I travel a lot.

And if you’ve ever spent some time at the airport, you know that it can be pretty boring, so I’ve come up with some methods to make the experience more interesting.

The best one by far, is a combination of the sacred plant and an ipod. It’s the only way to travel, really.

It’s not like I’m gonna have to make judgment calls or operate heavy machinery, or anything. I’m just going to be stuck strapped into in a seat for 5 hours, so what better time to enjoy an altered state of consciousness?

All of a sudden a waste of a day becomes and adventure, and an opportunity for a different way of looking at life.

My ipod is connected to my head with these really powerful shure earbuds that have these special drivers in them that makes music pumping into my head sound incredible, and as I’m thinking about all this shit, the perfect soundtrack seems to find it’s way to me through the wonders of synchronicity and random shuffle.

The car drops me off at the terminal, I check my bags and go through security, turn on the ipod, and the show begins…

I see the people moving around in the airport, and I’m aware that for whatever reason I always seem to think of people I’ve never met as existing in some sort of a static state.

Like the old lady with the bad limp has always been the old lady with the bad limp.

That’s the only way I’ve ever known her in the 5 minutes that I’ve been aware she’s alive. Normally, I probably wouldn’t give it much thought, but right now the pot lollypop dissolving in my mouth is releasing its magical influence, and the cannabanoid receptors in my brain are firing on all cylinders.

The old lady’s pants ride up when she sits down, and she massages her pale, frail ankles.

I look at her face, and try to picture her 50 years ago as Liz Phair’s lovely voice sings in my ear:

“Give it to me, don’t give it away. Don’t think about what the others say, my skin’s getting clear, my hair’s so bright, all you do is fuck me every day and night. You’re my seeeecret beauty routine, nah nah nah nah what my body has seen…”

She looks up at me, and I smile.

She smiles back. I don’t know her name, so I’ll just call her Dorothy.

I’ve never met a young Dorothy, so I’m pretty sure they’ve just about given up on that name for kids.

Where’s she going?

Old people love to visit relatives. Sex is a thing of the distant past, there’s no job to show up for, and most of their friends are dead. The only thing many of them have left is their offspring.

Dorothy’s hands have dark spots where her misfiring body has sent warning signals to the upper layers of the skin to let her know the end is near.

But that wasn’t always the case.

I bet at one point in time those hands were soft and smooth. They had a controlled, delicate touch that back in 1950 was to die for. I try to picture them wrapping around a young man’s back, pulling him into her juicy, succulent lips… rubbing her aching pussy against his hard dick…

I’m looking at the structure of her face, and I bet at one time she was very beautiful.

I wonder how she feels about the way she looks now.

I wish I could turn the time back and watch her wrinkles fade.

Go back through thousands of rotations of the earth and see what she used to be like when the life force inside of her was at it’s peak of radiance.

I want to watch the fat fill into her cheeks and the sparkle return to her eyes.

I want to see her when she was fresh and young, and she had that smell of passionate affection about her that every beautiful young woman does.

I wonder if she ever really considered that she would someday be in the physical state she’s in now. I wonder if her experience in this life turned out anything remotely like the way she thought it was going to.

Loud and crisp, Jimi Hendrix is right on the same page.

“I didn’t mean to take up all your sweet time, I’ll give it right back one of these days…”

Remember back when you were a kid, and you thought there were actually people that knew what this thing we call “life” was really all about? Remember when you thought there really were “grown ups?”

Then, all of a sudden one day you become a “grown up” yourself and the terrifying revelation occurs to you that there really are no “grown ups,” just kids that got old and had kids of their own, and no one really knows what the fuck is going on.

Moments of realization as to how fucking bizarre life really is slip into our consciousness periodically like ghosts, only to be chased off by the cover of US magazine’s speculation that Jennifer Anniston may very well be pregnant. The man standing at the newsstand uses his lust for the latest BMW to distract himself from the fact that his dick no longer works, and that he can find no rational explanation as to why even after a heart attack he still spends most of his life doing something that he doesn’t even remotely enjoy. The whole scene is just so fucking different when you’re high and the music is playing. What’s really weird to me right now – is why don’t I see life like this all the time? I’m not seeing anything that’s not logical or obvious, but it just seems so incredible how clear it all is to me now. When I’m not high and there’s no music playing, these ideas are all there somewhere, but they all just seem so much more abstract.

I have a theory as to why it is that most people are in such a deep trance.

I think what human beings have done by using ever advancing technology to make TV shows, movies, and songs, is that we’ve created something that’s far too influential for our minds to rationally process, especially when it’s hitting us over and over on a daily basis since childhood.

Human beings naturally imitate successful behavior. It’s how we learn from other people, and absorb their life’s lessons without having to live them ourselves.

We follow their lead, and absorb their example.

But what if what we’re absorbing is bullshit? What if it’s bullshit on a 50ft screen with surround sound, and you’re seeing it in the presence of hundreds of other people who are equally moved by the experience?

Every emotional scene is complimented and enhanced by music that guides the way you think about what you’re seeing. The good guy always survives, and love conquers all.

Are our brains really set up by nature to rationally process input like that?

I’m not really sure that they are.

Just think what would happen if you could go back in time and grab a guy from ancient Greece, then pull him into the present and make him sit in a crowded theatre with full THX surround sound and watch “the Lord of the Rings.”

The dude would probably shit his robes and pass out from shock.

I’m not sure if we realize how crazy some of the things we have today really are.

It’s sort of snuck up on us as the technology has steadily improved, and the access to it has steadily increased, but I think it’s increased far quicker than our ability to rationally process it has evolved. We’ve gotten used to it being around to the point where we hardly even consider it, but really there has been some pretty crazy shit that has happened to human beings pretty fucking quickly. I mean, somehow in only the last hundred years, we’ve gone from watching plays where the people performing had to act all fake and talk loud so that people in the back of the room could hear them, to the point where we are now that finds me typing these words to you on a small metal object that weighs less than 5 pounds, and it’s connected to the entire fucking planet wirelessly through the internet.

CNN is playing on dozens of TVs in the airport, and as the image of tanks rolling across some distant land plays on the screen, incredible music is blaring in my ear that was recorded by a guy that died over 30 years ago.

That’s some pretty fucking insane shit, and a pretty huge leap from the influence of the natural world. And it’s not stopping.

It will never stop. Even if every human being on the planet was wiped out except for a few hundreds idiots, if those idiots could figure out how to stay alive and made sure that they kept making people, eventually people would become smart again, and they would re-learn everything we’ve figured out today.

I actually think that’s probably happened at least once in our past. I think it probably explains the pyramids.

It’s almost like innovation is alive. Like it’s some life form that we can’t recognize, but we exist in a symbiotic relationship with. And the more time goes on, the more involved this relationship becomes. We need it, and it needs us, and one of the methods that it uses to keep us around and working hard, is that with our help, it dispenses a steady stream of bullshit.

We went from hunters and gatherers, to people that stayed in one place and grew and raised all their own food, to immense amounts of people jammed into one area, completely dependant on machines and technology to survive, and feeling naked and vulnerable when you lose your cell phone. And the main glue that’s keeping the whole ship together is bullshit.

I see that the plane is boarding, so I keep the ipod on, close the laptop, and head to the gate.

The stewardess’ lips are moving as she scans my ticket, but all I hear is Bob Marley.

“Don’t let them change ya, or even rearrange ya…”

I say “Thank you,” and hope that my voice doesn’t sound like a deaf guy’s.

I take my seat next to Joey Diaz, pull one earbud out, and I say that I wonder what movie they’re playing.

Joey, looks over at me, and says,

“Who gives a fuck. It ain’t The Outlaw Josey Wales, so I’m taking a nap.”

The plane takes off, I put the other ear bud in place, and re-open the laptop.

The movie starts playing, and it’s some wretched creation with Antonio Banderas teaching what appears to be troubled ghetto youths how to dance.

I’m sure it had a happy ending, and some warm moments, but I never gave it a chance.

I just looked up at the images, while Steve Miller played along with my dancing thoughts:

“Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future…”

Somewhere below the plane I’m on right now, a chick is sitting at home drinking a beer in front of her television, tired from a long day at work, and feeling shitty because she’s 27 and she’s still not married. A commercial comes on, and in it, there’s a woman in a beautiful field, and she’s laughing, and spinning in circles holding her baby. The chick at home puts down her Michelob Ultra, and searches for a pen to write down the name of the anti-depressant that she needs to ask her doctor about.

She softly says to herself,

“I wanna spin in circles in the field with my baby too…”

Why do anti depressants have such complicated names that sound like weird European cities? I mean, what the fuck is a Wellbutrin?

Why can’t they just call them “Happy Pills?”

Joey is not quite asleep yet, and I see his weight shift slightly to the side. I take several deep breaths before I realize what he’s done, and by then it’s too late.

I immediately pull my shirt over my nose to protect myself from what HAS to be the worst fart in the history of the human race. It’s so fucking horrible that I’m afraid that I might throw up inside my shirt, and I can’t even run away because I’ve got the window seat, and I’m strapped in place.

My ipod is still blaring in my ear, and as I gag Terence McKenna is talking about the end of time over a techno beat:

“History is ending, because the dominator culture has lead the human species into a blind alley…”

Just when the smell is starting to die down, Joey lets another, even more horrifying one loose. I look over at him and his eyes open WIDE.

Now, it’s so bad that I’m laughing. Tears are rolling down my face, and as I look up, Antonio Banderes is teaching the underprivileged youths how to salsa.

Over the pounding sound of my ipod, I hear a woman in the row behind us cry out,

“OH… MY… GOD!”

I look over at Joey and he smiles.

There’s your fucking happy pill, right there.