The Piffle Dream

The piffle tree
is the magic word
that isn't so magical when I wake up
and shut off my alarm before it rings

But my wiser peer, my sly spirit guide with the smile of a pre-canadian
painted tree sap on my hand, a blend of resin that would rub into my skin
on my full stomach, catapult me into that world

i got farther than they imagined though
that committee planning my shamanic education

after sapping my hand, the middle aged indian man set me on my path - it was a relaxant and even then i could sense it was an unconventional hallucinogen, nothing erowid had prepared me for - could i expect it to anesthetize my sure-to-be-bloody journey? would it turn into the most thin veneer possible to get me through?

i set up a steep staircase that had been carved out of the smooth wood of a bare brown tree. Everything had the sparkly look of a tryptamine come on, suggesting hallucinations that had yet to engulf me. The upper "floor" opened some innerlobe doppelganger, marshlands, hills, and vast strangitudes

it started when i was meditating on choosing the way of the warrior
"i'm not a warrior" i thought, but i discovered i had a sword anyway
maybe i could be, could try to be at least

then my senses heightened, i saw
that i was seeing in panorama, taking it all in, keen
the way a warrior would be, and a wolf was on my trail

i whipped around, sword at the ready
(amazing the archetypes at this stage)

the wolf was big, meaty, teethy, furry, gray
leering at me, but was he an enemy or an ally?

then i saw the bear lunging for me from the other direction but the wolf lunged at the bear - i turned and watched them crunch into each other viciously, teeth locked on flesh

they snarled and screamed, talking to each other intensely wordlessly amid the violence - it grew more and more horrifying, i would think there's no meat left to shred and more would be shred, more blood shed and the roars and pain rising - they wrestled with each other becoming one bloody being in some crack below the tree-step separating the staircase with the new land - they sank into some fluid subether where they flailed and it seemed one of them was compelling me to kill it. I stabbed my sword into the mess aiming for what looked like a brain, really shredded tendrils wrapped around bits of skull. My first stab was not perfect but after more and more assured pokes, I managed to kill the consciousness in there.

I set off again. What a harrowing start to the trip. It turned into an eerie cartoon land. Music and synesthetic visuals creeped in, a madcap music with orchestral grandeur, the melancholy of divine folly, always something to subvert the simple truth. It was a half-overcast british columbian forest scene but I tripped into sewer corridors of skeletons, purposeless fluids, and dark technological ruins with incomprehensible forms of life flickering peripherally around me, quantum flashes of technology. It was like "great-old-ones" detritus with older wiser mammals who had found uses for the abandoned, semi-powered infrastructure we humans had never conceived of - it was a crazy nauseas vertiginous feeling seeing this end of the cycle in my modern context, fractaltech with furry fingers slick with sticky dregs, however far modernity could penetrate this native-canadian framed dream.

I got to a new crack ~ sub sub, feeling the anesthesia wash over me - ah yes, THIS WAS A DRUG, sleepy hallucinotime, i was becoming a fish, a bright tropical fish swimming in a sea of writhing visuals, occasionally bubbling into meaning, happy to twist with the current until all condensed into truth

but i emptied out into the brown-skied vista with the blue mansion where i stayed for ages, forgot who i was, forgot the whole frame - i became a pinball bouncing around the corridors of the mansion, interfacing absurdly with musical notes that were connoisseurs of hallucinations, connecting to nodes of lunarcafe still protruding from my neurons, diving through cushioned caves of compressing emotional outbursts, slights, self-pities and righteousness - i lost myself completely, sprouted about five new dreams in that interior but they aggregated into a severe parody of my mission and i wound up back at the treetop swamps

i felt i was coming out of it but i was still heavy with tinges of nightmare. The first time "back" was an exalting feeling of having made the journey, carried it through in a rosy glow of half-hallucination, dreamy anesthesia with the knowledge that i'm coming back, that soon i will be back in the bedrock of reality, newly born, knowledgeable, a warrior... but where was my sword?

no sword, just more rooms in the tree-dwelling, apartments carved out of limbs with windows looking down on oceans, cliffs above beaches, multicolored seas - crowded rooms with weird old men and women looking disapprovingly at me, was it because i was still obviously intoxicated and didn't know it - or had i just failed the quest? wrong place, wrong time? i felt i was engulfed in hallucination looking at a ridiculously adorned version of my real home trying vainly to communicate with the cast’s counterparts: help! i’m lost here – what can I do?

i blundered into a room where none seemed concerned with my plight – cryptic messages met my senses: "i'm nobody's fuckbuddy" and orgy scenes, penises in cigarette holders, crusty quasi-condoms and a lot of sucking, looking for an orgasm - i abandoned the quest and attempted to live there for a while but it shifted

and i was back again, the treetop hole where i had killed the wolf and the bear, and i knew more now, knew that i had another chance but what chance was there really? but i would try again, what else could this fish do? cynically i charged down the spiraling treetrunk staircase putting on my best enlightened face and finally remembering something the indian guide had said, a word now finally magic, "piffle", a cultural artifact and carbon-based rosetta - it felt vaguely like a CLUE, a RIDDLE I didn't understand but nonetheless possessed the solution to -

and in dubious awareness of the secret
again, in a deja-dream loop, i leapt down
a flight of hollow wooden stairs in a claustrophobic tree trunk
in an ancient blue-tinted mansion, in a western,
to emerge in the clearing, populated with families, a
community i was being initiated into at whose behest I had no clue

and i shouted "PIFFLE"
and everyone smiled and broke into hearty laughter
a sly welcome
and i felt
vaguely
like the warrior's real homecoming had occurred
and i felt
vaguely
enlightened although i knew something was missing and then my guide
shouted "piffle" back at me and then
like the flick of a switch

i woke up

and here i am, collecting scraps, glue evaporated

still sick, getting sicker, talk of enlightenment and duality with dez
still bubbling into my mind, she declined to take it to infinity
i wouldn't know what to do with that anyway, and i’ve
got to go to work, maybe i'll drive
throat in shreds, stomach churning a strange diet
of fun-sized chocolate bars, salad, chai tea
grilled-cheese sandwich, french fries, bread and feta...
comparing a character from "renegade"
to my much stranger indian guide, personality texture spun from
layers and layers of local garments
thread-lacquered euro-legend
there's probably a joyce novel in that

i flicked the light on when i swam back into this world

piffle?