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Who knows why we did it in the morning, but we had the seeds! [See Part I] The question was, what should we do with them?

I’d gone down to Bob’s basement apartment. The weather outside was warm and sunny, but Bob’s one-room “pad” was dim and cool. Bookshelves and a bed occupied one side of the place, giant stereo speakers and a high-end audio system the other. A small passageway that also served as a kitchen led to a simple bathroom at the end. Bob locked the door so we wouldn’t be disturbed. He’d done more reading and decided we should simply eat a portion of the seeds, but how many? No one had a clue, so we each emptied a packet and proceeded to chew. (Trust me, you don’t ever want to do this.) It was like trying to eat gravel, but we persevered and washed down our respective mouthfuls of broken seeds with lots of water. Ugh.

Nothing happened right away, of course. As an utter psychedelic novice, I was disappointed. Bob thought that music would help, so he put a John Cage LP on the turntable and cranked the amplifier up. I can’t tell you which Cage piece we were listening to, but it sounded like cinder blocks being dragged across a sheet of glass. After a side of that, we listened to some Coltrane. This particular album reminded me of a stampeding herd of elephants in great pain, but I kind of liked it. At this point I began to feel a little woozy and stretched out on the bed.

As I lay there listening to the stampede, I had the thought that I was losing my mind. I was, of course, ho-ho, which had to be the point, but this was new and frightening. I started to panic and became upset. I also needed to throw up and ran to the tiny bathroom to barf my guts out. What a relief! The awful nausea disappeared, and then the other stuff began.

My first reaction was that I had never been so grateful to not be sick. My second reaction after flushing the toilet was to see the toilet: it’s A TOILET, HALLELUJAH! Such pure and utter bliss. You can’t imagine how wonderful that was (or maybe you can). I was still in the world, I hadn’t lost my mind exactly, but things were, um, different…

Staggering into the hall, I felt a roaring rush of joy, like I was happier than I’d ever been. GREAT FREAKING CHRIST, it’s a REFRIGERATOR! I passed my hands over the enameled steel and almost cried. And LOOK! A STOVE! A LITTLE GAS STOVE from PARADISE! With KNOBS!!! I must have been shouting, because I heard Bob cackling in the other room, even over the elephants. He’d been hit with a barfing fit as well but had to unlock the door and go outside because I was in the bathroom. When I came back into the main room, sunlight was streaming in the open door. We both were grinning like monsters and had to take this thing outdoors. Oh my Lord.

Texas had never been so beautiful as I stepped into the light. Neither of us went any farther than the bare dirt driveway just outside the door and didn’t have to. So HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY… I started looking at the little rocks and grass. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT, LOOK AT THIS! I squatted to have a closer look. The stones were frigging DIAMONDS full of color I had never seen. In the soft driveway dust under a baking sun, I noticed an impression of some kind. I thought I recognized it, but nothing clicked at first, and then the miracle: a BABY’S FOOTPRINT! A LITTLE BABY’S FOOTPRINT, RIGHT THERE IN THE DUST!!! We both got low and peered as closely as we could. An infant’s golden footprint, absolutely, the most intense, astounding thing. A goddamn baby-Jesus-Christ-child miracle for all time, right there underneath our noses!

Nothing else could top that. Neither of us wanted to hang out in the basement, anyway, and Bob was getting hungry. After a while, he grabbed his notebook and roared off on his motorcycle in search of coffee, doughnuts, and another waitress. I wandered back upstairs and watched as shallower reality returned. So this was “coming down,” and down was right! The numinosity began to fade. Gradually my thoughts intruded: where I had to go, what I had to do. But I was now “experienced.” (Thank you, Jimi.) I never chewed morning glory seeds again and didn’t have to. The main thing was that I had done this and I knew. To this day, the baby’s footprint stands out bright and clear inside my mind, and I remember how I felt. This would always prove to be the case. No swirling colors, no hallucinations, just diving deeper into what there is.

Epilogue

Was there a baby’s footprint? Who cares!

I wouldn’t do this now, though, I don’t think. The times just aren’t supportive of such exploration, although that could change. But it taught me that reality is very much a living thing, that there are layers of perception, that nothing is like our teachers, priests, and parents taught us, and that underneath it all is something palpable and indescribable and good. I was lucky to come of age when I did. Sometimes a sledgehammer is useful in eliciting these insights, especially for children of the ’50s, and the Universe provided.

These days I go out into the wilderness and it’s very much the same thing. Your time is right now, chilluns, and so is mine.

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Last October I received this photo in an email from from my brother: 98 Red River in Austin, Texas, my home in ’66 and ’67, a time like no other in my life, had finally bitten the dust. I can’t begin to tell you all the things that happened there. Not just to me, either—the place had an peculiarly Austin aura that affected many others. Most significantly perhaps, it was the scene of my first-ever psychedelic experience deep in the heart of Texas, in those glorious pre-air-conditioned days when hippies had to have eyes in the back of their heads.

My God, I know those steps. They led up to a nondescript white two-story house atop a knoll above the gas station on the corner. Someone had converted it into apartments long ago. There were two or three on each floor and a basement flat out back. My place was up the stairs on the northwest corner and cost 30 bucks a month. There was absolutely nothing distinguished or remarkable about it, although unscreened windows on two sides afforded decent views. To the west one saw a jumbled cityscape of more old houses, used car lots, Tex-Mex cafes, and probably some pawn shops. Below the north window was the gas station with a hose that rang a bell whenever someone drove up—no self-serve in those days—and across the street from that, one of those old barbecue joints where a geezer in a cowboy hat cooked brisket in a garage while customers ate at picnic tables out in front. The university was a couple dozen blocks away, north up the hill on Red River Street and to the west, but that was in a different world.

It was anything but student housing, which was part of the appeal. There was what we would have called a “Mexican” family, an art major friend who’d told me about the place, and an ever-changing stream of tenants with no money moving in and out. Out back in the basement apartment lived a uniquely interesting fellow I’ll just call Bob. I don’t recall exactly how we met, but half of what I am today is partly his fault, and I’m grateful.

Bob was older by at least five years and maybe more, a short, scrawny guy from West Texas with a wary eye and cackling laugh, just the kind of randy oddball runt all the women wanted to adopt. A jazz musician who’d played flute in a military band while stationed in Japan, he was unlike anyone I’d ever met. He had a collection of mystical Buddhist beatnik books, an actual stereo, and records by people I had never heard of, like Parker, Coltrane, and Cage. He wore a beret and sunglasses and was fond of finding empty churches to practice in, where frat-rats wouldn’t throw bottles at him on his way home. Bob was the first person I knew who called girls “chicks” and said “I gotta split” when it was time to leave. He also drank a lot of coffee, smoked tiny joints of primo dope, and spent a lot of time in all-night cafes where he would read Zen books, write, and go home with the waitress. (There was a chain of such places in Austin then, all run by Iranians.) He had a part-time job in the stacks of the massive U.T. Library that paid the bills and helped him meet more girls. I worked there, too, and paid my way through school on $1.10 an hour. You could do that then, and pay for food and an apartment. It was a simpler, much less driven time, that calm before the storm.

But new things were happening out there in the wider world. I was uninitiated, vaguely aware, and definitely eager. When Bob suggested we read the Tibetan Book of the Dead and “take a trip,” the only question was the means. No one we knew had yet tried LSD, but morning glory seeds might work. By ’66, the authorities in Texas were just beginning to catch on. Morning glory seeds (the Heavenly Blue variety) were known to be suspicious, and there was talk of restricting their sale or coating them with something nasty—that came later—but as far as we knew, what was in the Garden Department at Sears was legal enough. The problem was the paranoia, as in:

“Whatchoo boys want with all them seeds?!?”

“Lemme see some ID!”

“Y’all don’t mind a couple questions from the po-leece, do ya?”

So stealth and planning were required. We also had no idea how many packs of seeds we needed or how to use them, so we decided to to split up and score as many as we dared. Bob went to the store one morning and bought a few, along with other flower seeds, of course, and I showed up in the afternoon to do the same. The clerk gave me the once-over but rang up the sale, and we were set.

I never did read the Book of the Dead, but Bob had and wasn’t worried. In the morning we would obliterate our egos and merge with all Creation. That’s what psychedelics were all about in the beginning, not something done casually for fun, but a daring act of exploration. A quest for enlightenment, whatever that was. Seeing the Light. A spiritual adventure. Something you prepared for and took seriously. At that point I hadn’t tried marijuana either, so all of this was fine with me. Anything to join the ranks of the experienced, and I wasn’t even scared.

[Part II is right here!]

It’s very simple, she said. Look around, do you see a riot? Is the government collapsing, are there racists wearing guns? Has Reactor 4 gone critical? Did Obama betray us all? Are there Wall Street bankers in the grass? Is that a drone I hear? Is a tar sands pipeline sneaking through the sage? Did Romero’s pit bull get loose again?

A fly, perhaps. Some hummingbirds, but I won’t try to catch them now. The morning sun, the cool damp earth, a rock to rest my paws. I bring little mind to this, except to note a sound or scent. You puny wretched bastards think those other things are real. You can’t prove it, but you let your stomachs churn with righteous acid as it eats away your days. I’m probably older than you are now, the way you count these things.

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Oh, I like this! A customized and chopped vintage Volkswagen with a glorious hotrod engine! Looks like a ’56 to me. The gearshift almost poking through the sunroof has a skull knob, too (hard to see). My brother @RudeBoyRobbo shot this iPhone video on the street in downtown Austin back in April. He drives a pedicab, and if you’re ever in Austin, tweet him up for a ride.

All of which reminds me that I don’t see nearly enough of my siblings. This will not do. Another reason for my wife and I to find a better home, so people can visit once in a while. And with our ducks in a row, we could get away ourselves. I’m done with working so hard to be a hermit. That’s what years of worrying you’re no good will get you: not a damn thing, really…

So much bullshit gone under the bridge. Thank you, older generation, now all dead. Why were you scared of brilliance? What was wrong with art? Where did you hide your joy? Why didn’t you even trust yourselves?

One of the things I used to do when I was a teenager in Abilene, TX to escape the tension at home was buy a copy of Hot Rod magazine each month and lose myself inside the pages. No one has any idea how sacred and beautiful that was for me. To this day, the sight of a fine custom car or motorcycle fills my heart with love for the machine, love for whoever built it, love for my own self—it all goes ’round and ’round and gets me all excited and sometimes makes me cry. This must be one reason I appreciate Chicano car culture so much. Self-affirmation, pride, family, and all. Check out Art Meza’s work (@Chicano_Soul) on Etsy to dig just what I’m talking about. Dude knows from car love, chilluns. Mucho respecto.

Those days are also how I know what “chopped” means when referring to a car. Do you? I almost added “channeled,” but you can’t do that with an old VW, because it has no frame rails, har. This knowledge pleases me. No doubt it still will when I’m dead.