It is with no small measure of embarrassment that I confess that, even though I came of mystical age in the psychedelic Sixties—even though I have at one time or another in my sixty-two years on this planet experimented with a cornucopia of mind-altering substances—even though I have labored to control my breathing with pranayama, fasted for days on end—even though I’ve chanted myself to socially acceptable insanity and engaged in magical rituals that I would never dream of describing to your mother—the strongest and most powerful drug I have ever consciously ingested for the purpose of driving myself out of my physical body is Constance’s homemade broccoli or spinach quiche.
I must point out that this dish is not necessarily dangerous to anyone possessing a modicum of common sense and self-discipline. It has, however, challenged the resolve of many a strong-willed magician, and unless you have actually inhaled its savory perfume and laid eyes upon its fluffy buxom filling spilling over the thick flaky fringe of rich shortbread crust—unless you’ve actually slipped a warm forkful of its buttery ambrosia into your watering mouth and felt the living soul of cream and butter and eggs and scallions spiked with nutmeg and a dozen other spices, and Swiss, Parmesan and Cheddar cheeses explode inside your head—then, my friend, you have no right whatsoever to ridicule the weakness of others.
It is a dish to die for. In fact, on one occasion a dear friend of ours actually suffered a massive heart attack within a few hours of his feast of Constance’s spinach quiche, an event that required immediate triple bypass surgery and months of recuperation. I’m happy to say he recovered completely and has reassured us on numerous occasions that the experience was worth the memory of the quiche.
Is it any wonder that a weak-willed and insecure glutton such as myself succumbs to the demons of intemperance whenever I’m confronted with an entire spinach or broccoli quiche during a quiet dinner for two in the privacy of my own home?
The particular out-of-body experience I am about to relate took place five years ago following one such quiet dinner. I must hasten to point out that at that time of my life I had been abusing my body with a litany of bad eating and drinking habits (“crimes against wisdom,” as the ayurvedic folks would call it) and I had allowed myself to grow to nearly three hundred pounds. It was not good.
I am happy to say that I have since I have lost more than one hundred pounds and am feeling better than I have my entire life. At the time, however, my weight made sleeping quite challenging. It was great for lucid dreaming and astral projection because I was often tossing and turning in that twilight world between waking and sleeping. But it was terribly frightening when I realized that many of my colorful nocturnal adventures were kicked off by the suffocating effects of sleep apnea and that my astral projections could probably be more accurately described as near-death experiences! Still, this season of my life was characterized by a rich assortment of out-of-body experiences, and led to my ability to control and direct the circumstances of my dreams and projections.
I wish I could say that Constance was as excited about my astral adventures as I was. But I can’t. In fact, they were often rude and terrifying interruptions to her sleep. She usually knows that I am outside of my body before I do, because I almost always roll over on my back and stick my left arm straight up into the air. I have no idea why I do this, but whenever I do it she wakes her up and grumbles to herself, “Oh no! He’s out of his body again. I wonder when he’s going to make that noise?”
The noise that she dreads is a phenomenon that occurs when my astral body tries to speak, or rather, when my physical vocal cords try to vibrate to the speech impulses coming from my astral body. When I open my astral mouth to say something, my physical mouth back in bed makes the most grotesque and hideously frightening noise …
wooooahhhhhhHHHAAAAeeeeeeeaaaaaAAAAHHHH!
It’s not just a whimper either. I let out a monstrous groan as if I were the most tortured soul in the deepest pit of hell. It’s very loud. I can hear it myself and often wake up. It is so loud that Constance is sure our next-door neighbors must be terrified by the sound. I feel so embarrassed. I always think, “Why can’t I speak? Why am I making these horrible noises?” But instead of shutting up or trying to wake up, I always try again—only louder—
wooooahhhhhhHHHAAAAeeeeeeeaaaaaAAAAHHHH!
That’s when Constance has had enough and jabs me in the ribs with her elbow and yells in my ear, “You’re out of your body again! Wake up and go back to sleep! And put your arm down!”
I don’t recall what the occasion was. Perhaps it was a birthday or an anniversary, or just one of those days Constance was careless enough to innocently ask me, “What would you like for dinner tonight, dear?” My answer was of course, “Broccoli quiche! Please!”
And so began a day of heroic kitchen gymnastics that would give birth to the mystic meal. The quiche itself is made in an oversized pastry dish (not a pie plate) that can easily serve a huge slice to six hungry people. It’s not a thin little breakfast quiche either. The rich whipped filling fluffs up to nearly four inches. Two of these pieces was entirely too much for one sane person to eat at one sitting. But it was so good that I begged for another. Constance reluctantly agreed and succumbed to the temptation of another slice herself. When we were finished, we had eaten two-thirds of the massive pie. We
