20. A LINGERING FLASHBACK

PSYCHEDELIC : Psyche : Soul + Delein : to make manifest.
"Of or causing extreme changes to occur in the conscious mind"

    "Where the pyramid meets the eye".
          -- Roky Erickson, The 13th Floor Elevators 

     A favorite acid trip, circa 1981. Vancouver, B.C. Misha and I are walking the streets dosed on red micro-dot. We morph into two-year-olds on an outing, running to touch bright, shiny, tactile things. Everything must be communed with - put in our mouths to KNOW. All is new, hyper-delic, stylized. Who did this decor? FANTASTIC! Trees are dancing, shimmering, ECSTASY to hug. Each groovy green grass blade is ALIVE! with rainbow orbitals. The lawn is an (environmentally unsustainable) eco-system.....pet the earth mother's velvet fur! Stroke, stroke. Our world glows with an astral silver sheen, the aura of naked birthing vernix; the cosmic magenta, fuchsia, indigo, and turquoise iridescence of the pulsating umbilical cord. I am conscious of ALL BEINGS, enchanters in an enchanted land, breathing in languages of sound and color. Sssself-conssscious of ssseeming ssstrange to passsersssby, grazers and predators hilariously alike, caught in the ssspiraling fractal vine of telepathine.
                     
     We near the house we're renting on Fraser and East 14th. Next door, a church (we've never noticed before) throbs with orgasmic vibrations, compelling us to enter through an open portal. Bemused faces turn around in curiosity, garnering our unblinking emotion. We fidget, seating ourselves in wooden pews, observing the familiar Gospel unfold, in a fascinatingly foreign tongue (Korean). We have earlier partaken of the same vouchsafed Holy Eucharist, our red micro-dot, communal, Body and Blood. We are One! sympathetic family in ceremony, but like teenagers at the supper table, can only suppress giggles for a nanosecond, before holy cracking-up, offering sanctimonious contact highs. Please forgive, literally, our trespasses! We bail out, flying down the red carpet stairs, crumpling in hysterics around the back alley.

     Swooooossssh! Flash! an electric-blue-and-orange fireball rips through the falling sky, landing on the roof of the wooden toolshed, in the backyard behind the house. Moving in closer, we explode in paroxysms of laughter. The shed is smoking! As neighbors congregate to gape at this bizarre occurrence, our communication skills turn to gibberish. We surrender, visibly awed witnesses of His / Her Majesty's finger bolt blasts of lightning. Ever Thee Miraculous Sight (Smite)! Reminder of the Sum Unseen, Willing the Invisible Manifestation Visible. It is that - Om Tat Sat - which jettisons us - babbling babes - into Paradise (pair of dice, parody, paradox). Unexplained psychedelic phenomena.


                           SEEING IS BELIEVING.