Comedy Night and Mushrooms on a Hill.

The free comedy tradition continues. Tuesdays. Newark, Delaware.

I arrived at Homegrown toward the beginning of happy hour, which provided ample time to get an appropriate number of margaritas. Shawn and Melissa sat with me at the bar, and while that's happening everything seems to be alright. We retired to the beer store to get a few tall cans and drink in my van. More music! More limo lighting! More life-is-easy chair! We were audible at the comedy show. As I recall, Melissa was finishing a tall crumpled can of Bud Ice as we sat in the back corner of the room. Scandalous. "That's my girl!" Shawn pointed out to me.

Mushrooms. Sometimes they just show up. Apparently, some funny mushrooms were afoot. After some quick planning, supplies were obtained and we split up with a plan - meet at the farm in about an hour.

The farm is magical. A sanctuary. It is the tallest point in the county, and against all odds it remains undeveloped and unmolested. Some of my friends live there, and it has been passed down through their family for generations. It's a quiet retreat next to the Brandywine River. It is full of history. Solders marched across the land in two separate wars. The Lenapi Indians rested here at the tallest point and looked out over the land. That's where my van was parked.

My van came to a rest at the top of the grassy hill near the biggest and oldest tree I know of around here. The mushrooms did what they do, and the bizarre silliness of our existence took focus over the part of life where anything makes discernible sense.

When things got a little too funny, I had to run to another corner of the hill and laugh it off. I laid on my back in the grass as tears filled my eyes.

It rained, and then it stopped - then it rained some more. With dilated pupils we looked out over a bright and overcast panorama. I sat deeply nestled in my life-is-easy chair. A sort of reminder of real life began to arrive as the sun came up. But I don't think I'll ever be back. I agree with the shrooms. None of this existence is how it appears. You have to make the most of yourself in a strange and sorely wounded world. You need to make your own beauty, and find your own sense of self. I'm relieved that I have the time and privilege to reflect upon this. I have the time and resources to exist outside of a survival-instinct day-to-day reality. Maybe it's all that extra time that blurs the lines of reality. Maybe it would be healthier to exist more as an animal. Maybe it's just the shrooms. I won't be back to reality. I doubt I've ever fully been there. And I also doubt every narcissist who aims to explain it. It isn't our nature to understand all of it. It is our nature to get wrapped up in the details.