A still life with insects and vegetation

The dear reader must forgive me for my protracted absence. I returned from a visit to kith and kin at the beginning of July and was bluntly informed by your man that the Journal of Improbable Allegory would not be publishing the article that he and I co-wrote. It having been longer than I care to recall since this author has published, I had been in the highest spirits at the prospect of getting back, as they say, into the game. The rumor on the streets is that gross mis-management bordering on the embezzlous led to the publication’s insolvent status and thus precipitated my crash of spirit. Thus thoroughly dispirited, I took heed of your man’s for-once-reasonable advice and took holiday at an isolated mountain resort.
   There, away from the hustle and the bustle, the worries and the woes of life in this modern world of ours, I was (at last!) free to sit of a night in an en-screened enclosure, listening enrapt to the randy creatures of summer serenade forth their swan songs of desperate lust. A man can want no more than these three things: A cool beverage, a smoke-able stick of some type, and the symphony of insect-oid love, as plays nightly in rural Vermont. And they do have fine tobacco, as well. On more than one occasion I was courteously offered a cigarette rolled of what I am told was the locally grown (“home-grown,” they called it) Nicotiana. I must say, I found the smoke far superior to that available on the market. I fain wonder why they don’t sell it themselves? I one night, musing on the trans-portation costs of moving a truckload of the sweet leaf and of how many individual leaves would fill the space in the truck, asked the donor the same. He demurred to answer, modestly claiming it was available “if you knew where to get it,” what-ever that means. In any event, the tobacco was finer than any to have graced my palate in at least thirty years. At that time, I was in residence at Boston College and tutored a bit on the side, by which means I came to meet a young man by the unlikely name of “The Nuge.” He was a bit of a “long-haired” sort, if my meaning is clear, but a fine man and a fine mind. After the sordid commerce of tutelage was transacted, we would sit smoking and talking of all manner of things, of the nature of time and space, of brotherhood and love, and of the infinitely rich taste of Hostess' Twinkies. Such stimulating and intelligent conversation we had that I was aghast when, after he abruptly began skipping appointments, I learned that he had been arrested on narcotics charges. I suppose that even such great minds as Coleridge, van Gogh, and Huxley could be dope-addicts, but ah! such a waste.
   On my last night of sortie, as it were, my new friends gave me a handful maii-take to add to my salad. The name is Nihonese for “dancing mush-room,” which strikes me as charming. These mush-rooms were most unusual: dried and blue-stained. Evidently, fleshy fungus is unstable unless dried, which I had not known, although it now occurs to me that I have seen packages of dried shii-take at the grocery. The entrée was sauté'd bean curd garnished with whole soya beans in a rich shoyu sauce, but all I could taste was the mushrooms from the salad! Worse, I presently found myself in the uncomfortable position of suppressing gastric gas at the dinner table, which, when released, also tasted like the maii-take!
   At last, we were excused and I quickly made my way to the screened tent, powerfully anxious that my manners might not hold my weak old flesh back from further offense. There I found the crickets and cicadae even more melodic than usual, as if they were saying their good-byes to me- an odd gesture, as we had not even made acquaintance of each other. Or so I thought; having the notion in print before my eyes, I realize what an absurd conceit it obviously is. I am therefore even more embarrassed to have thought that the very trees, sinewy willows, were waving at me- but of course they were pines, not willows. It seems my gastro-intestinal distress had “gone to my head,” if I may make a novel turn of the old phrase. How very peculiar. I recall even at the time being wary of the strangeness of my condition, in fact, I even mentioned it, repeatedly, to my new “friends” the crickets. Or did I merely think it?
   The walk back to my cabin seemed to take much longer than usual. This is due in part to a rubber-necked lolly-gagging on my part: I was staring at the sky, having never seen the aurora borealis. Such beauty I have never seen- crawling and slinking sheets, spirals, and nets of light. In a word, it was wondrous. There was a peculiarly kaleido-scopic aspect of the phenomenon, as though I was seeing tessellations of color, a mosaiac, the tiles of which were constantly changing shape. Perhaps tesseraction would be a better term, as if the tiles were rotating in an unseen dimension, and I beheld only their three-dimensional cross-sections. The sight was rather captivating; indeed, I stared for what I give my word was hours, caught in the natural beauty and my own imagination, like to watching clouds but much more convincing in strength of analogy. I had no idea the phenomenon was so rich- Lovely colors in the sky are one wonder, but faces, animals, entire landscapes in the sky?
   I finally made it back to my room, where I found with wonder that it was only 9:00 in the evening! My walk could not have lasted more than twenty minutes. Perhaps the mountain air had at last over-whelmed me, accustomed as I am to the polluted excuse for an atmosphere of our urban centers. Exhausted, but paradoxically enervated, I lie down in my bed. My attempts at sleep were futile. Aside from the facts that the aurorae were still visible in my room (even after I lowered the blinds!) and the walls thus a-wash in crawling color, I found my hearing sensitized. I could hear multiple conversations in the rooms around mine, but could neither make out what was said (although I some-how felt it vaguely sinister) nor exclude them from my attention. At last, I left the cabin in my robe, returned to the screen tent, and watched the crickets and listened to the trees until four or twelve in the morning. (My watch said mid-night, but I can not believe I was there only for less than three hours.) Here the aurorae were subdued some-what; I found I could ignore them if I focused on other stimuli. But in their shifting light, the trees them-selves appeared oddly angular and fragmented, like one of Louis Wain’s cat-paintings later in his schizo-phrenia. At the last, I returned and collapsed in my bed, tasting with relish the sweet nectar of sleep that feeds the just and the damned alike.
   I was fully re-covered from the episode on the morrow. All-in-all, I am recuperated from my upset, that strange last night aside. The aurora was much more than I had been led to expect, and I suppose once in a life-time should sate my appetite. And on the topic of appetites, I will avoid maii-take mush-rooms when in polite company.