That is a question I often ask myself. And in that question I am now forced to share of myself, to you, perfect strangers but kin in the world of entheogenics.
Defining me, first would be the music I listen to because coming to my home, that would be the first thing you'd take notice of: loud, crisp techno. Or minimal. Or fidget, wonk, house, chop or dub. Breaks, too, of course. But lots of techno. The music assailing your ears would find your eyes greeted by a rather nice garden entrance lined with pedros and torchs and odd button like cacti, some viridis, lots of salvias, herbs in boxes, succulents in clay pots, lavender and garlic flowers and tree-like marijuana strewn inconspicuously about. Lots of order and no leaves at foot - you'd see I like to use a magic wand to rid the leaves that accumulate daily from the trumpet vines entwining overhead in the cypress trees where Spanish Moss is hanging, all of that foliage creating a green canopied, shaded and hard-to-see MAGIC garden just beyond the heavy iron gate you've just closed behind you - that locked when you didn't expect it to.
The music and the order of plants in neat containers and the colors of the flowers and the small stained glass-windows dangling from the trees and the heavy crystals strung from wires and the odor of incense tells you that you are entering something rather cool and special.
You see me at a computer terminal through a window into the office, lined with books, but I'm on the phone with someone in a hushed funeral voice, talking to a bereaved family member with tact and ease. You enter the office and spy a huge early American pastel painting of the San Gabrial Mountains by the painter William Otte, books on the subjects of DNA and astrotheology, Sumer and ancient history according to Michael Cremo, old hardbacks on marijuana (shelves lined with books on everything about the plant), tomes by Ott, Narby, McKenna, Munn, Hancock, Braden, Kaku, Lipton, and Rand, et al, shelves of fossils and crystals and bones and drug paraphanalia of the past, so many things to look at that you hardly pay attention to the photos of deceased people lying about, or the death certificates explaining someones asparatame induced illness or MSG enhanced stroke or diet-food-created-obesity-congested-heart-failure or cell-phone created cancer or COPE victim from chem-trails that happen to litter tables in piles..... No, your too busy just looking at the mindset of the person you've come to meet cause everywhere you look there seems to be books or statues or items with mushrooms on them.
As you wait you still hear the techno quietly in the background and think this is not the normal funeral type music and he does not look like a normal type funeral person - at all. Nope, this guy is thin and short and wiery, wearing baggy shorts, sandles, he's old enough to never be carded again, and his shirt is a big bright pattern of mushrooms (obviously something from the 50s and Hawaii - but absolutely so freaking cool a shirt and so perfect like it was made for him, but wasn't), a shirt of mushrooms ......... just like those big JARS filled with all kinds of various mushrooms lining the wall behind his desk!
And, hmm, right next to those are the bones of some creature by, why it's a large map of Disneyland from a long time ago with Walt grinning from the corner. Then you notice a large Burning Man poster and items from Burning Man ... things with fire painted on them, or necklaces with a Burning Man logo - and you aren't even sure what all this Burning Man stuff is about, but it looks crazy and party-like, those pictures of him with those women and they are all dressed in wild costumes and it looks like they are in a dusty white sand storm in the middle of a desert - and they are all smiling and laughing and look .... very high!
The short guy behind the desk quietly sets down the phone and, looking at you, jumps up grabs your hand and says:
"Howdy, I'm Mike! Nice to meet you! Care for an apple?"