and with a small smile said, “Cocktails.”
By two and threes we worked our way to the source. I had never had the stuff before, so I didn’t know how to judge amount. As usual, I was ready to err in the direction of too much. I took four hits, two in each nostril, and then waited for some fifteen minutes. I felt a slow rise, and had four more hits. I was chatting with a bearded blond boy who suddenly began to look like an ancient Greek, when my body dissolved into a mass of watery pinpricks. I got hung up on the fear flash which often accompanies such sudden changes in the state of the sensorium, and immediately walked off by myself to wait until the mood passed. I walked halfway to the large house when I turned, saw Leah, now also quite stoned, looking at me with knowing affection, and then, without warning, we were both racing for the pool, only to dive wildly in, laughing and quite prepared to drown.
We didn’t leave the water for four hours. During that time all the possible sea changes took place. We became fish, we became seals, became coral reefs. At one point, Leah did a bit of womb therapy on me, allowing me to float in her arms in the water until every last bit of tension had washed out of my body and I had regressed to the consciousness of an embryo.
Midway through the madness, a naked young man with a Roman helmet on surfaced near me. He blew the water away from his face, turned to me and shouted, “To all good things of the earth you are invited; the price of admission is sin.” And then dove under the water and swam away, helmet and all.
Our paths kept crossing, as well as those of several others. Leah and I found ourselves part of a group. Before we fully realized it, we had become a troupe, doing psychedelic guerrilla theater in an arena which was already in the upper realms of living theater. With the heat and the dope and fantastic vibrations and naked bodies and period costumes, all sense of the twentieth century had disappeared. We were in a timeless state. And while this is common enough when one gets stoned, it rarely happens with so many people in such perfect communion.
We came to name our group, “the Verbals — a Mime Troupe,” and began with some of the usual games. We did a finger lift, laying Leah down and lifting her with our forefingers, just five of us using one finger apiece. We built a human monkey cage, and did parodies of every movie ever made (“You there, down in the life raft”). Terms like “reality” and “fantasy” became utterly meaningless, for we were in the realm of pure play.
When the sun began to go down, many of the people began to get worried. We all flashed the existential dilemma of our reliance on the sun, that source of all life which is so obvious we come, stupidly, to take it for granted and forget, each day, to reel in the wonder of its existence. “What if it doesn’t come up tomorrow?” someone asked. Our troupe went from person to person, trying to find a volunteer to take care of the sun’s rising in the morning. Finally, we found someone ready for the responsibility. We put him in our astral elevator and went up to the sixth dimension, and left him off, where he promised faithfully to insure that we would indeed have a dawn the following day.
And now a strange thing happened. The guests began to leave and each of the families came down by the pool, and stood in knots on the grass, watching us. The Verbals took stock. We were not only strangers to them, but we did not know one another. A moment of decision came down, and all at once, we began, raggedly at first, a long ululating howl, aimed directly at the moon, and in a moment, we were sending up the most beautiful wavering cries of passion and longing that had been heard in those hills since the wolves had been driven out. Soon, the other families joined in, and before long, the entire night sky resounded with the untrammeled vibrato of human voices in their full power and expression. I
By two and threes we worked our way to the source. I had never had the stuff before, so I didn’t know how to judge amount. As usual, I was ready to err in the direction of too much. I took four hits, two in each nostril, and then waited for some fifteen minutes. I felt a slow rise, and had four more hits. I was chatting with a bearded blond boy who suddenly began to look like an ancient Greek, when my body dissolved into a mass of watery pinpricks. I got hung up on the fear flash which often accompanies such sudden changes in the state of the sensorium, and immediately walked off by myself to wait until the mood passed. I walked halfway to the large house when I turned, saw Leah, now also quite stoned, looking at me with knowing affection, and then, without warning, we were both racing for the pool, only to dive wildly in, laughing and quite prepared to drown.
We didn’t leave the water for four hours. During that time all the possible sea changes took place. We became fish, we became seals, became coral reefs. At one point, Leah did a bit of womb therapy on me, allowing me to float in her arms in the water until every last bit of tension had washed out of my body and I had regressed to the consciousness of an embryo.
Midway through the madness, a naked young man with a Roman helmet on surfaced near me. He blew the water away from his face, turned to me and shouted, “To all good things of the earth you are invited; the price of admission is sin.” And then dove under the water and swam away, helmet and all.
Our paths kept crossing, as well as those of several others. Leah and I found ourselves part of a group. Before we fully realized it, we had become a troupe, doing psychedelic guerrilla theater in an arena which was already in the upper realms of living theater. With the heat and the dope and fantastic vibrations and naked bodies and period costumes, all sense of the twentieth century had disappeared. We were in a timeless state. And while this is common enough when one gets stoned, it rarely happens with so many people in such perfect communion.
We came to name our group, “the Verbals — a Mime Troupe,” and began with some of the usual games. We did a finger lift, laying Leah down and lifting her with our forefingers, just five of us using one finger apiece. We built a human monkey cage, and did parodies of every movie ever made (“You there, down in the life raft”). Terms like “reality” and “fantasy” became utterly meaningless, for we were in the realm of pure play.
When the sun began to go down, many of the people began to get worried. We all flashed the existential dilemma of our reliance on the sun, that source of all life which is so obvious we come, stupidly, to take it for granted and forget, each day, to reel in the wonder of its existence. “What if it doesn’t come up tomorrow?” someone asked. Our troupe went from person to person, trying to find a volunteer to take care of the sun’s rising in the morning. Finally, we found someone ready for the responsibility. We put him in our astral elevator and went up to the sixth dimension, and left him off, where he promised faithfully to insure that we would indeed have a dawn the following day.
And now a strange thing happened. The guests began to leave and each of the families came down by the pool, and stood in knots on the grass, watching us. The Verbals took stock. We were not only strangers to them, but we did not know one another. A moment of decision came down, and all at once, we began, raggedly at first, a long ululating howl, aimed directly at the moon, and in a moment, we were sending up the most beautiful wavering cries of passion and longing that had been heard in those hills since the wolves had been driven out. Soon, the other families joined in, and before long, the entire night sky resounded with the untrammeled vibrato of human voices in their full power and expression. I
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