The Gorman Blog

I'm off; see you in a month or so

2012-01-30T06:03:00.000-08:00

Okay: About to get in the car for the ride to the airport. It's sad. It's always sad for me to leave. And once I'm in Peru it's sad to come back. Oh, well. I picked it and despite its lousy moments it's a great life.
For all of you: I don't hit the computer much once I am in Peru. I don't have a laptop and don't like going to the public places too often. So I'm gonna say goodbye now for a little while. I'll be back in early March. I'll miss sharing stories with you all.
Stay safe. I'll be in touch soon.

Wishful Thinking/Hypocritical Action

2012-01-28T06:01:00.001-08:00

I think most of you know that I write a column for Skunk Magazine. It's an irreverent but tasty marijuana magazine out of Montreal. The column is called Drug War Follies. I get to write anything I damned well please about the drug war. Most of it is rotten stuff: whether it's about the awful situation in the Mexican states along the US/Mexican border or the imprisonment of non-violent drug users or how money can corrupt; nearly all of what I write is about pain. And that makes me angry. I'd rather be writing a column about how people were nice to each other today. I'd rather be writing about how the CEO's of every company and corporation in the world just decided to give their workers a little bit bigger piece of the pie and how they're all going to start training programs, with pay, for the jobless.
Freaking bleeding heart, I know.
So this is the opening of the new Drug War Follies column that I'm putting to bed just 48 hours before tipping out and heading to Peru for five weeks. This column will probably appear in about eight weeks.
DRUG WAR FOLLIES #55
Between the time this was written and the time you read this, several thousand marijuana users in the US will have been sent to mostly privatized jails around the country, another 1,000 people will have died in the Mexican Drug War, and untold suffering will have been unleashed on medical marijuana users. All of it pointless if peace and decency is an aim. Unfortunately, for many people, peace and decency only apply to those who make the rules; those who want to live by other rules, or change the rules, be damned.
And I wish that weren’t so.
I’m writing this as I prepare to head down to the Peruvian Amazon again, my home away from home here in bucolic Joshua, Texas. I’ve got a group to take out to the deep green. They’ll ride on overcrowded flat-bottomed riverboats under the Amazon sky. They’ll see fantastic jungle and hike in slightly terrifying swamps and have the opportunity to do all sorts of good medicines—like ayahuasca and magic shrooms and the Matses’ medicines sapo and nu-nu—some of which would land them in deep trouble here in North America. They will come back refreshed, renewed and ready to face the world with new strengths and abilities.
I wish everyone could join me. I wish everyone could take a few weeks off from serving jail time for non-violent drug crimes and come with me out to the deep woods. Hell, I wish the private prison profiteers would come with me: I guarantee that when they returned they’d understand that it ain’t fucking right to make money off people’s suffering. And to encourage more suffering to keep them private jail cells filled and the bottom line fat and happy. Hell, yes, I wish I could take Joe Arpaio out to the woods and have him drink ayahuasca and then come back a different person with a whole different set of beliefs.
I wish that between the time I finish this and the time you read it amnesty gets called for non-violent drug crimes and marijuana gets legalized. I wish that in the next several weeks ALL drugs would be legalized, which would end a lot of killing in Mexico and a lot of slavery on the pot farms in parts of Africa and elsewhere. And end the need for those damned prisons. And end the fear so many people face when they get that awful knock on the door, or have the door knocked in.
I wish all that peace and decency but I won’t hold my breath. Because to ever get there from here, short of divine intervention, is going to take work. Hard work. Education, protests, pulling money from the companies that support the private prisons run by GEO and the Corrections Corp. of America and other bottom feeders whose money comes directly in proportion to the amount of suffering that’s inflicted by criminalizing the behavior of good and decent folk.
That’s a lot of work that needs to be done. And here I am heading off to Peru instead of doing it. Sometimes I feel like a fucking hypocrite for sure.

First Photo Ever on This Blog

2012-01-09T09:31:00.000-08:00

Okay: This is the first photo I've ever put up. I just found it. It's a picture of my Cold Beer Blues Bar/Cevicheria Madeleina in Iquitos Peru. It was a very very very cool place. This was taken by JT Cathey. If he objects, then I'll take it down. But for the next few minutes, here it is.
The bar was simple, serving mostly beer and a few local liquors. We served fantastic food. We had a good selection of blues music as well as good Peruvian music. We had one of my High Times softball team jerseys on the wall. The team was called The Bonghitters and that's what people saw when they saw the jersey. We had the skull of a 15 foot black caiman on the bar in a corner and the old skin of a 20' anaconda on one wall above the windows. Our clients were US ex-pats, DEA agents, US Special Forces, Peruvian drug dealers, pilots with the CIA--sometimes all at once. Why? Because we were the only joint in town that was anything like a real New York bar--in the sense that when you came in you were who you wanted to be and left the heck alone if that's what you wanted. Hell of a place.

Okay, There's My President

2012-01-05T05:52:00.001-08:00

So two days ago I was explaining recess appointments to Madeleina, how I really wanted Obama to make a couple of dozen of them. I wanted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director named, National Labor Relations Board members names, I wanted a couple of dozen judgeships filled around the country: You know the jobs that normally get filled either through congress or recess appointments.
And when I thought the window of opportunity had passed, I wrote that wailing last blog piece. But then, my pres came out and made the first recess appointments we needed. Good for him. Madeleina wanted to know if it was a good thing that happened and I gave her both my point of view and the opposition point of view. I think she liked my point of view that it was a good thing, that we need a president who will do what every other president has done and just be freaking presidential now and then. That's why they have the power of recess appointments--even if that power was initially given to the president because congress met much more infrequently 150 years ago.
So good. As Julio said once when I told him about meeting a terrifying entity during an ayahuasca dream: Do you have cojones, Pedro? Grab your balls! If the monster is 100 feet tall, make yourself 150 feet tall!
Good on Obama.
And then, Madeleina and I sat down to a nice meal of roast chicken with rice and gravy and a side of steamed broccoli. We didn't eat much chicken but boy that gravy on the rice was good!

Where the Hell was Obama?????

2012-01-03T18:13:00.000-08:00

Today, Jan. 3, 2012, Congress recessed for a few seconds before entering the new Congressional session. Where the hell was my president? I wanted him to be fair, but the Resnubs are idiots, not fair, just opportunistic and obstructionist. So I fully expected my president, Barack Obama, to fill maybe 130 federal vacancies in those few seconds between sessions when sessions were officially out and the president gets to wield actual power. I wanted judges put in place. If the Republicans didn't want middle of the road judges--and wouldn't even vote on them--I fully expected my president to put in very Left Judges, just to show them what the freak is in store. If they don't want people running business overhaul, then I want the most tough people in place. Let them suffer for the their mean-spiritedness.
But my president, President Obama, didn't fill those slots during the few seconds he had. He could have appointed 20 people in 10 seconds. I'm very disappointed. I don't have a big dick, but I have bigger balls than anyone can imagine. And I was hoping that my president might have a decent set as well.
Yo! Pres! When are you going to give the people who elected you the freaking hard on we elected you to give? Time to fuck the idiots, get it? When are you going to show the balls to do it?
I expect you to have the ability to throw a few people off of tall rooves. That's New York mob style. If you don't have that in you, then you shouldn't be walking, much less talking, much less president.
Show your balls, My president. Let them shine.

Should Lovers Sit Together While Doing Ayahuasca

2012-01-02T16:50:00.000-08:00

On a board to which I occasionally post, someone has posed the question of why some curanderos don't allow couples to sit together. Some people say it's hogwash. I don't think so. I think couples tend to interfere with one another during a very private time. I learned that from experience.
So this is what I wrote on that thread:

I'll start by saying that in general--and there are exceptions--ayahuasca is not, in my experience, a group situation. Which doesn't mean you don't drink in a group, but when you are in the medicine, and when you are in your dream, you are very alone. And I think you want to be alone. Scary, yes, but that's what the curandero is there for.
That said, when people come on my trips, I don't force couples to be apart if they want to be together, but I do encourage it. Why? Well, often, one person in the couple thinks the couple is stronger than it actually is. The other person may not feel that way, at least not having come all the way to the Amazon to explore their soul. Sometimes that's confided in me beforehand, sometimes after the first ceremony.
More than that, there is a temptation to watch out for those we love. I remember once when my wife and I were quite close during a ceremony, and at the time we were very much in love, and she was struggling. She was moaning painfully, occasionally cursing under her breath. I tried to leave her alone but eventually leaned over and asked if she was alright.
She simply opened her eyes for a moment and asked what the hell I was doing invading and interfering with her dream.
That was more than 15 years ago and I took it to heart. Even with people who are not lovers, I have a rule that no one, no one will interfere with anyone. I don't care if someone is vomiting on themselves and screaming "help me". No interference. My team and I will see to that person in a way that will not interfere. But if someone nearby, and it happens more often with couples or good friends who are near or next to one another, reaches over and touches that person in an attempt to calm them, or talks to them, or interferes in any way, well, you just have to know that more often than not, that apparent "crisis" came on at EXACTLY the moment when the heavens were about to reveal the secret purpose of that person's life, or the purpose of all life or something else just as startlingly vital. And when you, as a neighbor or lover interfere by asking if you can help or if anything is wrong, well, you took that moment away. That call of "help me" might have been aimed at an angel, but us humans might hear it as a call for help. So when the angel was going to help, us humans interfered and the angel, who has it's own life, simply moved on.
So no interference is the rule. And it's difficult, difficult, for people who love each other, to restrain themselves from trying to help.
That said, I will admit that I have held both of my sons when they were in their early teens and very frightened. And I once asked someone to hold me when I thought I would die from fear. In my son's cases, my holding them didn't interfere. In the case where my fear got the best of me, my cowardice certainly interfered.
So I think the reason that couples are often separated is simply that one will work with the other, trying to help, and even if they don't touch or talk, they will be interfering with the work.
I think it's for the same reason that couples are rarely, in my experience, allowed to diet together. You can't be working on you if you're working on making sure the other person is getting the work done. And you probably can't help the other person do the work. So it's probably better that one diet's in January and the other in March, so to speak.
Just my experience.

Might Help Someone

2012-01-02T05:51:00.000-08:00

Someone on a board to which I occasionally post asked for help with a malignant melanoma. There are some things used to reduce tumors in western Amazonia that might help this person. I think they will. I am not a doctor, so this is just passing along information that I have seen work sometimes even in extreme cases. At the worse, I've never seen this material produce anything negative in anyone. It's just something that might help someone someday. THIS DOES NOT TAKE THE PLACE OF STANDARD THERAPIES, okay? This would be in addition, or prior. Check with your doctor, please.
The plant materials are available through many sites. Fresh is optimum, but may not always be available. To find vendors, just punch in the name of one of the ingredients.
This is what I wrote and I hope it helps:

I think sacha jergon with una de gato might help a lot. If you're in Peru, get fresh material. 3 or 4 good sticks of una de gato in 3 liters of cool water. Steep at very low heat for several hours until you've reduced it to 1- 1/2 liters. During last hour, put in about 1/4 (two ounces) of a medium sized, fresh sacha jergon--a nice pie shaped piece.
When done, strain. Drink about one ounce three times a day. If you find you have loose stools, cut back to 1/2 ounce for a day or two.
The una de gato will eliminate excess fluid in your system--which is why it's good for arthritis, bursitis, etc--and if you find you have very dry and difficult-to-pass stools, drink extra water daily to give your system enough fluids.
Additionally, you might want to make an extract of medio renako tree bark and drink that along with the una de gato/sacha jergon. For that, get fresh medio renako bark--you can order it at the market in Belen--and let it sit in aguar diente for a few days. If you don't have aguar diente, use 80 proof plain vodka. Drink one ounce twice daily. If your system cannot have alcohol, cook the medio renako bark in water, similarly to the way you cook the una de gato.
Good luck.

Happy New Year, Everyone!

2012-01-01T09:37:00.000-08:00

Well, we made it. We're into 2012. Now, what kind of a year are we going to make it? Will we all work alone and try to get our personal dreams fulfilled or will we work together and make a better world for everybody? Will we keep our eyes and ears open and make political decisions one by one--decisions with an eye toward making this a better worlde--or will we follow some party line without utilizing our own critical thinking and wind up living in a world of someone else's vision?
Will we all give a little more time, effort, money, whatever we have, even if it's a smile, to someone who needs it, including people making a living doing those annoying phone solicitations? You and I and we all know they'd rather be doing something else but circumstances force them to sit at a table with a computer and make hundreds of calls daily to people who mostly curse at them.
You all get the point. I think it would be a better world with more giving, sharing, loving, especially when it's hard. So I'm going to try to do my best to do that. Will it make a difference? I don't know. I know it won't make things worse.
AND, NOW THAT I'VE SAID THAT....about 45 minutes ago I asked Madeleina what she was going to do for exercise today. She noted that it's vacation. I said that the food I make was to be used for fuel, not storage and to get her butt outside and get something done in the way of exercise. She asked what that might be? I told her she could paint one or both of the bridges over the runoff creek now that Mike and Martin repaired the one that needed it and I bought fresh paint and brushes.
She scoffed. "That's not exercise. Maybe for an old man like you..."
How about mowing some lawn?
"That mower could kill me..."
"Then get the leaves out of the gutter..."
"You said you were going to do that."
"No, darling, you suggested you'd do it..."
"Yeah, dad, about two months ago. Then you said to remind you, because you were going to do it..."
"No, you were to remind me that it needed doing and that you'd volunteered."
"I'm not doing that."
"It's not hard. You just put on some gloves and get the ladder a bag and put the leaves in it. Then move the ladder until it's done."
"We don't even have gloves..."
"I know. Us poor people take a plastic bag and turn it inside out and put it on our hands and pretend it's a glove..."
"I cannot believe you're asking me to do that. I hate you."
With that I was off to take a shower. When I came out she was on the ladder,barefoot, a bag on her right hand, scooping out the leaves from the gutter while singing at the top of her lungs: "Only Jesus can save you now, you sinner...." or somesuch--it wasn't a religious song, I can tell you that!--and having a ball. When she moved the ladder and the ivy caught onto its legs she threatened the poor plant with death if it ever dared interfere with her ladder again.
It took all of 25 minutes, including retrieving the ladder and sweeping up the bits that fell onto the flagstone. Nonetheless, when she came in she was seriously pouting. I called to her and she ignored me. I called again--she was only 10 feet away--and this time she responded.
"You know what you now have?" I asked.
"No," she answered.
"Well, you officially have a legitimate story that you can exaggerate to your kids someday."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about one day when you have kids or nephews or nieces or whatever, and they don't want to work you can tell them the story of the New Year's day when your dad forced you outside without a jacket and made you climb a ladder barefoot to clean the gutters with no gloves. And it's a true story, sort of. Just leave out the part that it was 60-degrees and that you refused to wear shoes or a jacket. Let them imagine the cold. That should get their attention. And no need to tell them that the gutters are all of 8 feet above the ground, either. Trust me, it's a great story."
"You might be able to justify cruelty to children, dad, but I can't. And I'm never having children, either, given how you treat them!"
And with that she cut herself a nice slice of last night's chocolate bit/walnut laced banana bread and poured a heaping tablespoon of sweet condensed milk on top of it. "At least I deserve a little breakfast after all that work!"
Happy new year, everybody! Let's make it the best one yet.

New Year's Eve, Last Week of Food for the Year Plus a Little Sadness

2011-12-31T16:54:00.000-08:00

Good evening, everybody. It's New Year's Eve, about 7 PM Texas time. I hope all of you are with loved ones and I hope all of you are setting up for a fantastic celebration to bring in the new year. 2012. I was riding in the car with Madeleina today and we were headed to get a steak--which we have not had in weeks--and then fireworks and it suddenly occurred to me that she has been with me more than a decade. A decade! That's a long time. And her decade was up April 9, 2007, so she's closing in on a decade-and-a-half. Wow! I have loved her a long time, if you include loving her spirit 40 years before I actually got to meet her.
I am very glad she's my daughter.
She just laughed and said that she remembers me when my hair was brown and my beard was dark brown with a bit of red, rather than gray hair and white beard. Ah, so while my older brother is dragging me up in age after him, my youngest baby is pushing me up from the bottom. Damn. Couldn't they just have left me alone at 41?
So this week we ate well. I don't remember all the meals but I do remember that the day before Christmas we had a vegetarian lasagna packed with garlic and onions and broccoli and spinach and yellow and green squash. Plus tomatoes, of course, and good ricotta and good parmesan and good mozzarella. That was a good meal.
Christmas we had corned beef and cabbage with boiled potatoes and good mustard. That was freaking divine.
Day after Christmas we had my version of fajita: Garlic/onion/scallions in good olive oil. When the onions are see-through I added the marinated skirt steak sliced thin and browned that with lots of butcher cut black pepper. When that was near cooked I added half-moons of roma tomatoes, sliced red and green pepper and onion slices. Plus good spices, many of them from Peru: Achote, a little cumino, paprica. Then some good white vinegar for bite, and then finished off with chicken stock for a juice--mixed with pan juices--and plenty of fresh cilantro. Served over rice. WOW!
Next day, Seafood Soup. I got a pound of shrimp, peeled them, and cooked the peels, dry, in a thick sauce pan, till they were bright red. Added onion and celery ends and water and pepper. Cooked that down for a couple of hours, replenishing water as need be, till I had about 2 cups of shrimp shell essence.
In the big pot I cooked diced garlic and onion and celery in olive oil, added the shrimp, then diced tomatoes, then a couple of ounces of a decent Hennessey I keep just for those occasions but otherwise never never touch. When that burned off I added the shrimp shell essence, a nice dash of very hot Crab Boil and then (TOTAL CHEATING) two cans of Campbell's cream of tomato soup, a cup of milk and half a stick of butter.
When it was rolling I added fresh calamari, cut small, and scungilli, cut small, some mussels, fresh, half-a-pound of crayfish. Let that cook for a minute, then added a big handful of fresh cilantro. Let that cook for two minutes, then added nice angel hair pasta, not too much, and served the soup with a very very good rye bread that Emily brought in--and has been kept in the freezer--a few weeks ago. Apple slices were served on the side to cool the stomach. MAN, THAT WAS GOOD!!!!!
Next day, hamburgers: Just good old fashioned hamburgers on hot buns with sauteed onions, tomatoes, dill pickles, mustard and ketchup--Heinz, of course. Served that with mixed veggies.
Next day, Thursday, I was going to make a rice mash--ground beef, garlic and onions and diced tomato--but changed my mind and made Cuban beef with yellow rice. Colored the garlic rice with achote, and to the well cooked and grease drained beef I added garlic, diced onions, diced tomatoes, a can of good black beans, a can of good pinto beans, more diced tomatoes, a can of chicken stock. When it was the texture of a good beefy tomato sauce with a Spanish flavor, I added dried culantro from Peru, fresh cilantro from Mexico, a bit of white vinegar, a couple dozen small hot charapita peppers from Peru--substitute good fresh jalepeno slices if you don't have charapitas--and you won't--though they are a poor substitute. Served over the yellow rice. That was served with sliced cucumber with lime just to keep the stomach cool and the ulcers at bay. MAN, THAT WAS GOOD!
Yesterday it was sauteed salmon with roasted sesame seeds and garlic served with a slice of left over veggie lasagna. MAN, that was GOOD!
And tonight it's a sauteed chuck steak with garlic and sliced onions. Served with sliced new potatoes simmered in chicken stock. With steamed broccoli and sauteed organic beefsteak tomatoes topped with sauteed garlic in olive oil and shredded parmesan cheese. With good black pepper, hold the salt.
And in the oven, because we're pigs and it's New Year's Eve, is a fresh loaf of semi-sweet chocolate bit/walnut studded banana bread. If there is any room. I'm full just talking about the meals we had this week.
The good part was that Chepa visited a couple of times, and so did Marco and Italo came for dinner and a movie a couple of times.
The excellent part is that Madeleina is better at the piano after 6 days than I was after three years.
The sad part is that Chepa and her boyfriend--who came to town for the occasion--and the babies, went to Chepa's sister's house. And Italo and Sara and my grandbaby Taylor Rain went to a friends' home.And Marco is staying in his den. So Madeleina and I have this wonderful food and a table worth of fireworks and nobody to share it with. And that's just freaking sad. How the hell did I break this family up so badly? Dammit! Note for next life: Don't f. with your family. They're important.
So we'll eat well and set off some fireworks and call in the new year and hope it's the best year. But in our hearts there is a little hole because both Madeleina and I know I messed it all up a long time ago. And most of the time you don't see the tears, the rent in the cloth, but on special days it seems there's a microscope blowing up everything.
So we're sad but we're good and we're strong and we'll go blast those fireworks anyway. And then eat a couple of bites of steak and broccoli, making sure we leave enough room for a bit of chocolate/walnut banana bread.
Happy New Year, everyone. Be safe/be loved.

Damn if the Gods Don't Have a Sense of Humor

2011-12-29T15:21:00.000-08:00

I'm sure anyone reading this blog knows how I feel about rats. The big rodents, the Amazon Majas and their like, I eat because they're the best darned meat out there, the only meat with any fat on them, and when you're walking a hundred kilometers or more you need a bit of fat.
But I really hate house rats. More than that, I'm terrified of them. They are my one real phobia. So a couple of months ago when one got into my roof, I was able to deal with it. But when the 600 pound monster ran across my feet I went out and got two cats to get it gone. And the cats, while they eat pounds of food daily and utterly distain using their boxes to poop in--giving me a 20 minute chore daily of cleaning up their leavings from the back room/laundry room floor--are worth their pain.
But then there is god. Give the big spirits any name you want and that's the one I'm talking about. The universal laughing stick that makes you deal with things you don't want to deal with. Know what he/she/it did? Had Marco break the back window of my Ford Ranger when he was loading garbage. And now, a rat has moved into my truck. He hides under the dashboard and sometimes drops his lanky tail on my shin while I'm driving. That's all. Nothing horrible, except that I've got to drive with the little sucker terrifying me, hiding, being nearby.
I know I must have done something to have earned this. And I could have sealed up the broken rear window even if I couldn't have afforded to have it repaired. But those of you who saw Talladega Nights know that you have to learn to drive with your fear if you want to overcome it. And while my driving with a freaking rat in the car is not the same as Will Ferrel driving with a cougar in the car, to me, I'd take the cougar anytime.
So I've been driving with this freaking rat in my car for a month. And I'm about to end it. Maybe tomorrow. I've driven with my fear long enough. And I'm still scared. But I've done it. And I'm gonna put the two cats in the car and leave them there for a couple of hours. I'm sure I'll have to clean up their damned poop, but that will be a small price to pay if they can get that freaking rodent out of my car and life.
But you know, I got to love this universe of ours. Only on this level are things like fear of rats so richly challenged. Which is, I guess, one of the reasons the spirits so want to taste our sensations. My palpable fear of the little creature dropping it's tail on my shin has got to be worth a fortune of knowingness without sensation.
I'm very glad I have this time here to enjoy/love/suffer these wonderful feelings of vitality, frailty, love, love lost, lonliness, joy, the whole damned human package. Thanks, Universe! You're the Bees Knees of emotional exposure.

First Running Steps

2011-12-27T16:24:00.000-08:00

I've probably already misled you with that title. I've got my granddaughter Taylor Rain Gorman and she's 4 months or so shy of two and "First Running Steps" might well apply to her: She's at that age where her body pushes with its strength to run, but at the same time her upper body isn't so connected to her lower body to allow that without a lot of stumbling. So the title doesn't refer to her. And it certainly doesn't refer to Alexa, just turned 4 last week and a girl with a twitch muscle everybody should be envious of: She can run like the wind, endlessly and joyfully and almost disappears from view because she runs so fast and furiously that you're still looking at where she was long after she's no longer anywhere within the parameters of that line of sight.
No, the reference was to me. It's been four years since an ulcer on my intestine exploded and 3 liters of very poisonous material burst into my system, burning my organs and nearly killing me. It didn't and that was great. A subsequent operation was necessary to put my insides back in after I tore open the stitching and staples a few weeks after the initial operation and then the third operation, completely open, was necessary to drain me again then sew me up with stretch bandages inside that were meant to keep me together.
No sweat. I kept acting like I was normal, but I knew I'd ruptured the thing three months after they sewed it into me. And last year my doc confirmed it. No situps, no heavy lifting. Just be content to be a fat old man was his advice.
Good advice if I were an old man, but I'm just me so naturally I kept taking my tours out, kept carrying 100 boxes of veggies when necessary, kept mowing and raking lawns, kept lifting babies and when given the opportunity, kept making love.
Last summer, while with my baby Madeleina, who'd just turned 14, I got depressed that my upper and lower body were not talking to one another. I started walking in Iquitos. Maybe 3 miles a day, incrementally: I'd walk from the hotel to the market and then to my friend Miriam's, maybe 2 miles altogether. Then I'd walk back to the hotel and then back to Miriams.
When I got home, Madeleina wanted me to chase her one day and I couldn't and she asked me if I would ever run again. I laughed and told her that at my very best I was a slow runner and that these days it was a question yet to be answered.
But I did start walking. Fast walking. I would walk around Walmart before going in to buy my dog's chicken and test my blood pressure. I'd walk around Central Market before going in to buy organic veggies and good fish (Sorry veggies and fish. I wish I didn't have to kill you to eat, but it's either you or smashing beans....damn!)
AND THEN I discovered the new little park they built in Joshua, about half a mile from Chepa's house and its 1/2 mile walk. And I began to do 1 turn on that, then 2, then three, plus the Walmart, Central Market, HEB walks. And it was good. And it's been good.
Running was not something I was thinking of. But then today, six or seven months since I began fast walking and trying to make my upper body and lower body know each other again, Madeleina decided to chase me out of the house. And when she did, my body, without me thinking about it, started to run. I'd like to tell you I ran like the wind. I wish I told you I ran 400 yards in a breakneck 46 seconds. I won't. I ran all of 80-100 feet, but I ran. And while I ran I started to laugh. My body knew itself. Maybe out of sorts but it knew itself. It has not known itself for years. And today, in a moment of joy a exhileration--and I know I'm spelling that wrong, darn it--my body just decided to run. Not fast, not cool, but real running: up on my toes, torso forward, legs pumping in unison with arms. And I didn't have to think it. It just happened.
So while I probably misled you with the title of this entry, I didn't mean to. Because for me, these were wonderful, fantastic, joyful, first running steps. And I was happy.

Being Dad at Christmas

2011-12-23T12:39:00.001-08:00

So someone asked me yesterday how I was doing. He was a fellow about my age, with grandkids in tow.
"Same as you! We're dad's and granddads at Christmas....we're broke but happy!"
He laughed and that was that.
But it's true. Seems to me it doesn't matter how old your kids are, if you're one of those people raised on Santa, well, when it's Santa time you give it all up. Doesn't even matter if 80 percent of what you buy isn't going to be used, or will be sold in a garage sale in six months, you still beg, borrow and steal to make it happen.
Okay, I admit that having written that, I feel like a fool for having just spent money I don't have on things people don't need. But they're not just people, they're my family and I think that makes a difference.
So what are they getting? Well, they all get something big, something medium, a few little things and then stocking full of things they need, like deodorant, body wash, new razors, whoopie cushions, salt water taffy, that sort of thing.
Italo's big thing this year is a good quality metal detector. Both Chepa and Italo's wife Sara said he'd been talking about one for months. He'll probably use it for a week, but who cares? I've always wanted one and if he doesn't use it, I'll use it in Peru some day.
Marco's big thing is I made his car--a recent present--legal. That means paid the taxes, inspection, registration and change in title. And his insurance for a year.
Madeleina's big thing: A lovely spinnet piano. Used of course, but only 40-years-old. Just had it delivered. I think she'll be wild and play all the time. If not, I'll sell the thing to the next dad.
Of course Chepa, Sara, Sierra, Alexa and Taylor Rain Gorman got good stuff too. And Madeleina was a dream: She spent parts of two days wrapping everything except her stuff, occasionally letting me know that one stocking or another was thin, or that "Italo really needs another present, dad. I mean, who the hell really wants a metal detector? Nobody. So don't forget to spend a lot on at least one other thing he won't use, okay?"
Her comments cost me about $200 in extra stocking gifts alone, and I still have not bought the next future-junk for Italo.
On the other hand, I waited so long to buy a Christmas tree that I can't find one. I'll give it another shot, of course, but if all else fails, I told Madeleina we'd just put some lights and candy cane on the upright vacuum and pretend. That got me a half-dozen good THWACKs! to my arm, and she's big enough now that her punches hurt.
Anyway, I had a good time shopping and taking care of it all, and I think Madeleina had a good time getting her first real taste of what it's like to wrap 60 things. So I don't have any money to pay the bills next month and I'm a grand in the hole to a cash advance. What the heck. It's Christmas, eh?
I hope your stockings are all filled with love and dreams come true and that this coming year is fantastic in every way for all of you who read this--and even all of you who don't.
Merry Christmas, everyone!

Did You Hear the One About the Medical Marijuana Patient...

2011-12-17T11:02:00.000-08:00

I write a column for Skunk magazine out of Montreal. It's a pot magazine and I get to write a column about the politics/insanity of the drug war. It's called Drug War Follies. I love writing that column. I hate passing on the news that I do, but love the freedom of a column.
This is the opening piece--there are generally three or four--for an upcoming column. This is the world we live in, for real.

You know, one of these days I’d like to be writing a column about how my local pot store just bonus’d me out with a quarter-pound of good outdoor, organic California Orange, or how cool it is to attend a rave in one of the hundreds of empty prisons around the country—empty because no one is being arrested for non-violent drug crimes anymore because drugs had been legalized. Yes, one of these days I’d like to start out a column talking about loading up a pipe and having a moment of bliss celebrating the end to the madness.
But it’s not time for that yet, you little maggots! It’s not nearly time for that because the insanity continues and the horror keeps happening. Yes, your brothers, your sisters, people who might have been your friends had you met them in this life are getting fucked this very minute by a rigged system. They’re losing their freedom, they’re losing their homes to forfeiture, they’re losing their medicine to a federal government that can’t relinquish its control over marijuana to the states. Right this second there are probably hundreds of people around the US and Canada who are frightened to death because they’ve just been busted or because they see a narc squad coming to their door. So keep your daydreams in your head and get out there and do something, anything to help bring awareness to the point where those freaking daydreams can become our reality. Occupy the Madness! End this fucking war on drugs!
You’re probably wondering why I’m lashing out today. Well, I’ll tell you. Couple of things are stuck in my craw. Name one? Okay, how about the medical marijuana patient in California being turned down for a kidney transplant because he failed a pre-transplant drug test?
Did you get that? Those who are not choking on whatever you’re eating this minute should go back and read that again. Or I’ll just write it again: Did you hear about the medical marijuana patient in California who was turned down for a kidney transplant because he failed a pre-transplant drug test for medical marijuana?
No, that’s not a joke. And I wish I’d heard about it sooner because it’s a story that happened months ago, but it’s still worth puking over. It seems that 63-year-old Norman B. Smith was “diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer” in 2009, according to a November, 17 press release from Americans for Safe Access, and was put on the eligible list for a liver transplant at Cedars-Saini Medical Center in Los Angeles. Smith’s oncologist at Cedars-Saini personally approved his cannabis use to help deal with the awful side effects of chemotherapy.
Last February, Smith was screened for drug use and cannabis was detected, leading the medical center to take him off their transplant list two months before he was to receive his transplant.
To get back on the list, if he’s permitted at all, Smith will have to test negative for cannabis for at least six months. And then he’ll wait for a liver transplant. Whether he can live through that extra time is unknown.
So you get that, right? Guy has inoperable liver cancer. His cancer doc, who works at Cedars-Saini puts him on medical marijuana at the same time he gets him on the list for a liver transplant. Then the guy is screened for drugs, tests positive for his medical marijuana and is kicked off the transplant list. What the….!!!!!
“Denying necessary transplants to medical marijuana patients is the worst kind of discrimination” said ASA chief counsel Joe Elford, who noted that the medical center would not be breaking any laws, federal or otherwise, if it allowed Smith to get the transplant.
Keeping things dismal, the ASA press release noted that there were at least two other cases, one in Washington State in 2008 and another in Hawaii in 2009 where medical marijuana recipients were denied liver transplants and died.
I am not making this shit up. This is the world we live in and if we don’t change it, no one will.

Stuffed Mushrooms

2011-12-16T11:42:00.000-08:00

So I had friends in, which was delightful, for most of the past two weeks. One came, one went, just passing through, dropping a little stardust into my life.
But one night this week I had one friend who is mostly vegetarian, glucose intolerant, won't eat eggs, no milk.
Another was vegan, can't eat eggs, no milk.
Okay, so what to make?
Both would eat a little cheese.
Okay, so I started with my basic basmati rice. Cook garlic in a little olive oil till the garlic is ready. Add water with a touch of sea salt. When water is boiling, add rice. Stir rice on high flame till 80 percent of the water is absorbed, about 7=8 minutes. Turn down to very low, cover tightly and let it cook for another half hour or so, stirring to fluff once or twice during that time.
Then I made a nice spaghetti squash: cut squash in half, eliminate seeds, score lightly both length and width, put both halves in a roasting pan. Put thin slices of butter, maybe five or six, atop each side, bent in so that it will drip into the center. Cook at 350 for about an hour. Take that out, use a large spoon to remove all the gorgeous squash.
Heat a little garlic and olive oil. Toss in diced red pepper. When pepper is nearly done, put in the squash and stir till well mixed and smelling scrumptious. Top with some fresh minced scallions or parsley or cilantro.
I made a veggie nice stir fry to put atop the rice.
And ten I decided to make stuffed mushrooms. I bought mid-sized baby portabellas. Stem them, chop stems (no bread, remember?) Sautee finely chopped stems in garlic and olive oil. I did it in two separate pans. In one pan I added finely diced walnuts; in the other I added raisins.
To the walnut stuffing I added good crumbled blue cheese and stuffed half the shrooms with that mix.
To the raisin stuffing I added good swiss (a nice home-shreded Ementhaler). I stuffed the other mushrooms with that.
A couple of mushrooms got both the raisins and walnuts.
I heated the shrooms for a minute in the hot saute pans, transfered to a baking dish and baked till the shroom meat was tender and juicy.
They were really rich. No fooling.
I will refine those stuffings a bit next time, but for a first-time invention, they were darned tasty.
So make them.

My Madeleina, Growing Up

2011-12-11T16:37:00.001-08:00

My Madeleina keeps growing up. Yesterday, while I was doing all those manly things, like collecting and then dumping garbage bags, and raking collecting leaves, Madeleina was not helping a lot. When she helped she sat next to one of the seven piles of leaves and talked with them before she put them in the bag. Good for spirit communication, bad for getting work done.
This morning, with just a couple of piles left to collect, she said she couldn't help. "I can't be the one who puts them in a bag and curtails their freedom by making them 'fence mulch', dad. It just isn't in my blood."
Half-an-hour later, while I was in the middle of a pod cast interview to the Ukraine about ayahuasca, she found it in her heart to pass me a note that read: "As Queen of this Empire, I declare that you have to go to the corner store and buy me the biggest chocolate ice cream cone they sell. NOW....or ELSE...."
Well, that put me in my place and I read the note over the radio and Madeleina said that since I'd made the pronouncement to all who would hear the podcast, I definitely owed her the cone.
I got it as soon as I finished the radio show.
Tomorrow a guest is coming in to stay for a week or so. So I told Madeleina that we needed to clean the house, and in particular, one room, the room the guest will stay in. She looked at me quizzically. "Dad. Let's face it. If they're your friend, they're already impressed with you. And so you can't do any wrong. So I don't need to clean to impress anyone. And if they're not your friend, you have to ask why the hell you invited them here into our home? I mean, if you need to impress them with cleanliness, then what's the point, eh?"
She's a clever little demon, isn't she?
But then she's also a kid. After we fast walked a couple of miles and were at the store buying lots and lots of vegetables and fruit, she met me at the truck. "Dad, I saw so many of my friends today it was unbelievable!"
She ran down the people she knows whom she'd run into. Then she changed tac.
"I was getting some acne sponges and in the aisle was a girl, probably 13, who looked like she was dealing with pimples for the first time. She was reaching for things but when she saw me looking at her she put them back. I finally walked up to her and told her, 'Don't worry. We all have a few pimples when we're thirteen. You'll get over it.' "
I just looked at her for a moment. This is a girl who was just getting her first pimples six or nine months ago. Now she's the expert, helping a newcomer through the ordeal.
Well, all I can do is smile. That's my baby. And I'm keeping her. She's the best. Crazy, perfect in the same breath, without a comma.
Thanks for being my baby, baby. My world wouldn't be at all as rich if I didn't know you, Madeleina.

Manly Day, Ending Badly

2011-12-10T17:09:00.000-08:00

Well, it started off as a manly day, but it's not ending in a pretty way.
I was up at 4:30 AM, fresh coffee in hand at 4:40 and read through four newspapers and the Huffington Post by 8. Put my clothes on, brushed my teeth, combed my hair, took my blood pressure medicine, fed the cats and began tossing the bags of trash into the back of my pickup by 9:30. By 10:30 I'd brought the trash to the dump and emptied my truck, had walked a mildly-manly but fast 1/2 mile around the track fast and come home and made Madeleina a good breakfast. I cleaned the kitchen, in a manly way, then took a manly nap. At 1 I got up and saw that I'd sold 10 copies of my book today--a lot--and then went out and raked all those beautiful leaves that fell like snow, like rain, the other day in the cold. Seven manly piles of about three large garbage bags each and I collected 4 of them, Madeleina collected one and we put them by the front fence. Emptied them on the front fence, outside, and told Madeleina it was fence mulch, to keep the weeds from growing there next summer.
"Nice try, dad, but I think you're just being too lazy to carry the leaves all the way back to the corner where we have all the mulch from the last 10 years. You know, the perpetually steaming pile of grass cuttings and leaves that will one day burst into flames and consume us all?"
Of course, she was right. I just didn't feel like doing those extra manly steps to way back there, particularly since the goats were in their own manly moods and bucking me every time they had a chance.
Getting on 3:30 PM, I decided to mow the lawn that had sprung up underneath the freshly fallen leaves--it looked like me, ready for a haircut--but discovered I was out of manly gas. So I strode mightily around the grounds until I found a plastic gasoline container and brought it to the truck for fueling. Then I told Madeleina to make haste and we were off to Walmart. I wish I could tell you that we were off to the local produce store, but it was closed, being Saturday. En route, I did another manly half-mile walk around the park, then walked a full mile around the Walmart Supercenter before entering.
I checked my blood pressure in a manly way while Madeleina looked for girly bluejeans. She's a girl so that was appropriate.
"Dad!!!!" she would exclaim later, "I'm down two sizes!!!! I am the blast, daddy-o!!!" and all I could do was smile in a simple dadly--not particularly manly but nicely dadly--way. Good for her. She's working hard and beginning to lose her baby fat and is so beautiful that when she smiles the whole world gets a little better.
And while she shopped for the jeans--we are going to the athletic store tomorrow for new sneakers for both of us--I shopped for spinach, chicken thighs, red onions--all manly things--plus a little fairly manly sharp cheddar cheese and sweetened condensed milk for the pretty manly banana bread I'm going to bake in a manly way tonight.
And so all that was manly and rigorous, more or less.
But all of it took all my manly prowess and when I came home and discovered that the little kittens had shit 12 times out of the box and on the floor, I lost my manliness and began crying like a Boehner. I really had a hissy-Gingrich fit and nearly sent snot up my Palin nose. Nonetheless I did a Pelosi, held my nose and cleaned up everybody else's shit, then did an Obama and washed it down with cleansing bleach so it wouldn't stink so bad, even if it was caused by my sworn enemies.
And then I washed my hands like Lyndon Johnson after he put his dick on the table in public view and dared the leaders of the Viet Cong to measure theirs to his, and began dinner. The dinner is a manly salmon filet in nice garlic'd olive oil, with a side of giant manly scallops, just four of them. All will be put on a bed of manly sauteed spinach--garlic olive oil and very manly balsamic vinegar with lots of good manly rough ground black pepper--and topped with a sauce I have not invented yet but which might include some ginger/diced onions/scallions/roasted sesame seeds, and which might just include some good shaved cheddar tonight just to check it out. I've got good and manly basmati rice left over from last night that's on low, and I have a small pot full of fresh green beans, yellow squash and broccoli that might work well as a veggie menage a trois if I can infuse a bit of fresh garlic and a videographer of olive oil and minced onion.
So it was all still going good till Madeleina, who presented me with a bill for her band for $244 this morning and the urgent, "Dad, I need this Monday. I don't know why you haven't paid it yet," plea, and then needed new jeans and now needs new sneakers tomorrow and then needs a real piano in January and refused to feed the goats, suddenly announced: "Dad, the Norton Anti-Virus program ran out today on my new computer. You better buy one now," and then suddenly, all the manly was gone from me. All the decency, all the strength. I have not paid the mortgage this month, or the water bill, or the electricity, or two of the three credit cards. Christmas is here and I don't know what the freak I'm supposed to do to fill those seven stockings or buy presents and I am doing as many manly things as possible but I cannot come up with another two hundred bucks for the Norton anti-virus. At least not on Saturday night.
So I screamed and yelled and in a very very un-manly manner tried to make Madeleina wish she'd never asked about that last straw.
But I know it wasn't manly on my part. It was just the little kid in me, afraid that I can't pay the bills this month and wondering if I'll be able to pay them next month. And I can do all the manly things in the world to puff myself up, but if I can't pay the bills, I'm not a hunter and if I'm not a hunter, I'm nothing. Not very manly at all.
But human.
Sorry I yelled, Madeleina.
I'll try to figure out something tomorrow. I'll do my best.

Christmas Shopping Book Special

2011-12-09T11:19:00.000-08:00

Alright, ladies and gents. After a series of nice posts, it's time to lay this on you. It's getting on the holidays. I have this book, Ayahuasca in My Blood--25 Years of Medicine Dreaming. Put the lines together: Yes, you want this book for all your friends, so that they can understand what the heck it is you're doing when down in Peru drinking medicine. So here's the deal: If you write me directly at peterg9 at yahoo.com and send $20 (if you're in the US only; outside the US it's $27) I'll have a book sent to you and it will include shipping. I think that's a $10 off holiday spirit thing. So what should you do? Order 30-40 copies? That way you'll be set for two years of holidays and marriage gifts! Or 100 copies just to make me smile? Yes, it would do that.
On the other hand, if you're gonna buy the book with money you would otherwise give to the Salvation Army or the local food bank, well, the hell with the stupid book. Go feed somebody, okay? That's way more important. I'm just giving you the option in case you've already fed people and still have family who expect real presents under the Holiday Bush or Tree, or wherever it is you put your presents.
So that's the deal and I'll stick with it till Christmas time--though if you don't order in the next few days I'm not gonna guarantee the books will get there by the holidays.

Here's a Little Poem Madeleina Found

2011-12-08T15:06:00.000-08:00

So years ago, I had friends in college who came out gay. I loved the female, so I didn't think I was, but I still supported them. And when the New York City Gay Rights marches began, I want to say 1970 or 1971, I was on the sidelines cheering. The first year there were five of us cheering on one of us as he proudly walked up 5th Avenue. Next year there were four of us cheering on the two of us proudly walking up 5th Avenue. Next year there was me, cheering on the 5 of us proudly marching up 5th Avenue.
Did I wonder if I was gay too? Yes. I still do. And if I am, I hope I will have the courage my friends had. But at the same time, I still get a freaking hard on thinking about the women I've loved, from K'O to Diane Z to Gail R to Gail B to Cl to AH, to Chepa to Gasd... to all of them. And I don't get the same reaction thinking about the boys or men in my life. I love them. I love seeing them. I just never had the urge to tongue kiss them. Unless I'm hiding it.
So two nights ago my friend Vic came in unexpectedly. I have not seen him since maybe 2001 in NYC. But he's gold in my book and if he wanted to stay a month that would be cool by me.
I've got a bookcase in the room I was going to put him in that has a shelf that's fallen and the day he was coming--he told me at noon, maybe, that he'd be here by 4, I bought those little plastic things you put in book cases to keep the shelves up. And when I picked Madeleina up I gave her a box of them and told her to fix the book case.
Now this book case holds a lot of the international magazines I've been published in, from Geo to Setta to German Playboy. In all, maybe 100. And the next shelf holds a lot of the tear sheets from the feature stories I've written in the last 10- years. And the other shelf has maybe 50 of my notebooks.
So while Madeleina was trying to fix the shelf that had fallen on one side, one of my spiral notebooks fell off the shelf and opened itself up to a little poem I'd written maybe 40 years ago, while my friends were marching up 5th Avenue.
I didn't know that until today, when she came into the living room just a few minutes ago and said:
Ideal Love
Created Above
Is not Enough
To Keep Us Here
From Going Queer
And I said: Man, that sounds like something I wrote a long time ago. Where did you find that?
"It's my new favorite poem, and you are my new favorite poet. Except that when I look at you I see just you and not a poet..."
"I'm the poet when I was in the moment. I'm the healer now when I'm in the healing moment. The rest of the time I'm just the me you know, fully flawed, absolutely dispensable and pretty worthless."
"Okay," she said. "I can deal with that. So you're generally a bum but then you have these moments..."
"You got it."
"Well, then I won't thank you but I will thank the poet moment in you who came up with
'Ideal Love,
Created above
Is not Enough
To Keep us Here
From Going Queer.'
"That's the cooliest, dad. It's just hard to imagine that you were that cool, even for a moment."
You just smile at that. Because that's your baby seeing a side of you trying to explain something very difficult to people in an era when it took extraordinary courage to take that walk up the middle of 5th Avenue in New York City. I'm not saying it takes less today, but I can tell you my friends thought long and hard about what it was to come out. They lost so much. Job opportunities, friendships, sometimes family members or even whole families. I salute their courage even today.

Raining Leaves

2011-12-08T09:20:00.001-08:00

Well, Texas suffered through just about the worst summer heat and wildfire season in memory this year, and then about a week ago it started raining and it rained for 3-4 days where I am, in bucolic Joshua, 25 miles south of Fort Worth. Each day it rained the weather grew colder, until yesterday, when it was 23 degrees F when I went to take Madeleina to school. But it was clear and bright and beautiful and that was a welcome sight, since I love a good blue sky and we had a deep blue yesterday morning.
And when I came back from taking Madeleina to school I turned into my driveway and was floored by what I saw. The big tree in my front yard, the one that hadn't even begun to turn colors yet, was raining leaves. Not wind driven leaves falling, but just hundreds, thousand of leaves raining down on the yard. I stood there in awe for maybe five minutes, went inside and poured a cup of coffee and then looked out the window for ten minutes more. Green leaves just raining down so beautifully. In no time they covered a thirty foot diameter circle on the ground. Half an hour later they were two inches deep. Another hour and there were maybe 100 leaves left on the tree. Boots the Wonderdog just ran around and around the tree as fast as he could, slipping and sliding and falling onto his side on the beautiful leaves. Over and over he ran around that tree.
It was simply gorgeous to watch the leaves raining down under that beautiful blue sky in the crisp late autumn air. I wish you all could have been here to see it.

Went to Sleep with a Bitter Taste on My Tongue

2011-12-05T03:38:00.000-08:00

Well, sometimes things are perfect and sometimes not. On the home front, in the last couple of weeks, Chepa's boyfriend has come into town a little more often than normally, both Halloween and Thanksgiving, and stayed several days, so I didn't get to see Chepa's little girls, Sierra and Alexa as often as normally do. And since my daughter-in-law Sara is strapped to Chepa's hip, it meant I didn't get to see my grandbaby Taylor as much either. And since my boys Marco and Italo are at odds, well, if one came over the other didn't. In other words, I'm not getting my two or three dinners with the family every week lately. And I really like those. I just like them being around.
Well, life happens, so it is what it is and rather than grouse, I've made a point of going over to Chepa's in the morning to see the girls before Sierra goes to school. That way I get to hug all the little ones and get to see Italo and Sara before they go to work, and get to take Madeleina to school if she stayed over at her mom's, or to have her with the family for breakfast if she stayed with me.
So all good. Well, Chepa surprised me and came over for dinner with everybody on Friday night and I whipped up some vegetarian tomato sauce and breaded some chicken cutlets and made chicken parmesan and in no time we all had a feast. And during dinner I suggested to Chepa that I'd like to take Madeleina and the babies to Fort Worth to go to Miss Mollies Candy and Toy Store on Saturday morning. It's the best best best toy store in town and even while I suggested it I knew I was gonna be in for hell once Sierra and Alexa got their eyes on those toys.
The next morning I got a call saying they were ready, so I told Madeleina to get some sneakers on, we were going to the toy store. When I went to pick up the girls, I made it clear that we were going to look at stuff they might need for Christmas, but we weren't buying stuff today. Sierra broke into tears. She didn't burst into tears, she just sort of started sobbing quietly, which I put an end to by tickling her, which caused her to break into laughter. I know that fake tear act of hers.
"But I just want to buy a toy for one dollar. Just one dollar, Mr. P Garman."
"No problem. You find something you like for a dollar and I'll buy you three of them. Or one toy for three dollars. Or one toy for two dollar and one for one dollar. Or 12 toys for twenty-five cents each!!!!!"
The girls were great at the store. No crying, no shoving stuff into my hands and insisting I buy it. They just had a blast playing in life-sized doll houses and with cars on a long and intricate wooden track, and then letting me know what Santa might bring them out of all those glorious things in there.
That was a beautiful morning.
And then last night. I'd finished scrubbing the kitchen--the job I started last week--and the laundry room and was watching football and when it was time for dinner I decided to make some stuffed shells and roasted chicken thighs. Chepa had Madeleina on Saturday night for a family party at one of her sister's homes--I stopped by briefly--and so was bringing her over for dinner with the girls and Marco as well. The stuffed shells were because it was cold and raining for the third day and night in a row and it felt like we needed something substantial.
So I cooked down fresh garlic in olive oil and a couple of tablespoons of finely diced salt pork, then added 8 ounces of fresh spinach and five leaves of fresh basil. When it was cooked down, I tossed that in a blender and added an egg. That resultant mash was poured into a bowl with 16 ounces of part skim milk ricotta cheese, stirred till beautifully married, added a touch of pepper and some good parmesan, then stuffed the large shells I'd made at the same time. I topped the shells with a light tomato sauce I also made at the same time--though it got an extra hour head start--and then some mozerella and baked them at 350.
They were done just as the chicken thighs were done. Perfect.
And then Chepa called. "You know, I'm not going there for dinner."
"Why not?"
"Because of those cats you have. I just want to throw up thinking about cat hair everywhere in the food."
"Chep, there's no cat hair in the food. There's no cat hair anywhere. It's coming on winter and cats and dogs don't shed till Spring. And even so, my house is so clean you could eat off the kitchen floor."
"You say. But not me. I don't like the cats in the house and making everything dirty. And the girls are allergic. You should get rid of them."
"The girls are not allergic. They love the cats."
"You are never going to have us for dinner till you get rid of those cats."
"What are you talking about? You just ate dinner here on Friday night."
"And I almost got sick with all that filthy cat hair...."
"You were hand feeding one of the cats while you ate. What are you talking about?"
"You are never going to change my mind. Just eat alone with your cats..."
It really was only going to go downhill, so I quietly hung up. But I was angry. I was hurt. I don't know what the heck is going on but it's as if the whole freaking family is pulling away and I don't think I'm doing anything wrong. But the cats as an excuse? The two baby kittens that the girls cart around like babies? The cats Chepa hand feeds?
Marco and Madeleina came and had a feast, topped with the nice banana bread I made for dessert, then went back to Chepas.
And I went to bed and had a million dreams but the one I woke up to was one wherein I was being forbidden to see my family. l kept asking why and couldn't get an answer.
And so I went to sleep with a bitter taste on my tongue and woke the same way. I'll figure it out, I guess, but right this moment, early on Monday morning, I don't like the taste at all.
'

Sorry, but Another Person Asked Something About Ayahuasca

2011-11-28T17:26:00.001-08:00

Sorry to all the people who want just family stuff and recipes. I get people who ask about ayahuasca and I think it's important to answer them as best as possible and today was one of those days when several people got in touch. I only wrote once about sapo, so here's something about Ayahuasca. This fellow D., wrote to say he'd read my book, appreciated it, but wondered about doing ayahuasca. Wondered whether his demons might not come out. Wondered whether Ayahuasca would just beat the shit out of him for no reason. Here's what I wrote in response:

Dear D.:Thanks for writing. Thanks for reading the book. Thanks for the good feedback.
Ayahuasca can be tough. You have to be soft and tough back. If she's the equivalent of a 100 foot impossible to climb mountain, you become a 2000 foot glacier to earn her respect.
I've never know Ayahuasca to pick on people. Will she go to dark places to root them out? Yes. Will she push you to change? Yes. Will she bully you for no reason other than that she can? No. She, like life, will give you opportunities to grow. Some of them are very freaking difficult. But none are beyond what you can handle, even if, at some given moments, you panic when dealing with them.
That's where, in my mind, a good curandero comes into play. He/She sees what you are going through and when they think you've had enough, they use their icaros, songs, to pull you out of the pain, the panic, the spiral. They are the ones who invited the spirits; they are the ones who can tell the spirits that the party is over and it's time to go. At least the good ones can.
So don't be afraid. Wary, yes.
Ridiculous, but I've a February trip coming up that includes some people who have some experience and a few people in your boat. All will come out better for it. All will be taken care of. And if one or two of them have demons come out, well, with a little spiritual help, my team and I will get those to either reconsider their positions or we'll dump them into the red room for a bit of a makeover. We don't like bully spirits on my trip.
If it is time for you, then join. It ain't cheap, but it's the real deal and I'm giving you the chance/choice. If not now, then you'll find something when you're ripe for it. You'll be fine. We're all scared to enter those realms. We'd be foolish not to be. But knowing you have someone who will get you through, the curandero, allows you to get through it much more easily.
Hope that helps.

A Note About Sapo

2011-11-28T06:40:00.000-08:00

Someone wrote to say that they heard that a Brazilian tribe's sapo--the frog secretions burned into your skin that clean you up, eliminate toxins, and sharpen your senses (great great liver/kidney flush)--was stronger than the Matses' sapo. I thought it worth addressing, so here's what I wrote:

Hello. I've never done any sapo except from the Matses, who are the first people known to have used it. The other groups that use it now got it from my writing about the Matses using it and from word of mouth, indigenous group to indigenous group. That's just a point of record in case someone else is claiming the distinction of being first.
Could the same frog in a different part of the Amazon have a stronger secretion? I guess they could, since it would depend on what they are eating which is what is turned into the sapo. I frogs in one area are eating more of the bug, or leaves that become sapo, then they'd have stronger secretions. It's like when you buy a phyllomedusa bicolor frog in an aquarium store in the USA, it has no sapo whatsoever. You can still get it to give off secretions, but there is no medicine in them. None. And that's because their diet is different in captivity than when free.
On the other hand, mostly what I've seen is that the power is in how the frog is collected. If it is touched at all it gives off it's secretions, and the most powerful secretions are in that first burst. After that, the more you collect, the weaker it gets. So while anyone can collect sapo frogs without too much difficulty, only a real hunter who depends on those secretions as medicines and to give him better aim when hunting knows not to disturb that frog: You don't collect the frog, you cut the branch on which it sits. You bring the branch to the ground and prepare your four sticks and the little vine-strings with which to fix the frog into the "green trampoline" position, stretched between those sticks. Only then do you handle the frog, putting it into position and then scraping the sapo onto your stick.
Real Matses hunters generally only take the first secretions from the frog. People in the business of trying to sell sapo sticks will continue to get more and more secretions from the frog but it simply gets weaker and weaker--just imagine taking not just the first, but all of the eggs in a hen's huevera: Only one egg is ready at a time: The rest are not fully formed yet. So with the sapo: Only the first secretions are capable of warding off a snake. If they don't do the job, well, the frog is dead. The frog certainly has more secretion, but it's not ready.
So yes, if the frogs eat more of what helps them produce sapo, their sapo secretions would be stronger. But even then, if not collected properly, the material would be weak.
Make sense?

Getting Old and Things Change

2011-11-27T15:58:00.000-08:00

You know, I feel like i'm 27. I'm young, handsome, long-haired. I've got three or four ounces of good pot in the drawer and four or five Thai Sticks I can smoke. A girl I know is going to come over with nothing under her raincoat and she is going to make love with me. We're gonna laugh a lot and I'm not going to know how to say it, but in my heart I'll be screaming: Thank you for coming here to me and treating me like I"m special. WOW!
Only now I'm 60 and living in Texas. And even if I feel like I'm 27 that's not the case. I'm still strong but my hair is grey. My beard is old-man white, and WARNING!!!!!, the hair on my balls is white too, so I shave it so nobody can see.
But you know what? Nobody wants to see. Nobody is interested. Damn.
Maybe if I still had that pot....
Or maybe if I was still 27 and a young buck.
But I'm not.
Now I'm not religious, but I am pretty spiritual.
I was raised Catholic and was an alter boy and helped serve food and keep company with shut-ins for a long time ago as part of being an alter boy. ASIDE: All you Christians are Failed Catholics, in case you don't know it. I'm not talking about you nice people, I'm talking about all the Republican candidates for president. Failed Catholics That's what Mormons, Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and all the other churches are---so there!
Lapsed would be a generous exaggeration for me. It's been 50 years.
That doesn't mean I'm not spiritual, like any other failed Catholic.
So yes, I pray. I know I'm not at the top of the food chain by a long shot.
But when I was a kid, I prayed not to get caught with 5 kilos of pot or an ounce of cocaine. I prayed to get laid. I prayed for a really good kiss or inspiration for a play I was writing.
Know what I pray for these days? To wake up in the morning.
Simple as that.
I love waking up in the morning and know that one day I won't. So I pray that tomorrow morning is not the day I don't wake up. I pray that tomorrow I wake up and fight the inequities of the world again. I love the fight. I wish I could win. I won't. Maybe I'll inspire two or three others to take up or continue the fight.
But I definitely pray that I'll wake up in the morning. With enough strength to fight the good fight again. To see my Madeleina. To hug Italo and Marco. To laugh with Sierra and Alexa, Chepa's daughters, and to hold my grandbaby Taylor close for just a minute.
So now that I'm getting older, my prayers are for different things.
I hope I keep getting what I pray for.
And I hope you all get what it is you need too.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-25T03:01:00.000-08:00

Well, I hope you all had a wonderful time yesterday. I hope you were with your pals and loved ones and that whatever you ate was just what your body and soul needed.
Here at the Gormans, I didn't plan much. Chepa's boyfriend came into town, so she and her babies and he were headed over to one of the sister's homes. Italo's wife Sara has been a little sour on my lately and was headed over to Chepa's sister as well, and I figured she'd take Italo and their baby. And Marco is a wild card. He might show or not.
I did not feel badly. It's just life and making demands on a day when everybody is under stress doesn't do any one any good. Neither does force feeding people their third or fourth meal just to say they came over.
Still, I bought a small turkey--about 15 pounds, made mashed potatoes and gravy, cooked some nice organic baby carrots and peas, and made a nice stuffing. Plus good cranberry sauce with whole cranberries.
Madeleina joked that the turkey was for Boots and the rest of the food for the raccoon who gets into our garbage. I laughed with her and said they both deserved treats, so what the heck.
And then at about 3, just as the Cowboy's football game was starting and the food was nearly done, Italo surprised me and came over. "Where else would I be? I want to watch the game with you, dad," he said.
And he and Madeleina put the big table in the living room and set it in front of the television. He turned the game on. In all these years in Texas that table has never been there before, so it was a nice treat.
And then Marco showed up. That was surprising because he and Italo had a fight a couple of weeks ago and have not been talking. They didn't talk yesterday, not much anyway, but they got along well enough.
And so there it was: Just me and my kids. And that was the greatest Thanksgiving in a long time.

Amazon Logging

2011-11-21T12:50:00.001-08:00

A friend of mine recently saw a documentary about gold miners tearing up a chunk of the rainforest--probably in the cloud forest on the eastern slopes of the Andes--in Peru and wondered why that couldn't be stopped.
I responded with this short but salient note about the illegal logging in the jungle as a sort of comparison. Here is what I had to say:
Well, no, the Peruvian government, just like the rest of the governments all over the world, can't keep people from either legal or illegal plundering. We just do it more formally here in the Western World by giving people contracts to ravage the land. In poor countries it's generally every man/woman for him/herself. Why can't it be stopped? Because there are just too many who want to work and need the dough and from everybody's point of view the jungle goes on endlessly. They have no idea how finite it really is. Even on the river I use for my trips there is illegal logging. And the loggers, who go upriver from where we go, cut down 10 trees, maybe 60 feet of good 5'-7' thick trunk each, and make rafts to float back to Iquitos where the wood is made into the cheapest plywood you've ever seen. And the men who do the work will make about 8 dollars a day, and the guy who organizes the trips will sell those 10 tree trunks--cut into 12 foot lengths for transport-- for a total of a thousand dollars and earn maybe $300-$500 when he's paid off his people and for the gas to put in the boats to move that raft of trunks.
Here's the kicker: There are trees out there--lots and lots of them--that are worth tens of thousands of dollars for a single trunk for use in fine veneers, fine furniture, fine flooring and for woodworkers. One of my friends, Jim K, has control of vast reserves of forest and he has his people, the people who live out there in those reserves, make very occasional and selective cuts. A tree here, a tree there. And he then has those trunks cut into blocks to sell to wood workers in stores in the northern US and Canada. And it's beautiful wood shipped out by the occasional container load. And his people get well paid and they don't need to cut the forest for cheap plywood. They protect the forest.
But how to educate everybody that they could make a lot more with a lot less cutting if they sold the right trees to the right buyers? And even if you could educate those illegal loggers, the price would fall if suddenly there was a lot more wood sold for veneers and furniture, and then the locals would go back to cutting everything.
So yes, it stinks.
And no, I don't have a solution.

Well, That's How Love is if You Mishandle It

2011-11-18T14:51:00.000-08:00

I don't go on facebook very often. But I still get notices from "friends" sometimes and those draw me in if I've got a moment. And, of course, once in a while I look for old loves. Why? Cause I'm a maudlin creep, I guess. Or sometimes just want to peek and see how some women I loved a long time ago are doing.
Well, today, there were notices that drew me to two women I loved. And in pictures, both of those women were being held by other men. I had my chance to hold them. I guess I didn't hold them tight enough. I always ran away. And when I stopped running away it was with a woman who ran away.
And so, as I was down with the flu and couldn't write worth a dime, I took a nap. And when I awoke from that all I could think of was All of my women are being held by other men.
Man, that was lousy.
I'm glad they got the right holding.
I hope they get more.
But it still shot through me that I'd failed those women, probably hurt them. They were willing to love and I was not. Selfish. Scared.
All of the women I loved love or loved other men.
Now if it only starts raining, I'll probably melt in a pile of self pity/hatred.
I miss them all, terribly.

Da Marvelous Trips

2011-11-17T11:53:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a nice week. Weather has been chilly and perfect here in bucolic Joshua, the whole family is fairly stoned on cough syrup cause we've all got thick colds and the attendant coughs, and I'm getting out there and doing my walking daily--which is good because otherwise I'm tethered to this computer. And now that my friend Martin hooked up a second screen for me last week, well, hell, I'm double-tethered.
Plus, I've been doing a lot of stories and still have two to go: One for the business magazine is due tomorrow--Yikes!--and a cover for the alternative weekly is due...well, tomorrow too, though only a draft of it due then. Problem? Yes. Seems that what I thought was cover story material is, after weeks of rooting around, sending in Freedom of Information Requests and calling eminent domain attorneys and a whole lot of other people, not a story at all. Ah well. I'm in proverbial hole, you might say, and I'm wracking my brain trying to come up with a way to salvage it and thus save my job. Oy vey! I'm verklempt!
But there is a bright side: The book is selling well this month.
And better still: Six people have signed on for the February jungle trip. Which is going to be 12 days instead of 9 1/2 for the same price, because I need my jungle fix. And a couple more, two just today, have asked if there is space. Yes, but I'm really hoping that the interest stays and I can fill it up. Cause the trip is just fantastic when we've got a pretty good sized group of 10-12 guests. That keeps my team hopping and when they're working they're having a blast. Me too. It's still small and intimate, but there are generally enough different personalities to keep things interesting.
Okay, so that's all I had to tell you.
I hope you all have some good things happening in your lives as well.
Oh, and if any of you have a good story idea that I can write in less than 24-hours, well, by all means pass it along. I'll owe ya.

Okay, You Shmoeblies, I'm Feeling Cantankerous

2011-11-15T16:16:00.000-08:00

Okay, you shmoeblies--that's a word I just made up to describe you, my dear readers--what's up? I just gave you three world freaking class recipes and nobody has written back that they've tried them and gotten laid, saved a marriage, ended a feud....what the hell is good food for except to change people and their attitudes? You think I'm giving you these recipes because I'm bored? These are shamanic tools that will allow you to change your whole world! Food is one of the three basics, okay? We have air--we need that for real. Then we have water--we have to have that. Then there is food. That's the third biggie. After that come shelter, safety, comfort and all the rest. But the first three we need even if we're on the run from dinosaurs.
And while good clay dirt and grubs will get you by, the reality is that in this world, the better the food--not the most costly because much of the best food is nearly free (see shmaltz or potatoes)--the better the communication, the better the healing. So I give out these recipes with the hopes that lives are changed. I mean, for goodness sakes! Strawberries in a bit of blue-cheese, garlic butter over sea scallops on a bed of sauteed spinach?????? Who makes that stuff up? That's magic in your hands.
So please, my little shmoeblies, try the freaking recipes and tell me how they changed your life. Maybe you made my basic and cheating bar-be-que sauce for a school affair that got you accepted or got your kid to stop being bullied. Maybe you tried my macaroni and cheese and realized you still loved your husband/wife, so long as they'd let you eat that stuff. Maybe you tried my lentils or canary beans and decided it wouldn't be so bad to be a vegetarian after all. Or maybe you tried my mussels maniere and realized that no champagne will ever go to waste again.
So here's one more, while it's raining ferociously here in bucolic Joshua, Texas and while I'm behind on two stories due Friday, which I have pretty much zero chance of completing because I'm a lazy motha.
Here's your basic, fantastic, roast chicken.
Buy half a dozen russet potatoes (red). Medium size. Cut them in half and put them, unpeeled, in a pot of cold water placed on maybe 8 out of 10. High but not max.
Wait 10 minutes, but before the water boils, add 30 baby organic peeled carrots.
Cut a large organic chicken in half. Wash it well, but not with soap.
Place the two chicken halves, skin down, in a dish lined with clean/trimmed celery stalks and thick half-onion rounds. Red onion preferred. Like cut an onion in half, turn it face down, make three slices and put those pretty thick slices on the celery stalks.
Put a couple of table spoons of chopped fresh garlic that's been sitting in olive oil for a day or so--at least a couple of hours--onto the chicken body. Rub it in with your hands. Include hand sweat, so long as it's clean. Put a little good butcher-ground black pepper and some very good sea salt (about $10 a pound but you get to use it in special places so it's worth it) on the chicken and rub it in.
Turn the chicken over.
Turn the oven on to 350 degrees.
Do the same thing to the skin side of the chicken as you did to the insides: Garlic, olive oil, good black pepper, good salt.
Go out to your yard or your neighbors yard or the local park and get two sprigs of cedar. Not logs, just sprigs.
Put them under the chicken, between the chicken and the celery/onions.
Put chicken in the oven.
Wait 20 minutes till the potatoes and carrots are halfway done.
Strain potatoes and carrots.
Put potatoes and carrots into the pot with the chicken. Spoon a little chicken grease from the pan over them to keep them moist.
Cook till chicken is brown. By that time the celery and onions will almost be caramelized, and the potatoes and carrots will be ready.
Take the chicken and veggies out and put aside.
Into the chicken pan put a couple of table spoons of flour and a can of chicken stock, or fresh chicken stock if you have some in your fridge.
Bring to a boil, solidify to a gravy.
Take a bit of chicken, a couple of potato halves, a few carrots, a stalk or two of celery and some of the onions and put them on your plate. Put some gravy on them. Make a good, tasty and healthy salad. Sit down. Eat. Get better.
Once better, become a shaman and pass secrets like this along. Keep the good things going.

Three Quick and Great Recipes

2011-11-14T08:55:00.001-08:00

Okay, so a couple of friends came over for the weekend. There was ceremony on Friday, then a bridge over the creek got rebuilt Saturday morning and I got a second computer monitor--very che che!--on Saturday afternoon. I'm high tech, baby.
So no food on Friday, but on Saturday morning I made a nice omelet of sauteed ham, garlic, onion, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower and good cheddar cheese.
Madeleina one-upped me by making everyone a delicious smoothie of fresh cantaloupe, strawberries, banana, and tangerine in an organic vanilla yogurt with good water and a little orange juice. With just a little sugar. Damn, that was good.
Saturday night, after one of my friends had gone home, I made lime chicken--you know the one where I cut half a chicken breast in half (making four pieces of chicken out of one breast), then flour, egg and bread them in a mix of half-good breadcrumbs and half-good quality, grated parmesan cheese. Saute, turn, top with a little more parmesan, butcher ground black pepper and then squeeze lime juice onto them. Enough lime juice, like four full ripe limes for four pieces of chicken. Then bake for a few minutes at 350, till the cheese is a light brown and the chicken is cooked through.
But I also had a couple of beautiful, large, fresh sea scallops and couldn't resist making a little side dish with them.
So I sauteed fresh spinach in a bit of olive oil and garlic and used that as a bed. While that was cooking I floured the the scallops then put them in a hot pan with a bit more of that garlic and olive oil. A little butcher black pepper on them. Browned on one side, I turned them over, added a tablespoon of butter--that's all you need for four large scallops--and an ounce or so of good bleu cheese. When those married, I tossed three strawberries I'd sliced into the pan, pulled the scallops and put them on the little bed of spinach. Then I squeezed two limes into the garlic/ bleu cheese/strawberry butter, brought it to heat, and topped the scallops with that. The strawberries were over the top but I've been experimenting with using them now and then and they add a decadently sweet snarl to the lime and bleu cheese butter.
Then last night, Madeleina had friends over to make a video commercial for their drama class. The project was supposed to run about two hours long, but by six or so, and not nearly done, Madeleina asked me to make them dinner.
So I took a pound of good hot sausages from the freezer and ran them under hot water for a few minutes, then put them in a pot of water and brought that to a boil to get them cooked.
In another pot I brought salted water to a boil and cooked a pound of fucilli.
In a third pot I put small pieces of fresh broccoli, cauliflower, zuccini and yellow squash to start them cooking. When they were al dente I took them off and cooled them in a colander, then put two big handfuls of spinach in the still hot water for a minute. Then I took that off.
I put a big sauce pan on the stove, loaded in three heaping tablespoons of that garlic in olive oil I always have on hand and added a diced red onion to it. When that was going good I added four diced Roma tomatoes and six cleaned and diced scallions. Then I took the sausages off the fire and sliced them, then tossed them into the pan with the garlic/onions/tomatoes/scallions. When the sausage slices browned, I added the veggies, a can of good chicken stock and--okay, I'm cheating here--a family-sized can of cream of chicken soup.
I let things get married in the pan, then tossed in some parmesan cheese for a bit of bite.
When the sauce was ready I mixed it with the pasta and voila! A nice dish.
Okay, you have permission to try those at home. They're freaking fabulous.
Bon appetit! everyone.

What a Coward Does

2011-11-10T17:15:00.000-08:00

So, in response to the 600 pound rat that ran across my feet, I put four huge glue traps in the attic crawl space. Damned thing fought three of them, won the cheese from all, left me enough hair on the glue to make three wigs and walked away full. So I did the next best thing: I got two little female cats from the pound. The damned rat outweighs them by hundreds of pounds, but I'm hoping the smell of the cats will make the rat run away. And if that doesn't work, at least I can sleep again, knowing that the rat, no matter how big and bold, isn't going to walk into a room where two kittens of about 12-weeks old each are sleeping on me.
So there. That's the cowards way out. And I'm not ashamed. Well, I am. But who cares. I had to do something and feeding two felines for the next 15 years at a cost of about $2 a day is nothing compared to having a rat free ceiling. Or something.
Have a good night everyone. I know I will.
Ahhhhh....the sweet smell of rat-killing cats... .

So A Rat Just Ran Across My Feet...

2011-11-05T16:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, so a huge rat, maybe 600 pounds, just ran across my freaking feet while I was getting nails to shore up a small hole in the ceiling. So, as I'm a freaking baby around rats--and I thought I got over it when I woke once and a rat was biting my hand and I flung it against a wall (thought I'd killed it but no such luck, they're very tough little guys)--I immediately called Italo, whom I met on the highway this afternoon at 70 MPH when he pulled up on me suddenly and gave me a great big "YEAH!" fist--but he was too tired. So he sent Marco, who took a plunger to trap the poor thing--swear to god the thing was way way way bigger than a plunger, length wise, though I know I'm exaggerating. Marco couldn't find him. Damn.
So now the thing is back in the attic--or there are more than one, which generally happens--and Marco just put up a board on the hole in the ceiling which will prevent the damned thing from falling on me, at least temporarily. So Marco, who is the bravest guy around rats you ever saw, was laughing at me: "Dad, you're not afraid of caiman or anacondas or vipers. You're not afraid to give people ayahuasca and you can handle it when they go temporarily nuts. You wipe their rear ends when they shit themselves. You take on patients that you don't even know and try to help them. But you're a freaking sissy around rats. Why is that?"
What the heck am I going to tell him? He's right. I'm just afraid because I got afraid as a kid, and when it comes to rats, I'm like 6-years old. I just can't handle it. I've thought of it as Catholic devil images--I was raised pretty good Catholic and a lot of images of the devil had rats around his feet--and I've thought of it a million other ways. No helping it: I'm a coward in the face of six ounce rats. Clare and I were in Seville, Spain, one night 28 years ago and a rat ran across the street in front of us and I swear it had three mid-sections, big enough to have 75 babies, and if you don't believe me ask Clare--and that was the end of Seville for me, even in front of my woman I didn't have courage.
Damn. Wish I was braver. Wish I had guts. But sometimes I just don't. And rats are one, many, of those times.
And Marco won't even stay for dinner, which I was hoping he would so he could kill the rat when it exposes itself. And he won't sleep here because his sometimes girlfriend might just put a little grace on him.
So I'm alone.
If Madeleina was here I'd be the big guy, protecting her. But she's not. She slept at Mom's last night and is getting her hair cut right now so I have no one to show off to. In which case I revert to being the freaking chicken that I am.
Damn. More than you wanted to know, right? I mean, P Gorman is supposed to have some spine.
Most of the time I'm the best. Bring rats in to walk across my feet and you'll find out the weak points for sure.
Ah, life, you have a way of undressing me that I find uncomfortable. But then, that's my weakness to work on. Thanks for the opportunity, though I hate getting it.

Follow Up Questions about Ayahuasca from a Stranger

2011-11-05T10:48:00.000-07:00

So the stranger from the previous post has asked a few more questions about ayahuasca. I've told him that this should be the last of them because it takes a long time to answer. Actually, I like being asked once I'm through answering, because sometimes strangers can ask questions that nobody has asked before and it's fun to try to come up with a legitimate response from my experience.
So here are his newest questions. My answers follow each.

1.) Let us say that one has developed certain abilities of extrasensory perception through Ayahuasca (e.g. clearly seeing the spirit world, seeing the internal organs of a human body, etc.) and a long apprenticeship with a qualified, traditional shaman. And then it happens that for a numbers of year one cannot return back to the Amazon and stays in Europe not being able to consume ayahuasca.

Do then these abilities of extrasensory perception remain completely intact or must one always consume ayahuasca to keep them active?

ANSWER: I don't know that you, or I, or any other curandero, develops any special abilities. I believe the spirits give you the juice, the ability to have those "powers" temporarily, as you need them. Therefore, so long as you and the spirits were friends, I think you would be able to access those "powers" when you need them. Even without returning to the Amazon or drinking more ayahuasca. But if you abuse your spirit friends, if you use their juice, their power, selfishly, I believe you'll stop being able to get those powers when you need them. I think people who fall into the brujeria trap find this out: They may have strong powers of negativity for a while but eventually lose all their juice and boy, isn't there hell to pay when that happens!
In terms of the kinds of "powers" I've been lent, here are a couple of examples: Once, when Italo badly dislocated his ankle and some foot bones, Chepa, my ex, told me to fix it. I said I couldn't. She said the spirits would help and that she knew I could do it. So I looked at Italo's ankle and foot and for just a second it seemed like I had X-ray vision. And I saw what was wrong and how to fix it. Of course I was terrified that I'd just break his bones but something let me try and I twisted, pushed, popped and pulled and by luck everything went back into place. He was up and playing again in no time.
Now I don't have the power of X-ray vision and I don't know how to set bones so complicated that have been dislocated. But in that moment of emergency, I was lent that juice.
However, if I ever hung a shingle outside that read: Bone Setter I'm sure I'd never have that juice or power again. Remember the key words, or at least the key words I was given: Use it, don't abuse it, or lose it.
Then there was the time, not long after the spirits told me that I would always have enough work so long as I did the work well, when we were broke. The electric company was sending a man out to cut off the electricity. Madeleina, then maybe 6-years old or 7-years old, was incensed. "The spirits told you they'd take care of us. They have to!"
I told her the spirits had said I'd have the work--and I had gotten a lot--but they never promised to make editors pay on time.
She didn't buy it.
So the electric guy came to shut us down and Madeleina was wild. I finally asked the guy if it would be possible to wait 15 minutes just to appease her. And then when a miracle didn't happen in 15 minutes, he could shut us down. He began talking about some shrubs along my property line--his way of stalling a few minutes.
And then, out of the blue, I mean out of the blue, a Fed Ex or some other special delivery truck roars past our house; in two minutes he's coming back our way and pulls into the driveway. He hands me an envelope. In it was a check for a story I'd done and been paid for probably a year earlier. And it wasn't just a check, it was a freaking bank check. It was truly a miracle. And I never saw that driver before or after. I don't even know if it was a real person or just a spirit visit.
But I then asked the electric guy if he could come back in a little while and I'd go cash it and pay him in cash. He said okay and Madeleina just screamed with joy, thanking the spirits for coming through.
Could I make that happen again? Was it my power? Not a chance. I was lent that extraordinary moment by spirits.
Back to your quesiton: I don't believe people get extraordinary abilities--abilities like you're imagining. But I believe that the spirits help us out sometimes. So remain friends with them, however you can do that, if you ever get the chance to meet one or more of them. I think they help everybody all the time, even if they didn't drink ayahuasca. Just imagine how many times you might have been just about to step into the street when something simply stopped you and in that second a car you had not seen roars by. And if you had not been stopped, bam, you'd be dead.
So I think they help us a lot. I just think it's neat to get to meet them and be able to communicate with them a little.

2.) You wrote:
"And then there is Hector, a Q'ero from high in the Andes. I've never had San Pedro with him but I have seen is impossible powers."

I don't want to sound like a miracle monger, but may I ask what are these impossible powers and in what way do they manifest?

ANSWER: Hector changes me just by giving me a hug. Sometimes I break out crying, other times I just beam with joy. He's one of the special ones. Impossible powers? Well, in ceremony one night, a San Pedro ceremony that he was not running but he had done the offrenda, the offering to PachaMama prior to the ceremony, at the Temple of the Moon outside of Cuzco, three people tried to interrupt the ceremony. They were loud, vulgar. They'd driven a car right up to the place, burned rubber. Two women and a man, I think. Drunk. Actually, under the influence of the medicine I thought they were just mean spirits upset that so many people were drinking good medicine.
They kept their distance at first, just yelling, cursing, asking what kind of sex we were having, farting loudly, burping very loudly. Just crude all the way. But the man was huge. Huge. I was wondering how I was going to take him down. It was my group, after all, and so my job.
And then suddenly, the three of them were at the entrance to the cave in the Temple of the Moon and about to enter. Hector was sitting next to me, outside on a rock, maybe 30 feet from the door. I got up to stop them from entering the Temple, where an alter had been set up and some guests were still receiving medicine. But as I got up, I turned to Hector: He wasn't there. He was standing directly in front of the Temple entrance. He had one hand up, palm open, like a universal stop sign. How he had gotten there I don't know. Either amazing aikido or magic, because he'd been sitting next to me a split-second earlier.
And the man looked like he was going to crush Hector--who's pretty good sized himself. And the women were loudly egging him on. Hector didn't say a word. But his hand was an impossible force for the man and the women. They couldn't cross it and finally slunk away silently.
That was an amazing display.
Later that night, as we all sat around a fire burning the offrenda, the offering to PachaMama, he asked me for a cigarette. I got it and was going to give him my lighter, but before I could he reached into the fire and picked up a red hot stone and lit his cigarette with that. Then lit a cigarette for me with the same stone. And he didn't burn his hands. And the hair on his arm didn't burn despite having been in the fire.
When he saw my consternation he simply said that as a baby his mother had given him the gifts of fire and ice and so those spirits were his friends and wouldn't hurt him. I believe him.
So that's the sort of thing Hector can do. And if you go to Cuzco and are supposed to meet him, you will. He will be where he is supposed to be. Have confidence.

2B) You spoke about many San Pedro curanderos you know. What about powerful Ayahuasca curanderos? Are there still any living curanderos of Don Julion Llerena (Jerena)'s calibre around? Really powerful and knowledgeable Banca Ayahuasqeros?
Further you said:
"Julio, Pablo and Bertha have all passed."
What about Pablo's friend, Manuel? Is he still alive? I believe he was also of the Matses tribe.
Are there still Matses around who would have such power and knowledge in spiritual matters as Pablo had? I mean, being able talking to animals, insects, plants, etc. and doing all other extraordinary things.

ANSWER: I'm sure there are wonderful curanderos around. Julio was my teacher and so he is whom I spent most of my time with. But there are many good curanderos. I can't evaluate calibre. For the worse have great days when the spirits really help them, and even the best generally have a rotten day now and then and the spirits don't seem to be around to help them at all. When it's time to find one you will.
One of Pablo's sons was named Manuel. His best friend, Alberto, is also extraordinary, but much less accessable than Pablo.
I think the Matses are losing their special abilities. I think that when they depended on them to stay alive, many had an uncanny, to say the least, understanding of the forest and the creatures that live there. But as modern times and things are incorporated into their lifestyle they depend less on those powers and so they lose them--or they stop communicating with those spirits and become estranged.
Don't get me wrong: They are still magic in the forest compared to most everybody else. But I don't think anyone who doesn't fully depend on hunting will be as good a hunter as one who does depend on hunting to stay alive. And the same with needing to communicate with the spirits of the jungle.

3.) Is it possible to acquire through ayahuasca (OR ANY OTHER MASTER TEACHER PLANT) perfect command of any human language one desires? EXAMPLE: Let us say that I want to study Tibetan, but there is no possibility of doing so in my country. Can ayahuasca (OR ANY OTHER MASTER TEACHER PLANT) teach and grant full command of Tibetan (classical and modern, spoken and written)? Or can the plant lead you to spirit teachers who can do so?

ANSWER: I don't know. I was never given that gift. And the only time I was given a book in an ayahuasca dream--a huge metal book with metal pages into which the words/images had been etched--I couldn't read it at all. So maybe, but not in my experience. Heck, they haven't even let me get my Spanish up to speed after all these years!

4.) Can ayahuasca (OR ANY OTHER MASTER TEACHER PLANT) reveal and teach about the healing properties of plants, which exist for instance only in India or Japan and nowhere else in the world? Can ayahuasca (OR ANY OTHER MASTER TEACHER PLANT) help you find a plant with specific effects such as extending human life?

ANSWER: Again, going from my experience, and knowing I'm not a curandero, I can only tell you what my experience has been: When I was shown a huge market with spirit plants in it, I wondered what the heck I was supposed to learn there. I mean, I don't know that much about plants and this spirit plant market was full of boxes of live and dried plant material. I had no idea what the purpose was in bringing me there. The guardian who had brought me heard my unasked question and told me just to shout out a disease or disorder. I did, and immediately a couple of plants jumped up and shouted what they were. I think at least one of them had a sign with its name written in English as well. So that's how I was to use that plant market.
Now, here in the US, once in a while someone asks me to go there to try to find a solution to a problem they're having. And on those occasions where it was possible to visit, nearly all the plants that respond are plants you can get here in the United States. Someone with a serious immune deficiency asked for help. I sent them una de gato, which I knew would work, but they refused to drink it. So I went back to the market and this time the shout that came up was Collard Greens! Half a cup a day!
Which was ridiculous, of course, until I looked up collard greens and discovered that they have amazing powers for bolstering immune deficiencies.
If I was in Peru and that question was asked, I'm sure a Peruvian plant would have been the one shouting its name. But what would be the point of being told of a plant that could have helped that person that they couldn't get hold of?
I imagine Julio, however he got his plant knowledge, was pretty much always given plants to heal that he could reasonably easily go out and collect. And if you moved Julio to Japan, I think he'd come up with Japanese plants, even if he had no prior knowledge of them.
But if you are asking whether I ever met anyone who could just go into a dream and study plants in another locale, no, I never heard of that. Doesn't mean it's not possible, just something I never heard of.
As to plants that extend human life, I don't know of any, other than a good diet full of garlic and onions and spinach and carrots and broccoli and all sorts of good veggies and fruits. Those things will keep you healthy a long time. But something specific like a fountain of youth for real, like in a novel? No, don't know of it, and I don't think Julio or Bertha or Pablo had either, as they've all passed.

Have a great day, everybody!

Answers to Three Questions Raised by a Stranger

2011-11-02T16:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, someone I never met wrote to tell me they thought my pgorman.com website had good information about ayahuasca. The person followed that up with these questions:

"I am greatly interested in ayahauasca as a tool for obtaining knowledge regarding healing plants and animals, the spirit-world existing parallel to ours and cleansing and healing generally - all conducted in a traditional way. I am not interested in any ayahuasca tourism or "feel-good trips" or curiosity mongering.

"But let me come straight to the point or I should rather say questions.

"1.) Let us say that a person has through apprenticeship become an ayahuasqero or curandero. Then he leaves the Amazon and moves to a place outside of South America, where neither ayahuasca nor other "teacher plants" are available. Let us further presume that he does not ingest ayahuasca nor any other psychoactive plants for 10 years.

"Will this man still retain his healing abilities, extrasensory perception, the ability to commune with the spirit-world, etc. or will he gradually loose all those abilities acquired through the years of his training as a curandero until nothing is left anymore?

"The point I am trying to make here is the following one: does ayahuasca awaken these abilities for good and then they remain with the curandero, even if he never again takes ayahuasca or will he forever remain dependent on ayahuasca as a mean to exercise his power?

"2.) Who was the most powerful and knowledgeable shaman or curandero that you ever met in your life (be it mestizo or a full-blood native one)? Is this person still alive?

"3.) The following question may sound odd, but can ayahuasca (or any other teacher plant, like san pedro, etc.) awaken the ability of seeing into the near-term future (about 10 or 14 days in advance) with perfect accuracy? EXAMPLE: Let us say that you want to know what will happen at a such-and-such place in Cuzco on November 20th this year."

Me Responding:
I waited a day to answer because I didn't want to go off half-cocked. Tonight I answered him. Tomorrow I might revise my answers but this is what came to me when I thought about the questions for a while. Mulled them over, so to say.
DEAR X:
Thanks for writing. Here's my take: When you make friends with the spirits, individual spirits that can help us in this realm because they are not constrained by freaking bodies--but at the same time are allured by our bodies--they are like any other friends: If you don't communicate for 10 years there will be an estrangement. That's just life.
The way it was taught to me, by those spirits, was that they would help me, but the deal was:
"Use it, don't abuse it, or lose it." That meant, they would supply a little extra power when needed, but I couldn't use it selfishly, or ignore it, or I would lose it. They would stop supplying it.
Spirits are beings too. They like attention as much as any other being. So if you abuse them or ignore them, they'll leave. They had full lives before they met you and will have full lives after you are gone from their lives.
Now, your question was, if you didn't drink ayahuasca in 10 years would you lose the gifts those spirits give. Not a good question, I don't think. I think that if you did not talk with those spirits--and you don't need the ayahuasca once you know them and they know you--for 10-years--it would be like any other friend: You no longer know each other. But if you didn't drink ayahuasca but remained in contact with those spirits through prayer/song/contemplation/meditation or however you did it, well, I think they'd still be your friends and offer you the gifts they initially gave you. Make sense?
Second question: Who was the most powerful shaman or curandero I ever met? My answer is my teacher, Julion Llerena (Jerena). He was a wonderful fisherman who raised his family properly and healed people daily. He never asked for anything that I know of, For all his strength he was tiny, had been shot twice in wars while with the Peruvian army, and was so so decent.
But then Bertha Grove, whom I wrote about in a series of articles for High Times in the late 1980s about the Native American Church, was brilliant. And then Pablo, the Matses headman who never heard the word curandero or shaman, well, he could probably talk with insects and have them talk back to him. He knew every plant in his part of the rainforest, had named them all, and could utilize them all.
Julio, Pablo and Bertha have all passed.
And then there is Victor Estrada and Kucho both of whom are very much alive. They are San Pedro curanderos. Kucho is young but learning well and very strong. Victor is my age, about 60, and though he's become very famous of late because of appearing in dozens of documentaries about San Pedro curing, he remains a force of nature once he enters ceremony. He is just a luminous shape-shifter and healer.
And then there is Hector, a Q'ero from high in the Andes. I've never had San Pedro with him but I have seen his impossible powers. He's my pal, in the best sense of the word, and in 10 more years might be the strongest curandero of them all.
And there are others. But this is a short list to help answer your question.
As to your third question: Can ayahuasca or San Pedro or other teacher plants open you up to know what will happen within say a two-week period?
I hesitate to answer that. Why? Because the answer is yes, but at the same time to call on those teachers to do that generally indicates a selfish desire, which is where we head into the turf of brujeria---the selfish end of curing. While it might be alright to wish that a friend gets through a difficult time in two weeks, for instance, it would be very selfish and probably very wrong to push the universe to do that. Or to allow you to see an outcome, thereby making it a done deal before it happens. I would suggest staying away from anything like that. To me, looking into the future would violate the "use it, don't abuse it, or lose it" dictum I was given. Maybe one day the spirits will change that dictum but until then, I certainly would not think of trying to ask a spirit to give me a hint of what will happen in the future other than maybe a direction to head in for the next layer of work.
And that's what I'm thinking about in terms of those three questions this Wednesday night, just before a thunderstorm hits us here in bucolic Joshua, Texas.
Have a great night, everybody.

One of the Things the OWS Crowd is Protesting

2011-11-01T17:09:00.000-07:00

People often ask, on various forums I visit, what the hell the Occupy Wall Street crowd actually wants? Those people are used to specific demands: Better pay, less hours, no more sexual advances from bosses and so forth. And the Wall Street occupiers are not always vocally adept at explaining what the problem is. But I'll tell you what the problem is, at least in small part. It was about banks, being told they were making too much off credit card and debit card swipes that stores had to give up to them, deciding to charge people for using debit cards to access their own money. These are banks that are not paying a penny on the billions of dollars in checking accounts they regularly loan for good interest. So they make money on your interest, and then they decided to charge people for using their cards to get their money. Well, with enough of a spot light on them, Bank of America, and a couple of others, decided to table that fee at this time. Let's be honest: They won't lose sleep over losing a couple of billion in lost fees to stores for the right to use debit cards. Because there would be many many more billions lost if people didn't shop with debit cards--and go overdraft at $35-$39 per.
Then some people ask "Show me a banker who committed fraud. You guys want to put bankers and Wall Street bigwigs in jail, but for what? Show me the crime!"
And the easiest answer is Wachovia, recently eaten by Wells Fargo. Between 2003 or 2004 (and I will look it up if you challenge me because I've written about this in 10 freaking places) and 2007 or 2008, Wachovia admitted not putting anti-money-laundering processes in place. Which means what? It means that in those four years, whenever they started and ended, Wachovia accepted, from Mexico, $374 or so BILLION dollars into the United States. Now, let's be honest: Does anybody think that the poor farmers and malquiladora workers in Mexico were sending more than 1/3 TRILLION dollars into the US to help support their illegal relatives who made it here?
I didn't think so.
So what was that money?
Well, it turned out that that money, $374 or so BILLION dollars, about One Hundred Billion dollars a year, was being sent by mom and pop money senders in Mexico to Wachovia--which charged a fee to accept it, of course.
That was all drug money. ALL OF IT. Not one penny has ever been sent from Mexico to the US from family to family legally. Money gets sent from Mexican workers in the US to Mexico, not the other way around.
And Wachovia admitted they ignored the anti-money-laundering rules to make a profit. And then they paid a total of $178 or so Million for the transgression, without anyone going to jail for the $374 billion in laundered money.
That's the kind of greed the OWS and me and a lot of you are protesting. If I sold five books on paypal and customers didn't get them I'd go to jail for interstate fraud. Launder, and admit you laundered, $374 BILLION dollars for the drug cartels and get fined $178 or so million.
That's corporate greed. That's tactile. That money would have fed everyone in the world for 10 freaking years.
And then there's the hot story on Huffington Post today, explaining that since the US govt decided to give people on unemployment and other worker or government subsidized programs (I say that because I hate when people refer to Social Security or Medicaid or unemployment as a government hand out when we pay weekly for those) their due monies on debit cards that are recharged monthly, banks are charging people to use them. Which means if say, you work for $500 a week, and then get laid off and then get maybe $250 a week in unemployment insurance that you paid for--along with your boss, nothing from government--and you make more than 4 transactions per month (Mortgage, car, electric, water, insurance, is five, and most people have double that), the bank might take $1.50 to $3 per additional use. The bank already is earning interest on the money put into your account which earns no interest. They got theirs. And nobody is gonna begrudge them that.
But charging you to access that money--which costs nothing, effectively, and which has already earned them interest--is a freaking rip off. And anybody who denies that is a liar.
So that's what OWS and ME are angry about. I'm angry about banks that put through the largest bills first and then tell you your 8 small charges were overdrawn, and it's gonna cost you $39 each. That's not banking. That's not loan sharking. That's beyond the pale of human decency.
So the next time somebody asks you: What the hell are the freaking Occupy Wall Street scum after, give them a copy of this post for a start. Cause this is the very basic root: Greed beyond the ken. Greed beyond belief.

A Little Help from My Friends, Please

2011-11-01T16:45:00.000-07:00

Okay, so here's the deal. As noted a few pieces back, I just discovered the "stats" button on this blog. I guess it's been staring me in the face for four years, but I still didn't see it. What's that saying: "None are so blind as those who refuse to see?" Something like that.
So now I realize that somehow, Magic Mushrooms in India is the all-time favorite piece of people who read my blog. About 10 percent of all hits have been to that piece. But how? How the hell do you find it? I mean, you could query the right key words but what the hell would they be: Magic Mushrooms in India...maybe. But I wouldn't guess that so many people would figure that out. More consternating is that the second most read post of all time is Swim Team 101, about my single misadventure on my high school swim team--at a competition at which one of the opposing teams was buck naked with shaved balls. Who shaved their balls? Someone at a catholic high school had that as his or her job description? No wonder there are occasional problems with adults taking advantage of kids.
"No sir, I didn't abuse Jonny. I did pick up his penis and carefully shave his scrotum--very carefully--but that was my job description..."
Who applies for that job?
Okay, after that, most of the most read blogs are about ayahuasca, which is connected to my book, which you all should have read and be quoting by now, copiously, in all manner of circumstances. For instance, if someone asks "How are you?" you might answer, "I thought my head would explode if I didn't get those snakes out!"
They won't know what you mean but they'll still be impressed.
So here is the question: I have long wanted to write a book called The Dad Blog Book. It would have a nice intro to set the stage, and then be a collection of cleaned up pieces from the blog about being a dad in Texas. A single dad with an estranged wife/ex-wife, living with his kids on an acre and a half in bucolic Joshua, Texas. It would have farm animals, crazy kids, live-in 16-year-old girlfriends for 17-year old boys--my sons--and that pesky ex-wife's new babies.
I'd clean up the pieces a bit, then have an editor go over them--or four editors, as in Ayahuasca in My Blood--and I might put in a few new pieces, but it would basically be the story of a single dad trying to raise kids in the era of the blog. And a lot of those pieces have recipes in them, which I know are fantastic recipes. So that would be a plus for those people who like to cook.
Would anybody buy that?
If you answered yes, then would you sponsor it? Counting designer, art, editors it's at least $8,000 which I don't happen to have.
Okay, so no sponsors. Just trying. Let me know.
Or, should I do a book with funny stories like Swim Team 101 and Ganja on the Ganges and Lengua and Magic Mushrooms in India, What Gringos Expect from a Trip to the Amazon, Cooking a Jungle Feast and The Feast of San Gennaro?
Let me know, okay? I'm just trying to figure out where to put the energy, and since you're my most loyal readers, I thought I'd give you the option.

What I Was Thinking About in the Car Today

2011-10-29T17:11:00.001-07:00

So I was in my car. I'd just done my exercises which Doc Gritter wants me to do to get my blood pressure down--along with the freaking meds he has me on--which was that I'd walked fast for about 2 1/2 miles. One half mile this morning in the local park, then another 1/2 half mile in the park--2000 steps--and then a trip to HEB supermarket where I park as far away from the entrance as is humanly possible--200 big steps--and then run in and out of aisles till I hit 1000 steps and then back to the car. Then to Walmart, where the parking lot is even bigger and I walk around the 5-acre building a couple of times, then shop, another 2000 steps, making 2 1/2 miles.
Okay, it's not the same as when I was younger and did 1000 crunches daily, plus 300 pushups in 75 push up bursts, plus rode my bike 15 miles daily, plus played handball 2-3 times a week for 2 hours, plus played softball with the Bonghitters from High Times twice a week during season, plus made a point of walking 15 flights of stairs a day. Okay, so I'm getting old. And I had that little heart attack. And I had that intestinal explosion that almost killed me and then the two further operations which fixed me, sort of--including a fake belly button because they had to cut the real one out, which Madeleina thinks is fantastic!--and the two flesh eating staph infections and all the rest. Wonderful freaking life, tell you the truth: You have no idea what health is till it's severely compromised. I mean, I try to run and my body just falls down. After the three major ops on my belly, my bottom half has no idea what my upper-half is doing. They just don't know each other anymore. Which is why I'm walking. I'm trying to get them to associate with one another again. Don't know if it's working and do know that I'm gonna buy a new pair of sneaks tomorrow because my feet hurt a lot--not to mention my freaking ankle where when it broke a few years ago I didn't have the cash to have the pin put in, which hurts not just a lot but a REAL lot.
I do know that walking more makes me do everything more vividly. More intentionally. I don't just stand up, I STAND UP and walk to the bathroom or the laundry room. I don't lollygag while shopping, I race through it.
And I cough a lot. I think I'm getting rid of a lot of stuff that could give me cancer, which I don't want, but still smoke two packs a day, so am probably pushing that envelope more than I should.
So today, after my walking, I was driving to Two Bucks, my liquor store. It's 23 miles from my house, and is the nearest one to my dry county. In the last couple of years, Johnson County--along interstate 35, the place where all the drugs from Mexico through Laredo are stored until they're broken up for shipments across the midwest--has allowed the sale of beer and wine at a few select places, and the sale of drinks at 3-4 bars owned by the local judges, but if you want a bottle of bourbon or vodka, you still have to drive to the next county, Tarrant, to get one.
So I drive there daily at the end of my errands to buy my 4 minis (1.6 ounces, each) of bourbon and then drive home. And on the way home I drink part of one of them. And I often wonder what a cop would do if he found me with an "open bottle" in the car--a big no-no here in Texas--and if that open bottle happened to be just the size of one drink. I mean, how the heck would he present that to a judge? "Your honor, this man had an open bottle, which I confiscated, while driving." And then when he showed the judge a bottle that contained 3/4 of 1/6 ounces, how would the judge rule? It's not the same as having a liter in your lap, know what I mean?
Anyway, I was driving to Two Bucks liquor store and realized I was going 70 in a 65 MPH zone. I slowed down. My 4-cylinder was probably breathing heavy at that speed anyway. But for a second I imagined a cop coming up on me and stopping me and coming to my window and asking "What's your hurry, old man?"
And these were a few of the answers I imagined responding with, none of which would probably have gone over well:
"Well, officer, the bottle of bourbon in the glove compartment is almost empty and I was trying to make it to the liquor store before it closed."
"Well, officer, I just stole this freaking car and I'm trying to get as far away from the scene of the crime and I can as fast as I can."
"My freaking wife is annoying me to death, so I'm trying to get to the gun show to pick up a throw-away piece."
"I'm gonna be Jonesing real soon if I can't get my hand on some meth in the next few minutes."
"I'm short just a little fertilizer for the back yard bomb I'm making and the damned garden center closes in 15 minutes!"
"One of my halogen bulbs burned out and my poor pot plants are gonna freeze if I don't get another hot bulb in that grow room soon."
"I left the six-month old alone while I went drinking and suddenly realized it's been a couple of hours. I'm sure the pit bull took care of her, but then I remembered I forgot to leave the pit bull's food out..."
"I'm trying to get to your house to have sex with your wife and realized you've only got a couple of hours left on your shift..."
"Just wanted to see what sort of speed the cars my tax dollars paid for your car could get..."
Have a great night, everybody.

Probably the Only List You'll Ever Get from Me

2011-10-28T12:11:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm not a big list guy. At least not a guy who writes down lists. When I go to Peru, for instance, I don't make a list of things to pack. I just get stuff washed and then pack the night before I'm going, or sometimes on the morning I'm leaving. When I have to re-up my medical kit for myself and my guests, I look through it, see what's old or what I'm low on, then go to the pharmacy and buy it.
The biggest challenge is getting ready to head to the jungle. To muster stores and equipment and particularly fresh food for 60-75 meals a day for a week takes a lot of thought. But I just stuff it in my head, imagine everyone needing to eat and then picture what they might like to eat, then head to the market to buy it.
It's chancy, I know, but I'm generally on the money and have a little left over in both dry goods and produce to give to the staff and jungle neighbors.
Now I do keep one list for myself: My monthly bills. When I get them and pay them, I put a check next to them for that month. It's just a little sheet of yellow paper with the words "mortgage, car insurance, home depot, IRS, water, electric, phone, television" on it and the faster I check them off the better I feel.
But for some odd reason, during the last few weeks I've been a bit off kilter. I'm getting a lot of work done but also wasting a lot of time. So I thought that to remedy that I ought to make a list of things I need to do daily. And I think it's a pretty good list so I'm gonna share it with you. And then maybe I'll write a book based on the list called IMPROVE YOUR WORTHLESS SELF LIST BOOK or something. Just kidding.
So here's the list of things to take care of daily:
Take care of intellect (read/consider)
Take care of family
Take care of work
Take care of spirituality
Take care of body
Take care of business
Take care of fun
Take care of friends
And when I do all that stuff--even if it's small stuff, like bringing lunch for Madeleina and snacks for Sierra and Alexa to Chepa's house at 7 AM--well, it feels like a good day's work. Today's work, for instance, was collecting info and doing a couple of interviews for a story I've nearly got done and will finish over the weekend. Today's business was wrangling with the local tax collector over what I think is a lousy appraisal (no clear winner yet) and in a few minutes going into my weekly alternative newspaper and picking up my check.
On the way I'll take care of body with walking a couple of miles to get the blood going.
So there it is. The only list you'll probably ever get from me, but it's a good one.

House Full of Empty

2011-10-27T10:17:00.000-07:00

So a friend and I, she's in the same business as me, but in the magazine editing end of it--and she's brilliant, were feeling a little blue that we live so far apart that she can't just stop over and bitch about a new issue or whatever now and then. Because we talk well together. And I noted that further than that, I don't have any friends nearby my house here in bucolic Joshua. I do have my family, and that's the bomb, but they're not always here. This is how it was the other day.
On the other hand, Chepa has been busy with some legal papers for one of her sisters for about two weeks, so I've been taking Sierra to school and picking her up a lot and that's been a lot of fun. Not tonight, as I've come back from Walmart to find no one here. When I left, Italo was sleeping, Taylor, his daughter, was climbing on him with a large bag of tiny marshmallows close to her breast; Sierra and Madeleina were talking about the fish we just fed with a good loaf of bread at the new local park. I still had to do my walking and shopping, so I left for an hour and then came home to a house full of empty. In New York that probably wouldn't have happened unless I wanted it to happen.
Oh, well, it's just life. But I used to love coming home from driving a cab and seeing Clare and Chuck, who initially stayed with Phil and I, and then lived next door with Suzy and Eli, and Chuck and I would just spend an hour blowing a joint talking about our fares for the night. Never seemed to get old because each fare was a bit different. As is each story, each issue, each problem.
So I'm gonna throw some chicken thighs on, and a little basmati rice with garlic and then some asparagus or spinach, or maybe a fresh cucumber. I'll see when it's time for that.
If I had a choice, the house would be quiet in the day and then jam packed at night.
Have a good one, everybody.

With Sierra

2011-10-25T17:15:00.001-07:00

Okay, I'm gonna tell you, if you don't already know, that I love my ex-wife Chepa's babies. I adore Sierra and Alexa. And though they're not mine, I love them like they were. And those of you who have read this blog know about the time she came running after me screaming, "I have a bike...I'm putting on my shoes...P Garman, wait for me..." while my son Italo, who needed time with me, said, "Dad, if you bring Sierra, I'm not going anywhere." That was one of the cruelest moments of my life and still bites me like a viper whenever I think of it. I let that child beg for my company, beg to be included and left her out.
I had to, because Italo needed my time that day. But I still feel the pain.
So now when I have the chance, I take it with her. For the last couple of weeks I've been going over to Chepa's at 7:15 AM so that the kids can see/hug me, and then I take Sierra to school. I can never make up for that day two years ago. I'm sure she'll go to a psychologist some day to say she feels abandoned, though the won't remember why, but I will. Because she was.
On the other hand, when I pick her up from school, she's just like any other 5-year old. She wants attention, things, food, drink.
Today was no exception. I was finishing a story that's going to press tonight when Chepa called to say she was stuck in Fort Worth and could I pick Sierra up. Instantly my heart leapt, then fell. Yes I could, but no I couldn't. Work demanded I be home for rewrite. Still, with Chepa unable, I would have to go.
Fortunately, my boss called with the rewrite notes 40 minutes before Sierra got out of school. So I did the rewrite and got there a little late. But once with her, Sierra acted like a spoiled kid. She demanded to ride on one of those carts that are so big you can't manouver in the aisles. And we did. And we bought things like marshmallows that I never buy. And toys. And other stuff. And you know what? When I started to get fed up I just laughed at myself. Cause she's Sierra a 5-year old who came out of my wife's belly, and even though she's not mine we're closer than two threads in a carpet. So I laughed at myself for getting uptight, then cut loose and started laughing with her.
Sometimes you just have to let the rules go.

Just Showing Off

2011-10-21T12:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, just a silly post here. My book, Ayahuasca in My Blood--25 Years of Medicine Dreaming, generally occupies a place on Amazon.com in the Shamanism section somewhere between the top 35 and 100 books. When it falls below the top 100 I sort of panic. Can't do anything about it, just panic that no one will ever buy another copy. But then there are days like today, when it's at #9 in the Shamanism group and about #23,000 of all the few million books they have for sale. So there it is. I'm hot today. That's cool, I think.
I hope you're all hot at what you're doing as well. Hope you're all having a great great time.

Becoming a Shaman

2011-10-20T15:59:00.000-07:00

Someone new to a forum on which I occasionally post has been asking to be put in touch with a real shaman so that he can finish a process of death/rebirth that he is sure he not only needs but which will make him a shaman. I've watched this post and the responses for a couple of weeks and didn't add my useless two cents till today. Today he finally said that he's 19 years old and has been having difficulty fitting into his world for two years, though he says he's had shamanic events in his life pointing toward becoming a shaman for years. I don't doubt him. He seems like a genuine person. But at the same time he's a genuine 19-year old, and, well, because I'm old I'm allowed to say that all 19 year olds are torn between this and that. (I'd add that most 60-year olds are as well, but you all already knew that.)
So today I decided to toss my useless two cents in and here they are. I guess I waited till my heart responded, rather than the dad in me...

Two years? Heck, I've been doing this for 30 some odd years, the last 27 with ayahuasca and San Pedro, with marvelous teachers to guide me. I've been dead and reborn 20 times and I'm just a little baby when it comes to shamanism or being a shaman. This sort of work can garner overnight results in a lot of healing ways, but I don't know that death and rebirth solve anything for the individual--particularly in genuine clarity. I think the experience cleans out a lot of rubbish and gives you a kickstart but you remain you--or at least I remained me--and that meant with each cleansing and heart/eyes more wide open, I simply saw more things to repair....I will root for you but don't want you thinking that if you can get to the death/rebirth with a genuine shaman and genuine and wonderful medicine that it will be an end of any sort. It's more likely to be a new beginning and one fraught with even more difficult realities than what you're currently working with. Which is fine, because you may also have an extra dollop of strength to deal with that new reality. But then after the next death, rebirth, the next hill is higher still....If I ever met anyone who reached the highest mountain, they certainly didn't tell me. Because in the end, even shaman are just fishermen or bankers or wives and mothers and fathers who have to pay bills, change flat tires, get annoyed at kids...it's just living and living wonderfully. Be joyful if you can, every day that you're allowed to wake up and see the white magic illuminating the world, the green magic coursing through the verdancia, the red magic pumping the blood through your veins, and the black magic, the magnetic power of the universe, holding it all together in a way you can appreciate.
Good luck. You've a wonderful journey ahead of you.

In the Supermarket

2011-10-17T16:48:00.000-07:00

Okay: This is the second post of the day, just seconds after the first. But something happened that I missed by just three minutes and I am so angry with myself for not seeing it and taking care of it that I want to write it out so that I will not forget next time.
I was in a grocery store and in front of me on line was a nice young woman--I later found out she's a local teacher, though not at my daughter Madeleina's school--who had bought a bunch of what was obviously going to be dinner. She had lettuce, onions, garlic, a big tomato, some chopped meat, a small sour cream and a can of refried beans, a can of red salsa and some tortillas. So she was a mom going home to make a fast and inexpensive dinner for her husband/kids.
Well, she paid with a check but didn't have her driver's licence so the store wouldn't accept it. She did have her Burleson, TX teacher's badge, with her picture, but the store wouldn't accept it.
She was very embarrassed when a manager was called over and she was told they knew her but corporate wouldn't let them accept a check without a driver's license.
I waited patiently in line, and when she apologized I told her not to sweat it, this sort of thing happens to everyone.
And a few minutes later, when the lady's order was cancelled and I was finished and in my car it suddenly hit me that I should have just paid for the lady's groceries. It was a lousy $14 bucks or so. I just didn't think of it till I was already in my car.
So now I feel like a schmuck for not paying more attention. That poor lady went home without dinner and then probably had to go back out to rebuy that food to feed her kids, and I could have handled it for her if I'd just been thinking more clearly and less selfishly. Dammit. I hate catching myself messing up.
Next time I come on that sort of thing, I will try to remember to simply handle it.

Somebody Asked...So Here's My Answer

2011-10-17T16:45:00.000-07:00

Someone I don't know got hold of me today--not unusual--and suggested that if the ayahuasca dieta called for no salt or sugar--because the spirits are slightly repelled by those things, among others--then why do we need salt or sugar in real life when not on an ayahuasca dieta?
I answered the best I could. Maybe tomorrow I'd answer differently, but here's what I wrote:

Dear X: The human body needs salt. It retains the water in your system, keeping the fluids in your body inside your body. And good salt--I mean real sea salt, which is expensive--has a lot of trace minerals and so forth in it. Without enough water in your system, down goes the electrolyte system and then you can't think straight. Fruits and their natural sugars replenish those electrolytes--as, to a certain extent, does sea salt.
So, in a perfect world, you might get what you need salt-and-sugar-wise from eating fruits and, like a lot of Amazon indigenous, getting their salt from eating salt-heavy clay--just like a lot of US southerners eat a couple of handfuls of dirt now and then.
But we live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with information to all our senses and so we need much more salt/electrolytes/natural sugar than hunter/gatherers ever did. Most people on the river that I know, even now, work hard three/four hours daily and then don't work at all most days. Westerners like myself get up at 5 AM, read newspapers, feed animals, get kids ready for school, drive to school, get work done for 8-10 hours, go to the store, buy food, make food, feed kids, get laundry done and so forth--a reasonably full 16 hour day, 7 days a week most of the time. So our needs are simply different.
Now, you got to know that I eat maybe two burgers from Sonic a year. No fries or soft drinks ever. Fresh fish or mussels/scallops three times a week, a little chicken--maybe a thigh or a quarter of a large breast--a couple of times a week, and then beef maybe once a week. Maybe eggs once a week. Rice with garlic a couple of times a week, bread maybe once a week or twice if I'm dying for comfort food, fresh corn, 4-5 helpings of veggies daily, lots of garlic, lots of onion, spinach, tomatoes, green beans, asparagus, zuccini, yellow squash, broccoli, cauliflower.
If I didn't drink at all I'd be in great shape. Happen to like my little bit of bourbon most days and a couple of glasses of wine. I also drink Una de Gato with Sacha Jergon pretty religiously--just a couple of ounces daily, but it keeps immune system up and keeps the liver clean.
Do I need a lot of salt? Not really. But there is a little good sea salt in the water in which I steam veggies, even if I don't add it later. And always a bit of salt on fish, beef, chicken, though it's down from what it was five years ago and that's down from what it was 25 years ago. I don't exercise as much so I don't need as much.
But I have to hold my ground on what I say about the dieta. If Amaringo was told by his spirits that they don't like salt or sugar, then that's perfect for him. The spirits that hang around me want me to indulge in everything. They're freaking rock 'n rollers who want to taste, touch, feel things to the extreme. They hate it that I don't drink so much anymore. They hate it that I've cut down on cigarettes. They can't believe I have not done cocaine for nearly 30 years.
The spirits that hang near me want the visceral. They don't have bodies and cannot feel the physical. So they want to step into my body and feel it all. And I mean all of it. Just for a second or two.
And they love salt and sugar (which I hardly ever have) and wish I would do more, just so they could experience it.
So, lesson? Different people, different spirits. And each spirit wants a different thing from a human host, even if we're just hosts for a little while.
Any of this making sense?
I would never cut salt out of the diet of the people I take to the jungle. I couldn't. They'd all fade after the first half day of walking 5 miles in the rainforest if they didn't have a little salt with their lentils and avocados and eggs and rice and river fish.
But this is just me talking and I've got no special pipeline to anything. I just do the best I can with the info I'm given and with the way I was taught.
I hope this ramble somehow helps you muddle through it.

Here's the Deal then...

2011-10-13T14:51:00.000-07:00

So in the last week I've been feeling like crap. My blood pressure, kept in check for the last several months--for the first time in my life--is running 145./93 or so, every day. Don't like that, especially since I'm taking the meds. But lately my eyes feel like they're so full they're popping. I'll get a glaucoma check as soon as I can swing it.
Some of it might just be getting old. Some of it might be me hiding in a shell. How? I don't know. But I still might be doing it. So I don't like feeling like death is getting close. Not in the playbook that I wrote, anyway. I've too much to live for. I don't drink a lot anymore--more than I should but pretty darned tame if you ask me. And I'm putting my smokes out at the halfway point more than half the time, sometimes less than that. Still, if I'm screwed, it's me who did it.
On the other hand, I am not going easy. I'm gonna be strong and okay. I'm fuggin Irish and they'll get me when they get me. Meanwhile, I'm gonna be on that freaking wanted list and damn those who don't know that. Come and get me, Mr. Death, if you got the balls to deal with me once you got me.
Arrogant, no?
Fuck them. Go out kicking and screaming. Do not go gentle into that good night....

Simple Lesson from the Spirits

2011-10-12T11:14:00.000-07:00

Someone I know and respect wrote to say they were having a difficult time living with what they learned through the spirit of ayahuasca in the real world. I understood. I think it's sometimes very difficult living by the spirits' lessons on this plane. But this is where our living is done, and the spirits often have good advice, even if it's difficult.
In my own case, I try my best. For instance, I'd like to be a perfect father, but am not. Could I be? I don't know. I try, and then try harder when I fail. I try to see--and this is a spirit lesson from years ago--no, try to be my kids to see what it is they need. Not what I think they need, because that's me making assumptions, but when there is a problem, to be them, to see with their eyes for a moment, and when I do that, and when it sometimes work, then I suddenly know what it is I need--or rather, what they really need.
Some things are fixable, some not. I wish my wife/ex-wife's babies, Sierra and Alexa, were my babies. But they are not. So I can either resent that, or be as joyful as possible over the fact that I get to see them a few times a week and that that time is valuable and precious to me--and to them as well, I hope. (Last night the girls, plus my grand baby Taylor had me picking them up and spinning them and having them climb all over me for an hour. That was perfect. It wasn't all day, and it wasn't today, but it was grand last night.
So I wish my family weren't broken, but it is. And it's probably my fault but that's all a long time ago and these days I try to make the most of my time with them. And though it's funny, although Madeleina is the only one of my kids who live with me--and then she also lives with Chepa a lot too--I still make enough food, or have enough food ready to be able to make every night just in case the gang shows up. It might be an extra chicken in the oven, or enough rice ready and enough veggies in the fridge, or enough extra portions of what I'm eating, to feed them all. And a lot of days they don't come over. A few days a week I'm eating alone when Madeleina is at Chepa's.
But I don't mind. I don't get blue over it. I just think of how much fun it is when they do show up and so I prepare for them with a lot of joy. And if they don't, well, they've got their own lives to live. That's fantastic. If they do, they usually show at dinner time, so it's either in the oven or ready to go in a few minutes.
That was a spirit lesson. More joy, less pain. Having the extra food ready is no real trouble for me at all. If it doesn't get used one day it will get used the next or wind up with Boots the Wonderdog. But having them know that they are welcome and thought of and considered in my daily life, well, I think that means a lot to them. I think it brings them joy to walk in and ask "What's cooking?" and be told "something good." I don't think it would bring them as much joy if I only had what I like in the fridge and never had anything ready for anybody else and they walked in and asked "What's cooking?" and I said, "Nothing. You didn't tell me you were coming over."
I think you just have to do the best you can, and if you're lucky enough to get some spirit lessons, well, they won't just automatically fit into your life, but I find them pretty generally invaluable in the long run.

Dream

2011-10-11T03:19:00.000-07:00

I don't generally bother you with my dreams. I don't know if I've ever written one here. But last night was unusual. Simple, hard, unusual. I woke up after it began at 11 PM. Then again at 1:10 AM. Again at 3:30 AM, then 4:15 AM and then at 5 AM, when I got up for good. I had the same dream the entire night. It never stopped. That alone was amazing.
For being so long it was a very simple dream.
The world was a moonscape. There was no life. No matter where I looked, there was not a sign of life. Not that it was dead, it simply was not alive and never had been. I went everywhere, including to other planets. Nothing. Not even our sun, just the very vaguest of illumination, enough to see that there was nothing. I woke up feeling blue.
I got up, pee'd, drank some water, went back to bed.
The same nothing. In fact almost a mottled nothing. Just a mottled colored planet surface on all the planets.
I traveled everywhere again and then woke up again. I was crying a little. It was a sad place with no life.
When I began to dream the dream again, I discovered a couple of others, like me, who were just as sad at the absence of life as I was. When we began to talk, we began to see a couple of shoots pop out of the ground. They quickly grew into trees on the otherwise barren landscape.
I woke up amazed, drank more water, went back to bed.
This time I saw a lot of people. They were arguing over the trees that had sprouted. Someone told them to stop being selfish. Just start being nice and sharing the trees and see what happened.
When they did, a lot of trees began to fill the landscape. And buildings appeared, and cities and rivers and the sun. And everybody was pretty happy that the world was back to being the world again, full of life, full of a bit of danger, full of energy.
I woke again, pee'd, went back to bed, sure that was the last of it.
It wasn't. This time people were back to being people: Some nice, some selfish. Whenever they were selfish things died or just disappeared and went back to just being not alive.
I began to tell people that though it sounded like some awfully written science fiction book, the fact was that we apparently had to do a couple of things to keep the world vibrant: We had to first accept that we needed to agree that the world would only be the world if we all allowed ourselves to believe it was full of trees and animals and people and so forth. And then we would have to be decent to each other to keep that image of the world alive.
Someone said they'd already read a story like that. I told them it didn't matter. What mattered was that to keep the beautiful world we'd have to do our best to get along.
Most people agreed.
I woke up again for the last time. I went to the kitchen and put the coffee on, then brushed my teeth, and thought about the dream. Really corny, I know, but I really had it. So I guess I must believe it on some level. What I really believe in normal hours is that the world will be beautiful and full of vibrant life whether people are here or not. What I think the dream was showing me was that if we're not nice, not decent, then we'll live in a world where we can't see that vibrant life. Where our lives are just a lifeless, mottled moonscape.
Very very corny.
But it was also very cool to be shown it from that perspective.
Ain't life grand?

Bought Madeleina a Cell Phone Today

2011-10-08T17:50:00.001-07:00

Well, against my wishes, I bought my daughter, Madeleina, a cell phone today. Just a throw-away that's to be used in emergencies. With a card that gives her five minutes a day for 60 days. That's 300 minutes, total, for two months. I'm not a fan of cell phones and don't have one and am always hard-pressed to use one when it's handed to me. Not that they don't have their utility: Now that every stinking pay phone in the world has disappeared, having a cell phone when you get a flat on the highway is a good thing. Or when your plane has been diverted to another city and you know people are going to drive two hours to pick you up.
So I recognize wonderful value there.
On the other hand, as a driver in Texas who has to work to avoid having half-a-dozen wrecks a day because people are driving with their knees while talking, calling, texting....well, I don't think they're cool. And to listen to people in the supermarket talk to someone somewhere else about, "Well, the Coke isn't as cold as the Pepsi, so would you rather...?" or "I'm here, hon. I'm one aisle away from where I was when you called me a minute ago...I didn't get to the eggs yet..."
Okay, so I'm old school and a Luddite but if anyone ever asked me those questions, well, I guess I'd have to stop talking with them.
Now, because I don't have a cell phone, when I approach someone and it's sort of an airport or flat tire emergency, I generally ask if they'll allow me to use their cell phone for $10. Most people say yes, cause that's nice pay for a local call. And I don't mind paying it. I don't want to be a mooch.
My daughter, on the other hand, with band, has to sometimes call to say she's going to be back at the school at 1 AM, not midnight, and so I generally try to have her have a couple of bucks at the ready for when she borrows someone else's cell phone to make that call.
But then last night happened. Last night started early, about 8 AM. Chepa was leaving to see her boyfriend--father of Sierra and Alexa, who now lives in Amarillo. Madeleina had an early day off, about noon, but then a 4 hour marching band practice, then a change into uniform, then a football game. Which meant she'd be getting off about midnight. (I am livid at the idea that the band can make freshmen in high school stay till 8 PM twice a week, then have those kids pull a 16 hour Friday, every Friday during football season, and then, like today, about every three weeks have them return to school on Saturday at 9 AM for band contests that last till 11 PM. That's a 12 hour day Thursday followed by a 16-hour day Friday, followed by a 14-hour day Saturday--all for a lousy high school credit. Hell, I was a star writer and decent athlete and in every play my high school put on while I was there and never never got home past about 6 PM--enough time to hold down a 24 hour a week job to pay for high school and still get my work done.)
Sorry for the rant. Back to the story.
So yesterday morning I told Madeleina to get a ride from her friend Sierra, who lives about 2 miles away and who stays her now and then for an over night sleepover. Madeleina said she was embarrassed to ask. I reminded her that I get up at 5 AM and generally am asleep by 9:30, so if she wanted me to pick her up she'd have to call repeatedly until I woke up.
She said she couldn't borrow a cell phone to make 20 repeated calls.
I told her to call her brother Italo to pick her up.
She said she'd try to get a ride with her friend Sierra.
But while I might be the worst dad, I thought I'd better stay sober and be ready to drive when the call came, if it came. And if it didn't and Sierra's parents brought Madeleina home, then I should at least meet them in the driveway to keep Boots from biting them.
So 9 PM passed and I started watching All about the Benjamins. Then 11 came and something else came on. Then it was midnight and I called Italo and asked him if Madeleina had called him. He said no. I asked how the fuck a high school football game that started at 7 PM could still be going on at midnight? He had no Idea.
At about 12:30 I drank water, washed my face and drove to Madeleina's high school. Not a whisper in the parking lot.
At about 2 AM I drove there again. I mean, it was possible she'd gone with Sierra (a different one than her sister Sierra) to her home to sleep and simply didn't call--that would have been gutsy but not past Madeleina to do that. I drove all over that school, looking for a little lost girl but found none.
At about 3:30 I slept for an hour, trying to reassure myself that she must have gone to her girlfriend's home.
That worked till about 4:30. Then I was up and drinking coffee.
At 6, still dark, I went back to bed and slept till 6:30. Then I was up for good.
At 8 AM there was a phone call. It was from the local Brookshires' grocery store, on their house line. It was Madeleina.
"Dad, I'm at Brookshires. Can you come and pick me up?"
"Sure. Where were you last night? Why didn't you call?"
"I slept in a doorway at school. I knew you wouldn't pick me up and I didn't want to bother Italo and Sierra never came to the game and nobody gave me a ride so I slept at the school."
I flew out the door and picked her up.
I was totally freaked out, could hardly breathe, was angry at her for not calling anyone but still seeing my baby trying to tough it out in a doorway and probably being scared to death all night. I was yelling and I was crying all the way to picking her up. I was guilty, I was sad, I was thinking of being her, not me, at 14, thinking you've been abandoned and sleeping in that doorway. And I was angry that she hadn't even tried to call Italo or I.
So I guess she was brave, then scared and finally, when the sun rose, walked the mile to the supermarket and made the call. And I'm happy she's okay. No, I was so freaking happy that she was okay that I almost killed her for being so freaking selfish that she didn't make a phone call to me because she thought I would be sleeping instead of staying awake to take care of her.
And then today, having put the three stories due last week to bed after rewrite, I just tried to sleep. I couldn't but tried. And then I walked a fast mile to get my blood moving and went to Walmart and bought Madeleina her emergency cell phone. Now she can call me 20 times to wake me up.
Cause while I know she's tough enough to handle sleeping in a doorway, and while I know she's seen me do it, or sleep in a cemetery, that's not necessarily what I want for that perfect little girl.
I'm glad she had an adventure, but it almost killed me.

Fine Dining Alone

2011-10-05T17:37:00.000-07:00

Okay, just to make you crazy: Tonight, I am eating alone. I was thinking about making a hamburger, or the good mussels I have. I was thinking a steak would be good.
I settled on the small piece of swordfish I had left over from a couple of nights ago. Maybe 6 ounces.
So I sauteed that in my garlic-olive oil (just fresh garlic chopped every couple of days and put into good olive oil to steep to have it when I need it). Then I was dreaming of my fried tomatoes with that, so I put two thick slices of organic beefsteak tomatoes into the pan as well. Everything got a good bit of butcher ground pepper.
I have left over basmati rice cooked with that garlic olive oil, so I'm using that as a starch, but minimally.
For a second veg I'm steaming spinach, then gonna saute that with thin slices of fresh strawberries and balsamic vinegar.
Now the swordfish, I've just turned it over and it's nice and brown on one side, is gonna finish with crumbled blue cheese. Then I'm gonna take that out and put in capers and a bit of lime juice to make the sauce.
The tomatoes will be turned, covered in good grated parmesan, then sprinkled with the cooking grease of garlic olive oil.
And then I'm eating.
Have a good meal everyone.

PS: Okay, so don't try that at home. Each element of the meal was almost more delicious than your taste buds could handle. Thank goodness I tried it for you. The swordfish with the capers/onions/blue cheese was way over the top of wonderland.
The spinach, garlic and strawberry slices nearly made my mouth fall apart.
The grilled tomatoes in garlic olive oil with good parmesan would kill most people.
And the basmati rice, well, it's just plain good.
Aren't you all glad you have me eating this stuff? I'd hate to find you all dead of exquisite ecstacy if you actually tried this stuff at home. But someone's got to do it.
Have a good night, all. Especially you, Morgan and Laura, cause I am thinking of you this second.

Ayahuasca--Part of the Jungle, Not Apart from the Jungle

2011-10-05T09:38:00.000-07:00

Someone on a forum to which I occasionally post recently asked where they ought to go to drink ayahuasca for the first time. And in the message he/she was clear that he didn't want to visit markets or such, but to basically stick to ayahuasca. Well, I thought the person was a little presumptuous so I responded. This is what I wrote:

Hello: There are lots of good places to go, but let me suggest that if you skip a trip to the market, or a dozen other places, you won't have the context in which to drink. Ayahuasca is part of the Jungle, not apart from the jungle. It's just one of a million things that people who live in the jungle do, like hunting, planting fields, making their dugout canoes, swimming, fishing, cooking or going to the market. So please reconsider your preconceptions. If you want it as apart from the jungle, then go to a camp and drink the day you get off an airplane. If you want to experience it like people from the jungle experience it, then imagine it's just something done in the course of a life lived to the fullest, which includes kids playing during ceremony, neighbors showing up while brewing--a very very social time, typically, in my experience--a wife or husband telling the curandero he's singing too loudly in the middle of the ceremony; the neighbors listening to the radio of a soccer game in the background of a ceremony; heading to market the day before ceremony because someone forgot to buy enough mapachos or agua florida or having to deal with a baby who needs a toothache remedy in the middle of ceremony.
All of this is what makes the medicine--as a part of the jungle, not apart from the jungle--special. If you miss that in favor of a controlled environment, you will be drinking like a lot of Westerners drink, not like Peruvians drink.

CL: This Is Just For You

2011-10-04T18:20:00.000-07:00

Hello, CL. This is Peter. I might be out of line here. I understand and this will be understated.
You cannot imagine how sorry I am for your loss. I kept my distance because of the love I felt. There is no credit for that. Just reality.
But I have been running through my head the possibilities of what happened last week happening and I keep coming up with zero. You didn't cause it. I didn't cause it. If you read the piece on How Guardians Work, you know what I am talking about. It should not, could not have happened. But it did.
If it all happened just for me to apologize to you, an apology so late and insignificant that it didn't need to be heard by you, that's what it was.
But someone/something/some spirit wanted us back in touch.
We had our conversation.
If that was enough, then okay.
I'm embarrassed because this is very public.
And if you never call again, I understand. You had a different life. You had a guy who loved you and whom you loved. I'm sorry for your loss.
I don't mean to be a dope. I probably am being a dope.
But the circumstances were just too out-freaking-landish not to be important. Like Italian Round-O's. Something significant.
Thanks for calling last week.
P
PS: My daughter, Madeleina (named after my mom) loves the Sherlock Holmes stuff you got in your last life. And she adores the ink well set.

Rats and Marco

2011-10-04T10:23:00.000-07:00

Okay, my son Marco and I have spent at least part of the last 19 or so years fighting with one another. At least half my fault, some his. He's obstinate, won't do what's asked, thinks of himself before thinking of others.
On the other hand, he's also the only 23 year old in the world who would come into the house, see a stranger--to him--sitting on the couch, and then, in a completely uninhibited way, sit in my lap and put his arms around my neck.
So while he's the worst, he's the best, and I love him always.
Today he's best: I was writing when creaking began in the kitchen. I had about 10 wonderful people over for the weekend and it was glorious, and they left Sunday and yesterday. Everything cool. So this morning I was back at work at the computer when the wall behind the kitchen food cabinets began to creak. I don't mean a little settling, I mean creaking and creaking, like a rat was trying to go from inside the wall into the rear of the cabinet.
Not much I can do since rats, in my house, terrify me in a way that goes back to a childhood fear. Something devilish about them, and I just freak out. So I was not going to do more than a cursory investigation. I did. No signs of anything. And the creaking stopped.
But then it started up again.
Nothing to do but call Marco and tell him to come over and help find and kill a rat.
He didn't argue. He didn't hesitate. He just got here, opened the cabinet that I'd been too afraid to open, declare that there were no holes in the rear that would allow entry and no rat poop.
"Probably in the wall, dad. You know, from the gaps in the flooring under the house."
Then he took $20 and went to go buy a few cans of sealant. And when he comes back he'll crawl under the house and seal the cracks.
And then I'll be safe.
And not so scared.
Two nights ago I killed a black widow with an empty pack of cigarettes. No sweat. No fear. Just a spider.
But a field rat?
I'm two years old again and want my dad to fix it, quick.
Thanks, Marco.

How the Guardians Work

2011-09-25T15:30:00.001-07:00

Okay, so you know I've been a bit upended by things that happened this week. Here's the deal, without names. And it goes to the heart of how the spirits I call the Guardians (or Guardian Angels, though I've never seen wings) work.
About 3 days ago I suddenly discovered--and I never knew it before; most of you guys know I'm an admitted Luddite with new fangled gimmickry--that there is a "stats" button on this blog. I don't know if it was always there or not, but I happened on it.
So I pressed it and was surprised to see that I could see the hits this blog got this week; what stories were most viewed on this blog (Mushrooms in India and Swim Team 101 are by far the most looked at and they're freaking old!) and so forth.
And on the stats page, which I didn't think I had ever since google ads cut me off for a burst of ad money about three years ago, it also noted which urls people came from to get here. And which key words were plugged into the computer. And on that list of key words used this week which wound up finding the blog was "peter gorman, c". (I told you, no names, but it was a name.)
Seeing that almost floored me. Utterly unexpected. This was a woman I lived with, was in love with, for a long time a long time ago. We have not been in touch for a long long time. There have been times I've been tempted but she had a family and no matter how drunk I got I never pulled the trigger (that I remember) and called. Doesn't mean I didn't think about her sometimes. She was a wonderful person. And gorgeous. And she never spat at me. Or hit me with a baseball bat. And forgave me my idiocy and emotional cruelty. I loved her for all of that. I hated her for all of that.
And to see our names together, separated only by a comma, meant she was trying to get in touch. So I looked her up--which I have not done for a couple of years, but probably do every couple of years just to see if she's doing okay--and saw--with sadness--that she's recently lost her husband.
She was very true, so I'm sure it was and is hard on her.
So I figured she was feeling rootless and trying to figure out how to get in touch.
I did not call her. Instead, I put a notice up on this blog telling her I'd love her to call if she wanted.
I woke up the next morning feeling like a predator for writing that (I was not being predatory that I knew of when I wrote it). So I took it down and chastised myself for being a prick.
A few hours later I checked the phone messages and saw her name on them. No message, but her name and a number. I looked it up: It was her hometown, or close to it.
I called the number. I got a machine and left a message--which included the fact that if this was who I thought it was I could hardly breathe.
She called and we talked. It was fantastic to hear her voice; sad beyond belief as well because she's so hurt by her loss. Like with my sister, I wish there was something I could do; there is not.
But what was strange was this: She said she had not been the person linking our names on google which wound up finding my blog. And I don't think she's a reader of the blog.
So how did I find the "stats" button and see the linked names, look her up, post a request that she call, have her notice it in the few hours it was up, and then have her call?
If I press the keywords for a month on my site, our linked names don't appear. They've only been used a few times and so only will appear in a "week" worth of stats. Not longer.
So let's go over this: I find the stats button on the specific week in the last 25 years when someone has linked my name with her. I put up a notice to call me and take it down in maybe 10 hours, but she sees it in that time and calls.
Now, when I talk about the guardians, whatever you call them, you have to realize that the odds of any of that happening are zero. Not one in a million, not one in 10 million. Zero.
But it all happened.
The guardians wanted us to recontact. For what, I don't know. But it was arranged so amazingly, so cleverly, that it is beyond description.
For me the difference between an hallucination and a real vision is that a vision is something that you could not have imagined if you'd made a list of 10,000 things that might have happened given a certain set of circumstances.
This is so far past that it's in its own ballpark.
What does it mean? I don't know. Maybe she was just being polite in responding to the blog request. I do know that some spirits somewhere thought it imperative that we speak.
And that's good enough for me.
PS: I loved hearing her voice.

Okay, On a Brighter Note...

2011-09-25T08:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, on a brighter note, man, Madeleina, Marco and I ate well last night.
I was in the mood for salmon. But I had some left over mussels in the fridge in a nice fresh tomato/garlic/onion sauce and I didn't want them to go to waste.
So I shelled them, strained the sauce and put both mussels and strained sauce aside.
Then I cut up red potatoes--with skins--on to boil.
For veggies I cut broccoli and asparagus and par-boiled them. Then I sliced some daikon radish and red pepper strips to add later, for sauteing with the broc and asparagus.
When those things were all ready, I sauted a piece of salmon in garlic olive oil and when that was mostly done I added the four large sea scallops I remembered I had to the same pan--little salt and pep. While they were cooking I added some sesame seeds. And when the seafood was done I took it out of the pan and added the cold mussels and left over mussel juice to the pan drippings.
The potatoes were mashed nicely by Madeleina and to them we added roasted garlic and fresh basil we'd tossed into the blender.
The fish was served on the garlic-basil mashed potatoes, a bit of sauce and mussels on that, and then those sauted veggies were ringed around the plate.
Man, that was good.
It might have been the first time Marco ever had sea scallops. Madeleina didn't want them so Marco and I had two each. And when he bit into the first he paused then asked what the heck "this round thing is?"
I told him.
"Welll get more of them. Dad, these things are fantastic!"
I thought that was excellent.

Reality Check

2011-09-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

Don't know what it is, but this week has been hard for me. I feel like I'm moving through molasses and getting nowhere fast. And I have no reason to complain: I have stories, good ones, that I'm working on and several more that I'm beginning to collect information on and my kids are all good and I got to spend some time with Sierra and Alexa this week, along with my granddaughter Taylor Rain, and that was fantastic.
So it's not work, it's not missing the kids. It really isn't money either--there was enough to pay the mortgage for next month last week and I still got enough for a can of paint I need and gas money in my wallet.
No, this is just about me and maybe a reality check. I already wrote about doing the songs and feeling like they lacked oomph. I'm dealing with that and gonna sing my way through it and keep trying to help if I can.
I think maybe it's about myself dragging myself down. I need some soul searching.
I spoke with someone I hadn't spoken with in a long time yesterday. I almost couldn't breathe at first. Whew.... Who the hell was I--am I--to be bumping into someone else's world?
Well, I'm sitting here searching for something to say and my Irish insides are telling me: You feeling sorry for yourself? Are you kidding? Get the hell into the kitchen and mop the floor. Get outside and get that paint and get the work done. Open a new folder and get one of the stories due this week started and finished. But don't just sit here full of vague remorse and self-pity you bum! Live, don't linger!
Okay, well, I'm glad I had that little chat with myself.
My mother used to say things like "You want to feel sorry for yourself? Go volunteer emptying bedpans at an old folks home. Then you'll at least have a reason to feel sorry for yourself."
Thanks, mom.

Trying to Help--Feeling Useless

2011-09-23T16:18:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I was very connected to spirit. It happens when I get to my late teacher Julio's home and am around ayahuasca and sapo and nu-nu and San Pedro. When I came home there were several people who needed me to sing for them. I didn't know what "singing" for someone was until I did it, but I was asked to help people who were sick, and a dog, and so I tried. And what occurred was utilizing--or asking for permission to utilize--some of the gifts that have been lent to me over the years via medicine, particularly ayahuasca.
Now ayahuasca ain't god, no matter how you describe/define that infinite force. But ayahuasca is a very powerful ally of man, a spirit we access by drinking the essence of the vine, banisteriopsis caapi with either chacruna (psychotria viridis) or chaliponga--which I forget in Latin at this exact moment.
So I asked the spirit of ayahuasca and the spirit of the four magics I know--white magic, the light in the known and unknown universe; green magic, the magic that runs through the verdancia, whether rivers, river animals, grasses, trees and so forth on this plane and perhaps elsewhere; red magic, the magic of blood that can cause/correct diseases that runs through us humans and so many other creatures; and black magic, the thick, profound, deep magnetic magic that we call gravity that holds not only the universe but each piece of the universe, in place. And I asked the guardians I know, powerful spirits who have let me be introduced to them, to help. And I asked smoke and perfume and cama langa to help, powerful allies as well.
And so I sang for those friends of mine.
And it was strong. And even those who didn't know I was singing for them got in touch to say things were happening with their ill bodies.
And then this week, it feels like the song has no power. No oomph. Like there are no spirits to call on or if there are I certainly don't know how to call them.
I still sing. I know there is life and force and will in everything and even me just hoping someone might get better is better than nothing. But I think it's more than that, normally. Just this week, it feels weak.
Damnit.

Someone Who Appreciates Food

2011-09-21T16:34:00.001-07:00

Well, my friend Bo was here last week. I last saw him in Iquitos about 16 months ago. He's the vet who became a US paddleball champion and wrote the Complete Book of Racketball that sold 260,000 hardcover copies a long time ago. And he's the fellow who runs the Executive Tours, taking wealthy people out to ride the rails to see what the other side of things looks like. He's a pal I met in Iquitos, Peru when I had my bar and he walked in with his legs and feet so distended I thought they'd explode. Been a friend ever since. I wrote a story about him called Renaissance on the Rails that helped me win a national journalism award and was one of three that won me a Journalist of the Year in Texas a couple of years ago.
So he was here for a few days, then split for another friend's--one of the original Microsoft guys--and then wrote me a couple of days ago that he had a friend he'd gone to school with at Michigan 40 years ago who wanted to meet me and loved food.
I said okay and then yesterday came and I was thinking of mussels in red wine and tomatoes with cilantro to go with huge sea scallops sauteed in garlic with fresh lime.
Turned out that Bo's friend didn't like scallops or mussels so I switched to my lime chicken, and diverted them with my jungle guacamole. For the guacamole, I cleaned three small Hass avocados--perfectly ripe--and mashed them. Then I sauteed garlic in olive oil, added finely diced red onion and finally finely diced Roma tomatoes. When that was done I added it, hot, to the avocados, put in a bit of salt and a bunch of butcher-ground black pepper, let it marry for 10 minutes, then added juice of two limes.
They liked it.
And while they were eating that I took 3 half chicken breasts and cut them each in half, lengthwise, to make six nice pieces of chicken breast. They were flowered, egged and then dipped in a mix of 1/2 plain--good--breadcrumbs and 1/2 grated parmesan cheese. With some good pepper thrown in for good measure.
Those got sauteed in good olive oil on one side till brown, then removed from the pan and placed in pyrex pans, dusted with freshly shaved parmesan and then embellished with the juice of several limes--and then put into the oven at 350 for about 10-12 minutes.
While they were cooking, the basmati rice, cooked with garlic and olive oil was finishing.
And while they were cooking I took about 1/2 pound of asparagus, par-boiled them, then drained. Then I cut some salt pork jowel bacon--just a little and cut finely--and reduced that in a saute pan. Done, I added a bit of garlic and olive oil and then the asparagus. As the asparagus was finishing, I added a bit of white vinegar.
While that was all cooking I moistened fresh spinach, drained it, then cooked it in the same damned olive oil and garlic with a little balsamic vinegar and a teaspoon of butter. With the same darned cracked black pepper.
Then I sauteed up some very fine red pepper slices--long wise--and used that to dress the plates.
Food was great. As always at the Gorman's, no matter who is cooking.
Taste bud sensation.
Bo's friend loved it. Bo loved it. i loved it.
What was startling was making it while someone who loves cooking watch. Normally my kids chip in on cutting garlic and things but they basically eat. And love it. But yesterday I had an audience of one who loves cooking and watching him watch me doing some of the most basic things I do let me see me through his eyes and WOW! I'm freaking fantastic in a kitchen. I do like 20 things at once, have three or four pots and pans on at the same time all coming together at the right moment, including garnishes--which yesterday included cantaloupe along with the red pepper and some cilantro. But to me it's just cooking. To see it from someone else's eyes--someone who likes cooking and who kept saying: What was that? I missed that step. How did you do that?
In all my life I don't remember having had an audience like that. I mean this guy--a smart guy--was interested in what I was doing and how I was doing it and he found it magical. My kids love my food. In all my years at the restaurant thousands of people came into my kitchen to watch me for my magic, but last night there was actually someone who understood the magic and loved it.
I don't mean to be sappy but what a rush that was! I mean, I made jungle guac and I had someone not just saying it was good or great or fantastic but saying, "So when did you add the onions to the garlic? How long before the tomatoes? This is unbelieveable! Go over it again."
And if you're a mom or dad or big sister or brother or aunt or uncle who has made thousands of meals, all with the intent of keeping those in your charge healthy, well, you know that's not a place where ego gets gratified. So to have someone gratify my ego--about my tastes, my movements in the kitchen, my cutting, my seasoning, my cleanup--well, that was one very nice event.
And for all you moms and dads cooking every day, I can only wish that someday this guy, this friend of Bo Keely's, comes to your house and makes you feel like the greatest cook/chef in the world.

Just Some Sad Stories

2011-09-20T09:25:00.000-07:00

Well, it's a beautiful morning here in bucolic Joshua. I'm sitting at my desk ready to start making phone calls. I've got several stories lined up that need to be moved along. Problem is, they're all pretty sad stories. A couple I know who moved into a dream house a few years ago faced almost immediate disappointment when they discovered that a gas well pad was being put along their fence line. There went the view. Worse, whenever it rained all the poisons that accumulated on the padsite went into their yard, killing their garden and flower bed.
Since then they've discovered their house is in a flood plane--it was said not to be--and the rains over the years have made it worthless. Sad story of being raked over the coals.
Then there's the story of a truck cleaner who is now crippled and whose partner is dead. He thought he was washing trucks. He didn't know they carried biohazards. Decent guy screwed by an unscrupulous boss. Damn.
Then there's a story for my column in Skunk magazine about someone in Hawaii going to jail for 11 years over some pot she was growing. Damn.
All those things and others are trying to take the sheen away from this glorious day. I'm gonna try not to let them.
There was one good laugh so far: Taking Madeleina to school this morning she referred to a guy we know who just got married and who already has a child as "pretty good guy. But the girl, dad, please....she's just a chick he picked up and knocked up..."
She tried to catch herself but it was too late. I'd heard it.
This was my baby talking! My baby!
Well, I guess she's still my baby but she's not really a baby anymore, eh?
Have a great one, everyone.

Shameless Self-Freaking Promotion: So Buy Into It!

2011-09-19T16:43:00.000-07:00

Okay everybody: Gloves are off. I need to sell 1,000 copies of my book by the end of the month, 12 days, in order to make enough money to pay the damned mortgage for the next couple of months. So go to Amazon.com, look up Ayahuasca in My Blood 25 Years of Medicine Dreaming and then buy a couple of dozen. Very inexpensive pre-Christmas, Christmas presents for the whole clan. Twelve year old nephew? No sweat. He'll grow into it. He's gonna do drugs one day anyway, so you might as well introduce him to the proper way to meet good medicine, rather than let his 14 year old friends do it. SO BUY THE BOOK!!!!!
Second: I've got two trips coming up in January and February. I think my website is finally up to speed on dates. There is a 21 day trip that includes the jungle and the highlands (cuzco-sacred valley-Machu Picchu). It's expensive at $4400, which comes to $210 a day. Does not include any airfare, but does include most meals, all hotels, trains, entrances, everything but walking around money and any liquor you drink in the cities. There is no liquor while in medicine mode. The medicines will include ayahuasca, magic 'shrooms, sapo, nu-nu and San Pedro. You'll have the best people I know administering it. And you can do either end or the whole trip. Jungle portion, 12 1/2 days is 2400. Mountain portion, 8 1/2 days is $2000. There are no secret extras: some meals and your walking around money are on you, plus your airfare, but the rest is included and it's well done all the way around.
Dates for the January 2012 trip are: Jan 7-Jan 28.

In February I've got a 9 1/2 day Jungle Intensive. It's very good, very intense, and focuses on living in the jungle/ayahuasca/sapo and nu-nu, with some shrooms probably showing up. That trip runs from Feb 4-Feb 13. Cost is $1800 and everything but airfare, walking around money and any alcohol you have during our day and a half in Iquitos is included.
Both of these trips are extraordinary, as former guests will attest. My team is fantastic, the places we go include some places that people who have lived in Iquitos, Peru for years have never gone. My aim is to allow you to change in the most positive way. If you suck, you'll suck less when we're finished with you. If you are already great, we'll just polish you up to a high gleam.
I love doing these trips. And I think the guests do as well. But I need guests to do them. So sign up, change your life, and that's it.
Thanks for listening to this selfish notice. I'll try not to repeat too often.

Marco's Birthday Story

2011-09-18T15:43:00.000-07:00

it was my son Marco's birthday yesterday, so I made a lot of grilled chicken and his favorite dish, Cuban beef--chopped beef in Spanish-seasoned tomato sauce--over rice and got a cake and brought it over to my ex-wife Chepa's where the party was. She had a lot of the extended family there and a good volleyball game that kept up for hours--with people just coming and going as they liked. I played a while, thenI left after cake at 9:30; I was told today the party kept on going till after Madeleina came back from dancing at a friend's quinceañera at about 1 AM. I just can't do those sorts of nights. I'm way too tired. But he had a good time and party--with the one black hole the fact that a girl he adores who was supposed to come by, didn't.
This morning he was fairly in the dumps about it so I told him the story of a beautiful girl who used to hang out with the High Times guys. She was gorgeous and would take a different one of them home to sleep with them once in a while. I was not in that circle so it was never me and that was fine. But one of our guys was really in love with her and I asked him how he held up, knowing she was only going to show up to sleep with him maybe every three weeks or month and that she'd never be his girlfriend.
He told me that at first it killed him. And then he realized she was like Grace from god. You got it and loved getting it when you did, but couldn't ever expect to get it and never dared hope for it. You just basked in it when it unexpectedly arrived. And that's how that guy handled it.
I hope Marco could see something in that story.
I'm off to cook some fish for Madeleina and I and while I'm at it some chicken for Boots. Then I'll water the lawn. Nice evening.
Have a nice evening yourselves, okay?

My Baby...

2011-09-15T18:29:00.000-07:00

My baby, don't need no lovin', my baby;
My baby, don't need no kissin', my baby'
My babe, she don't need no lovin'
All she needs is a good time husband, my baby....
And all Madeleina needed today was dad to bring a pot luck dinner to a pot luck dinner for the Joshua HS marching band.
Well, I bought 10 pounds of boneless pork country ribs yesterday and today I seared them, peppered and put a bit of olive oil and garlic on them, then baked them.
And while they were baking I made--cheated--a barbeque sauce. First, I took the pan drippings from the searing. To that I added fresh salt pork bacon bits I cut from a small piece I had. Then garlic in olive oil, a big diced red onion, four good organic roma tomatoes, two celery stalks sliced finely, four good scallions, cleaned and diced, and then, when that was all sort of married, some decent barbeque sauce.
So it wasn't my sauce but it had my intentions and material in it.
And it was fantastic.
And Madeleina called while I was cooking the sauce:
"Dad, did you forget the dinner? Please don't tell me you're drunk and forgot the dinner!!!!"
"I'm not drunk and didn't forget the dinner. I'll be there in 15 minutes."
"But I TOLD YOU to be here between 6:30 and 7 pm!!!!!" she screamed.
"Yes, baby, it's only 6:35. I'll be there before 7."
"Don't embarrass me, dad!"
"I won't."
Ten minutes later I was there and when I opened my dish and people smelled it they ooh'd and aah'd and Madeleina saw that and gave me the thumbs up and smiled broadly and when the person behind the counter took a bite of the soft as cotton ribs and announced: "We have the dish of the night here! Try these ribs!", well Madeleina started to glow.
And then she told me to go home and pick her up later.
So I did.
And she was proud. And that's all that mattered to me.
You need every edge in high school that you can get. I'm glad to help if the kitchen is involved.

Sunday Didn't End Well

2011-09-12T15:21:00.000-07:00

Well, Sunday started off with me being so alive, and so happy to be alive. And then I started thinking about 9/11, 10 years ago, and I was sad. And then I was doing a song for some people and my brother-in-law, Tom, said thanks but he didn't need it anymore. I'd been singing for his liver to get better and for him to have a bigger straw to breathe through.
And then I got a call from New York and Madeleina said she'd get it and I said "no" because I knew it was my sister telling me Tom had died. It wasn't. It was from my friend Bill, about writing.
But my brother Mike called me at 5 PM to say Regina asked him to tell all the brothers and sisters that Tom had died.
So Sunday didn't end well.
Tom was very cool. He was a good guy. He was a lieutenant in the Navy during Vietnam, went to law school but didn't take the bar because he didn't think it was an honest living. So he worked as a bouncer. i knew of him working in New York City restaurants long before I met him. He was the one guy the mob was afraid of. In New York, all bars pay for protection to the mob. It's a good system and no bar in New York has ever been robbed of receipts, even if they have $50.000 cash, in memory. The mob will eliminate anyone who robs a bar in all five boroughs. It's one of the reasons the mob is loved in NYC: They take care of business.
But the Irish bars don't like paying the tithe. So they used to hire my brother in law, Tom, to protect them. I've no doubt he charged more than the mob did but it was the principle. So the mob would come to an Irish bar and announce that they would be getting a cigarette machine, a juke-box and paying $200-$400 a week for protection on top of those. Then the bar owner would get in touch with Tom. Tom had several brothers in the police department, all big and strong, and, as the story went--though I don't know if it's true or not--when the mob guys came back for first payment, Tom would drag them to the building roof and toss one of them off to his death with the message not to come back.
It might have been just a story, but that's the guy my little sister met and fell in love with.
The toughest guy in New York.
And he probably was.
He was 6'1". but when he was a bouncer for tough clubs he liked to slouch. He wore glasses and a stingy brim hat and would come to a table of rowdy people and say something like: "Listen, fellas, you're getting out of hand. How bout we walk around the block for 10 minutes, catch some air, and when you come back I'll buy you a drink?"
Smooth.
When my sister met him he was under indictment for having bit the cheek off a guy who'd just become a doctor who tried to hit him with a 2/X 4 embedded with nails he'd found while taking that walk around the block. Tommy won the case.
So I had to let my sister marry this crazy guy, who turned out to be one of the best good guys. Though not a cop the cops often relied on him: Twice he called me to say he'd been hired by the NYPD to tail a known violent felon they didn't have the manpower to follow. My job, for $200 a day? Sit in back of the building where the felon was thought to be hiding, while Tom sat out front, and get the guy if he tried to run. I was so scared but knowing Tommy was out front gave me courage. And we're talking bad bad guys. He was that kind of tough.
And you know what? He loved my sister. My baby sister, Regina. He thought about her every moment: Where you going, Reg? When you coming home? Should I wait up? What do you want to eat? Should I make food?
And he loved their kid, Tommy, my nephew, who played baseball and basketball with my kids Italo and Marco.
So he had some faults like the rest of us-- anybody who ever looks at me will find alcohol and cigarettes, so I am not going to throw stones. And our faults finally take a toll. And so a couple of years ago Tom got sick. And I was sick thinking of him being sick. I mean this guy was so freaking strong he made heavy bags beg for mercy. Just like his kid.
So I hated seeing him weak the last couple of years. And I didn't see him, really. I only went to New York once since I moved to Texas and so saw him last November for 6-7 days, when he was really sick. But he was still full of vim and vinegar. He would still scare people.
But he pushed my sister to buy a house on long Island and was happy when she did. He knew that was important. And he put a few bucks away that she probably didn't know about just so she'd be taken care of.
And when I saw him he was still full of juice, though sick.
And I am going to miss him and his hats and his humor and his strength and the way he took care of my little sister and I'm sad for her, and their son, not him. If there is an afterlife I know he's already found a heavy bag and told St. Pete: Give me the gym. Now that I can breathe again all I want to do is hit the heavy bag.
And he's probably doing it.
I'm just hoping my sister makes it through.
Yo, Tom! You did right by my sister for 30 years. That's what I asked you to do when you married her. So Thanks. Now, she's a little lost. So take care of her for a while more, okay?
And then toss someone else off a roof if you need to.
Those of us who lived in NYC understand.
I miss you already.
Just saying.
Peter G--your bro in many ways

What It's Like on Sunday

2011-09-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

Well, it's a Sunday and it's gorgeous. I woke up knowing that my editor has a rewrite of my story and I can't do anything more on it till it comes back to me. So I made coffee, read newspapers, thought about 9/11 and how wretched it was and remains and how sorry I am for the people lost and the people who lost people they loved and how I was so lucky that my family, my brother and nephew working there have not gotten sick yet, and how lucky it was my son Italo went to school on 23rd street rather than further downtown and how lucky it was that I was on my way to work when the sky filled with smoke from downtown, how that blue sky suddenly was black and thick and I didn't know what had happened but learned and it was awful. And how lousy I felt for my friend Kent at Cantor-Fitzgerald who had lost so many friends that day.
And somehow I wish we could come together without a tragedy like that, without the 10th anniversary of a tragedy like that to make us forget our differences--which are legitimate but pale in the face of true horror--and work together to make something good, something honest.
I woke up so alive and so happy to be alive. And I was a bit recalcitrant but still dove into doing the first of a new three-day song for some people who have asked for help--as if I could help them, but maybe the song will--and put some black boa oil on the stove for a couple of other people who need good medicine, then found some copaiba, another medicine to send to someone tomorrow, and then talked with Marco and Italo and Chepa and the babies and though none of it is perfect, all of it is good and I've still got strength while others don't and I was feeling so strong and willing to help today. And I hope I can help tomorrow and never ask what those seeking help believe in: It cannot matter. What matters is that they think, hope, a song will help and so I hope for the strength to sing it.
And maybe this is silly but it's how the day was spent and now it's time for watching football and making dinner and feeding animals and the lawn.
So life goes on but there are holes in it. There is sorrow and there is hope and there is a wish to do more. A thought of helping someone, somehow.
And there is joy. And laughter and ain't it great to be alive? Not at anyone's expense. I wish everyone was feeling this alive.

Just Going to Feed Boots, the Goats and Trees

2011-09-10T17:10:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this post isn't going to be something to shake up your world, but it is a post to say that every stinking day I wake up I say, "Thanks, God! Thanks for letting me wake up again!" and you know what? I could care less what your religious affiliation is or what you believe. All I know is that there is a great chance I won't wake up and so when I do, when I continue to breathe during the night I am very very happy to wake up, be it 4 AM or 6 AM. I get to see the sunrise one more time. I get to say hello to the goats one more time and to Boots, the blind wonderdog who almost ate the UPS delivery guy yesterday, along with my sister-in-law. Boots finds them both to have the perfect rear-ends to bite: He's skinny and tall, she's curvaceous and short. Dog has it down as to what he wants to bite and they both fit it.
Me? I finished a very tough story about an air quality report. Took me weeks to get through it three or four times and took three or four times to know what the hell they were talking about. Can't say more. Look for the Fort Worth Weekly's cover story at FWWeekly.com on Wednesday afternoon, okay? I think I did a good story; history grades the writer.
And Madeleina? Tired from two 8 PM and one 1 AM band things this week, along with being in 4 honors classes. Here in Texas we value Band and Football way way over reading. So she'll be behind on her reading for weeks.
The goats are good: Nice little guys. And they are digging the 95 degree temps we've had since Sept 1 rather than the 110 temps we had for the two previous months. Thank god I pad $100 each into the water and fuel bills last month to help cover this month--else I'd be crying.
And my friend C came last weekend and she was wonderful to be around. We went to a Buckwheat Zydeco concert with Madeleina and Marco and took long drives and made good food and talked about magazines. Manna for me.
And every day I went to the park by the elementary school where Sierra now goes to visit Alexa and my granddaughter Taylor Rain after I dropped Madeleina off. Chepa is very cool that way, getting the kids out and playing. I brought donuts, pigs in a blanket, bananas, oranges--the kids preferred donuts--every day these last three weeks, but I'll keep mixing it up.
And so I'm writing, reading, feeding, eating, loving, enjoying. All I'm missing is a lover. Damn. She'll come along, I guess, when I'm right for her.
But meanwhile I've been thinking of your all and hoping that you are having a fantastic transition from Summer to Fall and that you are as happy as I am for the joy of waking up each day. YAY, GOD. Or GODDESS. OR White Light. OR Whatever. OR Whomever. THANKS ANYWAY!!!!!!

Accessing the Spirit of Ayahuasca

2011-09-02T05:12:00.000-07:00

On the board where I occasionally post, there's been a discussion of attaining the full effects of ayahuasca. Some people argued that if you don't see the lights and colors you were not getting the medicine; others disagreed. At least one of the posters argued that many people simply need a larger dose--as if ayahuasca is in the chemical components of the medicine. I disagreed and posted this:

I'm not sure I get that. Yes, if you want the full Coney Island, ask for more. But we're not dealing with chemicals here. Not at all. We're dealing with spirits. And spirits are not bound to quantities. Yes, if you drink enough you will have all sorts of wild visions. But they don't necessarily mean a thing. They're the distraction. They're the show. It's like the DMT thing at the onset of the experience: cool but not necessarily important. For those who think differently, just think differently.
For me, it's the spirit that works the magic. Just smelling aya cooking is more than enough. A drop can set off a full blown experience. It's your willingness to interact with spirit that's the key, in my opinion, not some baseline chemical reaction--which is very unimportant when dealing with living entities who have will, desires, capabilities of their own.
And yes, I have had guests who really needed the Funhouse of Desires and Fears to recognize that they'd been somewhere. So you give it to them. But you also give them the real deal, if possible, which happens only after that wonderful silliness passes.

Someone named Richard D responded with a bit of a challenge:

Nice post Sr. Gorman. I agree with you this time.
It does bring up the question though as to why Chacruna is added. If it's not for the Coney Island effect, or if the Coney Island effect is not of value, then why? I have my ideas about this, but I'd like to hear yours first, which of course may influence mine.

So I responded this way:

Okay, now you're going to make me go out on a limb. Which I don't mind doing for you, Richard D, who has added so much to so many conversations here. I don't think the spirit if ayahuasca is contained only in the vine. I think she's complex and that chacruna or huambisa, and their varities, are needed to make her whole enough to interact with us. It may be our failing; it may be something different.
I do think chemicals are involved, but only at the beginning, only to open up certain receptor sites we have and need opened to receive other spirits, whether they be hongos, ayahuasca, san pedro, peyote, Iboga, amanita....granted, slightly different chemicals, but we need those to allow the spirit entrance: The spirits don't. So we utilize chemicals to get those spaces open. But once open, we no longer need them. The spirits are real in their own right. They are there whether we ingest the chemicals or not. I'm gonna stretch here but: You don't know me. Yet I know I am real, in some sense. I am life, desire, force, intuitiveness and all the rest. You need the internet to access me. But I was there whether you had an internet or not.
Accessing the spirits might take chemicals initially, just like needing the internet for initial communication; after that we can do it telepathically--the chemicals of the internet are no longer needed.
I don't mean to know it all here. I certainly don't. But I do know that I can have full blown experiences just saying "Good morning" to the vine. Those include vomiting, healing, visions-the whole 9 yards. And I know I am not alone here. Once you've made friends, you're friends. Just call your ally--which is, after all, at least part of what a friend is. And the calling is sufficient if it's a true friend.
Make sense?

And I've reread the interchange this morning and think my answer is okay. So I'm sticking with it.

Ayahuasca Purging

2011-08-25T16:12:00.000-07:00

I've been over this before, but someone on a forum I occasionally post to wanted to know if it was better to purge, puke, or hold it in and try not to puke, after they drank ayahuasca. As nearly everyone, most of the time, purges about 30-40 minutes after they drink ayahuasca, and as that purge is potentially the most important element of drinking ayahuasca, at least sometimes, I thought I should weigh in. Here's my response to the general blog of what purging means and whether one should allow it to happen or try to prevent it.

I sometimes feel as I'm just purging liquid. But more often, I'm purging what starts as slow motion re-enactments of sins I've committed against others or those committed against me which I have held on to for no good reason. Sometimes I watch the act--cheating on a girlfriend when I was young, lying to someone when I was a child or adult--50 times in slow motion, painfully, until I suddenly have to purge.
I think the medicine roots around for things you have hidden, sometimes well, sometimes not, and then gives you the chance to rid yourself of their weight. It's an unseen weight, something we don't know what we are carrying around but it's as real as a 20 pound dumbell hung around your neck. You don't need it. Get rid of it. Be lighter. Remember the pain you caused or that was caused to you, but forget the actual deed: we need to remember to learn; we don't need to carry the pain around forever.
I urge my guests to feel free to purge: Sometimes when they challenge me I hold my hand under their mouths: I've never had a guest puke more than I can physically hold in one hand. There's no food in their system to come out. There might be an ounce of bile and two or three ounces of ayahuasca, but that would be a lot. Nonetheless they see enormous amounts. It's as if they are purging bits of dry sponge that they envision expand as they are eliminated and the contact with air makes them grow to huge things. I feel the same when I purge, but I know that physically it's never more than maybe two, three ounces of physical matter. The rest of it is psychic: Heavy, loaded, but not physical.
So purge away and clean yourself of things you needed to learn but which no longer serve you. Let yourself be freed of unnecessary weights holding you down.
Sorry if I've overstepped my bounds here. This is a topic-one of many, granted--that's very close to my heart.

Oy Vey! Being a Dad is Sometimes Difficult

2011-08-24T15:26:00.000-07:00

Well, last Winter, while I was in Peru, Madeleina heard of, looked up and then went to audition for a Fort Worth Independent Charter School, the Fort Worth Academy of the Arts. Or "For the Arts", I'm not sure which. She auditioned on flute and when I returned we got a letter letting us know she'd passed the audition but that they were only taking a couple of new flutes for the band so she was on the waiting list.
Summer came and went and no word. All month Madeleina has been at Marching Band School, something between bootcamp and football pre-season. She was at school for three weeks from 8-11:30 AM doing exercises, running and then learning routines. From 1-5 she was indoors practicing songs with the band on her flute. These were hot days: We averaged, according to my heating bill (which I think I mentioned in an earlier post but which was read wrongly), a high temperature of 108.9 for July 2-August 2, and then it got hot: We hit 113 a couple of days, a couple of 110s and so forth. So she'd start practicing at 8 AM when it was only 94 or so, and then finish when it hit 105. Of course, it was warmer for her as she, and the other hundred or so kids, were working on concrete.
The school finally relented for last week, the last week of Marching Band School, and had the kids come in from 6:30 AM till 11, so they'd beat some of the heat.
By the end of it Madeleina was totally in love with 4-5 hours of doing laps, pushups, running in place, marching. Last night she came home and proudly, and I mean proudly, showed me her band shirt.
Then this morning I got an email from the Arts Academy: A slot had opened up and she was in if she wanted. They needed an answer today. That stopped my work cold. I tried to calculate it. It's about $800 in fees despite being a public school, plus $200 in books and $200 in extras. Then, as it's 25 miles from my house, that's 1 1/4 gallons of gas four times a day for dropping her off and picking her up. That comes to 25 gallons a week, at say $3.40 each, or about $80 a week for gas, just to get her to school.
Then there is the time: I timed it today and going, with absolutely no traffic and all the lights in my direction, was 33 minutes. Coming home an hour later, with light traffic and missing a few lights, was 45 minutes. So let's say that's about 160 minutes daily, barring heavy traffic or bad weather. That's nearly 3 hours.
Still, it wasn't going to be right to just say no and then not tell Madeleina. She'd earned the slot in a tough school, after all. So I took her out of school and brought her in; we spoke with the principal, hoping there might be other kids from this neighborhood attending the school with whom we might carpool. Unfortunately, there are none.
Which means, even if I would give up nearly 3 hours of my work day daily to get her there and back, I would have no one to get her there in January and February when I'm out of town and working in Peru's Amazon. Chepa already has Sierra in school--kindergarden--and has to get her there at pretty much the same time Madeleina would have to be in school 25 miles away. Which would mean that even if she wanted to do it--and she would if needed--Chepa would have to get Sierra ready more than an hour early, and put Alexa in the car as well--and drive them with Madeleina to Madeleina's new school before returning to drop Sierra off. She could just leave Sierra at home with Alexa and sometimes Taylor Rain, but that's not really her style.
So after hours of deliberation and twice driving to the fantastic new school's campus, I had to tell Madeleina that it just wasn't a realistic option.
At least not until she's 16 and can drive herself there.
She wasn't happy with me. I don't know how to save it. Nobody from at school lives within 15 miles of us, so no carpool. I ain't rich, so no private car to take her and bring her back. I'm out of town two months every school year and for several days here and there during other times while I'm on a story.
Sometimes being a dad is more difficult than I wish.
Sorry, Madeleina.

Response to Some Responses Regarding Ayahuasca Dieta

2011-08-22T16:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, so my last word wasn't the last word. A couple of people took umbrage at my saying that the Ayahuasca dieta--no salt, no hot peppers, no pork and no sex--was made up by white guys in the last decade or so. See previous post, a couple of posts down, for that one.
I felt the need to clarify.
So I did.
So here is what I wrote about the responses to my response to the question of "Does anyone here reject the idea of a traditional ayahuasca dieta?"

Ah, the sting of having my ideas smashed to pieces....Double cut pork chops slathered in rich gravy indeed, Richard! HA! Those will kill you even if you're in shape and not doing medicine.
I don't think you guys were particularly railing against what I was saying. Steve, the fact that the diets differ for different groups makes my point, I think. Yes, there are restrictions. Yes, being quiet so that you can hear the spirits whisper is vital. But ayahuasca is of the jungle, part of the jungle, not apart from the jungle. And those who use it traditionally, remember, don't even drink, or if they do, do it rarely. People like my mother in law, father in law, aunts, uncles: They all drank a few times in their life, but the drinking was for the curandero, not them, as a rule--with a few major exceptions, like coming of age, getting married, that sort of thing. How it was among truly indigenous before outside influence, I can't say; I'm only speaking for modern indigenous (the few I know who utilize ayahuasca) and regular mestizos who live out on the river or in the poorer sections of Iquitos.
The point I was trying to make was that so many gringos are now doing ayahuasca, many with an eye on becoming a curandero, that the dieta has become a sort of one size fits all: No sex, no salt, no hot peppers, no pork. And I object to that. I just think most of that can be explained away by circumstance. Which is not to say that concentracion, as Wind points out, is not vital to someone trying to learn the medicine, trying to conquiste the medicine, to win it over as an available ally.
But there is more to the story than one size fits all. As I noted about chile peppers: Those who grow them sell them; those who can't grow them cannot afford them. Yet Jairo, whom Wind speaks about, and who is my late teacher Julio's son, always has hot peppers in lime and toronja juice with his simply boiled fish. Yet he told Wind not to eat pork for 30 days. But if someone on the river has a hindquarters of boar to sell, he'll ask me to buy it and then enjoy it, sometimes just a couple of hours before drinking ayahuasca, after a long day of cooking the medicine in unbelieveable heat. He does not--and I know few who do--recognize wild boar as pork. And Wind, a vegan who eats a lot of raw food, would not be generally surprised to have a lousy stomach from eating cheap pepperoni, I wouldn't think.
Again, this does not downplay the importance of a dieta, just the idea that one size fits all.
Here's an example, not related to ayahuasca, but related to general jungle magic on the same level. During certain times of the year hunting is very bad for the indigenous Matses. That is the time when they set traps deep in the jungle for tapir--the only animal large enough to feed a couple of families of 20 or so that might make up a small village.
First time I saw a trap set I had to stay maybe 100 yards away, because Pablo, the headman/curandero of the village, didn't want my stink anywhere near it. So he set the trap while I watched, strapping a sapling to a tree and pulling one end of it across a moist muddy area, then affixing it in place and putting a spike on the end of it. It had a trip line so that if a tapir walked into the mud the sapling would break free and the spike enter the heart.
Once done, he chewed a lot of leaves and spit them on the trip line to eliminate his human scent, then we left the area.
During the next few days, Pablo did copius amounts of sapo--five good burns three times a day, I think--and we didn't eat meat at camp. We saw monkeys, we saw sahino--boar-- one day, but he didn't hunt them. I asked why. He said it was because he was getting strong enough on sapo to project his animus, his spirit, into the trap as a female tapir, to lure a male tapir into the trap, and if he hunted any animals, the spirits of those hunted animals would tell the real tapir that the female luring him into the trap was Pablo, who had recently killed them.
Now there were two exceptions to that rule: The Matses could eat both river turtles and sloths during hunting season. Why? Because the large river turtles, both the charapa and the tarakaya (sp??) were so arrogant, that even if you killed them they wouldn't stoop to talk to other animals or animal spirits.
They could also eat sloths. Why? Because while sloths are among the biggest snitches in the world, they talk so slowly that by the time they explain what's going on the whole season for trapping is over.
Point of that story? If you met Pablo during that time and watched him not hunt boar or monkeys that crossed his path, and you didn't know the circumstance, you'd probably make a note to the effect that "Matses don't hunt boar or monkeys. Very curious."
Which would be totally incorrect in the big picture but correct from your view.
And that's how I see the standard dieta that claims, in bold letters, "no salt, no hot peppers, no pork, and no sex."
To me it's simply too big a hat to fit everyone. And historically, as Steve Beyer points out, it's not a "one size fits all" for different indigenous tribes. They might all have a dieta, they might all have regulations for an apprentice to ayahuasca, but each tribe would be different, depending on their circumstance. What would be the point of a 300 pound white guy not eating salt for 10 weeks while he was in the jungle? He'd simply die. So that would not fit him.
But to get that guy to hike 10 days in the deep green, eating lightly, listening to the forest, well, hell yes, that's a great dieta, even if he needed a salt tab once in a while to keep him from dehydrating.
Double pork chops smothered in gravy with rum and coke? Not hardly. Fried food? Sheer poison, no matter what you are doing or where you live. But then, even Wind, after eating all his food and his father's left overs, was sent out on a several hour walk without water/food and had ample time to eliminate/absorb all those fresh bean/fruit/veggie calories long before he drank the medicine.
So I'm not disagreeing with the idea of a dieta, I'm disagreeing with us white guys/gals who have decided to make rules for something which is a lot older than us and has been around a lot longer than we have been visiting the Amazon trying to learn about the medicine.
Thanks, gorman
http://thegormanblog.blogspot.com/
pgorman.com
petergormanarchive.com
pgorman

Posts: 503
Joined: Wed Oct 25, 2000 10:25 am
Location: Joshua, Texas, USA

First Day of School Sadness

2011-08-22T10:06:00.001-07:00

Well, it was first day of school around here. Madeleina started 9th grade and I was sorry to drop her off because she's such good company. And I've had a lot of her company lately, what with going with me to Peru and all. So it's sad that I'm sitting in an empty house again. And it was sad--though I was proud--that she didn't need any help from me to go clothes shopping yesterday. "Dad, why don't you just go and have a drink with Dave at Wild WIngs, watch a little football or something and then come back in an hour or so, okay?"
Growing up.
Sierra started school today too: She's in kindergarden now. My daughter-in-law Sara bought her a bunch of nice clothes and I bought her school supplies while Chepa and the girls (Sierra and Alexa) were visiting their grandpa in Michigan for a couple of weeks. And Sierra has been dreaming of this day for as long as she can remember seeing Madeleina heading off to school.
Madeleina and I went over to Chepa's this morning to see her off: She looked so beautiful, so lost.
And then so was Alexa, who was not heading off to school. Chepa called me an hour after school started and I could hear Alexa sobbing in the background. Just sobbing. She's never been without her sister before.
To calm things down we all headed over to Sierra's school to have lunch with her. I got there first, and when Sierra came in to the lunchroom with her class a few minutes later, she hardly looked at me, just went straight to a table and sat with other kids. She didn't even join us when Chepa, Alexa and little Taylor Rain joined me. No siree. She's a big girl and all we might do is embarrass her.
So that was that. Nice that everybody's growing up, but sad that I still get growing pains when they do.

Last Note on Ayahuasca Dieta

2011-08-21T15:56:00.000-07:00

Not to bore you guys, but once again the question of the dieta, the diet, has come up on a board on which I occasionally post. I was trying to stay out of it but it's just too juicy a topic for me to keep my hands off. So this was my response to a topic with the title of "Are there any of you out there who reject the traditional dieta?" or somesuch.
My entry:
At the Shamanism Conference in Iquitos last month, I raised some eyebrows--to say the least--when I flippantly answered a question about the dieta with something like, "the dieta was invented by white people 10 years ago."
I was flippant, but I don't think I was wrong.
I don't think most curanderos I know, among the older ones, ever adhered to any dieta as we know it. Not for the purpose of association with ayahuasca, anyway. Nearly every one ate a decent meal after they had cooked the medicine in the heat all day and before they served and drank it. I never saw one turn down a cup of coffee with milk and sugar just prior to the ceremony, nor salt if I happened to have it.
BUTTTTT, here's how I see it--and I recognize that it's my way of seeing it. And I might be seeing it through odd glasses since I never heard the term dieta until about 2002, when Hamilton, from Blue Morpho, said he couldn't shake my hand because he was on a dieta and forbidden to have contact with other humans. For him, I'm sure that was the right thing to do. And maybe others have been doing dietas for hundreds of hears. It's just that I find it odd because in the first 17-18 years of drinking the medicine it never came up.
Still, I think I can explain a lot of it to you.
Let's look at the primary things people discuss when talking dieta: no salt, no chile peppers, no pork, no sex.
SALT: In the jungle, prior to Fujimori, in the mid 1990s, supplying every tiny village in Peru's jungle a community metal boat, motor and 40 gallons of gasoline every month to ensure that people could get their goods to market, most river travel by locals from villages to towns was by dugout canoe. Once there was a community boat--a peque-peque with a 9hp motor--time to get from say, Aucayacu to Genero Jerrera, was cut from 5 hours to 2. The return upstream was cut from 6 hours to 3.
Subsequently, things people had rarely had were accessible.
In addition, in 2004-2007 or so, the Chinese brought in inexpensive peque-peque motors. So where there had pretty much only been a Briggs and Stratton available, and that was $1,300 US or so--out of the reach of nearly everybody--suddenly there were $250 motors available. A decent peque-peque motor can be had now for $180 (I just bought a 5 hp last month for a friend, so I know the price).
What does that mean?
Well, it means people go to town frequently. It means they bother to catch the large catfish, like zungaru and don seillo and can get them to town for sale in just a couple of hours. Prior to the availability of Fujimori's boats or cheap Chinese products, it was 11-12 hours to get to town and back. Which meant no fish would make it fresh. They had to be salted. So if you went to town to buy salt, you rarely used it on your food. No. It was what afforded you the ability to bring your fish, and hunted meat, to market to earn money for batteries, flashlights, an occasional shirt, a new machete. So salt was a very tightly held commodity despite it not costing very much.
CHILE PEPPERS: Chile Peppers in the jungle take a very particular type of soil to grow in. Not many places can produce them, hence, a kilo of charapitas (the primary jungle chile, the little yellow hot one) goes wholesale for 30-40 soles, and retails out at more than 100 soles when sold by the half-sol.
So nobody had chile peppers to begin with, and if you did you certainly didn't waste them when they brought in a week's pay (basic pay in Iquitos for working stiffs is still about 12 sols a day, though 20 sols is minimum wage and just a little less than police and teachers get). Pay on the river, for helping out building a house or whatever remains about 5 sols. So no one who grew charapitas would waste them on themselves and no one who didn't could afford them. So no chile peppers.
PORK: Essentially, the same as chile peppers but in spades. Pigs grow to be a couple of hundred pounds, even in the jungle. If you have pigs, you can't just eat some of it. You got to eat the whole thing. So when you raise them, you raise them for sale, not for food. So of course you don't eat pork in the jungle. BUT the dieta generally says nothing about eating sajino or wangana, the two peccaries in the jungle, and those are definitely pork. And majas, while a rodent, is the most pork like meat you'll ever find. All of these are staples of everyone who can trap or otherwise kill them, including every ayahuasquero and curandero I ever knew.
SEX: Well, I'm not sure how to explain this one, except to say that since all the curanderos I know have multiple girlfriends, wives and lots of kids--yes, there are exceptions, but not many of them out on the river--I'm not sure anyone pays attention to this. I do know that during intense periods with the medicine it never crossed my mind to have sex. That was a distraction. I mean, if you are going to be sleeping with your arms around a tree, getting bitten by all the bugs, bats, insects and everything else that protects that tree--in order to get to know it you have to get past those protectors--well, the last thing on your mind is sex. But I know of few people who've ever really slept with the plants to get to know them. Most just drink their essence and call it a day. But I do think sex is distracting and I also think that Ayahuasca has a very human trait of jealousy.
Now if what I'm saying is right, how did the dieta idea come up? Well, I think--and I've seen some videos from the 1980s and 1990s that show this--that gringos ask leading questions and then get answers and believe them to be correct answers. "When you were studying to be a curandero, did you eat pork?"
"No."
"When you were studying to be a curandero, did you....."
And so forth. What the questioner didn't ask was whether the person did those things when they were not studying to be a curandero. Because in most cases the answer would also have been "no".
I don't mean to downplay the importance of concentration in learning the medicine. I don't think you can be flip about it at all. But I don't know that what white people call dieta is anything that traditional people did specifically for ayahuasca: I think it was just part of living. Most curanderos, after all, were just fishermen or farmers who fished. They ate--and still do if they live on the river--boiled or grilled fish and plantains several times a day. It's their comfort food and it's their real staple. They'll eat rice if you give it to them but they wouldn't choose it over a good boiled plantain more than once out of the several meals they eat daily.
Even my team, my fantastic team, while they love my jungle guacamole and stir fried veggies, want plantain and fish at least 4-5 times daily. They typically go through 4 razimos--full arms of platanos with roughly 80 platanos each--in 6 days. So they really like them.
I don't think there is anything wrong with doing a dieta, mind you, I just don't think it's traditional. I think the white guys made it up asking leading questions.
On the other hand, most curanderos have told me that they have spent quiet time in the jungle, alone for weeks for the most part, unless someone was making them food, and that part of things I think is vital. Won't make you a curandero--that's something you're born capable of or not--but will help you get the most out of the medicine.
As noted at top: This is just my opinion and I totally respect those who are gonna say I'm full of it.

Doing a Song/Prayer

2011-08-21T10:54:00.001-07:00

Okay, so sometimes you got to send something good to someone who needs it. I think it's part of the responsibility of having been shown other realities by the spirit of ayahuasca. SPOILER: If you think I'm crazy now, wait till I get on with this. So you might want to quit right now.
Now, once in a while someone asks me if I can have a healing arranged for them. Generally, I say that that's difficult, as Jairo, Julio's son and the person who runs the ayahuasca ceremonies for me and my groups in Peru, is difficult to get hold of from here. It involves getting in touch with people who will try to reach him...very long distance. So that's generally the end of that.
But several months ago it occurred to me that I might have a responsibility to try to coordinate those things I've been taught with those beings who are what I call my guardians, and perhaps they could effect cures. It seemed to me that I had to try, anyway. At the worst I'd be wasting my time. At best, something good would happen. And in between, it probably would be a little good, at least, to have that person have someone send concentrated good intentions to them--a nice force of electricity or something that wouldn't do them any harm. I mean, who doesn't like having people spend time dwelling on them?
Not that I knew what a prayer would be.
Anyway, I decided that a prayer would involve the medicines from Peru, a request to God--or whatever/whomever the big big force is to me--and to the spirits, guardians, magics and the spirits of my teachers--four of them gone now, including Julio, Pablo, Bertha and Everett--to ask for a little help in making the prayer/song have some power and oomph. It would also include a song.
I didn't know what song, but I knew that if I smoked myself with mapacho, thanked the four directions, was happy to be alive and willing to do the work, that a song would come out.
Somehow it all came together and I found myself smoking, singing, shaking a bundle leaf rattle and trying my best to suck out the sickness from someone.
At first it was for a day. Maybe one-half hour.
But things being things, I realized I needed to give it more time. So last Spring I did a 10 day song for a couple of people. Every day a different song came out and even now they change daily. And then when I came back from Peru and was asked to sing again by someone, I did a three day sing. Then a two day sing because life interfered and as I'd stalled on the third day--because it's a lot of work--I missed the third day of that. And just now I've finished a 4 day sing, though I think I will do one more day tomorrow because there seems to be some more work to do.
So here I am, an agnostic, trying my best to get the universe and many of her spirits to help me out while I try to heal some people from hundreds of miles away without the benefit of modern medical knowledge or even active plant extractions to give them. Crazy, huh?
Somehow this is a very different post than I meant to write. I meant to write about something funny that happens at the end of the song. The thanking part.
Years ago I went, after trying to be allowed to attend for a long long time, to several Southern Ute Native American Church peyote prayer meetings. Bertha, a wonderful woman who became a great teacher of mine though we never had a lot of time together, was the matriarch. Her brother Everett, was a Roadman for the meetings--the curandero--as was one of her sons.
The meetings took place in a tee-pee, at the center of which was a fire in the shape of an eagle, the firebird. We would sit around the outside wall of the tee-pee with the fire in the center, the fire-tender at one side of the door, his assistant on the other side of the door and the Roadman at the opposite end of the tee-pee from the door.
I've never been great at sitting cross-legged for long spells, and so it was fairly uncomfortable for me to sit for hours. I'd move around during the ceremony, shifting to keep my legs from falling asleep. The medicine was passed regularly, as was the water drum--a small kettle with water in it covered with hide that gave it a fantastic sound as those who were initiated played it and sang their songs.
During the night there was one break, about 15 minutes, for people to use the bathroom in the nearby house or just to stretch their legs. Other than that there really was no leaving the ceremony. So by the time 10 hours had gone by and morning was coming alive, it felt like it was time to meet the dawn. But that's not how the ceremonies went. That was when the medicine stopped being passed and the official ceremony was over, but that was just the beginning of the Thank You's. Someone would start: "I want to say thank you to the Great Father for allowing me to attend this meeting. And I want to thank all of you for sharing in this meeting that we held to help X with his/her problems. And I want to thank the Roadman for bringing his power to this meeting, and to the fire spirits for carrying my wishes through the tee-pee roof and into the air so they could reach their destination with all my power in them. And I want to thank grandma Bertha, without whom none of this would be possible...."
And I would, at least the first time, think that was that. But no. The person would go on to name their relatives, one by one, who couldn't attend. And they named their dead relatives whom they missed. And they thanked the medicine for giving them strength to admit to wrongs they'd done--and then we heard the wrongs, in detail--and then they thanked their home and the land and their animals--one by one--until you wanted to strangle them.
And when that person was done, someone else would start and do the same, then someone else, until half the people in the tee-pee had thanked a combined thousand individual people and things while the other half of the people in the tee-pee were ready to take out shotguns if anyone else dared to do any more damned thanking.
And now that I've been doing the song, I see how that happens. You think you're finished. You've done the work as best you can, as best I can, and then you just want to say, Hey spirits! Thanks for helping out! but I find myself starting to name my guardians and then deciding maybe I ought to do a quick prayer for my brothers and sisters, and suddenly I'm thanking each, along with their spouses and kids and grandkids and then Chepa and all of the Gormans here, and then I'm thanking the universe for being alive and for having this home and then.....and then I just want to take a shotgun out just to shut me up.
So there it is. 25 years removed from those Native American Ceremonies--it seems like yesterday--and I finally know why those people have to say all those thank you's to everyone and everything. It's because you're so in that moment, so in that state where you love everything, that you can't resist thanking as much of it as you can think of.
I'm glad it's come full circle on me. It's just great to be alive.

Another Decent Recipe

2011-08-17T16:34:00.001-07:00

Okay. So today was a continuation of yesterday, which was not all that great. My little green truck has a new clutch but cannot pass inspection on emissions at the moment. Italo has changed several things to the tune of a few hundred bucks, cost, and it should pass. But the last time we took it to the inspection place, a couple of months ago, before I left for Peru, we were stopped by the police for an out of date inspection sticker and fined $245. A judge whom I've written some not great things about in the past said he basically forgave me and then lowered it down to $225. Thanks.
So I'm intimidated about trying to get the thing passed again, particularly if they're gonna sit right next to the inspection station--where I also change oil--and wait for guys like me to come in with late inspections.
And then about 10 days ago the clutch began going on my other green truck; the new one, 1998, which only has 184,000 miles on it--the other one has 299,994--and I had to rev that baby way over the top to get her to move off the red light line. Once she got to 60 she was fine: The problem was she spent a gallon of gas and was burning out the damned motor to get there. I'd asked her to last till I had a free day to fix her and she did: Italo got hurt playing soccer and had to take a couple of days off of work, so he was free to drive with me in his car to the mechanic to drop it off yesterday. I love my mechanic. I hate my mechanic. For years every bill was $473. The last two years, every bill is between $700 and $850. He's good but who knows? I believe in people but don't trust human beings, if that makes sense.
So I called Rick and asked if he could do a new clutch in one day and he said he'd try. We dropped the truck off this morning at 8:15 and it was done at 3:45. $741.43. Damn.
The clutch works but that's a lot of dough. Darnit.
Here's the thing: Rick's is about 5 stoplights past Walmart, which is where I shop daily. I shop elsewhere too, but that's where I check blood pressure, walk a couple of miles around the store a few times, say hello to people and so forth. But I don't go back to Walmart if I'm already past it. So today, picking up the truck, I was past it and just continued on from Rick's with the new clutch and light wallet to Two Bucks, where I got my four minis of bourbon and then headed home.
Home, I checked sales of my book and saw I was down 10 for the month. So if you're gonna buy it, buy it now and get me up to a reasonable $500 monthly royalty check, okay?
Then I asked Madeleina what she wante for dinner. The fridge held chicken breasts, short ribs and a couple of pieces of farm raised Atlantic Salmon.
She opted for the short ribs. So here's the meal:
Turn on oven to 325.
Heat heavy saute pan. Put in a little oil, Flour the short ribs, braise at high heat with salt and pepper.
Transfer braised ribs to glass corning ware. Add a bit of water/chicken stock to meat bits in pan along with 1/2 red onion, sliced into half rounds. Pour over meat in corning ware and place in oven.
Fill small pan with cool water. Add a little sea salt. Slice 4 medium red potatoes and place on heat. Add two tablespoons of olive oil with minced garlic (if you know how I cook you'd know there is always a small cup or jar of chopped garlic sitting in olive oil for just such occasions. Add 2 cups of good chicken stock that you happen to have in the freezer, left over from the last time you made a good chicken stock--at least once a week, okay?
Put another pan with salted water on: Put in florets of broccoli, cauliflower and chopped asparagus. Heat, cook, drain.
When the ribs are done, about 45 minutes, take them out of the oven to cool. Pour juice into saute pan with earlier drippings. Add 2 tablespoons of minced garlic--drain the olive oil as you have enough oil--, heat. Add one whole diced red onion. Add a whole diced organic beefsteak tomato when onions and garlic are done. Add one diced poblano chile if in season. Add the kernels of one ear of sweet summer corn left over from last night and cut from the cob nicely.
Sautee all veggies in juice. Add 3 or 4 ounces of extremely reduced chicken stock--just chicken jello, really--and reduce while cooking veggies. When veggies are close to soft, add your favorite barbeque sauce and mix. This is the lazy part. Then add salt/pepper and whatever else the sauce needs.
Drop meat into sauce and slurb it all around for about 15 minutes until the meat is entirely inundated with the crispness of the sauce.
Serve meat.
Drain and serve potatoes.
Put cooked veggies in what's left of pan drippings and saute for a couple of minutes till the veggies are hot and flavorful.
Serve with fresh watermelon slices, very cold, and good water and a glass of champagne.
Wear a bib. It's messy but good.
Have a great night, everybody.

Something About Medicine

2011-08-16T16:32:00.000-07:00

Okay, for some of you this post is going to seem quite off the wall. I understand. For some others, who have worked with plant medicines, or spent time meditating and are familiar with the other realities, it might not be so crazy.
I've a good friend...well, I've a client from a fairly recent trip who has something very unique about him. Madeleina was absolutely taken by his demeanor and basic generosity of soul. So was I.
He did medicine on the trip to Peru with me, and then stayed on for months. He's still there. And he's done more medicine. And he wrote me about a month ago that he had an ayahuasca dream wherein he met a man--a spirit that looked like a man to my friend-- smoking mapachos, the black tobacco cigarettes that are common in Amazonia and vital to the rituals there. And this man was in a sort of dark museumish place. And my friend was at first startled and a bit frightened but relaxed when the man told him to "look around" a bit, to see if there was something interesting there. Now to me, that's a special thing: To get invited to look at things that seem magical to us in ordinary reality, but things we can sometimes utilize to help people in ordinary reality, is a pretty fantastic thing.
Later in the ayahuasca dream, my friend met a little girl--a spirit that my friend saw as a little girl--who told him some things about some of his past experiences and then told him she would be with him always to help him. Again, to me that is very special. That's a guardian. As someone raised Catholic, and as a former alter boy, we would have called them guardian angels. As an adult I know they're real. They're the ones that keep you from stepping out in front of that bus you simply didn't see, the one that would have killed you. And they're the ones that make your car stall utterly unexpectedly just before someone runs through the light in the opposite direction going 100 miles per hour. They protect us. Why? I've no idea. I guess they're assigned or find us curious or get something out of watching us blunder along on this plane.
But my friend got one. Very very good.
And so, that led me to write him this note. It was about his responsibility now that he's got a place to find things people might need and a spirit who's volunteered to help him.
Dear X:
Just reread this for the 8th or 12th time. How fucking wonderful. Invited to
> explore. Given a guardian to answer questions. I hope you understand what a
> rare treat this is and treat it as such.
> I've just finished the second day of a prayer. That involves cama lunga,
> mapacho smoke, florida water, a shacapa, and some invisible things. I sing
> and call on the magics, red magic that moves through all the blood of
> everything in the universe; green magic, which moves through the verdancia,
> the trees, and rivers fish, earth and and snakes; white magic, which lights
> the world with stars and suns and moons and the light inside people, and
> black magic, the deep deep magnetic field, the magma that holds all things,
> large and small, together and keeps them moving in a way that allows the
> entire universe, known and unknown, to keep moving in rhythm--I call on the
> magics to help heal someone or something that has asked me for help. I can't
> help. I'm just me. But the guardians can help and I need to pray to call
> them. I need to sing. The song arrives when I need it. That's one of their
> gifts.
> Sometimes healing happens. Unimaginably.
> So treat your guardian girl with love and respect. She's offered her
> help, as has the man smoking mapachos who said you were free to look around.
> LOOK AROUND. Dream him, dream his space. Learn his space. He might have a
> million secrets you need hidden there.
> Just be joyful you've been made aware of helpers and thankful you have
> them. Use them, don't abuse them or you might lose them.
> It might also become a burden to you someday: People will know you have
> power. You won't have power but you will have helpers and people's souls
> will recognize that and ask you for help. You will need to help when it's
> appropriate. That often interferes with what you had planned on a given day.
> But that becomes your job.
> I don't mean to rattle on. I mean to tell you something I know about my
> circumstance and think you might have been initiated into something like it
> as well. And so I have to tell you what I've told you. It's part of the
> unspoken pact.
> I will finish my three day prayer for my friend and a few others
> tomorrow. It will be inconvenient because I have a serious deadline for a
> story. So what. The prayer is what I have been assigned to and it's bigger
> than my deadline. Though actually, the prayer will not interfere. It never
> has. Sometimes I can spend an hour or more and look at the clock and see
> that not 5 minutes of real earth time have passed. And if tomorrow I'm told,
> somehow, that I need another 10 days of prayer, I will do it.
> There are leaps of faith out here.
> Take good steps with your gift and she will walk with you always.
> And don't tell too many people--unless you write a book--because they
> will think you crazy.
> I hope I'm not being arrogant here.
> Peter G

In the Dark, As Always

2011-08-15T10:51:00.000-07:00

I'm often in the dark. People don't imagine that, I suppose, because of the way I carry myself. But I'm often in the dark. Particularly with Chepa. You know, just when I think I know, she turns the world on its head. Last week, after the kids told me she was going to Indiana and on to Michigan--to visit her boyfriend, and then to take the kids to see their ailing grandpa--all was good. Then on maybe last Wednesday, the day before she was to leave, she asked me to make dinner for everybody and then set the menu. I was fine with it as it was lime-chicken with veggies, fresh corn and I forget what else. So when dinner time came around and she wasn't there, I called. She said she'd be right over. Cool. I started the chicken. Soon after, Marco showed up with the girls, Sierra and Alexa, and my granddaughter Taylor Rain.
Seems mom was not coming over: She'd forgotten to mention that her boyfriend was coming into town and that she'd really asked me to make dinner so that I could babysit while they had some private time.
Okay. Didn't like that but did like seeing the kids.
Then Chepa showed up, said she was starving, and proceeded to eat. I went out for a smoke. Then Chepa left. Then I went back inside to do dishes: nearly all the chicken was gone. Seems she'd made a to-go plate for the boyfriend.
I was in the dark. See what I'm talking about? Just when you think you got it figured, you wind up babysitting and cooking for the boyfriend. What the heck?
I'll mention it to her when she returns from Michigan. Provided she returns. For all I know they've all flown off to live in Morocco or Bali by now. I wouldn't know. No one has turned on a light.
Right now I'm in the dark again.
I'm reading a major study as the starting point for a cover story for my local alternative weekly. The study, several hundred pages long, was written purposely to keep people like myself from understanding anything in it. I know that, which is why I know it will be a good story. If I can decipher it. Right now, I'm in the dark. I've got to learn a whole new language of sorts just to begin to get it. Then I'll have to go to the experts to interpret what I can glean. I know the people who did the study are dirty; I know their short form conclusion will not be what's actually written in the study. I also know that they know that few people will bother trying to understand the whole several hundred pages. So I'm in the dark.
And I'm in the dark with Madeleina these days too. Pretty much ever since we've come back from Peru she's challenged me on things every day. She'll ask me if I've signed certain papers yet and I'll say "no, not yet, darling." And then she'll get exasperated and say, "Dad, they have to be signed and you have to sign them now!"
"When are they due?"
"I think next week."
"Well, then I've got time."
"No, dad. They have to be signed now..."
Anyway, the first several times she did that I wound up screaming or wanting to scream. So I asked the powers that be for a little insight, a little light to be shed on my darkness.
And the powers that be were nice enough to do it. They told me, or let me see, or however it happens, an answer. And the next time Madeleina started in on something, rather than responding negatively, I said: "You know that you and I have been arguing for the first time in your life lately..."
"I know, dad. That's because you're stupid sometimes..."
I bit my tongue.
"I know I'm sometimes stupid. But here's the thing: Until the last couple of months you didn't know that. Plus, until we came back from Peru, for your whole life, you just gave me your papers and I took care of them. You didn't even read them. But now you're 14 and you're reading the papers and you're freaking out and imagining that I'm so stupid that if you don't get on me things won't get done. But here's the thing, Madeleina: You've got to think back to the first 13 years. Did you get fed? Did I remember to go to the store to buy food, remember to cook it, remember to ask you for input on what we ought to eat? Did I get all your school books--I mean along with mom, of course--and get you to school and remember to make you good lunches? Did I get all the paperwork done on time?"
"Am I supposed to answer that?"
"Yes as a matter of fact."
"Well, okay, so you didn't mess up..."
"So why are you so suddenly sure I am going to mess up now? Why do you think you won't have the dress for the quinceniera or won't get your band stuff paid for or won't get the medical papers filled out? Have I gotten so old so quickly that if you don't yell at me I won't remember anything?"
She started to laugh. "You might have Alzheimers, dad. You never can be too careful...."
"Don't wish that on me, girl,"
"I'm not. I'm just saying, maybe all that pot you used to smoke burned out your brain...."
"Not hardly, baby. I think the truth of the matter is that you're suddenly becoming a grown up and want to challenge me. Cause if you're grown up, then I must be old, and if I'm old, I won't remember anything, so you have to save me..."
"Something like that."
"Well, forget about it. You're welcome to be smart as you like, and you're welcome to fill out any paperwork you like, but it's gonna be a long time before I lose my edge. So have a little faith, eh?"
It was a nice moment of light in the darkness.
This morning she got up while I was working on the computer and came into the office/living room and crashed out on the couch behind me. She was so beautiful. She was just my little girl again for a little while.
And then she woke and remembered that she had to read Dickens' Tale of Two Cities and burst into tears. She doesn't understand a word of it. Not surprising: His writing is as complicated for her to understand as the report I'm reading is to me.
So I asked her to bring me the book--after I fed her scrambled eggs with cheese, cantaloupe and a juice made of fresh strawberries, a banana, orange juice, spring water and a little milk--and I began to read it to her. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...."
It took us nearly an hour to get through the first three page chapter. She simply has no context. So when we were done she yelled in frustration: "So why didn't he just write that it was 1775 and in England and France everything was freaking chaos and the only people who didn't know it were the kings and queens of those countries? That's it. Then end. First chapter done."
Actually, I don't know why he didn't write that. He really does write beautifully, but it's pretty incoherent for kids who've grown up with computers and who say things like RTFM as if it's English (it means Read the Fucking Manual).
I guess everybody around here is in the dark sometimes, eh?

2012 Amazon/Machu Picchu Trips

2011-08-07T17:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, time to weigh in on next year's trips.
(Madeleina, who is cutting two heads of garlic to refill my garlic/olive oil cup, just cut in to say "Remind me to take a shower tonight!", which I will do, but where is she going to take a shower? I mean, it's heavier than it looks....)
Anyway, I'm doing 4 trips in 2012. Two of them will be 21-day long trips--in January and June--covering the jungle and mountains and Machu Picchu and include Ayahuasca and San Pedro and magic shrooms and the Matses' medicines, sapo and nu-nu. Bit trip. Expensive but worth the price of admission.
Those two trips can be done wholly or in part, either jungle or mountain. Cost is $4400 for the 21 days (not including airfare or alcohol or walking around money and some meals) but including everything else, from boats to hotels, to my team, to entrance fees to trains, to ceremonies.
The other two trips are 9 1/2 day jungle intensives: Get ready to bare your soul to the universe cause these are fantastic and intense. These cost $1800 and include everything but airfare and walking around money.
All four trips will change your life for the better. My team, the river, the jungle, the Amazon sky, the mountains, the medicines, the ruins.....hell, all I've got to do is get you to the right place at the right time and then get the hell out of the way and let the rest do the magic. And what magic there is! Ask people who have been there. I wouldn't do these trips if I didn't love doing them. And I love doing them.
Dates: The January 21 day trip starts on Saturday, January 7, and runs through the morning of Saturday, January 28. The jungle portion alone runs from Saturday, January 7 through Thursday afternoon, January 19 and costs $2400. The Lima/Cuzco/Sacred Valley/Machu Picchu end of things runs from Thursday evening, January 19 through Saturday morning, January 28 and costs $2200. Both together cost $4400.
The June 21 day trip, starts on Saturday, June 2 and runs through Saturday morning, June 23. Cost: $4400. Jungle only: June 2 through Thursday afternoon, June 14 with a $2400 cost. Mountain portion only runs from Thursday afternoon, June 14 through Saturday morning June 23 and costs $2200. See above for what's included and what's not. Essentially, your spending money for gifts, your alcohol, some meals and your airfare are not included. Everything else is included.
The February and July trips are both 9 1/2 day jungle intensives. We'll do magic shrooms, ayahuasca twice, sapo and nu-nu, go night canoeing, bathe in the river, walk in primordial swamps, hike in pristine first growth canopy, collect plants to eat and plant medicines and whatever else we can squeeze in.
The february dates are Saturday, Feb 4, through the morning of Monday, Feb. 13.
The July dates are not set yet as they are set to coincide with the start of Alan Shoemaker's Shamanism Conference. Generally we start around the 7th of July and run through the 16th, but that changes depending on when the conference is set.
Cost for either jungle intensive is $1800 and includes everything but walking around money, airfare and any alcohol you consume in Iquitos (no alcohol in the jungle, please).
These are pretty fantastic trips, I think.
So anyone interested, please contact me at peterg9@yahoo.com and we can go from there.
And thanks for listening to this advertorial.

Where Are We, Death Valley?

2011-08-03T16:09:00.000-07:00

Whew! Not to kill you guys with two blogs in one day, but I just have to mention the temperatures here. Today was Dallas/Fort Worth's 33rd consecutive day of 100 degrees F or more. No rain for a couple of weeks prior to that or during those 33 days. A place up the road burned wildly from what's believed to be an errant cigarette butt tossed from a car. It's that dry here.
But it's also hot. Last few days, very hot. Last week it was 104-106. You know, hotter than it ever gets here but bearable. Yesterday hit 110. Today, according to the radio, hit 112. It will drop to 108 by 7 PM, and then down to 100 or so by midnight. That is not sittin' on a porch swing weather by any means.
Tomorrow might hit 113, which is, I think, the highest temp ever recorded here in the Fort Worth area, and about what Death Valley does during August. We are not supposed to be anywhere near Death Valley hot. We're north Texas, a central state and several hundred miles from the most northern Mexican border. So if we're hitting 112, it's hot.
And you know what? Not having air conditioning in the car, well, you really feel it. I've done two showers and changed three shirts today. My badly insulated house is at 84 degrees while the thermostat is set at 70. And I almost need a sweater in here after working outside for 20 minutes. Can't wait to see the electric bill. Fortunately, I'm in a co-op, so that while they'll charge me $500 for the month, they'll also send me $25 in co-op earnings. Perfect.
Tomorrow Madeleina are going to take my truck out from under the carport and let it sit in the sun. Then we're gonna fry an egg on the hood and she's gonna narrate and make that her new video on Youtube.com, under madeleinag. It ought to be good.
Next nine days look to be more of the same though a little cooler. From up to 113 tomorrow to down to 103 (highs for the day) a week from Friday. Nice and sunny though.
I'm not sure it's good to be sucking down all this superheated smog, you know? Just sayin'...
I am giving the goats and Boots a lot of water with ice in it. Everybody seems to like that. And I'm putting Boots' chicken legs in the fridge to cool them before I serve him (two pounds of chicken daily....sorry, chickens!).
I knew it was going to be hot today when I stepped from my house to go to my car for smokes at 8 AM and the temperature, in the shade, was 94. By 1 PM it was 102, and when I just came back from driving to town, at about 6 PM, it was still 106. That's in the shade. No sun whatsoever, on a porch surrounded by plants. So maybe the 112 was a little less than the real temp.
Ah, well, the good thing is that when it cools to 85 by 4 AM, and the house cools to the 70 degrees the AC is set for, well, it feels so icy cold that I put a blanket on and go into the best damned sleeps I've had since I left New York in the winter of 2002.

Get Real Lucky, Sometimes

2011-08-03T12:51:00.000-07:00

I get real lucky, sometimes. And I don't forget to say thanks to the guardians. Today's luck came at the end of a chain of events that didn't seem to have anything to do with each other.
I was working this morning, trying to track down the answer to a question that I need to make my next column of Drug War Follies for Skunk magazine shine. Comes up around 1:15 and I think, what the hell, let's just go to Fort Worth, pick up my paycheck and some fresh fish and call it a day.
Just then a guy I'd promised to call a couple of days ago called. It was related to a new story. I didn't answer and was ready to leave when I thought, what the heck, just call him and get that done. So I did. We spoke about 45 minutes when Chepa burst in and gave me an unexpected hug. I told the guy I'd call him back tomorrow. Chepa, it turned out, was having lunch with her sisters on some salt fish I brought back from the Amazon for her and she wanted some Margarita mix--left over from the wedding--and some ice. I told her I didn't have any ice but she said that Sarah had told her I still had a couple of bags in the freezer in the garage. So I said, let's go, I'll look.
On the way to the garage Chepa pointed out that Little Goat Guy had gotten his cord all tangled up with the tree swing and told me not to forget to fix it later. He's been back a few days and is still tied up because I have not finished closing all the holes in the fencing around the property that the goat made last year.
So I came back in, brushed my teeth, and suddenly Marco showed up. He was looking for his wallet. Well, I helped look, which led us to a large closet in his old room, the floor of which was covered in college texts and notebooks that belong to someone none of us know. So I decided to clean that out, and wound up with a big box of garbage. Too much garbage to leave in the house, so I brought it out--Marco had meanwhile found his walled in Italo's room, where he and Italo and changed into tuxedos for Italo's wedding--and put it in the garbage area.
And while I was doing that I saw the bale of hay and bag of goat feed I'd bought yesterday. The hay had been annoying since one of the three rear window panels of my 1998 Ford Ranger is broken and the hay was being sucked in so fast while I was on the highway that there was a virtual hay storm in my car. So when I saw that hay, I was going to leave it where it was, but then the little goat, Minute, saw it from across the fence and started braying for it. So I decided to roll it over to where the goats were and let them have a feast. And when I got to the fence gate, I realized that Little Goat Guy had wildly exacerbated his position to where his tongue was turning blue and his eyes were popping out of his head.
I left the hay where it was, raced over and undid the collar so that he could get his breath. In a few minutes his eyes were back to normal, though he didn't try to move until he'd had some fresh water and a few tiny mouthfuls of hay.
Now this is why I talk about the guardians: Left to my own devices, I never would have needed to get that ice, and Chepa would not have pointed out that the goat was tangled up. And even later, left to my own devices, I would have left him tangled until I got back from the city. But of course he would have been dead long before that. But by Chepa coming for ice, then Marco coming to look for a wallet, which wound up producing the garbage that led me to notice the hay still near the truck, which led me to feel guilty for not wanting to do the work to get it to the goats....well, that's what saved the goat's life. And I don't think that was luck. I think that was the guardians pulling the strings to get everything in place to save that beautiful goat's life.
Thanks, universe. You're the best.

Alone Again, Naturally

2011-08-01T17:30:00.000-07:00

Okay, so for the second time since I've been back I'm alone tonight. Chepa and the kids might surprise me with a visit for some watermelon and grapes but I'm pretty much alone. And while I was alone all day--except for bringing the kids donuts this morning and visiting them for a little while to see poor Madeleina after her first marching band practice practically dead on Chepa's sofa--Dad, when you make a mistake you have to do 20 pushups and I can't even do one!--well, I've been alone all day. Which meant I got a story done for the Fort Worth Weekly and nearly finished my column for Skunk magazine as well. Extra cool.
Lonesome, but cool.
Did get a reasonably nice check in the mail--which comes promptly between 4 and 5 PM daily--from the June sales of my book at Amazon. Nice to know it's still selling 100+ copies a month, which is pretty much what it's done since it came out last year. I would love it to go wild and sell 50,000 copies one month but still, some people are reading it. And lots of those people write me. I've got a lot of super excellent letters from strangers who found it a great read. Good. That's what I was hoping for.
Here's a story: When I was a fairly young teenager I was writing a lot of poetry--oh, the angst of youth and pimples, blue balls brought on by necking with Kathy O for hours and never being allowed to go further, and not knowing there was an end to masturbating until I'd actually had real sex with a girl--some of which I'd read to my mom. And my mom, pretty astute lady, would ask me what this or that line meant. And I'd explain. And then she'd say--and we probably did this half-a-dozen times over the years--"Well, are you going to explain that to everyone who reads your poetry? Because if you are, you won't have a lot of readers, it'll just take too long. So why don't you say what you just told me in the poem in a way that I and others can understand? Then you can sell your work to lots of people and not worry about having to go to their homes to explain it."
I hated her the first time she said that. It was so cold, so cruel, so on the money.
When I grew up I gave up poetry but always write so that everybody knows that the heck I'm talking about. I think. Or I hope. Or that's what I try to do, anyway.
And so I think even people who don't know about ayahuasca could have a reasonable change of reading my book and getting something from it, just like people who come on my trips to the Amazon and don't drink ayahuasca or do the Matses' medicines sapo and nu-nu still get a lot out of the trips.
(QUICK AD: Upcoming trips in January and February, then again in June and July. Sign up now cause I'm gonna sell out to excellent people! ALSO: Time to stock up on the book, Ayahuasca in My Blood--25 Years of Medicine Dreaming for your early Christmas/Hannukkah/Kwanzaa/Tribal Solstice presents).
Anyway, so I'm alone. But I did good and pulled the trigger on Madeleina's new flute. It is a beauty: a floor model from Taylor Music in South Dakota--from Geimenhardt, supposedly a good flute maker. it's open-hole with a B foot and a Gizmo key and comes with corks for the open holes. None of which makes sense to be but makes it easier to swallow the $895 price tag--which is a freaking bargain from the $1350 or so it sells for completely new.
I'm just thinking of my friend Phoenix, whose father bought him a cheap little guitar when he wanted to play and told him to learn enough to earn something better. Phoenix plays beautifull and so I suspect his dad was happy to shell out the bucks for something that could make his kid's music sing. I feel the same way about Madeleina. She's spent hundreds and hundreds of hours practicing, learning, and now needs to move up from a beginner's flute. Good for her. She earned it with her practice and she also earned it working with me in Peru for nearly two months. So I bought it with a thrill running up my neck rather than a knot in my stomach.
I'm getting distracted thinking of the tiny new potatoes I have on the stove. I better go check them.
They look fine. I'm cooking them in water left from cooking asparagus and then spinach. It's got real good sea salt in it, and a little garlic oil (the garlic has been soaking in the olive oil for 48 hours) a bit of chicken stock from chicken last night and then a few sprigs of cilantro. They're gonna be good boiled potatoes.
And I'm still in love with sword fish so I've got a piece of it--sorry fish. I won't complain if one of your brothers eats me. I know it will hurt but I will deserve it--in a bit of the same garlic oil. It's nice and low right now. And then, probably boring you who know the damned recipe, when it's browned on one side and nearly done on the other, I'm gonna add garlic, tiny diced red pepper (half a pepper as I'm dining alone), three diced slices of red onion, and half a tiny bottle of capers, with the juice. Maybe a teaspoon of butter to bind it all together.
The sides are maybe one of the tiny potatoes, asparagus (parboiled then sauteed in a bit of butter and good balsamic vinegar) and spinach (parboiled and later to be cooked in garlic and olive oil). I know, I've done it 100 times. But I still like it. And I never had it with the potatoes before.
And I'm gonna eat that feast in front of the television while watching Nicholas Cage and Eva Mendez in Ghost Rider, an insane movie that I happen to like watching every now and then, if just to watch Cage ride a flaming Harley custom up the side of a high rise.
Okay, so that's the single life. Not fantastic, but pretty rich if you milk it. I could do worse, right?
It's all good. I hope you're all having a great night, wherever you are.

Not Wild About Change

2011-07-31T16:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, so we've (Madeleina and I) been back from Peru for nine days now. Seems like we should have integrated. We are. But it is always hard to switch modes, and harder still when there are changes. We came back to see that Italo's Sarah, who is so beautiful and nice, had rearranged some of the art in my rooms. Specifically, my office, the bathroom and the kitchen. Plus, a wax cast of Madeleina's left hand, made several years ago at the Wax Museum in Dallas on a school trip, had melted over the lava lamp it has sat on for several years.
That was no one's fault. No one was living here for several weeks and the family only came over sporatically to feed Boots, the Wonderdog, vet for rats and keep appliances running. No AC was on and so the hand melted. But Madeleina put all her rejection of all the changes into that wax hand and cried for hours. What she was really upset about was that the art was rearranged, my writing trophies and certicates were in different places, the art in the bathroom was now in the hallway, and new pieces that Sarah thought would be good for the kitchen and bathroom were in place. Plus, one of our beloved rugs was folded up and in Marco's old room, as were several art pieces, a couple of end tables, lamps and so forth.
So Madeleina was not crying about the hand, exactly, but that it represented change she had not designed.
I cried too, but then after 44 years of travel a couple of months a year, I know that things will be changed when I return. And so while I abhor the changes, I welcome them. If someone thinks what they're gonna buy--like Sarah bought me a 6 piece couch in the living room and threw out my old and comfy couch/chair/ottoman--well then, I cry a little and then celebrate her taste.
Much tougher for Madeleina.
And today we brought the goats home from Shelly S's. house. She is the goat lady who at times has dozens of goats. She breeds them, sells their milk for cheese and generally loves them. She's the one I got the goats from so I pay her to board them--$200 for two goats for 2 months- and she said they were easy students.
But now they are in the backyard. Over 1 1/2 acres to play in but all they are doing is braying. I'm not sure what they want but will bet it has something to with having been taken from the place where they were for the last 8 weeks.
So I'm just saying, change is tough on everybody.
To get over it I made a shrimp soup: Garlic, minced, with red onion, diced, and celery, diced, as a mirapoix. THEN sautee shrimp, then add commercial tomato soup and pepper, then add water, then shrimp shell essence, then shrimp and a few minutes later the mirapoix. Then small diced potatoes. Then diced scallions and cilantro, pepper and angel hair pasta. Then just be patient for half an hour.
So here it is: We came home las week and still don't have our seagoing feet nearly under us.
And now I have to attend the soup.
But know that Boots, the goats, the birds, and the family, are all slightly freaked at the thought that changes were made. Because we liked things the way they were. We are intimidated by change until we integrate it. I hope you're better than that, but we're not.
Sometimes we're not strong enough.

After the Party Comes the Cleanup

2011-07-24T16:45:00.000-07:00

Okay, the wedding was beautiful. I had no idea how many touches would go into it--and I worked hundreds of weddings as a kid at Cresthaven Country Club in Whitestone, New York. This had floating lights, floating flowers, a friend of the other side of the family who drove in from South Dakota to pitch in as photographer--fantastic--and deejay--freaking brilliant. We went on a little late because it took a long time to get pictures done at the Botanical Garden of Fort Worth--a good enough reason to visit Fort Worth and hang at my house a couple of days--but otherwise no hitches.
And yes, Chepa's boyfriend and the father of her new kids came in to town and I was good: I walked up and introduced myself, and later helped patch one of the baby's knees. I provided the bandaids and he applied them. He noted that Alexa preferred the mickey mouse bandaids and I held my tongue: Did not say, "How would you know? I'm the guy raising them!" or anything like that. And when it came time, about 11 PM, that I thought I might, I simply went to bed and let the party rock on. Marco and Italo both commended my behavior. Marco was particularly nice: "Dad, you're the freaking coolest person I ever met. You made a great party, you dealt with Troy, you didn't drink all night. I want to be like you when I grow up."
I countered that it was a lucky day, but really it was just doing what needed. Difficult for me because I happen to still love Chepa. But I did it and I am okay with how I behaved.
The party part was a blast. There was food for 200 and people ate and ate. Not just what I made but what Sarah's mom and dad and grandma and grandpa made. Plus what Chepa and her sisters made. Plus platters from a supermarket. Fortunately, Italo and Sarah's friends are mostly in their early 20s, so they can eat like horses. And drink. They went through a keg of beer, a couple of cases of bottles, nearly 4 liters of Cuervo Gold in Margarita's and then 1 1/2 cases of champagne. Plus a couple of bottles of Stoli that someone brought.
Still, everyone behaved wonderfully.
And when the kids were getting married, wouldn't you know it that I was the guy standing behind all the chairs, bawling. Just thinking about my Italo and quietly sobbing. That's why I stood behind everyone. No need to go public with a private waterfall.
And the girls, Madeleina, Sierra, Alexa and little Taylor Rain, well, they were simply magic. I just cannot get enough of any of them. I mean, I just had Madeleina in the jungle and mountains of Peru with me for 50 days and I'm still thinking she is about the coolest person on the planet to hang with. And she looked gorgeous--pronounce that gojus--in her orange bridesmaid dress.
So that's that.
And just now we finished several hours of cleanup. Tomorrow the dump and then the rounds of returning things like the air conditioner unit Sarah's dad rented for the garage, or the tables and chairs, the tent guy's stuff and the beer keg I got.
But it's done yet and I've a fridge full of leftovers if anybody's hungry. Let me know.
And spend one second sending them good vibes. Marriage is tougher than most people think--as most of you know.
Appreciate it.

Back Home Again...Life is Freaking Grand, eh?

2011-07-22T18:54:00.000-07:00

Hello all. I've been away, working in Peru for 50 days and so have not been in touch. I'm sorry. But work is hard there. I've a team of 12-15 to oversee, trips to plan for, food to buy, babies who are sick, families that need help. Hell, it's like I'm a freaking one man money machine trying to keep up with it all. Not that I mind. My guests give me the money and I distribute it. That's how I see it. And this time, with my Madeleina, now 14, with me for the second June/July trips in two years, we actually made a few bucks. How? First, because she's such a good guardian she wouldn't let me have a woman closer than 20 feet and never ever alone. Which kept me from getting robbed or so gleeful that I gave someone $500 for the hell of it. Secondly: She wouldn't let me give anyone scholarships. Last time she was with me I gave everyone a break and by the time we added it all up I'd given $10,000 on breaks and came home broke. This time she wouldn't hear of that.
"That's my new flute, dad! Let them pay! You don't even charge enough to begin with!"
Which may not be true, but I limited scholarships and came home with enough to pay the IRS their blood money from several years ago and next month's mortgage and to buy the food and booze for my son Italo's wedding to my daughter-in-law, Sarah, the mother of my grandchild, Taylor Rain.
The trip was fantastic: Those of you who have been on it and were great guests, well, you know. This was just magic all the way with all the powers lending a hand to keep me joyful, and when I'm joyful, well, the rest of the world--at least our little world on the Amazon--tends to fall in line. So that was fantastic.
And now I'm ready to cook for tomorrow. I've cleaned and minced 15 heads of garlic and put it all in good olive oil to give me a foot up, but tomorrow it's brisket, Peruvian chicken, links, sausage, fresh beans, macaroni salad, potato and egg salad, hot dogs for the kids, a chocolate fountain, marinated and bar-b-qued asparagus and broccoli,and anything else I can conjure. The sisters, Italo's aunts will bring food as well. Heck, there are 100 people supposedly coming. Unfortunately, one of them is Chepa's boyfriend, the father of her new babies, the ones I'm sort of raising about 8 months a year because he's living in another state the last several years. I've never met him, and don't need to. I know he exists. No hiding from reality but he ain't gonna be my best friend.
I'll deal with it, I guess. I won't have a drink as a first step, lest I blurt out: Why am I paying about $6000-10,000 a year to feed and clothe your babies? Why can't you carry your end?
No drinks tomorrow. Be nice. It's my kid, Italo's day. Italo and Sarah. And their baby. And that's a good thing. Everybody is coming. I'll be on best behavior.
As for you all, I'll be back soon. Sorry to keep you waiting but those who know me in Peru know that when I am there I am there 100 percent and there is no time for anything else.
Now that I'm hear, I'm here for Italo and Sarah for a few days, 100 percent. And then it will be your turn.
Thanks for letting me have the space I occasionally need. I appreciate it.
And I hope it's all going well with you. Let me know.

Something About Iquitos

2011-05-24T12:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, so someone on a forum I occasionally write on posted something to the effect that Iquitos is a patriarchal society. I begged to differ. I think it's interesting, so here is what I wrote:
Slightly off topic but need to respond to Hazle-ra regarding the culture in Iquitos. He calls it patriarchal. I beg to differ. Very very matriarchal society. Women rule the roost. Even with sexual advances, at least among Peruvians. Enter gringas, or women of other cultures and yes, the men can seem grabby, and probably are. But then that is their culture and it is the women who let it happen and only on their own terms.
This culture, you've got to remember, didn't even exist 140 years ago. Iquitos was basically a trading post for the tribals that lived on different rivers. Many were fueding, and that was exacerbated a great deal with the advent of the rubber boom to the area--when large groups such as the Shipibo--I know we all love them, butttt--chose to offer a lot of other indigenous people to the slave trade at the time rather than be enslaved themselves.
So what you see is a city that grew up around the rubber boom, where forced slaves intermingled with one another, with Irish indentured servants, German fortune seekers, Black slaves who'd escaped eastern Brazil and even some Brazilian tribals who followed the rubber boom west from Manaus.
At the root of the culture of Iquitos is tribal life: Mostly hunting and gathering and fishing with a little agriculture thrown in during the rubber boom era. Births of girls severely outnumbered births of boys. To that, add that as hunters, men tended to die off in the jungle faster than women. Which made the disproportionate number of women even greater. As a result, men frequently had multiple wives. In Peru, a headman who had several--generally four or more--is called a curaka--a name still used by the women of Iquitos when talking about a playboy type.
It was important in tribal communities to have more than one wife. The simplest example I can give is my now-dead Matses headman friend, Pablo. He had four wives when I met him, though he had sons old enough to suggest he'd had earlier wives as well. Each of the four had their own duties: MaShe, the primary wife, ran the camp. Amelia breast fed all the babies of all the wives and kept the camp clean. Marta went hunting with Pablo and carried the meat back to camp (leaving him free to hunt any additional animals he saw along the way; the fourth, whose name escapese me, was the primary tender of the chacras, the yucca fields they had.
All of the women interchanged roles, but over several years, what I'm describing would best describe the situation.
MaShe couldn't have run the camp, taken care of babies, carried meat and tended fields alone. So she welcomed the other wives. And the wives, in turn, enjoyed each other's company. So much so that Pablo wasn't really needed. His job was to hunt, provide the food, then get out of the way. Not that the women didn't enjoy his company now and then--they did. But not all day, every day. That was women time when chores were done.
Now that model remains the model for Peruvian households in Iqiutos. Not the several wives, but the man's role. And any gringos married to Iquitenos will know what I'm talking about. Your role as the male is to hunt--these days that is probably a job, but still, it's to provide the food. After that you will be looked after, but you're not otherwise needed. The sisters, their mothers, the aunts, they will sit all day making food, washing clothes, doing their chores together; the man is not really included or invited into that circle very often.
And when you marry, chances are very good that your wife will pick your lover. Might be a sister of hers, a friend who has no man, but your lover will be given to you by your wife. And you are expected to take care of her, both intimately and financially--which might mean an entire second extended family. And if the man chooses more lovers, well, I've rarely known the women to care very much so long as the man continues to hunt--provide--for the primary family and extended primary family and the amante and extended family. If you can do all that and have more lovers, you are a curaka and that's admired by an awful lot of people. Means you can shoulder your burdens, take care of things. You're strong.
And while the hunter who cannot hunt any longer might well be fed poisoned soup by his wives--particularly if they are young enough to get new husbands--a man who cannot support his family will lose all respect of the women--from grandma to the aunts, to the wife, the amante and so forth. And if they can possibly move on to another man, particularly as a group, they will.
So I'm seeing that as a matriarchal society, not a patriarchal one. On the surface, men are allowed to walk around with their chests puffed out, but they know who runs the show. And they are so far outnumbered as a rule, that there's little they can do about it.

Getting Ready to Go: Wonderful Day

2011-05-20T19:04:00.000-07:00

Okay, I recognize that I've not been treating you fairly. And I'm sorry. My only defense for not posting more often in the three months since I've been back from Peru is that I've been under the deadline gun every stinking week. And I don't mean with six weeks to do a story. I mean, like last week, I was handed a story on Thursday afternoon that was 1,500 words long and told to turn it into a cover story by Sunday. Then this week, at my weekly meeting of my alternative weekly, I was asked to produce two 2,000 word stories in the next nine days. Can do it but it takes all I've got. Which means you get short shrift.
And, just for the heck of it, since I came back from Peru on Feb 20 or so, I've done three cover stories, five 1.500 word stories, 5 400 word stories, two columns for Skunk and a cover for MPI One+ mag. And I've still got 3 stories to finish before I leave town on May 30.
So I apologize and can only say I had nothing to say. The work has left me empty. Like a vacuum. I've not promoted my book for two seconds, not tried to finish the next book--nearly done, but so far away--and have not begun the third one.
And I have not been lazy.
Apology accepted, I hope. I'm sorry I left you.
Tonight is Friday. Chepa, the wife/ex-wife (and much more the latter for those who just joined) picked up my Madeleina, 14 and going on 40, from school and was to take her to Academy Sports to buy sneakers. Instead, she took her to the mall, whatever that is, in north Dallas, a couple of hours from here. And evidently bought herself nice clothes but didn't find anything for my daughter, who leaves for Iquitos, Peru--middle of the Amazon--with me next week.
All okay. My daughter will get the clothes she needs. I'm guessing Chepa got what she needed. Tomorrow is another day, and Madeleina can take $100 or $200 and I'll drop her off wherever she wants for a couple of hours to shop without her mom, who happens to be a fantastic and sexy shopper (Okay, I fell in love with the girl 15 years ago, and even though the marriage didn't work out I used to love being invited into the fitting room to check out how the new jeans would look) using all the money or taking her to stores that are more suited to 40-year-olds than 14-year olds.
So right now I've got nice salmon, Chinese style, with sesame oil, sesame seeds, diced tomatoes, scallions, ginger, garlic and cilantro ready to do. I've also got bi-color corn, which I hope won't kill us, and fresh spinach, fresh broccoli and fresh asparagus (with a touch of balsamic vinegar) ready to go.
And Marco came by, and my son Italo came by to say he's ordered an oxygen sensor for my old green truck, and the goats are happy, and Boots the blind wonder dog is happy and the birds are happy and you know what? I'm happy. I'm thanking whatever god or powers that be that I woke up this morning breathing instead of dying in my sleep. Because this was a great day. And tomorrow will be another if they'll let me have it despite my cigarettes.
So that's my apology to you. I'm living, and living hard, working like a dog, barely making ends meet but who cares since there is a paper up on my wall that says I'm grateful that I have enough to pay my bills.
And I hope you can pay your bills. And if not, I hope you find new and better work that will let that happen.
Life is fantastic, even out on the edge. I'm hoping you're enjoying it.

Madeleina's New Movie

2011-05-11T16:30:00.000-07:00

Well, while you've all been missing me, I've been living large and hard. I've written three cover stories, four 1500 word pieces, six 200 word news stories and two columns since I last wrote, not including yesterday. I've had a clutch replaced in my old green truck, wrote three or four pieces for Huffington Post, of which they only put up two so far, unfreakingbelieveably. Oh, and Italo and Sarah decided to get married, at my place, with me presiding, under the watchful eyes of over 100 guests, all of whom I am supposed to feed--including Chepa's boyfriend--just 48-hours after I return from 50 days in Peru. Good luck with all that shit. I'm almost just hoping they'll break up for a week or 10 days to give me a little time to get the yard and house and food in order!
Oh, and yesterday, at Chepa's, when I went there to pick up Madeleina for school, she came bursting out of her room to say: "Don't even start with me!" to me. What? I know Italian guys in my neighborhood growing up who used that phrase, and it meant something, trust me, but my 14-year old daughter? Just trying to get her to school on time? What was she going to do if I started with her? I mean, com'on...that's a serious phrase where I grew up. It meant just what it said: Don't start with me or this will end very badly for you.
Now my daughter thinks she can say that to dad? Oy, vey!
And now this evening, in the midst of a torrential downpour and extreme lightning storm, she's in the midst of making a new Youtube.com video. She publishes under the name madeleinag, so look for her. She's pretty fantastic. But she hasn't made a new video in three weeks.
Tonight she got in the creative spirit and decided to involve me: I was supposed to be the meanest dad in the world and when she decided to play in water several inches deep, she had me coming out and screaming at her. We did about 10 takes. Each time she was like: "Dad, you have to be more mean..."; or "Dad, sound like you're going to kill me..."
And I finally did, screaming harshly as I walked into the ankle deep water and off she ran screaming.
"That was good, dad. You're going to jail for that one. You were an absolute psychopath...."
"Thanks, baby. Keep the outtakes so the department of social services can see that you were the one directing the film,
okay?"
I had another scene where she took a soda, in total excitement, and I reached my hand in and scowled, "What are you doing? That's my soda!!!!"
I had a third scene but she cut me out of it.
So go to youtube.com tomorrow or the next day and check it out. My baby is one crazy woman when she decides to be. And she's a great director. I'll bet it's a good video.
She just said this one sucks. But who knows. Check it out anyway.
Me? I'm thinking of all of you and hoping you are having as much fun on the road to dying as I am. Which means living voraciously.
Oh, and Sierra, Alexa, and my granddaughter Taylor rain are all fine. So is Italo. So is Sara, my daughter in law, though I can never remember if she has an "h" at the end of her name or not. So is Chepa. So is Marco. We're all doing well. I think.
I hope.
And I hope you're all doing well, too.

Guy Asked Me for Advise...

2011-05-10T11:04:00.000-07:00

Someone wrote to me asking for advise on how to become an investigative journalist. I really don't have any, so instead I told him the story of how it happened and I hope it helps him somehow. Here it is:
Dear X: I'm not sure what to tell you here. That's because I didn't start out as an investigative reporter. I started out writing plays, poetry and finally short stories. I got a book called the Writer's Market (I think) about 30 years ago and went through the listings of journals and such to figure out who might print my stories and such. I used to send out 5 every week. They were often the same story, just photocopied and sent out. And the first year, I averaged about 1 sale for every 50 stories I sent out. And that sale was usually for either nothing or $25.
The second year I sold about 2 for every 50 stories I sent out.
Then I had a breakthrough: I was normally taking about a month to write a story. Way too long. So I made a deal with myself: I was going to write one story a day for 30 days, and that meant write it completely so that I could send it out at the end of the week with the other stories I'd written that week.
It was crazy impossible but I did it: At the end of the month I had 12 short stories, three or four opinion pieces and a 160 page novella. Amazing. And armed with that supply I was able to start getting sales about 1 out of every 10 places I sent stories to. And one of those places, a non-paying music weekly paper in the Village in New York, had an editor who called me to ask me to write him a non-fiction piece. He'd already printed four or five of my stories and wanted to try me at non-fiction. So I did. And it was okay.
About a year later, I was headed down to the Amazon for the first time and I told him I'd write a report every week on what happened that week. Which I did. I spent a lot of time on those reports.
Unfortunately, I discovered when I got home that he hadn't printed them. All of the hand-written stories were in my apartment mailbox. Seems he'd gone out of business while I was away.
But I looked at those stories and thought they were good. So I went to the Writer's Market and looked at the non-fiction category of magazines and papers. And then I started sending those stories out. And damn if High Times didn't buy one, then a magazine called Overseas Living bought one, and then Walking Magazine bought one and someone else bought one. Of the seven pieces, I think I sold 4 or 5. Better yet, I earned about $1,700, from those sales, which pretty much paid for the whole trip.
So I decided to concentrate on non-fiction--since it apparently paid so much better. And High Times asked me to do another story on the Amazon, which I did, and then another. And then finally the bosses called me into their offices one day and asked if I could do an investigative piece. I said I'd never done one but that I would try.
They said they wanted me to get an interview with Dave Foreman, the head of a group called Earth First!, a great environmental action group. The problem was that the FBI had put the key members of Earth First! on their most wanted list and so nobody knew where to find them or how to get in touch with them.
So there I was being asked to find this guy whom the FBI couldn't find. Sure.
I thought about it for maybe a week. How the hell could I find Foreman? I read anything I could about him from before he was on the list and then got this: He came from either Montana or Wyoming, or at least had lived in those places. And he looked big. So I suddenly got the idea that he probably played high school football, since most big kids in the midwest do, and I thought I might call all the schools in those states to find out if he had ever gone there. That didn't go anywhere because schools wouldn't give me the information. So I thought about it again and it hit me that maybe he liked to have a beer and watch football...
So I decided to call every bar in both states to see if I could find him. I picked Wyoming first and I don't know why. I call information--this was long before computers--and asked the telephone operator for the names and phone numbers of the first three bars listed in alphabetical order in Wyoming. I would have asked for more but three was the limit per call. So I called information again and got three more numbers, then again, and again until I had some two hundred or so drinking joints in Wyoming. Took about two weeks to collect that information.
Then I began making calls, in alphabetical order. At each I would say: Hello, this is Peter Gorman, and I'm with High Times magazine. I'm trying to reach Dave Forman of Earth First! and if you know him can I give you my number for him to call me?" Or something like that. Of course no one admitted knowing him. That went on for a couple of weeks.
And then, while I was working somewhere in the middle of my list, I got a call one day. "Hello, is this Peter Gorman?"
"Yes."
Click.
That happened again the next day. And then the next day and maybe two more times until one day when I said "Yes," the person at the other end said: "This is Dave Foreman. You want to talk with me?"
And I did and I got the interview and right then, I knew I was going to try to be an investigative journalist. All it took was coming up with a way to get information that no one had thought of. Imagine how I felt knowing that the FBI had Foreman on their most wanted list and couldn't find him and here I was in my little apartment in New York City and I got to him. Incredible feeling.
After that, I took every hard story--and tried to come up with some of my own--that I coudl get my hands on for High Times. And then other magazines started calling me, sometimes for regular stories, sometimes for investigative pieces.
So what advise can I give you on becoming an investigative journalist? None, really. Just keep your eyes open, keep trying to sell stories somewhere, anywhere, and sooner or later an editor will cal you and you go from there and see where it leads. And if you can get in with a weekly alternative paper--I'm with the Fort Worth Weekly here in Texas--there is plenty of investigative stuff to work on. How to do that? Just keep trying, even when you're only selling one story out of 50. The key is to keep sending material out. I was sending out 250 pieces a year for four or five years before enough editors knew me that I didn't have to do that anymore.
I hope that helps.
Peter G

Easter at the Gorman's

2011-04-24T11:16:00.000-07:00

Well, it's Easter at the Gorman's. I was hot under the collar last night. Started off good: I had a meeting with someone coming on my July Jungle Jaunt and she was great and will be a great addition to the trip. Then I raced home for a radio interview about ayahuasca that was scheduled for 5 PM. Or so I thought. It turned out to be scheduled for 9 PM, which was when Chepa and the girls were due over to color eggs. Now that is a tricky one because Chepa's boyfriend comes in from out of state to have Easter with his daughters Sierra and Alexa. Nonetheless, Chep generally brings them, and Sara and Italo tag along and Marco comes in as well.
This time, it didn't work that way. With the late time of the interview, nobody came. So it was just Madeleina and I and she was the only one coloring eggs as I was making us a very late dinner. And that was just so so sad. I know Madeleina is capable of entertaining herself, but I'm afraid I've got her doing too much of that. She really ought to be around her sisters and brothers more. Unfortunately, she's attached to me and pissed off at her mom--for not making her spend more time at her house--so she doesn't want to be there too often. Actually, she loves being there but wants her mom, Chepa, to drag her over there and pay attention to her. Which doesn't happen enough.
So I thought it was sad my girl was coloring the eggs all alone. But she did a gorgeous job. Everything the girl does is art.
This morning was different. The easter bunny got here early and made up baskets for everyone, then hid the 18 eggs and then while I was out for the corned beef I'm making for dinner--okay, I know it's not lamb, but then the kids don't like lamb--everybody showed up. Now that's the way I like it: Pure mayhem looking for those 18 eggs. And 30 minutes later they were still short two. Those guys have never found all of them. Not once. And the eggs are always in the same living room. And that bunny still makes a couple of them invisible.
And now, the corned beef is on. Italo is here. little Taylor is here. Madeleina's here. Sara and Marco will come by later. Laundry is on. I'm working a cover story.
It ain't perfect over here. Hasn't been for a long, long time. But for a broken up family, we still do okay.

Well, Earth Day, Good Friday, Good Evening

2011-04-22T16:19:00.001-07:00

Well, today was/is Good Friday. For catholics--and I was an alter boy who considered the priesthood for a couple of early teen years, until I discovered that girls had, you know....things that were nice to touch but incompatible with being a priest--it's the holiest day of the year, the day Jesus was crucified. I don't know that it really was the day, but that guy was something special, that is for sure. As were Krishna, Buddha, Mohammed and some others. So I'm all for taking a day of reflection to consider what real love, real forgiveness means. Or three, or 10.
It was also, this year, Earth Day. Another reason to reflect. What are we doing, how well are we interacting. Let's face it: By now, even those who have not dropped acid or had ayahuasca or magic 'shrooms have to see that we're not living on a planet in the middle of the universe, but that we are being permitted by the benevolent spirit of the earth to stay here. She shrugs her shoulders, we're all gone. She knocks her plates together, we're finished. Not her. She'll be fine. "Got along without you before I met you baby, I'll get along without you when you're gone," goes the old jazz number. So I think it's a good day to stop and reflect on what we each are doing here to help or hinder, to better or worse, both to the planet and to each other. And we could probably use another 10 days a year for that reflection as well.
In that spirit, I sang today. Not just rock 'n roll, but some good, deep notes that come out of the medicine I've been served over the years. I hope you all felt the resonance. They're not my songs or notes so no ego here: I was just lent them for a little while and couldn't repeat them now if you begged me. But for a minute, they were in my mouth and heart and soul and needed to come out and so I opened my mouth and out they came. And I hope the Earth, and the spirits, and all of you felt them. Not even on this level, just in your soul singing a little. And I felt songs from others as well. So thank you.
And now I'm off to cook dinner. It's simple tonight.
While it's cooking I'm gonna cut some grass in the front lawn.
And reflect.
Not on killing grass, just on giving it a haircut. Just on trimming the nails, so to speak.
Have a great night, everyone. And a great Passover or Easter or whatever else you call this time of breaking into Spring and welcoming the warm air and the start of the growing of the fruits and vegetables.

Car Trouble

2011-04-18T16:56:00.001-07:00

Okay, so this isn't a typically bouncy post on healing or Madeleina. This is a stinky post on car trouble. Specifically, my 1994 Oceanic Green Ford Ranger pickup's car/truck trouble.
The beautiful think has 299,271 miles on it. I'm watching because I want to be there when it hits 300,000, and 400,000 and half-a-million.
Marco has been using her since his car got totaled. Sometimes he uses my 1998 Ford Ranger--dark green--but lately I've commandeered that one since it's been playing better on the highway and can hit 70 mph without a strain, while the older beauty only hits 65 on a good day or downhill run.
But in the last week or two, Marco has been charged with eliminating a 10-foot pile of cement and old wood from his mom, Chepa's back yard. So he traded trucks as the newer Ranger has a little better pulling/carrying capacity and much better tires.
So I'm back to the oceanic green and loving it. She's my pal.
But today, after driving to Walmart and Fort Worth and Two Bucks, she started to smoke on the way home. I pulled onto the shoulder of I-35, the major drug running route from Mexico into the US. No problem, as I had/have no drugs. But I also didn't have a phone, so I had to run across the interstate, jump a fence, walk a wet gully, hit a factory and beg the use of the phone to call Italo to tell him I was stranded, had groceries, and needed a wrecker to pick the truck up and take it to my mechanic, Rick's.
I also told him to have Marco pick up Madeleina from school as I wasn't going to make it.
Italo decided not to call a wrecker till he reached me, about an hour on a 90-degree day. No big deal. He arrived, we called one, they said they'd be there in an hour. They were and brought my truck to Rick's. Then Italo brought me home--me slightly upset because I'll need a new/rebuilt transmission for $1400 on a truck with 300,000 miles, but don't have a choice as I need the truck--to Chepa's, where I secured my other truck, the one Marco has been using.
Darned if I didn't find that the bed of the pickup is loaded with about 3,000 pounds of cement pieces, more than enough to wreak the truck. Damned if I don't have to go to the dump first thing tomorrow so I don't lose another transmission. Damned if I have not figured out how Marco destroyed the transmission in the older ocean green truck--with 3,000 pound loads of cement in a pickup meant to carry half a ton, plus passengers.
I decided not to rail at Marco. Instead, I took my dark green truck and drove home. It was about 6:35 PM.
There I was met with a scowling Madeleina.
"Dad! I told you I had a concert tonight at 6 PM! Why didn't you pick me up? I missed it!"
"Honey, I'm sorry. I was stuck out on a highway waiting for a tow-truck. Why didn't mom take you?"
"Dad, mom went out Saturday to Jessica's, then went out Sunday to Monica's and she hasn't been home since."
"Why didn't Marco take you?"
"You were supposed to take me...."
"I know, darling, but I was sitting on a highway at 3:45, on the way to picking you up at 4."
"I doubt that..."
"Ask Italo. He came and saved me."
"Well, I missed the concert. Thanks a lot."
"I'm sorry. What else can I say. I was 20 miles from here on an interstate."
"But I had faith you would make it here..."
I smiled.
"Thank you baby. But in the future, if I'm with a broken truck 20 miles away and you have an hour to get somewhere, ask your brother to take you if mom's not home. Even if I could have walked home I had no way to get you back to school. And I was not going to abandon a truck and groceries on a highway..."
"The older I get," she said, "the more I realize you're a long way from superman..."
I didn't say anything. I know I'm not superman. I'm just dad. And when she was little, it seemed I could do anything, get her anything, fix anything. Now that she's becoming a woman/a person, she sees the limitations. I've always known they were there but for her to see them is a letdown.
I'm sorry baby. Your daddy is just another person. I'm working in your corner, but even my best isn't always good enough. Welcome to the world, little girl. I'm sorry you have to be here. Cause it's a much nicer place when you think there is someone who can, in a pinch, fix it all.

The Amazing Hypocracy of the Far Right

2011-04-08T16:56:00.001-07:00

Okay, now that I got my personal feelings about abortion out in my previous blog (see: The Abortion Issue), I want to just take a look at that issue again for a moment. But this time not from a personal point of view. This time not from the heart of someone who has contributed to abortions. This time from a simpleton's view of the spoken word.
In these hours leading up to a possible federal government (temporary) shutdown over the budget--it's 6:07 PM Central Time as I write this--I'm thinking about several of the riders the far right wing of the republican party tagged onto the budget. There was, of course, several abortion items: No more federal funding for Planned Parenthood, no funds to any country that might use some of those funds to fund abortions; and particularly no more money to or involvement with the United Nations Population Fund, which supports family services.
Those are three of the vitally important riders that the far right wing of the republican party cannot live without and which must be attached to the budget in order for them to vote to keep the government open for business.
Okay, so those people, those congressmen--and their counterpoints n the senate--need those changes because of the value of the fetus. Save the fetus at all costs. Don't give a government anti-malarial pills (which I don't like either) or help with fresh water in a cholera-plagued country if ANY funds given to that country might pay for abortion. Not if the cholera funds are being misdirected, mind you, just if ANY funds given to a country might result in abortions, then NO FUNDING for that country, even if it happened to be in the middle of a nuclear meltdown or a cholera outbreak.
But here is simpleton me. I'm just a kid from Queens, New York who went to catholic school, was taught all sorts of nonsense about the church and christianity--along with the very very good stuff about taking care of your neighbor and treating others like you would like to be treated, or better--and now looks at these riders to the budget and shakes my head. Maybe I'm missing something. Tell me if I am. But the riders don't end with abortion. They go on to insist that the budget won't be passed unless the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, the agency created to monitor and help protect our environment, is no longer permitted to regulate how many tons of greenhouse gasses a factory is permitted to emit. Let's face it: We're talking about the Midlothian, Texas cement factories burning tires to generate electricity and poisoning whole communities. That's what not regulating by the EPA finally means, I think.
And then the far right wing of the republican party is saying in another rider that they won't pass the budget if any funding goes toward health care reform.
And then the far right wing of the republican party says they will not pass the budget unless there is a commitment that no monies will be spent on the new consumer protection bureau.
So simpleton me, the kid from Queens, who used to play in Dupey's field before it was developed and was an alter boy at St. Mels o 154th street, starts thinking: And when I do I'm thinking: Wait a minute! You don't want abortions. Okay. I disagree but okay, you're entitled to your opinion.
But after you want to force women to have babies they don't want, you want unlimited smog, no health care reform and no consumer protection from preying credit cards, banks and other lending agencies.
So I'm thinking, let me get this straight: the far right contingent of the republican party is insisting that a fetus be carried to term to become a human, and then they want that human sick from unregulated greenhouse gasses, with no health care, and in debt to uncontrolled credit agencies?
Do you see what I'm seeing?
I'm not seeing the logic here.
But then maybe I'm missing something.
When I grew up in Whitestone, Queens in the 1950s and 60s, the mafia was all around us. Maybe half-a-dozen players lived right on our little block. Dozens lived within a few blocks. But they way they worked was this: If you needed money and went for a loan, they warned you against it. They said they were bad men who would hurt you if you couldn't pay it back. They tried to convince you not to take the loan. Same with everything they did: They always tried to talk you out of illegally gambling, looking for girls, drugs and so forth. Finally, if you screamed enough, they'd provide the vice you wanted.
Those were good bad guys. They were upfront about the deal.
These people who want to say it's a sin or wrong, or insane to have an abortion and insist that women who conceive by accident then carry the fetus to term as a human baby, are the same people asking for unregulated atmospheric gasses, no funding for good health care and no control of the predatory lenders when they reach out for help.
Tell you what: My mafia was always cleaner than that. Much much more upfront than that.

The Abortion Issue

2011-04-08T07:15:00.000-07:00

This is a very personal blog that I put up on the huffington post today. It probably won't be approved until tomorrow. But I thought it needed to be said and so I've said it there and will say it here. For those who don't want to hear about the abortion issue on a personal level, just skip this one.

It's Friday, April 8. A government shutdown looms tonight if a budget can't be hammered out in the next 15 hours. At issue isn't budget cuts anymore it seems; at issue is abortion, primarily, and greenhouse gas regulation. The New York Times ran a wonderful editorial this morning pointing that out. The far right wing of the Republican party is demanding that to pass the budget it will have to include riders promising that Planned Parenthood will receive no federal financing, that the U.S. will not provide any aid to countries that might use some of those monies for abortions, and that the U.S. not provide any support for the United Nations Population Fund, which supports family planning services. Also, there is a rider that prohibits the EPA from regulating greenhouse gasses and another that prohibits any funding to health care reform. Oh, and then one more, according to the NY Times, that no monies be spent funding the new consumer protection bureau.
I've a mind to go off on each of these assaults on humanity, but I'll restrict myself to the abortion issue because that one is one I've been personally involved with. On numerous occasions.
When I was young, I lived with a beautiful woman. We lived together for a long time, about 10 years. During that time she got pregnant several times. Not because we were careless or didn't care about her body: she got pregnant on the pill, with condoms that broke, while using the diaphragm. We were a couple of Irish kids from large families and were both born to make a lot of babies. We were just built for it.
The problem was that we were not ready to raise them. At least I was not ready for a family. And if I had chosen, or if we had chosen, to let those spirits take on flesh, I would not have been a good father. I would have been a resentful father. I would have seen those spirits in flesh as humans and thought they held me back. So rather than make them suffer, she had abortions. Was it selfish? Yes. Should we simply have abstained from sex? Possibly. But try telling that to people in love at 20-25-30. Should I have simply been more mature and decided that my dreams, and her dreams too, were unimportant and should be sacrificed to the spirit we'd invited to her womb? Maybe, but I wasn't mature enough then, so that wasn't an option. Should I, we, have just had a bunch of babies and lived with it the way you live with a hand of cards you're dealt? No. That would not have been in those babies interest. I would have minimally been passively-aggressive, toward the woman I loved and toward the babies she bore.
In the end, after about 15 years together altogether, we broke up. She found a new man and had a beautiful family. Seven years after we broke up I fell in love, married, inherited--gleefully--two children from a previous marriage, and then my wife and I made our own beautiful baby.
Fatherhood didn't come easily: They boys were a handful and I found that I not only had a stern "dad voice" but that I used it more often than I should have. But I caught myself and tried to corral that. And I've been, I think, a good father, a good dad.
The reason was maturity. I just grew up a little by the time I was 42 and becoming a father.
Back to the abortions: We took them seriously. We knew we'd inadvertently invited a spirit who wanted to experience tactile sensations--have a body that could feel, taste, touch, hear, talk, make love, get ill, play sports--into the initial steps of having that body. It's a nine month transition and we stopped that transition from spirit to flesh with each abortion. And we cried over it, mourned some, and prayed that that spirit, those spirits, would find another home in which to grow a body, a home that would welcome them and be open to all that was entailed.
And when my own daughter was born, when the doctor had me pull her free and she opened her eyes while halfway out and in my hand and looked up at me and said "hep, hep"--which I swear sounded like "help, help"--I looked down at her and told her that it was too late. She couldn't go back in; she'd made her choice to go from spirit to flesh and that as long as she was here I would do all I could to make a place for her that was warm and full of love.
And I have. And my now-ex has as well.
If I, if the first woman I lived with and I had allowed those other spirits to take on a body, the reception would not have been as welcoming. And so while I wish I hadn't mistakenly invited those spirits into that beautiful woman's womb, setting them free to find a warmer reception was, in my opinion, the best thing to do for them.
Selfish? I'm sure. It was still the right thing to do. Giving spirit flesh is a wonderful job, but one best done with the right partner at the right time, I think.

Getting Old, Unhappy Camper

2011-04-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm getting a little older. I turned 60 in February--don't worry if you missed it, I'm still taking gifts--and feel about 34. I'm strong as an ox, won't flinch from a fight--though I was never very good at winning them--and still have a heart/mind/soul of a kid.
Nonetheless, in the last few years, I have suffered some physical setbacks. Mostly, I had that damned intestinal ulcer that I had no idea I had until it burst and sent 3 liters of really awful junk into my innards, buring my organs. My doc saved me, but then I had to have it sewn up again, and then a third time. Not good. Then there was the flesh eating spider bite that left holes all over my legs and arms. Then there was the septic infection that ate the flesh from my calves and ankles. Then there was the broken ankle that I was sure would repair itself without interference--which it did after two years of pain with every step I took. Plus, it took San Pedro to actually do the fixing, but I only got that by walking up to near 9,500 feet at Machu Picchu, from a base of 7,500, with each step a very very painful move.
Then this year the damned flesh eating infection came back--not so strong, just in about 16-20 places on my legs--and I decided to treat it by ignoring it. I suspect it came back from the original spider bite and that it was time to just beat it on personal power. HA!
Okay, plus, I got the damned dengue in Iquitos.
Which leads me to this: While I've always been a 120/80 guy with blood pressure, when I was tested with dengue and the infection in my legs, I was suddenly a 170/105 guy.
My doc, someone who is a genuine emergency room doc and who has been on two trips with me, suggested that the infection and dengue caused the increased pressure.
Now he's not sure.
Cause I've been back in the states for six weeks, dengue long gone, and the infection nearly dormant--except for two sores that really hurt a lot!!!!!!
And I took blood pressure twice a day for two weeks, same time, same bp machine. And I was about 160/105 the first time each day, then 151/100 the second time, half an hour later and 1/2 mile walked between readings.
So doc sent me bp medicine. He knows I feel strong and don't want no damned medicine.
And then last week, my second reading for the last three days dipped to 96, 93, 91. So I told doc that I didn't want his medicine, that I wanted another week to see if having lost about 13 pounds--an estimate--in the last few months, and having added riding my bike--with a stationary machine--plus walking an extra couple of miles of fast walking daily might not bring it down into the 80s on the dyastolic.
Well, yesterday and today were both at 178/110 and second readings were about 161/104 and doc said it didn't matter how I felt, that those are bad numbers. Bad numbers.
So I at a damned pill.
We'll see what happens.
I am not a happy camper. I don't take pills unless they are for fun. Or basic ibuprofin.
And now I'm old and fat and bald and taking blood pressure medicine.
I'm on the way out.
I'm a goner.
\ I'm useless.
HA! I am going to be walking the Amazon in 10 years!
If I were you, I'd bet on me.
Even if it's a Peter G who is taking freaking blood pressure medicine.
UGH!

Fast Birthday Dinner

2011-03-31T17:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I left at 2 PM after a good interview with Erik Davis about ayahuasca on the radio and an apology to my boss that I was gonna miss this week's meeting, and then out the door. I had six errands to run and had to get back by 4:45 to pick Madeleina up from school. I hit the post office and sent Chepa and her babies, Sierra and Alexa, a stash of fariña, roasted, fine ground yucca, without which the babies scream all day. Then on to Office Depot to send a fax; a contract for a couple of grand that I really need. Then onto HEB to buy some veggies that Walmart has not had recently. Then on to Walmart to get my blood pressure taken--I've been averaging about 165/105 for the last month and that's not nice, particularly since I've always been a 120/80 guy until I got Dengue Fever a couple of months ago. So I ain't happy and I've been losing weight: about 12 pounds so far and another 20-25 to go to get to 170. I haven't looked at a scale in four years but today I walked around with my shirt tucked in, so I know I've lost some, at least.
From Walmart it was gas/cigarettes and then on to Two Bucks, a liquor store for my two mini Wild Turkeys and two mini Jim Beams, my alcohol for the day, and the it was a race to get Madeleina from school without being too late.
I was late. I ran into a 6-minute train: 120 cars of petroleum that took 5 seconds each to pass. Six minutes. So I was late.
Home, I went to the phone messages and one of them was Italo saying his girl, my daughter in law, had a birthday today. Heck, I didn't know that. Moreover, he said they and a couple of friends were coming for dinner.
I still don't have a good present for Sarah, my daughter-in-law and the mom of my granddaughter Taylor Rain, but I did make a good dinner.
First: I cooked two ears of corn, then cut the kernels off them and broke them up. I put them in a mix with diced red pepper, thinly slices red onion and cucumber. With vinager, white, plus a bit of olive oil with garlic, black pepper and sea salt.
Then I marinated sliced chicken breast in garlic-infused oilve oil, white vinegar, onions, ginger, a bit of teriyaki; to go with similarly drenched asparagus, cauliflower/ and broccoli. Add to that nice sweet barbeque beans, basmati rice with garlic, roasted pork with homemade barbeque sauce and a little roast beef short ribs.....
That was a cool meal to come up with in less than an hour, just with what was in the house.
Now we're gonna serve a german chocolate cake we made while peoploe were having dinner.
Next time please tell me it's you're birthday, so I don't have to sweat about the menu....

I'm Just Saying it Ain't Right, Okay?

2011-03-31T07:39:00.000-07:00

So my son Marco brings me something called a Surcharge Notification a few weeks ago. That's something dreamt up here in Texas--and it may exist elsewhere as well--whereby if you accumulate three moving violations in your car over a three year period, you not only pay for the tickets, but you pay a nifty little $150 or so on top of it for having had those three speeding tickets.
Well, okay, I didn't pay it much attention because last year Marco got the same thing and I paid it in exchange for him doing some work around the house.
Yesterday, in an effort to avoid looming deadlines--I like to call it ruminating about the story I have to get out--I was going through the "need to take a look at someday" pile of mail on my desk and there it was. I figured it was a duplicate of last year's notification, so I dug out the previously paid notification and called the outfit that sent it to tell them it had already been paid.
That outfit, Municipal Service Bureau, isn't actually a local government agency but an outsourced private company hired to collect bills for the city. Calling them was easy: I waited through the push-button automated options to get to the option where I could talk with someone to explain that the bill had been paid and that I'd begrudgingly send them the paid receipts if they needed them.
Getting through to a live person took some patience: I got on the phone at 11:45 and didn't get a person till 1:15. That was a lot of patience, but as the company has no address, it wasn't like I could go somewhere (their PO Box is Austin, about 3 hours south of here) in person. I mean, you can't just wait by a PO Box and talk with the person who picks up the mail. I guess you could follow that person back to wherever they bring the mail and try to talk to someone there, but that might get you arrested for stalking. So I waited and finally got to talk with someone.
In the meantime, I'd gotten Marco's full driving record: he had two speeding tickets in 2007, one in 2009 and nothing before or after that. The two in 2007 were in the same neighborhood and three days apart: I think they happened as he and his first real girlfriend were breaking up. In any event, he had nothing since then.
"This is Melissa at MSB. How can I help you?"
"Hello. Finally. Thanks. I have a small problem here."
I explained the notice and that I'd already paid the surcharge. She listened patiently.
"What you might not know is that you pay the surcharge every year all over again for three years," she said.
"What?"
"Let's say you have three tickets this year. You pay the surcharge next year. But the two following years you would still have six points on your license so you pay the surcharge again. Even though you already paid it. It encourages good driving."
"Three years?"
"That's right. Anything else?"
"Well," I said, looking at Marco's driving record. "Two of those tickets came in May, 2007. If they peel off after three years then he's only got the 2009 ticket."
"That's impossible. Unless he didn't pay the tickets until 2008. When did he pay the tickets?"
To my dismay, he paid both of them in 2008, months after he'd gotten them.
"Yeah, well you see, in that case the tickets counted for 2007 AND for 2008, because the conviction happened the time he paid them. And that's in the 2008, 2009 and 2010 cycle of three years. Anything else I can help you with? Oh, and by the way, the surcharge was due no later than March 24, so if it's not paid by April 7 his license is automatically suspended and driving with a suspended license is not only a $250 fine, it's also two points towards next years's surcharge. And he's already got two points from the 2009 speeding ticket. Have a nice day."
Dang! I'm just saying it ain't right, okay? Only in Texas, where the people rail against big government while their pockets are being picked.

Ah, Madeleina Again

2011-03-27T09:32:00.001-07:00

It's Sunday morning, threatening to rain here in bucolic Joshua, TX. Hasn't rained in about a month. Chepa took her babies, Sierra and Alexa, up to Indiana about a week ago to visit their dad, so Madeleina's been with me non-stop. Actually, she's been with me most of the time since I've been back from Peru. Which is fine by me. But I know she misses her mom when she's out of town. You can't quantify that type of abandonment--but I know she feels it. And not that she wants to go to Indiana, particularly, but I see it in her eyes and the occasional flash of anger that she feels it when her mom leaves with her other babies, leaving Madeleina feeling left alone.
So I try to make the best of it. I drag her around with me, generally against her will for the first few minutes till she gets in the groove and starts having a good time. Yesterday I gave a short talk for the Fort Worth Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists as part of a panel on natural gas drilling. The title sounds cool, right? And when I was introduced as someone who'd won multiple state and regional awards, and even a couple of national awards for my writing on the subject, well, I beamed but I thought Madeleina was going to explode!
It was a small group and I was very short and sweet: most anything I might have said could have been construed as political and that might compromise my ability to work as an objective reporter on the subject. So I opened the program, spoke ten minutes and left the stage.
Madeleina wasn't thrilled about coming--especially about waking up at 7 AM on a Saturday morning to go hear me talk--but wound up having a gas, in part because they had fantastic breakfast snacks, like mini-lemon cakes and mini-cinnamon rolls. And she got to stroll around the TCU campus where the event was held.
I paid her back by taking her to a fantastic glass/art gallery she'd never been to before after we left, and she was just wild about the art works. I mean, she was wild: "Dad! Look at these flowers! Look at this vase! I looks like it's a moving waterfall!!!! I want to be an artist dad, forget everything else, okay? An artist who has an appreciation for all things glass!!!!!"
We followed that up with a trip to Ms. Molly's, the best toy store in Fort Worth, for our money. Though she's been there 20 times she never fails to fall in love with it all over again. Her only disappointment being that she's too big a girl now to have all the toys that set her heart on fire. I did manage to get her a sort of mesuda hair thing that lights up--which I'm gonna guess is going to wind up on a youtube madeleinag video before long.
By the time we got home she was bushed and went to sleep. I spent a couple of afternoon hours working on a story due tomorrow, Monday, then headed out to the store to run errands. Before heading out I picked up the mail: there was a fresh box of fantastic jungle soaps--and generally fantastic bath soaps--made with plant essenses by my friend Boa Cowee, who, if she would ever set up a website could make a fortune with her beautiful soaps.
That one was addressed to Madeleina and I.
Then there was another piece of mail, this one addressed to the "Parents of Lydia Gorman". Lydia is Madeleina's first name, but in Peru you don't use the first name, hence Madeleina. It was from the Fort Worth High School of Performing Arts. It was either gonna be an acceptance or rejection letter. Dammit. I wasn't happy with getting it.
On the other hand, it didn't have a negative vibe, so I opened it.
It said that Madeleina had passed the audition to make the school with her flute, but that the few flute slots for freshmen were taken by kids who'd done better than she, so she was on the waiting list.
Good, I thought. She'd done well. This is a pretty high powered place in a town, Fort Worth, where they take their bands very seriously. And Madeleina had done well enough to make the school cut. Just not well enough for the three or four slots they had for flute. But this being Texas, well, people move around all the time, so I won't be surprised if something opens up and she gets to attend the school next year.
But I knew Madeleina was not going to take it that way, and when I got home she didn't disappoint.
"I didn't make it, dad! I'm a loser! I'm nothing! Why did I even try out?"
"Ah, darling. First, stop the theatrics. You're a winner, not a whiner, okay? So have your angst and then get on to the winner part."
"You don't know anything, dad....."
"Okay."
Pause.
"Done yet? Good. Now reread the letter and read what it says..."
"I can't. I already threw it away."
"Well, then I'll tell you what it said. It said you made the school but that some other kids were better than you. So you're on the waiting list. What's the problem with that? You made the cut. They just don't have enough seats."
"But I'll be a loser going to Joshua High School...."
"Enough, Madeleina. You never thought you were the best flute player. You know you're not. You don't practice enough for that, and that's not the school's problem, that's your choice. So if other kids practice an hour a day, and maybe have a private teacher as well, and you practice 30 minutes a day, who the heck do you think is going to be a better player?"
"That's not fair. I mean, they should just see what a wonderful addition to the school I would be...."
"Right, and then what should they do? Kick out a better flute player to make room for you because you are simply the coolest girl?"
"Exactly! That is exactly what they should do!"
"So much for worthiness..."
She eventually saw things my way, or at least pretended to, and then I distracted her with a cool meal, the likes of which we have never had around here. My friend Gritter, the emergency room doc, sent up about six pounds of the best slightly sharp venison sausage in the world. So I sliced a few ounce of that that thinly, bought some sharp cheddar, a little hummus, good crackers, stuffed grape leaves, good black olives and some sweet pickles. I made us each a tray with that selection, then added a few fresh strawberries, cantaloupe and watermelon.
I had mine with a Cabernet; she had hers with fresh sweet lime juice. She spoke with an alternating British and French accent throughout the meal. "My, the Gerkins make a lovely complement to the venison, don't they dear dad? And ze ftuits, zey are such fierrrce competition for ze cheddar, no?
We both probably gained 10 pounds.
It was worth it.
A nice day all around.

Death of a Friend

2011-03-26T16:21:00.000-07:00

About a week ago I got a letter, via email, from the wife of my friend Daniel Blumenau. She said that he'd died a couple of days earlier. I was stunned. I exploded in tears, anger, sorrow. Dan Blumenau was the older brother of my college pal, Phil, with whom I shared a cold water flat in New York from 1970-1976 or so. Phil helped teach me how to behave as a man. When we hitchhiked across country the first time he showed me how and when you needed to wield a machete to ward off serious problems. He taught me how to understand when a girl wanted to make love and how to accept that. I think I taught him some things as well.
Phil's older brother Daniel was something of a rapscallion. And a Cassanova. When he was young he could meet a girl entering an elevator and by the time they reached the 5th floor she was begging him to make love with her. Wasn't my style, but I was always envious.
And Dan was an artist. He took making montages to a high level: Among his well known works was the inside jacket, double fold, of Stevie Wonder's Taurus album, and Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland bathroom montage, for a while the most well known montage in the world. And it was Phil and I who did a lot of the work putting that up, under Daniel's direction.
I worked a lot with Daniel in the old days, when I was in college and shortly afterward. We worked on the Arthur Schlesinger house on, I think, east 64th street in NYC. We worked on the Kennedy house, yes, those Kennedys, across the street from Arthur S. We worked on the Oscar De La Renta house down the street. We worked for Island Records president Chris Black when he opened his offices in the Carnegie Building on, I think, 57th street. And then we rebuilt Island Records' townhouse on Grove Street in the village.
Daniel always had something going. Always was one step ahead of whomever wanted to blame him for Thai sticks showing up in New York and one step ahead of the other artists who would have killed themselves to get the building/art jobs Daniel got.
I've only been in touch with him sporatically the last 15-20 years. Maybe once every two/three years he'd call or email or I'd call or email to tell him I saw him on some documentary or that I was interviewed about the Electric Ladyland bathroom mural.
But he wrote me in November or December that his wife was ill with cancer and wondered if I had any medicines from the jungle that could be used as adjunct alternative therapies. I had a trip coming up and so said yes, I'd bring him some medicine for his wife when I returned from Peru in February.
I did. US Customs confiscated one of the plants; the other got through. I called him; we spoke. I gave him directions and sent the medicine out to him.
He was happy and on the phone he still sounded 32 to my 22 years old. Voices don't change as much as the color of our hair or the size of our pants.
And then two weeks later his wife called and said she felt great from the medicine but that Daniel had died of a heart attack two days earlier.
I am still crying. He was one of the very small group of good guys. Not perfect, but he treated the people who worked for him with respect and love and that is a small group indeed.
Despite not spending time with him for a long time he was still my friend and I always thought one day we'd do another building job together--and with Phil, of course, who has since gone on to be a brilliant physicist. And now we're not gonna get that chance.
Daniel: Have a wonderful trip to the next place/space. Smoke a joint of thai stick and smile and make some art that makes other people smile. That's why you were put here: To make people love the wonder of being alive. And I think you did your work well and earned your stripes and bars and now you go, brother, and show the universe what you can do. The universe will be surprised and will love you. Have a great trip, DB.
P

Just Something Short on a Detail of Healing

2011-03-23T08:42:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine, someone who was with me in the jungle a few years ago and subsequently went on a big hike to the Matses villages on the Galvez with some of my team, wrote to say her dreams are often prescient and very very vivid since she drank ayahuasca. She also told of having dreams where she was able to "suck" illness out of people, but that when she did she didn't know what to do with the ick she removed so she just tossed it into a nearby river in her dream. She wanted to know if that was okay and also whether dreams that later happened was a normal thing to experience after having had the jungle medicine ayahuasca.
This is what I told her. And I think the second part is important. I've written it here before, and noted in my book that the late Bertha Grove, a wonderful Southern Ute medicine woman, was the first to tell me that illnesses have a life of their own, with their own desire to live. And just pulling them out of someone doesn't mean they're going to die. They're going to keep looking for a new host--in which they might appear as a different illness than they did in the person from whom they were removed. She basically saw the illness in a person as a negative energy that had taken form to stay alive in a host. Anyway, here's the short note to my friend:

Well, I think that once you open that door, it never shuts, so no, I'm not surprised if your dreams are vivid and sometimes let you glimpse what's going to happen: After all, it's us that sees time as linear. But it may not be linear at all.
Now if you're given a gift of being able to suck out bad things, it is important that you know the bad things have a life of their own and don't want to die, so they will try to go into you, a new host, or to be dropped somewhere where they can wait for new host to come buy and affix themselves to that new host.
So, you have to not let them get in you: Just suck them out into your mouth and keep your throat closed when they're coming out. If they do get into you throw them up, then catch them on the way out.
Once you have them, either by spitting them into your hand from your mouth, or by throwing them up into your hand if you have accidently swallowed them, you must dispose of them in a way that will prevent them from finding a new host. You can send them to a place where no other life forms are. You can wrap them in light that will prevent them from ever escaping. You can put them somewhere where they will be transformed from negative to positive energy.
But don't be tossing them in the river girl, where they're gonna get in/on some poor fish and wreak no havoc, okay?
Peter G

Why I Do Aya in the Jungle and not in a Camp

2011-03-18T11:40:00.000-07:00

Someone wrote me asking about my upcoming June and July trips to the jungle. She expressed interest and noted that she had been at a very very well considered place to do ayahuasca twice before. I think it was twice, anyway. And I wrote her back and then mused for a minute on why I keep insisting on going through all the trouble to take people out to the deep green when it would be so much easier and so much less expensive to just build a place on one of the properties I have just outside of Iquitos and take people there.
Well, I know why. Because I love the jungle, that's why. And even though my places are in deep jungle, it's not the same as getting on a river boat and moving up the Amazon River 212 kilometers and doing everything else we do. But there is more to it and so this is the short note I wrote to the potential client on why I do things my way, instead of another way.

L: Just a note on why I do things my way: I was always taught that ayahuasca was a part of the jungle life--not apart from the jungle life. So I like people to get out on the river and live with the people who live on the river. I like neighbors asking if they can be part of the ceremony if they need healing. I like the occasional sound of a child laughing during ceremony. With Julio there were always neighbors and kids around: They just added light to things. The same with Airport Juan and Francisco before Sachamama became formalized. And forget Don Solon!!!! He had no door on his room and neighbors walking up and down the hall all night! Still, just part of things.
Anyway, I was thinking about that and since you just wrote, I thought I'd let you know.
Peter G

Taxes, Madeleina, The Catholic Mass

2011-03-16T17:09:00.000-07:00

Whoa! Those are three pretty heavy things in a title, don't ya think??? You betcha (apologies to Sarah P for appropriating the phrase!!!)
But they're all in action today. The back taxes, well, I got to pay them and today I sent off $700 to start. Ick. Miserable, I am. Hate it, I do. Still, I now owe only $4450, and that's better than $5150. And I also filed the new taxes for 2010 and they ought to bring back some money. Chepa gets most of it because she needs most of it, but I ought to get a couple of grand and that will be nice.
So darn it, I looked at it every which way, but even the CPA I hired couldn't find a way for me to not owe the taxes. The issue is that we, Chepa and I, get child tax credit, and you can't get that if you have more than $3100 in a given year in royalties from things like a gas well. In my case, I had more than that because my mortgage company took nearly two years to release the money to me but the IRS doesn't split hairs. I had a check for over $3100 in 2009 so I owe the child tax credit back to them. Which is nearly $5 g's and a bit over that with penalties and interest.
I've given up being angry at the system and only hope they spend the money on care for the vets who are coming home from one, two, three, five tours of the middle East and need good psychiatric and physical help. If they spend it on those guys and gals, well, then I don't mind putting it into the pot. And I'm hoping they do.
Now Madeleina, well, she's getting grown up. She asks things that surprise me. She asks about how to raise children and how to apply eye makeup and how--even though she doesn't like boys yet--she should respond to a boy trying to kiss her. Not to slap him but how to kiss back. WAIT!!!! This is my little baby! What's going on here?????? And she asks about books and why people like caviar if that's just the same as eating 50 fish embryos per spoonful. And she asks about why some singers get famous while others, more worthy, get left on the scrap heap. She's asking about everything. And she's angry. She's angry at her mom for not being a regular mom and she's angry at me for still catering to Chepa instead of cutting her off completely. And she's angry at her brothers for living at mom's and not here at our house anymore.
She's a handful and all I know to give her is time, attention and love. And I probably fail miserably at those.
But look for a new Youtube.com video under the name madeleinag tomorrow. I have a feeling she's planning something awesome for St. Pats. Us being Irish--or me being Irish and her being half-Irish and all that. I think it's gonna be good cause I saw her collecting her green stuff for it. I'm not sure she has it all planned out yet but given her mood--which includes us dancing together wildly to Billy Idol's White Wedding at full volume today in Marco's room, after which she said she hoped that's not how I ever danced in public!!!!---I will bet she'll be in fine fettle tomorrow for the video.
And then when we were driving to Two Bucks, the liquor store where I buy my four minis of bourbon daily--two Jim Beam and two Wild Turkey--she asked me something about catholicism. She said: After the priest finishes reading the bible, what's left in a Catholic Mass.
And so, as a former alter boy, I thought for a minute. And I realized that the Mass, as celebrated by Catholicism, is just the preparation for and the reception, of the representation of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The priest comes out, blesses the congregation. The alter boys, in my day, responded for them in Latin, signifying, yes, we hope you are blessed as well, and so forth. And them there was the purification and then the feast on the host and then the thank you and that was it. Half-an-hour, tops, except on Sundays, when there was a homily--story--stuck in there.
I told her that thinking about it made me think of how we do ayahuasca in the jungle: We invite the right spirits, invite those who are not right to stay the heck out, thank the medicine, ask it to help us/heal us, then we drink it. And then we say thank you. Very very much like a basic catholic mass when I was an alter boy.
And I told Madeleina I wished someone had told me that was what a mass was like when I was a kid. I would have understood it much better.
And then she asked me about homily's. And I told her imagine three kids from a foreign country moved into the neighborhood and they were beat up by locals. The priest might find a passage about loving your enemy, read that, and then talk about why those new kids should have been greeted with love--even though they were outsiders--rather than beaten up. And he'd ask the congregation to consider that and to consider that their grandparents were outsiders when they arrived in the USA years ago and that it was better to greet them with a fresh pie than with fists. And if it was a good priest--and I dealt with all good priests in my years as an alter boy, which means good, giving people, nothing more--he'd tell the congregation to go out and tell everyone in the neighborhood to bring those new families food and pies and shower them with love so that the enemy would become a friend.
AND NOW I have to finish dinner--fresh dover sole of all things!!!!!--so I will leave it here. And I hope some priest somewhere is making the analogy in his homily this Sunday, that if we can all come together to want to help the people of Japan, then we can and should all come together to help heal ourselves here at home. Cause that would be a good homily.
And I love you all for reading this and putting up with me. Thanks. Peter G

Today's Opinion--Or Rant...

2011-03-10T15:31:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine, one of the coolest people in the world, wrote today. He wrote a rant about having to get a new computer, his fourth in three years, or third in four years, and he wrote about getting ready to retire and not being able to afford health insurance. And he wrote about the youngsters of today who are not carrying out our political legacy--a legacy that includes civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, anti-nuclear proliferation, environmental work and a host of other very very important human work. And he asked why I wasn't writing about politics anymore, particularly as regards Wisconsin and the new Governor's bid to eliminate state workers from many angles of collective bargaining. And he wrote about the lack of poetry in the world today and how, if it doesn't change, he's gonna take his marbles and go home.
I was stirred. Like a chemical cocktail!!!! So here's what I wrote back. Just for fun, kiddies, but with a grain of truth...or sand....or whatever:

Dear Lar:
Wow, bad luck with the computers. I treated myself to a Mini-Mac---which is not a laptop but is a tiny square box that I could theoretically use anywhere that had a keyboard and screen--and it's freaking wonderful. I have no idea of everything it does--I still have not even figured out how to get the oral sex it's supposed to give, for instance--but man, it's quick and steady. Ran $800 with Macoffice, which it didn't come with. First new one I bought in five years--first new one I ever bought actually. And I wouldn't have had to buy it but my computer guy moved to Colorado and I couldn't find anybody in town to fix my old Mac G3, which I think is great but other people say is old fashioned.
It's just like the Nishiki 12-speed bike you gave me: You remember when that was a pretty top of the line bike: Steel frame, long body, racing/touring, very comfortable. I think it cost about $750 new 25 years ago. Well, I recently had it overhauled for about $300, including new tires, and it's a freaking dream. So I looked it up on Ebay. And people are selling them for $10-$50--when they have them! Unvbelieveable. But it turns out new bikes weigh half as much. And it turns out my old G3 MAC, the newest of the new, the state of the art, is now as much a lead sled as the darned Nishiki!!!!!!!!
And yes, kids are nuts. And I've got one son, Marco, who needs to be beaten but I'm not allowed to do that. Plus, he's 23, so what the heck. But he's been out of work for a year and there are signs up all over the place asking for people to work. And he swears he's applied but he's lyin!!!!!!!! He just sits in his shed behind Chepa's trailer and broods and plays video games all day. No drugs, nothing bad, just crazy.
And I agree about the tats. I am so sick of kids getitng these freaking tats that are just gonna look so bad when they gain 100 pounds in 20 years. And they look pretty bad already. I still don't have any, though I've got a lot of well earned scars from botfly infestation and sapo burns, and the flesh eating spider bite and the intestinal explosion and the hernia and all the rest. Now those are tattoos in my book. I remember the pain of each one of them. Not just: "Sat in a chair for an hour and had this guy write my boyfriend's name on my breasts. Then I had to have it covered over with another tattoo when we broke up!" That's not a tattoo in my book, that's just a bad hair day.
And you're ready to retire? I just turned 60!!!!!! I'm freaking out and freaking old and my beard is mostly white and my hair is gray and I hate it. And I have not had health insurance since I moved to Peru in 1998! Everything is cash on demand. Fortunately, I've been able to do most of it in Peru but still, I've spent more than $10 grand on the stomach ops and $3 grand on teeth--and they are not finished--in the last 4 years. Add another couple of grand in other stuff and that's been my whole profit from my Peru trips for a few years.
On the other hand: We be living, Lar. You're still probably the most handsome man on the planet, and you're strong, still doing triathalons, and you're gonna live 25 more years and make love a thousand or two thousand more times and you got a wife who loves you and beautiful kids and a tiny house that sounds like a nice tiny dream and your social security will come in and you'll get $1200 a month and work part time and sell paintings....and I'm selling my book a little at a time and making maybe $600 a month after expenses, and I get to travel to Peru and lead groups and my kids are gone but not far away and me and Madeleina still have the best of times and I have a grandkid and have something to do with raising Chepa's new babies....so all yer bitching is really just a way of saying "I'M FUCKING ALIVE!!!!!" I think. And the problem is that you see others who are not so alive. Well, I agree that sucks. These kids should have taken what we learned and gone further, not sat back and watched the politicos and corporations take it all away.
But they did. At least for now. And you and me, we can be in the fight--and I'm in the damned fight daily, though not in Wisconsin, particularly--but I'm in the fight about dengue in Iquitos right now, and in the fight about radioactive gas pipes and in the fight for the drug war and in the fight over corrupt politicians in Texas and as many other fights as I can be in--and you living right puts you in the fight as well. So we're doing our part. We're setting examples.
Aren't you sorry you got me revved up here?
I'm thinking I'm gonna buy a box of suspenders and some clothes pins and start handing them out to kids whose butts are hanging out....just an idea.
Anyway, I love you and I'm sorry we're all getting older. I still think and feel like 34 and so I'm gonna keep acting like it. Cool, suave, tough (okay, semi-tough) and excellent.
P

Okay, So I'm not really happy right now

2011-03-09T14:51:00.000-08:00

Alright, I generally like to write cool stuff here. But sometimes things bum me out and this is one of them. Last week or so I wrote about the IRS saying I owed a bunch of money. I wrote them and they reduced the amount to just over $5000. How? I have no stinking idea based on what's earned and what goes out legitimately to feed people around here. Legitimate people.
So I went to a CPA who spent half an hour going over things and said, "Well, you might owe $1.200, but not more than that. Give me a few days and I'll write up the papers for you."
So I went home happy. I don't think I owe even the $1.200 but it beats the heck out of the bigger figure.
And then today I called his office and his associate told me she was about to call. The paperwork was done. The bad news? "Well, you still owe the amount the IRS says you owe."
"How?"
"I have no idea. But you do, so we've included a partial payment form with your paperwork."
I am not happy with this. I don't mind paying my taxes. But I think I'm genuinely being jobbed on this one.
Okay, that's my bitch.
Everything else is great.
And if you're reading this, I've got trips coming up in June (jungle/mountains, either or both) and July (jungle intensive). So if that's something you would like to do--and the trips are better, much better than fair to middlin', now would be the time to write me either here or on private email (you'll find that at pgorman.com) to get the luscious details.
Sorry for complaining.
I hope you're all having the most fantastic of days!!!!!!

A Moment of Pure Magic

2011-03-02T11:12:00.001-08:00

This is a story that involves my Madeleina, the electric company, my ayahuasquero, Julio Jerena and blind faith. I thought I had told it and written it down a couple of years ago, but yesterday when I was telling it to my friend Lynn, who has heard an awful lot of my stories--and lived a bunch of them with me--he said he'd never heard it. So maybe I didn't write it down afterall.

Years ago, perhaps in 2004, I was in Peru with my friend Lynn. We were at my friend and teacher Julio's home on the Aucayacu River in Peru's Amazon. We drank ayahuasca and during the course of the evening, Julio gave me two guardians to help me with all sorts of things. Like guardian angels but much more imposing and frightening.
I've written about them.
But that particular night I asked them if they could help me make a living writing. I mean, I'd been a journalist for 20 years, and a damned good one, but after having moved to Texas in 2002, I couldn't catch a break. Nobody knew me, I didn't know what interested Texas readers--heck I didn't have any contacts here and so was having a hard time keeping a roof over our heads.
The guardians told me not to worry: that if I did the work and did it well, the work would be there for me. I didn't really believe them and so was pleasantly surprised when, a few days after I returned to the US I got a call from someone in Canada. The caller said he was the publisher of a new magazine called SKUNK, an irreverent marijuana magazine, and that his key staffers had told him I needed to be involved. "So here's the deal: I don't know who you are, but my guys say I have to have you, so what are you going to do for us and how much is it gonna cost me?"
That was a very cool line. I thought for about three seconds, told him I'd write a regular column and he should pay me $1000 an issue. "$1000?a Are you crazy? How bout $100?"
We settled on $400 and I've done 48 columns for them--at 8 per year--since then.
Other work came in as well. Unexpectedly. And that's when the Fort Worth Weekly, our local and fantastic alternative, decided I should be on a weekly stipend rather than just freelancing for them.
So I thanked the guardians and worked my butt off. And I told Madeleina, then maybe 7, why I was suddenly getting work. She was thrilled. "I'm glad Julio decided to help you, dad. Now you won't have to worry about money all the time..."
Unfortunately, in the world of magazine writing, having the job, even doing the job, doesn't produce instant money. It's often several months from turning in a story before you get paid. So several months later, when Madeleina was 8, I think, the electric was going to be turned off. I'd begged and pleaded, told the electric company I had checks coming in soon, but it was no use. "We really can't wait any longer, Mr. Gorman. We've done our best and we'll get it on as soon as you get caught up. I promise."
Well, the next day or maybe two days later, was the turn-off day.
The truck came shortly after I brought Madeleina home from school. Guy said he was here to turn off the electric.
Madeleina called me aside: "Dad, the guardians don't lie. They said you would have the work if you did the work and you've been doing it. So they have to fix it."
"Honey, I have the work. They never promised people would pay in time to pay the bills..."
"That's not fair. That has to be part of the deal or they were lying. And you said the guardians don't lie. So tell the man to wait."
"Wait for what, baby? The mail already came and there were no checks today. We'll get a check in the next few days and we'll get the lights turned back on."
"No. Tell him to wait a few miniutes. Just tell him, dad!"
So I walked over to the guy who was waiting impatiently to turn off our electricity and explained that my daughter believed in miracles and could he wait just 10 minutes to humor her? Maybe go to another house and then come back?
He wasn't keen, but started to chat a little about the bushes in my front lawn, which would buy me enough time to satisfy Madeleina.
And then, over the hill at the far end of the road, came a yellow DHL truck. I wouldn't have paid it any mind but somehow knew it was coming to our house. And it did. It turned into the driveway and the fellow asked if I was Peter Gorman. I said I was and signed for an envelope and off he went.
I opened the envelope. Inside was a bank check for $1000. It was from a magazine I'd done a story for nearly a year earlier. A story I'd already been paid for.
"I knew it, dad! The spirits don't lie!!!" shrieked Madeleina.
I showed the electric company guy the check and asked him if I could have half-an-hour to cash it and I'd bring him the dough. He laughed, said he couldn't believe it, then left. I said a silent thank you to the spirits and apologized to the company who was paying me a second time, then went to the bank, cashed the check, returned, paid the electric company and that was that.
And then I called the outfit and explained that I'd already been paid for the story but had cheated and cashed the check anyway and told the editor that I'd pay it back as soon as I could. He said that would so completely gum up the people who handled paying the freelancers that it was better I just kept it.
And Madeleina? Well, she had faith. Extraordinary faith that if the spirits really told me we'd have the work as long as I was willing to do the work, that that included avoiding things like electricity turn-offs. I don't know if it was her faith that made that check appear or not. I do know it showed up out of the blue, no advance warning, and that it was not due. And that it was a bank check, not a regular check. And that it came after I asked the guy to stall to give Madeleina's faith a chance to play out.
I don't know why I've never written that up before. Or why I've forgotten that I did if I did. I do know that when a friend who is at the end of his rope came over yesterday I told him that story and told him to keep the faith. That maybe just over the next hill was his DHL truck with a solution to his current problems.
I hope it is.
Thanks, Madeleina, for teaching me just how deep you have to believe to truly have faith in something. And thanks for coming through, guardian spirits.