the ultimate punishment!

new year's eve, and a huge year end commission, and I decided to treat myself and my friends to a wonderful treat: a vaporizer. truly an amazing machine; I opted for a Fiji, a Chinese knockoff of the German-designed Volcano. a good clone of a great machine. testing it in the shop, it seemed to work nicely, so I grabbed it and brought it home.

the three of us are in the basement, excited at the prospect of a greater high than ever, a true state of stunted/altered bliss, and watch in awe as the balloon fills up with a soft white mist of THC, and perhaps the tiniest bit of smoke from the smoldering leaves.

I take the first hit: it is the smoothest, most delicious hit of marijuana I have ever had in my entire life. it is lightly sweet, a colorful flavor very much like the scent of the weed, but in a form that would taste delicious as a seasoning in, say, a cheesecake or a pudding.

I pass the bag, and we continue until it is empty. we are sitting contentedly, having just passed through an entire bowl's worth of weed... and then I realize that the round had probably only "counted" as "a hit." intrigued, I hooked the bag back up to the chamber back up to the base, and started it up again.

the bag filled with the same delicious mist.

we continued with this single bowl's worth of "high quality chronic" for a total of 8 rounds, reaching a peak so high and so smooth one of us said he could never go back. silently we agreed.

then the chamber was opened, and what came out looked like perfectly smokable schwag! complete with crystals! amazed and excited, we decided to load the bong up with the stuff... it filled exactly one bowl's worth. I debated passing the honor in my head, but was too high to finish thinking before I could take the first hit and...


oh.



dear heavenly existence, all things in the universes, holy terrifying mother father oh my....



the darkest, most vile, most evil smoke had filled my lungs and mouths and...




I couldn't shake it. it was death. it was disease. it was a million families' homes burning, with their New Year's Eve's guests, their children, their cars, their kitchens, their beds, all violently burning in the most horrific and devastating of fires, a nuclear fire, a biologically diseased fire, a molten mass of evil.

it was punishment. it was a wall, a line that must not be crossed. I had reached the ultimate high, and in my unawares had reached even further. I brought upon myself a cosmic smackdown, a balancing of the universe, as I was not yet ready to wield such power and wisdom... I have much further to go.

as I finally began to come to, coming out of my fight to shake off the dread, I looked up, and saw it... the card I had on the counter, reading in big letters: 29.

-B-

nothing is simple, but complication is overstated

dating manifests as a far more complicated social apparatus than is reasonable. not that this is surprising, as there is a noticeable lack of reason and rationality in how many people approach relationships. something about the internal interaction between emotion and clear, logical thought... essentially, sanity is diminished by deeper emotions.

I have long been slightly amused, albeit unnerved, by some of the bad choices I've made when it's come to relationships. "Cloud" was probably the most notable example, and continues to be a source of some of my most amusing/mind-numbing anecdotes. but that was far from an isolated situation, and no matter how much more effort I put into preventing new mistakes, there's always something new to learn.

I find myself retracing my steps more and more these days, trying to better understand where I've been to better target where I am headed. in doing so, it has become more apparent that there are so many possible paths that the future is certainly set up to be pretty unique.

in other words, there are too many possibilities to adequately minimize the chance for missteps once steps are being taken. the reasonable thing to do, then, is to keep these thoughts in mind, and refuse to be treated poorly, avoid cruel and dishonest people, and look more for healthy connections than emotional perfection.

but again, reason and emotion don't mix.

-B-

self-calibration

there are over 6 billion ways to live a good life right now, the count increases every day.

people concern themselves with whether they've done enough in life (or for some, too much). there's worry about regrets, and regrets about paths not taken. with so much emphasis on opportunities not taken, it's easy to lose sight of the positive impact of things that have happened.

you should do what you can, and enjoy what you do.

I've found myself increasingly accepting of the pitfalls I face, and in some cases, appreciative of the chance to learn something, about myself, or about large heavy objects falling on my toe. it's proven infectious and addictive to study my mistakes with a sense of curiosity and amusement rather than distress.

but then, maybe my illness has made a masochist out of me. regardless, I remain at least slightly optimistic that I will live to see a trend of ditching the sadness, anger, and despair that poisons so much of our species.

-B-