“There is a war between the ones who think there is a war and the ones who think there isn’t.”   –Leonard Cohen as remembered by the author

***Context: the writer lives in Oregon while their brother lives in a state that continues to prohibit the recreational use of marijuana. The author’s brother has thereby requested a vape pen to be mailed to him. Interestingly, the author just finished _Chronic City_ by Jonathan Lethem which his brother mailed to him, as though a parallel piece of contraband, a conveyor of truth not allowed to leave Manhattan, and the connection between weed’s seductions: riding manic paranoid energy v. being at peace. In the book, Perkus Tooth conveys some truth about riding that paranoid mania into a place of letting it go, with lots of fun avant-pop conspiracies lacing the journey.***

So P___ wants a vape pen sent to him and we bought two cartridges and a pen for him. The one he wants we’ll send, and the other we’ll keep. The consideration of which has a lot to do with the fictional character of Perkus Tooth. To what extent is the flower of the brain that is paranoia an intrusive weed* or a delightful bloom. “Nothing crazy heady for someone who might experience anxiety.”

________________*PUN NOT INTENDED! Very euphoric, feeling personable but not equipped to socialize viz-a-vis normal expectations, very distractable.

Gentleman at weed store: “This has got the anchor for the eyes that will keep you going down crazy thought trains you can’t get out of,” or something like that.

Maybe it has something to do with whether you want one of two conceptualizations of reality validated–

EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED VS. EVERYTHING IS DISJOINTED

Weaving the conspiracy v. walking the dog

“This pot’s making me feel like bugs are crawling on me,” P__ says, “Or maybe a bug is crawling on me.” She considers her leg. “What’s this?” I’m too deep into this writing project to request clarification.

Another indication that Forbidden Fruit is made to destroy your attention span, flow with the disjunction that is America and not fall down the rabbit hole of why. Forbidden Fruit is the joyful outcropping, the apple of the garden. Everything is ok–but what happens when stimuli is not readily and beautifully at hand. What will discomfort amount to? And what of when you remember the greater context of this shithole society?

“Why bother? The world cannot be disenchanted, this was his new motto. Reside in whatever small cave of the real you can gather around yourself and a few friends. Walk the dog religiously, the dog has things to impart. Only watch the weather–when it stopped snowing, disbelieve his theories.”

Anyway I was having big thoughts while reading _Chronic City_–mailed to me by the same brother I am theoretically mailing this weed pen to–and listening to Car Seat Headrest after ***smoking*** Jack Herrer in a spliff.

“A ball on fire at the center of things” among other grandiose lyrics has a very Perkus Toothiness–there is an essentialness that it all may be boiled down to; it has to do with feeling connected, at peace, whole, full of meaning, feeling comfortable with where you are, in life and in the world–do you get there through next-level theorizing and dot connecting, or through thoroughly realizing who you are as an individual living in this world? It struck me how easily we may let this reality turn us schizophrenic–the academic and intellectual power shows us how we’ve inherited a racist system that still carries the weight of a legacy and purpose of destroying black bodies and the physical and structural power around us kills and imprisons black people. A cop accidentally enters a neighbor’s apartment at night and murders that neighbor in the confusion–this is all random and insane but the exact product of how this was all prescribed. The idea that putting the pieces together solves anything is the truly insidious idea. Letting that go is the real salvation.

“reside in whatever small cave of the real you can gather around yourself and a few friends. Walk the dog religiously, the dog has things to impart.”

P__ has a dog–will he get stoned and walk her?

These thoughts came to me as a fantasy of what I would say on a local slow-living bicycle podcast: “I could have continued to try to connect the pieces and find the ultimate means of sharing the accumulation of truth I had uncovered, a means uncorrupted by the power under the scrutiny of my lens, but the point is the society has developed precisely so its most prodigious critics become schizophrenic by the process of deciphering and revealing their truth; you perpetuate violence, you’re its victim, or you go crazy in trying to extricate yourself from that binary. All there’s to do instead is to find presence and flow and connection with the world and people around you. The bicycle serves as a symbol of that process–you know that apathy in the face of climate change is appalling / carnage in the streets from a car-centric urban reality is horrifying / experience of public space disjointed by class is unfair–the bicycle allows you to live and express that truth while having fun, getting exercise, and interacting peacefully and dynamically with your community.

The bicycle is like this weed–not a manic condemnation of a fucked up world but a beautiful acceptance that what is a war with those who think there is no war doesn’t have to kill us who think there is one.

We’re doing our best and deserve to be happy.