Cookie Lady
Psychedelic Water 28
*
The band plays on while the Hermetically trained shaman departs the labyrinthine market.
He passes through rainbow arches of brilliant heraldic fabrics and negotiates a
cunning obstacle course of shin-high wooden benches designed for yesteryear’s
dwarfish five year olds. The old public school - a regimented rabbit warren
closed down years ago with the demise of the Baby Boom, now taken over by a far
hipper community - occupies most of the triangular central block in the
phantasmagorical little village.
The recycled wooden buildings are now filled by community
groups, studios, workshops, the local FM radio station, eateries, galleries, a kindergarten
and childminding centre, ‘youth groups’, alternative media and rehearsal spaces.
This weekend all the yards and outdoor passageways are fringed
with a market of Byzantine proportions and complexity, where any number of
useful, useless and luxurious items and substances can be found at reasonable
rates (and barter is common at Mardi Grass, during the peak of the harvest
season).
He turns onto the main drag and a hirsute Nimbin original
from the era of the original Aquarius Festival - whose family has lived in the
area since hippies first began resurrecting the cattle-devastated fertile hills
- assails him from the nature strip in mercantile greeting; “Ah, here’s someone
who’ll be interested in this new generation of alarmingly great psychedelic
t-shirts! Step right up and take a gander at these enlightening images, kind
sir!”
Cagliostro’s eyes are concealed by gilt-framed purple
octagonal sunglasses and encircled by deeply etched laugh lines that bite into sunburn-pinked
cheeks. Count Cagliostro - perfect clone of the legendary Phineas Freak brother
(replete with a propensity for subverting the dominant paradigm) - holds up a
brilliantly designed portrait of an elderly gent riding a bicycle through a
warping field of psychedelic flowers, the lid of his top hat blown away to
reveal a coruscating array of lights pouring into his head. Around the image
the words ‘Hats Off to Hoffman!’ gleam in vibrant fluorescent dyes. “So what do
you think? Like them?”
Dr Hoffman (the ‘father’ of LSD) discovered some of the
miraculous mould’s unexpectedly extraordinary properties while riding his
legendary bike from work, where some of the compound had come into contact with
his skin. His familiar trip home became an extraordinary adventure. The
properties of time and space were fundamentally altered as his thoughts boomed
through resonant ventricles of suddenly expanding mindfulness – and the modern
shamanic Acid Trip was born.
“Fantastic!” The her(m)etic hermit is truly impressed.
“They’re the best psychedelic designs I’ve laid eyes on since the ‘80s!”
“And we print them ourselves! The technology’s come a long
way since the old silk screening days down in the Bush Factory. And cheap, too
– but fine grade cotton. For you, fifteen bucks.”
“Done.” He rummages through his hip pocket for some
brightly coloured slippery plastic currency. “You put these together on your
Mac? I recognise some of your artwork from the website.”
“That’s right,” a younger man agrees from behind the rack
of clothing, “on the Apple. How’s it going, Ramses?”
“Aloah! It’s been great, except for the drought in the
middle of the season. So you’re involved with this notorious change agent, are
you? Well met!”
“That’s right.” The second generation Nimbinite shakes his
hand, using the first three stages of the universal rainbow arch grip. “Perfect
day for it, though. No rain on the parade this year.”
“So ’twould seem – a great drying year, perfect for curing.”
“You got it,” Cagliostro tells him, pocketing the cash. “That’s
why there haven’t been many locals around for the past couple of days; they’ve
been too busy. And here’s something else for you, if you want it – a special
bonus gift for our hundredth customer of the weekend!” He produces the small
clear phial of colourless, odourless liquid capped with a rubber eyedropper.
“How’d it go?”
Thrice in as many
days? Ramses
considers the weighty question with the gravitas it deserves for all of two
seconds. “Perfect – but now my tolerance will probably be pretty high.”
“Burning the midnight oil does that. Well - in that case
five hundred mikes may be enough. What do you say?” The Count measures a dose
out in the dropper. “Do you want it in the eye or under the tongue?”
Ramses opens his mouth and tilts his head back in reply.
Cagliostro squirts the LSD under his raised tongue and the slightly viscous
fluid slips down his throat, clean, pure and ineffably familiar to his
experienced palate.
“I think that was more like seven hundred,” the bearded
salesman admits. “But you can handle it.” He passes the t-shirt over and the
three museketeers settle down on a narrow grassy strip alongside the concrete
footpath. “I had that much about half an hour ago and it’s coming on nicely
right about now.”
“Me too,” his partner agrees, reclining in sunshine a few
feet from the passing footfalls of a thousand strangers, tuning into the music
rolling over the landscape from the market stage. “You know, you’re not really
our hundredth customer. We’ve been doing okay, but not that well.”
“Not as well as at the Channon market,” Cagliostro
concurs. “But the website’s starting to turn them over like hotcakes and we
don’t have to store any stock – we just print them up when the orders come in.”
Glowing pyramids topped with spangled eyeball capstones
hover on the rack above their heads, shining over pentagonal dayglo symbols of
the Sacred Chao of Discordia, alongside warped and adapted reproductions of
Robert Crumb originals. A basket of Gilbert Sheldon’s Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comics is mounted on a small carved
wooden table, alongside hemp incense, hemp oil lip balm, cannabis massage oil
and hempen cigarette papers. “Feel like a number?” Ram’yana asks.
“I pick number twenty-three,” Cagliostro replies with
studious intent. His satisfied customer produces a long pre-rolled reefer and passes
it to him. “Congratulations! - that’s the winning number!”
They pause to watch a bevy of Ganja Faeries saunter past, their
nubile, subtropically tanned bodies slightly concealed beneath green spangled
bikini tops and short grass skirts. They carry large shield-like effigies of
marijuana leaves through the passing throng, making their way to a nearby
rehearsal space. “Looks like the parade’s going to be great,” Cagliostro
observes. “A fine crop of Faeries this year. There are even a couple of males
in among the dancing girls, to seed up the crop and give the women something to
look at. Ah,” he says as a trio of teenage girl stops to inspect the goodies.
“Greetings, ladies!...”The smiling group of citified hive dwellers pauses to
surround the stall and Ram winks at the Count, stepping away from the sudden
congregation as the salesman starts spruiking his wares.
Only a few paces up the road the shaman stops at another
impromptu stall spread out on the side of the footpath. Two boys barely larger
than infants smile up at him through gaps in yellowing milk teeth. Arrayed on a
paisley silk scarf spread on the ground before them is a carefully contrived
cluster of crystals laid out in a complex mandala. The grinning boys proudly
display the semi-precious stones to their prospective customer, who kneels down
to inspect the crystals more closely.
The change in altitude is momentarily dizzying and every
surrounding sound shifts in a weird Doppler effect. Even after he kneels he’s
still looking down at the tiny cross-legged urchins. The boys and their stall
are surrounded by a forest of dozens of pairs of legs. Their glittering wares
are ignored by everyone else.
“We found them all ourselves,” the sandy-haired spokesman
pipes up. A three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle of clear, citrine and milky quartz
intermingles with blue-green fluorites, subtly psychedelic agates and a variety
of less easily identified crystals forms a rough circle on the concrete
footpath. Highlights glisten within the fractured fractal surfaces in the
bright midday sunlight and babbling voices weave and flow in a verbal river of
intermingling multilingual thought-forms. It
certainly is coming on fast, Ram’yana realises. And on a full stomach, too…
He notices all the crystals have been cunningly arranged
around – and partly conceal – an oddly shaped purplish stone set in the very
centre of the mandala. Looking up at the two boys he sees a pair of ancient
wizened gnomes inhabiting the bodies of three year olds, smiling up at him and
nodding cannily. “These are really impressive!” he exclaims. “Where did you
find them?”
“Just down the hill.” The sandy haired creature points
toward the river, hidden behind a fringe of trees that stands between the hilltop
village and the escarpment of fabled Nimbin Rocks - jutting outcrops rearing up
from the depths of a primeval volcano once as tall as Everest, to guard and
brood over the Rainbow Region of Oz. “We found them all down there.”
“You didn’t have to dig for them?”
“Nah – they’re all right there in the river.”
The shaman jiggles a pale blue stone set beside an orange
quartzite. Both abut the strange central crystal, half concealing its perfect purplish
miniature phallic form. “These are particularly brilliant,” he says, catching
the boys’ eyes. “And they hide this one in the centre so well – the one you
don’t really want anyone to see or buy.” The gnomish lads glance at each other
and a look of pained consternation passes between them. “This weird and magical
gem right here, with the strange shape.” The long sharp nail of Ram’s pinkie
hovers over the central stone, not quite touching its gleaming lustrous patina.
It’s a natural talisman, he understands,
a fertility amulet and attractive fetish…
like a love potion set in stone…
A pleading look comes into the eyes of the ancient earth
sprites that inhabit the village children. Their tiny bodies freeze in hushed
expectation as they watch the squatting hippy. But it’s not something to need or want – how can you know that a woman
loves you if you use a token like this? It’s a trap for the unwary and unwise…“Don’t worry,” he tells them, taking a clear quartz double terminator from the
edge of the stone circle. “How much for this one?”
The spokesman’s sidekick erupts in glee. “A dollar!”
“Better make it one each,” the shaman suggests, handing
over a double-headed two dollar fool’s gold coin. “Always keep the Elder’s face
up and the Queen’s face down,” he winks at the gnomes.
“Thanks, mister!” the sandy-haired youngster exclaims.
“Boys,” Ramses says, “these are really good crystals, offerings of the living Earth. You’ve done
amazingly well to find these – they’re beautiful.”
“They’re okay mister,” the gnome replies, “but we can get
plenty more.” Ram’yana smiles, shakes their tiny hands. He rises to his feet,
tottering slightly as Doctor Hoffman’s patented potion surges through his
brain. He bows to the beaming boys and makes his way across a sea of undulating
stone-flecked concrete waves that guide him toward the centre of town.
He takes less than two dozen paces before another original
settler - an
evergreen stalwart still heavily involved in spawning the alternative society
of the Rainbow Region – stops to greet him, hugging him warmly. “You’re here
every year,” Queen Lisa observes while she holds his whiskers at bay. Only the
wild cut of her colourful clothing appears to have changed in the last three
decades.
She looks almost exactly as she did at the dawn of the
Aquarius era that transformed the subtropics of Oz, her smiling, well-tanned
face beaming with health and vitality. Good vibes, a great environment and
faithful adherence to an honourably alternate path – one she saw clearly laid
out, when the hippies first discovered themselves in the fertile paradise of
this ancient volcanic caldera – have combined to preserve Lisa’s beauty,
brilliance and edge.
“How’s it going down your way?” she asks as a blonde woman
strolls toward them with a rolling ship-shape gait.
“All’s fine in the rainforest,” he replies. He smiles at
the obvious impatience of the newcomer, who strives to catch Lisa’s attention while
subtly edging him aside with the personal space of her capacious aura. “We have
to get to the showground soon,” the rotund woman announces in a tone that
implies remonstration.
“Of course.” Lisa glances at her watch.
“Just one thing.” Ramses feels words swelling within him, forming
somewhere beyond volition, apparently arising of their own accord from some
mysterious inner font;. “Before I say anything…” he hurriedly tells them before
an unknown muse can spirit his volition away, “don’t pay any attention to
anything I say.” The blonde’s grey eyes roll and Lisa’s smile becomes a trifle
brittle - then the tidal flow pours through him; “It’s obvious there was some
friction at first, with the Permaculture village opening up on the edge of town
– many Nimbinites saw it as the thin edge of the wedge of straight
development...”
“Oh, that’s coming anyway,” Lisa interjects with a
quizzical smile. “Land prices are going through the roof…”
“They sure are,” her friend agrees with gleaming eyes and
a guardedly miniscule nod.
“…and if there’s one thing Nimbin and the Rainbow Region
need to continue as models of alternative living, it’s more environmentally
aware people – and more Permaculture, to help keep the asshole developers at
bay across the Queensland border, where they belong.”
“Maybe,” Lisa says, “but it’s put a real strain on things;
the town didn’t really want to expand in such a single huge step, without more
services being in place first.”
“Understandable – but now it’s not only a fait accompli, but a great green boon to
the place.” The shaman still wonders where all this is coming from and going to
as it unreels from his mouth. “Look around - there are thousands of people here
from all over the world…” They all glance outward, away from their small
clustered circle, as a river of undulating bodies parts around them and reforms
downstream on the concrete path. “More like tens of thousands,” the
unintroduced woman agrees, “and one raindrop raises the sea.”
“…and all these people aren’t just here for the drugs…”
“…or all the sex and rock and roll,” the blonde interposes,
eyeing the shaman with the full-length sweep of a glittering gaze.
“…they’re also here for the dream. Nimbin’s a showcase of possibility and everyone here
suspects the future that’s coming down on them is less than ideal. Most exist
in lives of apparently pointless struggle and wonder if they - or their
children - will have a future…”
“Oh, there’s a future all right,” Lisa assures him.
“The future’s so bright you’ll have to wear shades.” The
blonde smiles behind her mirrored sunnies.
“Of course – but you know what’s going on; they’re all
looking for solutions and a better life. Nimbin could do a lot worse that
grafting Permaculture onto its label; the hope of the future’s revealed in the
word. Permanence is what everyone craves, and the hope for something far more
than subsistence – the dream of a vibrant ongoing culture in harmony with the
Earth is what everyone really wants.” Lisa looks at her watch and he feels the
rushing stream of words sputter toward a halt; “And that, after all, is what
Nimbin is!”
“That’s an interesting viewpoint,” she says, not quite
meeting his eyes, “and now we’d better be off.”
“Or we’ll be late,” her white rabbit friend agrees. The sounds
of Nimbin suddenly return and increase in volume and variety, and the tide
seems to turn in the fragrant air. Echoes of drums and trumpets filter through
the tumultuous noises of the crowd and many brightly clad people seem to be
making their way toward the source of the semi-musical sounds.
“See you at the parade!”
“See you on the street,” Lisa agrees, giving him another
hug. The women wander up the road, immediately engrossed in conversation. Ramses
makes his way past the pair as he flows around an eddy which temporarily snags
them, and weaves quickly through the multitude to bypass the clotting knot of
interweaving wills.
The clear bubble of LSD expands to further transform his dizzied
awareness. The shaman watches people step unconsciously from his path, a narrow
track forming before him and closing as he passes through the protean
protoplasm of the crowd. He tastes their expectancy, ambition, lust, boredom
and wonder, their dawdling absent-mindedness and tightly focused concentration,
their wary paranoia and effervescent glee as his aura touches and mingles with
the multitude.
Marijuana smoke fills the streets, an aerial mixture of
resinous scents from all over the country and the far-flung world, whose
international denizens make regular and incessant pilgrimages to this little
painted village on a nondescript ridge inside one of the largest volcanic
calderas on the land surface of the planet (long extinct, we’re told by the infant
science of usurping newcomers).
He unbuckles a small camera from his utility belt and
checks the battery as he stalks along the edge of the road. He dodges a Jungle
Patrol clad in green and fluorescent orange t-shirts who are trying to keep the
roadway clear. His carnival garb seems to forestall any objection and his swift
passage along the roadway continues unimpeded. He strides up the double-lined
centre of the main drag but soon steps to one side to observe a dynamic duo of
gymnasts.
A surprisingly petite teenage girl in a blue tutu and
matching sequined bikini top stands balanced on the outstretched hand of a
long-haired Germanic-looking man, who holds his diminutive partner aloft above
the concrete with a studied semblance of ease. The girl performs a pirouette on
his palm to the enthusiastic applause of a growing circle of admirers and the
floppy velvet hat at their feet begins to fill with coins. The shaman adds a
jingling token and glances up to meet the teen’s serenely smiling eyes.
The girl holds his gaze as she shifts her weight to bend
over, then places her hands upon the man’s shoulders and rises into a handstand
atop him. Their heads touch as barefoot feet arch and purple toenails point to
midheaven while her long brown hair falls down over both their faces. Out-of-it
males leer and cheer to the disapproval of envious girlfriends as the girl’s
tutu flops down to reveal slim tubular pillars of spry young thighs surmounted
by a gymnast’s muscular buttocks. With only a tiny G-string to preserve a
vestige of the teen’s scant modesty, nude flesh gleams and muscles bunch to
flex pneumatically before a red-rimmed beast with a hundred greedily lustful
eyes.
The shaman’s gaze shifts to surveillance cameras that perch
on thin towers above her twirling form, slowly scanning the crowded street and
transmitting images to various government agencies with an abiding interest in
whatever transpires in the village of Nimbin. Ramses notes a camera tilting
down toward the upthrust girl and sees lens elements shift as it zooms in on
her near-naked body, while she twirls and somersaults head over heels to land
astride her partner’s shoulders.
“Cookie? Chocolate?” A willowy green-gowned girl leans a naked
feminine flank against Ram’s hipbone. When she presents a wicker basketful of
goodies he can barely see a face through her pointed hood and the serpentine
mass of long, dark, tangled dreadlocks that spills from it. “They’re really good
– not leaf. Here, smell this.” The name attached to the familiar voice teeters
at the edge of recall. The cookie she breaks beneath his nose releases a scent
as strong and delectable as good hashish, almost completely overpowering any other
olfactory charms the small cake provides. “Chocolate and cinnamon, too,” the
vendor informs him in a playful contralto. As she warily glances from side to
side he recognises her– a fellow feral forest blockader from rambunctious and
bucolic times shared in remote tree-canopied wilderness.
“Lacy! Long see no time!” She pecks his cheek with
fluorescent lime lips.
“Now I’ve put my mark on you! Here – have half for free.” Lacy
pops a crumbling brown mass into his mouth and in a breathtaking pause the rich
redolence of well-isomerised cannanibols fills his awareness, just as a squad
of flinty-eyed riot troopers swaggers past. “I recognised you by your winged
hat.” She tosses her hood back and smiles through a suddenly revealed and
alarmingly dense barrier of sharply pointed facial jewellery. “You look like the
parade’s about to start a day early! Oh look – there’s Joel!”
The feral girl climbs up onto the towbar of a handily
parked van and waves across a multitude of heads. He can’t resist staring at
the smooth brown legs that rise up and up until they disappear into an artfully
torn ultrabrief leather skirt, scant inches from his nose, and wonders at his endless
propensity for primate longings.
He looks away and espies deep ranks of merrymakers sauntering
beside and along the road. Most wear sunglasses and disport an array of private
surveillance devices – mostly digital, still and video, and a few audio
recorders as well as the ubiquitous cell (damaging) phone cams. “Good to see
you again, Ramses,” the young woman yells over her shoulder. Not a girl any more… He corrects his
earlier appraisal, recognising signs of an undeniable passage of time since
last they met and mingled.
“See you in the Rainbow later, okay?” Her eyes glow
greenly luminous through the long dark dreadlocks pouring from her hastily
replaced hood.
Images of their last trysts well into his awareness,
erasing the living present with memories graven into Ram’s heart, mind and
loins – fond recollections occasionally resurrected from the vault of time across
a hand span of flowering years. The sight of her face coming and coming again,
screaming wide-eyed while her body kept relentlessly, automatically, unendingly
bucking and fucking beneath him, when he lay her down in the moonlight beneath
dappled shadows of a vast primeval forest canopy; the first time they truly met…
Bobbling breasts, taut and firm in his cupping hands as he
tasted her nipples while she pressed his flesh into a soft carpet of yielding
moss by the side of a rock-strewn waterfall in dazzling sunlight…
The sensation of her luscious lips sliding over and around
his quivering glans as he hardened inside her mouth and slid deeper into her
throat; the sweet, salty taste of her quim on his tongue while soft, smooth,
slender thighs pressed against his ears and feminine hands inflamed his naked
body with intimate caresses…
Past gives way to present. When awareness returns her eyes
seem to be delving deep within his thoughts. “I’ll be there at sunset, if you
can make it” she tells him. He’s certain she can see – and feel – a semblance
of his recalled imaginings when a corner of her lips quirks upward. He can
still feel her loins wrapped around his length, squeezing as he moves through
her, even as they’re jostled together by strangers in the crowded street…
“I’ll hold it to
you,” he says with a wink while they’re pressed torso to torso, speaking around
the delicious consolation prize of her cookie before noticing his tongue-tied
slip. He swallows her gift and returns her widening smile. Her breath is delectable,
her scent intoxicating. He toys with the notion of dallying with her through
the rest of the day, in hopes of experiencing more exemplary, untrammelled,
uninhibited and unencumbered sex with the gorgeous young woman - but he can see
she has other things on her mind.
As she turns away she keeps his dreams smouldering with a
laugh, a light slap on his chest and a phrase; “I’ll keep a spot warm for you
then. Later...”
His thoughts begin to boom and echo through the cavernous
ventricles of his mind as she hurries away. He turns to continue up the street,
still unimpeded by Jungle Patrol members who direct most others from the road.
Bright protest banners and rainbow flags wave high in the distance, held
proudly aloft to proclaim the ever-approaching End of Prohibition. Next Year Jerusalem…
“Ah!” A jubilant voice drawls a path through the sardonic
thought. “We meet again… already!”
“And you still haven’t come down?”
The Alchemist’s eyes roll in their sockets while his skeletal
body reels around loosely socketed hips. “The time will come the wall rose
bled, to peak - and peek - at many things.”
“Uhuh…” The shaman’s mouth opens and words pour forth; “of
Jews and slips and seething flax and carriages of bling? And when, pray tell, will
this auspicious creature come and sing?” he asks in response as huge winged amphibians
pass above, pummelling swathes of air with resonantly beating wings that perfectly match the rhythmic cadence of a
hundred intermingling drumbeats and the pounding beat of his expectant heart.
A True Story
- R.A.
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