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Hallucinogenic mushrooms are an interesting drug. Everything ripples and moves like a lake on a slightly windy day. The world breathes; trees and grass and organic things become more vibrant and more alive, while man-made constructions like concrete and housing appear as drab barriers behind which an imprisoned earth jostles and heaves. Patterned wallpaper crawls like a multitude of insects and occasionally Dave Matthews will lurch off his poster on the wall, face dripping and rotting like the finest of zombies. It's good fun!

I am constantly reminded of childhood when attempting to describe the influence of this curious fungus. It is a difficult task. As my friend Lisa once said, in frustration: "Words are not enough." She said it many, many times that day and it became a mantra for personal experience, something you desperately wanted to share but which lay outside the boundaries of effective communication. "Words are not enough," became our way of saying, "Yo, I just experienced something fucking amazing... no details, but I just wanted you to be happy for me, okay?"

I can say that mushrooms tilt the balance back towards the great unknown: imagination is once again given a powerful hold over reality. There is suddenly a sensation of improvisation and play and wonder that brushes aside the sensibilities and behaviour checks which ordinarily dominate semi-respectable young adults. You roll gleefully down soft hills and lie in the grass and look at the sky in moronic awe. A melting forest in the springtime is Narnia. Fifteen minutes later, a dusty baseball field in the fading dusk is 1930s small-town America. The story flows without rhyme or reason but it doesn't matter.

Like kids, you are mildly suspicious of 'outsiders' - those outside the circle who don't understand, who might ruin your fun in some serious, adult way. You are somewhat aware of the fact that you should be acting like them, because some bastard moral construction in the back of your mind is screaming about acceptibility and social convention and telling you not to lie down on the sidewalk, but usually you can ignore it. Those people who are always asking each other, in furtive, hushed whispers, whether they seem normal or sober? They're the ones who aren't able to ignore their internal screams.

Chances are you'll have a hell of a time looking normal, anyway, on mushrooms because I usually find that you don't. Your pupils are huge and you can fall into them if you look in a bathroom mirror. The liquid properties of the world are mirrored in your physiology: palms sweat, your nose runs and moisture feels like it's seeping from every pore in your body. It's not uncomfortable, just... tropical. Rainforest-y. But most importantly, your eyes water and tear. I like to think it's from the vibrancy and overwhelmingness of everything.

Which leads me to the Grocery Pig. I felt it might be helpful to outline the underlying circumstances first, for those who haven't engaged in such illegal practices themselves. I would recommend it for some and not for others - the experience hugely hinges on your own psychological make-up and the people you're with - and eating mushrooms can result in nightmarish scenarios. I feel pretty okay with it, although there may be long-lasting repercussions: I haven't done mushrooms in a long while, but walls still ripple slightly if I concentrate and if I've had enough coffee. It's a rather entertaining side-effect and not really anything I regret.

Ah yes, Grocery Pig. Well, me, Carly, Chad, Jen and maybe others had all eaten large quantities of mushrooms (is this a surprise?). The hideous fungus taste was masked deep within peanut butter sandwiches. And we had a mission (a mission of unusual complexity, considering our severely altered state). We were going to walk aaaaaaall the way down to the Princess Cinema and watch The Animation Show, Year 2. So we did the walking, and we managed to purchase tickets with reasonable success and seat ourselves without too much commotion. This felt like the biggest accomplishment since the Gutenburg press at the time, by the way.

As the theatre darkened and the film began, I watched in near-hysterical amusement (although I seem to recall being distracted by things happening on the fringes of each segment, rather than the primary action). This all changed with the Grocery Pig, however. I watched as an elderly female pig, dressed conservatively with a bonnet, went to the market and picked out some fruits and vegetables. It was clear that she lived alone, a pig happy with the simple things in life. She had whistled in the kitchen; she had a happy bounce in her step.

That all changed when she arrived back home, however. As she trotted along the sidewalk towards her small, quaint apartment, a taxi cab screeched to a halt beside her and an incredibly fierce looking rooster emerged. His glare was legendary, the stuff of Jericho fallen. I gasped. Grocery Pig was similarly startled and dropped the bag laden with her purchases. Apples and potatoes tumbled into the gutter, hard-won items spilling every which way as the frightened pig rushed into her home, leaving the bag behind on the curb. As she calmed herself with a cup of tea, held between shuddering hooves, my eyes widened and widened until they split. Grocery Pig was shaken, I was tramautized. Her life had fallen apart over nothing and it was too, too much. There would be no potatoes for dinner.

"I think I'm crying," I whispered to Carly. "That was so incredibly sad. But I don't really know, because of the mushrooms." And she laughed, later, very loudly, but I suspect she thought it was endearing and maybe sweet that I would cry over something so absurd. I am not much of a crier with regards to the ups and downs of my own particular life, the one I am engaged in at the moment, but sometimes you lay your heart open to play and strange animals will steal a piece.

Posted by Chris at 06:25 PM >> Commentations (1)