Session 1 of 3: 4.14.2026, 16:33
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. (Link to lineage.) 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.
[15:06]
I want to know what that bird was, though. It’s windy and the heat pump is running because of how warm it is—makes it harder for me and the Merlin app to hear.
It was not any of the thrushes; was not an Ovenbird. Some kind of warbler? A tentative, careful, curious language of this whistles and longer notes, slowly progressing.
[Later]
It was a two-hour run, mostly played out by now. I finished reading a short story by Donald Hall that ran in the Atlantic Monthly in 1996; was included in the Best American Short Stories 1997, edited by E Annie Proulx. Hall was mostly, mainly a poet, one of the first poets I ever took a specific interest in, thanks in part to my high school English teacher, Dana Goodman. Hall had a poem title something like “Kicking the Leaves,” which we read in class, then had to write some kind of response to. Whatever I wrote was probably one of the first (prose) poems I ever wrote, and I told him before or after a class that I really liked the Donald Hall and he said something like, “Yeah, you sure did.” I asked him who else I might like, what else I should read. “You might like Robert Bly,” he said. Thirty years later, I am still reading Donald Hall and Robert Bly.
I read after smoking, and listened for birds. Then I walked around the house, looked at things, examined, bounced from place to place, took a few photos. The humidity fell away quickly once it started to fall. It’s nice out there now. [16:21]
Session 2 of 3: 4.16.2026, 15:46
Time for an Orange Cookies.
[16:26] Forty minutes in, pleasant experience. I have gone down a rabbit hole or two; harkened back; turned the past over in my hand like a rock I thought might have been an arrowhead.
Not quite baked. No bite this time. I’m sipping a drink, listening to baseball, rolling more joints. This smoke sesh with Orange Cookies has been a grounding, a reality check, what I needed. I have a sudden flash to my dad some evening coming home and confronting the three of us kids, screaming at us, “You’re all grounded!”
Not that kind of grounding. The good kind of grounding, like what a lightning bolt needs, what we need, why it feels good to sink our feet into the ground. I am having lots of thoughts back to prior lives, places I formerly lived, old apartments, our last (first) house. What ifs. Not in a judging way. Thought exercise. Fair. Getting off of my bed so I can make it. This is what cannabis is for! For me anyway. A gentle D-I-Y intervention. A reality check, a sorting. A conscious dream. Amalgamate, differentiate, the number eight, a white/black slate, Orange Cookies.
Session 3 of 3: 5.28.2026, 16:05
It has a little bite. First time I’ve felt it. Smoked a few of it, there were no notes. Or few remarks. None I remember.
Flavorless but not unpleasant to smoke. There is a headiness. The afternoon here in Tucson was a little rough—internet problems. 1 mbps upload speed, not worth a damn. Appointment necessary tomorrow. Two months from now my wife needs to work from here, to transfer files. Today she had to go to McDonald’s to upload her work. We don’t live here, her parents do. W’re leaving (again) in a few days. Some of today, some of tomorrow spent on internet troubleshooting. Needing a new router. Everything else you can get delivered in minutes. But not basic access to a commodity we all need and constantly use?
We had a nice hike starting out from the Iris Dewhirst Pima County trailhead, linking into a trail that runs through the Pusch Mountain National Wilderness Area. Rocks and cacti. Fun hike. Then lunch, New Mexican food, Poco and Mom’s. It’s been good for years. Today it was fast.
But my mother-in-law was back in bed when we returned, as she was all day yesterday, probably with the flu. Then the file upload fail.
So these Orange Cookies are fighting an uphill battle. I’m not getting any euphoria but maybe that’s too much to ask. I can drift away a little. The writing keeps me grounded. This is the high. Stream of consciousness. I’m listening to Cubs at Pirates. Skenes pitching, Mo Ballesteros batting. I’m drinking vodka and blood orange tangerine sparkling water.
It’s kinda groove-thing
Jaw-bone lite?
It’s kinds groove-thing
Jaw-bone lite!
Weeds of Grass 