night sky marched in and sent the toddling clouds to slumber til morning dew. I felt music enter my body from the earth, gently at first, then pulsating, heavier still and then throbbing, then pounding, over and over and over with certainty, with conviction, with absolute HolyPhuckWow:

“Fuck Yes! We are Alive!”

When the Mother Ship landed, the Mother Ship indeed landed.

There was no time, there was only Universe and our being within it. — I get it, acid may not be a thing you’d consider, or do, or do again. We all have different paths that led us to wherever we are at this very moment of Now. I know how many times I almost lost everything from my own cause-and-effect. I know how many times I did lose it all, save my own skin. I was a certifiable rave-kID, powder and pill popper, hitting after-parties at 7am. I’ve been sober now for 23 years. There were a handful of times, I can recall three over the years, where I tried it again, though I kept hearing “No,” in my heart and my head learned to agree. I’m not ashamed of who I have been and still am, as I’m a culmination of every breath I took and kept taking to survive to get here. To me, judging an addict, or judging anyone for that matter, is kinda like casting stones and shooting your own eye out. <insert “A Christmas Story: Fragilé” reference here.>

We all love a good Redemption Arc story but seldom give ourselves the grace to create our own, or space so others can divine theirs. That doesn’t mean I think any of us are “broken,” as we’re not made of porcelain. We can lean into learning to heal.

I get it. It gets loud. It’s hard to connect voice of mind, body and soul in the din. I was actually angry when I first read, “Siddhartha,” by Hermann Hesse. I challenged my professor on how things just didn’t happen that way. She stared deeply into me for a good, long moment- one of those moments where she was actively daring me to just breathe with her, just be in that moment and let go of shit-all else. I think she knew I had an issue turning down what I perceived as a challenge. She asked me what part I did not believe. I was still heavy, still finding her rhythm, so I shot back, “Everything! None of that would possibly happen, Ever!” Most likely, I used the phrase deus-ex-machina. I hadn’t thought about that in Jungian Synchronicity yet.

My Professor breathed in the room more, carefully including me. The clock above her desk ticked steadily into gloaming. She then asked me something that actually worked on me. I don’t know how she knew it would work. I knew it worked on me because it had been used on me before. But, me still being me, couldn’t turn down a challenge. She dared me to write my next essay on the book as though everything in it were absolutely 100% undeniably true. Goddamnit. So much love for her. Mapping it out gave way to unlearning to assume.

Sometimes I think, “I wish I would have…” but, time revises first mostly in mind, second in heart and third in looking up, letting go and creating ohm within soul, even in passing clouds.

I am still in that dorm. I am still driving down a mountain to see a Mother Ship land in P-Funk. I am still in my Professor’s room, the air thick with decades of stacked academia, yet instantly breathing in life itself, I am all of who I ever was and ever will be. And that’s kind of a create your own moment-by-moment experience. It’s my way of living in the now, even though there were times I didn’t think I’d get here. Something in me keeps setting a challenge: Goddamnit! Just

“breathe…”