Psilocybin Meat

Electric flesh, psilocybin meat. Crawling and tingling the coming up process is endured. My molecules come unglued and rush to the velocity of a million circus cannon blasts as I’m pulled by an immense gravity, origin unknown. The sheer amount of information processed every second is maddening. My haywire brain on conveyer belt wheels reaches incalculable speeds, throwing rampant thoughts like cardboard boxes at me as I stand at the end of the line, trying to catch them.

The tall walls are white lungs breathing, expanding, growing and retreating. The building is alive. I can feel the warm summer breath pouring in and out of the room through a pair of slender open windows. My feet are thrown on the couch with the rest of me. I couldn’t be more uncomfortable. I don’t understand my body. I suspect that I’m wearing it sideways. My hips are anchored to my spine at an incorrect angle. My legs and arms seem foreign, and I feel the loss of an appendage from some future stage in our evolution, one we haven’t yet developed, growing directly from my solar plexus. I try to use it to sit straight before flailing for balance in the ocean of throw pillows consuming me on the couch. Nausea spreads through my stomach, worsening with each tick of the clock. My legs shake and I throw my jaw left and right to pop my ears from the immense heights to which I’m propelled. I need something. I need to consume. I need to take my mind off of my discomfort. Food is not an option at this point, drink will not be enough. I pull a cigarette from the red and white pack on the table, but my fingers are too jittery to work the lighter. My palms are covered with clammy sweat, and by the time I get the cigarette lit, it’s nearly brown with grime.

All thoughts spiral over and over to some unspeakable end. An unstoppable train I can’t get off. They’ll lead straight to the most basic essence of fear, or insecurity, or anxiety and indecision. They’ll make symbolic connections between improbable concepts. I’ll snap out of it, realize the trajectory of my thinking and wonder how I got sucked into such a terrifying progression… then one thought will lead to another and another and I’ll be back up at the top, spiraling down again to the same base essence of despair… this is the true nature of The Fear.

A passage I read years ago in a Castaneda book flashes before me. Something on how fear and insecurity are outside patterns imposed on humanity, and laid over our consciousness by outside influences; inorganic beings that naturally cohabitate here with us on earth in a density we cannot perceive: minds without bodies, infinitely more intelligent than ours, yet outside the physical realm. We are their viscerous cattle. They feed on our emotional experience of living, since they have none of their own. Not being incarnated physically, they’re not immersed this reality the same as we are. They mimic our minds to lead us into default emotional patterns, fear and anger being the strongest. Once the fear patterns are initiated they are predictable in their outcomes. We think the “I” in our head is us, but it is not. The ancient shamans referred to this as ‘the topic of topics.’

The animal on the lazy-boy across from me, once a recognizable friend from a distant life where we struggled to match our socks, to make our schedules and pay our gas bills on time, has transformed into a quivering flesh puppet with wiry hair. He looks at me in confused terror.

I open my mouth to speak, “This dark presence,” I hear myself say. “That’s descended on mankind… it tricks us into thinking for us, thinking at us… you understand? We believe its thoughts are our thoughts… but its feeding on us… absorbing our emotions... we’re cattle,” I demand with wild gestures. “We’re in the middle of the food chain for fuck’s sake. Don’t you get it? Humanity… we’ve fallen from a great height to where we are now. It mimics our minds. For the love of god do you know what I’m saying, Joe?”

I study his eyes for a sign of comprehension. Did he understand? Did he get it? Or do I need to say it again? The look on his face told me my voice never made it past the Neolithic grunts of a pre-language human ape, or the amplified groans of my churning stomach.

I turn inward and try to put this theory into an application that would nullify this impending sense of dread building behind the speed of the mushrooms. Fear is a pattern, nothing more… use it, know it. But as I attempt to grasp the concept and its relevance to the hole I’m in, I’ve forgotten what it was I was trying to think about. I sink a bit deeper into a level of incoherence, and again I am powerless against the demanding mechanics of my own mind.