trip to Illumination

On what I considered a drab Friday evening I pursued friends rooms, knocking in anticipation of a “hello” or “what’s up”. Making my way from floor to floor heading towards the basement to do some laundry, I decided to drop in on my friend Shyrac. A kind greeting was exchanged followed by a smile and an ear-perking question. “would you like to eat some mushrooms tonight with me?”. He pulls out about an 1/8th of some marvelous looking shrooms…some bruised blue from handling. He hands me about half the 1/8th and before we indulge, I tell him to make this night complete I’d have to go get my friend Jenny. He says alright, but he eats his share after I leave and holds onto mine. An hour later, I return to his room with Jenny. We exchange acquaintances and between Jenny and I, only have 1 shroom each (2 grams each I’d say). A bit skeptical as to the amount we were about to take, we did it anyways hoping for a ‘buzz’. The three of us sat there in the dorm room playing Virtual Fighter 4 off and on for about 30 minutes. We decide to make our way to the 5th floor and see what some of our other friends were getting into. The rest of them were in the process of polishing off the 3rd bottle of liquor between 6 people. While Jenny and I are sitting there waiting for the shrooms to work their magic, we decide to track down some herb to smoke hoping to bring on the trip. After about 20 minutes we got a hold of some and my roommate rolled a monster of a spliff and between 8 people got fried. Not more than 10 minutes after finishing it, the tips of my fingers started to tingle. This was my second time at mushrooms and this time it took over an hour for the trip to kick in as opposed to 20 min. the first time. There was too much drama in the room with all the drunks so we decided to head down to my room which was not more than 10 feet away. We sat there awhile in silence with only a halogen lamp turned on giving the room, an eerie basement type feel. Trying to pick music, I sat there with the mouse in hand not knowing how to access music or even what music to put on. A deep breath and a slight shake of the head was all it took to jump back into consciousness for a few. If I remember correctly, some trance was put on; Paul Oakenfold I believe. At that point music just seemed to be noise in the background and I had to turn it off because it wasn’t making any sense. About 20 minutes goes by and my drunk roommate falls on the outside of the door and persists that we let him and this girl he was with to come in. He keeps motioning with his head and pointing his index finger towards the hallway. Not knowing what in the world he is trying to say, Jenny quickly jumped in and said, “I think we should go!” Ohhh…I thought to myself…so we all made our way elsewhere and left my roommate and his girl to be for a while. Gush, Jenny and I decide to make a trek around campus and get some fresh air. On that particular night it seemed like someone had ripped the entire atmosphere from a horror movie and planted it right on our campus. While walking, voices started to become distant and I slipped back from my body and watched myself walk from stopping place to stopping place. We made on way onto the main quad and discovered only 1 light that if you were to see on shrooms would answer the question, why bugs are attracted to lights. We stood there in awe and listened to the song the light had to offer. Also watching the halo of rainbow-like colors clutching onto the exterior of the light.


At this point, it was safe to say that the shrooms had drop kicked time right out of the window…. it was clearly non-existent, only the beautiful eye and brain candy existed. Trees had had a grayish blue silhouetting aura about them. Walking under them gave me the feeling of having nature ‘tucking’ me in and keeping me safe. Grass and leaves seemed to glow a neon-yellowish green. Making our way to the on campus park, we were startled to find out that because of all the splendid 3-dimensional trees pasted on the 2-dimensional background; that it had taken away our awareness and because of it we were walking on grass where it had just rained and ended up with some wet feet. Having decided that we had our fair share of nature in its entirety, we made our way to Gushs’ room. Being in a room specifically made for tripping, while tripping was beautiful thing. With the black light set in the corner it seemed to be breathing the most beautiful shade of purple I had ever seen. With the previously drawn images randomly placed all over the façade of his room, it became a jungle of writhing pictures created by a highlighter and a pulsating purple atmosphere from the cornered black light. An old antique-looking lamp stood out on the corner shelf on the other side of the room with a green party bulb screwed in the top. I forced myself to get up and plug it in hoping to intensify the atmosphere more than it already was. Click, the ceiling was all of a sudden crawling with this awe-striking green light. The ceiling was breathing and had started to form patterns only recognizable in an inebriated state. From the corner of the room where the lamp was, I swear the ceiling had turned into a wave pool and was flowing from one corner directly to the opposite corner. If I had to guess the flowing sea-of-green had to have come off the ceiling a solid 6 inches. I don’t really have any idea how long I spent looking at the ceiling…but whenever I ripped myself away from it I would glance over to look at Jenny and we would always time it perfectly and would greet each other with comforting warm smiles. My eyes eventually made their way to the computer screen. Then asking Gush if he would play some music and to change his wallpaper to something more ‘appealing’. Some random trance music erupted from the speakers and I was mesmerized at what I would consider the most intense portion of the trip. The wallpaper was set to that ‘acid-esk’ 60’s theme background. While glaring at it, it seemed to fade…well BREATHE in and out from it’s original look, which was that rainbow puddle pattern to a white screen. The computer screen was ‘groovin’ with the music and I was witnessing this spectacle. Then as if some had shut tight a book, the scene just changed. It was just the regular screen again, only this time the screen was a 3-Dimensional puddle. And to top it off, there was an invisible finger slowly mixing up the colors on the screen. It took my breath away. At that time, I’d say it was around 1:30 in the morning and we had been going strong since 10.



What happened about 30 minutes later put an interesting twist on the evening’s events. Our town was scheduled to have a routine power outage that we had known about just had forgotten the day it was planned for. So, without fail, around 2 in the morning everything went completely black we sat in silence contemplating not saying a word, but just contemplating for nearly 3 hours. Everyone else was in the quad lighting off fireworks and being obnoxiously loud and drunk. Needless to say that night and morning was the most beautiful 7 hours of my entire life and I’m glad I had 2 of the greatest people to share it with.

peace all.