I did that because I thought I saw everything in italics.
Anyway…
Last summer I went on a camping trip with about 20 other people to Mouth of Wilson Virginia. We pitched our tents alongside the French Broad, a nice gently flowing river covered with mist in the morning.
One day a few of us ate some shrooms. Eventually I started walking around looking at trees. This is hard to describe in words. I was mainly interested in the older trees that were covered in bark. When I first looked at those trees, the bark seemed to be moving, like colonies of worms. They slithered and crawled all over the tree as it pulsed like it was breathing.
Then, my perception shifted. I was no longer looking at the outside of the tree. I was looking inside. The tree had opened up and showed a whole new world inside. The bark was now hoards of alien beings moving about in their cities. They swarmed like orderly colonies of ants.
I then thanked the trees for showing me their insides.
I went back to the camp, where most everybody was gathered around talking, and I’d stand in the midst and watch their faces, my eyes unblinking. I didn’t say a word. The way their faces moved fascinated me. It creeped everybody out a little, but they understood why.
When I was much younger and stupider I drove across the country to see family with my then fiancé. We stopped on the way back home to “chat” with an old high school chum of hers. The chat lasted about 10 hours. So at about 3 AM we got back in the car and went on our way. By this time I had been awake for about 20 hours. I was OK for an hour or so but then things got weird. It started with the stegosaurus walking up one of the off ramps of the freeway. That was pretty cool. I slapped some water on my face and turned to vent up on high and kept going.
I don’t know if the chain is still in existence but I used to frequent the “Happy Chef” restaurants whenever I traveled I-80 back in the late 80s early 90s. In front of each one there is a huge statue of the happy chef wielding a huge wooden spoon and with a maniacal grin on his face. The reason I bring this up is that after driving for another 10 - 15 minutes I came upon the Happy Chef of Rhodes. A wire frame version of the happy chef at least 100 feet tall straddling the highway.
After I had driven between his legs I decided that it was time to pull over and have a kip.
When my mom was a kid, she hallucinated/dreamed a green man with a lace face was looking into her window. She screamed bloody murder (which awakened the neighbors. They actually thought someone was being murdered). It kind of scares me just thinking about it.