I'm doing 23 things
Me and a friend hitchhiked to town to get to another friends farewell party the other day. First we got to sit in the hanger of a racer-tractor that probably did 70 km/h for about 1/3 of the way. Then we had to get off, and started walking, trying to get a lift. But nothing happend for a while, so we ate some magic mushrooms (flein) my friend had plucked. We walked for almost another hour before we got another lift with two middleaged women, whom we in retrospect are certain that were liberal lesbians. The instance I opened the door to their car the mushrooms suddenly, without any warning, kicked in seriously, and I was 100% certain that David had the exact same experience, something I later found out was right. After a few minutes of increasing paranoia, that I counquered through the understanding that the only reason for feeling any worries about anything in our state, was the consequenses of breaking social constructions of sets of rules for how to communicate with elements outside you – i.e. people, cars, shopping malls etc., both through language, movement and topical placement – which are none other than that people think you are weird, I got to feel quite comfortable in the new exterior environment. So after we completed the mandatory chit chat, something which we for the time being still were able to recognize as a god idea if we wished to be seamlessly integrated in the new environment, me and my friend got into a conversation where he was telling about the time when he was taking hanggliding lessons, but even though he flunket every subject, he was able to talk his instructor into letting him fly, so he did, but crashed after a stall in about 10 m height, so the hangglider crashed straight into the ground, and the whole front section broke, so that when his head hit the ground it did not break, something he though was very nice. I could do nothing but agree. Then, after a few minutes of quiet (the ride lasted for about 30 min. I think…), I hear one small sound escaping my friend that implied that he was about to burst into uncontrolled laughter any second, implied even stronger by him trying, very subtle, to hide his face through a
combination of a strategic placement of a hand, and some of his very large jacket. So I found out that I should redirect his attention by starting to tell him about how the present cloud-system was formed, scientifically. It worked very well. Near the end of the ride, we asked them what they were working with, and they both answered “Psychologists”. I replied “Help.”.
They specified a little bit more, and the first was a psychologist for acute problems, and the other one was working in the area of drugs and drugabusers…
I then got into a little talk with them about how the freudianistic paradigm affected psychology today, and they both got a little excited, and said that they both were quite aware of the situation today, and tried to work independent from old dogmas. Then they put us off at a bus central, we thanked for the ride, and they said that it had been “interesting” to talk with us, and smiled, so I deduced that it all went
very well! They drove away, and left us more or less robbed for any perception of what social rules were correct to follow in a given situation. Pretty much any set of formal reactions to an external action from the world seemed to be exactly equally logical. A bus stood at one stop, and while trying to find our money that would let us into it, we got into a discussion around some reflections from the car ride, and the first effects of lack of perception of the local rules for topological placement in our new environment, the urban Bus Stop, became aparent when the busdrive got tired of waiting for us, and closed the door. I got quite startled by that reaction of the bus, because I knew
that we had to get in, but fortunately I rememered that if one knocked three times on such a door then it would open, so I did, and we got in. My friend paid, and just left, while looking very happy, so I had to collect the change and the tickets for him. After that we had a delightfully crazy time in town, and experienced with our state of ignorance towards social conventions through the shopping mall in sentrum, and some other places, while constantly stopping up and discussing analysises of the situations we were in, and what where the elements that were combined to create the different set of rules every situation contained, and what requirements people met unconsciously because of the underlying fear of being singeled
out or not fit in.
An example of impicitt rules is: if you take your body, and you place it some random place in the city, you might suddenly find your self in front of a car with some guy telling you to get in, more and more agressively, if you turn around, there will be a line of people behind you, shouting at you and calling you names, maybe even throwing a pølse(sossage) at you (a norwegian fenomena) and also telling you to get in. If you then give in to the pressure and get in, and after a while it shows that you don’t have the correct values for him, the man won’t let you out. Theese things aren’t really as obvious as they seem to us when brought up in such surroundings.
After a while I got the feeling that the only reason a mushrom trip feels surrealistic, is because the reality we have created around us is completely surreal (which it is). But as long as one is part of the surreality, you won’t see it, and it will be defined as ‘normality’ by default.
All in all it was very succesfull!
