Smoked an Orange Cookies ten or fifteen minutes ago. Bite. Taking me into the closet to see the skeletons again. Maybe that's unfair, an overstatement.

I was rear-ended on the interstate last week by a vehicle traveling at approximately 60 mph. A vehicle that didn't seem to brake at all before barreling into me and obliterating my car. Strangely I seem to have escaped without serious injury. Which is not to say I feel OK. I have bruises, scrapes, aches and pains, a weird rash on both flanks, my right rotator cuff is torn, and my neck just doesn't feel right.

Putting that memory aside I slipped into...the past, recounting shitty or difficult moments from the past year or two. I don't need to list them. This is a strain review, not a trauma dump. That's what this drug can do to you, though—why some people don't enjoy it. It's not about numbing yourself and forgetting, those are things alcohol can do for you. There is no hiding from the flower. I have zero alcohol in my blood, I'm baked. I'm high, I'm tweaked, and I'm processing events from reality. It doesn't always feel good but something tells me it's important. Like having a dream, except the memories are real and I'm awake. That's why dreams are so alluring. They are ephemeral, quickly lost, forgotten. You can have a bad dream, wake up, and it's not a situation you have to solve, see out, or live with. This is why it's important, to the best of my ability, to have real-life memories I don't mind recalling. Because I can't "wake up" to escape them; I have to live with them. Once I get to this point, the high can be fun, stimulating, assuring, comforting.

And maybe I can get there in a moment here, after wading through, after sifting through the wreck and the dreck. I'm outside. It's warm. I'm hearing the song of a bird I don't know. Or a series of calls. This, br—!

A tick, on my hand, crawling. I make a reflex jerk but it clings on. Then a get a tweezers from the (other) car, remove the tick, and hold a lighter to it. They make a popping sound when they go. It's a cruel, terrible thing to do but no one wants to carry a tick around. They are woefully bad here, in the wood, in western St. Louis County, Missouri. I wasn't even out in the brush; not even out in the yard. Just sitting here in a chair I only recently placed outside the garage. Suddenly, there it was. I wonder whether they parachute out of the trees. I am barely under the canopy of an oak that is beginning to leaf out, its leaves roughly the size of a squirrel's ear. According to old-time rubric, this is the time to hunt for morels but I'd say this year's prime morel season is already behind us.

These Orange Cookies are workable. The bite was firm. I plunged, they gripped. I've progressed through and past that stage of the smoke. Wouldn't it be nice if somehow the act of facing the rubble and climbing through or over it also meant I was clearing the way for some weird, vivid, amusing, memorable dreams later on, when I close these eyes?

The flavor of the smoke was similar to other Cookies-derived strains. Some of that burnt chem flavor but not strong or heavy. A smooth smoke, a steady burn.

I hadn't opened the jar—an AO "super eighth"—until today. Ground some up; the grind was very fine and even; how I like to see it. The bud was a little dry. The jar appeared to be sealed, with an intact wafer seal. I added a moisture pack. I'll come back to the jar in 24-28 hours. There are plenty of jars of flower I open that are dried out to the extent that I will not immediately grind any of the bud, so when I say the bud was a little dry I mean just that. It still had enough bounce to smoke on. I'm pleased so far. There were 4.74 grams of flower in the jar, a typical over-stuff on an Abundant Organics super eighth, listed as containing 4.5 grams. These jars—often offered at the dispensary I've visited on BOGO—are one of the several perks of passing through Arizona. Others include saguaros, mountains, different birds, standard time, and dry air...