Microdot is popped in as I waited for the bus near my house. I stop by a bodega to get gum and water. My plan is to visit one of my favorite places in the city, a vast crumbling cemetery where the depths of it have been wholly reclaimed by nature- tombstones submerged in seas of undergrowth and wrenched from the ground by the sinuous roots of the forest. It is a grey, misty day.

I get off the bus and wait for a trolley that will take me to where I need to go. There is a burgeoning sense of nausea and discomfort creeping up my body, but it still sits quietly within me like a secret. The sensory effects have not begun to manifest yet.

I arrive at my destination. I am already beginning to feel anxious and on edge with the presence of other people nearby and am eager to slink behind the fence and into the sprawling meadow before me. There is a tightening in my gut as if my body is reflexively reacting with anxiety, even though I am in peace and solitude now. My mind is swimming, afloat on an increasingly turbulent sea, the grand chorus of insects in the bushes nudging it about like an undulating wall of sonic breezes. The visuals begin to pick up as a flashing in my periphery, abstract forms creeping in from the side and slowly bleeding their way into my entire field of vision.

There’s a twisting in my guts that makes me have to stop as I’m walking around. I sit on the stone walls and try to lie down to bring some modicum of relief to the creeping deep discomfort. Cavernous chills run up and down my spine, I am shaking and twitching as the icy river of this trip begins to break through the floodgates and rush all over me, consuming me and tracing its way to the tips of my extremities.

I sift through the copses of trees peering around for all the little creatures of this world, overgrown tombstones at my feet and overgrown grey obelisks pinned to the sky above me. The muted shadows of the trees are like thin veils that I drift through as the ground undulates beneath me, adorned with all variety of blossoming colors. The sky is writhing and occasionally wringing a brief shower of rain down, as if it was incontinent. The mental effects are picking up as certain words and phrases in my clearly articulated thought processes catch like leaf litter catching on a riffle, swirling around in my head and embedding themselves as echoing intrusive thoughts. They bounce around my skull as I bounce around the jovial grey and green all around me.

I arrive at a grand hilltop overlooking the entire cemetery- at the peak of this hill is a towering pillar topped with the freemason logo, with several other mason graves in a circle around it. I laid down at the base of this grave, sprawled out on the cold eroded marble as I stared into the clouds, beams of sunlight peering out from the cracks between them. It felt as though there was a jet of light and energy erupting from my mind into the sky above, the clouds gathering around me and radiating around it, the earth in concentric circles around my being. It was a sense of incredible self indulgent energy coupled with a sense of being indelibly bound to my surroundings. The afternoon sky’s stratus blankets stalked in concentric rings as traceries of light began to weave themselves with their undulating forms. The stone beneath me spoke of the eons it had inhabited and the tension of its tightly bonded crystalline structures. The grass and soil beneath me whispered tales of its drama and struggles, of the creatures that devoured each other and cells lysing and being lysed and passing their nutrients onto other living, metabolizing cells. The trees that shrouded the earth heaved sighs of the wind that tickled their leaves, the larvae that wriggled into their bark, the sunlight that adorned them with photosynthetic energy, the rains that quenched their thirst, the roots tangled in an intimate playdate with the soil, and the incomprehensible beauty of their uncontrollably unpredictable branching forms. So much of the world around me, so much of it so densely tangled and intermingling, and there was me, an interloper, both out of place among their calculated interactions yet inextricably intertwined and exactly where I needed to be.

I have now situated myself at the base of a glorious Virginia Pine at the top of the hill overlooking the rest of the cemetery, a lofty tree with limbs that span the sky parallel to the earth, giving the appearance of a looming colossus with outstretched arms. I observed this giant closely and intimately, gazing upon the lichens and molds and slime molds and mosses that had gathered on its bark, imagining the intricate microcosms contained on its being, the lives so delicately and uncontrollably intertwined with its own. My mind became enraptured with the idea of microcosms and I became engrossed in quietly observing all the tiny things that crawled among its roots and lived out their daily struggle for life and death in a space of less than a square foot. It was absurd to imagine all this life that adapted and radiated and diversified just to arrive at the current time- a plethora of forms recycling nutrients and propagating themselves on this tree in so many different ways, eking out every last bit of the sun’s energy and the earth’s boundless assemblage of molecules.

I wandered off into the woodsy part of the cemetery and am just in awe at the lushness of the world around me, the explosions of life, it was as if the forest was breathing. It had rained all week and was drizzly today, meaning all the forest’s variety of fungi were in full bloom, bracket polypores jutting out of every tree and log, all variety of little mushrooms in dark little places and dense clumps of mosses and lichens thriving in the misty air. I felt like I was being uncontrollably subjected to their radiance, their pulses of life and their respiratory byproducts as they traversed the air around me, an entire thrumming prismatic shower of life. I was so enthralled by my surroundings that I didn’t notice another person was in the woods too, also aimlessly wandering. I quickly retreated deeper and out of sight, before I could be seen. I was intractably locked into this mindset now of being enmeshed with these microcosms around me that being suddenly dunked back into the reality of a human existence with other people was very jarring. I don’t know why I was so anxious about seeing another person, perhaps I had lost my sense of self among all the plants and fungi and was scared of how it may be expressed. Indeed I was tripping pretty hard at this point, the visual distortions were loud and apparent and I was separated enough from base reality to feel uncomfortable when I had to confront it.

I crossed a very fast and busy road with no stops or crosswalks to access the other side of the cemetery, which was a terrifying ordeal. The trip had manifested itself into alternating waves of sensation- a crest of nervous stimulation, physical discomfort, and an echoing, creeping throbbing and reverberation of my senses, coupled with troughs of stillness, peace, tranquility, and a quiet trickling of gently altered sensations down my neurons. To what degree this was guided by the setting I could not confidently determine. I was amidst the grand necropolis, smoking cannabis enshrined on all sides by tombs and obelisks and towering mausoleums. A tranquility has settled over the land like a mist at dawn. Immediately prior to this I was feeling very exhausted, too warm, too sweaty, and dehydrated. I had to suppress a burgeoning sense of panic at how off kilter my body’s equilibrium seemed to have become. But resting, drinking water, smoking, taking in the pleasantries of a cool breeze- it was invigorating and I felt myself on the upswing, physically, mentally, emotionally. I am so comfortable and tranquil that it seems to override the inherent stimulation of the chemical- I could fall asleep here, a soft fortress formed from the curtains of the birds and bugs singing in a chorus around me, cushioned by the pulses of their neutral impulses and respiratory byproducts. I lie at the base of a mausoleum for a while, gazing into the sky, watching paisley traceries manifest themselves from the clouds. They form and unform in a continuous stream, like the birth and death of some very ephemeral organism. I see more people approaching also seemingly aimlessly wandering and feel a quick shock of anxiety, as I must look very out of wack lying here on this tomb, falling asleep. I jolt myself up and make a quick retreat into another wooded section of the cemetery before I can be spotted.

I spent some time exploring some deeper woods I had not explored much before. I ducked into some dense bushes to get there, a barely discernible path through the undergrowth seemingly enshrined by the arches of vines and bushes above it, a green trail into a living, breathing oblivion. All of the walking had turned me sweaty and tired and I felt the sense of panic at the disturbance of my homeostasis again. I rested a bit to try and restore order. I spent a while in the woods, gazing closely at mushrooms and molds and other organisms that were hard at work decomposing fallen trees. As I wandered deeper into the woods, deeper into desolation, I felt pangs of fear at my isolation- indeed what would happen if I encountered someone else in this lonely place? I was fairly far into a muddy swamp when I decided to turn back- I had quietly become consumed by a unique panic and fear that my mind could only form when afflicted with such a dense chemical stimulation. Upon returning to the open cemetery I lay on a pathway and gazed longer into the sky, focusing on the visual aspect of the trip- the clouds forming into paisley mirror images of themselves and echoing into oblivion, reverberating to the horizon, their fringes and gaps awash with swirling fluxes of color. The sky is undulating and breathing and there are so many infinitely flowing and warping patterns that are folding themselves out of the disorder. Indeed this trip seems to be tangled in the contradictions of order and disorder- of the apparent disorder of the natural world around me, despite it all functioning along very clear lines of chemical and physical interactions, just so many tangles and threads that is beyond the scope of our understanding of order, the visualization of it all as microcosms as an attempt to turn the intricately assembled ecosystems into neatly compartmentalized closed systems- it’s all so much and I am thinking so much and I honestly just need to chill. It’s such a nice place to think though. The clouds are not formed into entities or conscious patterns or hallucinations, it’s all so abstract, like the self propagating molecules that would soon give rise to life vs. the coherent forms of the organisms they would eventually assemble.

I have moved on to another part of the cemetery. My path has been stalked by deer, families of does and bucks quietly surrounding me and staring at me. It makes me feel very nervous. They all eventually turn tail and run though. I have found myself sucked into microcosms again, this time observing the insect life hiding under some rotting bark at the base of a big maple tree. So many little trails of slime molds, so many insects haphazardly crawling around experiencing such an alien life to mine, all of them gently submerged in a rich tapestry of hallucinated colors and patterns and harmonious dancing and transfiguring forms. I have become so immersed in these microcosms that every time I look up from what I’m doing it feels like waking up from a dream, just suddenly being exposed from a very different world than the one I was previously engaged in. It’s very disorienting to say the least.

Decide to set off for home. I’m running low on water and want to be at peace in my own comfortable place. I take deep breaths and prepare myself to be immersed back into the world of people, as one would prepare for the shock of jumping into cold water. I walk to the trolley stop, the tightly packed rowhomes towering around me and draped by the overcast sky. Passerby look like caricatures of people, features exaggerated and distorted, and colorful patterns still dance and play across my field of vision. I am blessed that the trolley arrives just as I get to the corner, so I don’t have to wait around, exposed and vulnerable. The trolley and bus ride home are uneventful, there was barely anyone on board either and I could just find a seat towards the back in which I could curl up and hide. It was an overcast but pleasant afternoon and there were all sorts of people just leisurely going about their days all around me.The heart of the world beats on all sides of me, everything is moving and existing and living as an intricate clockwork that I am immersed in, inextricably part of, for better or worse.

I arrive home and immediately retreat to my cave. I feel light and floaty and bouncy, as if I am a buoyant ghost drifting around. The visuals have died down but they still carry a bit of momentum, crawling around my perceptual space, weaving around each other but slowly fading out like apoptosis.

I have mostly just been lazing around on my computer, I smoke cannabis which brings some of the dazzling features of the trip back for a bit but I am definitely on a steady downward slide. There is some residual physical discomfort like nausea, urinary retention and muscle tension. The day wears on and the sun sets and the novelty feels like its been drained from the experience. There is a show at my house tonight and I can hear the sounds and activity of people beginning to arrive. I’m content to be in my room with the vestigial patterns playing on the walls, the sounds a dull reverberating murmur.

I went outside to socialize but I find myself not being able to talk much, I am content with being curled in a ball in the corner, listening. I still feel stimmy and interacting with people feels slightly awkward but at least they do not look like distorted caricatures now. As the night wears on I smoke more weed and become more competently immersed in my social interactions.

The night has wound down and most people have left my house at this point. I go to sleep without issue.