April 4 2023

I was dreaming a lot and can’t remember all of the details though one of the main highlights was that I was running around Vancouver with a friend and I ended up having to come back to my apartment, and when I got there, there were two birds in a cage. One was Keiko (my finch friend who recently passed away) and the other was a baby owl that had hatched out from inside of the hay bundles that Keiko was cradled in. There was a spiral staircase of goji berries and almonds inside of the cage that the owl was feasting on and the cage was quite small. I realized that I needed to get them some proper bird feed and a bigger cage. The owl was so cute and fluffy and I was so excited to see Keiko.

In another part of my dream I was hanging out with a bunch of neurodivergent people of all ages and we were playing a mind game with geometrical objects stacked on top of each other and we were all solving a big riddle together*.

There were other random people around and I was trying to get them to listen to unique heavy metal bands that were fronted by womyn and trans people, but some of the people I was talking to were conservative and right wing and a bit hesitant, though I could tell that they were good people underneath and were just conditioned to be ignorant. They were breaking down mentally and spiritually, and were hesitant but curious. I was trying not to judge them and stay really open-minded and show them how good it felt to be accepting and what great music these unique bands were making.

I’ve been depressed as fuck though I’m starting to come out of it now. I felt a bout of mania coming on yesterday and I grounded myself and didn’t allow myself to get to overly energized and detached from my body. Both depression and mania are disembodied states of being that distract me from my deeper emotions and higher perceptions. I mistake sorrow and misery for reality and then I want to compensate for those illusions by creating more false perceptions based on unrealistic expectations of grandeur and perfection. There’s a mildly salty place in between the two where everything converges and where I feel simultaneously aware of many different thoughts and feelings that collide and contradict.

I ended up meeting up with my friend Sebastian who has the sweet 80’s car with the loud muffler and the Mexican blankets in the back seats that double up as cozy beach blankets. I’ve been concocting a brew of psychedelic tea, herbs, fruit, honey and apple cider vinegar for the past week and we were drinking that throughout the day, which started with a trip to Taco Time and some thrift storing. There was a menu item at Taco Time that was reminiscent of Taco Bell’s Gordita Crunch that I was able to make vegetarian and it was taco fucking Tuesday so we loaded up and had a big feast. I scored some Vans for $8 and some ripped up jeans that I squished myself into that will fit me perfect once they’re broken in but left me unable to bend over fully. I’m such a fashion victim sometimes.

We drove to Arbutus Cove and walked over to a rocky embankment where I had gathered salt near the end of last year and I was hoping to gather some more on this nearly full moon, but there was none to be found. Sebastian filled me in on the fact that the salt deposits are seasonal.

It was a brisk morning and I wasn’t thinking that I would end up in the water, though after the sun warmed me up I jumped in twice and then waded along the shoreline in my thrifted beat up old Native shoes letting sand and salt water swish through my feet.

We hung out on some beached logs listening to Glasser and Elisapie, who does an incredibly cool Inuktitut cover of Blondie's Heart of Glass.

Sebastian’s been doing night shifts at a shelter and I was surprised that he wanted to hang out so early in the day and wasn’t too surprised when he fell asleep on my couch after we stopped by my place so I could change into some warmer clothes. I didn’t mind at all as it gave me some time to chill out as I was still pretty burnt out from having to work more than usual as of late.

After he woke up we ended up going to the Market Garden, a bizarre and labyrinthine store that is grotesquely overpriced yet an incredible experience to walk through, especially while mildly high. We bought more junk food, including cherry bomb chocolates and a Vietnamese coffee flavoured ice cream sandwich.

We sat outside eating our food like 15 year-olds on a recess break and reflected on the ridiculous amounts of psychedelics we used to consume in our early youths, like 20-100 times the dosages recommended on the packets of the fancy pre-packaged psychedelics you get these days. We were like no wonder we’re so fucked up haha

I also remembered more of my dream from last night which included getting tattooed on my face and neck. I was like holly fuck my whole life is going to change now that I have these fucked up gangster looking tattoos - I never agreed to this..

We then drove out to the Esquimalt lagoon as the sun was setting and the moon was rising and it was beyond beautiful. There are so many secret portals in this town...

Oh ya I forgot about another lookout we went to with mounds of moss covered rocks and Garry oaks and a 360 degree view of the city. The sun was shining down majestically over the waterfront that faces America and was spreading waves of sparkles down onto the water.

It was so great to spend a day tripping out, listening to techno music, dancing on the beach and laughing like dumb ass teenagers.

I was chilling out in my PJ’s when I heard the sounds of Sebastian's distinctive muffler outside of my building again. I went to greet him wondering wtf? and it turns out that he had lost his phone and he thought that it might be at my place, but it wasn’t so we realized it must be somewhere out at the lagoon. I grabbed my head lamp and we drove back out there. The moon was shining so bright that we didn’t need the head lamps, and since we had left teenagers had made their way out there to light fires and hang out in their cars doing teenager things.

We walked quite far and still couldn’t find my friend’s phone, and then miraculously we found it on the ground near two woolly mammoths made out of driftwood. We both were wearing giant fur coats and decided to stay on the beach and drink Jagermeister and smoke some DMT. This time I smoked a lot and got pretty fucking high, though not so high that I saw the machine elves, just high enough that my body turned to Jell-o and I started seeing some pretty cool hallucinations. I was rudely interrupted by a raccoon and a military helicopter and then Sebastian started talking about the inversion of the sound of waves on the shoreline and a lot of other trippy shit that made perfect sense in the moment but isn’t possible for me to re-articulate..

I'm still scared to get too high, though now that I’ve tripped a little bit on DMT I fee like I could handle a full trip if I was in the right time and place. Nonetheless, what I did experience gave my mind a little bit of a reboot and I came home feeling really great. The next day I ended up calling a family member who I’ve been slowly reconnecting with after many years of having a rift between us and I really felt compassionate for her yet also protected myself energetically during the conversation. It was a great little breakthrough and I’m feeling Dagaz rune vibes right now..

* I’ve been reflecting a lot on neurodiversity over the past few months and read Unmasking Autism by Devon Price. Throughout reading it, I remembered many aspects of my childhood that were super supportive of the traits I exhibited that now would likely be “diagnosed” as Aspergers. One thing that several of the schools I attended to had was a program called “Odyssey of the Mind”, and I participated in this group in my early adolescence. We would get together and have competitions with other schools and it was a really awesome and interesting way of channeling creative (and scientific) energy, and a low pressure way of socializing with others. The snippet in this dream reminded me of those times.