Regretting the decision not to do an actual interview with Albert, I failed to take down the names of the plants Albert showed to me. The names are readily available to all who are interested, so listing them here could incriminate me as supplying information with an intent to break the law, or worse entertain thoughts of non-conformity. Cocaine was kerosene extracted out of one plant he was happy to report to be growing well. Another plant was to be grown to full maturity before its roots reaped the benefits of an intense speed like form of ecstasy. One thistle looking plant (salvia, or diviners sage, Adam confidently informs me) was akin to actually being in a scary movie, or traveling down a dark and claustrophobic tunnel. Further proof that taking this stuff is not about just having a mellow time. A nearby vine was acid to the Aztecs. Poppies grew amongst massive basil bushes. Many small pots contained peyote or mescaline, the cacti Indian Americans used for their shamanistic spirit walks. Juiced up on cactus snot, they would stagger purposefully until they were able to unify with their spirit animal. These were the very same plants Big W's in Lismore sells for $3.94.
Even the pine trees on the nature strip had been inoculated with fly agaric mushroom spores. The type that has the less than positive attribute of being a mildly nauseating hallucinogenic substance. There was at least 20 inconspicuous plants in Albert's garden that were potent enough to send people to other realities; and in worse case situations, leave them there for good. In light of this, one can never understate the caution these plants need to be approached with
Adams experiment with Datura flowers the previous week had highlighted the dangers these plants possess. Believing the peach coloured flowers to be less potent than the white variety, Adam gleefully cooked up two of the big trumpet shaped flowers and drank them down mixed with sugar and vanilla essence to make them palatable. After menacing me in the kitchen with random stove setting alterations as I tried to cook, Adam walked away with the tap running full bore, to iron the carpet. Two days of no visual cohesion or equilibrium had passed before Albert told Adam that people have taken half what he had, and gone beyond the outer reaches of sanity to take up permanent residence there.
With this in mind, I approached Albert's offer to try di-methyl-tryptamine, or DMT, with more than a healthy level of trepidation. After an earlier failed attempt soon after arriving in Lismore, I was better prepared for the brief rush that comes from a concentrated chemical, alcohol extracted from many different varieties of plant, grass and even a fish. It's effects had been explained to me as thus. Punch a cone of this stuff in a bong and a psychedelic grenade explodes in your head. Often people struggle at first to come to terms with something that throws your map of reality on the floor to clean up the mess you just made in your pants. The 'pixies' can then lead you where ever you can, want to, or need to go. The hallucinations that turn your skin into a rippling ocean and the trees into your personal army of Ents, are the same with each trip but the emotional and spiritual side is always in accord with your being at the moment you happen to be taking the DMT.
It was best that I had not eaten apparently, even though caffeine was driving my adrenals like it was wielding a large whip. I relaxed into the hammock and took a great deal of comfort in Albert offering me the healthy option; mineral water in the bong. He instructed me like an engineer would an astronaut as he prepared for takeoff. Once I felt sufficiently talked through, with enough superlatives to explain it to another without having to have the actual experience, I punched the cone and counted to five....
The Hollywood descriptions of traveling through a worm hole in space are a pretty close approximation of how I got to a dimension where the 'pixies' in the trees welcomed me with high pitched happy voices and thousands of waving leaf hands. I remembered the trees as bamboo, maples and wattles, but I didn't have the wits about me to confirm this after the experience. Like the strange patterns lighting up my pants like downtown Tokyo, I knew I was seeing exactly the same thing I always see, just in a completely different manner.
An illustration of this could be covering a tray with a few packets of smarties, ensuring a homogenous mix of all the different colours. By focusing on a particular colour of smartie, one is able to make them appear more pronounced. Change the focus to another colour and that will stand out as the previous colour recedes. This perception of the different patterns created by the random spread of the colours, can appear to the mind as an oscillation if the mind were able to perform it quick enough. Hallucinogenic drugs have this effect on the mind by changing the emphasis of what the eye sees before it everyday. This is closer to kaliedoscopical vision, rather than the pure hallucinations of seeing Santa Claus dressed in leather, bitch slapping a leprechaun on your ceiling fan.
The implications of this are that we all choose to agree on a particular reality that seems the easiest to survive in. Now that we have the ability to enjoy life without the fear of daily bear attacks, we can start to look at the old in a new light. And it was exactly this that the 'pixies' wanted to show me. Were I too overcome modes of thought that have become out-dated to the point of impediment, I would open myself up to other dimensions of consciousness and perception.
Buddhism arrives at this point after concentrated effort on a meditation cushion as set against a background of ethically skillful living. The benefit to counter balance this far more arduous approach, was that the effects were far longing lasting. And less detrimental to your long term health. The short term benefits of the DMT trip were having a direct experience of a state of being that is equally as valid as the one I usually share with other unenlightened humans in samsara. And instead of enticing me down an avenue to harder and more addictive drugs, it has inspired me to uncover more permanent ways to open my mind up to its full potential.
Once this realisation had taken root in my mind, the 'pixies' in the trees stopped talking to me. My skin still rippled like the white skin of milk that is animated by the liquid that boils beneath it. 5 minutes later that ended, and I left the comfort of my astro traveling hammock to rejoin normal conversation. Rejoin must be understood here to mean standing around with only a vague sense of what is actually being talked about, and contributing absolutely nothing to the conversation other than grunting at the appropriate times.
Mountains were mountains again, and rivers were rivers, but like the recipient of a deep secret, I was forced into reticence to try to come to terms with the implications of what I had just gone through. Albert seemed well-pleased that he was able to demonstrate exactly what it was he had going on there, and more importantly why exactly he was doing it. If you want to get off your face, methylated spirits is a cheap option. But if you want to push the boundaries of your mind, like Johnathan Livingstone Seagull pushed the boundaries of being a seagull, the harmless looking plants Albert cultivates are the keys to another world. Or more precisely, another way of seeing the world we inhabit every day of our lives.
On the way home we stopped at the supermarket, and I satisfied my ravenous hunger by racing through the check out and punishing a bag of crisps in world record time (pending confirmation from the Guinness book of records). Irrespective of the position of Uranus, it was not surprising that something so auspicious would happen in a month that contained a winter solstice and two full moons. Certain things only happen once in a blue moon. 'Pixies', civilisations in the thread of my jeans, visions beyond the scope of everyday understanding and wounds from amateur navigation of the dumbest form of transport ever designed. In truth though, stacking a unicycle is definitely going to happen more frequently than once every blue moon, and I should have asked Albert which plants had anaesthetic effects.
