What it Does to You

“Ew!” Jayha squeaked. “Look, they’re having sex now!”

We all turned and it was true, the two strangers were doing the familiar rhythmic thrust into each other on the no longer lonely bench which I sometimes sat on to meditate and contemplate the life altering decisions which I was occasionally forced to make.

“I think it’s time to go.” Beaglesworth said, no longer laughing.

Back around through the thicket of bushes and the feeling of being inside a giant bonsai tree overwhelmed me once again like it always did when I was tripping at the waterfall, and then rushing back up the wooden stairs as the couple on the bench didn’t even turn or stare, their actions lost within each other and the rush of the water. Behind us they fell, and further back as we climbed over the wall and back onto the empty street. Sick yellow light fell from lamp posts, illuminating us and playing strange kaleidoscopic games with our shadows as we roamed aimlessly along the solid yellow line in the middle of the road.

Half of us walked on one side of the road, while the other half of the group strode in the middle, in between. The division between us was the direction we were each heading, and I was haunted with the paranoid acid induced metaphor that this was it, this was us; each one of us traveling some road, heading somewhere, herded together briefly for school and training but then released to our own whims and will to the road. Some of us walked forward, others laterally, or even standing still. Those who stood still might as well have been walking backwards, for the rest of us kept walking into the night, bouncing from yellow street light to street light while the stragglers were left behind in the darkness, puzzled over broken glass in the gutter or bright fire balls in the sky.

A warm breeze passed us by, cooling the sweat which ran down my forehead and my hair onto my body and down my legs into my sandals which were cracked and broken and held together by duck tape and love. Beaglesworth and I rounded up the drifters, mostly Gom and Jayha who had fallen silently behind us, and brought them forth to the rest of us, approaching the behemoth black tooth grinning skeleton of a burned out mill.

Rising up from the fencing surrounding it, protecting us from it and it from us, the building stood tall and proud like a monument to the forgotten lifeblood of the town which ran through its veins for a hundred years or so before it became obsolete and discarded. Until it burned down, and then it made the news again, for one last time. And now it was just an old relic, a reminder of the fire hazards poorly and quickly constructed antique mills pose to those who are unfortunate enough to live within its mammoth, cobwebbed shadows of its shell.

Under its gaze we admired the blackened streaks and terrifyingly dark crusted corners of its tallest windows where the flames had licked and leaped outwards, trying to smote the whole town in some sick euthanasia moment of pity and outraged disgust. Silently, we mused over the structure like patrons to a museum would contemplate a twisted work of post modern art which rejected logic yet was brutally primitive enough to be placed beside a statue from Willendorf.

Ugly scar on an ugly town which should’ve burned to the ground long before I had the opportunity to flip through the classifieds while working an obscure midnight shift in some bloodthirsty and faceless retail outlet, why did the fire patrol cease the engulfing of the whole town by your angry flames bred of the mill which gave this very town birth?

Why not let things come full circle? Let the flaming holocaust spread to the mill next door, and the ancient New England cemetery across the street with its crooked tooth gravestones which resemble the foundation stones in the basement of the place I now call home, where all the people drive their broken down cars to their broken down lives while avoiding the face to face confrontation with their broken down dreams and the dismal fact that the human race is slowly losing because the race is considered a marathon. Meanwhile those of us who reject that silly notion stay up all night and wonder the abandoned streets in the summer heat and decide to sprint until our sides burst into oceanic dreamscapes of LSD induced pure reality which shred the thin blanket of comfort the retail outlets and landlords and politicians and sports stars cling to in order to establish a ground set of rules while cop cruisers drive by slow and shine lights onto us wondering what we’re doing out so late but we just smile sly grins and stick out our tongues with our fingers in our ears, mocking the small town pigs. I say let the whole place burn because it’s evolve or die in the hostile universe, and a town like this is an ugly reminder of the way things used to be, not what they could or should be and it just made me go mad in my frenzied state, like seeing a beaten down dog still chained to its post in its owner’s yard. Why even have a dog if you’re going to treat it like that?

The drug makes me feel so tall yet scrutinized like I’m under a microscope while pointing out that I am in control of all of my reality. This fact puts so much power into my hands that it in fact makes me feel small, as though I should be ashamed that this is the best that I can do. Sometimes acid trips can be very frustrating for this reason.

My friends tell me to shush until the cop turns his spot light back off and continues his slow coast down the road and they all burst out laughing but I’m not sure at what or why because what I’ve thought and said was very true to me and it seems to me that they don’t spend all day and all night out here, in the dusty solitude of a town that has no business existing anymore, where multiple types of drug abusers roam the streets and occupy the same waterfall simultaneously while not working together to bring about some type of positive change, because it’s so much easier to turn away than it is to embrace the world, than it is to change the world, especially when late night police cruisers shine bright lights right at your faces without exchanging any words for some reason and my friends can always return to their parents houses and their little bedrooms while the mom does the laundry and dad mows the lawn.

So we leave the giant structure behind when Gom and Beaglesworth become concerned about the signs warning of Asbestos and cancer and such, and we returned to my little second floor apartment overlooking the abandoned street. Loudly we piled back in and collapse onto the couch, and I’m so god damn hot it’s making me feel sick. The acid makes me out of touch enough not even realize how much I’ve been sweating, and the answer is a lot, and even sweet Jayha says, “Moon, you look like a drowning rat.” Because the sweat has completely soaked my hair and my shirt and I’m red faced and out of breath. I think maybe the playground really got right on top of me back there, and that’s part of it, but I think the sick realizations in front of the charred skeletal mill really made me uneasy and nervous. LSD produces strange realizations and truths which sometimes are better left buried beneath the conscious sometimes, otherwise everyone would be a nervous, sweating mess wandering the streets in confusion and dismay at the way things have come to be.

I go into my room and throw off my clothes and put on some more accommodating ones which I hoped would ventilate and cool my raving body and brain off, then I parked myself in front of the fan and let it blow hot air at me so I can cool off a bit, and everyone laughed at me because I looked so out of it, the supposed LSD guru who’s not worried about his brain turning to mush is slowly melting to death because it’s so fucking humid and hot and nothing’s alright in this town yet still the residents quietly sleep in their darkened rooms in the corners or their mattresses which are propped up against walls during the day to make more room for the dogs. My only relief is cold water which Marcus brings me and my drawing pad and a few colored pencils, because otherwise I’d probably just scream out in frustration.

I calmed down a bit and begin to draw aimlessly and beautifully. Drawing and painting under the influence of LSD is such a simple and casual experience; no thought is required to produce eccentric and eye catching art, one must merely let the pencil or brush glide over the page independently while the mind merely sits back and folds and shifts everything its watching while it is creating.

Everyone’s drinking water and talking softly about obscure topics. Mostly we discussed things which we have determined to be clearly illogical now that the drug has sharpened our gaze to the most basic and simplest form. It seems that the whole world has gotten unnecessarily complicated for the sake of being so, just in case a visitor happens to swing by our little blue life forging planet and ask us, “What have you monkeys been up to in the last five thousand years or so?” We can just close our eyes and point to anything and feel justified about the systems we’ve created for ourselves to follow. And in this country, in the last days of the American century, it seems more illogical and futile than ever before, especially in the eyes of Marcus who has spent considerable time in Denmark, the happiest country in the world, which is everything the American Empire should be but isn’t, and it’s just so insanely frustrating for the thinkers, fighters, and sprinters like us who realize that things have to change otherwise we’ll all end up like the burned out mills which landmark the roadway into the small New England town I came to hide in.

I turned on some beautiful music and the room fell silent as we all descend into our own minds and the games they play when stimulated so. My beautiful cat pounced onto the couch and I pet him softly as he collapses onto my lap happily, slightly paranoid like he always is whenever a bunch of us are awake all night laughing so hard that we cry one moment and then the next becoming deathly silent as we were confronted with realizations and strange logic which usually is forgotten by the next day until we remind each other over beers in some bar filled with old people that won’t let you talk about a thing. This is how we searched for meaning and illumination under the hot nights, happy for our efforts but frustrated by our lack of progress. This is what it does to you.

Regards, Esortnom