Mushroom Memoirs

The following anecdotes are all true stories about my own mushroom excursions, though names have been changed to protect the innocent. They are to be used as examples of what not to do, and what just about everyone ends up doing when they take mushrooms anyway. One of the premises and reasons for writing this book is that magic mushroom taking should not be a crap shoot, that the power they unleash should somehow be controlled and directed. The sense of sacredness they emit is just too precious to let dissipate in the winds of time.

Therefore, I have applied the ascetic disciplines and mystical foundations of Catholicism to their growth and use in a synthesis that perhaps only a person who has experienced mushrooms can appreciate. But the following experiences are what led to my decision that such a synthesis would not only be advantageous, but necessary. All my mushroom trips were at those times spontaneous, and rarely planned out. Some say this makes for the best trips. But by best what is meant? Best to me means that something of value is brought back, something that improves ones’ life, or improves ones’ ability to improve other peoples lives, or somehow solidifies, somehow clarifies ones love affair with the source of all longing.

At any rate, this chapter is meant to be compared with chapter ten entitled, “Into the Mystic”, which is a chapter that describes experiences which result from a much more disciplined, ascetic and Catholic use of the sacred mushroom. In so doing it is hoped that one would be able to perceive the difference between spurious use and a highly ritualized, focused and shamanic use. Some of the experiences contained in this chapter are nothing to be proud of, but I think they might be important, or at least interesting, nonetheless.

I first tried to grow mushrooms back in 1977. I’d read Terence McKenna’s book, “Psilocybin: The Magic Mushroom Grower’s Guide”, among others. There were a lot of those types of books in many ordinary bookstores back then. Of course it was an exhilarating concept for me to have fresh psilocybin mushrooms at my fingertips, even though at that time I was abstaining from all drugs, including alcohol, in order to advance my meditative state through yogic discipline. In fact, I had been abstaining for 6 years.
But mushrooms were my special weakness. A weakness that occasionally begot strength. Whatever they were, there was something about them that was mysterious, that opened spiritual and material doors, that somehow gave me an offbeat sense of what perception could be, or what it was meant to be. They gave me power in life. A power I was not in control of, but that came from odd angles, unexpectedly. I liked this. I liked the sense that one could do something that changed things fast, even if the change was oblique. I liked magic, visions, and awe, which psilocybin mushrooms seemed to supply abundantly, like a ‘horn of plenty” pouring forth rainbows of alterations.
For example, there was the time I ingested some mushrooms that I had grown and the next day had a job. Not just any job, but a good job in a specialized field. After having been devastated by bankruptcy, losing a house, going through a divorce, and all the wonderful intricacies involved, I was in a state of mental, physical and spiritual poverty. I couldn’t penetrate any of the barriers in my life. I’d stopped meditation, yoga, and spiritual discipline in general with the exception of going to the Catholic church and saying the rosary. I’d been desperately searching for employment for over 6 months. To add icing to the cake, I was in a the process of being evicted, and had already sold all my stuff, like televisions, vcr’s, computers, stereo equipment and so on, just to keep going. I’d forgotten there could be any joy in life at all. Call it a coincidence or whatever you like, but the day after I used the mushrooms, which I hadn’t at that point used for 13 years, I saw an ad in the paper for a ‘Mac Guru’. I immediately called up, got invited to an interview that very afternoon, and had a job the next day. It’s hard for me to pass that off as something that ‘just happened’.
My first attempts at growing mushrooms however were fraught with failure. Contamination of the green variety, probably penicillin, seemed to enjoy colonizing my casing soil much more than the mushroom mycelium did. After about five months of what I considered meticulous work, it became apparent that I basically sucked at growing mushrooms. I’d pretty much given up, but inwardly longed for that fancy mind frame mushrooms evoke. I was living in an old farmhouse with a few other people back then.
One day, many years ago, I was walking past a corral into the pasture that was just outside our house across the driveway. It was used as a drop off and pick up point for the cows that grazed there and were destined for slaughter. The cows meandered over the hilly fields from spring until fall. The hills extended all the way down to the Mohawk River, which served as a natural boundary on one side. The heard of about 50 cows were given free reign of a huge area, and only occasionally escaped onto our local highway, creating havoc for motorists.
The field was lazily sprinkled with cow pies, and sticking up from many were a variety of conspicuous mushrooms. I happened to glance over inside the corral, which was by now full of waist-high plant life, since the cows couldn’t get in to eat it or trample it down. I noticed that underneath the foliage there was an astounding number of these brown and grey mushrooms. When I climbed over the fence to investigate, I discovered that every time I pulled some of the foliage back to see the ground beneath, I found scores more of these prolific fungi. The corral was literally infested with thousand of these mushrooms. Some were gigantic, having caps up to five inches in diameter, but most were average size with caps from one to two and a half inches wide.
I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be something if these mushrooms contained psilocybin, and were magic mushrooms!.” At that time, I thought this to be impossible, knowing full well that Psilocybe cubensis , our most renowned magic mushroom, grew only in the southern most climates of our country. But my fantasy got the best of me, and I decided to pursue the issue with some friends, mostly out of the frustration I had experienced in failing to grow my own. I even went as far as to insinuate to my colleagues that they actually were psilocybin containing mushrooms.
We persuaded the so called “Magic Mushroom expert” in our area, Dan, to take a look at them. Dan was known for having actually picked magic mushrooms in Florida, and had even been shot at with buck shot by a farmer down there, so was a magic mushroom war hero who’d earned his stripes, so to speak. (I can’t say as I blame those farmers who each spring find their pastures littered ‘shroom lovers, who have a tendency to get the bulls all riled up anyway, a considerable danger in itself. A sophisticated mushroom enthusiast might get permission first by offering some form of compensation to the farmer before they begin their foraging).
I can remember sitting out on the lawn that afternoon, overlooking the field to one of the many beautiful sunsets we enjoyed there. Dan had warned us, before even looking at them, that magic mushrooms were not known to grow in our area. He confirmed his own suspicions upon handling them, and stated that they couldn’t possibly contain psilocybin, since psilocybin mushrooms always bruised an obvious cyan on their white stems. He was only slightly hesitant, when he thought he saw a subtle hazel tint on the stems, and some blue specks at the base where the mushroom was pulled up from its mycelial body. He ultimately dismissed this notion however as a trick of lighting, and not only denounced these mushrooms as having anything to do with ‘magic’, but issued a stern and frequent warning that they very well could be poisonous, or even deadly.
Although disheartened, I was still not thoroughly convinced by his assessment, and continued my offbeat fantasy that they actually were magic mushrooms. So much so that I gave them to some friends who were visiting at the time and explained to them my suspicions. Among these friends was a person nicknamed, ‘Mushroom Eddie’. He was a happy-go-lucky, free type of spirit. He always had a mischievous glint in his eyes like an overgrown leprechaun, but when he first observed these mushrooms, his countenance became stern, nearly obsessive. He gazed at them as if he were in a trance, and couldn’t take his eyes off them. He was suddenly ‘all business’. I warned him that these mushrooms could be poisonous or even cause death, but this did not seem to influence him. We perused my mushroom books to see if we could identify the family. To our surprise, the mushrooms corresponded in appearance and attributes to the mushroom Panaeolus subbalteatus. We discovered that Panaeolus subbalteatus was not only known to grow in upstate New York, but was also known to contain psilocybin.
‘Mushroom Eddie’ and the rest of the crew took a hefty sampling home with them, and immediately boiled a pot up. I still thought they’d be duds, as it is my nature to fantasize more than to believe. To be honest, I probably never would have sampled them myself for fear of being tragically poisoned. After all, that’s how Buddha died. But Eddie and the others were more adventurous than I. They were more action oriented, which isn’t hard to be if I was the standard for which action might be measured.
“Are the mushrooms psychedelic?” I asked Frank (another friend) when he answered the phone. “Yes, they definitely are,” he replied. “Are you sure it’s not just an imagined high created by all the excitement?” I asked, knowing full well that psychedelic awareness was unmistakable. “We’re very sure.” he said. “There’s absolutely no question.”
I was dumfounded. Hadn’t I spent the last six months trying to grow my own? Hadn’t I longed to have them at my fingertips? Wasn’t I ignorant of the fact that magic mushrooms did grow in Upstate New York? It’s almost as if these mushrooms ran across the driveway, knocked on my front door and began pulling at the bottoms of my pants, squeaking in chorus, “Pick me! Pick me!”
One of the most uncanny attributes of the magic mushroom is that its’ magic somehow spills over into one’s everyday life. Not in the form of a hangover, but in the form of unanticipated deviations from routine, especially if you’re in a rut. You could be basking, unceremoniously, in the rut of ruts, and a dose of mushrooms will brake the barrier in some way – guaranteed. I just gave two examples. One was finding a job in the nick of time after a long search. The other was finding the mushrooms themselves after struggling unsuccessfully to grow them. No wonder they call them magic! Consider the implications of this. What would happen if one intentionally focused on a specific goal while one was in the realm of the mushroom experience?
As for myself, I used these Panaeolus subbalteatus mushrooms we found in the corral about 3 or 4 times. I’m not one for frequent use, since my experiences tend to be so overwhelming that it takes a few months for me to integrate them into my psyche. What I remember most about them is that they give a mild and serenely lucid experience as opposed to Psilocybe cubensis. Psilocybe cubensis is rammy and undisciplined in comparison. With Panaeolus subbalteatus you emerge from the experience clean as a whistle. It’s primary characteristic is Oneness. Oneness with the earth, with nature, with everything and everybody, whereas Psilocybe cubensis. illicites transfiguring engagements with the Other, the Holy Spirit, God, or an alien presence in whatever mood this entity might be in. And it does have its moods! The only thing consistent about it is its utter anti-dimensionality.
My evaluations could be due to the amount of psilocybin contained in each family, the panaeolus known to be considerably less than Psilocybe. But its my belief that each magic mushroom family has its own personality characteristics or potential for personality characteristics. It would be interesting to do blind research studies to verify or disprove this theory. Also, the Panaeolus has no known precedent in ritual use among the indigenous Indians of North and Central America, whereas the Psilocybe does. It is my theory that this is why the Panaeolus does not contain the Mexican and Indian motifs in behind the eyelid imagery that the Psilocybe abounds in. The collective unconscious of of a culture in the experience of the Panaeolus has not been adequately formulated yet. This unveils the possibility of consciously molding a unique collective unconscious as regards any family of sacred mushroom not previously bombarded with the human collective unconscious.
As for personal experiences using Panaeolus subbalteatus, I can remember one of the four in particular, which may give an indication of how it ‘likes’ to effect human awareness. It reminds me of a precocious little girl of 8 who constantly wants to play. But this little girl, even amidst her innocence, is mesmerizing, and likes to play with energy rather than things. And she knows how to move energy like we know how to move things. But all this radiates from a core of complete childishness. When she gets inside of you she starts playing her games of energy, merging your consciousness with the things of the world.
One time I ate about 10 mushrooms of the family Panaeolus subbalteatus. I walked over to Colonie Town Park which buttressed the Mohawk river. It was summer, and there were many winding paths through a woods filled with tall trees, plant life and the beauty of nature. It was a week day so there was no one around. In the midst of my mushroom inebriation I got taken up with how sensuous nature was, how luscious, how gorged with life everything really was, and how I was a part of it all. Then I had sudden, overwhelming desire to completely take my clothes off, something that in my normal frame of mind would be unequivocally rejected. The urge was so strong I had to do it, so I began stripping right there on the spot. Now, entirely without clothes, I continued my trek through the woods. I felt the light of existence touch my body. I was completely at rest, completely one, and completely free. The birds and insects of the forest celebrated my newly found freedom by crying their song of creation much louder and more beautifully than before. It became a soaring celestial drone. I was no longer walking but moving as pure energy, soaring a soar of total freedom.
I can remember seeing a huge oak looming over the trail that demanded my attention. It reached out to me with its light, its age, its immaculate essence. I went up and hugged the tree, and experienced a mergence so strong that for a moment that might as well have been infinity, I sang the song of the tree through creation, and it fused my singing with all the songs of creation.
Thank God I was alone and nobody showed up. I would have been completely compromised. I would never have been able to become Governor of New York, or even Mayor of Albany (Well, maybe Mayor of Albany). Potential girlfriends might all of a sudden reject me. A gasoline powered paddy wagon might have been arranged for my transport to a 6 week ego re-modification program. But as fate would have it, I eventually found my way back to my clothes with no one the wiser. I even put them on, and charged back into America with enthusiasm and aplomb.
I had a similar experience while swimming under the influence of Panaeolus subbalteatus. I was swimming in a beautiful lake however, not a swimming pool. Just floating on my back and watching universes unfold behind my closed eyelids was a wonderful experience. Floating on water freed up my spirit and enabled the mushrooms to be that much more liberating. I could go anywhere I wanted to go, and see anyone I wanted to see. I could remember anyone’s face to the finest detail, even interact with them. There was a girl I liked at the time, but she didn’t like me. I had gone to her house that day and asked her to come with us, but she said no. Floating on mushrooms made it seem like I was right with her anyway, only better, because she liked me, and didn’t reject me. We danced the universal dance of Kali. We loved each other. And it meant a lot to be able to do that.
I thought for sure that the intensity of my love for her would carry over into the real world, but it never did. At least in any physical way. My love manifested in the form of a prayer for her, it got so intense. I suspect that God, in hearing my prayer, winded up listening to it and protecting her form a nut like me. I don’t know.
I’ve heard that sex is good on psychedelics, especially mushrooms at a low dose (below 2.5 grams dry). I personally can’t imagine having sex on a psychedelic. I’m too much of a prude for that. I have enough trouble dealing with God, let alone a woman. Yet it was a pre-arranged mushroom Mass where I met my former wife of 11 years. And where she met her current soul mate (not me), come to think of it.
It was during the Spring equinox and a full moon all at once. I had cooked up a big batch of magic mushroom/yogi tea, chanting healing mantras into the brew the entire time. By then I’d grown so many magic mushrooms I didn’t know what to do with them all. I had an entire 30 gallon green plastic garbage bag bursting with them, cracker dry. Since to me they were sacred, it would be a sacrilege to belittle their significance by selling them. It would be like getting a communion wafer at Mass, which is the body and blood of Jesus, bringing it to a hospital and selling it to a sick person there for ten bucks. At the same time, I couldn’t give them away indiscriminately either. I felt it was bad karma to not be in control or at least aware of the experience and personality makeup of each and every person who used them. If I found out that a young teenager for example, freaked out and had to go to the hospital, I know I would have held myself personally responsible. These days I’m less conservative. I figure if someone is looking for a mind expanding substance, it’s better that they get something pure than some bad acid, for example, which can really screw them up. I still refuse to sell them, but I’ll give them away to a person who shows sincere interest, simply because it’s the best psychedelic available, and the chances are excellent that they’ll come away clean.
Everyone had their own candle and their own cup of mushroom tea at the party. We sat in a big circle and said prayers. We passed around the Bible and each of us read a passage. There were about twenty people there. And then the mushrooms hit. The energy started bouncing off the walls, and we were all pretty much on our own trying desperately to salvage our own agendas in an agendaless realm. It was a little too much to ask. Mushrooms aren’t a party deal. They’re a little close nit group deal maybe, but not a party deal, at least at a substantial dosage level. So that’s what we basically did. Separate into smaller groups, trying to hold it together. To survive the onslaught of a non-ordinary realm in the midst of a social circumstance designed to celebrate our ordinariness. It just didn’t work too well. It got me a wife instead.
The main thing I can remember upon meeting my wife to be was her tremendously large head. It was really big. One cup of mushroom tea was enough for me, but not for her. She went back for seconds, thirds, and fourths. A mutual friend introduced her as someone who practiced Kundalini yoga, a giant and necessary step to sparking my interest, a confessed yoga addict. One thing about mushrooms, it gives one who’s normally shy a jolt of gumption on the downward glide. I might have never had the courage to ask her out if it wasn’t for that burst of mushroom gumption. I wasn’t struck in the heart by her beauty, or particularly attracted to her. I just thought I might be able to develop a relationship with her based on yogic practice. The strange thing is, we never took mushrooms together again. Who knows, maybe that would have helped our marriage.
Which brings me to yet another theory about the psychedelic sixties. I’m sure everyone has one. What happened was that people got disillusioned with psychedelics for a couple of reasons. First, they just burnt a person out, and spaced them out. The frequent use of psychedelics (2-3 times a week, or even once a week) doesn’t do much for you when you’ve got bills to pay, and children to feed, and the hippies were growing up and getting involved in the responsibilities of family life. Second, the push of eastern spiritual technique and religion and eventually neo-christianity, which took the place of drugs, and essentially banned them, were considered by many the next step after psychedelics. So to use a drug like LSD when you had a zealous commitment to kung fu, for example, was a serious cop out. Third, the Vietnam war had ended. What was one fighting about, or rebelling against, or dropping acid to change the consciousness of? The job in many peoples minds, was done. The war had ended. Friends weren’t coming home dead or crippled anymore. Fourthly, government propaganda, such as the lie about LSD and chromosome damage, and the severe penalties for possession and distribution, gave many a good excuse, who otherwise might have continued experimentation, to stop altogether.
It’s annoying to hear people speak of the psychedelic movement in the same breath as the disco fad of the late seventies, as if dropping acid was analogous to doing ‘the bump’. These are probably people who tried a major psychedelic once, became petrified by what it revealed about themselves or existence, and decided they would pass themselves off as an experienced user who now thinks its bad or out of style, laughing condescendingly at those times. It doesn’t take a genius to realize the major impact psychedelics have had on our culture. Just leaf through a current magazine and look at the art, or watch MTV for more than a few minutes if you can stand it. It’s bursting with psychedelic influence. Just look at computer software, video games, and the leftist media. Just look at the leaps and bounds in technology, such as Apple Computer and the Mac, the brain child of an acid head. Just look at the world wide web. Isn’t this an acid vision of someone about thirty years ago that wormed its way into our everyday culture? The whole world is psychedelicized, only it’s happened so slow we’ve hardly noticed it. We think it’s just modern stuff. Look at all the emphasis on deepening sensitivity and intimacy in relationships, women’s rights, relinquishing power to your partner and really trying to understand them; to share yourself with them. Isn’t this something we turned on to in the psychedelic sixties? Could any of this have happened without a psychedelic renaissance? Look at our cultures obsession with space and aliens. In the psychedelic sixties, humans saw the earth from outer space for the first time. The astronauts and cosmonauts were stunned by its beauty. With its deep blue oceans, swirling white clouds, and multi-colored corona’s, it was like seeing the rainbow of our own innate beauty for the first time. It was like seeing the earth for what is really was for the first time – a psychedelic planet.
It’s my opinion that psychedelics, far from being passe, are only in their infancy, barely out of the womb. In a sense it appears that the cart was put before the horse as part of an awakening for modern culture. The psychedelic movement came when we least expected it, like a swift kick in the butt of consciousness. This is a psychedelic nation. We are a psychedelic America, like it or not. Now it’s time to put the horse where it belongs, in front of a cart that’s hauling all kinds of psychedelic transmutations. Now the horse of spiritual discipline comes first. The meditation, the eucharist, the love of God and our neighbor. Do your five years of zazen and then eat some sacred mushrooms, and then do five more years of zazen trying to figure out what the bleep happened. Make your psychedelic of choice a quality occasion. Make it cautious, respectful, think it through, and the chances are you’ll come out with something sacred, a jewel of great value. Price paid.
So much for my preachy diversion.
The morning after the mushroom Mass where I met my former wife, two friends and I went canoeing on the cold March waters of the Hudson. I was always a very early riser, and so was my friend and his girlfriend. I was surprised to discover the the first thing he wanted to do was drink some more mushroom tea. It’s hard for me to figure out how some people are so cavalier about these experiences, when they’ve always been so soul shaking to me. I said, “Didn’t you have enough last night?” He said, “Well, you know, it was so much fun...”
To me they were children. And just as your own kids can get you doing things as an adult, like playing with blocks or going on a roller coaster, that you wouldn’t normally consider without them, these guys got me to slug down another cup. I questioned whether or not I would get off since I was feasting in East ‘Shroomingdale the night before, but sure enough, as we canoed on the river, I became transfixed by the ripples the oar made in the water, which were deeply tranquil, and had rainbow rivulets of the purest colors. We casually rowed around the inlet for awhile and then headed back to the shore where we got into our own things. Alone, I observed the newly budding trees. All the buds were just opening and were reaching out like baby raspberry bombs. Everything was alive with the dawn of new life. Deeply inspired, I had to write about it. I couldn’t let this moment go by without somehow sharing it. It was way too beautiful for that. So I got a pencil from my friends glove compartment, ripped off part of an old grocery bag, sat down in the back seat of his car and began to write. This is what I can up with:

Through life’s myriad unfoldings there stands true
A final step to knowing what is real
When each small thing surrounds you with it’s awe
And tells you of it’s meaning born anew

And leads you to the ultimate surmise
Once know it’s grip will not let go of you
Remembering that even stones have eyes
And seashells see the lonely things you do

And crimson buds wait for your tender kiss,
So innocent, adorned in sparkling dew
Displaying in their waking what truth is
While shyly leaving wondering to you

Imagine what is seen through searching eyes
On into hearts as vast and ancient too
As filled with more tomorrows than there are,
More love than can be learned from any clue

Maybe the wind will take my heart someday
And all my thoughts so gently to the sun
Or the flame of a small candle guide my way,
A river take me home to win your love

But I bet it might be someone just like me,
Searching like all foolish searchers do,
And finding it! Amidst creation’s breeze
Within the endless harmony of you.

Around 14 years later, the mushroom experience that landed me employment, described earlier, also prompted me to write, but in a more journalistic fashion. I tried to describe the experience as I went along. I received a few “concepts” that went entirely against the grain of my normal awareness.
The sacred mushroom had its ways of effecting a being on all levels. Things like getting a job or getting a wife are simple cause and effect types of things that are easy to explain and easy to understand. But a transfiguration in spirit is like trying to explain what a leopard looks like to someone who’s never seen a picture of one or seen one in real life. Or, say that alien space beings really exist, but they aren’t scheduled to be revealed to humanity for another 14,000 years. By some quirk in cosmic design, a person of our time gets to see one tonight at midnight. The next day, they begin running around to everyone trying to explain its non-human parameters, saying things like, “It went through me,” or “It glowed but was solid, and shifted around me in the blink of an eye”, or “It took something from me, or gave something to me, but I don’t know what it was.” If this person persists, they end up being medicated, or worse, being thrown in a psyche ward. Their explanations about the alien would be at best fuzzy and certainly unbelievable to another human. They would ultimately have to learn to convince themselves that they had a momentary lapse in reason, or sanity, and go on with their normal life. A final analogy to not being able to explain a transfiguration in spirit would be perhaps a soldier fighting in the American Revolution. All of a sudden he sees a jet plane fly only a thousand feet over his head. It roars by, and is unmistakably real. No one else sees it. He runs up to his captain screaming about some giant farting bird. He won’t stop, and the captain finally has to have him detained and sent home, the war being just too much for him to handle.
A transfiguration in spirit is similar to this inconceivable and indescribable state. When the sacred mushroom is approached with a disciplined preparation and in a sober context, it is possible to be rewarded with a conscious awareness of its taking place, rather than what usually occurs. What usually occurs is an influx of energy so powerful that it overwhelms a humans ability to focus. So they come away with little more than a color and light show, weird sensations and feelings, unfathomable vistas and a state not much better than a drunken stupor. But even with a conscious conception of this transfiguration, it is impossible to explain because there are no words for it.
Sacred mushroom intoxication is by nature anti-time and anti-dimensional. It’s the intensity of ones religious understanding and spiritual preparation that gives one enough energy for the luck required to unveil what human beings rarely, if ever see. Strict religious preparation stacks the deck of wisdom, and the sacred mushroom deals the cards of the inconceivable onto the table of spiritual transfiguration. It’s a gamble I happened to win one time, by luck.
It happened about five years ago. I lived by myself in an apartment in Latham, NY. I had an extra room dedicated to growing the sacred mushroom. By then being able to grow them was second nature, no big deal. It was only back in April that I had taken the mushroom and gotten a job the next day, a job that had been eluding me for several months. I was not interested in taking them again for awhile so I accumulated a pretty big stash. One night a friend called up to see if I wanted to go to a Grateful Dead concert. I usually required a crowbar to go out anywhere, homebody that I am. So, as usual, it took a heck of a lot of prodding to get me to go, even to a special event like ‘The Dead’.
Wayne drove up to my apartment, and with a bit more encouragement we left for the concert, which took place at the Knickerbocker Arena in Albany. He had another friend with him, ‘Earl The Pearl’. ‘Earl The Pearl’ was pretty much one of those people who are their own cartoon. Sometimes I’d have to check myself to see whether I was watching a cartoon on TV, or him. One way I guess I could describe him is that he was a hillbilly not adverse to wearing a tuxedo if it might end up getting him a female companion, or a beer. He was a party at all costs type of personality with a grainy, soulful voice, and a never ending zest for life. He smoked too much, drank heavy, and played the guitar too.
When the three of us got down to Albany, the streets were filled with hippies. It was like going back in time a couple of decades. All those young hippy girls, free as the wind; all the booths of street venders selling hippy clothes, beads and ‘Dead’ paraphernalia, the smell of reefer in the breeze and the buzz of acid in the undertow, all made for a surprising revival for me. We never got into the concert, but the street scene was show enough in itself. From the Knick you could hear the pounding of muffled music, but on the streets there were isolated groups playing their own songs with all kinds of drums, acoustic guitars and dancing. What a slap in the face a scene like that must have been to the dignitaries of our contemporary culture. A culture predicated on establishing a solid core of fear and mistrust within each individual by means of the media’s ceaseless indoctrinations concerning guns, drugs, the welfare state, domestic violence and how criminal and maladjusted all us folks in America have. If they can get us to the point where we can’t even trust ourselves anymore, then they’ve nailed us. If they can get us to the point where we have to spend billions upon billions upon billions for more prisons, more surveillance, more police and more government involvement in private lives, then they’ve nailed us. If they can get us to the point of hating the poor, the helpless and the broken, then they’ve nailed us. If they can get us to the point of being isolated from each other, and finking on each other if we so much as pass gas in the wrong direction, then they’ve nailed us. Then we are no longer Americans, but the unwitting victims of our greatest fear – government syndicated reality. America should be a festival of freedom, and not a prison state run by power hungry morons who wouldn’t know what real freedom was if somebody came by and shoved a flagpole up their a certain portion of their body and waved them around like Old Glory in the sun.
As soon as the concert was over the police spewed in, mounted on stallions with their white helmets gleaming, their billy clubs dangling and their fully licensed and registered guns inside the holsters around their waists. They formed a line of horses and swept the festival out like so much dirt with a broom. It was aggravating to be pushed around like that, but all the hippy kids seemed to be used to it. It felt like the party was just beginning with all the dancing and the music. The Knickerbocker Arena had made its money, the State had taken its share. The big boys had sucked in their profits, and to them that was the be all and end all of America. Sucking in the profits at all costs, including freedom. In a system such as this not only is there no room for the lowly hordes of society, but they’re considered a nuisance and a threat, especially if that detestable disease they once called ‘freedom’ has a chance to spread.
So we got in Wayne’s truck and drove back to my apartment. When Earl found out I had mushrooms, he was relentless in his asking me to give him some. He wanted me to take them too. I’d had a couple of beers so I was a little less disciplined than I might normally be, so I broke them out.
The Pearl immediately grabbed one, popped it in his mouth and began to munch. “Mmmm,” he said. “These are good. They taste like crackers. They need a little salt though.” So I got some salt and we sprinkled it generously over the chewy mushroom morsels. They were chewy because they were only nearly dry, having come from a more recent flush. The flavor of Psilocybe cubensis was never very appealing to me. They always seemed to have a slight medicinal bitterness to them. But for some reason, Earl’s suggestions that they taste like crackers made them more appealing in flavor that evening.
I must have eaten about seven or eight – Earl a little more than I. I considered this to be a modest amount. And since I hadn’t planned on tripping, I didn’t think getting blown away was a very good idea. Our plan was to drive to Wayne’s in Coxsackie, a town about 35 minutes to the south. Me and Earl went in my car and Wayne drove alone. Wayne didn’t take any mushrooms since he was in AA and he was afraid that taking them would get him started on other things again.
The river road from New Baltimore to Coxsackie is extremely winding and hilly. I chose the back roads because I wasn’t in the mood to have any unexpected conversations with police officers. It was about 2 AM on a Saturday morning and if you want to get stopped, that’s about the best time to do it. Earl had brought a few mushrooms for the road so we continued to munch. I don’t think we really needed them though because we weren’t even in Coxsackie, when the car began to float. “Slow down!” Earl yelled. “Yeah, you’re right” I replied, “I am going too fast.” The car appeared to be oozing rapidly up and down the hills and around deep, consuming curves. But when I looked at the speedometer, we were only going 15 MPH– much too slow! When I informed Earl of this he was as shocked as I was, then quickly put the bag of remaining mushrooms away.
Earl needed cigarettes, so we both went into Cumberland farms, tripping heavily. Earl was acting very weird. He had contorted and incongruent facial expressions which struck me as being hilarious. It made it even more funny when he looked at me as if I were the one acting unusual. I couldn’t control my laughter, and the nastier the glare from the cash register girl, the more I had to laugh. Amazingly, Earl struck up a long, drawn out conversation with the cash register girl. Really stupid and unusual stuff, like the texture of Slim Jim’s or something. He acted as if he were rapping about the weather, but I could tell she knew something was way out of whack.
After having spent an eternity of eternal moments that oscillated back and forth between complete embarrassment and utter hilarity inside Cumberland Farms with the cash register girl, we finally made it out the door, only to realize we’d forgotten to get cigarettes, or anything for that matter. We simultaneously burst into a long bout with laughter. I was afraid the cash register girl might consider calling the police at that point, so we went to Stewart’s to get cigarettes instead, and this time I stayed in the car. Thank God Wayne’s house was only a few blocks away, because driving had becoming increasingly difficult.
When we arrived at Wayne’s house he had already turned the lights out and gone to bed. We got out of the car and stood there wondering what to do now. The warm summer night was cloaked with an eery electric thickness. The world was sleeping, but me and Earl were primed to give birth to a couple of new ones! The mushrooms had been stronger than I expected. Many parameters can effect the amount of psilocybin that is produced in a mushroom, even within the same family. I must have inadvertently nailed a couple of them with this batch, because I was decidedly fringing on ‘never never’ land.
Earl suggested that we go inside and play music, but I could barely talk, and music playing didn’t sound very appealing to me at that moment. In addition to that, I didn’t want to keep Wayne up all night by bouncing off his walls ‘till the next day, so I told Earl I was going for a walk, and asked him if he’d like to come along. He said no, so I took off alone. In a way, I was glad we parted ways, because I had become too intense to be with anybody. When I left, I got the impression that I was leaving a lonely puppy behind and yelling “Stay!” as I proceeded down the road.
The next hour or two was a nightmare. It was dark. The country road before me was void of cars, as the plant life loomed around me in scornful animation. I began to recapitulate how awful my life had turned out, and how much of a failure I was. Bankruptcy, divorce, not being able to be with my son, and on and on in an endless loop of self recrimination. Failure upon failure was planted, germinated, sprouted and blossomed into wicked, black trees with thorns, and in their density I recognized how unremittingly they tore at my soul. Even the things I thought I did good seemed bad, like writing songs. I had prided myself on being a decent song writer, but in the frame of mind I was in as I continued down the road, it was clear that my songs now sucked. Some of my most sincere hopes now seemed like the useless concoctions of a desperate egotist.
As I entered the village I began walking past the many houses and the people inside were all watching me. Me, the dark man, the halloween man, the gremlin, the ghoul, masquerading as the holy one. They were all whispering bad things about me, and about themselves. I heard all their sins, and their blackest atrocities as they watched me through the dark windows. Their faces were white with terror and fear. Each house had its own outlandish dementia, its own surrealistic cruelty. A thousand confessions and repentant murmurings infiltrated my awareness. I felt like I was in the universal confessional box, an intermediary with little capacity to forgive. I was inundated with the core of human madness and suffering and I felt if I could only keep my eyes on the road that wavered a few feet before me, if I could only keep walking, I would be able to go on.
I made a turn for another friends house, which was about two miles from Wayne’s. I don’t know why I went there, maybe just to take up the time, not knowing where else to go. It was probably about 4 AM or so, and if I knocked I would wake the whole family up, so I went into their yard with thoughts a lying down somewhere and riding out the storm. As I perused Frank’s yard I noticed that he was putting in a stone walkway. I could barely see it in the darkness, but what I did see was a bunch of stones very oddly placed. If one were to walk on the walkway, one would have had to hop along from stone to stone. I began the hop, and it struck me as ludicrous and altogether funny that they be aligned in such a way. I mean, why put stones down in such a manner if it forced people to jump around just to walk on them? The laughter really turned the tide for me. Within an instant my mood was elevated and upbeat.
With a fresh burst of good energy, I decided to stroll down to the Coxsackie boat launch. When I arrived at the small park which held the launch and buttressed the river, dawn began to trickle in. I walked across the large lawn and looked up at the sky. It was streaked with a pronounced purple splendor. I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. I’d never seen or noticed anything like it at that hour. The beauty hit me hard. Every three or so steps I voiced an expletive like, “Wow! or, “Oh, my God!” The lushness of the moment was dizzying. Thank God there was no one up at that hour to see me walking across that lawn in such a manner because I’m sure they would have thought I was stark raving mad.
When I arrived at the beach I could see picnic tables scattered around. I remembered that at a certain point I was tired, even though now I was wide awake, and proceeded to lay down, face up on a table close to the river. Then I watched the stars. The mixture of the dawn and the stars gave the entire cosmic panorama a three dimensional effect. Each star had its own color. There were red, green, blue and yellow ones, and they were all joined by a massive grid work made of thin girders of light, all in pristine detail. The sheer depth and utter grandeur of creation’s grid work went on forever. That’s when it happened. My immediate description of it was that it felt like sexual intercourse, but without sex. God came down and married me, or something. It was a startling, ineffable union. It was the purest of pure love, and a day hasn’t gone by in my life without recalling its extreme depth and power. Suddenly, everything was clear and there were no more questions. Without words, God told me why He made creation. He related, within His pronounced silence, that He exists alone as love in its purest infinite form; that He Is Eternal Bliss. His love is so infinitely profuse it became imperative that He share it. So he made a creation of its own volition and only apparently apart, so that it could come to love the love of the Lover; so that He could see His love being enjoyed. He explained that suffering and tragedy are his rites of entry into this love, and His mysterious way of unfolding it all fully. After an indeterminable time had transpired, I began to weep uninhibitedly, in deep love and gratefulness for this time, as the sun began to peak above the horizon, turning the entire river a brilliant orange.
The reason God decided to throw me a bone, I’ll never know, at least in this lifetime. I like to think it was because of the intense internal purgation I’d gone through, but I think that would be conceited. The bottom line is, His ways are always inexplicable. They must be, for Him to love me, even when I’m screwing around with mushrooms.
As I mentioned previously, I felt that one of my mushroom trips broke through some barriers that kept me from getting a job back in 1992. After searching for months it just so happened that the day after I tripped, which was the first time I had tripped in 13 years, I suddenly found myself employed with as excellent job. I kept a journal of my experience under the influence of home-grown Psilocybe cubensis that day, and within it some major themes and theories about what was occurring to ‘me’ during the trip and to ‘humanity’ in general are forwarded. The following is a chronological unfolding of my ascent and descent to and from the world of magic mushrooms on that particular day.


April 13th 1992
7:33 AM: I ingested God knows how much psilocybin (probably about 25 milligrams) along with an extra large Dunkin' Doughnuts coffee (to cut back on the acrid Psilocybe cubensis flavor). It must be strong, because now at 7:44 AM I am already feeling the initial effects. These effects include a slight melting of paint patterns on the walls, a far away buzzing in the ears, a mild apprehension and uneasiness in the chest and throat, and a strange, subtle tingling or fuzziness in the shoulders, face and spine. Now I see, as I briefly close my eyes, some sharp but sporadic voltages of blue light. Now I see in great detail, again behind my eyelids, a clock which reads 2 o’clock. This means two things to me. One: I pulled the batteries out of this clock last night because the second hand was making too much noise. And two: This is about the time I expect my mushroom experience to end today.

7:53 AM: All of the above, only stronger. It’s starting to bring back memories of acid trips in the old days, which is disquieting because as I recall they were mostly bummers. I’m thinking so fast, too fast to write. The apprehension, body rushes and exhilaration are uncomfortable.

7:58 AM: Nothing exceptional, unless a pronounced dissociation from the body would be deemed so. Ha! Ha! My vision is spectacularly clear. I can perceive textures I am usually blind to, but if I stare at them too long, they begin to metamorphize into shapes and patterns of their own, which I can’t believe is really real.

8:05 AM: I’m tripping.

8:07 AM: My thoughts are much too fast to be lucid. There’s nothing exceptional about my thinking – it’s my awareness. There’s a beautiful woman, always just at the corner of my left eye, always following me, always protecting me, always trying to get me to laugh.

8:13 AM: I would like to get some fresh air, or maybe I’ll just open a window. Ha! Ha!

8:15 AM: It feels like the seat I’m sitting on and the table before me are moving around. It’s like I’m on a boat in the middle of a wavy ocean, listening... Suddenly I hear my estranged son crying (I had recently been divorced). And he’s crying across the waters for me, which makes my heart break, and tears come out of my eyes.

8:19 AM: There’s just too many God damned thoughts! I need to concentrate, but on what?

8:26 AM: I feel like if I’m going to write anything decent, I’ve got to get out of this apartment. But where? (I was living in an apartment complex in a busy commercial area)
First Problem: Bad place to trip.
Breathe the fresh air! It will make you happy...
(I went over to the window, opened it, and began taking long deep hits of air)
Ut oh
Just closed my eyes. Saw an Indian chief with a huge headdress sitting with a great brave. The Indian chief is my protector, I’m the great Brave. This is the mushroom talking...
The mushroom rules the inner world. Here I see a thousand colorful tepees and a beautiful Indian princess. The tepees go on into infinity in sensational patterns...

The inner world is extremely strong
As I take some hits of air,
How I seldom breathe –

Thoughts are much too fast!
I should fast (meaning food deprivation)
Burn the 20th century away
We will do it
It takes a great love
A great love for all the animals,
And each other.

8:45 AM: After 150,00 thoughts, I’m back.
So says the mushroom, “Tony is quite the thinker, much too much the thinker.
I find it difficult to free myself from his ranting, raving, complaining and depression. He’s constantly in the background trying to take hold...”

But the river is too strong
The river of the inner world
I will soon take a dip
Back within

Why do You bless us with this beauty
And make it so hard to find?!!

No pen made can be fast enough
To describe the worlds within worlds
Of a brain driving 100 miles per hour
So after I take a piss, I’m
Going to sit down and focus on the third eye

8:55 AM: AN ATTEMPTED MEDITATION UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF THIS SPEEDING DRUG...

O Holy Spirit
I have come to you
So you can aid
The journey of my life

Forcing myself to write;
Writing...

There are many Masters
Some higher, some lower

One must work hard
And focus deeply
To gain the aid of
A strong Master

The pettiness of normal awareness (the world)
Are like garbage that attracts
False Masters

9:14 AM: I have to get out of this chair I’m sitting in.

We create little prisons for ourselves in order to insulate ourselves from the plague of the twentieth century, namely technocracy. Technocracy is like a disease we’ll call Technocrasloozienza, that has necessitated the shielding or imprisonment, rather than the expansion of our innate humanness. Technocrasloozienza has infiltrated our chromosomes at such a speed as to allow the human species very little time to mutate favorably. This has nearly killed us, and still could. The shielding or insulation of our innate humanity as beings of consciousness causes pain; Deep psychic pain. This causes us to retract and want to protect ourselves more, which causes more pain, because in order to facilitate the onslaught of rampant technocracy we must numb ourselves to our sovereign beauty as beings of unprecedented awareness. Technology is important, it’s just that it’s often real stupid. It’s presently real stupid and it’s assimilation into our species at this very stupid stage is making us relate to our existence from a foundation of glowing and flowering stupidity. It never ceases to amaze me how ingenious we can be in our stupidity. Yet the tomorrow of technocracy is smart. 22nd century technocracy is brilliant, and will afford us an entirely revamped and miraculous character as emanant beings of light in both the inner and outer worlds.
Currently there is no cure for Technocrasloozienza The only cure is to endure. But there are medications that assuage the system; that fling a rope off the top of the mountain of immortality to a humanity hanging precipitously from a dangerous cliff in time. These medications are the intelligent and respectful use of the psychedelics. They help us integrate the circuitry of the stars. the eternal blueprint, the unassailable river of God, and stamp it indelibly into the soul of a humanity which is awareness itself, so that the forging furnace of dumb technocracy is not nearly as merciless.

10:23 AM: ??? (Alls I know is a lot happened).

10:27 AM: I’m constantly pacing, enjoying, back to myself more. Wow! Did I get away from my tortured self! (Awareness is pure joy!)

10:40 AM: Kind of sad I’m coming down. I’m a little hungry – not really. It’s so beautiful to be that high. I’m very happy. My worldly problems seem somehow, unreal. Only my happiness at this very moment matters.

10:43 AM: I realize what I thought were huge imaginary bees buzzing around my tripping head was just my window open and my hearing the planes circle in the sky to land at Albany Airport. That’s how blasted I was.

10:50 AM: This 10th hour is so long. Having some bread and cheese. I’m extremely sensitive to texture. This tastes exceedingly delicious.

10:56 AM: Coming down now. What a joy to be alive! In the gloom, futility and tragedy of life as it is, I exist as a pure “I” apart from the great drama. I know all this sounds hackneyed and cliched, but that’s really how it feels!

11:20 AM: Why is all this shit happening? Why am I conscious? Why am I aware? Why do I exist? Why must I suffer? Why was I made? Where will I end up?

And the answer please:

Dot Da Da Da......

May I have the envelope, please...

The answer is. Are you ready? The answer is...

It doesn’t matter,
Just enjoy the ride...

11:19 AM: (Author’s note: in my journal I seem to have lost a minute).
I’m mostly thinking about the important aspects of my experience now. I consider it to have been a light trip, only judging by duration in time. I also think it was more or less a perfect amount. Next time I have to remember not to include caffeine by drinking a big cup of coffee with the mushroom. My thoughts were zooming uncontrollably. I had several brilliant explosions of altered thought (at least I thought they were) but could only convey (in writing) scattered points that I was able to catch before they were shoved aside by the next. It’s like driving a hundred miles an hour through terrain you’ve never seen before and being so enamored with the splendor, you find it hard to write about any one thing, and as soon as you do something new and seemingly more ultra-significant pops into sight. It’s frustrating. I found myself writing twice or even three times faster than I normally might, frantically attempting to extrapolate new features of awareness as I was being presented with them. Through all of this I’m a little ashamed to say I felt like a prophet. I experienced a strong personal integrity; a real courage. For example, I avoided looking at myself in the mirror in the bathroom for as long a I could because I was afraid of what untoward monster I might encounter. When I finally did get the courage to look at myself I was surprised to discover that I looked awesome. I looked intelligent, extremely sensitive, and even saw greatness in my reflection. This relieved and exhilarated me.

11:36 AM: If you’re going to write while tripping it seems you have to have a lot of concentration and discipline and write as much as you can and as fast as you can for as long as you can. Next time maybe I’ll include a tape recorder.
But then again the act of talking would probably be intrusive on visions and revelations as well. I’m going to have to experiment with recording. A miniature voice activated recorder stationed unobtrusively on the body (perhaps clipped to a shirt pocket) would be best. That way the long silences would be deleted. I’m still waiting for an OVDR (optical video digital recorder) that could be tracked in simultaneously with an SDR (sensory digital recorder) to form a PAS or “Primary Awareness Synthesizer”. That way one would only need to BE, and be recorded being, and every astounding experience experienced could be catalogued and available repeatedly for learning, practice and extrapolation; all with minimal deleterious effects on body functioning. Well, so much for science fiction.
I actually found myself trying to write with my eyes closed. It’s a little humorous to discover rainbows of ink dripping from your pen at the same time as attempting to communicate complicated transcendental visionary unveilings. One has a tendency to switch gears immediately and begin a long reverie on rainbow ink from pens and all of its blossoming ramifications. Thus the need for yogic mind focus. One’s concentration must be practiced and laser sharp, ready to pierce the lead lined walls of mayavic distortion. One should also be in a “state of grace”, so that one might rest in the cradle of the inconceivable, instead of wandering by the seat of one’s pants, through the uncharted jungles of inner reality. I accomplish this through repeated prayer, and receiving the Holy Eucharist daily. By sexual abstinence, and the giving of time, energy and money to others. God digs this, and His predilection is to hold ones hand through the interior kingdoms, so we don’t get lost in the sauce of energy, so to speak. The sauce of energy is like morphine times a million. We need a reliable buddy for this. Jesus is the only reliable buddy I’m willing to bet my life on.
Anyway, writing with my eyes closed was natural, but difficult. It’s just one more thing that needs practice in both the normal and anti-normal awareness states. The three points I scrawled out on paper with my eyes closed were: NOT THE POWER MASTER. NOT THE SEX MASTER. NOT THE PAIN MASTER. I can remember almost bothering certain Masters who I didn’t even know the names of. I approached their thrones and domains, and they’d be meditating like master yogis in their sensational stained-glass mausoleums, and they’d see me and say, “O, not one of you guys again.” One of them broke down and gave the following brief dissertation:

Mushrooms open doors, but it’s up to us to walk through them. But sometimes mushrooms kick our ass right through the doors, which is great because it means we were ready to go through them anyway...Life has a strange way of narrowing our vision so that things become dull and lifeless. Mushrooms help cut through all this, and gives us a fresh and exuberant insight into our ineffable existence; into our intrinsic nature as human beings.

11:58: I came in with a lot of questions. I wanted to be outside, but I didn’t want to go outside where I was living because I knew there would be no place relaxing to go. I think apartment complexes are a little anti-human anyway. It’s not really a community of sharing humanity, but a bunch of separate people and families, each out for themselves and their immediate spouses and siblings. It’s a shame we should live so close and have so little to do with each other. Our modern society encourages isolation. Like the song by John Prine, “We are the lonely...all together...all together...we’re all alone”. Within a couple of acres a thousand people live yet nobody knows each other. It’s very sad. We are a TV culture, a giant mouth fed and formatted by a fear driven media god that only hungers for our devotion because without us it wouldn’t exist. The greatest and most feared rebellion the autocrats of our dominion could possibly imagine is if large masses of people stopped watching TV, stopped reading media fabricated and government sponsored indoctrination literature, and instead formed real community associations based on the celebration of existence. Then the dog eat dog money obsession that eats away at the America psyche like a gangrene in her soul would be thwarted. Believe me, the Army would be called in quite abruptly, and a state of national emergency would be declared. Wouldn’t it be great if we could have an anti-media month each year, where we could enjoy the privilege of being ALIVE, rather than being swallowed up by the vastness of ‘Big TV’ and the ‘Mega-Media Techno-Sociographic Complex’?
Anyway, I didn’t want to go outside and get bummed out by the events of modern urban America. It became absolutely mandatory, however, for me to open one of my windows wide, even though there was still a chill in the air from early spring. I found myself taking long, deep breaths of fresh air, which I no longer need to do as I write this. With each breath of fresh air something was healed within me, some new ingredient for the recipe of pure consciousness came to light. During my trip, I must have gone to the window at least 15 times for pure air. I suppose it could be deemed as psychologically symbolic of my opening the windows of my mind, and drinking in fresh panoramas of inner beauty, or of finally opening up to the new tomorrow’s of life.
I know I have to live in the real world, but what a nice vacation from it this was, even if it only lasted two or three hours. I was someone else at the height of the experience. I was the mushroom. My body was just a vehicle for the processing of consciousness. I was definitely not in control there for a time. I felt like I was writing for others.

12:20 PM: I’m tired of writing.

The Magic Mushroom Manifesto
Some of us weren’t so dignified as to conserve ourselves, or to enjoy the bounties of earth, or to propagate, or to earn and bear fruit, or to preserve the status quo. Some of us were born to rage in defiance, to burn like wildfire; to be the pioneers of awareness, the mutants, the freaks, the spiritual drunkards, the poets, the cosmic artisans. Some of us were made to be the fumbling fringeware of humanity’s conglomerate mechanism, riding the rakish crest of transcendental splendor. It should be no surprise that, as in war, the price is sometimes injury or even death. Some brave souls are sacrificed for the furthering of being, for the sake of freedom. This is more a cosmic law than a genetic decision. The hallmark of humanity, if anything, is to discover, to improve, to go on, and beyond, to make it better, and to pull back the veil that hides the resplendent face of unutterable tomorrows. This is what it means to be human; to shed the animal form. This is the intrinsic character of creation itself, and what is meant by being made in the image of God.
Let the status quo be the status quo until the mules of awareness pull it one step closer to home. Let the survivalists survive, until the slaves of consciousness make ready newer keys to human excellence. Let the warners warn until the unruly courage of the psychedelic pioneers finally open their eyes to the bastions of the inconceivable.
The following is a poem celebrating the brave maidens of consciousness, and the psychedelic veterans both dead and alive, who have put their hearts, souls and brains on the firing line for the freedom to be free.

Cyberdelphia!
Where the oracles of Apollo
Stream in unending array,
And minds bleed their crimson signature
On the parchments of a new day,
Where brazen coronet’s of revelations’ dawn
Pound out in anti-dimensional lore
The unbridled militia of light,.
The apomixis of our Soul...

Saint Teresa of Avila
You would have made a great hacker!
Surfing the net of pure being,
Cascading down the anamorphic freeway
Surrendering at the gate of the Beloved,
Receiving the holy synaptic wine
Traversing the galactic aorta
To the inner sanctum of your Majesty

This blaze of longing; its fiery, beatific loop,
Endlessly repeating in glorified Fusion;
In sacred, golden, gleaming, infinite integers dawning
Firing haphazardly out
Into the blackened corollaries of reason,
Firing out like desperate suns in the purple ocean of Eternity

In the name of serotonin, norepinephrine
And the holy dopamine,
We have received our calling
And are the mutant engines screaming,
We decipher, squander and enrich the code
We make for a hardy, prolific strain
We will no