Overcoming Ourselves

......................................................................................................The Begining ......................................................................................... I don't trip very often, so when I do I like to make it a journey. I called up 2 of my good friends, Brendon and Josh and asked em if they would like to share 3 eigths with me, and take a trip to the ocean. Once of my friends decided he was gonna bring one of his friends Joel, so there ended up being 4 of us. SO we made the drive down to the ocean puffin on some joints the whole way. When we got down to the ocean, we parked the car, and as Brendon and I were getting stuff out of the car, Josh and Joel just split. It guess it was an indicator of things to come. See brendon and I went to school together, so we are pretty close, and Josh and I are family, so we are pretty close to. JOel though is Josh's best friend, so already there was a division among us sort of. So we headed down to the ocean and eventually caught up with Josh and Joel. There was a stream that blocked us from going any further down the beach but, we decided to cross it and go dose up in the sand dunes. Besides we thought the stream would act as a nice bearier between us and the rest of the world. So after crossing the stream and arranging our stuff we all ate the mushrooms. After 1/2 an hour we weren't feeling much so we went and ate more.....We walked around and slowly time began to to expand, and the ocean began to appear in layers as the waves slowly broke. In the sky there was this incredible cloud formation on the horizon that looked like an atom bomb, with the sun setting right at the base. It was beautiful. We headed back to the campsite and tried to build a fire without much luck. Joel and Josh wandered off to go somewhere, and so B and I chilled and talked for a while. ..........................................................Brendon........................................................................................................................................... It was dark by now and getting cold. Everyone had come prepared except brendon and so he kept complaining about how cold it was. THen he started to complain about how had left his socks by the ocean....But he refused to go get them, and insisted on someone else getting them. After he complained for half an hour we made it very clear, either get them yourself or shut up. Now Brendon is very wealthy. In his parents wealth he has become lazy and I think a lot of time expects people to do things for him. I love the guy and hes my friend, but these character traits just became magnified that night. WHen he got back, he kept on complaining about how cold it was and how someone should build a fire....but he wouldn't even help get wood. Needless to say we were all frusterated with him. Josh was wearing red which was very bright, and seemed out of place, so Joel and I asked him to put on a jacket, or somehting to cover it up. He completely understood and apologized for wearing such a strong color. Brendon just looked at us like we were insane. He asked what we were talking about, and he just couldn't seem to understand. I tried to explain to him how every color had signigance. How the blue and grey jacket I was wearing stood for the water and the sky...how the green he was wearing represented the forrest. We tried to explain but he just didn't understand, and for the rest of the night it seemed that the 3 of us were speaking a different language then him..... .............................................................Joel............................................................ .............................................................................. Joel and Josh left for a while, but I couldn't go with them because I couldn't leave Brendon by himself. So I was stuck. When they returned Josh explained to me how Joel thought he was dying and was very afraid. I was concerned about Joel, but brendon just kept laughing at him which I thought was very inappropriate. Joel constantly had to see the time in order to verify has was not dead and time still existed. Joel asked if he could wear brendons watch (the only watch we had) which brendon responded about how it was expensive and such, and so he couldn't...so for the rest of the night we had to listen to joel ask the time. .....................................................................................Josh.................................................................................................................. After everything that had happened Josh thought it would be nice to smoke a bowl, and try and ease our troubles. Josh was frusterated with Joel and Brendon, and so I grabbed the pipe and he went to get the weed. He asked who had the bag last and I told him Joel did. Joel said I had it last, which I knew was not true. I kinda got the feeling joel was lying at the time, and he really had it, but I thought I was being paranoid. Josh proceeded to turn all our stuff upside down. Objects became scattered every where. Soon the area around us was very scattered, and the weed had not been found. Josh kinda sat down and we all huddled around our dead fire cold, and defeated .........................................................................................Me......................................................................................... ................ Everyone at this point was picking up bad, bad vibes from everyone else. I was mad at brendon because for the whole night he could not shut up...He was constantly talking, and he just didn't seem to mesh well with the group. Plus he lost my laser which didn't help. I was kinda mad at joel, cause I knew he had the weed last and he wouldn't admit it. The chaos of things scattered around us seemed to add to all our confusion and I wanted to pick it up, but I couldn't. We talked about our frusterations for a while and decided to leave, we threw our stuff in our bags as best we could and left in a hurry. So much stuff got left behind (laser, gloves, drawing pencils, strobe ball, bong to name a few) but everyone wanted to leave that instant and wouldn't wait for me to get my stuff. We headed back towards the car and to our surprise the tide had come in. THe little river we had crossed earlier was now massive. Fuck it we said and waded through the deep swiftly moving water. Sopping wet we reached the other side. It was like a symbolic crossing. The river was the last obstacle between us and civilization and civilization at the moment seemed like the only thing that could save us from each other. I started heading back to the car but brendon and joel refused to follow. They insisted I was leading them the wrong way. I knew I wasn't. I tried to explain to them that they were tripping and it was ok I knew where I was going. Joel accepted this but brendon didn't. Regardless of him I started to walk towards the car. He followed in the rear complaing the whole way. To get to the car we had to climb this hillside, so Josh and I started up. My shoes had fallen off by this time, but I was not about to stop to put them on...We had to reach the car as soon as possible, we all seemed to agree upon this. So we climbed up this hill, and into a patch of dead bushes which I walked barefoot over. When we reached the cement we were about 20 ft. from the car,just where I thought we were. I looked down though and my feet were bleeding, and torn. I cold feel the loose skin, and feel it drag as I walked. I didn't mention this to anyone because I did not want to slow us down any. Brendon had refused to climb the hill, but 5 minuts later he showed up. We threw our stuff in the car and headed to the nearest town just to be in the presence of other people. ..................................................................................Post trip thoughts.................................................................................................... For me there was a lot of symbolism in this trip. I learned a lot about my friendships with these people and the way in which we opperate together. There was a lot of male ego bullshit that went on down by that beach but I think a lot of it got resolved in the end. I loved the crossing of the river at the end, and the climbing of that hillside. In the end I think we all felt a sense of triumph that in some way we had overcome. It was truly a journey filled with obstacles. When we got back to the car and I looked at my feet to asses the damage, to my surprise I noticed there was no blood on my feet only sand. Then later after all the trauma we went through looking for the weed, Joel admitted he had it the whole time....Then bam, it hit me that everything out there that we faced, all those obstacles and difficulties, in one way or another we had created them. Maybe there was something in us they needed to complicate things, or maybe we sought to enhance the experience somehow by complicating it. Who knows. I suddenly felt triumphant that in some way by recognizing this I had learned the lesson set before me. Everything that had happened earlier was put into perspective. I had learned what I was suppossed. I smiled got in the car and knew I was somehow stronger because of the things that happened that evening