The connection between Kirsten and I blossomed, and our intimacy took on a fearlessness that only deep trust in one another could allow. She was an English Rose, her skin tanned by the Australian sun, her mind open to all possibilities that presented themselves even if they took her out of her comfort zone. Her sense of adventure was to be the most attractive quality of the plethora she encompassed. Kirsten’s beauty, courage, and confidence unfolded with every moment we shared together. When the awe I felt around her slowly began to integrate within my heart, my sense of gratitude that she had chosen to be with me developed into a profound appreciation of her choice. On a day when she and I had decided to spend our time away from each other, I was in the Byron township when I caught the sight of a red Ford panel van driving through along the street. I recognised it immediately. Erin, an Australian friend I had met in Port Douglas, got out of the vehicle and I called out to him. We embraced one another and I welcomed him into Byron. Driving over to the cape and then going for a walk to the lighthouse, we strolled up among ridge line and overlooked the cove, watching the surfers. The wind was beginning to pick up, blowing onshore, from the northeast. We walked around the lighthouse and then began to walk back to the van. I stopped near a bench seat, watching the clouds rolling in with great haste from the ocean, buoyed by the winds increasing ferocity. I looked at Erin and said, “It would be cool to come up here with our sleeping bags, take some acid and stay the night up here and watch the storm roll in.” Erin smiled at me and told me that he had some in the car! This idea seems like a seed planted in my mind now looking back at the experience that followed. The cosmic trickster who planted it would make themselves known later that night, then again the next morning.
We headed back to the Bunkhouse where I excitedly found Kirsten, introduced her to Erin. Upon hearing about what mischief we had planned, she laughed, took a pass on having any acid, but most definitely wanted to join us up on the hill. We ate, then gathered all our bedding and drove up to the cape. By now, the wind had become ferocious, gusts battering us around, but thankfully there was no sign of any rain. We searched for a position where we could lie down, finding nothing. Coming back to the park bench, I sat upon it and looked down at my feet. They were dangling into a drop in the ground beneath the seat. My eyes followed the gradient of the earth below. I saw that it gently rose again some distance from where I sat. Throwing my blanket down, I lay with my head where my feet had hung above. It was eerily quiet. No sound, nothing. Extending my hand up from my chest, the intense rush of the wind coming over the cape whistled through my fingers. I dropped it, silence. Laughing hysterically (I had ingested the LSD before leaving the bunkhouse), I called over to Erin and Kirsten to come and check out my discovery. Amused, Kirtsten, Erin, and I, bedded down, cuddled up and watched the twilight begin to creep in from the east, swallowing the last remnants of the day sinking away into the west. I began to yawn, the trippers yawn, as the acid coursed through my blood and around my body. We laughed, talking amongst ourselves, and then fell silent as we all watched the clouds careening above. I drifted off to sleep not long after we had finished talking, a first for me on hallucinogenics.
I awoke at some point. The sky above me was a torrent of wispy clouds, and stars that extended from their positions in tracks of light stretched on rubber bands away from their positions, then snapped back into place moments later. I grinned beatifically at the sight, remembering the substance making its way around my body. Erin and Kirsten were both asleep. I glanced at them both from where I lay, hearing them breathing rhythmically, in their restful slumber. Turning to the sky again I heard a man’s voice, spoken at me directly with no designated point of origin. “You must go to Rahm’s place.” I immediately thought Erin was talking in his sleep. The voice that I heard was so deeply resonant, so audible, and had resonated into my body that I would have been surprised if it had been Erin. I looked over at him, he was facing away from me. Kirsten was facing me, it most certainly wasn’t her. I lay motionless looking at the sky, one of the most clairaudient experiences of my life up until that point having just taken place. The message was clear and had been directed at me. In Port Douglas during the filming of the movie I had been working on The Thin Red Line, I had befriended a young man named Rahm Adamedes. He was light years ahead of me in his conscious awakening, his open mind and heart, his fearlessness, and the confidence he approached life with astounded and inspired me. In Port Douglas and as I travelled around Australia in 1997/1998 I had a small address book that I asked those who I had connected with to give me their details so that I could reach out to them if I was nearby so we could reconnect at a later date. He lived in the area, and I had his details in my book. Drifting off to sleep again, I had to ask Erin if he knew Rahm, and if he had told me to get in contact with him when we were all awake the next morning.
Waking around 5 am, I asked Erin if he had said that I had to go to Raham’s place. He didn’t know anyone called Rahm. Kirsten listened intently, and when Erin said we should head out of Byron to the tea tree lakes to bathe and to cleanse bodies and etheric fields I agreed, on the condition that we go back into the township so I could get to a payphone and call Rahm. Arriving at the lakes we weren’t alone. Others had gathered there around sunrise to bathe as well and we all felt replenished as we swam in the deep brown water. Drying off, we drove back into Byron where Erin took me to a payphone. I asked if Erin and Kirsten would be interested in joining me if Rahm welcomed us. They said they would, so I called Rahm just as the rays of the sun streaked through the phone booth’s glass walls. I didn’t intellectualise the lunacy of what I was doing. Calling up a friend I hadn’t seen in around a month, just after sunrise, and asking if I and two friends could come to his house…wherever that may be. Not to mention that a ‘voice’ had told me to go there. Rahm answered, calmly listening to my request. He told me had to ask his mother, and it was here that reality kicked in for me. What the fuck was I doing? This is madness. I expected him to say that it wasn’t possible, putting an end to this experience. I had been tripping and it had been an auditory hallucination. End of story. To my surprise, he came back to the phone and said, yes, of course, we were all welcome! I passed the phone to Erin as Rahm gave him directions on how to get to his property. Erin drew a map on the back of a piece of paper and we headed off to the bunkhouse to have breakfast, gather our belongings and follow the map Erin had drawn. I smiled and ruminated, who was it that had told me that I must go to Rahm’s place? I asked whoever it was to reveal themselves to me as we parked up at the bunkhouse and got out of the van. I would get my answer later that day.
