At the end of the afternoon, a slanting pink ray of light falls from the eye in the ceiling into the darkness of the room. The kif smokers move in and form groups. Each wears a sprig of sweet basil in his turban. Squatting along the wall on the mat, they smoke their little pipes of baked red earth, filled with Indian hemp and powdered Moroccan tobacco. Hadj Idriss stuffs the bowls and distributes them, after having carefully wiped the mouthpiece on his cheek as a gesture of politeness. When his own pipe is empty, he picks out the little red ball of ash and puts it into his mouth – he does not feel it burning him – then, once his pipe is refilled, he uses the still-red-hot cinder to relight the little fire. For hours at a time he does not once let it go out. He has a keen and penetrating intelligence, softened by being constantly in a state of semi-exaltation; his dreams are nourished on the narcotic smoke.
The seekers of oblivion sing and clap their hands lazily; their dream-voices ring out late into the night, in the dim light of the mica-paned lantern. Then little by little the voices fall, grow muffled, the words are slower. Finally the smokers are quiet, and merely stare at the flowers in ecstasy. They are epicureans, voluptuaries; perhaps they are sages. Even in the darkest purlieu of Morocco’s underworld such men can reach the magic horizon where they are free to build their dream-palaces of delight.
Circa 1925–27. From: Shaman Woman, Mainline Lady: Women’s Writings on the Drug Experience, eds Cynthia Palmer and Michael
Horowitz, 1982
I do hold it, and will affirm it before any prince in Europe, to be the most sovereign and precious weed that ever the earth rendered to the use of man
Ben Johnson
Charles Baudelaire
The Playground of the Seraphim
WHAT DOES ONE experience? What does one see? Marvellous things, is it not so? Wonderful sights? Is it very beautiful? Such are the usual questions which, with a curiosity mingled with fear, those ignorant of hashish address to its adepts. It is, as it were, the childish impatience to know, resembling that of those people never quitted their firesides when they meet a man who returns from distant and unknown countries. They imagine hashish drunkenness to themselves as a prodigious vast theatre of sleight of hand and of juggling, where all is miraculous, all unforeseen. That is a prejudice, a complete mistake. And since for the ordinary run of readers and of questioners the word ‘hashish’ connotes the idea of a strange and topsy-turvy world, the expectation of prodigious dreams (it would be better to say hallucinations, which are, by the way, less frequent than people suppose), I will at once remark upon the important difference which separates the effects of hashish from the phenomena of dream. In dream, that adventurous voyage which we undertake every night, there is something positively miraculous. It is a miracle whose punctual occurrence has blunted its mystery. The dreams of man are of two classes. Some, full of his ordinary life, of his preoccupations, of his desires, of his vices, combine themselves in a manner more or less bizarre with the objects which he has met in his day’s work, which have carelessly fixed themselves upon the vast canvas of his memory. That is the natural dream; it is the man himself. But the other kind of dream, the dream absurd and unforeseen, without meaning or connection with the character, the life and the passions of the sleeper: this dream, which I shall call hieroglyphic, evidently represents the supernatural side of life, and it is exactly because it is absurd that the ancients believed it to be divine. As it is inexplicable by natural causes, they attributed to it a cause external to man, and even to-day, leaving out of account oneiromancers and the fooleries of a philosophical school which sees in dreams of this type sometimes a reproach, sometimes a warning; in short, a symbolic and moral picture begotten in the spirit itself of the sleeper. It is a dictionary which one must study; a language of which sages may obtain the key.
In the intoxication of hashish there is nothing like this. We shall not go outside the class of natural dream. The drunkenness, throughout its duration, it is true, will be nothing but an immense dream, thanks to the intensity of its colours and the rapidity of its conceptions. But it will always keep the idiosyncrasy of the individual. The man has desired to dream; the dream will govern the man. But this dream will be truly the son of its father. The idle man has taxed his ingenuity to introduce artificially the supernatural into his life and into his thought; but, after all, and despite the accidental energy of his experiences, he is nothing but the same man magnified, the same number raised to a very high power. He is brought into subjection, but, unhappily for him, it is not by himself which is already dominant. ‘He would be an angel; he becomes a beast.’ Momentarily very powerful, if, indeed, one can give the name of power of what is merely excessive sensibility without the control which might moderate or make use of it.
Let it be well understood then, by worldly and ignorant folk, curious of acquaintance with exceptional joys, that they will find in hashish nothing miraculous, absolutely nothing, but the natural in a superabundant degree. The brain and the organism upon which hashish operates will only give their ordinary and individual phenomena, magnified, it is true, both in quantity and quality, but always faithful to their origin. Man cannot escape the fatality of his moral and physical temperament. Hashish will be, indeed, for the impressions and familiar thoughts of the man, a mirror which magnifies, yet no more than a mirror.
Here is the drug before your eyes: a little green sweetmeat, about as big as a nut, with a strange smell; so strange that it arouses a certain revulsion, and inclinations to nausea – as, indeed, any fine and even agreeable scent, exalted to its maximum strength and (so to say) density, would do.
Allow me to remark in passing that this proposition can be inverted, and that the most disgusting and revolting perfume would become perhaps a pleasure to inhale if it were reduced to its minimum quantity and intensity.
There! There is happiness; heaven in a teaspoon: happiness, with all its intoxication, all its folly, all its childishness. You can swallow it without fear; it is not fatal; it will in nowise injure your physical organs. Perhaps (later on) too frequent an employment of the sorcery will diminish the strength of your will; perhaps you will be less a man than you are today; but retribution is so far off, and the nature of the eventual disaster so difficult to define! What is it that you risk? A little nervous fatigue tomorrow – no more. Do you not every day risk greater punishment for less reward? Very good then; you have, even, to make it act more quickly and vigorously, imbibed your dose of extrait gras in a cup of black coffee. You have taken care to have the stomach empty, postponing dinner till nine or ten o’clock, to give full liberty of action to the poison. At the very most you will take a little soup in an hour’s time. You are now sufficiently provisioned for a long and strange journey; the steamer has whistled, the sails are trimmed; and you have this curious advantage over ordinary travellers that you have no idea where you are going. You have made your choice; here’s to luck.
I presume that you have taken the precaution to choose carefully your moment for setting out on this adventure. For every perfect debauch demands perfect leisure. You know, moreover, that hashish exaggerates not only the individual, but also circumstances and environment. You have no duties to fulfil which require punctuality or exactitude. No domestic worries – no lover’s sorrows. One must be careful on such points. Such a disappointment, an anxiety, an interior monition of a duty which demands your will and your attention, at some determinate moment, would ring like a funeral bell across your intoxication and poison your pleasure. Anxiety would become anguish, and disappointment torture. But if, having observed all these preliminary conditions the weather is fine; if you are situated in favourable surroundings, such as a picturesque landscape or a room beautifully decorated; and if in particular you have at command a little music, then all is for the best.
1910. From: Hashish: The Herb Superb, vol. II of The Herb
Dangerous: High Historical Writings for the Modern Haschischin,
ed. David Hoye, 1973
Johnny Edge
combe
Calypso Train
JAKE WAS REFLECTING on the first time he met Skyman. It was on his eighteenth birthday. His dad had bought him a new bike. He had forbidden Jake to hang around the waterfront with thieves and fornicators – the riff-raff. He reminded Jake that he had spent a lot of money on his education. Jake knew what he was going to say next.
‘The wages of sin.’
Jake came from a long line of Preachers, as far back as way back. His old man had been trying to convince him to become a Preacher too. Jake often wondered if his father really believed all that shit he laid on his congregation. But he assured him he wasn’t going near the waterfront. He was just taking his bike for a spin.
Jake took his bathing trunks off the clothes line, tied them on to the handlebar of his bike and started to ride out of Kingston, on the coast road. He was feeling good as he rode along the coast taking in the scenery.
He rode for about fifteen to twenty miles out of Kingston. He came to a nice cove with a sandy beach and decided that it was a good place to stop for a dip. There was only one boat in the bay and apart from a Rasterman painting his dinghy on the beach, there wasn’t anyone else around. There was a groovy little shack in the right-hand corner of the cove. Whoever made it had done a good job.
Jake felt a wave of admiration for the Rasterman, who was among his father’s categories of riff-raffs, ganja smokers and layabouts, as he watched him painting his dinghy like an artist. He stood there for a while, enjoying the Rasterman paint, seeing him stop from time to time to take a toke on his pipe.
Eventually he walked over, towing his bike and smiling.
‘Hello, Raster, what’s happening?’
The Rasterman didn’t reply right off. He looked at Jake for a while. His eyes aloof – the shutters almost half closed. Skyman knew that apart from the authorities, no one else was aware that he was back in Jamaica; if anyone was, he was reasonably sure that they wouldn’t recognise him. Just the same he didn’t talk to many people.
He guessed that the young guy was from Kingston, he seemed a nice enough guy.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Jake! What’s yours?’
‘Just call me Raster, for the time being.’
Jake knew, right off, that Raster – or whatever his name was – wasn’t a real Rasterman, but you wouldn’t know that by looking. His dreadlocks were very impressive and he had a full long beard, streaked with grey hairs. Jake was intrigued.
‘Can you paint?’ asked Raster.
Jake smiled. ‘Yes, but not as good as you.’
‘Well, grab a brush anyway.’
Jake was elated. They painted in silence for a while, Jake looking at Skyman from time to time. Every now and then Skyman stopped painting to reload his pipe. He picked up his corn-husk pipe from a makeshift workbench. First he would clean it carefully with a pipe-cleaner, testing it a few times, until he was satisfied. Then he fished into the small pocket on the front of his white T-shirt and brought out a white draw and extracted a fat bud before replacing the bag like it was a prized possession.
Jake noted the pungent smell of the herbs as it mingled with the paint in his nostrils, as Skyman crumbled the bud. Then the Rasterman took a king-size box of matches from the bench and started to light his pipe. He circled the bowl with the fire about four times, puffing gently each time, to effect an even light. Satisfied that the light was good and the pipe was drawing freely, he dragged hard and deep, the bowl glowing, as if about to catch light as he filled his lungs. He held the smoke for about a minute before reluctantly letting it go and automatically moving to pass the pipe to Jake. Hesitating a moment, he looked at Jake.
‘Hey, man! You smoke?’
Jake wasn’t really lying when he answered that he did. He had burned a few joints on several occasions with some of the guys from his school and dug it. But he had not indulged too much because he was aware that the worst thing that could happen to him was for the Preacher to hear that he had even tried the ‘Devil’s Weed’. But this was different.
Jake took the pipe without any hesitation and started to puff gently the way Skyman had done. Realising after the first puff that the pipe was ready, he hit it and tried to hold the smoke like Skyman but he felt that his head would explode if he didn’t let go. He opened up all his valves and for all he knew, when he started to cough and he felt like his head was going to come off, smoke might have been even coming out of his ears! Skyman took the pipe from Jake and gave him some coconut water. Jake had drunk a lot of coconut water but now he felt like he was tasting it for the first time. The taste was so lucid he even thought he could see it.
Within minutes hot beads of perspiration gathered on his forehead. His mind was scrambled but he was acutely conscious of himself, as if he was filming everything he did. He felt that the sun was getting hotter and he had to get out of it. He wanted to tell Skyman that he was going over by a tree to sit in the shade for a while, but he couldn’t string the words together. He saw himself gesturing, pointing at a tree. He realised he was still holding the empty coconut. In other circumstances he would’ve scooped out the jelly and enjoyed it before discarding it, but right now he couldn’t think what the hell to do with the thing. He was relieved when Skyman took it from him in slow motion and told him he could use the hut.
Jake looked at the hut, sure that it had been much closer a while ago. He wondered about his legs, he knew that they were there because he was still standing, but he couldn’t feel them. He looked down at his feet to make sure that they were facing the right way. He started to walk but his legs wouldn’t move. He had to get out of the sun. His underclothes were already sticking to his body. He almost fell over with the first step. His legs were so heavy he had to lift his foot very high to compensate for the weight. He was doing a kind of knees-up walk on his way to the hut, mindful of each step as his feet seemed to stick in the sand every time he put them down.
By the time he got to the hut, Jake was exhausted. All he wanted to do now was flop out. He made straight for the bunk bed, which seemed to come up to him, as he flopped down on it. Now he was floating up there in the ceiling, looking down on his helpless carriage. He became aware that it was he, I and I, and not his mother or the Preacher that was in charge of his carriage. He saw a new dimension and knew there wasn’t any way back.
He was counselling himself about some immediate changes he had to make, when he fell off the ceiling and the bunk began to spin and rock as if he was on a boat. He eventually fell off the bunk. Back in himself, laying there on the floor Jake had decided he wasn’t going back to bed when the floor started to perform as well. He couldn’t decide which was worse – the floor or the bed, but in the end he opted for the floor because he figured he couldn’t fall any further.
The floor was spinning faster and faster as if it was about to take off. He held on as long as he could, but the experience had wasted him. He let go and flew around the universe a few times before he fell into a deep sleep.
It was not only deep, but long. The sun brought him back among the living the next morning, with the sound of the sea, as it gently washes the sand. It was a nice way to wake up. Jake was feeling fresh and new until he realised that the sound of the sea washing the sand wasn’t a familiar sound first thing in the morning. And he wasn’t in his own room, on his floor. Then it all came back to him in a flash, so vivid that it was hard to decipher what was real, fantasy or dream.
Jake got up from the floor without giving a second thought to his legs. He had an urgent need for a piss. He looked for the door. There were two. He hurried for the nearest one, almost tripping over his bike. He was smiling as he relieved himself, thinking this was the best piss he had ever had.
He had wanted to piss since last night but the floor was spinning so fast he couldn’t get off and when he dreamed that he had found a place to piss he couldn’t find his cock. Jake went back into the hut; he had never felt better. He didn’t see much of the hut yesterday apart from the bu
nk but now he noticed that there was a table with a hurricane lamp on it, two chairs and an open cupboard with fifteen suits hanging in it. Each suit carrying a silk shirt. Jake moved nearer to the cupboard for a closer look. Now he was really knocked out, these suits were a collection of the finest rags he had ever seen. You know, the stuff only the rich Americans can afford; sharkskin, silk and cashmere. On the floor were seven pairs of shoes made of snake, croc and calfskin. Three matching belts hung in a corner. Jake tried to visualise Skyman all done up, without his dreadlocks. His perceptions were of a guy who looked like a million. Top drawer. Plenty of class and a lot of style. Jake had found a hero.