Harry Bailey is a 72-year old Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, where he found the three lifelong loves of his life: the woman he married, the English language, and cannabis. In this rollicking advisory on peculiar methods of executive success, we learn not only do’s and don’ts of handling monsters in the attic and downhill skiing, but we also spend a lubricated moment with Mr. Whiff, recently recovered weedalholic.

What an opportunity!

Or so I thought when invited to participate in this collection of testimonials from marijuana users. But the longer I thought about my half-century of exposure to the beloved weed, the less certain I am of what must be said and what is mere embellishment. So I’ll try to summarize my own introduction to grass and my long friendship with it, keeping generalizations to a minimum, because the unique quality of grass is that it affects each individual differently. You, on grass, are You.

I’m a writer by profession, not a famous one, but a very successful one in terms of earnings and personal satisfaction. I’ve had three novels published in hardcover, two of them made into bad movies, all of them gone into paperback and foreign editions. For twenty-five years I worked as a screenwriter as well, with over a hundred credits in TV prime time and a couple of movie screenplays that got produced, one of them terrible, the other a classic that you’ve undoubtedly seen and can still see regularly on the cable movie channels. My wife and I have been married for 47 years and have raised three children into healthy adulthood. Grass didn’t hurt my career.

I began smoking pot in late 1949 while a senior in English at U.C. Berkeley. A fellow English major had a brother who was a jazz musician in San Francisco, our connection to the only world in which pot was widely available in that era. My first experience was a washout, busy looking for weird symptoms and not finding any, until a chance remark (not very funny in a normal state) triggered the worlds of connotative meaning hidden in a simple sentence and we collapsed in helpless laughter, a laugh kick that fed on itself for many minutes and left us feeling totally relaxed and happy.

After that we began to smoke regularly, once or twice a week, learning to use the grass to open our minds to the beauties of various arts. Usually we listened to music of the kind we already liked: Beethoven and Brahms, symphonies and concertos. We were pilgrims discovering a new continent; the music yielded up incredible rewards in beauty and intensity, becoming not merely sounds but the very substance of our consciousness, the medium in which we existed. Today I still turn on, put on the stereo earphones and enter a new universe, that of Bach or Mozart, my tastes having evolved with age and listening.

Sometimes when high we would read from various masterworks being studied in our English courses. Shakespeare is best for this, his work deep and dense enough to bear full exploration.

My Shakespeare prof was a hideous old bastard who would have turned me against The Bard for life, had I not read him while stoned. Grass and Macbeth made me a lifetime reader. Another masterwork I never understood until I read it while high is the Sermon on the Mount. I’m a deist, but not a church member.

Painting is another art difficult to apprehend for those without years of study and practice, and for me, grass works its miracle here as well. I had taken some art appreciation courses and visited many museums, but I was never truly enraptured by a painting until I started smoking as an essential prelude to entering a museum or gallery. My epiphany took place before the great Dali original “The Last Supper” in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. I recommend the experience; it made a true art-lover of me. When my kids were in grades three to seven I used to wait for the school bus to bring them home, holding the latest issue of a course from the NY Metropolitan Museum with a dozen great prints in each issue. High, my head was as clear and receptive as theirs, and we’d spend one or two hours just LOOKING at those great paintings, and I’d get to see with their eyes.

So, perhaps it’s time to ask, does grass put anything extra into music, literature, painting, nature, or whatever? Of course not, but it allows you (lures you, enables you) to open your mind and senses to appreciate what is there for the expert, the practitioner. Grass is not for everyone, not for every occasion, not a mood elevator, not an escape. It is an exponential factor. It intensifies what you bring to it. Here, from personal experience, are a few guidelines.

Great times to turn on:

1. Just before the performance in the Vienna Opera House of a great symphony orchestra. Sound plus ambiance.

2. Just before entering the Dali Museum in Figueres, Spain, a gift from the master to his home town. Art, architecture, magic.

3. Before watching a lightning storm move over the Grand Canyon. Natures grandeur anywhere, worth a look through new eyes.

4. Before reading anything complex, subtle, nuanced – anything capable of being read s-l-o w-l-y with greater enjoyment. Proust, for example.

5. Half an hour before going to bed with one you love.

6. Halfway up the ski lift, if you can really ski. If you can’t, you won’t improve, but you’ll really understand terror.

Great times NOT to turn on:

1. Before the drive from Malibu across the Los Angeles freeway system to Pasadena. Or any drive in heavy traffic. You can do it with no loss of skill, but you’ll hate it. Bringdown!

2. Whenever there are people, places, or events you dislike looming in your immediate future. Bad gets worse.

3. Whenever you are feeling sad, depressed, angry or neurotic. Grass lights up the interior of your head, so if you have any monsters hiding in the dark corners, forget it.

4. Before hard, physical, boring work. Your rapid flow of thoughts may distract you, but an 8-hour shift lasts forever.

Over my five decades of smoking (No tobacco, please!) I’ve found that non-smokers usually ask the same questions, whether they’re planning to try it or not. So here are the time-tested replies.

Easy answers to hard questions:

1. What does grass do to you when you smoke it?

It does nothing to you physically, so the first few times you may miss the whole experience, being so busy taking your pulse and waiting to be seized and borne aloft. This is an I-feel-normal kick. Plan some activity you like, instead.

2. Is it habit-forming?

Physically, not at all. Psychologically, it’s like any other pleasurable activity, you tend to repeat it. I’ve smoked it almost daily when it was plentiful, or I’ve gone without it for months at a time whenever it was not easily available. If I quit for a while (as I’ve done) my body does not signal any difference.

3. What about the effect on your health?

At age 72 I’m a vigorous, active, strong male animal, blood pressure 120 over 70, good appetite, great digestion, normal weight, restful sleep. Grass didn’t make me healthy, but it doesn’t interfere with my healthful country lifestyle. I play tennis and golf, ski, cut wood, mow lawn, garden — enjoy all the activities I did at 30. No Viagra necessary.

4. How does it compare with alcohol, the legal drug?

So glad you asked. In answer, let me offer a TV playlet that I wrote during my years in showbiz, for a video producer friend on a comedy show. Somehow, it never got produced.

TV INTERVIEW – THE REFORMED GRASSOHOLIC

FADE IN ON LOGO THE DIRTY LITTLE SECRET SHOW – THEME MUSIC UP INTERIOR STUDIO CLOSE SHOT ON SHOW HOST – THEME MUSIC FADES

Max: Hello, America! I’m Max Probe, your lovable hard-hitting host on The Dirty Little Secret Show, dedicated to proving that everyone has something rotten to hide. Tonight’s show is a blockbuster, a television first! Now to my co-host …

CUT TO FULL FIGURE SHOT OF DONNA – CAMERA MOVES IN SLOWLY Donna: Thank you, Max. Hi there, America. As I’m sure you all know, I’m Donna Hue, famous interviewess. Tonight we turn the spotlight on a real crisis for our nation, the use of marijuana by otherwise grownup and responsible citizens, even high ranking corporate executives. oooooohhh, I get chills just thinking about it.

TWO SHOT – MAX AND DONNA

Max: That’s right, folks, tonight’s dirty secret is Mary-jane, as hopelessly hooked hay-blazers call it. With us here tonight is Mr. James Whiff, a business executive and top securities analyst, a man who narrowly escaped destruction by the demon weed. Please welcome this brave man!

CAMERA ANGLES TO THREE SHOT – MAX, DONNA & WHIFF – APPLAUSE

Max: I hope it’s not too embarrassing to tackle the subject head-on, so to speak — but we want to know how you beat the nasty habit that’s becoming so prevalent in our culture. When did you first realize you were a grassaholic?

Whiff: I never did. A friend had to tell me.

Donna: That’s devotion. Had you known this friend a long time?

Whiff: Yeah, it was Louie from the liquor store. I used to see him all the time, we were really tight, y’know? Then about six months ago he came to the apartment to see if I’d died.

Max: Very touching. Did he recognize your problem at once?

Whiff: Probably. I had a joint in my hand, holding my breath.

Donna: So he hit you with the truth. Did that wake you up?

Whiff: Naw, it cracked me up. I laughed so hard I got pissed off and left. But he sent all the guys from the Slob’s Nest to see me. That’s the bar I used to hang out in before I got onto weed. When I realized I hadn’t even missed the guys, I got scared. I knew it was time to re-examine my values, dope-wise.

Donna: Just how severe was your pot habit at that time, Jim?

Whiff: I was doing a lid a week. Plus stray hits from friends.

Max: Let’s get specific, Jim. ‘Were you hooked on Colombian?

Whiff: Naw, I was on Colombian for a while after I got off Panama Red, which was after I got off Jamaican Brown. When the roof fell in on me I was down to plain old Kansas Green.

Donna: That sounds like the pothead equivalent of White Port.

Whiff: Well, it does the job, skull-blowing-wise. Actually, I started buying Kansas because I got worried about our balance of payments.

Max: (encouraging smile) Even in the depths of your degradation, you were still a loyal American, right?

Whiff: I tried to be. But I wasn’t doing my part. I realized that when Louie and the guys began asking questions about my life style.

Donna: Could you give us an example of some of the unpatriotic vices you had fallen into?

Whiff: Well, my car, for one thing. It got cobwebs all inside. I just couldn’t make the driving scene, y’know? I mean, the vibes were so hostile in traffic, it brought me down. I found myself walking to the office, left the car in the garage.

Donna: You mean you were turning on in the morning?

Whiff: Oh yeah. One morning I had half a roach left over from the night before, so on a whim I lit it up. Before that, I never ate breakfast, too nervous about the day. Stoned, I was suddenly into the bacon-and-eggs scene. Overnight habit.

Max: That’s disgusting, Jim – but we understand. Having to eat a full meal every morning must have ruined your work schedule.

Whiff: Actually, I ate breakfast in the time I saved by walking to work.

Donna: Let’s get into the really embarrassing problems brought on by being a grassaholic. How did your wife stand it, Jim?

Whiff: It was tough on her. I mean, we had it sort of worked out over the years, she was adjusted to me being a certain kind of guy — then as I got heavy into weed, I stopped chasing pussy.

Max: Good lord, how did that happen? Did dope kill your desire?

Whiff: Naw, it was just that one morning after the bacon-and-eggs I got to memory tripping. Got into a replay of our honeymoon. when I happened to look at her doing the dishes, she wasn’t all that bad. Next thing you know we’re balling every morning. Sort of cut down on my urge to go sniffing for nooky on the lunch break.

Max: But what about after work? Cocktail hour is beaver city.

Whiff: Yeah, but I’d be doing a jay on the walk home and forget to go into the bars. And the wife was terrific about hopping in the sack if I came home horny. Even suggested it sometimes.

Donna: She must be a fantastic woman.

Whiff: She got better, with practice. So I found myself giving up the strange. To show you how bad I was into grassaholism, I didn’t even miss it.

Max: What with all the gluttony and orgies every morning, I presume your work really suffered.

Whiff: Well, I was usually late, but luckily I wasn’t punching a time clock. Thing is, I’d always do up another stick on the walk to the office, then I’d get heavy into my job. I wore out two desktop computers in the year I was really a hopeless case. Cranked out so many reports they tried to make me a vice president. But I couldn’t dig it.

Donna: (incredulous) You don’t mean you refused a promotion!

Whiff: Yeah, my ambition was shot. I just couldn’t see having to move my stash to a bigger office. I had false bottoms in all my desk drawers and the desk was bolted to the floor.

Max: I suppose your mind was so clouded with dope that you never thought of just exchanging the desk drawers.

Whiff: I thought of it. But the VPs all had Chippendale, and I had Regency. It would have been a hassle. So we settled on just a raise, without the promotion.

Donna: Your case history shows that you have two children, Jim. How did they respond to your being a hopeless dope fiend?

Whiff: They were cool about it. They’d always leave their homework and play with me when I got hung up with one of their toys. I used to waste a lot of their time, but they never complained.

Donna: Tell us, did they succeed in acting as though it were normal for a grown man to be doing things like that?

Whiff: Yeah, they never let on. They were wonderful. There was a period when I was heavy into Tinkertoys, and they helped me build some stuff you wouldn’t believe. Then there was the giggles — we used to giggle a lot, get so busted up we’d fall down on the floor and roll around.

Max: Uh, please, Jim — the network does have to maintain certain standards, so we’d better not dwell on that sort of thing. I think it’s been made clear that you were scraping the bottom. What turned things around for you?

Whiff: It was my friends that did it. I was too far gone to listen when they tried to talk to me. So for my own good they knocked me down, held me, and poured a fifth of scotch down my throat. While I could still talk they made me tell ’em every spot I had any weed stashed, and they ran it all down the dispose-all. They sent out for six cases of beer from the Flying Lush and then took turns sitting up with me for the next week.

Donna: That’s a heart-warming story, Jim. What about your wife and kids during that difficult period?

Whiff: Well, they couldn’t stand to see what I was going through, so the fellas took up a collection and bought ’em tickets to go stay with her parents in Maine. Still there, I guess.

Max: Did you have any relapses, any tendency to go back to the killer weed?

Whiff: No, I’m proud to say I’ve been drunk every day since then. Matter of fact, I’m half tanked right now.

Max: So is most of our audience, Jim, it’s the American way. I have to tell you, we’re all mighty proud of you. Have you gotten back into the mainstream of life now?

Whiff: You bet. I knocked up two secretaries in the last six months.

Donna: What about your car? Still got those nasty cobwebs?

Whiff: Nope. They cleaned those out when they put on the new front fenders and grill. Some idiot in a crosswalk, y’know.

Max: I bet you’re putting a lot more of your money to work now, boosting our national economy, right?

Whiff: Yeah, I’m popular with every branch of business. My auto insurance has tripled. I’m seeing my doctor frequently, again. With the divorce, the paternity suits, and the accident claims, the law firm that represents me has just voted me Client of the Year.

Donna: Bully for you, Jim. Have you let your friends know how you feel about what they did for you?

Whiff: Damn right. I had liquor store Louie move into my wife’s room after she served me with the divorce papers. As for the fellas — well, my bar tab at the Slob’s Nest topped two hundred bucks last week. No buddy of mine ever drives home sober.

Max: Yours is truly an inspirational story, Jim. Do you have any words of wisdom to pass along, to help the families of other grassaholics?

Whiff: One thing you gotta understand, to deal with the problem. Grassaholism is not a disease. It’s a goddam crime!

Donna: That’s laying it on the line. Do you see any use in fooling around with psychiatry or counseling or that kind of crap?

Whiff: Hell, no. If a guy’s drinking buddies can’t straighten him out, what he needs is a good hard bust.

Max: I’ll go along with that. I know a guy in Texas who’s doing twenty years for bringing half an ounce across the border. It cured him. He hasn’t had a toke since they threw him in solitary, and he’s doing fine without it.

Whiff: Way I see it, I’m paying taxes to support guys to catch these criminals, more taxes to prosecute ’em, then more taxes for a public defender, then more taxes for prison guards to watch ’em eat the food I pay for — I want some action for all that goddam money. I don’t want all my employees to be out of work – let’s bust everybody!

Donna: What you’re saying, Jim — we should all support our government in its War On Drugs. Who cares if it costs billions to stamp out reefer madness!

Whiff: (Pulling out a pocket flask) I’ll drink to that, honey. (takes a big slug) Say, I could go for a broad like you, I’ve always had a weakness for low-slung tits. (offering flask) Here, have a belt.

Donna: Uh, perhaps later, Jim. You were saying before the show that you had a great idea to keep marijuana out of our schools.

Whiff: Right! Sell beer in the cafeteria. (puts his hand on Donna’s leg) Whadda ya say we have lunch after the show, beautiful?

Donna: Thank you very much, but it’s almost midnight.

Whiff: Aw shit, that’s right. Well, how about a little party in my car? I’ve got a case in the back seat.

Max: (Raising his voice irritably) If you don’t mind, Jim, we have just a moment left to cover some important points —

Whiff: (Shoves the flask at him) Hey, have a slug and loosen up, tight-ass. I think I got a live one here.

Max: (Frantically signalling the off scene director) Well, folks, that about wraps it up for tonight.

CAMERA DOLLIES IN TO A TIGHT CLOSEUP OF MAX struggling to thrust the flask aside.

Donna: (off scene) Stop that, Jim!

Max: Thank you America for tuning in to this segment of The Dirty Little Secret show, televisions answer to our President’s call for more educational programming. Now stay glued to your screen for ten minutes of your favorite commercials from our greatest breweries and wineries.

THEME MUSIC UP FULL AS WE SLOWLY FADE OUT.

Though this little skit was written many years ago, before I escaped from the entertainment industry, the opinions herein expressed are still mine. I offer the script royalty-free to any acting group capable of reaching a wider audience. It’s hard to conduct a public debate on our marijuana laws when one side has already been declared the enemy, subject to arrest and imprisonment for acting on their views.

If I were living alone, I might have the courage to sign my real name to this declaration of my beliefs, for it is the truth as I know it. But I have a dear wife (a non-smoker by choice) and grown children living nearby in what is, by any standard, a conservative community. I will not put any heat on the people I love, so Chaucer will provide me a pen name.

The author is a technical writer for a company that makes robots. He spent 10 years as an English teacher, and before that he was a laborer, living all over the U.S. At age 45, he is happily married, with one child (George in “George’s Rainbow”) and another one on the way. He rides his bicycle every day and feels great about being alive.

I did an amazing experiment. Before today, I hadn’t smoked marijuana in about 3 years. For the 7 or 8 years before that, I smoked about one time a year, maybe two little hits. So when I sparked up a joint today, I was pretty much a marijuana virgin. I’m really quite terrified of marijuana. Truth in large doses can be very uncomfortable. If it weren’t for George, I probably wouldn’t have smoked again in my life.

I had been starting to realize that I wasn’t able to tune in to George’s actual personality. Perhaps my life was moving too fast, perhaps my brain could never slow down sufficiently to see subtly enough to get a glimpse of his soul. I decided that maybe I could do it via marijuana. (I happened to have some marijuana because a few months ago, I had given a copy of Alan Watts’ The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are to a teenager in the neighborhood, and he had surprised me by giving me a miniature baggie containing a nice little bud, in return.) For all the four and a half years of George’s life, Ruey and I have been on the run. For over two years, George has spent about three hours a day on the freeway to and from day-care, where he’s institutionalized 9 or 10 hours a day. When he was an infant, he had to ride in a carrier on my back while I did research at the university library for my MA degree. Now during the week, I see him only about 20 minutes a night, when Ruey and he pick me up at 10 PM from work. I felt that if I didn’t get to know him now, when?

It’s funny. Like an old grandpa, I had to put on my reading glasses to roll a joint! The marijuana was very dry and flaky, but I was able to do a halfway decent rolling job. I felt like I was some kind of criminal while I smoked two hits out on the balcony, looking down on the windows and swimming pool of the cop’s house next door. I coughed a lot while trying to hold the smoke in my lungs.

I went back into the house, where George was watching cartoons like a zombie. I’d let him stay home from daycare today. He could tell that I wanted to hang out with him, and he graciously chose me over the TV. He asked me to play with him with his little Hot Wheels police station/bank setup.

I was immediately overwhelmed by George’s real personality, because I had time to see it. I spend “quality time” with George every day, but it’s so compressed. I hold him a lot and I hug him, but this kind of love almost reduces him to the status of a little puppy with no real personality. The insight I got into his personality today was almost too much to take. During the two frantic months I’ve spent teaching at Heald College, he has become a little boy, no longer a baby. He is complicated and sensitive to a degree that I hadn’t expected.

I could feel his loneliness, how much he missed me, and the void in his life that existed because of not having a brother or sister. He really needed someone to play with. I looked at a Power Ranger brochure he’d been trying to show me for over a month, and this time, instead of looking at one of the many little pictures and saying, “That’s cool, George,” or, “Ask me how much I care, George,” I really looked. I realized that I couldn’t really look, though, because some of the pictures of the little action figures were too small. I said, “Let me get my glasses, George, so I can check this out.” He loved that. He explained complicated relationships between the various Power Rangers and the evil villains and monsters they fight, and he taught me which Zords (Power Ranger vehicles) morphed into which Megazords (giant fighting robots). He had studied that glossy brochure as carefully as I would study a new computer program.

It was an unusually sunny and warm March day, and sunlight was pouring in through the blinds. George found light in rainbow colors coming off the bottom beveled edge of the mirror on the closet door in the living room. He had to crouch down and put his head about a foot off the floor to see it. “Dad, look at this! I can see the rainbow!” Normally, I would have bent down a little, seen a slight rainbow effect, and brushed him off with, “That’s really cool, George.” Maybe I would have tried to teach him the word “prism” and explain how a prism diffracts light. Because I was high on marijuana, though, and therefore more sensitive and nice than I really am, I got all the way down on the floor and put my head at the perfect level to see what he was seeing.

Man! Light was breaking up into colors too intensely, too magically, too beautifully. When I moved my head slightly, I could see several stacks of rainbow colors-red orange yellow green blue indigo violet-one stack of color on top of another. Since the light was reflected directly from the sun, I feared eye damage, but more than that, I felt shy (or afraid) to make eye contact with God. It seemed as if there were black eye makeup between each color, as if God had a sex more female than female.

There were probably only about two minutes during the whole day (maybe the whole year!) when the sunlight would hit that mirror so, and the colors could only be seen in a miniscule area of space on our apartment floor. It’s amazing how kids can be in the right place at the right time. [I looked for days after writing this story for that phenomenon to recur, but it never even came close-the sun was always at the wrong angle.]

George showed me a bruise on his leg and cuts on his arm that he’d gotten when he fell and hurt himself on an escalator at the mall last week. I had been rushing him when he fell. I was angry at him for taking too long to eat lunch and I was impatient because he was not keeping up with me. He cried, but I ignored him and kept walking, teaching him, I suppose, to be tough, or that if he had been keeping up with me, nothing would have happened. Now, looking at his injuries, which were just about healed, I felt sad that he had never shown them to me, even though they were of great interest to him. He had known I was too busy, or perhaps he thought I didn’t care.

I said, “You’re coughing a lot, George.” He said, “I have a little cold.” I thought it was interesting that he was now diagnosing his own illnesses. In the past, it was always Ruey or I who told him that he had a cold. He was breaking my heart – I didn’t even know he was sick.

Georgie and I decided to look at the baby book my mom had made for me when I was a child. On one page was a photograph of my classmates from the first grade. George asked me their names, and I looked at the all the little kids, each a very small rectangular black-and-white picture, and said, “I don’t know. I can’t remember.” And he said, “Come on! What were their names? What were the names of your friends?” I looked again, and one by one, the names snapped into recollection. It was very fun! Once I remembered their names, the kids came alive for me, thanks to George.

(You say you don’t remember something because some impulse in your brain tells you that it’s going to take too much processing time. The pace of your life makes you so time conscious that you just instinctively start saying, “I don’t remember.”)

One problem that I have with marijuana is that it makes everything seem overwhelming. I felt flustered and confused trying to get ready for our trip to Berkeley – where’s my money, do I have my keys, is everything turned off in the house? It seemed an almost insurmountable task to get George and myself dressed, find his bicycle helmet and strap it on his head, and lift my 10-speed down from the hook on the ceiling.

And then, right when we were ready to leave, George insisted that I clean the bathroom! The sink was filthy, and I guess he didn’t want to hear Ruey yell at me later for not cleaning it. I had no choice but to find a rag and some Ajax and get to work. When I was about halfway done, George excused me and we took off on my bike for the BART station.

It was very hard managing my money for the BART ticket machines. My hands shook with tension as I dug for quarters in my backpack and fumbled with bills in my wallet. Simple, everyday tasks like buying a BART ticket can be mind-boggling for me when I’m high.

The BART ride to Berkeley seemed long and strange. As I wheeled my bike through the electric doors into the train, I felt so neurotic, so full of worry, so tense. Maybe that’s why things aren’t going well for me at Heald. Maybe it’s like Ruey said – maybe I’m mean and bitter in the classroom; maybe the trouble I have with some of my students stems from my own tension. True, working at Heald means facing serious sociological and ethical problems, but I don’t have to be so self righteous or deadly serious about it. (It’s hard for me to be complacent when my students terminate their statements in class with “ya-know-wa-sain?” (you know what I’m saying), just like the pitifully ignorant gang-banger/rappers do on MTV. The ignorance I’m seeing in students at Heald seems like a national emergency.)

George’s behavior was excellent on this special day. First we went to the Mediterraneum, where George had hot chocolate and coffee cake. Later, we had pizza at Fat Slice. We danced to the beat of the percussionists playing congas and bells in the square at the university. It was an incredibly beautiful day. It felt so fine to be riding my 25-year-old 10-speed down Telegraph Avenue with my son on the back. While riding that same bike more than two decades ago down a cane road on Maui, with an angry dog right at my heals, or through the projects in Denver to my taxi driving job, I never dreamed that there would someday be a baby seat mounted on the back of it and that I would have a bright little half-Chinese son riding in it!

Ferrell Beck is the pen name of an artist, writer and teacher living in New Mexico. Born in 1947, she received the BFA and MFA degrees in painting from Tulane University the University of Guanajuato in Mexico, respectively. For nearly thirty years she has taught studio art and lecture courses at five universities and colleges in the United States and Mexico. She has had fifteen solo exhibitions of her art, and is the recipient of numerous awards and grants. Her paintings are in several museum collections as well as in private and corporate collections. Beck also writes arts criticism and articles for regional and national publications, and has recently published a book of her essays on art.

My name is Ferrell Beck and I smoke marijuana. Who would believe it? I am a most ordinary 51-year-old, a mother of a well-adjusted and successful and tee-totaling daughter, the wife of a similarly abstemious artist-husband, a college teacher of some repute, and an artist with a long resume to prove my perseverance and accomplishments. I contradict any stereotype of a “slacker,” being punctual, efficient, active and highly motivated, and I dare say most of my friends, as well as my child, would be surprised or even shocked to know that mj is also my friend.

I don’t buy pot, don’t solicit it, and rarely use it. But when I have occasion to have a joint or two – once or twice a year, arriving from the most unexpected sources – I savor the experience and use it in a programmed way to enhance what I do as an artist.

Because my art, unlike the myths of unbridled self-expression born of angst, is heady stuff, dealing with a handful of themes: choice, chance and consequence; change and the process of change; and most important, relationships – causal, oppositional, complementary and paradoxical. These ideas feed on the high from the occasional mj experience, and are nourished by it.

The term high is the right one, since I use pot to open up, to connect with the realm of ideas, not to escape from anything but rather to escape to that mysterious place where ideas reside. I use it to brainstorm for an extended period of time, to clear away peripheral mental clutter, to locate the point of my work. Most of the time, I get something valuable from the process; on one occasion, I had a bona fide epiphany that changed my mind and life in a permanent way.

My routine is this: I plan to smoke on a day when I don’t expect any interruptions, when I don’t have any pressing responsibilities, and when nothing is expected of me. I would never drive under the influence, rarely go farther than the back yard, and don’t take care of normal day-to-day business while high. This is not a social activity for me, but a luxurious period of solitude and intense self-awareness. “Free” time. Scheduled free time. Time to think about anything which, for me, eliminates thinking about myself.

Mj releases me from self-consciousness, and at the same time, makes me attentive to how I feel – not emotionally, but on the level of muscles and impulses and cells. And thoughts, most of all.

So, I smoke a bit, then stretch, pace and think, take notes and jot down diagrams and sketches for artworks. If someone calls, they get an earful; otherwise, I smoke, pace, think and do whatever feels right at the moment. I might lie down and rest; I might do home-made t’ai chi; I might do a bit of manic housework; I might stay up late and watch Charlie Rose, compose a letter to the editor, make lists and more lists. If my husband is home, he leaves me alone although sometimes he’ll wait up for the late-night benefits of my heightened sensitivity. But he knows this is my time, between me and my head, and he respects it without understanding or envying it one bit.

Later, I’ll look at the evidence, sift through the notes and do a lot of editing: out go the silly, trite and obvious ideas, and I store the valuable ones in my cache of Things to Do. Transcribed into neat type, these scribbled jottings include ideas that may be developed into artworks or notes that may evolve into essays and eventual books. Notes like these – scribbled and barely legible, not typed and neatly centered on the clean page – serve as signposts and maps, revealing to me the direction of my work. It’s clear to me from the nature of my thinking – words like momentum, cause, arrows, plus signs and minus signs being the dominant and recurrent motifs – that, if the visual language of art weren’t my first language of expression and if I had a different temperament and background, I’d probably be a physicist or a theologian. As it is, I am, the ideas manifest themselves as signs and wheels, constructions and occasional pictorial paintings that explore these persistent themes.

In 1986, while doing my mj “thing” in relationship to a major multi-media exhibition I was working on, I experienced a true and lasting epiphany. I rarely talk about it, and have never mentioned the role of mj in this episode; I intend to fully explore this event in a future book of art-related essays titled Reflections, but I will summarize it here in case it is of value to this project.

I was preparing for an exhibit titled ONE WORLD: A SERIES OF MEDITATIONS that included eight “stations” of various media and themes: the show had a video component, maps, documentation, hand-made effigies of world leaders, an altar, etc. The intention of the piece was to invite people to a sequential “viewing:”/participatory experience that would prove that we function as One World, that we have individual responsibilities of attitude and action that determine outcome. In order to make this artwork, I had to be of two minds at once: thinking about the overall piece as Art with the critical detachment and decision-making that requires; and approaching each individual component in a spirit of total involvement and investment of mental and emotion purpose without think about Art. This is a difficult process, a back-and-forth of right/left brain, detachment/passion, etc., and is the process of deep creativity. At this point I give myself over to the work and am lost in it, and my focus is on that magical point where idea and form and intention coincide and resonate.

One night, standing at the kitchen island and making notes about an aspect of the piece that required me to make gifts, focusing very specifically on the object of the “gift-giving,” entering into a prayerful state of mind (and mildly high on mj), I had a sudden flash of insight, a moment so profound it was, in retrospect, like a lightning bolt or a power surge. I have tried to recapture the physical feeling: a downward surge, like heat, then – vaVOOM! – moving quickly back up? It’s hard to remember and hard to say.

But in that moment, unintended and unexpected, many things were revealed to me: something about the fallacy of the concept of zero, which I could never explain in words. An absolute knowing of “god”, instantaneous! A realization of my connection to everything. A sudden loss of fear. A sense of overwhelming peace, of the rightness of things and of my role in the big picture. Dramatic? You bet.

The next day I told a couple of my students that I thought I’d had a religious experience the night before, and they laughed; otherwise, I didn’t mention it, and I went about my daily routine seeing the world and my own organism in a profoundly new way, from a new perspective.

For a while, weeks and perhaps months, I felt very fragile and, at the same time, very powerful. I felt strong attractions to and from certain people; I sensed small children and babies turning their heads to look at me when I came into their view – much later I would think: as though they recognized something; an aura? I felt an enormous responsibility for every action no matter how small and went into an overzealous and annoying fit of recycling. I experienced numerous synchronic events. I had an innate sense of the intention of people and of inanimate objects like books and art, responding to positive and/or negative “vibes” which either drew me to them or physically repelled me. I relaxed when riding as a passenger in a car (I had always been a “white-knuckler”). I knew that I was a part of every living thing, of life itself, and that everything was okay.

These Ôsymptoms’ lasted for weeks and perhaps months, gradually decreasing and becoming more manageable. Within three months I suffered a debilitating though not life-threatening illness, a subject I also intend to write about more fully and which I’ve never been able to separate from the spiritual “zap.” (Perhaps I was so opened up to the world that my immune system was also wide open?) The changes in lifestyle required by the onset of illness, now chronic and mild, merged over time with the mental changes brought about by the “paradigm shift,” a term I only later learned.

Now, fourteen years later, every cell in my body is three times removed from this episode, yet I still experience the long-lasting effects of attitude and thinking. And while I don’t wish for another major breakthrough – way too demanding in a physical sense – I still use mj to open myself up to more subtle alignments in brain activity. For the type of work I do, and for the lifestyle I enjoy with its long periods of uninterrupted solitude, occasional use of mj is part of the creative process, part of my efficiency. Smoking pot is a private activity for me, and nobody else’s business. I share this information with you to counteract harmful myths about mj and to talk about the depths/heights of the creative process and the workings of the artful mind. I hope it’s of use to you.

Jeremy Wells is currently a 23 year-old undergraduate student (senior) studying history at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio. Remembering how children dance, he spreads his arms and celebrates life, and takes just a moment to commune with squirrels.

Hi, my name is Jeremy and I smoke marijuana. I’d like to tell you why, but first, if you’ll bear with me, I want to tell you about something that happened to me. Recently I was visiting with a relative who has a two-year-old baby girl, and we were looking for four leaf clovers. So here I was, a twenty four-year-old man on my hands and knees, combing through the grass and screaming “over here I found one”. Actually we found several and I think we were probably more excited than the kid. See children have a way of doing that to you. Through them you can vicariously relive your childhood. In the name of “playing with the kids” you can shed your inhibitions and do the things you used to take for granted. You look at the world through a different set of eyes. It alters your worldview.

In the course of reflecting on my four leaf clover (of course I kept one) I began to think of all the things I used to do as a kid, and how everything holds wonder and magic for children. I remember when I was a kid I used to dance, not some choreographed number, or something meant to make me look cool in front of the ladies, but life affirming, from the soul, “thank you God I’m just happy to be alive” dancing. It probably wasn’t very pretty or graceful, but I’m sure it was a beautiful thing to see and experience. I know it made me feel good. I also used to sing, long and loud. If I didn’t know the words I’d make them up, or I’d “la la la, mmm mmm mmm” through it. I didn’t care about sounding pretty, it was just about the music and the joy it evoked in me and the overwhelming need to let some of it out for fear that I would overfill with joy and burst otherwise. It was that burst of creative energy that needed an outlet, and that I experience now when I write or smear paper with charcoal and pastel. These were joyful, spiritual, things I felt.

Something else about childhood is that sense of wonder and mystery you feel. It’s the whole “wow, look at the four leaf clover, cool” kind of thing. I remember lying on my stomach in the grass and watching ants parade past. I used to play in the creek, and catch crawdads and minnows with little dip nets just so I could look at them, then let them go.

I used to yell at my dad to stop the car, so I could look at deer. I remember him teaching me to “talk” to squirrels, too, mimicking their raspy bark to evoke an answer from the bushy tailed acrobats as they peered out from behind trees.

Somewhere along the line, though, something terrible happened. I grew up. I became too cool to sing and dance, because I wasn’t good at it. I started saying to my little sisters, “yeah, it’s a deer, so what, we see ’em all the time”, and I even quit playing in the creek and talking to the squirrels.

Now you may wonder what this little indulgence of nostalgia has to do with marijuana. Well, you see, my friend and I were stoned when we were looking for those four leaf clovers, and his daughter was with her mom.

While we were waiting for them to get home, we were playing. Maybe not in the same way we would have if we were still children, but under the influence of this drug, we had dropped our adult reservations and our cynicism long enough to feel the wonder and the mystery once again. People also speak of the ability of this plant to help enhance their enjoyment of everything from food to music. If you doubt this, go to a Phish concert, or a bluegrass festival. Inhale deeply and in the breeze you will smell the sweet acrid scent of burning herb. Then look around at what you see. People don’t just hear the music, they feel it, and they aren’t bashful about it. They spread their arms wide and whirl ecstatically, like a maniacal dervish. They twist and contort their arms, and they stomp their feet, kicking up dust. They may as well scream “I deny you adulthood, and all of your constraints and strangleholds, and I’m gonna dance and sing and run and play and I do believe in magic, too!” The plant enhances their experience in this way. It’s not about partying and getting wasted. It’s about celebrating life. And it may not be pretty, but it’s a beautiful thing to behold.

“Jeremiah was a bullfrog, was a good friend of mine, never understood a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine, yeah, he always had some mighty fine wine” – THREE DOG NIGHT

The author, who uses the Pseudonym “Jatayu,” did his undergraduate work in India and England and is now a Ph.D. student in Boston. Supping at the “overflowing caldron of a million personalities,” he reawakens the qualities of mind that he had forgotten, and is humbled by all that may be.

There is a long take in Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou when the protagonist and the girl with whom he is on the run are reclining on a beach by the moonlight. The camera stays on them for a while, then slowly pans away towards the beach, and onto the sea – one slow motion, from the low ebbing waves towards the glittering water in the horizon, then skywards, finally settling on a bright, glowing sun.

In this single take, the genius of Godard was revealed to me. It was one of the most intensely exciting moments of my life, one in which I was, as Deadheads would say, in “the zone,” that normally inaccessible expanse of my mind. I might add that I had smoked a joint just before watching the film. It dawned on me then, as it does every time I smoke weed, how incredibly powerful this plant is, and how beautiful the spaces are where it allows me to roam.

I am from India, and am currently a graduate student in Boston. I had my first joint in my hometown of Calcutta – a clear summer night, slightly cool – at my friend’s house in the northern part of the city. Much of this part of the city has its residents living in two or three storey buildings very closely backed up against each other, so that passing from the terrace of one to that of another is easy and a good way to pass time among young kids with nothing much else to do. It was on one of those terraces that I was initiated.

My friend had built me up for the trip – evidently, his introduction to weed had also been recent, and he was literally overflowing with excitement as he described to me what he had “seen”. I was a bit skeptical at first, but I guess that’s how everyone is before the experience. I took a few tokes, and wasn’t quite sure for a while what the big deal was about – nothing much seemed to change around me. The sky remained dark and not full of “mysterious lights” as my friend had described, and when my friend asked me to get off my perch and walk about, I was able to do so without much difficulty.

But a little while into this exercise, I suddenly realized that I wasn’t quite sure how long I had been walking around on the terrace. And then it hit me. Not a discrete event with a start or a stop, but a slow oncoming and a sustained rush. Sweet, painful, bright streaks of lightning from a cloudless, moonless space – a barrage of 2001-Space-Oddyssey-like diffusions of light, multicolored, morphing shapes before focusing into pointed shafts of energy. Before long, we were downstairs in his room – I had brought along a live Grateful Dead CD – and I just about managed to put it into his player and press the play button before collapsing onto the bed. For a long time, I lay awake, twitching all over to the rhythms of “The Other One”. That night, I heard many sounds: ancient, primitive sounds, eastern strings, the drone of a sitar, the grooves of a bass drum. Rejoice, rejoice, I had no choice.

That amazing experience in Calcutta put me in a whole different zone – I could never have imagined the vistas that those few hours of music and hallucinations would open up for me. I could never have dreamt that my mind could be so powerful, so keen, and yet so elastic, so inclusive, and so boundaryless. It was a life-changing discovery, so much so that my relationship/experience with weed became almost quasi-spiritual.

I am not one to smoke a joint and head to a nightclub. I prefer to tune into some music or watch a film, and anticipate the staggering insights that follow. For a long time, I confined myself to the world of the Dead and its many cousins, but recently, often with the help of weed, I have broken new ground – Electric Miles, funk, trip-hop – all beautiful explorations emanating from the confluence of 60s acid rock and jazz. It occurred to me that all music has a history, and it is too easy to judge a particular form of music without appreciating the tradition to which it belongs. It is a humbling experience to realize that things that I have earlier brushed off without so much as a good listen have suddenly begun to grip me as interesting.

Similar awakenings have come to me in film appreciation – the first time I saw Pierrot Le Fou while stoned, I experienced multiple epiphanies (was it a coincidence that at one point the protagonist looks straight into the camera and begins to philosophize about Joyce?). The film opened my eyes to the infinite possibilities of the medium that Godard had chosen to work with. How different is it from static art? How demanding is it of the viewer? And how exhilarating the realization that filmmaking can be so cerebral, and yet so instinctive at the same time. This is what Huxley must have meant when he spoke of “suchness”. More importantly, this is what artistic expression is – something that cannot be second-guessed, something beyond judgment, something beyond words. Yet we are forever trying to find words to give voice to our ignorance, reducing our incapacity to grasp to the escapist dictum – what we don’t understand must be not worth understanding.

This same dictum lies at the heart of the layman’s attitude towards cannabis and other hallucinogens – not so much a fear of the unknown, as a willful denial of the possibilities, cloaking an ignorance born out of a fear of the law. To the uninitiated, I cite its more miraculous effects on my mind. Often this is hard to pull off without sounding “abstract” or being told to “keep it real”, but isn’t that what it is precisely about? Defying our traditional concept of reality, trying to get past it, attempting to inhabit other spaces, equally real, and much more potent, to describe which, words are much too inadequate. Perhaps this is it – the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The mind is a wonderful thing, an overflowing cauldron of a million and more personalities, and language is too ill-equipped to describe the creative forces that take shape from the interactions between these numerous “selves” – the use of marijuana is but one attempt to comprehend, even “experience”, this interaction, and to understand better who we are, and what our place in this universe is.

“Prairie Dog” lives in the heart of South Dakota and has crossed Hand and Hyde Counties more times than he cares to count. Amplifying the pleasures of country living by moderate use, he finds entertainment in the rain.

Almost anyone can appreciate the scenic grandeur of Yellowstone, Yosemite, or the Grand Canyon. It takes a little effort to appreciate the beauty of Hand and Hyde Counties in central South Dakota. These are plain farming communities on the Great Plains, which flourished in the 1880s and perhaps in the 1940s, but have been in a steady decline for many decades. The landscape is flat or gently rolling, with few trees other than those that were planted in shelterbelts by the farmers. During the long winters, it can be as bleak as Mongolia. In a dry summer, the persistent wind blows up dust clouds that obscure much of the view. Spring and fall pass through quickly, without the lingering beauty of foliage in Vermont or blooming dogwoods in Tennessee. No matter how you slice it, Hand and Hyde Counties don’t have much to attract tourists from faraway places.

I learned long ago that there is a way to enhance the natural beauty of Hand and Hyde Counties, and other places that are more functional than spectacular. Just as the Emerald City of Oz could not be fully appreciated unless one put on the magic green glasses, so too, Hand and Hyde Counties appear far more scenic if one just remembers to smoke a little marijuana before traversing them.

Suddenly the whole prairie comes alive! On a gloomy, muddy spring day, the bright green grasses really shine, and the returning meadowlarks fairly dance on the fence posts. The coteau hills of Ree Heights (despite its name, a suburb of nothing) suddenly appear to be a spectacular range of low mountains. The boarded-up storefronts of dying towns can appear charming and quaint. When a little cannabis is stirred into the equation, the road from Miller to Highmore could almost be made of yellow bricks. After all, it is the “Black and Yellow Trail”, U.S. Highway 14, which I used to imagine got that name from the blacktop and the yellow line down the middle, like the thousand other secondary roads, until someone clued me in: “No, dummy, it’s the road to the BLACK Hills and YELLOWstone.” Okay, now I get it, but it’s a long hot drive in July from Miller to the Black Hills, and another full day at least to Yellowstone Park. And nowadays, most folks take the Interstate, which is an hour to the south.

Hand County was named for someone named Hand. But as you enter the county seat of Miller from any direction, you are greeted by a hand-painted billboard which shows two hands shaking or clasped. One is marked “urban”, and the other is “rural”, and the legend reads, “Hand in Hand, we prosper and grow.” With a little marijuana to encourage the imagination, this thought is almost profound. Perhaps the billboards were put up after a horrendous fight on the local school board, during which area farmers all vowed to boycott Main Street, and Miller, and the merchants started to get a little scared. If the people from Polo and Ree Heights and Wessington and Vayland quit trading in Miller for good, maybe grass really would start growing in the streets. No, not that kind of grass!

Anyway, not everybody can live next to a chiseled red rock canyon or a range of breath-taking snow-capped peaks. And if everybody did, those places would be far more spoiled than they are becoming anyway. Somebody’s got to stay home and mind the farm, and raise the beef and corn and wheat that keeps them city slickers fat and sassy. Somebody has to live in the gray hard-scrabble country where tornadoes and blizzards sweep across the plains with frightening speed, where entertainment and culture means a choice of beer or bowling or a crummy movie. After a driving summer rain, when there is a double rainbow, two perfect arcs that stretch from end to end, and the indigo is the most vivid of the requisite colors, maybe there really is a pot of gold down the fenceline a piece.

On other days, whether you’re in Hand and Hyde counties for the afternoon or for the rest of your life, the experience is doubtless enhanced by just a bit of nature’s emerald glasses, known sometimes as THC. The garbage man in Spanky and Our Gang’s song “Commercial” was onto something. If “pot’s too good to be just for the young”, surely it’s too good to be just for rich urban hippies. What the hell, the sign may say that we’re a drug free county, but it grows wild around here.

South Dakota has a governor who believes in carrying the “war on drugs” to extremes. We have boot camp prisons and drug dogs sniffing school lockers and billboards at the state line that read: “If you bring illegal drugs into South Dakota, plan on staying a LONG, LONG, TIME!” A middle-aged farmer, who grew up not far from Hand county, claims the slogan should be turned around: “If you’re planning to stay in South Dakota a long time, you better bring a lot of drugs!”

A lot of drugs can lead to abuse. Just like the grain from the harvest or the white snows of December, there can be too much of a good thing. With the imported Jamaican or Mexican variety, or the sinsemilla that was raised in a closet in Wyoming with the help of grow-lites, a pinch is all it takes. Suddenly, the plain plains of Hand and Hyde Counties (Anywhere, U.S.) is turned into a magical kingdom, and Miller, Ree Heights, and Highmore could be the cradle of modern civilization.

Del Cogswell Brebner is an 80 year-old writer who lives in New Hampshire. Finding an amusing antidote to American football, she indulges in the subtleties of the game, and the highest score of the evening.

The book that somebody has recommended is totally disappointing. The point-of-view leaps about distractingly. The characters are too good, too nasty, too unreal. Into the up-for-grabs bag it goes. Hmmm. What now? My dearly beloved (and sometimes hated) of fifty-two years is watching a football game, not a choice for me. Ah! That joint rolled with my efficient eighty-year-old fingers is up in the bookcase behind Another Roadside Attraction, tucked there a couple of nights ago because the book of that night was happily absorbing. Football is not. So how about a little ego trip, a continuation in my thirty-year plan to thwart that ailment that troubled both my parents, glaucoma. The bonus in smoking pot, sort of medicinally, is something one does not talk about, write about, or even think about. But as long as this football game is on let me give it a try.

Almost immediately it turns out to have been a lifelong error to have forsworn football. It’s really a very fine game. See that incredibly long pass to the running-like-crazy guy who actually catches the ball against all odds – the speed, the distance, those guys in the orange shirts trying to prevent his catching the ball. But, there you go, he does catch it and then, in the cleverest maneuver, cuts away from the three brutes and runs all the way to the goalposts while thousands cheer. “While Thousands Cheer.” What is that, a musical? A movie? Did Dad take me? It was at the Colonial? Did we go to the Parker House for dinner? Before or after the show? Dad was dear about taking me to excellent places. Shore dinners at the Salem Willows. He was so amused by how much I ate. Baseball games, remember Rabbit Maranville and his “vest pocket catch.” The Ritz. The Copley-Plaza. The Kenmore for baseball games. The hockey game where we saw Sonja Henie skating like Pavlova between periods of the game. Was that the same night there was blood on the ice and I almost fainted?

Oh, wow! That player just kicked a perfect field goal with his bare foot!

But what’s this? Has my watch stopped? Was it only ten minutes ago that I took that couple of tokes of dope? Dope. Is that short for dopamine? What’s dopamine? Some kind of neurotransmitter in the brain, the wonderful brain. My wonderful brain. Here I am at long last enjoying football and at the same time musing about neurotransmitters and wondering how I managed to pull out that bit of information and remember, too, that dopamine has something to do with pleasure and watch, with pleasure, while the orange shirts try to get even with the blue shirts.

After a pleasant while it is half time and the jock anchormen are yakety-yakking and they don’t capture me although another time they might and then I could get right into their chatter and find them either bright and informative or dull and even silly. And enjoy the discovery, either way.

So then, delighted by my fascinating brain and its surprising recollection about dopamine, the greatness of me becomes a matter for consideration. And the greatness of me is the greatness of everybody. And the smallness. Hmmm. Sure. I really have it all figured out. Except that I’m quietly giggling at my own arrogance and calling out to the sports commentator, “No, no! Not ‘he invited my wife and I.'” And my love nods and asks if I had noticed a minute ago that the same handsome fellow had said of a player that he has an “unbridled love of the game.”

We are together. But not quite.

Where was I? Ah, yes, getting the answers. Somebody better write me down. Or is that somebody’d better?

Hmmm. We’re all great. We’re all small. You got that? And what was the other thing? Well, for one thing people have no free will. Human will is utterly incapable of generating or preventing individuals’ decisions, from tying their shoes to getting married until death do them part except if they get divorced for which also their will is not free. Fact. Nobody out there can do anything. They are all – all – puppets in the wily hands of the all-powerful memory. B. F. Skinner and I could probably enjoy a chat about this over a few Buds.

“Honey, is B. F. Skinner still alive?”

“Skinner?” He considers. “No, he died about ten years ago.”

Great guy, my mate of fifty-two years.

No matter. B. F. and I will invite Sigmund. Hume? I’ll look it up. But not now. I have to watch a football game and eat some pizza. But I forgot something, something important. You see, as opposed to all you millions of helpless puppets I – yes I – do just happen to have what is otherwise an oxymoron – Free Will.

Out of the ego trip now, the off-the-wall fantasy.

But why put oneself into such a silly frame of mind? Why not spend that time doing something useful? Well, maybe I’ve been doing something useful all day. And when straight I have neither the time nor the inclination to sit and let my head play. Nor would it even work without the couple of tokes. I’d probably remember something like I have to change the kitty litter or I ought to clean those glass doors where my neighbor ten-year-old twins had been playing with sticky tumble-down-the-glass toys.

This is strange. After about thirty years of occasional enjoyment (aka abuse) of this miraculous leaf (aka substance) I do not recall actually trying to describe the experience. Friends who share a joint or two with me might comment the next day, “Wow!”

“Oh, man!” Good stuff!”

“Can I get some of that?”

But nobody, in my memory, has ever described or shared personal stories about this very subjective event.

So, if I’m on an ego trip in which I think I’m having an epiphany, others might be eagerly planning a menu, remembering a happy occasion, embellishing and changing it. It’s possible that somewhere an investment banker in a three-piece suit is having a jolly ego trip in the Dow Jones. I could have a couple of small hits and list a hundred possible ego trips to be had out there.

But here’s a thought. Maybe I’m the only one who sees this as I do, who trips as I do. Then how do the others trip? How about an international competition for the World Champion Tripper? Even for this abuser it is not always the same. One should see my energy and enthusiasm for “cleaning up this mess”, sometimes to the tune of John Lennon’s “Clean Up Time.” Positively athletic, and productive as well. The mess is cleaned up with more than ordinary efficiency, and it was great fun.

Fun is the word. Even not having discussed this with my friends, the endangered species, to me it is extremely likely that the one word they would use to describe their reason for persisting in so dangerous an activity is FUN.

Fun to get a bit silly with friends.

Fun to have food fests hastily put together in the local convenience store.

Fun to play with the clouds.

Fun to get into your head.

Fun to listen to music.

It is important to note here that it is also inconceivable to me that any of the potheads in my world would go wild, get hooked on drugs, commit any crime beyond this particular one in which fun is the chief object.

Certainly it could be argued that some proven criminals are also proven tokers. Some of us would suggest that the cause of the criminal behavior was probably the end result of the criminals having been abused as children or at least ignored, unloved.

Addiction? Not a problem with any of my lawbreaking friends and acquaintances. The majority smoke at most a few tokes daily, more likely on occasion, sometimes days or even weeks apart. And many of them will admit that they couldn’t start the day without a couple of cups of coffee, a very popular drug that the Drug Enforcement Agency has not added to its schedules to alert police across the country to criminal activity.

Does anything positive aside from fun, a categorical positive, result from this euphoric rush and its attendant head trip? Others will have to speak for themselves but of myself I can report that I have made many good decisions on difficult problems while happily in a state of “reefer madness.” I have had insights into heady philosophical matters, insights that hold and that affect positively my behavior, my relationships, my life. In other words, quite often when I take a head trip, just as when I take trips by planes, trains, and automobiles, I am more knowledgeable and richer for having made the voyage.

And I had a lot of fun.

Sherry Hall is an artist residing in Colorado. Within this memory of her father’s passing, she comes upon a family secret as a young girl, and a peaceful remedy to the assumed barriers of the generations.

My grandfather, “Zaydie”, was an intimidating man. Like many men of his generation, he hated showing any sign of weakness. Zaydie was an old-fashioned no-nonsense conservative. He was stoic. He was proud. Zaydie was a successful entrepreneur who demanded a lot from himself and expected the same from the people around him. I loved Zaydie, but always felt a little awkward and inadequate in his presence.

One afternoon when I was 13 I was waiting in Zaydie’s car for him to return from an errand. I opened the glove box to rummage for a pen. I was surprised to find instead a plastic sandwich bag full of marijuana buds. I was dumbfounded that my grandfather would have such a thing in his possession.

I put the bag back where I found it, and wondered if I should say anything. I was afraid if I mentioned finding the pot, I might get in trouble for recognizing what it was. At the same time I was extremely curious. When Zaydie came back, my curiosity won out. I told him I had found something interesting in the glove box. He didn’t understand at first, so I pulled out the bag of herb and asked him to explain.

A flicker of alarm crossed his face. For a moment I was sure he would tell me he didn’t know anything about it, and then demand to know how it got there. But Zaydie surprised me.

“I got it for Michael” he said quietly.

Zaydie looked at me and saw I didn’t understand what he was talking about. Michael was my father. Michael had died of cancer two years earlier.

“Do you remember how sick your dad was in the final months?”

I nodded. Memories of my father’s agonizing death still haunted me regularly.

“Your dad asked me to get marijuana for him to help him feel better.”

“And you agreed?” I asked. I couldn’t believe my stuffy grandfather would resort to breaking the law, regardless of the reason.

“Not at first.”

Zaydie explained that initially he had refused Michael’s request. It wasn’t until Michael had wasted away to a skeletal 110 pounds that my grandfather finally bought marijuana as a last desperate attempt to help Dad start eating again.

I noticed tears welling up in my grandfather’s eyes.

“Did it help Dad?” I asked.

Zaydie tried to collect himself, then told me the marijuana did help my dad a great deal. Dad’s appetite returned, his weight stabilized, and his emotional health improved, too. “Then why are you upset?” I asked gently. (By this time my grandfather was wiping tears from his cheeks.)

Zaydie told me he felt guilty that he hadn’t acted sooner to ease my dad’s suffering. I had never before seen my grandfather cry or show remorse for anything. In those painful moments of confession I saw him in a new light. He was a fragile fallible human being, just like me. I gave Zaydie a hug and a kiss. I told him the important thing was that he had helped Dad before it was too late. I pointed out that some people would have never relented. This seemed to comfort him and we both sat in silence for a few moments.

I thought things over carefully and then couldn’t resist asking, “If you bought this marijuana for Dad, why do you still have it? Dad died two years ago.” If I was surprised before, Zaydie’s next response completely floored me. (I can only guess how hard it must have been for him to discuss this with me.)

“Your dad wanted me to smoke it with him. He thought it would help me come to terms with his death. So to make him happy I gave it a try,” “and he was right. It surprised me, but getting high with Michael led to some amazing conversations between us. We talked about our philosophies and faiths…fears and regrets. In fact, we ended up learning more about each other in the last few months of his life than we had in the whole time since he’d been born. We got to be friends, and I enjoyed that.” “So now I keep this stuff around and still smoke some of it occasionally.”

“You’re saying it’s okay to smoke pot?” I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. “I’m saying it’s enjoyable and I do it, but it’s still against the law and I could get in trouble for it. Do you understand?”

I understood perfectly. I promised I wouldn’t turn him in.

At that moment I almost told Zaydie that I smoked pot, too. I wanted to tell him how it had helped me get through my own grief in the aftermath of Dad’s death. I wanted to confess that without it, I would have probably committed suicide. I wanted to share all the wonderful insights I’d had from stoned conversations with my buddies. I wanted to let him know that the pictures and sculptures I had been creating, the ones that he liked so much and showed off to his friends, had all been inspired while I was high. But I was 13 and understood that Zaydie’s enlightenment had limits. So I wisely kept silent, and smiled to myself. Whether Zaydie realized it or not, marijuana had built the bridge that brought my grandfather and dad together – and now it had brought my grandfather and me together, too.

Octamandalagon ™ ® © September 24,1998

Florence Siegel, aged seventy-eight, is a painter, inventor of puzzles, a wife, mother, and a grandmother. In her introspections, she has an epiphany on the intersection of geometry, number, art and music, leading to the convergence of lifelong interests, and a feeling of restoration.

I am a healthy, seventy-eight year old, educated artist, mother, grandmother, a secular Jew, from Queens, NYC. I smoked marijuana for the first time in 1968 after my family physician, citing the LaGuardia Commission report and her own experience, assured me that the dangers had been greatly exaggerated. I wanted to be able to bring first hand knowledge to bear in cautionary discussions with my daughters, ages 18, 20 and 22. As it happened, I found it to be a highly interesting and enjoyable experience, with none of the miserable side effects I had with alcohol when I was a student.

After confessing to my daughters, and they to me, gatherings in our home were often enhanced by the passing of the pipe and marked by great conversation, great music and great feasts. I never would have considered proposing that we all get drunk together. People getting stoned together don’t compete, they cooperate and disagreements dissolve into laughter, not fights.

In 1969 I lost one of my daughters. In time, marijuana was helpful in restoring intimacy between my husband and me, as well as appetite for food, work and other pleasures of life. I had avoided solitude until 1980 when circumstances left me rudderless after the collapse of the art centered community and the coop-gallery I was associated with. In tandem to that event, I had lost belief in my work. In another year I would be turning sixty. I saw the vanishing point looming in the gloomy future. In that unwelcome solitude, revisiting grief, I began to smoke more often, seeking the relief gained from listening to music. Getting stoned and listening to Bach always guaranteed an exalting experience. The pain expressed in the music mirrors my own. Grief mingles with joy in those moments of extreme beauty.

I don’t recall making a decision to use marijuana to stimulate creative thinking. It just happened. I spent a lot of time drawing, writing, reading about philosophy, cosmology, perception, design theory, diagrams, physics, the fourth dimension, and revisiting old favorites, among them Abbot’s Flatland and Hesse’s Magister Ludi The Bead Game. Reading while stoned, as I flitted from one book to another seemed random and aimless, but in retrospect, appears to have had a hidden goal. The cumulative effect liberated me from ideological constraints, lubricated my imagination and long held assumptions faded as my true interests revealed themselves to me.

“All art constantly aspires toward music” Walter Pater

Patterns of Bach fugues, made visible under the influence, rekindled memories of long-ago attempts to capture the forms of music, trying to incorporate time, the missing dimension on the flat plane of a canvas. Now, listening to Bach’s Goldberg Variations, trying to visualize the patterns of the sound of the music, this idea came to me: To borrow an idea from Bach to use the letters of my name to generate a shape as he had done to generate a theme: 8 letters in my name, 8 notes of the musical scale, 8 points of the compass, and 8 on its side, ∞, the symbol for infinity.

I visualized an octagon as a path where the end meets the beginning. And I tried to visualize the consequences of disrupting the sequence of the 8 vectors, naming them

The reorientation of the vectors yielded maps of fifty-five different paths, twenty-one non-intersecting

and thirty-four with numerous intersections, with the beginning and ending points remaining constant.

I had wandered by chance, across the bridge, formed by geometry, between music and painting. Where would it take me?

Being stoned emboldened me to pursue an undefined goal that would, but for marijuana, have been shelved as either worthless, or beyond my means or ability to execute. After eight months of what otherwise would have been tedious labor, moved along by intuitive nudges, and within the limits I had set for myself, I had dissected one hundred and sixty- eight octagons in twenty-one different ways in multiples of eight.

Then, it seemed as if each of the twenty-one sets of eight, in an irresistible autodynamic urge, radiated themselves around mysterious octagonal spaces.

And then the six-hundred and ninety-six diverse pieces united, as if by force of nature, to form one embracing mother octagon.

EUREKA!

When I put in its place, the last piece of the puzzle I had unintentionally invented, I had the overwhelming feeling that I had discovered a truth.

Substituting marijuana for the abandoned habit of reaching for a cigarette was indeed serendipitous. Suddenly I saw, that what I had thought was a finished product was perhaps infinitely transformable. The puzzle, an EPIPHANY; a question asked and answered, a metaphor, a double analogy, intrinsic and extrinsic, a symbolic message from the subconscious and the cosmos. I had taken myself apart, reordered my beliefs and put myself back together again. Discarding the idealistic notion, the responsibility of an artist to be a social critic, I had given myself permission to play and to explore questions that had intrigued me since childhood.

Was there a precedent for the geometric tricks I had played on the octagon? Where would I look for support of my contention that the limit to the number of 8 sided polygons with four pairs of parallel, equilateral sides was twenty-one? Math phobic since school days, but for marijuana, I would never have seen beauty in numbers, nor had the chutspa to delve into areas I believed were beyond my intellectual powers. My research into the form of the octagon led to readings in sacred geometry and symbolism that revealed links between art, science and religion and to the realization that I had constructed a mandala, the universal symbol of order, balance and wholeness. I was dazzled by the notion of …. the limitless emerging from the limits… As an atheist turned agnostic, my mistrust of the idea of spirituality, has succumbed to acknowledging the creative impulse and its fulfillment, indeed, as spiritual. If we say “ideas come to us”, are we not acknowledging the links to something beyond ourselves, a sense of being part of a whole, of oneness? The choices I made eighteen years ago provided me with points of departure for a continuum of variations on the theme. Marijuana is an aid to perception. It enables me to discover patterns formed by different geometries, to integrate the centric and the eccentric movements, where to place accents that direct the gaze along various paths at varying speeds as in a measure of music, where to throw light and darkness. It enables me to see the parts more clearly, separately, in groups, or melding into the whole. I believe it has helped me to appraise my work by infusing me with the warm thrill of elation that tells me when all has come together.

Thanks to the pipeful I smoke daily, the aging years that I feared at sixty have instead been among my most productive, satisfying and fun filled. Three ago, my family presented me with a computer for my seventy-fifth birthday. I taught myself to do computer graphics and I was invited to conduct a few workshops on art and geometry for college students. I have not experienced any impairment of eye-hand coordination in wielding an xacto knife, executing precise brush work or in control of the mouse, nor relaxed my role as homemaker to my active eighty-two year old husband of fifty-five years. I consider my good health to be the best of all gifts to my daughters and their families; a testimonial to the restorative and mind-opening power of Marijuana.

Louis Silverstein, Ph.D. is a Professor of Liberal Education at Columbia College Chicago, where he teaches courses in Peace Studies, Dying & Death, Education, Culture and Society, and Drugs and Culture. In this moving and expressive essay, we journey through many intense and divergent realms of consciousness, yet remain quite safe in our voyage. Poetic and passionate, our special guide leaves us transformed, illumined, and renewed. Unforgettable.

I wish to share with you selected excerpts from my book, Deep Spirit & Great Heart: Living in Marijuana Consciousness, a first-person account of thoughtful, healing and provocative journeys into the earthly and spiritual realms of existence while under the influence of cannabis sativa. As told by Ganja, whose journal entries of his experiences while under the influence, responsible, respectful and disciplined use of marijuana affords one the insight that it is a plant teacher possessing potential enormous beneficial and healing qualities, that heaven is not a place, but a state of consciousness, in which a joyous daily existence, awareness of eternal truths, sexual ecstasy, heightening of ecological awareness, and spiritual enlightenment can become a life reality. Yet, a challenge remains: to incorporate into our daily existence what has been experienced in the cave or on the mountain top, a journey described in a most telling manner in the words of Ganja.

It is my firm belief that the cultural dictum to “say no or say nothing,” promulgated and enforced by the ruling cultural commissars, is a violation of the basic democratic principle that dialogue and not silence is the path to finding truth; that voices of an alternative and divergent nature speaking to paramount issues of our time are to be encouraged and not denied if a sane public policy approach to ” drugs” is to be arrived at; and that ‘getting high” is not to be feared, but, to the contrary, is a gift to the human race.

Deep Spirit and Great Heart

It was a magnificent fall day filled with a bright sun, blue skies, gentle trade winds blowing off the ocean, birds singing, butterflies sucking nectar from flowers, and children making merry sounds as they played. In the morning of such a lovely moment in time, destiny smiled on me, for I had the good fortune to meet the man whose journeys under the influence of marijuana and resulting conversations with his “marijuana self” were recorded in a journal he kept, excerpts of which constitute the subject matter of this book.

As I sat under a fan palm tree gazing at a stunning tropical sunrise, Ganja came towards me. Of slender build but with a well toned body, skin the color of brownish red earth, jet black curly hair reaching down to his shoulders, aquiline nose with flaring nostrils, eyes so piercing as if they were bright stars of truth, and breathing in such a manner that reminded one of an unbroken stallion at rest, his very essence shining through so clearly, he placed his body next to mine, very closely as if we had known each other for a long time, and began to speak.

“Marijuana has been my ambrosia for many years, has been my way of gaining access into the tree of knowledge but with no ‘fall’ involved, has served as my opening of the door into the house of higher consciousness, a journey that has been part of my life for more than three decades now.”

With such a beginning, how could our conversation not last into the late evening hours? We found that we enjoyed each other’s company, that we were simpatico, and that his experiences living the marijuana life were worth sharing with others, not only because of the insights they reveal into living a life filled with greater light and peace, but also because the truth about a gift from the gods, marijuana, would have its opportunity to be voiced and heard in a public discourse by what those in authority call a civilized and informed discussion about drugs, but which has been, in largest part, a policy of “Just Say No Or Say Nothing.”

His writings portray a courageous, wise, creative good, open, passionate, socially responsible, and caring family man, a fully aware and courageous traveler into the realms of non-ordinary and transcendental ways of being, into a life filled with meaning and purpose. Marijuana opened the doors of perception for him. Under its influence, he experienced well-being, expanded awareness, euphoria, ecstasy, a deeply eroticized sexual life, and an enlargement of the human possibility on earth. Under its influence, he reached out beyond personal, familial, societal and cultural limitations to find, develop and hone his life voice in the process of becoming a more fully realized soul, serving as a bridge between the reality of mass consciousness and the reality of evolved consciousness.

We knew each other for somewhat close to two years before he moved on to do some good traveling in heaven. During our time together, we grew close enough to consider ourselves brothers, to the extent of that he entrusted me with the responsibility of being the keeper of his journals, a commitment I most humbly agreed to “in the spirit of being of service to all who seek after light in these dark times” as he was occasioned to say.

I have chosen selections from journal entries covering the last two years of his life to be the focus of this book. Why these years? Because these entries are representative of the content, tone and insights to be found in his writings, and because they serve to illustrate quite well the nature, scope and depth of his journeys under the influence. All journal entries are word for word recountings of his safaris into consciousness as if they were being lived at the very moment he was high, which is how he wanted them captured for posterity. Although I have waited a number of years since his passing to bring his journeys under the influence into the public eye in the hope that sanity and good sense would be the order of the day, unfortunately such is still not the case, and the inquisition into consciousness still reigns supreme. Because of such a reality, his name and the names of his brother and sister outlaws have been changed to protect them from persecution and prosecution by the holy leaders of the drug wars who are mindlessly pursuing their jihad against those engaged in the heresy of mind expansion.

One day as we were sitting in a cafe sipping cafe con leche while admiring and breathing in the beauty of our surroundings, he said to me, “Louis, in order that you and others who will read my words may truly comprehend the role marijuana has played in my life, you must understand that from the very beginning, from the very first few inhalations, my life was forever changed. So, no regrets. Had I become intimately involved with marijuana for but a brief time in my life, I would still have tasted of the rapture of ecstatic love, come to know the earth as my home in deed as well as word, learned that human touch, compassion and caring manifest life’s highest callings, experienced the blessed consciousness of the eternal at each moment in time at the center of my being, and made to realize that the blessings of being human are not beyond our ability to grasp once the doors of perception are opened.”

Here is his story, that of an outlaw who walks on the wild side. Journeys into marijuana consciousness. Journeys revealing an immersion into an immanent and transcendent ultimate reality. Journeys dedicated to the love of pure truth and our need for meaning, joy, creativity and fulfillment woven into the daily fabric of our lives. Journeys speaking to the union of person and earth, joined together in a common fate and destiny. Journeys that can fill our lives with the sensual, the beautiful, the just, and the heaven to be found right here on earth at each and every moment. Journeys into the high life. Journeys of deep spirit and great heart.

April 7, 1993

Sitting under the wide canopy of a banyan tree, its gnarled trunk and limbs bespeaking more of experience and wisdom than of age, with my bare hands I dig deeper and deeper into the red soil as if I were trying to find something about myself I need to know, to be in touch with, each handful of earth a remembrance of times past, of affairs of the mind, heart and soul I need to acknowledge and let go of, for I need to move on with my life.

My teacher appears. Once again, she tells me, “Listen, I have a secret to share with you. Let me into your life, and I will illuminate the darkness of the mysterious places within you, freeing you to travel in the light.” The herb is lit. Inhaling deeply, I draw smoke up into my brain where it rests for a moment or two before its vapors circulate slowly throughout my entire body. I exhale, focusing my attention on the center of my being, where all is still and serene.

A balmy wind full of tales begins to blow my way, causing leaves to rustle and trees to speak. I am being told to take deep breaths as I repeat over and over again “eternal bliss consciousness,” and to make these words the mantra I am to live my life in accordance with. The path opening before my eyes is illuminated by a diamond shaped phantasmagoric gem garden of resplendent mauves, blues, yellows and greens, each gem representing a glimmering vision symbolic of gifts from the cosmos to be bestowed upon those who knowingly and with discipline step into the flowing river of marijuana consciousness.

Days have passed since I last looked into her eyes of white snow and black pearls and fell under the influence of the loving beauty to be found therein. My eyes open wide to behold a rapturous sight as my lover, Maria, the woman to whom I am wed, offers me the luxury of her body with its exquisite receptacle of delight between her hips. Body and soul mix with body and soul, sky and earth joined together in fiery passion, because love is needed more than ever now in a world seemingly gone mad.

We join together as one, as deep spirit and great heart.

June 9, 1993

My wings take me a place where the sky is green and the earth is blue. Naked women appear before me, holding thorn apples in their left hands, marijuana buds in their right hands, speaking words of truth and passion whether I be on earth or in heaven, and radiating bliss from their musk scented thighs.

I bite into an apple, savoring every sense of its transformative properties as I slowly drift into a deep sleep until I am awakened by an ardent kiss from my lover. Even with eyes closed, I know it is she. I could kiss a thousand mouths and know her lips. She asks me for kisses of ardor for her soft red lips and caresses of gentleness for her fuchsia body. How can I refuse? Not to do so would be sinful. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

June 14, 1993

You do not know me, but I am your lover. Take this message to yourself. You, being space, are female, and I, being time, am male, and you and I are everywhere. No matter where I walk, the path leads to you, where the Light of Light resides in the shrine of your heart, emitting illumination to all of creation, and showering me with the bliss to be found in joy and happiness.

August 16, 1993

Lounging on my bed, I envision primordial forests teeming with ghostlike dwellings inhabited by figures resembling humans wearing threadbare robes with hoods covering decayed faces. Descending from the gray charcoal sky are mammoth birds of prey with huge purplish black bodies and rhinestone beaks, each bird a work of terror as can be seen in the eyes of the creatures with decayed faces, eyes that are quickly gouged out by bird claws and eaten.

I realize I am walking through the valley of death, the dead remains of myself left over from past experiences that left me feeling hurt and disappointed with life. Oh, woe is me, I say to myself, what am I to do? Breathe, breathe it all away, is the answer received in response to my question. Chanting “eternal bliss consciousness,” I slowly breathe in, hold, breathe out, hold, repeating this sequence over and over until breathing and awareness merge into a unity. One by one, the human like figures and the birds disappear. I am left alone amidst the ghostlike dwellings, now filled with starlight and a joyous occupant. It is I.

August 28, 1993

Having decided to take a brief vacation off island, I am walking on the land of upper Oregon, staying at the homestead of a friend who lives in a canyon surrounded by white chalk cliffs holding out to all who are in need of healing a purity of place absent of time. Circles of smoke take leave of my mouth after circulating throughout brain and gut, the two houses of mind.

It is so beautiful. Unending stands of trees, poplar, pine, elm, sycamore, maple, willow, and black walnut. Black, brown and white mushrooms and toadstools. Blue, orange, red, mauve, purple and yellow wildflowers. Raspberries, blackberries, huckleberries, dewberries and blueberries. Buckwheat and oats. Flat land, rolling land, dry land and wetland. Huge white clouds floating in a big blue sky. Stillness filled with pregnancy. Wonderful, wonderful, just simply wonderful.

I sit myself at the foot of an aged tree, mother and crone being its essence. Bark is missing in places, some limbs are twisted giving off the appearance of gnarled hands while others have succumbed to disease, lightning or just age, woodpeckers have carved out notches in the trunk in their search for insect food, ants scurrying back and forth on the low limbs, birds have made nests in the upper limbs, and apple bud blossoms are opening.

Save for a slightly warm wind blowing in from the south causing the leaves of the tree and the field of oats and buckwheat to dance slowly, the melodic and soulful singing of birds, and the fluttering wings of a stoned on nectar butterfly, there is silence. Closing my eyes, I begin to rock back and forth on the balls and heels of my feet as waves of energy released from the tree float towards where I sit, bathing me with wisdom and peacefulness, impregnating me with nature’s grace. Peace above me. Peace below me. Peace all around me.

Trees do not cry out for notice and attention. Trees do not have pretense and wear costumes to hide what they are. Trees do not perform community service to save the planet by engaging in good works after 5 p.m. and on weekends to undo the damage that 9-5 work has inflicted on the planet. Trees are just there all the time doing their thing, planet support work – holding the earth together, housing and feeding life, transmuting noxious and poisonous vapors into life giving air, offering shade from the hot sun, beautifying the lands with their presence, reminding us that just being there, just being part of the community of life, is all that is needed.

December 2, 1993

Closing my eyes, I see myself sitting beside a pond with water lilies and blue green algae floating on its surface. I ask for help to make it through life’s journey, and she takes my hand. I weep, and she comes to my side. I listen for singing, and she fills my ears with the lilting sounds of her voice. I pine for love, and she takes me within her. I wish to return to the body in which I was born, and she leads me beyond time into eternity.

January 31, 1994

Spurred on by the desire and strength of our bodies engaged in a dance of love, we move to the beat of the music, our heat and the music paying tribute to sexual love. Eternity captured in the intimacy of a moment lasting until I explode inside of her with a force so powerful that our bodies seem to fuse together. We are no longer separate but one, a unity of being. Once again, cosmic laughter is upon us. We laugh and laugh and laugh. At this moment, time does not exist, transcended by delirious and rapturous joy.

We shall sleep very soundly tonight as we always do when love making of this nature has blessed us. And because the sounds of love are everywhere, above us, below us, all around us, filling space with its “life is good” message, our home will be truly harmonious and peaceful tomorrow as has always been the case when the 11th commandment is followed: light up the weed from heaven, let love flow freely, and peace and harmony shall reign forever and forever as we are reminded once again of who we are – the sunshine of each other’s life.

February 4, 1994

Charles and I are taking an early evening stoned men’s walk. I become conscious of how I walk when I am straight: rigid and goal oriented. Under the influence, I neither walk in a straight line nor with body armored against life’s surprises and entreaties. When straight, I usually walk with a strong determination to get somewhere – an objective to be accomplished, a known destination to be reached. When stoned, I always walk with dancing feet, in circles, in loops, a few steps forward and then a few steps backward intermixed with some steps to the side, my arms not swinging back and forth like that of a wind up toy, but weaving in and out and around like two slithering cool snakes. The music I hear is not John Phillips Sousa conducting his military marching bands, but Bob Marley or Cole Porter, and my body moves not in goose step precision, fixed and taut, but as if I were Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly gliding effortlessly and smoothly through space.

In this state of being, I know there is no need to get anywhere. I am already there by being here. Wherever I am, that’s where I am, if only I open myself to the fullness of the present, to be here now. Eternity is truly in each grain of sand and in each moment. All I need do is remember to breathe in, breathe out, and I am filled up with life. All I need do is allow myself to flow with the rhythm of the existence, so complete that there is no fear of separation. All I need do is fix my stillness of self on sky, tree, sun, moon, or star, rock myself back and forth perfectly so content that there is no fear of ever again being a huddled mass yearning to breathe free, for I am free.

February 11, 1994

Ambling over to Dad as tree, I sit myself down at the base of his trunk. With Dad, I need to do a lot of forgiving and healing because he along with our mother were at the root of our family, and his healing would contribute to the healings of his sons, living and dead. I tell him of the hurt and pain he inflicted upon his sons as he acted out the craziness of his own pain carried forward into his adult life from childhood sufferings, of my forgiveness of him, and ask of him that he forgive me for the hurt and pain I gave to him in return. We both cry, he with shedding leaves, I with salty tears.

Just as a clearing of the atmosphere can follow rain, I can see more clearly now after my rain of tears has ceased flowing. The price of not forgiving and allowing oneself to be forgiven is to be walled up inside a high security prison, cut off from the trials and tribulations and heartbreak of life, but also from life’s passions and joys; safe, but also forlorn. Yes, I can see more clearly now, but the clarity is one of acceptance of life as shadow and light, of mud as well as sky, of life as is and not as should be.

I turn away and walk over to a eucalyptus tree. Resting my weary body against its trunk, I tear a few leaves, releasing their healing aroma that I breathe in deeply, and with each exhalation I blow its curative powers towards my tree family.

Blessed is life.

February 24, 1994

I see elderly women and men, living in an institutionalized setting, a caretaker facility, all shook up. A pleasure attacker has been on the loose, inflicting random acts of pleasure on unsuspecting residents, their bodies experiencing paroxysms of rapturous delight.

Dogs are brought into to sniff out the criminal giver of such thrills, but to no avail, for as soon as the dogs sniff pleasure to be close by, they swoon, fall down on the ground, and eagerly await the pleasure attacker, for they, too, are pleasure starved, having been placed on a pleasure diet by their masters who have a low pleasure tolerance like all mad people.

The elderly ask, what are we to do? The keepers guarding the institution tell them to pray and ask for divine protection from unbridled pleasure lest they wish to be denied entrance to the heaven of the cross of pain. And so they pray, but this, too, is to no avail, for that very night two patients are made to endure pleasure attacks. The authorities throw up their hands, decide to close down the residence, and move its inhabitants to a maximum security pleasure protection facility to better ensure that life may be lived in a normal fashion where pleasure is managed and a hypnotic stupor of sitting and staring at emptiness is enforced as the norm for the elderly.

April 26, 1994

Cities of multi-hued splendor, each structure bearing a golden minaret, arise out of the sea under a clear sky, while I, standing amidst verdant forests overflowing with white ginger, heliconia, hibiscus, orchids and love in full bloom, am enraptured and still, listening to the conversation of creation surrounding me. I need neither church, nor synagogue, nor mosque, nor altar, for this, the great outdoors, is my place of worship, my shrine. Lying down on the moss covered earth, the sound of waves gently breaking on the shore serving as my sacred music, I fall asleep, for minutes, or months, or years.

Awakening, I am met by a completely changed sky, dark gray, and I soon find myself being enveloped by a gray cloud, feeling as if I am being taken over by death, that I am dying. Panic and fear begin to take hold of me. My life is in the grasp of death.

Remembering that all is one, that life and death are not separate, that all of human experience is contained within the seamless web of existence, that dying and death are known to me, that there is no beginning and no end, that I never was and always will be, I take heed of Maria’s advice, her words of wisdom – “My darling, always remember to breathe.”

Breathing consciously with deep inhalations and exhalations, chanting asat chit ananda (eternal bliss consciousness), I visualize life entering me in the form of an inhalation and death leaving me as an exhalation. Panic and fear subside, replaced by quietude, a soothing, a calmness.

The dark gray clouds dissipate, supplanted by an azure sky. I lift myself off of the ground. It is time for me to go home.

May 4, 1994

Sun rising. I lie down on a large black and gray boulder with the sea by my side and the sun rising above me. With eyes shut, I see grotesque, hideous, snarling and crazed pit bulls coming towards me. But I am not afraid. I smile and send love to these forces welling up from inside me, dark and ugly aspects of myself that I no longer need to possess.

The dogs turn into white doves, encircling me as they weave leis of yellow flowers representing healing, blue flowers representing clarity, purple flowers representing passion, and white flowers representing purity. I taste the fruit of mountain apple and Surinam cherry, and my body sings with pleasure. My wife and children encircle me as they chant asat chit ananda (eternal bliss consciousness) over and over again so that no sounds of the universe but theirs are to be heard. Slowly, each of my loved ones, in turn, approaches, sits down as close to me as possible, takes my hands in theirs, touches their lips to mine, and very consciously and deliberately breathes love into my open and receptive mouth.

My body armor breaks up into small pieces as it crumbles about me, walls come tumbling down, and a bridge appears above the moat of separation from others that has been my companion since childhood, allowing those who love me to cross over into my life. Kundalini energy moves up my outstretched spine into my brain as I glide into complete ecstasy.

A lemon tree beckons unto me. I take a branch, as if it were an arm, in one hand, place my other hand around its trunk, as if it were a waist, and we begin to dance. Some movement to my right catches my eye. Turning, I see a female figure, her skin green and brown, legs slightly bent, arms curved at the elbow, palms up, her body adorned with a gold laminated jacket and pants, a bejeweled crown on her head, emerging from a lime tree. We gaze intently at each other, at first carefully, and then with trust. Slowly, we move towards each other, eyes fixed on eyes. All is still save for our pulsating bodies and the sound of our breathing.

With butterflies of every color of the rainbow flying around us, we begin to dance. Am I crazy? Have I gone mad? No, my eyes have opened to what is always there – joyous consciousness. The dancing takes on to a feverish pitch, we are on fire, and there we stay until I gently fall down onto the moss covered earth and she returns to being within the tree.

Sleep calls me.

My eyes open to see the ground and trees covered with lotuses of every shape and hue. Heavenly music from a thousand harps and lutes accompanied by the aroma of cinnamon and jasmine fill the air. Dogs, cats and birds sit silently by my side staring off into space.

Peace calls me.

I decide I want to stay here, wherever I am, for some moments longer. As I rest, I take a few more puffs. Here I go again. Emerging from my mother’s womb, a child with blissful light at his essence. Crawling away from her body, so that a few feet separate us, I begin throwing up. Piece after piece of pus covered slime emerges from within me, falling to the ground. I collect my vile outpourings into a pile, take a match to it, letting it all burn, transforming all that which is negative within me into smoke that I do not allow to get into my eyes, thus preventing me from seeing life’s joys and beauty.

The words come. I tell myself, “Give up the struggle. Why resist being who you are? It’s no use to pretend otherwise. I can take whatever crap you want to heap on yourself and still love you. Why not just walk in the light with strength of character, compassion and beauty as your constant companions?”

Thunder and lightning break through the sky. A warm rain begins to fall. Pain and sorrow and life’s loves lost are cleared from my being. The rain ends. A glorious multicolored rainbow of orange, red, yellow, blue, green and purple arches through the sky.

I am ready to go home. It is time for me to be with my loved ones.

August 31, 1994

My trembling hands, like fluttering butterfly wings, rest for a moment on your purple lips and brown breasts as my lips gently kiss your eyes filled to overflowing with the sunshine of my love. Why do your eyes look so penetratingly into mine? Are you seeing the truth residing in the mirror of my soul? Embodied passions, seemingly spent in the gush of sperm, in fact, still there, to remain with you as memories of life’s joys and pleasures even as I part from you in search of still pastures other than the body to quiet my raging soul.

Season after season, you and I have traveled deep and far. We have walked through the valley of the shadow of death and savored life as we played in fields of wildflowers, learning and practicing how to be artists of being alive.

November 24, 1994

On dark green fields of eternity, I kiss her lips as she drinks fragrant nectar from my mouth and speaks words of sweetness and delight, “We have known each other a thousand times and still you love me.”

December 31, 1994

As caterpillar sheds that which is past and becomes butterfly, I leave the nest of my body and wander through forests of dreams and skies of fantasies. I taste pleasures and experience good and evil. I know terror and dwell amidst bliss. I solve the great riddle as I surrender to love given and received. I am rid of fear and despair. I am free of pain and suffering and sorrow. I walk into the light and become the light. I am radiant. I illumine creation. I am home. Free at last. Great god almighty, I am free at last.