^My Long Dance Banner^

Sitting cross-legged on the roof
apprehending the future;
a flurry of gulls squawk and screech above me
swooping to meet my line of sight and then firing themselves at me,
tilting their wings just in time to put enough sky between us
that there is no beak in my eye.
Haranguing me, humbling me to the power of nature.
A display of awesome beauty.
A taste of things to come.

The next morning,
still without the exact location
but with details of the nearest train station,
I decide to set off.
Halfway there I’m informed of my destination
by a very busied organiser.
I make my way to the site,
a farm to be a festival in a few weeks,
a sign saying “HIPPIES >” and a dude without much of a clue
(thru no fault of his own) point out the way in.
I find the fire pit in the centre of the site
and ask the guy working there if he knows where
the medicine ceremony will be, he smiles a great smile,
I have a flash of recognition, and he points me towards
a circle of poles and some busying bodies in the distance.
I go over and greet some of the loveliest people
it’s possible to meet. I ask what’s going on
and where I can lend a hand.

After a time and a few chores
I notice the brother from the fire pit in the centre
sitting on the ground, half way around putting string between
the circle of poles which will contain the dance.
He’s stressing out, letting his frustration out into the air
(and into the kind, willing ear of a listening brother.)
Fireman has a lot to do on this festival site
and is feeling trapped in the trips of others,
a lack of love and too big a load -
The string he was winding has fallen from the broken spool
into a pool of knotted thread – fireman needs a rest.
I go over and say I am only too happy to untangle the mess
and continue on with his job so he can go off, relax and prepare.
He thanks me, accepts, and goes to take a shower.
I sit and unwind then continue to wrap,
the knot gets too much and I call for a helping hand,
together we finish binding the circle:
A high line, a low line and one in the middle;
an entrance left open to the east.
A pile of earth dug from the central circular fire pit
(set in a six-pointed star drawn in stones)
is placed in a mound outside the entrance and decorated
with beautiful objects – stones, shells, flowers, feathers and more…
This mound is the Earth Altar.

After many hours all have arrived;
peoples banners – visual representations of their prayers
and intentions, things to leave behind, things to call in to their lives -
have been hung around the ceremonial circle.
Finally, all is set and all are gathered.
We sit on blankets between the points of the star,
Miguel sits with his great beard and wonderful presence
amongst instruments, pipes, and more…
A plethora of “big boy’s toys”
the likes of which I have never seen.
He begins to speak, making every word count,
reminding us why we’re here,
that we’re dancing for more than just ourselves.
Asking that we fully commit to seeing the ceremony thru
to its conclusion, that we resist the urge to wander off,
to stop and rest (unless to pray or if it’s really needed).
That we be mindful of the music of others when we pick up
a drum, and to be quiet when his special subtle sounds are on.

We each put our prayers via breath into cornmeal
and send them into the fire.

A long dance for all my relations,
for the totality of my being in the world,
Our Being.

Doing the rounds, banging the rattling staff on the ground,
speaking from the heart to translate our banners -
our reasons for being here. Now.

Then the medicine is passed around the circle,
hand to hand until each is holding,
stirred with a stick and then down the hatch -
air exhaled thru clenched teeth.
We grimace at the bitter beauty -
good medicine, tasty medicine!

We go out the door and walk the circumference,
one way – and then the other,
We re-enter and start the dance…
Down into the molten core of the earth,
dancing to purify, to release.

After pangs of doubt, not yet feeling the medicine,
instead feeling the fool for moving like this with all these people;
feeling futile, as if what we’re doing is too ridiculous to be real.

Soon, moving this circle path, this spiral path, brings peace:
I am slipping into trance.
Letting go of expectations, of attitude.
Letting go of thinking-I-know-without-tasting-the-flow – Now I am
judging the book by licking the words from its pages
and burning the cover.
Opening to the undeniable
malleable reality of the moment.

Rattles, gongs, all kinds of drums…
Sitting together on feeling, something higher than,
yet inclusive of, rhythm and form -
The goodness of making music is in a total acceptance of the moment,
respect for other sounds, and a willingness to take part.
Sometimes I carry a drum like a baby
like a burden – unsure if my very being
is playing thru it as I dance
or if I am simply one with the sounds, with the souls, of others.
Sure it doesn’t matter, whatever it is: it is.

No smoke, no water, no warmth, no rest for my aching back, no respite.
Our smoke, our water, our warmth, a snake like stretch for my aching back.
Know respite. Know all these things
Feel them swirling in the space around us.

Dancing down, sometimes circle big, sometimes circle small.
Sometimes people rushing fast, sometimes people slow.
Some songs respond to purging like performance to applause: Encore!
I walk and stumble and bubble and burp and spit my shit thru the ropes.

I sometimes struggle with making sound, the power so great
that I feel too weak to wield it, too afraid.
Yet I want to contribute, thus am torn.
Miguel and his assistant are singing a song,
Shadows are walking the ropes outside, I don’t know if they are spirits
or actual people, I dance for them too, privileged to be doing so.
Soon the song morphs out of ancient language,
(tho perhaps I am simply understanding its meaning?)
It is speaking directly to me.
(and, as I later found out, to others: both inside and out)
“This. Is-Not. A-Spec-tator-Sport!” Over and over…
I stumble into the centre on my next time round,
pick up a bodhran laying by the fire and begin hitting it with my thumb,
the sound is freakishly liquid and low and I don’t know what I’ve done,
I continue beating and soon others are helping me with their rhythms -
it’s like some dark wet slimy spider dance done safely.
A kind of exorcism. I am grateful.

Sometimes the beat calms,
Miguel picks up his long stringed bow.
A mouth harp guitar like crystal water
in our bodies, little plips and ripples
as beautiful as any sound heard purely now,
so incredibly enchanting -
we’re like freeform puppets on invisible strings,
spinning tops winding round some musical maypole.
We dance entranced. We walk in rapture.

His brothers in the art of holding space,
the rudders of our ritual,
share songs with him and us,
keep the beat when the energies dip -
whatever is happening we ride with it -
AHO Captain!

Dancing and walking and stumbling
thru pain, thru tiredness, thru flaking thought,
thru huge grins and unspoken connections,
keeping on ‘cos this is bigger than me.
Keeping on thru more than I can recall.

The sky dark, blurred hints of moon
growing stronger like a sun shedding skin
to calm amber orangey pink.
An echo of sunrise in this sinking circle.
Suddenly looking up and the clouds have parted for the stars
above us. We know our place.
See it. Feel it. Dance it.

Just when it should
a conch shell sounds
then farts as lips falter
and turns into laughter!

For a moment there is no way
but spinning giggles and bubbling joy
then the shout goes out and the tide turns:
“Change Direction!”

Dancing now for blessings.
Sending out and calling in.
Manifesting prayer.

Sometime here I feel part of the fire,
my meat stirring like ashen burning wood.
I am walking into the fire,
becoming it.
Giving myself graciously unto death
for the greater good.
Releasing all that I hold dear
to come across that precious thing so far and so near:
What really matters
and what to do with it.
Just Being.
Humble Service.

The unshakable balance of all things.
The wonder of being totally yourself,
planting seeds and letting be.
The perfection of the universe.
The understanding, allowing,
of other points of view.
Seeing the spiral of life,
some are in front, some are behind; yet
All are One. All is equal.

My people here with me their people,
themselves and countless friends, flesh family, spirit family,
morphing into and out of each other as the blessings flow.
Dancing for so much more than ourselves.
Knowing that in some way, on some level, it helps.

Everything has changed.
Everything is the same.

A brother becomes my brother, I know he needs it
and I know he is here. A lady becomes my Lover,
I commit myself all over to loving her forever.
It is pouring out of me…

I am shown that my Love is true, I was worried it had become pose,
empty memory. My connections to family, friends, my love, my life,
Our planet, this Universe, are strengthened. Confirmed.
All doubt is burned away.
Sanpedrito opens my Heart.

Sometimes, at just the right times,
The songs turn into laughter. This laughter is like an answer,
the questions are not important.

After dancing with the moon
under spinning stars, inexplicable yet highly reasonable
configurations in the sky,
morning starts again – subtle, slow.
Bringing light and solidity to these beautiful surroundings.
Filling in nighttimes potent gaps with washes of steady tweaking colour.
Wanting only one thing more than to flop on the floor
and that is to keep on moving. Waiting for the right time
to kneel and pray, when it comes it comes effortlessly -
Sheer relief, deep gratitude kissing/eating out of me
into Mother Earth. My head pressed into her bosom.
Home again. Home a-gain!
Then jiggedy jig and back into the flow…

Beautiful Sisters dancing, twirling,
Sensual, precious, powerful, loving.

A robot dancing, swift-twitching brother
twists contorted on the floor
as his opposite sides realign in winding jerks,
healing the split at the source and working out
thru piled on layers of tension. His process supported,
softened by clouds of smoke sucked and blown
over and into and out of him…

A blessing for each of us as we dance into Miguel’s steady waiting
and are cleansed in a shower of smoke.

Finally, after a seeming eternity – A beautiful eternity
teeming with hard work and grace -
We finish the long, long dance and move into anew space.

Gathered together under the loving gaze of a buffalo brother
and his beautiful, spirit-filled partner, part-stripped and sitting
on the grass. Feeling the wandering wind turn
liquid skin into air. Getting a chill and savouring it.
Knowing the heat will soon be intense.

We enter the sweat lodge one by one,
crawling clockwise until all are inside.
The central pit is fed hot stones,
the door flaps closed.

Water and incense rush into the atmosphere
soaking us in steam and sweat,
the first round of prayer begins,
devoted to the Great Spirits, our Grandparents in the West.
Each heartfelt contribution punctuated with another blast
of heat and sizzling steam.
Cool breeze and big relief with the opening of the door.
Then seven more hot stones and prayers to the North.
This cycle repeats for East and South,
each time the heat gets more intense,
Blessed water condenses in my throat and mouth.
My head sometimes pressed into the ground,
thanking the Earth for its calm and cool collectedness,
making me able to bear the heat of our prayers.

We exit, shining in the morning light, and line up
for those two loving souls – tenders of the lodge -
to pour cool, cool water onto the backs of our necks.
Unspeakable Bliss.
Thirst quenching sips.
Prayers thrown into the fire, riding tobacco wings
to transformation heaven, the great beyond between.
Here and Now. Hear and Know.

And then we laugh and smile and feast,
we love out loud – our laughter leaps!
People bring out an astounding range of treats,
we help ourselves to fruit, biscuits, crisps, vegetables and juice…
If the sky was a roof my head would’ve hit it,
instead my gratitude and joy rises into infinity
and loops thru the universe back into me.
Blessed be all creation!
Blessed be the sacred medicine!

I crawl into my sleeping bag, something like
ten hours after drinking, and fall into
deep sleep for a time.

We wake around noon and recoup.
Now the staff is passed around the group
and each person opens their mouth and speaks from the heart
of what they experienced.
I am moved to the cusp of crying
hearing of people’s healing.
Feeling the love and gratitude blossom in my belly.
The ceremony has been perfect beyond imagination -
The trust and open, willing co-creation.
We bless all our relations, the entirety of being
with our humbled gratitude.

The simple truth nested deep
like the shiny egg of a phoenix
glinting in our eyes.

I am reminded of what I had become
too tired, too jaded, too distant from
to keep in mind, to embody:
The wonderful rightness of being.
All is family, and all is well.

We who are lost, wandering, searching, striving, withdrawing,
building strange effigies to the ghosts of ancient memories…
What we have lost has never left us – it is up to us to turn and face it.
We are too heavy and heady to know how to look.
All we need, all we know, surrounds us.
It cannot be written in a book, it is too vital – too alive.
It requires honesty, humbleness and dedication
to become a conscious partner in creation.
To read the message of life, to know the secrets of nature -
All that it takes is where it takes ya.

We bid each other farewell with hugs, blessings and smiles,
the sense of solidarity is profound.
The fireman thanks me for helping him earlier the other day,
He said that he felt like he was caught up in a spider’s web
(I was covered in little spiders all morning)
and because I had helped to unravel it he was able to work thru it.
He told me that if I hadn’t offered to help him
he would not have been able to tend the fire
(which he did diligently all night)
and that if I ever got in trouble I could call on the six directions
and the fire in my heart for help. He blessed me.

I am reminded of the importance of helping others
and humbly serving the greater good. In the depths,
at the peaks, of my dancing – all else fell away -
service and simple being were left shining
like the only light there is.

I leave you the affirmation of this light as a blessing…

Now, two days later, my feet ache like I have bruised my soles.
My calf muscles stiffen and I have to rub them loose.
But I have woken up once more to the glory of existence,
this fading pain is not pain but a blessed physical memory
of that most deep down and dirty, exalted and pure experience.

I will never, ever forget it.

I urge you with all my heart to take part in a dance
if you ever feel the need and if you ever find the chance.

Heartbursting blessings to all my relations.

I Love you.

All Saints Church, Piddletrenthide. (Copyright Mike Searle, Creative Commons Licence.)

I love to see Yew
in the graveyard
and this Church
is one peace
of the puzzle

Open doors
and not a soul
insight

Looking East
thru stained glass
The Sun illuminates
His Halo

All faces are glowing
and turned towards
The Light

I love to see the pews
covered in cushions
to kneel on,
sown in scenes of
local life & symbols
of inner life

Choose Celtic
cross & circle,
return to childhood
on innocent knees
and talk to God,
as Life, with ease

Adoration
Confession
Thanksgiving
Supplication

ACTS in me

*

Climbing cross-section
cut to the bone
Chalk & Flint
in the green
grass of home

Walk
Stone Age veins
and fall into
timeless dreams

Cross stile
into vast expanse
of churned crystal earth
and wonder how many
accidents are ancient tools

Follow vague
15 year old directions
“To the far end of the field,
To the right of a prominent Ash.”

Sit and eat an apple
in the Sunshine
Praise Ra! while
A Jealous God
with guilt grabs
atension

Imagination expands
Beyond Our Star
to the bearded
Wizard Puppeteer
Beyond Space + Time

Dismiss
The Theatre of Thoughts
and walk over Horizons
Humpback

?

Blackthorn Hedges
Sharply silhouetted
A Crown of Thorns
Against the Sun

The Ash lays down its arms
The Giant Boughs
we are swept away…

Over Horizons hump
Snake-back shaggy
Caterpillar wiggles
cradling Plush
in plush surrounds

Over Horizons hump
The Wizard Puppeteer
hungers for lunch

Delves a dessert spoon
into the luscious earth
and leaves
a hidden valley

Church Hill littered
with Trees sprung
from Gracious gobblings
dribble

We walk the rim
just outside
the living memory
of heavenly
snackings

Stopped dead
in our tracks
NOW suddenly snaps
as a Roe Deer
Barks & Bounds
An eruption!
that snuck in
when we weren’t looking

The aftermath
quieter than silence
The striped pheasant feather
an apparition at my feet

ahead of us
…entrancing…
The Wood

*

Apprehension
amplified by absense
in the presence of
an open gate
with electric-wire
at our ankles

Conflicting
messages…

Moving on
is only ever
a short step away

A step we take
and soon the still woods
are alive with darting motion
but only for a moment
blurred shadows of beasts
and birds, a memory
almost before
they occurred

We have never seen
such life in a wood
now so still
every branch we crack
and crunchy leaf we crumble
is shrill!

Unknown persons
occasionally dissapearing
in the corners of our eyes

Nature is so alive
it feels unnatural
to be present at all
but we can’t turn away
from the moment

This wood
may belong to life
but it is claimed
by a round of
woven-wire-hexagons
and the only way out
is the way we came in

*

Carry on rising
to the Ridge

Lone bare Oaks
Elemental descriptions
as the Earth pours like Water
into the Air

Not so lonely, or bare,
drawn to climb
we look closer

Ecosystems of Moss
and Lichen populated
by shy insects

Small brittle cities
in pastel shades
of ground & sky

A spongy carpet
upon which
it is a joy to lie
to stretch green flesh
on brown bark bones
a welcome home

“I hope we didn’t hurt you
in ways that aren’t a joy
to repair.”

my mind speaks to the tree
as a money spider absails
on his invisible thread
making me quietly proud

I jump down
and on my way out
a branch gives me
a strong yet friendly clout

My reactionary frown
relaxes into a smile
while I ponder
the joy of repair

*

Reach the crest
of the Wessex Ridgeway
and enter once more
the wood

Our footsteps slide in the mud
for life in these parts
must conform
to the slope

Pheasants endlessly
keeping ahead
In this wood
is wheat & water
to keep the food fed

I take a log
resting on a metal drum
and BANG! just once

I am shocked by the swiftness
of a startled pheasant
as she hurtles heftily into the air
the sound of her panicked wings
merging with the beat
of her drawn-out cry

A commotion of chattering tits
in a confusion of twisted brambles
draws us in

A feathered fawn bolt-from-the-blue
rushes in and back out
in a moment of beautiful violence

Shotguns discharge
in the distance

The beater’s yell & batter
shatters our calm

Paranoid fantasies
are fun to breed
but not to believe

We walk as we run
from blood-red promises
steaming in the Sun

*

The Countryside Code
can make leaving a field
an odorous load
as you search for
an exit allowed

The yin of barbed wire
is well received

Darkness is but a turn away
behind the greying cloud
relief is breathed
as map orientates to territory
and route home is mentally ploughed

*

Walking through the quiet streets
of this Plush little village
Yew are standing by the road
Beckoning in tweaked mystique
growing upwards
beyond the gate

Another gate
beyond the first:
Two behemoth stumps
dressed in moss
their circumference
stretching the imagination

Yew are the living dead
transmuting the dusty flesh
of soil, rooted in bone
intimately grasping
our fading memories
ressurected above ground

Growing upwards
Yew are
The Church

*

Church of St John the Baptist, Plush. (Copyright Mike Searle, Creative Commons Licence.)

Lady's Hummingbird Tee (as worn)

Drawn with Fabric Pens onto White H&M V-neck; size: Small, price: £36
This T-shirt has been sold.

Lady's Hummingbird Tee (flat)

"Head Prism" Ink & Pencil on Paper, 30 x 40cm (2009)

The House of the Stone Monkey

The House of the Stone Monkey is a messy party in the pants of a slowed down dog. It’s hearing a quiet person tell a joke and telling it louder as if it’s your own. It’s taking a big lungful of smoke and trapping it with a spasm of laughter in your throat so that only a whisper leaves your lips: the white flag of surrender turned to dust. The House of the Stone Monkey is built of bricks … but blood is mixed into the cement. It’s the re-re-re-appropriation of the word ‘Cunt’ as a term of endearment. It’s watching a kung fu movie then beating up your little brother while you squawk like a spasticated bird. It’s a meat pie cooked in a sunset sky by a momma with a moon for a face. It’s hanging yourself with the finishing line just to get out of the rat race. The House of the Stone Monkey is ubiquitous and yet only arises in special conditions. It’s invisible, eternal, and crumbling as we speak. It takes five days of eating nothing but manna from heaven just to visualise a tile on its roof. It’s the blue flame of the pudding that’s burning 100% proof. It’s making everybody feel uncomfortable by dancing sarcastically in the middle of the room. It’s the Chemical Brothers vs. the Legion of Doom. The House of the Stone Monkey is a joke that hasn’t finished yet, and when it’s over you’ll forget it was a joke and tell your grandchildren about it as if it really happened. It’s every superpower you never had gleaming in the illustrated eyes of a thousand pound hooker. It’s skiing on yellow snow in stolen slippers. It’s taking off the mask by painting your face silver. The House of the Stone Monkey stays till the party’s over, even if that means falling asleep on the sofa. The House of the Stone Monkey shakes your hand and says “Pleased to meet ya” – but its eyes are staring hungrily at the chip on your shoulder. The House of the Stone Monkey needs feeding and it wants to be your friend.

Go bananas.

The Infinite Monkey Theo-re-re-re

CONTENTS

• Route de la Source
• Pursuing the Third Eye (A Dub Supreme)

Outside In-sights

To turn inside out is a violent act, but to turn outside in is only natural. It is not to turn at all, but to face the world and meet yourself in it. This is not narcissism or solipsism. This is animism, anarchism, the primacy of perception. You are just anOther in a world that is alive. The surface of your body is the depths of your mind. The universe and you are inextricably intertwined; you are crossed-over co-projections, just as light enters the eye. The end is insight, and so is the beginning. There is nothing to put right but the stories we are spinning. Life is suffering? Only because we Love! We are all archetypal avatars and every animal god! And they are us! Consciousness is an infallible mystery. All truth requires poetry: without it science is invisible and religion is silent. These are outside in-sights: inclusive yet transcendent.

CONTENTS

• From All Saints to John
• Quack
• PsycHome (Paintings & Memories)
• The Long Dance

Inklings

Inklings are high-coo calligraphy. Intentional accidents. Attempts to capture words from the tip of the tongue and spit them joyously onto the page. To frame images of the ineffable in a collaboration with chance. To make space for meaning to find itself in marks that record a dance.

Inklings are creatures too. They emerge wherever imagination gives them air to breathe, where attention flows like water and crystalline eddies flash. They rush to the surface for a moment, leaving messages written in ripples, then back to the depths they dash.

Inklings are feelings free. Feelings that whisper in wind-currents while they tickle your chest. Feelings that gurgle in glistening springs while they frolic in your belly. Feelings that boom in the dark of night while they startle in your heart, that hint like the trees that make the moon wink. Feelings that glint in your eye when the sun warms your body, that dapple your tongue with the faint scent of adventure…

Inklings, they say, cannot be grasped. But then:
I hear you can catch a laugh.

CONTENTS

• Head Prism

CommUnification!

CONTACT

• Get in Touch!

CONNECT

• Big Bridge (and thing.net)
• Larzaffer The Philosopher
  

COLLABORATE

• LovEvolvers

Come play in the feel-dings of the awed!

Authentic immedia, straight from the horse’s mouth, hooves firmly on the ground, eyes to the cantering skies. Outdoor performances striving to mimic nature’s spontaneity, making fire from the wind’s applause and cheers from the cheeps of birds. The reappropriation of the taken-for-granted in the service of wonder: a ruler can measure, or a ruler can sing. (That thing is a who, so who is that thing?) Flow-jamming with the ever-happening. The lyrical writing of light on moving water. Emotions groan in-sighed the garden. Outside in-pourings cast in sunshine-bronze and touched up with musical fingers. Organic chasms opening and closing like the mouth of a fish made of paint swimming through a forest of art (blowing observatory bubbles) the choral rustle of each wind-tickled masterpiece dissected without breaking the skin. The skin rippling like the surface of a river, dripping bones like candles made of shifting pebbles, the eyes a hologram, the brain run away down slick nerve streets to party at the edge of time. A palpable symphony of ultra-sensual celebration…

( ( ( ((( JoyInUs! ))) ) ) )

CONTENTS

• The kNew Forest
• np1s01s02
• BrainBowZzz

"Psilocybin Productions." Ink & Psilocybe semilanceata on paper. (1999)

In the last years of the previous century the internet truly came alive for me. My growing mind was open wide, and what should I find at the tapping tips of my fingers but a strange and vivid world of liberating knowledge waiting to come inside…

I’d been fascinated by psychedelics ever since watching a piece of Government anti-drug propaganda in my early teens in which a young LSD casualty believed he was on fire, I missed the intended message of FEAR and instead became incredibly enamoured by the idea that certain drugs could so completely alter one’s experience of reality -
it sounded like fun to me!

I vaguely recall sitting in a doctors surgery leafing through a brochure designed to inform parents of the various drugs their children may be on, when I saw a picture of these shrivelled little elves called, irresistibly, “magic mushrooms”.
Magic mushrooms?!
How phucking purrrfect!
I immediately fell in love.

It wasn’t until years later, just after starting college, that I met them in real life. I was sat round my dealer’s house one happy evening, smoking the wonderful weed with a few good friends, when she announced to us all that she’d got in some shrooms and asked if we’d like to try them. We gobbled a few down and carried on as usual. We felt a bit buzzy and giggly but that seemed to be about the extent of it – at least until the character in the movie we were watching started tripping: I was fascinated by this magnificent special effect that made objects seem to bleed into one another, their boundaries being composed of reaching and retracting spiral tendrils caught in a rhythmic dance. It wasn’t until I went to the toilet and saw the same thing happening to the wallpaper that I realised the effect I was seeing wasn’t in the TV but in my mind! How very amusing! I watched this beautiful wriggle, this self-contained movement like a time-lapsed vine constantly growing into itself, ever active but going nowhere, and felt a calm elation; I felt happy in the face of this benign mystery, comforted by the infinite possibilities implicit in such a happening.

So it came to be that I typed “magic mushrooms” into a search engine, and found my destiny fed back to me in the results. It was the holy trinity of deoxy, erowid & the lycaeum that served as focal points for my early education. I read all about mushrooms, taking my pseudonym “PsillyBoy” from the ‘Psilly’ in “Psilly Psimon’s Mushroom Growin’ Guide,” and the ‘Silly Boy’ I could hear the mother in my mind call me as I greedily drank down all this forbidden knowledge. I joined a mailing list discussing the crazy beyond-quantum world of the Mexican mint Salvia Divinorum. I found a Gnostic Garden that sold various dried plants & seeds labelled NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION! (luckily I didn’t consider myself fully human.) I was awestruck by the self-taught “Psychonauts” who voyaged these far-out plains chasing experiences that enriched their lives, thinking thoughts that expanded their minds into realms scarcely dreamt of by the scared and sleeping masses. I was exposed to ancient philosophy and frontier science, to art and music and poetry that went to the weird heart of the human condition and didn’t blink. I was free to think whatever it was possible to think, to embrace a world beyond belief.

It was at Glastonbury Festival in the sunny summer of 1999 that some of the possibilities the mycelial wwweb had shown me became reality. O the excitement of walking down that long hill filled with colourful people towards the vibrating mysteries of that magical temporary city of tents!!! We set up camp in a little field opposite the Jazz World stage, not far from some Hare Krishna dishing out free food that became a salvation for those of us who spent all our money on drugs. O the drugs! Bearded champions breezing through the fields calling like plucked birds: “Ganja! Acid! Pills!” Bless the old hippy who sat with us fresh-faced fools and doled out his shrooms before uttering the immortal words: “Would anyone like to try some Salvia Divinorum?” As the blue smoke dissolved into the orange sky we cried with laughter. Everything became clear, an awesome understanding blotted out my monkey-mind and filled me completely with a sense of ecstatic contentment. The sun went down as the shrooms came up. STRONG. I walked through tents of unknown depths arranged in misty but perfect geometries towards the palpable sounds and entrancing visuals emanating from some impromptu late night party. I danced like a marshmallow ballerina on steroids, like solid liquid playing cat’s cradle with itself, like a young man suddenly become half mushroom trying to make a new face out of curved space. I got lost in a timeless eternity that night. I wandered through the mists of a strange purgatory feeling all I’d been reading become shadowy amorphous blobs in a new reality. My whole life had led to that point. That NOW. That Eternal Plateau. I thought I was never coming back… and in a way I never have.

These are my poems and paintings, my raves and rants, my crystal clarities and utter insanities…
These are the things “Being Psilly” is all about.

With love,
in joy,
explore…

Feathers & Leaves, Earth & Sea...

DRAWING

• Buh! Ding! Buh! Da!
• Psychedelic Pin-up
• you wanna be a shaman baby?
• Trust the Medicine!

FILM

• You Win

NOTEBOOKS

• 1999

PAINTING

• Mandala Paintings 1999-2001

POETRY

• yoUtopia
• Thin-King of Games

PSILLY.ORG

• Psilly Organisation circa 2002

RADIO

• Psilly on Lilly