Circle of caring

So completely sober, or as sober as i ever am, i started this project where i auto-stim a psychedelic journey from which i can learn.

I'd been reading wacky but reasonable versions of the plant-induced variety with accompanying sides of terror and physical revulsion.

But why? All of that only goes to show that the brain is perfectly capable of doing that all on its own, and that it may actually be always doing that anyway without our ever noticing.

So I surrendered to the colors and shadow anyone might notice with their eyes closed or partially rolled back into the head, relaxing.

The trip reports had mentioned being carried along on a current that you can't stop. I thought of the swollen stream rushing past right outside my door and what it would be like to be on it.

Distracting thoughts for me, a ruminator, don't have to be chased down, and my morbid imagination is not afraid of and indeed occasionally produces scenes of carnage and destruction, as does any red blooded. So i was not afraid, but that did not happen. There was lucidity as in partial dreaming.

But then i remembered my own last experience with a bio-halucinogen: the very real sense of another presence, not a cartoon guide frog sitting on a stump, but something round that was just next to me and actually overlapping into my own head, so like my head was a Venn diagram, except both halves living and potentially aware of one another, at least i of it.

Now tho as i hung my head in frustration, wishing for the ego obliteration splinters of which were variously described as lighting, ants, fractured bisected perspectives, no instead my hand on my head became the hand of that thing. It was my left hand and the thing had been intersecting with my left brain.

The hand was familiar and maybe it was someone i knew who is dead and earlier, even before the experiment, i had been experimenting with prayer and reflecting on how it's different from talking to the dead, and whether or not talking to the dead was more dangerous than prayer. Which assumes more agency? etc.

The hand not only held my head while I wept but let me bury my face in it and felt my face as if it had not felt it for many years and wanted to remember. It's not like i never feel my own face.

Lately also i've been saying thanks to my previous self: "Thanks, past self," and really meaning it. I do something that will help out later like putting the groceries where I can find them again, and it's a pain in the ass while i am doing it but i feel like i need to say thanks to that person for going to the trouble because so often everything seems like a lot of goddamn trouble but sometimes i find the energy to do it anyway because i respect my future self that much at least or at least have the optimism to expect there to be a future self.




Dr. Donna Thong
"Doing my time on the Chang K. Chang Chank Drunk Tank Chain Gang."