- Vol. 10
- Chapter 04
Driving on Acid
I am dreaming that I’m tripping on acid and taking a road trip.
I slide into the driver’s seat with heightened cognitive focus and somatic grace. My bottom sinks slowly and sensually into doughy, quick-sandy leather that adheres to every curve of my body. The door coughs shut with crisp economical resonance. I turn the ignition. A quasar bursts forth from the dashboard and sprays the front of my shirt with viridescent luminance. I pull away from the curb and the sudden thrust of velocity causes my shoulders to press deeper into the back of my seat. I marvel at the law of science that impels my body backward, while inside the car I accelerate forward. There is something profoundly metaphorical about this.
The road to revelation is interrupted by the actual road. It turns into a gelatinous streamer that undulates upward and downward. I navigate by focusing on the white double line in the center of the street that remains invariable. I stop at a traffic light next to a brick building with a giant abstract mural. It is red, blue, and yellow, but the colors heave with radioactive vibrancy, and throb with such preternatural pulsing, that my synapses decree they deserve new nomenclature. So not red, rabbleraz. Not blue, blazenberry! Not yellow, yowelspurt!
I am startled by a loud rhythmic plunking sound. I see the branch of a towering palm tree crouching over the hood of the car. A leaf drips prodigious drops of dew on the window. They have a silvery glint like globules of mercury. They hit the glass and splatter into tens of tot-drops that sprout tiny legs and arms that they hold up high as they slide down the windshield shouting “Wee!”
I hear an otherworldly hum of four harmonic tones. An electronic humming quartet inside the traffic light, crooning to me. My voice joins in with a fifth harmony until we are all cut off by a click. Green light.
I turn the corner and start down a gravel road with no streetlights. The rolling tires sound like creatures munching on rock candy. It’s raining hard
Driving on Acid
and the wind is gusting. The wipers squeak out their synchronic duet. I turn right.
But there is no street. Headlights illuminate a woman on a patch of lawn. She is standing there staring at me. Leather jacket, scuba goggles, and a snorkel pipe ending in a crown of wires. My car is going to hit her. I scream in unison with the shrieking of the brakes, and the wailing of the wind, and the scratching of the wipers, and the growling of the gravel, and the fury of the raindrops that pummel the car roof with thunderous drum rolls.
Screech of rubber as the vehicle stops inches away from her. Goggle-Girl hasn’t moved a muscle. Steam shoots from the hood of the car. She is slowly obscured as it spreads.. Namaste, she hisses from the mist. You are not dreaming.