Notes Made After Tripping

On headlong living and writing

When was the last time you fell?

I went on a run today in the woods behind the house. Because of the caffeine I ran fast, and — possibly also because of the caffeine — I tripped. I experienced it in slow motion, a disinterested observer; a dissociative miracle.

Here is what my observer self saw:

Toe, catching on root,

Feet — left-right — slowing the fall,

Hands, reaching,

A slight roll to the side,

And I’m down.

I laugh, I get up, I continue running.

*

My impression as I write down this account of my fall is that it was less a crash and more like a plane doing a strategic landing. It wasn’t really a fall at all. It was a trip, and a trip is something quite different.

Let’s spend a minute on the word itself. The psychedelic-induced variety seems pertinent, not least because I’ve just advised on two novels dealing with the medical use of LSD. When someone takes a trip time slows down, in fact becomes irrelevant — a phenomenon that is also associated with the state of artistic flow. Even the fact of finding it relevant is relevant: one of the other phenomena associated with a psychedelic trip is that of making connections between things. This is a skill vital to the artist, and vital also to being human. By creating we come up with novel solutions, whether in writing or in life.

I rarely take a trip, other than to Dorset or Italy, though some of the research on the psychedelic kind is compelling.

But tripping of the over-a-root variety is just as rare for me. It’s not something I make a habit of because I don’t want to get hurt, and this makes me very careful. But I didn’t see the root coming, and when it came it was too late to worry, my body had already dealt with it. It was like it had a superpower that I’d never been aware of, sitting in abeyance, ready to react, completely separate from my thinking self. Even if my body hadn’t reacted, even if I’d fallen and broken something, worrying in advance wouldn’t have helped.

After the trip, there was the rush, the body celebrating its victory despite bruised knees and muddy hands: adrenaline, endorphins, coursing between limbs and brain. I had seen the void, or at least a great quantity of mud rushing towards me. I had been thrown out of myself, and it provoked a day of creativity and intensity, of daring.

Children trip all the time — my 6-year-old niece three times only yesterday. This is because they don’t have all their motor skills quite down yet; but it’s also because they leap.

Such a simple thing, tripping. So mundane.

Yet the mundane is ripe with meaning, and my over-root flight has taught me — or rather reminded me — of some lessons that are just as relevant to creative endeavour as they are to life.

Sometimes the answer is in the body, not the mind. Gut, not head.

Fear stops you from tripping. We must dare to run headlong.

Only when you trip will you find out what extraordinary things your Other Self is capable of.

The mundane is the most extraordinary. Write it.

Photo by Chris McIntosh on Unsplash