Fifth Words from B.C.
So here we are again. Another week has gone by on the west coast as it has everywhere else. That means it's about time to sit down in front of a keyboard and screen and do a little bit of the old typey-wipey. I'd like to welcome two new additions to the mailing list. Welcome Petchie and Pixi. Or my Mom and Miranda as they may be known to you. An interesting bit of coincidental alliteration there. And now where shall I begin? Perhaps where I left off would be an appropriate place. Certainly. Technically I am starting where others left off but they left off in reply to where I left off so off to the left I go. Not literally of course but I thought it might be amusing to throw in another left and off but spun around to magnify the novelty of it all. Ha ha ha. What's that? I should stop this inane babbling and bloody well get on with it? A truer statement could not be made. The Matrix. That's what I'm getting at. Slowly. Don't worry though, I won't be spoiling anything this time. And if you find the subject boring, don't worry about that either. I have much more to say but I must get this out of the way. Is that okay? No? Well I'm afraid you'll have to take it up with someone else because I'm not going to change the subject now that I've already gotten into it. Well, yes that's true. I haven't actually said anything on the topic yet. Look, it's going to get said at some point so if you don't want to read it you can either skip it now or skip it later. What difference does it make? I know it's easier for you if I leave it till the end so you don't have to find the place where you want to resume but I have other people reading this you know and they might want to skip the part that actually does come at the end. Alright, now you're just being unreasonable. I really don't see what that has to do with it. Can we talk about this later? I have writing to do. If you don't shut up right now I'm going to come over there and-- Oh bloody hell! Now look what you made me do. It's all over the place. Can you go get me a towel? Because I want to make myself a turban. Why the hell do you think? Just go get me a fucking towel. NOW GODDAMMIT! Fucking Christ I don't know why I put up with this... Thank you. There. Did I miss anything? Good. Now just keep your mouth shut and let me write this thing.
Hi everybody. Sorry you had to witness all that. Now where was I? Oh yes, the Matrix. After my last email I received two strikingly similar replies from Darren and Steve (though Darren's was certainly the more sober of the two). They both provided fairly satisfying explanations as to how the machines were able to maintain a thermodynamic balance between the energy input and output of the whole human-as-power-source system. I had forgotten Morpheus' comment about the dead being fed to the living and Steve reminded me about the machines combining this energy with a "form of fusion." My idea that the extinction of all photosynthetic plants would result in an elimination of oxygen from the atmosphere was obviously premature. Granted, having most humans encapsulated and everything else (presumably) extinct would mean that very little of the remaining oxygen would be consumed, but even if there were no animals to perform aerobic respiration it seems to me that naturally occurring oxidation of metals and such would eventually remove enough oxygen from the atmosphere to make it unbreathable. Apparently not enough time had passed for this to have happened. Darren brought up a further question of the Matrix universe which was, "Why humans (i.e. rather than animals)?" I believe I can answer this question. While it is quite possible that the machines DO use animals as a power source as well (waste not, want not after all) there is a further reason why humans were utilized. If you've seen the Animatrix you may have noticed that in the Second Renaissance Pt. 2 the humans agree to be used by the machines as part of their terms of surrender following their defeat in the war against the machines. The machines demanded of the humans, "Hand over your flesh and a new world awaits you." And there you have it. Thanks to Darren and Steve for their participation in the ongoing saga that is the Words from B.C.
So now I have to come up with something else to write about. Not that that's terribly difficult or anything, but I'll just clarify that I am moving on to another topic now. Specifically I'm moving on to the topic of reading which is a standard of these emails. It occurs to me that some people may find this subject tedious but I don't intend to treat them any different than those who found the last subject to be so. Thus we march ever onward till the drums they beat no more. I finished Day of the Triffids. Quite enjoyed it, I did. Reminded me a lot of the movie 28 Days Later. It takes place in England, a guy wakes up in a hospital to the end of the world, there's a scene where some people jump off a dock and hold hands underwater... Wait, that was Prince of Tides. The book that had come in on the interlibrary loan was The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary, et al. I later found the full text of the book on the internet so taking it out of the library was a little redundant. At any rate, I read it and it provided instructions on how to make use of hallucinogenic drugs to achieve a transcendental state of ego-loss. I frequently thought of the amazing experience I had on mushrooms while I was reading the book. While I don't think the information in it could have improved on the best parts of that experience (nothing could have added to the bliss and utter joy of some of those moments) I think I could have benefited from some of the advice it gives on coming back to a normal ego state. After those two books I checked out The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson. So far I've read the first book and I'm very much enjoying it. It's rather hard to describe. It's a kind of blend of fact, fiction, humor, conspiracy theory, occultism, psychedelics, anarchism, and 60s-70s activist culture with a chaotic timeline a la Joyce or Faulkner. I set that aside temporarily though because Stephen LaBerge's Lucid Dreaming came in, so I'm reading that right now. Last night (or rather, this morning) I had a dream that should have been lucid but I just couldn't make the connection. In the dream I was riding in a car with a person I knew had died but it didn't occur to me that I was dreaming. I even thought to myself, "I know he's dead. They even performed an autopsy. How can he be here?" For some reason, though, it just didn't kick in. I think it's a sign that practice is slowly starting to pay off. The next book I have queued up (after I return to and finish The Illuminatus! Trilogy) is On the Road by ol' Jacky K. I look forward to that.
It's 2:30 in the morning right now and I still have a whole lot more to write about (they just keep getting longer and longer) so I think what I'm going to do is save what I've got and finish it tomorrow. Of course you'll never know the difference. Unless you start reading this at 2:20 in the morning and get to this point and decide that you've had enough for one night and that you'll read the rest tomorrow, in which case you'll have a pretty good idea. So if that's the case, the point that I'm going to stop writing tonight is right... now.
And BAM! I'm right back into it. It's like I never left. It might take me a little while to get back into the rhythm though. I was kind of on a roll last night and now I'm not feeling quite as inspired so it's going a little slow at the moment. Then again this is another case where you would really have to be here to appreciate the passage of time between each sentence. Well I've talked about the Matrix. I've talked about books. What else is there to talk about? Why, there's always the events of the past week. That's it! I'll talk about artichokes! Did you know that a medium sized artichoke has six grams of carbohydrates? And ten milligrams of folic acid? And two to four milligrams of riboflavin? Many people like to eat their artichokes with butter but some people like to eat them with mayonnaise. Apparently the artichoke was first developed in Sicily. There is mention of the plant in Greek and Roman literature as far back as 77 AD. The artichoke was introduced to England in about 1548 but it was not well received. I have no idea why. But that's neither here nor there. Tim arrived in Vancouver this week. We met at Grandview Park on Commercial on Tuesday. We walked around a bit, made our way to the house where he's staying. He returned a bus pass he had borrowed and we made our way back to the Drive. We stopped to talk with a fellow Tim had met. We smoked a joint and discussed the intricacies of marijuana cultivation and breeding. The conversation moved around, meandered, flowed, and altogether changed. Who should then make an appearance but Nathan strumming a mandolin. It was a while before the crowd dissolved and Tim and I went to find a beer and wine store. Not finding one we stopped for coffee instead. After absorbing some warmth we embarked on the walk back to the house. There we sat on the steps conversing with Paul and any of the other residents who happened to join us. Before I left, Tim and I made plans to meet the next day to explore Stanley Park.
And so we come to Wednesday. This was really the most interesting day of the past week. It started at noon to catch the bus to the Skytrain station. At Commercial Drive station I met with Tim and Meatloaf (no, not the Paradise by the Dashboard Light singer/Fight Club actor) and we continued on to Burrard station and along the marina to Stanley Park. We sat down outside the information kiosk while Meatloaf rolled a cigarette and Tim threw some soybeans for three crows and a rather large seagull. We hiked onward into the park along the seawall. Halfway in, we decided to turn west into the park towards Beaver Lake (though it's hardly a lake). Leaving the path, we walked a short ways into the brush to find a suitable spot to sit and smoke some of the salvia extract I had brought with me. We sat down at the base of one of the many large trees in the park and I filled the bowl of my pipe. I had been previously instructed to take in as much of the smoke as possible and hold it in as long as I could. I've never been particularly good at doing this with marijuana. I don't have the largest lung capacity anyway. I found the smoke to be not as harsh or uncomfortable on the lungs as a good sized bong hit, but there was so much of it that I had to exhale a couple of times in order to take in the whole bowl. I passed the pipe and bag of extract along and sat back to experience the effects. So what was it like? I'm not sure any description I could give would be very accurate. It did come on very fast as I was expecting. In one sense it felt like smoking an ounce of weed in one bowl and being completely floored by it. I don't remember what happened to my vision. It didn't go black or anything, I could still see. I wasn't hallucinating but somehow it was distorted. And I don't mean wavering or hazy, just different somehow. My body seemed to feel rigid and I sensed that I was tilting to my left but the sensation didn't last that long. I'm sure if I had tried to stand I wouldn't have been able to do it. Even afterward for a short time my coordination was off and I was stumbling a bit. My mental coordination seemed to undergo a similar effect. My mind was a bit hazy for a little while afterward. Within an hour I was completely back to baseline and no longer feeling any of the effects. Was it an enjoyable experience? Not exactly, not enjoyable per se. But then, most first time experiences with new drugs aren't. It was certainly a learning experience. I think a different setting would certainly be an improvement on a second attempt. Most people use s. divinorum in a quiet, comfortable, dimly lit room. Obviously my expectations will be different next time as well. So the lesson learned was to be in a more conducive environment and if possible make more efficient use of the smoke.
When we all felt like walking again we trekked on up the trail to Prospect Point to see the raccoons and the Japanese tourists. We saw the view, rested on a bench for a while and then started the return through the park before it got dark and cold. When we got back downtown we walked up Robson St. and eventually made our way back to the Skytrain station. Around 7:00 we went to eat at the Sikh Temple where they serve dinner Monday to Thursday. There was a curried something or other that was really fantastic. By 8:00 when we were leaving I was exhausted and I wanted to pick up my book from the library before it closed so I headed back to Port Moody. On the bus ride from the Skytrain station to the library some preppy suburban scumbags got on and sat across from me. Gap jeans wearing, baseball cap at a carefully contrived angle, upper middle class, hip hop wannabe mother fuckers. The kind of dumbass unenlightened fucks that might as well be pissing in the gene pool for all the good they do humanity. To demonstrate my point I'll give you an excerpt of their conversation (though it loses a bit of the effect when you can't actually hear the dumbfoundingly moronic voice that's saying it): "I'm just doing my thing, man. When I do what I do, if I'm being a cockblocker I don't mean to be a cockblocker." If I wasn't so astounded at how incredibly stupid this guy sounded I would have laughed my ass off. Before I got off the bus I was surprised when one of them pulled a bag of pot out of jacket to show the other. It wasn't done surreptitiously either. And this was at the front of a bus full of people. I mean, I know Vancouver is pretty relaxed on the whole marijuana issue, but this gave me a bit of a jolt as to how different things are here as opposed to Winnipeg. Not that I'm complaining...
Well that's about all I have for now. It certainly should be enough. Until the next one.
Tony "Sir, your dog looked like that before the hot wax" Hawkins
Hi everybody. Sorry you had to witness all that. Now where was I? Oh yes, the Matrix. After my last email I received two strikingly similar replies from Darren and Steve (though Darren's was certainly the more sober of the two). They both provided fairly satisfying explanations as to how the machines were able to maintain a thermodynamic balance between the energy input and output of the whole human-as-power-source system. I had forgotten Morpheus' comment about the dead being fed to the living and Steve reminded me about the machines combining this energy with a "form of fusion." My idea that the extinction of all photosynthetic plants would result in an elimination of oxygen from the atmosphere was obviously premature. Granted, having most humans encapsulated and everything else (presumably) extinct would mean that very little of the remaining oxygen would be consumed, but even if there were no animals to perform aerobic respiration it seems to me that naturally occurring oxidation of metals and such would eventually remove enough oxygen from the atmosphere to make it unbreathable. Apparently not enough time had passed for this to have happened. Darren brought up a further question of the Matrix universe which was, "Why humans (i.e. rather than animals)?" I believe I can answer this question. While it is quite possible that the machines DO use animals as a power source as well (waste not, want not after all) there is a further reason why humans were utilized. If you've seen the Animatrix you may have noticed that in the Second Renaissance Pt. 2 the humans agree to be used by the machines as part of their terms of surrender following their defeat in the war against the machines. The machines demanded of the humans, "Hand over your flesh and a new world awaits you." And there you have it. Thanks to Darren and Steve for their participation in the ongoing saga that is the Words from B.C.
So now I have to come up with something else to write about. Not that that's terribly difficult or anything, but I'll just clarify that I am moving on to another topic now. Specifically I'm moving on to the topic of reading which is a standard of these emails. It occurs to me that some people may find this subject tedious but I don't intend to treat them any different than those who found the last subject to be so. Thus we march ever onward till the drums they beat no more. I finished Day of the Triffids. Quite enjoyed it, I did. Reminded me a lot of the movie 28 Days Later. It takes place in England, a guy wakes up in a hospital to the end of the world, there's a scene where some people jump off a dock and hold hands underwater... Wait, that was Prince of Tides. The book that had come in on the interlibrary loan was The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary, et al. I later found the full text of the book on the internet so taking it out of the library was a little redundant. At any rate, I read it and it provided instructions on how to make use of hallucinogenic drugs to achieve a transcendental state of ego-loss. I frequently thought of the amazing experience I had on mushrooms while I was reading the book. While I don't think the information in it could have improved on the best parts of that experience (nothing could have added to the bliss and utter joy of some of those moments) I think I could have benefited from some of the advice it gives on coming back to a normal ego state. After those two books I checked out The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson. So far I've read the first book and I'm very much enjoying it. It's rather hard to describe. It's a kind of blend of fact, fiction, humor, conspiracy theory, occultism, psychedelics, anarchism, and 60s-70s activist culture with a chaotic timeline a la Joyce or Faulkner. I set that aside temporarily though because Stephen LaBerge's Lucid Dreaming came in, so I'm reading that right now. Last night (or rather, this morning) I had a dream that should have been lucid but I just couldn't make the connection. In the dream I was riding in a car with a person I knew had died but it didn't occur to me that I was dreaming. I even thought to myself, "I know he's dead. They even performed an autopsy. How can he be here?" For some reason, though, it just didn't kick in. I think it's a sign that practice is slowly starting to pay off. The next book I have queued up (after I return to and finish The Illuminatus! Trilogy) is On the Road by ol' Jacky K. I look forward to that.
It's 2:30 in the morning right now and I still have a whole lot more to write about (they just keep getting longer and longer) so I think what I'm going to do is save what I've got and finish it tomorrow. Of course you'll never know the difference. Unless you start reading this at 2:20 in the morning and get to this point and decide that you've had enough for one night and that you'll read the rest tomorrow, in which case you'll have a pretty good idea. So if that's the case, the point that I'm going to stop writing tonight is right... now.
And BAM! I'm right back into it. It's like I never left. It might take me a little while to get back into the rhythm though. I was kind of on a roll last night and now I'm not feeling quite as inspired so it's going a little slow at the moment. Then again this is another case where you would really have to be here to appreciate the passage of time between each sentence. Well I've talked about the Matrix. I've talked about books. What else is there to talk about? Why, there's always the events of the past week. That's it! I'll talk about artichokes! Did you know that a medium sized artichoke has six grams of carbohydrates? And ten milligrams of folic acid? And two to four milligrams of riboflavin? Many people like to eat their artichokes with butter but some people like to eat them with mayonnaise. Apparently the artichoke was first developed in Sicily. There is mention of the plant in Greek and Roman literature as far back as 77 AD. The artichoke was introduced to England in about 1548 but it was not well received. I have no idea why. But that's neither here nor there. Tim arrived in Vancouver this week. We met at Grandview Park on Commercial on Tuesday. We walked around a bit, made our way to the house where he's staying. He returned a bus pass he had borrowed and we made our way back to the Drive. We stopped to talk with a fellow Tim had met. We smoked a joint and discussed the intricacies of marijuana cultivation and breeding. The conversation moved around, meandered, flowed, and altogether changed. Who should then make an appearance but Nathan strumming a mandolin. It was a while before the crowd dissolved and Tim and I went to find a beer and wine store. Not finding one we stopped for coffee instead. After absorbing some warmth we embarked on the walk back to the house. There we sat on the steps conversing with Paul and any of the other residents who happened to join us. Before I left, Tim and I made plans to meet the next day to explore Stanley Park.
And so we come to Wednesday. This was really the most interesting day of the past week. It started at noon to catch the bus to the Skytrain station. At Commercial Drive station I met with Tim and Meatloaf (no, not the Paradise by the Dashboard Light singer/Fight Club actor) and we continued on to Burrard station and along the marina to Stanley Park. We sat down outside the information kiosk while Meatloaf rolled a cigarette and Tim threw some soybeans for three crows and a rather large seagull. We hiked onward into the park along the seawall. Halfway in, we decided to turn west into the park towards Beaver Lake (though it's hardly a lake). Leaving the path, we walked a short ways into the brush to find a suitable spot to sit and smoke some of the salvia extract I had brought with me. We sat down at the base of one of the many large trees in the park and I filled the bowl of my pipe. I had been previously instructed to take in as much of the smoke as possible and hold it in as long as I could. I've never been particularly good at doing this with marijuana. I don't have the largest lung capacity anyway. I found the smoke to be not as harsh or uncomfortable on the lungs as a good sized bong hit, but there was so much of it that I had to exhale a couple of times in order to take in the whole bowl. I passed the pipe and bag of extract along and sat back to experience the effects. So what was it like? I'm not sure any description I could give would be very accurate. It did come on very fast as I was expecting. In one sense it felt like smoking an ounce of weed in one bowl and being completely floored by it. I don't remember what happened to my vision. It didn't go black or anything, I could still see. I wasn't hallucinating but somehow it was distorted. And I don't mean wavering or hazy, just different somehow. My body seemed to feel rigid and I sensed that I was tilting to my left but the sensation didn't last that long. I'm sure if I had tried to stand I wouldn't have been able to do it. Even afterward for a short time my coordination was off and I was stumbling a bit. My mental coordination seemed to undergo a similar effect. My mind was a bit hazy for a little while afterward. Within an hour I was completely back to baseline and no longer feeling any of the effects. Was it an enjoyable experience? Not exactly, not enjoyable per se. But then, most first time experiences with new drugs aren't. It was certainly a learning experience. I think a different setting would certainly be an improvement on a second attempt. Most people use s. divinorum in a quiet, comfortable, dimly lit room. Obviously my expectations will be different next time as well. So the lesson learned was to be in a more conducive environment and if possible make more efficient use of the smoke.
When we all felt like walking again we trekked on up the trail to Prospect Point to see the raccoons and the Japanese tourists. We saw the view, rested on a bench for a while and then started the return through the park before it got dark and cold. When we got back downtown we walked up Robson St. and eventually made our way back to the Skytrain station. Around 7:00 we went to eat at the Sikh Temple where they serve dinner Monday to Thursday. There was a curried something or other that was really fantastic. By 8:00 when we were leaving I was exhausted and I wanted to pick up my book from the library before it closed so I headed back to Port Moody. On the bus ride from the Skytrain station to the library some preppy suburban scumbags got on and sat across from me. Gap jeans wearing, baseball cap at a carefully contrived angle, upper middle class, hip hop wannabe mother fuckers. The kind of dumbass unenlightened fucks that might as well be pissing in the gene pool for all the good they do humanity. To demonstrate my point I'll give you an excerpt of their conversation (though it loses a bit of the effect when you can't actually hear the dumbfoundingly moronic voice that's saying it): "I'm just doing my thing, man. When I do what I do, if I'm being a cockblocker I don't mean to be a cockblocker." If I wasn't so astounded at how incredibly stupid this guy sounded I would have laughed my ass off. Before I got off the bus I was surprised when one of them pulled a bag of pot out of jacket to show the other. It wasn't done surreptitiously either. And this was at the front of a bus full of people. I mean, I know Vancouver is pretty relaxed on the whole marijuana issue, but this gave me a bit of a jolt as to how different things are here as opposed to Winnipeg. Not that I'm complaining...
Well that's about all I have for now. It certainly should be enough. Until the next one.
Tony "Sir, your dog looked like that before the hot wax" Hawkins
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