Love and Phenethylamines
The High Garden in PiHKAL
As a child growing up in Berkeley, California, Shura had a backyard fence that separated his family home’s garden from another. A giant honeysuckle overran it, covering the fence and weaving a secret hideaway tunnel for the young boy. Inside, away from urban noise, Shura nipped off the base of a blossom and tasted the droplets of sweet nectar.
‘The only things moving were fantasies, and memory pictures of my past and present… The taste of the honeysuckle was a magical connection with this world where every leaf and insect was a friend and I was an intimate part of everything.’1
Then, one day, someone decided the tired old fence and aging honeysuckle plant needed tearing down and replacing. Something newer, cleaner and safer stood in its place. ‘I was devastated’, Shura wrote. ‘When I cried, no one understood why.’ This story hints at the boy’s innate inquisitiveness of nature’s private world, but also a dynamic of loss—and becoming—in the garden.
‘Shura’ is of cours…