I was tripping. ‘I’m tripping out!’ I thought excitedly, ‘This is a trip! I’m actually in a trip right now!’ But as soon as I had this thought everything straightaway went wonky. It went wonky in a flash. Everything immediately became all weird – in a bad way – like it was set on the wrong speed or something. The thought came out of me like a slow fart, all bleary and wobbly and stupid-sounding. It sounded horrible and dumb and I was embarrassed that it was me that thought it. What a dick I was. Why did I have to think that?

More than embarrassed, I was full of shame. It was as if I had crapped in my pants in public. I had put my foot in it in a truly excruciating way. I had committed a howler. It was all just so wrong. It felt so wrong. And not only was the thought all distorted and slowed-down and wrong (like when someone manages to say exactly the wrong thing in a conversation and make a total utter and jerk of themself) so was I all kind of slowed-up and weird. The thought was all wrong and so was the person who was responsible for thinking the thought, which was me. The thought was wrong and so was I. It was all so wrong. It was all so fucked up.

The thought – being stuck in the thought – was a bad trip. I’m stuck in the thought and I can’t ever get out, I think to myself. I’m stuck in it forever and I wish I’d never thought it. The thought goes on forever but it never gets to where it is going, which is nowhere. It oozes out forever like a tidal mud-flat spreading all around me. Gloop everywhere I look. Bubbles of foul-smelling methane popping up gloopily under my feet. Pale white crabs scuttling away as fast as ever they can. They can’t wait to get away from me – they know that I am the source of corruption. They know that I’m turning things bad…

I’m trapped in a lower reality, an infra-dimension of unspeakable suffering. I can see now that me thinking that I was tripping wasn’t the trip – that was the bad trip. I’m not in the trip – the trip hasn’t got me in it and that’s why it’s a trip. It’s a trip out of me, out of the stale fart-gas bubble of me-ness, out of who I always have to be. Because I don’t know that I am it. The tripping carries on without me the whole time. It’s always tripping. The tripping is tripping itself – nobody’s tripping it. Nobody’s in it.

I’m not the one who is tripping; the trip is tripping out all by itself and I’m not in it. The trip is when I’m not there. That’s what makes the trip. I’m in the bad trip and the bad trip is where I think that it’s me that’s tripping. The bad trip is where I think that I’m in the trip, when I’m not. I’m not having the trip, I’m having the bad trip. I’m always having the bad trip. I never stop – I do it automatically. I do it all the time. I don’t know how to stop…