3 NOVEMBER, 2021

Looking back at some of the letters that preceded this one, I think I understand more about what has discouraged me from posting them: they are too personal, affecting others than myself. I think/hope it might be easier to put them out into the world between the covers of a book. Meantime, be aware that I have skipped over quite a number of those letters before resuming here...

Dear Harry,

So I promised you more about Norman, the fellow poet whose friendship contributed to a huge, irreversible change in my life and the way I see the world.

It was that same summer. He was invited down to visit friends on a farm some way to the south, not far from Hannibal, Missouri, and asked me if I’d like to join him for the drive. Of course I agreed. I was free, after all, to do anything I cared to. The drive was a spectacular one, through lovely hilly, wooded countryside to a spot so remote, amidst the hills, there was no other human habitation anywhere in sight. To complete the dreamscape, Norman’s friends—a man and a woman with a horde of untamed children—came out to greet us in the flowing white garments of true flower children. I could have imagined garlands in their hair. Our supper was a simple one: artichokes, with a butter dip for the leaves. I had never seen this kind of artichoke before, let alone eaten one, and I found the taste delicious.

Was there bread? Wine? Perhaps. I don’t recall.

But I do remember the thunderstorm that followed, in the night. I promise, Harry, you have never experienced anything like a storm in the American Midwest. Our English storms are polite affairs beside these monsters, with lightning strikes that split the endless sky, thunder that roils the countryside, and often hail—sometimes the size of golf balls, sometimes even larger; on one occasion, in Iowa City, great chunks of ice came tumbling out of a black-green sky, so big that the bodywork of every car in the city unprotected by garage or carport was left badly dented). You would be awed, as I was, always, by these giant storms and by the threat of killer tornados they bring with them. I remember standing at the window of my room that night and gazing out in wonder, and perhaps some fear, inspired by the raw power unleashed by nature at its wildest.

The next morning arrived bright, still, serene, the grass and leaves still glistening from the rain the night before. Was there breakfast? I have no memory of sitting down with the family to eat—but I found Norman and his friend standing by the refrigerator engaged in some kind of serious debate, which was resolved only when they showed me a little tab and asked me if I’d like to join them on an “acid trip.”
br> Acid! While I had been smoking marijuana quite a bit that summer, I still harbored a good deal of fear when it came to drugs. I had heard about LSD, of course, who hadn’t? Psychedelics flourished, and not only in the music I had come to love. It had certainly never occurred to me that this might be the purpose of Norman’s trip; but now, confronted with a new challenge to my fears… I could not say no. I laid the proffered tab on my tongue and washed it down with a glass of water.

We walked out away from the farm, the three of us, down towards what I’d learned was called the Femme Osage Creek. There was the legend of some Indian woman involved, many years before. Perhaps she still haunted this lovely landscape… At first I was unimpressed. I thought that nothing much had happened, aside from perhaps a sharpening of color, a brightening of perception. I began to wonder what the fuss was all about.

But then it hit. I realized I was no longer in the world I thought I knew. I found myself sitting naked in the creek, gazing down into the shallows where crawdads darted along a bed of smooth, brown stones below the surface of the water. I could see Norman sitting way upstream from me, naked also, gazing like myself into the wondrous aspect of a world that had started to reveal itself, everywhere, in its true nature. Everything—trees, rocks, birds, fields of grass, wildflowers—everything was suddenly, vibrantly alive, and everything, everything was in the process of communication, all things with each other, and everything with me. The normal barriers of perception vanished; I could see, I could hear, and better still I could absolutely understand everything around me. We were one. There was no mystery, only glorious, all-embracing clarity. It all made sense. The sudden, scarlet flash of a cardinal against the lush green of the trees was a message I could readily understand, reflecting the inner untrammeled elation that I felt.

How long did it last, that feeling? I don’t know. It could have been hours. It was only later that day that I began to realize I had been separated from my friends. Where was I? Had they left me? The realization that I was all alone and still in this strangely altered state of mind began to translate into a gripping fear. I was cold. Darkness had begun to fall. I was disoriented, unsure which way would lead back to the farmhouse, back to other people in this vast emptiness. Had I lost my mind, along with my sense of direction? Something like panic started to set in as I looked around in vain for some recognizable landmark…

I walked and walked. I walked until I was so tired I was not sure I could walk further and only then, with inexpressible relief, caught sight of the farm we’d started from. Norman came out to greet me. “We were quite worried about you,” he said. “We wondered where you’d got to.” I fell into his arms.

Was this a kind of religious ecstasy, I ask myself in retrospect? Did you, Harry, ever experience anything of the kind? The reason I tell you about it is that the experience proved to be not limited to that one day. It left a profound and permanent mark on my understanding of the world and my place in it. I never again experimented with the drug. I never felt the need or the desire to do so, knowing that the change had already happened, that my perception would never again be quite as it had been before. I wrote s series of prose poems and gave it the title “Femme Osage.”

If you challenge me I will readily admit that there was something false, something artificial in this new sense of liberation I’d acquired. But there was also something profoundly true. Aldous Huxley wrote about it in “The Doors of Perception”, and while I have not read this book for many years, I know it was an effort to expand the realm of consciousness to areas as yet unexplored. I’ll have more to share with you about all this in due course, when I tell you something of my own (“religious”? “spiritual”?) conversion.

In gratefully remembered ecstasy, your son, Peter