Where am I going? It’s not that I’m lost, but I need to visit the question. Between the cocoa techno party the other night and bushwhacking up the mountains that morning, I must have made the decision on where I am going. In the end, I suppose all answers are decisions.
I’m going to walk with the Willow woman down an endless road, her towards a village of curanderos in Colombia and I deeper into Pisac. The two of us are going to feel a connection, but we’ll both notice an impasse. I’ll wait for the right moment, and it’ll never come. I’ll notice that this is the only moment, and wake up in a mood again. All my answers, like this one, are decisions.
Impossible to predict the future, or the weather in a mountain town. But I do know that it will rain, and want to stay here for the moment around Pisac. Between the downpours, I asked the air and was given the answers I needed, a dozen new souls that lead me to a hundred more. These gifts mean nothing without trust, so I work to have faith in that these relations I am forming are exactly as they are meant to be.
Moving on from Casa Intihuatana until fate shifts, despite a twenty-minute distance I am still gripped by sadness, perhaps because several of my new friends are leaving town. It is a fine arrangement; My landlady is thankfully a pleasant person. Fast internet, kitchen to myself, I’ll live in this apartment for at least a month. It feels like fun, or work in the good sense of the word because I feel like I’m being productive. But I’d be fooling myself, it is not valuable work unless it is improving the world in some way, at least that is what I continue to tell myself. I was an upstanding citizen in Thailand due to the fact that I provided something to people. Being a teacher was good for that. What am I offering to those around me now?
A man from Oz gave me all the ingredients and recipe to start up my own kefir, putting an end to my battle with giardiasis. That same wizard made milk from beans the other day. He’s moving on soon to a nearby hamlet to practice with ayahuasca. My friend the Brazilian is on his way forward as well, to Arequipa and the majesty of Misti. I am becoming used to meeting people, more equipped for it, but when they leave there is always a melancholic demon that stands next to me, or over my shoes, holding me in place as it smokes a phantom cigarette, gazing over a Himalayan range that is also the sadness of a plastic bedroom somewhere in a blistered Piedmont suburbia. Soon, perhaps in this approaching third encounter with Wachuma, I will finally fashion a seat for my heartbroken demon at the High Table.
The smell of tobacco lingers in this mustard-colored room, the place feels like a campsite rather than a home, and I’m fine with that. Without this aura of adventure enveloping my beds and hearths, I’ll fizzle out. I am not under influence of any medicine, or perhaps I am in that She is with me, imprinted forever deep beneath, where Maestro Gilberto had also traveled with an icaros that tethered us both to the Amazon. There is a vibration in my arm where the young tattoo settles into my soul, that permanent commitment by which I vowed to never forget the faces that God revealed. Wachuma is inside that contemplative part of me, perched somewhere in the forehead where it speaks even now: “This attendant you will meet will not be of the Order of Custodians. You are…” My heart burns, pausing as my throat wells up. “You are going to gain a protector.” A sword. Avatar of the warrior. Decisive, active, the fire in your heart is…
As constant as the presence of my past self, who stands before Katenjunga with splitting lips and a heart that longs to be wanted. The Warrior will grow a new soul within the old, stoking the fire with deadwood.
—
Dream Journal | February 7, 2020
Enormous fish, they were catching enormous fish and leaving them by their vehicles at the gas stations, the fish were choking without oxygen as the motorists filled their tanks. The sea was swollen from an enormous storm that had brought in these giant creatures.
..
Listen to this voice with no head, though it is your own head:
When the eucalyptus tree fell it breathed electric fire upon Pisac and the mountains heard its cry. The mountains listened and responded with a mighty flood, one hundred buildings destroyed. I witnessed all of this in a dream, but there was nothing that I could have done to stop it. The people in the markets are solemn, many of them have lost to the river, and the gutters are clogged with the toxic mud even now, against the efforts of men and machines sent from Cusco. The lights returned within a few hours when the great tree fell on Pisac, distant hillside tambos once again glowing red in the petroleum that also filled the gas tanks for the indifferent motorists, and the angry souls of the suffocated river beasts --- "the waters have souls, I have no doubt," I had spoken in the entangled time surrounding Kinsa Cocha and the clawed valley beyond that heaven --- the souls of those captive fish with swords upon their beaks arrived in black mud upon this town, and I felt the anger and sorrow even before I woke. This was no time to speak with Pachamama or wachuma, and I am full of fire and embers all day.
If the gods speak through me now, it is in warning: "Your gutters remain suffocated like the bodies that were taken by the opportunistic fishermen in that dream-sea. Look north: the cattle may be silent and the dogs are resigned, but I stand sentinel above Apu Linli as a black tempest prepared to come this time for your hopeful machines, the higher ground, or an unknowing child.”
I sit with caution by the seething Vilcanota river, night has fallen and the rain has not returned, though I had felt the river's tears earlier in the evening. Even though the soil here is porous, this place remains as a home to the sea that once rested here, but now it speaks through rivers and ponds. I wonder as the orange street lights quietly come online whether humanity is breathing that sea back to its ancient life. It will come in the unassuming night, in the static fire of a million million street lights, swallowing the plastic alpacas that promise meager rewards to the vendors of Pisac. "Return to me," the ancient sea will command, "Return the black blood of my ancestry. Return what was so generously given, for our exchange was not reciprocated.”
Did the people of Pisac deserve this to happen? And what will my own people deserve? Twisted in bed, lonely yet avoidant, I mock myself for questioning whether I deserve love when nature so violently responds to me and so to the world: "Learn to love me; you have not yet understood what it means to give yourself away"
—
February 10, 2020,
A woman with five heads came to Casa Intihuatana and transformed the air. The heartbeat of Latin America resonated through a muffled stereo until it was all I cared to listen to, the heartbeat of El Bújo, Weval, Rodrigo Gallardo; Yani and I played Quenas until a storm rolled in. The earth is tender after a recent logging operation, I wonder whether it is a matter of time before a flood comes. Just as the valley is about to burst from the anxiety of the hundred felled eucalyptus, the woman turned one of her five dreadlocked heads toward the remote farming hamlets along the coast of Peru. I hope to meet her again, that girl whose spirit occupied the whole body, not only her mind.
I finally was able to bring together a couple of people to split the taxi up to Kinsa Cocha Laguna, where it rained the entire grey afternoon. The grass of that valley was inundated with a stratum of crawling water, and waterfalls split through the landscape to join the river that traveled in the middle. Shy llamas and sheep grazed on the hidden inclines where the trail often became invisible to us. My comrades were German, often I was left out of their conversation. It gave me time to think about the Portuguese dancer with the five faces, two of which were pierced all over. I wanted to tell her that she was brilliant. We’d spoken about trust that night before the fullest moon, she confided in her need to find a place where her mind could be still and her heart unabated, and I shared how I had found my burning heart in the chest of South America.
By the time we had circled back from Kinsa Cocha to an equally grey Casa Intihuatana, the bright lady was gone. She’d come here to find a witch doctor to retrieve a lost part of her soul, and at the end of a tearful evening, she’d found what was missing on her own.
I’ve moved to a house in the center of Pisac, taking my friend’s lead in searching for a place to focus my soul and open it all the way out. I fear that I’ll repeat old mistakes, become addicted to the work that doesn’t fulfill me but at least keeps me full. I was not well back then: lonely and irritable, out of touch, forgotten how to love myself, no memory of how to love others by extension. I didn’t know how to appreciate what I had, I did not trust myself and now that old habit wants to flower again.
—
We began the ceremony around noon. There were three of us taking the medicine: Willow woman, the Jedi, and I. Jorges and Yani would be our chaperones. Lili was there for a few hours and went to bed, she told us that the dog that had bitten her in Tarai must have been a vampire. They had come to the bridge from Cusco just as the brown waters had claimed the streets there, I could tell that they were still shaken from the sight.
We all submitted to sananga, Willow woman and I experiencing it for the second time. It is a miracle liquid, eliminating cataracts in the eye and the heart, and if you have learned how to love deeply, the excruciating burn becomes a neutral release of energy. Sananga gifted night vision and a wave of inner peace as Jorges fanned us with condor feathers and Yani rattled an anklet of animal bones. As time dilated, the assortment of flowers Vivi had brought for us from the market began to dance. Yani played a three-piece quena that became a chorus of birds whistling an eerie melody. I experimented with a harmonica, recreating that electric sound that had healed me in the black ayahuasca visions from Pahoyan.
We were guided on an excursion along the river, Yani playing the pied piper as we trailed behind. Willow woman did not remember how she got to the forest, and at the time the Jedi may have not felt anything at all. I tethered my mind to a boulder that wore the river like a robe, the one in the center of the angry water where people sometimes come to meditate. No one can sit upon that stone today that is beneath the swollen water, and I look for myself in it. When I turn away, everything is a river. Enormous beings dance in the sky hidden by the eucalyptus branches. According to Yani, we were out there for three hours, yet it felt like half of that. By the time we reached the hostel, the medicine was reaching a peak of influence in our bodies. When I sat again in the ceremony room, mind still fresh with a memory of the crying cow spirit in the eucalyptus that feeds from the river we’d departed, I see the onset of phosphorous rainbow ribbons dance in infrared tendrils from the blind corners of my vision. I was no longer only that persistent identity which was named Bradley, that grasping part of me was taking a rest if only for a moment.
The night came quickly, I spent some time on my own in the field by the hostel, fingers in the dirt as if I were growing roots, allowing myself to be in Pisac with the people, the animals, the mountains. Later in the night, our chaperones guided us up the street and along a path flanked with cacti and fields. In the distance over the town was Apu Linli in the shape of a grandmother. I perceived two heads at either end of the mountain, ancient lovers eternally intertwined in a twist of passion that must have played a role in the unity of all things here. Above us the full moon cut through the heavens like a blue-white window with a hundred swirling frames. Everything stabilized when I looked into the moon. Jorges asked me if I could see his thoughts in the clouds, but I couldn’t even see my own. The moon unified the world and so for a moment there were no dancing gods in the sky. “What is your sign?” Jorges asks me.
“Pisces”
“Haha, of course!” He rubs his head. “I’m Pisces as well.”
Me to the Jedi: “What about you?”
Jedi's a German violet belt in karate, dreads hang like taproots over alchemic symbols that cover her neck and the rest of her body. Black poncho, doing something with mandalas in her private time, I think she just came from Brazil where she visited her father for a martial arts scrimmage. “It feels good to fight with your father,” she’d said on occasion. The Jedi responds, “I’m Scorpio, but my astrologer would say that that’s too vague for what’s really going on.”
“Scorpio’s a water symbol as well, isn’t it?” She shrugs. “A scorpion is a crustacean, after all.”
“We’re all water symbols here,” Jorges says, watching the moon with one eye, the guarded husky at the edge of the street with the other. Hounds, men, water, he searches for danger in all corners now. I can tell that the floods have left a lasting effect on his nerves. We return to the hostel and split up for a while, then reconvene in the ceremony room. Jorges condemns the “fake” shamans that haunt Pisac, but I wonder if he realizes that he is also not a shaman. No one in this town accepts the title of trip-sitter, and I’m not sure why. He also on several occasions brings up the Isreali who accompanied me in my first ceremony, how the man had made sexual advances on a girl who was also on the medicine at the time. The Israeli was asked to leave the hostel. I think that everyone present with us was accustomed to the effects of psychedelics, but it was still an uncomfortable subject or Jorges to touch while we were courting with wachuma. Was he there to keep an eye on me? The cameras were all dead ever since the flood had inundated the common room. I accept that it is possible that Jorges is being careful but I am also not responsible. We smoke a joint and for a while, the two Germans talk amongst themselves. The Jedi has developed an abnormal headache that persists until the next morning. All of our stomachs are turned inside out from the medicine, and I must remain mindful of the pain in order to transform it into something different. With the right attention, that pain can be unfolded like a flower into something almost pleasant, but it requires consistent meditation and I often fall out of it. I imagine that the anti-parasitic San Pedro is rearranging my guts, though when I feel around my groin I realize that the pain resides there, not the gut. We can sense impurities and knots in our energy field, and for a long time, I have been conflicted in the sacral chakra. We are near the Earth’s sacral center, that is why the people here are so hot with passion. I am in the correct place for transformation beneath this full moon in the frustrated Sacred Valley. The Jedi, on the other hand, is undergoing a reprogramming of the mind. There is a connection happening in her and she is suffering from it. At the least, she smiles often and laughs cathartically even as the pain claws between her eyes.
The Willow woman is administered rappé by Jorges, the Jedi follows her lead. Jorges uses a long pipe, blowing a dart of air from his end into their nostrils. I agree to take the tobacco-mixed snuff as well. Jorges looks into my eye, tells me to focus there and not on the blurry pipe that connects his head to mine. The rappé is delivered in an instant flash of green and my head is filled with icy fire, I cannot breathe. Jorges again urges me to focus, I rest for a few minutes and then we finish with the second nostril. “It is bad to only do one side,” He says. When I regain my breath, I step outside. There is a cold mist on everything, I can hear the water rushing from the hostel gutters. At the edge of the driveway is a mass of fenceposts and garbage that transforms into a sinister old hag. The ghoul watches me from the edge of the property, and when she begins to advance I say aloud “Alright, enough of that,” and return to the ceremony room.
Jorges and I describe how to disassociate by gazing into someone’s eyes. I’m excited to try this again; even when the medicine produces less noticeable visual aberrations, this is the one thing that always reveals something incredible. We agree that Jorges has the most interesting face to gaze into; His features expand out of proportion until his face becomes a ludicrous mask, then his skin became like layers of paper mâché, a puppet with a black beard and beady eyes, like an elderly podling from the Dark Crystal mythos, not entirely human. “You were an Afghan,” I tell him. “We were beneath a bridge somewhere, perhaps the Middle East.”
“Wow, amazing man!” He then gazes with the Willow woman. First, she sees a caricature, then Jorges becomes a man on a ship.
“You’re a pirate,” she laughs.
“Ah no, not a pirate.” He wags a cigarette in contemplation. “I know what it is you have seen. My ancestor was a stowaway, you have seen a migrant.”
I pull the Willow's attention, she agrees to gaze with me. “Your face was like clay and your nose disappeared,” I tell her. “Just like when I gazed with Jorges, I saw the countless faces you could be wearing, looking into the toolbox of the mind. In time, you could have been anyone. What did you see?”
She was smiling as if deeply touched by what she’d seen. “I saw a little boy in his living room, playing. You look like the boy from the Never-ending Story.” She opens her small notebook to the page where I’d drawn a cactus the day before. I take the notebook and allow my mind to flow over the page, wisps of organic shapes that mean nothing but contain everything. I return the notebook and she smiles at my creation, “I think I know why I saw you as a boy. You are rediscovering your creativity.”
Jorges places an empty card box atop a bottle and punches it with the wind, suspending any doubt that the force is not his own chi. The Jedi proves to be much more equipped for this game. When the box falls I give her the namesake “You’re like a real Jedi.” She withdraws for a moment, then I ask if she would like to gaze with me. She agrees, in the orange glow of the ceremony room I see a being with a long neck, then her face becomes more visible to me. When we break eye contact, I tell her “You had glasses. In fact, you still have them, though I know that you don’t wear any.”
She tries to contain laughter, “Your face was shifting.”
“You looked into the toolbox as well, huh?” She smiled. “Everyone I’ve done that with appeared at least for a moment as an old person, but you didn’t. You were the same age throughout. This is a bit embarrassing, but you looked like my first crush, a girl from second grade.”
We spent a couple of hours performing tarot readings, Jorges translating the voice of the cards as we navigated our intentions and emotions. My spread suggested the need for quick decisions, the ability to judge the merit of an action that needed to be taken soon. I also asked a straightforward question, of whether or not I was on the right path to developing a life that could carry an intimate relationship. Being in the presence of two women who I’d already lowered my guard with, I hoped that being honest with this question would reveal a forgotten truth to me. The cards revealed an affirmation, but perhaps in two months’ time.
Jorges remains with us until nearly five in the morning and we finally find the ability to sleep. As I drift off, I understand that this session would not be over for at least a week. What has been set in motion never unfolds all at once, or at least we cannot perceive it that way. Days later after the Willow woman and several others have gone I am walking through the night from Casa Intihuatana towards town. There are no guards past midnight, I walk through the avalanche that battered the road toward the muddy heaps of dirt that nearly swallowed the bridge. I felt the weight of nature in the amoebic night while thinking of what the Jedi had said. “My family has a karmic number. Twenty-two appears everywhere.” I’d told her about my own karmic number. Elevens, everywhere I look. Tonight another guest of the Inti told me about the energy vortex in lake Titicaca, something about a cosmic event that would on the twenty-second of February open a portal into another dimension. My birthday was two days after that. An old habit shouts: Where am I going?
—
“Mescaline two days ago, ayahuasca tomorrow, but I’m cutting back on the weed, gonna replace that with coca tea.”
“As long as you’re being careful,” my counselor leads. “Though it does appear that you’ve gained some confidence in your abilities. You are capturing the idea that a fulfilling life for a creative type like yourself is one of experimentation.”
“I keep doubting myself.”
“Don’t do it!”
“At the least, I recognize that it is happening. It’s beautiful how the universe builds up pressure and releases our demons with ever more momentum the longer that we resist facing them.”
“You’re talking about the girl from home.” Referring to a friend from Asheville. When I roll the thought around, it does have some symmetry; doubt, ridicule, and misunderstanding masked in the silhouette of a friend but also that of another woman who made deep cuts on my soul long ago. No matter who wields the feminine energy, my demon leaps from one person to the other while mocking my insecurities.
“That’s right, but I think there is wisdom in even nonconstructive feedback. We see ourselves wherever we care to look. I saw all kinds of things through her words. If anything, it gave me permission to be responsible for my own happiness.”
All is the master, Lili whispers from the air. My counselor’s camera glitches, I’m thinking about whether the connection will manage to hold a video conference like this for hours at a time. That’s crucial if I’m going to go back to the old job. My ratings will be eaten alive if I lose connection with a student. And that leads me further down the rabbit hole: “I don’t want to be alone, but I also don’t know if I can succeed in building this future I long for while also building a meaningful relationship.”
My counselor’s dog is barking in the background, the camera glitches again as I fetch a cup of coffee. I’m glad that we are able to continue our sessions together despite the long distance. “I think it is fine to have friends,” He almost winks. “But I think you need more time to get your footing, build some momentum and roll out the foundation for your ideal life to develop. You must consider what you need to do in order to avoid the mistakes of your past, focus on the strengths rather than your fear of potential events. Check your intentions regularly, remember that the end goal is that you will continue to have inspiring experiences that reveal what is most important to you.”
No matter what happens, be honest with yourself, a wandering sage in West Australia suggested. It has been seven years since my friend first wrote that message to me, and now it is spoken again through the counselor’s voice. My time is up and the session ends. I am left standing in the center of my living room, windows stripped of curtains reflecting another February rain. What had suddenly come to mind was my dream from the night before. I had astral projected from a bed that I shared with my demon, afraid to embrace the goddess in that cold and empty room beneath an amphitheater of indigenous peoples. It was also my grandmother’s room, and there on the carpet, I remembered the real face of my demon. I am the one who is being avoidant, and I know what I need to do next.