A Fifth Dimension

A Fifth Dimension(Margaret Duarte) For the first time in his life, Anton regrets never having experimented with LSD. While an engineering student at Stanford, he heard repeatedly that this psychedelic drug leads to instant enlightenment, or at the very least, altered states of consciousness, leaving the user with an overwhelming appreciation for the beauty of the world surrounding him. Yet, with cowardice masked as caution, he heeded instead, all the voices that warned of LSD’s dangers, how it alienated people, made them suicidal, hysterical, and psychotic. Now, as a middle-aged student in a creative writing class, with an assignment to write a scene incorporating sound, emotion, texture, and color, he finds himself at a distinct disadvantage.

As far as Anton can tell, the literary writers his teacher favors are high on something besides life, their musings spectacular, bizarre, even frightening. Take Annie Dillard for instance. She compares the aftermath of a sexual encounter to "a shipwreck on the sheets," and writes about the skin feeling "double sided" and about lights on the wall that looked like chain mail. Anton admits that sex can make one a bit crazy, but what the hell was Annie on when she wrote this stuff? If it’s true that LSD works like a microscope, magnifying inner experiences and enlarging details, he could certainly use its influence now.

Anton eyes the decanter of Cognac on the coffee table, a decorative accessory his wife spotted in House Beautiful and insisted on adding to the room’s décor. Brandy is not his stimulant of choice, but as Emerson put it, "All life is an experiment," and until House Beautiful demonstrates a way to incorporate psychedelic drugs as part of a decorative scheme, brandy will have to do.

As Anton pours the caramel liquid into a crystal brandy snifter, twilight sparks off its faceted surface like welding spatter, and when he toasts his reflection in the gilded mirror above the fireplace, he gets a whiff of burnt raisins. "Here’s to enlightenment."

His teacher expects something brilliant to ooze from his "elastic imagination," which in turn, he’ll have to share with his classmates, some of whom claim never to have written before and then proceed to write as if they apprenticed under Hemingway, O’Conner, or Fitzgerald. Maybe he should jazz up his scene with a bit of dialogue, incorporating words from a romantic language such as French or Italian, but his specialty is Dutch, the guttural language of his ancestors, and unless the brandy causes him to speak in tongues, this just won’t do.

The first sip of what smacks of firewater causes his taste buds to bubble and burst and his nose to tingle as if he has taken in a mouthful of ice-cold air. Eventually Anton gets enough liquor into his system to feel a shift in perspective. Yes, he senses a streak of brilliance breaking through. Latin springs to his lips. "Pater noster, qui es in coelis…" It’s only the Lord’s Prayer, which he recited a hundred times in parochial school, but at least it’s a start. His head feels light. The room begins to sway. He perceives an Anne Dillard moment coming on. Good God, is that chain mail on the wall?

He nearly decapitated the snifter in his haste to put it down.

While booting his laptop, he hears a voice. "There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man..."

"Holy crap. It’s Rod Serling."

"...and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge."

Anton barks out a laugh and then concludes the famous prelude along with Rod. "It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone."

"Move over Dillard, I see a shipwreck coming on."