4._Finding Peace

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So after about another 2 months of practicing I felt like I was pretty much ready to go. Honestly I think I was ready earlier than that—at least as ready as I’d ever be—but I let myself enjoy a bit of the Santa Fe scene before I left. I told you that place is weird, right? There’s this religion-cult-thing there called “Human Design” that I guess is really popular among a lot of the rich people. I don’t really know what it’s about other than it’s really heavy on the pseudoscience and you can basically use it to justify whatever shitty behavior you like to engage in.

Basically astrology. It’s astrology with different words.

Jesus Christ, I’m telling you, that place is woo-woo. It was kinda fun for a bit. I went to this big party at some rich dude’s place—I’m talking a full on mansion—and there was a DJ putting on a legit electronica concert in the living room with fog machines and a light show and the house was totally packed with people. There were a ton of drugs too, and a guy in the kitchen making cocktails for whoever wanted one, I think he might’ve been the owner of the house based on how he was talking and how he knew where everything was.

Or, actually, I think it must have been the owner’s boyfriend, ‘cause I’m pretty sure someone pointed the main dude out to me at one point—a white hair and mustached cowboy looking dude who was apparently “absolutely loaded”—the dude in the kitchen looked mid 30s maybe, like Freddy Mercury mixed with the Brawny Man. But they were definitely a pair—I think. I guess they were probably poly, or in an open relationship or something, definitely bi, ‘cause they were both also all over 2 of the ladies I saw there, and with another one of the guys.

You know what, I don’t know, maybe they were all just super fucked up. Maybe the bartender was the owner of the house, and the Sam Elliot looking motherfucker was just the financial lynchpin of their entire polycule.

Point is it was crazy, like if Meow Wolf served LSD and was based in someone’s house. It kinda reminded me of this other rave I went to too that was basically the same thing as that house party, except it was outside and there wasn’t a dude making fancy drinks in a kitchen and I didn’t accidentally walk in on an orgy when I was trying to find the bathroom.

Maybe there was an orgy in the dirt after I left.

There’re these events that they call ecstatic dance that people are big on there. And a thing called contact improv. Wasn’t really my vibe, but it was interesting to see once. I really just tried to embrace the weird. I avoided the kratom and kava bars though, that shit is foul. Tastes like dirt and the high just feels like a weird, uncomfortable, shitty drunkness. People seem to love it out there for some reason.

I did eat fuckload of shrooms with some people out in the desert my last week there. I would’ve preferred acid, I don’t really like shrooms, I never seem to have a very good time on them. But that trip was good because even though it sucked, I was able to work through some stuff in my head. Really helped me to see that… well whatever, blah blah blah, it doesn’t matter, you wouldn’t get it. Basically it just made me realize that it was time to go. I was getting a little too comfortable. Despite my best efforts, I was starting to make friends and I kept delaying and delaying my leave date because it felt nice to distract myself with all this other shit and pretend that I was someone else.

But after that trip, I was ready to go. I even remember saying exactly that. I was looking right at Doug—this old dude who fucking loved shrooms and did them all the time, who was with our group when we ate them—and I remember waking up in this fucking yurt outside some dude’s house we had all ended up at, and it was the middle of the day and I sat up and I saw Doug sitting across from me smiling.

I know that sounds kinda creepy, but it didn’t feel that way. I mean, yeah it was weird, but more from like an intellectual detached perspective kinda weird. Like a “wow this is a very unusual situation to be in” kind of way. It didn’t feel creepy or uncomfortable in the moment. Doug was just sitting there smiling like a Buddha. He’s this old, skinny white dude with long silver hair who always wears fucking tiedye. Seriously, he looks like a caricature of a person. Like a bad Halloween costume of a hippy from the ‘70s. And he’s just sitting there looking like that, but underneath all that—or maybe “beyond” is a better word for it—beyond that frail old body he actually looks like he’s Buddha.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Or whoever the calm, fat, gold dude with ten arms is.

And so I sit up and I’m looking at him and he’s just smiling staring back at me. And, I mean, he’s really smiling. The sides of his eyes were all crinkled up and his grin kept getting bigger and bigger. It was almost like he was trying not to laugh. But it wasn’t like he was trying not to laugh at me. It’s more like he had this look on his face like you would if someone had told you the secret to the universe, to everything, and it was something so beautiful and wonderful that it made you so happy and you couldn’t wait to tell everyone else what it was so that they could be happy too.

I don’t know, I don’t have a better way to describe it. But so I’m looking at him, and then he somehow nodded at me without moving his head. Like, he nodded with just his eyes somehow. Like he had an energy field that expanded and connected to my energy field—I don’t believe in any of that shit, by the way, that’s just what it seemed like at the time: he somehow nodded with his eyes.

I’m sure if you went to any coffee shop in town and polled the people there, they’d say that it was indeed his “aura” that I’d felt. Maybe his chakra shocked me, I don’t know.

I think I might’ve been still tripping kinda hard. We ate a lot of shrooms.

I don’t even know if I had actually “woken up” from sleep, I might’ve just finally come back to reality from laying in the dirt and talking to god all night. Either way, I was looking at Buddha-Doug and he said “How are you my friend?” and that was the moment that my brain had the eureka moment and I knew I needed to leave Santa Fe and get on with everything. I mean, I already knew that I needed to get out before I got stuck in complacency, but the significance of it didn’t really hit until that moment. So I said to him, I said “Doug, I have to get out of here, I need to leave.”

Now, I think most people in Doug’s place would’ve thought I meant that I needed to leave the tent, that I needed to be outside for a sec, like the vibes in there were too heavy and I needed to be out in nature. But the way Doug responded made me think that he knew that that’s not what I meant. Now, again, I think I was still trippin at that point so that might’ve played into my interpretation of the moment, but the way he blinked at me felt like this solemn nod, like he was accepting what he knew I needed to go do.

That’s not quite the right way to put it though, that makes it sound like he was a disappointed father or something, but that’s not the vibe he gave off. It was more like the nod that a professor would give you when—after months and months of grappling with formulas and theories and shit—you finally figured out some super complicated concept on your own.

Whatever, I don’t know if that’s what happened at all. Maybe if you asked Doug about it he’d be like “nah, he was just trippin balls and freaking out” or something like that. All I can say is that that’s what it felt like was happening.

But, anyways, he gave me that weird little nod-slash-non-nod of his and then did this little roll maneuver to get out of my way. Like, he just rolled on the ground a few times til he was at the far side of the yurt, and then I stood up and walked out. And I got like 3 steps out and the sun was reallyfucking bright and I was shielding my eyes and then I turned around and Doug was standing there just looking at me with that same fucking gigantic smile.

But I guess it actually seemed a little different at that point. It wasn’t like he was smiling because he knew all the wonderfully hilarious secrets of the universe—I mean, it was a smile like he knew something, but it wasn’t like he was necessarily super happy about it—it was more like he had just accepted something really important. I don’t know, I mean he also didn’t look not happy either, it was just… just his smile was different in some way that I don’t quite know how to explain.

And we just stand there and stare at each other for a minute, or maybe 20 minutes, I don’t know—like I said, I was still not entirely sober—and after a while that fucking aura-nod happens again and he says “you will find your peace” and then he went back into that fucking sauna of a yurt. And I stood there for a good while thinking about what he said. Even then I had the thought in my head of hoping he was right even though he couldn’t possibly know what all me finding my peace would entail. But a tiny part of me thought “what if he does know?”

Of course I know there’s no way, mind reading isn’t real, psychics aren’t real, chakras aren’t real, psychedelics don’t give you a mental link with the dude tripping on 6 grams of shrooms pissing his pants on the ground in a fucking yurt in the desert. Still, sometimes I like to imagine that he did know, or at least intuited the general vibe. I like to pretend that it’s a good omen, that it’s my destiny, that fate demands my success.

And I guess I’ve made it this far, haven’t I? So maybe Doug was onto something, even if I’m not sure I’ve “found peace” yet. I don’t know if you’d call what I’m feeling right now “peace” exactly, but it’s definitely something.

Whatever you’d call it, it sure as shit seems a whole hell of a lot better than what you’re feeling right now… you don’t look so good. And I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s gonna get a whole lot worse...

But hey, relax, you’ve still got time, I gotta take a break, this is more tiring than I’d expected it to be honestly. I guess a lot of that must be the adrenaline and all the hormones fluctuating, plus the fact that I haven’t slept very well the last couple weeks. Thank god for caffeine and meth, am I right? No but really, this is all very exhausting… I guess more so for you, huh?

So, anyways, what was I saying?

Oh yeah, I was tripping balls in the desert with some trust-fund new-age hippy types and Doug said some shit that is either proof that everything I thought I knew about the universe is totally wrong, or that drugs be hella crazy. I’ll let you decide which is more likely.

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4.

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