I looked up and saw the sky through a lattice of mottled branches and leaves. Somebody said something, I couldn't say who, Rog or Merilee. Voices were beginning to sound mighty strange. I started to laugh; something had gotten me in the funnybone. I became aware, in an instant—the peyote kicking loose my synapses—of my tree, every tree, and hill and rock, the earth, and how I fit in. I thought: this is big medicine, and started to laugh. My tree was a great giant spindle aimed at the heart of this new understanding; and I was in the middle of it.
A radiant face, amused radiant face, was floating right above me in the form of a dancing cauliflower cloud. Socrates! Or was it some old Indian? His lips were moving! The world slowed down, or I slowed it down; probably the latter. The blurred features of things that bumbled by untouched in the hurly-burly spread out, distinctly, above me. The sky was a multitude of blue, a mosaic of sorts, with seams, dips, facets, and undulating, billowing curves. I followed one pale blue seam until it disappeared, then skipped to another. Everything was moving.
