SEARCHING FOR MYSELF

     Gary Richardson was reaching the climax of his guitar solo. The fingers of his left hand moved rapidly over the frets; a piece of chromed steel on his little finger to make those special harmonic notes. His right hand strummed across the 12 strings of his Gibson guitar, a bead of sweat ran down his nose. It was a performance I had seen dozens of times since we rented the main floor of an old house with 4 bedrooms on 16th and Flanders street in Portland, right across from Radio Cab. It was 1979. In a few more years we would be able to fill up our gas tanks at Radio Cab during the gas embargo brought on by the OPEC countries during the Arab-Israeli War. 

     Gary's face was showing the strain as his strumming approached those final notes. I had seen this as many times as I had heard his playing. This time was different. I was wondering who I was and whether my return from this particular chemical high would see me coming back as the same person i had been when i had drunk the initial sips of our Kool-Aid. A Kool-Aid I might add not provided by rightwing propaganda stooges.

     About three months earlier I had purchased a water-bed from a waterbed  store down town, near 2nd street and Taylor. Two long-hairs had delivered the bed and set it up in my bedroom running a garden hose through the window in my room to fill the bladder. After I paid them, they brought out some quart canning jars of pumpkin seed-shaped mescaline called, approprietly, Screaming Yellow Zonkers. I split the cost with Gary, we were going to sell them for $5 bucks per seed. They were a wonderful high, one we had sampled a few times in those months. The problem was that the tablet crumbled into a powder every time we opened the cap and shook out a few. Which brings us to this particular day where I was questioning who I would be when I came down. There was about a quarter-inch of powder in the bottom of the jar, the seeds were long gone. A merchandising endeavor we would never try again. I got the idea to mix the powder with some powdered orange drink mix, stirring the mixture vigorously, before pouring it into two glasses. Gary got the first glass I poured. And here was where I went wrong. The powder did not mix into the liquid, preferring to float at the top as the final glass was poured. The Glass I had poured after Gary's. When sufficiently high, Gary would open his guitar case and wipe the body and neck of his guitar with a hand towel before beginning to caress the strings. I am no musician, not then-not now, but Gary was an accomplished guitar player. When his friend John Wyatt would visit, with his guitar, we had a concert. And I could hear and feel the notes as they played, feeding on each other's leads. This performance was for me. The look of worry on Gary's face was unsettling. It probably was no different than at other times, but I was exploring a new level of psychedelia. The hallucinations were unlike any I had previously experienced. Not just colors but facial distortions which made Gary's facial expressions more concerning to me. Sometimes I would stand up and walk across the living room, struggling to find something to calm my over-active mind. I had lost my comfort level. This new high was beyond my previous experience. At one point I actually wondered if I would return as a slug, or some other crawly thing. 

     Gary reached the penultimate notes and as the final harmonic note faded away into the air, he put his guitar away, carefully wiping the oils from his hands off of the blonde veneers of the guitar face, then the darkened veneer of the neck and the back of the guitar. He placed it into the case, snapped it closed and set it aside. Then he picked up a spiral notebook and a pen.

     "You're going to be fine, Larry. You're just super high." He drew a line across the page a few lines above the middle of the page. Beside it he wrote NLC. "This is you normally, Larry. Your normal level of consciousness. He drew another line above that line, but shorter. Beside it he wrote PATH. "This is your previous all-time high." He drew another shorter line at the top of the lined page. "You're here. You've never been this high before. In a short while, you will start to come down slowly and you will return to consciousness at the same level you are used to experiencing. Some day we will laugh about this." 

     I think about that often. The pleasure of listening to Almann Brothers guitar solos, that waterbed that sometime later developed a leak (I was able to drain the bag without too much damage, but I had to wait for payday to get a new, more conventional bed), and my new understanding of pushing psychedelic limits. Life is its own kind of chemical conditioning. Whether it is mind alteration by virtue of some amature chemist, or the still pleasurable thrill of excitement and joy. I was early in my discovery of illegal highs. Every new experience prepared me for further experimentation. We are now revisting chemical stimulants with some 6 decades of researching their medicinal uses. In the old days we used to call our drug use, with tongue firmly in cheek, medicine. Some of those psycho-active potions are  now free of guilt, though out of the reach of most of us. Ahh, for those $5.00 hits. For the lucky few, those treatments can help to mitigate PTSD and other mental/emotional conditions. 

     I've been searching for the answer to who I am for a long time. I may never find the answer. Each time I think I'm close to the answer something else captures my attention and I am exploring new psychic dimensions. Im like that cartoon dog that sees a squirrel and chases after it, having forgotten his original purpose. I'm not too disconcerted; it's comforting to know I can adapt. I do not spend my life searching for the next high, I know that there will be one until that time there is no more need. And by that time i will be beyond worry. There is not the fear of running afoul of some law these days. The dispensers of what are now legally-permitted highs are far better informed than the old days and the product quality is regulated (and quite good). With the exception of pot, or its derivatives, the distance between my use of psycho-active products is measured in decades, not quite five. I still think about buying some magic mushrooms, or mescaline. The urge is no longer strong, but it still occurs. I still question how I fit into this world. Lately I have had the time to explore being a writer. At least somewhere on the spectrum of writing. I am enjoying it. Not everyone shares my enjoyment. There is much for me to write and people to write about, but I cling so far to political satire. It is not a fine art, but I'm fine with it. Seriously, have you ever experienced  a complete party of politicians who embody the meaning of clueless? Some of the leaders of that party are not clueless. They know enough to frame voting districts that are more favorable to their clueless party. but the people who send those people into those legislative or executive offices are embarrassingly clueless. Poking fun at those people floods my pleasure receptors with oxytocin. Some people advise me to expand my writing horizons, " write a novel, or a tribute. Use your talent to appeal to our better natures". Had I started writing earlier I might have done as they wish. But my talent took a long time to emerge. And the thing that captures this writers attention is the existential danger to democracy provided by a political party that has gone all in on the fascism that has remained hidden among the white supremacists and religious zealots that date back  before Sen. Joe McCarthy and the John Birchers. 

     I don't have too many years left. My audience is smaller than Marjorie Taylor Greene's book purchasers. So I am writing what pleases me and what pleases me is insulting people who oppress other people. I have found my purpose in life...at least for now.