I did, at this point (about 1:30), however, think of God. I felt a sudden desire to go to Westminster Cathedral. (Instinctively, I felt that a Protestant church would be useless: they aren�t really sacred buildings at all.) But when we got to the Cathedral, God definitely wasn�t at home, as far as I was concerned. So we walked along the street to the Abbey, for want of any better place to go. Don hadn�t been there before. The Abbey was very funny � a charmingly absurd little antique shop, full of ridiculous statues. (Sir Cloudesley Shovel was specially pleasing.) Its little old black rock-ribbed carcass seemed shrunken; I felt I was inside a dead and dried-up animal. Maybe a whale. No God there. No life at all . . . Having been told by John Goodwin and others that I must be sure to get close to nature, I could think of no place to go except a flower shop . . . I immediately seemed to see a great difference between the cut flowers and the ones growing in pots. �This one,� I told Don, �is just as alive as a snake.� And looking at a pot of azaleas, I could see the petals moving all the time, the stamens making constant tiny phototropic adjustments towards the light coming through the shop window. But did I really see this?
Christopher Isherwood, on LSD, diary entry February 25, 1956 quoted in The Times, February 25, 2003
