06-22-1974

Experience occurred yesterday at the Arts Festival. I was not expecting the dosage to be as potent as it was, but I believe this was a blessing in disguise.

Initial feelings were of complete relaxation. The drone of the guitars meshed with the waves of the Cove to create a blissful blend of white noise. I know I remained firmly on the shore during the entire Experience, as I was told by that lovely lady Beverly. Yet the waves became tangible, as if I could feel them washing over my faintly reddened skin.

I closed my eyes. The fractals behind my eyelids had a strange roundness to them, appearing almost organic. I felt as if I were drifting, pulled away by the tide like a washed-up sea jelly.

I became heavy. I opened my eyes for a reality check, but my vision waved like sunlight refracting through water. My body swayed; nerves jostled by a current that felt incredibly real.

I left my body then, and the weight shifted into a pull. I was being dragged under. The initial fear response was difficult to suppress, but I knew this Experience was becoming something more, something vital.

Though my eyes remained open, the overcast sky became so overrun by those strange organic fractals that it was indistinguishable from the closed-eye visuals. The fractals seemed to solidify and become three-dimensional objects rather than mere patterns.

I was no longer in my body, no longer on the shore, hell, I wasn’t even in this DIMENSION.

DEEP is the only word I can use for that place.

Dark as well, though despite the lack of light, the colors of the landscape before me were so vibrant.

Everything was massive, putting the glass and steel ivory towers of Los Angeles to shame. It was all alive; the coral shelves, the seaweed, the abyss below me. It pulsed with breaths, each bubble that floated by containing a universe in its iridescent casing. A feeling of gratitude overwhelmed me, that I was allowed to partake in the sacred act of life in this space. Beings darted in between crevices and shadows, just as neon as their habitat. The movement was constant, but only ever caught out of the corner of my eye.

I drifted more, through kelp that towered like a redwood forest. There was an intense feeling of being watched. The current shifted, as if something vast were passing by, not close enough to be seen but to be felt. I thought the black dots lining the kelp were mere patterns, but then they blinked as their gaze met mine. A pair of massive glowing eyes passed between the fronds. I only barely caught a glimpse of its fin, but the fin alone had to be the size of a great white, maybe even bigger.

More drifting, and a new location. A sense of dread gripped me as I gazed upon the omen.

The waters, if I was even still in water, became warmer and warmer, bordering on scalding, reminiscent of the sweltering August heat. The source of heat resembled miniature volcanoes, newly formed along the seafloor. I had seen photos of hydrothermal vents before, of the steam that billows out of them.

The ‘steam’ here was a deep crimson that I somehow understood was blood; the blood spilled by our pointless wars, by fatal accidents, by predators feasting on prey, by every other death that stained our world.

I gasped, and the steam went into my mouth. It tasted sweet, sickening, like a cheap fruity cocktail.

Before I returned to our imagined reality, I visited one more place, a hauntingly familiar sight.

I saw a house, the kind that spreads like a fungus across the suburbs of my long-forsaken hometown.

It was encased in coral, and anemones, and sea stars, and bone worms, and barbed black tendrils pouring out of the windows and pipes. White walls were stained green-gray by decay and carrion. Just another carcass being scavenged to the bone.

I understood then that this is our fate. We may cling to our material goods like talismans that will grant us immortality through recognition, but this is where we all go.

There is no Heaven, no Hell, no Samsara. This is where we and all our vain bullshit will go.

Everything dies down there. Entropy consumes all.

I knew, once I returned to my body, why this Experience was so necessary. It was both a warning, and a call to action. A Ghost of Christmas Future warning me of what will become of our species if nothing changes. I know what needs to be done now. I understand why I’ve been fascinated with death for so long, why I’ve longed to put a stop to the eternal ending. I can save us all. I just need the support to do so.