Bad Coffee and Magic Mushrooms

Silverdale, WA - 29 Apr 2023 

    Today my wife has her card making class and I am tagging along. Not because I want to sit amongst the paper crafters, but because I get to hang out in the sun at the coffee shop a few doors down. This week has been a mystery. It started cold and rainy and now, on the weekend, the sun is out blazing with promises of temps above seventy. There is a car show in the parking lot so the noise levels are high as the hotrods scream by drowning out pretty much all of the ambient sounds I would prefer. I may have to move my seat. 

    For the record, the shop is called Austin Chase. The coffee is watered down and thin. I could go inside and at least thrive on the shop's ambience, but more likely I will find another, less noisy place to hang out. The chairs are metal and not conducive to comfort. Any desire I had to sit, read and write are being washed away.  

    Ah, much better. I walked to the other end of the parking lot. There is a little island set with some foliage. A little green electrical box is here and sits at the right height for me to cop a squat and write in peace even if my coffee is still thin and without personality. That little voice in my head that suggested I go to Starbucks is jumping up and down screaming, "I told you so." I have a breeze, no traffic and am once again immersed in some creative mood and not gnarled like a desert pine tree struggling to survive. 

    I am reading Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life by Tom Robbins. The author claims it isn't a memoir, but it sort of is. The book is broken down into chapters of varying length and each is a snippet of Tom Robbins life from childhood until the time of the book's publication. These events and stories illustrate how he became the writer he is from his early years in Appalachia of North Carolina to his final home in La Conner Washington, not too far from here. If you have tulips in your garden they likely came from there. 

    Tom Robbins isn't for everyone. I first started reading him in the 1990s and his style appealed to me. He is a storyteller and his words flow much like those of Steinbeck and Kerouac. His books are a slow read, but every word is a treat. Right now he is in Washington and discovering the beauty of the forest and an interest in psychotropic mushrooms. Under the tutelage of a University of Washington MD/PhD he is learning the gifts these sort of plants offer to the world. His guide actually recommended he start with something more pure and stable. The fungi don't always have the same strength of psychotropic agent from mushroom to mushroom and the trip can be mild to frighteningly intense. For more information look to Michael Pollan's book, This Is Your Mind on Plants. Since I grew up in an experimental decade, I have a keen interest in such things and might I say comparing notes is interesting. But, I digress and that's a story for another time. 

    Anyway, that's my offering for the day. The sun is cooking my thighs and I need to reposition myself. 

Keep on truckin' 

-Mike