Tricycle | Awake in the World

 I WAS NINETEEN when I first dropped acid. A sophomore at UC Santa Cruz, I was living with my best friend, Kat, in a ramshackle beach cottage. We gave each other a long gaze, wished each other luck, and each swallowed a tiny piece of paper, blotted with a dot of LSD. Then we lay down in the tiny living room on the plush, blood-red carpet and waited for the acid to hit our systems. No one had advised us to vacuurn. As the LSD came on, Kat and I, immobilized, were captive to an onslaught of animated lint and cat fur. We closed our eyes in an effort to escape the writhing, multicolored environment, and the universe cracked open. I became complete peace, pure luminosity-no self, no form, no time. Free from identification with my body, I realized that death only exists in the imagination of humans.