Further up and further in… to trouble.

I reckon I'm transmetamorphosizin' into a Dean Moriarty:

Day 1.  Fly from Orlando to San Jose (with layover in Dallas).  Rent a Dodge Magnum (despite my request for a Charger).  Drive in a Southeasterly direction until near-collapse.  Shack up for the night in Firebaugh, which is a small farm town outside of Fresno.

Day 2.  Continue the odyssey down Interstate-5, make a left at Bakersfield, and proceed up Interstate-15 through Bat Country (Barstow, Baker, & Primm) to Las Vegas (see footnote).

Day 3.  Attend a concert at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

Day 4.  Burn a ludicrously maniacal streak back to San Jose from Vegas, then swap rental cars (again) so that I can…

Day 5.  Show up to another exciting day on the job at 0800, red-eyed and soggy-tailed.

Footnote:  When I rolled into Vegas, the Magnum was coughing, sputtering, wheezing, whining, and flapping.  I think the timing belt had loosened and the fuel injector was deuced up.  Way to raise those quality standards, General Motors.  So I traded it in, and they gave me a Hyundai Sonata.  Actually, the Sonata had a sunroof, better visibility, decent stereo sound quality, and handled much tighter (like a Honda J).  I should review compact cars for Motor Trend.

"... A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production.  Too weird to live, but too rare to die."

Okay, so since that previous blog is my finest accomplishment to date, how do I follow it?  How could Pink Floyd follow Dark Side of the Moon?  They had one frustrating fucking struggle writing Wish You Were Here, I tell you what.

So enough polishing this cannonball of which most I wrote one year ago…

Ah yes, blogging at thirty-five thousand feet above sea level.  This laptop is far too large for the average Airbus A319.

Do you zone out if too much is going on?  Yes.

Are you energized by spending time alone?  Yes.

In meetings, do you need to be asked for your opinions and ideas?  Yes.

Is your ideal celebration a small get-together rather than a big party?  Yes.

Do you fear being the center of attention?  Yes.

Do you have difficulty decoding social cues?  No such cues exist.  What is there to read?

Do you often feel like a tortoise surrounded by stampeding gazelle?  You can bet your candy ass.

It's alright, you're not a freak of nature, you just have an introverted temperament.  Holy shit!  What does that mean?

You're a loner.

My eyes have been opened after reading about introverted loners and why we are not openly accepted nor understood by the contemporary public.  I was planning on posting a blog persecuting Western Society of excessive superficiality.  The fact of the matter is that the majority of the population is extroverted.  Extroverts feed off of social energy.  Social interaction refreshes them.  This explains modern society's underlying infrastructure.  Extroverts are 'social butterflies'; they value social breadth over deeply personal relationships.  They use metrics such as quantities of friends to evaluate their social lives.  The more friends they have, the more successful they are.  They are the bumblebees floating from flower to flower while we introverted loners are the worms who burrow when we find a soft patch of soil.  The brain-digging worms often appear aloof, awkward, timid, misunderstood, rude, or grouchy in communal circumstances.

This uncoils why I've always felt like a gasping beached whale slashed up by outboard motors.  This explains the purpose behind, well, just about all recreational activities: overcrowded bars, mosh pits, sporting events, relentless dating, and chaotic keg parties all cater to the extroverts' mandate for constant socializing.

Organized religions are just fraternities.

Did you notice how quickly the herd rallied after the VT campus shootings?  Within two days, the majority of my friends had removed their faces from Facebook.  They replaced their individual identities with a message of mourning, concern, recovery, and conformity.

Psychologically, I reside upon the opposite end of the spectrum.  I tell people that all I need are three close friends and a girlfriend to constitute a fulfilling social life.  And yet, the idea of chaining ourselves to a singular someone or a group (chain gang?) is terrorizing.

Marriage?  Children?  A loner craves not.  The loner is content listening to his preferred singers lament over the joys and tribulations of love as opposed to proactively grabbing that slippery idealistic urban myth known as True Love.

Just because we've spent a couple of nights hanging at a bar does not categorize us as 'friends'; this makes us mere acquaintances.  Just as I won't claim to be an expert in a field until I feel I've learned all lore available, I won't label us as friends until I feel I know where you stand politically, economically, psychologically, artistically, technically, philosophically, and spiritually.  To quote Otto Kroeger and Janet Thuesen, "With introverts, what you see is only a portion of their personality.  The richest and most trusted parts of an introvert's personality are not necessarily shared with the outside world.  It takes time, trust, and special circumstances for them to open up."

This results in a paradox where I don't have the time to develop deep relations with every person I meet.  A typical introduction usually includes the basics:

"Where do you work?"

"Where do you live?"

"Where did you go to school?"

This conversation is a chore and provides me with little to nothing about your personality, so I am then incapable of deciding to invest the time to dive deep to find your true self, no sense trying to personally reach any of you (so read a blog instead).  Paradoxically, I don't care for learning names in the social setting.  I dive straight into conversation until the recipient stops me to ask my name.  Perhaps I exclude the proper introduction since this person's name is unimportant unless I routinely encounter that individual.  Then, I'll learn their name through repetition.

On the other hand, I met this guy at a party once.  In no conversational context whatsoever, he casually asked me the deepest question one can ask, "What are your thoughts?"  I was taken aback.  No one has ever openly and sincerely asked me that before.  It was an honor, a Goddamned dignified fucking honor to receive that question.  This simple query put me in control of the conversation; I could steer it into whatever direction I felt.  And to put it in perspective, I threw out my thesis that all people are inherently lazy and selfish, then rambled about how George Dubya invaded Iraq not to save the oppressed citizens from Saddam's dictatorship.  We invaded for us, the US, for the oil.  Dubya charged forth with guns blazing to finish what his father started, to bring pride to the Bush family.  Fuckup.

Furthermore, I participated at a workshop at the office on the topic of synergistic planning.  The purpose of the workshop was to prove that people are more successful when they work in groups as opposed to solitude.  However, my personal score outranked the team's score.  Group work makes me less productive, which is why I only occasionally joined study groups at school.  The other students just slowed me down, and I didn't need Group Think or their encouragement to keep me focused.

Many extroverts live under the belief that all experiences are worthless if you don't have someone to share them with.  Incorrect, my most profound adventures were executed in solitude; tethering myself to someone else would have either slowed me down or inhibited me from entirely drinking in a spiritual revelation.  I spent twelve long days driving in solitude averaging eighty miles per hour across the country from DC to Seattle, down to Los Angeles, up to Vegas, and back across the country to DC.  Those were twelve of the most exhilarating days of my life, yet accompaniment would have shrouded my meditative condition with social preoccupation.  Sure, I spent some time on the cell with friends, but moreso for swanking my accomplishment.

I'm gonna take trips like that more often: just passing through, no time to stop at any tourist trap, gotta keep moving, keep the landscape flying by, keep running from life, look at Gaia's green earth.

"I'm more comfortable by myself."

"Is that the case, or are you uncomfortable when around others?"

What's the difference?

It's not that loners hate other people; we just favor the company of… ourselves.  British therapist Doctor Raj Persuad has concluded "the capacity to enjoy your own company is a sign of personal maturity and perhaps the acid test of mental health.  Practically all creative people, and certainly most geniuses, have preferred to be alone for long periods, especially when producing their best work."  Georgia O'Keefe, Isaac Newton, Emily Dickinson, Andy Warhol, Franz Kafka, Michelangelo, Margaret Mead, Paul Westerburg, Curt Cobain, Nick Drake, Syd Barrett; the list of reclusive artists goes on and on.  Loner characters have played a major role in pop culture as well: Batman, Hyde in That 70's Show, the Marlboro Man, Doctor Cox in Scrubs, Willy Wonka; the list rambles infinitely.  On the other hand, it lightens the writers' work to keep the protagonist a loner to minimize character development.  The more characters, the more development is needed.

Underneath the dreadlocks and eyeliner, Captain Jack Sparrow is the epitome of a loner.  He cares not for his crew, friends, family, nor romance (although he occasionally lusts similar to any horny male).  The Sparrow character is not portrayed as a homicidal monster like the other pirates.  Within that intimate scene in the first chapter, Jack drunkenly confesses that a ship is freedom.  "My first and only love is the sea."  His sole purpose is sailing the Earth, running from humanity, for eternity.

Any depressed detective or trailblazing cowboy is highly respected on the screen or in the ink, but the paradox lies in reality when we meet that character in person: That guy's a weird freak, and I don't trust him.

Doctor Marti Olsen Laney states that extroverts tend to burn out at middle age.  There's something to look forward to: sitting upon chilled aluminum bleachers before the quarter-mile track of Life, watching you all sprint headfirst into a brick wall of fatigue.

Courageous loners are the trendsetters.  These passionate free spirits are the iconoclastic pioneers of fresh fads in art, music, fashion, and general innovation.  Proudly strut your stuff, the flopping myrmidons will conform and follow us.

After studying eccentric individualists, Doctor David Weeks discovered a trait amongst his interviewees.  Most of them were either an only child or the eldest sibling raised by strict parents.  BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!  That settles that.  I am a rock.  I am an island.  I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob.

Kandi is making love to Marshall.  He's soaking up all that ecstasy like bread through a bowl of clam chowder.  Reveling in life's finest moment, he grabs her ass with both hands as the climax builds.  The tectonic plates have been grinding for millions of millennia contained within one moment; the smoking volcano nearing eruption...

Every muscle flexed; every nerve tingling; every hair standing erect; every pore seeping sweat; each breath rattling like it was his last.  Marshall loses himself within that spiritual conflation with the Goddess.  Time halts…

Not inconsequentially, a bubble of torrential humor squeaks into existence within the bottom of his mind.  Thoughts expand within this bubble:  "Here you are, m'boy!  This is the apex of life!  You've got a hot naked chic straddling you and humping your cock!  What else, in the carnal sense, could a man ask for?

You've spent hours, days, weeks, months yearning and fantasizing of this moment!  How about all those lonely nights where the closest you reached to sex is puffing on a churchill cigar while feeling raunchy from Madame Cuervo?

You've invested an eternity of small talk, deep talk, casual touching, dating, dancing, dining, formals, proms, bowling, wining, beering, tailgating, gifting, and composing cheesy love letters all for this lustful dearth!  All those narcissistically drunken evenings of strategizing with the opposite of the opposite sex focused to this final climax!

How about all those excruciating hours you spent carving your body to contribute to your attractiveness?  Hours upon compulsive hours of pushups, sit-ups, and curls!  Marathons of marathons sprinting over asphalt, mud, and dead grass!  Spoonfuls of gag-inducing protein powder!

Our Creator blessed you with this body!  That Cosmic Being was fortuitous enough to grant you a fleshy protuberance!  This sacred phallus remains as useless as your appendix for pretty much your entire life, except now!  Now is the overly anticipated moment where that podgy shaft is put to use, pleasuring both you and Kandi!  Work that surly bulge!  Make her squirm and moan and scream for Eden's Nirvana!

You spend most of your life either in lethargic malaise or panically pumped with adrenaline!  You're obsessed with wrestling the imaginary lion in your cubicle!  But now, now you feel ALIVE!  You couldn't be more awake!  This is ultimate transcendent stimulation, the finest drug known to human consciousness!

This is the apex of life!  All your organic trivialities boil down to this venerable event!  All those hours, days, weeks, months invested!  But now you're cashing in!  Three Jackpots in a row!  A straight flush!  Blackjack!  Ludicrously better than expected earnings!  The moment has arrived to receive your just reward!  You can't lose because you're playing with the House's money!  This next Johnny-Black-and-ginger-ale is courtesy of Life!"

As Marshall reaches his climax, the bubble bursts in his mind.  Its suds scatter through his brain punching every endorphin within reach.  He releases a guttural bed-shattering maniacal laugh: cracking and cumming all over.  The laughter drowns the intensity of the orgasm; the explosion diminishes to a couple mild pumps.  Marshall collapses on the bed, still giggling, drooling on his pillow.

Kandi sits upright, still straddling him, with a quizzical look on her face.

"And what was that all that about?" she asks.

Marshall beams, "M'lady, I couldn't explain it if I knew."

The Blues – first off, I think it is incredible that an entire genre of music, one which the majority of musicians respect, is based on a single chord progression: I, I, I, I, IV, IV, I, I, V, IV, I, and then take it around town.  That's all there is to it.  We all know this progression, even if you can't discretely spell it out.  When you listen to the blues, I'll bet you can hum the next chord regardless if you know anything about chord progressions.  As a side note, the most common keys played in are E, A, G, and D – roughly in that order of popularity.  Clapton and Page love the key of A, and Jack White is hooked on E.

There's a universal relation to the blues.  People from all walks of life feel it; it unites Caucasians and Negroes.  Metaphorically speaking, it reaches deep into your soul, massaging your spirit.  When you're lonely and depressed, it sooths you.  The whine of the harmonica or the weep of the guitar carries away your emotional baggage.

This cosmic relation to the blues includes two basic needs of music: rhythm and improvisation.  If we reverse music evolution, the blues would be a combination of hip-hop and free-formed jazz.

Like alcohol, it's adaptable to a variety of environments; varying degrees of intensity, tempo, and instrumentation.  A mid-to-high tempo makes for an excellent driving soundtrack.  There's also a what I'll call marching band –John Philip Souza- blues: heavily syncopated at a high-step walking pace.

Basic blues starts with a single voice and either an acoustic guitar or a harmonica.  Every thoroughbred blues musician appreciates this style from Son House to George Thorogood.  This is your mellow and relaxing blues.  At the other end of the spectrum, you've got groups that almost feel like funk.  I think the premise behind funk is to make the performance feel like an onstage party.  Get as many people on stage at once: vocalists, backing vocalists, axe grinders, pianists, percussionists, and the wind-based players (typically trumpets, saxophones, and trombones).  This accumulates about two hundred people performing on stage.  This is the style of big BB King shows; they sound like the Rat Pack hooked up with Blood, Sweat, and Tears, except they're all black and they grew up together in Chicago.

Now let's turn this one-dimensional tonal spectrum into a triangle.  On the third leg of the triangle sits nasty filthy electric blues, full of fuzz and feedback.  The instrumentational need sits in the middle; you need drums, guitars, and buttloads of effects pedals.  This third leg is the apex of intensity.  I once read a magazine review that described Jack White's soloing as analogous to a 'blowtorch'.  Yes, this is blowtorch blues.  This is delinquent angst-ridden blues, the kind Curt Cobain would play had he taken an interest in this genre.  This is the style where guitar novices, much like myself, put themselves on a quest to sound like their elitist guitar idols.  However, they lack the raw skill, and in their frustration end up cranking the gain and stomping down a cascade of distortion pedals to the point where your output is a pure square-wave with absolutely no tone; it's a pissed-off Hungarian Horntail screaming out your amp.  That's another trick of the trade, more distortion covers the guitarists' mistakes, but I digress.  Point being, blowtorch blues is the kind you'll crank up in your car to the point where the subwoofer cracks your windshield and you don't give a shit if "some hearing loss may occur".

Is the Thrill gone, or is It due for a comeback?  As of today, I'm afraid those of Generations X and Y don't appreciate the blues.  I frequent blues bars, lounges, and festivals. At the age of one-quarter century, I'm the youngest guy in the shack.  I'm afraid this genre is eligible for retirement.  Or, as hope jumps in the way, my peers will inevitably develop an appreciation for this mature genre.  Those of us who presently listen to pop will fly the way of adult contemporary.  But you musicians out there will, with a bit of luck, accept the blues as you reach middle-age by making an emotional connection with it.  I see four options:

1.  The blues continues to lose momentum and is eventually snuffed along with the Baby Boomers.

2.  Our generation develops an appreciation of the blues as we age.  It remains a sideshow within local bars but never takes off to the status of pop.

3.  The record companies draw it back to mainstream pop culture.  In 1983, Stevie Ray Vaughn successfully initiated a blues revival.  His singles were all over pop radio, and still get plenty of airplay today on terrestrial classic rock stations.  We, the laypeople, have no say in this decision; we are but pawns of Corporate America.  The decision-making authority lies with Columbia, Sony BMG, Warner, EMI, etcetera.  I can only hope that some cigar-smoking executive enters a nostalgic mood thereby inspiring him to bring the blues back to the mainstream.  He would then pick off the street a youthful, relatively attractive blues musician.  Then the record company would promote the shit out of his music by paying off Clear Channel and Fuse to relentlessly play his single over and over until the song gets stuck in your head.  Entertainment media successfully brainwashes you, and you call your local radio to request more.

4.  A pre-established band whom already has their foot into the pop limelight (dare I say John Mayer?) turns into a thoroughbred blues band.  All the young ladies would show up to a Mayer concert, expecting to hear that sappy acoustic pantymelter melodrama, and the band proceeds to play a streak of Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters covers.  This would turn heads.

Even if the blues fizzles out over the next two decades, we still have rock, and the blues is a cornerstone of rock.  Without the blues, we wouldn't have the pentatonic scale.  This scale is used in 99% of all rock songs.  The exception being those 'art rock' groups who pave their own paths like Tool and the Mars Volta.  Since rock was built on a blues foundation, there will always be a whisper of The Man Who Sold His Soul at the Crossroads in every song you hear on HFS, DC101, 98-Rock, or The End.

Take me home, Jenny,

e|--4---3---2-----0--------------

B|-------------0-----------------

G|-4-4-3-3-2-2-0h1-----------2vvv

D|------------------------1-1----

A|-------------------0-1-2-2-----

E|-------------------------------

Now let me finish, Lizzo Rizzo.

I don't believe a true loner and a social butterfly can coexist in a fulfilling relationship, for this gives us the following expository scenario:  Let's say for some dubious reason an introverted loner and extroverted socialite find themselves attempting to exist as a serious couple.  The loner is content with a monogamous vicissitude, and thrives in this exclusivity shared only between the two of them; he or she focuses on deepening the romance and strengthening the bond.  However, at some point the socialite is overcome with the magnanimous urge to, naturally, socialize.  He or she eventually feels the loner's prized intimacy disenfranchises the socialite's lifestyle.  So the extrovert goes out, parties, mingles, and zealously acquaints his or herself with as many people as possible.  Meanwhile the loner does what the loner does best: writing, reading, surfing the web, cruising down the interstate, smoking on the balcony, walking the streets in the dead of night, etcetera.  Up springs the quagmire where the socialite has suddenly sampled dozens of new faces while the introvert has met no one.  Statistically speaking, the extrovert is due to meet someone he or she finds more attractive (physically, intellectually, emotionally, comically, romantically, or what have you) than the now-seemingly creepy loner.  Ergo, the socialite who now rationalizes that this freakish couple was lacking loyalty to begin with ceases the relationship and resumes his or her life of flirt and spontaneity with the other extroverts.

The butterfly flutters away with the other butterflies.  The loner is left alone, which may be serendipity seeing solidarity is what the recluse craves.

Bottom line:  the socialite is destined to find someone else because extroverts involuntarily market themselves while loners don't.

So there.

Once again my anal retentiveness may have tainted the satisfaction of a couple good books...

A particular gangbang scene stuck in my head due to its graphic nature, and then I came across it again in another book by another author.  Is this a case of disdainful Tom Wolfe plagiarizing the vanguard Hunter Thompson?

Let us assume Thompson's version is the original seeing he was there in person, and his account is more detailed.  Wolfe had to piece his book together from interviews, recordings, and other media.  In his epilogue, Wolfe throws in a long-winded disclaimer stating, "All the events, details and dialogue I have recorded are either what I saw and heard myself or were told to me by people who were there themselves or were recorded on tapes or film or in writing."  Then three paragraphs later, "Hunter Thompson made available to me several tapes he had made while working on his book, Hell's Angels, and parts of the book itself dealing with the Pranksters and the Angels were also helpful."  Let's assume Wolfe read the gangbang scene from Thompson's manuscript, and it thrilled Wolfe to the point where he decided he must absolutely adapt it for additional exposure of the Angels' animosity to the intellectually liberal slice of America (his audience).

This is a controversy of novelty… the novelty of nonfiction novels.  Even if the stories are not verbatim, not direct plagiarism, and this is legal in all matters of copyright, Wolfe loses some credibility by snatching Thompson's anecdote and claiming it as his own.  Granted, both writers were journalists, and we know journalists simply report the facts (usually second-hand accounts or facts from other media sources desperate for expeditious reporting), so perhaps Wolfe or both authors were drawing from their primitive instincts.

"You sneaky motherfuckers!  What the fuck's wrong with you?  Come on over here and see what you get … goddamn your shit-filled souls anyway!  Don't fuck with me, you sons of shitlovers.  Come on over.  You'll get every fucking thing you deserve."

As journalists, Neal Cassady's trenchant screaming at the cops across the street is explicitly reported word-for-word in both books:  Thompson's Hell's Angels on page 232 and Wolf's Acid Test on page 174.  The only nuance being Thompson withholds Cassady's name, referring to him as "the worldly inspiration for the protagonist of several recent novels".  That's a damn strong hint.

But back to the gangbang scene, it's presented in both books as an original first-hand account.  It's told through the artistic filters of our case writers, but the details and storyboard don't vary.  Thompson doesn't admit the exact location of the party, but determinedly separates the setting from any typical motorcycle gang turf.  Wolfe places the scene directly in Ken Kesey's backyard.  Wolfe doesn't recognize this sketch's source, for he puts no quotes around it.  The reader is mislead to believe this is Wolfe-originado.

This would be like stealing an anecdote from a friend, claiming it was you who turned into a misanthropic soccer-hooligan gorilla and destroyed a saloon by chucking garbage cans until every glass, mug, and tumbler was shattered.  And when you heard that story from its originator, would you not feel cheated?

After this realization, Wolfe's book loses its flavor.  This explains the changes in tone throughout Wolf's work.  How many authentic accomplishments of psychedelic originality did he steal from how many hippies?

So without further ado and my dry whining, here's the gangbang scene quoted from both books:

Hunter S Thompson's Hell's Angels, a Strange and Terrible Saga (first copyrighted in 1966), Ballantine Books 1996 paperback edition, starting on page 191:

It was not an Angel party, but they had been invited, and twenty or so showed up for what turned into a two-day bash.  Almost immediately several of the outlaws located a girl, the ex-wife of another guest, who agreed to make the beast with two backs in a small building set apart form the main house.  Which she did, and happily so, with the chosen trio.  But word quickly spread of the "new mamma" and soon she was surrounded by a large group of onlookers … drinking, laughing, and taking a quick turn whenever some vacancy occurred.

I keep a crumpled yellow note from that night; not all of the writing is decipherable, but some of it reads like this: "Pretty girl about twenty-five lying on wooden floor, two or three on her all the time, one kneeling between her legs, one sitting on her face and somebody else holding her feet … teeth and tongues and pubic hair, dim light in a wooden shack, sweat and semen gleaming on her thighs and stomach, red and white dress pushed up around her chest … people standing around yelling, wearing no pants, waiting first, second or third turns … girl jerking and moaning, not fighting, clinging, seems drunk, incoherent, not knowing, drowning …"

It was not a particularly sexual scene.  The impression I had at the time was one of vengeance.  The atmosphere in the room was harsh and brittle, almost hysterical.  Most people took a single turn, then either watched or wandered back to the party.  But a hard core of eight or ten kept at her for several hours.  In all, she was penetrated in various ways no less than fifty times, and probably more.  At one point, when the action slowed down, some of the Angels went out and got the girl's ex-husband, who was stumbling drunk.  They led him into the shack and insisted he take his own turn.  The room got nervous, for only a few of the outlaws were anxious to carry things that far.  But the sight of her former old man brought the girl out of her daze just enough to break the silent tension.  She leaned forward, resting on her elbows, and asked him to kiss her.  He did, and then groggily took his turn while the others cheered.

Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (first copyrighted in 1968), Bantam Books 1999 paperback edition, page 176:

Go with the flow - and what a flow – these cats, these Pranksters – at big routs like this the Angels often had a second feature going entitled Who Gets Fucked? – and it hadn't even gotten to that when before some blonde from out of town, one of the guests from way out there, just one nice soft honey hormone squash, she made it clear to three Angels that she was ready to go, so they all trooped out to the back house and had a happy round out there.  Pretty soon all the Angels knew about the "new momma" out in the backhouse and a lot of them piled in there, hooking down beers, laughing, taking their turns, making various critiques.  The girl had her red and white dress pushed up around her chest, and two or three would be on her at once, between her legs, sitting on her face in the sick ochre light of the shack with much lapping and leering and bubbling and gulping through furzes of pubic hair while sweat and semen glistened on the highlights of her belly and thighs and she twitched and moaned, not in protest, however, in a kind of drunken bout of God knew what and men with no pants on were standing around, cheering, chiding, waiting for their turn, or their second turn, or the third until she had been fenestrated in various places at least fifty times.  Some of the Angels went out and got her ex-husband.  He was weaving and veering around, bombed, they led him in there under glare and leer and lust musk suffocate the rut hut they told him to go to it.  All silent – shit, this is going too far – but the girl rises up in a blear and asks him to kiss her, which he does, glistening secretions, then he lurches and mounts her and slides it in, and the Angels cheer Haw Haw –"

We may also question if the adverse girl is from out of town, how does her divorcee happen to be partying in the same remote beatnik backwoods town of La Honda, California?  Perhaps they agreed to remain 'friends'.

So you've chewed on some shrooms and now think you're on an equivalent shamanic level of expertise as Terrence McKenna?  You think you've tripped?  You ain't tripped until you've drowned yourself in Salvinorin A.  This is the kind of trippin where you must chain yourself to a bed in a pitch-black room.  Here's a compilation of Salvia trip experiences over my years:

(1) Perhaps if I had seen it, it could have winked at me and I would have known it was all good.  Instead, the sensation of the night has been fear.  My psychoactive energy awoke an entity and it proceeded to scare the shit out of me in the basement.  It caused two loud crashes.  I recall apologizing to the forest spirit for being human whilst in my dreamlike state.  Maybe I created the spirit in my mind and it proceeded to incarnate itself in the universe of reality. 
One crash and I wouldn't have thought much, but two crashes within fifteen minutes is terrifying.

Next time, someone must be with me.  Maybe to comfort me or maybe to spot that forest spirit, and take a picture of it.  I bet that would be worth something to Dan Seibert.

If I switched to an MAOI, I'd probably be travelling the universe right now.  Goddamn modern medicine.  Seven droppers of Emerald Essence tonight, and nothing for proof but fear and a few dream images: standing at a train station and adults, possibly parents, preparing for a trip and motioning for me to come along.  Machines and roads and grassy hills, a theme of travel?

I was inspired to take the second trip on the hill or in some forest, to repent to the forest spirit I suppose.  Communication with other life forms could be revolutionary.  Goodnight, Gaia.  I guess I cannot stop you from watching me.  I mean no harm when I'm under the influence of a psychedelic.  Was that last night's lesson?

(2) 'And you thought you were making this up' was the common theme of last night's salvia trip.

It was the most visual experience to date, mainly because it was ninety percent closed-eye visuals.  I was holding the essence with my hand over my mouth for the last five of the fifteen-minute absorption period.  Shapes and colors became more prominent than usual.  Stunning.  An inner nurse was telling me it'll be okay.  She cared for me.

I swallowed it all after eighteen minutes.  I lay back in my bed and closed my eyes.  All the patterns were orange.  There was a traveling theme again, flying about orange striped walls, hills, columns, pillars, branches with orange buds, and etcetera.  All these shapes smoothly morphed into each other, unrestrainedly flowing.

I wasn't sure if I were consciously manifesting this journey.  My theory is I would consciously think of something and my subconscious, or salvia, would immediately integrate that thought into the journey.  Perhaps it was feeding off my mind.  I would picture something, and it would simultaneously morph or sprout into a new shape.  As I was debating this internally, voices were chanting, 'And you thought you were making this up.'  These voices were also constantly chanting one-word phrases, and of course I can't recall any particular word.  I believe the audio hallucinations originated from my breathing and the box fan in my room.  Note that both of these are rhythmic patterns that would lead to rhythmic chanting.

Then I thought, 'where are the elves?'  I saw one or two hiding behind the morphing trees, but I wasn't sure if those were the real elves.  Then it crossed my mind that the elves were behind the scenes.  They are the spirit of any hallucinogen, using my manifestations to produce more visuals to stimulate more of my own conscious.  I perceived them outside the cube that is my perception working little machines attached to the walls of the box.  Perhaps they were doing all the chanting.

This would all be very exciting were I to determine that it wasn't all within my own mind.  And they were trying to convince me otherwise.  Was the phrase also within my mind?  That is the question.

During the second half of the journey, the sensation of slowly going insane returned to me.  'I'm ready for this to end.  It's not stopping.  If it keeps going at this rate, I'll go insane.'  That more or less sums it up for both trips.  It got a little frustrating.  But why would I want my 'escape from reality' to end?  Because it clashes with reality.

It took me a while to fall asleep.  My breathing was causing too much visual stimulation.  Orange wisps flowing in and out with every breath.  Absolutely beautiful.

Progress leads to conflict.  Conflict leads to progress.  What an incredible night.

(3) I have found something to incapacitate myself to the point of an incapability to type.  So I must recap the Divine Sage trip the morning after it happened.  I took about ten droppers of the Emerald Essence.

Last night was similar to the previous shroom-salvia supertrip, yet it had its own personality.  I very much enjoyed the onset.  It started to kick in about four minutes into the absorption period.  This quickly hindered my ability to continue reading Lord of the Rings.

So I was coming up, right?  Drawing trails with my fingers, staring at the glare of my bedlight off the paint on the bathroom door, and seeing the sheets on my bed as a vast landscape.  I finished the absorption, swallowed the Essence, turned off the light, and entered the Land of Dreams.

The next roughly forty minutes was a race through hundreds of short dreams.  Each of these lasted maybe five seconds to a full minute.  Last trip, I described the images seamlessly and continuously morphing from one to the next.  The dreams had this same flowing quality.

I've been trying to remember as many as I can, but you know how most dreams immediately slip from memory.  For the first clearly defined one, I was basically a molecule on the bottom of a metallic rake swinging over a green lawn.  Some motherly character was tending the garden.  I turned onto my side, and this metal beam kept pushing my head to the left.  I realized this beam was the pillow.

I became more separated from my physical body.  My eyes were half closed.  The dreams were streaming through the top half of my vision, the closed eye field, and reality was sitting there in a dark and blurred background along the bottom of the visual spectrum.

Now this is the really cool part, I was so pulled away from my body that I honestly forgot who I was, what I was, and that I even existed in this universe.  I was so involved in this rush through the Land of Dreams that my identity was lost.  As I was laying on my side, my heartbeat could be felt in my right ear.  Did I realize it was my own heart?  Certainly not.  I noticed this interesting rhythmic tremor in the bare ground.  There were three or four men, most likely excavators with shovels and other tools.  We were all observing this pulse with a wonder like it were some phenomenon that we had not seen before.  I was amazed this subterranean organ, tied to some greater network, could operate itself with such a steady natural tempo.  Who or what was regulating it?  Certainly not I.  Note this description does not do justice to this spectre.

I exhaled through my mouth, but it felt more like some rusty old pipes releasing accumulated pressure of whatever gas was in the system.  I hoped it wasn't toxic gas discharging into an ambient room.

Those are the specific dreams I can recall.  There seemed to be many dreams where people were wisping me away to take care of something technical that needed to be done.

I guess I'm developing a mind of metal and wheels, as the Ents would say.  The left-brain is becoming too dominant, for my interest for psychedelics is waning.  I surely hope this is a temporary lull due to dispersed trips over the past half year.  We'll see as the weather warms and the fat old sun lingers longer in the sky.  Perhaps I've just listened to my Floyd albums so many times that my appreciation for psychedelic stimulation is diluting.

I thought I should draw something; try to capture some common image.  Then I was convinced if I turned on the light, sat up, and sketched that I would end up drawing whatever was in my vision at that moment, simply because it looked so cool.  This means I would have drawn my bedroom door and blankets on foot of bed.  That and I didn't feel like disturbing the dreamflow.

Finally, I've been inspired to try a future trip with music.  Last night was hideously silent in a black house.  I think some music would act as a catalyst into an entirely different sort of trip.  So I need a mellow song, a trippy song, a long song, a well-admired song.  I need a song that will take me on a journey through a beautiful soundscape.  You already know what I've chosen:  Echoes, the epic masterpiece of the Meddle era.  This is already exciting me.

(4) So I tried the Sage Essence with a little music and received an effect opposite from my expectation.  It had a sobering effect, like playing video games when drunk.  I'm so used to that time delay effect from ganja that a lack of it seemed to accelerate passage of time.

There were of course a few moments of getting wrapped up in the tune.  I noticed previously unnoticed parts.  Initially, the volume was relatively low since I thought any piercing high E string throb would give me a bad jolt.  I turned it up at the start of the second section.

The song creates an aural void, as we all are aware.  The Sage put more of a visual to this soundscape.  Start with a cross floating above you as the song begins.  Then sit next to a wall in a completely calm scene, no motion, in the second section.  The third section, as always, was pretty creepy with monsters hanging their heads low as they passed by a doorway to look at you.

And I'm always amazed at the perceived depth of the albatross whales as they go flying by in the third section.  All they did was mix the cawing in at different volumes to put the creatures at varying distances.

Voices bring you back to reality.  The visions dry up.  Instrumental sections allow your mind to wander.

Overall a pleasant experience but not as moving as I was expecting.  Dosage size was large enough to do the job.

(5) Most intense trip to date last night!  100x extract on top of the Essence, just as planned.

Let us begin at the beginning: I'm sitting there in the absorption period, reading the bibliography of Nick Drake.  That's so fucked up.  Anyways, I probably shouldn't have been reading of this as I was coming up, but I was listening to him all day and it felt right.

The absorption is finished and I hit my bowl of extract, one small toke.  As I hold the smoke in my lungs, reality is quickly slipping from my perception.  I hold it in for about twenty-five seconds, then let it escape through my window into Gaia's atmosphere.

Carnage – [noun] (1) the flesh of slain animals or men, (2) great and usually bloody slaughter or injury; side effects include nausea, headache, fatigue, lack of concentration, disinterest in all activities, zero energy, empty torso, craving to jump outside one's own skull

Two years after graduation, I thought my connection to Blacksburg had thoroughly waned, so why has this incident shaken me up?  Let's break out the creepy sequence of coincidences:

1. An acquaintance of mine was gunned down in a hallway within the building that I lived in my sophomore year.
2. During my tenure at Tech, I had several classes on the second floor of Norris.  I recognized the media's dredged pictures of the classrooms with those dusty threadbare forty-year-old yellow window shades.
3. Then there's the gunman himself.  Since this was Cho's senior year at the time of the incident, I was a senior when he was a sophomore.  We could have passed each other on the drillfield.  We could have sat next to each other in the cafeteria.
4. There were thirty-three deceased out of a student body of 26,000 plus faculty.  What were the odds that I would have personally known one of them?  It's not like he was a friend of a friend of a friend either.  I drank with this guy.  I saw him everyday at rehearsal.

The media lusts for violence.  They're bloated leaches sucking the blood off the campus sidewalks.  Carnage is the reporting business' forte.  Did you see the fire in Geraldo's eyes?  Nancy Grace wakes at dawn singing, "It's a beautiful day to be alive, because people have died."  They disrupt us by flashing images of the drillfield covered with cops in kevlar wielding assault rifles.  It's surreal to see media icons like Shepherd Smith, Anderson Cooper, and Greta van Susteren standing in front of all-too-familiar buildings: AJ, Cochrane, Torgersen, McBryde, Randolph, and Burruss.  It's disgusting to hear the media refer to the campus as a 'battlefield' or 'war zone'.  I cringe every time I hear the words 'massacre' and 'Virginia Tech' in the same sentence.  The media had me convinced this is the demise of VPI.  I was not only mourning the loss of life, I was mourning the death of my school.

On the flip side, every American should bypass the media filter, visit Blacksburg, and see that old college town with their own eyes.  One week after the shooting, the sun shines over campus.  Students are walking about and riding their bikes.  They're enjoying the spring weather; they're playing frisbee, volleyball, and tennis.  The restaurants and coffee lounges are packed with students.  A band is jamming at The Cellar.  There is no fear lingering in the air.

The media had me fooled.  Life will have to rain far worse maelstrom over Appalachia to slow the momentum of Virginia's largest college.  This was not a 'massacre'.  This was a fender bender; the dent is easily removed.

My friends and schoolmates make light of the media's onslaught:

"I almost hit Geraldo Rivera with my car."

"If Katie Couric tries to interview me one more time, I'm gonna punch her in the face."

We go to dinner at the Cajun restaurant in town.  Bob orders the gumbo.  Our waitress responds, "Sorry, we're out of gumbo.  The reporters ate all the gumbo."  Those jerkoffs!

Monday, April 16^th, 2007

13:30, received an e-mail from Nick, "hey man I don't know if you've seen this yet, but there's some shit going down at your old dorm"

14:39, received a text message from KK, "Stack got shot"


16:50, received a call from KK, "Did you hear?"  "Hear what?"  "…Stack died."

After a swelteringly intense therapeutic session, I kiss and her and say, "Now THAT'S what you call sexual healing."
She giggles, "Indeed, in honor of those fallen who are no longer capable of indulging in carnal pleasures."

"That's messed up."

You are not dreaming; this is LIFE.

Attend a social gathering in a high-rise apartment;
A studio full of mid-twenties bohemian intellectual hipsters;
The women with high-heels on their feet;
The men wearing pinstriped button-down Ralph Lauren;
Red wine, white wine, martinis, home-brewed beer;
No Head sitting in a dark corner rolling blunts;
No yokels throwing garbage cans at each other;
No one steals the keg tap, for there is no tap to steal;
Just civilized conversation to the soundtrack of Arctic Monkeys and Arcade Fire;
Ken Kesey labeled them as the "Beautiful People", tomorrow's corporate leaders;

Christ, is this where Smokie belongs?
Is this his final resting place?
No, not for the Rogue Maverick, he's gotta keep movin;
After all, he has a Hellhound on his trail.