Psychedelia Again

The drive up to Killaloe was full of bad omens. The city was under siege - a rain siege that flooded the streets and the highways. The basement flooded in my mom's neighbour's house; trees fell; and a little town was nearly wiped out. More rain than we've had all summer suddenly relieved itself onto the city within only a few hours while Ryan and I drove far away from all of it. Still, the omen was clear. On one of the dark stretches of highway north of the city, we ran over frogs and raccoons and other carcasses too mutilated to be recognized. It was like a warning: DO NOT PASS. DO NOT GO. But what's a little bit of rain and a highway full of road kill compared to a weekend of psychedelic adventures? Ryan and I drove a total of 9 hours that day only to find ourselves on a wet, vaguely familiar farm where we soaked our pants trying to find a good place to set up camp. There in the spitting rain, we located ourselves dead centre of all the fun with the BLA uphill and OM downhill. In the new four-person tent that is not so much a spaceship as it is a little cabin, we got a full blast of both music stages that was impossible to ignore or drown out. But being two ticking time bombs of stress, we decided it was the most convenient location to unload and that it would do for the first night. We also decided not to any hard drugs that night and we slept like still-born babies.

The morning was gray and I don't remember much of it because I was stoned the entire day. Ryan and I explored the land a little bit and decided that our camp spot was clearly the best spot in terms of view, convenience and privacy. To approach our humble little home, you had to go off the main road - the main road being the one long road that stretched from the entrance all the way up to the BLA stage. Off the main road, there is a winding little path through the tall grass and milkweeds. We had a little front porch area where we set up our two camping chairs and our food box as the table. Inside the food box, we threw in our stainless steel camping cups, plates and utensils, and we brought cans of tuna, mandarin oranges, wine gums (regular and sour), apple sauce, and this marvelous little snack that comes in a plastic bin: a tiny little can of tuna & mayonnaise (premixed), a package of salty crackers, a little tiny napkin, and a tiny little plastic shovel. It's fucking delicious. Ryan and I basically gorged ourselves all of Saturday. The healthy mix of marijuana smoke, fresh Canadian air, and a weak little camp fire had really pumped up our appetite. When the Kind Kitchen arrived, we watched excitedly awaiting whatever nutritious foodstuff they were going to make. I love the Kind Kitchen, you're always thankful for them at the end of the weekend when you're so glad you have a little bowl of hot food in your belly. I bought two loafs of bread, a bag of potatoes, and five green peppers to donate to the Kind Kitchen. They seemed surprised.

When it was starting to get dark, the mushroom guy arrived. This mysterious mushroom guy is the rumored Quebecian who, well, rumor has it that he is the only one at this party with any mushrooms. I was introduced to him the moment he walked into the party as a Friend of a Friend. I bought 8 grams of mushrooms and I knew right away that there was no way Ryan and I would be able to finish it all. But I'd rather be overstocked than under, so Ryan and I happily scurried away after we drank our delicious Kind Kitchen soup and ate our delicious boiled Kind Kitchen corn, and we went back to the tent where we could start eating our delicious Magic Mushrooms.

Ryan and I both ate one stem each. Nothing.

Two stems. Liz and Tom come by and we go check out the BLA party. There are a lot of people dancing already, and the pounding music shook the little hill the stage was set up on. I began seeing some light effects. One more stem was definitely in order.

I loathe the taste of mushrooms. I gagged twice on them, worried that I was going to throw up my mushrooms. Hate waste. But once the third stem went down, Liz came back again, alone this time, and we went back up to the BLA stage where the black light paintings and decorations really jumped out at me this time. There was a jellyfish that had a brain and it looked like it with swimming all its tentacles shook and wiggled along to the music. Another one was a wild, Fear-and-Loathing-esque scene with this weird scull and brains with eyes and Venice fly trap type flower. My favourite was this beautiful flower that had a little man sitting on top of it. It made me happy. I was definitely starting to trance.

I swirled in my red-orange-green sarong to the mind blowing music while black light monsters watched from the black sky. I was back inside again - inside of my mind - inside of everything. Everything around me was a part of me - part of my trip. Every single person counted and mattered. Everybody was my friend. Everybody loved me.

From the Outside, I heard a faint: "I'm going for a walk."

Ryan asks me if I felt like leaving and hell no, I was dancing dancing dancing like the swirly twirly leaves that fall from autumn trees, and so he left me: "I'll be right back."

He left me and time stopped. The music stopped. The people froze. In mid-dance, people stopped. In mid-sentence, people stopped. I forgot how to dance so I picked up my little water bottle and walked to a dark corner where I could be ignored. Where people couldn't see me hiding. And there I sat, falling deeper and deeper into myself, my internal dialogue becoming a senseless garble of rants and worries that I couldn't hear and I looked around hoping I could find something to keep my attention, but there was nothing.

Ryan B sat down beside me. He is only here for the girls. I told him that there are a lot of hot girls here. He already knew that. I can't think of anything else to say to him so I ignore him. He goes to sit with his friends around the fire.

I fall deeper and deeper into the hole. Why won't anyone talk to me? But I can't meet anyone's eye. My eyes dart around the stage as I fell deeper into that dark mysterious hole you can fall in when you're not careful when your mind runs away from you and you're left in this heavy body and you're thinking two thousand thoughts a second like a robot who can only calculate feelings, but cannot express them. I was not angry with Ryan, but I was annoyed. I could not find the words to say it, forgot how to move my mouth to say it, and that is why when Ryan came back for me, perhaps only minutes but what felt like hours later, I could not tell him that I wasn't mad at him at all, I was just annoyed. He took my silence for anger and worse yet a terrible trip and I think Ryan has had his fair share of bad trips for a lifetime. He pleads with me not to be angry that he was gone for so long, and the sadness in his eyes is contagious so I start to cry. It's strange to cry on mushrooms because your tears feel like big drops of cool mercury and when it slides down your face, your flesh feels like plastic. Big bubble drops of tears fall from my eyes and I cannot stop them. I feel vaguely embarrassed for crying at a party because nobody likes a party pooper, so then I really become upset with Ryan because if he hadn't left me hanging in the first place, I wouldn't be feeling like a mummy right then.

Ryan leads me back to the tent, all the while begging me to pull myself out of the funk. And though I tried to find the words, they don't reach my mouth and it isn't until we are back at the tent that I can speak again and Ryan makes jokes to me to cheer me up. We decide to start moving or we'd end up sitting at our tent all night and we both knew what that could lead to so we went Downstairs to where the OM people were playing some drum & bass, which might I add is actually considered chill compared to psytrance. But the area was dimly lit and there weren't a lot of dancers, so Ryan went Upstairs to see what the BLA were up to.

The stage was lit up bright with black lights and the paintings were so beautiful and all the people glowed. Everyone was dancing - arms and legs kicking and pumping to the beat of the music. The dancing was infectious because Ryan and I took off our shoes and joined them. I was twirling again, my feet were light as wings, and I flittered dizzily around Ryan. We were soon dancing together, something we have never quite managed to do because we dance quite differently, but we were doing then, playing a secret game of tag on the dance floor as we chased and teased each other with our dancing. Like in the middle of passionate intercourse, our minds and bodies were truly one and it was perhaps one of the most perfect and fleeting experiences of my life. For you know feelings like that don't last more than a couple of minutes. Such perfection simply cannot be sustained and it's lucky when it does last for more than just a second. Still, I do not miss it when it stops because with Ryan it never truly stops. Loving Ryan is as easy as breathing and is every bit as beautiful every morning when I wake up and see him mouth half open passed out next to me.

Soon, I have to pee again, so we went back to the tent. Once it got dark, I stopped using the public washroom because I hate it in there all stinky shit of strung out junkies and stale warm piss from the day before. Fuck that shit. Ryan and I each had our own bush to piss in. It was strangely poignant and ridiculous watching him pee in the moonlight. He had been standing at the bush for a long time, and when he comes back he tells me that he was having a conversation with a cricket.

"He was trying to convince me that there is such a thing as god. First I was looking at the bush and I was thinking about the Bible and why people believed in it. Because of the burning bush story. I said that it would be a real symbol if that cricket would be quiet. Then I looked away from the cricket up into the sky, and the cricket immediately stopped chirping. So then I started talking to… "God" and said, wow that was pretty impressive, but I wish you could do it again so I can be sure, but I guess it's one of those things where God doesn't do things twice, because you're supposed to understand the first time. Then I looked back at the bush and the cricket started chirping again. When I looked back up into the sky, the cricket stopped chirping."

I believe there's a god. OKCupid says that I believe in a George Lucas god, where god is a mysterious powerful force. Damn right I do.

We sat in our camping chairs and looked down at the OM stage. It looked so cool and chill with the little shack DJ booth lit by a single star-shaped hanging light. There was this glowing parachute tent that kind of looked like a mushroom. And a video screen where people can walk behind and dance. People were making funny tinfoil hats to wear to walk behind it. It was very cute. But for all that it was a cool scene, it was too dark and lame compared to the BLA stage. Ryan and I were soaring on our mushroom high, and we needed something with more energy. We walked back Upstairs to BLA who made us jump and spin, but I could feel that the peak of my trip was over when the lights and colours no longer seemed to sparkle, and I couldn't lose myself in the music as much anymore. On mushrooms, you can lose yourself in music where your body dances with all its might and your brain is just in for the ride. Then the power went out on the main black light that lit the whole dance floor. We all kept dancing, and the DJ kept spinning, but as soon as they got the power back up again, Ryan and I were gone.

Pot is a slutty drug that you can mix with all kinds of other more powerful drugs. As soon as Ryan and I started smoking the perfect fat joint I rolled, we are soaring again, and we lay in the tall grass and milkweeds watching people pass by and looking down at the glowing festivities at the stage below. We laugh and cuddle and it's like the perfect date except better because it doesn't have to end. The whole plateau is light with moon and we bask in its haunting glow. When we go back into the tent, we joke around and eat the tuna snacks, so cunningly designed for our needs.

We pass out quickly because the tacky low-heat lamp Ryan brought was too boring to keep us awake.

In the morning, there is sunlight. Everything we own is covered in dew and it smells like grass and flowers outside. Ryan and I brush our teeth and wash our faces and it feels marvelous cleaning the furry mold in our mouths and on our cheeks. We take a stroll around the site, rolling my giant Python: Focus on Profit beach ball around, playing catch with some friendly strangers.

We chilled at the OM stage where they were playing some reggae and eventually hip hop. The sun felt so good, I took off my sarong and lay on the grass in my bikini and let my skin soak up all the sun it had missed while being inside the office all summer. This is my only vacation of the year and I don’t think about anything at all – not work, not home, not money.

I was having the perfect date with the boy I love and I couldn't help noticing the other couples also chilling out Downstairs. There was one couple who was dancing with each other, mirroring their bodies together, grooving to each other's movements. It so reminded me and Ryan dancing the night before, and I could not stop watching them. Then there was another couple, the girl was topless but for a red scarf she wrapped around her head and shoulders, and they say together kissing so passionately, I felt myself blush, which doesn't usually happen during any porn. They all came together as friends with yet another couple, both dredded and hippy, the girl who had the sweetest face in the world sharing her cigarette with her sleeping boyfriend.


I have never seen such beautiful people before in my life. The girls especially were beautiful because of their grace and smiles, and I couldn't help admire them. I know I'm not a lesbian, but my attraction to women has nothing to do with sexuality. I love women because I love that I am one. When I admire other girls, it's not because of their clothes or their hair. I admire girls who are honest and graceful because they are usually people I aspire to be like. They don't have to be older than me or prettier than me. They don't have to smarter than me or more charming than me. Women are under a lot of pressure to compete not just with men but with each other. And it's rare to meet women who do not try to compete with me. These women are kind, generous and confident, and that's how I try to be. I feel only when I surround myself with people, especially women, like that, it helps me forget the ones who aren't like that. Women who try to steal from you or trick you, women who want something from you or want nothing to do with you. There are lots of people - men and women - who do these things, but it hurts more when it's a woman. So when I find a kindred spirit who is willing to put aside her competitive nature and let her true self shine, it makes me so happy and proud to be a woman too.

The day slipped by so fast, and we had to pack up and go to the beach before it got too late. I was really stoned and sun-baked so I was being lazy. There were clouds overhead and suddenly I was cold and tired and didn't want to do anything when Ryan tells me to get up and help him pack and I told him that I was too cold, the sun suddenly came out and it was like god was telling me to get up off my ass and get moving and I'm like, "Yes Sir!" and Ryan and I were packed within the hour.

When we get to the beach, the waves are choppy because of all the speed boats and Ryan and I run straight into the cold water that made me squeal and goosebumps pop. The water is unreal - so cool and clear and the sand under our toes feels so soft and squishy and we splash around and float on our backs with the sun warming our skin and the water carrying our bodies away under that big blue sky that is god's greatest creation of all.