Out of the Blue

This is just a quick note to say Thank You to whomever it was who anonymously sent me $200 yesterday. Here's what happened: I went to the mailbox and there was an envelope with my name and address printed in very stiff lettering on it. No return address. I opened it: There was a blank sheet of loose leaf paper with two hundred dollar bills inside. Talk about making my day! I was feeling the crunch because a check has been late coming in and Boom!
    Whomever you are, thanks. That was just a great great treat. I appreciate it.

Ayahuasca and Gullible People

There as a young fellow who died at an ayahuasca retreat last month. We are still awaiting autopsy report but evidently the curandero panicked and buried the body until the parents and police came, at which point he showed where it was.
   Now I don't believe he died of ayahuasca. I know of no deaths attributable to that medicine. But he might have died of snake bite, or drug interactions, or spider bites, or choking on his own puke. The topic has raised a lot of hair in the aya community. I've tried to stay out until the autopsy is in. But on one thread there was enough vim and vinegar that I responded. Here is my response, crude as it is:

There is a huge problem, I think, with people going to the Amazon and having a vision that they think they must act on immediately. Often this vision is to open a center for an ayahuasquero with whom they had medicine. They wind up cutting down several hectares of primary jungle to set up a camp for someone they hardly know, imposing their vision on a people who don't need it.
     Problem here is that Rob, with a really good heart, had a vision that he should open a center for a teacher that provided those visions. But Rob didn't live in Peru for 20-35 years. Rob didn't know anything about how Peru operates. Rob brought cement to make a permanent place in a place that lives on being turned over every 12-15 years. He has no idea that marrying a Peruvian girl involves 6-8 wedding parties, starting with the first party given to the people who hate you and will send brujo's to kill the marriage. He had no idea that giving a poor man millions of dollars of property would put that man in a position he had no way and no experience of dealing with. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and this is just a single example. If I could give advice, I would say that when you get a vision to open a center or build a pyramid in the river or make a hotel or whatever, that you wait 10-20 years and learn about the culture before trying to implement that vision with no knowledge of the culture.

      I railed against Chimbre before it was open because no one there had any idea of what the impact would be. No one involved knew Peruvian culture. And even if Mancoluto knew Andean culture, he had no experience in the jungle. Who was he to impose anything? Who was Rob? And I give Rob all the credit in the world for having a good heart and giving all his money to the point where he is now poor. But it was wasted. He simply did not know the culture, did not know anything more than what a vision--which might have been true but might also have been something to do 20 years hence--told him. I always remember this story: There was a person who went to a famous retreat outside of Iquitos a few years ago. The curandero was not there. THe assistant was not there. The guy who brought the water to fill the pot was there. He saw the gringo couple and when they offered $50 each for the ceremony, he found some aya and served them. The woman had an extraordinary experience and decided to open a center for the curandero. And she did. And he became famous as the curandero who did not sing icaros. Those of us who knew the man knew why he did not sing icaros: He's never been in a ceremony in his life. He didn't know that icaors were sung. But he made his $100 that night and the woman opened the center for him and he made a good living for several years--without ever having tasted ayahuasca. Rob was as fresh as this woman. He meant well but had no idea what the heck he was doing. He was warned by hundreds of us with experience that this was not okay but he was blinded by his vision. Rob wasn't a bad guy. He meant the very best and having spoken with him several times I know that, or feel that. Still, Would everybody please stop acting on their freaking visions? That doesn't help anybody. Mull the vision over 10-20 years, and figure out what it really means. Then act. Otherwise, well, the otherwise stinks.

Funny Week, Hope I Get Another

Well, it was a funny week, and if I was the one handing out new weeks to people, well, I'm not sure I'd give me another. Not that I'm fixing to die, just saying that I don't know that I did enough to earn another week here on this glorious planet. Did I actually do anything? Yes, did the rewrite on the new cover story that's up at fwweekly.com about the possibility of a Texas mental hospital for the criminally insane and for those incompetent to stand trial being privatized. Wrote a couple of two hundred word short pieces for the paper as well. Got a good freelance assignment. Drove all over Joshua one day taking care of the local bills--water, electric, auto insurance and the traffic tickets I picked up for the missing car seat and the expired inspection sticker. Paid other bills via phone. Did some yard work, cooked a couple of very good meals, got Madeleina to school on time, cleaned house, saw Italo and Marco and the babies, made new medicine...but you know, I wasted a lot of hours. I spent a lot of time just reading newspapers on the internet. Felt like nothing was accomplished or even worked for that will advance this world a little.
   So I've got to climb out of that hole and get moving. Not exactly sure what direction, but something and something hard. It feels good to push myself and I guess I have not been doing that. So if I was the fella or gal reading the reports and wondering who was gonna get another week down here and who was going to be recalled, well, I might be on the recall list right not.
   I'm hoping I'm not. I'm hoping I get another week and this time I'll add more to the mix, or try. It's early Sunday morning. I think I'll start with a crisp mile walk and see what goes from there.

TAXES

I wrote something about taxed today, something to the effect that poor people who work pay roughly 30 percent of their earnings into one form of tax or another. That means school tax, property tax, gasoline tax, stuff you buy tax, cigarette tax, liquor tax, car registration, tax on water, electric, gas, telephone and television bills and social security and medicare. Even if you don't pay a penny of federal income tax. So I'm pissed off that people are allowed to get away with the "47 percent don't pay income tax" nonsense, when most of those are retirees on pensions or social security, or veterans with physical/mental problems, or the working poor. And yes, there are a few freeloaders, but that's a very small percentage. Probably a lot more millionaires with tax havens don't pay federal income tax than poor people.
   So then some person writes and says that just imagine if I was not only paying the 30 percent I currently pay in general/property/gasoline taxes but was also paying 30 percent in federal income tax. And this is what I told the nitwit. And I am being generous here, calling this person a nitwit.

As someone who has paid 25 percent federal taxes most of my life, I not only understand, but have lived it. And when that salary drops--in my case because the internet took the money out of magazine journalism--well, you pay what you can. But having paid those taxes, I can say with certainty that it felt so so so so so good to have to pay them. It meant I was making $75 grand a year as a chef who was single; it meant I was making $100 grand as a writer! I would give anything to be asked to pay those taxes again because it would mean I was not only solvent, I was freaking rich! And that's the part the rich/wealthy/upper middle class miss. When you're paying those taxes--and I don't believe you or anyone else in the world has paid 30 percent federal in the last 30 years--it means you are well to do. It means you go out to dinner where and when you want. It means you buy a car in three days and not six months. It means you get to pay your bills on time and have a good credit rating and pay less interest on everything! It means that when your kid wants a new pair of sneaks you don't have to save for three weeks to do it! So YEAH! Bring me back the money and I'll pay those taxes in a heartbeat!!!!!!!!! I love paying taxes because it means I'm rich! And having been there, yeah, I miss it.

Response to a Thread on Ayahuasca...

Okay, so my friend Bill Grimes has a blog on dawnoftheamazon.com. He lives in Iquitos, Peru and has a good restaurant there.

Recently someone posted on it about ayahuasca and how ayahuasca has no medical value, is just a placebo, is surrounded by stories about people living thousands of years, etc. It was a naive post by someone who had never done ayahuasca. Nonetheless, it generated a lot of responses, some in agreement, others not, many calling for regulation of the medicine even down in Peru's Amazon.

Someone then wrote asking me to comment. So I did. So here it is. And I think I was asked to comment in light of the apparent death of a young American fellow who went to the jungle to drink ayahuasca. His body was allegedly buried by the curandero and not located until the police were called and he confessed. In his confession he supposedly said the fellow died from drinking ayahuasca. Personally I'm waiting for the autopsy. But I send deep condolences out to the fellow's family and hope they can get through their grief. Losing a child must be the most wretched thing in the world.

This was what I wrote:

Hello: I've been asked to comment here. Not sure what to say. The initial article was essentially a somewhat naive blog post--as evidenced by the longevity claim that in 30 years I've never heard and I get to hear an awful lot down in that part of the world. But somehow that little piece of fluff and fun has taken a serious turn--I think because of the suggestions that a number of people are dying from ayahuasca use. Which does tend to give a conversation a serious turn.

I think ayahuasca is very serious medicine, and I've always treated it that way--well, I'm sure I fell down on the job a few times, but mostly treated it that way. And I think it's wonderful medicine. Anyone who has ever purged know you are not vomiting food; you're vomiting the wretched things in your life that you no longer need to carry around with you. Things we all carry, but can't always explain or even know we carry: Nearly all of us were breastfed, but one day your mother took that away, and left you feeling, though you couldn't put it into words because you had none, abandoned. In truth it may have been that you'd gotten a tooth and it hurt her. Nonetheless, you felt cut off. And you've carried that pain around from that day forward. Now imagine reliving that and throwing it away--how much freer you would be! Or the lies you told your girlfriends or boyfriends over the course of your life: You don't need them. Throw them up and out. Not the memory: Retain that and remember not to do those rotten things to people you say you love anymore. But throw the pain and guilt away.

That's just the beginning of the purge.

Now I think it's a very good medicine for a lot of things. I don't think anyone would make the claim that it cures this or that malady or illness. The curative is when the curandero--if he/she is a real plant doctor--sees what is wrong with you and comes up with a plant decoction that will treat that ailment. That "seeing" is what occurs to the curandero during the session; his or her knowledge of plants that can treat those things are what is key to the healing.

Is everyone who serves ayahuasca a genuine medicinal plant doctor? Absolutely not. Are some? Absolutely. The trick, in a place like Iquitos, is finding someone who really knows the local plants, knows physical illnesses, understands emotional imbalance and such. And the further trick is getting to drink with them on one of their good days--because even wonderful doctors have bad days.

But any discussion of ayahuasca must include this: These people, the curanderos, were the healers in their tribes, and later, they were the healers on the rivers on which they lived. People's lives depended on them. A healer whose patients died of the grippe or snakebite wouldn't last too long.

So these men and women had extraordinary understanding of their part of the jungle and of the medicinal plants therein. And their access, according to them, to the spirits of those plants, was through their ayahuasca use. And that's vital: anybody can boil a carrot, but not everybody can get the best out of it. That best is, just to name it, what curanderos call the "spirit" of that plant.

I'm getting on too deeply here. Just to stay focused, because I could go on, lord knows, the curanderos are healers who traditionally have attributed a great deal of their plant medicine knowledge to what they have learned while under the influence of ayahuasca. That not everyone serving ayahuasca has that knowledge is a given. That no one does is a genuine disrespect for many of the people who have kept the people of the Amazon alive and healthy for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.

As to the deaths: I have never heard of a case that was authenticated as being from an overdose of ayahuasca. I've heard of people dying who were bitten by snakes after they drank ayahuasca, and I can imagine someone choking on his/her vomit if there were not a good curandero with helpers looking after people; and I can imagine a hypertensive crisis resulting from the bad mix of SSRI's with ayahuasca. Or someone drowning, or climbing a tree and falling. But I've certainly never heard of anyone just dying from ayahuasca by the time the autopsy was done.

Odds and Ends...All Pretty Cool

So I'm feeling great. I'm broke, as always, but happy because I just paid my water and electric bills, my insurance, and the tickets I got a couple of weeks ago for having an outdated inspection sticker and for having Alexa in the back of the truck in a seat, not a baby seat. Never mind that in my little truck the back seats are sideways and won't fit a booster chair (though someone just told me where to get a booster seat made just for those little side seats, so I'll investigate). Boy, paying those off was great.

Then, I had an editor call and ask if I could do a freelance story. I don't have a contract yet, so I won't count my chickens, but if it comes through, that will be great because it will cover December's bills. As a journalist making ends meet, you've always got to figure what might be coming in a couple of months from now that can take care of the mortgage. So that would be swell.

I've also just sold four books today, and any day when I sell three or more is a nice day. And then a friend wrote that he felt like playing hooky from work one day this week, and since my cover story will go to bed tomorrow night, I told him any day after that would be great. He should just come ready to paint the creek bridge. Be cool to get that darned thing done as it really could use a fresh coat of barn red paint.

Doesn't take a lot to make me happy, eh? Just a nice day, a couple of cool little things.

Oh, and the internet is still surprising me. Since I first began taking note of what countries are reading this blog--I wrote about it a few weeks ago, I've added a bunch of countries in which people are reading this. I find that amazing. To the list I already had, in the last couple of weeks these countries have been added:

Estonia

Indonesia

Sweden

Mexico

Denmark

Myanmar

Switzerland

Bahrain

Pakistan

Guatemala

Saudi Arabia

Moldova

Panama

Costa Rica

Zimbabwe

Chile

Dominican Republic

Trinidad and Tobago

Now, if we can get people in these far flung places to all read this blog, can't we get people to decide to make peace not war? That would something, eh?

Busy Week, Pretty Fantastic!

Well, as noted, the last of the guests left Tuesday afternoon. Which left me to do a rewrite on my next cover story Wednesday and Thursday before I got my next assignment Friday--though I won't finish rewrite on my 4,200 word cover story till next Tuesday. (As my kids note: Dad, that's your life! You always have a story due or a draft due or a rewrite due or an interview or 20 to do! You just work every day! Why ain't you rich???)

But Tuesday night I got it into my head to call Cl and I had wine and was exhausted and though I thought it was a fantastic 3 hours--not without glitches, but then I'm never without glitches. I make Joe Biden look like he's never misspoken!!!--and I loved every minute of it, I woke up Wednesday thinking she probably will never want to speak with me again. And that made writing on Wednesday very very difficult.

But I had a good time on Wednesday evening with Madeleina, just watching television and shooting the breeze over an easy dinner of steak and Jasmine rice with broccoli and organic cherub tomatoes.

Thursday was definitely knuckle-down day for the rewrite and just as I was getting knuckeled-down, Italo showed up to try to fix the truck he's been working on so it will pass the damned inspection. We've changed sensors, wires, valves, cleaned injectors, taped tubes....still couldn't pass. And with him came his baby Taylor Rain and Chepa's youngest, Alexa. So what's a granddad to do? You got to play with the kids, get them paints, feed them, get them to the toilet, get paint off the floor and generally entertain them WHILE at the same time making calls, doing rewrite of a difficult story. And in between, Italo needed me to help move the bed off the pickup and generally pitch in to get the work done.

Know what? It was easy. I don't just multi-task, I move like the wind when I need to. And so I flew around the house with the kids, carrying the phone, talking with state officials and the like and worked the stove like a pro while I was taking a break from the truck and phone.

And when Italo thought he'd fixed the last problem with the truck, he went and took it for a full hour drive and then brought it to the inspection place and in exchange for that I made him beef hotdogs with left over sliced steak, smashed potatoes with garlic and three eggs over easy.

AND THE TRUCK PASSED!!! I'm street legal again! I cannot believe it but I am! And when I took it out to shop late that afternoon, two cops spotted me and questioned me--they knew I was way past inspection prior to that--and they just shook their heads and said "Way to go," and "Good for you, Mr. Gorman," and I was flying high on the joy of not having to avoid the local gendarmerie. And I wrote Italo emails and left phone messages praising him to the freaking heavens for being able to figure it out and keep at it till it got fixed. I LOVE MY KIDS!!!!

And now, waiting for my boss to get back to me with the new revisions she wants, I've spent the day cleaning house, cleaning rugs, putting on corned beef and cabbage for dinner and paying bills and I am one happy guy.

I also got the first deposits for the January trip for the mountains in Peru and sold a few copies of my book. And I picked up my trophy for garnering 3rd in Journalist of the Year for Texas from the Houston Press Club.

So things have been tough, but great.

And I hope they are great with all of you as well. Because it's a beautiful night here in bucolic Joshua, Texas.

Great Medicine Weekend!

Well, the guests are gone, and I'm not sharing names, but half-a-dozen people, nearly all from former trips, came to my house to get a little seasoning. Which meant sapo, nu-nu, San Pedro for a couple and Ayahuasca for nearly all. And Madeleina had already told me not to "be an a-hole and ruin everything for everybody," or something very very close to that, and though I didn't like her tone or delivery, I deferred to her and stayed okay for the weekend. Now I don't normally stay up past about 9 PM because I get up at 5 AM or so and am awake two hours during the night, generally. But with guests arriving as late as 10 PM on Friday, I stayed awake, though slightly sudsy with exhaustion and a half-pint of Jim Beam. I think I was okay though, as there was no more alcohol in the house so I couldn't keep getting high.

And then Saturday was a medicine day--that's a fast day and though I was only recooking some medicine I had, I still fasted with the rest of them: They ate breakfast then fasted, while I took a couple of bites of the vegetarian souffle I made and skipped the roasted, smashed potato (You will have to ask me how to make that one, since it's fantastic but I'm not sharing until you ask), and all fruit.

There was sapo and nu-nu in the morning, just to get everyone lined up properly, then a day of cleaning out the garage, cooking down medicine, and one person with San Pedro. In the evening, several had aya: I could not, for the life of me, find my freaking voice, but I still was graced with a couple of new songs and the next thing I knew it was 12:45 and I was done. I mean done.

I stayed awake and yakked with one guest till nearly 4 AM while we watched the others to make certain all were okay before I tipped off to sleep, then got up at 8 to clean the kitchen--you'd be amazed at some of the creative places people vomited--and make breakfast. I made great burritos for those with the stomach for them (diced chicken thigh meat from chicken I'd made, beans, sour cream, pico de gallo I'd made a day earlier, plus real good cheddar) followed by fantastic watermelon.

There was more sapo after breakfast for the few who wanted it.

Monday was airport runs, with the few remaining behind having sapo and then San Pedro; Tuesday was the last of the airport runs after a bit of sapo for the last of the guests and then I simply was freaking bushed. I'd cooked, cleaned, made and served good medicine, and had no more to give. And since they've gone I've cleaned some more, done several loads of laundry, scrubbed the kitchen floor. Dang! No wonder I'm tired.

Still, I'm the one grateful that those people came. No, there was no money involved. Not a cent. I spent a fortune. But I got a weekend with some very special people, and that was/is priceless.

Thanks, universe.

Peter

The Falsetto is Singing!

Madeleina and I have this argument going since she first came to Peru with me three years ago to help run my jungle trips. See, I only bring a couple of cassettes or tapes these days. On the boat on which I fell in love with Chepa, Madeleina's mom, I had Tom Waits' The Early Years and a Dylan album. On the next trip, without Chepa, I had...well, I forget. But when Madeleina came the first time I had The Best of Cream; the double album Best of Bob Dylan, the Gypsy Kinds, a Santana Album--a mix my kid made--the Blues Project, Best of Bruce Springsteen and Best of Neil Young.

Now on that trip I realized that Young only sang in a falsetto. I don't know how tall he really is, but I imagine him to be Bill Walton size or at least 6'7" and to imagine that giant singing in falsetto his whole life--and I saw a program where he was talking about coming up with the falsetto as his signature--well, Jesus Freaking Christ. I don't care if he's gay/transvestite/transsexual, but NOBOBY chooses to sing in a falsetto unless they want to be part of the Papal Choir.

So I still love Neil Young, but every time Madeleina or I put him on I make jokes about that freaking silly voice. She punches me. I take the pain and keep talking. Because it's just silly that a man is singing about Kent State and the killings there in a falsetto that he's had to produce by working at it because he was too afraid of his own voice--by his own admission.

And I feel similarly about Stevie Ray Vaughn when I hear him talk about modeling his singing technique around someone else's. What's wrong with your own voice? What's wrong with your own truth?

I will always poke fun of people who don't trust their own truth. I won't do anything or say anything really bad; I just wish they had the courage. Imagine if Young and Vaughn sang in their own voices! How much stronger would they have been than trying to come up with a voice they thought would have been acceptable?

Follow Up to Yesterday's Empty Nest Post

Okay, so I was feeling blue yesterday, first day of a long weekend, no kids around and realizing that none were going to be coming over. So what was I to do? Get drunk? Could have; didn't. Instead, I made myself a fantastic--if slightly cheating--sopa de mariscos, then went out and mowed some lawn. Then came back in and watched some replay NFL football while I had my soup. Went to bed and then this morning had more soup and went out to mow more lawn. I'm sweating like a pig, and that's good. In a couple of hours I'm gonna go take a long walk, then go see my friend Dave and have my once-a-week glass of beer with a double of Jim Beam and then come home and mow more lawn. And then I'm gonna get to that shrimp scampi I was talking about yesterday.

And you know what? While I'm working the kids will show up. If they don't, well, I hope they're having a great weekend. Cause so am I. Not what I'd wish for, but not bad at all.

Here's the soup recipe:

8 cloves of garlic, chopped but not too fine, in 2 ounces of olive oil. Let it steep an hour or all day

6 diced Roma tomatoes

6 scallions, chopped

1 diced medium sized red onion

8 large shelled fresh shrimp--chopped

1 lb frozen bag of mariscos (mussels, clams, squid and octopus cooked and chopped)

2 family-sized cans of Campbells' Tomato soup

1 can chicken stock

12 ounces of water

4 ounces capellini or angel hair pasta

1 bunch of cilantro, washed and chopped

salt and pepper

Heat up your soup pot, put in the garlic/oil/tomatoes/onions/scallions. When they're good--onions slightly see through and the tomatoes are giving off their juice, add the 8 large chopped shrimp. In one minute or so, add the tomato soup, the water and chicken stock. When that gets to near boiling, let's say rolling but not burning, add the mariscos. If they're still frozen don't sweat it, they'll break up in the hot soup.

Cook till mariscos are done, about three minutes, then add the capellini.

Cook another minute or two till the pasta is done, add chopped cilantro and salt and pepper to taste. Turn heat down very low, cook a couple of minutes, turn it off, then serve.

Serve with a hunk of good bread if you've got it. If not, no need. The soup is filling enough.

Serves about 6-8 good portions.

Empty Nest or Stolen Eggs?????

Yeah, I know you've heard this complaint before. But still, it's irking me today. Particularly today, since this is the first three-day weekend that's happened since Chepa's boyfriend moved from Indiana to Chepa's house. Now I'm a reasonable guy. For the Yiddish among you, I'm probably a reasonable goy. Whatever. "In your face, dad!" as Madeleina's phone message says. But this is Labor Day weekend. I have a cover story due on Friday, and then I have several guests coming in for jungle medicines on the same Friday-next-who will need my attention for several days. And I will give it to them. That's my work. Just as, when Madeleina told me about someone she knows who's losing feeling in their fingers--and she's an adult musician--I told Madeleina I'd work with the woman with the best medicines I know. No charge. Ever.

So I've got to get some work done but no one is available to talk with me until Tuesday except for the activists, who, like me, don't make enough money to go away on these fabulous weekends. But activists can only take a story so far. You have to get the other side, as that's the side that people trust--even if sometimes they're not trustworthy. That's where the story is.

Which leaves me with mowing lawn, done, cleaning house, done, buying food for my upcoming guests, mostly done and doing laundry, done. So what am I supposed to do? I think I'm supposed to be with my family this weekend. I've got these two great mid-20's boys, one married, and a grandchild. Then I've got Madeleina and then I've got Sierra and Alexa, Chepa's two youngsters with her boyfriend but who spent the first couple of years partly at my house almost daily, and still have a tough time correcting themselves--though I've always corrected them--from calling me "daddy".

Now no offense to Chepa's boyfriend. He's probably a great guy. Probably better than I ever was at a million things. And I'm being serious. Hell, she dyed his hair pink and he seems to love it, where I would have probably screamed: "My freaking hair is PINK!!!! Fix it!!!" Which may not be the best thing a boyfriend/husband can say to the woman who was trying to save you from thinning grey.

But still, this is a holiday weekend and normally I would be serving a barbeque to 30-40 family and friends. I'm not. He is. I'm sitting at home--after working hard--and thinking about making some shrimp scampi and forgetting about the rest of it. Which means I am sort of feeling sorry for myself. And wondering where the fuck my kids are and why they are there instead of here?

I'm probably to blame. Not sure how, but I am probably to blame.

Still, I miss my kids. I miss the party. I miss the volleyball game and the soccer and the darts and the pool and foosball and whatever else goes into a 16 hour party on a three-day weekend. I miss cooking all that food. I miss being part of it.

That said, Madeleina had her first day on the field as a band member last night. She got off really late so Chepa picked her up. She slept most of the day but I caught her at 5 PM and she said it was the scariest but best thing she ever did. I was glad. Because yesterday I had to pick her up from school at 11:11 because she was puking so much. Seriously angry butterflies in her belly. I let her sleep for three hours, then told her to get back to school. I think the rule is that if you're not in school at end of day you can't be in the band that night. And I was not going to let her miss her chance. So I got her back for last period, and it worked. She marched, she played, she said she wasn't perfect but that she was good and it can only get better. Good for her.

Way to play through your fear, Madeleina. That's how winners are born.

Wow! This is the Internet at Work

Okay, so given that there are important things going on in the world, like that lying sack of nonsense, Paul Ryan, running for VP on the Romney ticket, filling the airwaves with a host of utter lies last night. And then there is the flooding in Louisiana--which I'm glad is not as bad as people thought it could have been--and injustice and poverty, both circumstantial and engineered, in our own country and outright starvation in a lot of other countries. And then there was my Madeleina yesterday, who got in my truck after school already angry, and when we started talking about a small get together of previous guests of mine in the jungle suggested that I not be an "A-hole this time, dad, so you ruin everything..." which was the first time she's crossed that line. (Anybody who is a former guest who did not get a specific invite, forgive me. Just don't have the time to cull through years of trips. So if you want to be invited, write me a note at peterg9 at yahoo.com okay?)

Okay, given that, I am going wow because I discovered a button on the dashboard of this web page that allows me to see where people are who are reading the blog. And it was a pretty far-ranging group. Far-ranging enough that last Monday I began taking note of the countries that were accessing this blog. and here is the list:

United States

Russia

India

Germany

United Kingdom

Canada

France

China

Jamaica

Mauritius

Slovenia

Romania

Hong Kong

Netherlands

Australia

Poland

Peru

Italy

Argentina

United Arab Emirates

Ecuador

Japan

Colombia

Spain

Austria

Singapore

Ireland

Belgium

Czech Republic

Philippines

Israel

Thailand

Brazil

Cameroon

Ukraine

Lithuania

Malaysia

South Africa

South Korea

Portugal

Norway

Greece

Taiwan

Turkey

Finland

Croatia

Now to me, that suggests the power and expanse of the internet. If people in Camaroon are reading about ayahuasca, or my family, or what the heck I made for dinner last night (which was just plain roast chicken with garlic served with rice, steamed broccoli and sliced cucumber with lime), well that is a long freaking reach. Why anyone in Estonia or Turkey or Malaysia would want those recipes or want to know that Madeleina, at 15, finally referred to me as an "A-hole", well, I have no idea. But I am amazed that web-visitors from all those places chose to visit this site during the last 10 days that I've been paying attention. Just WOW! is all I can think. Sort of brings to life the thought in the song from the 1964 World's Fair in Queens, New York: "It's a small world, afterall..."

Have a great one, everybody.

Saturday Night, Just Getting By...

Okay, so it's Saturday, August 25 at about 6:40 PM and I'm getting by. Not by much. But still, better than nothing. My stinking conjunctivitis still has one of my eyes leaking copiously after 8 weeks!!! And that's after a full 10 days of Cipro antibiotic and antibiotic eye drops. The funniest part is waking up at 3AM to take a leak--as guys over 55 will tend to do--and not being able to open my eyes because the leak has so much salt in it that my eyes are sealed shut.

On the other hand, I've written some kick-ass stories the last couple of days, or the last couple of weeks, and that feels good. I also had all the kids over yesterday for hours, including cousins and they went through nearly 10 pounds of chicken and two pots of rice. Little kids--the oldest was six--eat a lot. A lot. I'm doing my second load of washing from the visit as I write this.

Then for food today I was starving for something with meat. I don't really like the meat much, but the meat is the excuse for the baked potato or rice and I really love a good baked potato. BUTTTTTT.....as my kids didn't come over for dinner much this week, I had a problem. I had a full pound of salmon filet left. I had two pounds of mussels left. I had a full chicken breast left. I had two pounds of fajita meat left. Plus some really brown, rotten, sweet bananas.

So I decided to cook everything. I cleaned and cooked the mussels simply, in garlic/olive oil and cilantro (I've got good bread for dipping and am sort of tired of tomatoes and wine as a sauce). I cooked the salmon in garlic/olive oil/diced red peppers/fresh ginger and a light teriyaki to finish it. The skin is like salmon candy. But I'm not eating that tonight. I'll turn that into a salmon omelet, or six, in the morning.

The chicken I cooked, nice breast, for Boots, the Wonder Dog, to go along with a couple of huge chicken legs and a couple of chicken hearts/livers/kidneys. Keeps him strong and keeps him out of the neighbor's chicken coop.

Then I made the kilo of fajita meat that would have gone bad in another day or so. Garlic/olive oil/onions/tomatoes/red and green peppers/spices/vinegar/stock/plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Gonna eat that, a little of it, over rice--I know it's not a traditional fajita, but it's damned good--with an appetizer of the mussels.

And then, I faked a banana bread, which is gonna be delicious.

Now, if I had my druthers, I mean if God came down and said I could eat what I want, I'd probably cook a ribeye steak, then eat the fat and toss the meat, and follow that with half-a-gallon of mint chip/chocolate/pistachio ice cream with about a gallon of home made fudge sauce, hot.

God didn't come. I'm stuck with the mussels and a small portion of fajita. And then salmon until it's finished. Damnit. Good, but the salmon has all that asparagus and fresh spinach, and while I love that stuff, sometimes I just want a piece of fat to suck on!!!!!!!!

Gonna live to be 100, just wait and see. And for my 75th birthday, I'm eating chocolate ice cream or fudge or something like that for a whole week!!!!!

Have a great night everybody!

My New Column

So I write this column for Skunk magazine out of Canada. It's called Drug War Follies, and normally it is about the horror of the war on drugs. I generally wade through a lot of really ugly stories about everything from headless bodies in Mexico to people dying when police raid a wrong home or how the private prison industry pushes for harsher and harsher laws against non-violent drug users. This time I decided to skip that stuff and write something about the upcoming election season here in the USA. This is what I wrote:

Drug War Follies

It’s an election year and there is a lot of important shit going down, so sit up, drop the bong and pay fucking attention!

By Peter Gorman

There’s an election coming up in November, 2012. And it’s an important election. In 2008 the United States voted for a man who had a black dad. That makes him a “nig..r” in a lot of people’s books and here in the good old US of A, that just is not possible to accept for those people. No black man, no matter who, “is going to tell me what to do!” is the feeling. And it is a deeply seeded feeling. So deep that in the first days after the election, the opposition party leadership, the Republican party leadership, got together and decided that the first and most important measure of business for them was to get that “boy”, President Barack Obama, out of office. How important was it? Well, important enough that despite Obama having been left with the worst plate of slop any president has been left with in 80 years, getting rid of him was more important. That slop included—in a nutshell—everything from an exploding housing bubble that would cost millions their homes to foreclosure to a recession that would finally cost several million their jobs. Among the causes were tax breaks for the rich, two unfunded wars and a giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry that was costing the US federal government $1/2 trillion a year. Add to that a Veteran’s Administration that was so critically underfunded it was unable to even pretend it could take care of the needs of our returning servicemen and women and voila! A fucking mess.

Given that, this November’s election is very important. It’s time for those of us who still have a vote to go exercise it. And here’s how this New York kid living out in the boonies in Texas sees it.

If you think that some other man’s hand belongs up your girl’s skirt with a transvaginal probe, then you might think of voting republican. If you think that people ought to have to buy a government issued identification card for the right to vote, then you ought to think of voting republican. If you think new wars, lower taxes for the rich, the end of public television being partially financed by the federal US government, the end of Planned Parenthood, the end of women’s rights to equal pay, the end of the right of gays to serve publicly in the US armed forces, the end of basic grants to college kids to help get them over the hump, the end of federal funds for the arts, the end of a woman’s right to choose, the end of the new banking regulations, the end of a way for kids brought into the US illegally to become citizens, the end of social security that you’ve been paying into weekly, the end of medicare that you’ve been paying into weekly, the end of the new Obamacare with all it’s warts but which does not allow insurance companies to deny people care for pre-existing conditions, the end of super special tax cuts for the very very wealthy, the end of unions and the end of protected public pension funds are all good things, then you ought to think about voting Republican.

And if you think that evolution is a myth and that the whole world was created 6,000 years ago, yup, vote Republican. If you believe that a fertilized human egg is a person with all rights of a human being but that society’s responsibility to that egg ends at birth, vote Republican. If you believe that women should have to carry the fetus of a rapist to term, well, vote Republican. If you believe that corporations are people, my friend, and that they deserve special cuts and tax breaks, and if you believe that giving billionaires more tax cuts will create more jobs, vote Republican. If you believe that unlimited amounts of money should be allowed to be donated anonymously to things called SuperPacs to buy elections, well, vote Republican. If you believe that trickle down economics was anything more than the rich pissing on your head for the last 30 years or if you believe in personal responsibility except for those people corporations; if you believe in eliminating work safety rules, the minimum wage, the environmental protection administration and that green house gasses are good because they help keep us warm; if you believe that the founding fathers were thinking of fully automatic assault rifles with clips of 50 rounds when they devised the second amendment; if you believe that the words “in god we trust” were engraved in US money bills before the 1950s or that the Pledge of Allegiance was written with the words “one nation, under God” in its original form, then you ought to vote republican.

And if what you want from a presidential candidate is one who has said he cannot tell the populace what his plans are because if he did he would not get elected, then Mitt Romney is your man. If you want a presidential candidate who wants smaller government but then used a $1.3 billion bailout to mount the Salt Lake City Olympics while claiming he personally rescued them, well, Mitt Romney is your man. If you want a presidential candidate who developed the health care bill for a state, Massachusetts—which was adopted by President Obama for the entire country—and now claims it is a bad idea, yeah, Romney is your fella. And if you want a presidential candidate whose leading advisor described his campaign as an Etch-a-Sketch that can be shaken up as needed, well then, it’s settled, Romney is your man. Oh, and if you want a presidential candidate who suggested, in print, that Detroit be allowed to go bankrupt, and now that General Motors has been saved claims he is largely responsible for that, uh-huh, Romney’s the one.

And we’re not even touching on vulture capitalism, or Bain Capital and it’s sister companies that had a habit of buying up companies, loading them with debt, taking their cut, then selling them off piecemeal or watching them sink into bankruptcy, costing a lot of workers their jobs. And no, we’re not hardly gonna touch on the idea that while Mitt Romney’s dad, George W. Romney, was running in the 1968 presidential primary against Richard Nixon, released 12 years worth of personal tax records but that Mitt has—as of this writing—not released a single complete year of tax returns and has promised to release no more than two years in total. And we’re gonna stay pretty much away from the fact that Mitt Romney has flip-flopped on nearly everything he has ever stood for politically, sometimes during the same day.

If what’s above is what you think will make a better USA, then Republican is the only way to go.

Which does not mean I am thrilled with President Obama. What he has allowed to happen, what he probably pushed to have happen with medical marijuana in California and elsewhere would normally be enough to get me to vote against him. But given what we’re faced with, given what the Republicans stand for, well, even Obama’s unfuckingreal medical marijuana stance is not enough to get rid of him.

And I’m not happy that Obama has not been left-leaning at all. I did not expect him to be a slightly right-of-center—at least old style slightly right-of-center—president. On some issues he’s been great. On others his compromises have looked like complete collapse.

But I still have faith. I have faith that if the president had a Congress that had any interest in helping the US rather than eliminating that black guy from the white house, well, he’d be able to show more of his true colors.

And he and the Democrats still have some things going for them. Like, if you want equal pay for women, if you don’t want transvaginal probes shoved up your girl’s privates, if you think a human baby is more important than a zygote or even a fetus, if you believe that the wealthy should pay a higher percentage of taxes than the middle class, or that schools should teach science, not religion-as-science, or that it’s vital that the arts are funded and that Public Television exists; if you think environmental protections should be in place to protect yourself and your kids or that everyone deserves basic healthcare and that the banks and Wall Street ought to have some regulation to prevent them from running roughshod on naïve clients and that alternative energy sources ought to be investigated and promoted, if you think everyone is important, not just a special color or class or those who are straight and white and define themselves as Christians, well, if any of that’s important to you, then the Democrats, with all their flaws, are the way you need to go.

See how easy that was? Okay, now get back to those bongs and have a great big fat hit! Enjoy.

It would all be funny if people weren’t dying and the prisons weren’t full.

Traffic Ticket Blues

Well, good afternoon, everybody. I'm gonna tell a story here that I might have told previously. If so, if it's familiar, SO WHAT?????? It's still gonna be worth reading again and I'm sure I'll tell it a bit differently this time anyway.

Here it is: In 2004, I was poor. I mean, I'd moved to Texas two years earlier and was so darned broke that, as you know, I wound up working at the day labor center here just trying to get enough dough to put a stinking chicken on the table with some rice at night. As my son Marco remember it: "Dad, we had chicken every day for two years! I had no idea there were that many ways to make chicken!" If pushed he'll remember some really good franks and beans as well, but yeah, we didn't starve but we didn't have anything.

In those circumstances, things fall off the table. Like car insurance. It lapsed and I got stopped while at the courthouse in Fort Worth. I think I was there getting a background check so that I could become a substitute teacher at the local grammar school--a job that, at the time, paid an unbelieveable low $22 a day, if I remember correctly. And if I'm wrong, it might have been $28, but whatever it was it was way below minimum. I remember them explaining to me how they got around minimum wage and it was some fancy footwork, I'll tell you that.

In any event, I get my fingerprints checked and so forth and come out and there is a cop at my 1994 Ford Ranger watching the meter about to expire. I made it back just as the red tag came up and knew I was in the clear. Despite that he asked for my license and insurance. I didn't blink, just handed them over.

He noted that my insurance was out and that he'd have to ticket me. I told him I was broke and that since I made the meter on time--if just barely--that he ought to let it slide and I'd borrow money to buy the insurance the next day. He didn't go for it.

So I got the insurance two days later and went to the traffic court and showed them that I'd gotten it and the judge told me to go out to the tellers and pay the $10 or $20 court cost and that was that. So I did.

That ticket occurred on November 6, 2004. My insurance was renewed on November 8, 2004.

Fast forward to February 15, 2011, and in the mail is a letter from the agency that collects delinquent fees for Fort Worth, telling me I owe $425.10 for the 2004 ticket. I couldn't believe it. I went into my tax boxes to find the receipt and wouldn't you know that I only had back to 2005. I don't remember tossing earlier years but I suppose I did at some point--I threw away a lot of stuff when we had the field rat invasion of the little building out back where I kept things like shoeboxes of taxes that the rats had made nests in.

In any event, I knew the city couldn't be serious but knew I'd have to go to court to explain myself. So I went to my insurance agent and asked him for a copy of any insurance I'd bought in November, 2004. He printed out an old copy of the purchase i made on Nov. 8.

Armed with that I went to court and explained to the judge that while I didn't keep tax returns--and recepits--for more than five or six years, I could prove that I'd gotten insurance within 48 hours of getting the ticket, and it only stood to reason that I'd come in and shown that, which is why the judge had told me to pay just $10 or $20, I couldn't remember which. I was sure they'd drop it--particularly given that there had been no notices in the intervening six years and three months indicating that was late in paying the ticket.

The judge didn't buy it. She asked me if I wanted a judge or jury trial. I told her jury trial. I thought that was best because a jury would understand my reasoning.

Well, it turns out the hearing was announced in June and held in July. As I was in Peru, I had no idea of either notices' existence. Which didn't stop Fort Worth from putting out an arrest warrant for me.

Today I called the city and asked how to handle it. I volunteered to bring in my passport to prove I was in Peru at both the time of the hearing notice as well as the hearing itself. And you know what I was told? By all means I should come in. Bring the passport. I will be arrested, and my bond will be the price of the ticket, $425.10, plus an additional $65. I will give them the money and they will release me and set a new hearing date. If I make it and am found innocent, I'll get my money back. If found guilty, they'll keep the money.

I'm not really happy about this nonsense. I paid the damned fine nearly eight years ago at this point. I don't think it's fair for a city to expect you to keep a $10-$20 receipt for more than six years. I mean, if I never did pay the ticket, why weren't there any notices for all those years? Does not make sense and puts the ticketee in the position of having to prove the ticket was paid, rather than have the city prove it wasn't.

As to why the city has no record of my payment, I really don't know. I know I'm not the only one in Fort Worth dealing with this--at least one, and maybe two, others at the Fort Worth Weekly newspaper has had the same issue, and last year the paper did a story about it and the writer found others to whom it had happened as well. Every one of the tickets involved deal with 2003-2004, the period of time when the city was changing computer systems in the traffic division. That might be where the problem lies--the city simply lost records. On the other hand, I think the problem lies with the legal team that collects the city's delinquent fees: They know that if they simply request fines--fines that have probably been paid years earlier--several years after tickets were issued, that people won't have their receipts, and so will have to fork over big fees. And from those fees the collecting agency is getting between 35 and 50 percent.

I don't know that I will win this one. I haven't the gelt to fight it properly and without my old receipt I cannot prove my case. So I'm probably gonna lose.

I'm not going to like that.

And it will still be wrong on the city's part.

I Had Madeleina and Italo Today

Today, I had Madeleina and Italo. Italo came over early to work on the air conditioner. The big one in the attic crawl space. We just replaced the fan and the motor two weeks ago and everything was good. But two days ago that motor began shutting down one or two minutes after it was turned on. And this being Texas, even though we had a respite from the heat of the last couple of weeks, it was still hitting 93-95 degrees Farhenheit daily, which has made sleeping difficult to impossible.

I checked the parts I knew how, and they all worked. Then Italo came over this morning and we began to take things apart one by one. We finally took the new motor to the place where we bought it and the guy said it was no good. He gave us another. And Italo put it in place. I hope it works. Because it's been hot here without air conditioning--and I'm not a fan of air conditioning. Up to about 90 Farhenheit I can deal with it; after that I'm a big sissy.

So Italo worked, Madeleina suffered, I helped. And now it's all working again. We'll see.

But how nice it was to have Italo and Madeleina over here all day. I made them food snacks--from watermelon, ice cold, to smashed new potatoes, to salmon slices. And they loved it. And that made me feel like a dad again. I have not felt like a dad in some time. So that was good. Cause I like being a dad.

Nuts, ain't I?

Almost Had a Freaking Heart Attack

Well, I almost just had a freaking heart attack--and I can tell you from the only one I had that that is not freaking fun. What happened was that Madeleina went to get the mail, at my behest, and came back with two letters, one for Chepa and one for me, from the IRS. I know those letters. Two years ago I got one that questioned something the tax person had done and when the IRS didn't agree with me--though they admitted they saw my point--it turned out the $3500 or so they wanted had become more than $5000 by the time it was done.

So I don't want any more of those letters. And I am meticulous. I do not even take my stinking charitable contributions--meager couple of hundred that they are--because I don't want the government saying that I got a tax break for contributing to a food bank or whatnot.

In other words, I know I'm clean. I earn my $32 grand a year, work my ass off both in the jungle and as a journalist, and sell my book these last two years. I pay my illustrator via breaks on trips to the jungle and I pay my designer out of the book royalties and I keep perfect records of what's paid out. In other words, my financial records are an open book--unlike one very freaking smarmy vulture capitalist running for president of the USA.

So seeing IRS letters so soon after paying off the $5 grand or so I had to pay, well, I nearly choked. I was verklempt or vaklempt, depending on which part of New York you were from. I couldn't breathe. I nearly drove Madeleina and myself, along with my 1998 Ford Ranger with 199,707 miles--that's the new truck folks; the other is a 1994 with just over 300,000, what do you expect when you're raising kids on $32 grand a year?--into a ditch.

Then I got home and realized that my friend Milan had sent me a small bottle of Sliv, homemade Serbian rotgut and I opened that and had a long pull before I opened the IRS letters.

And when I screwed up the courage to do that--it didn't take long, really, I hate waiting on bad news--the letters were not asking me for more money for a new problem. They were just explaining that I'd paid off the last debt and was now in the clear. As is Chepa.

So there you go. I'm glad I didn't go ahead and have that heart attack. That would have been a waste of pain for real.

So now Madeleina is at her high school marching band party, and she's intact. And I'm here having another pull of Sliv--wretched though it is--and thanking the gods in heaven/hell and all around us that the devil himself, in the guise of the IRS, didn't think to roast me again. HooYA!

Simple Swordfish

Okay. I'm sorry I killed the swordfish by buying it. I'm completely guilty. I also let my cat kill a mouse--after playing with it for 30 minutes--and two beautiful grasshoppers this morning. And I fed Madeleina orange juice and watermelon and canteloupe. Hell, every stinking thing I do turns out I'm killing things. I know, as a born catholic and alter boy, that I'm going to purgatory for a long time. Shit.

Having prayed over that, I'm sauteeing a 1" piece of swordfish--total of 1/2 pound--in fresh olive oil and garlic. When I turn it I will add sea salt--$18 dollars a pound!!!!--and fresh cracked black pepper--and when I pull it altogether, I will put some diced red pepper, fresh minced scallions, diced red onion, and minced cilantro into the pan with 1/2 tea spoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of teriyaki sauce and a dash of balsamic vinegar.

At the end I will add 2 ounces of capers with the juice, which will give it a bite.

And I am serving it over fresh spinach dipped into boiling water and strained, then sauteed with garlic, olive oil, and raspberry vinegar.

And when it's all done, there will be 8 ounces of fish, 10 ounces of organic veggies and 1 ounce of organic sauce. Half each for Madeleina and I.

So we'll be okay from this meal, I think.

And if I could, I would go to a take out place like sonic and buy a couple of sonic blasts--ice cream--to have instead of the swordfish. Damn, why did I have to grow up catholic?????

Ayahuasca Vision Question

A friend of mine, Bill Grimes, lives in Iquitos and has a bar/restaurant named Dawn of the Amazon. He's got a blog of the same name, though I think it's called Captain's Blog, Dawn of the Amazon. In any event, a recent blog was posted by a woman (using the title Ayahuasca in My Blood, which I didn't appreciate since that's the title of my book) who is in a tough spot and who went to Iquitos, Peru for ayahuasca healing. She went to two well known ayahuasca centers; at the first she spent several sessions mostly vomiting and pooping and complained that there were no visions. At the second she saw her long dead father on one occasion--and got to straighten out some things from her past--and on another occasion saw herself at various ages/stages and then saw herself as a young person preparing to ferry the current version to safety. Two or three additional times she saw her heart, long close, open up and take in radiant love. But she continued to insist that she was not happy because she'd had no visions. She also brought up the cost of those retreats in a less than positive way as well.

A friend wrote to me and asked if I would look at the blog entry and possibly comment on it. I did, and here's what I wrote--and I think it has some bearing for a lot of people who drink ayahuasca and concentrate on looking for fantastic visions and who subsequently miss some of the most important stuff.

Dear X: I am having a hard time understanding what you mean by visions. You saw your dad; you spoke with him. You saw yourself at different ages being brought across a sea to a place where you will be safe. Your heart broke open and allowed love to enter for the first time in years. What else could you want from this wonderful healing medicine?

Did you want the funhouse of desires and fears? Did you want the visions of other planets or of the past or future? Those are mostly show. It’s when those are done that the real work begins: The healing on deep levels. And that healing begins with cleaning out the pain you’ve been needlessly carrying with you all those years: The pain others gave you, the pain you inflicted, pain you cannot remember receiving because you were too young to put words to it, but still pain you carry. That’s what you threw up and that’s what you shit out. You need to be clean before ayahuasca can paint you with it’s colors, as my late teacher Julio said. So you went to the Hummingbird and got cleaned out. Then on to the Temple and had those wonderful healing visions. Just because there were no fireworks displays does not mean they were not visions. Seeing your father; seeing yourself, watching yourself get protected… It sounds to me like you had the most wonderful time and were taken care of by very generous and good people and healers.
Celebrate your heart opening. Celebrate the gifts you received. The heck with the money it cost: There is no amount of money in the world that could ever pay for having your heart re-opened and allowed to love again. So celebrate your growth and keep growing, keep being open, keep the flame of love burning within you.

Sex and Ayahuasca: My Perspective

So someone from a board I sometimes write on asked me what I thought about the general dictum that you shouldn't have sex before or after ayahuasca. I was thinking the person was imaging a day or two, which is often proscribed by curanderos. But not all curanderos. So I thought about it and then wrote this as a response. Here it is:

Dear X: Well, I can't say I've always lived by that code. When I was with my wife and we were in love, it was hard to keep us apart. BUTTTTT...I will say that if someone is trying to be alone and doing dieta, it's difficult to get quiet if your libido is raging all day.

So I guess my gut feeling is to say I feel both ways: I think healthy abstinence is good; I think painful abstinence, where you are constantly thinking of what you are not getting (the love, affection, etc) is not good. I think sex is okay but shouldn't interfere with your ability to get silent so that you can hear the spirits whisper. Does that make sense and clarify things or make them muddier. In a sense, I think it's like food. Yes, you should abstain from food/liquids for 10-12 hours before drinking Ayahuasca--so that your stomach is empty and your purge is of foul things in your life, rather than a purge of the food you just ate--but at the same time I recognize that someone going into ceremony nearly feinting from hunger or dehydration doesn't do anyone any good either. And if you are one of those people who is going to be sugar-depleted if you don't have a cup of tea before ceremony, then I think you ought to have it. If you are someone who is going to spend the entire ceremony thinking about the sex you didn't have, then have it and get it over with. On the other hand, if you're going to be dreaming of the sex you did have, well, that's going to interfere. So people need to assess and appreciate their personal situations, rather than living someone else's expectations. Remember this, and it's important: While gringos nearly universally talk about the blandness of the boiled plantains and fish they are served while on a dieta, for the riberinos I know, the Peruvians who live on the river, boiled plantains and fish is their favorite comfort meal--equal to a hot fudge sundae or a prime rib with onions and garlic and a side of baked potato with cheese to a lot of gringos. It is important to recognize that nothing is what is seems with the medicine. There is trickster every step of the way. And that's good because it keeps us on our toes and separates the willing workers from those who want a quick fix. I hope that helps.

Banco Ayahuasquero

A number of people talk about "banco ayahuasqueros" as if they are something more than regular people. In my experience, especially of late, I've realized what a "banco" is. It is someone who has outlived his/her teachers, but whose teachers are still available to help in an emergency, when the curer asks for it. I recently wrote this to someone who was very taken with the word and concept of "Banco curandero". I did not write it as a way to elevate me, but simply as a way to explain what it is. This is what I wrote:

A banco is a curandero who had deceased teachers who are still available to him or her. In my world, Julio llerena, Pablo, the Matses curaka, Moises Torres Vienna, Bertha Grove, the Southern Ute medicine woman and her brother. a Southern Ute Peyote Roadman, sit on the bench next to me when I pray--and I am not a curandero. Still, they are my banco.

I think it's important to understand that many, many curanderos are banco curanderos. It merely means that you've outlived your teachers and they continue to help you while also being in the next world. They sit on your bench, and like any good athletic team knows, you need a good bench to win. Cause everyone knows people need all the help they can get to effect cures, healings and the setting of things right in this world.

What having a banco means is that you've got help when you need it. That's all. And that's a good thing. That's a wonderful thing.

Okay, So I Had a Sort of Blow My Mind Day Yesterday...

Okay, so I had a sort of blow my mind day, yesterday. More than that. It was a blow your heart out day. A clean up your insides day. A "watch the wind whistle through your heart" day.

I told you I fell for this beautiful Canadian gal who was on my trip. All was on the up and up till after every medicine was done and it was just time to have a party. Until then I was right on the mark with what I need to do as a trip leader.

But boy, I thought she was swell, and as I've told you, I have not had the man part of me appreciated for a long time. I'm not talking about sex. I'm talking about someone wanting to sit and talk with me, someone wanting to kiss me and hold my hand. Simple, profound stuff.

So I came home thinking she'd come down to Texas next month and we'd see where we stood. I was looking forward to it.

Seems it's not going to happen, as I noted a couple of posts back. She's got a full life and had a full life before she met me, and now that she's back to it, well, it's still full and I don't really fit. Good enough. I still had a few days that no one can take away and they were fantastic.

So yesterday is a full moon in my opposite or whatever. I was feeling under the gun from pressure to get a cover story written in too short a time, in wishing that woman would make a change in her plans and get down here if I bought her a ticket, and then I went to the mailbox and what did I find? A small package from my first real lover, CL. I've written about her in this blog and in the book and we had nearly 15 years together--though some of that was jagged--and I simply was not ready to accept love. I thought it constrained me and so I was the most lousy passive-aggressive person you could ever meet. What a freaking louse I was to this very very fantastic and giving woman.

Anyway, she finally left and married a guy and had the greatest 25-years she could have had and though I often missed her, I never interfered.

I was in touch last year for a phone call, after her beloved husband died. A few months later. Strange story that I've already related here.

So to get a package from her yesterday was astounding.

In it was a note to "P" from "Cl" and there was an outline of a small whistle we used to use together. I kept my whistle but never imagined she'd kept hers. Opening and reading that note just blew my mind.

Part of the note explained that she was sending back a ring that my mom, Madeleine, got from my dad, Tom, after she went crazy one night and had Tom cut her wedding ring off. This was what he gave her as a substitute.

Mom gave it to me to give to Cl as a measure of my love. She didn't think it was right that I was living with a beautiful woman who didn't have a ring on her finger.

So Cl wrote that she wanted to give my mom, Madeleine's ring to my daughter, Madeleina.

You don't think I was crying all over the place? Freaking watered the lawn. Nicest think she could have done and that from one of the nicest people God ever bothered to fashion.

The outline of the whistle on the note was an indication that it was okay to call her, so I looked her up and did. I kept it short, wasn't high, was nice. It was lovely to hear her voice but sad to hear that she's still having a tough time with her husband's passing.

An hour later, my beautiful Canadian called me to tell me I was fantastic and that she adored me but I wouldn't quite fit in with her life right now. I understand. Don't like it, cause I fell for her, but I do understand.

And then I decided to go to sleep: My first real love--and I am not short changing those who came before her, only that she's the one I stayed with, even if I was a cruel idiot--wrote and reminded me how valuable she was and is. Then I spoke with my most recent love who reminded me that while I was special, I wasn't quite special enough.

You don't think that was a tough couple of hours?

Every now and then the Universe just says: Tag! You're it!

And then you are.

And yesterday was my day to be "it".

Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I'm gonna dance a little tonight. Because very very very few people have ever had the love I got from those two very beautiful women/souls. How lucky can one guy be?

Most just don't get as lucky as me.

Thanks, Universe, for the reminder.

CL: That was so so nice...

CL: Thank you for the ring for Madeleina from my mom. It is so simple but something she will remember forever.

You are the best and you have always been the best.

Thank you for being you.

P

Feeling Alright, Not Feeling So Good Myself....

Well, Damnit! This sort of sucks.

I told you all that I fell for someone in Iquitos. I know it was fast, and that she was white and I have not fallen for a white woman since 1987 or so--I just have loved Peruvians since then, but then this woman, a grown up, came into my life and something clicked and that was that.

And she was fantastic for me. Broke open a shell I didn't even know I had built around my heart. Not saying I fell in love--that takes time testing--but I did fall for her.

And then today there was a sort of Dear John letter about a curveball in her life and she'll be in touch and I'm just sayin' that sort of stinks. Did she forget to tell me she had a husband/boyfriend/wife/girlfriend? Did she forget to tell me she's about to do three years in the state pen? Did she put on her glasses and see what I really looked like?

I don't know.

It ain't gonna kill me but I am not really dancing around the house this second, if you know what I mean.

Damnit! I thought she might be a keeper for the next 20 years.

Still, I loved the loving and kissing for the short time I had it. And that was good.

Nuts. Want more.

Just saying what's on my mind is all.

Sorry for the bother/blather.

One more time on food before ayahuasca

I know this topic has come up before, but as someone has brought it up to me again, I thought I'd touch on it. The subject is how important is it to have an empty stomach when drinking ayahuasca. The person who wrote me said they were having a tough time not eating for most of the day prior to drinking the medicine in the evening and wondered if I ever had folks with a similar problem on my jungle trips.

SIDE NOTE ADVERTISEMENT: Next trips are a 21-day jungle/mountain trip in January, 2013, and then a 9 1/2 day jungle intensive in February, 2013. END OF ADVERTISEMENT

I told the fellow that on the ceremony days out in the jungle, I like to get the guests up early and have them take a short hike after a cup of coffee or tea but before breakfast. On that hike we collect the ayahuasca vine we'll be using to make the medicine and the admixture plants that will go into it as well.

Back at base, at about 10 AM I serve everyone a big breakfast. Lots of fruit, veggies, rice, beans and a couple of eggs if they want them. And that's supposed to be it for the day. A little liquid as needed (not as wanted), and they always need some because at noon I send them all out on a beautiful 2-3 hour hike in the lomas, the hills, in first growth forest. It's a hike that will burn up nearly everything in their stomachs.

When they come back from that they can rest, meditate and so forth but they are supposed to not eat anything until after ceremony. And yes, they get hungry. And for those occasional guests who have a fast metabolism, I allow a tangerine. For the others, I prefer they drink water or unsugared/no-milk tea of they need it.

I mean, it does no one any good to come to ceremony dehydrated, physically weak, or so hungry that all you can think of is food. On the other hand, the reality is that each person, when they purge, vomit, on ayahuasca, is going to be allowed to throw up the bile of their lives, the pain they carry around needlessly and often unwittingly. They won't understand that until it happens, but once it does, they will. And they will see the value in lightening up their soul-load so to speak.

Or, they can cheat and eat three granola bars or whatever they have stashed in their bag and then they can throw that up later.

For my money, you can throw food up anytime. The chance to through up the bile of your life, well, that only comes along now and then. So my recommendation is have just enough food/water to keep from being dehydrated/weak during ceremony, but leave it at that.

That's my take on it, anyway.

I

This One's About Italo

This one is about my son, Italo. This is not a knock on my son, Marco, or daughter, Madeleina. No, this one is just to celebrate Italo.

After I came home to find the AC not fixed, among other things, and then got really really sick for a few days, I had some time and so did Italo. He was as pissed off as I at the thought that the people who'd come to fix the attic AC unit had said it would be $3,700--especially when we looked up the units and saw that they ran, new, from $500-$1,200 for the very very top of the line. Heck, the condenser is outside in the stand up unit so the attic unit has coils, relay switches, a fan, a pan to collect condensed water and a tube that runs to and through the outer wall of the house to release that water.

So he decided to try his hand at it. Well, he fell through the ceiling into Marco's old room, which was a pain in the neck, but gave him great access to the fan/fan motor and relay switches, so he worked from there. He yanked the fan and its motor and housing and off we went to a local store and for about $257 bought all that new. Then he installed it with a little help from me, but mostly it was his work.

Unfortunately, the unit still didn't work. So we called an AC guy--a different one from the one I've used in the past, the one who wanted the $3,700 for the $500-$1,200 unit--and had him take a look. Turned out one of the relay switches was out. He went home, got one, came back, installed it. Still didn't work.

So he took a look at the thermostat and guess what? Of the three wires there, one had been put in a position that was a wrong position. Who could have done that? The guy trying to sell the whole unit? Could be, cause he was the only one touched that thermostat.

Then the thing worked. Worked like new. Took some hours to drop from 102--the temp at which we turned it on--to a pleasant 72, but it got there and I wound up having to use a light blanket.

Today, Italo came to close the hole in Marco's old room's ceiling. He left lots of plaster on the floor so I trailed behind him, scraping it up and cleaning the kitchen and hallway tiles. But as I was cleaning up I realized I was getting dripped on. Through the kitchen ceiling. So we turned off the AC and up he climbed. Guess what? Someone had moved the drip pan, the pan that collects the condensed water and sends it out the tube outside, so that the water could not collect in the pan.

Now I know Italo didn't do that because he worked from the hole in Marco's ceiling through the back of the unit. Which leaves whom? Ah, yes, the fellow who said we needed a whole new unit.

Well, Italo got it squared away, checked for leaks in the pan, made sure the tube running to the outside of the house was working and now we're back in business.

So someone tried to job us. Tried to get us to pay $3,700 for a unit we don't think we need. They said the coils were shot but they seem fine. They said the motor was shot but it worked great until he showed up to find out why it was putting out hot air instead of cold (I thought it just needed freon). Turned out it didn't even need freon. But the sabotage, well, I'm not happy about that. Changing wire positions, moving a pan nearly a foot off center--heck, these guys are pros. I could make those mistakes but they shouldn't. I'm not even thinking they were mistakes. I think it was deliberate.

But my kid, my Italo, he's a pitbull when he decides he wants to fix something. And it's done. And he did it. And if it turns out we still need a whole unit, well, even adding $600 or so for the unit to the $500 we've put into it we'll still save $2600.

I'm gonna owe my son a new set of tires for that.

Way to go, Italo. Thanks for being my kid.

My Sisters' Birthday

Today is July 28. It's Independence Day for Peru. There are fantastic celebrations going on down there in Iquitos right now--though I am not there--I'm sure of that. It's also the birthday of my Irish Twin sisters Pat and Regina. They were both born on July 28, Pat in 1947, and Regina in 1955. Same day, years apart, is called Irish Twins. I guess it happens quite a bit in the old country--not unreasonable given that so many had so many children and the cold snaps, the time you might just want to cuddle up, are fairly predictable and very regular. Until the speeded up global warming, anyway.

My sister Pat is the gal, who, with here partner Frank Olinski, designed the MTV logo. It was the first logo that changed constantly while keeping a few established elements. It earned their company, Manhattan Design, a slot in Time Magazine's 100 Top Designs of the 20th Century. She's been ill for quite a while now, but she's a fighter and I hope she pulls through.

When she was a kid she gave us younger kids--I was four years younger, Barbara six years younger and Reg eight years younger--horse rides on her back through the house and had different names for the different personalities of the horses she pretended to be. I generally liked her bucking bronco horse.

I love you, Pat. Thanks for being my sister.

Regina was my baby sister. She was the one I was just old enough to baby when she was born. I mean, I was 4 1/2 to her birth, and so I got to take care of her a lot. Gosh, she was one of the most beautiful women in the world. And she's got an Irish heart of gold. You need something? Before you asked it was at your feet. That kind of generous.

Unfortunately, coming last in a fairly long line, all of whom were very smart in school, her personal defense was to be lousy in school until she dropped out of high school. We didn't care. She was plenty smart but preferred to go to Manhattan and wait tables and make money to doing math.

Until she married Tom Leonard--my great, late brother-in-law whom I have written about several times on this blog. He pushed her to get her high school GED, the diploma equivalent. And when she did, he pushed her to go to Hunter College of the City University of New York--a great university and a great college--and she did and she finally got through and graduated at about 37 or so, then got her Masters, then began teaching in Harlem, New York when it was still tough and while there her school awarded her Teacher of the Year honors twice.

She's still teaching, but I don't think she has to teach too much longer to get her pension. She's been doing it for 20 years by now I think. Or close to it. And putting up with New York City public schools as a teacher, well, you earn every cent of that pension.

I love you, Reg. Thanks for being my sister.

Pat and Reg: Both of you, along with Mike, Peg and Barbara, were the best team I was ever on, and I boast about my current jungle team all the time. So know that you were not just good, but you all helped shape me, for better or worse.

Happy Birthday, Pat and Reg! I hope this is your best year yet!

Pete

Something About the Peru Trips

Without going all grandiose, and I mean that sincerely, there is something about doing the Peru trips the way that I do them that is very intimate. My guests know that our circle is inviolate, and that any stories emerging from the trip must never include names or particulars that can identify anyone. I mean, who wants that funny story told about how they pooped themselves and had to be changed by the Gorman team? Or who might be in a child custody case and then someone posts a youtube video of them drinking ayahuasca and that winds up costing them custody of their children. No. None of that is public. And my guests have been very very good at keeping those stories nameless over all these years.

That's one kind of intimacy.

There are others. One of the others is that my team and I, watching out for the guests, not-interfering but making sure they can make it off the platform hut without breaking an ankle or to the bathroom most of the time in time, are encouraging people to eliminate the bile of their lives. We're working with the medicine to give them an opportunity--and it is deliberate, not happenstance--to get rid of the pain they are carrying needlessly. I mean, you lied to your mom about selling her car 20 years ago but she died 12 years ago---well, carrying that guilt is not helping you become a better person. So botale, throw up the pain you no longer need. Remember to never do that or lie about it again, so hold the memory, but throw up the pain associated with the guilt. It's past time to toss that and stand just a little taller with a little less weight on your back.

Unfortunately, my team and I, and I am the freaking specialist, wind up catching just a bit of that pain, anger, guilt...we wind up eating some of those sins though we don't mean to. And those sins, that pain, they have a life of their own and once it is in you (me) who knows how it will show itself?

This trip it showed up as simply conjunctivitis. Painful, nearly blind for a few days, but gone in two weeks with the right antibiotic shots and antibiotic eyedrops. But that turns out not to be all. The last three days I've sat in my home in Texas sweating, sweating, sweating. Cold showers but still sweating. Not a relapse of malaria, just the grippe. But nasty. And today I've got pink eye, styes, in both eyes. And the air conditioner we just fixed is not getting any electricity. Why? Don't know. Just interference from some nasty bit of filth I picked up from someone who was letting it go--a nasty bit of filth with a life of its own and which outsmarted me when I thought I was putting it somewhere where it could do no further harm.

I'll get better, and the second air con man in three days is coming over to repair things. But the things he is going to repair don't need any repair. They just need a choking force pulled off their wires. Because we know we already changed all the wires and everything worked.

So I'm not complaining, just noting that once again the universe is having a bit of a laugh at my expense. I'm sure I earned it.

Sounds like I've lost my mind to most of you, I'll bet. I haven't. I just see the life force in everything--and I mean everything--and none of it wants to die. And all of it will do any and everything that can be done not to leave this plane of existence. It's not a game. It's just the way life works: Life comes with an unwillingness to die.

Back Home Again, Again

So Madeleina and I made it home from Peru yesterday. A long haul after 51 days there and neither of us wanted to make the move. We did three jungle trips and all went well or better than that. I managed to escape the worst of the physical disasters, though I got conjunctivitis twice and the second time was a freaking bear, lasting two weeks and still causing me to wear sun glasses because the light hurts my eyes so much. But that beats flesh eating bacteria, exploding intestines, near fatal spider bites and so forth. Perhaps I simply didn't work hard enough this time to earn a near death experience--though even as I write that I realize I sound so catholic and guilty that in just saying it I might earn something terrible tonight.

Well, tonight is going to be terrible anyway. The day we left the air conditioner for the house shut down. Replacement was estimated at $3,700, more than the house is worth. Plus, I just changed the outside unit for two grand last year and don't feel like borrowing more money to keep cool. So Italo has been working on it for two days and replaced a lot of parts. He also fell through the ceiling yesterday, so now I not only need a new air conditioning unit, I also need a new ceiling in Marco's old room, which is now the guest room, though it's currently so filled up with sticky mouse traps and insulation that came down with Italo that I can't imagine a guest really wanting to stay there.

Then there was the stove that broke while we were gone, and the cat that ran away, and the scorpion laying in wait just under my keyboard for me--tiny nasty one that I managed to get before it got me. Then Chepa brought the babies over and all was right with the world. I mean all was right. So what that my trucks don't work anymore, or that it's 104 degrees in the house, or that Chepa borrowed everything I had and someone spilled ayahuasca all over the fridge and that it took me five hours to clean it out today? None of that matters in the face of having the babies around. And none of that matters in the face of Italo and Marco--who did a fantastic job of mowing the lawn while I was gone, thank you very much--hanging around since I got back. And none of that matters in the face of Madeleina staying with me and backing me up for the last seven weeks. Those are the things that matter.

Oh, and I fell for a woman in Iquitos. Let's see where it goes--and Madeleina says she'll burn the house down if I bring here here for a visit--but so far it was great. A pretty woman thought I was not the ugliest fat white old man on the planet. She actually thought I was handsome and wanted to kiss me in public. Man, that part of me, the man part, has not had input in nearly 12 years. I don't mean I have not had girlfriends, but I do mean that they have been few and long in between and then suddenly this beautiful woman is kissing me and I'm kissing her back and it was fantastic. Felt like I was just 60 all over again......or 34.

Madeleina didn't talk to me for days, but I hope she'll get over it. We'll see. Cause I'm gonna invite that gal down to visit and she says she's dying to come. All quite new and unexpected for me. I can't quite get my breath.

I'm not gonna kiss and tell, but I will say I love the kisses.

And that's my hello to you.

Anybody got a spare house air conditioner, let me know.

Glad to be back with you all. Thanks for putting up with the long silence.