Slime Journey

By Isaac Noland

Elizabeth Lubinger
The Essentials, 2013
Metal Plate Lithography
15" x 21"

There is a pointedness to acid trips. An “instant” hangs around indefinitely. It ambles about lazily, nudges a rock with it’s toe, puts its hand in its pockets, whistles, leans back, observes the sun, shields its eyes, and talks periodically about this weather we’re having. Then it turns into a raven and flies away. The tension between moments, the ineffable tiny little timeframe when something happens, like when a slinky on a stair’s momentum carries it juuuust past the point of no return and is sentenced to fall again. That tiny little speck of time becomes a leisurely afternoon.

Lightning traces up my spine, overloading nerves in a tingle of ecstasy. My body trembles. Every movement is a new pleasure, a door opened onto bliss. Only overwhelming physical stimulation can force an individual so wholly into one moment. Somehow it keeps building, each instant seemingly the peak of intensity, but the rise continues. Forward momentum. Ceaseless awareness. Every nerve in my skin is jostling to be heard over the sensory clamor.

Lyricism becomes a higher art form than you ever imagined. Literal becomes universally figurative. I attached myself to the idea of explosions. Explosions, a useful metaphor or simile.

I am a sex machine ready to reload 
Like an atom bomb about to 
Oh oh oh oh oh explode 
-Queen “Don’t Stop Me Now” 

All in the space of one trillionth of second, like the start of explosion. It’s like a sneeze that just barely starts and won’t ever end. You’ve caught a wave-cap that shows no sign of losing momentum. Riding on the ridge you are propelled. There is a popular game to play whilst in the throes. it is called keep-your-jaw-shut (hint– you can’t win). You can’t win because everything is just so goddamn AMAZING. You may also find yourself standing perfectly still. Because when you move–

My feet clench, and mud squishes from between my toes. The flash of stimulus sends more pulses over me. If I don’t stand still, I may forget all social graces and collapse in an orgasmic fit. To distract myself, I open my eyes and observe the rest of the merry pranksters I entered Stroud’s with. The brief white flash of sun fades to reveal the shore of Dow Lake and an array of trees in technicolor format. Sitting on an eroded shoreline and engaged in esoteric activities, Jake, Evan and Conor are physically only yards away from the ankle-deep water covering my feet. They are scribbling on a notepad, anxiously passing it back and forth, smearing flowers into it, trying to capture this.

Needless to say, that notebook is a wreck. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to offer any universal truths brought back from the other side. We probably became too distracted by little threads of interest to create a cohesive word. During a trip, every tangent starts with one spark. Take for instance this progression when I glimpse our sober friend Mike, our “babysitter” so to speak. Keep in mind about 1 second has passed and I am still standing stock still.

Our Shepherd, our Moses Mike, like a John Goodman character, he stirs up mud with his slow sliding steps and sediment billows into murky streams. John Goodman, shirt wrapped around his head like some mock keffiyah, walking stick in hand. Sheer white shirtless Goodman globe reflecting sunlight like his aviator sunglasses. John Goodman is playing a brash militaristic character of some authority. The sediment streams billow in currents like smoke over a desert battlefield. Moses Goodman, imperialist incongruity on the devastated landscape. Lord of war.

It could have been Mars or Afghanistan. I might as well have be on a distant star, or lost within a supernova, out of reach in cosmic intimacy.

The desert smoke spreads. Almost, ah it’s almost to me! Mud-billows obscure my feet, I am standing in a solid block of caramel. The sticky mixture of earth and water embraces me. It is hard to tell where my feet end and the muck begins. Some would speak of lovers becoming one, disappearing into each other for an instant, sharing fluids, melded together in passion. I wish to dissolve into the lake and return to the primordial ooze, give my own mixture of earth and water back to its source.

This dissolution is a remarkably common sentiment. In science class we may learn and thus know that we are so many particles of such and such. Merely a big heap of building blocks. During a trip, you feel the particles. The difference between the carbon and hydrogen and oxygen in your skin and those in the air and mud around you seems to be a trivial, thin membrane of definition, like the arbitrary lines that divide nations.

An affair with lysergic acid diethylamide teaches a young soul like an experienced lover. Maybe. It certainly feels that way. The TRUTH that you feel in the moment fades away with clarity. I can snatch glimpses of my conclusions out of the air – In the throes of sex we may be able to ignore the fluids briefly, but the mess builds up like stacks of dirty dishes. Two beings crashing against each other inevitably create discordant ripples. A fleet conjoining, oneness achieved for an instant, the flash of a mushroom cloud. We all want to hold on to the event horizon forever, but the stickiness prevents us. We long for the one instant of gratification again and again. It takes the unlocked power of the earthly fungus ergot to let humans conquer the moist, love the slime. Wish to dissolve.

I believe that standing ankle deep in a muddy lake felt better than a bed full of roses strewn on satin sheets. I have to believe because I do not know anymore.

Dirty jeans and a dusty t-shirt betrayed the rough journey of an unglamorous youth in the grip of a strong drug.

For some reason I think about idealizing sex. We always crave it, expect perfection. It is never as perfect as we hope. Acid felt perfect.

Memories of a lustful night or my adventure at Strouds warp and crackle like old postcards promising the unachievable. Removed from the moment, the perfection trickles away like mercury in our hands. If we do manage to cup a globule of the magical substance, we can’t hold on for too long lest it harm us. Logic circles and lost love will make Mad Hatters of us all.

For seven hours I had a love that sent waves of euphoria over me with the lightest touch. Wildfires would rage over my body, it was almost too much to bear. All that’s left are memories like an overexposed polaroid of bikini atoll mid-test in July 1946. Or the craters that still reside there.

About the Author

Photo by Evan Chwalek.

Hailing from the pastoral bliss of rural Marietta, Isaac enjoys watching smoke drift over rolling hills. A lover of grilled meats and bucolic settings, he feels most at home when standing over a couple racks of ribs on a Weber charcoal grill.

In the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism master's program, Isaac plans to research the intrinsic profundity of selfies. Isaac is also editor-in-chief of Speakeasy magazine, a student run online publication based out of Ohio University. At night he masquerades as a cook at Jackie O’s Pub & Brewery, where he is prized for his consistent quality-control tastings of the house made craft brews.

Isaac wants everyone to know that a dull knife can be more dangerous than a sharp one. A sharp knife is very important.