The Electric Kool-Aid Acid test and graduation.

Mountain Girl returns home because she's pregnant, probably with Kesey's child, and another member has neautological problems from his intense drug use. Kesey spends the night in a graveyard and comes up with the idea for the acid test. The test will be about energy and even though it doesn't reach out to the whole world, it has a good start. The begin advertising their acid test at a rolling stones concert. Kesey talks to the man from before who is in the Grateful Dead and the band agrees to play at this acid test party the pranksters are throwing. They throw it on a beach, after changing locations once, and reveal their new toy, STROBE LIGHTS. Everyone has taken LSD including Owlsey, the man in the band, whom no body has every seen trip. Owlsey has one of the most remembered, bad trips nad will be talked about for years to come. Kesey puts on the biggest acid test ever at a stadium but of course, the cops shut it down. The police try to arrest all of the pranksters but their attorneys bail them out. Kesey gets three years porbation and a little service work but he is off the radar. When someone calls the cops on the group for being rowdy they come into Kesey's home and find that he had merijuana in his possesion and this begins most of Kesy's legal troubles all over again. He is not supposed to go to the Trips Festival they've been planning and he is not supposed to hang out with the Merry Pranksters anymore but of course, he can't bail on this. The Festival lasts three days and begins to be a weekly thing. Wolfe says 'the Haight-Ashbury era began that weekend'.
Kesey is forced to move and has a warrant out for his arrest so he moves in with Babb's to his home. The Pranksters help fake his suicide while they smuggle him into mexico where he'll become an outlaw.

I'm not going to spoil the ending of the book, and a lot of things happen, but if this interests you at all, I highly reccommend reading it! Just be sure you have no distractions because it's a bit hard to follow.

Hell's Angels and the frozen jug band

The group decided to invite the Hell's angels, A well known gang, to party with them in La Honda. They plan a big party at Kesey's place and all the 'Angels' show up on their defening, loud harleys. The pranksters has the trees all ready and painted with day glo with speakers booming from the trees. Hell's Angels didn't know what to expect or how to react but once the Pranksters gave them LSD everyone had a good time. The cops are watching but as of now, they aren't breaking any rules besides for public nudity so the cops stay at a distance. The cops still don't break up the party even after two days, and a gang rape. Members of a church had become curious with what the Pranksters were up to so they invited the group to join them during a serman. Kesey is getting caught up in the fact that he can easily manipulate people and the power is all going to his head. He starts to turn the young people of the church againt the older priests and such and with this Kesey realizes he can control more people than who's just in the Merry Pranksters. Kesey is overwhelmed with this new found power and while having a bad trip, believes he can control anything, including cars rushing past him.

The Pranksters hear word that the Beatles are coming to play in San Francisco. Kesey gets 30 tickets to the sold out show from his acid dealer so they are set and ready to go. They all trip acid and play popular Beatles songs as they're on their way to the concerts in costumes and everything.On the way while tripping on acid, they all begin to experience a 'transcendental experience'. Wolfe describes it as: "no one even has to look at another because they not only know that everyone else is seeing it at once, they feel, they feel it flowing through one brain, Atman and Brahman, all one on the bus and all one with the writhing mass sun reflector ripple sun bomb prisms." Wolfe describes this feeling of complete intersubjectivity and transcendence as "CLOUD," when they could "draw the whole universe into...the movie." The venue is an old cattle herding/ slaughter house converted into a place for a concert and their trip starts going terribly bad. Mountain Girl says it looks like a concentration camp and they all soon feel lost in the crowd of people. When the show is over they all feel as though they're getting trampled and someone spred false word about the Beatles coming to La honda. On the way home they try and find their 'Cloud' of a trip but everyone is still too down and all they care about is getting home. Once the get there they are welcomed by a crowd of hundreds of people and Kesey storms into the house. One of the guys in the crowd, however, catches Kesey's eye and Wolfe starts to give background information. This man was the biggest acid dealer in the states and was well known for his quality of drugs. He and his friend had started the band Grateful Dead and began the wave of acid rock. The Beatles 'come up with' the idea for the Magical Mystery Tour where they all dress up and take acid on a bus but of course, thie was the Merry Pranksters idea first.
Kesey gets asked to be a keyspeaker for a rally against the war but instead of speaking, they decide to do a prank. Instead of protesting they decide to play music which confuses the crowd but they eventually die down. Someone throws teargas into the group of people and everyone dispurses.

We Are Hunted.

(I found this in my drafts section and realized I never published it. I'll keep it short)
We are hunted is a music site that has a sense of an underground, hole-in-the-wall kind of feel which everyone thrives on. Using the word 'underground' very loosely meaning they have artists whom are not huge, lady gaga or chris brown kind of famous. More like just below the surface. A few of the people on the site are famous, but still fit in with underground crowd. If you're looking for new music, I reccomend it.

Note 1

'I sit down and say, and I run all my friends and relatives and enemies one by one in this, without entertaining any angers or gratitudes or anything, and I say, like 'Japhy Ryder, equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha,' then I run on, say to 'David O. Selznick, equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha' though I don't use names like David O. Selznick, just people I know because when I say the words 'equally a coming Buddha' I want to be thinking of their eyes, like you take Morley, his blue eyes behind those glasses, when you think 'equally a coming Buddha' you think of those eyes and you really do suddenly see the true secret serenity and the truth of his coming Buddhahood. Then you think of your enemy's eyes.'

In this excerpt From The Dharma Bums, Jack is remembering the things Japhy said and he's realizing he wants to be like him. Jack says everyone is 'equally a becoming Buddha' but you have to really see the 'true secret serenity and the truth' of Buddhahood. This recollects remembrence because he's reflecting on things and living by them. He can't and won't forget those things that were said because he's based his life around it.

The crypt trip, dream wars, the unspoken thing and the bust.

The merry pranksters head to upstate new york on a journey of discovery. They expect to meet up with a group of friends, Leary's posse, but it's the opposite and they are greeted very cold. Babb's, frustrasted by the fact that the group didn't greet them as well as he felt they should, began to make fun of the way the group trips. Leary's group merged acid trips and buddhism together which wasn't anything the Merry Pranksters did. Leary's group attempted to meditate while tripping and had specific rooms for it which Babb's called Crypt Trips.
The group ends up heading back home because Leary and his friends refuse to have fun with them. Timothy Leary himself won't even meet with the group becuase he's on a very serious three day trip. The group finds themselves in Canada where one of the members comes back with a young girl who is a run-away.
Wolfe explains why the pranksters are so interesting to him. He explains it's all in the experience he has with them, the feelings he has while being in their presence.Wolfe says it's the fact that they can make up their own words and meanings and symbols for things, which all seems weird to other but is extraordinary for the group.
Wolfe gets back to the story and begins talking about how this run away, now known as mountain girl, is an official part of their group. Originally very educated and upper-middle class, she begins talking about her views on things and fits right in. Along with another boy whom had ran away from school, because of being an outcast, and began to live in the woods where he stumble upon the pranksters. He's known as the hermit.
The pranksters spent most of their year editing their film. Going through countless hours of footage of their trip and trying to determine what will fit into the final clips. They hope to release it world wide and gain lots of money just as Kesey had on his One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest broadway act.
The group starts trying even new things with their LSD. They have an idea to paint all of the trees with Day-Glo colours and listening to 'space noises' through their televisions. The towns people of La Honda are getting fed up with the group and the fact that they think they're exempt from all restrictions in the world. The pranksters think they're immune to the police but when someone tips a cop, they realize their no different than anyone else. The group's home gets raided and Kesey gets arrested after hitting a cop.

No White Stone: "Hello," Benjamin Peret

No White Stone: "Hello," Benjamin Peret: "Hello" My airplane in flames my castle flooded with Rhenish wine my black iris ghetto my crystal ear my rock hurtling down the cliff ...

Having a Coke With You -Frank O'Hara

Having a Coke with You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne

or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona

partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian

partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt

partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches

partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary

it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still

as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it

in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth

between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world

except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick

which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time

and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism

just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or

at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me

and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them

when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank

or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully

as the horse

which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint

I look

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience

ANIMALS

Have you forgotten what we were like then

when we were still first rate

and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

It's no use worrying about Time

but we did have a few tricks up out sleeves

and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal

we didn't need speedometers

we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn't want to be faster

or greener than now if you were with me O you

were the best of all my days

-Frank O'Hara [1950]

Personal Reading Goals

-read a book with a title of each letter of my name.

-get through a chapter on every surface in my house.

-have one reading afternoon every week with a friend.

-read to my friend's soon to be born baby.

-read a book I would never want to read.

-let a girl recommend a book to me.
-read a book from a movie I've seen

(I'll add more on as I think of them)

Daily Enlightenment

An insincere and evil friend is more feared than a wild beast;

a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.

-Siddhartha Guatama Buddha

सिद्धार्थ गौतम बुद्ध 

Unauthorized acid and tootling the multitudes.

The bus leaves Texas and they eventually end up in New Orleans. The gang takes a small amount of acid and ends up on a segregated beach for Africans only. They're not welcomed very nicely at first but once they start blaring music then there are tons of people gathered around the bus 'doing rock dances and the dirty boogie. Police, of course, ruin their fun and the group leaves to finally make their way in Florida where they settle for a bit. One of the guys, sandy, is really stressed and decides to take some of the 'unauthorized acid' that Kesey was saving. Sandy has a really bad trip, mostly because you should never take acid when you're in a negative state of mind, and Wolfe explains the horrors Sandy encounters on this trip.
They get to New York and even there, the people don't know how to handle them. Wolfe says 'even NY had to stop and stare'. One of Kesey's friends gets an apartment on Madison avenue and they throw a months long party. They left 'stark naked' in Texas because she lost her mind. The chapters end when Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg party with them, even though they don't have much to do with Kesey.

Poetry anthology

I'm thinking about doing memories. Poems where people recall things in their past. They always seem to have a type of admiration to them when being read. This person remembers the situation so vividly. Most of the poetry will most likely be from Frank O'Hara only because he's my favorite and he does this a lot. He talks about things that have happened to him in the past. So the title will most likely be recollection or something along those lines. It will probably contain a photograph and something that has sentimental value to the person in the poetry. If I used Frank O'Hara's poem 'Having a Coke with You.' I could include an old coke bottle cap.

The bus and the rusky-dusty neon dust.

Wolfe uses a kind of poetic and lyrical style to describe Kesey's idealistic home in the California woods. Kesey and his friends are enjoying Kesey's success from his book and now stage production of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. They live very naturistic and romantic type lives but it's not the nature that interests them, it's how open your mind can become by using LSD. They begin experiementing and attempting to find the worlds within them as a person. While taking the drug they make art and record themselves in a very avant-garde type style. Wolfe talks about the people while their on a trip and says that while stumbling through the woods, they find old, wood carved chess pieces and begin to improve with them. They talk to them with a mixture of gibberish and confusion, all of their worlds strung together. The group dances around and beats their drums and though they're breaking ground with their experiments, they're realizing they're not equals anymore. Kesey is the head and the group isn't sure how to feel about it.
In the spring of '64 Kesey and the Pranksters get an old bus and fill it with beds and a sink. They paint the bus with vivd colours and intricate words so that they can experience the sounds inside the bus just as well as outside. They plan to take the bus and visit New York's world fair in july. While driving, stoned off their arses, they get pulled over by a patrol officer. They feel as though they're surrounded by a forest fire but they aren't sure if it's real or a hullucination. The patrol officers asks the driver, Cassidy, if they're a part of the carnival which he replies with yes as members of the bus roll around in the grass, wearing neon masks on the side of the road. The patrol officer lets the bus go with a warning which makes the passangers believe, even more, that they are in fact invincible. While the bus breaks down in San Jose, they begin to plan for their big trip East. Kesey says that on this trip 'everybody is going to be what they are, and whatever they are, there's not going to be antyhing to apologize about.' They decide to document their acid trip so they take the LSD and begin the recording. They are all going crazy but raise awareness none the less. They stop at a gas station to fill up but the manager says they can't all use his restroom. One of the women jump out of the bus, completely naked, and embrases McMutry's son, thinking he is her long lost son. This is when the group realizes "She had completed her trip. She had done with the flow. She had gone stark riving mad."

Electric suit, what do you think of my Buddha?

Kesey is finally out of jail but no one seems to notice it which surprises him because he expected everyone to miss him dearly. Kesey visits with his wife and kids, whom Wolfe didn't know he had, and talks about his experience and is completely non-chalant about it. I loved this part because I expect myself to be arrested some day (for a good cause, probably while doing peace awareness protests) and it doesn't scare me. Kesey compares it to a 'cops-and-robers' game and says its 'nothing personal'.
Interviewers come to talk to Kesey and they ask him to refrain from bringing up the whole LSD movement, but Kesey has something to share with them. He says when he was in new mexico, opening his mind with LSD, he stepped into a lightning storm and felt the lightning forming around him. He thinks this is a religious type thing and that he's on a whole new level in the universe and he wants people to know.
Wolfe talks about Kesey's background and his story and how he became the leader of the Merry Pranksters. Kesey recieved a scholarship to study art at stanford so he moves into an artist commune. He was an althlete at Universtiy of Oregon before attending Stanford and he was raised by a farmer father. One of the kids in the commune with Kesey gets him interested in physchology. Kesey and this student volunteer at a local mental hospital and try to understand what's really happening there. They see that this place is trying to help vetrans over come their mental disabilities through the use of different forms of LSD. Kesey gets a job working there and it inspires him to write a novel. Kesey moves back to his artist commune and meets new people and they start to experiment with drugs and they eventually move in to their current home in La Honda, Cali.