ANOTHER USE FOR KERGUELEN CABBAGE

I often enjoy a bit of tobacco in my pipe after a long day of fishing or walking, or during an evening of hard drinking. I've never been one to experiment with drugs, although I will confess to smoking some morning glory seeds one time back in the states. I also tried smoking some other things when I was a teenager, including an occasional joint or cigarette, but also things like maple leaves, orange pekoe tea and oregano.

This evening I am in a lighthearted mood. About an hour ago I decided to try smoking some Kerguelen cabbage leaves I have been drying for the last week or so.

Nothing seemed to happen right at first. Then, I felt a slow rush coming on that started in my stomach and proceeded throughout my chakras until my third eye was radiating a beam of light that illuminated the cabin. Charley became scared and began to whimper, but after I blew some smoke at him he seemed to mellow. I closed my eyes and felt myself traveling forward through space and time at an alarming rate. I was overtaken by vertigo when I opened my eyes, and it wasn't long before Charley was cleaning up my cod dinner, which had somehow found its way from my stomach onto the cabin floor. As the top of my head started tingling and separating itself from my skull, I frantically reached about for it as it took wing. I chased it around the room several times before cornering it by the kitchen sink. Once my head was back together, I noticed the kitchen sink faucet was swaying slightly, in time with the breathing of the walls. That experience was enough to cause me to seek further diversion, which I did by getting out my timbales and playing them hard, for several hours. During a bathroom break just a few minutes ago, I thought my pupils were about the size of saucers. As I stared at my reflection, I thought I might be Christ, but then I realized I was just starting to look like him. Blue light shimmering through the dust motes stirred by the movement of a hand through the still air. Rough winds slashing over the rooftop playing reveille against my brainpan, suggesting the remnants of one thousand mornings. Thorough examinations of the connection between my lungs and the doorknob now take place, take face, take shape. A floating of the boat of both coats. My shoes. What the fuck!? It's only the rain. It's only the driving rain, driving and thriving and arriving as my tongue turns to liquid fire. Higher and down, lower and through, sideways and up are all turned to one. The center of the mind turns in upon itself and becomes pure light as I rise. No surprises here, nothing that hasn't been known since time immemorial began a few minutes ago. There are no such things as hands and feet, no feelings for the voice that hammers in my occipital lobe, screaming through a fog of severe chop, of stretched anchor lines and rudders. Chancre lines and rubbers. Gibbers and jabber jobbers. The cod dinner shines in the light which emanates from my ribcage. High lines of fine tines, sparkle, trickle, treacle. Freakle. Fickle. Spit trickles. Ventricles. Buckles and chuckles, chiclets, piglets. Wiglets. Wiggling!! When my coat finally wears itself, and when my knees work in reverse, I will reserve the right to put my shoes on backwards and run across the water to the glowing town in my frostbitten birthday suit. The sun attempts to penetrate the fog inside the cabin and out, as I start to come down. This may take a while, but it's all beginning to make sense now. I don't know where I have been for the past few hours, but it has been a place of strange and wonderful magic! My throat is a bit sore, but I think some Southern Comfort should help with that. Charley is now sound asleep by the fire, which seems to have spread beyond the fireplace and into the main room. Time to end this missive, put out the fire, and go to bed. More soon.