"And for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, with a phantom dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent and inconceivable radiancies shining in bright Mind Essence, innumerable lotus-lands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven. I could hear an indescribable seething roar which wasn’t in my ear but everywhere and had nothing to do with sounds. I realized that I had died and been reborn numberless times but just didn’t remember especially because the transitions from life to death and back to life are so ghostly easy, a magical action for naught, like falling asleep and waking up again a million times, the utter casualness and deep ignorance of it. I realized it was only because of the stability of the intrinsic Mind that these ripples of birth and death took place, like the action of wind on a sheet of pure, serene, mirror-like water. I felt sweet, swinging bliss, like a big shot of heroin in the mainline vein; like a gulp of wine late in the afternoon and it makes you shudder; my feet tingled. I thought I was going to die the very next moment. But I didn’t die, and walked four miles and picked up ten long butts and took them back to Marylou’s hotel room and poured their tobacco in my old pipe and lit up."

I held her a long time, even when she struggled to fall back. I realized she’d done it for a mood. She loved me. Also I think we were both frightened later when we’d hold a kiss for 35 minutes until the muscles in our lips would get cramps and it was painful to go on - but somehow we were supposed to do this, and what everybody said, the other kids, Maggie and all the others “necking” at skate and post office parties and on porches after dances had learned this was the thing–and did it in spite of how they felt about it personally–the fear of the world, the children clinging in what they think is a mature, secure kiss (challenging and grown-up)–not understanding joy and personal reverence-It’s only later you learn to lean your head in the lap of God, and rest in love. Some gigantic sexual drive was behind these futile long smooches, sometimes our teeth’d grind, our mouths burn from interchanged spittle, our lips blister, bleed, chap - We were scared.