Thursday 28 May 2015
A piece on craftsmanship
A piece on craftsmanship
First of all we ought question if an endeavour is worthwhile. There is a strong argument that doing a job well for its own sake is a moral certainty. Oppenheimer certainly worked hard to make the best bomb he could. Later in his journals, however, was known to quote the Indian God krishnas words, ' I am become death: the destroyer of worlds'. In his Reith lectures of 1953 he could give no satisfactory answer to how his work should be used, only that it was good to deliver a technology to mankind for them to find its use.
We have an obsession with work. Politicians endlessly push the lower ranks to find more work regardless of purpose. Work is seen to be a purpose in itself. Those who are successful consume proportionally more. As our resources become depleted it ought not be the greatest consumers who are considered morally upstanding. This is mere greed. The craft of unemployment ought to be subjected to scrutiny. A man ought to be praised for taking the Christian option of poverty. Living on benefits is far from easy. It requires discipline of mind to find purpose without work. Great poets, artists, engineers lay among their number choosing to consume little for the common good. Such self sacrifice is a moral certainty. Indeed, as is frequently pointed out by il luminaries espousing over working, david Cameron, jeremy Kyle, there is room for perversion within unemployment. But that is but one story. These are not overly intelligent men, or else men with alterior motives.
To work on worthwhile endeavours well is a moral certainty. This is the aim of the most high minded. To raise children well, to develope technologies to reduce climate change, to reduce the mass extinction being caused by overpopulation, to grow food in sustainable practices. To make objects to satisfy inner drives is morally questionable but to make objects for community needs is moral certainty. Interestingly, the work that calls itself the Crafts has lost most of its notion of providing satisfactory objects for community needs. Instead innovations of teapots that don't pour are sustained by poor art theory. A furniture has evolved of little useful value but finely crafted as the maker, perverted yet supported by fellow idealists on online forums, loses touch with the purpose of his endeavour. To provide seating is noble. To display skill through the vehicle of a chair a quite different thing. At its best, a good design built well is morally harmonious.
Over crafting is a form of bad or poor craftsmanship. Making turned to the perversion of obsession. It is a healthy practice to aspire to do any craft well from computer programming, child rearing to woodwork. To over craft is more of a danger than to under craft.
The junior prom queens, dressed and handmade bespoke costume that speaks of adulthood, made up like fairy princesses is over crafting in child rearing. With the advent of the Internet, the perverse in all fields can find forums where discussion, free from the cautionary wisdom of the wider community, can form moral cultures. The prom queen parents, paedophiles and furniture makers alike. Free from the balance of communities of physical and random interaction, these moral cultures are free to grow perverse.
Craftsmanship requires reappraisal. The craftsmanship of the surgeon, the dentist, the school teacher, are as much a part as the glass blower. Indeed the work practices that become Crafts are often trades grown economically redundant through superior technologies. They become of interest only to people for whom economics is of no consequence.
Sent from my iPad
First of all we ought question if an endeavour is worthwhile. There is a strong argument that doing a job well for its own sake is a moral certainty. Oppenheimer certainly worked hard to make the best bomb he could. Later in his journals, however, was known to quote the Indian God krishnas words, ' I am become death: the destroyer of worlds'. In his Reith lectures of 1953 he could give no satisfactory answer to how his work should be used, only that it was good to deliver a technology to mankind for them to find its use.
We have an obsession with work. Politicians endlessly push the lower ranks to find more work regardless of purpose. Work is seen to be a purpose in itself. Those who are successful consume proportionally more. As our resources become depleted it ought not be the greatest consumers who are considered morally upstanding. This is mere greed. The craft of unemployment ought to be subjected to scrutiny. A man ought to be praised for taking the Christian option of poverty. Living on benefits is far from easy. It requires discipline of mind to find purpose without work. Great poets, artists, engineers lay among their number choosing to consume little for the common good. Such self sacrifice is a moral certainty. Indeed, as is frequently pointed out by il luminaries espousing over working, david Cameron, jeremy Kyle, there is room for perversion within unemployment. But that is but one story. These are not overly intelligent men, or else men with alterior motives.
To work on worthwhile endeavours well is a moral certainty. This is the aim of the most high minded. To raise children well, to develope technologies to reduce climate change, to reduce the mass extinction being caused by overpopulation, to grow food in sustainable practices. To make objects to satisfy inner drives is morally questionable but to make objects for community needs is moral certainty. Interestingly, the work that calls itself the Crafts has lost most of its notion of providing satisfactory objects for community needs. Instead innovations of teapots that don't pour are sustained by poor art theory. A furniture has evolved of little useful value but finely crafted as the maker, perverted yet supported by fellow idealists on online forums, loses touch with the purpose of his endeavour. To provide seating is noble. To display skill through the vehicle of a chair a quite different thing. At its best, a good design built well is morally harmonious.
Over crafting is a form of bad or poor craftsmanship. Making turned to the perversion of obsession. It is a healthy practice to aspire to do any craft well from computer programming, child rearing to woodwork. To over craft is more of a danger than to under craft.
The junior prom queens, dressed and handmade bespoke costume that speaks of adulthood, made up like fairy princesses is over crafting in child rearing. With the advent of the Internet, the perverse in all fields can find forums where discussion, free from the cautionary wisdom of the wider community, can form moral cultures. The prom queen parents, paedophiles and furniture makers alike. Free from the balance of communities of physical and random interaction, these moral cultures are free to grow perverse.
Craftsmanship requires reappraisal. The craftsmanship of the surgeon, the dentist, the school teacher, are as much a part as the glass blower. Indeed the work practices that become Crafts are often trades grown economically redundant through superior technologies. They become of interest only to people for whom economics is of no consequence.
Sent from my iPad
Monday 25 May 2015
Chapter 5: The Rescaling of Moortown Water Tower
Chapter 5: The Rescaling of Moortown Water Tower
The timing was calculated to coincide with the anniversary of Richards death. He had fallen in love with a prostitute and enchantress. She bled him of all his money. Finally of his life. But he gave it willingly. I had known richard since boyhood and his greater days were proud. However, after a long amphetamine habit he succumbed to heroin. The only way he found to pay for his habit was to sell gear and his false lover would come to him and beg, steal and borrow it from him. He didn't mind but built a fantasy that she played into of a love affair on the cusp of opening up. She may have had to do this to fulfill whatever delusion richard required. All of us told him he was being bled dry. His story alone deserves a book so I shall not linger but, after being broken in body, heart and spirit he became suicidal in the scale of his self medication. When they kicked down his door a coffee table heald some fifty empty special brew cans, neatly lined up, all full of his urine. His body was saturated with heroin and methadone. Whether he deliberately took his life or drifted so close to despair and drug use he cared not if he lived or died I will never know. But overall, amongst his freinds, it was well known that his death was brought on by his inability or lack of urge to escape the enchantment and certainty he took his own life. Looking back, his death inspired a madness in me. I had lost my closest freind and myself became wreckless in my drug intake. Though a green burial in lawns wood cemetery, his tree is the only one of the graves there that died. Its roots no doubt poisoned too. I carved a block of wood and hid it in the bushes above his grave which I revisit on occassion. To pay my respects. We would anoint the block of oak and Richards grave with special brew. Then climb the water tower.
At the time I drove the Sin Van. A transit marked across the windscreen and down each side with simply Sin in large letters so all road users could see we were sinners. I picked up Lipton in Bath. He was living as a street person, begging and selling drugs to fellow homeless. He would return to his site periodically but parked up out in the country near Pilton, there was little money to be made there.
'Got all the kit sorted, Skree?' , 'Bar the action men, yes'. We had a final ritual to perform. A final stop to the climbing of industrial engineering. An opening line in our search for jesse and his underworld. Picking up two freshly boxed action men, I chose the archer, Lipton weirdly went for the deep sea diver. 'What the fuck did you choose that one for? ' I asked thinking the heroin was stilling his sharp nose for the ephemeral. We never set out to be urban english shamans. It was something we chanced upon as a generation. At first, in our early teens, magic mushrooms were just a way of getting out of ones head. It didn't take long to realise we were on to something far greater. A historic lineage of english witchcraft entered our blood. Secrets of life and magic, universal truths, religious experiences came fast and furious. Acid compounded our abilities to shift between dimensions but it was the sheer volume of free psychedelics that granted us the healing powers. As witches our duty was not to the sickness of individuals but the sickness affecting our land. A growing greyness. A failure in common man to see the earthly wonders. Awakening each morning on this strange planet, teeming with life and they were moaning about pensions and insurance. The nation were turning inward, getting up to work in frowns, they no longer heard the music. Psychedelics had forced us to be shamans. It wasn't a choice really but we were duty bound to restore the colour and beauty back to english minds. To cure the nation of this grey sickness. This is still my duty.
'I never had it as a kid, I had the hang glider, commando, sailor but never the diver'
'It's a short dive he'll be taking' I reminded Lipton. Their fates were grim, sealed.
In the van we had various ropes and ladders. Getting up was bound to be different and could be any sort of changes since my youth.
The drive takes about four hours which passed quickly. This is usually the case when on shamanic ritual duties. Even in our industrial architecture climbing phase, the excitement was always enough to shorten even longer journeys. Lipton was drinking a fair bit but I had to keep it to the odd can. A pull for drubk driving would put a damper on things. The police are after us always. They actively promote the grey. They often kill our kind too. This has been going on for centuries, since the witchfynding days where a mushroom tripper could be drowned easily. Such is the fear of our powers. But we normally win. They are chosen from those of the lowest of iq. Servants of the sociopaths who spread the grey. Pawns, really, foot soldiers of the dull.
Our first port of call was to tom and trout faced Tina's . West park I still headed for habitually as I had done for the previous near decade as richards flay was where I usually stayed. My remaining immediate circle being the customers who he had served. Tom was old and Tina a good sight as could be expected, still in greif and self medicating to compensate.
Tina was a prostitute too though her clients tended to be doctors, lawyers, businessmen and her roll more of a councelor than anything. Quite unlike the enchantress who had brought about richards death. I ought to point out that we knew these girls as fellow drug addicts, any notion of us paying for sex from them would have been laughable, culturally out of context. They were freinds who shared a habit and their business their own business.
They helpfully sorted us out, me with some rock and Lipton with his gear. Leptons spirits were lifted as the size of deal and quality in Leeds was always superior to Bath or Bristol. Pipes weren't the best preparation for this type of job and though I was stocked up with valium along with their sedating effects comes intoxication. You need to have your wits about you on trips like this. Climbing water towers may seem modest from the ground but a fall was a death fall.
After buying chips, eaten in the van cab, we drove on up to moortown, parking in Nursery Close where we unloaded our equipment and donned hi visibility vests and hard hats.
Since my youth the fencing had been replaced by folded alloy tri spike sections. This was crowned by the terrible razor wire that Brough innevitable cuts, however careful or gloved one was. Perhaps through tradition we took the same piece of fence to cross. Hidden by woodland providing the privacy required. We had one eight foot ladder and capped the wire with heavy blankets. This meant hawling the ladder over this first fence. The pipe we used as boys to gain access to the base was gone and a secondary fence cut us off. Fortune favours the brave and a large cable real, empty was rolled over to ascend the fence and the ladder dragged up and dropped over to get inside the inner area. From here the ladder again was used to get on the towers base.
Once on the base no significant obstacles lay ahead though the old spiral staircase was now a ladder and backscratcher, much less safe and harder work. I went first, Lipton behind. As we gained height adrenaline and nostalgia blended. Wind becomes a problem occasionaly but today was relatively still.
'Where we hanging them?' Lipton asked. I'd fashioned two miniature nooses to hang our juju dolls. These did not represent Elvis and jesse but me and Lipton. I'd brought the makita hammer action drill, wall plugs. Lipton heald my ankles as I leant as far over as I could work. Soon the two holes were drilled and plugged. The nooses were readied and fixed with security head screws.
We sat the archer as my juju doll and the deep sea diver on the edge, slipped the nooses over their necks. We ritually took a pipe each using wind proof lighters. Then their final push and our dead miniature selves swung. Dead. Our climbing adventures completed, sealed and signed. I recently went up there but couldn't see if they'd been removed or still swung. Our enterprise now lay entirely underground.
Sent from my iPad
The timing was calculated to coincide with the anniversary of Richards death. He had fallen in love with a prostitute and enchantress. She bled him of all his money. Finally of his life. But he gave it willingly. I had known richard since boyhood and his greater days were proud. However, after a long amphetamine habit he succumbed to heroin. The only way he found to pay for his habit was to sell gear and his false lover would come to him and beg, steal and borrow it from him. He didn't mind but built a fantasy that she played into of a love affair on the cusp of opening up. She may have had to do this to fulfill whatever delusion richard required. All of us told him he was being bled dry. His story alone deserves a book so I shall not linger but, after being broken in body, heart and spirit he became suicidal in the scale of his self medication. When they kicked down his door a coffee table heald some fifty empty special brew cans, neatly lined up, all full of his urine. His body was saturated with heroin and methadone. Whether he deliberately took his life or drifted so close to despair and drug use he cared not if he lived or died I will never know. But overall, amongst his freinds, it was well known that his death was brought on by his inability or lack of urge to escape the enchantment and certainty he took his own life. Looking back, his death inspired a madness in me. I had lost my closest freind and myself became wreckless in my drug intake. Though a green burial in lawns wood cemetery, his tree is the only one of the graves there that died. Its roots no doubt poisoned too. I carved a block of wood and hid it in the bushes above his grave which I revisit on occassion. To pay my respects. We would anoint the block of oak and Richards grave with special brew. Then climb the water tower.
At the time I drove the Sin Van. A transit marked across the windscreen and down each side with simply Sin in large letters so all road users could see we were sinners. I picked up Lipton in Bath. He was living as a street person, begging and selling drugs to fellow homeless. He would return to his site periodically but parked up out in the country near Pilton, there was little money to be made there.
'Got all the kit sorted, Skree?' , 'Bar the action men, yes'. We had a final ritual to perform. A final stop to the climbing of industrial engineering. An opening line in our search for jesse and his underworld. Picking up two freshly boxed action men, I chose the archer, Lipton weirdly went for the deep sea diver. 'What the fuck did you choose that one for? ' I asked thinking the heroin was stilling his sharp nose for the ephemeral. We never set out to be urban english shamans. It was something we chanced upon as a generation. At first, in our early teens, magic mushrooms were just a way of getting out of ones head. It didn't take long to realise we were on to something far greater. A historic lineage of english witchcraft entered our blood. Secrets of life and magic, universal truths, religious experiences came fast and furious. Acid compounded our abilities to shift between dimensions but it was the sheer volume of free psychedelics that granted us the healing powers. As witches our duty was not to the sickness of individuals but the sickness affecting our land. A growing greyness. A failure in common man to see the earthly wonders. Awakening each morning on this strange planet, teeming with life and they were moaning about pensions and insurance. The nation were turning inward, getting up to work in frowns, they no longer heard the music. Psychedelics had forced us to be shamans. It wasn't a choice really but we were duty bound to restore the colour and beauty back to english minds. To cure the nation of this grey sickness. This is still my duty.
'I never had it as a kid, I had the hang glider, commando, sailor but never the diver'
'It's a short dive he'll be taking' I reminded Lipton. Their fates were grim, sealed.
In the van we had various ropes and ladders. Getting up was bound to be different and could be any sort of changes since my youth.
The drive takes about four hours which passed quickly. This is usually the case when on shamanic ritual duties. Even in our industrial architecture climbing phase, the excitement was always enough to shorten even longer journeys. Lipton was drinking a fair bit but I had to keep it to the odd can. A pull for drubk driving would put a damper on things. The police are after us always. They actively promote the grey. They often kill our kind too. This has been going on for centuries, since the witchfynding days where a mushroom tripper could be drowned easily. Such is the fear of our powers. But we normally win. They are chosen from those of the lowest of iq. Servants of the sociopaths who spread the grey. Pawns, really, foot soldiers of the dull.
Our first port of call was to tom and trout faced Tina's . West park I still headed for habitually as I had done for the previous near decade as richards flay was where I usually stayed. My remaining immediate circle being the customers who he had served. Tom was old and Tina a good sight as could be expected, still in greif and self medicating to compensate.
Tina was a prostitute too though her clients tended to be doctors, lawyers, businessmen and her roll more of a councelor than anything. Quite unlike the enchantress who had brought about richards death. I ought to point out that we knew these girls as fellow drug addicts, any notion of us paying for sex from them would have been laughable, culturally out of context. They were freinds who shared a habit and their business their own business.
They helpfully sorted us out, me with some rock and Lipton with his gear. Leptons spirits were lifted as the size of deal and quality in Leeds was always superior to Bath or Bristol. Pipes weren't the best preparation for this type of job and though I was stocked up with valium along with their sedating effects comes intoxication. You need to have your wits about you on trips like this. Climbing water towers may seem modest from the ground but a fall was a death fall.
After buying chips, eaten in the van cab, we drove on up to moortown, parking in Nursery Close where we unloaded our equipment and donned hi visibility vests and hard hats.
Since my youth the fencing had been replaced by folded alloy tri spike sections. This was crowned by the terrible razor wire that Brough innevitable cuts, however careful or gloved one was. Perhaps through tradition we took the same piece of fence to cross. Hidden by woodland providing the privacy required. We had one eight foot ladder and capped the wire with heavy blankets. This meant hawling the ladder over this first fence. The pipe we used as boys to gain access to the base was gone and a secondary fence cut us off. Fortune favours the brave and a large cable real, empty was rolled over to ascend the fence and the ladder dragged up and dropped over to get inside the inner area. From here the ladder again was used to get on the towers base.
Once on the base no significant obstacles lay ahead though the old spiral staircase was now a ladder and backscratcher, much less safe and harder work. I went first, Lipton behind. As we gained height adrenaline and nostalgia blended. Wind becomes a problem occasionaly but today was relatively still.
'Where we hanging them?' Lipton asked. I'd fashioned two miniature nooses to hang our juju dolls. These did not represent Elvis and jesse but me and Lipton. I'd brought the makita hammer action drill, wall plugs. Lipton heald my ankles as I leant as far over as I could work. Soon the two holes were drilled and plugged. The nooses were readied and fixed with security head screws.
We sat the archer as my juju doll and the deep sea diver on the edge, slipped the nooses over their necks. We ritually took a pipe each using wind proof lighters. Then their final push and our dead miniature selves swung. Dead. Our climbing adventures completed, sealed and signed. I recently went up there but couldn't see if they'd been removed or still swung. Our enterprise now lay entirely underground.
Sent from my iPad
Saturday 23 May 2015
Chapter 4: Burial of the Twin
Chapter 4: Burial of the Twin
It seemed a good idea initially to invest £300 in johns small crack business. His aim was to ensure free personal usage. Crack is a terribly moreish drug. It is never enough. Ones first pipe can never be improved upon. It's oddities perverse. Rather than savour the sensation of the pipe just inhaled, one can't focus as the mind contemplates the next. Ultimately and innevitably dissatisfying. Unlike other stimulants that can make long term repeat processes enjoyable, crack makes nothing enjoyable. All drugs take time to learn. Expectation and delivery of the expected degree or insufficiency. You have to know the neurotransmitter activity a drug induces in order to look for it. If truth be known a drug is never properly enjoyed until the user is addicted. Think cigarettes. Horrible until addicted. Think heroin. Makes non users sick as a dog. Lysergics, psychedelics aside. These substances, the sacraments of the english shaman are tools to enter altered states, states or domains, many of which aren't enjoyable. I will discuss these later in the book. Psychedelics are 100% tolerant the day after. Effectively impossible to become addicted to. They just won't work again for a good two or three daysMy early crack experiences, the honeymoon period when one is getting to know your new drug, her moods, her nuances, her personality traits, how to administer to oneself in a competent manner, what to look for in quality assessment. This was all good. I liked the junky spirit. The phoning of numbers, the meetings with strangers in darkened corners, the swift intimacy and giving over of trust and money. It was a way of enjoying all the culture of heroin without the physiological dependence. But the money you hand over to never be satisfied. I hate other crack users. I hate myself for ever having had a relationship with the stuff.
My investment ensured each day when john scored he gave me a gramme and he was good to his word. But you never have enough so ultimately, my free first and main always entailed further cashpoint withdrawals for desert. It was a small part of my life. I had other habits on the go. My work. My job. And my various quests. I had begun to take valium to chill out after smoking crack. I was on a subutex prescription and determined never to return to heroin. So rather than buy a bag of gear to wind down with, I bought valium. They came in tubs of 1000 10mg blue pharmaceutical tablets. Very addictive. Withdrawall if done cold turkey worse than heroin, but by taper, handleable. They work on the GABA family of receptors and encompass the whole family. Other, more targeted benzos can hit the GABA for just anxiety say, as with pyrazolam. Ideal for public speaking, no dozy ness or even wobbly feeling most wreck heads look for. Just elimination of the nerves. They were cheap too. Selling a few can help someone out but as the heroin then was of poor quality, people were buying 30, drinking them down with some strong lager then losing any self consiousness. More murders committed on benzos than alcohol relative to ammounts taken. And few like the sensation of not knowing what it was you did last night. These blackouts make me think they have that solitary aspect in common with MDMa. Drink a lot with MDMa and you can find whole chunks of lost time. Guilt fills these vacuums. Often with good reason. This is why I am down on both these drugs. Some common neurotoxicity. Final,y the valium story ends in a murder. But for now it was a good fuel for taking on missions. I doubt we'd have done Box Tunnel, one where both me and Lipton nearly died, yet a hugely rewarding subterranian adventure. They are excellent for fighting, shoplifting, any activity one feels self consiousness trapping you in. But easy to get beat by misjudging ones potential, easy to get caught shoplifting on them. Your sixth sense is there for a reason. For four years I had limitless supplies. This led to addiction, the withdrawall was the worst experience of my life.
Me and Lipton habitually opened our pill bottle and ate four each, our tolerances pretty high. Technically we were trespassing but only on farm land. We had entered Worthy Farm from the Pylle side, late April, on a mission. As GLASTONBURY festival tightened up, getting busted became a real problem for many dealers. Without the drugs there is no festival. For many outlaws GLASTONBURY is the earner of the year. Sell enough drugs there and you need not work all year round if you real,y went for it. Ours was but a small investment. Our plan. Enter the fields when the farm has no fence, six weeks before the vast fencing is even begun being assembled. The ground is damp and digging will present no problem. We'd both invested £300 in high quality e's. Thoroughly packed we planned to bury them deep and secure. Mark the spot. Then the drugs would wait as the festival built itself around them. We'd used several tubes of silicone over many layers of cling film. Theyd survive dry any global warming, any flooding. This ought to to return us a thousand each. Enough to finance our real plans.
Neither of us liked Elvis. Chuck Berry invented rock and roll. Elvis just gyrated.
'A bit over elaborate this one is Skree' . Lipton preferred bringing thr drugs by vehicle. 'Thing is its a cert. I'm not losing out like last year.' We'd taped a nine bar deep into Hostile Daves engine last year and lost the whole lot. Lucy got stopped walking in too. We couldn't afford those type of losses. Not with this new Jesse work underway.
The downers were starting to kick in which was some relief. After buying the pills we'd been at them like smarties for four days and hadn't slept properly for days. Our senses were jaded and hallucinatory.
Having broken into or worked at the festival for many years as a cover for drug dealing we could see where virtually everything would be. The lay out is essentially the same each year despite its endless expansion as more straight people came. The free festival movement of the seventies had built itself on LSD. By the eighties Stonehenge had become a focus for the united Mystics of Britain. Thatcher, threatened by these 'medieval brigands', travellers who lived in trucks and buses were growing in number. The city is a Barron place for the unemployed and freedom, the call of the wild, had taken many seeking a better life out on to the road. The Convoy of vehicles, painted in bright colours, clearly having too much fun,meeting up festivals often lasting weeks before police could gather eviction orders. The battle of the beanfield where vehicles, men ,women and children were systematically smashed was filmed by an intrepid young ITV journalist. Further destruction at Nostell Priory, worse if anything, carried out in 84 by police fresh from the battle of Orgreave changed traveller culture forever. Gone was the green ethos, peace, LSD. In came heroin, special brew. The peaceful types relocated to Spain, Ireland, Portugal where their lifestyle choice was tolerated. The traveller scene continued in Britain but they were a more violent type. Committed to a lifestyle they believed was their right. After the battles they'd never lie down again. Not without a fight.
Once the drugs were buried deep. Made in visible by the railway tracks wooded sides, somewhere nothing could spoil we began to plan the other burials.
'He could be underfoot now' I pointed out to Lipton. Elvis was a twin. His stillborn brother was buried in a paupers grave. Once Elvis became king of rock and roll the money poured in yet he could never shake off the guilt that God had chosen him. Elvis roots were in gospel and he was from poor but deeply religious family. Jesse could so easily have been the lucky one. After buying Graceland Elvis sent team after team of men out to dig for jesses bones. Despite all efforts they were never found. These thoughts never left Elvis. As the amphetamines he took, an addiction he died with in deep denial, Elvis became a pittyful figure. There was no one he could trust. Especially after Reds sacking and the damned book he wrote. Reds Had been like a brother yet jealousies in Elvis gang over gifts of cars, houses, shared women, that God damned traitor had told all the world. In graphic detail the world learned of Elvis drug addictions, his impotence, his burgers. Nothing was left out.
Many speculated it was Elvis who had died. That he was jesse. Where were the bones? Only close family knew the exact location so no crazed fan, steeped in voodoo, could have carried out an ungodly internment. Unless he could find them bones, rebury jesse in the grounds of Graceland, the king would surely die. At fourty two, surrounded by pills, the King died, on the john.
A weird aside. Many Elvis fans could not accept that the bloated king was dead. Theyd endured his disipation. The slick leather clad hunk of the 68 comeback special was as beautiful as ever. The worlds most beautiful man had dragged the Devils music through the cleanly trash of cheap poor movies. Any respect he had enjoyed before joining the army and the taking of a underage bride had dissolved as colonel Parker arranged his appearances in film after film. Elvis died many times. Yet we must not forget, some of his finest moments 'suspicious minds', already the psychosis of amphetamines. 'In the ghetto', for me Elvis finest moment came as the early weight problems began. A mere decade after the leather clad glory Vegas concerts in harlequin costumes had seen his body bloat and distort. More pills left him lost. A shadow of the one time king.
After his death a country music magazine ran the weirdest full page advert. Well, advert does not explain why this page occurred. A silhouette in cowboy hat and in large letters 'Jesses Comin'' . Was this Parker? Was jesse alive?
To me and Lipton this could be the only truth. We discussed it as the MDMa kept us awake for days. Elvis had such gyratory powers he was banned from the waist down. Women could not be expected to control themselves if they witnessed these sexual moves. The advent of television meant a simultaneous orgasm could form as every woman in America lost control. An earthquake could form from such devilish magic. Elvis had to be banned from the waist down. It was a matter of national security. And if the securities were that scared of what could ensue from group viewing of these girations what further conspiracies took place. It was clear. After entering this mystical condition we were able to decide the truth. Jesse was not dead. Sure they tried to kill him but jesse was more than just a man. Fortunately our minds have been improved by years of psychedelic drug use. Though having had frequent hassle from mental health experts, Lipton has developed a multi dimensional maths, much of which goes over my head. But I trust him implicitly as frequently we depend on this advanced athe for our quests for jesses activity. Through these complex mathematical calculations involving planetary alignments we were able to ascertain jesses gyratory powers were in the region of twenty times that of Elvis. Let that figure sink in a minute. Twenty times the gyratory power of Elvis. A mere hip flick could cause clitoral stimuli for miles around. The power of the devil.
So poor jesse was buried alive. One can imagine the struggle as even as a baby it took five men to wrestle those powerful hips down that six foot grave. Impacting the soil these government agents felt relief. Nothing could escape that. Having witnessed something ungodly. The live burial of some hell spawn demon baby left all involved sworn to silence. Rumour has it two took their own lives that very day. A further two sought escape through alcohol. From bar to gutter, telling anyone who would listen their strange twisted tale. Few believed these lost derelict souls who, like Ira Hayes, were found dead, together, in a ditch one morning.
The only answer that made any logical sense was that jesse burrowed. From graveyard, under field and Ocean, gyrating at speed like a demonic mole he made his way beneath the deepest Seabees on planet earth. Feeding on deep sea fish, his flesh white but strong. His eyesight withered but a shark like sense of electrical pulsations and sonar sense, like that of bats replaced his lost vision.
By the time he made these shores he was far from man. And, my god, was he pissed off. Gradually he built up an army of premature burials. From these followers he learned his brother had been made king of the overworkd. Jesse became king of the underworld. His musical skills were similarly disproportionally greater than his twin. But the subterranian Rock and roll his army danced to was far darker, far weirder than that of his brother. He sang not of jailhouse homosexuality, not of blue shoes. He sang of rejection and burial, of darkness, of never having seen the sun. A music so loud and booming any who heard were forced to dance to the dark evil rhythms. A trance like state would overcome his followers. An empire of underworld subterranian eternal rock and roll.
It was on a journey we took through Brunels box tunnel we first heard jesse. A story I'll explain.
Today our drug burial was cover for our real mission. A few weeks back Lipton and I had bought an action man each. One to represent jesse one to represent Elvis. I made small coffins from appropriate American timbers. Elvis action man was fixed in a maple coffin, jesses similarly crafted miniature coffin was from black walnut. Our mission was to give the twins a decent burial. A ritual to bond ourselves to lifelong, or as long as it took, to explore all subterranian labyrinths, to travel to any reports of underground noises, minor earthquakes. Our duty was to find jesse. To join his empire. Perhaps we could encourage him to join with us, to take the top world. After all, he was rightfully king now.
We walked up the festival fields, empty but for cattle, working our way up to the fake stone circle. Our chosen spot was the centre. This must be the most powerful spot. Checking for security or farm workers we dug two morticer slots, a foot deep in the earth. Genetally laying in the coffins that contained our action men. Relaying the soil and pouring special brew to seal the spell. We were burying our past too. Since the Fall of Solomon we had become less keen to climb. We were to focus on the ground and what lay beneath. But one more quest was comitted to. It seemed essential I climb moortown water tower, once more, as adults. Only through this could we regain perspective.
'So, Leeds next, the water tower'.
Sent from my iPad
It seemed a good idea initially to invest £300 in johns small crack business. His aim was to ensure free personal usage. Crack is a terribly moreish drug. It is never enough. Ones first pipe can never be improved upon. It's oddities perverse. Rather than savour the sensation of the pipe just inhaled, one can't focus as the mind contemplates the next. Ultimately and innevitably dissatisfying. Unlike other stimulants that can make long term repeat processes enjoyable, crack makes nothing enjoyable. All drugs take time to learn. Expectation and delivery of the expected degree or insufficiency. You have to know the neurotransmitter activity a drug induces in order to look for it. If truth be known a drug is never properly enjoyed until the user is addicted. Think cigarettes. Horrible until addicted. Think heroin. Makes non users sick as a dog. Lysergics, psychedelics aside. These substances, the sacraments of the english shaman are tools to enter altered states, states or domains, many of which aren't enjoyable. I will discuss these later in the book. Psychedelics are 100% tolerant the day after. Effectively impossible to become addicted to. They just won't work again for a good two or three daysMy early crack experiences, the honeymoon period when one is getting to know your new drug, her moods, her nuances, her personality traits, how to administer to oneself in a competent manner, what to look for in quality assessment. This was all good. I liked the junky spirit. The phoning of numbers, the meetings with strangers in darkened corners, the swift intimacy and giving over of trust and money. It was a way of enjoying all the culture of heroin without the physiological dependence. But the money you hand over to never be satisfied. I hate other crack users. I hate myself for ever having had a relationship with the stuff.
My investment ensured each day when john scored he gave me a gramme and he was good to his word. But you never have enough so ultimately, my free first and main always entailed further cashpoint withdrawals for desert. It was a small part of my life. I had other habits on the go. My work. My job. And my various quests. I had begun to take valium to chill out after smoking crack. I was on a subutex prescription and determined never to return to heroin. So rather than buy a bag of gear to wind down with, I bought valium. They came in tubs of 1000 10mg blue pharmaceutical tablets. Very addictive. Withdrawall if done cold turkey worse than heroin, but by taper, handleable. They work on the GABA family of receptors and encompass the whole family. Other, more targeted benzos can hit the GABA for just anxiety say, as with pyrazolam. Ideal for public speaking, no dozy ness or even wobbly feeling most wreck heads look for. Just elimination of the nerves. They were cheap too. Selling a few can help someone out but as the heroin then was of poor quality, people were buying 30, drinking them down with some strong lager then losing any self consiousness. More murders committed on benzos than alcohol relative to ammounts taken. And few like the sensation of not knowing what it was you did last night. These blackouts make me think they have that solitary aspect in common with MDMa. Drink a lot with MDMa and you can find whole chunks of lost time. Guilt fills these vacuums. Often with good reason. This is why I am down on both these drugs. Some common neurotoxicity. Final,y the valium story ends in a murder. But for now it was a good fuel for taking on missions. I doubt we'd have done Box Tunnel, one where both me and Lipton nearly died, yet a hugely rewarding subterranian adventure. They are excellent for fighting, shoplifting, any activity one feels self consiousness trapping you in. But easy to get beat by misjudging ones potential, easy to get caught shoplifting on them. Your sixth sense is there for a reason. For four years I had limitless supplies. This led to addiction, the withdrawall was the worst experience of my life.
Me and Lipton habitually opened our pill bottle and ate four each, our tolerances pretty high. Technically we were trespassing but only on farm land. We had entered Worthy Farm from the Pylle side, late April, on a mission. As GLASTONBURY festival tightened up, getting busted became a real problem for many dealers. Without the drugs there is no festival. For many outlaws GLASTONBURY is the earner of the year. Sell enough drugs there and you need not work all year round if you real,y went for it. Ours was but a small investment. Our plan. Enter the fields when the farm has no fence, six weeks before the vast fencing is even begun being assembled. The ground is damp and digging will present no problem. We'd both invested £300 in high quality e's. Thoroughly packed we planned to bury them deep and secure. Mark the spot. Then the drugs would wait as the festival built itself around them. We'd used several tubes of silicone over many layers of cling film. Theyd survive dry any global warming, any flooding. This ought to to return us a thousand each. Enough to finance our real plans.
Neither of us liked Elvis. Chuck Berry invented rock and roll. Elvis just gyrated.
'A bit over elaborate this one is Skree' . Lipton preferred bringing thr drugs by vehicle. 'Thing is its a cert. I'm not losing out like last year.' We'd taped a nine bar deep into Hostile Daves engine last year and lost the whole lot. Lucy got stopped walking in too. We couldn't afford those type of losses. Not with this new Jesse work underway.
The downers were starting to kick in which was some relief. After buying the pills we'd been at them like smarties for four days and hadn't slept properly for days. Our senses were jaded and hallucinatory.
Having broken into or worked at the festival for many years as a cover for drug dealing we could see where virtually everything would be. The lay out is essentially the same each year despite its endless expansion as more straight people came. The free festival movement of the seventies had built itself on LSD. By the eighties Stonehenge had become a focus for the united Mystics of Britain. Thatcher, threatened by these 'medieval brigands', travellers who lived in trucks and buses were growing in number. The city is a Barron place for the unemployed and freedom, the call of the wild, had taken many seeking a better life out on to the road. The Convoy of vehicles, painted in bright colours, clearly having too much fun,meeting up festivals often lasting weeks before police could gather eviction orders. The battle of the beanfield where vehicles, men ,women and children were systematically smashed was filmed by an intrepid young ITV journalist. Further destruction at Nostell Priory, worse if anything, carried out in 84 by police fresh from the battle of Orgreave changed traveller culture forever. Gone was the green ethos, peace, LSD. In came heroin, special brew. The peaceful types relocated to Spain, Ireland, Portugal where their lifestyle choice was tolerated. The traveller scene continued in Britain but they were a more violent type. Committed to a lifestyle they believed was their right. After the battles they'd never lie down again. Not without a fight.
Once the drugs were buried deep. Made in visible by the railway tracks wooded sides, somewhere nothing could spoil we began to plan the other burials.
'He could be underfoot now' I pointed out to Lipton. Elvis was a twin. His stillborn brother was buried in a paupers grave. Once Elvis became king of rock and roll the money poured in yet he could never shake off the guilt that God had chosen him. Elvis roots were in gospel and he was from poor but deeply religious family. Jesse could so easily have been the lucky one. After buying Graceland Elvis sent team after team of men out to dig for jesses bones. Despite all efforts they were never found. These thoughts never left Elvis. As the amphetamines he took, an addiction he died with in deep denial, Elvis became a pittyful figure. There was no one he could trust. Especially after Reds sacking and the damned book he wrote. Reds Had been like a brother yet jealousies in Elvis gang over gifts of cars, houses, shared women, that God damned traitor had told all the world. In graphic detail the world learned of Elvis drug addictions, his impotence, his burgers. Nothing was left out.
Many speculated it was Elvis who had died. That he was jesse. Where were the bones? Only close family knew the exact location so no crazed fan, steeped in voodoo, could have carried out an ungodly internment. Unless he could find them bones, rebury jesse in the grounds of Graceland, the king would surely die. At fourty two, surrounded by pills, the King died, on the john.
A weird aside. Many Elvis fans could not accept that the bloated king was dead. Theyd endured his disipation. The slick leather clad hunk of the 68 comeback special was as beautiful as ever. The worlds most beautiful man had dragged the Devils music through the cleanly trash of cheap poor movies. Any respect he had enjoyed before joining the army and the taking of a underage bride had dissolved as colonel Parker arranged his appearances in film after film. Elvis died many times. Yet we must not forget, some of his finest moments 'suspicious minds', already the psychosis of amphetamines. 'In the ghetto', for me Elvis finest moment came as the early weight problems began. A mere decade after the leather clad glory Vegas concerts in harlequin costumes had seen his body bloat and distort. More pills left him lost. A shadow of the one time king.
After his death a country music magazine ran the weirdest full page advert. Well, advert does not explain why this page occurred. A silhouette in cowboy hat and in large letters 'Jesses Comin'' . Was this Parker? Was jesse alive?
To me and Lipton this could be the only truth. We discussed it as the MDMa kept us awake for days. Elvis had such gyratory powers he was banned from the waist down. Women could not be expected to control themselves if they witnessed these sexual moves. The advent of television meant a simultaneous orgasm could form as every woman in America lost control. An earthquake could form from such devilish magic. Elvis had to be banned from the waist down. It was a matter of national security. And if the securities were that scared of what could ensue from group viewing of these girations what further conspiracies took place. It was clear. After entering this mystical condition we were able to decide the truth. Jesse was not dead. Sure they tried to kill him but jesse was more than just a man. Fortunately our minds have been improved by years of psychedelic drug use. Though having had frequent hassle from mental health experts, Lipton has developed a multi dimensional maths, much of which goes over my head. But I trust him implicitly as frequently we depend on this advanced athe for our quests for jesses activity. Through these complex mathematical calculations involving planetary alignments we were able to ascertain jesses gyratory powers were in the region of twenty times that of Elvis. Let that figure sink in a minute. Twenty times the gyratory power of Elvis. A mere hip flick could cause clitoral stimuli for miles around. The power of the devil.
So poor jesse was buried alive. One can imagine the struggle as even as a baby it took five men to wrestle those powerful hips down that six foot grave. Impacting the soil these government agents felt relief. Nothing could escape that. Having witnessed something ungodly. The live burial of some hell spawn demon baby left all involved sworn to silence. Rumour has it two took their own lives that very day. A further two sought escape through alcohol. From bar to gutter, telling anyone who would listen their strange twisted tale. Few believed these lost derelict souls who, like Ira Hayes, were found dead, together, in a ditch one morning.
The only answer that made any logical sense was that jesse burrowed. From graveyard, under field and Ocean, gyrating at speed like a demonic mole he made his way beneath the deepest Seabees on planet earth. Feeding on deep sea fish, his flesh white but strong. His eyesight withered but a shark like sense of electrical pulsations and sonar sense, like that of bats replaced his lost vision.
By the time he made these shores he was far from man. And, my god, was he pissed off. Gradually he built up an army of premature burials. From these followers he learned his brother had been made king of the overworkd. Jesse became king of the underworld. His musical skills were similarly disproportionally greater than his twin. But the subterranian Rock and roll his army danced to was far darker, far weirder than that of his brother. He sang not of jailhouse homosexuality, not of blue shoes. He sang of rejection and burial, of darkness, of never having seen the sun. A music so loud and booming any who heard were forced to dance to the dark evil rhythms. A trance like state would overcome his followers. An empire of underworld subterranian eternal rock and roll.
It was on a journey we took through Brunels box tunnel we first heard jesse. A story I'll explain.
Today our drug burial was cover for our real mission. A few weeks back Lipton and I had bought an action man each. One to represent jesse one to represent Elvis. I made small coffins from appropriate American timbers. Elvis action man was fixed in a maple coffin, jesses similarly crafted miniature coffin was from black walnut. Our mission was to give the twins a decent burial. A ritual to bond ourselves to lifelong, or as long as it took, to explore all subterranian labyrinths, to travel to any reports of underground noises, minor earthquakes. Our duty was to find jesse. To join his empire. Perhaps we could encourage him to join with us, to take the top world. After all, he was rightfully king now.
We walked up the festival fields, empty but for cattle, working our way up to the fake stone circle. Our chosen spot was the centre. This must be the most powerful spot. Checking for security or farm workers we dug two morticer slots, a foot deep in the earth. Genetally laying in the coffins that contained our action men. Relaying the soil and pouring special brew to seal the spell. We were burying our past too. Since the Fall of Solomon we had become less keen to climb. We were to focus on the ground and what lay beneath. But one more quest was comitted to. It seemed essential I climb moortown water tower, once more, as adults. Only through this could we regain perspective.
'So, Leeds next, the water tower'.
Sent from my iPad
Friday 22 May 2015
Chapter 3: Drugs
Chapter 3: Drugs
The narrative of consensus for anyone who experiments with drugs and comes unstuck is currently one of victimhood. As unfortunate as disease. I suggest, that for many, myself in their number, I loved taking drugs. So much I was almost prepared to die for the enjoyment it gave me. Rock climbers, sportsmen, circus performers all live in essense the same level of irresponsibility. They deserve no greater respect than drug users. From as long as I can remember drugs have always fascinated me. I'm sure as early as six or seven I'd been aware of the Beatles LSD inspired songs. These fairy tail, joyous tales of a magical beauty had me hooked. Strawberry Fields forever, Lucy in the sky with Diamonds, wonderful expressions of a childlike perspective, unsoiled by adult baggage and drudgery. I don't condone their use. I wouldn't advise others to get involved but my life has been spent in search for altered states of consiousness. And what's more I have loved the majority of this spectacular adventure. It has been a brave and dangerous undertaking. Scott of the Arctic would understand.
To give a true picture of how I came to be teatotal, and that is where this book leads, I must be candid. Not to hide or deny how substance use led me into addiction, the loss of my home and wife, the deaths of many, many of my closest freinds. The loss of my business and onward to homelessness and poverty. Much of my actions were born out of a drug fuelled psychosis. Diagnosed as bipolar 1 drugs have served as life savers at times.
Also drugs delivered many of the greatest and post beautiful episodes in my life. They gave me a spiritual dimension to life, something lost as any tiny faith I might have toyed with was so crudely and profoundly extinguished by my mothers death. She never smoked, never drank. She prayed each day. God, if he is of an interventionist disposition, clearly wished to cause pain to my mother and family with an evil beyond comprehension. I lost faith in Father Christmas aged seven, lost faith in God aged ten. Yet read this description of my last few years you will see drugs also brought the most magical times of utter beauty and finally, as this story will describe, first hand religious experiences. Experiences so profound they stole away my atheist certainty, and cured me of all addiction.
A breif pharmacopeia at this point may be useful to contextualise the events about to unfold.
By twelve I was on the lookout for but seldom found cannabis in any form from hashish to marijuana. By fourteen I was smoking it everyday. This continued until I was thirty one. It was a background drug, like cigarettes though, in my circles more socially acceptable. At around the same age, thirteen or so, I began to find access to LSD though money restricted my use. Psylocibin, Liberty caps, british shamans natural sacrament became a complete obsession. After discovering their power i sought to explore the inner space of the mind with a serious appetite. Each season saw three months, even longer if your drying techniques were developed. From early doses of thirty I progressed to several hundred in a go, brewed up in to a tea. Taken in this manner the transition or takeoff can be as breif as ten minutes.
My father has always been respected as a great drinker whose intake would easily have killed men of weaker constitution. I never saw its charm back then, perhaps in response to my fathers love of alcohol. Each generation must find new ways, new styles of clothing, new music to ensure a generational divide. A cultural evolution and an assertion of personal identity. Through psylocibin I enjoyed spiritual revelations. Here was a shamanic religion. Here you didn't need faith, I saw miracles each week. At its higher points I grasped fundamental aspects of life and existence. Such magic, such power does not come free of dangers. My nerve grew weaker and by twenty I stopped taking magic mushrooms. To this day I very rarely use this sacrament but I shall never regret the thousand or more trips that grounded me in shamanism and the ability to travel to other dimensions.
I had a minor rebellion to my hippy adolescence and began to enjoy the flatter, more simple yet clumsy alcohol my father so loved. I continued with cannabis and then at sixteen discovered speed. For a year or so I snorted the powder but grew to dislike it. I moved to the country for a few years of sobriety.
I returned to live in leeds. Having not got on with snorting powders speed had been of little interest. At the time, just by the university, there was a medical research unit. Here, young drug free unemployed people could earn money as human guineapigs. Most of the drugs are already on the European market but I was fortunate to be in the trials for hydro morphone spheroid. A powerful new morphine ten times in strength, though of course, our doses were t significant. Each twenty minutes nurses took blood samples clumsily from the same hole your vein repeatedly. It was there slapdash approach to needles that made me think, 'I could do that far more clinically.'
On release I immediately bought some high quality amphetamine sulphate. Injecting in to ones main vein was in comparable to the blocked powder in sinus Tom foolery. The rush immense. From man to God in seconds. Every hair on ones body erect and an attention of mind I'd never before felt. Amphetamines are damaging to the heart. They also discincline one to eat or sleep. Combined with depletion in dopamine can often lead to speed psychosis. I was fortunate to meet a beautiful student who had just enrolled on a post graduate course in Birmingham. I moved down there and soon re entered education studying fine craft furniture and spent two years merely smoking cannabis and drinking the odd beer.
Following this I became a keen cyclist, launched my first business and continued my relative sobriety. My new girlfreind was in Cheltenham studying art and having a lot of fun. The rave scene had begun. The acid grew very weak but the club/ dance scene is not acid based. Once I discovered pills, ecstasy and MDMa I lost my inhibitions and became an all night dancer.
I returned to college, gave up cigarettes and did my three years at Buckinghamshire college, smoking hash pipes all day. This allowed me to work hard as I was too stoned to socialise. I got a first piping a good eighth a day. I took no other drugs there.
After leaving college my relative sobriety continued, my girlfreind had bought a cottage on the Welsh borders and I spent a year renovating it. Once complete I spent a short while working as a cabinet maker.
My degree show and following exhibitions attracted media attention and I found I had job offers coming in to lecture. First Wolverhampton gave me two days a week, next university of central England offered me another two and a half days a week. Finally, Shrewsbury where I had studied offered MA day a week. So, despite having neither training nor experience I'd become a full time lecturer. My girlfreind was working away so I had no support. Making is a solitary process where I sought the zone, flow, a state of hyperfocus where one cuts off from the world to lose themselves in their work. This is the polar opposite to the hundreds of human interactions in a day tutoring entails. I had had breif spells of mental ill health but nothing like the breakdown this brought on. I was prescribed sleepers and anti depressants. I took to drinking a bottle of spirits a day and driving up to leeds where all my old speed freak freinds had converted to the brown afghany heroin that flooded the country in 98/99. I'd enjoy week or fortnight long heroin holidays safe in the knowledge that I had no contacts down in the Midlands so spent two years as an occassional unaddicted user.
The coping strategies were destroying me so I gave up all teaching jobs and moved to somerset. I spent two years working for one of the countries best known designer makers. I cut back to wine and, along with my partner began a two year stint of weekend clubbing. Always fuelled by MDMa. The dance club scene is pointless without pills and MDMa. These were good times.
In a drug haze i launched my own business. I had become ecstasy fried and a chance meeting was to change my life forever. As a homeless sofa surfer I had spent a while living with Ron Tree. He had followed his music career and was now Hawkwind frontman. Suddenly I was connected and my recreational heroin binges linked up. On a Wednesday in 2001 I woke up ill. From then till 2015 I was addicted to opiates. The honeymoon period though beautiful is breif. My partner split up with me, I lost my house and in 2003 had a go at cold turkey. After a month I could work but after six months my endorphins were still in shreds. So, after a phone call I was happy again, my social life blossoming and I was able to work hard.
After three months I decided the endless search for money or gear, the patches of drought and its resultant sickness, we're not for me. I became a registered addict and was put on a new experimental opiate addiction management system. Subutex, bupronorphine is a partial agonist. It delivers an up,ifting, motivating buzz but prevents heroin from having any affect. At first, release from heroin is wonderful. However, overtime it erodes ones endorphin system. Gradually you lose interest in sex, you can't fall in love, orgasms are minor sensations, you become cold, detached. You aren't fully emotionally engaged.
Recovering from heroin takes at least a year. I never had the luxury of taking that much time off. So, in order to keep my clients happy i remained an addict to a sublingual tablet.
In 2007 my father fell damaging his brain.mit fell on me as the childless sibling to abandon everything and go look after him. He was in hospital as it transpired so I found work for a museum fitters.
Owning a Siberian husky cross German shepherd cross placed strict restrictions on where to stay. My best freind richard, now dead, was a disabled heroin dealer. He looked after my dog and I succeeded in resisting the heroin. Unfortunately crack cocaine had taken off so I picked up a six year habit. This horrible drug leaves one with the heeee gee eyes.
I returned to frome after ten months and picked up my business with a massive order. I was never short of work meaning I never had time to get well.
My crack use in frome continued and to balance this I found myself with a limitless supply of benzodiazepenes through traveller freinds. Now addicted to subutex, diazepam, crack and alcohol I knew I'd have to stop. Giving up crack was easy but the benzos, Christ. It took six months off work, sleeping two hours, waking to screaming nightmares, then walking the street s with my dog waiting for day.
But I did it. Spent two years totally clean. I was so happy. By chance crack stepped back in for a few weeks. I had discovered the research chemical scene and began to explore these new and sometimes fascinating new compounds. So angry with myself at falling back to crack I took seventy five times the recommended dosage of Methoxphenidine, a new dissociative in a suicidal attempt to nuke the crack habit. Fortunately I lived but for days I couldn't walk or talk. I spent three weeks in total psychosis where I travelled to the distant future. I spent time in the past also, world war 1. And in a version of future America where no plant or animal could survive. Just broken synthetic goods in bright plastics. One leg or arm might suddenly grow seventy feet in length whilst other limbs would shrink to action man proportions. I was fortunate not to be sectioned.
I succeeded in killing the crack demon posession. Sadly benzos became available online and crept back in. I discovered a new powerful stimulant called ethylphenidate. Very nearly killing myself on a number of occasions through overdose. I was in a bad way. Death was very likely were i to continue.
Though at its bottom end, research chemicals were rough new stimulants and dissociatives quite by chance a family of new and highly advanced family of chemicals emerged. The new lysergics. These are synthesised and purified from LSD. I had come full circle.
This book is the story of the adventures taken whilst drifting into drug induced psychosis. It also tells of my discovery of a group of chemicals that could save mankind. So advanced compared to acid and mushrooms. A family of chemicals able to deliver first hand religious experiences. Chemicals that I believe will be an evolutionary trigger in human consiousness. More sophisticated than the Peruvian shamans ayaushka. My life has been spent perfecting drug taking techniques. Learning as a human guinea pig. Seeing the deaths of many close freinds,nfellow psychonauts. Yet ultimately this war I have fought, this journey of experimentation in human consiousness has delivered the key to our species next step. Something as significant as language.
This quick grounding in my drug use is written to let you know that I have studied drugs, as a user all my life. That I am an expert in the field. It also tells how the discovery came about. Only by studying, practicing drug use of all varieties to the extremes, to the point where many died, only by laying my life on the line have I been able to report back. Now recovered from addiction I have an answer. The key to the next paradigm shift in human awareness. The next level for the human species.
Sent from my iPad
The narrative of consensus for anyone who experiments with drugs and comes unstuck is currently one of victimhood. As unfortunate as disease. I suggest, that for many, myself in their number, I loved taking drugs. So much I was almost prepared to die for the enjoyment it gave me. Rock climbers, sportsmen, circus performers all live in essense the same level of irresponsibility. They deserve no greater respect than drug users. From as long as I can remember drugs have always fascinated me. I'm sure as early as six or seven I'd been aware of the Beatles LSD inspired songs. These fairy tail, joyous tales of a magical beauty had me hooked. Strawberry Fields forever, Lucy in the sky with Diamonds, wonderful expressions of a childlike perspective, unsoiled by adult baggage and drudgery. I don't condone their use. I wouldn't advise others to get involved but my life has been spent in search for altered states of consiousness. And what's more I have loved the majority of this spectacular adventure. It has been a brave and dangerous undertaking. Scott of the Arctic would understand.
To give a true picture of how I came to be teatotal, and that is where this book leads, I must be candid. Not to hide or deny how substance use led me into addiction, the loss of my home and wife, the deaths of many, many of my closest freinds. The loss of my business and onward to homelessness and poverty. Much of my actions were born out of a drug fuelled psychosis. Diagnosed as bipolar 1 drugs have served as life savers at times.
Also drugs delivered many of the greatest and post beautiful episodes in my life. They gave me a spiritual dimension to life, something lost as any tiny faith I might have toyed with was so crudely and profoundly extinguished by my mothers death. She never smoked, never drank. She prayed each day. God, if he is of an interventionist disposition, clearly wished to cause pain to my mother and family with an evil beyond comprehension. I lost faith in Father Christmas aged seven, lost faith in God aged ten. Yet read this description of my last few years you will see drugs also brought the most magical times of utter beauty and finally, as this story will describe, first hand religious experiences. Experiences so profound they stole away my atheist certainty, and cured me of all addiction.
A breif pharmacopeia at this point may be useful to contextualise the events about to unfold.
By twelve I was on the lookout for but seldom found cannabis in any form from hashish to marijuana. By fourteen I was smoking it everyday. This continued until I was thirty one. It was a background drug, like cigarettes though, in my circles more socially acceptable. At around the same age, thirteen or so, I began to find access to LSD though money restricted my use. Psylocibin, Liberty caps, british shamans natural sacrament became a complete obsession. After discovering their power i sought to explore the inner space of the mind with a serious appetite. Each season saw three months, even longer if your drying techniques were developed. From early doses of thirty I progressed to several hundred in a go, brewed up in to a tea. Taken in this manner the transition or takeoff can be as breif as ten minutes.
My father has always been respected as a great drinker whose intake would easily have killed men of weaker constitution. I never saw its charm back then, perhaps in response to my fathers love of alcohol. Each generation must find new ways, new styles of clothing, new music to ensure a generational divide. A cultural evolution and an assertion of personal identity. Through psylocibin I enjoyed spiritual revelations. Here was a shamanic religion. Here you didn't need faith, I saw miracles each week. At its higher points I grasped fundamental aspects of life and existence. Such magic, such power does not come free of dangers. My nerve grew weaker and by twenty I stopped taking magic mushrooms. To this day I very rarely use this sacrament but I shall never regret the thousand or more trips that grounded me in shamanism and the ability to travel to other dimensions.
I had a minor rebellion to my hippy adolescence and began to enjoy the flatter, more simple yet clumsy alcohol my father so loved. I continued with cannabis and then at sixteen discovered speed. For a year or so I snorted the powder but grew to dislike it. I moved to the country for a few years of sobriety.
I returned to live in leeds. Having not got on with snorting powders speed had been of little interest. At the time, just by the university, there was a medical research unit. Here, young drug free unemployed people could earn money as human guineapigs. Most of the drugs are already on the European market but I was fortunate to be in the trials for hydro morphone spheroid. A powerful new morphine ten times in strength, though of course, our doses were t significant. Each twenty minutes nurses took blood samples clumsily from the same hole your vein repeatedly. It was there slapdash approach to needles that made me think, 'I could do that far more clinically.'
On release I immediately bought some high quality amphetamine sulphate. Injecting in to ones main vein was in comparable to the blocked powder in sinus Tom foolery. The rush immense. From man to God in seconds. Every hair on ones body erect and an attention of mind I'd never before felt. Amphetamines are damaging to the heart. They also discincline one to eat or sleep. Combined with depletion in dopamine can often lead to speed psychosis. I was fortunate to meet a beautiful student who had just enrolled on a post graduate course in Birmingham. I moved down there and soon re entered education studying fine craft furniture and spent two years merely smoking cannabis and drinking the odd beer.
Following this I became a keen cyclist, launched my first business and continued my relative sobriety. My new girlfreind was in Cheltenham studying art and having a lot of fun. The rave scene had begun. The acid grew very weak but the club/ dance scene is not acid based. Once I discovered pills, ecstasy and MDMa I lost my inhibitions and became an all night dancer.
I returned to college, gave up cigarettes and did my three years at Buckinghamshire college, smoking hash pipes all day. This allowed me to work hard as I was too stoned to socialise. I got a first piping a good eighth a day. I took no other drugs there.
After leaving college my relative sobriety continued, my girlfreind had bought a cottage on the Welsh borders and I spent a year renovating it. Once complete I spent a short while working as a cabinet maker.
My degree show and following exhibitions attracted media attention and I found I had job offers coming in to lecture. First Wolverhampton gave me two days a week, next university of central England offered me another two and a half days a week. Finally, Shrewsbury where I had studied offered MA day a week. So, despite having neither training nor experience I'd become a full time lecturer. My girlfreind was working away so I had no support. Making is a solitary process where I sought the zone, flow, a state of hyperfocus where one cuts off from the world to lose themselves in their work. This is the polar opposite to the hundreds of human interactions in a day tutoring entails. I had had breif spells of mental ill health but nothing like the breakdown this brought on. I was prescribed sleepers and anti depressants. I took to drinking a bottle of spirits a day and driving up to leeds where all my old speed freak freinds had converted to the brown afghany heroin that flooded the country in 98/99. I'd enjoy week or fortnight long heroin holidays safe in the knowledge that I had no contacts down in the Midlands so spent two years as an occassional unaddicted user.
The coping strategies were destroying me so I gave up all teaching jobs and moved to somerset. I spent two years working for one of the countries best known designer makers. I cut back to wine and, along with my partner began a two year stint of weekend clubbing. Always fuelled by MDMa. The dance club scene is pointless without pills and MDMa. These were good times.
In a drug haze i launched my own business. I had become ecstasy fried and a chance meeting was to change my life forever. As a homeless sofa surfer I had spent a while living with Ron Tree. He had followed his music career and was now Hawkwind frontman. Suddenly I was connected and my recreational heroin binges linked up. On a Wednesday in 2001 I woke up ill. From then till 2015 I was addicted to opiates. The honeymoon period though beautiful is breif. My partner split up with me, I lost my house and in 2003 had a go at cold turkey. After a month I could work but after six months my endorphins were still in shreds. So, after a phone call I was happy again, my social life blossoming and I was able to work hard.
After three months I decided the endless search for money or gear, the patches of drought and its resultant sickness, we're not for me. I became a registered addict and was put on a new experimental opiate addiction management system. Subutex, bupronorphine is a partial agonist. It delivers an up,ifting, motivating buzz but prevents heroin from having any affect. At first, release from heroin is wonderful. However, overtime it erodes ones endorphin system. Gradually you lose interest in sex, you can't fall in love, orgasms are minor sensations, you become cold, detached. You aren't fully emotionally engaged.
Recovering from heroin takes at least a year. I never had the luxury of taking that much time off. So, in order to keep my clients happy i remained an addict to a sublingual tablet.
In 2007 my father fell damaging his brain.mit fell on me as the childless sibling to abandon everything and go look after him. He was in hospital as it transpired so I found work for a museum fitters.
Owning a Siberian husky cross German shepherd cross placed strict restrictions on where to stay. My best freind richard, now dead, was a disabled heroin dealer. He looked after my dog and I succeeded in resisting the heroin. Unfortunately crack cocaine had taken off so I picked up a six year habit. This horrible drug leaves one with the heeee gee eyes.
I returned to frome after ten months and picked up my business with a massive order. I was never short of work meaning I never had time to get well.
My crack use in frome continued and to balance this I found myself with a limitless supply of benzodiazepenes through traveller freinds. Now addicted to subutex, diazepam, crack and alcohol I knew I'd have to stop. Giving up crack was easy but the benzos, Christ. It took six months off work, sleeping two hours, waking to screaming nightmares, then walking the street s with my dog waiting for day.
But I did it. Spent two years totally clean. I was so happy. By chance crack stepped back in for a few weeks. I had discovered the research chemical scene and began to explore these new and sometimes fascinating new compounds. So angry with myself at falling back to crack I took seventy five times the recommended dosage of Methoxphenidine, a new dissociative in a suicidal attempt to nuke the crack habit. Fortunately I lived but for days I couldn't walk or talk. I spent three weeks in total psychosis where I travelled to the distant future. I spent time in the past also, world war 1. And in a version of future America where no plant or animal could survive. Just broken synthetic goods in bright plastics. One leg or arm might suddenly grow seventy feet in length whilst other limbs would shrink to action man proportions. I was fortunate not to be sectioned.
I succeeded in killing the crack demon posession. Sadly benzos became available online and crept back in. I discovered a new powerful stimulant called ethylphenidate. Very nearly killing myself on a number of occasions through overdose. I was in a bad way. Death was very likely were i to continue.
Though at its bottom end, research chemicals were rough new stimulants and dissociatives quite by chance a family of new and highly advanced family of chemicals emerged. The new lysergics. These are synthesised and purified from LSD. I had come full circle.
This book is the story of the adventures taken whilst drifting into drug induced psychosis. It also tells of my discovery of a group of chemicals that could save mankind. So advanced compared to acid and mushrooms. A family of chemicals able to deliver first hand religious experiences. Chemicals that I believe will be an evolutionary trigger in human consiousness. More sophisticated than the Peruvian shamans ayaushka. My life has been spent perfecting drug taking techniques. Learning as a human guinea pig. Seeing the deaths of many close freinds,nfellow psychonauts. Yet ultimately this war I have fought, this journey of experimentation in human consiousness has delivered the key to our species next step. Something as significant as language.
This quick grounding in my drug use is written to let you know that I have studied drugs, as a user all my life. That I am an expert in the field. It also tells how the discovery came about. Only by studying, practicing drug use of all varieties to the extremes, to the point where many died, only by laying my life on the line have I been able to report back. Now recovered from addiction I have an answer. The key to the next paradigm shift in human awareness. The next level for the human species.
Sent from my iPad
Chapter 2: Moortown Water Tower
Moortown Water Tower
If there is a beginning to this story it would have to be my boyhood relationship with Moortown Water Tower. York has its Minster, Winchester its cathedral. Moortown has its water tower. Growing up in the suburbs of leeds the biggest architectural feature that stood over looking our manor was Leeds' oldest Water Tower. An underground service reservoir sits on the corner made by the A61 leeds to Harrogate road and nursery lane. This was not open to the public and fenced off by spear like uprights of iron that stood seven feet tall. This raised field could be accessed by the odd bent or removed spear. I guess I must have been nine or so when I entered a period of exploration. Accessing local public electricity substations and water works. Positioned at one of the highest points of the city the Water Tower took on a spiritual significance. As near to a cathedral we had nearby.
Built in 1872 of intersectional concrete sections, it stands proudly with subtle detailing; stepped flaring of the feet, but largely functional and minimalist. Painted periodically white or cream and has an eight foot high base, octagonal in section where the eight legs stand braced twice as they taper to the drum or storrage cylinder. This holds 75000 gallons of water.
As kids we would enter the fenced off area before shimmying along a fat pipe some eight feet off the ground. To discourage trespassers a spiky circular fence, often geased up and wrapped in a bundle binding of barbed wire. Crossing this itself was tricky for a small boy but once overcome you were basically only restricted from this point by fear. The base slightly domed then had a cast iron spiral staircase that ensured a dizzying ascent adding to the change in consiousness brought on by height and fear. World War 2 sirens still fixed at points.
My fear of heights ensured I took steady measured steps of which there were 118. As one entered the cylinder, the wind, it's noise and disconcertion evapourated as a false sense of security relaxed the final steps. Once on top it tapered, a shallow cone for drainage. A small wall of no more than a foot was all that protected one from falling.
From here as a boy I felt on top of the world. Always a terrifying climb for me but offset by the views over the entire city. In summer, leaf cover obscured some views but winter time meant a true perspective, comparable to feelings Londoners enjoy from their Shard or Eye.
It became something of a right of passage, the enrolment into the select band of boys brave enough, stupid enough but mainly curious enough to climb. These were pre drug days. Yet I feel that the adrenalin rushing from my fear of heights, though unpleasant, was a natural high. Once safely. On top, the sedating neurotransmitters, endorphins became released to calm the raging adrenalin. A speedball for children.
I was nine when my mother first went to hospital for her first mastectomy. She died three years later. Her body became riddled with cancer and these three years were a process of deconstruction as parts were periodically cut away. Operation on operation. Hospital to home to school to hospital each night for three years. Having previously been a clever pupil. Top or there a outs in most subjects, I began to find it pointless. My father wasn't a domestic man and took to drinking heavily. My clothes became dirty and ragged. My mothers christianity, her faith in God and prayer clearly didn't work. My fathers evolutionary atheism, his nature of survival of the fittest was closer. I had never believed in an interventionist God and grew to think the world a dark and evil place where all you trusted and loved would some day prove false.
I took to climbing the water tower alone. It became my high castle. My eyrie. On its top I would lay for hours lost in thought. Sleeping there some nights. No safer place existed. Nowhere so private to be alone with my thoughts nurturing a nihilistic outlook as punk rock broke. The first line on side 1 of 'Never Mind the Bollocks', "You're only 29, got a lot to learn, but when your mummy dies, she will not return." From this platform in the sky I plotted my reinvention as a new creature with a new name. A creature more suited for survival in this cruel place.
Sent from my iPad
If there is a beginning to this story it would have to be my boyhood relationship with Moortown Water Tower. York has its Minster, Winchester its cathedral. Moortown has its water tower. Growing up in the suburbs of leeds the biggest architectural feature that stood over looking our manor was Leeds' oldest Water Tower. An underground service reservoir sits on the corner made by the A61 leeds to Harrogate road and nursery lane. This was not open to the public and fenced off by spear like uprights of iron that stood seven feet tall. This raised field could be accessed by the odd bent or removed spear. I guess I must have been nine or so when I entered a period of exploration. Accessing local public electricity substations and water works. Positioned at one of the highest points of the city the Water Tower took on a spiritual significance. As near to a cathedral we had nearby.
Built in 1872 of intersectional concrete sections, it stands proudly with subtle detailing; stepped flaring of the feet, but largely functional and minimalist. Painted periodically white or cream and has an eight foot high base, octagonal in section where the eight legs stand braced twice as they taper to the drum or storrage cylinder. This holds 75000 gallons of water.
As kids we would enter the fenced off area before shimmying along a fat pipe some eight feet off the ground. To discourage trespassers a spiky circular fence, often geased up and wrapped in a bundle binding of barbed wire. Crossing this itself was tricky for a small boy but once overcome you were basically only restricted from this point by fear. The base slightly domed then had a cast iron spiral staircase that ensured a dizzying ascent adding to the change in consiousness brought on by height and fear. World War 2 sirens still fixed at points.
My fear of heights ensured I took steady measured steps of which there were 118. As one entered the cylinder, the wind, it's noise and disconcertion evapourated as a false sense of security relaxed the final steps. Once on top it tapered, a shallow cone for drainage. A small wall of no more than a foot was all that protected one from falling.
From here as a boy I felt on top of the world. Always a terrifying climb for me but offset by the views over the entire city. In summer, leaf cover obscured some views but winter time meant a true perspective, comparable to feelings Londoners enjoy from their Shard or Eye.
It became something of a right of passage, the enrolment into the select band of boys brave enough, stupid enough but mainly curious enough to climb. These were pre drug days. Yet I feel that the adrenalin rushing from my fear of heights, though unpleasant, was a natural high. Once safely. On top, the sedating neurotransmitters, endorphins became released to calm the raging adrenalin. A speedball for children.
I was nine when my mother first went to hospital for her first mastectomy. She died three years later. Her body became riddled with cancer and these three years were a process of deconstruction as parts were periodically cut away. Operation on operation. Hospital to home to school to hospital each night for three years. Having previously been a clever pupil. Top or there a outs in most subjects, I began to find it pointless. My father wasn't a domestic man and took to drinking heavily. My clothes became dirty and ragged. My mothers christianity, her faith in God and prayer clearly didn't work. My fathers evolutionary atheism, his nature of survival of the fittest was closer. I had never believed in an interventionist God and grew to think the world a dark and evil place where all you trusted and loved would some day prove false.
I took to climbing the water tower alone. It became my high castle. My eyrie. On its top I would lay for hours lost in thought. Sleeping there some nights. No safer place existed. Nowhere so private to be alone with my thoughts nurturing a nihilistic outlook as punk rock broke. The first line on side 1 of 'Never Mind the Bollocks', "You're only 29, got a lot to learn, but when your mummy dies, she will not return." From this platform in the sky I plotted my reinvention as a new creature with a new name. A creature more suited for survival in this cruel place.
Sent from my iPad
Thursday 21 May 2015
Chapter 1: Bath Gas Silos
Bath Gas Silos
lights flooded the compound in white light yet anachronistically no cctv cameras revolved or watched in silence. The three gas silos on the Lower Bristol Road had reached functional obsolescence and though unlit steely one was left standing at the time I was under the belief they were all to be destroyed. Bath has some beautiful buildings but few exposed industrial architecture that I love. Workmen were cutting through sections of the Victorian frames with oxy acetal one torches, reducing these beasts of engineering to transportable chunks to be weighed in. One silo was already gone and I cursed myself for not being abreast of this operation. These men were some private firm hired in, not council workers happy to stretch jobs out. If we didn't act swiftly these icons of industrial past would be gone.
Surveying the area under the pretext of being an art photographer the security allowed me to take thirty odd shots from outside the chain link fence. I wasn't lieing, I do photograph cooling towers, communication transmitters, water towers, anything of beauty despite itself. Never buildings of self consious wealth but that patch where civil engineering hands over to stylist architect. Here is where one can find the beauty within the mundane.
My recy complete i stashed away my mini compact camera and assessed the ease of access and scaling the still perfect third silos majesty would depend on the enthusiasm of the security. Their days are dull and sa wish so the deconstruction had put a spring in their tale however, in my wide experience of what has come to be known as urban exploration, they will be focused on making sure the metal isn't stolen for resale. They can't conceive of why anyone would want to climb the structures just to see from the top. Just to place oneself at a point in the city no one else goes.
Lipton was residing out at a traveller site of loose vehicles hidden behind a large public car park and a cheap eating pub, wither spoons or some such establishment. His own trailer and truck were back over shepton way and he'd come stay in town where cash could be made or free food found by stating in a vacant caravan. Unlocking the chained gate and rolling on to a new traveller site is always a mixed feeling of reforming old freindships or facing protective hostilities. No where can you just roll on to site in van or truck in to an established village without invitation, explanation or confrontation. Heavy rains had formed a vast puddle sped across. I only had a transit and their single rear wheel drive is notorious for getting stuck in muddied grooves. Fine on hard standing and summer days.
Lipton was polo nosed. Ketamine was popular at the time and the tell tale nostril halos and reddened strained eyes suggested the boys had been at it for a few days. It ceases to deliver the profound depth of k hole with repeat use and dimishing return leaves a rush of sensation but users fully able to talk to a straight man. I was offered a line but rejected. My mind was on the silos and distraction is all too easy on site.
Lipton is familiar with my missions and his bravery without question. He sometimes doesn't get why I need to do something but always grasps it is a serious and sincere operation. I explained about the demolition of the silos. How it was our duty to climb the final one, to walk around the top circle. To see the city lights above. To outsmart the security below. At this time the phrase urban exploration had not been coined and though other teams were out there I still felt it was my art form, not the fashion it became. It was not only the increased numbers out exploring but an event that shook me to the core. The Fall of Solomon as we came to refer to it saw a solo guy we'd often see out on building sites or railway embankments fall to his death from a half built office complex. He was not close but a freind. This put a damper on our enthusiasm for climbing and ultimately led to the later subterranian adventures in our hunt for jesse Presleys underground rock and roll empire. More on that later.
My plan, such as it could be described as such involved passing off our van amongst the workers. These boys were going all night and drove a mix of makes and colours. From the car park to the chain link would be easy booted up in our uniform hi viz jackets. The footprint of a gas silo is massive. The cutters were working dismantling components of the others and their unusual presence on site had the regular mundanity of the security engrossed. We should be fine scaling the seven or eight feet of checker link fencing crowned by those spiteful razor wire rolls. These fences weren't even vertical and nothing we hadn't bypassed ten or more times before. A rope ladder and a thick blanket for the razors, timed right should get me and Lipton inside in under a minute. Professional pride was at stake.
Shaking off the wannabes took a few minutes as all wanted to go. But this was my special work and I didn't want any k'd up or drunk ruining our one chance because once the security jobs worths have seen you try they'll be looking on for your return for weeks.
Parked up we treat it exactly as if we are at work. The no silane and boredom of the worker must be evident. No prickly nervous movements or scanning for dangers. We are supposed to be there. In a sense we have more rights than the workers as our aims are artistic, spiritual, adventures taken for no personal gain. Our only enemy the growing greyness of the everyday. Each morning we wake on a sumptuous planet crammed with strange and resplendent animals and plants. On a sphere spinning through space surrounded by stars and galaxies. Yet man chooses to polish shoes, look at only the mess, think only of money, constantly in search of distraction from the beauty and wonder of existence. It is our duty to see the world. We are aware for this briefest of windows and thus it is ours to look, to smell, to taste the wonder of existence. For sure, Solomon did not want to die. But he died in search of wonder, and that is no bad death.
My fear of heights is well known. Fortunately im not a freezer. They can cause you any kind of problem. But I step slowly. It feels unnatural. Lipton suffers an underground claustrophobia so neither of us is perfectly equipped.
We were over and in unseen. All activity was around the footprint of the now disassembled silo.
I've seen these since I was a boy and they've always fascinated. The differing heights of the gas dome, it's rings of walkway, it's curved linking ladders. Finally I had my own. I'd guess it's frame height at 150 feet. Not vast but enough to be inthe fall kill zone. Just the frame remained tall, the containers long empty sat at the lowest divide. Four sections criss crossed with triangulation frames held all steady and straight runs of zig zag stairs led to the top circle, our goal. Seeing our freedom we chose opposing sides of the silo.
It must have been nine or ten by now yet still the cutters worked on. The ground flooded with light meant soon we'd be out of all sight. Ripping up his side Lipton reached his top way before my ponderous stepping. And there, above the cities arse end, we looked across towards each other, either side of a hundred foot circle a hundred and fifty feet above the ground. Weirdly, despite the distance we could speak such was the activity below. Across that vast ring in the sky our bond was made. We knew what we must do. We must always be ready to abandon the mundane for adventure. Looking down space curves and new perspectives on routes you took each day became apparent.
We walked round and met up on our circle above. We cracked a can of special brew each and seldom has it tasted so invigorating ly pure and life affirming. A fair breeze reminded you not to let go easily. Though no giant it's still a one slip death monster. I can't remember us saying anything special. Pointing out landmarks. Me excited to see his glee. 'Glad you came?' I asked. 'Fucking right, where we off tomorrow?' Lipton was initiated into my world.
After half an hour we were cold enough to come down. Scaling an in leaning fence is another matter. We'd stolen nothing. Hurt no one. So called the two security guards to let us out. They found our actions funny and let us return to site. But we'd ignited fire in our bellies. New plans formed from our excited minds. A touch of ketamine and more beer rounded off a perfect start.
Of course we had no inclination we were on a spiritual journey. That we had taken on a responsibility for mankind. We just thought of buildings and tunnels, bridges and structures. The city had become our playground.
Sent from my iPad
lights flooded the compound in white light yet anachronistically no cctv cameras revolved or watched in silence. The three gas silos on the Lower Bristol Road had reached functional obsolescence and though unlit steely one was left standing at the time I was under the belief they were all to be destroyed. Bath has some beautiful buildings but few exposed industrial architecture that I love. Workmen were cutting through sections of the Victorian frames with oxy acetal one torches, reducing these beasts of engineering to transportable chunks to be weighed in. One silo was already gone and I cursed myself for not being abreast of this operation. These men were some private firm hired in, not council workers happy to stretch jobs out. If we didn't act swiftly these icons of industrial past would be gone.
Surveying the area under the pretext of being an art photographer the security allowed me to take thirty odd shots from outside the chain link fence. I wasn't lieing, I do photograph cooling towers, communication transmitters, water towers, anything of beauty despite itself. Never buildings of self consious wealth but that patch where civil engineering hands over to stylist architect. Here is where one can find the beauty within the mundane.
My recy complete i stashed away my mini compact camera and assessed the ease of access and scaling the still perfect third silos majesty would depend on the enthusiasm of the security. Their days are dull and sa wish so the deconstruction had put a spring in their tale however, in my wide experience of what has come to be known as urban exploration, they will be focused on making sure the metal isn't stolen for resale. They can't conceive of why anyone would want to climb the structures just to see from the top. Just to place oneself at a point in the city no one else goes.
Lipton was residing out at a traveller site of loose vehicles hidden behind a large public car park and a cheap eating pub, wither spoons or some such establishment. His own trailer and truck were back over shepton way and he'd come stay in town where cash could be made or free food found by stating in a vacant caravan. Unlocking the chained gate and rolling on to a new traveller site is always a mixed feeling of reforming old freindships or facing protective hostilities. No where can you just roll on to site in van or truck in to an established village without invitation, explanation or confrontation. Heavy rains had formed a vast puddle sped across. I only had a transit and their single rear wheel drive is notorious for getting stuck in muddied grooves. Fine on hard standing and summer days.
Lipton was polo nosed. Ketamine was popular at the time and the tell tale nostril halos and reddened strained eyes suggested the boys had been at it for a few days. It ceases to deliver the profound depth of k hole with repeat use and dimishing return leaves a rush of sensation but users fully able to talk to a straight man. I was offered a line but rejected. My mind was on the silos and distraction is all too easy on site.
Lipton is familiar with my missions and his bravery without question. He sometimes doesn't get why I need to do something but always grasps it is a serious and sincere operation. I explained about the demolition of the silos. How it was our duty to climb the final one, to walk around the top circle. To see the city lights above. To outsmart the security below. At this time the phrase urban exploration had not been coined and though other teams were out there I still felt it was my art form, not the fashion it became. It was not only the increased numbers out exploring but an event that shook me to the core. The Fall of Solomon as we came to refer to it saw a solo guy we'd often see out on building sites or railway embankments fall to his death from a half built office complex. He was not close but a freind. This put a damper on our enthusiasm for climbing and ultimately led to the later subterranian adventures in our hunt for jesse Presleys underground rock and roll empire. More on that later.
My plan, such as it could be described as such involved passing off our van amongst the workers. These boys were going all night and drove a mix of makes and colours. From the car park to the chain link would be easy booted up in our uniform hi viz jackets. The footprint of a gas silo is massive. The cutters were working dismantling components of the others and their unusual presence on site had the regular mundanity of the security engrossed. We should be fine scaling the seven or eight feet of checker link fencing crowned by those spiteful razor wire rolls. These fences weren't even vertical and nothing we hadn't bypassed ten or more times before. A rope ladder and a thick blanket for the razors, timed right should get me and Lipton inside in under a minute. Professional pride was at stake.
Shaking off the wannabes took a few minutes as all wanted to go. But this was my special work and I didn't want any k'd up or drunk ruining our one chance because once the security jobs worths have seen you try they'll be looking on for your return for weeks.
Parked up we treat it exactly as if we are at work. The no silane and boredom of the worker must be evident. No prickly nervous movements or scanning for dangers. We are supposed to be there. In a sense we have more rights than the workers as our aims are artistic, spiritual, adventures taken for no personal gain. Our only enemy the growing greyness of the everyday. Each morning we wake on a sumptuous planet crammed with strange and resplendent animals and plants. On a sphere spinning through space surrounded by stars and galaxies. Yet man chooses to polish shoes, look at only the mess, think only of money, constantly in search of distraction from the beauty and wonder of existence. It is our duty to see the world. We are aware for this briefest of windows and thus it is ours to look, to smell, to taste the wonder of existence. For sure, Solomon did not want to die. But he died in search of wonder, and that is no bad death.
My fear of heights is well known. Fortunately im not a freezer. They can cause you any kind of problem. But I step slowly. It feels unnatural. Lipton suffers an underground claustrophobia so neither of us is perfectly equipped.
We were over and in unseen. All activity was around the footprint of the now disassembled silo.
I've seen these since I was a boy and they've always fascinated. The differing heights of the gas dome, it's rings of walkway, it's curved linking ladders. Finally I had my own. I'd guess it's frame height at 150 feet. Not vast but enough to be inthe fall kill zone. Just the frame remained tall, the containers long empty sat at the lowest divide. Four sections criss crossed with triangulation frames held all steady and straight runs of zig zag stairs led to the top circle, our goal. Seeing our freedom we chose opposing sides of the silo.
It must have been nine or ten by now yet still the cutters worked on. The ground flooded with light meant soon we'd be out of all sight. Ripping up his side Lipton reached his top way before my ponderous stepping. And there, above the cities arse end, we looked across towards each other, either side of a hundred foot circle a hundred and fifty feet above the ground. Weirdly, despite the distance we could speak such was the activity below. Across that vast ring in the sky our bond was made. We knew what we must do. We must always be ready to abandon the mundane for adventure. Looking down space curves and new perspectives on routes you took each day became apparent.
We walked round and met up on our circle above. We cracked a can of special brew each and seldom has it tasted so invigorating ly pure and life affirming. A fair breeze reminded you not to let go easily. Though no giant it's still a one slip death monster. I can't remember us saying anything special. Pointing out landmarks. Me excited to see his glee. 'Glad you came?' I asked. 'Fucking right, where we off tomorrow?' Lipton was initiated into my world.
After half an hour we were cold enough to come down. Scaling an in leaning fence is another matter. We'd stolen nothing. Hurt no one. So called the two security guards to let us out. They found our actions funny and let us return to site. But we'd ignited fire in our bellies. New plans formed from our excited minds. A touch of ketamine and more beer rounded off a perfect start.
Of course we had no inclination we were on a spiritual journey. That we had taken on a responsibility for mankind. We just thought of buildings and tunnels, bridges and structures. The city had become our playground.
Sent from my iPad
Wednesday 20 May 2015
Saturday 16 May 2015
How to get ahead in life
How to get ahead in life
While walking down The job centre with the wife
I says, 'how do folk get on in life?'
She says, 'knobhead, you find an opportune opening'
Just round the corner by the snooker hall, the brickies ont tea break had left a hole in the wall
I slipped in, to the opening, tipped all the tills in to a bin, then slipped out of the openng. A small ish wise cunts sin.
Walking down't Headrow with me old girl
I asks 'how did Dad get on int world'
She says, 'Son, you sure are a brain dead pillock, just like all folk wi nouse he kept his eyes open for his window of opportunity.'
So just like he, I scanned the streets for a clue,
Fortunately they'd burnt the toast at number 22,
Wide open fucker and I jumped right through.
I got a I phone 5, a PS 4, a wide screen Sony which barely fit through't door.
And sold't lot. To get ahead in life.
Grandma Wilkins come round for tea, I asks 'how did grandad Wilkins get your place up Shadwell, that coundntve bin free, '
She says, 'Son, you're sure a divvy cunt. Takes a bit of luck, you know, a leg up in life.'
I says, 'smart', and fucked off up Adel. With our Adele.
Them church windows are fixed high up and just as gran said I needed't leg up
To get through, thanks to Adele,
Gold candlesticks and Angels. All kinds of resale weigh in tat and collection box to boot.
Then Monday came the postman stood my giro in his hand. An honest man with car and house, I asked from whence he got his nouse. 'By buggery youre thick you twat but I'll tell you this for nowt, life's like snakes and ladders and if you're savvy you can tell one from t'other.'
So off up Alwoodley lane I walked, where all the posh cunts live. Even prudent postmen if blessed up top, no div.
and just as that wise postie said a ladder stood by 't'house. A window cleaner at the top, soon stranded came to shout, 'Come back with my ladder you thieving chavy cunt!' But I darent look back nor face his squeals, an entrepaneur becomes deaf to such appeals.
I picked my house, checked all were out and planted up me ladder, then up its treads I stepped reat fast so no cunt could chance upon me.
An elbow throught bedroom window, scrambled in quiet and swift though. Straight to the Mrs dressing table loaded with Tom foolery, what cockney theives call jewellery, and crammed me pockets with gold and chains, diamonds on rings. All sorts of sparkling birthday gifts to sell down town come't morrow.
So looking back, now a respected man, a dude of wealth and taste. Live right out near Harewood, so I do. Some take me for a country gent, some take me for a gentry cunt, but my advice to you. Respect your elders good advice and follow to the letter. An honest life it can be made but a dishonest one pays better.
Sent from my iPad
While walking down The job centre with the wife
I says, 'how do folk get on in life?'
She says, 'knobhead, you find an opportune opening'
Just round the corner by the snooker hall, the brickies ont tea break had left a hole in the wall
I slipped in, to the opening, tipped all the tills in to a bin, then slipped out of the openng. A small ish wise cunts sin.
Walking down't Headrow with me old girl
I asks 'how did Dad get on int world'
She says, 'Son, you sure are a brain dead pillock, just like all folk wi nouse he kept his eyes open for his window of opportunity.'
So just like he, I scanned the streets for a clue,
Fortunately they'd burnt the toast at number 22,
Wide open fucker and I jumped right through.
I got a I phone 5, a PS 4, a wide screen Sony which barely fit through't door.
And sold't lot. To get ahead in life.
Grandma Wilkins come round for tea, I asks 'how did grandad Wilkins get your place up Shadwell, that coundntve bin free, '
She says, 'Son, you're sure a divvy cunt. Takes a bit of luck, you know, a leg up in life.'
I says, 'smart', and fucked off up Adel. With our Adele.
Them church windows are fixed high up and just as gran said I needed't leg up
To get through, thanks to Adele,
Gold candlesticks and Angels. All kinds of resale weigh in tat and collection box to boot.
Then Monday came the postman stood my giro in his hand. An honest man with car and house, I asked from whence he got his nouse. 'By buggery youre thick you twat but I'll tell you this for nowt, life's like snakes and ladders and if you're savvy you can tell one from t'other.'
So off up Alwoodley lane I walked, where all the posh cunts live. Even prudent postmen if blessed up top, no div.
and just as that wise postie said a ladder stood by 't'house. A window cleaner at the top, soon stranded came to shout, 'Come back with my ladder you thieving chavy cunt!' But I darent look back nor face his squeals, an entrepaneur becomes deaf to such appeals.
I picked my house, checked all were out and planted up me ladder, then up its treads I stepped reat fast so no cunt could chance upon me.
An elbow throught bedroom window, scrambled in quiet and swift though. Straight to the Mrs dressing table loaded with Tom foolery, what cockney theives call jewellery, and crammed me pockets with gold and chains, diamonds on rings. All sorts of sparkling birthday gifts to sell down town come't morrow.
So looking back, now a respected man, a dude of wealth and taste. Live right out near Harewood, so I do. Some take me for a country gent, some take me for a gentry cunt, but my advice to you. Respect your elders good advice and follow to the letter. An honest life it can be made but a dishonest one pays better.
Sent from my iPad
Friday 15 May 2015
I Tried to catch a fractured angel fallen to the E
I Tried to catch a fractured angel fallen to the Earth
I tried to catch the fragments as the shattered angel fell to earth
Her particles slipped through my grasp
lacerating finger flesh
like crushing lightbulbs clapped twixt palms my shredded grasp bloodied but sparkling crystal fragment cuts
Her diamond shards regrouped together glancing back with mild disdain
As if a man could hold or help such matter equipped with mere flesh and heart
this crystalline mist of dust and sand and chunks so sharp it slashed through meat
and silently entranced I couldn't hope to shift my glance as wonder trumped attempts to avert my eye
so captured by her majesty, shattered, shifting, reformation particles found destination
such grace eclipses privacy
so rare one gapes unconsciously
resisting staring at beauteous impossibility
pity or empathic forgiveness allowed her eyes to let me in and briefly witness reassembly
a metamorphic reconstruction, something human eyes aren't free to see
this rebirth of a mythic being of beauty beyond our natural laws of simple flesh biology
and as the crystal creature reassembled, fluid speed rendered me humbled
the witness to a magic science not of our world
scared and lost in our moist and peat and meat
her crystalline biology accepted my water based fragility
she stopped and graced me to let me see
but briefly her broken form reassemble silently
returned to strong geology
we saw each other openly
so swiftly her return to flight shone down on me resplendent light
as magic slipped away to my normality
my bloodied shredded hands heald particles of jewelled sand
the coloured spectrum fragments burnt
my palms a gift of painful colours
crystal fragments, blood and loss
Sent from my iPad
I tried to catch the fragments as the shattered angel fell to earth
Her particles slipped through my grasp
lacerating finger flesh
like crushing lightbulbs clapped twixt palms my shredded grasp bloodied but sparkling crystal fragment cuts
Her diamond shards regrouped together glancing back with mild disdain
As if a man could hold or help such matter equipped with mere flesh and heart
this crystalline mist of dust and sand and chunks so sharp it slashed through meat
and silently entranced I couldn't hope to shift my glance as wonder trumped attempts to avert my eye
so captured by her majesty, shattered, shifting, reformation particles found destination
such grace eclipses privacy
so rare one gapes unconsciously
resisting staring at beauteous impossibility
pity or empathic forgiveness allowed her eyes to let me in and briefly witness reassembly
a metamorphic reconstruction, something human eyes aren't free to see
this rebirth of a mythic being of beauty beyond our natural laws of simple flesh biology
and as the crystal creature reassembled, fluid speed rendered me humbled
the witness to a magic science not of our world
scared and lost in our moist and peat and meat
her crystalline biology accepted my water based fragility
she stopped and graced me to let me see
but briefly her broken form reassemble silently
returned to strong geology
we saw each other openly
so swiftly her return to flight shone down on me resplendent light
as magic slipped away to my normality
my bloodied shredded hands heald particles of jewelled sand
the coloured spectrum fragments burnt
my palms a gift of painful colours
crystal fragments, blood and loss
Sent from my iPad
The Return of the Archangel Michael
The Return of the Archangel Michael
I told the angel who I was then watched shock flood down his sanctity
His self disgusted and shameful form walked off to report my arrival
'He's here, my Lord,' he bowed his head to the mightiest of all
A touch of Crimson, guilt? Remorse? Pinked the holy whitened beard
'Let him through, of course, my most trusted defender,
Archangel Michael, he who sparred down lucifer, stuck through Satan
His blade bereft of fear and certain of victory, supreme knight of God
Blood still scabbed my blade from battle welding sword to scabbard
The fallen angels dieing spurt from throat I cut ensuring his demise
Satan done through I had returned to hear His mighty plan
'Ive done your work now , Lord, and what is my return,
As you who sat at home in fear awaiting my return, surrounded by
your angel hoardes, waiting news of my delivery of your glory, the end to
your evil reverse. Yourself pulled through infinity, two gloves for paired hands.
Your mirrored self now lies lifeless and I come to you for why?'
The Holyest of Holys, the supreme being shook. He sent his minion staff away
for our sole ears to discuss. 'He gave you choices, freedom to fail, to turn against my vanity,
I feared he could prevail.' 'But choice is good, my Lord, our liberty to err,
ours alone to sin or not, your gift, or was it not?'
'I loved you Michael, I loved you all, his offers were but tricks. Distractions from my masterplan
of overwhelming good.' I stole myself and gripped my sword as wrinkles frowned my brow.
'And who chose what was good or bad, who chose piety or sin, were this games rules
struck out fair between you mirrored pair? Or did you set the game alone.'
His mighty ness seemed human now, a vanity at most. This war created for His glory
my life it's victor prince.
And filled with rage I drew my sword, scabbed dry Satan blood releasing. And thrust my blade deep down Gods throat to equalise this planet.
For one mans good is another's bad and no man should right decide.
Nor vainglorious creators play games with people's lives.
Sent from my iPad
I told the angel who I was then watched shock flood down his sanctity
His self disgusted and shameful form walked off to report my arrival
'He's here, my Lord,' he bowed his head to the mightiest of all
A touch of Crimson, guilt? Remorse? Pinked the holy whitened beard
'Let him through, of course, my most trusted defender,
Archangel Michael, he who sparred down lucifer, stuck through Satan
His blade bereft of fear and certain of victory, supreme knight of God
Blood still scabbed my blade from battle welding sword to scabbard
The fallen angels dieing spurt from throat I cut ensuring his demise
Satan done through I had returned to hear His mighty plan
'Ive done your work now , Lord, and what is my return,
As you who sat at home in fear awaiting my return, surrounded by
your angel hoardes, waiting news of my delivery of your glory, the end to
your evil reverse. Yourself pulled through infinity, two gloves for paired hands.
Your mirrored self now lies lifeless and I come to you for why?'
The Holyest of Holys, the supreme being shook. He sent his minion staff away
for our sole ears to discuss. 'He gave you choices, freedom to fail, to turn against my vanity,
I feared he could prevail.' 'But choice is good, my Lord, our liberty to err,
ours alone to sin or not, your gift, or was it not?'
'I loved you Michael, I loved you all, his offers were but tricks. Distractions from my masterplan
of overwhelming good.' I stole myself and gripped my sword as wrinkles frowned my brow.
'And who chose what was good or bad, who chose piety or sin, were this games rules
struck out fair between you mirrored pair? Or did you set the game alone.'
His mighty ness seemed human now, a vanity at most. This war created for His glory
my life it's victor prince.
And filled with rage I drew my sword, scabbed dry Satan blood releasing. And thrust my blade deep down Gods throat to equalise this planet.
For one mans good is another's bad and no man should right decide.
Nor vainglorious creators play games with people's lives.
Sent from my iPad
Thursday 14 May 2015
Fwd: Sam Harris is a liar
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michael wainwright <skreeworld@yahoo.com>
Date: Thursday, May 14, 2015
Subject: Sam Harris is a liar
To: skreeworld@googlemail.com
Sam Harris is a liar
I read Sam Harris' breif treatise on lieing. How the world could be so much better if we all told the truth. I even know a handful of heaven spawn who've somehow found themselves among us. Like simpletons who've just had their lunchbox stolen by the school bully they look on bemused, aware this higher state, this better way could be. Almost like dogs. Dogs see no reason why an ape would lie. This would merely confuse. Just add to the jumbled road system our nation spins round covering mile after mile of irrelevant Tarmac. Finally these loops deliver the nations taxpayers back to their wives and children but only after stealing half their lives so urban planners drawings looked planned. Patterns drawn often begun with decent intent but as their artwork grows, interposes and super overlays other genii of urban route mastery, the over sprawl, the artwork, the communal tortuous circuitry that never reaches completion, becomes pattern on paper. Junctions of dis function but aesthetic eloquence. Nods of respect as blue motorways curve ingeniously oppositional to users destination. "Smart move, Stephens. Swindon bypassed with magisterial inclusion of reading." The road map of Britain a mistaken correction of a mistake of a mistake. A doubling of fuel consumption because we can no longer go back. It is too late. From power supply to farming. We took the wrong road years ago. We can't strip our paths away. RIP it all up. Start again and correct the growing tumour of vehicle vessels. A dog would wait for night, till lorry and commuter had completed lonely last late night hauls. Then, in silence, ignore all mans laid lineage and head directly for their destination.
Harris hunger for truth. A Christian impulse, if ever one was can never be. Humans tell stories. My characters the work of years adjustments. Alterations to the inadequate truth. For Darwins greatest lesson was that we are animals. Strip us of our lies and all we are is fighting males for alpha pack rulership. Women bitch stabbing in baggage and babble and put down and bitchy digs to raise their status. Men all want to fuck their freinds wives, unless they are ugly. They circulate in dress code developeing their self narratives of bullshit. Creating film characters, swarve, smart, interesting, sophisticated, clever, funny, better in all fields than their rivals. But in the real world where words are meaningless gruntage, it's still the competition. And much as they despise boxers, brutes, animals, it is only men of sport, competing outside of lies. Offering real truths. Of who could realy deck who. Who, if push came to shove could batter who.
On reading Harris I spent a moment in his Christian heaven of honesty and truth. The air was sweet and heads were heald proud. Untwisted by a life of story and characature. Faces smooth, unwrinkled by guilt, deception and fraud. His laughable fantasy as pompous as his letter to a Christian nation.
I had it once and can draw on it in danger. Never listen to what a person says. Not even the first utterance. Watch what they do. Let there verbal dexterity descend to pig grunt, let it affect your mind no more than silence. But watch what the animal does. The true rulers of this overlay of narrative frauds can get most to believe their piss is rain. That their polite conversational inclusion of ones wife is gentlemanly, while their cock lies semi erect, awaiting your next bathroom venture. This is the world we chose. Lies, deception, nothing is real. Save the boxer. The fighter. He who speaks only to arrange matter of a practical nature. Still some truth lies in tacit knowledge. The carpenter. The mechanic. The nearer to the animal, the nobler the man. But once a man abandons his hands to make his living what has he left? Only stories, deceptions, trickery. And Sam Harris' hands are not calloused. His life is narrative. A linguistic projection of a truth he would like you to believe. That is his job. And he is a fair player. A pretty good damn liar.
Sent from my iPad
Wednesday 13 May 2015
AL -LAD. The doorway to truth
6-allyl-6-nor-LSD was first synthesised by a group of Japanese chemists in the early 1970s though David Nicholls has claimed the discovery and AL-LAD as most now know it was made aware to psychonauts by Alexander shulgin. There have been a wide cross section of reports on this drug which is a refinement of LSD. It is expensive to make as LSD25 must be synthesised first. This is then reduced by a process not commonly known by four fifths. Essentially LSD, a known drug is diminished in quantity by four fifths to make a drug few other than psychonauts have heard of. Many have used the drug and suggested it is flash and glitter, visual but lacking the soul searching element of LSD. It's duration is just 4 or 5 hours to LSD's 7 to 11 hours. Some LSD purists regard it as soft mans acid. I have even heard reports of some psychonauts feeling no effect at all.
Yet, to me, this is perhaps mans greatest work of chemistry. For sure, it isn't so challenging as acid. A euphoria ensues as a swift assendance free of all acids anxiety fills me with a confidence. A fearlessness. The hundreds of trips wasted, scared to enter a shop, fearful of an approaching gang, the dark corridors of the mind, the feelings that plague so many trips of a danger or demon, following behind. AL-LAD has none of this. The countless hours of trip time wasted, holding on, trying to keep it together for fear of something undefined. People working against the trip. Fighting its effects to stay sober. Preventing the whole essence of being taken. Abandoning oneself to infinity and the endless possibility. AL -LAD has no time for this pushing around. Perhaps you want a ride on the ghost train. LSD is always a choice.
Yet this freedom. This deliverance from fear allows one to dive headfirst without caution, free of all worry. The deep self examination of acid, the acid test is an important thing but you take acid if you want to scrutinise your soul. But this is no MDMa. No character changer enabling conversation with any knobhead, embracing, planning meet ups with dickheads. You restrain self. You keep dignity.
As with any drug it takes time to learn. Like riding a horse or a motorbike. A skill base must be established. I can only suspect those who deride its joys try it once, looking for acid. Perhaps twice. They find it is not acid but fail to open their minds. Learn its nuances. Get to know its own special personality and forget trying to see Lucy. Once you've learned this. Once accepting, there is no experience I have had in my life that comes close.
I first tried the one on a birthday morning to sparkle the day. Before long I realised this 'party' dose is insufficient. I began to try different options. One time I took one 150ug blotter each hour for five hours. This has some merit but the secret truly comes when taking 300ug or 450ug in a single go. 150ug allows you to observe the trip from outside, studying it for future reference. But once ready go for a decent single dose. It took maybe five trips to realise this was something very special. After seven or eight times I now believe there is no drug to compare. No experience in my life to compare.
I've described others but one I took in leeds two weeks back can only be described as a first hand religious experience. I was mildly drunk and took 300ug and headed for the woods in evening light. A strongish trip comparable in strength to the many trips of my youth.
At some point the intensity increased twenty fold, a hundred fold. I lost Chris and for four hours I became free of any individual self. I became the soil and all its abundance of micro organisms. I became the root network of the forest, tangled underground. I became the trees, the leaves. I became the wind blowing through them. I became the stream. My consiousness became not a singular person but spread throughout the area of woodland. No part, big nor microscopic was not incorporated. The global consiousness had taken me in. All Id, all ego, all separation was gone. I could see from any perspective. Look down from the clouds I had become. Enjoy the speed of the current in the stream I was. I was one with nature, to use an overused phrase. My significance could be a grain of sand, but equally I could observe myself, godlike from above. This sounds arrogant but was humbling. It was a truth that had always been. I have had out of body fixed point outside myself experience but this was of such magnitude, so far beyond any trip of my youth. And it was good. The earth was good. Entering this single consiousness was no hallucination, it was more a true observation I have not been permitted before in life.
I can no longer see this earth, this life, as seperates. Of course we know we live, we die, we rot, our mineral deposits compost down. We know this intelectually but I was that for some four hours. Quite easily the most spiritual moment of my life. If I never reach such heights again I can still remember.
After some four hours I returned to Deans, trousers torn. I felt the moment it left as I had to return to skree to talk to my freinds. It had gone.
We took a further 200ug 1p-LSD which ensured a trip continued throughout the night. Not the same. Enjoyable in that bright 1p silver gleam. So far 1p has not taken me anywhere like so far. I like it. It's duration of some 11 hours is a great way to tailgate the LAD. Who would want to return from that? But nothing like that.
AL-LAD could be mans greatest discovery. In all honesty I believe it can break you into the universal singular consiousness. I look back now at my writing of science and realise how foolhardy. How closed minded I had been. But how could I have known life was one connected thing. I am changed.
Yet, to me, this is perhaps mans greatest work of chemistry. For sure, it isn't so challenging as acid. A euphoria ensues as a swift assendance free of all acids anxiety fills me with a confidence. A fearlessness. The hundreds of trips wasted, scared to enter a shop, fearful of an approaching gang, the dark corridors of the mind, the feelings that plague so many trips of a danger or demon, following behind. AL-LAD has none of this. The countless hours of trip time wasted, holding on, trying to keep it together for fear of something undefined. People working against the trip. Fighting its effects to stay sober. Preventing the whole essence of being taken. Abandoning oneself to infinity and the endless possibility. AL -LAD has no time for this pushing around. Perhaps you want a ride on the ghost train. LSD is always a choice.
Yet this freedom. This deliverance from fear allows one to dive headfirst without caution, free of all worry. The deep self examination of acid, the acid test is an important thing but you take acid if you want to scrutinise your soul. But this is no MDMa. No character changer enabling conversation with any knobhead, embracing, planning meet ups with dickheads. You restrain self. You keep dignity.
As with any drug it takes time to learn. Like riding a horse or a motorbike. A skill base must be established. I can only suspect those who deride its joys try it once, looking for acid. Perhaps twice. They find it is not acid but fail to open their minds. Learn its nuances. Get to know its own special personality and forget trying to see Lucy. Once you've learned this. Once accepting, there is no experience I have had in my life that comes close.
I first tried the one on a birthday morning to sparkle the day. Before long I realised this 'party' dose is insufficient. I began to try different options. One time I took one 150ug blotter each hour for five hours. This has some merit but the secret truly comes when taking 300ug or 450ug in a single go. 150ug allows you to observe the trip from outside, studying it for future reference. But once ready go for a decent single dose. It took maybe five trips to realise this was something very special. After seven or eight times I now believe there is no drug to compare. No experience in my life to compare.
I've described others but one I took in leeds two weeks back can only be described as a first hand religious experience. I was mildly drunk and took 300ug and headed for the woods in evening light. A strongish trip comparable in strength to the many trips of my youth.
At some point the intensity increased twenty fold, a hundred fold. I lost Chris and for four hours I became free of any individual self. I became the soil and all its abundance of micro organisms. I became the root network of the forest, tangled underground. I became the trees, the leaves. I became the wind blowing through them. I became the stream. My consiousness became not a singular person but spread throughout the area of woodland. No part, big nor microscopic was not incorporated. The global consiousness had taken me in. All Id, all ego, all separation was gone. I could see from any perspective. Look down from the clouds I had become. Enjoy the speed of the current in the stream I was. I was one with nature, to use an overused phrase. My significance could be a grain of sand, but equally I could observe myself, godlike from above. This sounds arrogant but was humbling. It was a truth that had always been. I have had out of body fixed point outside myself experience but this was of such magnitude, so far beyond any trip of my youth. And it was good. The earth was good. Entering this single consiousness was no hallucination, it was more a true observation I have not been permitted before in life.
I can no longer see this earth, this life, as seperates. Of course we know we live, we die, we rot, our mineral deposits compost down. We know this intelectually but I was that for some four hours. Quite easily the most spiritual moment of my life. If I never reach such heights again I can still remember.
After some four hours I returned to Deans, trousers torn. I felt the moment it left as I had to return to skree to talk to my freinds. It had gone.
We took a further 200ug 1p-LSD which ensured a trip continued throughout the night. Not the same. Enjoyable in that bright 1p silver gleam. So far 1p has not taken me anywhere like so far. I like it. It's duration of some 11 hours is a great way to tailgate the LAD. Who would want to return from that? But nothing like that.
AL-LAD could be mans greatest discovery. In all honesty I believe it can break you into the universal singular consiousness. I look back now at my writing of science and realise how foolhardy. How closed minded I had been. But how could I have known life was one connected thing. I am changed.
Saturday 9 May 2015
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