Thursday, April 30, 2009
Step by Step
Where are the psychedelic drugs? point me in the right direction...
Something about everything reminds of who I don't want to be. I feel like I've been skullfucked by an angry dimension. I am not who I am. Somnium Ergo Sum...
1800 mikes was not too much - It was, like most 'bad trips', too much at the wrong time, in the wrong place. It was not a fully-fledged psychedelic freakout perse, replete with spittle dribbling down my chin and a wild animal behind my eyes, so much as twelve hours of being shown things I had tried so hard to hide from myself. To be frank, it was a psychedelic experience, animolytic and awe-inspiring. I saw myself reflected in a puddle of bloody vomit, and felt invisble hands holding me upright when all I tried to hurl myself down a cliff.
It's time to face the music, it's time to introduce reality. Remember that everything you have learned is just that, learned, and not necessarily true. I am not who you think I am. if everyone could just STAND UP for a minute and start to deconstruct fallacy, mainline truth and hammer down the bricks of order into a chaotic rubble of order and ash - Maybe then we could get somewhere.
WE ARE ALL TOO WRAPPED UP IN WHO WE WANT TO BE TO REALISE WHO WE REALLY ARE.
If you go your whole life without going through a heavy psychedelic experience, you have missed out. I'd go so far as to say that you have failed your duty as a human to embrace neural freedom.
Burn down conciousness. You are lying to yourselves and everyone around you. Who are we, really? I do not recognise this gaunt and pallid old man standing in the mirror.
I was saved by an Angel and baptised in spearmint.
I am standing on the edge of the world... I don't feel like losing control...
Crunch time. Who are you?
Time goes by while I am feeling low! So open up the door; and let it go!
Something about everything reminds of who I don't want to be. I feel like I've been skullfucked by an angry dimension. I am not who I am. Somnium Ergo Sum...
1800 mikes was not too much - It was, like most 'bad trips', too much at the wrong time, in the wrong place. It was not a fully-fledged psychedelic freakout perse, replete with spittle dribbling down my chin and a wild animal behind my eyes, so much as twelve hours of being shown things I had tried so hard to hide from myself. To be frank, it was a psychedelic experience, animolytic and awe-inspiring. I saw myself reflected in a puddle of bloody vomit, and felt invisble hands holding me upright when all I tried to hurl myself down a cliff.
It's time to face the music, it's time to introduce reality. Remember that everything you have learned is just that, learned, and not necessarily true. I am not who you think I am. if everyone could just STAND UP for a minute and start to deconstruct fallacy, mainline truth and hammer down the bricks of order into a chaotic rubble of order and ash - Maybe then we could get somewhere.
WE ARE ALL TOO WRAPPED UP IN WHO WE WANT TO BE TO REALISE WHO WE REALLY ARE.
If you go your whole life without going through a heavy psychedelic experience, you have missed out. I'd go so far as to say that you have failed your duty as a human to embrace neural freedom.
Burn down conciousness. You are lying to yourselves and everyone around you. Who are we, really? I do not recognise this gaunt and pallid old man standing in the mirror.
I was saved by an Angel and baptised in spearmint.
I am standing on the edge of the world... I don't feel like losing control...
Crunch time. Who are you?
Time goes by while I am feeling low! So open up the door; and let it go!
Monday, April 20, 2009
many crows, few corpses.
I cleaned my room tonight. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think i'm losing the plot a little because I've stayed up until 4am drinking a twelvepack of Solo cans, watching 21 Jump Street and cleaning my room up. I found a lot of my old army stuff, including my old notebooks from basic training. Most of it is technical data and notes, procedures and drill that I needed to memorise. but here and there are a couple of pages where I've tried to make sense of my headspace, when i had one of those brief periods of freedom that I could use to sit down and write. It's interesting. it's odd. Reading it again dredges up that bittersweet fear and total loathing, but yet, total yearning. I hate the army. I miss the army.
but yeah, here's the shit.
It is the eighth day. Much of the facade and fear has been stripped, leaving weapons handling drills, ratel and pack marches. Soldier stuff. The good shit. Several times I have considered binning myself but I find these thoughts grow less and less frequent as the days proceed - I feel that they build on each other, that every passing day makes it more likely that I will endure the next. This is a strange place - Governed by tradition, built on honour and enforced by a medley of the bored and the faithful, the bully NCOs who resent this shit posting and the good NCOS who see this as the most important post they could possibly have been assigned. Life grows more and more surreal as time passes. I feel bits of me slipping away... Like I'm being fossilised. My soft, pink insides have been buried and are slowly rotting only to be replaced by hard silt and stone. Is this a dream? Is this life? This room has large windows but they are dirty, misty and scratched. light plays through the leaves outside, mottling shadows onto the table. Like everything - Like even the coffee-stain rings on my notepad, they remind me of DCPU. Clearly the indoctrination is working. I shall write again soon - This has helped.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The differential screams
as borderline truths
of altruism and the common man
are independently acquired
the blood of thousands
paints the neatly laid walls
of Kirribilli House.
perhaps it is time
to paint the inside?
let maggots squirm
and shrapnel rust
in the bodies of bosnians
and serbians
and australians
and humans
while a 4.7 billion dollar convention centre
is used to sell cut-price straight-to-dvd movies
5 people to 1 bed in PMH
people, not numebrs
children, not people
instinct/reaction - start the fires
turn the masses
hearts and minds
as one
a dog's day dawns
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Twelfth day. Cracks forming. Life is disjointed and cannot link one memory to the next. No core stability - Constantly falling forwards, only just managing to keep my feet under me. it's like a dream, body acting and mind watching. It reminds me of ether hazes. I feel like tearing a young schoolgirl to pieces, or picking a fight with a wall. I want to get bloody. I want to cry. It's not as easy as I thought, but it's nowhere near as hard. it's just... different. weird. Distinctly unpleasant. My mouth tastes like brass. I'm so goddamn tired.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
From the moment of inception it was clear to all concerned exactly which way their priorities were arranged. The Big Machines - They got the oil while little Timmy rode his pushbike twenty k to school, shedding rust from his chain the whole way, mechanical ochre dandruff leaving a breadcrumb trail. We are that bike. Neglected by the bigger picture, overworked and tireless, begging for oil like the proverbial tin man.
We came into being as whimpering puddles of protozoan jelly, pools of congealing amino acids, and semi-coagulated sputum. Odds are, that's the way we'll leave it too, plus a little radioactive ash raining dowjn on us. The world will end with a whimper, but there will be an earlier bang that signifies the beginning of the end - The starter's gun which sets the rat race scrabbling for cover, vermin fleeing the burning ship. There are motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane. They know they won't make it to shore before they drown but it's better then burning to death.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Day fourteen. Thank god it's friday. Room and rifle inspections have revealed that I'm not quite as on the ball as I thought I was. live fire qualifier today too, that was another shock. My grouping were shoddy and I only scraped a pass, but when you drop the outliers I was laying down 99mm three-round groupings at 200m. Feeling better. Saner, calmer. But still disconnected.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
peach and nectarine kernels from the mess, crushed and powdered. Dried on the window sill while we're at drill. Brasso mixed with water, seperated to recover clean solvent. Extract cyanogenic glycosides from the kernel pulp and put into water bottle.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
hexy stove tablets, battery acid from one of the landies and a little nitrate from the wet-light matches. boiled for fifteen minutes, filtered through a sock and the resulting grey gunk packed into an otherwise blank round.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
If I find more, I'll post it.
but yeah, here's the shit.
It is the eighth day. Much of the facade and fear has been stripped, leaving weapons handling drills, ratel and pack marches. Soldier stuff. The good shit. Several times I have considered binning myself but I find these thoughts grow less and less frequent as the days proceed - I feel that they build on each other, that every passing day makes it more likely that I will endure the next. This is a strange place - Governed by tradition, built on honour and enforced by a medley of the bored and the faithful, the bully NCOs who resent this shit posting and the good NCOS who see this as the most important post they could possibly have been assigned. Life grows more and more surreal as time passes. I feel bits of me slipping away... Like I'm being fossilised. My soft, pink insides have been buried and are slowly rotting only to be replaced by hard silt and stone. Is this a dream? Is this life? This room has large windows but they are dirty, misty and scratched. light plays through the leaves outside, mottling shadows onto the table. Like everything - Like even the coffee-stain rings on my notepad, they remind me of DCPU. Clearly the indoctrination is working. I shall write again soon - This has helped.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The differential screams
as borderline truths
of altruism and the common man
are independently acquired
the blood of thousands
paints the neatly laid walls
of Kirribilli House.
perhaps it is time
to paint the inside?
let maggots squirm
and shrapnel rust
in the bodies of bosnians
and serbians
and australians
and humans
while a 4.7 billion dollar convention centre
is used to sell cut-price straight-to-dvd movies
5 people to 1 bed in PMH
people, not numebrs
children, not people
instinct/reaction - start the fires
turn the masses
hearts and minds
as one
a dog's day dawns
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Twelfth day. Cracks forming. Life is disjointed and cannot link one memory to the next. No core stability - Constantly falling forwards, only just managing to keep my feet under me. it's like a dream, body acting and mind watching. It reminds me of ether hazes. I feel like tearing a young schoolgirl to pieces, or picking a fight with a wall. I want to get bloody. I want to cry. It's not as easy as I thought, but it's nowhere near as hard. it's just... different. weird. Distinctly unpleasant. My mouth tastes like brass. I'm so goddamn tired.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
From the moment of inception it was clear to all concerned exactly which way their priorities were arranged. The Big Machines - They got the oil while little Timmy rode his pushbike twenty k to school, shedding rust from his chain the whole way, mechanical ochre dandruff leaving a breadcrumb trail. We are that bike. Neglected by the bigger picture, overworked and tireless, begging for oil like the proverbial tin man.
We came into being as whimpering puddles of protozoan jelly, pools of congealing amino acids, and semi-coagulated sputum. Odds are, that's the way we'll leave it too, plus a little radioactive ash raining dowjn on us. The world will end with a whimper, but there will be an earlier bang that signifies the beginning of the end - The starter's gun which sets the rat race scrabbling for cover, vermin fleeing the burning ship. There are motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane. They know they won't make it to shore before they drown but it's better then burning to death.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Day fourteen. Thank god it's friday. Room and rifle inspections have revealed that I'm not quite as on the ball as I thought I was. live fire qualifier today too, that was another shock. My grouping were shoddy and I only scraped a pass, but when you drop the outliers I was laying down 99mm three-round groupings at 200m. Feeling better. Saner, calmer. But still disconnected.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
peach and nectarine kernels from the mess, crushed and powdered. Dried on the window sill while we're at drill. Brasso mixed with water, seperated to recover clean solvent. Extract cyanogenic glycosides from the kernel pulp and put into water bottle.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
hexy stove tablets, battery acid from one of the landies and a little nitrate from the wet-light matches. boiled for fifteen minutes, filtered through a sock and the resulting grey gunk packed into an otherwise blank round.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
If I find more, I'll post it.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Riding bicycles into the future.
Timewave Zero is a unifying theory that purports to calculate the ebb and flow of novelty in the universe as an inherent quality of time. It is an idea conceived of and discussed at lengthby Terrence McKenna from the early 1970s until his death in the year 2000. Novelty, in this context, can be thought of as newness, density of entropy and dynamic change as opposed to static habituation. According to McKenna, when "novelty" is graphed over time, a waveform known as timewave zero or simply the timewave results. The graph shows at what times, but never at what locations, novelty is supposedly increasing or decreasing. According to the timewave graph, great periods of novelty occurred about 4 billion years ago when Earth was formed, 65 million years ago when dinosaurs were extinct and mammals expanded, about 10,000 years ago after the end of the ice age, around late 18th century when social and scientific revolutions progressed, during the sixties, around the time of 9/11, an extended spike during November 2008, and with coming novelty periods in October 2010, with the novelty progressing towards the infinity on 21 December 2012. Important graphic points in 2009, appear around 19 April, 29 August and 23 October 2009, indicating the possibility of significant events around these dates. This coming Thursday will be the 19th of April, the 66th Anniversary of the first deliberate human ingestion of LSD-25 by Dr. Albert Hofmann. I intend to ingest 2400ug and get seriously molten with some close friends, and hopefully ride the timewave into oblivion on a thick amber crystalline board of dimethyltryptamine.
See you in the future, I wonder what will happen?
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Box #10
The events I mostly discuss in this post transpired about a month agol. I had this entry up in an earlier form but removed it quickly because I feared potential legal action,b ut it doesn't look like it's coming. So, re-written somewhat, here it is again.
On the morning of Saturday, February 14th 2009 I went through one of the most horrible, educational and enlightening experiences of my life. I'm sure many of you saw the two wrecked cars, and several wrecked trees on the way to the gate, and probably heard or saw first and second hand of the events that transpired. The driver of one of those cars was at fault. That much is for sure. I know him casually, as an associate and fellow partygoer, but I wouldn't go so far as to call him a friend because I generally try not to party too hard with the kind of people who take more then they can handle. in this case, that was (from what I have dug up) six of last years best pills and a half-weight of speed at the rave in perth, then somewhere between four and six mushroom caps once he arrived at the doof. This was clearly far, far beyond his boundaries and many people suffered because of it. During the time of the crash I, my girlfriend and another friend were sitting some hundred metres further towards the gate on a fallen log when we heard a terrible, keening scream. Pure, and total fear. I have never heard another sentient being in such anguish as I heard that day. We looked around and saw someone sprinting down the road, stumbling, rolling gait, clearly extremely fucked up. I thought I recognised him - It was who we thought it was, and I could see several others chasing him. The rate at which he was running, the way he was screaming and the whole situation felt like it was more then just a friendly game of chase or anything of the sort. So we too, leapt up and started running after him. We joined the group of about three or four others running after who told us he was 'skitzing out on mushrooms and speed' and has just crashed his car. He was about fifty metres ahead, and looked like he was bleeding from the head and potentially even his mouth. I'm ex-army, fully qualified in trauma first aid, this and my uni med experience told me that if any of what they'd told me was true he could be in extreme danger, and I wouldn't be able to help him, and that we would need someone qualified.
We told two of the others with us to go back and find help - Find one or more of the organisers, preferably someone with medical training - While we pursued him. By this point we were sprinting through relatively thick bush, the individual freaking out was flailing, screaming and running, barely managing to avoid any number of trees or ditches, rocks and such - He did trip and fall more then once, allowing us to gain on him until such a point as he cut across and ran out onto Edison Mill Road. All through we had been calling his name, trying to get him to stop and answer us, to turn around so we could figure out what had happened. Obviously, if he was in such a state, being chased by people yelling his name couldn't have helped but we weren't going to just let him "Run off, freak out and let him calm down on his own time" as someone had already suggested. Though traffic on the road was mostly non-existant, he was nearly hit by a speeding four-wheel-drive, at which point he stumbled to the side of the road and we were able to catch up to him. he had lost his pants, shirt was torn, he was bloody but only from superficial grazes - he was raving and rambling, incontinent and clearly extremely fucked up. Whilst keeping our distance we were able to get him to calm down and pause, to try and talk. He would shriek, his eyes would roll back in his head and he would babble violently about how he 'deserved this' - he begged us to kill him, to make it end. We did our best to assure him that we were only going to help him, and that he needed to calm down and to tell us what had happened. When he realised we wouldn't do it for him, he tried to kill himself. he immediately leapt up and sprinted three paces, hurling himself and trying to impale himself on a sharp, thick, protruding branch. it was only sheer miracle that I and the only other person who had still been chasing him managed to catch him before he hit it. We pulled him away, he was scratching, biting and struggling. he tried to tear out his own throat and ours. The two of us, and then the last person who had caught up with us, barely, were able to wrestle him to the ground and subdue him. During this time, he was screaming, tried to rub dirt, leaves and piss into his wounds and mouth, was trying to chew rocks and tear out his eyes. A passing motorist, unaffiliated with the doof scene, stopped and asked us what was happening. We explained, and she said the best thing to do was to restrain him - She even said she would have taken him in the car with her if she didn't also have her kids with her. She had a rope in the boot through, and we tied him (humaney, I might add) and she drove off towards perth to phone range, in order to call an ambulance. It was maybe ten minutes after she left that I remembered that during the night people had been talking about how someone supposedly swapped the signs around for Edison Mill and Yarra Roads - We were on E.M, and knew that if the several carloads of seasoned doofers had gotten thoroughly lost along the way, then a city ambulance would never be able to find the place.
For two hours we sat there, on the roadside, talking this guy out of his trip, hand-feeding him and dribbling water into his mouth, trying to clean him up and keep him calm. His rage eventually subsided, leaving only confusion and a childlike state where he lay his head in my lap and called me mommy while he repeatedly pissed himself, wept and begged for god to forgive him.
I'm not saying this because Im looking for praise, or to make anyone feel sorry for me. I'm saying this because I'm trying to convey the seriousness of the situation, and to ask why nobody came to help.
This was, I know, mostly due to the breakdown of communication involved with trying to send a message back, yelling it over your shoulder to people behind you while chasing a madman through heavy bush. But the situation should have been clear enough - Someone is freaking out. We need someone who has been in the scene long enough to know what to do when someone freaks out. He just crashed his car. he could have internal injuries. Get. Help.
I wasn't there when our messengers got back to the doof so I can't know for sure what happened. I was told, however, that, upon finding organisers and interrupting them mid-bong to try and explain what they knew, that the situation was not given what one would call the 'highest priority'. The car crash was attended to, and observed, and probably dealt with as it was needed to - But we were left there, waiting for help to come from one direction or an ambulance to come from the other. neither did. Finally, a car slowed, it was people we knew, heading to the doof. They told us that they'd left perth at 11pm the previous night (it was now at least lunchtime the next day, we had first started the chase at some point early on in tye's set) and had only just found the place because someone had been playing silly buggers with the roadsigns. This confirmed out worst fears, and so we sent one of ours in the car with them to the doof to try, again, to summon more help or at least get more water - I didn't know what the forecast was for the day, but if it had been something like it had at the Wibbltey Wobblties for instance, the injured party could well have died of heaststroke. By the grace of gods unknown, he was calm enough now that we could untie him and he could sit up, almost talking coherently. He was mildly concussed, but I checked him over as he was now sane enough to lie flat without struggling and I could find no broken bones or signs of internal bleeding - He had blood in his mouth from biting his lip in the crash, had chipped a couple of teeth but appeared to be otherwise sound exlcuding minor abrasions and lacerations. He would, it appeared, be okay, but nontheless he needed to be taken to perth and assessed by a medical professional. Now no longer knowing if the ambulance was ever going to find us, at last a car appeared from the doof. it was the one we had sent in earlier, that had found us and confirmed our fears about the signs. it held the guy we had sent back, a drunk driver, some water and spare seats for the three of us including the injured party. We brought him back to the doof, at which point we were greeted by several others from the original crash and more then one who had told us the organisers had been informed and the situation was 'under control'.
Now that he was calmer, no longer in the danger of killing himself and not suffering from any life threatening injuries I was more then happy to leave him in the company of his 'real friends' who all had wanted to "calm him down with a nice cone" or "take him down to the dance floor to relax" when he had first shown signs of freaking out, before he got into his car. These were, admittedly, a younger crowd, and not what I would call exactly responsible in their substance use, but no one had made any attempts to take his keys away from him, or take him somewhere quiet, or anything.
The previous night I had seen, on the dance floor, an individual stripped down to the undies, furiously masturbating. This, whilst admittedly utterly inappropriate behaviour, was not what I would call threatening or dangerous, but nontheless an invidual whose name I do not know but have seen doofing regularly and would expect better of, king-hit him into one of the projector screens. I don't know the whole story there - maybe he'd been jacking off onto the other guy's girlfriend or something, I don't know. But the way it appeared was that someone whose drugs had gotten the better of them was dealt with in a disgustingly primitive way. In my limited opinion, someone who was that fucked up on god knows what should be steered away from the dance floor, re-dressed by someone competent, his friends found and maybe locked him in the car or sat him down at the chillout stage for a while, if not just asked to leave.
These two events have shown me that we have failings in our duty of care. if we're going to have a party, a public party, people are probably going to show up who we don't want to be there. They might cause problems, or ruin our night. That's shit, and needs to be fixed. We should all be more careful about who we tell. But everyone deserved the right to be helped. if they're going wrong, people who know right should tell them right. There are those I know who will refuse to listen - Bourbon guzzling pillchewing hilux-driving pig-hunting bootscooters for instance, who will find their kicks by hassling a couple of guys cuddling on the dance floor, hurling abuse and threatening them - But when there are young people coming into the scene, who don't necessarily know what they're doing, taking too much of whatever and getting into trouble, then there clearly needs to be more education. It's very difficult, I know, to teach people how they should take their drugs, or what to take if anything at all - We can't exactly hold public service announcements on how many mushie caps you should take for your first time, I know - But we need to realise that as much as we would like to be, we are not completely seperate from reality. People we don't want to be there might be there. People who can't handle their shit might not handle their shit. And we should be prepared. Someone should take the responsibility of dealing with shit when it happens - Nobody wants to spend their whole night running around after young fucks who think they're invulnerable, who wouldn't listen to reason - But I know there are medical professionals in the scene, would it be too much to ask for someone higher-up to have a lockbox up by the DJ with some valium in it? Some mild sedatives would have resolved the situation much faster then it otherwise was, or even someone with medical training coming out to assess the poor guy. Even if all they could do is come out, take his pulse, look at him and say "Yep, he's freaking out. No, he's not going to die. No, we can't move him." And then gone back to the doof, at least then i could have known whether or not I was going to have to start CPR at any second. I didn't know how long ago he'd taken the pills and speed or if he was ODing as well as having his manic episode. We ran for a good three k at least, but that's a five minute drive and a two minute diagnosis to see if he's critical or not.
Even if you don't want them at your party, if they're at your party, you have duty of care. I don't want to sound like I'm accusing anyone of failing in their duties, but someone did. Either the people I sent back didn't tell what they were supposed to, or I didn't tell them properly what to say, or who they told didn't properly act. But it was only sheer goddamn luck that that boy is still alive today. And i can guarantee that if he'd died out there it would have been the last party for a while.
Situations like this will happen again, if we don't take steps to resolve things. People will still continue to be irresponsible with their bodies, and as much as we don't like to have to clean up their messes, until they learn their lessons we're going to have to. We are all human beings, the same blood and bone, just different minds. And if you think someone is doing something wrong, you need to help them to do it right. We need to keep people safe, either by keeping them OUT or teaching them how to behave.
Without harping on too much, as I'm sure this is already a huge post, things need to change. We either need to privatise better, or take adequate precautions to stop something like this from happening again. I can only thank everyone who was there and who acted responsibly and did everything they could. I shudder to think what would have happened to him if we hadn't seen him, or if his pillhead buddies had just let him roam off into the bush. Would we ever have seen him again, alive?
I truly doubt it.
On the morning of Saturday, February 14th 2009 I went through one of the most horrible, educational and enlightening experiences of my life. I'm sure many of you saw the two wrecked cars, and several wrecked trees on the way to the gate, and probably heard or saw first and second hand of the events that transpired. The driver of one of those cars was at fault. That much is for sure. I know him casually, as an associate and fellow partygoer, but I wouldn't go so far as to call him a friend because I generally try not to party too hard with the kind of people who take more then they can handle. in this case, that was (from what I have dug up) six of last years best pills and a half-weight of speed at the rave in perth, then somewhere between four and six mushroom caps once he arrived at the doof. This was clearly far, far beyond his boundaries and many people suffered because of it. During the time of the crash I, my girlfriend and another friend were sitting some hundred metres further towards the gate on a fallen log when we heard a terrible, keening scream. Pure, and total fear. I have never heard another sentient being in such anguish as I heard that day. We looked around and saw someone sprinting down the road, stumbling, rolling gait, clearly extremely fucked up. I thought I recognised him - It was who we thought it was, and I could see several others chasing him. The rate at which he was running, the way he was screaming and the whole situation felt like it was more then just a friendly game of chase or anything of the sort. So we too, leapt up and started running after him. We joined the group of about three or four others running after who told us he was 'skitzing out on mushrooms and speed' and has just crashed his car. He was about fifty metres ahead, and looked like he was bleeding from the head and potentially even his mouth. I'm ex-army, fully qualified in trauma first aid, this and my uni med experience told me that if any of what they'd told me was true he could be in extreme danger, and I wouldn't be able to help him, and that we would need someone qualified.
We told two of the others with us to go back and find help - Find one or more of the organisers, preferably someone with medical training - While we pursued him. By this point we were sprinting through relatively thick bush, the individual freaking out was flailing, screaming and running, barely managing to avoid any number of trees or ditches, rocks and such - He did trip and fall more then once, allowing us to gain on him until such a point as he cut across and ran out onto Edison Mill Road. All through we had been calling his name, trying to get him to stop and answer us, to turn around so we could figure out what had happened. Obviously, if he was in such a state, being chased by people yelling his name couldn't have helped but we weren't going to just let him "Run off, freak out and let him calm down on his own time" as someone had already suggested. Though traffic on the road was mostly non-existant, he was nearly hit by a speeding four-wheel-drive, at which point he stumbled to the side of the road and we were able to catch up to him. he had lost his pants, shirt was torn, he was bloody but only from superficial grazes - he was raving and rambling, incontinent and clearly extremely fucked up. Whilst keeping our distance we were able to get him to calm down and pause, to try and talk. He would shriek, his eyes would roll back in his head and he would babble violently about how he 'deserved this' - he begged us to kill him, to make it end. We did our best to assure him that we were only going to help him, and that he needed to calm down and to tell us what had happened. When he realised we wouldn't do it for him, he tried to kill himself. he immediately leapt up and sprinted three paces, hurling himself and trying to impale himself on a sharp, thick, protruding branch. it was only sheer miracle that I and the only other person who had still been chasing him managed to catch him before he hit it. We pulled him away, he was scratching, biting and struggling. he tried to tear out his own throat and ours. The two of us, and then the last person who had caught up with us, barely, were able to wrestle him to the ground and subdue him. During this time, he was screaming, tried to rub dirt, leaves and piss into his wounds and mouth, was trying to chew rocks and tear out his eyes. A passing motorist, unaffiliated with the doof scene, stopped and asked us what was happening. We explained, and she said the best thing to do was to restrain him - She even said she would have taken him in the car with her if she didn't also have her kids with her. She had a rope in the boot through, and we tied him (humaney, I might add) and she drove off towards perth to phone range, in order to call an ambulance. It was maybe ten minutes after she left that I remembered that during the night people had been talking about how someone supposedly swapped the signs around for Edison Mill and Yarra Roads - We were on E.M, and knew that if the several carloads of seasoned doofers had gotten thoroughly lost along the way, then a city ambulance would never be able to find the place.
For two hours we sat there, on the roadside, talking this guy out of his trip, hand-feeding him and dribbling water into his mouth, trying to clean him up and keep him calm. His rage eventually subsided, leaving only confusion and a childlike state where he lay his head in my lap and called me mommy while he repeatedly pissed himself, wept and begged for god to forgive him.
I'm not saying this because Im looking for praise, or to make anyone feel sorry for me. I'm saying this because I'm trying to convey the seriousness of the situation, and to ask why nobody came to help.
This was, I know, mostly due to the breakdown of communication involved with trying to send a message back, yelling it over your shoulder to people behind you while chasing a madman through heavy bush. But the situation should have been clear enough - Someone is freaking out. We need someone who has been in the scene long enough to know what to do when someone freaks out. He just crashed his car. he could have internal injuries. Get. Help.
I wasn't there when our messengers got back to the doof so I can't know for sure what happened. I was told, however, that, upon finding organisers and interrupting them mid-bong to try and explain what they knew, that the situation was not given what one would call the 'highest priority'. The car crash was attended to, and observed, and probably dealt with as it was needed to - But we were left there, waiting for help to come from one direction or an ambulance to come from the other. neither did. Finally, a car slowed, it was people we knew, heading to the doof. They told us that they'd left perth at 11pm the previous night (it was now at least lunchtime the next day, we had first started the chase at some point early on in tye's set) and had only just found the place because someone had been playing silly buggers with the roadsigns. This confirmed out worst fears, and so we sent one of ours in the car with them to the doof to try, again, to summon more help or at least get more water - I didn't know what the forecast was for the day, but if it had been something like it had at the Wibbltey Wobblties for instance, the injured party could well have died of heaststroke. By the grace of gods unknown, he was calm enough now that we could untie him and he could sit up, almost talking coherently. He was mildly concussed, but I checked him over as he was now sane enough to lie flat without struggling and I could find no broken bones or signs of internal bleeding - He had blood in his mouth from biting his lip in the crash, had chipped a couple of teeth but appeared to be otherwise sound exlcuding minor abrasions and lacerations. He would, it appeared, be okay, but nontheless he needed to be taken to perth and assessed by a medical professional. Now no longer knowing if the ambulance was ever going to find us, at last a car appeared from the doof. it was the one we had sent in earlier, that had found us and confirmed our fears about the signs. it held the guy we had sent back, a drunk driver, some water and spare seats for the three of us including the injured party. We brought him back to the doof, at which point we were greeted by several others from the original crash and more then one who had told us the organisers had been informed and the situation was 'under control'.
Now that he was calmer, no longer in the danger of killing himself and not suffering from any life threatening injuries I was more then happy to leave him in the company of his 'real friends' who all had wanted to "calm him down with a nice cone" or "take him down to the dance floor to relax" when he had first shown signs of freaking out, before he got into his car. These were, admittedly, a younger crowd, and not what I would call exactly responsible in their substance use, but no one had made any attempts to take his keys away from him, or take him somewhere quiet, or anything.
The previous night I had seen, on the dance floor, an individual stripped down to the undies, furiously masturbating. This, whilst admittedly utterly inappropriate behaviour, was not what I would call threatening or dangerous, but nontheless an invidual whose name I do not know but have seen doofing regularly and would expect better of, king-hit him into one of the projector screens. I don't know the whole story there - maybe he'd been jacking off onto the other guy's girlfriend or something, I don't know. But the way it appeared was that someone whose drugs had gotten the better of them was dealt with in a disgustingly primitive way. In my limited opinion, someone who was that fucked up on god knows what should be steered away from the dance floor, re-dressed by someone competent, his friends found and maybe locked him in the car or sat him down at the chillout stage for a while, if not just asked to leave.
These two events have shown me that we have failings in our duty of care. if we're going to have a party, a public party, people are probably going to show up who we don't want to be there. They might cause problems, or ruin our night. That's shit, and needs to be fixed. We should all be more careful about who we tell. But everyone deserved the right to be helped. if they're going wrong, people who know right should tell them right. There are those I know who will refuse to listen - Bourbon guzzling pillchewing hilux-driving pig-hunting bootscooters for instance, who will find their kicks by hassling a couple of guys cuddling on the dance floor, hurling abuse and threatening them - But when there are young people coming into the scene, who don't necessarily know what they're doing, taking too much of whatever and getting into trouble, then there clearly needs to be more education. It's very difficult, I know, to teach people how they should take their drugs, or what to take if anything at all - We can't exactly hold public service announcements on how many mushie caps you should take for your first time, I know - But we need to realise that as much as we would like to be, we are not completely seperate from reality. People we don't want to be there might be there. People who can't handle their shit might not handle their shit. And we should be prepared. Someone should take the responsibility of dealing with shit when it happens - Nobody wants to spend their whole night running around after young fucks who think they're invulnerable, who wouldn't listen to reason - But I know there are medical professionals in the scene, would it be too much to ask for someone higher-up to have a lockbox up by the DJ with some valium in it? Some mild sedatives would have resolved the situation much faster then it otherwise was, or even someone with medical training coming out to assess the poor guy. Even if all they could do is come out, take his pulse, look at him and say "Yep, he's freaking out. No, he's not going to die. No, we can't move him." And then gone back to the doof, at least then i could have known whether or not I was going to have to start CPR at any second. I didn't know how long ago he'd taken the pills and speed or if he was ODing as well as having his manic episode. We ran for a good three k at least, but that's a five minute drive and a two minute diagnosis to see if he's critical or not.
Even if you don't want them at your party, if they're at your party, you have duty of care. I don't want to sound like I'm accusing anyone of failing in their duties, but someone did. Either the people I sent back didn't tell what they were supposed to, or I didn't tell them properly what to say, or who they told didn't properly act. But it was only sheer goddamn luck that that boy is still alive today. And i can guarantee that if he'd died out there it would have been the last party for a while.
Situations like this will happen again, if we don't take steps to resolve things. People will still continue to be irresponsible with their bodies, and as much as we don't like to have to clean up their messes, until they learn their lessons we're going to have to. We are all human beings, the same blood and bone, just different minds. And if you think someone is doing something wrong, you need to help them to do it right. We need to keep people safe, either by keeping them OUT or teaching them how to behave.
Without harping on too much, as I'm sure this is already a huge post, things need to change. We either need to privatise better, or take adequate precautions to stop something like this from happening again. I can only thank everyone who was there and who acted responsibly and did everything they could. I shudder to think what would have happened to him if we hadn't seen him, or if his pillhead buddies had just let him roam off into the bush. Would we ever have seen him again, alive?
I truly doubt it.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
sometimes the cold gets in my bones so bad, that I just don't think i can go on...
laying down to sleep I turn my mind inwards - stare at the craks in the walls and let my head puddle into the matress. lint in my eyes. It tastes like a very old, very loved teddy bear that has been left out in the rain and then dried in the oven once too often. not explicitly damp, jsut kind of musty. Fungal. Reminiscent of long camping trips down Ballingup way searching for holy spores and strange golden growths.
Stop - Don't get caught up in the nostalgia. Don't be an armchair tripper. Don't sit there with your brandy and cigar blathering about the good old days...Its just that, well... I'm all for women's sufferage, mostly because I enjoy seeing women suffer. hah.
I’m a depressed, muttering, repressed suffering maniac
Screaming at anybody, anyplace.
Everyone I know is on drugs. And I hate it. it's selfish of me. partially because I feel like I want to be special - I want to have one up on everyone else, and that's my leverage. Drugs make you COOL, yeah? you dig? No. I hate it because everyone is so fucking weird and fucked up and I can't escape anything. There's nowhere to hide. The best I can do is curl up on the couch in an empty house, bake bread and watch battlestar galactica.
Send lawyers, gun and money. Get me out of this.
I'm losing faith. Losing touch. Losing days, losing memories.
The powder's power only lasts for an hour, so it winds up with me chasing my sanity around on a string, long white lines, one after the other up the septum - Searing, blistering moments of AWAKE AND READY, just enough time to get my work done before I have to go and hide in bed again.
Fuck your problems. I'm sick of hearing how shit your life is. I'm sick of having to pick up the pieces. I can't do this. I want to be there for you but you're sucking the life out of me. I can't taste the rain on my lips, but it's ok because I'm crying anyway. my cigarette has gone out and the day grows dim. eyes cloud - old dog's cataracts and a youngblood's pride.
Left foot, right foot
Keep it moving...
I spent the last eighteen years of my life learning my way - Finally I felt direction, for a few brief moments. Clarity was fleeting. I can still smell it in the air like gunsmoke.
Night cycles, sun rises, people work, die, fuck and sleep. Then again the next day.
my aim is to find the place between black and white. The hidden light between night and day. That twilight zone between the covers of reality, down an alleyway in time
Probability strikes random targets - We play dice with the universe, but for the losers... the powder and pills ain’t no way to heal, my friend.
People say that a lot about drug users. That we're burnouts. Junkies. Losers.
it's easy to win.
Stop - Don't get caught up in the nostalgia. Don't be an armchair tripper. Don't sit there with your brandy and cigar blathering about the good old days...Its just that, well... I'm all for women's sufferage, mostly because I enjoy seeing women suffer. hah.
I’m a depressed, muttering, repressed suffering maniac
Screaming at anybody, anyplace.
Everyone I know is on drugs. And I hate it. it's selfish of me. partially because I feel like I want to be special - I want to have one up on everyone else, and that's my leverage. Drugs make you COOL, yeah? you dig? No. I hate it because everyone is so fucking weird and fucked up and I can't escape anything. There's nowhere to hide. The best I can do is curl up on the couch in an empty house, bake bread and watch battlestar galactica.
Send lawyers, gun and money. Get me out of this.
I'm losing faith. Losing touch. Losing days, losing memories.
The powder's power only lasts for an hour, so it winds up with me chasing my sanity around on a string, long white lines, one after the other up the septum - Searing, blistering moments of AWAKE AND READY, just enough time to get my work done before I have to go and hide in bed again.
Fuck your problems. I'm sick of hearing how shit your life is. I'm sick of having to pick up the pieces. I can't do this. I want to be there for you but you're sucking the life out of me. I can't taste the rain on my lips, but it's ok because I'm crying anyway. my cigarette has gone out and the day grows dim. eyes cloud - old dog's cataracts and a youngblood's pride.
Left foot, right foot
Keep it moving...
I spent the last eighteen years of my life learning my way - Finally I felt direction, for a few brief moments. Clarity was fleeting. I can still smell it in the air like gunsmoke.
Night cycles, sun rises, people work, die, fuck and sleep. Then again the next day.
my aim is to find the place between black and white. The hidden light between night and day. That twilight zone between the covers of reality, down an alleyway in time
Probability strikes random targets - We play dice with the universe, but for the losers... the powder and pills ain’t no way to heal, my friend.
People say that a lot about drug users. That we're burnouts. Junkies. Losers.
it's easy to win.
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