Excerpted from Broadsides from the other orders: a book of bugs by Sue Hubbell, ©1993:
I once entered into a world without categories and found it interesting but unworkable. Along with two other people, I took mescaline, and for the hours that the drug acted on our brains everything we saw appeared the same, equal, lacking classification. Perceptive held, but figure and ground did not; all elements were significant. Selectivity of perception had been lost; thought was impossible. We went for a walk in the woods, and when we sat down on some pine needles it was as if we had discovered pinecones for the first time. The light brought out colors we had never noticed; the shadow revealed their surfaces in a way we had never seen. We sat there sopping up pineconeishness but also sopping up pine needles, our hands, the pine's boughs, the texture of the earth, the blood pulsing in our temples, the warmth and pleasure of our companionship, all equal and all equally scattered because we were unable to focus on any element. There were no elements, in fact, only aspects of a whole. We were immersed in a warm oatmeal of perception. It was enlightening in several respects, but not much could be done with it.
