The Magic Bodhisattvic Schoolbus
For someone who’s supposed to be enjoying a perfect Saturday afternoon, I’ve sunk pretty low. The Bud Light in my large plastic cup’s already warm. I’m feeling the unpleasant effects—mainly headache and nausea—of consuming cheap American beer. The non-stop salsa music’s been pounding my eardrums for hours, with no relief in sight. This year’s local Latin American music fest’s turning out to be a real disappointment.
And my wife’s grown restless. “I’m sick of this tiresome jungle routine. I was hoping for variety, a bit of romantic music, or maybe even some mariachi. Instead, all they’ve been doing is shouting and wagging their asses. It’s as monotonous as the Budweiser that’s all there is to drink.”
I couldn’t have summed it up better. We lose no time and
leave. We linger around downtown
My wife’s and daughter’s faces have a sort of blank, spiritless look, the chief symptom of staying too long in a modern urban utopia or watching too much TV. They’re a reflection of what I’m probably looking like myself.
Ok, so I’m out of shape spiritually. I do some light meditation. The time feels right for a curative Salvia session. Sally relieves many physical ailments, but it’s in healing infirmities of the spirit that she excels most.
A week ago, I made some tincture from eight
Then I take the remaining tincture and dilute it with 9 parts water to make roughly a 20-proof alcohol solution. I pour the mixture over a small quid of four re-hydrated SBC leaves. Yes, I’ll have that bitter, magical piece of Mother Nature between my teeth tonight.
My first experience with homemade tincture was very positive—I’d say a solid 30-minute Level 4 trip. However, it left my tongue sore for a couple of days. I enjoyed my first quid trip with twelve re-hydrated leaves as well, but had to struggle all the way against the awful bulk in the mouth.
With the “tincture-enhanced quid”, I hope to combine the best of the quid and tincture methods without their main disadvantages. The new (?) method decreases the bulk of the quid and also the alcohol content of the tincture solution. I figure that the effects will be comparable to those from either quid or tincture separately.
But after 25 minutes of chewing, I’m not quite up to Level 3. This is as far as the enhanced quid will take me tonight. Perhaps the alcohol content was too low to penetrate my sublingual mucous membranes. Or maybe I should’ve used more leaf. However, I still think the new method shows promise, and will try it again at a future time.
I do see two vague images while chewing the small quid. In the first image, I see a man seated on a lawn of grass. He’s staring dully into space. Both his legs are cut off just below the knee. The amputated parts lie a few feet from him. There’s no blood at all in this scene. The man appears to be hollow inside, or perhaps has been drained of bodily fluids. He could be a scarecrow or a dressmaker’s dummy.
A casualty in the endless struggle for Authenticity? Another hollow man in a spiritually hollow wasteland? I sense Lady Salvia’s biting irony.
The second thing I see is a tablecloth being stretched out
against the corner of a table. Is
someone, somewhere, in urgent need of being “straightened out”?
The mild quid’s gotten me worked up. An hour later, my smoking equipment’s laid out and ready. I particularly enjoy drawing in with one inhalation all the smoke into the large water pipe. Then I can breathe in the cooled smoke at my leisure. The apparatus is so efficient that I need only a single SBC plain leaf to reach Level 5.
I almost always have music with Salvia. It substitutes for the calming ritual in the original shamanistic context which I’m not able to reproduce. Tonight, the music—“Visiting” from Will Ackerman’s 1983 album “Past Light”—will blend in superbly with the experience.
I sit on the sofa, with my feet resting on the beige living room rug. As I take my second toke, I’m sucked into Salvia Space in the now familiar manner that I’ve grown to respect but no longer fear. I’m twisted and bent into some complex, mind-boggling shape I can’t describe.
Will Ackerman’s “Visiting” begins with the haunting, ethereal sounds of the Lyricon, a clarinet-like controller for analog synths. The notes flow gently like the soft ripples of a stream.
The flow quickens, and at exactly 1 minute, 50 seconds into the piece, the music achieves an intense melodic “breakthrough”. It feels like a ray of pure exquisite sunlight that’s penetrated through the darkness. A large bump forms under the living room rug. It rises and morphs into the front of a large bus, half sunk into the floor, driver seat facing the sky.
Through some warp in Salvia Space, I “melt” away and fuse
with the bus chassis. Perhaps it’s a schoolbus, or one of the ancient Chinese Army trucks I saw in the “
With my strange new body, I witness a most exhilarating vision. At the exact moment of the musical “breakthrough”, a driver, or more precisely, the silhouette of a driver, appears behind the wheel. The strange figure waves his hand high. “Hop aboard!” he/she seems to be saying, “Don’t miss out on The Greatest Trip of Your Life!”
The inexplicable bus with its spirited driver and the sudden bold ray of “musical light” combine to form a magical eternal moment that will always live in my memory. Existence may appear banal or tedious, but the beauty, mystery, and excitement of Being are always there just below the surface, waiting to break through whenever we’re ready to “hop aboard” and see with our Third Eye.
A voice asks, “Aren’t you done yet?” It sounds like my wife calling from upstairs. But it’s no use answering now—a bus can’t reply to questions.
Shortly after, I’m back to base level. I clean up, turn off the lights, and catch my wife still awake in bed.
No, the voice I heard wasn’t hers. She hadn’t spoken to me since I turned on the CD player. However, she did sneak in a peek. Curious as to my “tripping appearance”, I prod her for details.
“Oh, you should’ve seen yourself in the mirror. You could’ve passed for the Buddha. Eyes shut, hands joined, completely still, like you were in another world—ha, ha, ha!” Her sarcastic laughter.
Buddha. Hmmm....
Certainly, this has been a most productive Saturday night.