Tim Barrus, New York Times

Tea is best. Mescaline in my world is Moon. In my world, this will not be a world you recognize or know, there are codes, languages, suggestions articulated to obfuscate the normals into demonstrations of a white snow. Button snow is a little darker. If you advocate, you break the law, you are about information, watch your back. Government is recording. This is forbidden stuff. You can get a life sentence just being around hallucinogenics let alone using them. They like you ignorant. Mountaintops are good. The deserts have too many snakes for me. The witching hour is just before the sun goes down. Throw some weed into the brew. A stitch of birch bark to make it pink. Chill. Just feel the rush and taste the ride. It’s like a bike. No helmet. Fast. Silent. Annihilated. Here, I am allowed to go inside my autism and cut the bondage ropes in the cerebral cortex. Matter collapses. Dark matter is the carving. Normals get what they want to get. Suddenly, I am not autistic. I am not The Alone. It’s about being The Alone. Not with it. It smoothes my autism and I want what I want, and I want it now. Power to normals is indeterminate. That would not be obvious to you, in my world, we can recognize cops a mile away. Dirt bikes can handle terrain you have never seen. Look for snakes. I have the rattles from a hundred snakes I have shot to death. I sip at tea and make music. The tea, with both Moon and Button in the mix, carefully organized, sipped, the atoms colliding in my bitter mouth.