human-soluble

Remarkably, as we sit on a new section of shoreline closer to the roiling turquoise sea, my eyes alight on the tiny fleck of ejected blotter paper. Scarcely bigger than the head of a pin, no doubt a multitude of tiny angels dancing on it, I scoop up the paper and force it back into Charlie's hand.

He had spit it into the wind an amount of time ago that could be seconds, minutes, or hours. At the time I had declared its contents to be very human-soluble so swallowing the stamp seemed unnecessary. But I am becoming increasingly concerned that our doses differ too much and that I’ll be out here on my own since I ate all of mine. It feels like no small miracle that I am encountering this forgotten-about needle in a haystack now. Perhaps more than a stroke of luck. Finish this sacrament Charlie. The silt covered chit of cellulose goes back on his tongue after sufficient prodding. “Show us!” Like a psych ward nurse, I'm demanding to see the medicine in place before the jaw shuts and the throat gulps.

The laughing fits that demarcate each chapter in the story begin again. Laughing that would be hysteria if it weren't so joyful and naturally fitting to the moment. A synchronous call-and-response spectacle crescendoing into a shared ecstasy that feels too intimate and vulnerable, even between two old friends. We gather ourselves, wipe our eyes. I blush a little and look down. We carry on.

We have staged our voyage on a tilted plane of sandstone. The side toward the ocean juts proudly up above the heaving water while the declined aspect is buried under the cliffs that outline the end of the continent. Below where we are seated, a perfectly clear tidepool has gathered in a depression formed where another of the canted shelves subducts into vertical rock. Protected from the windswell shoving against the craggy coastline, the pool is a flat long triangle of inviting stillness, as though a designed work of holy architecture. There's a piety in its repose, like a baptismal font that calls us to enter naked and be burned briefly by its searing cold water.

Charlie initiates a ritual crossing of the warm sun-beaten slab down the sharp rock steps to the pool, disrobing along the way and submitting to its invitation. I look on in awe and envy. I know myself better; I'm never equal to the allure of a cold plunge. But with my shifted perspective I've picked up a trick. I latch on to a short phrase and mutter it over and over, focusing not on the temperature of the water but on the repetition of the syllables. So engrossed in the simple recitation, I am able to proceed from ankle-deep to knee- to thigh- to crotch- to waist-deep and there to pause the muttering and the shuffling, to breathe in, and to bow in reverence ‘til my whole body is doubled over under the surface of the pool. I come out with my magic phrase lost and a wordless beastial howl rushing out of my lungs in its place.

Will the journey end at this point of crossing between overwhelming sensations? Dry to wet and warm to frozen–I expected the effects to be sobering and final. They are not. This is but one passage on a journey that continues through many more.

The technique of phrase repetition continues to serve me well. Alone in the shadow forest, the sentence She sings to me in all the sounds I've ever known becomes a vessel that carries me through the time passed here. The forest rustles, creaks, hums, and bellows as the steady onshore breeze animates the canopy. The branches and trunks jitter and yaw against one another like bows on strings, lips on reeds. Without ceasing the trees sing while I float in place tethered to a lifeboat’s mast by my incantation. Jagged broken stumps of low-lying branches close in like body traps laid in gridded corridors that recede deeper into the forest, daring me to allow fear to swell up in my chest. Before it can gather momentum my spell deflates the fear and the forest reaffirms her benevolent intention.

Sit beneath my branches and bide some time with me, eye-level with my long grasses and awash in my love.

---

I see now even as I saw then, inside of all the sensations and surprises, a yearning for that peak experience that would somehow define the journey and transform the soul. I thought I had it too. I danced and raved about it. “It happened! I disappeared.” Maybe it did happen and maybe I did disappear. What would that be like? To escape the overbearing sun I stooped in a narrow band of shade by a small dirty waterfall. From there I meditated while listening to the gentle splash and babble of the creek and looking out on a beachhead stuffed with smooth stones of all sizes and one conspicuous piece of driftwood laid down like the subject of a composition. A bleached and overexposed Godard set arranged around this ragged log, salt- and sun-weathered to purple, gray, and orange. Passively radiating wonder. I must remember this I was telling myself. Insistent, like I could feel deeply the loss of the memory while it was still being recorded.

I closed my eyes and let the vision of the waterfall and the beach, the stones and the driftwood, and me, an object placed arbitrarily into this mise en scène, dissolve. I felt my breath and held it. The vibration of the world and everything in it down to the matter that I am built of became the only presence. No stuff. No thought. One sense, all-encompassing. Euphoria? Peace? I begged myself remember it, keep it safe. The feeling of being there sticks in my ribs. I try to write it down but such feelings don’t surrender easily to words.

---

What mental imagery in these instances is artificial and what is authentic? From dorm room posters, CRT screensavers, and exaggerated Hollywood depictions, to a hundred other culturally-scripted preconceptions, we embark with the visions that a trip is meant to evoke already preloaded. When I dissolved I saw the same convergent wave patterns that I’ve seen soft sand make when disturbed by low-frequency sounds in subwoofer commercials and sci-fi flashbacks. Are these visions lifted from elsewhere then, or are they authentically mine? I wasn't trying to direct the show; it seemed to rise up spontaneously. And after all I was surrounded by sand, and by waveforms, in the form of actual waves. And small waves on the backs of waves, and smaller ones on those.

Speaking of sound, as evening sets I lay down and play music (CRJ, what’s new?) from my dying phone–it travels on down my ear canals and along the auditory nerves to somewhere deep in my brain. Instead of one unified track I hear each track in the mix distinctly. Like all the parallel recordings on an old eight track tape are playing at the same time, as isolated but congruent outputs. Every synth strike and auto chord, drum machine pop, slapped bass note, vocal and harmonized vocal–peeled apart into individual ribbons with simultaneous interweaving streams of imagery, geometry, and color. A synesthetic kaleidoscope.

I listen to the same songs now and they seem flat and homogeneous. Oddly, in recollecting the music, the forgotten phrase from the tidepool baptism also comes back to me now. It's one of the dozen or so acid-etched inanities jotted down in my yellow notebook.

I’m still clinging to this slow death. I’m still clinging to this slow death.¹

1. The slow death being that of… control? the narrative of the self? a former self? Or just the inevitable, natural, noble procession of life towards its terminus. Though the phrase sounds mournful it was felt as a celebratory proclamation; an acknowledgement of the relief that comes with loosening that white-knuckled grip on the reins of one’s story.

The word blossoms that spring from the mind in this state can’t be taken very literally after-the-fact, and many really can’t be taken in any sensible way. Still they are entertaining as objects of puzzlement, or embarrassing for their gratuitous self-seriousness.

Is this a different version of the same moment?

There is nothing to undo.

Each polished rock is the shape and size of a different human emotion.