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Altered States
If We’re Lucky
“Prophet?”No one had called me that in a while. Before I turned around, before I looked for his face in the mirror behind the bar, I knew, I felt who it was.
October 1993The Witness Tree: Memoir Of A Ritual
It is a terrible thing when a brave person becomes afraid of you. It wakes you up. You see that, in Hemingway’s great phrase, you have “gone beyond where you can go.” It is unlikely you can save yourself, and unlikely that any one person — lover, therapist, friend — can save you.
February 1992The Seduction Of Consciousness
We don’t have a “drug” problem. We have never had a “drug” problem. We will not have a “virtual reality” problem. Past, present, and future, we have a consciousness problem — today compounded by the fact that it happens to be occurring in a Neanderthal political landscape.
November 1991Reality Fire
Water will not put out a reality fire. Those little red extinguishers are useless. A reality fire will not be tamed. As the eyes move from object to object each bursts into flames and is consumed, gone forever, and no smoke either — for a reality fire will consume so thoroughly that nothing is wasted. No smoke escapes. Never any smoke. From a reality fire there is no smoke.
October 1991The Sixties
Investigating conscientious-objector status, attending a rock festival, plucking strychnine tufts from a bag full of peyote buttons
April 1991High In The Himalayas
Twenty years ago I had my first and only mescaline trip in a remote part of the Himalayas that borders India and Nepal. I had already traveled and studied Tibetan Buddhism in India for three years.
January 1991Elmer Slow Bear
In a man of his size and complexion, however, many found the reserve unnerving. Mr. Cody, the history teacher, referred to him in private — with more than slightly nervous humor — as “My Bad Conscience.” Also, as “Doom.” Most people called him Elmer, and stayed out of his way.
December 1989
