The Ephemeral City

Yesterday was a crazy adventure. I woke up at Seattle Pacific University, where I had been staying with my friend Benny and his cool roommates. They let me crash on their beanbag, which was surprisingly comfortable. They were all busy in the morning, so I headed to the school’s library to work on editing the novel that I’m writing. After a bit I caught a bus to the U-District to meet my friend Caroline for lunch at Café on the Ave. She’s going to dental school at UW. We hadn’t seen each other for a year and a half and it was great to catch up.

 The sun was out, so we decided to walk through the beautiful UW campus, when who should appear out of nowhere but Jeff Jorgensen, whom I had hung out with the day before (1^st Chance encounter of the day). No more than five minutes later, my buddy Luke from PLU showed up at this same random spot (2^nd chance encounter of the day). 

Caroline had to leave, so I ran off with Jeff. When walking by the music building, I spotted a patch of Amanita muscaria mushrooms, which I have been on the hunt for for quite a while. These are the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ ‘Super Mario Bros.” mushrooms.

 Very nice. Jeff and I promptly picked them and stored them in his bag. We found out later that these are not illegal to possess, like the psilocybin mushrooms, as they contain a different mind-altering chemical, muscimol. I was eager to try one.

Overcome by hunger, we went to a Pho place on the ave, where I ran in to Jeff Rud, brother of Mark, who I had seen a few days earlier (3^rd chance encounter). After eating, we saw my friend Haylee on the ave (4^th chance encounter), and she gave us a Ziploc of M&Ms. Alright!

With a full belly, I became quite tired and tried to nap as Jeff played Tetris in a city park. I couldn’t sleep. I’m finding that all of the new experiences make me pretty sleepy in the late afternoon, just as it’s getting dark. Back at Jeff’s, I ate one of the Amanita caps; one is a rather low dosage, but I basically had the feeling of being just a little tipsy, with no bad side effects. I’m eager to try the Amanita again.

Spent the night at Haylee’s apartment on Capitol Hill. I’ve grown rather fond of Seattle, and I was sad to leave it this morning.