20·12·06
from Anne Waldman's introduction:
| The night Lewis and I took lysergic acid diethylamide at a friend's apartment on Nob Hill, first time, I hallucinated a lineage tree, an arbor vitae (prevalent archetypal acid icon)—resonant with what you visualize in particular Buddhist practices—that included all the people I'd ever known: family, friends, their families, friends. Also heroes, heroines, cultural figures, saints, poets, ballplayers, actors, movie stars, singers, many others—bad guys, enemies even. Animals, trees, plants, lakes, mountains, and so on. All gathered in my brain in witness motif, gazing at one another and then up at the sky waiting for an impulse to get something "going." Or make use of their precious time "on earth." Of course all these folk were already busy, that wasn't the point. It was my yearning to be part of it all, a blueprint for community, for sacre conversatione. More like a fifties Sci Fi movie? And yet the desire to belong, and to "lead" had a naive, albeit egotistical, purity. |
| (Jacket published the entire text here) |
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