I'm probably late to the party with this one, but here it goes:

During my first year of college in San Francisco, I decided to try a shroom candy for the first time ever. Up until this point, I hadn't tried any kind of drug (so, me being me, why not start that whole period of my life with a super potent piece of hallucinogen.) A group of us took one each. The ring leader had been taking shrooms every day for about a week for a project. (We were in art school. Stop rolling your eyes.)

Anyway, as the night went on it slowly started to kick in. My body began to feel a little fuzzy, but everything around me made me happy. Like, I couldn't stop smiling. We all decided to take a walk around the block, and we all had forgotten that the Sun had already done down (we had other things going on in are brains all the time.) San Francisco Winters a decade ago, brought with it rain. And it stormed that night.

I remember, while walking by a corner store, drops slowly starting to hit a dry cement wall. And just then, a car opposite the street made a turn and turn on its high beams and the shadows of the rain became people and creatures splattering like paint across buildings. Flowers, left out by the corner store, became slowly danced as I grew tall while I walked down a hill and short, when I walked up one.

After we circled the block, we went into the courtyard of a dorm. The courtyard was beautiful and one wall was devoted to growing vines climbing ever higher. That's when I met, what I called him anyway, the Green Man that lived inside my head. I watched these vines on the wall move around, twist like snakes. But not eerie or scary. It was beautiful, I felt as though I understood a part of nature and a kind of inter-connectivity I could only (up until that point) intellectually understand.

At this point in the evening we had each gone our separate ways, either back to our rooms or into the community lounge. A friend of mine stayed outside with me as he slowly walked around, sat, and just talked about all of those things we couldn't feel like we could talk about when we were sober. Religion, mortality, spirituality, creativity, inspiration, imagination. No topic was too complicated and all of it was positive.

A handful of hours had passed and my friend and I decided go back into the dorm where a friend, an amateur documentarian wanted to know if he could film some stuff and ask questions. Half of us said yes, and so the evening slowly melted into a video shoot where probing questions of how we felt were asked.

Finally, as the sun slowly rose, and I became more in control of my thoughts. (You know what I mean, when that particular voice comes back. The one that can counter-argue, reason, and question.) It was then that I decided to e-mail myself a letter, just then, of how I felt. It was to an old Yahoo! mail account (pre-google long-ago) and I didn't save it. Though I do remember very clear:

"We are all Bhudda, Jesus, and Shiva. We've created simple mirrors to describe the complexities of our world. We are all apart of the chaotic rainbow."

I remember this exactly because, for a project, I made it into a poster. (First year of art school was pretty enlightening while experiencing it, but embarrassing when looking back on it.)

After I sent the e-mail, I remember looking to this guy next to me at the second computer.

And that's how I met my best friend.