It was over the summer (1987) between my high school graduation and my Freshman year at college, that I had some of the most profound experiences of my life. I am disappointed in myself for thinking at the time that life would only get more and more exciting for me. I wish so much now that I had lived each moment more fully. It is not regret... It is more like an adjustment of attitude... That lets off the steam...
My new love with, who I will call, "Windy," was (in hindsight) the most beautiful and touching thing that has ever graced my life--romantically. And it was during a most impressive time in my life. There is no aspect of reality that has ever been more influential to my direction than my relationship with her was.
Let me give a better idea...
This girl had large greenish-blue eyes. Her hair was golden. It wasn't blond. It wasn't brunet. It was wispy golden down. Her smile was so disarming that many times I watched men and women of all ages melt before her. She was beautiful physically. Beyond, actually... But her gentle, surprisingly energetic and positive personal force was intoxicating to all around her. I was simply the happiest guy then. I would continuously remind myself that she was mine and I was hers.
Now I must try to focus in on the experiences we had; that is, over the way I felt about her while we experienced them.
When we first started hanging out together, I had left my, high school band and had started another. In many ways my time with Windy mirrored my time with this new band. In fact, the very first time Windy and I ever really got "together" was when we happened to be with my other two fellow band mates.
But I've digressed.
One night several weeks after getting together, we decided to split an 8th of mushrooms. I had to play that night and everything went well. Later, when we were somewhere (I can't rightly recall who's place it was that we stayed at), I happened to have my 4 track recorder with me and tapes of some of the instrumental stuff I'd done on acid, or hash, weed or just straight. She loved all of it. Then I played our band's new demo tape and she loved that two. It was more than just trying to make me feel good. She had such a fresh energy. She wanted something for herself too. But it was not in a selfish way at all. Just looking in her eyes was enough for me to trust her, absolutely.
She wanted to know how the recorder worked, and could she mute different tracks, and how did I make sounds backwards. She really was interested in the whole deal. I felt like I had a partner now to explore these realms and music. And she was the best partner I ever had in both ways and one other...we were both becoming almost obsessed with spiritual matters. We shared the Unnamed Book. We did other things too.
Several times we tried to hypnotize each other, and we did fairly well at simply directional consciousness (describing scenes that the other person could then explore). We LOVED experimenting with all facets of our union.
We lay in bed that night on mushrooms, passing the earphones back and forth. Then we shut off the music and turned off the 4 track. We held hands. That was something that lasted throughout our relationship. We loved to be in contact with each other. And then we discussed what we were seeing. She saw that everything was made of dots, like a color half-tone. I actually could see paisley, twisting and untwisting. It was really like cutout psychedelic curtain designs floating in front of my face. We both cracked up. We smoked cigarettes and enjoyed each other's company. We loved having sex, but we loved just hanging out with each other just as much.
My dad owned a property way out in the country on Route 9 and no one was renting it at the time. He often spent days there working on things, but Windy and I would go out during the nights and hang out there, tripping or just talking. We wanted a place that was private and safe. We knew every back road and hidden parking place in the county, but being in a car all the time got old.
This small cape had a very large L-connected workshop. My dad worked in one part, and my band rehearsed in the other. But it was in my dad's part of these conjoined workshops that there was a finished office (carpet, heat, a few pieces of furniture), up on the mezzanine, that Windy and I would retreat to late at night.
One night we were up there in the workshop office and the acid we had taken about two hours before was really starting to come on. We were determined to try to "see" the "other side" somehow. On this night we finally came close.
I sat on on the floor with my back against the wall one way and she sat facing me with her back against the other wall. We were feeling the growing intensity of the trip as it stripped away our normality and left us psychically naked before each other. We stared only at each other's eyes. It became so strange and otherworldly that we kept getting distracted by the glimpses of amazing things occurring in our peripheral vision. The more we stared at the other person's face, the clearer the peripheral visions became. As the trip reached a peek, all we wanted to do was relax. So we took a break and just smoked cigarettes and discussed what we were trying to do.
KD. Windy was so innocent-hearted and had a childlike energy that could exhaust me. She would bring strength whenever I would begin to falter. This would eventually change in later years, but it was a real partnership of adventure during these first few months.
After the peek we tried our staring experiment again. This time we seemed to not only be looking at each other's faces but through that connection seeing our own faces somehow.
Around Windy's eyes I saw extensions to her lashes and another more fundamental "face" beyond what I normally saw. Above her head were heat waves of distorted light. And what looked like very exotic feathers or membranes moved slowly up and down, almost like wings attached to her. Her nose completely disappeared and Cheshire cat-like "smile" remained. She had a open countenance, in the joy of as touching a trust for me as I had for her. Her eyes smiled by themselves. Everything was being transmitted through them. The only truly sharp details I was able to see were her two dilated black pupils, in the middle of this less-resolved, smiling "being" before me.
Both of us were tearing up with strong emotion for the connection we seemed to be making. But it was SO intensely personal. We were outside of time somehow. There were no sounds outside the room. All the peepers were gone. There were no cars passing by on the main road. Nothing stirred inside the room either.
Then I caught my first glimpse. To the right there was what looked like a mechanical being who was also somehow alive. And behind him I saw other buildings and beings, plants even, that had been invisible just moments before. Windy sensed my surprise and we both got deep shivers up and down our spines. We quickly moved to the center of the room and simply embraced.
What had been developing as fear and confusion in seeing something that I simply couldn't believe was outside my mind, turned immediately into warmth and love. She was so soft and beautiful. She was motherlike at the same time that she was my partner. We decided to end the evening's experiments, set up a little boom box we had to go down to the car to retrieve and played our favorite songs at the time. I think it was Prince's "Paisley Park."
Then we got the idea of recording ourselves while we discussed things in this strange state. The room was already trapezoidal in the sober world, in nearly every way (no squared corners), but the acid amplified this effect to outrageous proportions. We just laughed and smoked and recorded ourselves talking. At first the trip lost some of its magic. One gets that "On Air" feeling, where one seems to edit every response. When we weren't recording we talked so openly and directly, but when we tried to record we became reserved and timid. Eventually though, we just left the recorder going and forgot about it. It was an interesting tape as I recall. We lost it. It may even be found by someone, someday. Of course tapes aren't easy to play anymore.
We switched off the overhead light and turned on a small lamp that we had brought to mellow out with. We laid back and began talking about the coming school year, her as a Senior in high School and me as a Freshman in college. It grew a bit uncomfortable for a while as we disagreed about how much we could stand being apart from each other. Although I didn't admit it, I was unsure about going to college; nervous, really. Very nervous.
I could imagine getting bogged down up north there while she got to enjoy the lessened workload of senior year. I really wanted her to go to college when she graduated but she wasn't sure. She thought that it should be alright for me to go to college and her to go off traveling around the world. I did not agree. I wanted her with me all the time.
Eventually we agreed that whatever we chose to do we would never break up. Then I think we had sex and she eventually caught a couple hours of sleep, but I didn't. I remember very clearly watching her as she slept. Blueish light was chasing out the dark night and the birds began to sing. And I watched her as the after-images of my trip played themselves out like a cellophane wrapper colored with fluorescent makers, moving across our skins and the surfaces of everything in the room. As it came time to get up and head home I simply thought, "Windy, we have to go." And then her clear eyes opened blinking repeatedly like the wings of butterflies testing the morning air. She smiled.
After my vision of the being that night, I knew more clearly what to watch for. Apparently there are buildings, plants, machines, beings, and maybe even animals that are just outside of our vision. Materially too, they are of a finer "stuff." Their stuff somehow does not naturally come in contact with our stuff. But because both we beings have relatable minds we can occasionally see each other. Now I wanted to actually meet one of the supermaterial beings again to attempt to speak to him/her.
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