Chapter Six – Blanket Bay
Frederick, he has got himself nice and comfortable without isolating himself in the caravan. He has a towel, cigarettes, some water, and a cup of iced coconut water. He knows the Narrator may make him cry. After all, the Narrator is the only one that can make Fred cry.
The towel is for this reason. He just went swimming, didn’t swim, the towel is more wet than he got. He can bury his head into when he needs to, it keeps everyone safe.
He is with his mother right now, Pscilocybin Cubensis, he asked her to be his mother today. He didn’t ask for anything else, told her he knew the things he wants for himself but knows they may not be the things he needs right now. Mum helps him work it out.
He has cried today, it’s rare, he does it properly when he needs to. Today he needed to. A couple of key reasons, one old the other new. The solution is the best part. He isn’t going to yell and scream making demands, he is going to give his friend every opportunity to change his mind.
The Trigger Warning addition was very apt. We start talking about those things now. These are the things that are happening with this man we are coming to know. How he sees the world.
Starting it all, even now, even now with how strong this man is. How ridiciulously strong. He has to ask himself permission to really express himself. He needs permission from himself to be himself.
This is what he is torturing himself with. He is afraid of using DMT because it is full permission to release all control. It is very painful, extremely, it is what he needs. He is afraid of it.
This is what he learns, he learns it beautifully. He is hurting as the Narrator writes this, oh boy is he hurting reading these words. He knows how much this is all going to hurt and he does it anyway, we get to learn the freedom this gives together reader. Walking into your fears, the life it gives back to you.
He asks himself for permission because this was the very reason he was so afraid in the first place. Now he is afraid of it, himself, the himself he wasn’t allowed to be. A grown man afraid of a child. A child that is him.
He was tortured over and over again. Over and over again. People let that happen, people who loved him. His little brother witnessed it, he witnessed it a lot. How he remembers it the Narrator does not know.
Frederick, he remembers it, each time a constant method of discipline was used on him he became more and more afraid, buried himself deeper within himself. Everyone knew it, could see, said nothing. Luckily for him it left his life when he was 15, just after cannabis entered. Frederick’s Dad tried to break him to become him, this boy would not do it. Made a promise to himself that he will never be like that man, made that promise when he was seven.
He never broke, almost broke his Dad with a gesture, almost broke himself. Almost broke his heart by putting a rope around his own neck. He knows the only way a heart can break is this, is him taking his own breath away. If he takes it or someone else, an illness, it does not matter. That is the only way it breaks.
He has built himself back up from there. Tonight he cried because that same thing that happened to him is happening still. Maybe not the brutality at the end of it but the brutality leading up to that brutality. Nobody, nobody is saying anything. Has said anything. Well onebody has. Onebody will continue until somebody says somethig too.
His family and himself have ostracized him from his family because of being this OneBody. He cried, oh he cried. Ostracized for telling the truth, ostracized for standing up for the little people in his life. He breaks and he cries because he knows his world is this sick. The work he has chosen to do is overwhelming, he continues to try.
He is a brave man. He will call himself a coward and know it when he does, but he is not. He deserves the one thing he still, STILL, does not believe he is worthy of, his own breath. He cried the first time because it is fucked up that the abuse was let get to the point it did, that nobody said anything. Still, almost no-one is. He cried because he knows he is torturing himself to know he is worthy of his own life and to understand how to get through to his family, it is messed up. Fred knows it is messed up.
He knows no other way.
The second time he cried was the relationship with this mate, new mate, Finn. The wife too, Trina.
45 minutes left to work on a Friday, Fuckheadrick (a beautiful nickname given by a beautiful person) wanted to do one more thing but not a 45 minute or more thing. He started mowing the lawns outside the property boundaries.
Finn came walking down the street with a ‘no, we don’t do that’. ‘We don’t want them here, Free Campers, neither does the council. They camp and have free showers, make fires’. Freddy says okay, goes away, cleans the mower and is done.
Today he reflects and he cries about it. His heart breaks, as above, but it is not that his heart breaks, it is because he is so confused. This is why he cries, he doesn’t understand, that’s why we all cry. No heartbreaking, we are just confused, so confused we express in a wail of tears. It is what it is.
He cries because he knows the only two good weeks of the year as a kid were the two weeks the family got to camp at Blanket Bay. Magical. Magical. MAGICAL. Oh, magical. It became harder when the camping fees came in, the Nortje family never paid. The fine for not paying fees was maybe four nights camping, some families cannot afford either.
Freddy’s Mum, had she got a fine she would have paid it, found a way. How she did the things she did is hard to understand.
Oh Freddy Boy.
Tears are welling up. They won’t come though, he has cried over this before. He doesn’t need to now, the feeling and love is enough. Yes, my friends this is Blanket Bay.
Then it became really expensive, and when it did it became cool, booked out a year or more in advance. Nortje family could no longer go camping anymore. They couldn’t afford it. Blanket Bay was an hour and 15 minute drive to their own paradise, free paradise. The petrol itself was a huge consideration. Paradise lost.
One year, one Christmas, camping was the priority over everything. Thank God it was for our little buddy. The kids sockings were full of nothing but walnuts, no presents in or out of them. Frederick, he was in heaven, walnuts and camping. Two weeks to try and work out how to open these things in as many ways as he could think of while being by the sea. While being relatively safe. Picking up crabs, starfish, poking and prodding things, being attacked by things, swimming, fires, exploring. Yeah, the boy liked it.
Blanket Bay.
Frederick, he knows a thing or two about being scared, being stuck in a house with the thing that scared him. He knows what the freedom of camping does for everyone, even the demon that isn’t really a demon. Just a man who could not see what he was doing. What it was doing to others. Same thing that is occuring now.
So Freddy cried the second time because his mate does not understand what it means to have no money. But more so the prison in which the innocents to those circumstances are living in. That two weeks of camping is being let outside those walls. It absolutely destroys his fucking heart, confuses him to having no words, that money is more important.
It is not.
He has a solution. Which involves money. He is going to give his friend every opportunity once a month to change his mind. On the first working day of each month our boy is going to present to them, starting at, $200 cash. He will explain what it is for. Finn and Trina take it they accept, they do not take it, they do not accept. Simple, done. Once a month, every month, a version of this will happen until it happens. No pressure.
So Freddy will hand over the $200 and say something to the effect of:
$50 is to hire the lawnmower for four hours.
$150 is for any free showers taken by people not staying in the facility.
You set the price for the showers. I will pay whatever it is. My whole pay. Will clean the amenities on weekends in my own time, all the rest.
I will mow in my own time. Should the mower break down I will pay for it to get fixed. I will hire another, even if it comes with a driver, in the meantime. I will buy a new one if it is not repairable. The business will not be affected.
As comparably cheap as your prices are for camping they are not free. Some people cannot afford it. They need it the most.
This will become a monthly routine. He won’t bring it up in between. Happily discuss it when his friends open up the topic, but nothing else, no pressure.
One thing he knows for sure, pressure is torture.
Chapter 7 – Dominic
Fred here, taking over for a moment. I’ve told the Narrator there are some things in his story that don’t add any value to chapter six. The Narrator just smiled. This is part of the show. Picking up unfinished stories, finishing them, recognising some basic clues. There was not any real need to talk about DMT or Mushrooms, they were irrelevant. What is this torture thing? Not Fred speak. Attention speak. Yes, get my attention speak. I pick up the things I have not expressed plainly enough and explain them better.
The simpler I explain them to you the clearer my own knowing/understanding. I’m continuing to learn.
Let’s do that.
This isn’t a two character working apart, together, oblivious to one another thing. The Narrator is the reflection, Fred is what is learnt through that reflection. Present a few practicals to you.
So, when the Narrator says I torture myself I do, in a different way than was done to me. I walk into painful things knowing they are going to be painful. I face up to them, to me, knowing this has every chance to be no fun, for hours, a lifetime.
At all times I pay attention to my body, I use substances which significantly enhance the sensations of that body. Due to the negative nature of our world a majority of those sensations are painful. This is where I go in my own space, my own time, with the addition of mushrooms today.
The reason I do this to my body is because I know that my thoughts do not come first. They are thrown from my body to my head to try and interpret what is going on. They are there to both stop me pursuing this subject/emotion/trauma/identity/attachment and encourage me to keep going. Encouraging me to walk into these feelings, emotions, discriminations, whatever and enhance them.
A few examples of what I have already learnt in its entirety: fear, desperation, heartbreak, love, happiness, joy, isolation, dread, terror, panic, violence, psychosis, compassion, abandonment, abandoning, anger, frustration, kindness, greed, privilege. This is the hardest part about this process, the healing process, we have to go into so much negative, it floods our world. These and other topics are the ones I continue to explore.
I enhance the fuck out of those feelings through tripping on a variety of substances. I dictate that experience though, me not the medicine. I am here to learn and you are going into my body to help that process. I will tell mushrooms to stop fucking around, I did today, it was too easy, these games are bullshit, show me what we are here to see. I then peak, I peak and I peak and I peak. I do it until I run out of energy, I learn the absolute shit out of myself then relax and integrate.
I boss these feelings, you aint got shit whatever you want to call yourself. Jealousy, for example, I’m just playing games with you buddy. So the feelings in my whole body are significantly enhanced, it is unsettling, it is doing its job. My body is at such a state that it throws random shit into my thoughts. The examples are the many reflections and learnings from this process I am sharing. This book.
If I’m going to show you this works, I’m going to give you pointers to do it yourself along the way. Do it myself as an example. This is that, your thoughts start with your body, your words expressed from there. We can be friends or foes with our feelings and thoughts. Foes they control us and we justify ourselves based on them, hurt our world with excuses. Friends, you do the shit I do. Take responsibility for your world, no excuses.
I am not afraid or crawling in a ball through the intensity of the trips, sometimes I do. Mostly I do not. Writing this I am sitting on a beach chair, in the shade, looking at this beautiful Mountain. Angus and Julia Stone are singing the Devil’s Tears in the background. To my left is coconut water, water, cigarettes, a lighter and a bag with a bong and pot in it. I have an apple and a carrot. Everything I need. I am comfortable, completely at peace. This is my body, it doesn’t want to hurt me, we want to understand each other.
This is a painful topic. The very best part is as soon as I understand the story I have created that drives the topic I am currently studying I understand its equally beautiful opposite topic. I understand both sides of the argument in the same moment, the pain turns into something else, there are no words for it. It frees my world, I get to make a choice from there on this same thing in the future. One leads to pain, the other to pure beauty, more freedom. It becomes an easy choice. First, I have to know, KNOW, that choice.
The hard part again about all this is the terrible stuff, it is equal to the beautiful stuff in this world. Most of us are just choosing a really painful path, the path of making others change, the reason there are so many more examples of the horror world. This is what all our yelling and screaming for others to make the changes I want is and does.
Some are choosing another path, it’s an option. The other path is a man sitting on a hill, looking at another hill, being completely comfortable and safe while being on the verge of tears at the beauty and the horror of it all.
Sitting there with a smile on his face, the beautiful voice behind Mt Wolfs VII in his ears, about to suck a bong, a cigarette and get eaten by bugs knowing this is the choice he makes.
The beauty of it all aint so bad.
The drugs too, let’s address that. The Narrator is introducing you to my relationship with them. Cannabis regularly, builds the body feeling slightly (in comparison to other psychedelics), explore gently. The most present topics, cigarettes and intimacy, dominate this space.
I know there is more to them, I look at them from a bunch of perspectives. Slowly and gently.
DMT is the point I am bored with myself on the topic, it’s time to take more direct approaches. Or I know I have learnt the subject and celebrate to some sense. It is not gentle, nothing can hide, DMT gets right down to the finest of detail, very very quickly and intensely.
The rest of the medicines all speed up the process from normal non-medicine state in different ways, different heightened body states. Mostly I exist in the non-medicine state. The more intense the medicine the less often I use it, am in that state.
At this moment I won’t go to DMT, I know it will hurt a lot if I do, I’m a bit afraid of DMT to be honest. I know it won’t be as bad as last time, that was my peak bad trip, amazing trip, I know it. Everything else will be child’s play in comparison. This current experience is very fun even though it is intense, previous not so much fun at this point.
The more I learn about the topic the less painful the DMT trip will be. May not have any pain, as mentioned it is sometimes a celebration. I have learnt what I needed to without it, or any medicine. I don’t need them, neither do you. The fact I am looking at and questoining myself is the process. It’s just a hell of a lot faster with these beautiful tools.
Knowing your relationship is the key. I wanted a motherly presence today, our everyday Mother was there. This beautiful thing that allows forests and rainforests to communicate, protect itself, share resources, provide oxygen to you and me. The thing that loves us, it gives and gives and gives no matter what we do to it. It is showing us it is in pain and that pain is getting worse. Still, it gives us an option that is full of love, arms around shoulders in pain, arms around shoulders in happiness, that never judges, just wants us to be who we are. Really are.
It has nothing to do with her, Mother Nature, fixing us or herself. She will be fixed in the process but that is not her motivation, she just wants us to be happy. She will take whatever pain she needs to in the process. This is love. When we are happy, truly happy, she will be happy again too. Still, not even an intention for her.
It is an intention for me. I intend to do my bit for her, I have learnt how, it is to fix myself. It is so simple.
I needed this tonight, her, it was selfish, she did not care. I went to her to walk into my darkness, for her to open the door. She continues to. She is the Mother I need right now. She will listen to me and she will tell me the truth, she will do it with a Mother’s Love. That is the environment I wanted to do today in, so I did, am, continue to. A bit to go.
DMT does it with a brother’s love. ‘Fuck you mate I love you, this is how it is’. I don’t need that just yet.
One can do beautiful things with the psychedelic medicines should they understand their relationship with them. How to work with them. Magic happens, miracles happen.
Before I hand back over I’ll note here this book will be 52 chapters and it will be done, it won’t continue forever hoping for the outcome that is coming. It will come in 52 chapters. Whatever it is will be done. What else 52 comes to mean in the process of finishing those chapters, let’s see. Let us see if coincidence covers it.
Believing in coincidence is like believing in God, believing in anything. I don’t believe in coincidence or God, or anything. Yet I can talk about it all, I talk about it all like I know it. Belief is to think something is, not on facts, not on experience, not on anything. One thing drives this, attachment. Attachment means one cannot reason on this topic, their belief overides their senses, they become stupid.
Dominic, a good mate, a beautiful man doing beautiful things in this world. This man is stupid when it comes to God, it is stopping him from living. Stopping him from seeing the truth of what he is. Stopping him from helping people.
Dominic is the God that he believes in, that he does not know. Something he is looking for everywhere when it is right inside his chest, his stomach, his head, everything he sees in his world, his whole universe. Dominic is the centre of his universe, Dominic is experiencing Dominic. Dominic does not want to admit this to himself.
It does not matter my friends what you call it. Call it God, Nothing, The Great Unconscious, a computer type simulation, a practical joke. It does not matter. It is all the same thing, you are all the same thing doing the same thing. You are whatever the fuck it is called experiencing itself because that is what it does to try and understand what it needs to. Experience what it needs to.
No matter one’s origins, no matter at all, everyone and thing comes from the very same thing. The very same single unit that first entered what we call existence. That unit multiplied itself into two, then four, eight, 16, 32, God knows how many things. Still they are all it, are part of it, it is part of them, every them, every thing, every you. You know it is in you, in everything, look where it matters people. Inside yourself.
Each one of us is playing our part in this experience, most of us do not know it. Hence we collectively are doing living extremely poorly at the moment. Everyone is looking for something everywhere else, trying to force others to do this and that thinking/believing it will fix their problems. Never does it, never. Their/your problems come back in other ways, more limiting ways, the same limiting ways. It never stops, never ever, not while you are looking in the wrong direction.
The closest path to finding this thing you are looking for is inside of you. Fucking hell mates, it really is simple. This is the whole everything that has isolated me from everyone, telling people to look in the mirror, telling them the truth. Look into the mirror properly, look into it when you are angry, frustrated, sad, in love. Watch the ugliness and stupidity that comes to your features. You know then this is not what it is, whatever it is that I am doing at this moment, it is not the way.
Look inside of yourself, this is where you meet God. Experience God, experience yourself, play your role. Your feelings, feel them until you cannot feel them anymore. They will release, tell you a story, show you what you have done to yourself and the world. Open a world of beauty in the process.
Dominic, brother. Bang on the door of your chest with whatever it takes mate. When you are at your most vulnerable do whatever is the most difficult medicine for you to do, the one that creates the most fear. Hit it then, properly, you will see, you will know what you believe. You will wake up. Simple.
Love you Dominic. Look forward to our next chat.
Chapter 8 – Panic
Freddy went wandering yesterday up a big hill. It really is just a big hill this thing that is being called a mountain. It is not overly physically demanding. This idiot pretty much walked it one and a third times, without going to the top.
He’ll do the top another time. Fred was just dawdling along and found himself going in a bit of a circle. He was doing whatever but kind of walked on past it, the top. It’s hard to say how it happened. Did a circle, went back, wanted to go the other way but was pretty content. Knows now he could hop up that hill in just about any condition.
He can see why it would be challenging, that some wouldn’t attempt it. This to him is an indicator of where Australia is, the health crisis in the country. Bare minimum, unless one has a very good excuse, of acceptance is every adult between the ages of 18 and 55 should be able to walk up and down that thing in one day. Eventually without complaining.
Oh the excuses, work, children, sore knee. These are not excuses that anybody can accept. They do, but cannot. Work means money is the number one priority, number one. Everything else no, second or lower. Including your children parents. Parents, you people have the greatest responsibility to this world, yet money overides that responsibility.
You have a fat child you are at fault, You. You are killing your child, creating a foundation of lifelong struggle. You will not take the time to look into better food options. Or start by educating yourself on the primary reason people get fat and work with that.
Number one and two, poor diet and lack of exercise/moving body. Remove the stupid word exercise. Go for a walk, to the park, sport, gardening, whatever activity moves bodies. Move your body with your child. You too will also get less fat, you too will be able to climb this hill.
You will not take your sickly child out to move their body for an hour some days but you will do two hours overtime everyday. You say you will do anything for your kids yet you will not prioritise them over money. Keeping those things alive is not enough, it is not raising children. What you do to yourself and them in the process of reaching adulthood is your fault. What they turn out to be, they are imitating and trying to understand their experiences, their upbringing.
Raising them, modelling, this is what is needed.
Being physically in a state where you can at least do something for yourself when you are stuck is pretty important, particularly when climbing a mountain. Fred, well, his dawdling also created a second concern, he wandered off the path. Yes he did.
This happened a few years ago now, his first mushroom trip. Wandered off the path, got lost, had a tantrum, told himself to get up and keep walking. He did, said to himself ‘see, you can do it’. Frederick learnt a lot from that moment.
It has happened quite a few times, many times. Fred does not care about directions. He just walks, cycles, drives, takes random buses and does his thing. Yesterday, he found himself on a track he wasn’t sure was a track. It wasn’t. He knew two things, well three, and remembered a fourth along the way.
He knew that the best way to recover himself when he is lost is to follow a creek down, or the dryness that once was a creek, it will inevitably lead to a water something, It did, then it kept going, and eventually it was not safe with the lack of equipment he had at hand. The problem with going down when one hasn’t come up the same way, cannot be sure of what terrain will present.
This point it got to after about 45 minutes, it took an hour and a half maybe to get down in the end the proper way. Fred has climbed halfway down this mountain before he decided it was time to try another route. The only other safe route is the up route, this one he knew he could do and he would refind the path there. Up is the second thing he knows.
Up, up, up he goes. Physically no problem. Had three occasions where his feet tried to move ahead of him, his breath rate increased, unsurity entered his head, a little bit of grumpiness presented. Fred knew this is panic, the starting point of panic. He underestood it and calmed back down. He made it back up after a while and made the journey home again. No problem, no stress.
He had fun, a lot of fun. An adventure in the bush, climbing, scrambling, processing. Being in the bush. One doesn’t need to be as fit as this bloke, he will walk this thing for leisure. Just fit enough is good enough. Fit enough to walk up a big hill.
The third thing he knows about getting lost is keep your clothes on, don’t take them off, the body is more susceptible to the elements and injury when naked. The fourth, simple, don’t panic.
This fella also knows that obesity and his cigarette smoking are no different. This is his way of telling him to look at himself, I’m showing you the thing that is doing this to you. Tobacco and adipose tissue. The solution is not to do those things, make changes to change. Fred is down to 50% of the cigarettes he was smoking a few weeks ago.
The changes he made included filling his time with something he enjoys, not taking cigarettes outside the property with him, do this book work. All three things help him understand them, he doesn’t need them. They are part of the attachment he is exploring. Understand the attachment, release the symptom.
Ultimately addiction is simply a symptom of the actual cause. The symptom points to the problem, the symptom itself is not the problem. Cigarettes show Fred where to look. He feels the smoke into his body, he feels his body after he smokes, he knows the areas in his body which are activated by it, the ones that ask for it. Same as eating.
This is the feeling and topics he is looking into at the moment. The major areas. With feelings it is easy, they present heavily in a space. Addiction can present quietly in multiple spaces. It worked as a tool for one difficult moment so I also applied it to others. Addiction may have multiple paths to walk depending on how long it has been present. What it has been used for. Fred, his use of tobacco started at 15, his tobacco addiction the moment he was born.
So Freddy Boy, The Narrator, does not think overweight people are bad, or shit people. He tells them the truth about themselves because that is the truth that needs to be told. He gives them a solution, a solution he knows works, he won’t pressure them to give it a try.
He loves, this is what the boy does.
One of his very favourite movies is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Slowly reading the book again for the second time, watched the movie many times. He likes to reflect on moments. His adventure in the bush, on a pretty good dose of LSD and the intermittent bong (part of the refreshments taken on journey, much lighter than alcohol). Second time lost on drugs. Maybe 102nd time being lost. Drugs, not the decisive factor.
It was a real adventure with no understanding of how he got into the mess or out of it. He knew he’d be right, and he was. Ended up starting again at the top from a completely different place he remembers and found where he went wrong on the way down. Everything worked out in the end. Psychedelic medicine experiences lost in the bush and the Improbability Drive. Very similar.
A towel, the importance of a towel. Always have one when travelling. Always have one. Dry with, sleep on, sleep under, cry into, scream into, stop bleeding, use as a bandage, a mat, a bunch of other things. Fred always has his towel. Has already been mentioned.
Don’t Panic, the words written on the front of the Hitchhiker’s Guide. One of the two main reasons for its success.
Panic in the above situation leads to taking risks that are unnecessary, making mistakes as one cannot think clearly. To know panic and how to recognise it one has to study it, explore it, know it. Fred has done this, hence he knows what panic does. Knows how to recognise panic and bring himself back to a state of calm.
Most people who get lost, hurt themselves, whatever else this is the mistake they make. People panic and do not have the tools to be with it, be aware of it. To accept it and act differently. Understanding panic, your own panic, what it does, how to undo it can save lives. Panic takes lives. Takes them through poor reactive decision making.
This is the importance of knowing yourself, understanding feelings and emotions. It keeps you, and everyone in your space safe, particularly when that space is challenging. There is no more reaction, it is replaced by conscious action.
Don’t Panic, a prayer to live by.