I woke up early feeling refreshed. The clock had read quarter to lavender when I went to sleep. I slid out of bed, brushed my teeth, showered, and went out for lunch, riding my bike to Gartine, a café I had heard served delicious breakfasts and lunches. I ate steamed eggs with duck prosciutto and truffles.

I was itching to explore again, but I went back home to finish an index. When I arrived, I saw the painting I had been working on and was taken aback. I liked it … and hated it. The light of day changed everything.

There was no question that the painting was made for shrooming eyes and a shrooming mind. Nevertheless, there was no focal point, and I found that my eyes couldn’t stop roaming, trying to find the beginning, searching for the end. In that sense, nothing had changed. I saw the areas that needed work. Most of them were obvious simply because they hadn’t received caring attention. After twenty minutes of staring at it, I made myself turn on my MacBook and get to work.

I finished indexing around five o’clock, editing until six-thirty. I sat back to marvel that all of my work responsibilities were finished. I had received an email from a different publisher offering two new indexes; both had long schedules. I wouldn’t need to complete either one of them until the middle of May. I was free for the rest of my stay. I leaned back in my chair wondering how much trouble I could get into over the next month.

I went to the window. The weather had been clear and calm earlier in the day, a smattering of sunshine between the clouds. Now, though, the wind had picked up and the air had a bite to it. I saw walkers bundled up, bracing against the wind and the pelting rain. The cars beeping past seemed angry. Nothing fun existed out the window. My mood sunk as I watched. I had been looking forward to going out to celebrate. Now I wasn’t so sure.

I figured, though, that if I wasn’t going to go out that I should weather the storm and pick up some shrooms from Conscious Dreams. The ride there and back would not be fun, but … what else was I going to do? I bundled in rain gear the best I could, went out and unlocked my bike. I arrived soaked, walked into an empty shop and ordered a dose.

By the time I returned to my apartment, I was so soaked I felt twenty pounds heavier. I struggled to squeeze my bike into the rack and painstakingly locked it before slogging inside, carrying myself up the stairs through force of will, wondering why I had bothered. I no longer felt like shrooming. Nevertheless, after I undressed and hung up my clothes to dry, I ate the dose before taking a shower to warm up. As I was drying off, I remembered the woman from the previous night She said she would be at “Shuim,” a café or bar of some sort. I went to the bedroom to dress, still not sure I would. I had to see where it was or if I could even locate it.

I turned on my computer and searched for “Shuim Amsterdam.” Fortunately, the search engine was forgiving and led me to a bar called “Schuim” on Spuistraat. It was almost all the way to Raadhuisstraat. No way could I bike there. A cab? Yeah, a cab. It was after eight and I had written down eleven, the time she had mentioned she might be there. May as well show up early.

As I rifled through my contacts to find the number for a taxi service in Amsterdam, I came across Vanessa’s number. Hmmm, Vanessa. I hadn’t thought about her for what, a month? Seemed like a lifetime. I felt an urge to call her, to have her come by, go to Schuim. I shook off the impulse, but it nagged at me as I called for a taxi. I could always call her later, I rationalized. I wanted to party, to really party. I could always call Chris, maybe even Sophia.

I got a call when the cab arrived out front, threw on my jacket, and ran down the stairs. I hopped in the taxi and told the driver to take me to Schuim. He didn’t know the place. I told him Spuistraat south of Raadhuisstraat. He nodded and drove to Vijzelstraat, cut to the north, and made his way. As we were driving along the Amstel, I started to feel funny. The lights were excessively vibrant.

This was going to be more of an adventure than I had anticipated. I could barely remember what the woman looked like except that she had long, straight white-blonde hair with dark roots. If she had changed her hair at all, style or dye, I would never recognize her. I felt a powerful urge to call Vanessa, but I made myself focus on the lights. Later, maybe, see what happens first.

As the cabbie turned onto Spui, I settled into a soft glow. I was looking at a fun night. I could even call Auriana and Ellie. The possibilities were endless. Too bad Sterre was in Berlin. Still, I could call her and see if she was around. I could call Daniel, too, maybe swing by Gollem and see if Andy was there—he was always fun and pounding beers with him would be a blast. On top of all that was the possibility of meeting mysterious strangers.

The taxi pulled up outside Schuim. I paid and stepped out. The weather had calmed. The air was thick, leaning heavily on my body. I took off my coat as I walked under the awning among others who were smoking, all of them excessively good-looking and eclectically dressed. I had read just enough of the description of the café to know that it was supposedly “artsy,” sometimes featuring exhibits, but also DJs and other events. It seemed to have no rhyme or reason as far as what might be happening on a given night.

As I sucked my smoke I overheard a conversation in Dutch, a few men and women standing outside the entrance. It was refreshing to hear the affable sing-song of their voices. I noticed the way they were dressed, but couldn’t place it. Modish, perhaps, in a European sense. They appeared to be in their thirties.

One thing I had learned through all of my experiences was how to intellectualize sensory extravagances in social situations. Having acquired this skill allowed me to appear somewhat normal, if eccentric, around otherwise “straight” people. I felt a thrill being able to trip heavily while maintaining social acumen. It felt weird, but it alleviated tensions and anxieties. The skittishness and heavy social anxiety of November had long past so I relished being in crowds, drifting among the unknown, embracing the weird that might come.

I waited for an opening and when the group of them fell silent I made my approach. The woman wearing a pink scarf made eye contact with me first so I directed my attention to her: “I don’t know exactly what sort of constellation this is, but I felt the need to let you know that something surprisingly important is likely to happen tonight. Forgive my English, but it’s far more comprehensible than my Dutch.”

One of the men, tall, suave, far too good-looking for anyone in his presence to do anything but adore him, smilingly asked me what I meant. “Look,” I said, “there are only a few things I know with certainty, but after speaking with a confidante earlier this evening, a man of sufficient grace if debatable taste, I became aware that I might meet a crew of distinguishable Dutch outside a café that may—or may not—possess a substantial allure.”

The utterance of “allure” tasted like ripened grapes on my tongue. “This place—more specifically, you—have attracted my attention to a sufficient degree that I should be able to give voice to something more elegantly pretentious that even I, on any other night, might be repulsed. Nevertheless, my friend, who is more of a wise nuisance than anything else, explained that this extravagance might win over a crowd of ‘beautiful people’ who might not otherwise glance in my direction. So, consider what I have said as an invitation to a night far more lovely than any of you may have previously anticipated. Whether or not that comes to pass, well, that’s up to you.”

I could feel myself witnessing while speaking. It had been a passionately vacuous plea; I had fallen in love with the tone and cadence of my own voice; I noticed, however, that the Dutch had not. They were looking at me expectantly—it appeared that way, anyway, though I began to wonder if they were trying to will me away from them. I could feel their negative energy, that was the only way I could think of it, and I decided, then and there, that I needed to get away from them. I said, “Pardon,” dipped my head, and walked between them to open the door and walk inside.

I had made a great escape. As I looked around inside, nearly bumping into a delicate man dressed entirely in gold, including a top hat, I noticed what appeared to be paper mâché circular saucers on the ceiling, the lights hidden within them, giving the room a soft glow. The floor was wooden, but not hard-worn. I walked past a pillar—there several in a row the length of the wide and long interior space—toward the bar. I wasn’t quite overwhelmed by sensory overload; in fact, the sights and sounds served to keep me sufficiently out of my head so that I could maintain.

 It was certainly early in the evening, that was evident by the immediate service I received from the Dutch beauty behind the bar, her hair curling and curling and curling, her eyes spectacularly blue, her waist pulled tight by a belt inches thick, her bodice, which I knew was the wrong word but wasn’t able to find the right one, was white and flowing. She spoke gutturally in the soft din of sounds racing around one another. It could have been Dutch, but it didn’t matter because I wouldn’t have been able to understand what she had said even if it had been English.

I replied, “Orval.” She shook her head no. “Cold spring cocktail.” Apparently, she thought I was from another planet, but I realized she might not know the English name for the drink so I said, “Cognac, maple syrup, lemon juice,” and before I could finish she said, “Ja,” and went about mixing the drink. When she brought it to me, I realized I needed to pay. I pulled out my card, but as I was about to say “run a tab,” it occurred to me that I might not remember later. I put it away and pulled out a twenty Euro bill.

With drink in hand, I turned to survey my surroundings. I saw a DJ booth in the corner, but no one was manning it. Or womaning it. Or whatever. Then I saw, through the room, through the women and men sitting and standing at tables, milling in between, a painting on a wall, a painting … that … was … exactly like a colored pencil sketch I had made days ago. It was blown up, huge, on the side of a wall, god knows how large, a superimposition of my tiny 16 x 20 sketch. Who had done this, had sneaked into my sketchbooks and copied it to slap it on a wall for all to see, as if it was his or her own?

As I walked toward it, ignoring the paintings of the other walls, I said, “Who did this? Who stole my sketch?” In some way, I recognized this inquiry as futile, some type of territorial pissing, completely betraying my revulsion to intellectual property. Ego exerted itself, though. “This is mine, man. Seriously, I made this sketch. Now it’s here, massively blown up as a painting on a wall as if I had nothing to do with it. Who is raiding my sketch books?”

Three women sitting at a table next to the hijacked wall painting, sunning themselves beneath a copper-domed light, looked up at me as I stood behind their table indignantly, barely noticing them at all, somehow perceiving them as less significant than the traitor who had absconded with my creation, my ideas, my aesthetic. I had come up with bold, hard-lined rainbows of color mixed in a fashion completely random yet geometrically representative of persons, waves, fish, and somehow none of those things, merely colored shapes bordered by hard black lines.

It was a copy of the last of my colored pencil sketches in which I had used black as a bordering element. I was abandoning black as a laziness that made far-too-easy-on-the-eyes demarcations of shapes. I had since embraced the subtlety of shaded colors and complemented contrasts wherever appropriate. This was … this was a violation, an insult, a robbery. I wanted to speak to the artist, to ask why he hadn’t credited me.

But then, as I blocked out the Dutch spoken by the women who were, perhaps, perplexed or annoyed—not that it mattered to me one bit—I considered my own efforts as Forms that had always existed but had only been waiting for any and every artist to articulate particularities through color, whether paint, pencil, stencil, whatever. I was reminded, yet again, why I did not believe in property rights. All Forms existed independent of manifestation. It was, indeed, an accomplishment to discover such Forms and to give them representational life, even if considered abstract, though such a concept betrayed everything about what those Forms were.

This was not, in a strict sense, a Platonic ideal. Neither was it Buddhist. However, each of those manifestations were Forms in and of themselves, ways of conceiving the configuration of not just representations but being itself. Beneath those constellations was formlessness, the stem cell of being that could take any particular shape at any particular time, influenced perhaps most starkly by context, whether cultural or ideological, but even through belief systems or conceptual frameworks, none of them, though, any more than means for functionality, expression, or being in the world in such a way as to project an identity which, as much as anything else, was ego, even if “high” ego—which might be better described as identity—was a step on a path to self-realization, which was just a fancy term for being what each of us were behind the delusions we adopted through indoctrination and indirect cultural influences, including, especially, familial shapes any of us had been encouraged to accept within economic, political, and social structures.

As I considered the painting, now appreciating it, not simply for itself, but in the sense that I had channeled something similar, I felt the importance of realizing how rare it was to touch, with any measure of understanding, anything past the delusions of Form to what I was, what we were—if we were a “we” or if I was an “I”—while also acknowledging that I was closest to this understanding when I suppressed language and allowed my mind to … flow, a word that seemed trite in context.

That was the problem with words; they betrayed meanings by representation, being at best mirrors of reality. They turned the way things were upside down and backwards and, worse yet, distorted what could be in ways that were imperceptible; there was no mathematical configuration that could be applied through formula, even theoretical, to become 1:1. Consciousness, absent language or representation, was the only avenue to understanding, even if even that understanding was but a glimpse of possible realities.

I heard a Dutch voice rising from below me so I looked downward. The woman who had her back to me had swiveled in her seat and was looking up at me gibbering in Dutch. The other two women, sitting across the table, looked either shocked or dismayed. I couldn’t tell, but combined with the tone of the woman sitting below me, I gathered they were either unnerved or perturbed by my lingering presence. It was possible I had stood there for quite a long time while thinking and speaking to myself. I interrupted the jibber-jabber and pointed at the painted wall. “It’s not even my best work.” With that I turned and walked away, finishing my drink as I walked back to the bar.

The bar was still uncluttered. I looked out the front windows and saw the rain pouring down. Of course. This night was going to be slow. As I placed the empty glass on the counter, standing between two large floor-to-ceiling pillars, the woman who had served me earlier asked if I wanted another. I said yes then stared at the wall of liquors behind her as she made my drink. I pulled out a bill—I couldn’t tell how big—and handed it to her. Exchanging paper for liquid and the rental of a glass seemed entirely ridiculous. Whose idea was this? Do we all really believe this is how things should happen when objects are exchanged? I felt like I was sitting on a cloud high above the earth watching the history of trade throughout the entirety of civilization, wondering why such otherwise intelligent creatures had to stoop to such comical means as a way to overcome distrust. Advanced species? Compared to what? Certainly not dolphins.

I looked in my glass and saw porpoises cavorting. I took a drink and discovered they felt the same way I did about economics. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “What can I do? It’s not like I can join you in the ocean and swim freely for the rest of my life.” A man who previously had been invisible asked me what I had said. “Dolphins. Porpoises. They think capitalism is mundane, but I can’t swim.” I took a good look at the tall fellow and realized he was the gent I had met outside. His eyebrows were raised and he was leaning his torso away from me. I told him I remembered him from outside. He said, “Yeah. You are strange.” He had almost no accent, but that wasn’t the point. As soon as I heard him refer to me as “strange,” I heard Vanessa’s thick accent ringing in my ears: “You are strange.” When I asked aloud, “Why am I strange?” I heard Vanessa’s voice before his: “Because you are strange!”

The man came back into focus. I was struck by his handsomeness, but asked, “Do you know Vanessa, the diminutive supernatural Romanian sexpot?” His eyes widened, allowing me to see that much more of his soul. “You speak very much like her and yet, as beautiful as you are, you do not appear to be as wise or preternaturally young.” I took a drink and felt the rush of maple sugar saturating my tongue. “Forgive me for being judgmental. It’s unfair to compare anyone to an elfish gypsy.”

The tall and perhaps eternally youthful blonde laughed so vigorously I could feel my balls quaking and blood rushing into my cock. I took another drink, the warmth seeming to descend directly into my crotch. What was it, the thought of Vanessa, the young man’s laughter, the sugary warmth of my drink? Before I could try to figure out the mystery, the man spoke. “You are a very interesting person. Come, drink with us.” I didn’t want to be rude and reject his invitation so I followed when he turned and walked away from the bar.

We approached a table near the far corner of the bar, opposite from the corner with the unattended DJ booth. There was music playing, but it was muted and unattractive. The floppy-haired blonde Dutchman pulled out a tall-backed leather chair and I sat down as he slid it under me. He took a seat next to me and introduced me to the others sitting at the table. At first I counted five of us in all, but on second count there were seven of us. It was possible that I had been wrong both times and so I gave up trying to figure it out. There were words uttered that were likely meant as names for each of the men and women present, but I couldn’t recreate any of the sounds let alone who the sounds were supposed to represent. It seemed I was supposed to play the sound game so I said, “Michael,” and there was a generic but subdued hurrah of relative unimportance.

Now that the verbal syllabic introductions had been cast as ineffective incantations a more rousing chatter arose, voices overlapping voices until the tall Dutch blonde man from the bar spoke. I thought of him as Floppy because his hair always switched to the other side of his head whenever he turned one way or the other. Floppy spoke in a commanding voice, first in Dutch and then much softer in English: “He’s the fellow from outside.” Upon this utterance there was another round of hurrahs as everyone seemed to acknowledge that his words were significant. I recognized the need for reference points, but the respondent huzzahs were annoying. Again and again, I had to resist the urge to swat away gnats buzzing about my head.

A fluvial voice escaped from a woman with silver-blue-grey hair wearing dirty-white embroidered fabric as a sweater of some sort. I could only see the top half of her torso, but she was excessively thin, as thin as a ten-year-old boy but with much longer limbs and upper body. The size of her breasts were about the same as a ten-year-old boy as well. I didn’t catch what she said, but I thought it odd that she could have been a fashion model, especially given her sunken cheeks and oversized eyes, and that anyone should find such a child-like gangly-tall androgynous alien figure sexual in any way. Aesthetically pleasing, yes, but there was nothing remotely sexual about this creature, even the tattoos on her arms were aesthetic rather than arousing. For whatever reason, though, that thought gave rise to the possibility that she—and fashion models in general—was an evolutionary advancement that transcended sexuality for the sake of aesthetics and that she reproduced season to season as fashions changed. Perhaps I had suspected objectification to be evolution in disguise.

As fascinated by these possibilities as I was, it seemed that the table had become impatient. I surmised that there had formed an expectation that I would respond to the woman’s riverine current. I didn’t want to disappoint any longer than I had so instead of asking her what she had said, I simply blurted, “A woman I’m going to paint told me to come here tonight.” I looked back toward a window overlooking the street outside and saw that the rain was still pouring down. “I don’t think she’ll show, though.” The faces of the men and women at the table turned to one another quizzically, again and again in a matter or moments, then they all broke into smiles and looked back at me. I looked at the woman I thought of as Blue Silver and said, “I get the feeling that wasn’t the response you were expecting.” Silent laughter and a look toward Floppy who, when I looked at him, simply shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

Before any of them could say anything more, I asked the group as a whole, “Do you represent a new evolutionary stage? Is this the Age of the Fashionista?” A surprisingly contemplative response from the table. A gel-slicked dark-haired tan stubble-faced man with cheekbones so high they seemed to meet his hairline adjusted the collar of his rusted-orange sport coat which was covering his worn-yellow corduroy unzipped zippered jacket over the top of his denim-blue unbuttoned button-down shirt exposing a black t-shirt with just enough of a tattered-red anarchy symbol showing said, “That’s one way of looking at it.”

I nodded my head while interlacing my fingers under my chin. “Will there be new types of drugs accompanying this evolutionary revolution?” Layered Man looked at Floppy then back at me. “Pretty much.” I finished my drink. “Well, then, let the revolution begin.” Another woman—straight black hair, possibly a wig, crystal sparkles around her eyes, skin so white flakes of it could have been mistaken for cocaine—laughingly said, “I think you started the revolution without us.” Before I could take in any more of her, I felt a “whump-whump” at the base of my spine creeping upward. Perhaps she was right. Layered Man interjected, his face dribbling droplets of caramel onto his lapel, “I think Michael should come with us and continue the revolution.”

What that meant, I had no idea, but I gathered we were all going to be leaving together, not so much in search of something out there, but to lead whoever might be worthy in our wake. I could no more complain that this was a bad idea than I could stop the flesh of the Layered Man’s face from slipping off his bones. Poor chap was going to be left with a skeleton for a head if he kept decomposing at this rate. Then again, I didn’t know what was beneath the flesh of this evolved species. I wasn’t one of them, I was pretty sure of that, but neither was I part of humanity. It was possible we were two branches of evolution that had split off in different directions yet had enough respect for the fact that we were young enough within our species to possibly have some use for one another. Evolution toward symbiosis rather than division and competition.

The lot of them, still impossible to tell how many, rose and I struggled to rise from my throne. Floppy gave me a hand, and I shot up like a rocket. As we walked toward the door, I said, “Orange, lime green, and chartreuse, those are the colors this year. Maybe white, too.” Layered Man gave me his eye and I said, “Your sport coat, your zippered jacket, yes, but instead of blue and black the next layers could have been lime green and white.” He raised an eyebrow and a woman I hadn’t recognized earlier, a burnt-orange redhead with a green-vine tattoo climbing up her cheek, looked back at me as the corner of her mouth crept upward toward a grin. Layered Man said, “Lime green, maybe, but white?” I shot back, “You’ll see, white will demand attention eventually. Why wait until the masses figure it out? You’re leading the evolutionary parade. Who’s going to doubt you?” He looked ahead again, seemingly in contemplation. As I walked through the door, half the group seemingly in front of me and half perhaps behind, I asked, “What do you think is happening on Earth right now?”