Dumping It

In the caverns of the pale bunnies, in the tunnels of the sacrificial husbands of praying mantis mothers, and the half eaten lettuce-leaf domain of the caterpillar and his smokey dreams there are places to visit that require a little more gas than the hinterlands which are more accessible to the casual traveler. Some lost girls find it by accident, others go looking for these places shining with fractal lights and all manner of crystal sights.

There is a rhythm to the travel, there is a beat to the exploration, and you lose it at your peril. Out there things can turn ugly quickly. It doesn’t take much to collapse those tunnels and force the walls in on an intrepid explorer – a loud sound, a sudden shock, the roar of a motorcycle back in the land of Coca Cola, and everything around slides sideways, metal grinding against the pathway, skinning legs and roughing up fraying nerves. The beat is seductive with gentle periods that chug along slowly and peacefully, and then they rise to a crescendo, jangling along in rag time or perhaps a sacred polka that twists and whirls with the hurdy gurdy sounds of the lands through the polished antimony mirror. The poison will not harm you if you are ready for it, instead it will ring as clear and loud as a bell, clearing away the weeds and rags of order and construction.

If you really build up some speed you can reach some of those inner lands where the roses grow thick and fast in the gardens of the holy. Once you reach those giddy heights the speed is almost unbearable: fractal patterns coalesce into images both disturbing and beautiful and both simultaneously. The rocket separates into two separate parts, once launched there is no need for the initial thrust that takes you deep into inner space, it is afterburner time. Do not try and slow it down, do not try and calm it down, all that will happen is that you will stall your internal engine going from infernally fast to far too slow. No. There is only one way forward, my intrepid travelers to the coast of perfection: DUMP IT.

There will be no slowdown in the vacuum of space, nothing to provide that friction, to get that snake out of its skin, the only option is to dump the internal clutch, and accelerate out of the bend at hair raising rates of acceleration. Let it go. Let it be. Nudge it into that gear that exists somewhere in mythology, far beyond the normal capabilities of transmissions, both psychic and psychedelic, by taking your foot off the control and dumping all your weight onto the gas. Let’s go! Smooth sailing, ghost riding, hands off the wheel, everything in the eye of a storm, moving in slow motion in a way that only happens when time flickers out of importance and frames get frozen in space and time continuing.

Once that speed has been satisfied and the atmosphere of another world is entered, the only concern is how to get out of that speeding sharp arrow motion without spinning out. Haul on the bowline! Pull on the handbrake! If you are lucky, or just plain skillful your boat will be at 180 degrees from its starting position, sitting in an impressive haze of kicked up gravel, smoking tires and the glare of people around who are spitting dust from their mouths and picking straw out from their hair. “They only went and dumped it!” They whisper in shushed tones of wonder. The hero, returned! The trick landed safely! A few scuffs on the tires, perhaps the glass pockmarked by tiny chips, and an alarming amount of smoke emanating from the engine and brakes, but still…landed and landed well.

What then? Ah, perhaps you find your hands have turned into neat lobster claws. Maybe you are blinded by the light and looking into the abyss. Sometimes you find the world has shattered and there is space to poke a finger through the gate of time. If you are lucky there is something to learn there. If you are not, then you find a way to test your mettle and try for burn out another time. Whichever, whatever, it is a lifestyle choice, or perhaps a medicine with curious and curiouser side effects.

It is my brown paper and packing tape. It is my cardboard box and string. It is my jagged pieces glued together. How I dread it! How I love it! How I am grateful! How I am afeared. How I am ashamed and proud all at once, my hair blown back and my brain blown clean into the hereafter. I am myself again, and yet I am not. I am lost and found. I have both gone astray and returned back home. I wonder when they will come with their pitchforks and their flaming torches, to drag me through the streets and insist that I never had any right to peek beyond the veil of things which long to be seen. I am not one of those things. I prefer to be hidden, to stay in the dark. Where does the light go when the sun goes down? It stays safely in its nest and waits for the sun to disguise it so it can wander outside and not stand out like red nose on a clown.

My spaceship has a strong hull. I am not scared to travel beyond. Perhaps I should be, but I appear to have let go of the fear out there somewhere in the outer reaches of psychedelic space. I guess I just went and dumped it.