Thursday, August 10, 2017

Memory

Often when I’m stoned, I have brilliant insights into the human condition that allow me to be more forgiving and compassionate towards my fellow human beings.  Unfortunately, those revelations are ephemeral and by the time I might get around to writing them down, they’re gone.  Consequently, I find myself just as clueless and misguided as I was before I got high and no more considerate towards mankind than I ever was.

So, fuck all of you SUV drivers, Trump supporters, and Baltimore Ravens fans. 

Ah, that’s better.

Just kidding! 

Actually, I love you all, and I don’t need drugs to remind me.  (What I need drugs for, as a matter of fact, is to lessen the pain of human existence and also to make bike riding easier and more fun; also, to encourage me to swim in the lake and to make reading fiction more enjoyable; oh, and because it keeps me from wandering around the house eating everything in sight and additionally, since it eases some of the nagging pain I feel in my knee and my neck.  And, of course, because weed smoking makes me cool.)

I recall the first time I ever got stoned; it was the day after Thanksgiving, 1972; I was in the third-floor poolroom of our house in Pittsburgh; Val Hornstein, whose older brother was an authentic hippie, as evidenced by his dog-eared copy of Be Here Now, had a joint of “Acapulco Gold” procured from said sibling.  We smoked it and walked around outside in a snowstorm that was so beautiful and quiet that it’s no wonder I’m still a pothead almost fifty years later.

One of the things I like about weed is that it makes the simple complex and the complex simple.  Big issues, like how to prevent nuclear war with a madman for President slide away, and you get to focus your attention on whether to wear sandals or Converse.

At least, that’s how I remember it.

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