Time to Eat to Heal the Pain

I'm having a tough day. My daughter needed $180 for a couple of things. My ex needed $100 twice this week, plus she needed me to pay for one of her new child's ( whom I adore) lunches. Plus I had a flat and had to have the tire guy come out to my house to take it off, bring it to the shop and give me a new tire for $120. Plus my Saturday night car, my Crown Vic, lost it's power steering and the new power steering part cost $164. That's about $720 for those counting. And my book residuals from Ayahuasca in My Blood and Sapo in My Soul came to about $350 this month. So this is not a winning financial formula. This is a losing formula. And do NOT get me started on Trump asshats who kill people at his command and then he runs away like a sissy and blames the killings he encouraged on others. BS! But I'm trying to keep my sanity.
So my daughter asked for Uncle Clem's Chicken. I have probably talked about it before. Uncle Clem, my godfather, made a dish that he entered into the mazolla oil competition. It was seared chicken breast bites on a bed of asparagus, topped with a sauce of Campbell's Mushroom soup and Heilman's mayo, and then topped with cheddar cheese and baked.
My first wife, Clare, changed that to chicken over broccoli with the same sauce, and topped with mozzarella, which was a better dish. Serve that goup over good jasmine rice and you have a winner. So that's what I'm making tonight. Three half chicken breasts to 6 pounds of trimmed broccoli, so it's mostly a broccoli dish with a little chicken. But that's what it is going to take the stench of Trump and his bullshit out of my nose and soul. Wow! Great meal. Hate to waste it on eliminating horrible nonsense that's not grounded in reality.
Eat well. If you are hungry, come on over, I'm sure there will be plenty for everyone.

The current refugee caravan and other refugees

The way this caravan goes, and the way waves of refugees go is this:
The United States and corporations based here create untenable situations for humans all over the world, then wonder why people want to leave their homelands and come here to escape those hells we created. And then we have a president who wants to ignore international law regarding the treatment of people who ask for asylum--who have to be allowed in the country until their claim of asylum-need is evaluated. Traditionally they go to family or friends awaiting their court date, at which nearly 95 percent appear. We've stood that on its head and now incarcerate them, most of them, until their appearance date. Dehumanizing people for fleeing a situation we created for them. We are not the great nation we claim to be, not by a long shot.

A hint at what I stand for

A friend of mine and I often disagree on fb. She puts up bad memes that spread lies and hate and says it's up to the reader to discern what's true or not, for instance, and I really don't like people who do that. Today she accused me of worshipping at the altar of the democrats. This was my response:
As to worshipping Dems, I'm so far to the left of Bernie Sanders it ain't funny. I think we should all get paid about equally: I worked kitchens and drove cabs and did painting in NYC apartment buildings and carried lumber 10 blocks to get it to site and no brain surgeon should make more than the people who do those jobs do. AND NO writer like me, semi famous or not, should make more than a good dishwasher. And certainly not idiot insurance CEOs or lawyers, or paper pushing people on Wall Street, or elected officials. Hell, those jobs are for generally stupid people who are afraid of real work because they know they'd never measure up. I've met lots of dishwashers who went on to become doctors, but I never met a doctor who would be able to wash dishes in a restaurant in New York City. And no, I do not believe you should be able to inherit anything more than the house your parents had and enough money for its upkeep. Every thing else goes into the pool and we get it to poor people, or people who cannot fend for themselves because of physical or mental disability, and we bring them up to the level of everyone else. And I want nearly every prison shut down because while their job is to educate and rehabilitate, we use them as punishment and that is not their description. So yes, some people need a time out from society, but our system ain't it. And I do not believe one single person would work less hard if they knew they couldn't become millionaires. They either like their work or quit. I don't care. And if you want to drink too much or do drugs, hell, let's put that stuff on every street corner, with a notice: You will not be assisted if you over indulge. So no, I do not worship at the alter of the dems. I liked Obama because he was a straight shooter, a regular guy who interacted with regular people fairly often for a president. I liked Ike, though I was young, because he did not like the idea of a military buildup despite being a General. I hated Johnson for the buildup of Vietnam, but loved him for THE GREAT SOCIETY and civil rights work-- even if he had to be dragged kicking and screaming. So you and doc got me all wrong. You know me and know that I am all about sharing and trying to make the best of things for everyone, from my team in the Amazon to my family, even if that means sacrifice for me. That's okay. Sacrifice for the betterment of others is a good thing.

Sapo/Kambo and your arteries

Someone was asking about sapo/kambo and it's effects on the human body. People were discussing temporary blood pressure lowering. I disagree. Here's my simple argument:
I'm going to go out on a limb--because I am not a medical doctor--and contradict George M a little. I see the vasodilation very differently than most people. I picture a balloon that you blow up for your kids and let fly around the living room. You blow it up 20 times and it flies and flies. Finally, it disappears behind the couch, and nobody finds it for a month, until you are doing a deep cleaning and move the couch and your kid sees the balloon and says "Dad, here's that balloon! Blow it up!" Of course you can't because the sugars and so forth in your breath have dried and made the balloon taught. To blow it up you have to stretch it out, vein by vein, until the sugars have dropped off because of the stretching and the balloon can be blown up and sent around the room again. Your arteries are like that balloon: Garbage gets stuck on them and it dries and cakes and shrivels little portions of your arteries, allowing less and less blood flow to your vital organs. Now you add a good dose or 10 of sapo/kambo and the peptides blow those arteries wide open and that garbage, stuck in the corners, starts to fall off into your blood stream for elimination. Not all at once. I have no idea how many times it takes but if you blow those arteries open enough to lose one percent of the accumulated garbage--like stretching that dried out balloon--you wind up with a permanent one percent more blood and more oxygen going to your vital organs. Do it again and get them open a bit more. Remember that it took your entire life to clog those arteries, so when you stretch them and the crud falls off, it will take another lifetime to replace that crud. After a number of sessions you might be getting a permanent two, three, four percent more blood/oxygen to your organs, which means you will permanently see/hear/smell better, have your kidneys and liver working more optimally, have your heart and lungs functioning at a higher level, have your stomach digesting better. And you will have permanently lower blood pressure because your arteries are a bit more wide open than they were.

More Joy, Less Pain -- the movie

My friend, Mike McCoy, is nearing the finish of a full length documentary called More Joy, Less Pain. The title comes from an ayahuasca vision I had during the breakup of my marriage: I realized that at every moment I felt pain or my buttons being pushed I responded badly and caused more pain. Then I woke one night with the words "more joy, less pain" etched into my brain. It took a couple of days to see how that phrase could be useful to me, and then I had another squabble with my wife/ex-wife and in the middle of it I realized that if I responded angrily, I would cause more pain for myself, and especially for my kids. If I chose to respond cheerfully -- and that was flippin' hard -- the argument defused and the kids didn't hear us screaming, which produced more joy and less pain. I have tried to infuse that into all aspects of my life -- at least when others are present, because I still allow myself an occasional primal scream in private -- and it has really made a difference for me.
I'm very proud that Mike McCoy has chosen that title for his pretty wonderful movie about northwest Amazonia, medicine, and to some extent, me. He's done such a good job that my daughter Madeleina, on seeing a screening of it recently, noted: "Holy shit, Mike! That was great. And you even managed to make my dad look cool!"

How long will ayahuasca last?

Someone posted on a forum page the question of using ayahuasca that was a couple of years old. This was my response:
I always recook ayahuasca even if it is being used just two days apart. If it is thick, add water to thin it and then cook and smoke and reduce again. If it tastes clean, regardless of the age, I use it. If it has a sour or fermented taste even after recooking, I toss it. But I generally find that if it is cooked well in the jungle, then recooked two days later for a second use in the jungle, then recooked in Iquitos, then recooked the day I return home, that it lasts for years in the fridge, with full potency. The last recooking, the fifth, is saved for the day it is being served. All recooking is done with full attention, mapacho smoke, and singing. It's also done in stainless steel pots and stored in containers that are cleaned, dried and smoked.