My campsite is a five-minute walk from the Grand Canyon south rim. The first notes in my notebook: Always take a pre-trip poop/Drop a deuce before you drop acid. It gets weird from there.
On my way over I pass an incongruous yellow fire-hydrant with orange trim sitting in the stubby forest like a lamppost in Narnia. This is going to be a good night...
By the watchtower, a hummingbird drinks from pink thistle flowers that only a careful gourmet could enjoy. Like pufferfish. The hummingbird dances in the air, tail flicking up and down, as if suspended on a wire. A truly remarkable creature—and to him, he's just making a living.
This watchtower seems impossible. The echoes, the sound of children scampering. Strewn with pictographs & symbols, a mockery and an homage in one. Like many preservation projects. I feel I must keep jotting to exist, to maintain my grasp. But perhaps I should let go. Perhaps that's the point. When I look around, so much fodder, so many reasons why it's okay to sit and do one's own thing, deeply, unjudged. Did the architect do these cave paintings herself, by hand? Or did she have her friends? Throw a party? 1933. I picture too-loud laughter, hierarchies of guests formed ad hoc & ex officio. Cocktails & pearls. Overdressed patrons buzzed enough not to complain of the heat; not yet drunk enough to bicker. Echoes of time, of place. Foreign accents and giggles. It's hot in here. Sweat breaks on my forehead.
I realize I'm narrating a scene. Can I change it? Can I conjure a Lipan sorceress with clear cold water for my parched lips? What are all these scenes, these styles? They're telling me to move, to get up and see the rest before the building closes. I nod my head and tap my feet like I'm composing music. Editing myself for content, for character. By my own design I am creating myself. God-like.
Are these just the cocooned ramblings of a drug-addled freak? Or is there really something to the idea of life as a work of fiction?
Creation is a most awesome process. Constant flux and flow, artists & brushstrokes blending into a story. Words. The strongest medium, for their ability to craft psychology, to effect an effect. But will words one day cease to exist? When we direct-connect experiences & authorship no longer matters? Or will it still because we'll still craft our perspectives from all those around and all those around before?
What a flow. What a place. So much more than a pin on a map. A glimpse. A wink. This is where it is. This is where you'll find it. Whispering. I live my trip in words, exploding on the page. Careening through life, not sure whether I'm narrating or writing or both. Time to go.
I don't know where to go, where to choose to enjoy this the most. And yet, I do—every place is perfect. Every angle is there. As long as I'm HERE.
Here I am in the pages again, an attempt to capture the heavy clouds dragging rainy bellies along this rugged land, shy like a painting of purples & fire & rays of light. Storm fronts gather—am I actually going to see a thunderstorm out here? Am I going to die transfixed by lightning from within and without? The perfection of this moment is
HARD TO FATHOM
as the universe—or at least this speck of it—seems to gather itself before me, a dusty display of hereafter.
I wish I could paint those hazy valleys and ridges laid bare by the sun's slant. I have no grasp on how close that cloud is overhead. Seems like it could just reach out and scoop me up, carry me along some dusty mile and drop me off wherever it pleased.
These clouds
So perfect
I wish I had the words.
The wind kicks up dust devils. This is a side of her I've not seen yet. Flexing a little. Ready for the show. (ongoing)
I'm so torn in this place—to stare and contemplate, or delve & explore. That's the glory of it. Those doubts are strictly for befores & afters. In the THICK of it it takes over completely, and all you can do is follow or be left behind (which you can't be). If I get up and walk over to that tree on the promontory, will the people behind me behind the rail think I'm walking strangely (picture Johnny Depp) and do I really care? Can this Grand Canyon attitude be brought back to real life? Is it really just a tourist trap? or do people remember its touch? Do they, behind me, comprehend the beauty? Do I need to move forward to escape their touch? What will this all look like in the light of the morning? Isn't that the endless ??
This moment won't last (it's infinite) so enjoy the mess out of it.
The sun is master of this place (or so he likes to believe)
God alone knows if these words make any sense
(which is to say)
I alone know if the words make sense
(and they do)
So cheeky.
Who am I talking to in this tome? Me? My progeny? Anyone?
I think I'm crying. Or is it really just the dust?
I think I'm shaking. Or is it really just the cold?
Sunset under the clouds, and it seems like it will clear in time for the stars. That kind of a night.
Cameras. Always trying to capture, spending the whole experience trying to capture the experience.
Is the tree blocking my view, or part of it?
What about these words?
Drops of rain. What a thing in a place like this. I feel like I could spend a lot of time here, leaving behind the trappings of society. As I watch myself write this, eyes telling me look up!
LOOK UP!
How often do I obey? Smell the sagebrush? Sip the fountain?
How often do I cry?
How much of the noticemanship do I bring back each time? Like I'm weaving (or knitting?)
I could never bring this experience to someone who hasn't been. All I could ever do is find a few tidbits and bring them back. All that exists are remnants.
(like the space between these lines)
Fossils of moments past.
No, not like that, that's not how I want to say it. Just gibberish & ranty episodic memories. Just pieces. Who can puzzle them together? Why can't I have someone record these thoughts while I experience? Then there wouldn't be this hopeless scrabble to get it all down.
I've totally left behind the mortal realm. The psychedelic state is one of mankind's greatest gifts to itself.
(if only they all knew)
There's a verve, a sense of childish wonder at the amazing spectacle of life (all around!). The sheer terror & delight. I don't even know where to begin (continue?) (leave off?)
It's truly remarkable how much the human brain (mind?) can fit into such a brief window of time (as we understand it). I've only been out here a brief while, and already eons of thought have passed. The roar of the mind is a sight/sound to behold. All these minds, these energies and experiences all bubbling together in this unfathomable spot of land.
Staggering.
It's always just out of reach. Like looking at the Seven Sisters out of the corner of your eye instead of directly on. It disappears if you look too closely.
This utterly belies marketability. This perfection all coming together turns that whole scheme laughable, exhausting in its narrowness of scope. And yet it's our only unified channel. The Get-Things-Done-ness is what this whole thing spins on, from before the words ever meant anything.
I feel simultaneously immutable and transient. The psychedelic state is such a oneness and no-ness it seems silly to describe. Every time I try to jot it down, I just miss it, like a shooting star. It's good to be brought back into the wonder, to awaken—as it were—through this absurd dream state. Tears roll down my cheeks, and the only thing that looks small is the Big Dipper, impossibly far and enormously large (as well as tattooed in centimeters on my arm)
I might be inside a dust storm right now. There's really no way to tell, but it seems so. I'm pretty sure this is a dust storm. Or at least a dusty storm. Evidenced by my gummy chapped lips, my crusty tearstreaked cheeks, the thin film of grit on my teeth...
Course, now that I've thrown that label on it, it clears up (in a manner of speaking) and I'm once again entirely unsure of the dimension of this landscape.
Shit, that's not what I was trying to get across.
Language can't possibly keep up with thought. So what's next? Where's our next experience-trading jump? All these ladders of communication; DNA, data, archaeological evidence...
What are we trying to share? Why is communication?
Every word I write seems silly and inefficient, incapable of communicating the thought behind. As pretty & poetic as it is, language is a cudgel when it comes to communicating this (and every) experience.
Try not to pinnacalize. Take that away.
I'll never be here again. In this holy moment. In this slice of lifetime.
Trippin' on the edge of the Grand Canyon. Definitely one of those things you're not supposed to do. Good thing I'm sure-footed (I think) (therefore I am)
Curious how gross and animalistic it feels when I briefly awaken, look around, snort, clear my throat, gnaw the grime from my lips, spit dust and cough. Funny how we embody all that grossness while also thinking these thoughts of gods & heavens.
We created the gods.
Why?
Because we had to.
Or
Because how else could you explain all this?
Perfection creates itself because it cannot envision life on this planet without perfection.
Damn, once again
almost had it.
Life is verb. Enlightenment is verb. Me falling and writing, even as I fall, hoping to capture
to capture
to capture
As it once again slips away furtively into its own mystery.
Have I been present & aware?
Am I present & aware?
Is that possible, when we're trying to simultaneously narrate and live our own stories?
What becomes of these amalgamated experiences when I'm dead?
I am just an idea
my own
my loved ones'
my unborn progeny's
Who will tell of me after I'm gone?
Does it even make sense to ask such a question in this calamitous tech age? So caught up in our trivialities, we forget how trivial we are (as individuals)
Or maybe we're constantly battling that diminishing idea, so we surround ourselves in cocoons, forgetting (or not really knowing) that we're about to be born as butterflies. And maybe as future butterflies we have to lose ourselves in our chrysalises, we have to forget (or not know). Certainly feels like it. For whatever that's worth.
The psychedelic state is there to say WAKE UP to your present moment while in this deepest of dreamscapes. Paradox. It says take heed of every little thing and its place, because tomorrow the sands of time will have swept up all traces of the party.
Don't forget your favors.
From any unfortunate outsider's perspective, I am clearly a crazy person, sitting out here on a ridge under the moon surrounded by crickets and dusty cyclones, alternately beside myself with laughter and jotting fiendish notes as if someone's out there reading. (and they will) But clearly crazy. Those eyes. Streaming with tears. Those hands. Furiously scribbling at nothing, chasing dreams here and there across the page across the canyon across the galaxies.
Plainly nutty. Out of his mind (which usually means all the way in it)
It's so confusing, being a writer. A constant turmoil, an internal battleground of ego vs humility.
A writer. Like, who the fuck am I? Where'd I dig up the audacity to think my words and experiences are important enough to share—even trade for? I alternately crow and cower in the face of it.
Acknowledge me acknowledging the world. (pretty please)
I can't tell what's a shooting star and what's just conjured by the power of that thought. Perfection is all about perception. You load your own gun, as it were. Just like how I know this road trip is all perfect. Like: it would make perfect sense if my car flat died in Iowa. (Am I even going through Iowa?) (Is Iowa even a real state, or just a sort of bumfuck catchall?) (Would they be offended?)
We have to arrange the stars into pictures and patterns and maps because the depth is otherwise just too much. Too much to wrap this tiny bit of matter & mind around. Patterns exist because we find them. What an extraordinary privilege to Be Here Now.
Perception: you're not talking to the plant. You're looking at the plant and talking to yourself and the universe. Which is (considered) worse?
What if we replace "God" with "Universe"? Does that work for everybody?
What's the next doomsday date after Dec 21, 2012 whirs on past? Who will tell us?
The genius of Judeo-Christian is its vague dates, as the Mayans get ready to drift away, so much more dust in the hourglass. (but maybe not...) It's just exciting to think about. As always.
Compare the psychedelic state to the moment a chick wakes up and realizes
IT'S IN AN EGG!
(Get out. Now.)
See the world. This has been a truly blessed, blessed night.
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