"Nutmeg Part 2"
[This is the conclusion of the exciting tale that started last week. Read
Part 1 HERE.]
If a little is good, then a lot must be better. This was the philosophy
that encouraged me to chug down the milkshake loaded with freshly ground
nutmeg. If a little sprinkle of the pungent spice is good on your egg
nog, then a fistful must be great.
The idea was that I was supposed to get some sort of a buzz from it, according
to the man in the turban, my yoga teacher, the one who gave me the nutmeg
seeds and told me what to do with them.
"Ride, Captain, ride," I thought as I choked down the last foul-tasting
gulp, anticipating the glorious high that would surely follow.
I'm not advocating or promoting the act of getting high, though I personally
have no spiritual or moral problems with it. It's really just a changing
of the brain chemistry, something everybody does every day (unless you
happen to be a person who doesn't breathe or eat, in which case I apologize
for lumping you in with the rest of us.) I share this personal philosophy
with you only so you know where I'm coming from when I tell you that being
high on nutmeg really sucked.
The first six hours were pretty miserable. I shuffled
around my parent's house, where I was living at the time, with a blanket
draped across my shoulders. It was a blanket my grandmother had crocheted
for me years earlier, and in my nutmeg stupor, this seemed significant.
"My grandmother made me this blanket with her own hands," I
said.
Unfortunately, I said this to my grandmother, who was visiting at the
time. She was already suspicious of my lifestyle, and this admission didn't
help. As she stared me down, trying to get me to admit to having dome
something wrong, her eyebrows moved freely and independently on her face,
looking to me like two hyperactive caterpillars. Luckily,
I kept this observation to myself.
The next 6 hours continued to suck. My parents had recently installed
an automatic room deodorizer, a new gizmo at the time, and every 10 minutes
it would squirt out some horrid industrial pine-scented aerosol
mist which would rain down on my face as I tried to sleep on
the couch. This device had no off switch. I thought it was evil, like
seriously inhabited by the devil. Yeah, we're partying now.
I woke up the next morning still "megging." By this time the
novelty had REALLY worn off. It just felt like my face was being drawn
towards the center of the Earth by a giant vacuum cleaner and the floor
was made of tapioca.
What did the guy with the turban see in this stuff? He was a Sikh, and
his religion didn't allow him to take drugs, but I guess he'd found a
loophole that allowed nutmeg use. I felt sorry for him, forced to shuffle
around for days on end trying to convince himself that this nutmeg trip
was a real gas, man.
The next morning I was a little better, though still sluggish for the
rest of the day. All I had to show for the last 48 hours was a
grandmother on high alert and a poem that I'd written during
the throes of my nutmeg stupor. A really lame poem about grabbing the
edges of reality with your fingernails and turning it inside out. Yawn.
Samuel Coleridge, I ain't.
The following Monday I returned to yoga class. My turbaned teacher asked
(in private) if I had tried the nutmeg. I spilled the whole tale - the
ruined coffee grinder, the paranoia, the grandmother, the vacuumed face,
the bogus poetry, the lethargy, the three wasted days.
He seemed puzzled.
"How much did you eat?" he asked.
"Well, all of 'em," I said.
"You weren't supposed to eat them all at once," he laughed,
but in a scolding way.
Funny, that never had occurred to me. You mean excess isn't the spice
of life?
"That was enough for five people," he added, shooting me a look
of spiritual superiority that was accentuated by his
crisp, white turban.
[Next time: Barry scores some cinnamon sticks from a Sufi - and you
are there.]
home
sign
up to get
irrelativity
(yes, free)
read the
archives
buy stuff
you
suddenly need
revealing info
about me
