Our fathers took turns driving us, on alternating weekends. We participated in services, and afterwards, in children's Sunday school, we studied the Old Testament, from texts with comic-book illustrations depicting scenes from the bible. We kept at it, until just before my older brother reached the age of his Bar Mitzvah. I think it was difficult, emotionally, for our father to show up for us. Given the resistance we put up about going to temple, all of the whining and complaining, by the time my older brother was about twelve, my father abdicated his position as enforcer of Torah studies, and our attendance permanently lapsed.

There was an element of complication to the decisions my parents made concerning our religious training. By Jewish law, children are considered to belong to the religion of the mother. Since my mother had drifted further from her Catholic roots, and was, to some degree, subservient to my father, she acquiesced to him when it came time to choose between church and synagogue. She would not, however, capitulate on the matter of Christmas, so we did celebrate that holiday, with the caveat that the unfortunate little evergreen on which we hung our lights, ornaments and tinsel each holiday season, was referred to as a "Hanukkah Bush," rather than a Christmas tree.

Many of the other kids in my neighborhood had Irish and Italian Catholic roots, or were from families otherwise Christian. Some attended Catholic private school, others were strictly required to take part in mass and confession. Once in a while, these kids would come home terribly frightened, from a fire and brimstone sermon, and feel the need to enlighten the rest of us about our poor prospects for the future, given our heathen status.

Apparently, heaven was a sort of gated community, and if you didn't follow the narrow and highly detailed set by-laws put forth by their home-owners association, you'd be denied entrance, and, as a consequence, your soul was subject to eternal damnation, and would burn in hell for ever.

There might have been a bit of the "telephone" effect to how I received information on Christianity. By the time it reached me, it was distorted to the point of ludicrousness, and was impossible to take seriously. Talking to young Chris Mueller, fresh out of Sunday services, eyes like saucers and mouth pursed into an "O", looking like he'd just seen a ghost. Telling the rest of us that we didn't even have to DO anything wrong to fall from grace, we already WERE wrong, because of the doctrine of original sin. The burden of guilt on this poor child, when he informed us that it was we who were responsible for the death of Christ, probably impelled him into decades of psychotherapy.

I found the whole notion so absurd that I suffered a total loss of empathy. None of it had any reality for me. It didn't correlate with any of my childhood experiences. It was no more believable than the cartoons on TV, or, say, an issue of "MAD" magazine.

It looked to me like a prime example of the insanity of the adults. I thought the real problem was that misinformed parents were erroneously indoctrinating their malleable offspring with fallacious, pie-in-the-sky fables that were impossible to live up to, and neither helpful, nor useful.

There were a few kids who were learned and serious, on the subject of religious studies. These kids were sincere, and devoted. They were the pious, in-your-face, bible-thumping proselytizers. I concluded that they were suffering from information poisoning, mind control, and needed to have their brains washed out by one of those cult deprograming experts.

You know, kidnapped, and taken to a motel room, with the shades drawn, in Teaneck, New Jersey. The interventionist spends seventy two hours forcing them into a state of sleep deprivation, and through a process of coercive persuasion, manages to reform their thought processes until they break free and regain their ability to rationally dispute ideas. In a short while, they're able to arrive at the conclusion that they'd been duped, and voluntarily repudiate their former belief system.

There was no congruence between whet the religionists said, and what they actually did. Many of the kids who went to Christian summer camps would come back and broaden the rest of our horizons in regards to the more recent innovations in sex, drugs, and rock n' roll.

The way that my resentment towards organized religion played out, was that for most of my life, I was incapable of receiving meaningful spiritual direction from conventional sources. I was full of mistrust and disbelief, and experienced a deeply rooted reaction of claustrophobia and repression from any contact I had with western religious institutions.

Although technically a baby-boomer, more recent social theorists have coined my generation, "Generation Jones", located right between the boomers and "Generation X." A product of the wind-swept steppes of 1970's suburbia, wanting for no material thing, yet suffering from an unrequited spiritual hunger, a "God-sized hole", that no amount of consumerism, sexual adventuring, or designer drugs would ever be able to satisfy. The defining characteristic of this demographic group is constant hunger, a.k.a. "Jonesing", a slang term coined during the heyday of that era, meaning, "to have a strong need, desire or craving for something, originally in reference to chemical dependancy", i.e., junk.

When I was about twelve, my father gave me a copy of "The Prophet", by Khalil Gibran. The author was a Lebanese born artist who, as a youth, emmigrated to America. The book was published in 1923, and gained in popularity, over the years, until becoming a philosophical classic amongst the 60's counter-culture. The protagonist of the story is a seer who is stopped and questioned by fellow travelers, as he is about to board a ship, to sail for his homeland, after a twelve year absence. His responses to their queries becomes an inspirational discourse on a broad variety of topics related to the human condition.

I had so far failed to make any kind of meaningful connection with the religion of the adults. Reading "The Prophet" precipitated my first significant awakening to the fact of an inner life. It brought me to experience an undeniable awareness of my own spiritual dimension, and to accept that I had a sincere need for genuine spiritual guidance. Something deep and internal moved within me, a shifting of the tectonic plates.

At a time when we were living in our big, cookie-cutter house, lunching on "pizzas" made out english muffins covered in ketchup and american cheese, my idea of recreation was breaking irreplaceable antique bottles on the rocks in the woods, and my father was teaching me about three-card monty and pimpmobiles, I made friends with a kid from school who lived in a Frank Lloyd Wright house in the Usonia community in Pleasantville, New York. My friend's parents were well-traveled, highly educated, macrobiotic, pacifist Jewish intellectuals.

The Usonian concept was to create small, planned communities, free from previous architectural conventions, as an expression of an original, new-world landscape. The houses were avant-garde in their degree of environmental consciousness, utilizing native materials, passive solar and radiant floor heating, natural cooling, natural lighting with clerestory windows, and so on. There was always a strong visual connection between the interior and exterior spaces in the Usonia homes, they were built into the landscape.

I first laid my hands on a copy of "The Whole Earth Catalog", on the coffee table in the living room of that home. The author, Stewart Brand, had initiated a campaign, in the mid-1960's, requesting that NASA release, for the first time, a photograph of the whole earth, taken from outer space. Brand wanted to help save the planet. He felt that this image alone would be enough to bring about a shift in our collective consciousness.

The "WEC" was intended as inspiration to stimulate free thinking, to blend practicality, liberal social values, and emerging ideas, and to serve as a clearing house for esoteric knowledge. It provided information on topics such as deep ecology, alternative energy, sustainable building, ethical business practices, organic farming, aquaculture, and the preservation of endangered species. It was a resource for giving individuals access to the information and tools needed in order to revision society, through "appropriate technology" and "whole systems thinking."

This second, seminal piece of literature not only significantly broadened my world view, but, without my having been able to put this into words, it introduced to the experience of "sacred outlook", the pure perception that our world, and everything in it, is our blessing, and therefore an integral part of spirituality. In other words, it linked ecology to theology. Somehow, the "WEC" ended up on the same shelf as the spiritual books.

The third book that sent me on that big, left turn was "The Story of My Experiments With Truth", which was the autobiography of Mohandas K. Ghandi. Although I did not myself aspire to a saintly life of political action and selfless service, I was enthralled by Ghandi's incredible story, how, by harnessing his faith in God, with simplicity and humility, and having the courage to live up to his convictions, he was able to to accomplish great deeds.

His story is an example of how one person's dedicating their life to the spiritual quest expressed itself through activity in the world, in the creation of a grass-roots revolution for social justice that successfully brought about positive political changes in the governing of a nation, which, in turn, effected other nations and the world.

Ghandi pioneered the use of mass civil disobedience, founded on the principle of non-violence, as a tool for political reform and social change, which was, of course, adopted by Martin Luther King Jr., and the American Civil Rights Movement. Ghandi led mass-movements for women's rights, organized labor, religious amity, tax reform, abolition of repressive class structure, easing poverty, and foremost, for India's independence from foreign domination.

In reading this book, there were two graphic images that impacted me. One of them had to do with Ghandi's spinning cotton yarn on a a portable, hand cranked spindle. All of his clothing was made of cloth woven from this yarn. He urged all Indian citizens to follow his example, in order to boycott the machine-loomed fabric manufactured in English factories, as a method for developing national economic self-reliance. The lowly spinning wheel ultimately became the symbol of the entire Indian Independence Movement.

The image that stayed with me was of Ghandi, in his traditional Indian garb, sitting on the floor in the reception room of the office of the British Prime Minister, patiently twisting up khadi yarn on his portable spindle as he awaited his appointment with one of the most powerful leaders of the developed world.

The other image that stayed with me was a photograph of the sum total of Ghandi's worldly possessions, at the time of his assassination. A pair of glasses, a pair of sandals, a bowl, a spoon, a knife, a watch, a robe, a walking stick, and a Hindu religious book. Previous to seeing that photograph, I had always thought that life was, "all about stuff", that, "When you die, the person with the most stuff, wins."

Right along then, my mother took me to my first crafts fair, out in the parking lot at the North Castle Public Library, in downtown Armonk. The most prominent works were wall hangings made from hand-knotted macrame, done with colored strings, with seashells and pieces of driftwood woven into them, which were all the rage, back then. There was also a display of some languid tie-dyed fabrics and tee shirts, that had been done by bunching the cloth up, with knotted rubber bands, and dipping it into bland, unsaturated pigments, for a kind of pastel effect. Then there was an assortment of small pieces of thick, poorly formed pottery, with heavy, dark glazes. We bought a small pitcher from that stand.

There were two hippy-looking potters, a teacher and his apprentice, doing an outdoor demonstration, hand-throwing clay. They had set up a wedging board, and a small bucket of water next to a kick-wheel. Grapefruit sized lumps of the clay were prepared by kneading them in a circular motion on the plaster board. Then, with the wheel turning slowly, a lump of clay was thrown down onto the flat wheel-head. The wheel speed was increased, and the clay was lubricated by squeezing water from the bucket out of a small sponge in one hand. Then, with both hands, exerting a firm, downward and inward force, the clay was shaped into a perfectly centered mass.

After the lump was centered, the potter formed a hollow in the clay, between the fingers of the two hands, using a series of rapid movements. Then, slowing the wheel speed slightly, reaching down and in, he spiraled up a tall, hollow, cylindrical form, remoistened it with the sponge, and reaching in once again, swelled out the belly to form a jug. As the vessel widened, it shortened somewhat in height. The potter finished the form by compressing and thickening the rim with a wet, slip soaked piece of leather.

Stopping the wheel, using the index finger of one hand between the index and second finger of the other hand, he sensuously stroked a pitcher spout out of the lip of the vessel. Then, he demonstrated how to form a handle, by pulling, in a linear fashion, on a smaller lump of wet, slip coated clay. He looped the handle over upon itself to set up and dry.

They took turns making pieces. They worked efficiently, in a straightforward way, with a sense of confidence and lack of inhibition, and the plastic material came magically alive in their hands. The whole thing was beautiful, the athleticism of the men, with their long, flowing pony-tails, shirt sleeves rolled up, in jeans, with muddy aprons, and the spontaneous, living quality of the moist stoneware. Watching them work made me feel elated.

We took class trips to the art museums in the city fairly regularly. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, that great fortress up on Fifth Avenue, while the majority of the kids were gaga over the Monet paintings, I was drawn to the ceramics in the galleries of Asian antiquities.

It's like how some kids become interested in chess. When you teach them the rules, it makes sense to them, if you show them a little, they'll guess the rest. They "have a head for it", the mathematics of the thing is already lodged somewhere inside of their minds. That was how I felt about ceramics, although it did strike me as odd at the time, to come to these strange objects unbidden, of my own accord.

With the old Chinese pottery, the Sung dynasty T'zu Chou ware, I could see the loose perfection in the integration of the shape of a vessel, with it's decorative, brush-worked surface. The tie-in between the power and gravity of the form, versus the lyrical spontaneity of the calligraphy. In the collections of folk pottery, from Korea and Japan, that had been used in the Japanese Zen tea ceremony, I could see the distinction that, where many of the objects were not superficially pretty, they possessed a beauty that was deep and complex.

There was "hakeme" slip work, rudely stroked with a coarse straw brush and incised with a cutting tool, or chattered with a wide brush of rabbit fur. There was the "mutton fat" style celadon glazes. There were austere Bizen wood ash-glazes, the ruggedly crawled and crackled Shino, and ornate, vigorously over-painted Oribe. My favorite tea bowls were "hare's fur" and "oil spot" tenmoku, iron saturates, with the glaze roll at the foot of the vessel beginning to form a droplet that never quite came into contact with the kiln shelf, it's downward motion arrested, just in time, by the cooling of the kiln.

I asked my teacher, Mrs. Becker, what I was seeing, and she told me it was called, "aesthetics", the ability to discern sensory values, to see the principles underlying and guiding the work, and to form judgements about the proportion, harmony, and unity in an object.

Things were changing, in our little hamlet, in the early 1970's, from both the outside, and the inside. Adolescence was looming, and with it, the expectation that we'd know what we wanted to be, when we grew up. There were so many conflicting parts, I didn't know how to piece it all together.

My father had episodes where he'd turn into a total maniac, usually in public, with the whole family, including my mother, mortified with embarrassment, and sobbing for mercy. Sea-monster insanity. One minute, the surface of the ocean was calm and flat, the next thing you knew, the whole ship was lifted clear out of the water, entangled in the tentacles of the giant squid. I've heard psychologists refer to it as the "dominant mood." These episodes did not escalate to the point of physical violence, they were emotional in nature.

Small things could trigger an incident, maybe being slighted by a clerk, in a store, or a waiter in a restaurant, or at home, if we were having "family yard-work day", or when, on a weekday, he finished his commute from the train station. When he drove into the driveway, pulled up to the garage door, and honked his car horn, if we ignored his honking, or didn't hustle out there to lift the garage door for him, so he wouldn't have to get out of his car before he'd pulled it in, he'd go into a tirade of fury, and act it out until we were all cowering in fear.

I was like the perfect storm of vulnerability factors for self-medicating. I was a sensitive kid, with an artistic temperament, from a family that was emotionally invalidating. I was constantly afraid and uncomfortable around other people. There was a high incidence of mental illness and alcoholism in the extended family. I was alienated from my peer group due to an indiscretion that had occurred at a spin-the-bottle party. Popular culture touted the whole "expansion of consciousness" deal from the sixties. I was subject to a lot of anxiety and depression from which fast relief would've been a blessing. I had been ripe for the jail-break, the feel-good, the quick-fix, for a long time.

My mother was a smoker, as fond of tobacco as her cigar-maker father had been. At the time of my birth, she was smoking two packs a day of filterless, Chesterfield straights. Could be the first thing I did as an infant was go into post-partum nicotine withdrawal. My first earthly accomplishment might have been that I quit smoking.

At the age of eight or nine, my friends and I started filching cigarettes from our parents. I smoked a couple, and choked on the smoke, and then got nauseous, sick to my stomach, kind of dizzy, and light headed. But, the brain chemistry, when I felt those synapses fire, and those neural pathways light up, well, the circus was in town. It was like coming home. My mission was clear, what I needed to do was to go out and get more.

Some of the kids from the broken homes were loud and aggressive, ugly, and mean, and I was scared of them. They'd come out of reform school with sharp little scars from knife fights, and long scars from getting whipped with snapped off car antennas, and cigarette burns on their arms, from in-home abuse. And there was some level of comprehension that they had been beaten and stripped and forcibly sodomized by, bigger, stronger, meaner boys. Many a boy's worst fear, to be left, humiliated, with an injured anus, innocence crushed, and rectum dripping semen from some revolting, hateful stranger.

But one thing the reform school kids were good at was illegally obtaining alcohol. This was my introduction to hiding in the bushes and trails behind the school grounds, and swilling malt liquor. The tough kids could drink five times more than I could, and vomit, and then drink some more. Sometimes I'd accidentally end up pegged for a fight, it was hard to avoid with that bunch. Somebody'd say, "Fuck you!", and then it's "No, fuck you!", "No, fuck you, you fuck!", which would inevitably lead to , "No, fuck you, you fuckin' fuck!", and then it was off to the races.

Well, I was usually too fearful to fight, so I'd back down, and skulk away, shamed and degraded. I'd think to myself, "Yeah, but if only Fotzen were here, I'd show you guys. We'd kick your ass! Yeah, if Fotzen were here, and Stephen, and Franky, and Joey, and Gaggy, you'd shit a brick! You'd beg for mercy, we'd show you!"

The older brothers of the blue-collar townie kids were coming back from Viet-Nam in terrible shape, all fucked up, in ways that I couldn't understand. By the end of a tour of duty, most of their minds were completely blown. The military would fly them back through Bangkok, Thailand. They partied down, big time, in Patpong, the red light district, and were still hammered, and pissing flames, when they caught their flight out.

This was how us kids learned about that thick bamboo tube, maybe three inches in diameter and eighteen inches long, called a "bong." The bong had a short, small tube extending upward, out of the side, near the bottom, at, like a forty-five degree angle. You put a few inches of water in the main chamber, and it served as a water pipe. The word was not pronounced with three syllables, "baaahhuunng", in the throat, the way they say it today. It was said in a short, clipped tone, in the nose, the whole word a half syllable long, as though you were sitting in a sweltering jungle in southeast Asia. "Bong."

They had these cuttings of bright green herb, as long as your hand, wrapped around a slender splint of wood, and tied in place with a spiral strand of red thread. These were called "Thai-sticks", and you smoked them by burning small pieces in the little throat-tube of the bong, and poking the ash through with a wire pick. You sucked the smoke through the water in the main chamber, and then inhaled it, and it sort of tasted like skunky, sweet, mint-flavored bacon.

It made you cough, and it made you giggle, and then it made you feel like the words you were trying to say were different than the words that were coming out of your mouth, and then it made you nervous to be around other people, and then it made you hungry, (I had eaten many a full box of "Cap'n Crunch" cereal, five and a half ounces of sugar, in one sitting, while under the influence), and then it made you sleepy, and then you'd want to do it all over again, as soon as possible.

Patti Schoeber was a girl who lived in the same neighborhood that I did, in Windmill Farms. She was a few years ahead of me in school, and she had an older brother named Tommy, who was handsome and popular. Patty was maybe a little bit in Tommy's shadow, because she was kind of shy, and very plain looking. To tell the truth, she was a homely sort of a tom-boy, with a very round face, and upturned nose, pock-marks on her cheeks, and thin, straight, brown hair, with split ends, that she parted in the middle, that fell flat to her shoulders. She had breasts, and her nipples often showed through her tee shirt, which was fascinating, and she usually wore faded blue jeans, mended with a patchwork of different colored fabrics, and a plaid flannel shirt, in the pre-old-school style of pre-grunge.

She really liked boys, and there were rumors that some of the neighborhood stallions had felt her up a few times, and that she liked it, she'd let you go to third base. The guys said she had a "big, hot pussy." I wasn't really sure what that meant, but it seemed to be a good thing.

My older brother Steve's nickname was "Farb", and he was in the bloom of youth. He was part of a cool "in" group of kids who were very bright, talented, and charismatic. He was smart, and slender, and strong, and athletic. He let his hair grow long, and he had a sweet mustache. I thought he looked like a cross between "Sgt. Peppers" George Harrison, and "Smokey and the Bandit" Burt Reynolds. Oh, my God, did the high school girls ever love him. He went steady with some real beauties. He could just take his pick, they were lining up for the chance to hang out with him.

I was "Little Farb", the annoying younger brother, with no status to speak of, defining the outer fringes of "as uncool as you could get." All through primary school, I had suffered from terrible social anxiety. I felt embarrassed about being me, and was terrified of other people. I was uncomfortable around most of the other kids, many of whom seemed to have a positively inborn talent for being social. I never felt like I "got" it. I had the oft described feeling of being on the outside looking in.

Patty had a crush on my older brother Steve, but she didn't have a chance with him, as far as going steady was concerned. She started cultivating my friendship. I figured she thought she could get closer to Steve, through me, but I didn't mind, because I was lonely, and I didn't get to hang out with many girls. Plus, both of her parents worked, and her older brother was out with the cool kids, so she had the house to herself all day. But best of all, she usually had a lid of marijuana kicking around, so I would go and smoke her weed.

One week-day, near the beginning of summer vacation, Patti invited me over at around nine in the morning. She said she had a surprise, so it was important that I get there early. Our houses were connected, through the back yards of neighboring houses, by a trail through the woods, that was about a quarter mile long. It was a small but beautiful section of forest, with pine groves, and stands of white birch, and sugar maples. The ground along the trails was abundant with moss and fallen leaves, littered with acorns, and beech and hickory nuts.The trees were full of squirrels.

When I arrived, she was the only one home, and was up in her bedroom, listening to music on her stereo. She had a few vinyl LP's stacked on the record-changing turntable. Donovan, Cat Stevens, Leon Russell, Bob Dylan.

She told me that Tommy had brought her something really special, from his friends in the city. She said she thought I might like to try it. I asked her what, and she opened the lid of an ornately carved rosewood box that she kept on top of her dresser, and took out a piece of thick white paper. It was a fuzzy-edged, L-shaped scrap of cotton rag blotting paper, the kind used for soaking up fountain pen ink, which was usually sold in large, textured sheets that fit into leather bordered desk pad sets. The entire surface of the paper was embossed with a grid pattern of concentric squares. They were about a half inch on a side, inside of each square was a series of other squares that got smaller and smaller until terminating at a central point. She took out a pair of very sharp little embroidery scissors, and snipped off one square section of the paper. She put the larger piece back in the box, and then very carefully clipped the single square into two rectangular halves.

It was 1972. Patti was an older woman, she was sixteen, and I was all of thirteen years old.

"Little Farb, what time do you have to be back home?", she asked.
"Seven-thirty, to eat. My mom's making dinner tonight. I have to be home by seven-thirty."
"Good, we'll need at least eight hours." She gave me one of the half by quarter inch rectangles. It felt surprisingly thick and stiff in my fingers.
"Careful", she said, "Hold it by the edges, like this!" She showed me how to hold the paper on edge between my fingertips.
"Careful. It'll rub off, and the oil on your skin will break it down."
"What is it?", I asked.
"Acid, it's a half a hit of clean acid. There's hardly any cut in it. The bum stuff is laced full of strychnine, and bathtub crank", she replied.
"What's acid?"
"You know, Sandoz, Mighty Quinn."
"Never heard of it. I don't get it. What's that?"
"It's the stuff that Owsley made the Electric Kool-Aid out of, in San Francisco.
"Who's Owsley?
"Look, don't worry about it. The thing is, it's good stuff. Take my word for it, okay?"
"Okay, but tell me again, what is it?
"It's LSD."
"Oh, yeah, the stuff in the anti-drug propaganda movie they showed us in science class? The day-glo-graveyard-nightmare movie?"
"Yeah, but that's bullshit. Look what they said about grass."
"Sure, but what's it do to you?"
"It makes you trip. It can make you trip your balls off."
"What's "trip" mean? Is it like getting high?"
"It's more than getting high, it's.....I can't explain. So, do you want to try it, or don't you?"
"Yeah, I guess so, what do you do with it?
"Put it under your tongue, and keep it there for as long as you can, without chewing it. When the paper starts to turn mushy, then chew it up and swallow it."

So, I followed her instructions. We put the pieces of paper in our mouths, and did like she said. It tasted like cardboard.

It was a little after nine o'clock. She said it'd probably take about forty five minutes to feel it. She said first we would "get off", and then later in the day, we would "come down." We waited. Nothing happened. I asked her if she thought we should take some more, after all, they were just little pieces of paper. She said to be patient, and just keep waiting. Nothing.

It was a sunny summer morning. Her parent's house was a suburban raised ranch, set back from the road on an acre and a half lot, with a paved driveway. It was built up on a little knoll, across the street from a beautiful lake called Long Pond.

We were in her second story bedroom, listening to the music, looking out the window onto the front lawn. The grass hadn't been mowed in a while, so the surface was all uneven, with unruly circular clumps of lighter and darker green grass billowing up, here and there. The blacktop on the driveway was bleached grey, but you could see uneven splotches of black in places where there had been some remedial repairs.

Nine thirty. Nothing. Patti and I looked at each other. She was fiddling with a fancy little metal pipe, which she had gotten at a head shop,"The Elephant's Trunk", in Mt. Kisco. It was made from a bunch of threaded, 3/8" lamp parts that were screwed together, with a heat-resistant wooden sleeve on the stem, and a very fine brass screen in the bowl. I asked her if we could smoke some of the Colombian pot that I knew she kept in a screw-top metal film canister in her little stash box. She told me no, the moment wasn't right, to just be patient, and keep waiting.

Time ticked by. Nothing. I was wearing a pair of black Keds sneakers, with the rubber toe caps. Since we were just sitting around, I noticed that my toes had gotten numb, my feet were cold and clammy. I was suddenly chilly, a wave of goosebumps came up on my arms. I was bored, and scrutinized Patti. I was just beginning puberty, almost, and wasn't one of the big kids, yet. I was wondering if there were any indications that she'd let me find out about the big, hot pussy. My mouth tasted stale, I must have forgotten to brush my teeth. There was a bitter taste, like tin foil. As far as the acid went, nothing.

Ten o'clock. Nothing. So far, I wasn't too impressed by this "trip." What a let down! My skin and my hair kind of hurt, and I was lightheaded, thinking maybe I was catching a cold. The muscles in my face ached, my cheeks were tensed into a grin, even though nothing was funny. Patti gazed at me. She embraced herself by putting her arms around her solar plexus, her hands on opposite elbows. She started smiling at me, in a sort of beatific way, but didn't say anything. Not a word. She bit her lower lip and closed her eyes. I was wondering if maybe I had "gotten off", but just wasn't on the right wave-length to realize it. Maybe I wasn't sensitive enough to feel whatever it was I was supposed to be feeling. Or, maybe the whole acid thing was a hoax. I didn't know what to think.

Ten thirty. The music started slowing down. I guessed that the turntable on her record player was broken. Sometimes, there were problems with the belt-drives, the belts stretched, and went off-speed. But, wait, oh, no, there it was, regular, again. Then it sped up a little, it was going too fast. I hadn't realized it before, but we must have been listening to this funny carnival music, which seemed to have a strange significance, something very important that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

All of my thoughts were in conflict, I felt immense pressure in my forehead, my mind was arguing with itself. I felt very frustrated, like I hadn't gotten high, and I was coming down with the flu, and I was very confused, and weird carney music was coming out of the speakers. It was surging, speeding way up, and slowing way down. I wanted to tell Patti that her record player was broken, and the acid wasn't working, and ask again if we could smoke some weed, and if she'd she please let me in on the big, hot pussy, but my vocal chords felt paralyzed. It seemed like a lot of time went by, maybe twenty more minutes. I kept losing my train of thought.

Ten thirty-five. There was this feeling of groundlessness, like the floor had fallen away beneath me. The room seemed to have gone trapezoidal, everything was out of square, all of the angles were badly off-kilter. When I opened my mouth to speak, all that came out was a gutteral moan. I tried harder, and got out a sentence.

"Patti, it's all weird, what is happening?" My voice sounded far away and insignificant. Hot sweat burst out on my forehead.

"Let it be.....We're just letting it be what it is.....It is, Little Farb, you know it is.....So just let it.....You got to go with it." She smiled at me, and she hugged herself, and she bit her lower lip, and she sat with her back against the headboard of her bed, knees up, feet flat on the bedspread, still hugging herself, her eyes glazed, smiling. Time started dragging along at an excruciatingly slow pace.

Ten forty five. I was panicking, like I was losing my mind. I had made a horrible mistake, taking this crazy drug. I was so glad we hadn't taken more of it. I wondered if the effects would wear off soon. I hoped so. I felt giddy, and went to the window for air. As I hung my head out the window, I looked down at the lawn. It was a dozen shades of green, so vibrant that I could taste the intensity of the colors in my cramped jaw. Bile flooded into my mouth, through my inner cheeks, as though I were becoming nauseous.

On one particular clump of grass, I could see the individual blades growing, like time lapse photography. The lightness of the green corresponded to the newness of the grass, the older, longer blades were darker green. Wait.....this effect wasn't confined to that one clump, but was occurring with all of the clumps scattered across the lawn.

I looked more closely. The entire lawn was percolating with growth. There were all the different shades of color, and all the different speeds of movement, and all the different moments of time. I could see the life force in the plants, as though it were some kind of evanescent gas. I realized that this was how it had always been, I had just never been tuned into it before.

The individual blades of grass began to lose their linear characteristics, and the clumps began to take on a spherical quality, which seemed to more accurately reflect their true nature. The life was bubbling up from underneath. It made me think of striped green porridge, bubbling in a pan on the stove. The lawn went fluid, and began to gently boil. The bubbling escalated, until the whole lawn was boiling rapidly. Bubbles of lawn were rising up from beneath the grass surface and actually popping in the air. It was causing visceral sensations in my body that were uncomfortably intense.

It was making me queasy. I averted my gaze. I looked over at the driveway, for relief. I figured the blacktop would be static, because at least it wasn't alive, like the lawn. But, oh.....wait a minute.....the driveway seemed to be.....moving. The multi-hued grays of the gravel-imbedded tarmac were rising and falling, and rippling into gently lapping wave patterns, flowing uphill towards the pale, concrete lip of the garage. The small waves of asphalt crested and broke, in eddying patterns, before they reached the garage. With a regular tempo, the waves continued flowing, uphill towards the house, as though the tide were coming in.

My whole body was sweating. The floor had fallen away, the music was lurching, the room was changing shape, the lawn was boiling, the driveway was flowing, and every time I tried to express myself to Patti, whatever words I could form fell from my mouth without meaning. Fell, like thick shards of broken glass, making those random, pale blue ice-chip sounds of the high pitched keys on the piano.

Whew.....it suddenly got very warm. I went into the bathroom to wash my face. The metallic wallpaper on the bathroom walls was sweating. The cool water felt like a thin film of rubber against my palms. My face was greasy. Everything was animated. I could see the life force pulsating within the varnished mahogany on the bathroom door, and the marble on the vanity. The lighter parts were raised up and flowing in one direction, while the darker parts were recessed, flowing in the opposite direction.

I looked into the mirror. It was like a filter, allowing me to see a different dimension of reality. My eyes were dark, oily pools. The skin on my face was stripped, almost transparent, like those see-through pages on human anatomy in the World Book Encyclopedia. Underlying beige bones, white teeth, silver sinews, maroon muscles, blue veins, yellow fat corpuscles, green glands. I looked at my hands. They were just like my face. I could see and feel the blood flowing in my veins, in rhythm with my heartbeat. The inside of my mouth was like sawdust.

I went back out with Patti. She was still on her bed, only lying down. I was all tensed up from persisting in trying to express.....the enormity.....strangeness.....everything. She didn't try to talk. She just looked me deeply in the eyes, smiled, and beckoned me to lie next to her for a moment. She hugged me very tenderly towards her. I could feel her breasts, the firm nipples, against my hands, through her clothing. She was letting me know that I should have no fear, that she accepted me, that I was safe.

To my surprise, she unsnapped and unzipped the waistband of her jeans, took hold of one of my wrists, and placed my hand, underneath her tee shirt, against the supple, curving skin of her soft belly, around the downy peach fuzz by the swelling, dimpled contour of her navel, and slid it slowly, inside of her pants, slowly down beneath the elastic on her panties. As my hand came into contact with the top edge of her bush, the pubic hair prickled against my fingertips, like tiny shocks of electricity.

She had a tight grasp on my forearm, and continued arcing my hand slowly southward. In sharp contrast to the magical softness of her skin, her pubic hair was unbelievably coarse and thick. I had a whole hand full of bush. I could feel, with great intensity, how she was so female, and it was completely fantastic.

She shifted on the bed, spreading her legs very slightly apart. She continued drawing my hand down, it started falling, fingers curling towards my wrist, down, and in. My hand felt something sensual, opening, silken, hot, an exquisite cleft. Blossoming, wet, lubricious. Perfect. Heavenly. It was heaven. It felt like I held the entire planet in my hand. Fumbling about, the woman, earth, mystery, seeing stars.

At the same time, caught in the overpowering rotational gravity of the psychedelics, it felt so awkward. It was impossible to sustain any kind of contact. Patti returned my hand to me, I smelled my fingers. Some kind of luscious fruit, and something amphibian, an inexplicable combination of enchantment and dismay. She sat up, and motioned for me to go sit in the overstuffed chair, opposite her bed. We looked at each other anew. We were head-on, full-bore, flat-out, tripping. We were totally tripping.....We were tripping our balls off.

Things continued to get more painfully complicated in my mind. I looked out the window for relief, trying to avoid getting drawn into the complexity of the lawn and driveway. Looking up, to the expansive simplicity of the sky.....ah.....but, no.....wait a minute. I was quickly overcome by a rapidly changing panoply of giant, grotesquely deformed, mask-like faces taking shape almost invisibly, way up in the ether. A pattern of sky on sky, like the rippling interface of liquids of different densities undulating in a soda glass filled with ice. The faces were transmitting surrealistic messages that I couldn't quite decipher, as they morphed in and out of being. It felt so heavy, like the weight of the sky was pushing down on my forehead.

I couldn't control my thoughts. I was swinging rapidly from one emotion to another. My mind kept struggling for control of my lost senses. As I thought I was getting a grasp on something, my cognition would falter, I'd lose track, and things would slip away. I was being buried by crushing, unendurable feelings of inadequacy, self-loathing, guilt, shame, fear, and paranoia.....a kind of existential terror. The entire process of thoughts and words, my whole rational being, was being twisted and squeezed, knotted, like a tourniquet, gathering towards some unbearable crescendo.

The distorted visuals were so overwhelming, so "heavy" that I was driven to the floor. I fell where I stood. Laying down, I finally had to simply close my eyes. But.....oh, no..... that was no escape.....either. Wildly animated movies were playing on the insides of my eyelids. First, vivid colors, kaleidoscopic visions, shifting patterns of sacred geometry, flames dancing on the sun.

Then it was like I had been swept down a twisting waterfall, the vertical shaft of a subterranean river, but all the water was deep red velvet. Twirling down through the convoluted crimson channel at a terrific speed, falling, falling down, until everything started turning from red to bright silver, and I realized I was falling up. I fell up and upwards until the shining silver coagulated into stagnant pressurized mercury. My mind clogged, with that sensation of the walls closing in, the ceiling and floor, closing in, closing down, the overwhelming pressure of being crushed, until everything finally exploded out of the top of my skull in a showering geyser of meat, bone, and hair, and gushing, splattering puddles of brilliant sparkling mercury.....whoa.....dude.

The pressure let up, but it felt like my soul had been vomited out of me. Throbbing florescent plasma that contained all of the potential, for this lifetime, of my body, mind, and spirit. It represented everything that was precious in me, all that was safe, and sane, and sacred, the circuit board of my life force, the chart of my DNA, the hard drive of my personhood.

It was like seeing a turtle out of its shell. I felt a wave of anxiety because of its extreme perishability, and knew that it was always meant to remain imbedded at the core of the matrix, protected within the larger organizational framework,.

Symbolically coalescing into an ancient looking, two-dimensional document, of brittle, yellowed paper. It was the map of my soul, the essential, immaterial part of my being , brought forth and so vulnerably exposed, I felt apprehension, concerned that it should come to no harm while it was out of my body like this.

I felt a wave of dread as the sky darkened. The light was drawn from the room, as if by the giant suction of some negative force. It felt like a vacuum of chaos and destruction had risen from the dark belly of the neighboring lake, and swept into the room, a funnel cloud of peril.

My map was taken up in the vortex, spun around and shredded into a hundred tattered fragments, which blew across the room before spinning out into space. The map fragments were blown everywhere, out across the bubbling lawn. The sky cleared. Robins came out of the woods, hopping between the paper scraps, and started pecking for worms in the grass. I doubted I would ever be able to find them all. I realized I was in some pretty deep doo-doo.

Though I could see all of this very clearly, I could not locate my body. There was some kind of paralysis, my nervous system was not responding. I could view the scene, but I could not act. The experience that followed was enormous, indescribable. Looming, like a monument, it was a monolith, it was a mountain. It was like the peak of a mountain, standing beyond a yawning, mist filled valley. It could be no larger. Then another wave would come, and the first mountain would appear small as a hill, as a boulder, as a rock, as a pebble, a mere grain of sand at the foot of the path to this next peak. When the experience of the next peak could grow no larger, it, too, would recede in size, and appear as a hill, as a boulder, as a rock, as a pebble in the abyss before the next, looming wave.

I lost track of several hours, I can't remember what happened, except that a bottleneck in my consciousness opened, and I went out of my rational mind. At some point, all of the pain diminished, the suffering fell away, and everything converged into a single, dancing, all-encompassing state of utter bliss. At some point, there was that ultimate release, the glimpse of a greater reality, a deeper understanding of life and existence, and a transcendental experience of spiritual union.

"Little Farb.....Little Farb, can you hear me? How are you doing? How's it going, little man? Can you come back? Here, with me? It's six-thirty. Are you coming down, yet? You've got to pull it together. You've got to get your act together. It's almost time for you to get on home to dinner."

Gradually, starting to regain consciousness, coming back to my senses, in waves. Disembodied.....where was my body? I thought I might have died. Had I woken up somewhere in the afterlife? It felt so incredibly sad.

Patti's voice was like a telephone ringing down some distant corridor. It felt so comfortable, to ignore the ringing phone. So much had just happened, resting, it felt so good to just be resting. But, with that awareness came fear.....resting.....feAR.....resting.....FEAR! Whoa, if this were the afterlife, I might not want to miss that call! Maybe Patti's voice was the only pathway back to reality! Get that phone, before it stops ringing! I have to get to the end of the hallway, before she gives up! I have got to pick up that phone!

I found myself back in my body. It felt like I'd gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

"Holy shit! Yeah, wow, Patti, wow, okay, holy shit!" "Wow, oh, my God, holy shit! Patti, holy shit! I can't begin to tell you where I've been, everything came alive, and the colors, and I couldn't stand it, there was a red velvet waterfall, and the mercury exploded, and my soul got loose, and this dark suction, and then, and then..... as it got smaller, it got bigger, and fell away, and rose, and came together, and went into this dazzling white light, enormous, with a giant violet aura, and the, the....."

"Little Farb, shhh, shhh, I know, I know, you don't have to explain, I know where you've been. Just relax. Take your time. At this stage, you just want to mellow out, okay? Take your time. Now, we're just gonna mellow slow, okay? Are you down?"

My clothes were all rumpled and my hair was all mussed. I had a forlorn sensation as I collected my few belongings. I felt that the tattered fragments of my soul map were gathered up in an old, wrinkled brown paper grocery sack. As I was leaving Patti's house, I felt that I was clutching the sack to my chest.

I began to worry."I have to get home! Or, I'm gonna get in so much trouble! If Mom and Dad find out what I did today, they'll KILL me! I've got the map, but I probably lost some of the pieces. I think I got them all, I hope I got them all, oh, I hope they're all there."

I wished that my soul map had come back together, intact, and been infused and empowered by the healing vibration of the cosmic white light. Instead, I was walking away from Patti's house in despair, wondering if I were leaving that place somehow diminished, a different person than I had been that morning. The Wizard of Oz had met Alice In Wonderland, and tumbled like Humpty-Dumpty. Would I ever be able to put all the pieces back together? Were all the pieces even there?

I entered the forest at twilight. Still tripping hard. The trees were very beautiful, emitting a soft light from within. It felt like I was coming down from a high elevation, this, accompanied by a deep sense of melancholy. The trees so gentle and friendly, I had to pause, taking solace, with wounded soul and great sadness. I leaned against a beech tree, as a fearful child takes refuge in a protective parent. I carefully pressed the trunk between my hands. Holding it, resting my cheek against it, it's bark looked like elephant skin. The tree was breathing, all of the trees were breathing. They were drawing long, deep breaths. As I inhaled, the tree inhaled, it's diameter increasing, it's skin expanding. As I exhaled, the tree exhaled, it's diameter decreasing, it's skin contracting. The spirit of the tree felt deep, and powerfully benevolent, protective, angelic.

At that moment, I had a vision about my future. I understood with certainty that I wasn't going to be a townie, or go to work for IBM, or put on a suit, and commute to an office job in the city. There was something else in store for me, a fourth way, though I didn't know what that was. I knew that I needed to "make my own cloth", to work with my hands.

I walked along the trails, through the rustling leaves on the woodland floor, feeling downcast. The trees formed a bower-like trellis, a sort of ceiling, branches interwoven above my head. Under the tension of the arching trees, I could feel the universal balance between good and evil, being parlayed by cosmic forces, the power and light of the heavens in dynamic equipoise with the malevolent darkness of the fearful underworld, an epoch struggle, being carried out on our behalf, somewhere just beyond the range of our conscious perception.

There were squirrels in the tree tops. These were dark spirits, savage and demon-like, throwing off hostile vibrations. Although I was afraid, I knew they posed no danger, because, for the moment, the greater forces were in harmony. I continued on my way with the awareness that I was treading a knife-edged path between the emissaries of light, and those of darkness. I was wandering among angels and demons.

When I got to the house, I tried my best to fly under the radar. As inconspicuous as I could be, maybe a little quieter than usual. My father was home from work, and had changed into a pair of blue jeans, and a blue chambray shirt. Under the florescent light in the kitchen, he was giving off peaceful emanations of a deeply glowing, intense electric blue. He seemed a little less contentious than usual, and I liked him that way.

We sat down to eat, my mother had made veal parmigiana, with pasta and salad. I wasn't really hungry, but I had to play it cool. The mozzarella cheese and spaghetti sauce kept floating up, a couple of inches above the surface of my serving of veal. I had to keep pressing them back down, with my knife and fork, and hold them still long enough to cut off a bite and get it in my mouth. The spaghetti marinara was an undulating heap of bloody worms. There wasn't much I could do with it.

My mother asked, "So, Alan, what did you do with yourself today?"
"Oh.....I went for a walk in the woods, with Patti Schoeber."
"It's so nice that you have friends you can do things with."
"Yeah."
My father chimed in, always sharp for clues. "Patti Schoeber? In the woods? Did she give you a little muffki-guffki?"
"I don't think so, Dad, it's not that kind of thing."
"Well, Alley-boo, you never know. Some of these girls really like to bake those cookies!"
"Yeah, that's what I hear, Dad, I'll be sure to keep you posted."
"Cool, Alley-boo, real cool. When we're done eating, would you take the garbage out, while your mother cleans up?"
"Sure thing, Dad."

After dinner, I took refuge in the upstairs bathroom. I could get away with taking hour long baths. It had become a coping mechanism for me, a way of surviving the claustrophobic atmosphere of family life. I'd hold a washcloth up to the overflow drain so I could get the water level a little higher, and then, when it began to cool down, partially drain the tub, without getting out, and refill it with fresh hot water every fifteen minutes or so, taking care not to scald myself in the process.

I lay naked in the warm water, trying not to panic from the anxiety of being in the house with my parents, at thirteen years old, having possibly irreparably broken my soul, while tripping for the first time on LSD. Maybe I had come down. I looked at the beige, nimbus shaped water stains on the white, sand-painted ceiling above the tub. They looked deeply three dimensional, like mushrooming clouds, doing elaborate, billowing contortions.

Mellow slow, that's what Patti had told me. I tried to relax in the tub. Maybe I was finally down. My skin appeared to be textured with the same pattern of concentric squares that had been imprinted on the blotter paper. The entire surface of my body shimmered with the half inch grid pattern, as though I were embossed with transparent plastic. It faded away.

The last thing I remember about that day was getting out of the tub, putting on my jammies, going downstairs into the family room, turning on the TV, and snuggling under a blanky, with a glass of warm chocolate milk. There was a program on, called, "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert", that was broadcasting from New York City. The act that was performing that night was a rock band out of Macon, Georgia. The band members were in a period of mourning, immediately following the loss of their young lead guitarist and co-founder, who died, at the age of twenty four, from a traffic accident, when he crashed his motorcycle into a produce truck loaded down with a cargo of Georgia peaches. The band was performing songs from the album they had just released as a eulogy, entitled, "Eat A Peach."

This gifted young white man, as a session guitarist for Stax records, developed an innovative slide style, that had a powerful impact on the sound of soul music in the mid-sixties. He backed Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Herbie Mann, and others, and contributed some of his best known work to the Clapton album, "Derek and the Dominoes, Layla, And Other Assorted Love Songs". His name was Duane Allman. As I was finally coming back to myself, I was grooving out to the Allman Brothers Band, on the TV, laying down some mellow psychedelic jams, in their inimitable southern style.

My father came downstairs, to kiss me good night. "Hey, son, ya' watchin' a rock concert?"
"Yeah, Dad."
"That's cool, Alley-boo, real cool.....You enjoying it?"
"Yeah, Dad.
"Cool.....Okay, I'm going up to bed. Make sure to shut the hallway light before you turn in, willya?"
"Sure thing, Dad."
"Thanks.....okay.....I love you, boo,"
"I love you, too, Dad."
"Sleep tight, boo, and, oh, yeah, if you get up in the middle of the night, please try not to piss all over the floor in the downstairs bathroom, again, willya?"
"Kay, Dad."
"'Night, son."
"Night."