The Vision
by AJ Snook
The third floor is my semiprivate
sanctuary. It's the place that's allowed my teenage mind to survive
into its 30s and, subsequently, fatherhood – that mind of wonder,
inquiry and bliss. My room up there is a far cry from the decadent
man caves so popular these days. No leather sofa. No surround
sound. No humidor. No Chivas Regal. Unlike a teenager, thankfully,
I have outgrown the need for braggery. Actually, I have – through
a conscious effort – succeeded in widdling my list of friends down
to a toothpick. Just a few to go all in with. Afford the time put
the work in on a few instead of spreading my bets too thin.
What I lack in superficial sticker
shock up in my room, I certainly make up for in humanist depth.
Books on Eastern religion – Suzuki, Ram Dass, Alan Watts.
Notebooks filled with novel sketches and thoughts not to be
forgotten. A rug for sitting, table for working. White walls and a
simple brown shag rug. Usually a laptop used sparingly as a music
player, a thesaurus, an ebook, and more.
But the one thing that really makes my room standout from the rest of the house is the small wooden box that sits unsuspectingly on the bookshelf, on top of a used copy of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. It's not for jewelry or trinkets, no, it's where I keep my mind expanding substances, my tools for self-discovery. My metaphysical body shop. Instead of ratchets and oil cans I keep magical herbs and a ceramic pipe in the exact size, shape and color of a cigarette (in case I need to make my mind lab mobile).
As I'm in my room
last summer I hear my wife, three months pregnant call up the stairs
to me, “Honey, dinner's ready!” (She knows what I'm doing and is
neither supportive nor antagonistic.)
The stuff I'm
smoking is a synthetic form of THC that I got from a buddy of mine
whose a chemist (one of the perks of growing old and continual down
the path of the psychonaut, though slightly more lonely, is that your
friends become more useful, more powerful). To say that it's strong
stuff is as non-descriptive as saying Katrina was a strong hurricane
(true but lacking qualification). The partaker must know the
possible damage before getting involved. A bout of hunger and a nap
on the couch are not parts of this game.
Warning:
Expect lapses of introspection and that lead to simultaneous
realizations of both the horror and wonder about the nature of
reality so metaphysically robust that one lacks the language
capabilities to translate said epiphanies back into the sober world
in a quantifiable and constructive way.
Translation:
You might meet some motherfuckin' thought aliens beamed full-speed
into the meat receiver you call a noggin.
So with dinner
getting cold I suck down a full bowl of the stuff in one careless
gulp. In roughly five-hundred words, the consequences are documented
below.
It hits me right
away. Like after a sucker punch from the champ my brain gets a
regular jostle and my head is put into a different place altogether.
The walk down the steep winding stairs is accomplished only through
muscle memory and great reliance on the banister and faith that it
won't break under my weight. I splash through the beads draped in
front of the entryway and into the living room/kitchen.
Immediately I hear
a cute, “Can you do me a favor and cut the onions?”
My
confidence is through the roof so I oblige and get to cutting. My
head has a pulse running through it that feels rythmic and
intentional. A homing beacon perhaps? Chop, chop, chop. Cutting
has never been so much fun. After only about thirty seconds of
cutting, though, it happens. The pulse in my head intensifies and it
feels like something is quickly approaching me. I can feel a sort of
gravity or pull on my being. I imagine how planets and other
celestial beings feel when they get too close to each. For every
reaction...
Next I'm in a dark
place. My consciousness doesn't feel lost. It's still intact but
it's not in my body. Am I dead? Will my kid grow up with a single
mother? These thoughts come to me but the very existence of this
space I'm in puts my worries to rest. If this exists then my unborn
baby has nothing to worry about...ever.
Next I see two
large figures appear. As I'm writing this I'm sure my memory
couldn't bring back their true shapes in worldly terms, but my
earthly mind seems to want to reassemble them into giant white and
silver heads with eyes of light, the texture and color of them
pulsating in waves of the supernatural hues, never solid, always
flowing. They are the size of suns but they see me very clearly.
Again translated
as best I can they communicate to me through pulses of cosmic energy
(love?):
“Welcome. We want to show you something before you
leave.”
“Before I leave?
What do you...” but I never got an answer as their show began in
all its grandeur.
Out of the depth
of space emerged a plane of pure light energy. It stretched for as
far as I could see, perhaps to infinity. Nothing existed but the
vacuum of space minus the stars and planets (Is that familiar space –
the only space I know – different than where I am now?), the two
giant conscious beings, me, and this plane of light. But through
some kind of psychic cue the godly due (working together), allowed
another plane to rise up from the first, hovering parallel above it.
Then a second hovered down below it. Three parallel planes of
infinite (conscious?) energy and power expansing out into the
infinite void.
What exactly were
they showing me? Other dimensions that lay parallel and connected to
each other because of some universal, natural order? That's the best
I could come up with. But I woke up on my kitchen floor. Back here
in this realm of words and pictures. Not more than two seconds had
passed, although at least three minutes had gone by in that other
realm. My chopping knife was staring me in the face, so close I
could smell the onions on it. I can't say that I learned much that I
can apply here in a worldly way (not getting rich off of this
experience if you know what I mean). All I can say is that it was
real and not a construct of my imagination or subconscious.
The three truths
that I can take away are as follows: aliens are real but they don't
need ships, the mind is a cosmic beacon/receptor for said aliens, and
there are drugs here that just might catalyze a face-to-face with
them. Keep an open mind.
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