Ah, mescalin

I thought Huxley's descriptions of what it was like to be under the influence of mescalin were absolutely fascinating. Though I have never taken the drug itself, there was a lingering familiarity to similar experiences I have had. It has just dawned on me that while drugs or meditation or sleep deprivation or whatever may be a way to get to an altered state of consciousness, that does not necessarily mean that the destination is so different once we get there; that is to say, we may travel by plane or train or automobile, but Disney World will still be there at the end of the journey. And just as Disney World will be there, every person who visits will take something different from the visit.
The crude analogy to a theme park aside, Huxley's thoughts got me thinking. While reading about the flowers or the material of his slacks, I was reminded of fleeting thoughts and memories that had flitted through my own mind, perhaps when I was in an altered state of consciousness, or close to it. We've already discussed that sleep deprivation can lead to an altered state, even unintentionally; have you ever had a day when you were so incredibly exhausted you can barely keep your eyes open and your head upright? Still, you take a shower (trying not to drown yourself in the process), put on make-up (because the worse you feel, the more you have to look like you're fabulous), and somehow manage to make it to school or work in one piece, though when you get there you're not exactly sure how you didn't hit anything (a typical example of drifting consciousness).
You're so sure that you can fool everyone, that if you look the part and if you are physically present, no one will ever guess that you were up so late because your girlfriend never left your house or you had to cram for an exam or because you couldn't put down the controller because you were playing MegaMan until the sun came up. Yet somehow, at some point throughout the day, you look down at your knee, and you're suddenly and as if for the first time aware of the knee of your jeans, of the curious diagonal pattern (what would have been wrong with horizontal or vertical threads?), of the ridges from one thread to the other, how the jean is not all the same color but faded in some spots, darker in others. Though some small part of your conscience may be trying to tell you that you should be listening to the professor, that voice slowly fades into nothingness, and you're absorbed with the pattern on the jeans.
You don't care whence the jeans came or how many cotton plants it took to weave those patterns or how long the jeans will last or even what you leg looks like beneath it. Though on any other day they would just be a pair of pants that happen to look good with any shirt you own, in those moments they are your entire world, because you are suddenly aware that they are. While you don't give any thought to the leg itself, you can feel the brush of the material against your thigh when you move; you can feel where it's stiff from being hung to dry and soft from being worn so many times. Every aspect of those jeans fills your mind and your senses -- you can even smell the Tide laundry detergent you used to wash them, but that does not exist in your mind as Tide; it is the scent of those jeans.
Perhaps it is a form of meditating that when we become so focused on one object that it expands to fill one's entire mind; perhaps it is a combination of meditation and sleep deprivation and hypnosis? From everything we've been reading about what happens to the mind when it is influenced by drugs, it seems that these drugs offer the user the opportunity to shut out everything else, to focus on one thing that is so important -- an idea for a painting, a vision for a book, pitching a no-hitter. In these altered states, we are no longer a slave to the busyness and the white noise that surrounds us and fills our everyday lives with meaningless chatter. Life is a package that has arrived and is filled with Styrofoam packing peanuts -- they're everywhere, of no particular use and in fact dangerous, but we have to cut through them to reach what is really important in the center of that box.
It's all shadows and dust.