This is a thing I wrote a few years ago - if you dislike the Grateful Dead and frown on discussions of drug use, it is probably not for you. All names have been removed, and who knows, maybe it's not even autobiographical (unlikely, but you never know)
:-)
A Long, Strange Trip
He finally got going on his way to work on a Friday morning in early August. His body was aching and he was moving slowly all morning.
Like he often did, he tackled necessary projects that he nevertheless didn't have any time to take on in the morning - this morning's project was to run vinegar through the clogged coffee maker several times. It worked, but it ate up about 10 minutes of his morning that he should have been using to get ready. Increasingly, though, on some mornings lately, he just COULDN'T get going. No matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried to "hurry up," he couldn't anymore...he would just...move....around...the...apartment....taking...his....time.
He had another gig that night that he had to go to straight from work, and it was going to be a pretty big show, so he wanted to make sure he had a backup guitar with him too, in case he broke a string or something. So that meant he had even more crap to move, and that he had to make TWO trips down to the garage where his car was parked, and between his snail-like pace, the putzy elevator (set for elderly people, so it took FOREVER just to go one floor), and the automatic door that inched open, his timing was now off and he was running late for work, yet again.
He finally got everything loaded into his car and settled down into his seat, marking the first time since he had gotten out of bed that he had sat down and relaxed. He rested comfortably for a few seconds, savoring the fact that he was no longer schlepping shit out to his car. His back hurt. His stomach hurt. His life hurt, but he knew it had gotten better lately, not worse. That was a plus. As he pulled out of the garage and driveway and out onto morning-sun-splashed Excelsior Boulevard in St. Louis Park, his hometown-that-he-only-left-for-7-years-and-then-moved-back-because-it-was-a-constant-and-felt-comfortable (and of course, was where so many family members and friends and acquaintances resided, which of had its upsides and downsides ), he popped in the Dead's American Beauty.
Feeling like he really wanted to capture that joyous experience he'd been having lately while driving in to work in the morning - the world felt so full of possibility some mornings, and the sky was gorgeous on some days - he had grabbed the classic 1970 Grateful Dead album out of the stack of discs in his bedroom and put it on the bed to take with in the car. As he was about to lock the door on his way out, he remembered that he had left it on the bed and ran in to grab it and throw it in his grungy, double-paper-bag-from-Byerly's "work bag."
As he made his circuitous way down Excelsior Boulevard to Lake Street to Dean Parkway and then around Lake of the Isles, he popped the disc in and soon Box of Rain nearly overwhelmed him, emotionally....
"Just a box of rain,
wind and water,
Believe it if you need it,
if you don't just pass it on...
Sun and shower,
Wind and rain,
in and out the window
like a moth before a flame
And it's just a box of rain,
I don't know who put it there,
Believe it if you need it,
or leave it if you dare,
But it's just a box of rain,
or a ribbon for your hair,
Such a long long time to be gone,
and a short time to be there"
And then - he was transported.
He was no longer 44 years old and trudging his way in to the same drab job he'd been trudging into for 20 years now. He was 18 or 19 years old, camping with his two best friends from high school in a tent in Wisconsin, on a trip to the Alpine Valley Music Theater to see BOTH the Who and the Grateful Dead, who would be playing there within 3 days of each other. They couldn't believe how awesome this was going to be. They would smoke a LOT of weed and be free - truly free - for a few days. Who knows, they might even do acid. What the hell, right?
They had all been back in the Twin Cities for their first summer after college and were all working boring, crappy jobs, but now they were at Alpine Valley and were going to see two of the greatest bands ever. They were together, which made the 3 of them happy lately. They had gone to different colleges, but the bond between them seemed to only strengthen after a school year away from each other. Their trio was solid. It worked. They were comfortable together and made each other crack up and they smoked pot together and had even started playing music together, although the other two guys, to be honest, couldn't really play bass and drums all that well. But the point was, they had started jamming, and it was fun (and loud).
And now, they were at their campsite, and he had brought psilocybin mushrooms for all of them, and they ate them, choking them down despite the not-so-vague hints of manure in the nasty-tasting (but somehow slightly nourishing) fungi. And they felt - nothing. 15 minutes went by. Zippo. They decided to take a walk, all of them disappointed that the 'shrooms were apparently "duds." About five minutes into the walk, everything started to go wavy, for all of them, at once. Suddenly the grass under their shoes was alive, the trees were alive, the leaves were pulsing, the ground was rippling, everything was FLOWING...and it all felt so PEACEFUL and GOOD. And they laughed now - especially at how they had all feared they had gotten ripped off and been sold worthless merchandise. No, this stuff was for real. And they were carried off by the feeling of the moment. They soared. Eventually, they headed back to their tent, where he got out his guitar and played and played and they sang and sang along and this went on for hours, jamming, the other guys clapping and drumming along on objects when necessary....floating along for hours on a tide of music and good feelings....
And then...he pulled into the parking ramp at work. And the fantasy was over. He was 44 again, and that wasn't so terrible either, necessarily. There were just SO MANY obligations now. All the time. Constantly. Still, he thought, it certainly had been very nice to go back there for a little while, to that summer of 1989, in Alpine Valley, Wisconsin. He might have to visit that memory more often in the future.
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