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Flash Epistle Number Six
During my curious youth, I spent an entire year (1970) taking LSD, perhaps fifty times. Pure, strong LSD. Like Jake Blues, I thought I was on a mission from God. It was time well spent. Doubters think LSD is just a trigger for meaningless hallucinations. The characters in the Iliad all heard the voices of gods in their heads, believed in those voices, and acted upon them. Were they mad or touched by Divine Fire? Today, Achilles would be given Haldol or incarcerated or both. I found it a portal to other worlds, as or more real than this one. It opened my eyes to the fact that there is more happening than those eyes usually see. Metaphor matters more than reality. Perhaps metaphor is reality. That explained a lot and has been of great use to me. Vietnam was an alternate reality. I worked for the CIA. The Company is an alternate reality that creates alternate realities. Mysteries within enigmas. Reality is whatever narrative we find comfortable and it can turn on a dime. Every conspiracy is real to those who believe in it. Reality is an abstract noun, open to infinite variations. There are many realities, if only you look hard enough. I accept every impossibility. If you don’t accept the world as impossible, how can you stand it? Knowing that helps me to survive, even after decades. I quit taking LSD because I’d opened the doors of perception as wide as I could stand. I’m no Homeric hero. Walk too far through those doors into those other worlds and there are no breadcrumbs to follow back. You will find yourself declared a schizophrenic and become a prisoner of the DSM. Even so, I wonder what LSD would be like at sixty six, but fear I might enjoy the trip too much to ever return.
