Chasing the Dragon

He mumbles something. Its not Latin, I decide. After a couple of moments of my brain doing its best Bletchley Park, I deduce its the parlance for ‘grown under lights, carefully fussed over and supposedly maxed out in Tetrahydrocannabinol’. He cycles through a few more cultivars. All deadly I’m sure. I don’t feel like rolling my own, and beggars can’t be choosers. ‘Two drags and my girlfriend is done’ he continues. The owner of this dispensary is a former school teacher recently returned from the Emirates. He’s a really nice guy, last time I was there he made me toasted panini with cheese, olives and prosciutto. This guy is the weekend stand-in, whose waffling I now grow weary of.

He hauls a jar off the shelf like a sommelier, unscrews the lid and holds it up to me for inspection. This requires some interaction on my part I realize. It certainly looks like cannabis to me. Does he want me to smell it I wonder? Are there some theatrics involved that I’m unaware of. Is it like wine-tasting? Am I getting hints of blackberries or… eh… something?

I must be honest. Being able to walk into a store on the Main Street and Apple-pay for weed still feels very… odd. Surreal even.

In my day (cue wavy lines) we had to go to a sketchy park and give some dude money. Who would then disappear for a while and come back with a small zip-lock bag of… inconsistent quality. A sliding scale where lawn clippings were on the one end and brain damage was on the other.

*coughs* This stuff however, is pretty strong…

I head into my office, kickback and try to work through a jumble of alt. rock I’m attempting to curate into a playlist. But its too jarring… too uncomfortable.

Weirdly. And somewhat omnisciently Spotify queues up Johann Pachelbel, Canon and Gigue for three violins in D Major.

Which blows my frikken mind!

THIS is the best song I’ve ever listened to in my whole entire life I decide, getting a little teary.

(re-listening to it not-baked-out-of-my-brackets does not illicit the same response, I mean its still good… but obviously not as AMAZING as after you’ve set the neurons in your hippocampus on fire. Also, OMG was I listening to this at FULL volume last night?)

Now I’m wondering what some of the other stuff might sounds like. Vivaldi. Mussorgsky. Dvorak. Beethoven. It’ll probably sounds better on vinyl I ruminate. Although I don’t have a headphone jack for my record player. I imagine some of the other residents of the domicile might vocalize their displeasure if at 11pm their blazed paternal authority figure is aerating Wagner throughout the habitat. (For some reason this suddenly reminds me of Inspector Morse, which if you don’t have a certain proclivity is likely quite an obscure reference)

Even better would be a concert I decide. I mean a philharmonic orchestra would be perfect wouldn’t it? You can sit there for two hours, completely zoned in. You don’t have interact with anyone and by the time it’s done you’ve likely come down and can be social again.

I laugh as I suddenly imagine myself as Anthony Hopkins in Red Dragon. Although without the post-concert cannibalism. I can however empathize with the red-mist of hangry-ness that likely came over him.

I’m adding it to my to-do list. The concert part I mean, not the soirees with snobby theater wonks and the divine-looking amuse-bouche.

Think to yourself that every day is your last, the hour to which you do not look forward, will come as a welcome surprise. As for me, when you want a good laugh, you will find me in a fine state, fat and sleek… a true hog of Epicurus’ herd

-Horace, cribbed by H Lector.