70

For my birthday, my daughters gave me some "edibles." Those of you who don't live in Washington or Colorado may not know that edibles are cannabis candies. Perfectly legal. Unless you are a Republican, in which case you believe in our Attorney General who says, "People should not smoke marijuana."

Unfortunately, though I ate three of these little demon chocolates, I didn't get high. I didn't even get the munchies. Maybe that's cause I always get the munchies. But these hip products, sold at designer pot stores by sales girls who could be marketing cologne at the Nordstrom cosmetics counter, bear no resemblance to the stuff we smoked at college in the 60's.

Oh yeah, that was a life or death experience. My room-mate, Bob, couldn't find stereo speakers big enough to contain his head.

First, the weed was not commercially available in convenient candies, cakes, and oil inhalers. If you wanted to get high, it had to be illegal. You had to scrape the withered leaves off twigs delivered in a plastic bag by the "cousin" of a friend of a friend. Who always turned out to be a black guy from the Bronx.

It's 1967 and I'm watching a vintage, black and white, Micky Mouse cartoon projected on the wall of someone's walk-up in a high rise I can't remember how I got to. All I know is, I scored. I didn't get arrested. And the ounce only cost me twenty dollars.

Whether the evening begins or ends here, I can't remember. All I know is, Micky loves Minny and her nose is spinning in silent inter-galactic explosions of compassion.

I will need to explain to you in the morning how atoms are emitted from chaos with secret names that are the song of God. But all I can tell you now is, the grainy quality of the film is part of a benign aesthetic conspiracy intended to teach us, by means of subliminal osmosis from the dream-time, how ancient wisdom returns to the ineluctable sparkle of The Present Moment.

Wait. Did Krishnamurti say this? A Mick Jagger record is playing. I crave a cheeseburger. But I don't eat meat. The cheeseburger is not meat. It is made of stars and protons of electromagnetic mind.

Oh, yeah. Happy birthday, Me.