If it works as herbal medicine to smooth the experience of living on Earth�?? why should we refuse the gift?

I need a drug that quiets the existential buzz without anesthetizing you the way alcohol does.

Marijuana does it very well.

It enhances sensation, and what is sex but a feast of the senses?

That’s the nice thing about weed�?? no matter how much you smoke, you still get a hard on.

I decided a long time ago that as long as I can get it up, I’ll keep it up.;-)

In fairness, he was communicating with nature, but it was more with all things mysterious.

Walter was a curious soul. He was tall and squinted at the world through his glasses.

When he looked at you, you got the feeling he was looking at a scene that somehow didn’t include you.

He didn’t talk much, and it never occurred to me to engage him in a conversation about himself.

But just for my own entertainment I asked him, “Do you think the pope is the Vicar of Christ?”.

He didn’t smile when I asked that, he being a Catholic convert.

He looked beyond me, as if he saw St. Augustine with his pears, before he was a saint.

Then he said, “God is a lonely lover”.

I could buy that.

We’d smoke joints and work in the garden and laugh at the expressions on the faces of the rednecks who were driving around in the woods and stumbled upon our “nudist colony”.

It was funny to watch Mr. Natural walk up to their pickup truck (it was always a pickup) and ask them, “Can I help you?”, his dick hanging there nonchalantly in the breeze.

I’ve never seen so many tongue-tied goobers.

One night I went over to the dome to get high with Natural and his ‘old lady’. I didn’t bother to put on any clothes.

So there I was sitting au naturel in the rocking chair while the Naturals reclined on the mattress that served as a platform for his comedy act when we heard a car drive up.

It was night, so we didn’t know who it was till they got to the screen door.

It was the beachside movers and shakers come out to bless us with their presence.

Mr. Natural threw me a blanket and I covered up, not that I was ashamed, but I knew what they were going to think.

I’ve always been ‘psychic’ that way.

The glint in their eyes said it all when they came in, but I just played it cool.

I thought it was too bad I didn’t have a hard-on, though.

It would have been a blast.

The fallout.

The state of perpetual emergency imposed from above by some local lord feels artificial.

What dilettante bohemians consider medicine for the soul might not be your cup of tea, but an anarchist’s utopia could be a portal to something better if your imagination had free rein.

The natural world is our native planet�?? if we’re lucky the energy and elements combine to make our lives worth living.

Peace and understanding are possible, if you can see past the DMT-hungry cannibals scooping the brains out of your skull like it was tasty pudding.

And people think zombies don’t have preferences.

Soul rebel.

That’ll shake things up, inside and outside this skull.

Everything old will be new again, and I’ll be myself for a change.

Don’t worry, it’s no worse than Iggy Pop.

The real magic is inside us, anyway.

Some of us just need a good kick in the ass every now and then.

That’s why I have both hands on the knob that steers my ship.;-)

Who could offer more scathing commentary on our all-too-human foibles?

The inward tension oozed from his pores.

If junkies get relief from the existential buzz, no wonder they’re addicts.

Just living is work when you don’t have a maid.

In this material world that we do such a fine job of messing up.

I always thought wisdom was spelled out in the commonplace things that happen in everyday life.

It just takes an artist to see it, sometimes.

Bugs are everywhere.

I thought it was a smug thing to say but I have to admit it’s true, at least when he rides with me.

He’s not the swivel-hipped rebel from some forgotten vignette now showing on YouTube�?? he’s more like someone with no space left in his heart for anyone else’s reality.

Some things you just have to take at face value.

I mean, I really don’t consider the energy it takes to pay attention expendable for any megalomaniac who comes along.

Some of them call it a steampunk world, but I say it’s all relative.

The first time I saw Mr. Natural blast a big fat cottonmouth moccasin out of the pond with his goose gun, I thought he was just playing Davy Crockett�?? then I tried it myself.

I hate to anthropomorphize evil-looking snakes, but somehow it felt like a holy mission when the bastards started going after the baby ducks, as if the depredations of the clever-ass raccoons weren’t bad enough.

The goose gun, such an ungainly apparatus, did the job and held a very tight pattern, all the better to atomize the spawn of Satan.

It made you feel like a righteous barbarian�?? adrenaline is a self-affirming drug.

Still, shooting swamp snakes with shotguns is no more sporting than dropping rabbits.

At least we ate the rattlers�?? barbecued.

But now I’d rather live and let live, even when it comes to vipers.

I’ve got the bullets!

I knew he had a mission.

This was a golden opportunity, so I stripped and put on my thong.

Then I opened the door with a big smile.

Some moments are priceless.

I’ll never forget the astonished look on his face, and the series of emotions that flickered across it�??
from embarrassment to consternation.

I have to give him credit, though�?? he never lost his cool.

He just stood there and looked right through me without flinching, but I had the feeling he was struggling to avoid that inevitable glance at the ‘thing’.

I felt a little sorry for him, but declined to show him mercy.

I invited him into the house, and put my hand on his shoulder.

Good thing he didn’t drop dead right then and there.

He looked so conflicted I thought he might fall apart.

He couldn’t make it across the threshold�??it was as if an invisible wall stopped him.

I asked him if he was looking for a ‘donation’.

That’s when his eyes began their inevitable descent to the mother load.

It was funny how he just stared.

He looked hungry�?? I felt a little guilty.

But not too much.

It’s a bright new day.

Maybe an alternative reality imagined by Arthur C. Clarke�?? or a movie with James Dean�?? would better depict it.

Just look at the merchandising.

So don’t give up easily�?? stay the course, and all that.

I wouldn’t send my friend on a fool’s errand to recover his dignity when the monster shits its golden turd, but at least he should have veto power over his own information.

The war is going to be about human dignity, and how much bullshit can real people absorb?

I never believed for a moment that Childhood’s End could be reduced to a morality tale about interplanetary colonialism, but it looks to me like some people are stuck on their local happy plantation.

Draw your own conclusions�?? there’s a classic world that draws its strength from the tribe in here somewhere.

Looking outside the cave.