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I walked alongside a lake and I was troubled by where I was standing. I was standing somewhere I have stood dozens of times, yet it suddenly felt foreign to me. These epiphanies on LSD that I experienced were stimulating but were in fact illusions themselves. They are no more real than my mind and this body that consciousness is flowing through everything. Believing that I was experiencing something extravagant and groundbreaking is making a commitment to that which is unreal. In my sleep, while in waking state, even while tripping, the self is always present and is the only thing present. I decided it was time for me to pick up my last passenger.

As I was driving across the Queens borough bridge to the airport, the sun was sinking. It’s as if the colors and intensity of the light was just enough to calm me. The sun is like a great big romantic, inspirational fire in the sky. It would be as if a powerful symphony was quieting down, becoming more emotional and beautiful as it dies down. It was almost if the sun was tired from keeping us warm all day. Its rays seemed friendly. They reminded me of an old friend, waving goodbye to me. I knew they were leaving but I was filled with the confidence that I would see them again.

It took me over an hour to find my grandmother at the airport. After I searched the terminal frantically for her, I decided to drive around JFK to see if she was wandering around and to my relief, she was sitting at a bus stop for a bus that was never going to come. I got out of the car to take her baggage. “Babushka, what are you doing here?” I asked. “Yuri, I was waiting for bus to come to your home. I didn’t know where you were,” she said weakly. She was wearing a silk head kerchief and gold earrings. Her lea...

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...ist in a world of meaning. But this does not only connect to non-religious beings. Religion, for my grandmother, helped her with her own existence and established hope after her suffering.

Evil comes in all forms: in a tablet, in a word, in people. I watched my grandmother carefully put away her book back into her suitcase and I wanted to ask her the same questions I once asked her when I was a child. It was untimely to ask her anything because I already knew the answers. I have suffered through several traumas and confronted them partially yet there is one trauma that seems to influence and shape my mind constantly although I never experienced it myself. I gave my grandmother a kiss on her cheek, wished her a goodnight, and headed into my closet sized bedroom. I had to be at work at eight in the morning to pick up more victims. That was the last time I took LSD.