I was 24 years old the first time I took LSD.
It was 1969, all fall I had been listening to the double album from the Woodstock Festival. Richie Havens sang about freedom in his deep raucous voice, the crowd cheered, and I wanted to belong to that tidal wave of music and relationship.
The European magazines talked about LSD. Although they said it was bad and dangerous, I felt a deep pull to this mysterious drug, almost like the experience was the entrance door to a new life, a new me, one with the music that was floating across the ocean from America, to me in Spain. There was no doubt in my mind; taking LSD would be the major poker play in my Destiny.
In November I took a flight from Madrid to Washington DC. I felt like the explorer I had always wanted to be. Travelling to far away lands to discover something unknown. By mid December I had met a handsome dark haired man who promised to come by with some LSD. We took a large dose at dusk. I settled down on the orange sofa in my living room at the apartment on Phelps Place, and waited for the miracle.
I was afraid and I was excited as never before. I felt an uncomfortable feeling as the substance made its way up my spine and then the entire atmosphere in the room changed. It was indeed like a window in me opened, a new kind of perception. Rainbows floated in the air around me, the space was beautiful, intense and alive. Darkness came across the room like a great wave from a far away ocean. I looked at my hands and saw my veins were like rivers flowing under my pale skin. My gaze wondered over to John sprawled in an armchair close to me. His face displayed emotion, every half a second a different feeling, fleeting and amazing. I got up, walked over to the record player and played Bob Dylan's album Self Portrait.
I found it difficult to speak during the experience, feelings and thoughts passed so rapidly through my being, I would have interrupted myself mid sentence. Each thought and feeling falling, like a shooting star across the sky. My mind was fickle and unreliable, my mind literally changed its mind so often I could not follow its mad race to evaluate, judge and assess the world around it.
Now inside the LSD experience I had no idea who I was, I felt great fear and shame, I was supposed to know "who I am" or I was lost and in danger.
My partner's face on the other side of the room, itself a great continent, appeared as bewildered and surprised as I was.
LSD did not make me unsteady on my feet. I walked to the kitchen nearby, opened the fridge, I had painted bright red. I understood I had to acknowledge each item. Orange I said to myself, grape and in that moment I dealt with the enormous array of feelings and thoughts this naming brought about. Grape was not just a small green or dark round ball, it was the vineyards of France through which I travelled as a child in the back seat of my Mother's car, it was the clear night sky during summers on the Riviera. It was the smell and sound of a seashell, the buzzing of bees, the taste of pale lavender honey. Orange was tangerine and clementine and grapefruit, the fruits of sunny winter places.
Then the question arose "Do I want it, do I reach for the fruit and take it from its illuminated cave?" that was too much. I could not find an I to whom I could ask the question. The best thing to do was to continue my exploration. I could not find an I in me to make a decision. There were just questions hanging in the air like soap bubbles ready to pop. Gingerly I made my way to the bathroom, turned on the light. My face was reflected to me in the mirror. I saw someone I barely knew. "Mirror, mirror on the wall, am I the most beautiful of all?" no longer made any sense. I saw an ageless ancient face, expressions of pain, joy, surprise and awe flashing across the landscape like lightning illuminating the contour of a mountain. I could barely stand the changes I saw in the bathroom mirror, who was this creature of contradiction? No stopping point, no stillness on that face, just change, complete transience. My face was new to me and yet I knew the woman in the mirror. I tried to grasp a feeling or thought so I could evaluate it but everything came and went so fast there was no room for judgment. I needed to define who I was. I was afraid of being nothing if I could not control my mind. Me just seemed to go on without me.
I made my way back to the front room, candlelight drawing flamenco dancers on the white walls. Once again I walked towards the record player, I placed the needle on the third song on the album. Bob Dylan sang "Lay lady lay, lay across my big brass bed" It was a voice I loved, familiar and comforting like a country road I could walk without getting lost. I looked outside the window, there looking back at me was a graceful fir tree, each branch glowing against the backdrop of early dawn. Somehow I saw that the tree had its place and I had mine, we were both planted in the same earth. We were absolutely connected and totally separate, the tree and I, growing and dying in the same moment. Both of us were creatures of absolute contradiction. In this miracle of relationship I stopped my endless agitation, my quest for the next moment, I perceived beauty and my body trembled in awe. I saw that the tree and I and all that surrounded us were linked in a perfect dance. I felt the fullness of life flowing through me, like the roar and strength of the Swiss mountain waterfalls. At that precise moment nothing needed to be different than it was, LSD had brought my attention to the present moment. I was home, at last.
Again Bob Dylan's voice reached me " In the early morning rain, with no place to go." No place to go, nothing but an ethereal light painting the room in shades of pearly gray.
This substance I had ingested a few hours ago has shown me I have a right place in this world, not because I wear trendy clothes, the latest Chanel accessory or the tightest pair of jeans. Not because my skin is tanned or my nails are painted green. I have a place like the fir tree on Phelps Place, not because of family or country or religion, I have a place like buttercup, dandelion and crocus. Sun and water is what I need. I am as useful as butterfly, bee or black beetle. I saw the chipped paint on the windowsill as beautiful because it contained the painter, the summer sun and the pouring rain. At that time I felt beautiful in a way that did not depend on the world of appearances. My beauty did not depend on the desire of others. I am the atmosphere of everything that has touched me, made me. The soft pebbles of the Mediterranean beaches, Bijou the horse I rode when I was five, the blue gentians I pressed between the pages of my favorite book "My Friend Flika," the gnarly face of my devoted nanny Miss Hudson.
The roar of the morning traffic on Connecticut Avenue grew louder. John brought in a tray with grapes, buttery toast and strong French roast coffee. Coming down, as they say, had a gentle feeling to it, a feeling of newness, a touch of innocence. I had a sense of having spent time in God's cosmic washing machine, of been scrubbed clean, freed from beliefs I didn't even know I had.
Joanna was deeply involved with Timothy Leary in the 1970's. While he was in prison she published 5 of his books.
