Bless you, teacher!

Terence McKenna & Mark Pesce – Techno-Pagans at the End of History. This is a picture I took of Terence, the only time I saw him up close, at Esalen in August 1998. He had not yet discovered the tumor that was at that moment growing in his brain, the tumor that would take his life, after experimental cancer treatment, and a shitload of hashish, in April 2000. I had just discovered him a couple of months before, shelving BLs (mostly gorgeous books in Hebrew with color splashed, dappled edges, far too many to fit on the shelves) in a library at Stanford University, when I espied a strangely hued paperback with a wacky cover, The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End of History (a collection of essays from various publications), a book that completely changed my life, and goes on changing it every day. Miss you, Terence!

Because of you, I've made so many friends, and grown so much professionally. I've gotten to know your lovely family. Because of you, I got tenure as a librarian, and collected over a 1,000 books on psychedelics and cannabis. Because of you, I've started on a quest that has already taken me very far, and is still gathering momentum. Bless you, teacher! 

Of course, I also miss Mark, but that's a different story. He's alive and well and living on the other side of the Equator and the Date Line, and even when he's here, I don't see him any more.