Plasces Where I've Lived: The Magic Rooms ( Acid Trip Number Three, Or, Kids, Don't Try This Anywhere!)

Ah, yes, learn from my mistakes.  But also like me, please enjoy the making of them.  I came across another little supply of Magic Postage Stamps thanks to...well, this blogger has a few secrets that will be accompanying him to the crematorium. 

It was the Summer Solstice and a full moon in 1975.  K and I took the acid together and then happily went off to take care of the daily errands.  We had some business to take care of at the local Unemployment Insurance office.  We walked through the cemetery and walked on a high narrow trail over the sidewalk on East Thirty-Third Avenue.  It was a narrow high little trail that required a little courage to walk up on but we were already quite high and didn't really notice.  At the Unemployment Insurance office I ran into a girl I knew in high school.  Her legendary long hair now went down almost past her knees and she was quite amused to hear that the high school Jesus freak was now whacked out of his sweet little head on acid.

We somehow got through our errands then walked as far as Queen Elizabeth Park where I was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of the life force.  The cirrus clouds overhead in the blue sky throbbed and flowed with rainbow edges.  I suddenly sensed the life force, of which I had never before even heard, running through us all, through every blade of grass, every tree, flower, bird, insect, human being, everything.  I whirled around in a euphoric joyous ecstasy and then we both fell in the grass where I was suddenly overwhelmed by the most penetrating and acute sorrow.  I wept inconsolably. 

I soon pulled out of it.  We resumed our walk across Vancouver, higher than proverbial kites.  We wandered down into Kitsilano and stopped in the Naam for a bite to eat.  There was a friendly long haired cat who stopped by to be petted.  Somehow from there we made it to Wreck Beach for the sunset where we sat on a log staring out at the water.  A man with long hair and beard was playing a wooden flute.  He was wearing an Andean poncho. 

We bussed into East Vancouver where we visited the Dandy and his friend the Goddess (one of the Remarkable People I Have Known).  We somehow stumbled home at five in the morning.  That was my third and last acid trip.

I still had some left over.  I had already concluded that I wasn't going to do this any more.  It was just too intense.  I also suspected that there were some lessons I had learned and was still needing to absorb while on acid that would somehow be forgotten from overuse of the drug.  A day or two later on the bus I chatted up two young men, an apparent gay couple.  They bought the acid from me.  I never saw them again and I hope they had fun.  I did.  Sort of.

Forty years later I still feel at times the impact of the drug.  It has altered and enhanced my vision, my way of seeing, absorbing and enjoying colour and light.  To this very day things in nature still take on an otherworldly radiance.  Can I blame it all on LSD?  Perhaps some of this has been spiritually generated.  I may never know the answer but I am eternally grateful for this vision, this new vision made real and sublime with each new day.