So here's the scoop...

Yesterday morning I got up, had breakfast and went to Mike C-----'s house. We fiddled around with an orange blind he was trying to put up, but it was too wide, and after some mildly amusing antics we gave up.

Mike and I walked to the co-op and each got a can of pop. Karen was working behind the counter. We said hi. We drank our soda on the bench out front, watched the people go by, talked to a two-year-old boy waiting for his mother, and discussed how we should best fritter away the next four hours, after which Mike had to work.

Then Mike suggested that we do Robitussin.

I jumped on it. I'd wanted to 'tussin up the night before, but no one had been willing to join me. So we walked back to Mike's and drank all the cough syrup he had: about two ounces each.

Mike drove us over to Greene Hall, and I drank four more ounces in my room. I ate lunch at the main quad and smuggled out two bean burritos for Mike, who waited for me on the veranda. By this time it was 1:00.

We decided to visit Missy B--------. She's living in a house on the corner of Woodlawn and 11th, just a block away from Greene. She's living with two or three guys, I think, and one of them is David F-----. Dave and Missy and Ann were friends at Ball State; I met him there just once, when I'd had my bag stolen; he gave me an old jacket of his.

(I've gotten many compliments on that jacket since. But Dad mentioned the jacket as one of the offensive things that led him to the breaking point. I was wearing it yesterday when I went to Missy's. I left it there. Will I ever get it back? There are still 2 burritos in the pocket.)

Ann and Missy had warned me about Dave. I had a rather frightening image in my mind of someone powerful, intelligent, manipulative, egotistical and just plain strange.

Mike had met Dave once too. After I said I'd like to visit Missy, Mike said, "Okay, but if we start talking to that David character we're going to be in trouble, because he's a real freak."

We talked to him, alright. Missy and Mike and Dave and I (and another guy, or two) sat in a circle and passed the peace pipe. I abstained. I was feeling a little whacked out by this time. Dave dominated the converstaion. I had the bizarre feeling that nothing he was saying would make any sense if I was straight and sober. It only *seemed* to make sense because I was on drugs.

I can't remember what we talked about.

Later we were all hanging out on the front porch, smoking cigarettes and talking. It was pleasantly cool day. I had a huge glass of water, trying to stay hydrated. David and Mike and I were talking. Somehow we decided to go into David's room to smoke some pot.

David's room was dark, lit only by a big globe lamp with a blue bulb. The latest Beatie Boys album was playing: Paul's Boutique. I had a couple hits off of the flexible transparent tube Dave uses as a pipe. This is when things started to go really crazy. I distinctly felt that David knew everything I was thinking. He must be a telepath, I thought. I've discovered a real telepath. No, he's more than that. The way he's looking at me, so confident, so sure. He must be God. David is God! And I'm only a few feet away from Him! I was in ecstacy. Or so I thought.

I think Mike and David saw it coming. I must have been acting strange. All I can say now is that I saw the God in David. And then I realized the God in my own self. With that shift in focus, I crossed some kind of cosmic threshold. I felt that everything in existence was coursing through me. I was speechless. I laughed aloud, and continued to laugh, and laugh and laugh and laugh.

Mike said later that he was almost embarrassed by the naked expression of joy on my face. I felt outside of time, eternal. That state of intense ecstacy lasted for about five minutes. A good long time. When I was finally able to rally my verbal abilities enough to speak, I quoted Camus: "I was right, I was still right, I had always been right."

When Mike left the room to call his work and say that he'd be late, I was alone with David for the first time. "You're a telepath," I said. He replied that, no, he wasn't; we simply had very similar backgrounds.

I've forgotten so much of the feel of it already. I could feel my memories flaking off layer by layer as I sat there in David's room in that tar-paper house on the corner of 11th and Woodlawn -- I could feel myself falling like Lucifer, falling so far so quickly that I sometimes feared I was going to be sucked down into a negative energy spiral. (But as David said to Mike, "Don't worry about him, he's resilient.") There's a hard, sad edge to this forgetting.

What will I remember next week? I realize that I've had experiences similar to this one, and I'd forgotten them entirely until now. HOW COULD I FORGET? I'm afraid of forgetting. By writing this I can preserve my memory, crudely imperfectly. This is a record of the events and circumstances surrounding. There can be no record of the experience itself. I can only point to it, make allusions and generalizations.

The second time Mike left the room, David said, "You know, telepathy is much more powerful when there are just two people present." I think he was playing with me.

It was a state of pure joy. I didn't just feel good. I felt like I was tapped into the truth. A reality orgasm. Generated by cough syrup?

JOY = TRUTH

At 7:00 I had to be at work. I made it early. I worked the rail for this performance. Pretty easy.

Ecstacy as an issue interests me. I think my experience yesterday was the most incredible and fantastic single experience of my entire life. Is it the same experience people have when they're "born again"? It seems possible, even likely, because the experience felt universal, not strictly personal. Possible for all humans, not just me.

I'm still basking in the afterglow, even though it's now 6:00 pm, the day after. I'm at the Waffle House, where you'll find me every Sunday from five 'til ten.) But I've got the feeling that I can't hang on to this forever.

These last 24 hours have given me so much to think about. Is it possible to live each day like this? Is it even desirable?

I think that Mike's working at Domino's again tonight. I think I'll go over there and pay him a visit.

When Mike came back from his pizza run, I said, "carry on, my wayward son, there'll be peace when you are done." He replied, "Well, you know, Bart, all we are is dust in the wind."

I told him I'd written 15 pages in my journal tonight, and he asked, "What on earth could you have so much to write about?"

"Are you kidding?" I told him. He took a rather skeptical attitude, and I must admit to a sensation of creeping cynicism which sets in some times when I consider that all this came out of a bottle.

BUT I do think these pages of writing are worthwhile. I really do feel strongly that this whole experience is valid -- the drug did something profound -- as tried to note before, I could and still can feel all my personal prejudices and bewilderments and doubts, etc., but they feel overwhelmed somehow by *me.*

Whatever that means. Hard to explain this to my straight self (that's what this is, a message to my future); I'll never be able to persuade my future self that this experience is not only valuable, but superior. Will I? Is it just because it's from an external chemical, or is it actually because of the difference between my state of consciousness now and my straight state. Whee! Shit, if I ain't augmented, then distortion sure feels pretty good.

This state is dangerous because severe depression seems to be always lurking around the corner. It hasn't sunk its claws in yet, but if it does I'll be hell-bound and howling. At least normality doesn't threaten such awful lows, though on the other hand, you don't get to hang-glide from one heady precipice to another either.

But what is there to be worried about? That it can't last forever? Maybe it can't. But what is there to be worried about? This is an important question to ask, in order to deflate anxiety. Thank you to Mike Clarke for providing inspiration.

Every moment is a revelation.

Thought for the day: how may we reconcile a mechanistic view of the brain with a spiritual or mystic conception of the mind. Possibly the truth is that there is no difference. Now stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

I am most definitely in touch. I'm seeing things with new eyes and a renewed sense of wonder. Why shouldn't it last forever? Just because drugs got me here, why can't I stay on my own power? Perhaps I can, perhaps not. What is important -- what do I need to maintain this state of intense awareness of my internal world as well as intense appreciation of the external world? Maybe all that's required is to understand what it's like. Yeah, that sounds right. But I'm still skeptical. Guess we'll just have to see. Seems like last time I got this close -- August 15th -- I forgot and sank back to Normalia. But this experience was much more affecting -- it's motivated me to write this, which I think is really something else. Wowee.

Y'know I'm not just floatin' around in a state of euphoria here. I simply feel more alive, with all that carries with it. Paradoxically I feel in control because I'm not in control? That doesn't make sense. I'm intense because I'm mellow. OK, it doesn't look good on paper, yet somehow I feel it to be true.

Gotta get some sleep.