Deep Stories: Tales from the Pit

Astral Worlds

Here’s a short work of fiction – fiction I tell you – about a guy who worked in a mine fifty years ago, possibly Copper Cliff North Mine. This fictional story is part of Deep Stories: Tales from the Pit, which is full of real-life stories, not this fictional kind. If I haven’t mentioned it, the characters herein are all fictional, and bear little resemblance to any real, non-fictional persons. It’s written in the first person, but only because that adds verisimilitude to the obviously fictional story.

I first dropped acid on New Year's Eve, 1970.

I had a great guide: Art was a couple of years older than I was, and he had already taken a few trips through the astral realm. We had met deep underground in the nickel mine where we worked, and we quickly discovered that we were both fans of a deeply-obscure album by a deeply-obscure group (Dinosaur Swamps; The Flock). There had to be some kind of cosmic meaning involved – not that we could articulate it – so we came up with a plan: maybe psychedelics on New Years Eve would reveal at least part of that cosmic plan. You can find meaning in anything, if you put your mind to it.

I found out that first time why they were called trips: they are voyages of discovery as you sail from one metaphysical shore to another, sight-seeing included.

I also found out the real meaning of the word 'hallucination', when two hours into our voyage, Art asked, "So, how is it?"

I said, "I thought there would be hallucinations".

Art blinked at me (I think he blinked; on acid, you couldn't be sure). "You're not to seeing... weird stuff?" Simple words, but they held the meaning of the cosmos, which – as you can tell – would be significant to us.

I looked over to where he slumped on his tiny bed in his tiny room. Art lived in a dingy, long-term hotel room in downtown Sudbury. Cheap rent, and no one seemed to care about who you were or what you did. Past him, the wall shimmered into transparency; I could see the street outside, lights twinkling as the setting sun gave everything a golden glow (despite the fact that it had been dark for hours). The scene really was quite pretty, and calming, almost like a painting.

Maybe it was a painting.

"Well, I don't know if it's ‘weird’,” I said, finally coming around to answering his question. (In retrospect, he might have asked the question five minutes earlier, but it still stood, so I answered.) "I mean, I can see the street outside, and I know it's not really there because there's a wall behind you and it's like… eight o'clock at night, but I can see it."

True enough, but still. I knew that sitting in dingy long-term hotel room in downtown Sudbury meant there were walls all around us. But it wasn't as if the glow from the street was a hallucination or anything; I knew it wasn't real, because it couldn't be, because we were sitting in dingy hotel room in Sudbury at eight o'clock on a New Year’s Eve, weren't we? (That was another thing, the circular nature of your thoughts as you sat in a dingy hotel room in Sudbury).

Art smiled and nodded sagely. He was a sage. "Well, that's a hallucination. An hallucination."

"Really?"

He nodded, and I said - exact words – "I thought there would be... pink elephants and stuff."

He shook his head. "That's just people who, you know...."

And I did know, because we were sort of talking that way, thoughts flowing from words, which they did a lot. That was one of the joys of acid, being able to communicate at the molecular level if you wanted. That and the glow of the sunset in a dingy room in downtown Sudbury.

That first trip had a great capper, 'great' in the sense of memorable.

Around 11 PM – after visiting faraway forgotten lands and watching empires turn into sand – it was time for me to head out. I didn’t mind that there would be no celebration at midnight, because each of us was captain of his own ship, and we didn’t have to follow the rules.

Rules? We don’t need no stinkin’ rules.

Even though I was still on my first voyage into the brave new world of pharmaceuticals, I knew I was in control enough to manage the trek. (That’s because Art had chosen nice, clean ‘clinical’ acid for the launch, not weird-world Windowpane or wavy-gravy Purple Microdot. You learned these things. If you did the research.)

It was a thirty-minute walk back to my boarding house. It wasn't particularly cold, and everything was dusted with a new coating of snow. Besides, watching the flakes fall through the street lights was fascinating.

Sure, 'watching the flakes fall through the street lights was fascinating', because I was on acid. But that’s what it does – it allows you to look at things differently. I knew I was watching through the lens of chemically-altered reality, but there was a real beauty to the scene, and I had never appreciated it before. The thing is, that shift in perspective stays with you. There was both intricacy and simplicity in the way the snow fell, then settled onto the street with an almost audible hiss. I hadn't been aware of it before, but now I was. That’s the meaning behind 'mind-altering'; you realize there are different ways of looking at everything, from the mundane to the sublime. Did it begin to change the way I saw the world? Was I being profound, or just stoned? Probably both.

One of the best comments about acid came from Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, who – at least according to musician David Crosby – had this to say after his first trip: “I knew they weren’t telling us everything!”

After a gentle journey through the night, fat snow flakes drifting through streetlights and naked trees, I got to the boarding house, a dilapidated two-storey tucked into a side street off Lorne Ave. It was a dismal place, with a dismal landlord, a dull, small-minded man who always seemed to get the short end of the stick, and let you know it.

So after a truly serene evening playing with the unlimited possibilities of thought and the infinite (not to put too fine a point on it), all I was thinking about was how I was going to embrace my shiny new world in a shiny new year. I headed to the kitchen door at the back – boarders had to use the back entrance – and stepped inside.

"And stay the fuck out!!"

"Get out of my house!"

"You bitch! YOU BITCH!!!"

I walked right into the middle of an alcohol-fuelled screaming match. The landlord and his wife were on one side of the kitchen, and their guests – a couple they had apparently known all their lives – were on the other. If they had had knives, I'm sure they would have used them. Right now they were just using their voices. At ear-splitting volume.

"You bitch!"

"Get the fuck out, I said!!"

"Oh, don't worry..."

The visiting couple was scrambling for their coats, screaming at the landlord, the landlord screaming back. And between them, blinking in LSD-infused shock and wonder, a newly-minted astral voyager (me) tried to comprehend what was happening as both couples hammered each other with invective. It was as if I wasn’t even there, and I actually wondered if a) I really wasn’t there, or b) this might be a real hallucination, whatever that was.

But it was so immediate and visceral and LOUD that I knew it was real.

"And stay the fuck out!"

By now, the visiting couple had brushed past me in their scramble to get out, but they turned for one last broadside. "You fat fucks! You fuckin' fucks!!" If there was one word that people need to get through life on a daily basis, it’s 'fuck'.

Suddenly they were gone, leaving their words – and the sound of the door slamming – echoing into silence. A fascinating echo at that, rolling back and forth in the dismal little kitchen in the dismal little boarding house.

Then the dull-as-dishwater landlord snapped out of it. He was calm, almost rational by his standards, as if the adrenalin-pumping screaming match of seconds earlier had never happened.

"Well," he shrugged, "I guess it’s time for everyone to get to bed." This at 11:30 on New Years Eve, and obviously directed at me. I nodded, maybe even sagely, and headed for my room, voices echoing.

It was going to be an interesting year.