the magic spot

there are a lot of trips i would like to try and describe, but i think i will start with the one that is most vivid in my mind. in november 2001, i decided to buy a quarter of mushrooms and split them with 4 other girls one balmy autumn evening. i procured the shrooms from a friend, which looked pleasantly blue, and the next day i woke up in anticipation of the course of the day. i live about 5 blocks from lake michigan and my friend lives 2 blocks from lake michigan. maureen is my friend from school - cute brunette with a quick wit and a strong will, andrea - a blonde with a lott of sweet and sassy qualities - lives with her in this aparment that is all glass and overlooks the lake. she's in fashion design. maureen had 2 random friends visiting from nyc that day, too, and they made up the other 2 people in the group. mo is an athletic, funny, insightful girl who works in central park, and margaret is also fun, but quiet and introspective, too. anyways. i leavfe my apartment to go catch up to these ladies who are all staying at maureen's apartment. i smoked a bowl before i left, so the noon was appropriately bright and blue. However, as i wandered toward the lake, the most immense fog rolled in off the lake and between the highrise apartments. it looked like the fallout from the wtc -, the way it came like a wall through the buildings against a bight blue sky- was coming down the street it was that immense, BUT i had no negaive thoughts or anything. it was really beautfiul even if it seemed strange that the place where i wanted to trip- the lake - had just been swallowed in this monstrous fog. so, i meet up with the girls, we dally. smoke bowls. chat. everyone makes sure they're feeling ready to go. it's about 1230 and i have split the quarter into 5 doses. some requested more or less than others, so we are not on the same level, but this seems like it own't be aproblem. we begin. we walk down to the lake. the fog has narrowed and diminshed, but the sky is not bright and the lake is liquid turquoise. maureen is gabbing with her old friends and they are joking and teasing with each other. andrea and i sidle up on a few rocks near the edge of the lake and look out over the water. i start to see a sort of 3-d psychedelic matrix in the air, as though i am seeing the dimensions of this day. the lake seems an even more ominous blue. geese spin spiral staircases up off the like and dive back in in huge formations. maureen and pals decide to take an adventure back to her apt to go to the bathroom, so andrea and i make small talk and decide to take a walk up the lake a little. we are both feeling restless and i feel unoccupied, as though i am concentrating too much on figuring out the effects. we make a home for our drinks in a rock outcropping and walk along tghe shore. the day is turning bluer and shadows are falling through the trees. eventually, we wander down the lake until we find a spot that overhangs the water and gets you right up into it. the rocks suddenly had faint faces flickering through their textures. their own faces. some looked mean, others friendly. it was hard to step on them to get to the magic spot, but andrea and i made it. we had a cigarette. smoekd a bowl, i think. suddenly, i became very aware of the movement of the lake, the ebb and flow throb of hte water beneath the rocks and around them. i gathered myself as close to the water as possible and leaned back on my hands. suddenly, i felt as though the rock beneath me was really wet (it wasn't) and ir ealized i felt very AQUATIC as though i had flippers and fins and feflt perfectly natural being immersed in waves. andrea laughed- you look like a mermaid! maureen and her girls showed up adter a long restroom trip and agreed. it occurs to me just now that even now i cannot piece together the order in which the events of the day occured. i will just tell you wha ti remember. i remember the trees at twilight. they turned into these crazy psychedelic shapes and i was distinclty reminded of tim burton's a nighmare before cjristmas where everything is warped. i remember the silence within the shadows, the absolutely delicate lacy fingertips of a leafless willow sawying tin the evening breeze. the kaleidoscope of golden leaves all wround the ground. i remember being with maureen and andrea by ourselves at some point, listening to music in the apartment. we listened to donovan and other equally topsy turvy music and i felt that music had never sounded so good. i began to see faces floating vertically past the 11th story windows of her apartment and i realized the land on which i was romping was dense with thousands of souls, so much spirit, so much human energy expended in and concentrated on this very spot. i felt as though i didn't mind all of these souls, though. i wasn't afraid of the dead. in fact, i felt i had so much to leanr from them, from their stories etched in their faces. i only wished i could see them more often and reminded myself to remember them later as i walked around. another thing that happened to all of us is that we all startedyawning outrageously and our eyes teared up and overflowed repeatedly all afternoon. more importantly, we could not stop laughing. the entire day, absolutely everything was so funny because it madeabsolutely NO SENSE. i couldn't even think in time or space. it was so beyond me to try and capture the moment and assign it to one dimension or another. i felt like a child wandering around on clumsy feet padding across soft, friendly ground. at one point, the carpet became more than my hand leaning on the carpet, i became the carpet felt it ripppling across the floor boards, felt each molecule shift like water beneath my fingers. everything i touched was this way for awhile. my shirts were especially difficult to get on and off as i passed from hot to cold and indoors to out to a windy lake that sometimes lay still for dozens of minutes. i remember stadnding on the sidewalk with andrea waiting for maureen to buy more cigarettes from the store. we just stood there watching her go in and laughing hysterically because nothing made any sense and it seemed absolutely hilarious. i felt like the mad hatter, truly. but i also felt like alice. as i wandered from place to place, apartment to lake - crossing the highway on a huge perdestrian bridge was also an amazing experience, even though concrete, etc would usually bother me while tripping - but as i wandered, i realized that i was just a sleepy little girl. and i did feel like a child, laughing hysterically, tears rolling down my face, seeing my friends do the exact same thing seemed even more funny. if they hadn't been there, i think i may have had a bad trip, but we all understood how insane and carnivale everything felt to each of us. i know we talked at points. maureen trooped us all around and was a dazzling leader/hostess/bathroom escort. her friend margaret had a 3rd eye at one point and mo's eyes at one point looked so dilated as i peered up at her head that i though i saw a psyhedelic tunnel streaming back into her head like a great highway into her mind. eventually, we were all back in the apartment looking crazy. we ate a little more. i looked in the mirror and saw incredibly tangled long brown hair and purple flecks shimmering all around me. i had that sense my vital essences are flowing out of me every second, but it didn't bother me this time. on this day, beginning with the magic spot, i realized that i should never sit around and be anxiously bored. i should never ingest things that don't satisfy my desires and make my situation better, i should never pretend to be someone who i am not. i also learned how relative space and time really are. as the evening set in and the sun set, i looked out maureen's windows at two high rises that paralleled each other. out of one of them, 18 stories high, somehow perfectly composed of the shades and curtains in everyon'e apartment, i saw homer simpson bursting from the insides of the building in full 3-d glory and color, moving and waving a beer as his mouth open and closed. go figure :) we finally settled into the afterglow around 7 and made the most delicious bread (we ate it with honey and butter) and mushroom-chicken soup with wild rice from scratch and drank wine from sparkly glasses. all in all, a great saturday.
-ariana