Mimsy Were the Borogoves

by Derek Bushmiller

I stood eying the small tan caps, roughly the size of a quarter, and the off white stems, sitting in the palm of my hand. I vaguely remembered hearing something about how psychedelic mushrooms grew in cow shit, but put it out of my mind. Best not to dwell on it as I was already rather disgusted at the thought of having to put the dirty little pile of fungus in my mouth. I had eaten mushrooms on two prior occasions, but both times they had been baked into chocolates, and had been rather weak. This batch we were assured were extremely potent, and I was hesitant not only about actually eating the fungus itself, but about the trip that was to follow.

I glanced over to see if my two companions were as hesitant about the process as I was. My friend Wade seemed to share the same reservations as I, staring at his pile like a child preparing to wade into a swimming pool, timidly dipping a toe or two in to check the temperature before committing to anything rash. Fred, on the other hand, apparently ascribed to the philosophy of diving in headfirst, as he was already chomping away at a mouthful, gathering the last remaining bits from the bottom of his bag. Wade and I exchanged glances and popped a handful into our mouths, following Fred to wherever it was we would be going.

Not wanting to sit around idly, nervously anticipating the imminent trip ahead, we headed down the hall to the resident stoner lounge on our floor. We settled in with a handful of our baked companions who were lounging around, smoking a bowl and, fittingly enough, preparing to watch the movie Dazed and Confused. About half an hour into the movie I noticed that I had gotten a bit chilly and that my palms were clammy and perspiring. I wondered for a split second if the mushrooms were kicking in, but I suddenly had my answer. ‘Ohhhh fuck,’ I thought to myself as I was propelled headlong down the rabbit hole in a matter of seconds, my once familiar surroundings becoming strange and alien, my mind working a mile a minute in an attempt to sort things out.

The wave of anxious energy soon crested into a giggling euphoria, as I looked in amazement around the room I had sat in a million times, but had somehow failed to realize its overwhelming beauty. I was fascinated by the glow of the bright box in the corner that seemed to hold everyone’s attention, shimmering in the dark room, displaying the most vividly brilliant colors I had ever seen. Suddenly the colors began to swirl and the surface that separated us from the world inside the box took on the consistency of water, pulsing and flowing. There were people on the other side of that bright little window. Smoking pot. Drinking beers. It sounds like they’re planning quite the party at the moontower. Struck by the similarity between the box people and our selves I’m suddenly faced with a Sartrian conundrum—no, no, I mean sartorial conundrum. Which side of the box is real? Inside or out? It was quite conceivable that the people inside the box were real and we were not. Perhaps they too were sitting around a similar box, observing our absurdly trivial existence, ascribing meanings to the arbitrary situations in which we found ourselves that were relative to their own consciousness.

Bordering precariously on the edge of losing it I decided it would be best to retire to my room to collect myself. I eloquently stated my intention to take leave of my friends for a moment of quiet reflection, “I gotta go. I’m fucking freaking out, dude!” And took my leave…

Safely back in my bedroom I stumbled upon the most amazing discovery. I could, at will, change it from light to dark merely through the manipulation of a magic lever that sat above my bed. I alone could decide whether it was day or night. Ecstatic at my newfound control of nature I began jumping on my bed, giggling furiously as I tested out my new powers.

“Daytime!”

“Nighttime!”

“Daytime!”

“Nighttime!” I shouted as I commanded the sun to do my bidding.

At this point my roommate, who I had earlier informed of my plans, returned to the room, curious as to how my trip was going.

“Drew! Drew! Check this shit out!” I exclaimed, eagerly demonstrating my powers.

“Awesome man. Keep up the good work,” he replied, clearly less enthused at my discovery than I had been. Maybe if he knew how it worked.

“Look, all you have to do is move this thing! Do you want it day or night?” I explained to him, sharing the secret of my powers.

“Its your world, man. I was just seeing how your trip was going. Looks pretty good. I’m out, but enjoy that light switch.”

With my audience gone I soon got bored with my discovery and became distracted by another intense flurry of psilocybin fueled existential deliberations. The uncomfortable feelings of anxiety that had caused my earlier flight from the pot den resurfaced and I crawled under my covers, trying in vain to come down. In the dark room with my eyes closed I became entirely convinced that I was dead. I laid absolutely still, unable to open my eyes, listening to the sounds of sirens on the streets outside. ‘That must be the ambulance coming to get my body,’ I thought to myself rather matter of factly.

Indeed the more I became convinced that I had died the more I became accepting of the fact, and a sudden calm came over me. I began to lose my concept of self, viewing my situation less in terms of dead or alive, but rather in terms of states of consciousness. I was no longer ‘alive’, and yet I still existed somewhere in some fashion. Viewing my situation by way of a sort of cosmic reductionism, convinced that “I”, whoever I was, was all that existed, as some singular entity or idea, floating through eternity, and that everything that I had ‘experienced’ up to this point, everything that I had believed ‘existed’, were nothing but the product of my sole consciousness.

I decided that this black emptiness was reality, and that all that the objects and people I had encountered in “life” were imaginary, nothing more than inventions, born out of a lonely entity unable to cope with being alone in the universe.

Suddenly, I opened my eyes and took stock of my surroundings, realizing where I was, who I was, and that I had been tripping on mushrooms and I was coming back down to baseline. I decided to get up and join the collection of people across the hall, all who peppered me with questions about my experience, which, out of a fear of sounding like some corny New Age philosopher, I mostly replied to with vague assertions of, “It was fucking trippy, man. I thought I died,” and descriptions of color swirls and other minor details.

Casting aside the mushroom induced revelations about existence of the previous hours, I delved wholeheartedly back into a world that may or may not have been just a figment of my imagination.