Program Notes
Guest speaker: Lorenzo
In today’s program there is no featured guest. Instead, Lorenzo presents the first chapter in his new novel, The Genesis Generation. In it, Lorenzo weaves the tale of a young man caught between two worlds, the world of corporate America and the world of the psychedelic community.
As the story unfolds, we learn of the transformation of a 29 year old “yuppie-geek” into an underground hero of the psychedelic community. The story begins in Palenque, Mexico and moves through Texas, Amsterdam, Viet Nam, and even to Burning Man.
Chapter Titles:
An Awakening in Palenque
Depression in Dallas
Amazement in Amsterdam
Confrontation in Viet Nam
Stranded in San Francisco
Ecstasy in Dallas
Midwest Memories
San Francisco Seminar
Caitlín’s Salon
Rindy’s Place
Burning Man
Weekend with Old Joe
Wizard’s Council
A West Coast Drive
Mountain Farewell
Freedom’s Promise
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:19 ►
This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:23 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:30 ►
And today, June 10th, 2009, is a day that I have been waiting for for a long time.
00:00:33 ►
Well, I guess waiting isn’t quite the correct word.
00:00:36 ►
It’s more like this is a day I’ve been working for for a long time.
00:00:39 ►
Six and a half years, to be exact.
00:00:43 ►
There are several things that make today special for me.
00:00:49 ►
The first and most important is that my mother was born 94 years ago today,
00:00:55 ►
and just four years ago on this date was my first podcast from the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:59 ►
So today marks the beginning of my fifth year of podcasting.
00:01:09 ►
And what’s more, at long last, my novel, The Genesis Generation, is finished and recorded in an audiobook format.
00:01:19 ►
And should you like what you hear in today’s podcast, you can purchase a professional editor who I can work with to help me move this book into print format.
00:01:31 ►
But for now, it is only available in audiobook format, with me reading it, of course.
00:01:37 ►
And I’ll have more to say about the book and the other three I plan to follow it with after we first listen to Chapter 1.
00:01:43 ►
I plan to follow it with after we first listen to Chapter 1.
00:01:50 ►
But now, without any further ado, here is Chapter 1 of The Genesis Generation.
00:01:52 ►
I hope you enjoy it.
00:02:01 ►
The Genesis Generation.
00:02:05 ►
Read for you by its author, Lorenzo Haggerty For Ruth, Joe, Anne, Leo, and Mary C., and to my muse.
00:02:16 ►
A note from the publisher.
00:02:19 ►
The manuscript for this book was given to me by a young man I met at a conference that we were both attending.
00:02:25 ►
I had seen him once before at a little gathering in Venice Beach, but we didn’t actually meet that night.
00:02:33 ►
He said he’d heard me speak a few times and that he believed we held similar views about the world.
00:02:39 ►
Of course, flattery will get you everywhere with me, and so I wound up spending an hour or so visiting with him.
00:02:46 ►
It was time well spent, as I think you will see.
00:02:50 ►
Long before I would have wanted our conversation to end,
00:02:54 ►
a somewhat mystical-looking and very lovely young woman,
00:02:58 ►
along with two men who reminded me of traveling missionaries,
00:03:02 ►
gathered him up and the four of them swept out of the conference hall so quickly
00:03:06 ►
that it almost seemed as if they had vanished into thin air.
00:03:10 ►
The last I saw of them was the little green beret on the back of his girlfriend’s head
00:03:14 ►
as she strode purposefully out the main door.
00:03:18 ►
When I picked up the cloth shoulder bag that held my notes,
00:03:22 ►
I immediately noticed that it was considerably
00:03:25 ►
heavier than it had been before I sat down to talk with this young man. It now contained,
00:03:30 ►
I had discovered, the journal that you are about to read. My first thought, I am not proud to admit,
00:03:37 ►
was that he had only made contact with me in order to soften me up into reading a
00:03:42 ►
draft of a book he had written. Normally I wouldn’t have minded, but it came at a time when I was involved in more projects than is sensible.
00:03:51 ►
So I was irritated at myself for being drawn into yet another diversion of my attention,
00:03:57 ►
away from some things I would still like to accomplish in this lifetime.
00:04:01 ►
But something almost irresistible caused me to begin reading this story,
00:04:06 ►
which, quite frankly, still seems mostly unbelievable to me.
00:04:11 ►
Even now I am not sure what to think of this tale.
00:04:15 ►
In fact, I probably wouldn’t have published it at all
00:04:17 ►
had Will Battersley not handwritten the following quotation
00:04:21 ►
on the back of the large manila envelope that held this journal.
00:04:25 ►
I believe that today, more than ever, a book should be sought after,
00:04:30 ►
even if it has only one great page in it.
00:04:33 ►
We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails,
00:04:37 ►
anything that has ore in it,
00:04:38 ►
anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and soul.
00:04:43 ►
It may be that we are doomed,
00:04:45 ►
that there is no hope for us, any of us.
00:04:48 ►
But if that is so, then let us set up
00:04:51 ►
a last agonizing, blood-curling howl,
00:04:54 ►
a screech of defiance, a war-hoop,
00:04:57 ►
away with lamentation, away with eulogies and dirges,
00:05:01 ►
away with biographies and histories
00:05:03 ►
and libraries and museums.
00:05:06 ►
Let the dead eat the dead. Let us living ones dance about the rim of the crater. A last expiring dance,
00:05:12 ►
but a dance. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 1934.
00:05:20 ►
Signed, Lorenzo Haggerty, Publisher, The Genesis Generation
00:05:25 ►
The Genesis Generation
00:05:30 ►
Chapter 1 Awakening in Palenque
00:05:35 ►
Journal Entry
00:05:38 ►
I have come to the belief that we who are alive today are going to be judged not only by our own
00:05:45 ►
time, but by all times.
00:05:49 ►
History is at such a pivotal moment right now that there is not a person alive who doesn’t
00:05:55 ►
have the potential of becoming the butterfly whose tiny flapping wings see the storm that
00:06:01 ►
grows so great that it eventually tips human consciousness into its next higher state.
00:06:07 ►
In essence, that is my whole story.
00:06:11 ►
And if you already understand exactly what I mean,
00:06:14 ►
then there is no reason for you to read any further.
00:06:18 ►
But the only way I know how to help the rest of you truly grok what is happening right now
00:06:23 ►
is to tell the whole story as best as I can remember it.
00:06:27 ►
What it boils down to, I guess, is that I have actually come to believe the line in
00:06:33 ►
an ancient Hopi prophecy that says, we are the ones we have been waiting for.
00:06:39 ►
And for me, that means that I can gain no further benefit by living another lifetime on the sidelines,
00:06:46 ►
fervently hoping that the task now before us will fall to some future generation.
00:06:51 ►
I am now convinced that the day has arrived for each and every one of us,
00:06:56 ►
and you know who you are, to stand up and be counted.
00:07:00 ►
And if we are not willing to take that risk,
00:07:03 ►
then we should acknowledge the fact that we are passing up an opportunity that will not come again on this planet for another hundred thousand lifetimes.
00:07:14 ►
As has been my habit for a long time now, I keep a journal.
00:07:18 ►
And while I don’t write in it every day, during most weeks I get a few lines in.
00:07:25 ►
in it every day. During most weeks I get a few lines in. What follows is an expanded version of the notes I made on a few of the more significant days during the most eventful
00:07:30 ►
twelve months of my life, so far. I can’t guarantee that I’ve recalled all of the conversations
00:07:37 ►
exactly as they occurred, but I have done my best to give you a sense of what it was
00:07:43 ►
like at the time these events took place.
00:07:47 ►
November 22nd, 2003.
00:07:51 ►
A campground near the Mayan ruins at Palenque, Mexico.
00:07:55 ►
Saturday night.
00:07:57 ►
Humankind is being led along an evolving course.
00:08:01 ►
Through this migration of intelligences and and though we seem to be sleeping,
00:08:06 ►
there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream, and that will eventually startle us back
00:08:12 ►
to the truth of who we are. Rumi. I think that Rumi quote pretty much sums up my state of mind
00:08:20 ►
when I decided to step out of my comfort zone a bit and join a group tour to the ruins
00:08:25 ►
at Palenque. To be honest, camping isn’t something I enjoy all that much, but my life had become so
00:08:32 ►
routine and boring that I knew something had to change. My job was interesting, but my life wasn’t.
00:08:40 ►
Apparently that inner wakefulness that Rumi talked about was doing its thing.
00:08:46 ►
So, when a friend from work suggested we check out some old Mayan ruins in Mexico,
00:08:50 ►
I jumped at the chance.
00:08:53 ►
The trip was fantastic, even the camping.
00:08:56 ►
In many ways, it was like being in a completely different world.
00:09:01 ►
I can’t explain precisely what it is about Palenque that is so compelling to me,
00:09:05 ►
but for sure there is some powerful magic in that beautiful Lacandon jungle.
00:09:11 ►
For me, the magic began in earnest on the last night of our trip. We had been camping at a spot
00:09:17 ►
within walking distance of the ruins. Luckily for us, it wasn’t too crowded the week we were there,
00:09:22 ►
and it was easy to make friends as we weaved our way to the road
00:09:25 ►
from the spot where our little group had pitched our tents.
00:09:30 ►
Up near the road there were a few small stone buildings that could be rented
00:09:33 ►
if sleeping in a tent wasn’t for you,
00:09:35 ►
and it was at a party in one of those little stone huts on the last night of our trip
00:09:41 ►
that my life took a turn in a radically different direction.
00:09:46 ►
Some traveling musicians had rented one of the huts to hold a going-away party,
00:09:51 ►
as many of us who had been camping there all week were leaving the next morning.
00:09:55 ►
I was one of the last to arrive at the party because I knew that most of the people there were planning on taking ecstasy,
00:10:05 ►
people there were planning on taking ecstasy, and I had to avoid that scene due to the fact that,
00:10:11 ►
at the time, my job required me to have a secret-level U.S. security clearance. The last thing my career needed was a drug charge against me, so I did my best to stay squeaky clean in
00:10:17 ►
that regard. Alcohol and caffeine were my drugs of choice. Needless to say, arriving late did nothing to shield me from the marijuana smokers.
00:10:28 ►
I had never seen such a thick cloud of smoke in a room in my life.
00:10:32 ►
And, of course, when I walked into that wall of smoke,
00:10:36 ►
my level of self-induced paranoia went off the chart.
00:10:39 ►
I almost freaked out, thinking that just the second-hand smoke alone
00:10:43 ►
would probably get me busted at the airport.
00:10:46 ►
But then, through the fog, I saw my friend from work.
00:10:50 ►
He was sitting on an old wooden kitchen chair, quite king-like, right in the middle of the room,
00:10:56 ►
and he had a woman on each knee with another one massaging his shoulders from behind.
00:11:01 ►
Without a doubt, he was stoned out of his mind and obviously in his own little heaven.
00:11:07 ►
Until this trip, I had never even suspected that rough-smoked pot. After all, his security
00:11:13 ►
clearance was even higher than mine. That was my first hint that there was still a lot for me to
00:11:18 ►
learn about how the world really works. It didn’t take long, however, for me to get into the rhythm of the night.
00:11:26 ►
After chugging down a couple of cervezas, the paranoia quietly slipped away, at least
00:11:32 ►
for an hour. Then it returned with a vengeance. In retrospect, it is easy to see that once
00:11:40 ►
I knew of the existence of communities of free spirits like these, there would be no turning back for me.
00:11:46 ►
But at the time, I was more than a little freaked out by all of their talk about drugs
00:11:51 ►
and what they called journeys back to the source.
00:11:55 ►
Of course, back then I was a geeky know-it-all asshole,
00:11:59 ►
as Ray Lua so eloquently put it when she told me later what she thought about me that night.
00:12:05 ►
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
00:12:08 ►
I’ve always felt a little awkward at parties where I don’t know many people,
00:12:12 ►
and so I did what I usually do in those situations and headed for the food.
00:12:17 ►
The cabin was a large rectangular stone box with a high ceiling.
00:12:22 ►
To the left of the door there was a sleeping loft that was held up by a couple of thin wooden poles,
00:12:28 ►
and on the right was an open high-ceiling kitchen area.
00:12:32 ►
Mainly it was a big open space with a fireplace opposite the door.
00:12:37 ►
There were several sofa beds and large cushions scattered around the room.
00:12:41 ►
A long table served as a kind of wall on my right,
00:12:44 ►
and it separated the room into a food area and a conversation area.
00:12:50 ►
The cabin wasn’t all that big and seemed even smaller
00:12:53 ►
with forty or so people crammed in,
00:12:56 ►
and it sounded as if everyone was talking at the same time,
00:12:59 ►
filling the space with an insanely loud buzz,
00:13:02 ►
making it almost impossible to hear Panda playing
00:13:05 ►
his guitar up in the loft.
00:13:07 ►
You have probably been to a party like that yourself, where you had to shout to the person
00:13:12 ►
next to you just to be heard.
00:13:15 ►
Soon I was filling my plate from dishes on the table, which was loaded with all kinds
00:13:20 ►
of delicious foods that I had never tasted before.
00:13:23 ►
Coming from Dallas, I was basically a meat and potatoes guy,
00:13:27 ►
so all of these new tasting vegetarian dishes were a real treat for me,
00:13:32 ►
particularly since my campfire cooking left a lot to be desired.
00:13:37 ►
I’ll say one thing about this crowd that few would argue with,
00:13:40 ►
and that is the fact that they really knew how to create a feast out of food
00:13:44 ►
that a lot of people wouldn’t have thought of as being particularly interesting. you with, and that is the fact that they really knew how to create a feast out of food that
00:13:45 ►
a lot of people wouldn’t have thought of as being particularly interesting.
00:13:49 ►
I can still almost taste the raw chili peppers that were stuffed with finely chopped onion,
00:13:54 ►
carrots, and cilantro, all mixed into a pate-like filling that I later learned was made from
00:14:00 ►
sunflower seeds.
00:14:02 ►
Who would have thought that anyone could make things like that taste so good?
00:14:06 ►
And how they achieved such an exquisite blend of flavors in the dishes that came out of
00:14:11 ►
what appeared to be a dirty old campground kitchen I still can’t figure out.
00:14:16 ►
The table, covered with food and fresh-cut flowers, reminded me of one of those beautiful
00:14:22 ►
Buddhist sand paintings that are swept away shortly after they are completed.
00:14:27 ►
So I decided to do my part and sweep away some of the food.
00:14:32 ►
As I was grazing this lovely feast, I commented to a woman standing next to me that
00:14:37 ►
I was surprised to see that someone had brought salmon pâté to what was billed as a raw vegetarian buffet.
00:14:47 ►
pâté to what was billed as a raw vegetarian buffet. It was actually the best salmon pâté I had ever tasted, and I didn’t mean it as a complaint at all. But when I said that,
00:14:52 ►
she completely cracked up. As she laughed, some little pieces of food shot out of her mouth and
00:14:58 ►
landed on my arm, which for some reason just made her laugh even more. Then she tried to brush the food off my arm,
00:15:05 ►
all the while shouting something about the salmon pate
00:15:08 ►
to an exotic-looking woman who was standing with her back to us at the end of the table.
00:15:14 ►
It really isn’t possible for me to do justice to a description of what Raelua looked like that night.
00:15:20 ►
She was wearing a long, native-style dress in a color so bright it almost looked as if it was glowing.
00:15:27 ►
Her dark hair, topped with a small green beret, hung in dreadlocks all the way down her back,
00:15:34 ►
and while my impression was that her hair was drowned in dozens of precious jewels,
00:15:39 ►
the truth was that she only had one or two little feathers in it, along with a bead stuck here and there.
00:15:45 ►
It wasn’t the little details that drew your eye to Ray Lua, though.
00:15:49 ►
It was her aura.
00:15:52 ►
At the time, I didn’t know what an aura was,
00:15:54 ►
but if you had pointed her out to me and said,
00:15:57 ►
See how she looks?
00:15:59 ►
Well, that’s what an aura is.
00:16:01 ►
I would have understood immediately.
00:16:04 ►
Even to an existentialist geek like I was at the time, Ray Lua’s aura an aura is. I would have understood immediately. Even to an existentialist geek like
00:16:06 ►
I was at the time, Ray Lua’s aura shined through. So here I was, transfixed, staring at this
00:16:14 ►
glorious being as she began to turn around. It almost seemed as if we were in a slow-motion film,
00:16:20 ►
and all the while her friend was laughing hysterically, rubbing my arm and shrieking,
00:16:26 ►
He likes your salmon, Raelua, so it’s okay that you killed that poor little fishy.
00:16:32 ►
It would be months later until I learned that the joke, which was obviously amped up by the inordinate quantities of pot everyone had been smoking,
00:16:41 ►
was that it wasn’t actually salmon but a faux salmon made with wine-soaked almonds
00:16:46 ►
and carrots, among other things.
00:16:48 ►
As this incident points out, the government actually did get one of their facts right
00:16:54 ►
about marijuana.
00:16:55 ►
They listed one of the only negative side effects of marijuana as euphoria.
00:17:01 ►
When you think about it, this really isn’t a negative feature to someone who has just had a toke or two,
00:17:07 ►
who doesn’t want to be a little euphoric from time to time.
00:17:11 ►
However, for anyone who is not very happy and is in the middle of a bunch of euphoric people,
00:17:17 ►
well, euphoria can lose its charm quite rapidly.
00:17:21 ►
So while being high on marijuana can make trivial things seem funny,
00:17:26 ►
to a non-toker the same things will often seem stupid, or at least not worthy of such excessive glee as the
00:17:32 ►
smokers seem to enjoy. So this manic woman is pawing on my arm and cackling something about
00:17:40 ►
salmon, all the while continuing to spit more little pieces of food on me, causing her to
00:17:46 ►
laugh even harder. Yet it was as if I was watching a video and the sound suddenly got cut off.
00:17:52 ►
I heard nothing and barely noticed the pawing on my arm, while the divine creature at the end of
00:17:59 ►
the table slowly turned, broke into a huge smile, and when her green eyes met mine, she screamed,
00:18:07 ►
Willie!
00:18:09 ►
The tsunami of conflicting emotions washing over me in that instant was the first sign that my life was about to change forever.
00:18:18 ►
Laura, I barely whispered as her arms wrapped around me in the most all-enveloping embrace I have ever experienced.
00:18:26 ►
In a way, it felt as if I was having a near-death experience,
00:18:30 ►
the kind where your entire life flashes before you in a few seconds.
00:18:35 ►
Laura, as I knew her before she changed her name to Raylua,
00:18:38 ►
and I more or less grew up together and had been best friends since we were three years old.
00:18:44 ►
In truth, there were a
00:18:45 ►
couple of times when I made passes at her, but the response was always the same. I told you, Willie,
00:18:52 ►
we are going to be best friends for life, but never lovers. That’s our line. Cross it and we’re history.
00:19:00 ►
The tragic death of one of our high school classmates on graduation night more or less brought our friendship to an unexpected end
00:19:08 ►
for reasons I’m still not clear about.
00:19:12 ►
But after we went off to college, we went our separate ways
00:19:15 ►
and just gradually drifted apart.
00:19:18 ►
That was a little over ten years ago.
00:19:21 ►
Bam! In a single instant I revisited hundreds of magical childhood memories
00:19:26 ►
and in the same instant I again experienced the agony of those mind-numbing years in high school.
00:19:33 ►
Then BAM! Laura and I were saying goodbye as we left for college.
00:19:38 ►
Then BAM! Here we were in a Mexican jungle.
00:19:42 ►
Only slowly did it begin to dawn on me that this was the same person that her
00:19:46 ►
spitting laughing friend was calling Ray Lua. I guess you could say that after finishing high
00:19:52 ►
school both Laura and I had followed our parents’ wishes. My parents wanted me to go to a small
00:19:58 ►
college, preferably a Catholic one, and so I did. Laura’s parents were a little more enlightened, not that my parents
00:20:06 ►
weren’t great. They just didn’t see the world in quite the same way as Laura’s parents did.
00:20:12 ►
One day she told me that when she asked her parents what would make them most proud of her,
00:20:17 ►
they said, we want you to do what you came here to do, because that will make you happiest.
00:20:23 ►
Have you ever had one of those experiences where
00:20:26 ►
you knew what words were about to come out of your mouth, but no matter how hard you tried to
00:20:31 ►
stop them, they came out anyway? So how are your parents, Laura? I asked in what I intended to be
00:20:38 ►
my coolest voice. With that, the two women embraced and nearly collapsed on the floor in hysterical laughter.
00:20:45 ►
“‘He likes your salmon, Ray Lua,’ more hysterical laughter.
00:20:49 ►
“‘And he likes my parents, too,’ more hysterical laughter.
00:20:54 ►
Then, as if some invisible switch had been thrown,
00:20:57 ►
the spitting woman held her friend at arm’s length and,
00:21:00 ►
with a stone-cold sober-looking frown on her face, asked,
00:21:04 ►
“‘Hey, who’s this person called Laura?
00:21:08 ►
From behind her, a choir began to echo her chorus,
00:21:12 ►
Who’s Laura? Who’s Laura? Who’s Laura?
00:21:15 ►
until their chanting caught everyone’s attention and,
00:21:18 ►
in an instant, most of the conversations in the room stopped.
00:21:21 ►
Then a wiry-looking man, who appeared to be in his late fifties began to croon.
00:21:27 ►
Tell us your story, Laura dear Lo. Tell us your story, we all want to know.
00:21:34 ►
Instantly I had the feeling that I was not going to like Laura’s friends.
00:21:39 ►
But, like many of my other first impressions back then, I was wrong. As it turned out, that goofy old singer is now my mentor.
00:21:48 ►
The next half hour or so is a little fuzzy in my memory.
00:21:52 ►
I know that Laura slash Ray Lua introduced me to more people than I could possibly remember by name.
00:21:59 ►
And she may have told me then about why she changed her own name,
00:22:02 ►
but I only remember hearing her talk about that when she spent the night at my place in Dallas. It’s an interesting story,
00:22:09 ►
but too long to repeat here. After a bit, Deirdre, the laughing spitter lady, began
00:22:16 ►
to call Ray Lua’s little posse together. Attention, attention, here and now, here and now, come and meet a ghost from Raelua’s past.
00:22:26 ►
It’s ghost story time, everyone.
00:22:28 ►
I wasn’t sure I liked being called a ghost from the past, but it soon became obvious
00:22:33 ►
that any connection to Laura was worth more than gold.
00:22:37 ►
Old Joe once called her the heartbeat of the tribe, and I didn’t hear anyone contradict him.
00:22:48 ►
tribe, and I didn’t hear anyone contradict him. For her part, Laura slash Raylua assumed a beatific smile that let me know that she was pleased to see me, but this would probably be a good time for
00:22:53 ►
me to keep my big mouth shut. So, my young friend, tell us about the land from whence you and the
00:23:00 ►
childhood incarnation of Raylua, the person you call Laura, once frolicked as carefree young innocents,
00:23:07 ►
boomed the older guy whose singing had already irritated me.
00:23:12 ►
Please give us a peek into the childhood of our dear goddess Raelua.
00:23:17 ►
With the soothing voice of a mother speaking to a precocious but dearly loved child,
00:23:22 ►
Laura said,
00:23:23 ►
Now, Shadow, this would be
00:23:26 ►
a good time to practice being impeccable.
00:23:29 ►
As she spoke,
00:23:30 ►
it seemed as if another channel of
00:23:32 ►
communication had opened between them because
00:23:34 ►
I am sure they exchanged
00:23:35 ►
some silent understanding when their eyes met
00:23:38 ►
for only the briefest of moments.
00:23:41 ►
Of course,
00:23:42 ►
you are right as usual, Ray Lua,
00:23:44 ►
he said in a less intense manner, although his eyes remained brightly focused on me.
00:23:50 ►
I’m sorry, I said, offering him my hand. I’m William. I didn’t catch your name.
00:23:56 ►
That’s because you didn’t hear it. Just call me Shadow. Everyone does.
00:24:01 ►
Shadow? Like a shadow on the ground?
00:24:00 ►
Everyone does.
00:24:03 ►
Shadow? Like a shadow on the ground?
00:24:10 ►
You got it, my friend, he beamed with a smile so wide that he almost looked crazed.
00:24:15 ►
His bright blue eyes evened outshined the reflection from his bald head.
00:24:22 ►
I attributed this fire-coming-out-of-the-eyes look to the fact that he was probably under the influence of some kind of a drug.
00:24:27 ►
Only that night, I later learned, he hadn’t taken anything.
00:24:30 ►
Like me, he’d only been drinking beer.
00:24:35 ►
Later, I discovered that this intense, fire-eyed nature was his normal state,
00:24:40 ►
which makes Shadow somewhat difficult to be around if you want to slack off a bit.
00:24:48 ►
He is definitely a Type A guy, a lovable one, but type A all the way. I don’t know how long we stood at the end of the table exchanging stories about who we were and what we did,
00:24:52 ►
but I’m sure that twenty minutes or more had passed before Deirdre interrupted the conversation
00:24:58 ►
to say, excuse me for a minute, but I think Ray Lua may want to know that her old friend here not only likes her salmon, but he really loves her brownies.
00:25:08 ►
A true look of concern flashed across Laura’s face for just an instant before her big smile began to grow and she very slowly said,
00:25:18 ►
Brownies? Brownies plural? As in, more than one quarter of one brownie?’
00:25:25 ►
Gales of laughter immediately followed.
00:25:28 ►
Once again the joke seemed to be on me.
00:25:32 ►
That night I learned a very valuable lesson.
00:25:35 ►
Whenever you are around this group who sometimes call themselves the tribe,
00:25:40 ►
never sample the sweets without first learning their proper dosage.
00:25:44 ►
That night the brownies were particularly potent, Never sample the sweets without first learning their proper dosage.
00:25:48 ►
That night the brownies were particularly potent,
00:25:51 ►
as everyone threw the last of their stash into the mixing bowl because it wasn’t worth the risk of crossing the border with marijuana in your possession.
00:25:56 ►
Never transport. Always buy local. That seemed to be their motto.
00:26:01 ►
Except for the time when I was in first grade
00:26:03 ►
and accidentally fell into some freshly
00:26:06 ►
poured concrete at the mall, the next half hour was the most humiliating time of my life.
00:26:13 ►
One minute the room was a buzzing hive of conversation, and the next minute people were
00:26:18 ►
arranging pillows and couches around the fireplace while others magically cleaned up the kitchen and
00:26:23 ►
moved the food table against a wall, as if they were well-trained ants following the orders of their queen,
00:26:30 ►
a role that Laura slash Raylua seemed to command without question.
00:26:35 ►
The humiliating part was that all of this sudden activity was centered around creating
00:26:40 ►
what someone was calling a safe container for me once my mega-dose of brownie came on.
00:26:47 ►
You have no idea what kind of effect all of this had on my reawakened paranoia. Outside of a few
00:26:53 ►
tokes of marijuana in college, I had never actually experienced a heavy drug trip. Not knowing what to
00:27:00 ►
expect, my mind began calling up images of me being raped in a Mexican prison where
00:27:06 ►
I was being held after I freaked out on brownies and killed someone.
00:27:10 ►
I must have expressed some of those fears to Laura, because she took me outside where
00:27:15 ►
she gently whispered,
00:27:17 ►
Now, Willie, let me tell you exactly what’s going to happen.
00:27:22 ►
I know you are still operating under the reefer madness lies
00:27:25 ►
that you’ve been fed by the ruling class,
00:27:28 ►
but almost everything you know about drugs is probably wrong.
00:27:33 ►
Can you please call me William, or even Will, anything but Willie?
00:27:38 ►
I pleaded, totally ignoring everything she said after, now Willie.
00:27:43 ►
As I was about to ask her why she was still wearing that silly little
00:27:46 ►
hat she’d had since we were kids, one of her scouts showed up with a very stoned Russ in tow.
00:27:53 ►
This guy says that he works with your friend and that he’ll be more than happy to take
00:27:57 ►
responsibility for getting Mr. Brownie home tomorrow. That was the other thing I was freaking
00:28:02 ►
out about. How was I going to get to the airport in the morning?
00:28:07 ►
A quick look at the goofy grin on Russ’s face let me know that
00:28:10 ►
I was in even more trouble than I had first thought.
00:28:14 ►
He quickly lost the train of our conversation about getting to the airport and
00:28:18 ►
began looking over his shoulder at all the hectic activity going on inside the cabin.
00:28:24 ►
What’s going on? he asked as he turned back toward us.
00:28:27 ►
Then he looked directly at Laura.
00:28:29 ►
Are your parents coming back home early tonight?
00:28:33 ►
Is that why we’re cleaning up?
00:28:35 ►
By then the first of the marijuana-laced brownies had begun to kick in
00:28:39 ►
and I joined the three of them laughing wildly for little reason.
00:28:44 ►
Now you know, said Laura as she
00:28:47 ►
smiled at me. Now I know what? Now you know what the next few hours are going to be like for you.
00:28:54 ►
What do you mean? I asked. You’re going to start laughing at little things, and you’ll probably
00:29:00 ►
find some rather sophomoric ideas to have profound significance all of a sudden.
00:29:06 ►
All in all, you are about to have the best time of your life.
00:29:10 ►
Look at it this way, Willie.
00:29:12 ►
You crossed the Rubicon once you swallowed all those brownies.
00:29:15 ►
There is simply no going back now, so you might as well relax and enjoy it.
00:29:21 ►
And don’t worry.
00:29:22 ►
Never in all of recorded history has a single person ever died from an
00:29:26 ►
overdose of cannabis. William, please call me William. No one has called me Willie since high
00:29:33 ►
school. Okay, Willie, I’ll try to remember to call you William, she teased. And with that, she led me
00:29:41 ►
back into the cabin and to a couch that had one end angled out from the fireplace,
00:29:46 ►
doing its part to form a large semicircle of couches and cushions that became our cocoon for the rest of the night.
00:29:54 ►
She sat down in one corner with her legs stretched out the length of the couch
00:29:58 ►
and invited me to lay down beside her with my head in her lap.
00:30:03 ►
For the rest of the night I drifted in and out of a silken floating dream.
00:30:08 ►
Thinking back to that night,
00:30:10 ►
I am no longer sure how much of the conversation I’m recounting here
00:30:13 ►
actually took place in that little cabin,
00:30:16 ►
and how much of it took place in some other dimension
00:30:18 ►
where our spirit selves had gathered to begin creating a new myth
00:30:22 ►
to carry us all forward.
00:30:25 ►
At one point I remember asking what this tribe thing was that everyone kept talking about.
00:30:31 ►
No two of them came up with the same definition.
00:30:34 ►
It was the dance community, the psychedelic community, the followers of shamanic traditions,
00:30:39 ►
the electronic music lovers, die-hard hippies, dead fans, and a dozen other cultures thrown in for good measure.
00:30:48 ►
As the conversation descended into a cacophony of ideas
00:30:51 ►
ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous,
00:30:55 ►
my mind began to wander, and before long I was back in a Midwest winter.
00:31:00 ►
The ice on the pond in the middle of our town park
00:31:03 ►
was ringed with bright light bulbs that were strung from tree to tree, circling the skaters.
00:31:09 ►
Laura and I were walking away from the pond on the dark path that led to the parking lot when, on a wild impulse,
00:31:16 ►
I reached under her coat and lightly caressed her breast through the bulky knit sweater she was wearing.
00:31:22 ►
What do you think you’re doing? she asked. Her voice in this
00:31:26 ►
dream was much softer than I remembered it being at the time. In fact, at the time she actually
00:31:33 ►
said something more like, what the fuck do you think you’re doing? The dream voice was definitely
00:31:39 ►
better, I decided. Laura’s breasts. God, I’m sorry, Laura, I was asleep or in a dream or…
00:32:10 ►
Shh, she said as she gently pulled my head back down to lie on her chest.
00:32:17 ►
It’s all right, William, just relax and enjoy yourself. And don’t worry, no one is paying any attention to you. It’s okay if you cop a feel now and then, but just don’t get so far into the flow
00:32:23 ►
that you forget your manners, she added with a smile. For the next hour or so, I couldn’t follow any of the conversations going
00:32:30 ►
on around me. I know that several times Laura got into serious discussions with the group, but
00:32:36 ►
I can’t tell you what they were talking about, because my mind was fully occupied trying to
00:32:42 ►
process what Laura, or was it Ray Lua, had said about
00:32:46 ►
copying a feel.
00:32:47 ►
Did she want me to?
00:32:49 ►
And what if I did nothing?
00:32:51 ►
Would she think I didn’t want to?
00:32:53 ►
Should I play up to the fact that she was somehow responsible for drugging me and then
00:32:58 ►
try to take advantage of the situation?
00:33:01 ►
Could tonight be the night that Laura and I finally make love?
00:33:05 ►
Could I even get it up as stoned as I am right now? Is my stomach starting to rumble? Am I going to get sick and
00:33:10 ►
blow my chances of getting laid? The loops were endless. After what seemed like an eternity, I
00:33:17 ►
decided to let go of my sexual fantasies about Laura and tune into the group’s discussion,
00:33:25 ►
fantasies about Laura and tune into the group’s discussion, which had begun to increase in intensity.
00:33:32 ►
Why are we being intimidated by a bunch of jerks who don’t know anything about life?
00:33:38 ►
Who are they to tell us what we feel and how we’re supposed to behave? And why take all that bullshit?
00:33:48 ►
Wow, that’s great, Stein. Did you write that yourself? asked Laura. Nah, it’s not mine. Guess who said it, though? A long time ago.
00:33:52 ►
I’ve never heard it before. Have you, Shadow? Laura asked.
00:33:57 ►
No, it has a familiar ring to it, but I can’t say who it is, he replied.
00:34:03 ►
I don’t know who actually said that, a tall black man sitting near the fire said. His voice was very soft,
00:34:06 ►
but he obviously commanded everyone’s attention whenever he spoke.
00:34:10 ►
My guess is that it was someone from the beat generation.
00:34:14 ►
You got it, Al, Stein said. I should say, you got it, man. It was Allen Ginsberg who said that
00:34:22 ►
when he was asked about the philosophical framework of the Beats.
00:34:26 ►
Those guys could have cared less about what was being passed off as American culture at the time.
00:34:32 ►
They knew that the country wasn’t like what the Ozzie and Harriet show made it out to be.
00:34:36 ►
At a time when it was really unpopular to do so, those guys stood up and were counted.
00:34:42 ►
And they followed their own plan.
00:34:44 ►
They definitely weren’t a part of someone else’s plan,
00:34:47 ►
at least from what I’ve read about them.
00:34:50 ►
Another first impression.
00:34:52 ►
When Stein went off praising the beats like that, I thought,
00:34:55 ►
how does this young kid get off lecturing to this crowd?
00:34:59 ►
After all, he seemed to be less than half the age of most of the people there.
00:35:03 ►
Although he wasn’t very tall,
00:35:05 ►
his string-beam frame gave him the appearance of
00:35:07 ►
having more height than he did.
00:35:10 ►
Yet there was no question about the fact that
00:35:12 ►
he could not have yet reached his twentieth birthday.
00:35:16 ►
Since it seemed like everyone there had some kind of invented name,
00:35:20 ►
I thought I was being quite clever when I whispered to Laura,
00:35:23 ►
I’ll bet he’s called Stein because of that fancy beer mug in his hand.
00:35:28 ►
His large cup was truly a work of art.
00:35:32 ►
While reminiscent of the fancy Stein sold to tourists in Germany,
00:35:36 ►
this one was inlaid with multicolored electric light fibers
00:35:40 ►
that seemed to morph into all kinds of exotic psychedelic patterns
00:35:44 ►
that appeared to synchronize with kinds of exotic psychedelic patterns that appeared to
00:35:45 ►
synchronize with the mood of the conversation. I know I’m not doing it justice. Hopefully you’ll
00:35:51 ►
see it for yourself someday and you’ll know what I mean. No, said Laura, it isn’t because of the
00:35:58 ►
beer mug, but that’s what he wants you to think. When he first appeared on the scene, we were so blown away by how smart he is
00:36:05 ►
that we started calling him Einstein. He hated that. So we shortened it to Stein, and that’s
00:36:12 ►
when he began carrying his electric mug to parties. And I guess it’s worked, because I’ve even begun
00:36:17 ►
to think of him as the mug, not the brain. He’s one of the smartest people you’re going to meet in this lifetime, though So be nice to him
00:36:26 ►
I still thought the kid was kind of a smartass
00:36:30 ►
And to be honest, at times he can be both a smartass and a pain in the ass
00:36:34 ►
But if I was in a jam and could only call one person to help me
00:36:38 ►
I’d call Stein
00:36:39 ►
He might not personally come to my aid
00:36:42 ►
But he has more contacts around the world than anyone I know
00:36:46 ►
And Laura was right about him being so smart
00:36:48 ►
He never finished high school, but he has a photographic memory, a great mind, and he reads incessantly
00:36:55 ►
On top of that, he is one of those rare people who are always in a good mood
00:37:00 ►
I would rather spend an evening talking with Stein than with any PhD I know.
00:37:07 ►
The first question I would ask about any plan for long-term survival on this planet,
00:37:12 ►
Laura was saying, is whether or not it is sustainable, and I’d reject any idea that
00:37:17 ►
answers that question with a no. Well, that’s the ideal situation, said Shadow. But I think we have to temper that hard line with a little dose of reality
00:37:28 ►
in regards to how a new human culture makes it through the transition.
00:37:33 ►
We can’t just go off by ourselves, you know.
00:37:35 ►
There are far too many of us now.
00:37:38 ►
We number in the millions, I’m sure, so we can’t just go off to the woods and start over.
00:37:43 ►
The first thing we’ve got to figure out is how to stay out of the way of the American Empire
00:37:47 ►
as it continues to come unglued.
00:37:51 ►
Before we know it, the whole enchilada may just come crashing down about our heads and shoulders.
00:37:56 ►
That might be simpler than you think, said Apache,
00:37:59 ►
the stately black woman who was sitting by the fire next to Al.
00:38:03 ►
As you know, locals always survive empires.
00:38:08 ►
It seems to me that the trick is to put down deep roots wherever we are living and let
00:38:13 ►
the empire wash over us and fade away, as empires always do.
00:38:19 ►
At that I was finally able to muster my thoughts long enough to say,
00:38:23 ►
Are you people saying that you really think the United States of America is going to break up?
00:38:30 ►
The Soviet Union did, and it did it so fast that nobody I know of predicted the breakup
00:38:35 ►
just five years before it happened, said Shadow.
00:38:39 ►
Face it, the mythical version of America is already dead.
00:38:43 ►
In fact, it never actually existed except in people’s minds.
00:38:48 ►
In mythical America, the needs of the poor and downtrodden were taken care of.
00:38:53 ►
Mythical America would never attack a country that hadn’t attacked us first.
00:38:57 ►
You think you have a right to privacy?
00:39:00 ►
Kiss that goodbye with the seriously misnamed Patriot Act.
00:39:04 ►
Your right to a speedy trial? Gone.
00:39:07 ►
Now even U.S. citizens can be held indefinitely
00:39:09 ►
and without any charges being filed against them.
00:39:13 ►
On top of that, you might even be put in one of those secret prisons
00:39:16 ►
at which the Attorney General has now authorized the use of torture.
00:39:22 ►
Do you want me to go on?
00:39:24 ►
Face it. Mythical America is dead and gone.
00:39:27 ►
May it rest in peace, as if it ever existed in the first place.
00:39:32 ►
I agree, said Apache. Far too many people in the States are still living in an
00:39:38 ►
Ozzie and Harriet fantasy world of the 1950s. It’s time for people to wake up and smell the gun smoke, because it’s coming
00:39:46 ►
from American guns, and before long they may be pointing at you. But that’s such a negative way
00:39:53 ►
of looking at it, interjected Ray Lua with her soft voice and a smile. How about us getting back
00:39:59 ►
to the reason we’re here tonight? If you remember, we came down here with the idea that our little extended family
00:40:06 ►
would return with some new ideas about how to make it through the coming shift. So how do we go about
00:40:12 ►
creating a civilization that rewards sustainable self-determination? Isn’t that what we’re trying
00:40:19 ►
to figure out? Sure, but I don’t want to get involved in just some new kind of rat race, said Stein.
00:40:27 ►
Right now, most of my friends who are stuck in the system spend the better part of their time and energy each week
00:40:33 ►
just trying to earn enough money to pay the rent, make a car payment, and get a little food.
00:40:38 ►
There’s got to be more to life than that.
00:40:41 ►
Personally, I’m not interested in being a part of any community where I’ve got
00:40:45 ►
to work more than two or three hours a day to do my part. I’ve got a lot of other things I want to
00:40:51 ►
do, and spending my life as a wage slave isn’t one of them. I was now beginning to wish I had
00:40:57 ►
paid more attention to the earlier part of this conversation. From the few bits and pieces that
00:41:03 ►
were beginning to come into focus for me,
00:41:06 ►
I gathered that these people were all privy
00:41:08 ►
to some knowledge about the future
00:41:10 ►
that wasn’t widely known.
00:41:12 ►
Or maybe it was widely known by millions of people
00:41:15 ►
but never talked about in the news.
00:41:17 ►
Actually, I couldn’t really follow
00:41:20 ►
much of the conversation at the time
00:41:21 ►
because of the effect that those brownies
00:41:24 ►
were having on my powers of concentration. So whenever I couldn’t hold on to the storyline, I just drifted
00:41:30 ►
back into my beautiful floating dreams. Occasionally, another heated exchange would bring me back to the
00:41:37 ►
present. As you all know already, there is no precise line in the sky that separates Pisces and Aquarius. As uninterested
00:41:47 ►
in astrology as I was at the time, Apache’s hauntingly beautiful voice completely captured
00:41:52 ►
my attention. In any great African tribe, she would no doubt be their queen. Every time
00:41:58 ►
I saw her profile, my first thought was of the famous silhouette of Cleopatra, with her
00:42:03 ►
long and graceful neck arched back a bit,
00:42:06 ►
as if to include the gods in her conversation.
00:42:10 ►
There is a window of perhaps 300 years or so.
00:42:14 ►
Most likely the transition will be gradual,
00:42:17 ►
but my point is that at some moment in time,
00:42:20 ►
let’s say it’s 500 years from now,
00:42:22 ►
at that point in time,
00:42:24 ►
we can safely say that humans on the planet Earth
00:42:27 ►
will be living under the influence of what is called Aquarian energy.
00:42:32 ►
What Apache is pointing out, Al interjected,
00:42:36 ►
is that it may be worth the effort to begin to consciously transform our thinking
00:42:40 ►
into an Aquarian mindset right now.
00:42:43 ►
The age of Aquarius is going to last for over 2,000 years,
00:42:47 ►
and one way or another, it most likely will be less stressful
00:42:50 ►
in the age of Pisces that we are now leaving.
00:42:53 ►
That’s right, continued Apache,
00:42:56 ►
but keep in mind that there are two polarities to each of these signs.
00:43:00 ►
The prevailing consciousness in an Aquarian age can be very rigid,
00:43:04 ►
fair, but mechanical and tightly controlled.
00:43:07 ►
Or it can be dominated by a deeply human form of compassion and empathy.
00:43:14 ►
Shadow interjected,
00:43:15 ►
My guess is that, at least for the next few centuries,
00:43:20 ►
these two opposite approaches to societal organization will be competing,
00:43:24 ►
not directly, but as alternative choices of lifestyle.
00:43:28 ►
In time, he went on, not giving anyone else a chance to speak,
00:43:32 ►
the cities will become more tightly controlled,
00:43:35 ►
with special ease of passage for citizens who have been pre-screened
00:43:39 ►
and have the proper biometric credentials.
00:43:43 ►
In effect, the cities are going to be tightly locked down, and most of the decisions about
00:43:47 ►
free movement around town are going to be made by machines that have been pre-programmed
00:43:52 ►
to either let you pass or hold you for further screening.
00:43:56 ►
Man, that is really going to suck, said Deirdre, who had curled up next to Shadow.
00:44:02 ►
A brave new world where hackers rule,
00:44:05 ►
shouted Stein as he gave a closed-fist, raised-arm salute.
00:44:10 ►
The lad has a point, said Al.
00:44:13 ►
I just re-read Huxley’s Brave New World a few weeks ago,
00:44:17 ►
and I was blown away by how much that hideous future world
00:44:20 ►
that Huxley wrote about is like life in the United States today.
00:44:24 ►
Do you remember the picture?
00:44:27 ►
Almost everyone was working at a mindless job that they would have hated but for their daily
00:44:31 ►
dose of Soma, which is what they took whenever they were awake and not at work. What’s Soma?
00:44:38 ►
asked Deirdre. It’s what Huxley called the drug that kept everyone mellow most of the time.
00:44:44 ►
Whenever people tried to break out of their tightly controlled culture,
00:44:47 ►
they’d be offered and in some cases forced to take a little Soma
00:44:51 ►
to help them relax and get their minds off the reality of their situations,
00:44:56 ►
said Al as he got up and walked over to the kitchen sink to get a glass of water.
00:45:01 ►
Apache, stretching out like a beautiful cat in front of the fire, added,
00:45:06 ►
In today’s America, SOMA is television, sports, alcohol,
00:45:11 ►
anything that is legal and that takes your mind off changing the status quo.
00:45:16 ►
I thought it sounded like MDMA myself, said Stein,
00:45:20 ►
at least in the way he described its effect on people.
00:45:24 ►
It does remind one of that, agreed Al,
00:45:27 ►
but Huxley didn’t know about MDMA in the 1930s when he wrote that book.
00:45:32 ►
You know, this is why I tried to talk you all out of doing medicine tonight,
00:45:37 ►
exclaimed a somewhat frustrated-sounding Ray Lua.
00:45:41 ►
It’s impossible to keep the discussion on track with all the detours we keep taking.
00:45:46 ►
It doesn’t matter if Huxley’s Soma is LSD or television. What matters is what we are able to
00:45:52 ►
do during the next few years to remain free of the net of fear and control that has already
00:45:58 ►
trapped so many of our friends, relatives, and neighbors. Stein already mentioned one approach,
00:46:07 ►
said Shadow from the pile of cushions he’d stacked next to the fireplace.
00:46:09 ►
As he just said, hackers will rule in a world where human freedom is doled out by machines.
00:46:16 ►
And speaking of hackers, I am happy to report that our Q-teams are within a year or so of
00:46:22 ►
having either bots or humans inside every major corporate and government computer network on the planet.
00:46:29 ►
That, of course, caught my attention since network security is my specialty.
00:46:34 ►
But as I struggled to sit up so I could better follow the conversation,
00:46:38 ►
I noticed another of those quick exchanges of a glance between Laura, Shadow, and Stein.
00:46:44 ►
Before I realized what had happened, Stein changed the subject.
00:46:49 ►
You know, you guys should go back and re-listen to some of McKenna’s talks.
00:46:54 ►
On quite a few occasions during his last few years,
00:46:57 ►
he talked about the coming conflict between human consciousness and machine consciousness.
00:47:03 ►
A lot has happened in the world of tech since he died,
00:47:05 ►
but I’d be willing to bet that he’d really be beating the machine versus human drum right now.
00:47:12 ►
I tried to get the conversation back to what Shadow had just said about infiltrating the net,
00:47:17 ►
but my few feeble attempts at entering the conversation never steered them back to my pet topic.
00:47:23 ►
As it turned out, this was just as well,
00:47:26 ►
because I probably would have tried to show off and
00:47:28 ►
inadvertently disclose something that was classified.
00:47:32 ►
At least that’s how I rationalized it.
00:47:35 ►
The truth is that I was far too stoned to carry on any kind of a normal conversation.
00:47:40 ►
Like I was really stoned.
00:47:43 ►
Seriously stoned.
00:47:44 ►
Even the next day and beyond. I have to
00:47:47 ►
hand it to Russ. He got me home, but how he did it is something I’ll never be able to piece together
00:47:52 ►
with any degree of detail. I know we shared a taxi with someone for the two-hour ride to the
00:47:58 ►
Villa Hermosa airport. That was the easy part because I slept the whole way. Getting through security, flying to Mexico City and then on to Dallas is still mostly a blur to me.
00:48:11 ►
At one point, I don’t remember if it was at a ticket counter or going through U.S. Customs,
00:48:17 ►
a long computer delay convinced me that someone from the party the night before had turned me in to the authorities,
00:48:23 ►
who seemed to be everywhere I looked.
00:48:25 ►
I thought that every person I saw in a uniform, from the baggage handlers to the pilots, were
00:48:31 ►
drug police who were just waiting for the right moment to pounce on me and take me away.
00:48:37 ►
If you had asked me the next day to describe our journey home, I would have been able to describe
00:48:43 ►
in great detail how we barely got away
00:48:46 ►
from the cops at a ticket counter by diving onto the luggage conveyor belt that was running behind
00:48:51 ►
the ticket agents. The dive down the luggage chute wasn’t nearly as bad as I anticipated,
00:48:56 ►
but running across the tarmac with people in the little luggage tractors chasing us was tense.
00:49:03 ►
It was a grand adventure and a miracle that we got away.
00:49:07 ►
Of course, had I told you that story, it would have been a complete fabrication.
00:49:12 ►
It only happened in my mind. Every time someone stopped us to look at our tickets,
00:49:17 ►
my imagination ran wild with getaway plans like that. If the next day Russ hadn’t assured me that
00:49:23 ►
we’d had a completely uneventful trip home,
00:49:26 ►
I probably could have passed a lie detector test telling those crazy escape stories that
00:49:31 ►
kept running wild in my head. I still hadn’t become accustomed to being stoned and was having
00:49:37 ►
a little difficulty telling the difference between what was taking place in the real world versus
00:49:42 ►
the imaginary world of cops chasing me that had become my own private reality.
00:49:48 ►
Laura had warned me that with the huge dose of marijuana I’d had and the brownies that
00:49:52 ►
I’d eaten, I would still be feeling the effects two days later.
00:49:56 ►
While some people might think that they would enjoy being high for so long, I can assure
00:50:01 ►
you that it isn’t all that much fun.
00:50:03 ►
I can assure you that it isn’t all that much fun.
00:50:09 ►
On the outside chance that you meet Russ someday and ask him about our trip home,
00:50:15 ►
I guess I should come clean about the one little incident where I actually did lose my cool demeanor.
00:50:23 ►
As we were coming in for our landing at DFW Airport, the plane made a very steep bank to the right. At the same time, the pilot cut way back
00:50:26 ►
on the engine speed in some kind of a new noise abatement maneuver I hadn’t experienced before.
00:50:32 ►
We were sitting on the right side, and I was asleep with my head on a little pillow leaning
00:50:37 ►
against the window. Suddenly, the plane lurched to the right in what seemed to me, in my half-asleep state, a very steep dive.
00:50:46 ►
The engine noise went from very loud to almost nothing.
00:50:50 ►
And I woke up.
00:50:53 ►
My heart stopped as my hands slammed against the bulkhead on either side of the window.
00:50:58 ►
If you had been outside the plane looking at me just then,
00:51:00 ►
I would have looked like one of those wide-eyed stuffed cats that nutty
00:51:05 ►
people stick on their car rear windows. To make matters worse, as I came out of my stoned
00:51:11 ►
sleep, thinking there was a serious problem with the plane, I shouted,
00:51:17 ►
We’re going down!
00:51:19 ►
My words seemed to hang in the air as if they were frozen. With the exception of Russ, everyone around us was staring at me in horror.
00:51:29 ►
Fortunately, I guess, Russ began to laugh so hard that I thought he would get sick.
00:51:35 ►
After what seemed like an eternity, I took my clue from him and began laughing as if I’d been making a horrible joke.
00:51:41 ►
I won’t repeat what some of the people around us had to say about my
00:51:45 ►
little stunt, as they called it, but I can assure you that none of them thought it was very funny.
00:51:52 ►
Of course, that didn’t keep Russ and I from giggling like two schoolboys until he
00:51:57 ►
dropped me off at my apartment on his way home from the airport that night.
00:52:03 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives
00:52:07 ►
one thought at a time. Well, there you have it. If my little story hasn’t yet captured your
00:52:16 ►
attention, well, then you probably shouldn’t buy a copy. But if you are somewhat interested in
00:52:22 ►
learning how the main character in this book makes the transition from yuppie geek into an underground hero in the psychedelic community, then I hope you will buy a copy for yourself.
00:52:33 ►
The cost is only $12, which works out to just a little over a dollar an hour for each hour of listening, if you want to figure it that way.
00:52:42 ►
And to give you a little idea of what comes after the bit we just listened to,
00:52:47 ►
here are the titles of a couple other chapters.
00:52:51 ►
Amazement in Amsterdam,
00:52:53 ►
Confrontation in Vietnam,
00:52:55 ►
Ecstasy in Dallas,
00:52:57 ►
Burning Man,
00:52:59 ►
and The Wizard’s Council.
00:53:01 ►
Just to mention a few of the 16 chapter titles.
00:53:05 ►
So if you are inclined to purchase a copy, just go to Genesis Generation,
00:53:10 ►
that’s G-E-N-E-S-I-S, G-E-N-E-R-A-T-I-O-N, all one word,
00:53:16 ►
genesisgeneration.us, and you will find a link to our store.
00:53:21 ►
I should warn you that I still have a lot of work to do
00:53:24 ►
finishing the building of the support you that I still have a lot of work to do finishing the building
00:53:26 ►
of the support infrastructure that I’m
00:53:28 ►
planning. For example, I’m going
00:53:30 ►
to install an open source version of
00:53:32 ►
Digg for you to use
00:53:34 ►
to comment about various topics I
00:53:36 ►
touch on in the book. And
00:53:38 ►
hopefully this will also be a place where
00:53:40 ►
you can find a few more of the others.
00:53:42 ►
Not to mention the fact that
00:53:44 ►
I intend on integrating your comments and suggestions into the next
00:53:47 ►
volume of this series.
00:53:49 ►
As I said, this book is just the first in a little quartet that I’ve planned, so the
00:53:55 ►
story isn’t over at the end of this book.
00:53:58 ►
In fact, I plan on releasing the next volume as an audiobook early in 2011, and that is
00:54:04 ►
also when I intend on publishing
00:54:06 ►
an edited version of the Genesis Generation in paperback format.
00:54:11 ►
Then, early in 2013, Volume 3 will come out, with Volume 4 following in early 2015.
00:54:19 ►
And I guess that should also give you an idea of my plans for 2012.
00:54:24 ►
Basically, I’m planning on working right through the winter solstice that year and well into the next decade.
00:54:31 ►
Of course, I do hope that my friends who are expecting some kind of a miraculous event on that day are correct,
00:54:38 ►
and that they will gleefully tell me so when the time comes.
00:54:42 ►
Expect the best, but plan for the worst. That’s my motto.
00:54:46 ►
Well, that’s all I have to say right now,
00:54:49 ►
but I’m going to close with a slightly different message
00:54:52 ►
in that today’s podcast is not released
00:54:55 ►
under a Creative Commons license,
00:54:57 ►
primarily due to the fact that
00:54:59 ►
after more than six years of work,
00:55:01 ►
I hope to earn a little extra money for my efforts.
00:55:04 ►
And so this podcast
00:55:05 ►
is copyrighted by me with all
00:55:08 ►
rights reserved.
00:55:10 ►
And for now,
00:55:11 ►
this is Lorenzo signing off from
00:55:13 ►
Cyberdelic Space.
00:55:15 ►
Be well, my friends.