My Library

Zelda's Virgo Party was quite mobbed and fully packed with everyone guzzling cheap wine. The infrared photos of psychic energies were again being passed around -- stimulating appropriate oohs and aahs, and so I found myself something of a luminary, albeit quite lesser than Monroe and Backster. But what I wanted to do was see plants responding to human thoughts. A mob was congregated around Backster in Zelda's little kitchen, and he had been backed into a small space by the refrigerator and a corner. I wedged myself into the Backster groupies, sipped wine and listened to the talk. Finally I had the courage to ask if I could come to his lab to see. He said "Yes." And with this, the direction of my life changed forevermore -- although I had not a clue at that innocent moment. So, a few days later I made my way to Backster's lab and lie-detection school just off Broadway near Times Square. The plant experiment room was a smallish, gray cubicle furnished with steel desks, galvanometers and polygraph equipment. And a stately DRACAENA MASSENGEANA, one of the plants which had officially ushered in the age of sentient plant reactions. It was about five feet tall and already hooked into the polygraphs. But there were only two people present: Backster and I. So I asked: "Are you going to influence the plant?"