beta flashback

A conversation about the Beatles that took place at a Jim's Diner a good twelve years ago, up at Moistworks.

Similarly, recalling the first time I ever heard Tom Ze, back in high school.

No, I'm not going to my high school reunion or anything like that (that nostalgic ship already sailed), but I am pondering a book proposal dealing with such a time. It means revisiting a book like Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD so as to again be struck by information about Dr. Hubertus Strughold, a Nazi scientist who performed mescaline studies at Dachau (in addition to injecting inmates with gasoline, crushing them to death with pressure chambers, and other experiments involving poison, gas, and other chemicals). Tucked away in the US military under Project Paperclip, he relocated to the states where he became renowned as "the father of space medicine." Go figure that he lived in San Antonio, too.

It also means a stroll through the scorched parts of the mind, rescuing such artifacts, creating the artifice of teen thought, and wondering what the narrative thread through such a tangle could actually be, learning how to illuminate such burnt filament. In the words of thee mighty Trux, "It's an education every day."