Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ferment was a piece of shit, a waste of time and life, just like school at the State U. Yeah, sure,
he was having a great time, but he was hanging out, just this side of hiding out, and he needed
to be somewhere he could call home. He wasn't certain where that would be, but it would be
somewhere he wasn't afraid of being drafted.
He told me to look around—look at him and myself and all the misfits we hung out with,
all of us refugees from a world at war, hiding out on a campus. “College? For us? Fuck, man.
We should be out there getting started.”
He loved hanging out but hated the classes and the hours wasted on empty talk with noth-
ing to teach or learn. He hated school.
I assured him he'd hate the jungle worse. He nodded—no argument there, but it only
boiled down to two choices if you let it. He had a bad feeling about the whole situation—the
United States of America situation, that is. Kenny was a conspiracy theorist, often melodra-
matic and sometimes correct. He proved true to his convictions and spirit.
He vanished a few months later to Canada.
It felt like a death in the family. Premature departure made it more poignant, cold and
anonymous. One of the guidelines for crossing into Canada was no talk beforehand, no com-
munication or indication after. Close friends disappeared, as if by choice. The Federales went
north on clues to bring potential soldiers home.
The seasoned among us knew that drugs could expand the mind, yet we had to keep that
expansion within boundaries, with sustained connection to the non-tripping world we lived
in most of the time.
Obviously, some failures occurred, though acid burnout was mostly attributed to excessive
frequency and/or dosage. Both culprits were triggered by the rock 'n roll mentality of more,
more, more. If one hit was cosmic then two hits should have been galactic, or something
silly—make that stupid, with nine hits revealing the face of God. So it was. Those burnouts
looked crispy—and insane.
The point was that the drug of the day would magnify many things, so the drug should
be avoided if those things were dark, or in any way doubtful, apprehensive or anxious. A situ-
ation rife with challenges and complexity should not be compounded with LSD, mescaline,
psilocybin or peyote. The alternate realist should wait with faith that happiness runs in a cir-
cular motion; in time the circle would come round again to a better place.
Donovan was soft, nearly quaint, getting it every time. So we waited a while. But how long
could we postpone a major distraction, with life already on hold? And what about the boys in
the jungle war? They couldn't very well wait for some blue sky and daffodils.
It was a time, a time it was and all that with the love all around us and flower power and
demonstrations two, three, five times a week, where a college guy could get laid by being draft
age and keeping his mouth shut. Joan Baez advised the girls—before the girls became wo-
