June 29, 2024 - The Moai of Portland
Jul. 21st, 2024 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eerietomFor the last several weeks, I’ve become more interested in hiking while stoned, so I’ve been exploring a lot of new areas for me. One such area was the section of the Springwater Corridor that runs just east of the Willamette.
The corridor was a narrow paved path that seemed to be only for bicyclists, so I checked the signs carefully to make sure pedestrians were allowed. It didn’t say they weren’t, so I proceeded, walking to one side and keeping an eye out for approaching bicycles. Here and there were dirt paths paralleling the paved trail, which made it easier to avoid them. The bicyclists would whiz by very quickly; I felt like I had stumbled across a secret express lane for elite bicyclists to get around Portland.
To the left (facing east), was a tall line of trees on a hill, which made them seem even taller. Barely visible through the tops of those trees was what seemed to be an elevated highway (it was actually SE Grand/SE McLoughlin). With this odd combination of beautiful nature and the elevated road, it seemed there should be a monorail up there. It all felt somewhat utopian, like a scene from a sci-fi film.
Click image for larger view; opens in new window.
I came to another section of the tall trees. I was instantly reminded of the moai on Easter Island. Were these trees then, Portland’s moai? I felt like I had discovered a holy place. This area was full of dragonflies, which buzzed around quite audibly.
Click image for larger view; opens in new window.
After I left the Moai Area, I reflected upon how much I enjoyed the sound of the dragonflies. And then I thought, didn’t it sound a bit like my tinnitus? I’ve been suffering from moderate tinnitus for about a year now, and there are periods where it seems more acute and noticeable than others, and particularly so these last few weeks. I try not to think about or dwell on it; I’ve tried to make peace with the idea I’d never hear total silence again, for it’s easy to “catastrophize” the condition. So how could I find one sound enjoyable and not the other? (of course, one answer is I can always walk away from the dragonflies) And that’s when I decided I had a tiny dragonfly in each ear. Since real dragonflies need to eat and rest and can’t flap their wings constantly, the dragonflies in my ears must be robots with an indefatigable power supply, buzzing endlessly. I wondered, when their host (me) dies, what will happen to them? Will they just keep buzzing in my skull for all eternity? Will they fly out and find a home in someone else’s ears? Of course there aren’t actually tiny robot dragonflies in my ears, but as I have a bit of a cyborg fetish, I like the idea that there are. Anything that makes me tolerate the tinnitus better, even such an obviously fanciful idea.
While walking on the path, I saw a man ahead sitting under a tree with his bicycle parked nearby. He was playing what sounded like old-school Eurodisco music on a portable radio. I appreciated the incongruity; most people play tunes on their phones these days. From the way he was behaving, I guessed he was also in an altered state of consciousness. As I got closer we both nodded and smiled at each other, and that’s when I noticed that he looked just like Snoop Dogg. Now, I didn’t really think it was Snoop out there all by himself. While everyone needs solitary time now and then, Snoop doesn’t seem the type to be out in public without an entourage or some bodyguards. But I looked online, and this article says he was in Eugene, OR less than a week before, so it very well might have been him! And if it was Snoop, then I could just kick myself for not at least saying hi! (however, the guy I saw seemed a little younger than Snoop)
The nearby Oregon Rail Heritage Center offers open air train rides along the Corridor. One passed me, then eventually disappeared from sight but I could still hear its bell. As it got further and further away, the sound “degenerated” until it was mostly echo, and mostly the higher frequencies, so it sounded like a celesta. Ordinarily it’s the higher frequencies that roll off with distance, but perhaps my “enhanced hearing” made a difference?
Although I had taken my usual dose that day, it sure hit me much harder than usual. Some sounds seemed somewhat distorted and became almost unrecognizable. I felt a little dizzier than usual while walking. I wasn’t alarmed, just a little surprised, but also oddly unconcerned. Shouldn’t I have been more concerned? Shouldn’t I have just gone back home, or at least sat somewhere until the effect had peaked? Was I so high that I was throwing caution to the winds? And then it occurred to me that each time I heard a bicycle approach, I would instinctively get over as far as possible, so obviously I wasn’t so unconcerned I might do something foolish. I thought about this, and then came to this conclusion (dictated into my phone that day, edited for clarity):
It was later that I discovered the word psychonaut. While doing cannabis has been a lot of fun and has helped with my overall self-esteem and depression, I enjoy the insights and flights of fancy I get. And besides cannabis and (dreaming about) magic mushrooms, I’ve long kept a dream journal (for my dreams tend to be very long and quite vivid, not the “I dreamt I saw a dog cross the street” variety), have tried guided imagery and meditation before, and so on. It’s more fun to say I’m a stoner, but really, I’m a psychonaut.
Finally, a few random anecdotes:
⇒ I swear I’m not making this one up. On the way from OMSI Station to the start of the trail, I saw a building for a company called TRD Motors which, of course, I read as turd. And the first thing I thought was, I hope their advertising slogan isn’t “Put a TuRD in your driveway!”
⇒ While eating lunch earlier, I was reading on my phone that dimetrodons (don’t know why I was thinking of dimetrodons) were not true dinosaurs, but also existed 40 million years before the dinosaurs appeared. It’s not that I didn’t know how old the earth was (especially since I once recorded a piece of music called Gondwanaland, which contained a segment entitled “Six Billion Years Pass”), I guess I had never really thought about it before, and had a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around those figures, the idea that the earth formed some 4.5 years billion ago ... humanity’s presence here barely registers as a blip on the timeline.
⇒ I also read an article that said it’s a myth that rabbits love carrots (don’t know why I was thinking of rabbits, either). It said rabbits prefer green leafy vegetables, because they find carrots too sweet. Can you imagine Bugs Bunny carrying around a big head of cabbage and munching on it as if it were an apple? lol
⇒ As one of the open air trains passed, I waved at the passengers and some waved back. However, waving at them distracted me just enough that I stumbled pretty dramatically on the path, though I stayed on my feet. The first thing I thought was, every parent on that train probably pointed at me and said, “Look kids, it’s the town junkie. Don’t do drugs, m’kay?” lol
The corridor was a narrow paved path that seemed to be only for bicyclists, so I checked the signs carefully to make sure pedestrians were allowed. It didn’t say they weren’t, so I proceeded, walking to one side and keeping an eye out for approaching bicycles. Here and there were dirt paths paralleling the paved trail, which made it easier to avoid them. The bicyclists would whiz by very quickly; I felt like I had stumbled across a secret express lane for elite bicyclists to get around Portland.
To the left (facing east), was a tall line of trees on a hill, which made them seem even taller. Barely visible through the tops of those trees was what seemed to be an elevated highway (it was actually SE Grand/SE McLoughlin). With this odd combination of beautiful nature and the elevated road, it seemed there should be a monorail up there. It all felt somewhat utopian, like a scene from a sci-fi film.
Click image for larger view; opens in new window.
I came to another section of the tall trees. I was instantly reminded of the moai on Easter Island. Were these trees then, Portland’s moai? I felt like I had discovered a holy place. This area was full of dragonflies, which buzzed around quite audibly.
Click image for larger view; opens in new window.
After I left the Moai Area, I reflected upon how much I enjoyed the sound of the dragonflies. And then I thought, didn’t it sound a bit like my tinnitus? I’ve been suffering from moderate tinnitus for about a year now, and there are periods where it seems more acute and noticeable than others, and particularly so these last few weeks. I try not to think about or dwell on it; I’ve tried to make peace with the idea I’d never hear total silence again, for it’s easy to “catastrophize” the condition. So how could I find one sound enjoyable and not the other? (of course, one answer is I can always walk away from the dragonflies) And that’s when I decided I had a tiny dragonfly in each ear. Since real dragonflies need to eat and rest and can’t flap their wings constantly, the dragonflies in my ears must be robots with an indefatigable power supply, buzzing endlessly. I wondered, when their host (me) dies, what will happen to them? Will they just keep buzzing in my skull for all eternity? Will they fly out and find a home in someone else’s ears? Of course there aren’t actually tiny robot dragonflies in my ears, but as I have a bit of a cyborg fetish, I like the idea that there are. Anything that makes me tolerate the tinnitus better, even such an obviously fanciful idea.
While walking on the path, I saw a man ahead sitting under a tree with his bicycle parked nearby. He was playing what sounded like old-school Eurodisco music on a portable radio. I appreciated the incongruity; most people play tunes on their phones these days. From the way he was behaving, I guessed he was also in an altered state of consciousness. As I got closer we both nodded and smiled at each other, and that’s when I noticed that he looked just like Snoop Dogg. Now, I didn’t really think it was Snoop out there all by himself. While everyone needs solitary time now and then, Snoop doesn’t seem the type to be out in public without an entourage or some bodyguards. But I looked online, and this article says he was in Eugene, OR less than a week before, so it very well might have been him! And if it was Snoop, then I could just kick myself for not at least saying hi! (however, the guy I saw seemed a little younger than Snoop)
The nearby Oregon Rail Heritage Center offers open air train rides along the Corridor. One passed me, then eventually disappeared from sight but I could still hear its bell. As it got further and further away, the sound “degenerated” until it was mostly echo, and mostly the higher frequencies, so it sounded like a celesta. Ordinarily it’s the higher frequencies that roll off with distance, but perhaps my “enhanced hearing” made a difference?
Although I had taken my usual dose that day, it sure hit me much harder than usual. Some sounds seemed somewhat distorted and became almost unrecognizable. I felt a little dizzier than usual while walking. I wasn’t alarmed, just a little surprised, but also oddly unconcerned. Shouldn’t I have been more concerned? Shouldn’t I have just gone back home, or at least sat somewhere until the effect had peaked? Was I so high that I was throwing caution to the winds? And then it occurred to me that each time I heard a bicycle approach, I would instinctively get over as far as possible, so obviously I wasn’t so unconcerned I might do something foolish. I thought about this, and then came to this conclusion (dictated into my phone that day, edited for clarity):
| There are those who skydive or similar for the thrill. There are those who climb impossibly high mountains or dive from space for the thrill. So why can’t one explore one’s mental universe for the thrill? Because I’m walking outside and I am really fucking dizzy and I feel like I should feel more concerned, yet I don’t! I understood that I had to concentrate on my walking because I was stumbling a little more than usual, and yet I didn’t feel concerned, and that’s when I thought, maybe in my own way, I am just one of those thrill-seeking types? |
It was later that I discovered the word psychonaut. While doing cannabis has been a lot of fun and has helped with my overall self-esteem and depression, I enjoy the insights and flights of fancy I get. And besides cannabis and (dreaming about) magic mushrooms, I’ve long kept a dream journal (for my dreams tend to be very long and quite vivid, not the “I dreamt I saw a dog cross the street” variety), have tried guided imagery and meditation before, and so on. It’s more fun to say I’m a stoner, but really, I’m a psychonaut.
Finally, a few random anecdotes:
⇒ I swear I’m not making this one up. On the way from OMSI Station to the start of the trail, I saw a building for a company called TRD Motors which, of course, I read as turd. And the first thing I thought was, I hope their advertising slogan isn’t “Put a TuRD in your driveway!”
⇒ While eating lunch earlier, I was reading on my phone that dimetrodons (don’t know why I was thinking of dimetrodons) were not true dinosaurs, but also existed 40 million years before the dinosaurs appeared. It’s not that I didn’t know how old the earth was (especially since I once recorded a piece of music called Gondwanaland, which contained a segment entitled “Six Billion Years Pass”), I guess I had never really thought about it before, and had a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around those figures, the idea that the earth formed some 4.5 years billion ago ... humanity’s presence here barely registers as a blip on the timeline.
⇒ I also read an article that said it’s a myth that rabbits love carrots (don’t know why I was thinking of rabbits, either). It said rabbits prefer green leafy vegetables, because they find carrots too sweet. Can you imagine Bugs Bunny carrying around a big head of cabbage and munching on it as if it were an apple? lol
⇒ As one of the open air trains passed, I waved at the passengers and some waved back. However, waving at them distracted me just enough that I stumbled pretty dramatically on the path, though I stayed on my feet. The first thing I thought was, every parent on that train probably pointed at me and said, “Look kids, it’s the town junkie. Don’t do drugs, m’kay?” lol
