ELUCIDATION OF A DAYDREAM

BY CHANDLER HARLAN GEBHART

Blinded by the past in my pursuit of the future, I’ve been in the middle of everything that mattered and stood among the great without having the tools to recognize it.   It doesn’t have to be this way.  Saving myself is now a mandate.  Once I realized I was exactly where I should be, I knew I was well on my way to where I was going.

I needed to pay close attention to Mother Nature’s greatest melody.  The serenade of the evening katydids, wondering if she did or didn’t; the whistle of the midnight cricket, crying out in love; the majestic violin of the grasshopper, reporting the weather; the washboard sounds of the cicada, telling me the meaning of it all;  completed by the brittle, rattling, clipped reverberation of the harpsichord plucked then muted by the locust, reminding me how fragile life is.  With the assitance of my spirit animal, I listened to birds sing a tune while whistling trying to stay in time.  Through it all, I discovered that it’s the addiction to the buzz that guided me back to the hive.  Now there, I need to play my part to protect the natural world over the dominion of want and greed, even if it means losing my stinger and sacrificing myself for the greater good.

It wasn’t like any other day that’s ever been.  Sure the sun came up but fear shined through my window and my friends could no longer come around.  Newspaper man informed us that we were in the midst of a global pandemic. Quarantining at home was the mantra and getting back to normal seemed to be everything but conventional.  Once I realized that a typical day was no longer standard, I made the decision to venture out to an essential business nestled in the Roaring Fork Valley.

In search of a Colorado experience and escape from the new world order, I traveled to Best Day Ever for premium cannabis.  Conveniently located two doors down from my first residence in Aspen, above Cooper Street Pier and Bad Billy’s, I walked in to the store on a mission.  A loquacious, depilated associate with a chin beard and wild eyes assisted me with my journey that would be less than an hour away.  Staying six feet from every individual along the way, I returned home.

Arriving within the confines of my own reality, immediately I removed N.C. Wyeth’s painting ‘The Island Funeral’ from my living room wall and accessed my concealed safe.  A green light and two short beeps later I removed what amounted to be my first dose of the vaccine, dimethyltryptamine, an hallucinogenic drug that I obtained at Dark Star Jubilee, a recurring music festival held in Thornville, Ohio.

Handling the DMT with care, I emptied the vile onto a clean piece of heavy cardboard next to my waterpipe and placed my fresh purchase of the highly recommended marijuana strain, GMO (Garlic Mushroom Onion) on the same table.  Locking the door, turning off the lights and my cell phone, I put on my favorite compression socks and started listening to primal Grateful Dead, 1967 live from the Rock Garden in San Francisco.  This would be my first time discovering the well kept secrets hidden in plain sight within our universe and others.

Loading my first hit of pot, sprinkled heavily with a white, crystalline powder, I lit my lighter and inhaled, making sure to hold the self experiment in my lungs as long as possible.  Before unleashing my lungs, I chopped the rest into a fat line.  Emptying my respiratory system of the magic, I gathered my composure and snorted the rest in one swoop of a dismantled Kenichi pen.

At this moment a tornado of brilliant light swirled around everything I ever was and sucked my mind into a vortex of luminescence, olfactory superiority, a palate of incredible taste, muffled perception of sound and a clear feeling of losing touch with my own body.  This mental Wizard of Oz moment lasted for an unknown amount of time until I was spit out into a objectless white room.  There was no fear or concern as I perceived something magnificent was on my conceptual horizon.  As I achieved cerebral clarity my Spirit Animal appeared.  He introduced himself as “Mr. Heernt.”  

I asked, “what does your name mean,”  He replied,  “I might be heernt, then again, I might not.”  Looking at him closely, he was half raccoon, half bumble bee.  His face was masked and his front paws were extremely dexterous yet the rest of his body was clearly bee like.  When he spoke his voice was that of Bil Rieger.  The journey with this elf like creature began but not before the raccoon persona insisted we both thoroughly wash our hands.  He insisted I wear a mask like his.

In what seemed like a split second we were entering Bootsy Bellows.  The nightclub was pumping with people shaking their bones and drenched in alcohol.  Mr. Heernt said to me, “Cowboy, watch this.”  He proceeded to enter the dance floor, surrounded by humanity, he simply took a shit right there in the middle of everything.  Once finished he insisted it was time to move on.  He knew I was baffled, he muttered, “that’s what everyone does at Bootsy’s.”  I understood.

The next thing I knew I was on the back of my new bumble bee buddy getting an aerial view of the valley.  As we passed over Burlingame, he informed me that everyone is a cowboy with one exception.  He made me mindful of a Texan that was being evicted for making life miserable for his neighbors and breaking APCHA rules, reminding me not to make people’s lives more difficult than they already are.  Fluttering past Woody Creek, he confided in me how many beers Budweiser Tommy drank in a lifetime while imbibing at the Tavern.  Our flight ended on the jagged edge of a bluff overlooking a ranch property shaped like a lollipop.  It is here that I learned that the bees started dying off once cell phone service was introduced and that 5G will be the demise of his species.

The last thing I remember is the voice of Bil Rieger reminding me to always check on my friends and to always allow my friends to check on me.  As soon as I heard those prophetic words I woke up soaking wet plastered to my leather couch.  

That day, the beginning of the pandemic, I learned to buy pot at Best Day Ever, support Kenichi, shit wherever I want, don’t make people miserable, drink plenty of Budweiser, stay off my cell phone and care for my friends.