But this aspect of Aachen - in fact, of many parts of Germany - we did not know on that Sunday. We were discovering a series of wonderful cobblestoned and tiled streets, some of them old and narrow, others broad and obviously modern. Aachen had been bombed during World War II and the ruined parts of the city had been rebuilt with imagination and, in some respects, a whimsical sense of humor.
There were fountains everywhere in this new Aachen, fountains more complex, playful and beautiful than any others we had seen, anywhere. Walking down one street, we stopped at the entrance to a park, seeing in the middle of it a 15-foot fountain shaped like a lotus-flower, covered with reflecting metal squares which shone like silver. As we watched, the petals of the lotus closed slowly until they formed a bud-shape, then slowly and silently opened again to full flower, spouting a delicate spray of water from the center.
A few blocks away, in a busy little square, we found a small, child-sized fountain, a metal well sprouting bronze doll-figures with movable heads, arms and legs. On the top of a pole emerging from the center of the well was a small bronze soldier on a horse. An excited little girl called to her parents to watch as she bent and straightened the arms of a bronze peasant woman. I looked up at Shura; he grinned and gestured at my camera. He had left his at the hotel.
We found another fountain, near the train station, honoring the needle boys of Aachen, adolescent boys who had worked in the needle factories of the city before World War II. Three lean bronze figures held their right arms raised, each hand showing a long little finger distinctly crooked because (we were told later) they had been trained to use their little fingers to sort good needles from bad.
At one point in our explorations, Shura said to me, "Have you noticed, no matter where we walk, all we have to do is look up, and there's the top of the Dom. Anytime you think you're lost, just look for it and head back in that direction." I hadn't consciously noted it, but he was right. The great grey cathedral dominated the center of the city visible above the rooftops, sitting there, quiet and solid like a venerable grandmother keeping an eye on the young ones.
We bought some bread, fruit and cheese, a big bottle of orange soda for me and a beer for Shura, and took it all back to our hotel. We discovered the strangely made-up beds (the pillows were rolled like bolsters and the sheets were folded like apple-pie beds or what Shura called short-sheeting;
you were supposed to undo all of it before you got in). I sat at the little desk in front of the windows and looked out at what I could see of the city, and thought about the faintly hollow sensation in the general region of my tummy.
I said, "You know, I'm just beginning to feel a little bit of weirdness for the first time since we left home. Don't know why I didn't feel it before this -1 mean, realizing that I'm actually in a foreign country, and it isn't home, and I don't really belong here - maybe it's not knowing the language. I certainly didn't feel this way in England. I guess it must be the language. Not being able to understand anything people say and knowing they don't understand what I'm saying. It really makes a difference."
Shura agreed, "It does, yes. At least we'll never tell anybody not to worry about traveling in Germany because practically everybody speaks English!"
I laughed and groaned at the memory of the early morning search for a hotel.
Looking at the little pile of food we'd put on the desk, I made a decision. "Shura?" "Alicia?"
"A thought occurs to me. Maybe this would be a good time for the 2C-I; what do you think?
Maybe it would let me get a bit of a handle on this displaced feeling? It's just an idea. Say no if you're too tired, or think we shouldn't for any reason."
We had brought with us four doses of MDMA and two of 2C-I, just in case. I thought to myself that perhaps it would turn out to be a waste of a good, lusty psychedelic, if we were too tired to make love, but the prospect of integrating with the 2C-I, and whatever fooling around we might manage, was pretty tempting.
"Fine with me," said Shura, "But if we're going to do it, we should start pretty soon. I've got a really full day tomorrow at the nuclear thing."
I stretched and yawned, "Right now's okay with me. We shouldn't be up too late if we take it now."
Shura unpacked his set of vials and held up two of them, each marked 2C-I, 16 mgs. We dribbled a bit of tap water into each vial and shook them carefully. Then we clicked vials.
Shura said, "To us," and I said, "To adventure," and we swallowed it. The taste wasn't any better than usual. I said "Bleah," and Shura showed off, smacking his lips and murmuring an appreciative "Yummm," which I ignored. I opened the bottle of orange soda and poured some of it into a bathroom drinking glass, remarking to him that - since he enjoyed the taste of 2C-I so much -1 wouldn't offer him soda to help wash it down. He said he'd have some anyway, just to keep me company.
While Shura was taking his turn in the bathroom, I figured out the sheets and the quilts and checked the window-blinds, after pausing a moment to look out again on the quiet street below. When he came back into the room, we pushed the two beds together, speculating -
between grunts - about the sex lives of Germans. We had asked for a double bed, and they'd given us two narrow singles.
Then, naked under the big downy quilts, we explored each other's skin with gentle fingers and shared our impressions of what we had seen that day. We were feeling the first effects of the 2C-I, when I took a moment to look around at the room, softly lit by the one bedside lamp.
The wallpaper was a Victorian floral pattern in blue-grey and white, and the desk across the room was made of polished, dark wood. The carpet was red and there were cocoa colored drapes over the windows. I decided I liked the room, specially the wallpaper. Everything was moving a bit, shimmering slightly, which meant the 2C-I effect was by now at least plus-two.
I turned back to Shura. Our heads were a few inches apart as we talked. Suddenly, I was aware of something right outside our window. It was immense and powerful and I wondered for a frightened moment if it was trying to get in. I sat up quickly and Shura said, "What's wrong?"
I told him, "I just got hit by an extraordinary feeling that there's some kind of thing - a presence - outside the window. I don't know what it is, but boy, is it strong!"
"Do you want me to take a look?"
"I don't think there's anything to actually see, honey. It's just a - something tremendously big like a mountain, and very powerful. Feels sort of dark grey. Frankly, it's a bit scary. What the hell could it be? I've never felt anything like it before."
"Well, I'll look anyway," Shura said. He climbed out of his bed and lifted the blinds. "Nope, all clear." He got back on the bed and sat cross-legged, watching me.
"This is very strange," I said, hugging my knees and trying to figure out what could possibly be out there, pushing to be acknowledged. I bent my head down and closed my eyes, keeping myself as open as possible to the presence.
"It feels like - well, if I were to give it a shape - it's hard to get any kind of shape in my mind, but maybe like a pyramid, sort of. I don't even know whether it's good or evil; it's just huge and strong. That's the closest I can get to it. Like a pyramid, awfully old and absolutely immense. It doesn't feel like anything human, really."
Shura asked, "If it doesn't feel human, what does it remind you of?"
"I can't think of anything it reminds me of. It's a completely new experience." I kept trying to touch the thing with my mind, like a blind person feeling out a piece of sculpture with insistent hands.
After a few minutes, I told him, "I'm not sure about the non-human part, now. Maybe it has something to do with humans, but it's not like a person. It's part of the human world, in some way, I think, but it's too immense to be any single human being." I took Shura's hand, "I know I'm not making any sense, but I'm working as hard as I can to understand what it is. My main reaction is wanting to push it away, but maybe that's just because it's so strange, and I can't figure it out."
Shura asked, "Does it
frighten you?"
I thought about that for a moment, then told him, "No, not really. It's just surprising to get hit by something so intense, all of a sudden like that."
"Why don't you lie back and close your eyes," suggested Shura, "Just let the impressions come to you. Don't try to push at it. Let it tell you what it is in its own way."
I said I'd give it a try.
As we lay next to each other, I speculated out loud about what the thing might be. Maybe the cathedral, just a few blocks away? That didn't make sense; the cathedral had been full of warmth and peace. Could it be some kind of memory of the Nazi time here? That didn't fit, either. There wasn't a feeling of evil about the thing.
"I think it's somehow beyond good and evil/' I said, still probing with my mind, with every antenna I had, "Or maybe it includes them."
The answer came as such answers always do - like a confirmation of what some part of me already knew. It was clear and certain and Of Course.
I turned to Shura and said, "I know what it is! It's the city. Aachen! It's the whole city, the whole of everything that Aachen has ever been, thousands of years of this place. I'm feeling the city, the total of all the lives and deaths and everything that's happened here!"
Shura nodded.
I sat upright again, "That's it, honey, that's it! My God, what an experience! I've never felt a city before, not that way. It's like a - it's not like a person, but it's got an identity, almost a personality; it really does have a kind of pyramid shape to it, like a mountain, and it's so incredibly strongV
"Now that you've figured it out, does it feel friendly or unfriendly?" asked Shura.
"Neither. It's just there. It exists. It's good and evil and everything in between that human life is. Wow! How fantastic!"
"Well," said Shura, pulling me down beside him, "Now that we've got that figured out, how about some very personal contributions of our own, to the City of Aachen, huh?"
We made love, then. The pressure was still there at the window, but it no longer demanded attention, and I knew it would slowly fade, now that I'd identified and acknowledged it.
Later, as we lay quietly on Shura's bed, my leg folded around his, our sweat pooling in the center of his chest, a new image began forming behind my closed eyes. I said to him, "I'm seeing something very interesting inside my head, and I'll try to tell you as it develops, okay?"
He grunted, and I described the pictures as they unfolded.
There was a large grassy clearing in a forest, perhaps a hundred feet across. The trees around it were thick and tall, and there was sunlight on the grass. Around the edge of the sunlit oval, between the trees, were people, some standing, some sitting. Small children ran, shrieking and laughing, around the perimeter of the circle, darting in and out of the trees and bushes, but they didn't venture into the clearing. The adults were quiet, all of them looking toward the center of the grass, where the sunlight seemed to be gathered most intensely.
I knew that the people were worshipping and that the way they did it was to gather around a place like this, where the life energy was strongly present, even if only for a short while, and simply allow themselves to become part of it, greeting it and letting it greet them, feeding their bodies and their souls.
I said to Shura, "They know that the energy, the life-force, whatever you call it, is everywhere, that they can choose to contact it, immerse themselves in it, anywhere at all. This just happens to be one of their favorite places, when the sun is shining on the grass."
Then, the scene changed and I was watching a man, driven and single-minded, obsessed with what he believed to be his life's purpose, gathering stones to make a wall around another clearing much like the one I'd seen earlier. He was directing other people to lift and place the stones, and they were obeying his instructions, some good-naturedly, some with resentment.
They all thought of him as not quite sane - out-of-balance, out-of-harmony in some way - but they were doing as he wished because of the force of his desire, his urgency. These people had not developed psychic or emotional boundaries, I realized.
The man was building a worship-place by putting stones around the grass circle, closing it in. I saw that he didn't know and couldn't understand, as the others did, that the singing life-energy was everywhere and could not be contained within walls.
The man believed that he had been singled out by some kind of Great Being to build a place for it to live in, a wall of stones which he, himself, would control, because he had built it. He would make the rules about it, because it was of his making, and because he was the appointed instrument of the God-thing which had ordered that this be done.
I felt the pity that some of his tribe had for him, and the irritation and impatience that others were beginning to feel; I saw that, before long, they would leave him alone in his circle and go to some other place together, because there was no point in being around a soul so dark and sad and unable to hear anything they said.
"He was pretty sick, I suppose," I murmured to Shura, "But I wonder if it's a picture of the beginning of a new development in humans; I mean, maybe he was a mutation, you know?"
"A mutation?"
"Well, maybe it was the beginning of individuality. A mutation who was one of the first individuals. What humans eventually had to become - closed-off individual egos. They couldn't do that if they stayed telepathic, without psychic boundaries. It meant giving up some of that interconnectedness, in order to develop the single, separate Self - for whatever that's worth! It certainly isn't a particularly happy picture, I must admit; in fact, it's very sad - that disconnected, power-hungry little mutant."
"Well," said Shura, putting his arm around my shoulders, "The whole history of the human race is somewhat sad, wouldn't you say, if you look at it in a certain way? But then, if you squint a bit differently, it isn't sad at all. Just extraordinary."
When the pictures faded, I respectfully saluted the City of Aachen, which still leaned against the window, and silently thanked it for the experience. I murmured a thank you to Shura and he kissed my nose and turned over with his back to me, and I fitted myself against him and we went to sleep.
CHAPTER 36. 5-TOM
(Alice's voice)
Sometime in the early '80's, David and Shura developed a new drug, to which they gave the charmingly odd nickname, 5-TOM. Shura began running it up (as he calls the early nibbling of a new material) in the fall of 1983, with my infrequent help. Between the two of us, threshold activity was eventually established at around twelve milligrams, and the nature of the effect at higher levels - between 35 and 50 milligrams - was reported in our notebooks as benign, de-stressing, and enabling fantasy and visual interpretation, though without much in the way of conceptualization.
In April of 1984, we decided to get together for Shura's 59th birthday, (we always celebrated group members' birthdays with an experiment, followed by soup, bread and cheese, a cake with candles and small token presents), and - although Dante and Ginger wouldn't be able to attend this time, Theo and his girlfriend, Emma, said they would be coming.
Theo had become part of the research group several years earlier. He had met the tiny, exquisite Emma at a poetry reading and, six weeks later, moved into her house. Within a few months - after the usual consultation with all the permanent members - she was invited to join the group. The young couple didn't participate in our experiments very often, because they worked during the week and, like most people in their thirties, they had a lot to do on weekends.
Emma was less than five feet tall, with a lovely figure and a fine-boned, delicately sensual face. I never tired of looking at her. As befitted a poet, she tended to introversion and occasional dark moods, but when she was having a good time, her brown eyes crinkled with humor and she laughed a low, velvety laugh. When Theo visited the Farm on Sunday afternoons for a few hours, Emma usually accompanied him, settling gracefully into the role of appreciative audience for Shura's ebullient ham-and-nonsense.
I hadn't k
ept up as much as I should have with modern poetry/ but it seemed to me that the poems both of them wrote, although quite different in style and content, were extraordinarily good, and I was always surprised at how demanding they were of themselves as poets, and how critical of their own beautiful pieces. They both used psychedelics or MDMA a couple of times a month, as writing tools, and brought Shura and me copies of the poems which had first taken shape under the influence. Emma also brought delicate watercolor paintings of flower-forms and mandalas, which she had created while using certain of the 2C-T compounds, her favorites being 2C-T-2 and 2C-T-8.
I was delighted to hear that they would be coming to the birthday celebration, and told them we would be trying out a new material with the funny name of 5-TOM.
So, at 10:00 AM on a Saturday in April, we gathered at the Close's house in Berkeley. Ben and Leah, Ruth and George, John Sellars and David, Shura, myself, arid Theo with his lovely Emma, greeted each other in the high-ceilinged living room, with its view (when the fog was absent) of the Golden Gate Bridge and some of downtown San Francisco.
The house was the Close's treasure, and although I had never seen it otherwise than immaculately clean, it managed to be completely comfortable; couches and low tables were expected to support feet, and spills on the Persian rugs were taken care of with paper towel or sponge, and without fuss. The house was like its owners: neat, organized, and warmly welcoming.
While Shura weighed out the various dosages of the material of the day in the kitchen, Leah was in the dining room with David, Theo and me, telling us that she had finally completed her Ph.D. thesis, after grueling years of work. She said, "I can't believe it's over! It's going to be hard, you know, learning how to relax again - maybe even waste a few minutes, now and then - after all that pressure. Of course, I've still got a lot of stuff ahead of me, before I'm a proper psychologist-with-shingle, but the worst of it's done, done"
We cheered and David reminisced, "I'll never forget the day I finished my thesis! There's no feeling like it, when you look at that stack of paper and realize you don't have to re-read or re-write or even re-think anything, any more! Far as I was concerned, getting the official document was an anticlimax."
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