HOW LOVE CONFESSES ITSELF UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF PSYCHEDELIC MUSHROOMS

Shreeya Shrestha

Naropa University

“I saw you, right as you are now,” you said but there were bright yellow sunflowers bigger than your face. You envisioned me surrounded by sunflowers beneath you. Painted in your hallucinations, You saw me on a bed of yellow, “My little piece of the sun, what did I do to deserve this Goddess at the tip of my tongue?”

On a warm Thursday afternoon, back in fall when you used to spend your hours waiting for me to get off from class, you took me to a little shop at the end of the hill. “It’s the Daylight Studio, and the owner is such a hippie, he literally spent a whole summer tripping on shrooms!” you told me. Despite its name, very little sunlight entered the small shop. Its width was the size of a corridor. Right outside its entrance was a huge flamingo made out of rusted metal. It was painted pink and had prayer flags draped on its neck as a scarf. You introduced me to the owner and I pointed out all the little trinkets I liked in his shop. The little crystals, the handmade earrings, the huge porcelain mushroom sculpture on the counter. Every time I pointed something out to the owner, he told us a story of how he had found it. As we were about to leave, I remembered I hadn’t asked his name. He said he hadn’t chosen one yet but people called him Peter. “I’m Shreeya by the way,” I told him, and as is the normal response to my name, he asked me where I was from. “Nepal,” I answered. After my response, Peter only looked at you. He shared that he had been to Nepal several times and asked you if you knew that Nepal was one of the seven sacred gates to heaven. You didn’t know that, but you nodded along as he explained that all Nepalis, and by default me and my family, were guardians of that gate. “She is not your woman, or your lady, or your queen; she is a Goddess,” he told you. Then turning to me, asked, “Has he ever told you that?” You have, once, I answered Peter’s question.

My bloodlines if traced back millenniums have tasted heaven.

There isn’t much guarding I can do now

away.

About a week prior to that day, we had tripped together for the first time. That night the ceiling in my room turned kaleidoscopic. I told you the age-old story of a man stuck in a maze. He couldn’t swim the ocean that met him at the end of the maze so he got out by making wings with feathers and melted wax. “Icarus,” you said. “Yes, remember the story of Icarus!”

Maybe you are my Icarus

Yes But remember he died because he got too close to the sun.

“You know what the story is really about? Drugs! It’s about drugs!” My laughter rang in our ears, light and feathery against the thick air. It then rested on your smile.

You are my joy You are my safety

I was looking into your eyes when you said you could hear the angels sing. I asked you how it sounded. “

While you heard the angels, I heard the Divine Voice. She spoke to me in the oldest language I had ever heard. I couldn’t understand it, but I knew it was the first language. I tried to repeat her words out loud but my voice drowned hers and I couldn’t hear her anymore. I shared this with you: “I was trying to whisper it quietly, her words. I just don’t know what language that could be.” You pointed to your Mjolnir pendant hanging from the doorknob, a pendant symbolizing Thor’s hammer. Could it be runes?

After my laughter erupted in the thick air of the night, tears hung at the corners of my eyes.

There is so much sadness in me

And it is contagious

When I confessed my love to you, we cried I’m sorry I cried I’m sorry I made you cry I didn’t intend to do that

Can I cry right now?

When you were in me, I realized that even if we hadn’t known how to speak to each other in a common language, we would’ve still known exactly what to do. Because our bodies carry that one primal knowledge. There would be an aching that would direct us. When we made love that night, there was nothing physical about it. It was an excuse our souls made so that they could meet.

I think I found a new religion I think it has something to do with you

* Around the same time that fall, when we visited Peter in The Daylight Studio every week, we were talking about moving in together. How fun it would be to have each other at our disposal. When we got serious about it you told me you don’t sign leases. “I can’t be tied down. Does that bother you?” you asked, but I shook my head. I had a dream that night. It was the day before your birthday and there was a party at your house. We got tired so we let the guests party alone and went to your bedroom in the attic to go to bed. As I was about to sleep I noticed huge blisters pregnant with pus all over my body and I told you I wanted them gone. You said they would if I went to sleep. When I woke up the next morning in the dream, unlike you, they were still there. I went outside to look for you, I looked for you everywhere and I called your phone and called out your name as I scanned every block, every street. There were people walking around, hurrying to go to their classes and their jobs as I stood in the middle of a crosswalk. At last you picked up my call.

In that dream, I asked you where you were. You said, “I went away; I can’t be tied down.” I asked you when you were coming back. You replied, “You don’t need to wait.” All I wanted to do was kiss you and wish you happy birthday. I woke up from this dream, crying, and the number of times you repeated, “I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere,’ did not console me because I realized that if the dream you could leave me then there was a possibility the real you could

leave me too. Once I was done crying I said, “I wish I could make you sign a lease to me, so that you would have to stay with me, like a fifty-year lease.” You said, “You mean marriage? Are you proposing to me?”

I did not ask Do you know what it is like To need someone to love you?

* Our first trip together had lasted so long, we were hallucinating till four in the morning. You said you were feeling pretty sober and wanted to finally sleep. But when I looked up at the ceiling, the popcorn bits were still moving in kaleidoscopic waves. As you drifted off, I held you and whispered everything I had seen when I was tripping. Huge canyons, deserts and oceanic landscapes. You must have taken me to those places, because in the moments you held me, I finally saw the world.

I did not whisper everything.

I was scared to go to sleep. What would I do if we both woke up and our memories of the trip were not available to us anymore? What if everything that we confessed was only because of the shrooms? What if our love only exists within your will and without any leases? What if you woke up and simply forgot me? You told me to get some shuteye. I couldn’t tell you, under the ceiling, pulsing in geometrical ripples, that I was afraid to face the morning. The morning at some point in my life without you. So, I told you, “If I sleep I’ll die.” “No, love, if you sleep you’ll dream.”