Further Ruminations ...

2/20/2009 Cusco, Peru

'In the body of the world
they say there is a soul
and you are that

But we have ways
within each other
that will never be said
by anyone'

-J'allaludin Rumi

Yesterday we taxi'd from Ollantaytambo all the way back to Cusco. An hour and a half in total, our route veered south at Urubamba circumventing Pisaq and taking us up to the high grass planes of Chinchero. Peruvian peasants donning traditional Andean wear were herding flocks of sheep and the periodic groupings of llama, ocassioning honks--a roadside greeting--from our driver. It was nice to indulge the extra soles for a taxi-ride, I think it's important to ever so often opt for comfort during periods of extended travel.

Chinchero itself, though described in ethnobotanical literature as a place of particular interest, struck my untrained eye as rather drab. A formless chaos of white-washed dwelling cubes around a thin stretch of highway; a large, rectangular grass field centers the town, with children playing soccer and couples kissing on benches. While for the most part, Peruvians seem quite conservative in terms of public displays of affection, the parks and plazas seem to be a safe haven for couples in tight embrace, tongues locked in wet and probing discoveries of one another. We passed through Chinchero quickly, like a summer's breeze.

We spent most of our afternoon in Cusco resting at the hostal; our room quite small and simple excepting the luxury of two--yes, two--windows: es una ventana del mundo. In the evening, we walked down to the Plaza de Armas, quite lively and somehow alight in the dim and starless evening.

One of the most endearing things about travelling in undeveloped countries, is the sense of simple things. Last night, I went out and bought 4 white candles. Gratefulbear and I sat silently in the candle-lit darkness, burning the fragrant wood of the Palo Santo tree to brighten our olfactory pallet. Throughout this trip, we've both found great comfort in familiar memories, each a hallucination: the smell of our favorite breakfast cereal, a rhythm wafting through the air, a turn of english phrasing.

I seem to have lost my ipod, which has become something of a crutch anyways, as well as a book I finished in the earlier part of our trip. I guess it was their time, they may have been stolen; or I possibly misplaced them. We'll never know, both are bound to happen.

I have been giving considerable thought to the whole notion of biological imprinting as the basis of the archetypes. This last summer, during a period of accelerated personal change, I seemed to devote particular attention to the anima mundi>world soul iteration set of the maternal imprint, perhaps as a result of my initial reading of Jung's 'Mysterium Coniunctionis' (not the last). I think some of the seeds of the concepts developed in Mysterium are foreshadowed in 'Alchemical Studies,' where Jung lectures brilliantly on the dual motherhood that was implicit in the philosophy of Paracelsus (often considered the father of Occidental medicine). Paracelsus seems to have shared with me the confabulation of a distant personal mother. As a result, in his philosophy you see particular emphasis on the Alma Mater--patron mother--a compensatory mechanism that loosens the grip of the consuming mother as a nascent imprint. Paracelsus found personal peace in what George Macdonald terms the 'symbols of nature,' expressed in Paracelsean philosophy as the Lumen Naturae: the light of nature. Several of the principles of homeopathic (as arguably effective/ineffective as homeopathy is) medicine can be traced back to the Paracelsan sensibility.

I arrived in Bodhgaya, India on the 1st of January 2001, after a fitful night of sleep intermittently disturbed by the constant barking of metal loudhorns announcing the new years in the city of Gaya. New Years evening, I befriended a Tibetan monk, face smeared with mud and robed in tatters of red and gold. Strapped to each hand, were the wooden prayer blocks that are part of the prayer-form of the preliminary stages of the Mahamantra training of the Gelugpa. Slapping the blocks together at the heart level, joined hands are extended overhead then plunge downward and out as the body is extended fully on the ground in complete prostration. The heart prayer of Tibetan Buddhism is recited with each prostration: Om Mani Padme Hung. Pilgrims will do this tens and hundreds of thousands of times in preparation for the second stage of Mahamantra, the visualization of the world as a bodhimandala, pure and enlightened.

Over the language barrier, we somehow befriended one another and I agreed to cover his housing for the evening and a took-took the next morning to Bodhgaya itself. I have always felt that pilgrims along the road--no matter their destination--embody our own capacity to recognize our own best nature as we travel to destinations unknown. So it was with this young monk, who--while I slept fitfully--slept motionlessly all night long.

There was no fanfare as I arrived into Bodhgaya, somewhat traumatized by my brush with Indian law in Banares. I saw from a distance the Mahabodhi temple, with the tree itself--of the species Ficus religiosa--looming like a great mountain over the central plaza. Ocassionaly the thick and dense seeds would fall, while scurrying pilgrims jockeyed below to catch them like sportsfans at a baseball game. I didn't visit the temple itself for a week, instead re-reading The Hobbit at the Om Cafe amidst the tent city of resteurants and pilgrim's quarters. We quickly became tight friends with the owners at the cafe, and the smattering of travellers who had come to this most remote and inhospitable of pilgrimage destinations. During this week, I visited the various temples surrounding the central Mahabodhi complex. Of particular note, the Bhutanese temple had scenes from the Buddha's life carved in the most intricate design into their temple, ornately painted in bright and shaded pastels, much like the stone dyes of the Tibetan Thangka style. At the far end of of the temple walkways sat the immense and towering statue of the Maitreya future Buddha of the next age, echoing the millenarian sentiment common to most major world religions.

When I eventually visited the Bodhi tree, I took with me no particularly religious sentiments of nostalgia. I almost felt obligated to visit the tree, having come so far. More like a tourist than a pilgrim, I enterred the temple, a labyrinth of chambers leading to the central tree. Passing through chambers decorated in the devotionals of the various branches of the Buddhist tree, I enterred the central chamber and saw the tree.

The base wrapped in a gold sash with a Buddha-footprint under glass in front of the tree, I looked up. To my surprise, and welling up from within my heart and into my eyes: the tree was glowing with a soft and golden light. Something inside opened, and I just broke down in uncontrollable waves of tears: flowing from my deepest aspiration. It was like a miracle: right here, someone really and truly did put an end to suffering. For the first time in my life, the aspiration of enlightenment was lit in my heart, a real possibility in this lifetime. Like a guiding light from some distant and unkowable infinity, that unattainable rainbow that is the aspiration of bodhicitta: to liberate all suffering.

Morning Bell

I think in our culture, the idea of a living and breathing Spirit in Nature, has a sort of passing and 'new age' appeal; but to seriously consider what the Spirit in Nature implies in terms of our place in things, stretches reason to the maximum. Most people seem to resist this notion at an unconscious level with much thrashing and gnawing of teeth, because to accept it is to die to ourselves: we're simply not that important in the grand scheme. But in Bodhgaya I touched a tree, and that tree quite literally spoke to my heart, in a language that only my heart was capable of understanding. This tree was alive and aware. What evidence do I have to offer except what is my most deep and abiding value:

I am like a great and solid rock island in the middle of a coursing river: I only know the river that flows around me. But my ultimate destiny is down river beyond anything I've ever known, and that unknown is a fine and ungraspable light like a gaseous mist rising in the morning: entirely self-illuminated and utterly unknown.

So perhaps it is fitting that the Inca worshipped the Sun, the source of that very light which has been--across the ages--the central 'natural symbol' and metaphor of the mystic's heart. In my own life, the Lumen Naturae has comforted a heart alienated by a distant mother and a world alienated from itself: a man has to stand for and within something. Rain is falling outside, and the Christ statue above on the hill where the Saksaywaman ruins are situated is alight, a white and gleaming beacon with arms outstretched above the valley. It's quite a pleasant statue, less austere and encumbered by theism than many images of Christ; more natural like a bird in flight. It was here in the mornings that the priests of the Inca would raise their arms, palms stretched upwards to receive the rays of the sun. Enough for today, tomorrow is a mystery with arms outstretched to receive it.

2/21/2009 Cusco, Peru

'You fall into a hole,
but down in that hole
you find something shining
worth more than any amount
of money or silver.'

-J'allaludin Rumi

This morning I took off my shirt to discover that somewhere amidst the fatigue, diarrhea, altitude sickness and nause, I seem to have developed pectoral muscles and a six pack. Last night we finally realized that we were suffering from more moderate symptoms of sorroche, altitude sickness. Flying into Cusco earlier this month, I had taken the necessary pre-cautions to avoid serious symptoms: rest and hydration. However, it kind of slipped my mind that between Machu Picchu and Cusco, we would be ascending almost 4000 ft. So I wasn't paying attention to hydration or rest.

In the evening I sat down with my new book, John Hemming's 'The Conquest of the Inca,' and within a couple of minutes of reading noticed I was particularly mentally fatigued, to the point of actually being lightheaded. It definitely seems to get worse in the evening. My palms were a bit clammy, and I noticed my lips were quite parched. A little lightbulb went off in my head, 'huh, I have been having some weird sort of rolling nausea and headache waves today.' Furthermore, BOTH Gratefulbear and I were getting these most disheartening waves of oscillating loneliness and depression; Gratefulbear described it as 'you have loneliness on one shoulder, and depression on the other,' a most unpleasant effect. So I dropped a couple liters in one of the hydro-paks and started hydrating. The effect was clear and almost immediate, I gradually started feeling better. Having taken a bit of time away from the coca, I pulled some out and began chewing. I must say, hydration+coca is something of a miracle when it comes to altitude sickness, there seems to be a synergistic effect.

Within 20 minutes of beginning to chew coca again, a sensation like achey pressure-release developed in my chest. Imagine being tense and sore after a workout and then soaking in a nice hot-tub and all of your muscles just relax, that kind of achey-tension release but in the respiratory system. With each pressure release, I would need to urinate. It was a remarkable effect and the symptoms of the sorroche/altitude sickness quickly subsided. I chewed periodically through the evening: chewing and then hydrating. After a certain amount of time passed between chews, I would feel the return of symptoms that progressively decreased in intensity with each chew. It was quite a lesson to connect with coca as a medicine for specific physical distress, I seem to have connected with coca in a more balanced and respectful way as a result. I wonder what is happening at the molecular level in this case.

Perhaps some of my mad-ramblings and delerious visions have been the result of improper hydration, not to suggest they are any less meaningful. William Blake wrote that humanities core delusion was a belief in a body seperate from soul and vice versa. I think what we often call 'soul' is perhaps in fact an as yet hidden aspect and understanding of the material universe. Just how unknown it is, I think the most materialistic amongst us can come to appreciate. Nevertheless, it has always seemed to me that the often irrational and confounding vicissitudes of the heart, soul and psyche, have a truth and reality as compelling as anything understood according to the current state of our comprehension of the material universe. Truly gnosis/knowledge then becomes a function of revealing that which was hidden and unknown, a sort of light in infinite regress, with each revelation containing within it the seed of some future enlightenment albeit in a veiled and phosphorescent form. Each successive seed then dissolving the fruition of the previous seeding and awakening.

Last time I was at elevations this high was in Nepal, ascending to an altitude just shy of 18,000 feet. It was a trek and we ascended slowly, not nearly so quickly as ascending 4000 feet by train of plane. Nepal is a rare gem of a country, the great gateway of the Himalayan mountain range. After a sweltering week in the urban hell that is Mumbai, our flight to Kathmandu arched the Western coast of India with a stopover in Dehli. We were projected to arrive in the evening, controlling for the roaring chaos that is India. Our plane left the gate in Dehli with everything in order. In transit from the gate to the runway, the pilot comes over the intercom: 'we have to turn around to address mechanical problems,' so me and my travelling partner--an anal-retentive but entirely likeable Long Island Jew--spent a restless night staring at each other in the New Dehli aiport. Around 3am, our flight is okay'd and we embarked for Nepal.

Our plane arrived into the Kathmandu valley just as the sun peaked over the horizon from the west. As we descended, the rays of the sun illuminated the rippling and white tips of the Himalayan mountain range in soft and pink light effervescing into a soft gold. Sweeping across the entire valley, our plane descended into a cradle of gentle and golden green. Even as recently as 2000, Kathmandu was a special place, a rare urban center in the modern age that maintains soul and character. The central tourist zone is your typical labyrinth of commerce and craft. South and hugging the river is the Hindu temple at *blank*, ornately complex in the Indo-Aryan style with an active Kali temple where animal sacrifice is still practiced. Small wooden huts line the river up and down, home to the many Saddhus that populate the temple and it's surroundings. Mud-covered and with their chillums, the Saddhus of India and Nepal are invariably swathed in a cloud of cannabis smoke. It seems to be one of the finer points missed by spandexed yoga-enthusiasts of the west that yoga and the Vedic philosophy in it's native form is basically an ellaborate and ornate cannabis cult. Certainly cannabis is a likely candidate for the spectrum of plants--several seem likely as part of an evolving plant-man complex--that formed the evolving Soma complex of the ancient Vedas across India and the Middle East.

EPI PHYTE

Crossing the river lies the white and rotund stupa at Swayamboudanath, a home for Tibetan peoples in exile. As the sun sets in the evening, pilgrims and residents circumambulate the stupa in prayer; quite a remarkable scene of goodwill and comraderie. The Tibetan people are genuinely kind for the most part, exclaiming 'tashe delek' in greeting as one ascends the great mountain.. As the story goes, the wild Bon of the Tibetan plateau were tamed by the lotus guru and father of Tibetan Buddhism: Padmasambavha. Sitting in the afternoons as the sun set and watching so many smiling and sun-parched faces of the Tibetan plateau, was always heart warming. Years later I was regaled by a story Terence Mckenna tells of dmt-induced psychoplasmic vaginal holofluids on one of the roofs surrounding the temple at Boudanath.

But the Himalayas are the heart of Nepal, and our path took us around the great and towering Annapurna massif: 130 miles of man and nature. We climbed slowly, passing into the Kali Gandaki river valley, resting and acclimating at 15,000 feet in the high dessert-plateau village of Manang. The first day I heard tell that a day's walk away at the base of the 8000 plus meter Gangapurna peak. Somewhat tired of the constant worrying of my travelling companion, me and our Nepali porter Heera slipped out one morning to find the hermit's cave.

As we ascended the stone-strewn slope, my be-sandled travelling companion transformed into something of a high mountain ballerina, skipping ahead and thoroughly enjoying himself. Before I knew it, he had 'left me in the dust.' I trudged along with the expectation of seeing our destination over each and every hill as we approached the mountain base. After awhile, I became completely exhausted, with no sight of my hiking companion. Entirely spent, I flopped my backpack around behind me and collapsed onto the ground. Opening my eyes, I gazed out into the immensity of the Kali Gandaki valley, perhaps 16,000 feet and completely alone. It was like a shot of dmt, suddenly I became aware of an immense and resonant ringing sound: the mountain was quite literally singing, it had a tone to it. I melted into the sound, merging with the very ancient soul of the mountain, I lost sense of time and space as disparate phenomenon. It was one of those rare and abiding encounters with the very heart of the world.

Eventually I got up in a haze of excitement, spurned on by the beauty of my surroundings and the profundity of what I had just experienced. I made my way over the next hill and we were at the very base of Gangapurna, crowned with an immense and glowing glacier. My travelling companion was sitting on a rock looking up at Gangapurna, with an extraordinary and knowing smile on his face. I sat down next to him and pulled out the two Mars Bars I had brought that day. I gave him his, and opened mine up. It was perhaps the most amazing thing I've ever eaten, we both chewed silently for a couple of minutes and then my companion exclaimed with a grunt 'MMMMM!!!' It was perfect communication from the heart and gut level, and we both proceeded to break down into the most irrational fits of laughter, to the point of tears. Across worlds and languages, we somehow understood and recognized one another. We never found the hermit's cave, but in the solitude of that moment alone on the face of the great mountain, I found something shining.

I looked into plane tickets to Iquitos, which connect through Lima: more expensive than I was hoping. In fact, the flight to Iquitos will end up costing as much as our flight to Lima from the United States. So, it seems we will bus to Arequipa-Puno, visit the Colca canyon (and hopefully see a Condor), Lake Titicaca and perhaps hit up Bolivia before heading back to Lima and catching a flight from there to Iquitos. From Iquitos, my work with ayahuasca begins.

For all the myriad of psychedelics and psychoactives I have sampled from A to Z to 2-C-Special G, I have never once imbibed the vine of the soul, nor any of the traditional dmt-enriched plant admixtures of the ayahuasca complex. My fascination with ayahuasca began at the age of 14. Having been exposed to the world of dimethyltyptamine through the rabbinical ramblings of the inimitable Terence Mckenna, my initial exposure to the visionary vistas of ayahuasca came through the inspired visual poetry of Pablo Amaringo. At the age of 14, I promised myself that I would wait until I was in the Amazon jungle itself before taking ayahuasca. Now, sixteen years later, here I am, within striking distance of the jungle and that very vine which connects our world with the Other.

What Jung termed the 'duality of the archetype of the mother,' is expressed in the shamanic-mystical worldview as the two worlds. This world, which we perceive through the doorway of the senses, is bound by those very laws which govern the structure and function of the very sense organs through which this world is perceived. William Blake termed humanities obsessive and myopic fixation on this domain of perception as the world seen through 'narrow chinks of the cavern.' The essential initiatory crises of the neophyte seeking induction into the expanded domain of the Other world, involves what William Blake termed the 'infernal method,' a stripping away of life, death, the world as we know it and everything familiar; Mircea Eliade describes a similar process in the 'skeletonization' of the shaman.

New Years Eve 1998/1999, a small group of us gathered for a night of exploration. More than a little naive at the time, my usage of psychedelics could be best described as irresponsible if not downright wreckless. By far the youngest of the group, I must have come off as awkward in a pubescent sense. I was lost and confused, desperately seeking something which--in retrospect--was inevitable. My flight arrived from Albuquerque, and without any delay the table was set and dinner served; the first course: dipropyltryptamine.

The first two doses weren't particularly memorable at 30 and 40mgs apiece. Blue and purple hallucinations, warm and rolling with a vibrating and physical current lifting from the sacrum area. With the third dose upon us, 'how about 50,' I asked our physician in residence. I'll never forget my dear friend's response, 'no, I think you need 60.' Sometimes you get what you ask for, sometimes you get what you need. As the trance surged, the physical wave began to expand in amplitude until the entirety of my consciousness seemed wholly encompassed--and compressed--within this wave. There was a sense of the wave 'bottoming out,' at a point where the derivative of the curve is locally undefined. It was like flickering and my mind seemed to be toggling in and out of consciousness very rapidly, I became quite anxious. Then, embedded within the wave at the 'zero point,' a current coursed through me from some other shore, a consuming wave of fire. I came to in another world altogether.

I was in the middle of a circle of beings of light. Their gaze was terrifyingly still, swimming with filigrees of flaming and wheeling galaxies in their eyes. There was a central being, like a priest; initially I conceptualized this being as either Christ or Satan: lord of the underworld. In his hands was a bowl, which he was extending out to me. I looked down at my hands.

Over the years, I have discovered that while many people have a sort of fascination with psychedelics and the human relationship with drugs both plant-based and synthetic; very few people seem to connect with the psychedelic teachers at the visionary level, it's just too much. More often than not, people generally seem to toy around a bit with the psychedelics: just enough to have fun but not so much to challenge their essential worldview. Generally then, the psychedelics are integrated into the ego-cocoon and become part of the reflexive unconsciousness of the self-focussed state. My observation has been that--at this point--psychedelic experience is passed up for less consciousness-expanding fare such as alcohol. In fact, I have known entire sub-cultures within the psychedelic scene that devolve to this point and then become collectively locked into the participation mystique of the group consciousness in a way that I can only describe as cult-ish. The collective force of the strictured and limited state of consciousness then takes on a life of it's own, maintaining it's homeostasis at all costs; discussion becomes limited to only those topics--and modes of expression--which re-inforce and maintain the cocoon of the devolved state of consciousness. Jung aptly described this state as 'collectively unconscious.'

When I looked down at my hands, and through my wrists on both side were--clear as day--puncture wounds all the way through. It's almost impossible to describe hallucinations/visions of this nature, but this was entirely indistinguishable from the reality that I am experiencing as I sit here right now. This was as real as anything I have ever experienced, I could see it in full detail, could touch it, smell it, hear it. 'No, no' I kept repeating, for I was absolutely sure beyond any shadow of a doubt that I had really and truly 'done it this time.' Years later I came across a very similar description of initiation in Jung's 'Alchemical Studies,' where he discusses the visions of the Greek Gnostic Zosimos.

I looked up into the icy, formless eyes of the central priest, begging for some sort of salvation. The circle of beings scoffed, communication was telepathic, 'how dare you come to us like a beggar,' the central priest beckoned towards the bowl, 'pray you fool, this is the hour of your death.' It was absolutely terrifying, in the most primeval way: there was simply no escaping this horror. Not only was I going to die, I was going to experience the most profound mortifications of the soul. I looked at my body, there was blood everywhere: on my pants, on my face, all over my shirt. Then my flesh began to rot, bloated with bacteria and swimming with disease,

'if you will not pray, then I will pray for you' from the eyes of the central priest,

He then reached for my hand, and by some peculiar manipulation of the physical plane, he removed my hand and put it into the bowl. Then the other hand, then my arms, then stripped the flesh from my chest, removed all of the organs. Everything went into this bowl, swimming with some manner of fluid. Legs, everything until only my head remained; then stripping the flesh from my skull, he cracked open the top of my head. The last thing I remembered was staring at my fleshless skull as it floated in empty space, then a crushing pressure and complete oblivion. I remember looking at the priest, into this flaming eyes: 'I must go now,' and in one terrible instant, the candle went out and he turned his back on me.

I came to in a sort of blissful haze of unknowing, uncertain as to how I had survived the experience but feeling very solid. It must have been quite unpleasant for the people around me to witness this, as I had no connection to the world. Over the next several years, and largely as a result of this experience: my life completely fell to pieces. I dropped out of school, travelled to India; things truly were never the same for me. I'm still picking up the pieces.

Over the years, I have listened as various 'seekers' parrot an argument that Thomas Mann made in response to Aldous Huxley's 'The Doors of Perception.' Mann argued that the spiritual journey is like a mountain that we climb, and psychedelics are like taking the tramway to the top: they're a shortcut. When I think about this particular experience, and just how challenging the psychedelic path has been for me, 'shortcut my ass' I think. Embedded within Mann's metaphor and argument are several misconceptions, not the least of which is the myth of enlightenment as an attainment. But Mann also turns a blind-eye to the original purpose and function of psychedelics in their native setting: psychedelics heal. As such, psychedelics can become an authentic path in their own right, as part of the aspiration to relieve suffering or what the Mahayanists call bodhicitta. While I cannot ascribe to a metaphysical philosophy of absolute moral relativism, many of the moral arguments against the use of psychedelics don't seem to take into account the very necessity that informs their use. The Mazatec of Mexico use the mushroom because they can't afford expensive pharmaceuticals; the NAC use peyote as a way of enduring their often marginalized place in American society. Much of my travel and effort has been about contacting psychedelics within the matrix of this necessity: to heal.

The peyote shaman Don Jose 'Matsuwa,' received his shamanic vocation after losing his arm in a farming accident. He lived to be 110 years old. In his latter life, he observed *Matsuwa quote* It has not been an easy road but one with heart, and a strong one at that.

The news of my mother's death was entirely shocking. When I first heard, it was like swimming in a dream; there was part of me that simply did not believe it. The reality of losing someone close, and particularly one's mother, dawns slowly over years, or it did for me. The fallout from her death was difficult, with the entire family jockeying for her possessions. She expressed her love through money and material possessions, and we all wanted a piece of her love.

She died my last week in basic training, and my heart broke. I had lost my way in joining the army, and one afternoon as I looked at myself and saw the path I was walking unfold in the mirror: I went utterly and completely absent without leave. It was an incredibly difficult time, and but for the support and guidance of certain close friends (several of whom are on this list) as well as my life-partner, I might not have made it through it all. I took up cigerettes, hiding out in the various run-down motels along Route 66 in Gallup. Several weeks prior to joining the army, I had watched George W. Bush Jr. win his second term in office from the dingy run-down 'glah'nii' (alcoholic) bar in downtown Gallup: The American. The next morning, I went for a long and hungover hike up into the Red Rocks canyon on the northeast end of Gallup. Feeling somewhat hopeless--as I'm sure many of us felt--I sat down and grabbed in my fist a handful of dirt. The warm and solid earth was re-assuring, and something said to me 'everything will be ok.'

I was living in the Ford Explorer that I had bought with the $2000 that was supposed to get me through the last of the semester. With four weeks left in the semester, and my lowest exam grade a 97% in Physics, I once again dropped out. I had watched as my mother and brother descended into an awful spiral of opiate, benzodiazapene and alcohol addiction. At a certain point, my brother began exhibiting psychotic-type symptoms. I remember one day finding him in the garage, slinging the tupperware against the garage door because he 'liked the sound.'

My mother was not well, from the time I returned from India until her death. You never imagine you will lose someone so suddenly; had I known what was going to happen, I would have done alot of things differently. The finality of death is a profound teacher, it teaches one how to live. On my return from India, and after a short stint in the San Diego area, I returned to New Mexico and briefly lived with my mother. During my time away, she had gone through an ugly divorce with my brother in the middle of it. My brother suffered from the notion that it was somehow his duty to 'protect' my mother from negative influences in her life, including the men with whom she was intimately related. Over the years, this dynamic developed into a co-dependency with immense and blinding gravity.

Initially my stay was somewhat pleasant, but after awhile things began to quickly devolve. While I was gone, they had purchased a female akita. Certainly cute as a puppy, this female had become quite large and aggressive as an adult. My mother and brother weren't capable of taking care of themselves, much less a full grown and territorial akita. Their lifestyle had become quite isolated, for example they wouldn't allow me to cook for fear of the dishes getting dirty; the simple acitivities of living had become a threat to their insular lifestyle. Both my mother and brother would lock themselves in their room, shutting the blinds to all outside light, and drift off into their own world. As a result, the akita was never properly socialized. I kept telling them the akita was a liability, and was the 'bad guy' as a result. One day while my mother was away, the akita decided to make tatters of my hand; quite a frightening experience.

The density of their co-dependency was extra-ordinary, and try as I might I simply couldn't break through the shell. I began distancing myself from the situation, and spending a great deal of time at the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe. After commuting back and forth between Albuquerque and Santa Fe several times a week for the daily meditation and work schedule, they offered to let me stay overnights in exchange for work. I enjoyed the work itself: weeding, painting, sweeping. One day the office-folks pulled me aside, 'we really appreciate your quality of work,' I seem to work best when there is no sense of compensation involved, perhaps I would do well in not-for-profit work.

During this time, the stale and bloated war-rhetoric of the Bush regime was ramping up in full force with all eyes on Iraq. The decision had been made, and Bush's State of the Union address was eye-opening as a technicality in a war that was already foregone as a conclusion. Then Colin Powell presented what was quite obviously weak evidence for weapons of mass destruction and the harbouring of terrorists. I sat aghast as a very small grouping of insane politicians waged what will certainly go down as one of the most catastrophic and irresponsible military campaigns in American history. My paternal family, conservative to the core, proudly waved the banner of blood-thirsty American hysteria that swept our country in the first decade of the third millenium.

A week prior to the first wave of the Iraqi invasion, the resident teacher at Upaya--Roshi Joan Halifax, part of the initial wave of psychedelic research in the early 60s--addressed the war directly,

"When I was first involved in spiritual practice during the time of the Vietnam war, one of the big questions we struggled with was our role as practitioners: how involved do we get? We learned alot from the Quaker's during this time. So, I ask you all now: what is our role in this war? what is your role in this war? As practitioners of peace: how can you know peace in an environment of war?

I have thought about--and meditated--on this alot, and here's how I feel. I will absolutely NOT allow my one central and abiding conviction in the healing power of compassion to be desecrated and trampled upon."

Over the years, I have reflected ever more deeply on her words, for they spoke from a truth that penetrated into my very bones. She closed her talk and we recited the Bodhisattva vows,

"When you recite this vow, take it to heart: what does it truly mean to 'embody compassion,' with your entire being.'

We recited, 'delusions are infinite, I vow to exhaust them; beings are limitless, I vow to liberate them; the way of compassion is unattainable, I vow to embody it' and so on.

After the chant, she slipped into the small foyer adjacent to the smell meditation room beneath Roshi's living quarters. The temple-head, a young and clear-eyed French woman, delivered the weekly announcements. As I listened, I became vaguely aware of Roshi's presence to my right and slowly turned my head. She kind of hopped out at me, looked into my eyes directly. I saw her body in one sweeping gestalt of perception. Her clasped hands opened, grabbing the front seam of her robe and pulling it back slightly. She smiled at me, and sewn into the creases of her face, the delicate way she lovingly adjusted her robe and carried her body: the light of lovingkindness. It was palpable, I could see it with my eyes and feel it with my heart as we gazed face to face and eye to eye. I stumbled out of the temple and sat as waves of tears poured out; sometimes you manage to peak your head up over the endless ocean of suffering, and see just how difficult life can be. In essence, she showed me what it was to embody compassion.

Things with my mother continued to degenerate. One evening as I was staining the wood over the entrance of the main temple at Upaya, a feeling crept in to my heart telling me 'you need to go see your mother.' I left the job half-finished and rushed home. During this time, while my mother was still using opiates and benzodiazapenes, she had for a short period given up alcohol. By the time I got back home, she was significantly intoxicated. Her friend John--a Cordon Blu trained chef--was visiting from Colorado, and certainly the 'toxic nostalgia' of the old days must have eclipsed her best intentions. John, somewhat rotund, greeted me enthusiastically, face pink and flush with the warm oblivion of alcohol intoxication. He cared for my mother in a certain sense, and was fairly charming in a good ol' boy kind of way. I didn't dislike him, though he was certainly one of the affairs that my mother had during her third marriage. He liked to drink, and my mother and him shared many fond memories of drunken weekends in Las Vegas. He was cooking the most disgusting pork dish I've ever seen, dense and dripping in animal cholesterol. With him was a friend, no more than a couple years older than me. I decided to check-in for the evening, with the hopes of returning to Upaya early the next morning.

Several years prior, in Thailand, I had the following lucid dream: I'm standing in my mother's kitchen, and awaken to the fact that not only am I dreaming but I have complete control over what it is that I dream. Having travelled for 7 months at that point, and utterly sex-deprived, my first inclination is to weave a woman. Naturally then, we'll have sex and it will be wonderful. So I set to work weaving this woman out of rainbow and light. Everything is going fine to the point that I actually complete the creation, at which point it takes on a life of it's own. I go to embrace the woman I've created and she slips from my reach, receeding into a space of infinite regress. I pursue her, over mountains and down valleys, traversing rivers, crossing jungles and the dark desert nights. Eventually I find myself in a sort of broke down war zone, littered with the remnants of bombed-out buildings. There's a spiral staircase and I'm descending in circles, hoping to corner here. I circle the last corner, and there is a woman here, but she is different from the woman I initially created. Her face is pale, eyes sunken, there is a sort of preternatural and pale light over her. Her mouth is wide open, I collapse into her as she begins performing oral sex. As I fall into her, I look onto the ground and illuminated like runes in moonlight is a single word: Prophecy. I awoke with the intuitive sense that my life-partner was going to be a twin, there was a twin-complex embedded within the dream.

So I lie down, and try and sleep with the hopes of leaving early the next morning. The party in the kitchen gets louder and louder, they seem to move upstairs. Someone has turned the music up full-blast. Frusturated, I walk across the diningroom to the kitchen-area to tell them to quiet it down. I walk into the room, and my mother is on the other side of the kitchen performing oral sex on the young man who had accompanied John. Everything went downhill from there for me and my mother. While she did love and care about me in her own way, she was just so ashamed about so much of her life. I moved out within a week and found a place near the university. The last time I saw my mother was Valentines Day 2003. My life-partner--indeed a twin-- and I visited her with a great stuffed bear (my partner's totem is the bear) and flowers. My mother was so ashamed of her obesity at the time, she wouldn't let Gratefulbear in to see her. Gratefulbear never met her, she died the next year of a cardiomyopathy, the result of her obesity.

Much of my psychology has indeed been conditioned by this imprint of the consuming mother. My tendency to connect disparate phenomenon, to place special emphasis on synchronistic and pre-cognitive phenomenon; these things are--for me--a sort of tight and knit blanket that weave me into a sense of the planetary and cosmic mother. For me, these phenomenon are not so much unique manifestations of my own giftedness, as something I seek out from the necessity of the condition I find myself in: orphanhood.

Years later, in the wake of her death, I'm chain smoking American Spirits in a run-down motel off route 66 in Gallup. Very much alone, and constantly watchful, my days were spent in anticipation of the worst possible outcome: jail, a dishonorable discharge. In 2005, and in spite of the wartime, one real loophole existed for getting out of the army. Much of one's chances for actually getting out rested on whether or not it was worth it for your company to pursue a long and costly court martial. For most soldiers in the early part of their training, it's simply not worth it for the army to prosecute. One goes AWOL and avoids--at all costs--getting wrangled by the US Marshall's comissioned with the task of capturing AWOL soldiers. At this point, you simply bide your time until you are DFR'd (dropped from the rolls). This is supposed to occur on the 30th day you are absent, but sometimes they hold onto your file longer so that when you turn yourself in, they simply send you back to your company. So you routinely check with Ft. Knox, and when you are officially dropped from the rolls, you turn yourself in at one of two places for outprocessing: Ft. Knox or Sill. From what I read, Knox had a tendency to keep people around for a long time, where Sill routinely outprocessed people in a week or less.

So I mostly just bided my time, waiting to turn myself in and expecting the worst. This one morning, I'm really down and depressed, flipping through one of the cheap tourist catalogues left in my motel room. I turn the page, and there's a most extraordinary black-and-white photograph of the Santa Fe artist Georgia O'Keefe, taken by her husband Alfred Stieglitz. Something in my heart responded to the image, and there was a sense that everything would work out fine. Beneath the image read in O'Keefe's own words, 'Nobody sees a flower really because to see takes time, like having a friend takes time. We simply don't have the time.' There was a sense of reconnecting with a sense of beauty and meaning; I have always been amazed at how simple these openings can be. There's a knock on the door, and a Navajo man with a rattle outstretched, an older style Navajo rattle from gourd, '4 dollars man?' I reach in my pocket, exactly four dollars. Every time I use that rattle, which has become an instrument of unusual power for me over the years, I reflect on that sense of beauty in simple things. I was outprocessed in a week without hitch, closing the door on a particularly difficult chapter of life.

'Rose and the nightingale lost in the fragarance'

-J'alalludin Rumi

2/22/2009 Cusco, Peru

'But my dreams aren't as empty as my conscience seems to be'

-The Who

I slept almost 13 hours last night, I guess I needed it. My dreams were rapid and mundane, a clear case of REM-rebound. I seem to be dreaming a great deal about my brother, for whatever reason. We have been resting, though the both of us are ready for another journey into the unknown. We have considered working with a local San Pedro shaman, but I don't feel particularly called to San Pedro here in Cusco. Perhaps in it's native region, in and around Trujillo in the northern part of the country, I will feel more of a pull.

Trujillo itself interests me greatly, as the source of the famed 'Trujillo coca.' The novogranatense species of the Erythroxylum genus, Trujillo coca is said to contain quantities of methyl salicylate which imparts to the coca a sort of minty flavour. Novogranatense is unique in the sense that while E. coca is capable of self-germination, novogranatense lacks the proper morphological structures for self-germination. I find this interesting bit of botanical data especially intruiging in lieu of the Kogi mythologem which describes the cosmic genesis as an act of self-germination. In fact, the Kogi actively cultivate only the novogranatense form of coca, it's E. coca relative occuring predominately farther to the south with a morphology that suggests a natural and uncultivated source. Perhaps then their mythologem tells something of the story of how coca came into human cultivation.

Apparently the majority of Trujillo coca is exported to the United States, stripped of it's cocaine--which is then marketted for medical use--and used to flavour Coca-cola. There's one company in the United States licensed to import coca, I forget the name. Of further interest, the area around Trujillo seems to be the headwaters of Wuachuma/T. Pachanoi shamanism, certainly one of the most ancient of the new world shamanic forms. Cactus truly has been a powerful ally over the years, especially good for facilitating human bonding and clearing the heart.

This last summer, I spent a fair amount of time at the Wounded Knee reservation in South Dakota. Generally recognized as the most impoverished place--per capita--in the United States, the unemployment rate hangs somewhere around 80% on the reservation. Wounded Knee and Rosebud are the wild, wild west. I remember one day, we went out searching for a pair of horses belonging to a young Lakota we befriended. Sometime in the early morning, a group of rowdy Lakota boys had stolen the horses, and were seen leading them away from the central, government housing facility at the center of Wounded Knee. I guess horse-stealing is still a problem. We journeyed to Wounded Knee to learn the peyote way of the Native American Church, as well as to explore the Lakota tradition in it's own right.

I drove from Albuquerque to Austin, a 12-hr plunge into the heart of Bush country, 'Welcome to Texas, the home of President George W. Bush Jr.,'

'wonderful,' I'm thinking.

That first night in Austin it thundered and poured. When the rain cleared, all was silent except a single owl, calling out into the night. Twenty-eight hours of driving and four states later we pulled into Wounded Knee, a blanket of rolling and green hills. Our hosts, the Lakota spiritual-leader Richard 'Who Has the Foundation' Swallow and his wife Bonnie, warmly welcomed us into their simple trailer home. My companion took the bed and I took a cot in the livingroom. Richard, donned a black cowboy hat, Ray-Bans, beaded bracelets matching his dark-blue button-up T-shirt decorated with a orange lighting-bolt design. No sooner had we sat down, when he looked me in the eye and bluntly asked,

'So, let me ask you a question: how far have you gone with the medicine?' he asked.

'Not as far as I would like,' I replied.

Over the next 6 hours, he told story after story: the medicine wheel, his lineage, stories from the 1970 military occupation at Wounded Knee. He took a specifically controversial stance on the medicine wheel, describing it as a mandala of the races. As a result, his particular perspective on the medicine wheel was particularly inclusive,

'But the real medicine, is beyond this wheel' he would say.

He suffered from diabetes, having lost his toes to amputation. He smoked cigerettes and drank Coca-cola unapologetically, with the effect of ocassionally becoming a bit loopy,

'Can you sing?' he asked the first night.

'No, but I'd like to learn,' I replied.

He regaled us with some of the older peyote songs, sung in his characteristically soft and lilting way. As we came to discover, peyote songs in their current inception on the Lakota rez are sung behind a rapid and beating drum, with a great deal of gusto and bravado; it's very intense and somewhat macho. Richard was of an older form, gentle in his singing and partial to the 'half-moon' style of the peyote ceremony. Tamed by age, he shared stories of his 'wilder days,' drinking and fighting. We learned how to tie the waterdrum, and were walked through the Lakota cosmology and genesis. Lakota mythology describe a great flood brought on by the iniquity of mankind. In this flood, the world is conceived of as a great wheel that is inverted and submerged in primordial water. The re-creation of the world involves a great tree to the north, in whose branches the White Buffalo maiden is placed by the Eagle People. From the wood of the branches of this world tree comes the mouthpiece of the Chanunpa, the sacred pipe which acts as medium between the two worlds. The bowl of the pipe is carved from a specific quarry of red stone in Minnesota, considered sacred to the Lakota. The stone represents the 'blood of the Mother.' As the story goes, the White Buffalo maiden appeared to two hunters--twins--as they returned home from the hunt. The first brother, overtaken by his lust for her beauty, resolves to take her then and there, ignoring the warnings of the second brother,

'this woman is sacred,'

Going to sieze her, a bolt of lightning reduces him to a skeleton,

'go to your people and build for me a lodge,' she asks of the terrified second brother,

'I come bearing a sacred gift,'

So was gifted the first Chanunpa-pipe to the Lakota, an instrument of communication with the Other world. To the pipe is affixed two eagle feathers, representing the twins who first set eyes on the White Buffalo maiden. The far tip of the pipestone bowl is angled, in rememberance of the Lakota equivallent of 'the fall.'

One night, we shared dinner with a fellow roadman of the Church, a thin man with wild hair and clear eyes,

'one thing you will see about Lakota people, is they have this Spirit' he said with a weathered accent,
'this Spirit, it makes them tough, Lakota people are really tough; you can't have this Spirit, white men don't know about it,'

I took the silver and torquoise bracelet off my wrist, and slid it across the table,

'that line of torquoise is the river, the triangles are the mountain; underneath are the insignia of the clans of the Dine, my fiancee is Dine. I want you to have this,' and I handed him the bracelet. Taking the bracelet, he smiled and put it on. We ate silently for a couple of minutes, then he looked up

'maybe you can have this Spirit, you might be able to have it.'

We built Richard a sweatlodge, replacing the one damaged from snow the previous winter. The sweatlodge itself is formed according a specific design. Traditionally, twelve stalks of willow are strung together in a circle and anchored by three willow hoops that circle the structure. The door and fireplace face north, with the Lakota altar between the door and fireplace. Once the Chanunpa-pipe is placed on the altar, one does not cross the line between the altar and the door of the lodge. Instead, you circle clockwise and enter the lodge from the right side,

'A day will come when each and every person all the way down to the drunk man in the gutter will receive his revelation, and it will be like pouring, pouring from the sky,' he said one evening

My first sweatlodge was on the Wounded Knee reservation, four rounds of prayer. As the intense steam singed my back, I hugged the earth closely and prayed. I prayed for my father and brother, for a solution to all of our family problems. I prayed for the sick wife of a close friend, I prayed for my family, my wife. We prayed for Richard's health, and the well-being of his family. We expressed our gratitude for friendship. Something about the dark and damp inferno of the sweatlodge truly builds a sense of filialhood and closeness, I found myself being quite honest. During the fourth round, the Chanunpa-pipe was handed around and we smoked. When the pipe reached me, I prayed for my father and took of the pipe. As I smoked, I sensed a soft and golden light from the top of the lodge. It grew in intensity, there was a tinge of purple and it was pouring over me, 'everything will be fine,' it told me.

Afterwards, we laid on the ground, naked except for our underwear, gazing up into star-strewn space. Richard pointed to the big-dipper,

'see, it's like I said: it's pouring'

We were silent. That night, I slept wonderfully.

The next evening, I sat my first ceremony with the Native American Church. We brought some of our own medicine--fresh buttons--and ingested several before stepping into the lodge. This was a birthday celebration, for twin daughters of one of Richard's nephews. Richard grabbed my hand, setting me down next to him as my travelling companion slipped across to the opposite end of the tipi. The peyote went around several times, a damp paste certainly concocted from dried peyote powder. I took several spoonfulls and washed it down with peyote tea.

What struck me that night was less the effect of the peyote--which was indeed plenty strong--and more the attitude of reverence and venerable respect afforded this particular medicine by the people sitting circle. The woman next to me, wrapped in a blanket covering a thick, black leather biker jacket, wept all night. Ocassionally, her head would peak above the blanket. Her hair pulled back by a red sash, her worn and tear-stained face was the spitting image of the one and very 'tough Spirit' I had been told of. The staff went around in circles all night long, song after song. At a certain point, Richard placed his eagle-feather fan in my hands,

'here, hold this'

In the peyote warmth, delicate tendrils like webbing seemed to radiate outwards from the tips of each feather,

'it's a song-catcher, songs are like spirits' he said,

But I had no songs, passing the staff on with every round. The only gringo in the circle, my travelling partner part Mexica, I felt ocassionaly self-conscious and compelled to simply keep my head down. An hour or two before sunrise, one of the elder women on the opposite side took the staff and stood up. Turning to her son, who had been sitting to the right of her and ocassionaly lasciviously eyeing me across the fire during the night, she passionately and openly castigated him for his alcoholism, body quivering with tears,

'When my grandfather free'd the peyote from deadwood, he took that peyote to my grandmother who was in the hospital sick. They thought she was uncurable, but he gave her the peyote and she walked out of the hospital that very day. I truly believe in these peyote ways. These peyote ways are the one thing the washchichu has not taken from us, they are sacred. But that alcohol you are using, it's only destructive, it only destroys.'

Her passion and sincerity was profound, and I was amazed at how the peyote lodge created a circle whereby such sensitive and painful material could be openly discussed in a supportive atmosphere. Her son listened, then began crying. Everyone in the circle nodded their approval.

In the night, I heard an owl circling the tipi. Richard was in and out of consciousness throughout, clearly weakened by his diabetes. In the morning, he opened his eyes and grinned at me,

'so you made it,' he was very much still there.

Our last night, Richard gifted us eagle feathers. Two were gifted to good friends, and one--a wing-tip golden eagle feather--I kept for myself. On several ocassions, Richard connected the 'Eagle People' with aliens and the UFO phenomenon. He related an experience during one of his Vision Quests at Bear Butte. There was a stone before him during his fast, and he looked up in the sky to see that the stone was also in the sky. From the sky-stone came a beam of light like a bolt of lightning that shattered the earth stone before him,

'the stone was shattered, in many pieces. Then the stone came back together, and I saw that this was how Christ walked on the water, he used these stepping stones.'

It was a very peculiar story, arift with alchemical and alien metaphors that reminded me of the whole constellation of dismemberment motifs in shamanic and Egyptian mythologies.

Several weeks later, I returned home to New Mexico, having driven a total of 96 hours by the time I made it home. It was good to see Gratefulbear, and we made passionate love that night. Exhausted, I brought back with me a decent-sized bag of peyote, perhaps 120 fresh buttons. Several I planted, many were eaten.

My third day back, Gratefulbear became visibly sad in the early part of the day, eyes turned downward with a look of loneliness. Something was clearly bothering her, and I suspected she was missing her deceased mother though we didn't discuss it. One thing I have come to appreciate about Navajo women, is their aptitude for silence. When I first met Gratefulbear, her silence confounded me to no end; in time, I learned to respect and appreciate the beauty of her silence.

I first met Gratefulbear shortly after returning to New Mexico after a short stint in San Diego. We were both working at Olive Garden at the time, and there was something incredibly alluring about her soft olive skin and demure presence. She was generally quiet, shy in a certain sense. Clearly not of anglo descent, it was several weeks before she told me her ethnicity. Earlier that month, I had taken my single largest dose of Mescaline HCl, 400mg including a supplementary dose of San Pedro juice. The experience was extraordinarily intense, with some of the most vivid and electrifying visuals I have ever been privvy to. In fact, this was the last time I ever tripped with my brother, and it was perhaps the last time we saw eye to eye. At the peak of intensity, I become entirely confounded by the whole konundrum of the 'insides and outsides' of things. For example, the activity of being 'inside my clothing' was almost impossible to wrap my mind around. So naturally, I took my clothing off, as did my brother. We ended up taking a bath in my mother's bathtub upstairs, having certainly regressed to a time when we shared a bath-tub.

Eventually we ended up naked on the bed, very high. At a certain point, my brother must have realized how ridiculous we looked, he went into the laundry and came back fully clothed. In his hand was a towel for me, black and elegant it had an alien quality like martian silk. Unfolding the towel in what looked to me like hyper-dimensional acrobatics he then handed it to me,

'put this on.'

I grabbed the towel, fascinated and scrutinizing it's every surface. Then wrapping it around myself, it was like something unzipped from deep within me. It was very peculiar, and seemed to have something to do with my brother having given me this towel. The entire plane of our physical being was wrapped in what I can only describe as an immense blue flame. We were nestled within this flame that between us was like a single intelligence. Words flowed effortlessly between us with the sense that what was being spoken was simultaneously and directly felt as flowing directly from this higher mind. At a certain point, we began laughing, everything was so naked and obvious, how could we have ever been confused.

Later that day, my brother and I went for a long walk on the golf course, the very place where we had grown up together for many years. The world was beautiful, everything was shining and we felt connected; connected to each other, connected to the world. It was on that walk I told him, 'I will meet my life-partner before the month is out.' Sure enough, at the end of that month: there she was. When she eventually told me her ethnicity, 'I'm Navajo,' something in my heart responded. There was a soft and glowing golden light around her, and I sensed to life of the desert, herding sheep and the welcoming firmness of desert sand. I was hooked, so to speak.

Several of the peyote songs are said to bring close the spirits of dead relatives. We didn't discuss what she was going through that day after my return from Wounded Knee, but I picked up the very rattle I had acquired while AWOL, and began to sing and pray. I prayed that the peyote would bring her in touch with her mother, in a way that would bring her peace. I prayed most of the morning, then later that evening suggested we both partake of a large dose of peyote. We ate the buttons and settled in for the long, slow dawning of the inner-sun that is peyote. I put together a make shift staff, to which I afixed the eagle feather. Holding the staff in my left hand, I shook the rattle in my right and sang, praying for Gratefulbear. At about the hour and a half point, Gratefulbear fell into a very peculiar sort of sleep. Entirely motionless, I continued singing and praying as she slept. As I sang and prayed, there was a faint and stirring wind that moved through the room. I knew what was happening as she slept there. She slept for perhaps an hour then awoke, eyes wide and looking mildly confused. By this time, we were firmly in the welcoming grips of the peyote. She didn't say anything about what had happened for several hours, simply remaining silent; but I knew. She had seen her mother. My intention for this experience had not been discussed between the two of us, it was most unusual and healing for the both of us.

'I saw someone' she eventually uttered, and then later told me that she saw both her mother and the recently deceased father of a close friend.

To this day, she remains silent on the specifics. She has told me that she asked her mother three questions--one for each feather I say--but not what they were. I don't press the subject, it was a healing she deeply needed and something very personal. I remain open to any and all explanations for these phenomenon, but in my life: they have a certain reality. There is a quality of mystery to such things, and for this reason the practice of 'noble silence' is entirely suitable. Gratefulbear shares with me a sensitivity to such phenomenon, and the mescaline complex has played a significant role in the unfolding of our relationship. So perhaps in the region surrounding Trujillo, something will open up for us. We may walk up to the fortification complex up the hill at Saksaywaman this afternoon. The writing has been profoundly therapeutic for me; I feel like I'm somehow getting to know myself better.

2/23/2009 Cusco, Peru

'This tradition is like a strange bird'

-Peter Kingsley, PhD. on Parmenides, the pre-Socratic 'father of reason'

I slept another 12 hours last night, and would have slept more excepting a knock on our door early this morning. Our fourth night here, we haven't yet paid and they were just checking to make sure we hadn't skipped town. We finally sent out the package we've been holding onto, postal service is quite straight forward in Peru. Still, they took my passport number, a copy of my passport as well as a finger print! It was like being inducted into the army, I was waiting for the blood draw.

I have been thinking about Gratefulbear's mother more these days. A woman who approached saintly, she was one of these extraordinary beings so meek in their loving that they become mothers to mankind. In the two years I knew her, I can honestly say that I learned more about love and living than anything I ever learned from my own only human family, for this was a woman who truly knew the sort of simple and sustaining natural God of George Macdonald. Thin, she rarely spoke, and when she did, her soft voice was punctuated by a very gentle Navajo accent. Having been sent to Rehobeth--the Protestant boarding school in Gallup--at a young age, she was very modest and seemingly embarassed about speaking her native language. An extra-ordinary and difficult language, Navajo has consistently been described to me as 'the most difficult of Native American' languages by native speakers. Her dark-skin and round face was more often than not lit up by the most wonderful of smiles. Shortly after retiring from the nursing profession, she fell ill with a gastro-intestinal condition that was never properly diagnosed. Somehow I have always felt that she passed with her career in the healthcare industry, the very substance of her life inextricably bound-up in caring for others. Alice quite simply accepted me, in spite of her reservations. When my mother and brother were falling to pieces, she welcomed me into her home, cooked for me, and just spent time with me. Her crises of health, which eventually took her life, was long, drawn-out and painful. Surgery after surgery, medication after medication, nothing worked and it took years before everyone came to terms with the fact that she was dying. I remember a month and a half before her death, coming together with a group of friends for a mushroom circle: 5 grams under the tipi.

Drum in hand, the mushroom thrust hard and heavy as was expected at this dose. Firmly established in the trance, a clear and lucid sound rang out in the space above me. clear, and quite loud a strange bird appeared to be calling out from the space towards the top of the tipi. As I gazed upwards, I saw the dim outline of a white bird, delicately floating in the space above me and through the haze of the undulating mushroom visions,

'whose bird is this?' I thought to myself, somehow assuming that it belonged to one of the people in the circle.

In it's mouth was a delicate golden thread, which reached up through the top of the tipi and out. That very same night, locked in epigenetic and alien embrace with one of our company, I saw growing from his neck an immense and branching object. It reached out perhaps two feet from his throat; I touched it, astounded over what I was seeing, then watched it retreat back into his neck. It remains a hallucinatory anomaly for which I have no explanation.

But the bird was an especially touching presence, and I eventually interpreted it to mean that Alice was not much longer for this world. She passed a month and a half later, it was very difficult for everyone.

Three nights before she died--she was in a coma--I dreamt she came and asked me to visit her. The next day I drove out to Gallup. She was peaceful, her room simple with a booklet by her bedside. On the cover of the booklet, the blue and swimming image of the earth. There was a glow about her, and I sat by her side. It was one of those moments that you sink so deeply into, that--in a certain sense--it never ends. There was a sense of presence in that room, a feeling like everything would be ok. I carry that moment within me, always. I didn't want to leave, but the hospital was closing. Reluctantly, I got up, left and was on the road the next morning for Taos. She died two days later, in the early morning.

As the nurse related, she became somewhat restless. The nurse sat down next to her, and began singing hymns, they worked together and she knew that she enjoyed hymns,

'it's ok Alice, you can let go,'

and two tears fell from Alice's eyes. Through all the pain of her illness, she never once cried; she had been saving those tears. Quietly, she slipped away; her breathing stopped, and the little bird, our pajarito flew.

2/27/2009 Cusco, Peru

'The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light' -Matthew 6:22

Dear Grandma and Grandpa,

We're doing well, excepting the ocassional bout of diarrhea. We miss you guys and think of you often. How iS grandma's knee? I imagine she's recovering fine, she has a strong spirit. We made it to Machu Picchu, quite a grueling journey but it was TOTALLY worth it; what an amazing place. I sent you a postcard from Ollantaytambo and have a couple of others from Machu Picchu and Cusco.
We think about you often; both Brandy and I are infinitely grateful for your presence in our lives, and look forward to many more years caring for you guys. In fact, the both of us agreed that if you ever do move to Phoenix or Palm Springs, that we're moving with you to take care of you; thank you for being family, you perhaps don't know how much it means to me. Also, I know Tom Jr. was giving grandpa crap for what happened just before we left, but I REALLY, REALLY appreciate that someone finally--after all of the years of bullshit with Tom Jr. (whom I love dearly)--took a stand for me and the people I love and said 'you don't have to put up with that.' In all the years dealing with Tom Jr.'s illness/alcoholism--and it has been VERY difficult sometimes--no one has ever had the strength of character to do that for me; you really earned my respect.

Anyhow, I have been thinking alot about something the two of you mentioned in regards to Tom Jr's alcoholism,

'he uses the alcohol because there is some core problem/dillema that he is trying to hide from,' or can't deal with.

So the night we picked up our bags--in a slurried haze of drunken speech--he asked one question,
'maybe you can tell me why everything with my family is falling apart,'

at the time I was sort of confounded, how could he not know? It's the drinking, obviously. Since we've been travelling, I 've thought about it more and I think you're right: it's not the drinking, it's something underneath. Since I've been in touch with him, several times he has shook his head sadly and said something like,

'I really loved your mother, I should have been a better husband. I just lost control.'

Then he wasn't invited to the funeral, which was just wrong; I should have stood up for him. I felt like I had no control over the decision, and was in total shock; I never expected to lose her so suddenly. My mother had requested both Gabe and I spread her ashes on the mountain, but Gabe did it without me and I have harboured alot of resentment. Had my head been on straighter, I would have--and should have--stood up for Tom Jr. and said, 'bullshit, they were married for ten years; if anyone should be here, it should be Tom.' I should have stood up for Tom Jr., because for all the crap he has put everyone through over the years, Jr. has a good heart and I love him. Because of this complex of feelings about his family falling apart--and what happened to my Mother--he unconsciously alienates the people who love him, creating situations where things fall apart.
I tend to have peculiar and very vivid dreams. I don't like to talk about these things instead heeding what I have been taught, "But you, when you pray, enter into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father which is in secret; and your Father which sees in secret shall reward you openly." (Matthew 6:6), but I hope you can perhaps understand the necessity from which I'm writing you.

Over the years, I have had many dreams in with Yeshua/Jesus called the Christos has come to me and delivered teachings and taught me how to pray. In one teaching, He raised his hands to the sky and there was a white bird that descended which he placed in the middle of my forehead; this bird, which is the benediction of the Holy Spirit, is always with me. Often, I dream of friends and family who have died, sometimes before I even know they have passed. Several years ago, my Uncle Elliot passed and before I knew he had passed, he came to me in a dream and asked me to write the following poem, three days later I was told that he had died a month prior (bear with me here, this is going somewhere):

"Crux Mea Stella" by Azure

Though this path before me stretches clearly,
and long the winding road that leads me.
Each step I make hence follows surely:

Crux Mea Stella;
The Cross is my Star.

And though my shadow surely follows,
an olive tree neath a sleeping hollow,
so to will follow a bright tomorrow:

Crux Mea Stella;
The Cross is my Star.

And though this life shall surely wither,
as an ocean so receives the river
like a truthfulness endures forever:

Crux Mea Stella;
The Cross is my Star.

For in these two worlds colliding,
the endless joy of calm abiding
as a dove descends so gently gliding
and perching henceforth deep inside me:

Crux Mea Stella;
The Cross is my Star."

There were people in my mother's life who were true friends--people who meant a great deal to my mother--who weren't at the funeral; people like Tom Jr, Emma, you guys, Gary, Leonilla's family, Gratefulbear's family (even though they didn't know her), several of Tom's friends, Officer Francis etc.

I have been fasting and praying over the last several days, my heart set on my Lord and Teacher (Rabboni in Aramaic), called Christo. Last night, I dreamt of my mother. We were in the old house and it was completely empty,

'It wasn't right, the way everyone descended on all of the beautiful things of my life like vultures. Set it right, Azure; I love you.'

It wasn't the first time I have seen her since she passed, and I know I'll see her again. But it's always wonderful to see her like that, I remember that she loved me and that I loved her; in all honesty, in my weaker moments I wonder. I remember before she died, there were two songs she would play over and over again: John Lennon's 'Imagine,' and 'I Can Only Imagine' (about the Christos) by Mercy Me. She would play these songs over and over and over.

So I imagine when we get back, we could do a proper memorial for my Mother and invite all of the people (ALL of them) who were touched by my mother. I will put together photo-CD's for everyone; people can make a little something if they like. But what I would most like to do, is create a beautiful place--I'm thinking a stone statue I will commission, and perhaps a paintings--that can become a place for prayer and reflection.

I wanted to ask if there was anyway I could use a small space in your backyard for this, it would be very tasteful and everything used would be first and foremost approved by the two of you. She just really loved you guys, and loved the view ... and I don't have anywhere I can go and perhaps it would help Tom with some closure.

There is no pressure here at all, and I absolutely will not be offended if it's not feasible. But, I think it could help Tom's alcoholism, and I would be most indebted to you (not that I could be more indebted than I am now).

03/02/2009 Puno, Peru

"The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water."

-Dogen Zenji

It has been several days since I have made a real entry, having been hit by some sort of malaise; it may be emotional acclimation to the culture-shock. As wonderful as travel can be, there is a profound loneliness to it as well. Nothing is familiar, from the subtleties of body language to the rarity of the air, we often reach out for company in what is familiar to us.

I didn't have my journal on the busride from Cusco yesterday, so penned notes into our guidebook. On the 29th of February, I stayed up all night again instead working on some design issues for the gallery and boutique back home in Albuquerque. As I said, we often reach out for the familiar to wrap our own solitude in those aromas of childhood revery and dream. Brandy awoke with a headache situated over her left eye, unusual and perhaps suggesting something like a cluster form of headache; a concern nonetheless, I will write her Uncle Tim--the physician--this evening. Perhaps we shall find some Psilocybe's along the way for help.

Our bus was perhaps the single most comfortable bus I have ever ridden in; plush seats that reclined with leg support extended out fully. One could easily sleep in these seats, we chose to pay the extra 5 soles for the luxury seats.
For the charm of Cusco, I'm glad to be moving on. It reminds me of Santa Fe in a way; there's beauty and a sort of gravity and draw that can become inescapable. The stalls, markets and goods, with everyone trying to sell this or that; you feel like a passing commodity sometimes. At some of the parks throughout Cusco, moments of solitude and belonging open up.

Today, our bus followed the auburn waters of the Rio Vacanota south of Cusco. Barren, strewn with the withered stalks of grasses well past their bloom. Both Gratefulbear and I have been under a rather heavy malaise, we suspect it may be related to the altitude, or just general culture shock. Another possible candidate in my case would be the intense usage of coca; but that wouldn't explain Gratefulbear's issues. We have taken lodging at a nicer hotel, friendly and beautiful with hot water. I feel like there is some sort of work I need to do, but there is an obstacle, an obfuscation. I often work, or send email, and then worry: what is this person thinking about me? is this work of any value? The coca seems to work within these patterns of thinking: putting in my best effort, worrying over what everone is thinking about my effort, obsessing over each and every detail of my work. What I'm beginning to see, is that much of this is my previously mentioned mother-imprint trying to maintain itself as a valid construct of my psychology. Now that the pattern is identified, working with it seems to involve another level of challenge with an effort all it's own. My first task, to convince myself that THIS time, the effort truly will be worth it. As I see it, this becomes a function of re-defining my object libido; I have to somehow re-envision the mother archetype in a way that psychologically sustains the work I do: evolve a new system of values.

What do I truly value?

I value Gbear, I value my friends, I value when my friends are able to take care of themselves, I value when my friends are happy, I value beautiful things, I value novelty, I value good books, I value business between friends, I value my niece and nephew, I value my sister Genie, I value my brother John, I value autumn on the riverside, I value quiet and rainy days, I value a good night's sleep, I value my grandma and grandpa Neill, I value my stepdad, I value dogs, I value cats, I value a good pair of sandles, I value simple clothing, I value Ernest, I value David, I value walks with Gbear, I value Uncle Tim, Aunt Carole, Heather, Jesse, Andrea, Corbin, Candie, I value working long and quiet hours with Tim, I value Robin and Esther, I value the sound of rushing water, I value soulful music, I value losing track of time, I value clear skies and starry nights, I value aspen trees and the turning of the seasons. I most value the simple activity of caring for another person without any thought as to result or compensation, excepting the love of others. I value love ... I need to be loved.

I remember returning home to my mother's casita in Rio Rancho, a place of comfort--perhaps too much comfort--but full of her inimitable and peerless sense of style. The year prior I had lived in a friend's closet off Encinitas beach just north of San Diego, working in a vitamin shop and surfing during the evenings. I fell ill and my mother took me in, needing a specific surgery; I think more specifically what I needed was a sense of being loved by my mother. Getting the insurance situated, and the money together a fiasco in itself; everything was none the easier for my ever restless heart. After a couple of months and several referrals, I underwent the procedure I had hoped for: a stealth CT procedure for delicate issues of the frontal sinus. In the waiting room before the procedure, my father called on the phone and made some sort of snide comments,

'you know he's faking it, I certainly respect you for dealing with him because I sure can't,' resentments I still bear.

'It has been a pleasure,' Mom retorted.

On the way home--in my anesthetized haze-Mom broke down into surging waves of spontaneous tears, her body shaking wildly,

'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I love you so much' she sobbed over and over again.

The last time I saw my mother was Valentines Day 2003. Brandy and I visited her with a great stuffed bear and flowers. My mother was so ashamed of her obesity at the time that she wouldn't let Brandy in to see her. Brandy never met her, and she died the next year of a cardiomyopathy, the result of her obesity. For years I found myself irrationally distraught on Valentine's Day, eventually making the connection. In fact more than once, I forgot Valentine's Day altogether, to Brandy's dismay. Then in 2007, I really went all out: roses, bath salts, home-made dinner, candles, everything. We were living in the mountains at the time, and as I came up our dirt drive-way I noticed the lights were all off. Sighing and sad that I had seemingly ruined another Valentine's Day and come home too late, I gathered the flowers, the eggs and tortilla for the meal, the card, and sullenly made my way to the house.

As I was walking, I became aware of the light of the moon; it was just shy of full, perhaps 50 degrees off the eastern horizon, and casting an muted orange tone over the pinon and grass field in front of our house. Walking beneath the the light of the moon, was--in that moment--a miracle. For years, I had always been sad about my mother, with few positive thoughts and memories; everything seemed painful and unhappy. She had spiralled into addictions of various forms, and then alienated herself from me out of the shame she felt for her condition. Then, she was gone; so suddenly, I wasn't prepared.

But here in the light of the moon, I felt my mother's presence. It was like those tears, not something that made sense but something that was full of Spirit. I remembered how wonderful my mother was, as I stood alone under the moonlight. I remembered that I valued and loved my mother, deeply. No one knows from whence or where these things come from--it was irrational and spontaneous--but it comes from a place deep within us all; raw, emotional and slain by the Spirit.

To this day I remain baffled by the power that came through these moments; it said something of the deepest rhythms of the heart and soul, something only understood with heart and soul. My mother, for all her misgivings, truly was a beautiful soul; she knew the heart, and lived the sort of life that was perfect for her, in this world. Sometimes I feel her near, with all her quirks and misgivings, and realize I love them too. I imagine a beautiful white bird with a teather in it's mouth, gently ringing the angel's bell: 'on earth as it is in heaven.' I'll say it again, because it means something to me: I valued and loved my mother, deeply.

Tomorrow we hope to be well and rested enough to explore the city of Puno and see Lake Titicaca itself. Until then, rest and music.

03/04/2009 Puno, Peru

Awoke this morning after a restless night of unsettling dreams, many with a sexual charge. In one dream, I'm copulating with a black woman who--at orgasm--disintegrates into a skeleton. I seem to be dealing with more gastro-instestinal discomfort, I went a bit overboard with 'comfort foods' last night. I decided to just sap it with some Cipro, and it seems to be working quite well. My flurry of creative energy and effort from the other night has me once again feeling these similar emotional patterns: is this effort worth anything? does anyone value this work? I don't check my email, because there's always running that risk of bearing your soul and having it trampled on. Certainly this constellation of emotions is based on a specific set of experiences.

September 11th, 2001, I was fasting in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand. I had been struggling with a peculiar pressure in my forehead that had become quite uncomfortable; the very same pressure that led me back to New Mexico for surgery years later. I remember walking in the walled Old City in Chiang Mai when I saw the first images of the towers falling in New York. My initial reaction was one of denial, 'oh, it's some Thai tabloid making a joke,' but as the day unfolded I eventually saw the video footage.

My travels had exposed me to Muslim groups. On a 48-hr long train ride from Calcutta in the north to Trivandrum in the Kerala district in the south, a group of perhaps five Muslim men had taken it upon themselves to protect me from passing strangers. A stranger would approach and one of the Muslim men would stand up sternly and warn them off with a wave of his hand. In the Sufi tradition, 'the guest' and the subtlies between host and guest represents the relationship between humanity and god; a mystical concept in the sense that it extends from the necessities of human custom, an essentialy humane attitude. During the ride, they taught me the fundamental tenents of Islam, asking me if American Muslims prayed five times daily as Muslims in the East do,

'I don't know many American Muslims,' I responded.

This exposure inculcated a great of sympathy and respect for the tradition of Islam, and since my UCLA days I had taken Rumi as my own patron heart-poet: Uncle Rumi. So when 9/11 happened, and the war drums started beating, I had doubts. Furthermore, my travelling companion had exposed me to the whole domain of conspiracy theory and the politics of revolution, especially pertaining to the Bush-Reagan 'dynasty.' I took to many of the ideas with great fervor, having studied Gandhi and the Transcendentalists in High School. I fancied myself a 'pacifist' having not yet realized that true pacifism and ahimsa is first and foremost the process of taming one's own inner violence.

With this background, I wrote an email shortly after 9/11 critical of US policy in the Middle East, quoting extensively a brilliant article written by cognitive revolutionary and political commentator Noam Chomsky. Little did I know, that one, single email would entirely transform my life. I knew the email would challenge certain of the concepts held by my paternal family, but was not prepared for the focussed barrage of emnity directed at me in the days that followed. I was wounded to the core, having put a great deal of heart, soul and research into my email, with the hope of engaging in rational and mature discussion with my father especially. Instead, I was pummeled with a series of ad hominem character attacks criticizing me for not paying taxes, having a job, 'wandering,' These felt like attacks on my very heart and soul. To this day, my father and I are alienated. A greater portion of the complex I have in regards to creative effort, and sensitivity regarding how people respond to statements I make, can be traced to this one and deep wounding that has walked with me through my 20's.

I tried, but ultimately found that I could not both satisfy my father's expectations of me and be true to my higher Self,

'to thine own Self, be true.'

It has been perhaps the single most confounding enigma of my lifestory, that I was born into a family whereby listening to my heart I have had to leave home and kin behind. I joined the army with the hopes of reconciling with my father, have made several efforts to talk it out, but it has ultimately been an impossible enigma. In our lives each of us has a 'tough nut' that we work on, what the alchemist's call the prima materia, the 'black earth.' In the first operation, the prima materia undergoes the divisio, which discerns the prima materia as being comprised of distinct and impossibly irreconcilable elements. So it has appeared with my father, an impossible and entirely confounding situation without any sense of possible reconciliation.

In retrospect, I would have done alot of things differently--it's often that way--but, at the time, I simply could not have anticipated my fathers reaction. Nothing suggested to me that my ideas would be so fundamentally threatening to his worldview; I'm still learning from this painful aspect of my life. For long periods I struggled with daily anger and deep resentment, waking every morning angry at my father. I still struggle, much like Jacob become Israel, but will not relent until I see the truth 'face to face.'

After having emerged in one piece that fateful night--years prior--in which I had gazed into the flaming eyes of the High Priest while on Dipropyltyptamine, we pressed on deeper into the chasms of hyperspace. Next on the menu, DPT+Ketamine in combination. Wramping up slowly, toggling between each of the medicines in search of that fine line: 30mg Ketamine, followed 15 minutes later by 30mg DPT. The disocciation of the Ketamine synergized, slowed down and then amplified the somatic-psychedelic vibration of the DPT. We pressed the dose, 40mg Ketamine followed by 40mg DPT, and something was opening. Three in the circle, each speaking in tandem, I began to relax deeply into the vibration of the language. As the warmth and relaxation expanded, the pressure in my forehead between my eyes returned, and I relaxed into it. I requested a final shot and always grin with crazy affection at the memory of my good friend sinking the plunger,

'that's 50mg Dipropyltryptamine and ...' sinking, buzzing, slow and suffuse '75mg Ketamine Hydrochloooooooorrrrriiiiiiide,'

and the entirety of this physical reality, my whole life and everyone I ever knew, everything I ever did, collapsed through the point in my forehead and once again I found myself in the Other world.

There was a circle of beings of light above me, spinning overhead in a spiral. I looked at my companions, who were still visible in the circle around me; each of us spoke in tandem. As we spoke, I saw that from this angelic spiral above me was sent this ray of light, that was circling through us like a great cosmic lasso. It moved through each of us in a circle, and while--on the one hand--it was like a single ray of light, it illuminated the entirety of the circle. As the ray passed through our individual bodies at the throat level, our physical bodies would utter the visible and tangible topography of the illumined circle: visible language. I could quite literally see what was going to be said by the next person in the circle before anything was even said.

Above me, and visible through the spiritual eye in the center of my forehead, a great spiral spun outwards into infinite space. In this spiral, I saw the entirety of my biological heritage, what seemed to be the spiritual bodies of ancestors, my father, mother, as well as friends and family who had been central in my life. In a paradox of motion, as I collapsed within this point of spiritual vision, the spiral opened outwards in layers like an onion. The medium of vision and perception was like a tightly focussed laser of high intensity. The spiral itself was comprised of a Being--akin to the Christos--whose hands were palms outstretched and facing downwards just over the top of my skull,

'this is how one truly prays,'

and the light-ray circled within my body, peeling away layers and showing them to me in full physical detail:

'this is the epidural system' then peeling back the layer, it became transparent;

'lympathic system' peeling system back, then transparent;

'muscular system' peeling back, gone;

'visceral system' peel, gone;

'respiratory system,' gone

'cardiovascular system,'

'skeletal system,'

'peripheral nervous system,'

then the 'central nervous system,' and I was looking at was the entirety of my physical form transparent to this light excepting the juncture between my eyes where my ocular nerves crossed, an ultra-dense point of brilliant light. There was a great POP, like a gushing fountain, and my consciousness instantaneously leaped from itself. Ineffable, my consciousness was completely without form, but was diamond-like: a radiant star. Within the wholeness of this light, I was also a particle that traversed within the diamond from point to point. Simultaneously, I was the entire star, each point in the diamond reflected at each and every point within it,

'The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light' (reference)

I was completely disembodied and, according to my companions, repeating three words ad infinitum: 'Bliss, Enlightenment, Nirvana.' Subsequently, I forgot the entire experience until a month later when the memory spontaneously re-surfaced; not the only time I have had this selective psychedelic-amnesia. I remember coming down, the sense of having been abandoned on this very dense plane, utterly doomed, parched and devoid of the thirst-quenching substance of salvation. For some unknown reason, I was sent back.

Over the years, I have conceptualized of this experience in many ways: the benediction and blessing of the Holy Spirit, alien abduction with implantation at the eye-brow (explaining subsequent sinus issues), third eye awakening, the gifting of spiritual wings. Inevitably one comes to view these experiences as occuring over many worlds, mercurial across many conceptual frameworks. Ultimately I see this class of experience as being what the Sufi's call 'Baraka,' the 'Blessing.' There's a sense that--in the end--everything will be fine.

I seem to be going through a period of great personal crisis. The strain of near constant physical discomfort coupled with this momentum that has brought me so far from home, I get homesick sometimes. Awkward, considering I don't really have a home per se. I know this will make me stronger, but it has not been easy. I look with faithful eyes towards the setting sun

In my life, travel has served some manner of healing function. Gratefulbear and I experience certain places in a specifically personified and embodied form, including San Francisco. After my mother died, I frequently made the drive to San Francisco; driving became a sort of meditation, and I would drive for hours on end. I was experiencing a personal crisis similar to what I seem to be going through now. I spent some time with my travelling companion from our days in India, but I don't think he quite understood where I was in my life. During this time, I developed a taste for both cannabis and red wine, indulging often. I found the parks particularly comforting; much of San Francisco's spirit has always seem to me to have something to do with it's orientation about Golden Gate park.

I had picked up a copy of Mary Wilcox book on Ayahuasca, covering a sort of limited but very interesting personal exposure to the hoasca-complex. With the stress and remorse of loss, my mind was strained, I empathized with Wilcox struggles as a woman. As the sun began to set, I remember reading a particularly moving passage in which she gives a Jungian rendering to one of her ayahuasca visions. She describes rising up above the planet and seeing immense and moaning red vents, releasing mists of grief into space, terming it the 'woundedness of womanhood.' As I was reading, the veil softened, transparents gossamer and was then gone:

Glistening scales--slick with sheen--an undulate form emerges soft then sharp and well defined,

'this is the land of the dead' I hear,

and the glistening form reaches upwards, rhythmic and alluring. A soft and effervescent silver light surrounds the length of it's serpentine body leading up to it's head. With the head, the entire framework shifts and everything becomes planar, like peaking one's head up above water. About the head is a pliant and illumine golden glow, like a hazy sunset. Peering through the haze, the plane becomes clear and defined; the head is spread out like a great arch that eclipses the entire body, a sort of infinite circle without circumference. At it's crown, I see my mother's face, calm, serene and decorated with a simple and poised smile; I saw her several times after. Nothing was said, just silence and seeing; there was a host of shadow's around her, and something about the scene seemed dramatic and posed, like an opera. The vision faded, and I went for a long walk in the park, confounded by what I had seen.

3/5/2009 Puno, Peru

'Everything's gonna be alright now, everything's gonna be alright ... '

-Bob Marley

Yesterday's dose of Ciprofloxacin really threw me for a loop, the most pronounced experience of it's side-effect profile I've ever experienced. Loopy, while simultaneously fatigued and restless, it took me a couple hours to connect it with the dose of Ciprofloxacin. I had to bring out the big guns and listen to some Bob Marley, brother had soul and brought me right out of it. Things were feeling pretty ominous, it was hitting me hard, comes through some of the writing from yesterday. Funny thing is, I can't stand Reggae! But, you gotta love Bob Marley; kinda like the Beatles, just gotta love that soul.

Thomas Merton wrote that the spiritual life was an act of brotherhood; being a monk, he was writing specifically from his condition and perhaps 'filialhood' is more generally appropriate, but Merton used the word brother. I miss my brother, we were such good friends: I just miss him. All the pain of the recent years somehow eclipsed those years where we anchored each other to a sense of family and belonging. Another impossible situation, one of my own living koan's.
I slept well after that night when my mother came to me on the head of an immense snake. That next morning, I meandered about Golden Gate Park and the Haight district of the city. Towards the afternoon, I listened to music and took it easy. When dusk hit and the sun was setting, I was sitting in my room when a second and more unsettling vision unfolded.

Again a lifting veil, web-like and gossamer. A place like a basement, lusterless shadows and scurrying darkness in every corner. Filled with despair and loneliness, the webs and shadows lift ever so slightly and there's a woman in this place. Wearing a thin white night-robe, this woman was desparately in search of some lost treasure. Becoming clearer, I sense my mother. She often suffered from insomnia, and could be heard wrustling about the house late into the night. Often you'd hear her start a load of laundry at 3AM, or doing dishes into the early hours of the morning. In this place, she was in urgent search of something lost, seizing about the room in a fit. As I brought more attention and focus to bear on her presence, she slowed and gravitated towards me. Looking into her face, I saw what it was she had lost. In her constant searching, her fitful and restless wandering, she had lost her face.

Instead of a face, she had a torrential and vacant whirlwind. I peered deeply into this void and within her face was an unfolding scene; behind her restless seeking was a pure and cold animal body, rippling with taut and fierce musculature. It looked like a bull and was the pure substance of desire, craving, unquenchable thirst; prodding her on constantly in search for the very thing she would find if she stopped looking. She slowed, and the simple act of my seeing into her void brought some peace to her; even without eyes, we saw one another.

03/06/2008 Puno, Peru

"We have no idea what we are"

-J'allaludin Rumi

An interesting development regarding the coca. Up until two nights ago, I have chewed daily with no discernable problem. Two days, I started chewing and seemed to develop an allergic response. Starting as an itch in the scalp, I then developed a hive-like rash on my neck and forearms and my eyelids became slightly swollen. As a note, the reaction began as I was relating the story dealing in the motif of my mother's facelesness and the bull. I took a couple days off, bought some loratadine and tried it again today; within 20 minutes of chewing the rash developed and I took the loratadine, which allayed the symptoms within an hour or so.

This could be several things: it could be something specific to the coca in this particular area, it could be an authentic sensitivity to coca itself. The coca seems to have served a specific function in putting me in touch with the mother archetype, it may be that my physical body is shifting into a mode whereby it is preparing for the ayahuasca. Though I've never taken ayahuasca, I have experienced unusual phenomenon surrounding the ayahuasca-complex; phenomenon that appear--in some way--to be atemporal and connected to some future encounter of the plant.

Several weeks before we made the decision to travel, I dreamt that the ayahuasca spirit came to me as a soft and golden light,

'it's time to walk this medicine path,' it said;

it was peculiar and subtle, but the message was very clear. Today, after experimenting again with the coca, my shift seems to have quite clearly shifted to the ayahuasca, and my sense of it is far more obtuse and veiled from me. I have no idea what will happen, but have a sense it will be amongst that rare class of experience described as 'peak.'
In the hopes of bringing some closure to the maternal vision cycle aforementioned in this journal, the last time I experienced my mother on the visionary plane was under the influence of a full dose of DMT. Over the years, my experience of DMT has been particularly unusual. Initially, it was the classic experience of the elf-ridden DMT-plex, a theatre of the bizzare. At a certain point, DMT began opening up a space that was a profound and void stillness, deeply satisfying but indescribable; in a sense, there was no real content to the experience, simply a sense of now-ness.
Under the influence of DMT, this void and still nowness unfolded and I was floating above the surface of the planet. My mother was there, as a presence that surrounded me. I felt as though I had tapped into an immense cosmic database of information. She told me several stories across her life: childhood neglect, stories of pubescent sexual abuse, people she had affairs with. There was something profoundly liberating about these stories, something that allowed me to understand and let her go,

'it's time for you to go,' she said

and there's a whoosh and a sucking gravity pulling me rapidly down, submerging me farther, farther and an upward gush. I smell the ocean, wind in my hair, and an immense sense of freedom. I am riding the back of a whale, my totem; the dmt 'elves' have become dolphins swimming, splashing and playing at my side. The vision fades, and I come out of the trance to the sound of the soft patter of rain.

Something is happening here, something of an unusual nature; this will be my last public entry for awhile. That indescribable and void stillness appears to be suffusing my soul and there is a sense of ineffable but dense pull and direction. The compass is set, it's time to sail.

03/08/2009 Puno, Peru

We just returned from two days and one night on Lake Titicaca. A threshhold has been passed in this journey: physically, emotionally and spiritually. Our boat, a shallow skiff with outboard motor, chugged along slowly; within an hour, we stepped off at one of the several floating islands at Uros. The tradition of floating communities began during Inca times, when pre-Incan groups along the lake at Titicaca took to the waters as shelter against the dominant and invading Inca. Initially living in only boats, the inhabitants of the floating islands shifted to floating islands made of reed and large chunks of floating peat moss, all roped together. We sat, sang, purchased some crafts and moved on to the island at Amantani.
Described as a living relic of Inca culture, the community at Amantani is cradled by two peaks, each boasting temples respectively devoted to the masculine and feminine principles. Terraced with modern agricultural stonework, the land is discretely divided up into family parcels. The families--women dressed in traditional clothing--met us at the dock, accompanying us to our respective homes for the night. In the afternoon we ascended to our highest elevation so far this trip: 4200 meters at the Pachamama temple.

At night, we danced with our families and the community. For the first time, I felt that perhaps tourism wasn't such a bad thing, but could be a medium of education and cross-cultural understanding. I slept light, and we woke early; apparently Brandy's clock was an hour fast. I dreamt that I was Che Guevara, training in an underground complex: it was painful.

The boatride between Amantani and Taquille was rough, the waters tossing the boat around for the entire hour and a half; Brandy suffered from a bit of sea-sickness, with our Japanese travelling companion full-on puking. At Taquille we walked an hour up to the main community, admiring what have surely been the finest textiles we have witnessed in Peru. I purchased a vest, we ate lunch on the far side of the island and made our way back to Puno in the afternoon. A wonderful experience. Tomorrow, we're heading back to Cusco in the hopes of finding the ring and catching a flight to Iquitos.
Emotionally and psychologically, the last week or so has largely focussed on my father, which is perhaps why I haven't written much. I get very angry and can't imagine writing down these feelings and thoughts, but I can't let them build up: they become dangerous. When I get angry, I need to do something with that energy to prevent it from being so destructive.

This afternoon, I seem to have softened about my father; we're getting too old for all of this. I felt some compassion for him, he's getting old and must be realizing it. I hope he softens, I pray he softens; all I need is a sliver of light from him and everything is forgiven, the thinnest sliver of opening. My brother, I think he just needs to be it on his own, and I should have recognized that when I visited him over the summer; I was very needy and had some idea he was all right in himself. In fact, I was looking for guidance from my younger brother when it's really my place to be the guide; I hope healing is still possible, I believe it still is. Healing would be a real miracle in this life, it must be possible somehow: God could not have intended this to go on forever. So I'll pray for it over the next couple of months, I have alot of regrets about all of this; alot of my creative energy seems wrapped up in this regret and shame. On the one hand, I have this powerful reservoir of creative energy; on the other hand, there's a deep fear of what it actually is. Am I crazy? Is this all empty bullshit? There are so many obstacles, but I have only ever needed a sliver of loving kindness from my father; it would heal my entire world. I feel like I have tried everything, and now anything would be a profound grace, and profound grace seems to be the only real possibility here.

Alot of it is seeing how indigenous communities and families function, there's a glue of joy and simplicity that holds people together. The sound of the ocean, simple activities; these people have the most extraordinary smiles. I feel like my family lost this, our faces have been a lockjaw of unhappiness, I see alot of unhappiness in myself: it's hard for me to smile. But the truth is, I am connected to my family and I can't change that, there's deep pain in this place: the pain of separation. It's strange, having been so right about the politics, the violence, the problems with this country; yet simultaneously, so emotionally wrong. This is where true strength is born, and I will have to transmute my past somehow; how, I have no idea.

I returned to the coca, and the side-effects have cleared up and I seem to be more attenuated in my chewing. I have no idea how to explain the shift, but I tried chewing earlier this evening and was completely rash free: it may have been the specific coca I was buying, from one woman. Tonight, part of me is lonely; part of me is at home in the loneliness. On the edge of unseen beauty, you only have your vision: seeing, being; a vision naked in it's own sight and standing alone before it.

Glancing back through all of this writing, I have yet to find that common thread with which to weave this story with simplicity and grace: there are pieces missing. I need to start remembering my father, and through that memory building a sense of my own manhood. I need to hem in the rhetoric and mythopoetics, and tell the simple part of the story. When did it go wrong? Where did it go wrong? Why did it go wrong? When was it right?

I'm not sure what it is that I'm looking for really; sometimes I have no idea why we're here. I know at a certain point, Brandy felt it was too much for us. A void sense fills my heart. On the one hand, there's so much about the trajectory of this journey that I cannot know, yet there's an urgency: to 'get there.' I do think it's good to keep active so as not to malinger; but perhaps I'm simply running from something. I wish I was solid with my family, but the family instability must serve some function. I'm tired of being disliked by so many people; I wish I could just set it right with everyone and go about my life. As calous as I often pretend to be, I worry a great deal about what other people think about me. Still, I'm glad I have taken a sort of stand against the whole thread of militarism in my family. I guess my father felt like a failure for not going the military route; I certainly made a mistake in joining the army.

I think one of the difficulties I have struggled with in my father's general sense of personal ethic, is that--in his eyes--it has never been ok for me to feel good about myself. Over the years, the extremes of negativity just got to me; he so desparately needed me to have something wrong, and I so desparately needed to be right in his eyes. In essence, between us we have needed a problem: why?

If I can say there was a clear source to when my father's attitude towards me started changing, I would have to say when I became involved with the opposite sex. I don't think he could possibly understand the deep sense of need that my relationships with women were serving at the time; I should have talked with him more about what was going on emotionally, but it has always been difficult talking with him about emotions. I just never really had a loving female presence in my life, my mother's presence was so sporadic, though she did love me. My father seems to have some sort of deep seated issue with a man's need for a woman; in my life, I have needed female companionship.

There are people who do love me for who I am.

03/11/2009 Iquitos, Peru

While for years the jungle has captured my imagination from a very young age, the vibration of the jungle itself has captured my spiritual imagination--what Henri Corbin calls the Mundus Imaginalis or imaginal world--in a way that has quelled any and all doubts in my mind as to the compelling reality of the process that was initiated in me almost ten years ago now. In fact, our culture--with it's compulsive fixation on disparate bits of externally verified datum--is knotwork, quickly passed over, in a vast and flowing tapestry of infinitely more depth and substance. All of the doubting and critical voices, twisted bits of string so enamoured of their own peculiar twistedness as to refuse the very fabric of which they are interminably bound.

In the Siona mythologem, a specific word is used in describing the actions of ayahuasca upon the human mind and sensorium. Translated roughly to mean 'shine,' suna denotes the second in the bi-phasic action of the 'vine of the dead.' The first phase--designated by the verb dwege--is to be drunk, dizzy; an altered state devoid of meaning in the fashion of so many 'psychedelic enthusiasts.' 'To shine' however, is the revelation of all of the realms of the universe within the fulcrum of constant transformation, rhythm, meaning and design. Here in the jungle, I feel myself shining; often, there is a sense of electrostatic swell within my heart, stretching out beyond the physical plane like one immense vibronic and luminescent green blanket. A veritable forest of visions humming with the dense and rich music of souls taken to flight, or ashine on the branches of the one great tree that is itself all direction and life; wings outstretched and then gone from the branches.

This last month of challenge and travel has fortified our constitution and while everything feels foreign and strange, there is a sense of personal renewal as if my own world has been created anew. Our flight yesterday was relatively uneventful excepting the long ride from our hotel in Puno to the airport at Juliaca, and flights then to Lima connecting on to Iquitos. Landing in Iquitos, itself a bead along the vast and meandering serpent that is the Rio Amazonas, our plane settled amidst a pillow of cloud and wind. In fact, it does rain quite often in the rainforest, betraying facts perhaps too obvious; the rain is a constant companion of the diversity in which the rainforest itself is embedded. We emerged from the cool comfort of the plane into a humidity both hot and hectic. Yet for both Gratefulbear and I, the sense of pleroma embodied by this bedrock of organic, earthbound existence, has given the wind beneath my feet wings upon which to fly.

We quickly proceeded to the Belen market described as 'filthy but real' by the owner of the 'Yellow Rose of Texas,' where we seem to take most of our meals. Last night I dreamt of the ayahuasca spirit, the message simple: allow it to open, allow the experience to come to you. The series of coincidences today, linking and threading me into what is the single most ubiquitous plant psychointegrator complex on the plant, astounds. This afternoon, sensing the ayahuasca approach as evasive, I sit down; a woman logs in for the first time at a chat channel I frequent back home in the states,

'I have apprenticed with an ayahuasquero here in Iquitos for a year and a half, if any needs help navigating (yes, she used the word navigate), be in touch.'

Synchronous phenomenon in attendance of the Mystery, we discovered that we weren't five minutes walk from one another. We will be meeting for dinner this evening, and take it from there but this momentum is undeniable and I feel very strong. Leaving behind a world of dense and fruitless associations and entanglements, has without doubt been the smartest thing I have done in years and years. My life and it's purpose are with me, and I alone with my life: but alive!! Alive!!!

03/13/2009 Iquitos, Peru

The clouds cleared today leaving us quite exposed along the banks of the Rio Amazonas. I have begun acclimating to the infamous mapacho Tobacco, the Nicotiana rustica of the jungle. Thick and of an altogether different class of psychoactivity than it's commercial cousin N. tabacum, it has been a challenge to get used to the thick, dark, potent smoke. A universal companion of ayahuasca, the tobacco is used for cleansing and in ritual. However, I didn't want to just dive into two wholly novel psychoactives at one time, so we bought a little and have been sampling it.

Yesterday we journeyed a couple hours down the Rio Amazonas to the Rio Nanaya, a tributary that winds it's way along the southern bank of Iquitos. Having not planned to be out, we forgot our sunscreen, longsleeves and hat; so both Brandie and I ended up with sunburns. Last night we met a very interesting man from London, here as a volunteer in the field of environmental technology. On sunday he invited us to attend a futbol game with him and his taxi driver. Some time in the near future, we hope to charter a boat up the amazon to see it's headwaters.

We decided against visiting the zoo today, instead opting to rest and eat. Our companion from Australia--Garth--left earlier today, wide eyed and enthusiastic to return and continue working with the medicine; I hope he makes it back soon. I am awaiting Meghan's reply to my email ...

03/15/2009 Iquitos, Peru

Today we attended a futbol game at the main stadium in Iquitos, a fairly civilized affair excepting the difficulties in obtaining water. Our companion from London--Nick--is quite a find in terms of familiarity with local Iquitos and his willingness to help us in exploring the local scenery. As adventurous as Nick is, you'd figure he would be a bit more jaded but he is always up for something new. The heat and sun was nearly unbearable, beating down on us just past halftime and leaving is soaked in sweat; but we have figured out how to deal with the sun, long sleeves and strong sunblock. Though expected to win, the home team was a disappointment; we ate tasty Ceviche and spent the afternoon staying out of the sun.
Yesterday we visited the Quistakocha zoo, an up close and personal look at the jungle fauna. The jaguar especially sturck me, powerful and muscular as it paced in a circle about the cage. The pumas masticating in ecstatic feline joy, immersed in bloody, raw carniverous splendours. Both Brandy and I stroked the belly of a 'Waidurin,' pink Amazonian river dolphin. Afterwards, we fished for our lunch up the road, all under the lead of our local guide: Roy. His english is good enough to teach me a fair amount of spanish, we spent another afternoon avoiding the sun. Tomorrow we are supposed to go see the famed butterfly farm, though it's closed; so perhaps we'll go see the snakes.

03/18/2009 Iquitos, Peru

Yesterday we travelled by taxi up the lone careterra and across the Rio Nanay to the jungle town at Nauta, catching a grass-roofed river taxi down the Rio Ucuyali to the headwaters of the Rio Amazonas. From the mirador--watchtower--the muddy waters of the Rio Maranon merged in one fluid continuity with the dark waters of the Rio Ucuyali to form the great one river Amazon, teeming with water and life all the way through Brazil to the Atlantic. From the watchtower, my mind slowed and rested in memories of moments long ago; the great and blue image of planet earth that graced the side of my mother-in-laws deathbed, the one great Light that is Spirit, a quiet nap in the evening;

'such moments remain with us always,' I thought to myself and resolved to sit with this one until it faded across the temporal twilight that is all passing phenomenon including our own lives.

The bright and smiling faces of river children, splashing in the languid waters along the shore echoed as if in a dream and sweeping across the flat plane of the jungle came a great and showering blanket of rain, a welcome respite from the radiant heat of the equatorial sun. For lunch we ate fish, which is near impossible to avoid in the jungle, and fried plantain like sweet potatoe,

'time has no meaning out here, except for the two times: sun up and sun down,' the proprietor at the local gringo hangout reminded us today in typical form.

From the Mirador we continued up the far shores of the Rio Maranon to a point just beyond the headwaters, where the flow temporarily slows before merging into whirling and unruly currents. Jumping into the cold water, the pink river dolphin gathered around us, emerging momentarily to exhale in spurts of foaming mist. A day well-spent, excepting perhaps the taxi-ride home like a flying metal death-trap on wheels. Today we relaxed and tomorrow we will go see the butterfly farm.

03/19/2009 Iquitos, Peru

'Where is my Spirit; I'm nowhere near it.' -Stevie Wonder

The night prior to connecting with Meghan, Brandy dreamt she was with a female Spirit and talking about her mother,
'it has been so long and I am still mourning my mother' she tells the Spirit,

'for healing you will go here,' and she takes her to a small village. In the village there are two large and white statues of hands; the hands are moving about in some form of communication. It just dawned on me that Meghan speaks sign language, another bead on the thread of synchronicities that have drawn us here.

Last night I dreamt again of the ayahuasca spirit. A group had gathered in an open-air space beneath a wooden casita propped up on stilts with one side opened out onto a sort of lagoon or lake. We partook of the brew and sat in anticipation of the on-coming surge. I felt myself being pulled up on a sort of teather, floating up and above the casita and being almost sucked into the vast and empty sky. Then a complete shift in consciousness and I suddenly find myself completely removed from the domain of the physical and sensory. Everything is dark, but my consciousness is illumined within the darkness without any sense of physical body, all senses in complete suspension. The darkness is like a large and warm velvet blanket, welcoming and spacious, and has become the object of a light that is beyond light/darkness. At some point I return to the physical form and Brandy has been having some sort of difficulty,

'where did you go?' she asks,

but I have no answer to her question, 'nowhere really, but while my body was here I was elsewhere' is all I can think to say.

The sense of illuminated darkness was striking and somehow absolute, touching something ineffable and removed from the narrow chinks of the sensory and bodily. Not void, nor nihilistic in any sense but empty of anything of any discernable singularity or substance, not even truly 'dark,' but light of an altogether different variety. Many of my recent dreams have dealt in the ayahuasca theme, though I have no recorded the majority of them; this one was quite striking. I have no interpretation.

03/20/2009 Iquitos, Peru

The young man who has been ocassionaly acting as our guide accompanied us to the Mariposaria--butterfly farm--up the Rio Nanay. Looked over by a well-informed and passionate Austrian woman, we were walked through the various stages of the life-process of the different butterflies from egg to pupa to catepillar to winged butterfly. Stepping off our boat, we were immediately mobbed by monkeys, and warned to protect our belongings from the capuchin who have a reputation for pickpocketing.

Such a strange way to live, tending butterflies for the simple sake of doing so; for butterflies have no real economic value so far as the butterfly farm goes. I find the devotion to beauty for it's own sake most appealing, though she offers a sort of service like a zoo; the sheer impracticality impresses me.

Afterwards we boated across the Nanay to the Serpent farm on the other side, a somewhat drab place where they clearly don't take optimal care of the animals. Honestly, I felt bad being there as we learned they are not properly licensed; but the Amazon does not tend to be a place of licensing and protocol.

Draping an anaconda around my neck--to my own surprise--the snake handler passed me the head while yelling in Spanish. Shocked and afraid that if I didn't take the head they would just simply drop it, I grabbed the neck just behind the head. A mass of tightening musculature, the snake reared it's head and opening it's mouth hissed at me. Quite a snake, about four meters long and with a wreak like death. I was glad to get it off me.

03/22/2009 Iquitos, Peru

We have waited now several weeks in Iquitos to work with the ayahuasca medicine. Though ocassionaly impatient to get things moving, I know things are unfolding as they should; the synchronicity and magic which has brought us to this point is assurance enough that we are in good hands.

This morning we struggled through an ass-buster of a bike ride through the jungle; now I know why they call it MOUNTAIN biking not jungle-biking. Between large sections of mud and sand, the terrain varied far more than one would imagine in this jungle basin. The heat beating down in waves with the passing of the torrential and incessant multitudes of hovering clouds; the sun peaking through, hell's very own beacon in this devil's paradise. We begrudingly biked to another mirador--look-out point--cursing the entire way. Gratefulbear fell off her bicycle just short of the mirador, tumbling straight into some monstrosity of a plant with evolved and plentiful splinters like a fine dust burrowing into her skin. Needless to say, she was not pleased.

But I can't complain really, the jungle is just such an incredible unfolding of novelty; the passing of each and every second a flux of alien and vegetable geometries, fresh and alive. We were supposed to meet our English companion Nick for swimming this afternoon, but none of us could pull ourselves out of bed we were so exhausted by the morning's bikeride. We should sleep well tonight.