This sounds obvious, but it is something my music teachers tried
in vain to teach me for years. Until I started getting stoned, I could not differentiate one instrument from another. Now I can pick out the different parts that make up one piece of music. Instead of hearing a big jumble of sound, I can distinguish numerous small sounds working together. I'm even beginning to be able to identify a few sounds as coming from a particular instrument, which is a new adventure for me.I have come to have a greater appreciation of art in the same manner. Through looking at pictures while stoned, I have learned to see the detail, to look for the feelings in pictures. Colors stand out as more vivid, and slight variations in hues become more discernible. I have a small book of prints by Salvador Dali, which I enjoy looking at when I'm stoned. He paints schizophrenia and other intangible aberrations into visible, tangible pictures.
Marijuana grown in different places has different effects. The first time I got loaded on Jamaican, I felt as if some oversized dark-complexioned god was walking through the fields of my mind, swinging a hammer, tearing down the walls and fences, crushing out the choking vines of repressed knowledge, feelings, and memories. I can pinpoint that experience as the point where I started to believe I could do something intelligent and constructive with my life.
Mexican taught me how to laugh; or rather, it taught me that it is okay to laugh. Mexican, of course, was my first high. I learned that I could relax, that nobody was going to gobble me up. And I learned that not all humor is malignant, the way it was at home. Being stoned on Mexican taught me that laughter is essential, not the laughter that ridicules but the laughter that says, "Hey, I feel good! The world feels good! And it's okay to feel this way!" This was something I had not known previously; I laughed when I was stoned, and when I came down it was still okay.
Colombian is like a cool breeze blowing through the summer midday of my mind, teaching perseverance, concentration, and the beginnings of patience. On Colombian, things feel that they are fitting together more smoothly, as though all of my physical and mental processes are at last synchronized. I learned to concentrate, to really concentrate on one thing, to do some really heavy thinking without feeling like I was some kind of weirdo. I discovered that deep thinking was actually good for me, that it was a natural tendency of mine that had been severely repressed from early childhood. I learned that solutions to problems could be found in my own mind, that I didn't need somebody else to point the way for me all the time. And I found out that people who think are not the sad cases in the world.
Smoking has its disadvantages too. That same Colombian that blows a cool refreshing breeze can also blow up a hot arid storm. When this happens, there is nothing I can do except ride it out. Getting frustrated just makes it more intense and longer lasting. Pressure builds behind my eyes, and my head becomes hot. Thoughts don't flow freely. Concentration becomes difficult. \0Ihen this happens, I just do the dishes or sweep the floors or get involved in some other physical activity until the storm subsides, as it always does.
When I'm stoned, my thoughts fly to some pretty strange places. It's fantastic. The doors in my mind are thrown open wide, and I'm free to retrieve much more information stored in the library of gray matter than I can ever manage to tap when I'm straight. I read a report somewhere that pot affects the user at his memory switching station. I think the report is right, but I don't find it to be cause for alarm.
Many of my repressed childhood memories come back to me when I'm high, and I can see that life is dynamic and not static. I try to let myself see what went on; before a pattern can be altered, it must first be sharply defined, and marijuana has given me back my childhood through memories that were hidden for years. It has enabled me to begin perceiving and altering the patterns of my life, making them constructive instead of destructive.
I've always been a reader, and smoking marijuana has helped me to see the world in more ways than just the printed word. Now I can also see things in pictures, thoughts, sounds, ideas, emotions, and physical sensations. It's like when I started getting stoned, somebody starting letting up the shades on all the windows in my mind. Now I'm learning to translate knowledge and experience from one realm to another, just like translating a book from one language to another. And in the process, I'm coming more together.