My wonder~full life~changing experiences in big city London

Hello everyone that may be interested in my little tale, which is true by the way.
This is my very first post. I only heard of this place just a while ago, and it sounds very exciting and I am glad to be a part of this growing community.
I am going to share with you a VERY important and life changing part of my life. it began with my dream of going to London to be a dancer actually materializing when I was in my 15th year on this good Earth. At the time I was absolutely OBSESSED with big cities, or my image of them. My ultimate image was of course New York City with its sky-scraping buildings, and crowds, traffic, noise. and NEON lights. Loved the neon, and it has to be said the sleazy mystery (for a boy) of such places. Looking somewhat older for my age I had previously been able to see the film Midnight Cowboy, and this fascinated me and attracted me all the more.
But London was said to swing, and I fatefully found myself meeting someone, a dancer, through a friend, who was visiting Manchester where his family lived, who told my mum he would take care of me, and introduce me to Covent Garden Dance Centre in London where he trained (he used to dance on the BBC TV's Top of the Pops) where they did American Jazz style dancing which is what I loved. As a little child my mum had taken me to see the amazing film musical West Side Story at a cinema which had this gigantic screen that was curved. it just blew my little mind away. I think it was then I had decided I wanted to be a dancer!

So Paul (the guy who lives in London arranges all this) and gets me to stay in this bedsit with a woman friend of his, in Chelsea just off the Kings Road, This was in a street of those posh Chelsea houses that have multi floors and basements. Guess who was living in the basement flat? Members of the band Tyrannosaurus Rex! I saw all of them but not the singer, Marc Bolan (who was to later die a tragic death in a car accident), though the woman I was staying with (who I found out later was a speed freak) told me stories of him, and especially how hot he was when shirtless!

So here I was, Chelsea, London, dream come true, living near the ultra hip King's Road. To say I was buzzing is an understatement. I started going to classes at the Dance Centre, but even at that tender age had to get a job to support myself. I remember happily going into nearly every shop on the King's Road asking for work, and I eventually got one, working behind this trendy counter selling 'with it' items.

I was a little disillusioned at the Dance Centre though. many of the other dancers seemed to be double and even treble jointed, and I wasn't, and had trouble following the choreography. However Paul told me that one of my Dance teachers, an American woman, told him I was 'a natural' which boosted my confidence.

Now the King's Road job. the people there were not that friendly, and the boss also, and he kept suggesting most nights the till was a pound short, and this ended up me having to leave. So I then I had to find another job and found myself going to THE dream place for me, the very centre of London, Piccadilly Circus, and in one of the places I walked in which was stalls, there was a girl student from the Dance Centre who told the boss there I was alright, and next thing I am working slap bang in my BIG city dream!!! Right in the heart of the noise, crowds, traffic, pollution, neon land. I was in my element as I breathed in the toxic fuelled air, and was very at home in the crowded circus. One of the jobs I had there was pulling ice cream cones. on the street I would sometimes wear shades at night to give the idea I was a 'cool heroin addict' hiding my heroin eyes. I had in reality never tried it, I am glad to say but this shows how culture can affect a young mind. many of the 'cool' rock stars of the time were into it, and it was therefore 'cool' to me to pretend this image.

There were stalls selling Tshirts, and I got work in one of them, and it was run by these hippies, known as heads, who took interest in me, and one day when I was leaning over one of the road fences looking at all the metropolis going around me, I felt a soft tap on my shoulder, and it was one of the heads asking if I would like to go to a party. I sure did, and I always call this moment the crucial time of my life when LSD tapped me softly on the shoulder.

On the way to the party one of the heads offered me this tiny tiny half of a blue pill on some tinfoil. I was naive and had assumed it was a 'bluey' (speed) which had been reported a lot about on the TV. I had never touched speed but I popped it on my tongue, couldn't even feel it it was so minuscule.
So now I am a bit like their guinea pig . They secretly observing me as the drug was to start taking effect. So we get to the party. As far as I am aware the others there weren't tripping on psychedelics, but would have been stoned on cannabis I am sure. I was sat on a couch with the heads, one on either side. As I sat there observing some party goers playing a 'mindgame' of trying to guess what card another was looking at via 'telepathy', the closed door to my left suddenly seemed to blow out, into the room, like some weird vortex and I had entered this dimension where I suddenly began seeing people very differently. I saw their body language extraordinarily emphasized, and it to me revealed a deeper meaning than the social persona they were presenting to others. To add to the irony of this they were trying to use telepathy with the cards whilst I thought I was seeing directly into their souls. it was all too much and the giggling began. I just could not stop giggling at the madness of the situation, and began getting very irritated looks from the ones I was looking at as I giggled, but I just couldn't help it. So that was my first psychedelic trip, and before I hit 16 I was to have more.

We would usually trip at night until the dawn, and then leave the flat/apartment and go walkabout past people's gardens and into parks, and it was these parts of the trip, known as 'come downs', after the psychedelic climax, which to me were the most life-changing.

You see, when I was really little I had a magical sense of nature, but roundabout 8 and 9 years old, through influence of the 'education' system, and culture in general, I was becoming dulled to nature, and this was a time I started my big concrete neon-lit city obsession. Nature was dead and boring that I threw litter at, AND I was getting a sadistic streak. The only houseplant I wanted mum to get was the Venus Fly trap so I could take pleasure in seeing flies having the life sucked from as they were trapped in jawed snapping leaves, and I was also very into Pan horror books and films.

One of the most wonderful 'come downs' then, I remember, which as a memory ensapsulates this major life-change was when we went into Hyde Park at dawn and reclined by The Serpentine lake, and watched the sun's rays playing deep in/on/of the rippling water like a million infinite stars. it was indescribably wonder-full. On acid I had seen 'matter' breathe, flow, ripple, and be ever so alive, and nature, everything was alive. REALLY alive. Certainly not flat boring and dull as I had begun to see it before even as a boy! I was changed! Reborn.

I saw people bring their dogs into my view, and they seemed kind of robot-like, but the dogs tugging on leads and once off were full of life running this way and that, lively and playful spirit reflecting my own

I see life as mythical. For example many years later when I became aware of Goddess mythos, I read about 'serpentine energies' of Earth and body which the patriarchal warrior mindset was afraid of and tried to suppress, so how amazing that it was by a lake called the 'Serpentine' which was like the birth of a new awareness and connection with nature.

So this is an introduction of what I will be loving to share with those interested, because those experiences set me off on a life-long journey I am still on, still asking questions ~~~

I feel what I want to share has value, and it would be great to be able to be supported doing what I love which is encouraging deeper connection with nature which is what we all so much need, as does the natural world. I have So much to explore