The Seven Habits

can have you everything you ever wanted but were too afraid to ask for. All you gotta do is start fresh. Just like a newborn baby, but one who has a lifetime of experience waiting to shape his personality and mind.

Don’t look at me like that, man, it happens all the time. You just don’t realize it. When you were giving me that cigarette earlier, I noticed the Semper Fi tat on your forearm. So you should know what I’m talkin’ about. Why the hell do you think they give you cats such a hard time in basic? They’re breaking you down, man, crushin’ your ego beneath the heel of a combat boot that just keeps comin’ down again and again and again. They even shave your heads, try to make you look as much like one another as humanly possible, strippin’ your individuality like ethanol on shellac.

And once they’ve totally broken you… then they rebuild you into the perfect marine. They can form you like you weren’t nothing more than a little lump of clay.

That’s so negative though, ya know? Me and Johnny, we wanted a more positive experience. I never wanted to kill anyone. I never wanted any of this shit I’ve been through. But you know what they say about the best plans of mice and men, right?

Anyhow, there was one small difference between Johnny and me. See, he was trying to do all this with just the drugs alone, but me, I’ve always been into the great mysteries, ya know? Astral projection, mysticism, astrology, mind over matter. I didn’t really identify myself with any one particular belief system or practice. The way I see it, all these different schools of thought are like that parable about the blind Indians who stumble across this elephant. One of ‘em touches the tail and says, ‘Oh, it’s a rope’, another touches the leg and says, ‘Oh, it’s a tree’ and so on and such.

Well, God is that elephant, man. Everyone thinks they’ve got the one clear picture because they’re limiting their understanding to a fixed set of perceptions. I wanted to see the whole damn animal, dig? So yeah, I did it all —Santeria, Golden Dawn, Freemasonry, Thanateros, Wicca. I panned each of them for the little nuggets of truth hidden in all that other worthless silt, and eventually, it all came to a head.

See, there was this dude Johnny knew. Real lanky guy with long hair and these little John Lennon glasses. I never could remember this cat’s name and wouldn’t tell ya if I could. He supplied most of the valley with their shit, but he was a good guy. Wouldn’t sell to kids, stayed away from the really fucked up stuff, and always smoked one out of his own stash with ya. Quality fuckin’ individual. He’s forgotten more about drugs then your whole narc squad ever knew, man… a walkin’ fuckin’ encyclopedia, that dude was. Which is why I just called him Professor Weed.

So anyhow, Professor Weed stopped by our pad this one night to hook Johnny up with this new shipment of chronic sativa that had come into his possession. He’s got the baggie out on the coffee table and he’s hunched over the tray, rolling up a nice fat one with his bangs all down in his face, when he looks up at Johnny.

“I’ve got something The Dude might be interested in as well.”

See, that was one of the funny things about Professor Weed. He always spoke to Johnny as if I wasn’t even in the room. And he always called me The Dude because he said I reminded him of Dude Lebowski.

What’dya mean, who the fuck is that? The dudester? El Duderino? Ain’t you ever seen The Big Lebowski? Shit, you guys gotta get some fuckin’ culture….

So anyhow, like I was sayin’ before I was so rudely interupted, Professor Weed says he’s got something I might be interested in. Says it’s a new strain of acid that’s brewed up by these monks out in the Mojave desert. Called it Liquid Enlightenment and said that through every step of the process these dudes were performing rites and rituals to instill it with arcane properties. Told Johnny he could hook me up with two or three hits if I was interested.

So I told Johnny ‘fuck yeah, I’m interested, man’ and he relayed the message like a kid caught between bickering parents. Two days later, I’ve got three tabs with these little infinity symbols watermarked in the middle of each one. I put two of them on the tip of my tongue and just kinda leaned back, smokin’ a cigarette and waiting for the doses to dissolve. Johnny, he took the other one. I’d offered to halve my second one but he had to work in the morning and didn’t want the acid to cancel out his pre-shift joint.

About thirty minutes later, that shit had really kicked in, man. By this time, I’d moved out onto the front porch and was just stretched out on the couch we had out there. I was watching the leaves on this old tree that stood in our front yard and they were so awesome. It was like I could see this faint aura around each one, like a golden glow that pulsed with the energies rushing through that elm.

Everything was so clear, so fuckin’ hyper-real. One point, I’m racked out there—just kinda controlling my breathing and meditating—when I begin to hear this beautiful music. It was like there was this angel hovering just over our roof and it was ringing tones and textures from the atoms and molecules of everything, man. Each note hung in the air with this perfect clear pitch, trilling and droning into eternity, overlaying the next note, and blending together into a chord that seeped down through my body and vibrated my soul.

So eventually I open my eyes, right? And I see this little night bird sitting in the limbs of that tree and he’s just warbling away. The bird was the angel, dude. His song was the music of the spheres and something about this knowledge made me feel like every cell in my body had just been stroked with the finger of God.

I rush into the house and Johnny is there doing this chalk and charcoal portrait of his mind on butcher paper. He was always trying to map out his psyche, see, because he had to understand where each of the roads lead before he’d be able to divert them. So I snatch away this piece of white chalk and run back out onto the porch and I felt so fuckin’ alive, man, so fuckin’ connected.

I get out on the porch and I start scrawling these veves all over the floorboards… a veve? It’s this complex symbol, man. Voodoo houngans draw ‘em in cornmeal to represent all these astral forces that are spiraling around out there and they kinda act like beacons for the loa. See the, loa are these spiritual beings that….

Shit. You’re getting me totally off topic, man. The point is, I drew these veves all over the damn porch and I was channeling my energy into each line, each dot and swirl. After a while, I realized that I wasn’t just drawing the ones I knew. I’d branched out into these geometrical shapes and patterns that had just as much power, just as much energy… only these were coming from somewhere inside me.

Finally, I stood up and started calling on the Watchtowers, man, the directions, the elementals. I invited them all in and could feel myself opening to them, unfurling like the petals of the moon flowers that crept all up and down our hillside. I could feel the energies surging into me, manifesting in my blood and coursing through my entire body. It was like a black hole had suddenly opened up somewhere within me and it was pulling everything in, man.

About this time is when I noticed how these dark clouds had crept across the sky and they kinda flickered with the glow of lightning that was just out of view. A wind was blowing and it felt like the universe was kissing me softly, running its cool fingers through my hair. I could feel the moisture in the air, could smell that fresh scent that pre-rain spores release, and I knew that this wasn’t just something that was happening to me.

I was part of it, man. I knew that I was just this little strand in the giant web of everything, and I wanted to experience it all. The cool grass between my toes, the wind rustling my pubes, the feeling of bare skin when those first, fat drops of rain finally started falling outta the sky.

So I took off all my clothes, right there on the porch. Left them in this rumpled pile and went running down the steps, across the sidewalk, and into the backyard. You’re never really free until you’re naked, ya know? You’ve never really experienced life until you’ve done it without all the hang-ups and impositions society tries to choke us with. If you’ve never danced nude to the rhythm of rain pattering on leaves, then you’ve never truly been alive.

Anyway, I’m out in the backyard, doing this little tribal two-step, when I hear howling way back in the hills. Sounds just like some giant wounded beast and it stops me in my tracks. I’m standing there listening to this sound, ya know, and all of a sudden all that zen just vanishes. I’m like Adam in the Garden of Eden, realizing his nakedness for the first time and feeling the shame warm my chest and cheeks. I wanna run to the porch, put on my clothes, go back inside where its bright and safe and protected, ‘cause I’ve got The Fear, now.

I’m listening to this moaning sound coming down off the mountains and it seems like it embodies every fucked up thing that’s ever existed. Violence, doubt, rage… it’s all there, whipped into a frenzy by the coming storm and fueled by the anger of the Earth and how her children have betrayed her. I can see the pines way back there swaying back and forth, the wind is really blowing now, driving these little stinging bits of dust into my eyes and peppering my bare skin with what feels like tiny pinpricks.

But I can’t move. It’s like roots have spread out from the soles of my feet and anchored me to the ground, ya