March 31, 2001 (thing)

What’s a party log?

A party log is like a day log or a dream log. It is a space for the sordid details and ramblings of the events that made up your recreational self-abuse. A catalogue of debauchery, alcoholic or otherwise. It's not a day log because it covers a time period that may be shorter or longer than a day, and is defined by location and events, not time.

Hopefully, like a dream log, editor or day log, it will be immune to being down voted simply because it is about your personal life. It is something that may or my not catch on. Regardless of if other people make party logs or not, I still need this.

In it’s own way, this is noding for the ages. Historians in the year 3000 investigating our era will want to know this stuff. They have plenty of official documents about what the official version of life was like. Stuff like this gives them a glimpse of what is was really like to exist here and now.

One more digression: I am aware that some noders here object strongly to pro-drug nodes. See The problem with nodes condoning drugs. Myself, I don’t have a problem with drugs. I take drugs, I get high. No problem. I can control my intake and not do it every day, or even every week or month for that matter.

I have a problem with rabid anti-drug disinformation, on everything or anywhere else. I try to make my writeups about drug use factual, even if the facts are “I felt great, it was amazing. I want to do it again.” Or the opposite , as the case may be. This is my truth. If you have a problem with the truth then the problem is all yours.

Okay, now the reality, the party log.

There were 2 parties: Mike’s 30th at his house, and Alien Safari’s outdoor trance techno event somewhere put near Woester.

We started at Mike’s party around 8pm. He was turning thirty and it was a pajama party. Very few of us actually own pajamas so there were a lot of dressing gowns, and borrowed nighties. Mike & co has but on a magnificent buffet of yummy food, but I had already eaten & didn’t want to challenge my stomach too much with the pepadews, cheeses, salsa and other spicy foods. The utterly huge mushroom (the edible variety) looked cool though.

He had made jugs of a delicious concoction: Bright blue and fragrantly lemony. Highly alcoholic under all the citrus. I only had one glass as it wouldn’t mix.

I heard about the roadblock on the road just before the trance party. The narcs were probably trying to target dealers in the afternoon, but we don’t take chances.

I left about 10:30, got home, changed and put various trance party stuff in the car: clothes, juice, loo roll, a torch, sweets. Alien Safari parties are smaller than Vortex so I thought that we we would be able to park close to the dancefloor. There have been thefts are parties recently so I was planning to lock all valuables in the car.

Various goodies were well-hidden in anticipation of the roadblock.

The drive was long but uneventful. I haven’t been through the Dutooskloof tunnel in ages.

Along the way I got a call from Paul that the roadblock was gone. This was expected, as the cops are loath to work late on a Saturday, but anyhow the precautions are worth taking. I can’t afford another arrest.

We arrived after 1am. The field for parking was large and full of cars. I dashed off an SMS to the General to say that the roadblock was gone: “All clear”.

Another surprise. We walked to the edge of the field, and the dance floor was nowhere nearby. A bakkie was operating as a ferry service. The driver drove a bunch of waiting people, including us, a Km so up a dirt road, and dropped us off. We began to walk. It was dark as only a cloudy, moonless night in a deep valley in the countryside can be. Ahead the road twisted into the top of the valley. We could by now hear a faint thump, and as we rounded the corner, see lights playing on the slopes. The venue is called The rabithole, and I saw why.

We tuned the last corner and the sound hit us. A field, a large dance floor in this isolated valley. The crowd was large for an Alien Safari, easily over 500 people. Regan was playing his brand of techno, a bit to repetitive and tunless for my liking.

I soon located some friends. They had staked out an area to the left of the dancefloor. I was getting cold and my earplugs were back in the car. I didn't feel like dancing, so I made the voyage to the car and back. I was lucky and didn't need to wait for the shuttle either way. I came back with a pack containing energade, a torch, loo roll, assorted goodies, and wearing my warm, heavy-weather top. A few pinpicks of drizzle had hit my face whilst I was on the back of the bakkie, but that was as much rain as we got that night.

I was planning a relatively sedate weekend – just some mushrooms at dawn, and GHB in the day.

It was cold & they got a fire going.

Chris told me that people were selling Nitrous oxide in balloons. Previously I have refused it, but this time I felt “Why not?” once can’t hurt can it? It’s not like you’ll get Olney’s lesions from one hit. A novel, legal, non-addictive, short psychedelic can’t be bad, can it.

Anyhow I obtained a big balloon of Nitrous. The vendor suggested that I sit down before trying it. Back at the fire, I sat down, exhaled and sucked on the balloon. After a lungful, I held my breath for a few seconds.

I felt lightheaded, like the time I sniffed lighter fluid. It wore off 20 seconds later. If this is all there was to it, then I was cheated.

But there was still plenty left in the balloon. I exhaled completely, and sucked down a big lungful and held it.

This time I felt so lightheaded that my ears rang & I saw spots before my eyes. As I exhaled my voice had clearly dropped three octaves. “Aamm .. Iii .. taaalkiingg … sloooowly ?” I asked. I was underwater, swimming in treacle, talking in slow motion. I giggled at myself. My head cleared rapidly.

Hm. Not bad, but not amazing either. The balloon still had some gas it in it. I exhaled, took a big hit, held it and followed with a second one that finished the balloon.

?

Blackness.

Information is being experienced.

It appears to be a text stream, but not just plain ASCII, some richer format. A lot of M’s in it. Unclear.

OK, so if information is being experienced, then it must be experienced by a subject. Yes. Subject is tentatively termed “self”

What is known about self?

?

Where did self come from and how did it get here?

?

Nothing, ok, let's leave that question for a minute and return to the information, which is resolving into a field of points of light, all moving to the left in unison. Size is impossible to estimate without reference points. It is possible that “self” is located inside a cylinder and is rotating rapidly.

New information modality: touch. Does not correlate with visual. Feels like rough surface covered in straw, located where the open base of the cylinder should be. By reflex, the hand touches it in several places. There it is again. And there. A flat surface. And that now is a knee covered in fabric.

An image is fading into the starfield. Lines, like a photograph on glass. After a while it becomes clearer. It is the outlines of a person. It is looking at me. It is surprised. It is not just a distortion, it is a communication, a reality. I know her.

The stars fade and the image gets stronger. Oh. I’m coming back. This is the ground, the party. Never before have I been so quickly and completely ripped out of reality. Fortunately I came back again just as quickly.

Nitorus is somewhere between LSD and sniffing glue. It is like holding your breath until you black out, only trippier and not as uncomfortable.

As it gets light after 5am, I swallow the mushrooms (the psylocybe variety) as planned. They are finely powdered to make them easier to swallow. I never find that part easy. The yogurt is back at the car & I doubt that the shuttle service is still running so I force them down with Energade. It’s not fun at all and I fight off vomiting.

In retrospect the mushrooms were way too strong.

I feel lightheaded, leaden, cold and have difficulty breathing. I have to lie down and cannot move.

After a while I felt so dizzy – like the world was receding in a black tunnel, that I was worried that this might be a serious problem. Fortunately I know a lot of party-going medical students. I managed to get Jonno’s attention & after taking my pulse he told me that it was just psychosomatic. This doesn't make me feel any better.

It was then that I began to reinterpret the Nitrous as something far more monstrous. The universe has an off switch. Stripped of sensory input, identity and space-time, I still existed. This was all there was, but now the illusion is no longer perfect. I am not this body, this meat puppet, this mammal on planet earth.

We are not from here, we are plugged into here. The user illusion is not perfect any more. It’s like being wired to the sensory input of an animal, a homo sapiens, but it doesn’t seem real anymore.

When Neo unplugs from The matrix he still has a body much like his illusory one, he still has space and time. It won’t be like that. Those are just rules of this universe. You can’t exit it without leaving them behind. A mammal body made of meat, linear time, 3d space, even memory, identity, causality, all of these are just local features, rules of this gameworld. Unplug and they are gone.

Who built this game, this cage, this system that we find ourselves locked into? Why should be take it seriously? Let me out. Make it stop.

For some reason my eyes were watering. We finished a project at work this week, after a year. We shipped a 1.0 of our software. I thought I’d feel elated but I just feel tired and empty. Perhaps I am fading out, ceasing to exist.

I know what’s what and the scenery is pretty, but isn’t it just a movie? It’s the sensorium of a meat animal, nothing to do with me.

After a few hours I am able to sit up. I find a small sharp stone, a chip of shale, and start rubbing it against my left hand. Pain. A sensation. It hurts the meat, not me. Is it real? I don’t know so I try again.

When I realize that I am sitting on a bench with a mournful expression, staring vacantly ahead, rubbing a sharp object against my wrist, I shift over to the back of my hand. I do this for a while. Sometimes I drop the stone and pick up a new one. I still have four of these little stones.

I want to go there again, to flip that switch, to pull the plug. A bullet in the head would do it.

I didn’t need to go here. I’m not ready for this. I like my scientific world view. I don’t need Cartesian dualism, that debunked bugbear. But it persists.

I ask several people if they have a mechanism to reconnect the ghost to the machine. Nobody has one.

But it comes back. The shrooms wear off. I slowly reconnect, and feel with it enough to take some GHB. After a while, I am having a good time.

If the reality switch can be set to here or off, can it also be on to other places. They may be very different. All we know: Gravity, identity, space and time are just local environment, just this universe. I think I’d better lay off the disassociatives for a while.

For a few minutes, this is how it’s supposed to be. I grab the 2-note melody as it bounces joyously back and forth. This is an African trance party, Saturday night still going strong at noon on Sunday, hot and dusty, blasting white-hot techno into the clouds and mountains.

For the last 2 parties I have purposefully left the meth at home, and taken hallucinogens instead. Next one I’ll do the reverse. I need some uncomplicated fun, dammit!

Thank god for breasts. They really do make life a lot more pleasant to the eye.

Later on we sit and chat. Dale complains that Craig’s music is too rolling and monotonous. Personally I agree and am not dancing, but I know that Craig has a well-developed musical sensibility and he likes his music just like this, so asking him to change would be both rude and pointless.

We swim in the dam in our undies and go home around 3pm. Apparently the music wound up around 4pm. We feel good.

At home, my girlfriend comes around. She is a medical student, and I ask her what the names for it are. Depersonalisation and derealisation. She says she loves me. I say nothing. It’s all I can say.

At 6m I fall asleep and wake up on Monday morning. Tired but mostly normal again. We never solve these issues, we just shelve them. I listen to more Joy Division.