STEAMPUNK21

The broken, the down-trodden, the chaser, and the best years of my life were reserved for my first 2 years in college. Those 2 years have tested the sands of time. One that has no end under the hasy evening sky of a decade, or under the influence of drugs, under the cover of a microscope.

In those 2 years, away at college, I was homeward bound. My friends were my family. We were resolved to educate and be educated. While there, I embraced the college experience and college really took a hold of me. I had my own radio show, and I opened my debut air time with a block of Oingo Boingo. I had found my voice, or more like I had a magnetic personality (which I never knew about). I have a Master’s degree now, but in the beginning, I didn’t take advantage of my public education. It was a social experiment. I opened my 3^rd eye.

Now, understand that in high school, I was barely a “C” student and only got into a university because I was seeing a therapist (for anxiety and depression) who taught psychology there. If I were to wake up tomorrow and relive the events of my high school life, I’d be seen as a failure. I think everyone gave up on me.

How the hell did I ever make it to college, is the $1,000,000 dollar question. I can’t believe it. I mean, the state really took a chance with me. In all fairness to myself, I am repaying the debt to society. I am a man of my word.

One year, 10 years ago, I broke records. In 12 short months I worked at Arbys, Robinsons-May, Right Start, Texaco Gas, Wilson’s suede and leather, KCSS, Sizzler, Amici’s, AMC movie theatres, Round Table Pizza, Harbor Freight, and Rockwell.

Yes, I was sick – between my Autoimmune Disease and mental illness, I was desperate for my niche. I would walk in to each possible employment opportunity and never had a problem in getting hired. I could get a job when I needed one. At this time, I wanted to write myself in the genre of great artists.

Yet, Education didn’t come to me (so to speak). I came to it. My life at this point, at age 19, was full of wide eyed discovery. I couldn’t be exaggerating to correctly call it miseducation. My friends and I wanted to push ourselves, cross the line, up to the limit of sanity without understanding the consequences. The ideas we had were thrilling. Altered States of consciousness, the philosophy of time, totem spirits. Out of body experiences took me to the fringes of the universe. Alone in my space. Alone on my bed. Alone I sleep.

My friends and I backed and embodied the “Beat,” generation.

At this point, I really wasn’t sure about my future in college. Although, I was on track to achieve a 3.0 GPA and two more years ahead of me, I wanted to be free from responsibility. My only concern was in the moment.

The reality I know, seeking “information,” is more of a symbiotic and cerebral relationship which fuels my intellectual advancement. My behavior in the quest to learn was determined by practicing hard and aggressively achieving individual goals.

It was the season of discovery and wonder that lasted for 2 years with an extra year of lifeline of being apart (between emails, calls, and visits). During this time, when not studying for college, I would get Stoned with the most amazing people in my life. Amazing can’t express the deepest of love we had for each other and the encouragement – we were zealous. We could/should have written a book. Or formed a band. Or started our own religion. Or began a revolution. The first year of college took playing with friends to a whole new level.

When I first met my best friend, some might call her my Muse, I was living in the dorm next door to her dorm room. It was a “co-ed,” style. Historically speaking, I wasted no time in finding out who smoked weed and who didn’t. But this one magical encounter, I was stopped right after I finished unpacking. 

Do you smoke weed?

“Yes, I do.”

Good! So, we’re off to a good start. We’re cool then, if we smoke weed, next door and all?

I have no problems with you smoking weed, as long as you share, I said with a wink.

“Of course,” she replied.

This was one of her roommates And she invited me over. It was the most weed I ever saw. I was not used to the casualness of my peers.

I must have smoked a shit load in the “marijuana den”, because I couldn’t remember anything else. I was a light weight. She came into the picture and reminded me that I asked her to cut my hair, which she did. Years later and she still reminds me fondly.

This was a few days before our freshman year began. I was a skinny stoner dude. I was very disciplined, when it came to my diet and having Crohn’s Disease. I was la-dee-daaaaading my way though life (just like the Judybats, a band I used to play when I was a student radio DJ) in every which way after my health care needs were met. Unstoppable. And no one really cared.

I was away from the safety and experience of my parents. I followed my instincts one whim at a time. That is what makes us human. Whims. We all have them. I didn’t have the foresight, however to understand what I was doing to myself in terms of the psychological scars. Like dreams, they fade too soon. Don’t let this happen to you, my Dear Reader. Write things down. Napkins, carry a back pack of paper and pens, keep a tape recorder close by. Write Now! This Instant.

We gravitated towards each other. Angels in the stream. The river took us in a unifying direction and from the moment we became unified, the river took us on journeys that were nothing short of divine intervention. The river built us up.

Our friendship weathered the true test of meaningful, strong, liberated, life long friendship. We were the original “Rat Pack,” the kind of “Reservoir Dog-Band of Brothers,” that Quentin Tarentino writes about. The kind of friendship that is only possible in the movies. Yet, it was borne.

I am probably leaving out parts of my life where I’ve neglected the people in my present life. At that time, the sun was on our backs. Now, the sun is on my face. But don’t think there is any less purpose. The sun has never set, and, the sun is always shining. Even when our hearts have been locked up and broken. You can find angels among us. Listen to my story. I am telling it from my heart.

I had a lot of first experiences in the 24 months of post high school education. My first experience with pills, with psychedelics, first time I had sex, first time arrested, and first time in my life I felt purpose, like I belonged.

I always wanted to have a radio show, and as it turned out, the college radio station was the biggest in the Cal state college system. So I applied for my FCC license and the Radio Manager gave me 2 hours a week of air time.

It was my radio show. All the mystique and tunes were broadcasting to the quiet little farming town. It was my renaissance of music. I became dissatisfied with the commercial stations and the radio show opened my musical palate. It gave getting stoned credibility.

For an outcast such as myself, you never forget the feeling of belonging, like the first time. All you have to do is to dust off the spider webs.

I got really close to four people from my freshman year. Our bond in the beginning was weed. I was already attracting people who wanted to get high with me. During this time, whatever I did, it always revolved around drugs. We practically bumped into each other.

My friends, my muse and 3 of the closest people to me, I have ever met, I experimented with psychedelics on a few occasions. My first trip on mushrooms I loaded Ummagumma by Pink Floyd in my cassette Walkman. We walked everywhere. We were gone, gone, gone. All I have now is my memory of alternate memories.

It was under a full moon. The full moon glow would eventually lead me to discover my animal totem/spirit. I had a wolf tattooed over my heart a few years later. Soon the tiny farming town I called home was too small. We walked over pavement, grassy fields, farms, made our own trails, discovered worlds that only existed in the mind. Psychedelics were medicines that I used to ease the pain. To literally take my mind off of it.

We made multiple excursion trips a year to the Bay Area.

We stumbled into a rave, where I danced with 2 girls at the same time. This was how our adventures began. On our way to San Francisco we traveled by trains and cars. If we traveled by train, it would drop us off at Daily City and we would have to take a train ride into SF proper.

I have no sense of direction. Yet, wherever we were, it was exactly where the universe wanted us. The rave was so nonchalant-incognito on the outside. It was brick exterior. The doors were like the garage hangers you’d see in movies about fancy cars. I was high.

But the activity inside was so original, that I was dancing with two girls. It was so sparkly, I was drawn instantly to the club life. This was my first club. The drugs were never hard to find. My life was at new GREAT high(T)s.

In the beginning of my college life, I was never vein enough to care much about my style or fashion. To me, that lifestyle was the equivalent to superficial. In this sort of vein, I concluded to protest, what I can do is to echo the counter culture, in which I wanted to “own.” Myself! I wanted to start a clothing revolution.

That my insight would take this as an conclusion.  In the beginning, a bum gave me $5 because he felt sorry for us, we fed the homeless at night, slept on park benches, got kicked out of a restaurant because we fell asleep and didn’t buy anything, slept in a metropolis church during mass, walked San Francisco all night and covered practically every inch of what was to see.

This was the 90’s. In the early 90’s, big pharmaceuticals were pushing anti-depressants. The young were on them, the old were too. And everyone in-between. Even dogs and cats were on them. They were drugs, right? 

All individuals endure at times, challenges by the problems which compel them to seek that which is unknown. This requires identifying their problems. Next comes clarifying, then resolving.

In winter, the seeds are planted. In the spring, the seeds yield to growing flowers. Trees become forests. Finches in beautiful yellows, blues, and reds, hop from the telephone lines, down to patches of grass. I also grew from my experiences during those experimental two years in college.

I was very impressionable. I felt I was missing this thing Pink Floyd called, “the warm thrill of confusion, that space cadet glow.” It was a time of discovery and experimentation.

But this ill-gotten-glory-clouded-mystique was internalized deep, deep in my brain  – an ill guided one way expedition as it were. Where I got lost, until I can’t escape from my deepest mind.

I used drugs like a scientist. Even though I was always in control, I wanted to be free. Weightless. I wanted to view the other side of the walls of sanity/calamity. Little did I know that the hard part was coming back.

So my college friends and I experimented. How much can the brain endure? I might have pushed myself hard, but my mind pushed back harder. I guess it is true about hind-sight. But this is space or time travel … or is it? Blink? Blink!

The behavior of this magnitude is fueled by scientifically challenging our beliefs, strategies, vigor, and understanding. One time, my friends and I, tried to force ourselves into a state of altered awareness. This was done by inhaling nitrous oxide over and over again in complete and total darkness.

To challenge your beliefs, you need to forget everything you’ve been taught.

This is how it goes. I reduced everything down to its simplest form, between possessions (watches, TV sets) and the creation of life (e.g. trees). Everything wants and tries to be understood. The philosophical formula is; simplicity divided by thoughts. Yes madam, sir, I am a fucking scientist.

We chose to live a life of fantasy and fringe. Nothing was insignificant. Bike racks were personified. We were guided and ignited by spirit and innovation. My philosophy instructor enabled us too. He gave us ideas of dreams without sleeping.

Sleep deprivation experiments and what it takes to push the laws of the psychological mind. My close friends and I were up for 3 days, on drugs. Except, I was the only one apparently who didn’t take anything except coffee. I stayed up for 3 days. Those three days were accompanied by 1 hour each day to sleep. That was necessary.

 The abstract notion of time (that time can warp), combined with the laws of physics (days into nights), I discovered the creation of history that can not be apprehended. To see history can’t be grasped. I found out that no mater what, time doesn’t stop. Blink. Tick. Blink. Tock.

Does time exist in a vacuum? No. Yes. Well, sort of.

In space, in a vacuum, in a dark world void of physics, it is important to understand, to stipulate, that time doesn’t exist. It is only when matter is introduced in a vacuum, does physics become the law of all things possible. Elementary, time is math and math is physics and this is where metaphysics is born.

This transformation (between space and matter) becomes Chaos. In a singular event, the Big Bang creates the fullness of what we understand as the properties of time. Time exists in chaos.

What is “life” supposed to mean? Does time exist in the breath? Because after all, the breath is what gives us life. 90% of the breath is water vapor. What is all this supposed to mean?

In a mirror, you can see how you have changed. Can a mirror be more than your reflection? Take the blue pill…and wake up.

In space, you can measure time in terms of “Light Years.” According to physicists (including Hawkins) lights are tiny particles in space. Here is the conundrum. Space is a vacuum, and exists with matter.

Light is a particle. But to test time in a true experiment, you can’t introduce anything to the vacuum (or space) and study an element such as a particle at the same time. To do so, you would sabotage this experiment by contaminating and introducing particles. These are the two outcomes as defined by the theory known as Schrödinger’s cat.

(Taken from Wikipedia) The scenario presents a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead, a state known as a quantum superposition, as a result of being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur. The thought experiment is also often featured in theoretical discussions of the interpretations of quantum mechanics. Schrödinger coined the term Verschränkung (entanglement) in the course of developing the thought experiment.

Why then, can time seem to speed up or slow down?

Because, dummy, time is dependent on external factors – since matter is established, and time is created.

During this sleep deprivation experiment, time didn’t catch my attention. In the beginning, everything was fine. It wasn’t until the second and third night that I discovered time slowing. Five minutes turned into an eternity. I heard from our beloved philosophy teacher that there was an untapped level of consciousness that can only be obtained by not sleeping. I was sipping coffee for three days. I felt and experienced time and history like no other.

Believe what drives you. Blink.

If there is intelligent life outside of my insignificant universe, I wonder if it can be found. I need the close encounter that Richard Dryfuss found while playing an actor. I need to be released from the mental chains of reality. Maybe a roofee cocktail? Two days worth is all I need. In the desert.

I need mental clarity. Blink.

Two years from the freshman year of college were all about perception, but something else, too. Something experimental – in the deep recesses of the mind. We were on a mission to determine the moment things change. Chasing that which makes up the seconds, minutes, and hours.

For me, it was a downward spiral. I couldn’t catch the intangible. Time was speeding up in a soft and seductive fabric. The intangible couldn’t catch me – so I relied on the fringes of psychological fortification. I put myself into a psychotic state from the moment I voluntarily checked myself in to a rehab. This was the time travel, trip through the light fantastic. This was the ultimate experiment.

This was the leap that catapulted me into the serious Chaser’s experiment. I just had to believe in myself. Is it true that one can’t believe oneself into psychosis? Or was I just board?

One year before the Rehab, I was introduced to prescription drugs. This was appealing to me because of the warm taste and subtle touches it gave me and the inhibitions that follows. It made me question the permanence of addiction. How else was I going to pose nude for an art class?

To break the cycle of addiction, is to live in the moment.

Not that I was ever addicted to drugs before this. If anything, the only semblance of an addiction was Marijuana. However, the windows opened up after that first drug in the form of a pill. It made me curious about what else I was missing.

I was focused on the “chase,” the experiment. I thought I was in control. Instead, I was intently controlled by the “chase.” My focus was being controlled and free at the same time. The rough stream of consciousness’s tide turned against me, and the only way to survive was to tread water when the flood gates opened. I couldn’t swim.