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Brownies and Tree Frogs By: Chris Link on 8/21/2002; 11:15 PM or . . . How One Thing Leads To Another Disparate objects of our attention are sometimes oddly and uniquely connected inside our minds. The sub-routine in charge of cross-referencing this data is like fuzzy logic gone awry, an early AI program discarded because it presented a serious hazard to the machine it was to inhabit. Or could it be that our minds are messy because they evolve and mature over time like the World Wide Web, for example? Perhaps then, one should not be surprised when surfing the grey cells of one's own intranet, to begin with brownies.net and end up at treefrogs.org. Twenty years ago some radical acquaintances of mine thought it would be a hoot to surprise me with THC-laced brownies for my birthday. The real surprise was the active ingredient which, in retrospect, probably came close to killing me. I don't know how many brownies I ate. I ended up passing out and remained unconscious for several hours. But during those few minutes preceding the unconscious state, I found my perceptions in an altered condition which, along with subsequently similar experiences, sparked a curiousity for matters esoteric. Fortunately, I found it unnecessary to further pursue that curiosity through dangerous, chemical, and illegal means. After all, it is possible to read and learn without duplicating all of the self-experimentation. I read voraciously through Huxley, McKenna, Castaneda, and so on until I came full circle to Ken Carey who lives almost on my back door step. Ken, author of several books with metaphysical themes has lowered his entertainment threshold until, like Whitman, he can "see the world in a grain of sand." It is this dialed down ability which led to his appreciation of frog concerts, described in exquisite and hilarious detail in a very different type of nature book, Flat Rock Journal. It is Ken's opinion that frogs prefer their swampy homes to be located near structure that provides an echo, which adds a fuller sound to their croaking and peeping. Not only that, but a sufficiently patient and trained ear can, through the cacophany, make out and distinguish primitive patterns of pitch and rythym. In other words, the frogs are "gettin' down" on the farm. The nearest pond on my property is partially surrounded by pine and walnut trees, and it is possibly because of this that there is a predominance of tree frogs, the "peepers" in the orchestra, which gives the frog concerts on my farm a distinctly treble bias. It's like the concert on Yasgar's farm if Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young was the only band to show up. Voices in a higher register. I listen and enjoy, stay away from the brownies (and the brown acid). Oh yeah, and I keep my clothes on.
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