42. THE BRIEF INCARNATION OF MONA : THE FAKE-ACID SELLING NIGHTHAG

                                         Marijke Koger, Love Life (1966)         
     On Overdale Street, the quaint, petite avenue in Downtown Montréal, where we shared a longtime lair, we met three Brit brothers and their "blondes" (Québecois slang for girlfriends). They were in a band together that played The Clash, The Undertones, and punked-up, Bay City Rollers tunes. Sid Vicious meets Rod Stewart. Lovable, plaid-kilt-wearing, shag-hair wankers, with charmed accents! Well, one of their clan up and moves to San Francisco and began sending us back LSD in the mail. The technological advances disguising acid had reached a New Wave peak in the early Eighties. The original 60's sugar cube, ingenious in its classic "tea-time" design, morphed into the madcap brew the Merry Pranksters were stirring into Electric Kool-Aid for Free Acid Tests! which, in turn, begat mass-manufactured, industrial-strength, revolution-rousing, LSD tabs featuring.......Blotter Art! Sandoz! Marc McCloud's Blotter Barn! an online warehouse1 of archival psychedelic artifacts : Sorceror's Apprentice! Mad Hatter! Steal My Face! Mr. Bill! Beavis and Butthead! As time-warped, the dots and microdots fused, with subliminal mantras and cartoon yantras to obliterate your day......

                                                                     Norman Hartweg, Acid Test poster (1965)
     Personal Acid Diary : Metamorphosising into lion-tamers with M's twin 'Tin, the whippin' Ringmaster in our feline circus, taking place in the inner courtyard of the Overdale apartment building / firetrap. We pampered the Stars of the Show - our sleek, black cats Fafur and Bazooka, as they climbed ladders and jumped through purple flaming hoops. We co-existed in purrfect telepathic bliss and interspecies joy. I digress, I mean, dig this grass.........the acid being sent from S.F. was encapsulated in edible triangles of translucent green, cosmic gel; sparkling, serrated gems hanging from pierced-earring wires! Sell them on the dance floor of Les Foufounes Electriques! "Da Da Da!"2

                                                                   Rev. Ivan Stang, Church of the Sub Genius
     Tripping daily with our Guru Brother (the Other M), we came up with the idea of soaking the blotter tab (imprinted with the Church of the Subgenius' cariacture of Bob (Got Slack?) Dobbs, Jr. smoking his pipe, or was it Fat Freddy's Cat, in his atypical, electric, wiry arch?) in a solution of vodka, then injecting the psychedelicized (Entheogenic) alcohol. Wow! an athletic little daemon entered our Blood! We climbed up to the rafters on fire escape ladders, enacting Spidey and Doc Octopus chase scenes; jumping to connecting rooftops like flying squirrels, entranced by the Symphony of the Setting Sun, until our superpowers rounded home (coming in to roost behind our eyeballs). The best volunteer "job" in the Universe? - sunrise and sunset gazing, in service of the rotating Earth (purring in retrospect, it may well have been Fat Freddy's cat after all).

                   Gilbert Shelton, Fat Freddy's Cat and the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comics
     Onto Mona's brief incarnation (and sad fate).....être sympathetique avec moi, chérie, je suis une belle Américaine, vingt-deux ans, vivant dans la ville le plus chic en Amérique du Nord, oui, moi, a radically-disllusioned, paranoiac-critical (Salvador Dali's diagnosis) raggamuffin, dope-takin' occultiste / anarchist, wisely disdaining speaking her pretentious high school French to a nation of righteous, cutthroat, Québecois séparatistes, moi, avec ZERO (beautiful word in the native tongue) opportunity for cash benefits (short of prostitution and stripping, two things I wouldn't do). TABERNOUCHE, CALICE DE ST. CIBOIRE! We were two living on welfare for one, $446 a month! A week before the dole, we took everything we had of value (guitars, synthesizers) to the pawn shop (Montréal legend Rock's). Out of necessity, we hatched ways to make "fun money", you know, to survive on. One of these get-rich-quik schemes birthed my alluring doppelgänger, Mona (Moon, in OldEnglish). She lasted a lunar sizzle before running off with Frankenstein........

     Mona was invented by a pair of "complètement fou", mad scientists, to go out into the starry-studded street and sell......fake acid. No brainer! We had already sold real acid for five bucks a hit, and were known as dealers around town. After thoughtful consideration (i.e. hunger and nic-fits) we figured our clientele had absolutely no way of knowing whether the stuff was real or not (or so our logic presumed, taking ZERO spirtitual responsibility for this diabolical deed). We interpolated.......people would be tripping.....precisely on...Wow!...the enhanced perception...and anticipation....of the assumed  realization....they were supposedly tripping! Whew! Which applies to consensual, perceived reality in general, thus.....the PLACEBO ACID BECAME REALIZED! (we'd imbue it with Magickal Intentions!).
     Mona became the Good Nurse.....(do not attempt to shatter this logic). I wore a brown, airline-stewardess wig, with shoulder-length waves and bangs, drew on a mole, and hit the street hissing "ACID" (because you can't help but hisssss Asssscid in a whispering, yet urgent, tone of voice), faithfully trailed by the 6'6 shadow of my lysergic pimp. Well, we sold some right off the bat, to some German tourists, and I felt like an R. Crumb cartoon derelict. Even worse, we bumped into our acidhead friend Dray (whom we spied, yet again, lurking in the cemetery on top of Mt. Royal). He was wearing dark shades (as usual) and when I saw him days later, teasingly querying "enjoy the trip?", he recited some weird Zen koan to rattle me. I felt bad, even for a Moon Vamp, and experienced a rising column of burning crimson shame. I knew it was a nasty head game to lay on heads, who only wanted to trip, with their egos detached, please and thank-you. Perchance, ("Dream on!"3) it was their "best trip ever", as PLACEBO is Latin for "I SHALL PLEASE" - looney hostess Mona's intention all along.....

                                                             R. Crumb comic, circa 1968
     Sharing this story with my friend Rob, he admitted selling vitamin C tablets as Orange Sunshine, to his fellow fifth-graders, for extra money to play video games. Great cons think alike, and quirky LSD stories rule! The stuff makes you crazy (and reveals the underlying mass hallucination) 'cuz IT'S ALL CRAZY, BABY! - and what better way to suffer Ego Death, release Control, and unleash the floodgates of Conscious Alchemy and Mutation?!!!

                                                  Alex Grey, St. Albert and the LSD Revelation Revolution (2006)
     Dr. Albert Hoffmann needn't have worried about his "Problem Child"4. LSD is wholly responsible for some of the world's best art, music, films, Be-Ins, Love-Ins, spontaneous happenings and political protest movements - a challenging, cultural reboot for the vanguard of a society seemingly dead to the Reality.....that Everything's Alive!!! Only the Undead, Acid Trippers, Quantum Mechanists, Indigenous Cultures, Buddhists, Wiccans, Shaman, and Daoists, purely embody the realization that nothing ever dies....EVERYTHING....KEEPS CHANGING....Morphaliciously!..... in Spiral Soul Revivals!

     Our Clan Mother Zaza is a Pillar of Enlightened Beatitude, her tripping likeness made the scene on the front page of the San Francisco Examiner, when acid was still legal, and being used "therapeutically" (in psychotherapy sessions in the early Sixties) (the Stained Glass Windows of the Mind Cathedral!). Zaza hung out with Owsley "Bear" Stanley, the Acid MAN! of the Heyday, and sat on a Queen's throne as a Muse of The Black Mountain School Poet Charles Olson. Decades later, she caught up with Owsley's latest project - an astral gold distillation of the Sun, sparkling-like opals. Were I not past the injectable phase, it would be a tempting medium to shoot (to trip alchemical gold!).

     ALL HAIL! the PSYCHEDELIC Movement, and its foretold GREAT AWAKENINGS! The Freaks are infinitely resourceful. Dose that water supply! Levitate that Pentagon! Keep inventing ways to blow Humanity's Mind! We are living on a Giant Space / Spice Mushroom, whose Intelligence manifests in Spores of Elemental Pranks and Rhizomes of Pure Joy! Devas, Fey Elementals, Stone People, Star People, Online Everyday People, all are experienced as interlinking, connectable and contactable Psychedelic Agents neutralizing Control.

    Seeking Communion with Entheogens (God-and-Goddess- Enabling-Beings, remember? The Food of the Gods!5) is part of an overall "ritualized usage of culture" we are, thankfully, reclaiming. PRAISE to Terrence McKenna (a lively incarnation of the Great God Pan!), his brother Dennis McKenna, and friends Luis Eduardo Luna, Kat Harrison, etc. for The Archaic Revival6 they've helped pioneer.

     In sacred celebration of our True Divinity, with the guidance of indigenous Seers, we're re-devoting entheogenic healing temples, integrating cults of the hallucinogenic Psilocybin, the crystalline Cannabis, Gea's vineblood Ayahuasca, San Pedro's Heavenly Gate, the somnambulist Poppy, the cactus flower Mescalito, Peyote's Red Road, the reindeer shaman's Amanita Muscaria, distilled Wormwood / Faerie Absinthe, time-weaving Salvia Divinorum, and the tantric imbibing of sensual Yang Elixirs and Yoni Nectars....for Life is a Quest of KNOWING JOY and JOYFUL KNOWING!!!!!!!!!!!

          K NOW WING JOY! TAKE FLIGHT!
         PARTAKE IN THY SACRAMENTS!
                     FEED THY HEAD! 
    INTEGRATE THY DICHOTOMIES!
       EAT THE ENABLING HOT DOG!
   BECOME ONE WITH EVERYTHING!7

1 www.blotterbarn.com
2 Trio, "Da Da Da"
3 Aerosmith, "Dream On"
4 The Damned, "Problem Child"
5 McKenna, Terrence, The Food of the Gods
6 McKenna, Terrence, The Archaic Revival
7 Q : How does the Seeker order a hot dog? A : Make me One with Everything!