Phases

Surrounded by twenty or thirty thousand souls on the Polo Fields of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, I was eighteen when I took my first hit of LSD. The San Francisco Oracle, a hippie newspaper distributed in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, announced the event, 

‘A new concept of celebrations beneath the human underground must emerge, become conscious, and be shared, so a revolution can be formed with a renaissance of compassion, awareness, and love, and the revelation of unity for all mankind.’ 

The allure of unity for all humankind drove my peers and me to chase higher consciousness through the use of psychedelics, a prerequisite to the revolution; One wasn’t part of the culture until they tripped. 

The LSD came on a sheet of paper torn into a small rough-edged square the size of a piece of kleenex you’d place on a shaving cut to stop its bleeding. My senior yearbook photo shows I had no facial hair back then, which I pinpointed as unique during a time when men (and women) often preferred to let their hair grow wild. I was too afraid of my parent's glares to flirt with such follicle freedom and surely appeared to the others in attendance as an outsider. Yet, I was in a group surrounded by my peers, high school seniors who’d got their practice in questioning authority from school and were now ready to take on civil rights, women’s rights, consumer rights, etc. 

A dozen of us sat in a circle and put the sheets on our tongues in unison like birds flying in a ‘v’ or trimmed blades of grass swirling in the wind. The level setting realization hit us at once; we’d consumed acid. A few in the circle burst into fits of laughter, unable to contain their delight at what was to come. 

Later there was a conversation I overheard or possibly was a part of, 

“White lightning.”

“White lightning?”

“The guy who made it, he’s here.” 

“No way.”

“Bear.”

“What?” 

“He’s called Bear.” 

“White lightning?”

“Bear made the white lightning.”

“The acid?” 

“Yea, Bear. He’s here.” 

 In my new world, things already named were given replacements, which startled me enough at the beginning of my interaction with LSD to cause my separation from the group. I followed a changing path framed by gyrating bodies that I both drowned in and moved effortlessly through. The visualizations were intense. At one point, while looking straight ahead, I maintained eyes-sight with a girl who wore a crown made of daisies that I’d passed five people earlier. I was pulled in the direction I went and didn’t question the route. Soon, an opening in the mass of bodies led to a small corner stage. I joined fifty others who were repeating chants facilitated by a man on stage sitting cross-legged and playing a hand drum. Purples and reds rolled into my peripheral vision, followed by waves of bright colors that all led to the man on the stage tapping his hand drum and chanting, and chanting, and. 

Towards the back of the stage, I saw a little boy appear from behind a gap in the sound equipment. He tap-danced on all fours over the wires on stage, moving his torso with the fluidity of a feline. Around me were murmurs that suggested bewilderment at the child’s presence. The child appeared to believe it was a cat. Quickly, it all seemed to escalate. I heard someone say, 

“They gave a five-year-old LSD.”

My scope of reality instantly constricted, and I focused solely on the child on stage that thought it was a cat. He was off a little to the left of the man with the hand drum. He had his butt raised in the air and was swaying back and forth, curling his nonexistent tail overhead. 

“Does anyone know the kid’s -” I choked on my tongue, or had the sensation of doing so, and couldn’t finish my question, the words swallowed. On stage, the boy was now frozen stiff and staring directly at me, his spine straight as a board as he slowly blinked. I teleported to the side of the stage nearest to him and begged that he come with me. I believed I was there to help him.

A man with chest hair like a fur rug asked me questions, 

“Is he yours? Is that yours?” 

I still thought I was an older brother.

“Yea.” I said. 

The hairy-chested man leaped on stage from one foot, more like an ape than a human, and I watched in disbelief as he walked over to the child, picked it up, carried it back, handed it to me, and said, “Here you go, man.” 

The child’s muscles tensed underneath my fingertips, and then it began to squirm. To counteract its movement, I gripped harder, which led to him hissing at me. There was fear in its eyes, and I knew what would happen next; he scratched me across my face forcing me to relent. With my hand pressed against my wounded cheek, I watched him run away, his back arched and straightened with each enormous stride.

I chased after him. 

We ran like the hunter and hunted through fields of dancing hippies and didn’t stop until another break in the mass. On all fours, the boy turned and looked at me. His ears were up.

“I’m trying to help you.” I shouted. 

Those who heard me were confused until they saw what I was dealing with (what I was talking to), and by then, they’d figured it out and so somehow disappeared. Truly, it was only the boy and I that I knew for certain; much more was left to question - What was it that drew me to protect him? The loss of my younger brother? The search for answers?

The boy, then a spitting image of a cat, peacefully protested in front of me, maintaining its stillness, a trait that made it a deadly stealth predator. Transfixed, I walked towards him feeling each footprint one after the other, my hands upturned in an attempt to appear non-threatening. In the background, a man named Timothy Leary said for the first time the famous phrase, "Turn on, tune in, drop out.” It was meant to encourage consciousness, harmonious interaction, and self-reliance. The words were lost on me then, as I was mere steps away from seizing the boy, but I do recall them echoing from the speakers behind me. I can still hear them.

The boy let me scoop him up, and soon I was listening to his purs and cradling him in my arms. He no longer seemed fearful or even interested in me at all. Instead, his eyes darted around the crowd, fascinated by small movements I could never notice.

The trip took me back to the group that I’d come with, who were all delighted to see what I’d picked up in my absence. In particular, the girls adored the child and showed their affection by patting him on his head or stroking his back. Their behavior alarmed me. I liked to think that we were sharing the same trip, but they treated the boy like a cat, which made me question if I was still the outsider, tripping all on my own. 

Another conversation bubbled, 

“It’s the best.” 

“The best.” 

“It couldn’t be any better.”

“I guess you’re right.” 

“I am right.”

“How high are you?” 

“How are am high?” 

The group laughed at the unexpected word jumble, but I wasn’t amused. The laughter startled the boy, who leaped to the floor and dashed away, accelerating as fast as a sports car and using his fake tail for counterbalance. Upon seeing my empty arms, the group laughed even harder than before. 

“I need to help.” I said and ran off after him without looking back. 

I found him hidden in the branches of a Monterey pine. 

“Come down here.” I shouted, but he did not move. 

I was astonished by how well the boy could balance. He seemed built for the trees, and I soon understood that he was not going to move. If I wanted him to be safe, I would have to go and get him. The Monterey pine is a softwood, but I was still unable to find a grip or foothold suitable enough for my ascent. I assumed the child had found his advantage in the trunk's stubby ends that smaller climbers could only utilize. I tried so many times to get up the tree that I ravaged my forearms and inner thighs red. I looked up at its rounded top, past the boy, defeated. I would need to lure him out. 

I searched for a long branch or something else I could use to coax him down from the tree. The acid allowed me to do two things at once; I looked for a branch with half my brain, and with the other, I pondered on the phrase I’d heard earlier, unable to comprehend its meaning but understanding its impact. I felt that history was happening in front of my own eyes; it was the revolution, but I focused on the boy. 

I found a branch from a eucalyptus tree and carried it over my shoulder to him. It was twelve feet or more, and it could only just barely reach the bottom side of the branch the boy perched upon. I tapped at the tree trunk trying to get him to move, and I also used words, but the boy seemed incapable of understanding language. 

“Come down!” I shouted at him anyway. 

I grew frustrated by the situation feeling how parents feel when their children cry after losing a game of Candyland; I had an obligation to be there, but I did not want to stay. 

As if they’d been waiting for me to ask for help, my group appeared and formed a half-circle around me. They cranked their heads towards the sky to capture a glimpse of the scene. 

“I can get it out.” One of them said and grabbed my eucalyptus branch. 

“Be careful with him. He could get hurt.” I responded. The crowd sort of laughed at me for saying that. 

“He’s got nine lives.” One heckled. 

The boy was looking down at us, occasionally moving its head from one side to the other. He looked speculative. Perhaps he could understand language after all. 

“I’m going to get him to jump.” 

“Don’t do it.” I begged.

It was too late. 

The peer who had taken the branch from me was now using it to bang against the tree's trunk, each blow shaking the very branch the boy was on. I yelled at him to stop, I mean, I really pleaded with him to quit, but it was no use. I was not conversing with a single man, I was trying to counteract the crowd's will, and my group was not on my side. 

I felt each of my blood cells freeze and tingle when the crowd finally got what it wanted, and the boy jumped from the branch. Gravity seemed especially strong to me as my eyes followed his falling body. He stretched out all of his limbs to brace for impact. Hadn’t he learned yet that one was supposed to be relaxed on impact? I imagined his bones would shatter if he landed like that, but I was helpless and couldn’t move at all. It was then, when I was powerless, that I realized the boy was never mine to save. Upon landing in the man's arms who hit the tree, I saw the boy with no projections and for what it was; a cat. I was chasing a cat. 

The pictures and videos from that time are all in black and white, yet I experienced 1967 in the most vibrant colors. I know that the past is not a place to dwell, that we’re supposed to ‘be here now,’ and yet I am still helpless and get pulled backward. What would that day have been like if my brother hadn’t died before it? What would I have seen then? Now that I’m older, I don’t like talking to people older than me; I think they know too much. It is young ones that we need; their naivety allows them to forge change. When I’m gone, my entire life will be remembered by loved ones like a photograph, but it won’t contain those younger years. Those years were just for my parents and me. In many ways, I’m still chasing the cat.