A Mirror of Before and After - CHAPTER XXIII
By Frank Moore circa 1970s
Moe was right about taking risks. I demanded the right to risk everything that was me or mine. But he was wrong about my being limited in experiences. Why didn’t he really know me? Know that I had done everything, that I had experienced almost everything that could be done outwardly …
I had traveled halfway around the world. Attended parties with movie stars. Been in fast-moving racing cars … and in riots. I didn’t shoot up smack. I had let other people experience that sort of thing for me while I watched. True, I didn’t play basketball … but I didn’t want to, as much as the script said I should want to. But I always got to do what I wanted to … in time … always.
I couldn’t help laughing inside when someone looked at me in that way, feeling sorry that I couldn’t do things. I had done more things than they, had a fuller life. I didn’t need to laugh at them … rarely set them straight. I just chuckled inside over the secret.
As a kid, I just couldn’t see spending time trying to learn to walk and talk … even when people kept trying to force me into it. I would have liked to talk … that would have set people free with me. But I knew very early that I could never talk, that trying to was just performing useless rites. As for walking, I couldn’t see I was missing much by not walking. I wanted to learn, understand, and live much more than I wanted walking and talking. I worked hard at learning, understanding and living because I saw that was the way to real freedom. But people rarely understood that. As for taking acid, Moe was partly right. I did take risks. But the thrill of taking risks was not the reason I took acid. I wanted to get to the other reality so I could see this everyday reality with objectivity, so I could come back into this world with a new perspective … dig this world more.