Adonis Diaries

Part 2. A winter “mushroom trip”

I am a public servant attached to the ministry of energy (electricity to be specific).  My job is to pay visits to new owners of properties and suggest remedies for saving on energy.  One of the owners was to be a writer.  I met the two ladies Astrolabe and Alienor:  One was very beautiful and the other was obviously a retarded person:  She didn’t get up and kept eating.

It was winter and cold in the old and small apartment beneath the attic with glass roof.  I suggested remedies to saving energy but the beautiful girl declined all of them on the basis that they cannot afford to pay electricity bills.  The girls were wearing three layers of parka. 

The retarded Alienor was the author, and the two ladies purchased the old apartment from author’s rights. Alienor suffered from the rare gentle autism called “autism of Pneux”. This kind of autism renders the individual totally defenseless against any kinds of aggressions:  They cannot perceive aggressions as bad, but just as a curiosity. Alienor views dirt and being dirty as an amusing phenomenon: Astrolabe has to wash Alienor and give her baths.

Alienor writes with great difficulty and Astrolabe has to take dictation of a language that only her can decipher.  Astrolabe is de facto the intermediary between Alienor and the outside world, particularly with the publishers; and she refuses to part from Alienor for even an hour.  The particular case of Alienor is that she can only feel aggression when she writes, but never in her daily life.

On one of my visit, I was kissing Astrolabe and Alienor came very close to observe the event, with wide eyes:  This behavior was sort of “reading material” to Alienor; she was observing details for her stories.

I had this ingenious idea.  I asked Astrolabe to expect me this Saturday morning to bring in breakfast, and suggested they eat nothing before I arrive.  That morning I brought dry hallucinogenic Guatemalan mushrooms and the CD of Aphex Twin (Zigomatic 17).

I distributed “recreational” doses for the girls and an adequate portion for myself.  I asked them to drink two glasses of water.  The mushrooms taste nasty and the water helps for efficient ingestion of the poisonous condiment and generates quicker effects.  I prepared the floor with cushions and plaids: I know that not many can stand or even sit as the effects set in.

I have asked the girls not to eat anything because we might feel like vomiting at the start of the trip.  I learned to swallow like crazy to prevent vomiting.  Astrolabe was now focusing on the white wall separating the apartment from the neighbors.  Alienor had closed her eyes and never moved during her 8-hour trip:  She is of the “internal trip category”, the category that gets the best of the effects. The effects on Alienor was as if she got four doses of mushrooms.  Astrolabe was of the external category:  Her pupils expanded to cover all her eyes.

I intervened so that Astrolabe would not spend all her trip on the wall. I presented a blue Nattier cushion for her to contemplate.  Astrolabe was speaking softly and inaudibly.  She said: “This blue is so fantastic that it is necessarily a secret. It is as if I have never seen blue color before”.  Our noses were in the blue cushion.

I told Astrolabe that what we are seeing is what less than two-year babies see, before they mature for survival sake. We feel as happy as a one year old baby feels. I kissed Astrolabe and she laughed and said: “The skin of your face is all covered with Chinese characters, like the Golden Buddha”

“So you’re my lover?” she asked me, and proceeded to investigate everything in my body, turning the lobes of my ears inside out… Astrolabe’s face looked humongous to me, as if I was playing the physician with a giant.  She pulled my sweater and started to listening to my heart, stomach… “I am hearing incredible noises inside you, as if you ingested a working washing machine” she said.  “Yes, what you are hearing are the desire-kinds of noises” I replied.

Astrolabe looked at Alienor who was on her internal long trip.  I asked Astrolabe to close her eyelids.  She screamed and said: “I see explosions of contemporary arts in my head; like the art works of Kandinsky, Miro, Rothko, and Nicholas of Stael…

I told her that all these artists have experienced hallucinogenic mushrooms.  Even Plato had a few mushrooms:  The description of Plato of the cave cannot be but the witnessing of the mushroom effects.

I said: “When we sober up, we’ll always recall the “trip experience”, though we’ll not be able to feel it”.  I asked Astrolabe to knell and look at the floor. She took the Moslem position in prayer and exclaimed: ” I see a transparent sheet of ice, like an iced lake, and fantastic palaces underneath. I can see a beautiful girl with her hair trying to break through the ice.”  Astrolabe was ice-cold: We have mostly the feeling of the cold during the trip.  Earth was a giant ice block before the sun slowly heated earth.

I wrapped Astrolabe with my arms, legs and body.  I proceeded in removing her layers of parka. Astrolabe discovered that her body was a rigid cold marble: She boxed her stomach and felt nothing.  People on trips cannot feel external blow: They are “stoned” as the expression rightly describes the physical condition.  She was frustrated to feel her rigid body.  The music of Zigomatic 17 ended and she wore her clothes back.

I felt very frustrated and asked her: “What monument in Paris most resembles to you?” Astrolabe said: “The iron Eiffel tower because it is in the shape of an A.  The first letter in my name. Actually, Gustave Eiffel conceived this shape because he was madly in love with Amelie. Just imagine the name of the loved one was Olga!  You can be sure the shape of Eiffel Tower would have been very different!” 

It is then that I decided to crash an airplane into the Eiffel Tower:  We tend to destroy what we love best.  As Wilde wrote: “We kill what we love”. Ugly and insignificant monuments never cross our minds for destruction.

There are moments of “bad trip” when we frankly and clearly see the ugly external things: Like an ugly tie that drive us to madness and we cannot help but demand from the gentleman to throw the tie away.  Everything that we feel during the trip is utterly of the most frank sensation.

Note: This story is from the French book “The winter  trip” (Le voyage d’hiver) by Emilie Nothomb