Spaced-Out Dreamy Nonsensical Noise

The pope and his folks got us under a scope
But for unknown reasons cuz we don’t sell dope
That you distribute, we don’t contribute, to your clandestine
activity, my soliloquy, may be hard for some to swallow

-Wheelz of Steel, ATLiens, 1996

For all of you former midnight tokers out there, do you ever have an overwhelming urge to smoke again?

Spring Equinox always fills me with the desire to pack my bags and head to the Hills for a serious smoke fest with friends. I remember when I was in college, sitting on my favorite rock by my hidden little waterfall while the sun warmed my face. High as a kite, I sat for hours and watched the clouds.

Or, when my best friend and I parked my 1988 Monte Carlo on a gravel road, rolled the windows up, and smoked our brains out. The windows were tinted a black/blue hue, and they shook and rattled while we listened to my new Outkast CD. “Touched by the wheels of steel, now show me how you feel…” echoed in background over their spacey new age-ey hip-hop beats.

Last night I was thinking about altered states and the “body buzz”. For me it was the euphoria, a feeling of being weightless and without conscious ego that really floored me. When my boundaries dissolved and I was absorbed into/and with nature it felt like unity was possible.

Divine union with others (sex), ourselves (masturbation), god (nature worship, for some), is what it’s all about. I think all human beings (even the most callous) have a need for reunion with The Source, and we all use various methods (and yes, sometimes addictions) when we reach for it.

It was so easy to “get there” as child. In those days, I would lie in the grass and walk through my grandmother’s garden and get lost for hours. I literally felt as though I was being absorbed into the landscape. It wasn’t hard to forge a connection between myself and the Earth then because it was there already, vibrating with me.

In adulthood, the methods aren’t as natural, and the consequences are potentially destructive. In attempting to fill the bottomless pit of “need” and “union”, many will allow the protective veil of fantasy to dominate their lives through addictions. And since addictions represent the ultimate denial of reality coupled with a refusal to participate in life, addicts, in their empty shells, desperately cling to the void of nothingness.

But the problem is, Joy, or Union with the Divine, cannot be held in the palm of our hands, at least not for any great length of time. This is, in fact, an Earthly incarnation. Eventually, we must all return from the garden, come back to reality, and face the inevitable. This requires a certain amount of trust in life (to every season, there is a turn, turn, turn), because we all face the same anxiety about life and our place here.

If I could re-do the D.A.R.E. speech I gave in 5th grade, I would’ve included some of things above. And I would’ve ended with, “Fellow classmates, some of us will experiment, some of us will become addicts, and some of us will never touch a drug in during our life span, but all of us, at some point, will experience the need to reunite with the divine, let’s not fuck it up by forgetting where we came from.”