6. Stoner Adventures, vol. III

	Calm springs days unnerve me, giving me this feel of
restlessness, this sense that all is not as quiet as it seems in
Nietzsche's raging universe.  Such was this day, southern California
cool, as I sat on the small porch some distance from my room, hoping no
one would recognize the super-fat jay I'd rolled with two pieces of
zigzag.  I knew I shouldn't smoke the whole thing myself, but as I had
no obligations and needed to kill that horrible restlessness, that
searching feeling which has brought me despondent to many sealed doors,
I sucked the whole thing down, finishing with the aid of my keys, which
served as a faithful roach clip.  I got up, leaving my copy of
Zarathustra on the seat.
	Back into my now-incredibly-dark room, I staggered around the
piles of paper and cigarette butts, finally groping to my screen.  I
stared at it for some time, wondering what I should be doing.  I was
pretty well stoned, as that jay must have had five grams of dope in it,
good home-grown Berkeley Turbo Zonk, but my tolerance betrayed me, and
so when Spike came in the door with a huge box and a wide grin, I was
receptive.
	"Hey, man...look what came in the mail."
	"Is this the 'art project' you were telling me about?"
	"Yeah, check it out.  Took quite a bit in shipping and all, but
now it's here, and I just bought a bag, so let's break it in."
	"Agreed." (enthusiastically; I refuse to use the ! on a routine
basis & especially not in situations such as that, as it is overused as
hell by most of this country, especially teenaged girls, who can't seem
to convey anything of any importance at all without at least six !
trailing their sentence like a vicious tracer)
	Spike pulled open the top of the box and lifted out the object
inside with some difficulty.  I couldn't believe my eyes, as he appeared
to be pulling out the most unlikely object ever to be bongified,
something that appeared to be a large explosive device.  With the usual
slender tapered shape of a dangerous weapon, it sloped not into fins but
the large mouth of some form of bottle, transplanted.  Spike propped it
against the wall and pulled out a small stand designed to fit under the
detonator end and then rested the bomg (for such was it to be called) in
it.  The bowl was literally huge -- he must have found some oddball
place to do this work -- and the entire thing seemed to be sealed tight
as a drum.
	"Spike...what?...how?...who?"
	"My brother works on a five-silo site in North Dakota, and since
they're stationed way up there and some local growers produce prime
dope, they smoke a lot.  He gets stoned more than I do, and he will even
more now, since they've coopted the mess department, who've promised to
requisition more funds for 'morale-boosting holiday dinners' and
munchies.  I think they sold some equipment or something, because
they're not living off of their salaries -- anyway, he found one of
these lying around, and converted it into a bong with some help from the
machine department they have as part of their post-nuclear survival
plan."
	"What was it?"
	"A Mk62 nuclear device, with option for cluster munitions, nerve
gas and herbicidal devices."
	"Oh."
	As he said this, Spike was busily loading the bowl from the
fattest, greenest bag of dope I've seen in some time.  "I got this from
my brother, too -- they apparently got rid of a missile or something,
because they have a whole silo now to grow dope in.  I think the
radioactive residue helps or something.  Here, take this--"
	It was a brilliant hit.  More subtle than Camus, more potent
than Sartre, more brainshocking than Nietzsche...brilliant.  As I sort
of wobbled in the corner, Spike took another.  "Damn, there almost is a
gOD," he said when finally able.
	So here I was, restless, sort of ambling for something more in a
giant intellectual space I had no control over.  It's not the
restlessness itself that's so bad, I guess, but the feel of the reason
behind the restlessness, that maybe it's all foolish and damnable and I
might as well go smoke a giant fat one because there isn't much point in
anything else -- all about the same, which transforms this into the kind
of positive thought that weed sometimes helps slip into your mind.  Or
maybe it is the restlessness.  While Spike loaded the bowl again, I was
itching to go, but I wasn't that sure that I could move.  Nevertheless
another bomg hit did me well, I think.
	Once again on the street.  Spike and I dodged cars, spoke to
strangers and fed fifty pennies into a Coke machine (it spat them all
out).  We walked past a man preaching from his sidewalk can about the
world ending & the value of money to him, helping save souls, but we
didn't give him our fifty pennies.
	We came to a fountain.  Spike was pretty much nonfunctional,
having whipped out a similar joint to mine and smoked it with me,
putting him well "under the influence."  I was holding a handful of
useless pennies, shiny, bright things that reminded me of spring days in
childhood, innocent foolish thoughts of how pretty they were & better
than gold.  I threw them into the fountain, where they engendered a
brief & lasting (on the backs of my eyes) rainfall.  Spike asked me why
I did that & I replied that it was for good luck, although it never had
brought it to me, and he asked me why I did it then, & I said it was a
product of hope, 'cuz otherwise it was too cold to see.
	Seven men spoke to us about politics, but I don't think I heard
much of what they were saying; we went back our way, skipping rocks down
the gutter.