BEFORE

Feelings emerge now, that weren’t there before. A sense of calmness comes over me. My heart stops racing, I’m consumed by experience. I long to put you in this picture so badly, to put you in MY picture. I wanna savor this right here with the world. I feel like I’m in a tropical rainforest of floating trees and swinging monkeys. And they all connect through the branches. And they’re eating chicken nuggets. Jesus.

This music feels like the DJ’s got saw blades for fingers. Patterned saw blades though, so they align perfectly atop the record. He free lances the spinning black disk, shadows left lingering as the volume knob goes up. It keeps my head so far underwater. I’m drowning in FACE and eighth notes. These sounds are on fire, aflame, full of heat, burning on my eardrums. This beat is popping brain cells like bubble wrap. I can hear them explode in plasticity. Or whatever the hell they’re made of. I try to pull away, but this music twirks my mind. Twirkage of the mind.

Coloring in colors is so underrated. Why haven’t I come to this conclusion before? Drawings are so deceptive right now. Like, I’ll have my mind set on drawing a certain thing, and then just totally lose my concentration and move on to a segment of the paper that’s brighter or that has more leeway. I’ve noticed this a lot in the past two hours. I’ll leave myself lots of leeway, just in case my mind vacates halfway through my original drawing. I’ve noticed, also, that drawing things without looking down at what I’m drawing is surprisingly entertaining. It’s even better when I do look down and everything turns out okay. And then there’s all that leeway everywhere. That’s the best.

Streaming lines of fluctuating colors litter my inner eyelids. Shooting stars, and I’m sitting inside. I stretch triangles to form non-polygons. Detached at the vertex, my base serves no purpose. I poke out my angles and bend sideways at the fulcrum. As I try recapturing moments, I stutter. My mind’s not responding, my mouth begins to water. (This shit’s so good, it’s crooked.) I look down through the clear glass and Red Bull leftovers. It’s blocking my view, but I’ve still got my perspective. Ahhh, my perspective.

My eyes float in Capricorns, my ears rest on Saturn. The moon is so bright tonight, I can’t help but stare. My imagination visits angels, catching up on old times and past recollections. I’ve been up here before, too. But I’m always still amazed at how beautiful it is. God hand delivers Hawaiian blankets to my cloud and ESPN comes in clearly on the television. It’s awesome. It’s like vacation without the turbulence or sunburns.

Everything sort of all just blends together now. Like my hands. Oh man, my hands. I find them sculpting cartoons in blank pieces of wall. Whoa. I’m tingling at the fingertips in a sensation I never thought possible. You know that feeling, you know the one. Where you pop yer neck in just the right spot, so it numbs the entire upper portion of yer spinal cord. I’m feeling that feeling, but in a good tingly feeling instead of pain. (It hurts so good.)

Lava is oozing from his brain and her clouds melt together to create one big one. Coughing non-stop, their lungs are constantly flexing. They’re mouth washing air. They’re stuck at a standstill. Oh so high. So very very high. What a rush; exhilarating, exciting. I feel so pure, I can’t possibly feel guilty for doing this. My writing makes no sense, but it’s fun that way. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up, though. Creativity falters to lack of sleep. Residues of thoughts. Too bad the closest I’ll get to a brain storm tonight is a light drizzle. Dayum, dayum, dayum.

AFTER

Words can’t explain it, they just can’t. But by God, I’ll try.

I felt like I was a live wire, like I HAD to be doing something, whether it was talking or walking or ANYTHING. My mind and body were in super fast mode, but nothing I did made me satisfied. No matter what I was doing, I felt like I HAD to be doing something else. I wanted to be able to lie in my bed, to just stare at shit in my room and get lost in deep thoughts and crazy visuals (which I did get a decent amount of), but I kept finding myself unable to sit still and just think. God, it was so weird.

The closed eye visuals were absolutely incredible. They were always changing and complexifying, but most of the time I’d end up with a mix of rotating shapes and random strands of light surrounding those shapes. I remember looking at it and thinking how cool it would be to draw the thing, but I realized it was impossible because it was multi-dimensional and constantly changing its structure.

I think shrooms prove challenging to artists and writers in particular. Because as a writer, I’m always trying to grab hold of themes and always trying to provide basis on whatever it is I’m writing about. When I’m fryin’, there’s nothing to grab. And it messes with me. There’s no reality crutch – reality’s missing her crutches. EVERYTHING is swarming with life, and I just can’t grab EVERYTHING.

At one point, I couldn’t feel my body anymore. I knew I was lying on my back somewhere on the floor, but I couldn’t feel it. My consciousness was an independent person within me, which simultaneously had no start or end. It just WAS. I felt so connected to that floor, too. If I were to have gotten up while still feeling this, I’d have lost a part of me. That’s how connected I was.

I remember being on the phone with one of my good friends at the peak of my trip. Kaneeka I think it was. I don’t really recall the conversation, but I remember repeating things 3 or 4 times back to back because for some strange reason, I thought my vowels were stuck in the receiver. Like they were prohibited from entering the phone line or something. I would try talking louder, but my throat was too sore from laughing earlier. It was so unreal.

When my trip started slowing down, I started visiting different places in some sort of realm that I could only perceive through emotional feelings. (They radiated feels that had color.) The ceiling beams spoke to me in gorgeous forms of Italian and it was so frustrating because I wanted to understand them, but I wasn’t fluent in Italian. And so I stood there mesmerized by their accents for close to twenty minutes, hoping maybe, just maybe they’d switch to English. But they never did.

It’s funny how every high I’ve experienced has some sort of a thematic element wrapped inside of it. This time my theme was “Combining Worlds; Do You See What I See?”. Because every room had a unique vibe to it. Some were kinda scary, like the laundry room. (It was so small and cluttered; I felt trapped and claustrophobic there.) But others, like my room and the bathroom, were so incredible. It felt like I was discovering new territory every time I walked in. The rooms were the ‘worlds’ and by combining them, I was constantly absorbing new information.

And then I’d try explaining this to all my fellow shroomers (there were 6 of us). Like, do you see/feel/hear what I’m currently seeing/hearing/feeling. And most of the time it would be a lost cause, but every now and then, I’d be on the same wavelength as somebody else. And it was so exciting for me when this happened. I got that ‘I belong here’ feeling and it made me feel like less of a loony because I wasn’t the only one experiencing what I was experiencing. If that makes any sense at all.