Introduction
If you haven’t read Part One: G-13 you should start there. This is the second in a multi part series in which I gave the writer five kinds of weed labeled simply A through E and asked for a “review”. (How do you review weed?) -Editor
Marijuana B: Pot of Gold
Since Marijuana A kept me up until nearly 6 AM, I decided to take a break between experiments. I smoked Marijuana B three days later, on my first full day off, in the early afternoon. It was a sunny day. I thought, perhaps this smoking will be mellower. Maybe it would be the same weed.
After I smoked, I went online to look at Swatch watches and found a few that really appealed to me. In fact, most of their line of watches was truly hip. I scrolled through ten pages of novel Swatch designs, but decided not to buy anything in that moment because I feared that marijuana would turn me into a compulsive shopper. The stoned note I took was “Swatch: I write consumer reports. I guess I am just a consumer.” It was not a very profound moment, although it seemed like it at the time. I decided to go for a walk.
I wandered to the back alley behind my house and found, a few blocks down, a grass alley bordering the I-5 freeway. I’d never been there before. Since I had no plan and nothing to do, I decided to wander down the path, overgrown with wildflowers, vines creeping up the wall, and tire tracks cutting two trails into the green growth. I saw a plastic chair turned upside down, next to nothing. I phoned my friend Dustin who lived just a few stops up the max line.
I told him what I was up to, and he was down to hang. I walked to the Overlook Park station and waited for the train. The sun felt good on my legs, a feeling I associate with a deep kind of comfort and relaxation. I have a very early memory of listening to a Bob Dylan tape in my mom’s Volvo before age 5, with the warmth of the sun beating down on my knees, feeling like a blanket. This was like that.
I arrived in Dustin’s room, with blinds drawn, and sat in his vintage chair close to the door. I always feel a certain non-verbal joy when I encounter Dustin. He is a hardworking rock songwriter who has been at it since before we met in 2009. He came to Portland from Sacramento, and has been working in food service while slowly honing his songwriting and guitar playing, consistently drawn toward classic American themes of alienation, the debilitating effects of technology, and the joy of music. We had a short-lived collaboration called Yuccan Woman, the results of which can be found on Bandcamp. I think the songs have between 10 to 15 listens each, which is fine, I guess.
I tried explaining the difficult nature of the assignment Mike gave me. “I know it seems easy, but I don’t necessarily like smoking pot.”
“Essentially, you’ve been assigned to observe something that distorts your powers of observation,” he said. I took a note of that sentence on my phone, and Dustin said, “You can remove ‘essentially,’ if you want. Or keep it. Whichever you think is better.”
Then Dustin smoked pot out of a boxy wooden piece and we ambled out of his house. We walked past the high school and commented on the well-manicured blue astro-turf track that encircled the football field. “We could wake up at 5 AM every day and run the track,” I said.
We talked about the concept of Babylon. “Isn’t that something Bob Marley sings about?” I asked.
“Babylon is used by the Rastas to talk about capitalism. New York is a modern day Babylon.”
“I need to read the Bible. I’ve only read very few excerpts from it,” I complained.
“You should get the audiobook of James Earl Jones reading the King James Bible,” Dustin said.
We walked to Peninsula Park, and sat by the fountain. I removed my Birkenstocks and dipped my feet in. There were a bunch of assholes playing kickball. Dustin explained that when he first moved to Portland, his friend Roxanne saved him from accidentally signing up to be on a kickball team. “I thought it might be a good way to meet people,” Dustin said. “But then Roxanne said, ‘you’re making a huge mistake.’ So I dodged that bullet.”
We walked back to my house, and sat on the adirondack chairs in the backyard. We both smoked more marijuana, and I found my copy of the Bible. I tried reading the beginning of Genesis, but became quickly discouraged with all the begats. So, instead, I found this section on the Tower of Babel:
And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.
And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.
Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”
So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city.
Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. — Genesis 11:4–9
My stoned interpretation of this was that God did not want men to become industrial capitalists. Capitalism and urbanization are processes driven by an existential dread, a fear of loneliness and alienation. But it is the very nature of a courageous life to confront these existential problems. So, to instead be motivated by the fear of them, will only serve to create a discord with nature, as we have a great deal of today. That was my stoned epiphany. Does it sound dumb? After that revelation, I said goodbye to Dustin and spent the rest of the day continuing to smoke, and I missed my DJ night by accident.
Coming soon, Part 3:
I Didn’t Know I Was Smoking Shiskaberry
From K. Mike Merrill: I didn’t write this, I’m just publishing it. This is part 2 of the third article for a new magazine called Pot Dads. Legalization is taking marijuana mainstream and the prevailing culture of weed is going to become boring. At Pot Dads we are excited about an integrated weed lifestyle.
And no, you don’t have to be a Dad to read Pot Dads, it’s just a fun name.
