The Truth About Toad Licking

This was written back in '96 when I lived in Austin.

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Toad Licking

You've probably heard about 'toad licking'. Go out into the woods, find a stream, find a toad, lick it, and ta-da! La-La land. Well, it's not EXACTLY like that... although, finding mushrooms is ALMOST like that, except you don't go into the woods, you go into a pasture, and instead of finding a stream, you find a pile of cow flop... but that's another subject. But anyway, back to the toad thing.

First of all, if you do happen to find the right toad, it wouldn't be a good idea to lick it. The stuff that 'gets you off' is actually venom. The frog secretes the stuff when it gets agitated, such as when a predator is about to gobble it down. As soon as the wolf or gila monster or whatever puts the thing in it's mouth, it spits it out, because the venom tastes like ca-ca. But a human, however... a human dedicated to catching a buzz will go ahead and lick the toad, because he's got a new-fangled cerebral cortex that suppresses his natural instincts for long term survival in favor of his need for instant gratification. So before you go stuffing toads in your mouth, here's a few things you should know.

The toad's venom is concentrated on the surface of it's skin, and that's why licking is dangerous. Smoking it is a different story, however. The toxic ingredient in toad venom is called bufotenine, which is burned off while smoking. After the toxic stuff is gone, what's left is the hallucinogen 5-MeO-DMT. THIS is what sends you to never-never land. The only toad known to contain 5-MeO-DMT in it's venom is Bufo Alvaris, also called the Colorado River Toad. It is found in the Southwestern portions of the U.S., usually along the Colorado River in Southern Arizona, California, and Northern New Mexico. 5-MeO-DMT is classified as an unscheduled substance, which means that it is legal to posess... but B. Alvarus venom also contains bufotenine, which is scheduled, so you are hereby warned of all the cop crap.

B. Alvarus is a very large, squat toad with smooth, leathery, greenish-grey skin with tannish underparts. It has several round warts on the body, and four large parotid glands found where the hind-leg meets the body and also above the ear membranes. They can grow up to 9 inches long, but they usually range between 4 and 9 inches. If you ever do actually have one of these greeblies in your hands, be very careful, because as I stated earlier, it secretes venom when agitated, so wear gloves or something and don't rub your eyes or any other orafice on your body after handling it.

In order to get a smokeable sample, put the toad on a piece of glass (a pyrex baking dish works well) and rub the parotid glands behind it's eyes. This will irritate the toad, and it will secrete a milky fluid. Once there is a goodly amount of it, let it evaporate to a crystal and then scrape it with a razor blade. Put it in a glass pipe, and then SHMOKE IT!


These are the commonly reported (generic) effects

Coming on INSTANLY, you will feel a buzzing head-rush and notice a profound change in light and color perceptions. Acute closed-eye visual hallucinations are commonly reported. Effects last for 5 to 15 minutes, falling off rapidly. WARNING: Venom smokers may experience dizziness and/or heart palpitations. If this occurs, breathe slowly and deeply until the effect fades.

Here is a first hand account by Yours Truly

A friend of mine mailed me a sample of this stuff, and included was a note that read 'have a nice time'. I had no idea what this 5-MeO-DMT stuff was, and expected some kind of a mellow buzz akin to marijuana. So, confidently, I loaded the stuff into a pipe, sat back in my lounge chair, and prepared to chill out. Two seconds after I had inhaled my first (and only) hit, the room exploded. When I say that, I mean... it EXPLODED. Everything came apart like a puzzle, but the pieces were still next to each other, like it had only come apart at the seams but hadn't scattered to the four winds. It was an extreme, instant rush; VERY INTENSE. I gripped the arms of the chair I was sitting in like I was on a roller-coaster, and looked over at my lifelong buddy Clintmonstah, and his face flew into 5 different parts. Actually, it was his face, reproduced 5 times, hovering around the central image of his REAL face. I can remember saying something like "oh shit, this is heavy", and then Clint left the room, knowing that something SERIOUS was going on. What followed after that is very hard to recall, because it seemed like a VERY long time passed... a lot longer than the 5 minutes that actually passed in reality between the time when Clint left the room and when he came back. When Clint came back in the room, I was starting to chill out a little, but during those 5 minutes, I was somewhere else. Where, I do not know. Not only was I someWHERE else, I was someWHEN else too. I could have lived an entire lifetime in those 5 minutes, because it seemed like an eternity had passed. Time lost all meaning. EVERYTHING lost all meaning. I was in limbo for those 5 minutes. But I finally came back... and had a frame of reference again! I exhaled in relief. After that, things calmed down, until the effects were completely gone. The entire episode lasted for about 30 minutes from the time I inhaled to the time I was totally back in reality. And what a journey it was...

If you've ever done acid or mushrooms, then imagine the heaviest trip you've ever had magnified about 100 times. That is what it's like when you inhale about 5 milligrams (the recommended dose) of 5-MeO-DMT. And it's instant, not like the slow, gradual coming on when you take an acid hit or eat a shroom. So if you ever have a chance to smoke some 5-MeO-DMT, now you know what you're in for, unlike poor naive me who was expecting a mellow buzz in my comfortable lounge chair in my air-conditioned apartment. But, it's definitely worth the trip, even if you take it only once.

The process of wenting

Tonight I couldn't wait to get off work so I could go out on a walking adventure. The wind was at zero, the moon was almost full, it was luxuriously cold, and I had a full charge on my tablet, my phone, and my mobile hotspot. Baby, I was ready to go, as Republica said back in '96. They were ready to go too, standing on the rooftops and shouting it out... but that was almost 20 years ago, so I don't know if they're still ready to go, or if they already went, or if they just gave up. I didn't stick around to find out; I went ahead and went.

After all these years I'm still in the process of wenting, I guess, even as I type this, and I'm still wondering where my went is going to wind up... although I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter, because we are all eventually going to wind up up as old farts anyway. Right now I'm still a relatively fresh fart, but I can feel the oldness coming on, and I'm sure it will be here before I even know it.

I don't necessarily mind becoming an old fart, but dang... those ripe ones can really really really really really stink. That's the only thing that worries me... the smell. I hope I don't smell too horrible when I'm a ripe old fart.

Anyway. I think I kind of ruined the mood when I started talking about farts. My original intent was to attempt to describe the indescribable beauty of the night which surrounded me tonight - that's a weird sentence - but I wound up talking about farts somehow. Not that a fart doesn't contain it's own inherent beauty. A fart can be quite a lovely thing! For example - imagine a life without farts. And while you're imagining that, try to imagine that you are appreciating something lovely, after holding in a couple of years worth of farts. I can practically guarantee you that nothing will seem lovely to you after a couple of years of cooking up a crock pot full of pressurized farts... except maybe an actual free-floating fart.

So where was I? Oh yes. Tonight. Dang, it sure was pretty tonight. That's all I really wanted to say, I think. If I could go back and do it again, I would have written more about the awesome beauty and less about the farts. I guess I could go back and do it again, but no.

Anywho. I'ma bed now.

More shenanigans at work.

The store got robbed tonight. The owner wasn't here at the time, but we all looked at the video; me, my coworker, the owner, and the cops, so we all had a pretty good idea of what the guy looked like by the time we were ready to open the store back up. Then afterward - and this is the essence of irony - the owner was driving around town to see if he could spot the guy just by chance, and he sure did, at a deli on Carroll. He called the cops and they promptly showed up and nabbed him. So, the guy who robbed us was found by the owner of the store, who wasn't even here when the robbery took place, and he was caught just two hours after the fact.

Gasping choking dying

Oh man, that was just awful. I was starting to panic, I was starting to think that I was really going to die. Why does there have to be such a horrific panic response to a lack of oxygen? I mean, I can understand the purpose of pain, to warn you away from danger. In most cases, removing oneself from a source of pain is fairly simple. Stop doing the thing that hurts. However, this "I can't breathe, oh please God, I don't wanna die in agonizing mortal terror!" bullshit is going overboard. I mean, how often do we run across a lack of oxygen in our daily lives? Do we really need such an agonizing warning? Wouldn't common sense and a level of pain equivalent to, let's say... a stubbed toe, be sufficient? Is it really necessary to be forced to discover a reality shattering epiphany regarding our mortality?

Why am I griping and carrying on like this? Well, what happened was this. Tonight, just a few minutes ago, on my way home from the Shmelvin-Elvin, I was just a-walking along, minding my own business, chewing on a malted milk ball (you know, Whoppers) and watching a movie on my tablet, when I almost freaking died. I must have inhaled just a tiny bit of whopper saliva, because suddenly my throat was closed and I couldn't pull any air into my lungs at all. I would take a little tiny breath, and I would get a little bit of air, but whenever I tried to pull in a good breath, my throat would close and all I could do was make this terrifying wheezing sound. This went on for about three minutes. Long enough for me to scan my surroundings, scope out the nearby houses, gauge their distances, calculate whether or not I had enough oxygen in my lungs to make it to the front door of the closest one, realize I wouldn't have any breath left at all to shout, and maybe not even enough to knock or kick, and that I would likely die right there, tonight, on some strangers doorstep, wheezing and gasping, and experiencing the worst death possible, short of being burned alive.

It took me about a minute to realize that short breaths were the key. Oh man, damn, those sixty seconds sucked. Just the memory of it is almost enough to bring back the actual feeling of suffocating. What a great memory! I'm sure that I will reflect upon it with nostalgia in the years to come... that is, if I don't suffocate to death before I get the chance. So... short breaths. After another minute or so I was able to get about half of a good breath, and my panic started to subside. And after another couple of minutes, I was fairly sure that I was going to live.

I'm pretty scared now. It was a lot like those times whenever I've woken up in the middle of the night feeling like I was suffocating, except that this time it went on for about four times longer. So, this sucks. My own saliva can kill me anytime it wants to. Just any old time at all. Asleep or awake, it doesn't matter. I really don't like this new 'random possibility of death' thing that's going on in my life lately.

time-like entropy

Everything feels like a dream right now. Everywhere I look, I can't help but to imagine myself, or an alternate version of myself, existing in conjunction and in some variant way with whatever happens to live in my field of view - trees and houses, sidewalk and sky, dirt and moonlight; the muffled sound of a distant conversation, and footsteps; a barking dog. I'm imagining myself embedded within the swath of influence that these things have shaped and formed as the phenomenon of existence flows over, across, and around them... like a glacier of time-like entropy winding a path of consequences through a mountain range of causal events; splitting and merging and splitting, and merging again. And I'm aware of how magical it feels to be both an old friend and a complete stranger to myself.

Dang. I sure as heck don't know where all that came from.

A dream - Jerral

I was sitting in a rocking chair in front of this gas station in Mt. Pleasant on the north side of town that we used to stop at on the way to Clint's.  I was rocking back and forth pretty good, thinking about these stunts I'd seen earlier that had put this idiot in the hospital.  It was a news report I was remembering.  It was funny, so I laughed.  Then I saw Sam coming up the hill, and I thought, "Time for a smoke," and started fumbling in my pocket for a couple of cigarettes.  Then to my left, I saw Jerral walking up.  He was just like the last time I saw him.  Stocky and healthy with a shock of unruly blond hair, arms so big they kind of stuck out to the side a little as they hung naturally from his shoulders, and there was this grin on his face that got bigger and bigger as he got closer.  I jumped up out of the chair in disbelief, and I said, "No, no, I knew it, you're ok, you're not dead," and I ran over and gave him a hug and started crying, saying into his shoulder, "Why, why man, why did you scare us like that?"  And then we sat down on a couch and he started to explain how he'd almost died, but it was his wife who had saved him, and then his voice started to recede and things started to fade, and I said out loud, "This isn't real.  You're dead."  And I burst into tears and woke up.

A dream - string of worlds

I dreamed I was on an engineered planet, one of a ring of planets which circled the sun, all of them connected by technology.  I stood on the surface of the world, and the sky was daylight and blue, but a very dark blue, and stars were visible, and the sun was shining close to the horizon, and it was indescribably beautiful.  And in the sky I could see the string of worlds, and they were all attached to this shimmering length and strung along it, and I could see the vegetation growing on each world, and the oceans churning and reflecting sunlight, and each was like a mini-version of the Earth.  A string of pearl Earth's stretching across the sky.  I got so excited I couldn't stand it, I had to find someone to show it to, and there was a station across the field, so I ran to it.  People came out, and I screamed and shouted to them and pointed at the sky, but wind was blowing, and I couldn't hear anything I said or they said.  I ran into the station, and the engineers were in there, the one's who'd created it all.  They were doing something that was being displayed on a screen, and I saw that they were tearing the string of worlds apart and reordering them, and in doing so, making connections which fit together perfectly, as if they'd been made that way but put together wrong to begin with.  I watched as all of the worlds reconnected, and electric lines of blue surged along all of the rivers and rock strata and ocean currents and air currents and through all of the vegetation, and then it was done, and it was all connected and I ran back outside and looked up, and it was all glowing this awesome blue, and I knew I was looking at a huge, cosmic brain which had been formed by all of those connections, and that the string of worlds was now a conscious thing.

Bird

The weirdest thing! Tonight I came across a bird in the road, just sitting there, all nestled up and comfy. Right in the middle of the road. So I went over to it and and said, "Hey bird, hey, hey, hey bird, hey, watcha doin' in the road, hey bird, whatcha doin', whatcha doin', get outa the road bird, hey bird, what's up bird?" And it didn't respond at all. Now, you may be thinking that this bird was dead, but no... I've seen plenty of dead birds. Just plenty of 'em, and this one wasn't dead. But what the heck WAS it doing? I reached down and was just about to grab it and move it off of the road, and as soon as the tip of my finger just barely touched its wing, SHEBLOGINSCHNOGUMUP! That bird flew right off. Crazy bird. Could'a got run over.

Dang. I mean, yeesh. Wow! Weird!

Dang. I mean, yeesh. Wow! Weird! Okay, so here's what happened. I was walking along, and about to cross over a creek. It was a pretty wild creek, with lots of reeds and tall grass growing in it. So, I'm walking across this man-made Road Bridge, over the creek, and I see this thing moving in it. This thing moving in the creek. At the front of it, where its mouth probably was, there were a bunch of reeds and grass sticking up out of the water. It had these things in its mouth, these tall pieces of grass and stuff. So, I pretty much stopped immediately and froze, and looked at it really hard. I thought to myself, dang, what the fuck is this? A fucking platypus or something? Pardon my language, but that's what I was thinking and what I kind of said out loud, in a sort of whisper. I watched it and it kept coming toward me, and I had the ridiculous thought that it was a cartoon animal, swimming along underwater, and using a hollow reed for a snorkel. I happened to be munching on a pretzel at that moment, so I spit it out into my hand and threw it into the creek. I thought to myself, damn, that'll stop that thing. I was sure that it would go after the pretzels. But hell no, that thing just kept on swimming, with the shittiest bouquet in the world, sticking out of the water in front of it. As it was about to pass under the little piece of road I was standing on, I threw more pretzels at it, and I even yelled at it. I think that I said, "Yo yo yo, hey, pretzels! You're missing the pretzels! Dummy! Wtf?" Then I got a closer look at it, and I thought that it was either a beaver, or an armadillo. Or a platypus. or a really hairy turtle. Heck, I don't know what it was, but whatever it was, it was on a mission with that bouquet of weeds.

How we met

How We Met
by
Ash

One day I was cleaning my dust collection when I suddenly had the urge to do something impossible. So, I decided to put this quantum mechanics probability poo-poo and purgatory of uncertainty crap, espoused by such mental midgets as Bohr, Einstein, Planck, and Heisenberg, to the test.

So, using that crazy 'observation must make it real' crap that Schrodinger was trying to teach to his cat as a necessary reference point in this world of bullcrap, I observed a device into existence for the purpose of punishing all of this dumbass quantum mechanical rigmorole. Seriously, it's retarded. I mean... if we are to believe the ass menagerie of modern science, then quarks come in flavors. So, according to these aforementioned dunderheads, there is such a thing as a quark that tastes like 'charmed'. And some of them have to spin 720° just to make one full rotation... I shit you not! Now, does that make a doggone bit of sense? NO. Quarks are stupid.

So. The device I observed into existence was a protractor which could not only measure both the energy and position of a particle simultaneously, but which also shat upon Planck's constant and the Pauli exclusion thing and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, all at the same time (it was a real protractor, by the way, and not just some crazy imaginary thing... just so you know I'm not making this up) which means that according to this protractor, Heisenberg was stoned and Pauli must have been drunk on elderberry wine, and Planck was just this kid who thought algebra was a vegetable.

So, now that I've laid the groundwork, we can continue on to whatever it was I was talking about, which was how we met... I guess. That's the title I used when I saved this little essay when I started writing it about a week ago, but now I can't remember who it was that I was supposed to have met, and how it was supposed to have happened. It's pretty frustrating. Like when there's something you can't remember the name of.. like a thingamajig, or a whatchamacallit. Or that dream you had last night, or what day it is, or where you are, or how to speak English, or how to breathe... uh. You get the gist.

Anywho, that's what's happening right now. I can't remember any of that stuff. That's ok though, because I don't remember meeting anyone before, ever. I know it's something that must have or will have happened at some time in the future or as a future memory, but that I will have had knowledge of before I start writing this; the knowledge of which has, or was, or will have, or will be, or will be said or will have been said at some point either then, now or whenever, and has become or will become or is becoming or later becomes whatever it is that this is, right now.

Does anyone concur?

Oh, wait a second! I remember now. All of this was supposed to be about how I met this 120 year old time traveling version of myself from the future, who'd been on all these awesome adventures with aliens and dinosaurs. Duh! How could I have forgotten that? Stupid!

That Feeling

Sometimes I dream about that place where reality consists of an abstract feeling tthat describes things, such as family and friends and home and weather and seasons and love and happiness and disappointment and sadness and despair and hope and longing and utter destruction. Don't we all have those dreams? The ones that seem more real than actually being awake... the ones that we long for, that should contain us forever in a shroud of comfort, immune to logic and math, and events and the passage of time? The ones which consist of that pinnacle of perfect sadness that we would die for? A comforting blanket of grief that lasts forever. Murky and warm and deadening, like an eternal dose of novocaine. Does anyone else know about this, or is it just me?

How I turned a million in real estate into 25 dollars cash

It's about... 2:00 am, and I'm just leaving CVS. I have some crap that I need to throw away, so I head for the trash, over there to the right, and... good grief, it's practically overflowing. Doesn't anyone here ever empty the trash on their smoke breaks? Unacceptable.

Anywho. So I walk over to this volatile midden heap to dispose of my receipt and some other crap. I toss it all in, oblivious to the danger... but as I turn to leave, I have to do a double take. What did I just see in there? In the trash? Was that money? I shoved my flashlight in there and shone it around, and by golly, there was a dollar bill! I wasted no time extricating it from the surrounding crap, after which I continued to excavate vigorously with both hands.

As I was thusly engaged, I looked over to my left and froze. There sat a cop in his cop car, about ten feet away, just a-watching me as I enthusiastically strip mined the garbage. Without really being consciously aware of it, I immediately... bounced, I guess, is the best word to describe it... away from the garbage can, as if I had been shocked right off of it with high voltage. I looked around for a strategic exit, but the cop was parked right there at the curb. There was nothing for it except to just walk right on past, holding up that dollar bill and sort of smiling and wiping the invisible schmutz off it, hoping that the cop understood that it was okay, and not at all retarded, or illegal, to go dumpster diving for dollar bills.

Alone and stuck in a bear trap with a bad banana on broadway

Why does it feel this way?

I do this walking around at night thing a lot, and every single time I do it, I'm alone - an isolated thing; a self contained window on the universe. So I ask myself for the umpteenth time - is everyone alone inside themselves, or is it just me? It's how I've felt for my entire life, since I was old enough to remember being alive. It feels natural... this cut-off, isolated feeling. The way cancer feels natural. That's the way I've always thought of it.

Allow me to elucidate. Firstly, we have selfish to the second power - that is, the object of our discussion - multiplied by selfish. Or selfish squared, or the opposite of the square root of selfish. Anyway. Then you multiply all of that crap by altruism, and then divide it all by patience. Then, after all that, the only thing left is to plug in the value of the specific triomial nomenclature pertaining to whatever it was that the poem was about, which is, in this case... the deus ex machina, and you wind up with what seems like a lot of pretentious bullshit. Ha ha ha! But seriously though. Right? Yeah! Hee hee hee. So. Yeah. But seriously. Right? Will you go with me? Yes - No - circle one?

So anywho.

Here I am, and it feels to me like life is an immense bear trap; the dimensions of which aren't measured in space, but in duration... always only a day or two away from its purpose, which happens to be adjacent to, parallel to, perpendicular to, and opposite of mine.

A big dumb truck and a stupid fraidy cat monster

I'm walking down Windsor, going east past the rec center.  There is some kind of waste management truck, driving on the sidewalk, of all places.  There are little mini-manholes along the sidewalk every now and then, which I assume are accessible for some civil engineering purpose, so I guess that truck is doing the mini man-hole thing at 4:00 am. I don't like it - he's in my way.  I have to cross the street and tread on grass to avoid the truck, which displeases me.  It is an inconvenience.  I pass by the truck as it inches forward, and think to myself... supid truck, don't you know that at night, all of this belongs to me?  Yeesh.

Anyway, so I keep walking and finally pass that truck and I am able to regain my rightful place on the sidewalk.  You hear that, truck?  Roads are for trucks, like the one two feet to your right that you can't seem to get a bead on.  And sidewalks are for people.  You know, the guys who invented your stupid self with your too big to be practical tires and your huge storage tank full of whatever and your big, dumb empty brain case that requires somebody to be sitting inside it just so you can decide whether or not you need to take a dump.

Okay, that made no sense, which I now realize.  Whatever.  Who cares.

Now comes the point of all this rambling rigmarole.  So I pass by that big, dumb brainless truck, and after about half a mile of blessed silence and peace, here comes this wolf, just trotting along in the opposite direction on the other side of the road, as if he had every right to.  Wait just a second... was that a wolf?  Let's see.. it definitely wasn't a coyote, because I've seen plenty of those late at night, roaming the streets of Denton.  City coyotes, I guess they are, like in those old cartoons where the city varmint visits the country varmint and hilarity ensues.  You know, city coyotes.  Like these ones; that is, if there were any here.

Anywho, this weren't no coyote, because coyotes are little scraps of fur and bones, and this thing was huge.  Way bigger.  I suppose it could have been a German Shepard, but how many huge, stray German Shepards do you see wandering the country part of Denton at 4:00 am?  It was big, and I think it was a wolf.  Right?  Ok then, it's decided.  It was a wolf.

So this huge wolf monster goes trotting by, and I have no choice but to ready my double-laser club-whip and prepare for battle.  The wolf monster turns its head toward me in mid-stride, and as he sees me, his eyes instantly ignite into two glowing blue balls of super hot plasma, and I mentally prepare myself for the twin beams of million degree energy which will instantly render my atoms into their constituent quarks, thereby returning me to the quagma state; that frothing stew of potential from which all matter is formed and all phenomena occur.

Well, that didn't happen obviously, because that wolf just kept on going and hightailed it like a big stupid fraidy cat.  Stupid fraidy cat wolf monster.

Anywho.

Killed by beauty

I, as a pinpoint of awareness in all of this infinite shmagaluphness, am walking at night with the whole of existence all around me, in every direction, everywhere.  It's night, or what I observe as night.  I am this thing which absorbs the ceaseless input of information from just... everything, is all.  I direct my sight up, and see a thing which astounds me.  Just flat out blows me away.  It always does, I guess.  Clouds are forming a bright fish-bone type of pattern against a darker background of sky... and the reason is - get this - because of the moon, which is half full.  It's over to the left of where I'm looking; where I'm directing my information absorbing attention, for those brief moments of eternity.  The clouds are a kind of gray-blue color, against another gray-blue color.  The sky.  Which is about, oh say... a hundred times darker than the clouds.  Wild guess.  They show up pretty well against it.  The moon is there, about a thousand times brighter than the clouds.  Half of it.  The moon.  Half of the moon, as it's only half full.  And there's this thing around it, a band of dim colors that fade into the background of sky, because of quadzillions of atoms what are scattering the light just so... red and blue and purple, and purple-black, and red-black, and blue-silver, and just so many colors.  I never have noticed before that so many colors can exist between gray blue black and white blue light.  I never knew that before. 

I continue walking, and the stuff around me continues to change as my position changes.  All kinds of stuff.  Lit by moon-light and man-light.  Trees, branches, leaves, man-made stuff, dirt, puddles of water, reflections of trees and branches and leaves and man-made stuff and dirt in the puddles of water.  For a few moments I wonder about the resolution of the universe, and how far down it goes, and how much processing power it takes to continue rendering it into existence, and then I imagine the mind of God, or try to... the mind of God, constantly rendering the universe into existence, and I am afraid, deeply afraid that I'm incapable of ever understanding, and that I'll be afraid for a brief piece of eternity.

Awareness continues and changes as the scenery changes, and the mood changes too, and I understand for a second... I am aware of how it's all attacking me from everywhere at once, all of this beauty, and that it's relentless, and without mercy.  It will never stop being beautiful, and my only defense is to ignore it, which is impossible.  I am being battered with beauty, and I start to cry, and to weep, and tears pour out of my eye holes, but I try to do it silently so as to not contaminate or offend or anger all of that everythingness around me.  I try to weep with a tiny bit of humility, but I know I'm not.  I know that I'm only weeping for myself, and because of my fear, but I don't know how else to be.  I don't know how to weep purely. 

I endure this kind of strange mixture of heaven and hell for as long as it takes for me to realize that this beauty is terminal.  It's killing me.  I'm being constantly killed by beauty, and I don't know if I'm crying with tears of joy or tears of sadness.  I don't know whether to be comforted or terrified.  I truly don't know.  I'm just overwhelmingly overcome with this thing, a feeling or something.  This thing that invades my now-ness and forces my acknowledgement of it.  I'm suddenly aware that I'm alive, so very much alive.  Ah, God.  I don't know.  I don't know what sadness is or happiness is.  I don't know.  I'm feeling very very much, and I don't know.  I'm aware of dying.  That I'm living, and that every moment of living is dying.  That the point of living is dying, and that the reason to live is to die.  To be killed by the experience of life; the beauty of it.  Beauty is killing me, and it always has been, and I only notice it now and then.  It's too much.