this is the gloaming.

back in january, on a quiet winter evening. yeah. must've been about 6:30. npr's marketplace was on. lying on my stomach feeling hopeless, but not any more so than the typical individual thrashing about in our post-american century. things to get done, but i'm so damn comfortable. maybe i'll take a power-nap and hop to in half an hour? not that tired though. close your eyes anyway darlin.

here comes the weird.

shut my eyes, still conscious, just resting them. and the vision begins.

i'm on my hands and knees, in a lush forest, high noon sun splintering through the dense canopy overhead. every thing is in high resolution, hyperrealistic. the greenest, most luxuriant grass i've ever encountered. foot-high blades swaying, leaves fluttering, i can feel the coolness of the ground-level current on my face.

but i hear nothing, and as i acknowledge in my mind that i hear nothing, it instantly becomes clear, as though whispered to me by some unseen guide: i've breached the death interface.

but there's no real sorrow, no pain, no horror. this is peaceful, kind of exciting, like i've snuck into studio 54 and gotten away with it, all wide-eyed and giddy.

eyes open.

dow breaks the 12,000 point mark. a record. overhyped though. DJIA's only about 30 stocks anyway.

wow. that was fucked up.

now keep in mind that this was long before i began experimenting with dxm (though the visual aesthetic of this spirit-vision resembled my closed-eye, dxm-induced visuals rather uncannily). i was totally sober during the minute or so i was in that forest. and of course, trying to grasp at that interface once i'd risen from my bed only pushed the sensation of it farther away. no use chasing it any farther down the hole. might as well get to the homework then, put on some radiohead.

admittedly, there are times when i appreciate such a heightened level of consciousness, honest there are. but there are certainly other occasions when it is the bane of my existence.

wouldn't it be nice, i wonder, to be but a lamb, grazing mindlessly as each day gives way to another?

maybe not.