Episode 3: The
Lords of the Field
I guess I had
superpowers. That only really occurred to me when I started to fall
asleep, lying there in the bushes, my stomach and head both feeling
still strongly overcome by latent LSD. As I started to fall asleep, I
was treated to an endless fractal display rotating across my
eyelids—I fell deeper and deeper into the center of it until it
bent around me like a tunnel, and I began to plummet towards it at
the speed of light. Time drug to a halt...a word crossed my mind.
Dimethyltryptamine. DMT. I'd heard of it. A chemical released in the
brain during sleep, and near death experiences. Used in ayahuasca, a
traditional brew from the Amazon—that's what I heard at least—at
one party I went to in college, there was a guy who said he extracted
it and was letting people take hits from a vaporizer for five dollars
each. A few people tried it, and said it changed their life—I
passed. It smelled like burning tires, and I was too stressed with
midterms, I thought, to really enjoy it. Reading the wikipedia
article sufficed. I was conscious as I fell asleep, and could feel
the DMT shooting through my brain, in a cascade of chemical reactions
that renewed the connections between different sections, making my
eyes jolt back and forth. My body was paralyzed—I felt my mind
being renewed—at last I could rest. I leaned back—laying in what
felt like a celestial ocean. A hum came from the sky, a deep and
relaxing vibration. I stayed there for what felt like eternity.
Complete peace. Complete nothingness. Complete rest, where I was. The
uncertainty that had permeated my day began to slip away, as I began
to accept all that had happened.
I sank into the
water, feeling it overtake me and drag me further into it's complete
and perfect solace. I was unafraid—I knew deep within my heart that
this was, fundamentally, not a unique, superhuman process—only an
everyday process of which I was now keenly aware, brought to life in
a new sensitory symbology. I looked up at the sky through the water,
filled with stars, lit by the light of the moon. The branches which
dominated the thicket where I'd gone to sleep peered over the edges
of my vision. Looking up at the watery sky, I felt my body begin to
turn, until I came to rest on the ground. The ground rose and fell
softly, breathing. I looked around me. I was standing on top of my
own sleeping body.
I studied myself.
I looked older than I was, my facial hair patchy and my hair grey. I
was dirty, a consequence of my lifeway. My body was surrounded in the
faintest white light, my skin alive with what seemed to be
holographic tattoos, memories written on my skin. Gazing upon myself,
I thought of my body like a ship—a ship which had taken good care
of me—adventured with me to the edge of the earth. I could trust
myself—care for myself—it had carried me this far, and the
creaking substance of the vessel still bore the traces of many
near-shipwrecks, arrows fired from distant shores, patches left from
hard fought battles. But it was okay. I was okay. We were alive, and
we were safe here, lying by the roadside. In some way, we would
always be safe, no matter what happened.
I flew off of my
body—finding myself not unlike a fairy, a small dot of light which
hurtled down the highway past cars and streetlights. I drifted back
into the town, looking over where I'd been, hearing the thoughts of
those who paassed by like muffled, underwater voices. At the gas
station, Ahmed was being interviewed by a news camera. I couldn't
hear what they were saying. Six or seven police cars were there,
including two from Kansas. I flew inside one of them, but still
couldn't hear any of the sounds. On the dashboard, I could faintly
make out the reading of the time. 2:00am. It was the first words that
I'd successfully read since I took acid—the written words were
easier to percieve when I was in this strange astral form. But the
voices—I couldn't make sense of them. I could only surmise that,
say 5 hours or so had passed since I left. I flew out, catching a
glimpse of Callaway, who stared up at my astral body with awe. I came
back to him, and he pointed up, hand shaking. The police looked back
and forth, unable to see. I hushed him. His consciousness reached out
to me, and I found myself coming closer, able to hear his voice. “I
told them everything.”, he said, “I
need to get better.”
“Good job.”
“Thank
you for doing that for me”, he started to cry, “I
needed that. I needed...”
“Of course...”
I drifted away from
him, and soared over the Walmart. I could see Meagan, just getting
off of work. She looked irritated, her eyes bloodshot and exhausted.
In the light, I could see her more clearly. She was the nicest person
I'd met in the entire town, she must have been. I settled into her
car, sitting on the dashboard—I wondered if what I was doing,
sitting there and watching her, was wrong. But I wanted to talk to
her, if I could find a way. The tables turned in my dreams—I could
watch, I could receive, but I could not hear thoughts, not as
anything more than a muffled voice. Callaway had reached out to me—he
could see me since I'd been inside his head, there was still a part
of me with him. But not Meagan—she couldn't--I needed to be invited
when I was still asleep.
She leaned down
and, trying to stay out of anyones line of sight, fished a pipe from
underneath her seat, then a small plastic bag filled with marijuana.
Grinding a piece of flower down between her thumb and index finger,
she filled the pipe and lit the edge with a lighter, looking
suspiciously over at the police as she did. She inhaled deeply and
then blew a cloud of smoke over me, which passed through my body in a
bright white fog. A few hits later, the car filled with a faint haze,
Meagan cracked open the door, and then retired the pipe into a little
fabric bag. Exhausted, she laid back against her seat, wringing her
hands over her face, and silently screaming into them. I could see
small tears drip down the edges of her nose. I wished I knew what she
was thinking—I started to cry myself, watching her. It was hard to
watch the world break down good people. She cried into her hands for
two minutes or so, before blowing her nose into a tissue and throwing
it into a plastic grocery bag with a host of other trash. Breathing
deeply and trying to regain her composure, she pulled her purse to
her lap and unzipped it. I slipped off of the dashboard and walked
closer, standing next to the transmission so that I could see,
knowing that I needed to leave, and soon. She pulled out the
tourmaline crystal that I had given her, a brilliant and clean
polished specimen, which bled gently from pink to green. Smiling
faintly, she stared at it a moment, before hanging it from her rear
view mirror. It dangled and sparkled in the flourescent lights.
Around her skull, I could see the faintest tinges of thought emerge
in a swirl of color. Meagan started the car, and drove away. I
quickly left her alone, flying to return to my body.
I quickly became
lost in the beauty of the world. Flying over the Texas hill country
was magical—in the three am starlight, I could see the countryside
illuminated for miles and miles, until it met with the city of
Fredericksburg. I rose higher and higher towards the clouds, in awe
of what I was beholding, circling around the tiny little city.
Whenever I focused on something, it would rush up to me, and I could
see it in minute detail—there was a rich beauty to everything, even
the trash in the city. A welcome escape into reality—the racing
thoughts and clamor of my waking consciousness was absent in this
dreamscape. I touched the edge of the clouds, and felt myself splash,
like a dolphin, out of the real world and into the infinite ocean in
which I'd floated before. My astral body rose up, before dipping back
down, into the real world. A rush of wonder overtook me. I rose out
of reality again, piercing the cloud canopy, and flying again over
the ocean in the form of my astral body.
As I did so, I saw
something strange—there, stretched out in the ocean, there were
thousands of bodies, all perfectly asleep, minds resting on the cloud
canopy, unmoving. High above, it was difficult to tell which one was
mine. I flew closer, along the edge of the water—seeing the
sleeping faces of old married couples, of children, bunched close
together where houses sat, but almost nowhere to be seen in the
country—that was where I'd slept— A desolate stretch of pure,
untouched water. I dipped back down to reality, shooting from the
stars and into the Texas countryside. I'd traveled to the city
limits. I came to a rest there for a moment, trying to identify the
road—the same one I'd walked to get to the campsite. Meagan's car
sped by, heading the same direction.
I rose up and flew
along the highway. Her path overlapped with my own path back to my
body, and I started to worry that she'd see me lying on the ground.
Racing, I found the thicket where I'd fallen asleep and stood guard
by it. A cow had found my physical body, and started licking my
sleeping feet. Meagan turned left onto a county road not far from me.
I came to a rest on top of my forehead, and studied the cow. Could it
see me? I saw it's eyes, and locked onto them, becoming overwhelmed
with the beauty and detail within them. I looked into the texture of
its deep brown iris and the magnificent structures within. I started
walking closer, and closer. I kind of wanted to pet it. I was half
curious to see what would happen if I used astral projection to go
touch a cow's face, but also simply fascinated by the animal. I
studied every part of it, it's hair, it's nostrils, it's feet, it's
tongue—all of them became remarkably intricate and almost magical
as I studied them more and more. I put my hand on it's nose, and the
animal, froze, not seeing me, but somehow, suddenly aware that a
physical presence had reached out and touched it. It sniffed the air,
not finding anything, and then turned it's head to search for me. I
floated up and ran my hand along the side of its neck, before it got
spooked and ran away.
Without thinking,
I found myself chasing after the cow, as it sped through the tall
brush and out into an open pasture. I passed through what looked like
a brightly colored field, and all at once, the colors around me
shifted, becoming just slightly unreal. I could feel a pulsing in the
earth, a sense of unity with it, and a feeling of spirits all around
me. In awe, I hovered cautiously, wondering if I'd entered into the
dream of another person. The cows, all unanimously aware of me,
stared in complete silence, sniffing the air. Their skin, once dark
brown, had become a pale blue. I settled onto the ground, surrounded
by a forest of tall grass, worried that I'd upset them, and they
would wake up the owner of the farm. I could feel their energy, if
not their thoughts—the world felt remarkably alien to me—the cows
recognized me as some kind of spirit, and the other cow, who was
young, though I couldn't tell how young, had come to be near the
others for protection. I drifted through the field, suddenly acutely
conscious of my existence as a fragment of my own consciousness. Were
they doing this to me?
A bright light
came far out into the pasture—I began flying towards it, followed
by the herd of eager looking but wary cows, who watched me with
intense curiousity, but whose demeanors seemed increasingly hostile.
I began to panic, losing the grasp I had held all this time over my
fear. The cows were all staring at me, their eyes seeming to surround
me, their thoughts erupting as one monolithic, wordless flow, molten
and steaming hot like lava shot from beneath the earth. I headed
closer to the light, which shot straight up to the sky, and bent out
to form a forcefield. Disturbed, I circled around it, trying to focus
my vision on what was there hidden in the light. A strange, foreign
voice spoke to me, surrounding me from every side, sounding vaguely
inquisitive. I froze. The cows had formed a circle around me,
watching the light see me. I could hear the cows murmur in
anticipation, in some strange, and earthen tongue. I felt myself
pressed towards the center of the circle by some kind of collective
will, shrunken down and made one with the earth, until I was brought
to my knees in front of what looked like a towering, incandescent
mushroom, with a bright golden cap and a vibrant blue side.
The mushroom spoke
to me in a deep and ancient voice, murmuring in a tongue which I
could not hope to understand. I felt it's presence rush through my
brain, interrogating every part of it. I knew that the mushroom
contained something more than a mushroom—I remembered taking a
dried mushroom just like it at a music festival in college—some
kind of spirit within, one which felt a distinct guardianship over
the cows. The cows had brought me before the mushroom in order to
stand trial, and all watched with solemn and impassive gazes. It
slipped through every corner of my past, holding me still and trying
to discern whether or not I was a good or bad spirit. Croaking dark
and austere poetry as it studied me, the mushroom, shaking, sent out
a signal through its roots, which lit up a constellation of other
fungi that had spread across the plains. I felt my soul drawn out, my
consciousness stretched between the underground limbs of the
creature—a thousand voices danced back and forth around me, almost
singing as they spoke and debated my fate. I struggled to wring
myself free, breaking myself into one solid whole, before a bright
purple lightning bolt shot from the hills and pinned me to the
ground. The cows mooed in a terrible choir, and a great trembling
came from within the earth.
I felt my
consciousness jolt back into my body, crumpling my spine and sending
seering hot pain through my nervous system. Jumping up, I brushed
myself off, my heart pounding. My vision was seething, seeming to
melt. In front of me, I could see, barely, an almost oily forcefield
surrounding the pasture, rippling with the noise of the cows
anguished moos. Through the branches, the jet black eyes of a cow
stared me down. Suddenly, I couldn't move. The same, croaking voice
spread through my head. What are you trying to say?,I asked. I
felt a vastly larger consciousness press against my own, and,
struggling to regain control of my breathing, I pressed in against
it.
My consciousness
shot up from my skull and into the ocean, where I beheld a vibrant,
purple sunrise. The waters of the ocean chased after me as I rose,
higher and higher, towards the second sky, which I pierced through
like a gunshot, rising into a pristine reflecting pool, surrounded by
tall, overgrown fungal matter reaching high up towards a glaring full
moon. I could feel the water reach up towards me, but I was able to
dangle just out of its reach. The voice tried to speak to me again,
this time in a softer, and more whispering tone. A chorus of murmurs
shivered out of the darkness within its walls. I was spinning off
balance, overwhelmed by a primal and inhuman fear. Breathing in, I
reached out for thoughts, trying to understand where I'd been taken.
Ineffable memories rushed through me—the old people of this
land—their tall stone houses, their mounds of earth, their
languages and ways of thinking, the anguished cries of villages torn
apart by alien disease, the melting of the wilderness into cold and
dead pavement—the creature, which I hesitate to call a plant, knew
the bald monkeys well, but did not know me. I was strange blooded,
carrying the mark of some far away universe—the very sort of spirit
from which they were tasked with defending their earth. I could not
speak to them, not in their language, which I knew only was very old,
primordial, but tried to reach out to them by lifting up my memories.
Out of nowhere, a vivid image of rye, growing in a field, entered my
mind, followed by a pair of blue flowers. The mushrooms were familiar
with the ergot fungus and its cognate plants. A sense of relief came
across the collective consciousness, as they reached the unanimous
conclusion that I was a mold of some kind which inhabited a human
body, using the human's brain to magnify it's own powers. The waters
beneath me subsided.
“Speak not our
language, does the old one?”, the mushrooms said in a familiar yet
still alien dialect. I felt them draw me up, higher, above the sky
over the reflecting pool, and into a world made of energy. I reached
into it's memories, and tried to understand the ettiquette which it
expected of me. They were too vast for my mind. But at least now it
was speaking to me in a language that I understood. “Leave the bald
monkey and come settle in our fields. Not far from here is much
wheat, corn. Help us guard against the coming of the Beyond.”
“The Beyond?”
“The Beyond
comes. It comes in the last nightfall. It tears open the earth above
the earth.”
“The hole in the
universe”, I thought to myself.
“You know?”
“I was there.”
I could feel the
other mulling this fact over. “You were there? And you did
nothing?”
“I didn't know
what was happening.”
A seething anger
shot through the world in which I found myself. A piercing and
totalizing gaze drove itself in between the two lobes of my brain. I
felt my limbs catch fire, and my stomach begin to boil.
I turned tail and
shot down out of the sky and back towards the reflecting pool.
Violent and raging torrents of energy, which took on the form of
rushing water from the heavens, followed in pursuit as I dove through
the pool. My lungs filled with it, igniting. As I fell through the
other sky, I saw the ocean was leeching with magma, turning it into a
black and tumultuous archipelago. “You have been corrupted, Old
One. You have betrayed your earth and you will pay.”
“I am not the
Old One.”, I spoke as I dove into the water, my skin flayed by
the flakes of lava rock and hot magma. Burning, I crashed into my
body, my head dizzy and my vision blurred as I saw the pasture seeth
with hot black anger.
“How do you
speak their tongue?”, asked the mushrooms. I stepped back, feeling
their intensity like a knife up against my throat. My maimed and
bleeding consciousness shivered, sending convulsions through my body.
“I was tripping...in the field last night...and...”
I hadn't realized
I was speaking outloud. The farmer had woken up with his shotgun, and
was looking out the window with terror in his eyes. Another one of
those damn heroin addicts.
“You must have
merely communed with the Old One.”
“Yes, yes, yes.
That's it.”
“You were drawn
near the Beyond, and the Old One sacrificed itself so that you could
live. That is what happened. I see the truth now.”, the mushrooms
sighed, all as one, mourning the death of their friend in a massive,
wailing cacophony. I began to step back. The farmer walked out onto
his porch, and trained his shotgun onto me. “Wait! Wait!”, I held
up my hands.
“Bald monkey,
can you communicate with the one who lives in the brick abomination
in our field?”
“Y-yes.”
“He lives among
the the Buffalo which we protect. They are tenderly fond of him. But
in the past months, he has grown negligient and has not left the
porch to make noises to the Buffalo, bringing them great anxiety.
Tell him that we, the Lords of this Field, wish for him to speak with
the Buffalo.”
“I—I--”
“You got about
ten seconds before I call the cops on your ass.”
“The bald
monkeys have communed with our kind and worship us as the guardians
of this earth. We taught them to make their thought noises. Only
fools do not recognize our power. We will give you the words to
speak, as we have always done.”
“Just a second,
let me explain.”, I said. He lowered his shotgun and I inched out
of the brush, my hands up. “I—uhm--”, I entered the field of
protection the mushrooms projected about the cows, seeing thousands
of their bright and glimmering forms lining the hills, burrowed
underneath the ground in a mass of luminous veins. The mushrooms were
stationary, immortal creatures. They had guarded this land, the three
or four square miles of earth here, from dark spiritual forces, but
they were unalone—other masses of similar creatures, I knew, lay
far beyond their boundaries—their knowledge was no more universal
than any other animals—the traditional lore that they spread to one
another, between boundaries, indeed said that they had given us
language. But little had changed, in their minds. Today, the cows
were still buffalo, as they had always been. The bald monkeys still
treated them as a sacrement, if they did not outright worship them.
“If he tries to kill you, do not worry. We will let you will
decompose in glory.”, they tried to reassure me.
I crept out onto
the pathway, feeling the uncertain and terrified thoughts of the old
rancher scald my barely breathing soul. I did not want to
anger the mushrooms again, and knew that if they pulled me into their
world one more time, I could easily be killed. But I also did not
want to be shot. “My name is John.”, I said, my hands above my
head as I keenly listened for the mushrooms to tell me more of what
to say, “I speak on behalf of the Sacred Mushroom, Guardians of
this Pasture and Most Beloved of the Kind Buffalo.”, I said. On the
command of the psychic fungi, the cows lined up alongside me, staring
towards the farmer. My voice trembled as I spoke their message word
for word, “The Infinite and Exalted Mothers of Language honor me
with the right to speak on their behalf. The Kind Buffalo have been
delighted when you have emerged from your brick abomination to make
noises to them, but are troubled as of late by what seems to be your
withdrawn nature. The Sacred Mushrooms wish for me to ask you to
emerge and to speak once again with the Kind Buffalo when the sun is
high, and again sing to them peaceful hymns.”
“I don't know
what the hell you're talking about, but you can take that hippie
bullshit and shove it right where the sun doesn't shine.” I tried
to translate this statement to the mushrooms. They fumed with anger.
“Please, maybe you should negotiate.”, I suggested. The anger was
at once directed at me. “You dare to challenge our directive?”,
they fumed, “We, the Mothers of Language, Protectors of the Earth,
Masters of Nations and Most Beloved of the Kind Buffalo, will not
negotiate with the Bald Monkeys, especially not when they resort to
such blasphemous indecency. Tell him that his impudence will be his
undoing. The Sacred Mushrooms shall command seven dark forces from
the Underworld over the next seven suns, and seven pestilences from
the Heavens over the next seven moons until he answers to our
demands. If he remains stubborn, we will condemn him to Xibalba,
the dreaded place of fear, until his soul begs for oblivion.”
“Let me--”, I
breathed in, trying to lie to the Mushrooms, “Ahh---the Old One is
speaking to me.” Murmurs of confusion and wonder filled the
hillsides, “It wants me too—too—Ahh!”, I feigned panic as,
with all my might, I drove the field of my consciousness to meet with
the farmers, escaping from the bonds of the mushrooms empathic
defense field. My sense of bodily autonomy returned, and I, with
relief, felt a wave of humanity come over me as I clung to the
farmer's mind. He looked on, terrified. The mushrooms wondered what I
was doing, with awe. The Old One had spoken in judgement from beyond
the grave on their behalf.
“What in the
h--”
“Please, listen
to me. My name is John. I was sleeping in your field. It's filled
with psychedelic mushrooms and they want me to talk to you.”
“Get away
from--”, he looked out at my physical body, drooling and half
asleep on his driveway, seeing that I was almost ten yards away, and
felt himself totally paralyzed. At once, he realized that I was some
kind of psychic force, and thought for a moment that he must be
dreaming. I searched through his memories, which were weakening with
age. His name was Gerry. He was eighty seven years old. He'd built
the ranch with his wife and children, and was now alone. His children
were off in a number of different cities. None of them had taken too
much of an interest in ranching. In the old days, he'd walk around,
singing old bluegrass music to his cows and taking care of them, but
he had instead found himself unable to walk like he used to, and
would sit inside by his window, watching the cows. Every week, his
oldest son would come out, watch TV with him, and they'd show his
children the cows. But his sons wife was, in his words, a stuck up
little bitch, and she couldn't stand the smell. The two would help
clean up the house, and help him take the cows to market. I looked
through his memories. A tear started forming on the corner of his
eye. I started crying as well. The mushrooms looked on with awe. I
tried to pull myself deeper into his mind, which I could feel
shivering around me, and show him what I could see—the glowing
mushrooms—for only a second. He looked on perplexed. “Those live
on your farm. They're psychedelic mushrooms. You may not realize it,
but they can think.” It took a moment for what I was saying to sink
in. “They've been here a lot longer than you or I have. They want
me to tell you to talk to the cows again. They say the cows miss
you.” The ranchers face contorted into an expression of sorrow. “I
just can't anymore. Can you tell them that?”
I returned to my
body, leaving the rancher crying on the porch with his shotgun at his
feet. I pleaded his case to the mushrooms. The collective wept with
the realization that it had so deeply misunderstood, as the cows all
lowered their heads in comprehension. Together, the herd began to
crowd towards the porch, at the behest of the mushrooms. “It will
be enough for the Buffalo to see him, so long as he makes noises for
them to hear.”, the mushrooms said. I reentered the farmers
consciousness. His mind was awaft with memories of sitting in that
same spot, playing mandolin and singing to his herd. “All they want
to do is see you. Maybe you can come back out here more often.” But
he hated them seeing him like this, so weak, and old. I told him it
didn't matter. They understood. Solemnly, I withdrew, watching the
farmer move down the porch in order to pat the first cow on the head.
Tears in his eyes, he looked at me, “You need a place to sleep?”
I held out the
blue topaz in my hands, offering it to him. “Yes.”
Commentary
Because the episode before this was split in half, one half ended up combined with this episode. I am just posting it based on what was originally in the script. "LSD" is the old one because in this universe, that includes LSA and other ergot like compounds, which are all what you could call a "trade language" that facilitates interactions between different plants, molds, and animals to coordinate defense against the Beyond.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnmAA8JCRQ0Upi0jlPZqAog
https://riversofthemind.libsyn.com/lords-of-the-field
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/rivers-of-the-mind/id1278391177
https://play.google.com/music/m/I5obttfukzok6ggklvb5umo2mgq?t=Rivers_of_the_Mind
All episodes by Timmy Vilgiate. No drugs harmed in the making of this podcast. Nothing in this is real. Nothing at all is real. Everything is a lie.
No comments:
Post a Comment