Of Temporality

Ghosts. Ghosts are all that are left of the days of yesteryears. The past is another country, long lost in some forgotten revolution. And journeys therein, of necessity, are clouded by false memories, false recollection of true events. Even the people from the past, the ones who left the deepest of marks, would have already turned into ghosts. Forgone dreams may hold them steadfast in memory, but they would hardly have any ground left under them -- their feet would have already turned to smoke.

It is difficult, utterly so, to be homeless. It is difficult still, to not have a home. It is not pleasant, to have to suffer. It is unpleasant still, to realise the futility of suffering. 

The great tragedy of life, is not that it ends. It is rather that the process is, inherently, paradoxical -- a continuous conflict between the destination and the journey itself.

LSD, Grateful Dead and Self-Desired Psychosis.

It's definitely a full body/mind experience for me. I am on my third acid (dropper/cid/blotter/drop etc.) right now, and I have one more to go. LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide, is an extremely potent hallucinogenic psychedelic compound, with (a) no physiological addiction, (b) no long-/short-term neurotoxicity, (c) no dependency syndromes, (d) no recorded case of overdose, and (e) no known side-effects, other than acute, and often desired, psychosis. 

I felt the acid coming on very gradually, about ninety minutes after I placed the blot under my tongue. It began as a mild altered consciousness, purely psychological, but then slowly spread over for a more full body/mind experience. The immediate, and so far as I can tell right now, persistent, effect is  increased (definitely heightened), but also highly altered (paradigm shifted) cognition. It seems pretty domain general at this point -- I can tell it affects spatial reasoning, I know it affects melody and rhythm, I know it's making me a little bit more jovial than I usually am (I am laughing my ass off to That 70s Show), and it certainly makes you aware of the physical limits of your body, the edge of your skin against the  cosmos. And yeah, talking like this is another not-so-bad effect of LSD.

I am not sure that I had any of the acute visual experience that most LSD users swear by, but I did experience acute psychedelic shifts in my conceptual-intentional system, and getting a little bit higher up with the abstractions, some major shifts in the recursion of the Fodorian concepts within my mind.  There is nothing new, though. I should mention that. I don't think the LSD induced anything that wasn't there to begin with. Also, it is completely different, pleasantly so, from alcohol. Alcohol impedes cognition. LSD enhances it. As far as I can tell, right now, it also significantly modifies it. It's almost like being aware of things that you never knew you were NOT unaware of -- but seriously, it really lets you travel, almost literally, into some pretty enticing corners of your psyche, and affords whole new perspectives on things. I suppose, this is why they call this "a trip"??

Now, I am wondering, purely out of academic interest of course, can the 'nature' of the trip be attributed to the LSD? I think LSD, in this context, is merely a catalyst that interacts with and manipulates the process of recursion of the Fodorian concepts in the mind, thereby inducing psychosis. My personal thinking is that it does not induce anything novel, but only magnifies and helps re-interpret the ongoing conceptual computation. Otherwise, there would be some observable correlation between the good trip vs. bad trip distinction and the chemical composition of the LSD ingested. I couldn't find any such reference in the literature. 

Recursion!!! That's the key! Perhaps, recursion characterises other more domain-general cognitive functions as well, thereby distinguishing those functions in humans from other higher primates! Hmmm... I should run this by Iris Berent, and possibly Poeppel and Pinker too!

Okay!! I think I might be beginning to see some of the visual auras... this is so awesome!!! I just spent the last seven minutes trying to adjust the font size across the text, only to realise that its the acid interfering with my depth-perception and spatial-reasoning. I am still completely in command of my mind and, from what I can tell from the line-walk test I just took, also my body. There is no hangover of any sort. Nor any clumsiness, as one would from drinking alcohol. In fact, I feel fresh. Almost unbelievably so. 

My mind is a kaleidoscope, right now.... somebody is playing Grateful Dead's greatest hits from 1965... Amy Goodman is interviewing Noam on Syria... and I just saw a freaking dragonfly, gold and blue, burst out of a rainbow and dissolve into a sea of colourful lava.... there are dragons and unicorns, and Derrida, and Neruda, and co-ordinate geometry...

I think I am just gonna sit back and enjoy this awe-freaking-some show my mind is putting up in front of my eyes, right now! It's pay-per-view, boys! Watch this space for updates on my experience with LSD. The fonts are changing colors right in front of my eyes.... this is seriously awesome! And the fact that I am doing the Science along with the LSD is making it that much more awesome!!! 

Peace, love and resistance, ya'll. 

Hope: Memoirs of a Homeless Vagabond

"[...] beneath the glitter and glitz, the diamonds and black velvet, deep below, the Metropolis' heart beats; down in the sewers and gutters, where its dearest families live."

-- Paul Theroux; Memories of New York City--


She had come to hate it -- Hope.
The word. The sound. The concept. The unabashed cruelty of it all.
That's all anyone ever gave her -- Hope. Wrapped in short change.
A few were bills. But a buck is a buck -- paper or metal.
A dollar's worth of Hope -- that's all she ever could get for one.
And there were many -- a dollar at a time. A dollar a day.
Always. A dollar's worth of Hope.

Hope was a lie. Hope was a beautiful fairytale.
Hope was a ploy; an excuse.
Hope was diversion. Hope was perpetuation.
Hope was no solution; nor was a direction.
Hope. Was a compass without a magnet.
Hope was her; sunken eyes, ruffled hair.
She sat under that park bench; still savoring yesterday's meal.
As she thirsts for tomorrow's rain.