Doses of Ramble (Vegetables)

11/08/2020 0 By BuddyCushman

Some 50 minutes after sitting against the living-room wall, the bloody Mary been drunk, I began to stop seeing the world. But I found my palm quite interesting. Very interesting. I raised my right hand below my face and looked down at the palm. It did not move. My eyes did not move. I did not move. For almost three hours. I know these facts and this number because I was told some 12 hours later, told by a young woman named Celinda Shaw. Celinda’s had a thing for me for something like forever, therefore not surprising she would be paying me her attention at yet another party, sidling (she told me later) over along the wall close enough to know what was what. She watched me look at my right palm, she later told me, for a minute or so before pulling her cell from her back left pocket and turning on the stopwatch. I didn’t ask why, 12 hours later, and she volunteered she couldn’t tell me. One of those feels-right-in-the-moment deals, apparently. She says I stared at my palm, my body ceramic-like, possibly Buddha-like, for just under three hours. She says she never took her eyes off of me except twice having to pee, which in her case was a quickie in and out of the facilities. Otherwise, swear to God, she never looked away from the trance-aholic I had become. And when, whimsically, I raised my head and its implanted eyes – and she heard me say only this: “No shit” – she pulled the phone from her back left pocket and stopped the digital count and what she saw was the time numbers 2:55, meaning, she explained a little over 12 hours later, I’d been staring at my palm (the right one) for just under three hours, and since she had my undivided attention here in Larry’s spare bedroom she was kind of wondering what the fuck that was all about.

A secret you may be interested in, though, is that while I cannot deny or refute her observations or numerical fascinations and reportage, I will tell you that over the years, whether consciously choosing to participate in a transcendental psychedelic journey or being what’s affectionately known as getting “dosed” – and that was the case with a slightly off-taste bloody Mary at Larry’s early evening yesterday – over the years I have developed the skill of being able to focus with my eyes intently on just one thing, which isn’t all that remarkable in the extensive folklore of how people act when whacked out of their mind on one hallucinogen or another, well, back to the secret, I have developed the skill to stare with seemingly 100-percent devotion at this object or that while also (surreptitiously) out of the farthest corner of my eye keep seeing everything else. Meaning, and this isn’t so much epiphany than accurate journalism, while Celinda tells me (has just now told me) that other than two pee breaks (which I can verify) she never took her eyes off me and my stare-at-my-palm behavior, in fact that just ain’t so, seeing she’s leaving out of her “Oh my God do you know what you did at Larry’s party last night?” once upon a time report the fact that all the retinal right-here-right-now power of that far eye corner saw, clearly and not without some physiological sensory tingling on my part, Celinda engage in a decidedly hot make-out session with Lulu Radowitz, a girl from our senior class. Yes, I call you out lesbian storyteller, and you (reader) can see why I noticed – even under the spell of thrust-upon-me, involuntary what we used to call “tripping” – a bodily excitement on my up-against-the-wall part. What I cannot tell you, now that I have pretty much outed Celinda and her offer to tell me the exact nature of my behaviors by my highlighting hers, is whether or not I saw anything worth noting on my palm. Roadmaps? Predictions? Historical scabies? How pelicans do that up down thing, all of them in formation, exactly? All I can tell you is this – I went to Larry’s party to which I was invited. Some inconsiderate asshole dosed me with LSD or one of its botanical cousins. Apparently I looked at my right hand something like 175 minutes. Lulu kisses like there’s no tomorrow. And I’m kind of hoping Celinda here takes a hike so I can catch a few zzz’s. And then journal a few other thoughts I think I may have been thinking – along with the palm thing.

……… Other thoughts journaled.

For a long time I cooked everything in organic coconut oil. Extra virgin. Later I switched to bacon fat. Now I cook everything in bacon fat: red bell peppers, hot dogs, organic eggs, grass-fed sausage. I can no longer pick butter out of a lineup. A lineup, even, with giraffes and rat traps (the big industrial mothers) and pistachio ice cream.

They were probably made in a factory in Sumatra, which displayed a large sign over the entry door reading “Fuck the Americans”. More religion. Which was why I was using up most of the round slab of shoe polish and half the bottle of waterproofing. I wasn’t about to go catching a cold. Or justify Sumatrans.

I’m taking to using larger measures of coffee lately. When I make coffee. We’re all going to die, no point in saving up. And oh, the richness of flavor. I kind of think my wife agrees. Meanwhile, she sets industrial-strength rat traps in the cellar.

I have woke up with Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” tickling under my chin. Blowing softly in my ear. Trying for my attention. There are peacocks one mile away, still, I hear their cry every morning. See, there it is again. But “cry” may be wrong. A judgement. Possibly “song” will be more accurate. Are they singing to their young, hungry and hopeful in nests on roofs of sheds? I would like to awake to a day without judgements. Without evaluations. A day I move through with observations only. Would I then become a Buddhist? A child? Look, mom, the sky is blue. See there, Susan is laughing. Listen to the peacock’s voice. Listen. Yeah, Dylan got it right – “Twenty years of schoolin’ and they put you on the day shift”.