A literary point of view on this: I had an immediate impression from the Shroomery story. There’s almost a romantic notion regarding the heroic dose. Had the writing been terse and in Spanish, I could have been reading a short story by Jorge Luis Borges - about the gauchos driving the cattle across the plains of Argentina, their encounters with soldiers, thieves, and their dreams. It’s a place where a man proves himself a man. The decision impels him to go forward, cowardice is not an option, even when Death is certain. There is no return from one’s destiny. And with Borges, you’d meet your double in the labyrinth, likely discover a magic book or magic knife that had some obscure and esoteric history; and passed hands between cryptic eccentrics, fools and charlatans who secretly knew its power, and spent their lifetimes trying to rid themselves of the cursed object.
The thumbprint, it reads like the once in a life time decision, the bridge once crossed cannot be uncrossed back again. I’ve heard this echoed on the site, about what cannot be unseen. The writer’s St. John the Babtist moment, having devoted the rest of his life evangelizing the LSD sacrament, having become a true believer. I think the heroic dose opens the explorer up to the realm of Myth - where a person discovers his truest will. Where every step he takes must thereafter fulfill his will and the mythical persona he has become.
It sounds enticing, destructive, exhilarating.
But for me I’ll stick to the stories. At least now.
I was told that the 4-way windowpane we used to get in high school (31 years ago) - from the nephew of the treasurer of the local Hells Angeles - was supposedly 400 mics. It was peach-red, translucent and curved like a minimal surface, pulled down at the corners, about the size of my thumbnail. I only once took one half one time, ever of this windowpane. I can remember the feeling of having to
hold-on hold-on hold-on, thinking about my parents, that they loved me. I said it to myself over and over again. A ridgepole in the storm: otherwise I’d have lost it. I watched the branches of a tree overhead come to life, and swirl and reach, a thousand hands and arms, and my own hands shook so much I could not write. And that one time at a tender sixteen was just too much.
I think at the right time, the right set and setting, now someday I will be interested to go for the Moon.
Much respect to the courageous!
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