- Apples (Canada), Avocados, Artichokes, Almonds (California)
- Bananas (Hawaii), Blueberries, Blackberries (Poland)
- Cranberries (Wisconsin)
- Dragon Fruit (Mexico)
- Eggplant (New Jersey)
- Figs (Turkey)
- Grapes (British Columbia)
- Honeydew Melon (Arizona)
- Iceberg Lettuce (Salinas Valley, California)
- Java (Mocha, Yemen, Sumatra, Bali)
- Kiwi (New Zealand)
- Lemons, Limes (Florida)
- Mangoes (Thailand)
- Nectarines (Sunshine Orchards, Central Okanagan)
- Oranges (Florida), Olives (Sicilian, Spanish, Greek)
- Peaches, Pears, Plums (Okanagan), Pomegranates (Eden, Utah)
- Quinoa (Peru)
- Rutabaga (Ontario)
- Saffron (Iran), Sesame Seeds (China), Strawberries (Fraser Valley, British Columbia)
- Tea (China), Tea (Nepal), Tea (Japan), Tea, (Sri Lanka)
- Udo, or Mountain Asparagus (Hokkaido, Japan)
- Vanilla Bean (Veracruz, Mexico)
- Watermelon (California)
- Xigua (China)
- Yams (Jamaica), Yukon Gold Potatoes (Okanagan)
- Zucchini (Saskatchewan)
- Details
- Category: Love
He unwraps the book with her.
They will share this.
The book, this book, it's a rarity, it existed, until this moment, only in the imagination.
It is a banned book.
Oversized in the manner of an old atlas, a pair of supple white leather gloves fall out the wrapping paper with it, there is first a note of caution:
"This book offers you the means to exchange knowledge for experience..."
The note continues...
The pages, lightly bound of different papers, weights. Some, heavy, fine calligraphy, instructions. Illustrations of fairies dancing about mushrooms by the light of a yellow moon, tinted with various vitamins and minerals. The instructions, to fill a sterile jar with cooked brown rice, clip a piece from the page, roll it and place within the rice.. in a few short weeks this paper, impregnated with the spores of the mushroom you just planted, will give your first crop.
There follow descriptions of how to maintain and time the temperature, light and humidity.
Another page, thick, this of the peyote button and flowers arranged in a Mandela, this, a proper commitment, you must follow the instructions and wait up until 10 years until you reap the reward.
Instructions as to the type of soil, acidity, PH, exposure.
The next page, a sampling of blotters, each ready to consume. Wear the gloves. The full pantheon of Indian Gods in glorious polychrome, Orange Sunshine, others, ready to go, merely take a tab on tip of your tongue.
There are the classics, Papavar Somniferum, with instructions to various preparations and abundant cautions as to it's use, bright pictures of poppies, coca leaves, cannabis, sassafras and morning glories, The Mimosa Hostilis, drawn, again, plant the seed, review the instructions on how to prepare. A bubbled page filled with tablets of 2C-B, another with seeds from "Banisteriopsis Caapi" and "Psychotria viridis" with details on how to prepare the vines, the leaves. A beautiful vomiting symbiosis that will see you healed. This is a modern herbology, empathogens, hallucinogens, psychedelic's, depressants, vivid dreams drawn and colored beyond the margins, beyond even the marginalia, dreams of terror and isolation and profound communion and enlightenment.., dreams that slip from the page and into the abyss...
This page should see no sunlight, and this should be rolled into papers and smoked, this can be taken as is, and this, only under threat of madness, a trip to be taken and might be never returned from, pack your bags accordingly...
There are Instructions, rituals, rites, formulas to be followed at every step. Disregard them at your peril.
In the margins are drawn little fairies, gnomes, elves, gremlins, and the occasional grey or insectoid alien. This, fair warning for what to expect, with notes as to certain well known 'personalities' you might encounter who might impede or further your experience, depending on how favourably they regard your intrusion.
Were you invited?
There are lost preparations from "De Materia Medica" by Pedarius Dioscarides, from the "Pen ts'ao kang mu" by Li Shih-chen, tested again by Shulgin with his notes, there are tinctures and eyedrops that promise to enable you to see in the dark, colors otherworldly and fluid, colors drab will swirl and pulse, you'll see the wind, watch sacred geometries unfold, the same drops in your ears would fine tune, attenuate your hearing so that you would understand the birds, hear the whisperings of the dead, make enough and rub it on your skin and you will feel them beside you, their brushes and pinches, switches and tweaks, swabbed in your nose would make you pursue scents like a dog, realize how tiny your experience of it was so far.
And there are times - certain recipes recommend themselves as being most potent when harvested in the summer and prepared in the fall, propitious, even, when prepared with the required ceremony, there are ointments for women that should be rubbed upon body and broom, fair preparation for Walpurgis Night, for the men there are unguents and stimulant's, candy-flipping combinations to keep your enthusiasm going an entire week-end...
There are poisons with the corresponding antidotes, the point, to bring you close, the deathbed visions, the penultimate spiritual tourism, taken to its limit, this page without notes, merely instructions to create first the antidote before attempting the poison. Prepare the antidote first. Always, always, prepare the antidote first, for, once poisoned it is very unlikely that you will have the attention or resources to devote to making the antidote. And - to be sure, the page containing the poison recipe is printed in an invisible ink that will only be visible when sprayed first with the antidote.
It continues, how many pages? The periphery of all thought, human experience, the illustrations, scripts, varied to suit the contents, the combined perspicacity and insanity of madmen, prophets and saints.
Salvation and Damnation, should you change your mind, here for the first time together on this blotter, a fine Thangka; no, thank you...
This book is amazing, a maze, there is no exit. Not easily, not here.
There are prescriptions for Melancholia, for Bile, for Phlegm, for Ennui, to enable Memory or Forgetting, there are philters, tonics, panaceas, the pages unfold fractal geometries and make plain your most intuitive understandings.
The colors, page to page a fair representation of your visions, there are hidden pictures within pictures that will become apparent only when under the influence, there are litmus papers to be stirred into your tea, check the acidity, drawings that required a change of perspective to decipher, interpret, a bending of the mind, anamorphic drawings without the mirrored sphere to assist, optical illusions that morph and move under sober observation....
Time now to close it. Together they will make a plan.
She is perhaps not as enthusiastic, but in his enthusiasm he misses this.
- Details
- Category: Love
Odds are against you, you know that. They're stacked against everyone, posters warn you, at the casino, buying a lottery ticket, even at the bar to just have a drink, warnings plastered on cigarette boxes. Everything is out to get you. The only thing you can do is never play the game.
And - even then, odds are certain you're still going to lose.
But then, look at how much you've already won?
The odds, unimaginably minute, infinitesimal, that you even exist. From amoeba's and protozoans in primordial swamps your ancestors munched, evolved, slaughtered and fornicated until you were born. An entire planet, through multiple extinctions, how many times over, why, the DNA alone of every thing that had to survive to evolve you would wind twice around the known universe.
It puts things in perspective. It's enough, really, when you consider the odds, to make everyone a gambler.
And then there's those "glitches" - like Ms. Hazel Ruffles improbable whist hand. That time in Bulgaria, the lottery, same numbers, different order, twice in a row. Bulgaria, you laugh, but what are the chances? What are the odds?
Monte Carlo, August, 1913: 26 consecutive black spins on a roulette wheel. Chances of that happening: 1 in 136,823,184. You had to be there. Or Laura Buxton's balloon message. Mike McDermott's twice lucky lottery numbers. This is not unusual we're told. This is simply the law of improbably large numbers in action, like the infinite numbers of monkeys on an infinitude of typewriters would eventually, most certainly type out, without error, the complete works of William Shakespeare.
Which is unquestionably true, it happened, only not in the way described, for after a few million years some of the monkeys became men and one of them did indeed type out the complete works of Shakespeare...
- Details
- Category: Love
It's a beautiful night, the cool drizzle, low hanging clouds over the sea, the binoculars mounted to the seawall, the forgotten sound of the breaking waves, the cafe's, shops, a seaward line that conceals the labyrinth of lanes and alleyways that wait behind. Along this, glancing in the windows, shops filled with antiques, nautical is largely the theme, windows swaddled in nettings filled with lobster traps and blown-blue glass floats drifted from China, old binnacles and copper diving helmets, ships wheels, brass portholes, wooden model sloops, telescopes, sextants...
Another, this one filled with mechanical antiques, wind-up birdcages, bird boxes, slot machines, vintage and antique amusements, cast-iron piggy banks that do tricks to encourage thrift, a dog jumps through the hoop to grab the penny and deposit it, the monkey wiggles his ears and rolls his eyes as his hand lifts to eat it, a ghoulish laugh, then a skeleton hand reaches out from a blanket to grab it.
Thrift is best served by not going inside.
But in front, beside the door, she is there.
His other girlfriend.
The Oracle.
The Gypsy Fortune-Teller.
She's not for sale, there merely to lure in the tourists, swart dark painted features, a paste ruby in her brow, carved to be both beautiful and vaguely terrifying.
It's dark and she's sat there alone in her window, bowed over her crystal ball.
He checks his pocket, searches for a coin.
There are adjustments to be made first, dials to be turned, switches to be pulled, a host of obscure symbols he must decide upon before, choose: the phase of the moon, the time of day, the position of the stars, the nature of the question...
The coin rattles.
The crystal ball lights up, she lifts her head and stares blindly forward.
She can't see him, the light inside, it must reflect off of the glass...
It doesn't matter.
She looks into the crystal ball, then then after a moment sits up and slowly pantomimes writing upon a slip of paper with her hand.
A typewritten slip of paper is ejected.
The window, now dark, she's again inscrutable, bent over her crystal ball.
He takes the paper and leaves.
- Details
- Category: Love