At least, that's what my notes said when I had a chance to review them several days later. Apparently I was a bit hung up on that fact, and decided to dedicate several pages to the implications of this particular neuro-chemical experience.
I was headed to Valhalla... or Asgard... it was impossible to keep track of Norse mythological geography at that point. I had been told that we were going to meet Odin All-Father: Spear-Shaker, Vili's Brother, the Master of Riddles, Lord of All Aesir.
Or something to that effect. This is what seemed to blabber out of mouth of the Electric Acid Viking rendition of Thor the Destroyer who was escorting me at a feverish pace towards my appointment with destiny. A cold weather Danish military encampment swam around us within a bizarre hurricane of aural and temporal cues as to the actions and intentions of tens of thousands of Einherjer prepared to ride gloriously into battle for either death or glory for their King and Kingdom.
"Valhalla, must be Valhalla", I murmured.
"How do you know of our camp's name??" my captor/spirit guide yelled at me, throwing me against the nearby wall of a hardened winterized shelter.
It was hard. Very hard, physical reality reminded me.
"Ow" I offered in response. The impact caused the world to break apart and swim around like pieces of plastic in a snow globe. Just existing was also starting to get HARD.
Thor's eyes went wide, and then narrowed in simmering antipathy. "He will pay for this treachery with his life's blood", he spat through clenched teeth, before grabbing me again and continuing our interminable shuffle towards Odin's chambers.
Time seemed to collapse and loop in on itself in no particular direction. anthropomorphic sea otters danced around the edges of my vision - cavorting with Svartalfen temptresses. I knew intuitively it was merely a distraction, designed to take my attention away from more important matters... such as concentrating on preventing my molecular structure from dissolving.
Suddenly, the dream collapsed in on itself. Mainly because I had been thrown face first onto the floor of a Cyclopean throne room, resplendent with shining jewels and the grim faces of warriors who would gladly die at a word for the pleasure of their monarch.
That, or a pimp military-grade winter shelter overloaded with electronics and bored, cold Danish defense contractors. Distinctions were truly beginning to feel irrelevant.
I lay on the ground for what seemed like an eternity, contemplating the entangled nature of quantum particles and electromagnetic repulsion preventing me from falling deep into the gravity well of the planet. I also contemplated the possibility that my nose might have been broken by the impact with the ground. I was stunned to realize that since I had, by the blessings of Sedna, landed more on my cheekbone than my nose, it was only a gash in my face that was bleeding - and not smashed nasal cartilage.
The realization of this stroke of fortune allowed me to slowly tune back into the reality simmering and percolating within the demichamber of Odin All Father. Human voices coalesced alchemically from the buzzing and howling swirling around the room.
Sadly, those voices spoke the bastard tongue of Man - Danish.
"What the hell is this trash and why is it leaking bodily fluids into my antiseptic environment??" bellowed a voice filled with malice, authority and the sickly-sweet smell of mead kept just a little too long in the bottle.
Either Odin or some sort of Mayan Death God - taking my chances, I assumed Odin.
I heard some disdainful murmurs from the ring of warrior god/defense technology specialists hanging ominously around Valhalla's mighty meeting hall. A place of warriors and stories of heroism - a space for laying cunning plans and stratagems - a place where a young Danish conscript could get away from it all in isolated prefab encampment far away from intoxicants and the possibility of intercourse with anyone they might want it from.
I heard (or perhaps felt), my Electric Acid Thor the Destroyer preparing himself to launch into what was probably the most exciting opportunity to look awesome in front of his superiors he'd ever had. "A traitor, a spy and a miscreant, sir!" he screamed with gusto, beginning his epic tale of my capture. "A man filled with the lies and cunning of a wolf, the Great Demon Fenrir himself - Sun-Swallower, armbiter, most misbegotten of Loki's broodmares..."
Realizing that it was now or never, I daringly chose to interrupt. "Excuse me Odin All-Father, I hate to interrupt your son, Thor the Almighty Warrior, High Lord of the Wintermark here - but do you high-born Aesir have a bathroom that the child of the Arctic Gods could use? Nature, and my little friend the psilocybin mushroom, is calling lustily for me to purge my stomach of at least three generations of ancestral pain, illness and guilt. And I don't suppose you'd want that all over the floors of... where.. when?.. ever we are currently."
All sounds and motion seemed to stop. I felt a million hard cold eyes burning with fire boring into the back of head and body, each one willing death by a thousand hard Viking daggers into me.
Realizing that I may have been completely misunderstood, I took a moment to consider what any sensible Inuit, surrounded by war-maddened Viking demigods would do.
Coming up completely blank, I thought a quick review of what I might have said that could have been considered a faux pas.
Could it be that I had offended my hosts by not invoking the appropriate list of honorifics due the Lords of the Aesir? Or because I was still lying face-down on the floor in a pool of my own blood (and probably making something closer to a hideous Jabberwocky-like burbling noise)... or perhaps it was just that I had not used language even remotely akin to anything that the human mouth is supposed to ever utter - my mind and mouth comfortably detached by a beautiful wall of glossolalia?
"Oh yeah - I am still tripping face. Right, got it." I thought to myself. Maybe if I got up into a sitting position and tried again in a human-oriented register? Or maybe just yelled - yelling works wonders to break down communication barriers with foul-smelling Nordic barbarians. At least, that's what some ancestral voice screaming in rage at their murderous intrusions into our homeland, seemed to be saying.
But then I realized how much of a mistake Getting Up would prove...
To be continued...
