Ergonaut wrote:
> Paisely Sky
retina.net> wrote in
> news:459C45A0.FFD38D8D@retina.net:
>>> Flashbacks Excerpt 2---Michael Hollingshead
>>
>> This is the second of what I hope will be more excerpts from
> Flashbacks,
>> one of Timothy LearyÂ’s autobiographical accounts (the most
> complete
>> one).
>>
>> This excerpt describes how Leary met Michael Hollingshead.
>>
>> [Word count: 361-Reading time 2-3 minutes]
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Spring 1962 Harvard University
>>
>> There now arrived on the scene a most enigmatic agent who was to
> change
>> the lives of all of our crew, Michael Hollingshead.
>> Sporting an Oxford professorial accent he phoned me with
> greetings
>> from his alleged mentor, the distinguished British philosopher
> G. E.
>> Moore. I took the bait and invited Hollingshead to the Faculty
> Club for
>> lunch. He was in his mid-thirties, medium height, balding, and
> he had a
>> whimsical style, spinning witty multi-reality tales. On the
> basis of his
>> claim to have ingested more LSD than anyone in the world I
> invited him
>> to stay at our house and act as a project consultant.
>> Apparently he and a New York doctor had obtained 10,000
> doses of
>> lysergic acid from Sandoz to study the effects on the web-
> spinning of
>> spiders. They mixed the stuff with moist powdered sugar, which
> they
>> shoveled into a laboratory flask on the theory that spiders
> would go for
>> the sweets. Just as an afterthought they licked the spoon. Since
> they
>> knew nothing about human dosage, they were unaware of the fact
> that they
>> had absorbed about a hundred times more than anyone in the
> recorded
>> history of pharmacology.
>> According to Hollingshead the two diligent scientists sat
>> immobilized in the laboratory for hours, transfixed by what was
>> happening inside their brains. They became Mystics on the spot,
>> dedicated crusaders for the cause of altered states.
> Hollingshead packed
>> half of the sugar paste into a mayonnaise bottle, said goodbye
> to the
>> spiders, and set out to turn on the world. His first stop on the
> mission
>> was our project.
>>
>> Michael bounded around my house with his Venusian
> expression, jar
>> in hand, offering anyone and everyone the inter-galactic trip.
> Initially
>> there were no takers since we had decided to restrict our
> research to
>> psilosybin. I had imposed a prohibition against even harmless
> little
>> marijuana, wishing to keep our project free of any connection to
>> notorious drugs. Because it had been used in chemical warfare
> research
>> and by psychiatrists trying to induce psychosis, LSD had a
> dubious
>> reputation.
>> Hollingshead tried our cozy know-thyself psilocybin and
> scornfully
>> dismissed it as just pretty colors compared to the philosophic
>> detonations of lysergic acid.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> I read it in 45 seconds, but then again I had read it all
> before...
Well, when I say reading time I mean the time required to read it
outloud. I know people tend to not want to read long posts. I am the
same way. I have to be interested in the subject matter to read the long
ones. But even the long ones don't take that long. That's why I feel
that it someone realizes it's a subject that interests them, and it only
means a few minutes out of their day, they may be more inclined to read
it. But I don't want to get them to read it on false pretenses. That's
why I use the time required to read it out loud.
I'm a slow reader, myself. But I have a high level of comprehension.
