Free Association Thread 5

[Handley_Page]

Not up here in the central Sierra Nevada range.

My cinderblock shack, since demolished, was cat-corner from that JTNP visitor center, under 100 yards away. Toloache (Datura) and Indian Tobacco grew around my shack. Datura lined the roads around there. We campered at Indian Cove CG in JTNP last year. Datura abounded. Look up Daryll Shade. He'll tell you about the datura there.

'Lush' isn't exactly how I would describe Datura Meteloides. 'Ominous' is more like it. Finger the leaves and sniff: fermented peanut butter. Now wash your fingers and try to forget that smell. Yes, those big brilliant white-purple trumpet flowers are magnificent. Avoid cutting and putting in a vase. Wouldn't be prudent.

You want flower power? Datura is THE power flower. Poppies come close.

I gather that Datura is kinda dangerous. . . .
Toxic, even

 

[Hypoxia]

I gather that Datura is kinda dangerous. . . .
Toxic, even

The many beautiful Datura species are full of atropine, scopalamine, hyoscamine, all sorts of potent solanaceous alkaloids. A hallucinogenic dose isn't much less than a fatal dose. But it's long been part of maturation and medicine rituals across the Americas..

A youth starts growing pubic hair. Bar/bas mitzvah time! Feed them a bit of toloache stew. (That's the Nahuatl / Aztec name). Set them in a safe place. Soon they're conversing with ancestors, animals, deities, all just as real as mom sitting beside you. It's the ultimate spiritual trip. You KNOW religion is true because you've been there. Carlos Castaneda was mostly bullshit but he was right to call the experience an alternate reality.

The biggie is atropine. As I recall, nerves transmit signals by, at nerve junctions, emitting cholinester, which is then neutralized on the other side by cholinesterase ('erasing' the cholinester), like writing on a chalkboard and then erasing it, awaiting the next text. Atropine blocks cholinesterase. Your brain no longer receives signals... so it makes up its own. The result is indistinguishable from normal reality.

Pretty dizzifying and disorienting. Stumble around; bump into stuff; bruise. Fucks up eyes and brain for a few days. That's the price of enlightenment.
_____

Another subject. What's the difference between "burned up" and "burned down"? Structural, I guess. What's the difference between "closed up" and "closed down"? Are "all closed up/down" more permanent?

 

[JKendallDane]

The many beautiful Datura species are full of atropine, scopalamine, hyoscamine, all sorts of potent solanaceous alkaloids. A hallucinogenic dose isn't much less than a fatal dose. But it's long been part of maturation and medicine rituals across the Americas..

A youth starts growing pubic hair. Bar/bas mitzvah time! Feed them a bit of toloache stew. (That's the Nahuatl / Aztec name). Set them in a safe place. Soon they're conversing with ancestors, animals, deities, all just as real as mom sitting beside you. It's the ultimate spiritual trip. You KNOW religion is true because you've been there. Carlos Castaneda was mostly bullshit but he was right to call the experience an alternate reality.

The biggie is atropine. As I recall, nerves transmit signals by, at nerve junctions, emitting cholinester, which is then neutralized on the other side by cholinesterase ('erasing' the cholinester), like writing on a chalkboard and then erasing it, awaiting the next text. Atropine blocks cholinesterase. Your brain no longer receives signals... so it makes up its own. The result is indistinguishable from normal reality.

Pretty dizzifying and disorienting. Stumble around; bump into stuff; bruise. Fucks up eyes and brain for a few days. That's the price of enlightenment.
_____

Another subject. What's the difference between "burned up" and "burned down"? Structural, I guess. What's the difference between "closed up" and "closed down"? Are "all closed up/down" more permanent?

Or you could just lick a toad.

.

 

[Hypoxia]

Or you could just lick a toad.

Bufotamine isn't like atropine, more like the triptomines IIRC. DMT WTF!

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Datura can be lush. It grows large and profuse in some areas. I've found it on the little flood plains in the Virgin River Canyon growing nearly four feet tall with less than a foot and half between plants. Lush. Not tropical lush, but lush. I had some interesting experiences with the Virgin River Datura as well. Very different than with other stands.

On a lighter Nahuatl note...

The Axolotl Song

 

[JKendallDane]

On a lighter Nahuatl note...

The Axolotl Song

And that is proof that you can find almost anything on You Tube.

.

 

[Hypoxia]

Correction: the neurotransmitter-erasing enzyme is Acetylcholinesterase. My bad. (Memory, that is.)

Meanwhile... aw, fuck it. The day proceeds. Time to erase some more esters.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Correction: the neurotransmitter-erasing enzyme is Acetylcholinesterase. My bad. (Memory, that is.)

Meanwhile... aw, fuck it. The day proceeds. Time to erase some more esters.

And Castenada called it "A Separate Reality," not an 'alternate reality.' It can be found in the cracks that let the light in.

 

[Handley_Page]

And Castenada called it "A Separate Reality," not an 'alternate reality.' It can be found in the cracks that let the light in.

And t.he rain. . . . .

 

[JKendallDane]

And t.he rain. . . . .

Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head

.

 

[SamScribble]

Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head

.

There are holes in the sky
Where the rain gets in
The holes are small
That's why the rain is thin

- Spike Milligan (?)

 

[Handley_Page]

There are holes in the sky
Where the rain gets in
The holes are small
That's why the rain is thin

- Spike Milligan (?)

I'm fixing a hole
where the rain gets in
to stop my mind from wand'ring
where it will go.

(Beatles, " Sgt Pepper")

 

[Hypoxia]

Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head

When the rain comes, they run and hide their heads
They might as well be dead when the rain comes, when the rain comes.

Rain, I don't mind. Shine, the weather's fine.

I can show you that when it starts to rain, everything's the same.
Can you hear me? When it rains and shines, it's just a state of mind.​

Meanwhile, prior song: a story. We rented a casita in odd months in San Cristóbal de las Casas, old Spanish colonial city several klicks high in Chiapas state just above Guatemala. Stupendous place, Mexico's best.

Our streets were cobbled. Water trucks appeared every morning. If you heard the truck and your bottled water was about gone, you ran to the sidewalk to flag down a truck and get your Sparklets-size bottle replaced by studly jug-carriers. For a small fee. Bottled gas swaps worked the same way but with big fucking propane tanks.

How did you know when a water truck was near? Like I said, the streets were cobbled. There's a preliminary warning. Priest at a nearby church launches skyrockets to bomb-in the dawn. Then the water trucks appear, loudly dragging heavy chains across the cobbles to minimize sparks and explosions and maximize horrible clanking noises.

Each truck has huge horn speakers mounted atop. And what do those loudspeakers emit at ear-splitting volume, to announce replacement water is nearby?

RAINDROPS KEEP FALLING ON MY HEAD FTW!​

Not the rest of the song. Just that line on endless repeat. Every day from dawn till afternoon. If you wondered at the high consumption of cheap aguardiente rum there, wonder no more.

You don't want to know what blasted from the speakers atop clattering gas trucks. Fortunately, I don't remember, so it remains our secret.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Thunderstorm in the Northern Sonora

 

[Handley_Page]

Thunderstorm in the Northern Sonora

an impressive display

 

[Tio_Narratore]

an impressive display

I've been there. A month of thunderstorms and flash floods starting around Summer Solstice. I've seen cars and people washed away Yes, impressive.

 

[Hypoxia]

I've infested a few deserts in the Americas north of Nicaragua. The Sonoran is fun. Seasons aren't what outsiders expect. Around Agua Prieta (Sonora) the wisdom is that summer monsoons start just after gringos across the border set off their July 4th fireworks. This ignores skyrockets regularly launched by local priests, but so what?

If you drive by at 77 mph in your AC-isolated car, it's all just Stinking Desert out there. Dreary shit. Go walking at dawn and it's alive. Inhale. Listen. Watch. Learn.

 

[JKendallDane]

If you drive by at 77 mph in your AC-isolated car, it's all just Stinking Desert out there. Dreary shit. Go walking at dawn and it's alive. Inhale. Listen. Watch. Learn.

That's the key to most any of nature's wonders I believe. We have become so conditioned to "instant gratification and move on" that we rarely take the time to just absorb what we are experiencing.

A couple dozen years ago I spent about six hours exploring the hiking trails with friends in the Puerto Rico rain forest. The best part of that day was when I took a half hour to just sit and drink in everything that was there and how much was actually going on around me when I stayed still enough to see it.

.

 

[oggbashan]

On sunny weekends I often sit in my front garden looking at the sea - and the tourists driving past on the road between me and the beach vainly looking for parking spaces.

Even when the beach and road are crowded there are birds in the sky, seagulls swooping for dropped chips and McDonalds, cormorants diving for fish, and sparrows hunting insects.

Out at sea, apart from bathers, canoeists, rowers and jet skis there are dinghies and yachts. Further out are container ships and other sea-going vessels.

Above are passenger aircraft, light aircraft and some microlights.

And people stop to ask me what I have to look at.

 

[Handley_Page]

On sunny weekends I often sit in my front garden looking at the sea - and the tourists driving past on the road between me and the beach vainly looking for parking spaces.

Even when the beach and road are crowded there are birds in the sky, seagulls swooping for dropped chips and McDonalds, cormorants diving for fish, and sparrows hunting insects.

Out at sea, apart from bathers, canoeists, rowers and jet skis there are dinghies and yachts. Further out are container ships and other sea-going vessels.

Above are passenger aircraft, light aircraft and some microlights.

And people stop to ask me what I have to look at.

What an exciting vista, Ogg.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

When my wife and I hit Badlands National Park years ago, we watched as a Japanese tour bus pulled up. The tour guide (we presumed) got out and set up a tripod and camera as the passengers lined up at a metal staircase at the foot of an eroded cliff face. Up they went, one couple, family, or single at a time, to a walkway across the face, stopping in the middle for the guide to snap a picture before descending the other side and getting back on the bus. When all had finished, the bus left. All that was necessary, it seemed, was a photograph showing you had been at a place you never really looked at, let alone saw.

 

[Hypoxia]

I spent a full day outside my cactus-garden cinderblock shack in 29 Palms, across from the HQ of Joshua Tree National Monument (then).

It began in the velvet black of a starry moonless night. The desert's bare, ragged Pinto Mountains a couple miles south slowly became visibly violet. Cool zephyrs zephed. Creatures crawled and cried, The sky brightened slightly, then more. Another slug of coffee with cheap tequila.

My sunrise roadrunner zooms across my shack. The sky, brighter and brighter. Animal sounds diminish; traffic picks up, mostly on the highway a mile north toward the vast USMC base. Some artillery fire in the distance.

Midday, the Pintos glare brightly white under the unrelenting sun. Dead air, not as hot as it could be, but incentive to remain under shade. Some birds. Some jets. Some creature(s) moving in the open desert, I can't quite tell what. More Mexican coffee.

The sun sinks into Los Angeles and evening attacks the desert. More birds, breezes, creature noises. The Pintos have cooled from white to gray to reddish-bluish to darker, and back to ominous shadows on the too-close horizon. Then the blackness of night returns, washed by the Milky Way. Time to crawl in.

Who says a day on the desert is boring? I didn't even have to hike.

 

[Hypoxia]

When my wife and I hit Badlands National Park years ago, we watched as a Japanese tour bus pulled up.

I have mentioned this before.

Traveling, I stopped at a suburban Trader Joes store for meager supplies. A tour bus pulled into the parking lot just in front of the store. A scad (that's a score or three) of Japanese-looking guys, well but casually dressed, ages 20s through 40s, spewed into the store, waving varied cameras, photographing everything (but not each other so much). This lasted about three minutes. Then they surged back onto the bus, which sped away.

I have zero fucking explanations.

 

[JKendallDane]

I have mentioned this before.

Traveling, I stopped at a suburban Trader Joes store for meager supplies. A tour bus pulled into the parking lot just in front of the store. A scad (that's a score or three) of Japanese-looking guys, well but casually dressed, ages 20s through 40s, spewed into the store, waving varied cameras, photographing everything (but not each other so much). This lasted about three minutes. Then they surged back onto the bus, which sped away.

I have zero fucking explanations.

They were spies obviously.

.

 

[oggbashan]

I have a beard.

<---

A few years ago, when visiting Versailles and in the Hall of Mirrors, a Japanese couple wanted to take a picture. They wanted two pictures, one of me with the husband, and one with the wife. My beard was bushier than usual because I hadn't brought my beard trimmer to France.

As soon as they had taken their pictures I was asked to pose with three more Japanese couples.

Later, in the Petit Trianon, I had to pose for two more sets of pictures.

It reminded me of my brother in the early 1950s. We were visiting a Festival of Light in Tarifa, the southernmost part of Spain. At the time any foreigners were very rare. My brother and his then girlfriend had to pose for several pictures taken by the locals. Why?

My brother was six feet five inches tall. His girlfriend was five feet eleven inches in her bare feet but wearing heels.

Most local men were under five feet six inches, and the women even shorter.

The locals wanted pictures of the visiting giants.