SikkimRex

Well, for now, I have decided to withdraw from the MO search, so thanks to everyone for their messages. Moderator, can you please de-pin for me? And by the way, I did almost make an offer on a nice one near Nimbin, so if anyone needs a contact, give me a PM.

My girlfriend and I are interested in buying into an MO (multiple occupancy). We almost had one sussed and then it fell through, so I thought, hey, why not ask the Corroboree. We would ideally with the following characteristics: >Either Byron, Tweed or Lismore Shires; >Shack (rather than proper house, nescessarily), or just potential building site; >Some bush on it, with wet/palm/rain forest preferred; >2 Wheel driveable access road; >Telephone access nearby (to connect to - must be able to get internet, but dialup ok (just!); >Community that doesnt mind coming and going, and is a little chilled out (freakazoids are fine though); >Some pasture land / cleared land for tree farm; >Upper price between $70K and $100K (yeah, the budget end); >Willing to tolerate a fair bit of shade, but not constant, and prefer morning rather than afternoon sun &; >Obviously the closer to the coast the better (but know that this is the price driving factor), and also to Collangatta airport. We are looking at moving down there early next year, but could settle very soon if nescessary. Rather than give money to real estate pricks, we are interested in private sale, and if someone in the SAB community can help me find something (that comes through) there will be a finders fee if it goes through. Am interested in MO's that are just getting up also. Don't care about community title, re-sale bullshit - just want a bolt hole in the bush. Please PM me if you know someone, have a lead, or have a share yourself you want to sell. (also, mod's, if this type of notice is not appropriate, please tell me - otherwise if mod could "pin it" that would be great)

Botanica - was'nt meaning to be condescending - but its best not to assume too much with random punters. I am in the game too. Though I am out of practice right now (literally and metaphorically). I am writing now. Havent been in contact with any LA's into the entheogen thing yet, though there are a few ex-trippers I know, who regard it as "kids stuff". In the thing in Barcelona all the LA's were Dutch, yet they did not touch a thing - none of them! Again, they see it as for tourists or kids. When I visit them in Netherlands (those who I have known for a while), they always say to me "its safe to come back - we have regrown the mushrooms since you were last here".. Its just a payout - but they cant seem to conceive that this is serious stuff, deeply intellectual stuff - and as old as the world. I just laugh it off. So, well you must be in the states then. You must be an LA.. I should have got it from the reference to LA's being better than architects, though personally I dont beleive this, and there is ample evidence in Oz that often architects "do it better". So, to continue my investigation... Kiley is Dead. And Rose is Dead. And Treib is nostly academic these days. And Church is Dead. So you work for EDAW then.. though Eckbo is long off the scene for them. And EDAW in Brisvegas is the biggest nationally... So say Hi to Mark F. for me... I might even be working for your alma mater.. Send me a PM and I will introduce myself and we can industry gossip...

Thanks for the reply Botanica. I dont know how into landscape architecture you are, but if you are interested in the inside-out thing, then you should check out a book called "Modern Landscape Architecture: A Critical Review", edited by Marc Treib. It goes through a range of approaches to the inside outside relationship that were developed by American LA's between the 1940s - 1960's. LA's such as Garrett Eckbo, Thomas Church, Dan Kiley and James Rose really created this discussion with their projects, aswell as the idea of outdoor living. The book reprints articles of these guys from the 40's and 50's. You might remember the Sunset Garden Books from the 1970's? You can still find them in the Gardening section of second hand bookshops - the Western Landscape one includes a lot of the work of these LA's and the ways they designed around indoor-outdoor, outdoor living, etc. The question of how a building "harmonises" with the natural environment is an interesting one. Its about THE LOOK of sustainability. Two similar buildings could use the same amount of technology and provide the same environmental technology, yet look different. So I do not think there is a single aesthetic or look for an environmental builiding, but there is the look that we personally, subjectively like. For me, buildings that dont impact negatovely on the environment physically, but set up a contrast with nature are more interesting. SOme of the houses of Harry Seidler (RIP) in Sydney do this. I think nature is spectacular and culture is too and they are at their best when together what is special of each is revealed. This is not to say that designers should not be precise in what they do in relation to nature, but they should not nescessarily mimic nature. Finally, if you are interested in planning and landscape architecture in cities, Barcelona is the place to research and try to visit. In the lead up to the 92 Olympics (and after a fascist dictator, Franco) they created many new spaces that were very innovative. I revisited them on this recent trip and it was interesting to see how they have grown or been used or degraded in almost 20 years. Most were in terrible shape, but a few were much better than they were then, where the vegetation has grown. and transformed the whole design. This is what vegetation should do, but few of the projects there (in Barcelona) use much vegetatation, since they were all done by architects. Their new public spaces are also pretty interesting, such as this new park amphitheatre by Foreign Office Architects (or FOA), also at the Forum. Its pretty crazy too.

Went down South for the weekend, and as we all know, it rained like a MOFO. When i returned, I have found that all my cactus have this black sliminess happening under the surface, just in 3 days! We had them under the verandah, but some sideways rain may have got them. I was thinking that they just got too wet, and was going to remove the pebble mulch and leave them in the sun to dry out, and hope for the best... Dunno what else to do... Also, last week I pyrthrummed for the scale, as per other posts I had read... but this happened just after.. a link? I dunno... can any of you experienced dudes recommend a strategy? Are they all gone - is it too far gone? A scared parent... Rex

Thanks Guys! Its just so sad. But now andy if you reckon they may come good, I will stick with them. I was gonna cut them into lots of little cuttings. I wish I had known about the washing off the Pyrethrum part. Now I do. Its all good (breathe). I gotta tell ya- its 20 years since i did plant protection in my hort course, and all this stuff has just washed away. Just more evidence that I gotta get out of the office.. I wonder if they have refresher courses for horticulture? Tanks again! Rex

Hmm. Thats a worry. Can anyone else confirm this? I am sure that others on the fourm have suggested Pyrthrum for scale on cactus.. Thanks for the reply about anti-fungal all - cant do any harm - so I will have a go. It just looks like DEATH to me... BUT I MUST SAVE MY BABIES! Can they survive these kind of ailments?

If that was a period edition - you did very f'kn well ,my friend. Thats not a book, its an investment! Most of the time these book shop fkers are checking abebooks all the time, so you just cant find these bargains any more. There is a bookshop in Annerley that is a total disaster, like an old fashioned one (maybe like GOulds in Syd), and I thought - finally - if I spend enough time here I am sure to find a cheap beauty (?). I found two - Book of Flotation and Pathways Through Space by Franklin Woolfe. Ad they were $40 bucks each! (NOT cheap - they should have been $15 max). I went to the counter, and sure enough, amongst the mess, the old fella was on Abebooks, checking every single one out! Yet he was storing them in the worst, shabbiest way ever! By the by, a book shop in NZ that I buy stuff from - Brews n' Browse Books has a first of Charles Tart's "Altered States of Consciousness" for $15US and also a 1993 edition of "Invisible Landscapes" for $10 US or so, if anyone is interested PM me. Hope the house hunting is going great Prier!

Have you tried hypnosis? I have been doing some "re-programming" with it recently, not for insomnia, but for getting up easily and writing (at 5am), and its been working a treat. I know that hypno's reckon they can do hypnosis also for insomnia. Of course it depends if you can be hypnotised, and you will have to do a session to see if you can. Most people can - even if they think they can't. We go into trance a few times a day anyway, without knowing it. A lot of it depends on how much you want to fix the problem, and if you are willing to "beleive". For example, if you go to one to give up smoking, and you dont really want to, it wont work. (Though then you should just read Alan Carr - Easyway to give up smoking - which is based on hypnosis anyway) For psychedelic people this should not be too hard, and indeed, hypnosis has some psychedelic qualities of its own (floating, loss of sense of above and below, spontaneous memories/visions). If you find hippy stuff corny, then do what I do, and tell them to do it straight, cut the new age music, etc. Surprisingly I have found that I already knew the solution to most of these things, but my conscious mind was working against my interests. Hypnosis kinda synchronises it. It is expensive ($120 - 180 per hour, but I have pleaded one down to 90), but if you have ever been prescribed an anti-depressant, then you can probably get a referral to one as a treatment for "mental illness" for 5 sessions (at least in Qld), and then just set the brief yourself. If you do do a limited amount of sessions, make sure you get them to teach you how to do self hypnosis - its surprisingly easy, but you have to know what the "trance feeling" feels like first so you can put yourself into it, so you need to at least have a couple of sessions with the hypno first. If you do do it, my main advice is, dont sabotage it. That is, don't fixate on annoying psychologist shit, and thereby subvert it yourself. Go to it with the knowledge that YOU are doing it, its your trance state, and they are just facilitating. THen blow 'em off when you have got it.

Nice! But fuck Microsoft! So let me put a plug in for my favourite OS Office substitute Sun's Open Office - it does all of it (new version is MUCH better) and is with the spirit the internet arose from. And of course its FREE! Also, now they (the OS'ers) are taking on Adobe, so check out GIMP also!

I am growing a lot of rainforest trees in pots, and two species in particular Brachychiton and Harpaulia are getting absolutely hammerred - the B. has been completely defoliated. Someone suggested making up a garlic spray. Does anyone do this, and if so, whats your recipe, otherwise, any suggestions? I am trying to train my cat to get 'em, but he just isnt into it! HELP!!

Many of you will know of Christian Ratsch from his amazing Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants, and also from when he spoke here a few years ago, apparently. At the symposium he was a major feature, speaking many times in German, only a couple of which were translated, unfortunately. As I said before, it was an unashamedly Germanic forum, and Ratsch in particular was really pushing this idea that ethnobotany is a German thing, although occasionally, during the German only presentations you would hear him scream out in ENglish "DMT is everywhere!". He has a great prescence, and was very happy to speak to everyone - which was good, because every one wanted to speak to him. Rather than describe what he looks like, I have attached an image of him and his fabuous partner (who, so long as I can keep up the momentum, will be discussed in another post). To say the least, he looked like the consumate ethnobotanist! His first and main presentation was both scholarly and informative. As I review my notes, they are now looking a bit illegible, so I will do the best I can to give some sort of description, and then give some info on some new things I had'nt heard before. With his Germanic flavour, his lecture started discussing WWotan or Odin (who he described as the "God of Researchers") and the axis mundi, the universal tree. He spoke that entheogens helped us to remember, and noted however that in looking at other cultures we should use their knowledge but not copy their rituals. He quoted Hoffman that "you are only a good scientist when you are a mystic as well". One of his main points was that "the darkness" was a fundamentally important aspect of the psychedlic experience, and that it was simply tough teaching, not actually dangerous. He suggested that one had to go through hell to get to heaven. There is no such thing, he said, as a horror trip, and he quoted Nietzsche that "the encounter with horror turns us into human beings". He was very keen to discuss how we must not think of entheogens as western medicine, that we can simply take something to have an effect. HE noted how the Pharmakon was not just an application of a medicine, but also worked with words, and that this combination programs ones consciousness. That the word leads the medicine. He described entheogens as a "cross habit". In this vein, he went on to discuss Paracelsus, and the notion of resemblance (in a way that reminded me of Foucault), and how the shape of something might tell us how it might be used. In terms of this cross habit (words/medicine, resemblance/activity), he described his discussions with a shaman who had described a Morning Glory (Ipomea calea) as Toes. When he tried to correct him and point out that Toe was Brugsmania, the shaman had said that the same plant spirit can manifest in different species. He also said that dosage levels are not just more of the same, but are different instruments all together (this reminded me of Bergson's idea of differences in degree versus differences in type). He then told an amazing tale about how when visiting the Shipibo in the Amazon, he was interested in how the women made the ceramics with patterns from the ayahuasca experience so accurately, yet women did not take ayahuasca, and also how they can have their own icaros without ingesting it. Apparently, however (and this blew me away), female babies are given eye drops at birth of "pitiri", which he described as being derived from a Cyperus grass, that may have had an ergot fungus. Thus these patterns were inherent to the women from birth - they didnt need to take ayahuasca. In terms of ethnobotany, he proclaimed his beleif, that he shared with Hoffman, that LSD (not just LSA) would be found in a plant (not just in claviceps), and that it would most probably be found by further examining convolvulaceae. HE also spoke of the great potential he saw in HBR (we know this ). HE talked about how Oliliquia was prepared as a honey nectar. Finally he proclaimed his most recent discovery of a plant he called Cabalonga, the seeds of which were traded, and that when cut and put on the tongue, were just like 300 mikes of LSD. On the last day, I went up to talk to him again (we spoke 3 times), and he wearily but happily told me that I should forget doing an organised retreat to the Amazon, but just get as far from Iquitos as I could get, and then just find a Shaman. He then gave me a kind of "go up this river, take the first fork on the left, find this 10 house settlement, and ask for Roberto!" direction map to find one. This struck me as very generous, and certainly a money saver. I just use this example to give a sense how the man was hammered by people, myself included, and just kept on giving. He was a legend. As a final aside, during one of my frequent stranger tests (whenever there was a break I would just walk up to a table of smokers who i didnt know and try to meet some new crew - and not once was I snubbed - good vibes city), I met this table of young German guys after one of Ratsch's lectures, and said how great he is. They were huge fans and promptly pulled a big bottle out of their bag and said "youy like him, then you should try this brew of absynth I made from his recipe". It was delicious, but was like a pan-galactic-gargle-blaster, that is "being battered over the head by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick".

Well, to jump onto the ship... I have been looking at buying a share in an MO in the band Nimbin-Lismore to Coast, so if anyone knows anyone who has a budget share to sell (but not too budget - have got some cash) I would be very interested - PM me if you know someone who might wanna get out..

This is probably not the right reponse, but I can say that from the other side, as a bullied kid (both at home, and at school - it happens that way), that kids do mean shit to each other. Childhood is the testing ground for all these emotions, but also ethics. Consequently, if you are upset about it now, then simply, your lesson has been learnt, regardless of how long it takes. While at the time I literally wanted to kill my bullies (and indeed borrowed a pistol and took it to school to kill the bully, after appropriate humiliation of course - all fantasy - I just left school instead), 20 years later, if I heard any of those bullies expressing remorse as you are (and theirs was much more physical than yours), I would forgive them immediately. Yeah, reflect on it for sure, but dont think you are the same person - you are not - real bullies don't feel remorse, they just keep fucking people over. Just be glad that you survived childhood without staying that way. Laboratories also require failed experiements to confirm the truth!

Sounds great! Any ball-park dates to structure around?

It was interesting at the Forum that Leary came up rarely, if at all. Obviously, and rightfully, the community has moved on. Metzner was the only speaker from that scene (the Millbrook scene) and is a major speaker in his own right, as a contemporary enetheogenic thinker and researcher. One speaker about Leary was his ex-wife Joanna Leary (now Joanna Harcourt-Smith), who is the famous Swiss countess, that Leary was with while he was in Swizterland, during his arrest in Afghanistan, and during his prison time in the US. I am pretty sure that he had another wife after her. In Acid Dreams and Storming Heaven, suggestions are made that she was either an agent of some sort, or at least an informer, and that she convinced Leary to do the same. I had never heard definite confirmation of this, although apparently it was confirmed in the video “Timothy Leary is Dead”. She was a pretty compelling woman, still very attractive in her forties or fifties. The presentation was quite funny, in some ways, because she was speaking in a space below the main stairs, and was discussing very personal stuff, including her sex life with Leary. It was one of those moments where I thought how extraordinary this forum was – this woman was exposing herself in this huge space, but there was barely 20 people watching. This sense that you could discuss ANYTHING at this forum was strong and liberating, even if it occassionally embarrassed me with my English (colonial) sensibilities. She described their meeting, and how she was a “Vogue Hippy” at the time, and totally naïve. As soon as he met her, Leary told her that she was his one true love. She said that it was instantly huge doses of LSD and that they did not make love for quite a while. She noticed that he was always carrying a briefcase, like the professor, with him, yet she had never seen what was in it. When they were finally going to make love, he opened his briefcase, and it was full of bits and pieces and his writing. He unpacked a series of Tantric things, writing, and a copy of Life magazine. He opened the magazine and showed her an article of brain scans, pointed to a part of the brain, and said “This is where I am going to make love to your brain”. She was 24 and he was 53. Not much of a pick-up line if you ask me! She then got a “Dorothy Dixer” (a leading question) from her current husband - “Can you tell us about the truth or otherwise of the rumour that you and timothy were DEA informants?”. I cringed when I heard this, because I thought that this would have to be the worst place to make such a confession... However, with appropriate sense of the moment, she told the whole story. My first thought was how she was TOO HONEST... They were picked up in Afghanistan by a DEA agent who introduced himself thus: “Dopes the game and Brook's the name – and I am taking you back to the United States”. The story of the arrest and what follows is basically described in in the Acid Dreams and Storming Heaven. However, in her discussion, she discussed the prison experience for both of them. While this was being discussed the anxiety level of the audience increased as they sensed the coming confession – and this, the rationale. She discribed how she was cavity searched daily, and how Timothy was in solitary for 3 months. She said that jail was killing him, and indeed, if you look at Neurologic, the book he wrote while in jail with Joanna, then the difference in Leary's appearance before and after, he certainly aged. For Joanna, as a person deeply in love with Leary, her first priority was to get him out. She said that prisoners must have someone on the outside. She said that unless you had been there, you could not know the kind of pressure athey had on them, and the desperation to simply get out. She herself had negotiated Timothy's deal with the DEA, and he had supplied some of the least damaging names he could think of. She had then gotten wired up and met with a number of people. As far as she knew, there had only been one arrest resulting in 3 weekends in jail. The people they had implicated were all lawyers. When she was finished, no one was clapping, but I did. Her earnestness and guts to say what she had impressed me. She had managed to communicate very strongly the horror of the experience, and that THEY could make you do anything. She said that if you love someone, you must try to get them out. I think she was courageous, though I was a bit dissapointed in Tim. He was such a variable phenomena, a saint and the devil, a scientist and a hedonist. RIP If you are interested in Joanna Harcourt-Smith (Leary), the following is her website: http://www.metahistory.org/PreciousMind.php ALso, for your edification, here is a bad photo of the famous order for Tim Leary from Hoffman at Sandoz, from the LSD library: (photos by Micha Lerner)

It's interesting - my mother thinks that "we will be the ancient ones" ie. that we will populate the universe, and that other species will evolve from us. The down side is that our search for others may reflect our emptiness - we are truly alone. I told her that this is'nt that different an idea to ones underlying star trek - she hated that. Captain kirk was a sleaze bag! However, even if we are the old ones, that doesnt mean that there are not already other consciousnesses here, synchronous with our own - eg. cetaceans, plants. Maybe the planet itself (if you are a Lovelock fan (I am). Obviously all of this is very dependant on an anthropomorphic notion of consciousness. I am with wittgenstein "About that which we cannot speak, we will remain silent". Magic is science yet to be described.

A FOAF got a hold of some S.d. and was told at the time that he should be very careful with fertilizer, However, its a bit skiw, si how to fertilize, considering sensitivities? Perhaps a slow release, or maybe some composted manuare on the pot? any thoughts out there?

10 minutes and all the answers! THanks lady's and gents!

Hey Neurotichaosis, it's all good - this is just healthy discussion - so I am not slightly annoyed by your criticality (if that is a word). But it's interesting that you felt you needed to defend yourself from my comment. I don't doubt the authenticity of your experience, and agree with Descartes, Hume, Berkley etc, that we can only ever really trust the internal - our senses cant be trusted - and that the world relies upon them to confirm its existence. So if those senses are distorted, then we are experienceing a different world as much as we are experiencing the real one. In a way, I think that Balzac's reply gets to the most lateral interpretation of the scientific angle - that we might invent entities in our minds, but that does'nt mean that they are not nescessarily sentient in their own right. Like we might create viruses - that don't know they were invented (like the recent movie ISLAND). After one startling session with acacia/burnt plastic , I became convinced that WE are THEIR experiment in artificial intellegence - their experiement from the digital into the physical, the flexhy. And OUR emotions were THEIR attempt to be illogical. Luckily this idea passed before I had a chance to tell it to too many people. Hell, you may be right about science being my defense meachanism - it's been pretty effective for western society to drive itself firmly into dry dullness. In fact, in Amsterdam earlier this year, I was able to take some mushies legally (viva NL! Last bastion of sanity!). ANd what interested me is that I messed up the dose and my partner and I ended up unable to move (luckily we had rented an apartment for just such experimentation), hallucinating in a way that I had thought only the lucky sixties people did - it did'nt matter if our eyes were open or closed. ANYWAY, the hallucinations were aztecy, etc, as per many descriptions out there. But I was presented with 2 opportunities, both of which I recoiled from for fear of going insane. One was that I suddenly became able to stretch my mouth strangely, and make these weird sounds, but it was also a dance of elbows, ankles and knees, and chins. I performed it once with my girlfriend, and then she answered me with it (this strange synesthesic language) - and it so freaked me, I did'nt do it again that night, even though I felt this compulsion to. The other opportunity was this aggregation in the pattern that formed itself into a biologcal vehicle that was just "idling" - waiting for me to pop into it and travel somewhere. I called it the thrashing machine (it's actually my dwg for my avatar). Both of these opportunities were presented and both I refused, because I could not accept them in my current mindset. But, for me, that was the clearest such a presentation has been, and that itself indicates that I am getting closer to be able to take such opportunities). I am learning, what can I say. But for me too, entheogens are about connecting with something else, something other than this shallow consesus reality. I will get there. Finally, I suppose that I still have a lot of fear - I am in my late thirties, and I only just survived the eighties. I am the last of 5 friends who took things together - drugs took them all (admittedly, not psychedelics). This kept me on the straight and narrow for 10 years. I have also had to help admit two people to mental institutions after severe psychotic episodes on psychedlics. Both have never come back (bar deinstitutionalisation). Sure they were predisposed, but who is to say that I'm not? Hey, I've been on anti-depressants! If science is a refuge for me, its value is as another filter of understanding. I do not think neurochemistry is separate from the spiritual. I dont think that our subjective experience is devalued by beleiving in science - it's just that it isnt the domain OF science. our society values science more than art, when both are accurate means (when well done!) of representing different things. Thats why I like Lilly. He valued both the subjective and the objective, and crossed them - being subjective about the objective, objective about the subjective. I was'nt meaning to belittle your experience at all - I think it was amazing. I must be more careful about my words. Rather, I was thinking about how the model of science might interpret it, because you were so articulate about the experience itself - it needed no further interpretation! Hell, yeah, it's a rave, but I am at home on a Friday night! SAB is where iz at... and it will be less that 10K.

RC, eh.. it's got a bad sound about it doe'snt it.. too like RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary!) hmm - scary stuff. I love it when you have a box in the mail! waiting, waiting... can you say you just did'nt know?...

Indeed, a hell of a report. In fact, after reading it I had an afternoon nap (lucky student I am!), and then dreamt about a woman similar to the lady you discussed! Suggestion, eh? It is interesting this thing of other people appearing. As a kid, I saw a young girl (but older than me) by my side the whole time I was under anaesthetic in hospital, and she was just talking to me. I was 5 at the time. And I have been reading about Lilly and his "guardians" - comforting consciousnesses around him during dangerously far out experiences.Joe Simpson discusses this in "touching the void", when he feels like someone is looking out for him while he is delirious. Mountaineers also frequently get this feeling at high altitudes. I read somewhere (i really wish I knew where though!) in the psychedelic literature that an evolutionary argument for hallucinations is as a way to "shut out" the real world, the reality of which would otherwise be too much for the organism to cope with. Like a deliberate, temorary insanity. My scientific side says that it is your brain creating a third person as a defence mechanism. But in my heart I really would like it to be an independant consciousness - and I hope you meet this lady again (but perhaps any man would say this - a mysterious beautiful woman with your interests at heart!). She sounds great!

So Torsten, is TIKHAL illegal? Fruck - it's not just our bodies they want to control...

I am in sub-tropical eastern Australia, and my P.viridis is growing SOOO slow. It looks fine (healthy), but has only gotten 3 leaves in a year! (Each about 10 cms long, but thin). It is growing in a 12 inch pot, with pretty good potting mix, in semi-shade (it was burning in the full sun, so I moved it some months ago). Can anyone suggest a cultivation regime they have used successfully with these suckers?

A great discussion to initiate Wandjina, and on this the national forum! Having just been to this LSD symposium (and yes, I will stop talking about it some day), I had such a strong sense that holy fuck, this thing is getting BIG again. And its world-wide. To hear Hoffman, he said LSD found him - it searched him out. For me, as a previous explorer in the 1980's, and having lead a straight, sober and career oriented 90's, it feels like it's also re-found me too. I mean, I am a fan of McKenna (even if i dont beleive it all), and so perhaps there is some sort of momentum leading up to 2012? I have met quite a few thirty-somethings who have suddenly renewed their interests, and in a more intentional and research way. The internet is definitely a factor, and also, obviously, thanks Torsten. We wouldent even be having this conversation without it. But at the same time, it could easily also be the down-fall - it's like any good tool - it's good and bad. However, I think that this society is escalating in its straightness and its control. 1984 is happening with a dangerous subtlety. And I think that Leary et. al's Internal Freedom Foundation is more important and relevant than ever. I mean, I am a smoker, so i note strongly that they are forcing effects (or lack of them) on my body. But breath-testers in their own way are holding whats internal against you. If we factor in sedition, then it's clear that the body is no longer off limits. ANd also, as a teacher, I have to say that the numbers of alternative kids have greatly decreased. Generally there would always be 5 - 8, and now there are 2, if you are lucky. So if there is a psychedlic Renaissance, then it will happen in a very socially stratified way. In many respects, this may be like the copnservatism of the 1950's, with the 60's as a response. We can only hope. But I do think that the stakes will rise severely in the next 2 years, as this community booms. In the end though, it was the ones who were most carefree and had something to say that survived the last dark ages. SO I dont think we should be too paranoid either. Hell, I agree with Torsten - (about oz and mushrooms) but will expand and say that I thinkl that the tryptamine thing as a whole may become a defining part of the Oz scene. Given wattles and all. I think that as those courageous ethnobot types start attacking the oz flora, we may find much, much more. Finally, I think that intention, dose, set and setting will be the key for it not just being another scene or subculture - that it is ties to experience and exploration, rathert than music and socialisation