I dreamed her...  everywhere there was light 
everywhere there was fire, 
and I dreamed her true, 
winged and liquid and flying into sky. 

August 22, 1997. The most forever Friday ever. 
So much in one day! My friends Brian & Tim and myself. 
  

I called Kia from Piggly Wiggly, hello-love before the mountains. Brian tried calling Kate (his fiance) to wish her happy birthday. He called her at work, and at home, but didn’t find her, was only able to leave messages. 

While he was doing this Tim and I went into the grocery. We were outfitting ourselves for the trip, buying liquids and foods. We filled the shopping basket with a case of Spam (about 50 cans) and two bottles of lemon juice extract. 

Brian happened upon us. "Put that back." 

We gathered real things. Gatorade. Cantaloupe. Oranges. Bread. Jam. Fruit roll-ups. Tim was distressed about all the healthy junk we had in the basket. He threw in a bag of Snickers. 

Outside, Brian called some guy about networks, I think. He and I were sort of breaking one of the rules. Consorting with our real lives. 

I was dancing by the car and telling Tim about counting coup but he didn’t buy it. He likes the idea of more pure wrestling. The slamming people into the ground kind of thing. 

Brian was driving so Tim and I played rock, paper, scissors for rights to the front seat. We played it often this weekend, letting the game make decisions for us. I would usually beat Tim when I was clear and there and not thinking about what I would play, listening so close to life that it was my hand that decided what to do, not my mind. If I thought about it too much, Tim won. 

We drove into the mountains, finally found this bumpy dirt track that took us high and wound up to the head of the trail leading to the waterfall. We parked there and repackaged our gear for the mile and a half hike down into the valley. 

It was almost dark by the time we were ready. We hiked in, eager, and found the campspot. A perfect place, hidden on a tiny trail that slid mischievously downstream from the falls. There was a fire pit from previous campers, and we set up tent in a flat space through a bush portal, beneath a canopy by trees. 

Someone had set up a circle of rock seats ten feet away from the fire. It almost seemed like a circle where people did ritual work. This was the same place my friends Ted and Will used to camp for their mushroom voyages, so maybe it was remnants from their past? Ted, in particular, is deep into zen buddhism and south american shamanism. He spent three months in the Amazon with an ayahuascero, learning to see, learning to flip through realities, learning to love the beauty of the mundane as well as the extraordinary. I think Will is heading along the same path spiritually. 

I told Tim and Brian about Ted and Will’s use of this place, and we were quiet for a minute, thinking about them. 

Brian was tired, so he took a nap in the tent while Tim and I gathered firewood. I made a fire, and a little after that Brian came out of the tent, refreshed. 

We were indecisive for a while about whether Friday was the night for mushrooms as it was already around 11pm... but it seemed right so we did. 

I had two jars of mushrooms, and I dumped out one in the top of a cooking pot. Eighteen fungi. Beautiful. Dry. I had picked them myself in early July. 

"Do we make tea from them?" I asked. 

Brian shook his head. "I like to just eat them. I think you are supposed to." 

Tim said he too felt like gobbling them. 

"Okay, but one day you’ll have to try my tea. It’s very good, very tasty. A cup of magic." 

We divided the pile in three. I put three mushrooms back in the jar, carried the jars back down to the river and put them back in the cooler. 

"I’m not sure if I want that many," Brian said, sifting through his portion. Brian hadn’t tripped for several years. Never before with Tim and I. 

"Okay," I told him. "Just have however many you want." 

We munched them, like crackers. Brian ended up having about as many as everyone else. Neither of them like the taste. For Kia the smell and taste are difficult as well. I love the taste/smell. Especially of fresh psilocybes. Incredible. Or the herbal scent of the tea I make, when it mixes with their heady aroma. Whenever I pick a fresh one I smell it, savor it. Yummy. I told Brian and Tim about the time Kia, Trix-e, and I made sesame honey mushroom treats. 

I lit a sage/cedar/lavender smudge stick I had, and we dusted each others auras. A glaze of trust around us. 

We all took a turn laying in the hammock. floating. a boat or cocoon sailing through galaxies of interstellar dust. The breeze of time-space, pushing me lightly, teasing me. Smooth dreamings, but I couldn’t quite find what I wanted to. But so smooth. This was a good place, near the waterfall. True and sacred. We sat around the fire for some time, sharing a few words, sharing silences. We took a walk to the waterfall. Everything was clear and dreamy. We spent a few minutes there and then we returned to the fire. 

"What are you thinking about?" Brian asked me. 

"I’m thinking about eating some more of those mushrooms." 

He laughed. "So am I." 

Tim looked at us. "Whatever. I am feeling it pretty strongly." 

I took out the jars again. Dumped the last three mushrooms from the first jar into the silver pot lid. 

"One for each of us." 

We looked between us. 

"Damn, this feels familiar." The mushroom dividing/preparation ritual all over again. 

We each ate a mushroom. 

Brian was looking at me. 

"You know, if we crack open the second jar, we’ll probably won’t be able to just eat one or two more. We’ll probably eat the whole jar," I said. 

"Yeah." 

We opened it anyway. Dumped the contents into the pot lid again. Tim ate about three more, Brian and I swallowed a bunch. 

We really ate a lot of mushrooms. Probably about six grams total. 

I suddenly could see the moon through a hole in the trees. It grew and grew and was so shiny. Brian knew it was there from the light skinning through the valley but he couldn’t see it. I told him to step over by me and we both were lost in it for a while. 

During the eating of the second mushrooms (which we ate about an hour after the first), the energy had begun to grow strong. It looked to be a very interesting night ahead of us. Almost wordlessly, we decided to return to the waterfall. Tim went to his pack to get smokes. I dug in the tent, found my harmonicas and egg rattle, put them in my pocket and promptly forgot about them. 

"Do we need light?" Tim picked up one of our candles, and Brian brought a flashlight along just in case. 

The candle cast a flickering ethereal glow through the trees as we tramped up the trail. Something was changing. Wild energies were forming, and I felt the silvergirl there, next to me, eagerly pressing forward. 

We walked out onto the overlook platform and it hit us all at once. The waterfall was staggering, I thought of both Kia and Echa right then, wondering if they would know, would they feel the intensities.… 

The waterfall. Rainbows splintered across her from the candlelight. We could see everything now, we could see in the dark. She was awesome. So ravishing! I stumbled forward and draped my arms over the railing and the wave of pure ecstasylovejoy hit and my consciousness blinded me as it shot up into the universe in a burning scream of pureness. I had never felt like this before. Exhilaration greater than anything, ever. Love shot through me and I felt my self reaching for the spirit of the waterfall, I felt her reaching for me, and we shared…. a mixing, merging, whoosh, faster, faster, love for all being, everyone, my friends around me, spinning, whirlwind, a galaxy of moons, arms of stars and the sheer roar of the water, pounding, stories and songs and a blinding white kiss…. 

When I could speak after this infinity I turned to Tim and Brian, and said, "Wow." The thought crossed my mind about how good it would be to rip my clothes from my body and go lay in the waterfall. Even more so, I felt it would be a great thing for Brian to do. But I said nothing. 

Tim and Brian were smoking their stogies. Brian flicked the burning ash of his butt down among the rocks. We could see its glow for a long time. 

"I feel caged in," Brian said. For a moment he looked like a professor or a scientist. Different than Brian. He pulled at the slatted boards of the observation platform. "I want to get through this, get out to the rocks, but I don’t think I can fit through the boards." I laughed, he was the Brian I knew again. 

"Well, we could just go back off the platform and walk underneath it." I had seen the way through earlier, when Tim and I had checked out the waterfall and decided it would be safe to wonder close to it even when tripping. 

"Yeah, we could." 

So we did. All three of us went and sat on a boulder along the stream coming just out from where the water fell. We stayed there for about two hours and didn’t move. 

becoming one with the rock… 

a whooshing rumble, a huge roaring sound started from beyond the trees above the waterfall, and I stared, bewildered, and the whoosh soared and suddenly it was with us, by the pool, the rocks and in the sky and it zoomed around my head and I looked up and there was stars and I felt Tim’s back leaning into me and then the sound spun and sunk and suddenly slurp, I had swallowed it. 

my mind exploded. washes and seas of melting color and... silvergirl she was fully there, "I’m here, always," she smiled and I touched her glowing white fingers. crackle. shapes, form, limbs intertwined, life thrusting from the soil and throwing off the earth’s covering in a mad gasp... a spinning mandala tunnel opened and I leapt down inside it, i trusted it, everything I know about shamanism urging me to go there, and silvergirl following, her arm around my shoulders. Suddenly frog eyes, billions of them, a symphony of ribbets and green and then one swirling green-white frog formed out from them and I just said, "you too?" and the frog hopped into my hand. 

an entrance, a place, skies of incandescent purple and we were in front of a building of sorts, organic-techno tribal house pounding out from inside... jungle winds, monkey screeches, birds... the overpowering electronic beat-boom and I had the odd thought, "I thought I was in a mountain forest near a waterfall, where does this come from?" 

reality shivered. the lines of shifting became crisp, but still mad with color and morphing, melting, swirls in between the arcs and lines. 

I went inside. 

The place was blowing up mad crazy! booming bass, rapid fire staccato, strobe-flash, off-planet breeze, glitter sparkles spinning. There were strange creatures, alien and fantastic, milling about, moving, talking, drinking odd liquors and smoking pipes of red smoke. colors, a man with a tray loomed near, "what color would you like today, sir?" flasks of pigment, I was going to pick one up and look at it but someone shoved me roughly. 

Two, uh, goons is the best word to describe them.... large and roped with muscle, they stood above me. Glaring. One pushed me back toward the door. "This place isn’t for you." Confusion. 

Silvergirl stepped in front of me. "He’s with me." The gargantuans’ eyes widened, and they let us pass. My friend’s rainbow irises smiled. sleek tiny dress. pure silver-white hair around her pale face. she’s so beautiful and lithe at times... I held her hand and we moved into the interior. For a while this place seemed familiar, like the time I first met Trix-e and we wandered together in Sol, but here things rapidly got much weirder. 

Alien shakti-goddess voice entwined with the swirling beat-beat, the dance floor was packed with undulating limbs and I noticed that the singer was there, in the middle of the crowd with twelve lovely arms and a blinking third eye in her forehead and she was half naked with shiny blue shorts and four breasts and the circle spiraled around her 

splashes... we ate a bean shaped pill given to us by a wrinkled old man. It glowed from within and it was soft and difficult to hold, almost solid but almost liquid too. flash. strobe thing. swirling lights and dancing with the silvergirl. I couldn’t stop gazing at her smile it was so pure. She chuckled and pushed my forehead with her palm. I fell back and spun and suddenly we were dancing like mad, spinning, arms snaking and curling and our limbs were fluid with motion, following the insane beats from the dj, i saw him now, and the diva was still voicing liquid tones, deep beats, expanding and collapsing, a conundrum of merging thuds and cadences... 

fire was tumbling from every hand of the shakti goddess.... blue skinned humanoids whistling, and silvergirl grabbed my head, "look!" 

and where the fire fell from the goddess fingertips rainbow whirlwinds formed and we ran near one and silvergirl breathed in my ear, "don’t forget to tell Trix-e she’s beautiful" and I understood, it would be good for my Atlanta friend to hear. 

silvergirl hugged me close and the light burned into me... whatever was in the old man’s pill had burst in our brains.... silverlove.... silvergirl, silverbutterfly.... wa la ka aya de mar ama yiiiiiii 

The rocks are dark and slick with water. Fingers and moonlight and her thighs, barel y in the water below the falls, a girl with silver eyes. There is fire everywhere striving to burn, to destroy the woods, the earth… and her mother lies crucified on the rocks and her breasts are innocent and heaving with frightened breath. "Save me!" she screams. I want to love, she needs love, I know I must tell her she is beautiful but I do not know how…. 

Shards of glass start falling, huge icicles of pain from the sky, sizzling where they hit the water, impaling anything they touch, the rocks, a lone speckled brook trout. "No! Watch out!" screaming, screaming…. the rock is melting and still the girl stands with eyes so silver and true. She is right in the middle of the pool, she is afraid yet so sure… someone will know she doesn’t have to die. 

"I love you," I cry, tears whipping across my face, and maybe they are the shards tearing the water. "You are so beautiful, so beautiful." 

Moonlight above and a star is falling and I see a constellation I have never seen before and it is naked like the girl and I make a wish…. 

Demons with broken teeth are laughing and tumbling forth to slice out the truth. "Be careful," advises the wounded mother, "be calm." 

the heat, so hot… 

There is a roar, either demons or maybe a dragon… none of them are evil, really, though they like to think they are. 

absence of light for a moment, total black. 

Blink, moonshine, starblinks. the void is screaming, screaming, and I am in the girl’s arms and she’s screaming, and she’s holding me madly, so tight… "Don’t go." 

I can’t, I can’t…. I must love…. I must tell her…. 
something is ripping my bone 
I must say 

My eyes melt and suddenly I am blind but can still see 
rainbow halo and death, the slow erosion of nothing lasting 

cycle 

"oh, god…" burning blue fire between my fingers 
she’s kissing my mouth 
her eyes are bottomless dark, piercing… 
she has metal in her nipples and her belly is smooth and soft like a butterfly 
her tongue is honeysuckle 

"I am dreaming…" I am laughing 
I am screaming 
"my brother," she cries, her own eyes wet and everlasting 
she listens to my forgotten whispers, 
her dark hair the raven cloak of night, the breath of the water, burning, my skin smolders, 
rocks collapse and she pulls me under and in the water I breathe, choke, 
"trust me," is it her voice? "trust me." it is. I drown. 
I am not alive and I see everything and I hear everything and I taste the blood, her creamy milk streaming from her thighs, mother’s milk though she too is a daughter, 
"Sister," I mutter. She knows me. 
She kisses my forehead. 
"My friend," she says, "it is you who are beautiful." 
I smile weakly. "But it is you I must tell it to." 

Pure love kills the demon and we are breathing greenstone in the dream of god, I am so frightened! Here in the heart of the world… dark eyes, deep fathomless blue 

"I can’t hear!" 

wild sexual want destroys worlds 

"trust!" she screams 

and births beauty, goddess secrets. Her eyes contain meteor shards and they tingle and flirt with me and say they will only tell me one secret, writhing, deep golden fire… the spiral – we need not die here, fuck survival, I love! 

"You are so beautiful. Lovelovelove." I tell her this, I tell the universe. We are floating in water. Fire rages above. The waterfall pounds air bubbles violently and deep around us. Crunchy aliveness, just barely, but this is the right thing. Rock edges of nothingness. 

barely breathing. 

kisses. kisses. kisses along eyes. 
we see! 
blinding… the light is, the light is 
no words! 
so bright, so white 
rainbow winged 
everything is churning in this moment of surprise. 
everything. 
the universe trembles from love. 
it has not felt it like this before. 
it is frightened. 
it is eager. 
everything shakes. 
vision blurry. 
everything shivers. 
my spine is ripped into an arch around her soul 
the chrysalis has burst. 

  
zing. breathing fast. heart thudding. still in the wild electro-club world. the blue skinned aliens were kissing my forehead, thin beautiful people, male and female and something else.... silvergirl was squeezing me and her head was on my chest.... 

we were in a corner drinking water. it was so good, cold, refreshing. "am I in the waterfall?" I asked my lovely friend. "oh yes! but not really." For an instant I was afraid and ethereal and I held her. "is Kia okay?" "yes, she is just deep dreaming." 

a little later I noticed someone sitting close to us. My mouth opened in surprise, I knew him! color-shifting cloak, the jester... 

I nudged him. his eyes focused. he recognized me. he dug in his pack, found a cube. "would you like to see it today?" I nodded, for this time I knew it was right. 

He opened the cube, crystalline webs of light twinkled and fell out and the jester laughed and opened his voice wide in a scream.... 

butterflies tumbled from his mouth, turquoise and dandelion yellow and violet and tangerine and deep red and pure white... he juggled them into beings.... they had legs and arms and eyes and they were giggling truths, their wings fluttering, the jester’s hands twirling them in a smooth oval across his chest and above his head and they burst.... pop, pop, more were born and they were sweet laughter, an ambrosia of song.... swirl, swirl,... the jester faded, and silvergirl’s white hand was on my shoulder... "listen," I do, "it comes..." she breathed and there was hunger in her voice and the tiny butterfly creatures all touched and joined and suddenly, so abruptly it was like they were never anything else, colors intertwined, and a butterflygirl unfurled her wings, human-size, surprised to be alive, an arc whispering through her lips, her hair was straight blue and clear white and her wings were wide and ravishing, shapes and sigils and rune-life inside.... the colors moved upon them, shifting, changing, breathing.... she flapped them once, quickly, and I saw her eyes.... flash! I can never remember the color, maybe they are no color, and silvergirl with her arms around my neck smiled so purely and I could hear the melody of her joy. butterflygirl noticed her, butterfly eyes large and deep and she was momentarily totally consumed by curiousity. her mouth was wet, newly born. "kiss me," she invited... I trembled. "Not yet," my silver friend said, does she mean not ever? "NO, just trust...." 

the butterflygirl dried her wings in the moonlight and we were back near the waterfall, I could tell and I could feel Brian’s and Tim’s back touching mine. butterflygirl was magnificently naked and her breasts and stomach dripped with rainbows and great swaths of morphing reds and purples and greens curled around her legs and in between her female centeredness and she kicked gently. Maybe the colors tickled her... her long fingers brushed my face, across my eyes. Wings flapped and created wind and the water rushed louder and she lifted from the ground and she flew! She circled the pool and silvergirl and I and Brian and Tim and wet one wing in the waterfall, giving butterfly dust to the stream and then she rose higher and higher and the moon claimed her for a shadow.... star clusters, bright night. 

"I think I can hear the individual sounds in the water," Brian said. 

Tim agreed. "Yeah, over there, just that one burst of water over the rock..." 

"Did you guys hear the roar?" I asked, "it came and circled me and suddenly it was in my head and everything changed..." 

Tim looked at me with a silly smile. I think he did. Brian said, "I keep feeling like the boulder is rumbling. Like the earth is shaking." 

I listened. "Yeah, I hear it too." Tim doesn’t hear this. He keeps smiling. 

"Have you been keeping your eyes open?" I asked Brian. 

"Yes, all the time." 

I thought I would try that. Try to look at the waterfall in this reality. The intensities swept over us again, and voices faded like the tumble of desert sand. I could see the waterfall, but she was so strong I couldn’t view her directly.... I could see shadows, they were forms, a woman kneeling, praying maybe, a male figure standing to the right of her, leaning over her, saying something to her, instructing, blessing her??? then everything faded in geometric morphings and then my eyes closed, I couldn’t keep them open, I tried and then I didn’t know if they were open or closed and then I think I reached for Kia, but it felt like she was sleeping to deep to reach in a place I couldn’t quite get to and I tried seeking Echa and I think I found her, and suddenly I wasn’t sure if the birthing of the butterflygirl before was when I found her, or this time, when I could see a rocky beach and green trees and voices, talking about dreaming and stars, and then I don’t know what I saw because I felt and it came in extremes.... the burst of love and joy again and the waterfall pounding its crescendo and I was screaming in my head, "Echa, please see this, feel this!" lightning burst, the universe’s laughter through my body... ecstasy... remember, try to remember... i must tell Kia about this, I wanted to say something to Tim and Brian but I couldn’t move.... 

going to the bathroom. the trees wanted to lead me away. so many voices. I knew though I couldn’t listen to every one. back to the group. Brian and Tim said I suddenly just appeared. 

"What did you see out there?" 
"Trees and rocks." 
They laughed. 
I asked Tim if he wanted to sit facing the water. "Does it really matter?" he said. 
"Probably not." 

feeling cold. 
"maybe we should move away from the water." 

Sitting on different boulders. I handed Tim the wooden egg. "Thank you," he said, his eyes glowing. I am not sure what he did with it at first. Brian and I talked about some things I don’t remember. I think we were just speaking to hear our voices. Suddenly there was this strange crazy rattling. We looked at Tim and I knew what it was but Brian was bewildered. Tim shook the egg wildly, the scatter of rattle sound and his hand moving in a blur. He handed the egg to Brian. "What is this?" I described something about it. "What is it made of?" It felt strange, bizarre. Brian shook it briefly. Tim said something like, "wouldn’t it be great if you had brought the harmonica." 

I dug in my pocket, gave him one. "Wow." He blew some noise. then he had sort of a warbling rhythm going. He stopped. The waterfall was much louder. 

I took out the other harmonica, blew a few breaths. Brian shook the egg. Tim tooted on his harmonica. making music, but not completely in synch. Tim gave Brian his harmonica and took the egg. i listened to the waterfall. Brian and I played the harmonicas, slow inhales and exhales matching the flow of water. 

standing on the rock. not truly music, just breathing. 

Brian leaning back and defying gravity. We marveled at this, while knowing it was only amusing perceptual illusion. 

Brian went to the bathroom. 
When he returned it was like suddenly he too suddenly just arrived. 
"What did you see?" I asked. 
"Trees and rocks." 
Tim said, "That’s what Ander saw." 
"Hey, I guess you are right." 

Tim decided to climb the lookout platform, which he did easily. Once he was up there something changed again. Brian and I stared in wonder as he took huge strides back and forth across the platform, huge energy in him, and then he went and did something to the candle. It looked like he put his fingers in the fire and suddenly fire-rockets shot off, sparks and spears of flame. 

Tim looked down on us. "What are you guys doing?" 

We weren’t sure what to say. "Watching you." 

We clambered beneath the platform and went on top with Tim. We gazed at the waterfall. Tim went to the bathroom. Brian and I stared at the candle until he got back. "Hey, it is just a candle," Tim said. He pressed his fingers in the wax on the side. 

We decided to return to our campsite and the fire. Tim picked up the candle. "Brian should lead," I said. Tim gave him the candle and we traversed this crazy and endless terrain, teased by candleglow. Finally we were back to the camp. 

The fire was almost gone. We stirred up the coals, put in a few pieces of wood. 

Tim and Brian wandered up by the tent, through one opening of trees, and came back around the huge trunk of another. 

It felt like it was raining. Brian and I looked at each other with wonder. The sky was clear. Tim didn’t understand us, and he went and laid in the hammock. 

Brian and I continued to ponder the rain. It had felt so cool, so refreshing. Like real rain. And just by talking about it, we happened again. We stopped questioning and just smiled. 

I was hungry. "I think I want food," I said to Brian. He nodded. I stood there for a while. "Do you?" 

"No, I think that would be too much for me right now." 

I stood thinking again. Then I went to look for the food. I couldn’t remember where it was. I had the urge for licorice. 

I opened the tent and dug in my backpack, finding all sorts of things, but no licorice. Suddenly my hand closed on something weird and squishy. I pulled it out. It was the crazy toy alien. 

I laughed. Maybe this was what I was supposed to find. I went back to the fire, put it on Brian’s knee. "Weird," he said. "Where do you get this stuff?" I shrugged, took the alien and dropped it on Tim on the hammock. "No way!" he said. I left it with him and went back to Brian. 

"I’m still hungry." 
He nodded. 
"Want to help me get the food? Maybe it is a two person job." 
"Yeah," he smiled, "maybe you need a flashlight." 

While looking for the food, we thought of the making tea. Why not, we couldn’t find the food. The tea leaves were easy. Everything that we thought of that we needed was suddenly right at our fingertips. A pot? Here it was. A burner? As soon as we opened Tim’s pack. "If only we could find the food," I said. Suddenly Brian started giggling, laughing hysterically. He pointed above me head. The food bag was hanging an inch from it. I had forgotten that Tim and I had tied it their much earlier in the night. 

"we’ll come back for it." 

We started making the tea. laughing uncontrollably. so funny, such joy. It was an experience. 

I still wanted food. This time I took Tim. I dug in the pack, still sort of searching for licorice. couldn’t find it, had the odd urge to even hike back to the car… it wasn’t that far… but I didn’t, fortunately. found bread & jam. Something moist. I pulled it out and cantaloupe birthed from the food bag. so bizarre. back to the fire. eating jelly and bread. so slowly. 

"This is where there is no time," I said. Brian nodded. I know Tim heard too. Eternity had no edges. 

I could see oceans and dolphins in the tea... 

indian shamaness, goddess in three forms, driven by the silk in her arms, floating in waves of pure color, undulating like the snake that eats its own tale.... her voice is singing from her throat, from deep, full of breath, desire, life, terrible beauty. she could have sharp teeth, or not, if she so chooses. her eyes are black, or pools of blue, or silver with purple quasars at the center. the pulse of quantum theory. she occupies the same space at the same time. driven, she pulls me inside her many arms and I know her.... she is silvergirl inside and she is playing with me. so much energy, she chuckles, so much, ander, you should come here more often and play. it is easy. come find me. know me remember. 

feel me. know me. fly away. 
frogbabies. 
the white-maned children of the wind 

Tim wanted to sleep. Probably a good thing. I did not, and got my notebook, the Shelley gift, and my frog. 

relax your mind and give it all to me 
moon and the waterfall 

I saw the moon coming! I knew it would be over the waterfall clearing. No longer blocked by the trees. I had to go back, had to go beneath that light near the water. I had to. 

Brian all night kept saying everything was exhausting and an ordeal. and many things were, doing stuff became so involved, so full, so intense. they would occupy us totally. 

He saw me going, said he’d either meet me back at the camp, or he’d find me by the waterfall. 

Climbing the stream up to the waterfall. I clambered over stream-washed trees and rocks and other obstacles. What an adventure. But I made it. The waterfall ecstasy washed over me again, the place was entirely aglow with moonlight and it was like stepping out of my dreams, the silvergirl pool truly in real life, the water so terribly clear, so wanting, milky moonlight and female love. 

I wanted to drink from the stream. I wished Brian was here so I could ask if it was safe, or would there be mountain bacteria in the water? 

I knew Echa would understand this completely, all of it, silverbutterfly... I called for her, imagined her in the Coromandel in the huge night... was she seeing bright starskies there.... a spread of quiet, a beautiful knowing?? 

Writing in the notebook, sitting with legs crossed on the stone next to the waterfall. 

I want to write without thinking.  
She is so beautiful. 
I don’t know sometimes 
if I should just experience her 
or be her 
or write about her. 

sometimes silvergirl and butterflygirl are the same. sometimes they are. they can be different too. 
 

I carefully stepped close to the huge swell of the waterfall. The rock was slippery, as slick as wet ice. I looked down, judging what might happen if I fell. The smooth rock swept down, and I figured that if I did slip I would just sit down and slide the rock. No drops, just a smooth slide. Though I would get wet. 

I made one leap for the edge of rock near where her torso was. I made it. I put my arm in the roaring water, felt it drench my skin, my hand. Wow. I kept it there for a few minutes, dreaming. The splash made my jeans only a little wet. 

then I went back to dry rock, and sat and wrote again in the notebook. 

I went back up to the ledge of the notebook, wrote: 

We stepped back at one point when the moon was directly overhead and Brian saw my plastic frog sitting next to the Shelley book and the notebook. He freaked. "Is that real?" It looked so alive in the moonlight, just then. I would have laughed if it moved. I picked it up and gave it to him. "It is just a toy, but I like it." He chuckled. I opened Shelley and read him the passage about true love. 

Brian and I talked about how we saw Tim get lost. I hadn’t been sure if Tim was just very tired or was thinking too much. But he needed to be that way and it was good that we didn’t interfere. When you are lost you have to find your own way out. There is little point in rescuing someone (or even yourself) because then one will come out of it knowing as little as they went into it knowing. Brian and I both knew this. And a few days later Echa reminded me. 

It had seemed like a storm was raging within Tim, after we got back from the waterfall. He told us later that he had spent time taking the universe apart and then putting it back together, fixing something, then changing his mind and redoing it the way it was. He said it was really the only time he couldn't create things and work with the environment around him. Everything had always felt alive before and willing to play with so he started turning inwards. Dangerous, and he termed the experience blasted filthy screaming. 

"I wish he would have faced the waterfall," Brian said. 

I was surprised. "That is exactly what I was thinking. But he told me he didn’t need to." 

Brian told me about how he’d chased a skunk from the campsite, saved the bread!. We laughed about the tea again. Remembered the joy of the brook trout. 

We thought about climbing the waterfall. The sky was beautiful. Brian saw a shooting star, and we stared for a long time at a small constellation that was either a cross or a diamond on a staff. The moon. the sky cut it in half. "I still think it will get lighter." "well, dawn is coming." Brian laughed. "yeah." 

We climbed the waterfall as the sun rose. The rising sun turned the sky pale blue-gray. The stars faded. The moon stayed for a long time, then it too was gone. And the day came. 
  

Saturday night, Brian wrote this in my notebook, but told me not to read it until later. I didn’t until almost a week later. It makes a lot of sense to me. 
  

everything I write these last two days is psychedelicised... all vast universe concepts and peace and love and strange interrelations with crazy concepts of beauty and nakedness and pure stuff and wild morphing shades of blue and red and green and trees and rocks living screams and waterfall sleek legs falling crucified in a beautiful crescendo of rumbling stomachs and harmonica while the strange egg shakes and Tim grins like a jester with no tophat and life spins butterflypeople into being and Brian is in love and almost married to the joy everywhere, screaming, dying, living, breathing, out of the night, into the day, beneath the moon and sky. 

tea leaves spreading red and burning like dolphin eyes... 
remember the shooting star? 
M-O-R-E-A-U 

the only thing I didn't do was swim in the waterfall. 

  
September 2, 1997. afterthoughts. 

I just remembered Trix-e and Kia’s lips stained with strawberries, during the rain on Cumberland Island. This after eating strawberries and seeing this big green grasshopper creature on top of my office door. What a strange little guy; I watched his eyes and mandibles move for a few instants, and then tossed him free outside. 

Minutes before this I had the incredible urge to walk outdoors. I wasn’t sure why. So I did, and it was really good to be outside the house, breathing in the night. Insect and frog noises. The air. I looked up into this small hole between tree limbs and saw the sky. I almost fell over. 

The star cluster was there. Nagna. Centered perfectly in that opening. I was so astonished that I rushed inside and woke Kia, and she sleepily protested in her dreamy beautiful way as I led her outside with me, pointed the stars out to her. 
  
Nagna kind of looks like this:   
Kia and I saw maybe a sixth star on the left side of the diamond, but I think it isn’t really a part of her. Nagna was following the moon the night of the waterfall, and its light only showed these five stars. The extra are stars from further away in the universe. 

I was glad I got to show this to Kia. So strange! I hadn’t seen the constellation since the waterfall night and the Saturday night after. I hadn’t really looked for it. Suddenly it was here, outside, and only in that window of the sky for a few minutes. It is gone now, hidden behind trees, I went out again and checked. One last coincidence to go with all the others. Note: I just discovered that this constellation is Pleiades, the Seven Sisters… this myth element is everywhere these days… one of the stars has the name Echa!?! 

Kia told me that on Friday night she slept deeply and completely all night, she was so tired after little sleep Thursday (she was restless all that night). So maybe this was why it was difficult to search her out during my Friday night! 

I am still surprised that during the height of the mushroom whorl I was not torn apart, ripped to shreds and dissolved and eaten and gutted, a shamanic death that usually happens first on some of my very strong mushroom journeys. Especially before experiencing such pure ecstasy, like the bursts and bursts and the strongest ever feelings in the mushroom or any space. Maybe I am past such initiation? 

It will likely come again. I am not frightened of it, I think the gory visceral feel and vision of this is just an after-effect of ego-loss, something I am very comfortable with right now. Dipping into the rainbow of mind… vastness. It is truly something. 

It is great noticing the hugeness and beauty fade into my everyday. Mystery forever. Real and love. 

Wow, i'm still reeling.