Perú (Part 1)

The “Spirit of the Amazon” retreat that my brother and I signed up for was to take place at Corto Maltes Amazonia Lodge on the banks of the Madre de Dios River near Puerto Maldonado in southeastern Peru...








The retreat would include three ayahuasca ceremonies, officiated and supervised by experienced local curandéros and ayahuascéros grounded in the shamanic traditions of the region and the responsible and respectful use of these powerful plants. I knew something about the nature of the ceremonies from my father, who participated in several this past summer in BC. Here’s what I knew going in:

• They take place at night, with little or no light, in some kind of circular structure where people are seated against a wall on mats or cushions.
• With the exception of music, which plays a vital role, a “noble silence” is observed, meaning that there is no speaking or deliberate making of any noise (such as tapping the floor, sighing, etc.) except to join in, or initiate (with the curandero’s permission) a song.
• One by one, the participants drink a cup of the brew, which is made from a combination of the ayahuasca vine and other jungle plants, then return to their seats. The effects are felt anywhere from 20 minutes to 1 hour later.
• Ayahuasca often promotes “purging” or vomiting, which is encouraged as a means of releasing whatever fear, pain, angst, or negativity has been stored in the mind-body. Everyone has a bucket for said purpose. The instruction is to welcome the purging and let it come if it comes, and not to force anything.
• The ceremony lasts anywhere from 4 to 7 hours, roughly the duration of the main effects of the brew (though it varies from person to person).

The plan was to fly from New York to Líma direct overnight, arriving around 6:30 am, with about three hours to spare before our next flight left for the Interior, getting us to our destination well in time for that evening’s opening ceremony, so to speak...

CEREMONY #1: Oops.

Didn’t happen that way. Our flight left JFK nearly four hours late due to bad weather on the plane’s previous voyage. There was a slim hope we’d land in Líma in time to make our connecting flight – and in fact, we touched down with 10 minutes to spare – but it wasn’t enough. By the time we got through customs and figured out the lay of the land, our flight was long gone. And to our dismay, it had been the last of only two daily flights to Puerto Maldonado – both on the same airline, both in the early morning, both within an hour of each other, in a maddening bit of compressed scheduling. (Thinking of it now, it occurs to me that it’s probably for financial reasons: this way the Puerto Maldonado airport can be open for its two incoming and two outgoing flights and then be done for the day by 3 pm. But at the time, frustrated and disappointed as I was, it occurred for me like evidence of grim stupidity on the part of everyone but me, the one who booked his flights with a mere three-hour buffer zone between.)

So there we were, in stinky smoggy Líma, with free rooms at the airport Ramada but no ayahuasca, no ceremony. (We could have guzzled tap water if we really wanted to have visions and throw up, but figured we’d do better under a shaman’s care.)

We spent the day napping, visiting downtown Líma, and touring a 17th-Century church complete with catacombs. (The thousands of skulls and bones were kind of spooky, but even creepier was a large “Last Supper” painting with Jesus & the Apostles surrounded by what were supposed to be little Incan children – the idea being that the painting depicted the innocence and wonder that constituted the proper attitude for the local natives to adopt toward Christ and his missionary spokescolonists.)

All in all, not a bad day, but we knew that off in the jungle there was some serious medicine being drunk and some serious visions being had, and we went to sleep feeling a bit hard-done-by, a bit deprived, and a bit annoyed with ourselves for insisting on the direct red-eye flight...

I'm Some Wacky Guru

Wednesday night, I'm cooking up my Trader Joe's curry chicken tenders, checking on the wild rice n' daikon seed blend on the simmer, prepping a little mâche-&-arugula salad, and listening to some freshly downloaded music. Not just downloaded: iTunes'd, bought and paid for. When's the last time that happened? (I'll tell you: when Metallica's first single from their new album dropped in August. But before that: not often. I'm an unrepentant pirate with a long wake of pilfered-mp3 foam floating behind me. I'm an all-day sucker for acquisition via Acquisition P2P Software. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I downloaded Stevie Wonder's "All-Day Sucker" with that very program over a year ago, in my new-DJ phase.)

But I wasn't going to steal music from Shimshai. Or, as my brother lovingly calls him, 'Shimmers'. (Not as the verb 'to shimmer' -- though it fits -- but as a playful sort of slang pet suffix my bro applies to many words and names. Thus the distinguished and renowned MIT professor Noam Chomsky becomes the family cat, 'Chomskers'. No disrespect intended: Chomskers is my brother's hero.)

***

I first heard of this guy Shimshai through my Dad, who met him at a retreat in BC this summer. "You'll love him, I think," Dad offered, "if your cultural cynicism doesn't close you off too much. He's a genius musician, so you should enjoy that, at least."

My translation: "I know you tend to scoff at anything remotely New Age or overly earnest, so I won't get my hopes up, but his music really touched me and I'd like to think it could touch you too, if only on a technical level, if that's all the credit you can grant it."

I was on a visit to Vancouver in September when this conversation took place, and Dad's concerns about my receptivity weren't coming out of the blue. I was huddled in a particularly cynical corner of myself, full of dread and misgivings about my future. I'd been on anti-depressants for months and was feeling more depressed than ever, sleeping as long as I could and only getting up to do things I'd said I'd do, and then only sometimes. I'd developed a fairly acute Super Mario Galaxy addiction in the past few months, which landed me many Power Stars but little power.

Certainly a lot of cynicism was feeding on me in those weeks. But mostly it wasn't the kind my Dad was trying to offset with his comment. It wasn't my usual musical snobbery, complete with well-reasoned disdain for anything I can't grok at first listen. It was a sadder cynicism, only about myself, and thus more vulnerable to being met, touched, tenderized.

***

One day I borrowed Dad's car to go renew my driver's license, and I came across a Shimshai disc. "Live On Maui". (A brief flush of envy that this Shimshai gets to play concerts in Hawaii, concerts that get recorded and mastered and distributed.) Took a look at the liner jacket, which showed a slight white guy with dreads playing a guitar that looked weathered and well-loved in some spectacular early- or late-day sunlight while a horse grazed, as if on the man's music, behind him.

(White guy with dreads. Figures. I thought of all the insufferable amateur hedonist-herbalists I'd smoked pot with in East Vancouver and listened to as they waxed long-winded about Burning Man and other retreats I'd never attend, what kind of tea to drink for maximum sexual potency, the latest in the struggle to legalize "the herb"... nice guys, but like I said, insufferable sometimes. Especially for a sufferer like I & I was. :)

Oh well. Might as well give it a shot. I pop the disc in and set my course for the local Office of Motor Vehicles (or whatever it's called).

Ambient audience and stage noise. A very gentle-voiced man -- who sounds like he'd never prejudge, much less harm, a fly -- welcomes the crowd and thanks them. "It's always great to be back in Maui"; ('vroom', goes the car engine; 'grrrr', goes my mind.) He then invites them (us) (me) to sit back, relax, fasten our seatbelts, and "enjoy the magic carpet ride."

(Well, Shimmers, my seatbelt is conveniently already on. But this mystical rug trip business makes me a little leery. What, are you going to bust out with "A Whole New World"?)

Music starts. Nice groovy trebly two-chord guitar groove, makes me think of Crowded House's "Don't Dream It's Over". Except I can tell it's not a pop song. We're talking pure devotion here. The lyrics begin. Lovely voice, actually, singing gratefully about "Mother of my Soul" and then some Sanskrit verses (hey, I've done some yoga, okay.) Strumming getting a bit more intense now, clearly by an arm and fingers that know what they're doing, a DiFrancoesque rhythmic confidence. Points go to Shimmers. I nod and tap the steering wheel. I'm a bit bored by the repetitive chanting of the singing, but not at all annoyed like I'd expected (hoped?).

The annoyance (which had been politely waiting for an opening) comes a few songs in, which delves into roots reggae. Ah yes, here they come: the AyShan Rhymes. You know the AyShan Rhymes.

No?

"FoundAyShan", "revelAyShan", "no time for hesitAyShan in this generAyShan".

Plus plenty of shoutouts to Jah-Jah (Binks?) and copious insertions of the sacred "I" vowel -- I-ternity, I-tinually... (I-cetera.)

Let me be clear: I do not, and never have, looked down on Rasta-speak. Except when white people speak it. Then I get a bit brittle around it.

Especially when I'm feeling vulner- and/or miser-able.

I pull up to the DMV office, turn off the stereo, go inside. No line-up, which kind of disappoints me. Put down my $75, get a positively porky-looking headshot taken -- I look fat and scared and pale-sick, which is how I feel. The woman gives me a provisional license and I exit into the sun.

I return to the car. I'm about ready to call the game in favor of "I tried it out, Dad, and it's not my thing". I figure I'll drive out to Commercial Drive, have a good strong Joe's cappuccino, and try to write something. I'm about to hit eject on the stereo when I notice, on the CD cover lying on the passenger seat, a song title that sort of intrigues me: "Suddhosi Buddhosi". Something about Buddha nature. I like that. I think Buddha nature is a good thing. I'm down with Buddha nature. I scroll to the track I want, boost the volume a bit -- at last, a real chord progression! on familiar pop-folk territory, somewhere between Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" and Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changing"; ooh, and a pan flute, I like, I like, I--

suddhosi buddhosi
naranja nasee
samsara maya
parear jay daasi
samsara swapanan
traja mohar nejrum
nanjama mrityor
jay satsvar rupee

You are forever pure,
You are forever true,
And the dream of this world
Can never touch you.
So give up your attachment,
And give up your confusion,
And fly to that space that's
Beyond all illusion . . .

By the time I hit downtown traffic, I can barely see the street signs for the tears streaming from my eyes and fogging my glasses, which are smeary at the best of times.

Never before have I had a song pierce me like this, like a sterile needle through a swelling blister. And like that blister, I now am leaking out everything toxic.

Is it the melody? Certainly the melody is lovely and the chord choices are perfect, supporting the melody without being repetitive, cycling through with a certain relaxed urgency. Is it Shimshai's voice, or the voice of the woman singing backups? They are sublime together. The layered guitars? The dumbek pulse?

All these things, like resilient vessels, help deliver the dosage straight to my heart, but the message is the dosage. I so want to know these words as true of me, and I so haven't known them to be true for so long. I want the song to last forever, until my head gets it through its head. I want to lead Shimshai, my big brother, to my brain the bully, and say, "Here, you talk to him". Then to go wait while they sort things out.

The blister of my despair doesn't disappear that day, but it drains a fair amount. Over the next few weeks it will heal rapidly and completely.

***

I got to hear much more of Shimshai's music in Perú. (He's big in medicinal circles.) And with the ayahuasca in me, I could hear all of it as really being directed to me, too. I even got to jam with him. Turns out dude knows all kinds of sacred music: he made me his ever-loving slave by busting out the intro to Metallica's "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" right when things were getting a little too serious. I almost skipped back to my hut that night, giddy as a schoolgirl who finds out something new and even more adorable about a new crush.

Also got to talk music with him, and was refreshed to hear him use words like "flaky", "cheesy", and "cornball" to describe aspects of the West Coast spiritual scene. Maybe I'm not such a snob after all; maybe I just have a sense of taste.

Anyway, turns out Shimshai's a super dude, a brilliant musician, a wise man, and a nice guy. I wrote to him the other night:

"Thank you again for the gift of your music. People spoke of how wise you are. I have no doubt this is true. But there are a lot of wise people. What I want to acknowledge in you is not so much the content of your knowledge or wisdom -- which isn't yours anyway, if we're being truly wise ;) -- but rather the impeccable vessel you are for its transmission, which speaks to me of something far rarer than wisdom: a willingness to live with diligence and a certain rigor, in service of something greater than the individual self or identity. Your musical talent is breathtaking and your instruments (voice, guitar, that other thing) respond to your intention like eager lovers. I acknowledge not just the presence of the talent, which is a given (in all senses of that word), but also your clear commitment to refining it and nurturing its capacity for the sacred. That takes maintenance, and that maintenance is something that must be done and that no human mind automatically wants to do. I salute whatever work it's taken for you to maintain...
[...]
It will be a happy day when I get to be in your presence again, hopefully playing bass counterrhythms under, or perhaps searing shred-metal lead licks over, your beautiful musical foundation. (I still have not stopped loving you for busting out the Puppets-era Metallica that night. Never underestimate the importance of having the pop-cultural quivers in your arsenal. Metallica's WAS sacred music back then, they were just too drunk and angry and defended to know it in those terms.)"

***

Back to Wednesday dinner. I'm mixing olive oil (Fairway) with balsamic vinegar (Trader Joe's) for the dressing, absolutely loving the music I've just purchased. My resistance to the sacred, celebratory, devotional aspects is gone and I'm grooving to it just as I do to Ghostface Killah or Minor Threat.

A song comes on I remember hearing at some point. I want to follow the lyrics, but it's in Gurmukhi (a Sikh language) and it's beyond me, so I just bop along. At some point it becomes a chorus of sorts, a repeated mantra; Shimshai's singing:

Ang Sang Wahé Guru.

Except, I hear something slightly different: it sounds like

I'm Some Wahé Guru.

A braggadocious boast in the middle of a sacred mantra song -- devotion music for the hip-hop age.

About 20 minutes of sustained giggling ensue. I wonder, what could "wahé" mean? "Funky"? "Well-dressed"? "Pimped-out"? "Hardcore"? The recombinant possibilities keep me entertained well into the cold Brooklyn night.

Back in Brooklyn with a stowaway molecule

The Medicine, She is still in my system. In me like a slow-release capsule, seeping tiny reminder dosages into my bloodstream at will -- I'm not sure if the "will" in question is mine or Hers, or whether there's really any difference. Either way, I can be doing something mundane like vegetable shopping or riding the G train home, and suddenly I'll be struck by the magic of it all.

(The G train especially. Even before my recent experiences with ayahuasca in the Peruvian Amazon, I always thought Ye Olde Crosstown Local cut a particularly beautiful route through Brooklyn. On principle alone, I love a train that doesn't feel the need to service ever-throbbing, insatiable Manhattan, a train that quietly defies The Alpha Borough's cocksure edict, "None shall pass without entering Me first! Bridge or Tunnel, Local or Express, you're still mine, Bitch." The stubby little G's no serf masochist like that; it knows the E, R, and J give way more than they get. On its own terms, too, the much-maligned G does good work. I love its inauspicious Gowanus beginnings -- even if it could do even more benefit starting farther south in Kensington at Church Avenue, freeing up my old friend, the harried and overburdened F-train, to save some time and brake fluid via the semi-secret express track under Prospect Park & Windsor Terrace. I love, too, how the G rides the F's coattails contentedly for a while through BoCoCa before making a sudden and major 'big boss move', as my brother would say: veering sharply Eastward and pulling up suavely alongside the A/C line (outbound, no less) at the underrated Hoyt-Schermerhorn stop (name-dropped memorably by Jeru the Damaja in "You Can't Stop The Prophet", 1994), forming this crafty clandestine triangle between Jay, Bergen, and Hoyt, which makes for some fun weekend role-reversal hijinx when there's construction on the go. Then it actually cross-cuts the Fultonian A/C, takes lovely Lafayette through majestic Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, into heroic Bed-Stuy just so far, before making a sharp 90º, this time a left, up Marcy/Union, straight through the heart of Satmar Jewville before meeting the L at Lorimer in hipster Williamsburg, where a different kind of pale scruff is the (T)radition(!). Then a last borscht bolt through Greenpoint for good measure, and finally a handshake across the water to Queens, just to be inclusive -- when bucking a crime boss like Manhattan, it's good to have allies.



Point is, great train. And today, my bounty of fall vegetables between my arms, it seemed an even greater thing, this swerving little underground engine. Kind and considerate, even. It wanted me to get from Point A to Point B with velocity and elegance. It was 4/7 the size of a regular train, but there was plenty of room for me and my week of imminent dinners. I could have hugged it, but it had places to be. Stand clear of the closing doors please.)

So yes, this foul-tasting brew called ayahuasca has left me intermittently giddy. Intermittently giddy, and constantly appreciative. Even when I was nearly stripped of the ability to move by some heavy altitude sickness two nights ago in Cúzco, I could feel my body doing what it needed to do to put the past 10 days in context and integrate all the heights (figurative and, most recently, literal; we'd climbed a fairly drastic little mountain called Putucúsi (see below), Machu Picchu's younger cousin, earlier that day, and it had soundly and assuredly kicked my ass like a game-winning field goal by a star kicker who makes it look easy.) I didn't take it personally, the strangely heatless fever, the loss of appetite, the insomnia, the all-over ache. I didn't enjoy it, either, but I recognized it as a friend of some kind.




Landing at JFK at 7:10 this morning after a daylight-long yesterday layover in Líma, I felt welcomed back, even by the border guards of whom I've become accustomed to think as adversaries. One of my nicest and most welcome insights while on ayahuasca was that my whole immigration problem isn't a problem. Or, it is, but only in the most strictly pragmatic sense of that word. It's a problem like a Soduku puzzle is a problem, or like a child trying to eat an ice cream cone while tying his shoes has a problem to figure out. It is not a problem painted in dramatic colours and symbols. "The what's-so" (one of my favourite expressions from the Landmark Education lexicon, meaning Just The Facts, Sans Interpretation Or Colour Commentary) is that I'm a Canadian who wants to live and create in the U.S. ongoingly. I'm ready to create now; I'm not (and, somewhat crucially, my girlfriend is not) yet ready to procreate, which could, admittedly, game that part of the system. The what's-so also is that I need certain things to happen, involving press recognition of my work, before I can petition for an O-1 Visa, and that if I can get said recognition, the Visa should pose little problem. That's all. No one's trying to stop me from doing anything. No one is knocking on my door, or making any plans to knock on my door. (It's not even my door, it's my girlfriend's landlords' door, which she rents from them and I, in a way, sublet with various kinds of currency.)

And that's the whole deal. There's some things to do, some results to produce. Period. No drama, no big chase scene, no interrogation room.

(As Werner Erhard, the broad-minded wisdom collector who had an epiphany on the Golden Gate Bridge and founded EST to try to communicate it to others -- and is thus is to Landmark Education as Abraham is to the Jews and as KRS-ONE is to "conscious" hip-hop -- as Erhard used to say: "Once you get to just What's So, the other side of that is: So What?")

I guess you could say I realized I'd been sitting in a red-painted room for so long it looked neutral, wondering why I felt surrounded by hostility and heat. I also realized I was holding the paintbrush, and that the paint was covering walls that were really transparent glass.

(Another very likely possibility is, you could come up with a much more elegant metaphor.)

Is any of this really new? I knew these sorts of insights about the hidden power of context, had had them many times. Hell, I try to teach them, in settings both semi-official (introductions to the Landmark Forum) and unofficial (conversations with friends and strangers.) I knew that any loss of power in the face of circumstance was just a symptom of something gumming up the gears of possibility, and that the responsibility was/is/always will be mine, if I choose to adopt a responsible viewpoint. I knew, and I knew that I knew. I knew until it became a fact, a belief, an item, a unit of knowledge, a thing in pocket -- useful when accessed, forehead-slappingly curseworthy when misplaced. Sometimes it was more like, "Fine, I know that already. It's true, yup. What else you got?"

Ayahuasca gave me a glimpse at a different kind of knowing. I didn't just know it, I saw it, richly. I was offered it, unhurriedly. It was handed to me, pure and unspun like fleece, like truth.

Now, to be truthful, this kind of knowing is not entirely brand new, either. Every major breakthrough I've ever had, via whatever modality, usually something to do with Landmark, happens not intellectually but perceptually. It had just been a while, is all. And this particular "issue" had escaped the alchemical gaze of transformation, maybe because it looked so obviously valid AS an issue. "Man Against the INS. Creativity vs. Bureaucracy. In A World..."

Plus, one thing ayahuasca has that no Western system of understanding can touch is a profoundly physical component. The knowledge is IN YOUR BODY. It's in your gut and your blood. The dream-making DMT (dimethyltriptamine) in your brain, busy urban cousin to the mystic, eccentric, country-fed DMT in the plant medicine, must record the imported knowledge, xeroxes it, morphs to upgrade itself so that it can remain more than a memory when the country cousin goes back to the jungle. More than just a snapshot of a passing thought or momentary fact; a living entity of its own with growth potential to spare.

Again, that expansive aspect is true of any real transformation, no matter the source. You don't have to pay for an ontological seminar (à la Landmark) or, alternatively, sit in a dark hut in the jungle and drink a hallucinogen 'til you see things and vomit. Those just happen to be the two paths I've found to be, for me, so far (and by far) the most efficacious.

Ask me again in a few days.

To Begin With:

"Reading the writing on the wall" is fairly easy; most of us know the text by heart. Distinguishing the font (or the handwriting) is more elusive, and sometimes more instructive.

And what if the wall has no writing, no doodles, no discernible scratches or smudges?

Well then, have you ever noticed the hue of the paint?