My Son Marco's Birthday

Today is my son Marco's 19th birthday. All right, everybody: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARCO!
It's been a fairly amazing life with him so far. No one, with the exception of his mother, ever tested me, pushed me, prodded me, like Marco has. Difficult would not begin to touch it. Yet I love him thoroughly and wonderfully.
I met Marco when he was just 4. I'd fallen in love with his mom and asked her to marry me. She didn't take me seriously: Gringos in Iquitos fall in love easily--as do the girls--but there's a long way between falling in love and marrying a woman with two young boys, like Chepa had. Didn't matter to me: though I'd never wanted kids I knew that with her it would be no problem.
I shoulda run when I had the chance...or at the very least when I saw Marco, always thin, out in front of a joint called Ari's Burger--at the time the only place where a gringo could go to get a cup of coffee--his arms cleverly hidden in his shirt, posing as an armless urchin and begging money from tourists. I might have run when we got to New York and he was about 6 and I took the family grocery shopping for the first time. It was a nice supermarket, a Gristedes, and when we paid and got out I realized Marco was eating a candy bar. The problem was I hadn't bought any. So I sort of went crazy and dragged him back into the store and called for the manager and made Marco pay for the candy he'd stolen--my money, of course--and apologize. Marco wasn't happy, and asked if he could keep the other candy. "What other candy?" I asked in front of the manager. Marco smiled and took out more than a dozen candy bars and packages of gum and then glumly turned them over when told he couldn't keep them.
We got outside and I was still lecturing on the evils of stealing when Marco, unphased, reached into one of his coat pockets and pulled out a candy bar and offered it to me. Nothing I could do but laugh at that point. Kid must have had 10 more than he'd turned in. But the lesson wasn't lost on him. Steal. Apologize and return some. Keep the rest. Dad will laugh.
And I should have known it would be difficult between me and Marco when once, in Iquitos we had to walk from Belen--the market--back to the Hotel Isabel where we were staying, a good 8 block walk. Well Marco, then probably 7, didn't want to do it. So I carried him, then I dragged him, kicking and screaming, and finally just left him to follow Chepa and I to a joint around the corner from the hotel where we were going to get a beer. Marco came in and sat at a table nearby but wouldn't look at us. We had a soda brought for him but while he drank the soda he still wouldn't look at us.
A few minutes later several police, all armed with automatics, came in and looked around the joint. They asked who we were. I told them and asked what was up. They said they'd received a report that a gringo and a local girl had been seen dragging a child down the street and they thought it was an abduction. They asked if we knew the boy at the table near us. I told them he was our son, Vinny (he changed his name to Marco when he was 10 or so). They walked over to him and asked if we were his parents. Very deliberately he shook his head no. They asked if he'd ever seen us before and he shook his head no. They asked if we'd dragged him down the street and he nodded his head, yes. Took me and Chepa about two hours and half-a-dozen beers for the cops until they believed our story.
But then he got sick and nearly died and when the nurses couldn't find veins--he was on medication that swelled him up--I had to hold him down for the nurses to take blood and man, you should never have to hold down your son for his own good like that. He screamed wildly, three times a day while the nurses searched for blood under his fingernails, from his thighs, under his tongue, anywhere they could find even the littlest vein.
In New York once at grammer school I got a call from the school principle saying Marco had been in a fight. I asked if he was alright. She said yes, but that the other kid had a broken nose and the police would be calling. Then she added that the kid had been picking on Marco for days and Marco had put up with it until that morning when the kid jumped on his back and he turned around and lashed out and broke his nose. "You should have seen it, Mr. Gorman. It was wonderful to see that bully just lay down and cry. You've got a great kid there."
I got another call from his middle school a couple of years later. "This is Sgt. Broklen, NYPD. We've got your son down here at the school and we need you to come down and talk with us."
I got on my bicycle and was there in three minutes flat. They told me Marco had a butterfly knife at school. They showed me a zerox copy of it and asked if I knew it. I said it was mine, part of my collection of interesting things like butterfly knives.
The story was that Marco had brought it to school and traded it with a kid for two dollars. The other kid took it out to show it off, was caught and asked where he got it. He ratted on Marco, hence the call to me. The cop was fine, just wanted to let me know that while Marco hadn't shown it to people or scared people or anything, he still shouldn't/couldn't bring things like butterfly knives to school anymore.
One of the assistant principles got upset. "That's all? Just a reprimand?" she demanded, and when the officer said he didn't see the need for anything further she added: "DO you know what he did with the two dollars? He bought pornography!" She flashed a rolled up magazine in front of me and the others in the room.
"Now just hold on a sec," I interrupted. "I'm very angry that Marco stole my knife. I'm angry that he doesn't realize that when he sold it he might be selling it to someone who could hurt other people with it. But the fact that a 12-year-old was later caught having used the money from the sale of the knife for pornography is not a bad thing. That's a good and normal thing. He's supposed to have porno at that age. May I see the magazine?"
"No you may not!"
"Well, then, can you at least tell me if it's straight or gay pornography so I'll know how to deal with him on sexual issues?"
The woman almost feinted; the cop nearly busted a gut laughing.
When we moved to Texas Marco didn't change. First party we had one of his friends--who has since gone on to be a professional bull rider--broke off the nipple from our house air conditioning unit and all the kids huffed the freon. I didn't find out about it till the next Spring when we went to use the air conditioner and there was no gas. I went through the roof and thanked the creator that none of them died.
Couple of years ago he called me from a party and asked me to pick him up. He was dead drunk. Police had come to the party after the kids started a bonfire behind the house. Marco had to walk a line and failed miserably but for some reason didn't arrest him. That was nice of him. I wasn't nearly as nice. Bonfires in Texas have a way of getting out of hand. Marco got the point. Not that night, of course, but the next day, while he was ill. The hangover turned him off alcohol.
On the other hand, after having broken every electronic device we ever owned up until he was 15, he can now fix any electronic device on the planet. And after not doing homework--except under threat of murder by me--he managed to graduate from high school last year with pretty good grades and a very legit diploma. And now he's working and getting to be more of a man every day. And he still hugs me and has learned how to say please and thank you over the years and I think he's going to turn out to be one hell of a man.
Thanks for being my son, Marco. Happy Birthday, boy.

Investigation 101

Don't mean to bore you all with another story about writing, but someone wrote recently--after a new cover story investigative piece of mine came out in the local alternative weekly I work for--and asked how long it took me to dig up the dirt I was dishing. He wrote because he's about to enter journalism school and was thinking about being an investigative reporter.
I told him about the weeks/months/dozens of interviews involved but the real key, aside from always making another phone call, doing one more interview, cross-checking one more time, is being creative when you have to.
I just wrote about the circumstances of how I became a writer, but I didn't say how I became an investigative journalist. This is it.
I'd done some stories for High Times on ayahuasca, nu-nu, the phychedelic plant doctor and maybe one other, when I got a call to come to the offices. There, my editor in chief talked to me about Earth First! There had just been a big story about them in, I think, Rolling Stone or Esquire, and my boss wanted the High Times version. The big story was wonderfully written, but as Earth First! leaders were all wanted by the FBI at the time there was no new talk from any of them in the piece. So my boss, Steve Hager, told me he wanted an interview with Judi Bari or Darryl Cherney of Dave Foreman or any of them. "Something fresh. Something nobody else has," he said.
Which was great. I had no idea where to even start. Hell, if the FBI couldn't find them, how the heck could I?
I'd never done an investigation before, at least not like this. So I went back over the piece in the other magazine. Over and over. I looked at the pictures of the people in Earth First! to see if there was a clue. Nothing.
Essentially, I was perfectly willing to give up because it was an impossible task. I had nothing to go on at all.
And then maybe two or three weeks after Hager had asked for the story, I was watching a football game in my apartment in NYC when a lightbulb went off over my head. I jumped up and went back to look at the pictures of the Earth First! crew again. And there it was: Dave Foreman looked like a bear of a man. A big guy. The kind of guy who probably played high school football. And probably still liked to watch football. And maybe liked to drink beer while he did.
The article said that Foreman had grown up--if I'm remembering correctly--in Wyoming, or had some Wyoming connection so I decided to start there. There was no Internet at the time, and I wouldn't use a computer for another 3-4 years (I think this was 1988), so I got on the horn and called Information and got the first five alphabetical names and phone numbers of bars/restaurants in Wyoming. Five was all the phone lady would give me. So I called back and got five more. And again and again until I had I think--again, if I remember correctly--283 bar names, addresses and phone numbers for the state. Thank god it was Wyoming and not California.
Then I began making calls. It took days. At each I'd say something like "I'm Peter Gorman from High Times magazine. I'm trying to reach Dave Foreman. If anyone knows him can you pass this number along? I want to talk with him."
I think I was through about 130 or so, about half the list, a week later, when I was watching football on the next Sunday again and the phone rang. "Is this Peter Gorman?" "Yes." Click.
The next day it happened again. "Is this Peter Gorman?" "Yes." Click.
There were no phones with caller ID back then, or redial, so I had no idea who or what it was about and didn't think about it much.
The next day the same phone call.
And then the fourth day it started the same. "Is this Peter Gorman?" "Yes." Pause. "This is Dave Foreman. You wanted to talk with me?"
Man, you should have seen my heart beat just then. I was on the phone with a guy the FBI was actively looking for and couldn't find. What a thrilling moment that was.
I don't know that my interview was all that great, to be honest, but it still made the cover of High Times and from that point on I thought of myself as an investigative reporter.
Years later, while I was interviewing everyone I could think of that was connected with early years of LSD, from Leary to Beresford, to Ram Dass to Ginsberg to Hofmann, I was trying to reach Ken Kesey. Wavy Gravy had given me Kesey's private line--I think it was Fish Lips or some such--but warned me that Kesey didn't generally take phone calls. I called his home and spoke with his wife--she said he wouldn't speak with me. I called the Fish number several times and got no answer. But I really wanted Kesey to be part of the 50 Years of LSD special issue of High Times that Bill Weinberg and I were putting together.
And then it was a Saturday and I was in the apartment and the Oregon college game was on in the background. And then it hit me, just like it hit me with Foreman: Kesey was a wildman but must love football. Still, if he did, he wasn't going to answer the phone during the game. So I waited till halftime and the moment the half ended I was on the phone and sure enough he answered. I blurted out: "It's halftime so I know you got 10 minutes. I want to talk about LSD. This is Peter Gorman and I already got Ginsberg and Ken Babbs and I need you...."
It all came out as one long word, I'll bet. Nonetheless, he laughed. "How the fuck did you know I'd be watching the game? And don't waste time, the clock's ticking."
And then he told me about LSD.
So I guess football has been very very good to me.
And investigations, when they pan out, are freaking fantastic.

How I Wound Up Being a Writer

Okay, this may not be something people care about much, but lately for some reason I've been reliving some of my past, both in waking and dreaming time. It's been on me and I've not been able to shake it. Perhaps I'm trying to get rid of some stuff that my intestinal explosion couldn't eliminate. Anyway, I don't know that this is of interest, but I hope it is. That said,......

I was the fourth of six kids born to Madeleine and Thomas Gorman in Whitestone, Queens, in a time when Whitestone still had a couple of farms left and a huge swamp, Dupey's, where there were snakes, possum, quail, turtles and so forth, all of which wound up in our back yards sometimes. It was country living in New York City in the 1950s and it was great. As an Irish family, or at least as our Irish family, we were all expected to supplement our 10-15-25 cent allowances with jobs, and at age 6 my job was taking in the neighbors trash cans on pickup days. I probably had 5 clients and I wasn't very good, but then I was only 6 years old. By 8 I was the night delivery boy for Frankel's Pharmacy, bringing drugs and diapers to 10-15 people daily for three hours, while Mr. Frankel, the pharmacist, ground his potions and put them in capsules for his clients. By 10 I worked as a soda jerk at Joe's, a soda/ice cream/newspaper joint on 24th avenue. I could make the heck out of an egg cream, a float, a banana split and so forth. And if you asked for a half-pint of ice cream, I filled that thing till the flaps couldn't possibly close.
My brother and sisters did the same. Mike was the oldest. He's now a judge in the Bronx and a lawyer/investigator for another lawyer part time. He retired from the NYC Police Dept a lieutenant about 10 years ago with 30 years on the job. During that time he became a lawyer and prosecuted dirty cops. But he was/is a fair guy. If he caught guys sleeping on the job he'd find out how many days they were on patrol, and if it seemed like a lot to him--having done patrol for years--he'd find a way to botch the case and the guy would be off the hook. Mike always did have a good sense of fairness.
Growing up, Mike was a great athlete. He played baseball for Archbishop Molloy high school--one of the best in the country at the time--and later for St. John's University, a perennial top-20 baseball school in the early to mid-sixties. He later played ball for a sort of Mets Class D farm team: he and others weren't going to make the pros, but a lot of pros on the mend from physical ailments or alcohol or drugs played on those teams with him, so it had some class. And until he turned 63 he still batted 4th and played first base for a baseball league. He never made the pros, was never signed. He was fast but not blinding; hit well but not exceptionally; played good defence but not brilliant defence; threw well but not fantastically. And the pros only go by those four things. So while he might have been able to hit .290 in the pros, without the power, or speed, or fantastic arm, he didn't catch their eyes. I know because I spoke with lots of scouts who came to see him and I was the team batboy. They always said: He's great, but doesn't do one of the four keys so well that we can't skip him. Man, that stuff made me want to die, because I watched Mike work out all year long, put weights on the end of a bat and swing it 100 times a day in the basement of our house, helped him play infield by hitting sometimes 50 balls daily to him on rocky fields and knew how good he really was.
Pat was second. She was a great artist from the git go. I've written about her before on this blog so I won't go into it here, except to remind you that she's brilliant, recognized by Time Magazine as having designed one of the top 100 designs of the Century--the MTV logo, which changed the face of design--and had Sting as a personal client for 10 years. She also won an Emmy or two, was full scholarship to Pratt and so forth.
Peg was a baton twirling thing of beauty. She teamed with Pat on some awesome doubles but as a solo she was North American East Coast singles champ one year, just to give you an idea.
Now my dad, Thomas B. Gorman, was an actor. He did 2,000 television shows and 7 Broadway shows and once had his name aboe the title of Gore Vidal's Tony Award/Pulitzer Prize Winning play The Best Man, after he replaced Lee Tracy as Art Hocksteader in that. "TOM GORMAN in GORE VIDAL'S THE BEST MAN" at the Morosco theater. So he was good.
And my mom was a radio actress credited with coining the "des, dem, dos" version of Brooklynese on a radion show created for her. She later raised us all, then went back to school, became a teacher, and finally returned to the stage before she died.
So then here I am. I'm the fourth. It seemed like every possible thing was taken. What the heck was I supposed to shine at?
Well, one of the things my brother Mike made me do for a winter one time was write jokes. I had to write jokes for 3 hours every Saturday morning as a discipline. My father, before he made it as a character actor, had been Arthur Godfrey's main joke writer, and had written for Robert Q. Lewis and Henry Morgan and others, so Mike thought we ought to do that. So I got used to writing.
And then in high school, at Bishop Reilly HS, in Queens, NY, everyone in the school had to write something creative for the Robert Frost Competition, something John F. Kennedy had mandated while still president and alive. All high school kids in the whole USA had to submit something.
I submitted a poem and won a second place among sopohmores at my school. Which meant I won. And nobody in my house had ever won a prize for writing before. So I thought I might become the writer of the Gormans and let the others do what they did. I was so darned proud.
By the next year I won a first prize and a third prize, and in my senior year I won national honorable mention for a play I wrote that was later staged at my school. Now that was something.
So I thought of myself as a writer and wrote throughout college. I managed to get four plays produced off-off Broadway, even got covered by local tv news a couple of times. I was supposed to be an up-and-comer. But then my last play got produced at the Lincoln Center Library Theater--which sat 400 and was free to the public--and the public didn't like it. They threw fruit at the actors, stood and ranted, and so forth. I didn't realize at the time--I mean I saw it but didn't really realize it--that the library theater was afternoon home to a lot of homeless people who had strong views and liked to share them. Nonetheless, I was humiliated and stopped writing plays.
Instead I wrote novels: Nobody published them. I wrote a children's book called "I've Never Seen A Cat Do That" ((Uncle to nephew):"Or a cat who goes walking with a pack on his back, moving through woods that are darker than black?(Nephew to uncle): I've never seen a cat do that. (Uncle to nephew): Have you heard of the cat who tames tigers by banks of the river? He keeps them all happy by feeding them liver. (Nephew to uncle): I've never seen a cat do that...") which was so brilliantly illustrated by a pal that one of the big kids' book publishers wanted it until she tore all the original drawings up.
So I turned to short stories after college and won some prizes, had maybe 20 published in small mags and journals and earned about $30 each--not a lot for a month of work. But I was earning a living driving a taxi, and then later cooking, and then later being a chef in good NYC joints and writing when I could.
Then I got a call from an editor, my first editor-call ever, asking me if I'd write a piece about Sex in New York. I'd never done a non-fiction piece before. The paper was The Aquarian, a weekly music mag out of New York city with an editor/owner, Jim Rensinbrink, who liked to publish poetry and fiction and who had published maybe five of my stories by then. So I did it. And then another. And then I headed down to Peru with pals and sent him one piece a week on our travels. And when I got home I discovered he'd gone out of business and all my pieces had been returned to me.
So I looked them over. They were good. I investigated a bit and found a book on marketing magazine stories and sent them out to the places that seemed appropriate. Walking Magazine sent me a contract for $700 for a piece on the Inca Trail; International Living sent me a $200 dollar contract for a piece on a little Amazon town called Requena. Two or three others were also sold and then finally High Times mag sent me a contract for $300 for a story on my having taken ayahuasca, the wonderful jungle medicine.
Man, I was hooked on non-fiction. All my years of writing fiction had brought in maybe a grand. One seven-week trip produced more than two grand, just for having fun and paying attention to where I was.
The following year I returned to the Amazon and sold High Times three stories for nearly a grand each, more than paying for the trip, and a year after that Penthouse bought a story. Then Omni, then Playboy, then Geo, and Die Zeit and Wildlife Conservation and dozens of others. Suddenly I made 25 grand in a year as a writer and was able to go part time as a chef. I loved being a chef, loved inventing one new dish daily--my credo/my discipline--but after 18 years I was getting tired of it. And then here this was. And then High Times hired me to be their drug war reporter and the next thing you knew, 10 years later, I was the editor in chief there. Wow. Time flies and so does life but I hope I made a difference in the lives of some people by getting them freed of prison, or getting them to realize the realities of what they were doing, and even finally helping get major laws changed, like when Henry Hyde had an aide call me for my forfeiture series and then began working for a change in the forfeiture laws.
And somehow, somehow, I've been able to raise this crazy family of mine on investigative reporting for nearly 20 years now, just like my father raised us on being a character actor. I'll bet he's happy if he looks at me. He knows I try really hard.
Anyway, more than anyone needed to know. I was just a kid trying to do something special that my brother and sisters didn't do and that little Robert Frost contest third-place win was the thing.
Who'd have guessed a little thing like that would sort of direct a life's work, eh?

Ganja on the Ganges

Okay. Some of you might have seen this in Cannabis Culture about a year ago. Some of you might have seen it on my archives. But I just re-read it and laughed so I think it's still got some punch. I know it's got mention of ganja, like the last piece did, but what the heck...I feel like adding this to the blog and so I'm gonna do just that. Enjoy.

Ganja on the Ganges

By Peter Gorman


It was 1988 and I was already well into my 30s before I got to India. Everyone in the whole world arrived before me but I didn’t mind: India is just too damned India-ish for all the hippies, hypsters, gawkers or squalkers to change it much. Pale-skinned Hare Krishnas at the Bombay airport paled in comparison with real Sadhus—holy men—and their followers; St. Patrick’s Cathedral was a simple stone building when compared with the Taj Mahal; traffic jams on the LA Freeway were a walk in the park next to the camels, sacred cows, rickshaws, cars, trucks and sea of humanity that pushed through Pushcar during the annual Mela.
I’d been there about a month before I got to Varanasi, the most sacred city in India. During that time I was in a constant state of open-mouthed wonder at everything I saw and heard: 30 days wasn’t nearly enough time to completely eliminate the culture shock of being in a place where rats are sometimes worshipped while an entire class of people are considered untouchable. To ease my transition I’d indulged in several recently-outlawed-but-readily-available treats: I’d smoked pot in Bombay, eaten magic mushrooms in Kodaikanal, smoked bowls of opium in Madras, had chillum’s full of charras in Agra and drank quantities of bhang lassis in Rajasthan. Still, nothing quite prepared me for Varanasi.
One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, it’s as holy for Muslims and Buddists as it is for Hindus. Shiva, according to one legend, is supposed to have laid down and where his body was the river Ganges flowed. It is a city of narrow streets and ancient buildings, the birthplace of Indian art and culture. In Varanasi there are 365 holy days a year and a temple exists to commemorate each. For Hindus, a Pilgrimage to Varanasi and a bath in its waters liberates the soul forever from returning to human form. To have one’s ashes thrown into the Ganges, along which Varanasi was built, assures one of reaching eternal bliss.
The city teems with life. Its markets overflow with the most beautiful saris and silk weavings in all of India. Bowls of fine powdered chalk the women mark their foreheads with come in colors that could make a rainbow blush. Wood carvers and fine painters abound. Sacred cows share space with roaming monkeys. Music from sitars and flutes echoes from every corner and down each alley; car horns blare in contest with the wailing of mourners carrying their dead to the ghats by the river to be burned.
I’d arrived with no place to stay but quickly found a cheap room in a ramshackle hotel, then headed out into the thick of it. In the street the hustlers asked if I wanted their charras and the beggars held out their hands for rupees. I ignored the hustlers and gave the beggars what I could. I was on a mission. I wanted to find the last legal government bhang shops in India. I was told they were not far from the Ganges, near the burning ghats, and that the government allowed them to stay open so the dead could be burned with a little treat to make their trip to the afterlife more pleasant.
I wound through streets and alleys in a slightly downhill fashion, and in perhaps an hour or two I’d reached the water. The sun was setting and the river was golden. It was also low, and I could see rows of people standing on a sandbar in the middle of it. Small boats lined the bar in front of the people.
I asked someone nearby if one could rent a boat for a trip on the river. The fellow, who spoke English, shook his head side to side and said "Yes. You can be having a boat. But not here. For getting a boat you must walk back up the hill to the first street, then down to the next street where they are having boats."
I asked him if he knew where there were any government bhang shops. Again he shook his head ‘no’ while while saying yes.
"In the streets before the boats where there are the burning ghats there are several. But if you would like some charras I have a cousin who…"
I cut him off, thanked him and left before he had the chance to lure me to a carpet or jewelry shop where I would be stuck looking for hours at beautiful carpets or ornate jewelry that I didn’t want and couldn’t afford.
In no time I arrived at a row of little wooden shacks that were locked up for the day. I couldn’t read the writing on their signs but could smell the cannabis and knew I was in the right place. Down the street I could see a dozen or more boats moored to poles at water’s edge. I decided to come back at dawn then headed back to my room through the bustling streets.
In the morning I awoke early and headed back to the little wooden shacks. As I drew near the streets grew thick with people, mostly mourners, carrying their dead. Some were carried on liters, their bodies wrapped in simple white cotton cloth; others were drawn in carriages with colorful silk burial shrouds adorned in flowers and beads. All of the groups were making their way down narrow lanes to the burning ghats. I let them pass and made my way to one of the now-open shacks.
Inside, a gaunt, shirtless man sat on his haunches on a raised platform with a rolling pin in his hand. On the floor next to him was a large, open newspaper-bound bundle of pale yellow-green cannabis stalks. A young boy placed a handful of the stalks on a sort of cutting board in front of the man, who began rolling them with his pin as if he were rolling flour. From a shelf behind him he took a container and poured a little of what looked like oil onto the stalks as he worked them: the oil mixed with the plant material and in no time he had turned the cannabis into a green, gooey paste. He scooped it up and quickly made about 30 little balls from it that he put on a tray and handed to another young man who was selling them to the passersby. I bought one and bit into it: it wasn’t very good and I swallowed as quickly as I could. The boys laughed and told me it was better in lassi, the yogurt drink.
I watched their father work for maybe half-an-hour before my body began to rush and the world around me begin to throb. The boys saw that I was getting high and laughed between themselves. I bought another ball, ate it, thanked them and began to make my way toward the dock.
The walk took more effort than I anticipated: my legs were wobbly and the narrow passage’s walls seemed to close in on me. Worse, a family carrying a dead loved one was hurrying to the ghats just behind me and I couldn’t walk any faster—the rush was coming on strong—but I had no way to get out of their way. One of the men in front, a large man with a bushy moustache asked me something in a foreign language. I tried to answer but my mouth wouldn’t work. He began to glower at me and I leaned back against the wall, trying to become one with it so that he and his family could pass. It didn’t work. I was still in the way and there was no room for the men carrying the liter to pass me. Unfortunately, I was hardly able to move just then and stood where I was, an impediment to their beloved getting to his deserved bliss.
The man began to shout at me and the entire family picked up on the cue. I didn’t know what they were saying but the words were coming out like cartoon letters from their mouths, colorful and large and not at all pleasant. I was at a loss and feeling completely wretched that I’d interrupted someone’s shining moment with the thoughtless act of eating a bhang ball. Worse, it occurred to me that I’d eaten a second and that everything was going to get even more complicated when that kicked in.
The family’s now angry voices brought me back to the alley. I had to think of something or we’d be stuck there forever. Just then the god of cannabis came forward and gave me an inspiration. I pushed out from the wall and stood in front of the liter. I indicated to the lead man that he should lift the liter and that I would help pass it over my head as they walked by. He understood and did as I suggested. I helped raise the dead and then began to help pass it, hand-over-hand. I had a brief vision in which I saw myself dropping the corpse and nearly collapsed, but managed to hold it together until it was in front of me. To my surprise the family didn’t stop to thank me for the ingenious solution to the apparent impasse but simply kept walking to the river.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Behind me I could hear sounds and turned to see another family bearing another loved bearing down on me. I fairly forced my body to move. I couldn’t go through that again. I put one hand on the wall to my right to steady myself, and made my way down the alley. It couldn’t have been more than 100 feet but it took an eternity, what with the walls and floor breathing unevenly and the family behind me gaining with every step. When I finally reached the sunlight I lurched around the corner of the building and held on for dear life while the family flew by like a merciless locomotive.
In a few minutes the sunlight invigorated me and I could look around without feeling helpless. In front of me, to my left and right and not too far, groups of people surrounded the cremating corpses of their loved ones. White smoke rose from the fires to the heavens. Other families waited. Other groups carried bundles of what I supposed were ashes from other ghats to the boats, then piled in and the oarsmen took them into the river. Further off to the left and right I could see huge groups of people bathing along the banks of the Ganges, fulfilling their sacred obligations to make the once in a lifetime Pilgrimage to this holy place.
I don’t know how long I stood leaning against the corner of that building but I know I didn’t move until I felt I could make the short trip to where the boats were without falling. When I finally left my legs still wobbled beneath me, but did as I asked.
Before I even reached the boats several men approached me with the glint of tourist money in their eyes. "Boat tour?" they all seemed to ask, their faces slightly misshapen in my altered vision. They all looked like people I did not want to be with just then and I waved them off, pushing through them to an old man who was still sitting in his boat, eating.
"Can I rent your boat?" I asked. He kept eating and didn’t answer. I thought that maybe the words hadn’t actually come out of my mouth so I repeated my question. He still didn’t answer. I leaned down and touched him on the shoulder and he turned his head just enough to indicate with his eyes that if I was coming I should get in. I did, crouching low so as not to fall off the other side as the boat lurched with my weight. I managed to stablize and sit.
The man still hadn’t said a word and he didn’t stop eating. He had chapati—flat bread—and a sort of stew in an aluminum pot and he was scooping the stew with the bread. It looked wonderful and I wanted some. I was ravenous. I stared at him, hoping he’d get the message that he should share that wonderful pot of food. He ignored me. I began to wonder if I’d misread his eye signal. Maybe he hadn’t invited me into the boat at all. I began to get a little edgy that perhaps I should leave, but was much too comfortable to move, so determined to sit until he either asked me to leave or began to row.
Fortunately, he eventually put the pot down, stood, untied the boat from its piling and pushed off into the river.
"Do you want to go close to the burning?" he asked suddenly, unexpectedly, in good English.
"Um, what? No. No. I don’t. That’s private. Just the river. The river’s good."
The words tumbled out and clattered together. The man laughed.
"Bhang. Not talking good."
He turned so that his back was facing me and began to row us out toward the sand bar. We nearly reached it when he turned the boat and began to row parallel to the city on the river’s bank. I stared in near awe: There, rising up on a hill was what looked like a wall of ancient building close on each other. Dozens of temples painted white and blue or left the color of clay rose next to homes and old military buildings. In front of them at the river bank were funeral pyres and boats moving goods and hundreds of people bathing in the river. It was as if I was looking into a sort of heart, throbbing with life, and motion and bustle. It was at once magnificent and wretched, beautiful and awful. It was inspiring. I felt a rush of joy. I might have been looking at the center of the universe. This was truly the most holy of places. Many of the people I could see bathing had probably waited years to be able to step into that water. The plumes of smoke rising from the burnings meant everything to those families. Good for them, I thought. Good that they'd made it. I hoped they got everything they wanted.
"Beautiful, my city," the oarsman said, waving his hand at the sight.
"Very," I answered.
"Shiva lives here."
I couldn’t do anything but grin. Shiva lives here. Of course.
"Budda came here."
I remembered a story I’d been told about Budda. When he first came to the Ganges, the nine Nagas—the snake dieties that hold the world together—who lived by the river each made themselves into a bridge so that Budda could cross. Budda looked at the nine Naga bridges and, not wanting to offend any of them, made himself into nine Buddas and crossed them all.
"You are here," the man said. "Too bad you are not Hindu or you would be promised everlasting life."
I laughed.
We rowed in silence for a little while. The bhang’s effect was beginning to abate and I was thirsty. I reached over the side of the river and scooped a handful of the water and drank it. It tasted wonderful. I scooped another handful. Even better. On the third handful though I came up with what looked like a piece of finger and tossed the water back.
The boatman must have seen me because he burst out laughing. "Don’t drink that. It’s full of body pieces. Not everyone can afford the wood to completely reduce the bodies to ash. They still throw them in the river. Watch."
He quickly brought the boat near the sandbar and began to stir up the sand with his oar: bits of bone, whole bones, body parts began to float around in the water. I began to feel sick.
"You are looking like you are going to vomit. Please vomit over the side and not in my boat."
I didn’t. In a little while we began to head back.
By the time we reached the dock I felt strong enough to walk easily. I paid him, disembarked and began to head back to the alley.
"Don’t forget," the boatman called after me. "Shiva lives here. Welcome to my city."

My Friend, Phil Blumenau

I guess everybody has someone who taught them how to live. For some it was teachers, for some their parents. For me it was Phil Blumenau.
I was 18. I was probably already problematic, having helped start an undergroung paper at my high school, Bishop Reilly in Fresh Meadows, Queens, New York, being a baseball player and an actor at school and someone who would sell poems to other students to enter into the annual Robert Frost Competition that John F. Kennedy demanded every high school student be part of. But then I went to Hunter College of the City University of New York, a great university. I entered Hunter, perhaps the most famous nursing and education facility in the US in 1969, just the second year it was integrated--it had always been a girls' school--and the ratio was something like 9-to-1 females to males. And there I was, a functioning male. For a kid who had never masturbated--sad but true--being in that environment where I was around that many girls gave me essentially a permanent erection: to the point where my extremely Catholic mom asked if I was trying to show off. Hah! I wish.
In my anthropology class in my freshman year--an auditorium class of perhaps 200, there was one guy who caught my eye. He was a longhair like me, but he had an air about him that showed a sophistication I'd never seen before in someone so young. He seemed to know that he was doing. He wore an afghan coat that was in style that year, but he wore it with an ease I'd never seen. His blond hair was straight, his blue eyes piercing....I guess if I was gay I'd have fallen in love. As it was, I wasn't but I still fell in love with him.
I met him when I missed a couple of anthro 101 classes and needed notes. I asked if I could borrow his. He said okay but he wanted them back. I said Okay and returned them a couple of days later. We became fast friends. There was a girl who like me named Darryl and Darryl (hello, Darryl, wherever you are) and she and I would borrow my mom's car and drive to Philip's mom's house in Queens Village and neck in the area's private streets. We got caught by the cops once and were pretty naked. They let us go after taking about 30 minutes while looking at the 6-foot Darryl and we didn't consummate until after I broke into Phil's friend, Naomi Pelzig's Amstermdam Ave and 91st street apartment to have sex with Darryl. Great break-in. The cops were called then too--probably why I am shy around women as the cops always seem to be talking about my private parts when I'm naked and they catch me.
It was worth it for Darryl, who became a fantastic educator for New York State.
Phil and I wound up getting a rent-controlled apartment on 76th street and Second avenue in NYC in 1970--the week I turned 19. Four little rooms, tub in the kitchen, for $45 a month. Ground floor, fireplace, small back yard. (Yeah, different time, different world.) We grew up there. I don't know what he might say about me but I will say that Phil, who later had his own lab as a physicist working with optics, was the single coolest person I ever met. He could make ice melt and was as humble as a daffodil. But he knew how the world worked.He understood things that a smart guy like me didn't know at all. His brother Dan had done the collage in the Stevie Wonder Taurus album and hired me and Phil to work on his famous collage in Jimmy Hendrix's Electric Ladyland Studio bathroom on St. Mark's Place. Dan later hired me and Phil to help revamp Chris Blackwell's Island Records' Grove street townhouse and their Carnegie Hall studio, where we met and toked with Bob Marley and others. We later worked on the homes of Oscar de Laurenta, Arthur Schelinger and the Kennedy townhouse on 63st. None of those toked with us.
But Phil was cooler than even that: One night we left our NYC apartment, took a walk to participate in a protest about Vietnam, and wound up as a couple of 19 -year-old kids in a coffee shop around the block from where we lived. Next to us on a stool in the place was a 45-year-old man. This guy, whom we'd seen around the neighborhood but never spoken with, was sitting next to Phil. And he said something like: "Did you see the undercovers? They were everywhere. What a freakin' city. You never know who your friends and who your enemies are."
And Phil, sitting next to him, pulled a joint from his shirt pocket then put it into the guy's shirt pocket. "You have to go with your gut feelings about who you think are narcs. Enjoy this."
The guy's tongue is still probably hanging down to the ground.
That was the single coolest thing I've ever seen on this planet.
And Phil may reappear on this blog from time to time. He's still that cool.

They Stone You When You're Tryin to Be So Good...

But I would not feel so all alone,
Everybody must get stoned.

Last person to complain, okay, and I know I've use Mr. Dylan's song in a post before so let me start my complaining--which you know is coming--with complaining about me. What the heck is so hard about coming up with a new song? Why use the same song? Is this guy Gorman lazy or what? Is Dylan's Rainy Day Women the only song that will work? Or is Gorman someone who has that song running around in his head every stinking time the junk hits the fan? Put it this way: Has Gorman ever used Mitch Ryder's Devil in a Blue Dress yet? Why the heck not? He's complained about women, about his ex--my ex, actually if I could stop looking in a mirror for a moment and realize I'm talking about me, not my mirror image--but did he ever use that song? No. And it's a great song. So why not? Is he freaking retarded or what? "Fe-fe-fi-fi, fo-fo-fum, Look at miss Molly, lord here she comes....Devil in a blue dress, blue dress, blue dress, Devil with a blue dress on!"
And what about The Boys are Back in Town? He's never even thought for a minute about using that great song, yet he's wasted 2,000 words talking down Ted Nugent, which probably sold Nugent an extra grand worth of CDs. And then there's the Blues Magoos' Ain't Seen Nothin Yet--the only guitar solo Gorman ever mastered--and you havn't seen that on this blog. Or the Stones' Ruby Tuesday, or the Blues Project's Wake Me, Shake Me--with Al Kooper on his astounding B-3 organ and vocals, of course. Gorman even smoked a joint with Kooper once at the Cafe Au Go Go on Bleeker Street after a show in '68 or so and still you never saw that song mentioned in a blog, did you? And what about one of the absolute essential rock songs of all time, Gimme Some Lovin, by the Spencer Davis Group, or Manfred Mann's version of Springstein's Blinded by the Light? Or anything else Manfred Mann's Earth Bands ever did? Or Procol Harem's Whiter Shade of Pale? Ever been mentioned here? I don't think so.
All Gorman can do is repeat Dylan's Rainy Day Women #12 and 35 when he wants to bitch. What a one track loser.
That said, I got a bill for my electric this month, today, for $529. I've never hit $300 before and three months ago switched to those swirly flourescent energy saving bulbs. So what happened? I don't know. I'll call the electric company tomorrow to ask. It's like someone is shunting electricity to grow pot or something because there are no new appliances in this house, but there sure is a new electric bill.
And the phone bill, which has unlimited everyting came in today with $94 bucks worth of long distance charges. What the heck? We'll talk tomorrow. And my radio in my car shorted out during a white-out rainstorm that I insisted on driving through with my fantastic old 1994 Ranger (4-cylinder, 2.8, with 275,000 miles) and now it smells like people have been sitting in the seats for 13 years because I left the windows open during the storm. And my son's girlfriend Sara's car is broke, the new self cleaning oven won't clean, and the sink and toilet backed up when my son Marco decided to fix the water leak under the house then clean the muck from his clothes in the sink and rinse his legs and arms of mud with a bucket of water in the toilet.
Ah, life...and Chepa comes back from her boyfriend's tonight; we all love her but life sure has been peaceful without her for the past couple of weeks.
Blinded by the Light, Cut loose like a goose, another runner in the night....
Shit. That don't work.
They stone you when you are young and able,
They stone you when your're sitting at the table...
Ah, now that's a song you can bitch to...

Good Morning Everybody!!

Wake up, wake up, you sleepyheads, Wake up, wake up you sleepyheads....
It's Saturday morning at 8:15 in Gormantown Texas and this is just a reminder to have a great day out there. Here the sun is already shining but it's not going to be a scorcher. Madeleina has her first official soccer game today and the coach told me she's making enough progress that he's going to start her. Marco was off to work at 4 AM, finishing up his first week with a a real --though boring--job. Italo is picking up some overtime today and was out by 7; his live-in girlfriend Sarah made a deal for a used car--a 1995 Toyota for $1700--on her own yesterday. And I'm finishing up a big story and will turn it in in about two hours. So things are looking good here.
Heck, I might even try to get part 5 of 25 Years of Shamanism started later today.
Just for the record, we had marinated skirt steak with garlic, sliced onions, tomatoes and green pepper last night--sort of fajita style--over Basmati rice with a wonderful salad and there's plenty left over. And I'm thinking about sauteed sea scallops in a garlic, red pepper and scallion butter sauce tonight. We don't usually do butter here cause I'm too darned fat, but with scallops I'm tempted.
That's the short skinny here. I hope your day is just as full and fantastic.
Gorman out.
NOTE FROM ADVERTISERS: This joyful moment has been brought to you by the expresso coffee bean growers of the world. We fully expect Gorman to crash and be in a foul mood within an hour.

The Matses Bow and Arrows

I've just been asked to describe the Matses Indian Bows and Arrows: How they're made and from what they're made. For most of you this might be something to skip. For a few others this might be great. Here goes, from my experience:

The bow is made from interior wood of the aguaje tree--a black, spined-palm whose fruit, is enjoyed by humans and the favorite food of both sahino and wangana--the two edible peccary's in the Peruvian Amazon. The wood is strong, and pliable, though it keeps its strength for years: While arrows are generally used once or twice, the bow, which takes several days to make, is used for as long as a year. And that's with daily use.
The bow, generally about 2 meters long, is strung with chambira, a palm fiber utilized by indigenous and mestizos alike for weaving hammocks. If the chambira breaks, restring with regular bow string. (In traditional use, chambira is replaced almost daily).
The Matses arrows are a work of art. Reeds are plucked from swamp, then held over a fire and slowly turned: Those that bend, pop, or crack are discarded. Of 100 reeds selected, perhaps 5 or 6 will finally be made into arrows.
Arrow making is generally done on rainy days, and the process of selection of the reeds can take hours. At the same time, it's generally done by more than one hunter at the same time so that it becomes a social activity--around which food is served and hunting stories told.
The arrows are actually made in four parts: The shaft is a reed: at one end of the shaft a split feather is affixed: a feather cut in two is set on opposite sides of the shaft and tied into place with a single strand of chambira, interlaced in the individual hairs of the feather. That is covered with copal, a tarrish tree-sap that's heated to boiling--turning it black. Once boiling, the copal is applied to the chambira, sealing it to the shaft. At the end of the feathered end of the shaft a coil of chambira--or more frequently these days, colorful sewing thread, is wound around the shaft's end, keeping it from splitting and lending a touch of balancing heft to the arrow.
At the business end of the arrow, a short, 4-6 inches, section of blond wood--generally from a hardwood branch is inserted into the hollowed end of the reed. To this is affixed the arrow's point: a sharpened piece of wood cut from either bamboo or ugurahi--a blond palm. The point is affixed to the hardwood connector section using chambira, though sewing thread will also work.
Arrow heads range between 6 and 12 inches long, depending on the type of game being hunted. For birds the arrow head is generally short and flat. For jaguar the head must be hollowed out to a half circle to allow for blood letting while piercing dense muscle.
Arrow heads, once in place, are sharpened by using the long, curved tooth of an agouti, a jungle rodent, attached to a two-meter long thin, round shaft of aguaje wood. The agouti tooth is notched with a machete to allow it to run up and down the length of the arrow head to make an exacting blade on either side.
Interestingly, the Matses also utilize different bird feathers for different arrows. For general monkey and bird hunting the black feathers fo the Puca Cunga, a type of jungle turkey, are utilized. For hunting ground animals with some body mass, the feathers of the Trompetero, another jungle turkey, are utilized. And for hunting jaguar, the feathers of the aguilar, the eagle, are used. The colorful feathers from the guacamayo--the maca--are also occasionally used. Those can be utilized for anything but a jaguar as they don't allow the arrow to gain full velocity at short distance, the only distance at which a hunter would have a chance of wounding a jaguar.

My Quick Take on Drugs

Someone recently remarked that ayahuasca, a primary physical, emotional, and spiritual medicine that's utilized throughout the Amazon, was "a fucking drug, first and foremost." The person is way off base in my opinion.
So for what it's worth, here's my opinion.

Ayahuasca, like all Master Plant Teachers and even the Lesser Plant Teachers, is so physically revolting, that you've really got to want to learn what she's got to teach to get it down and keep it down. If that's your idea of a drug, then let's look at drugs.
There are four primary kinds of drugs:
Those that intend to cure or control physical ailments: antibiotics, natural remedies, chemotherapy, etc.
Those that eliminate pain: heroin, aspirin, opiods, meth, ibuprofin, cannabis, etc.
Those that provoke sex: cannabis, alcohol, cocaine, meth, and a couple of others.
Those that teach: Mushrooms, cannabis, Ayahuasca, San Pedro, Peyote, Iboga, Amanita Muscaria, Datura, Syrian Rue and some others.
A few overlap.
To be honest, there are only three general reasons people take "drugs" voluntarily: To eliminate pain, to get laid, to learn.
The "learning" drugs are very articulate. If you put them in the same category as pain killers you've missed their point. The learning drugs are plants that willfully want to teach us silly humans something about the universe. And they all make it quite difficult to ingest them: Vomiting on your date won't get you laid, after all. And going through ego-dissolution won't make you the life of the party or ease your pain either.
And if you havn't got that down yet, you're missing a lot.
So yes, ayahuasca is a drug. But you damned well couldn't do it like you can drink a beer or have a shot of whiskey with with a chaser.

Dog Ate My Homework...Uh-Oh

Wow! Two blog entries in one day! Must mean I have something to say, eh?
Wish that were so. In fact, I am writing this because I'm a bit frustrated by things at the moment and it's probably better to do this than throw a baseball through a window to get my frustrations out. Though the baseball is gonna remain an option, okay?
So like late last week Marco noticed that a couple of the hardwood floorboards in the living room were buckling. We ignored it as it looked like work. But then the kitchen floor began to shift. Me Marco and Italo all knew there was a leak somewhere but as my busted belly wouldn't allow me to crawl around under the house I certainly couldn't look into it. And Italo's been working on his mom Chepa's plumbing, crawling around under her house, so he didn't want to do it. And Marco had already fixed a leak in the sink last week, so he didn't think he should have to do it. So we kept ignoring it and the persistent hsssssss that seemed to be coming from under the house. Heck, could have been a snake, right?
Well, anyway, last night when the water leaking from under the house began seeping onto the kitchen floor, we couldn't ignore it any longer so we turned off the water to the house.
Marco's been under there as Italo's at work today. Pipes are old. He's gonna try to seal it just with duct tape for now until Italo can take a look. But meanwhile we can't take showers this morning, so we all sort of stink.
But that's like a normal problem.
The real problem is that my computer just ate my entire interview and notes file for a cover story I'm supposed to turn in today. Just says: Due to a faulty connection (or somesuch) Word cannot read this file.
Now I've got what I've got written on another file, which is fine at the moment. And I've got such a good memory that I could probably reconstruct much of what was lost, or at least the salient parts. But as this is a local political story there are libel to be repercussions: I've been asked to provide copies of my notes to the paper's legal team on more than one occasion, to give them ammunition when libel suits are discussed.
But I no longer have those notes. I no longer have those interviews, or even those phone numbers at my fingertips.
I'm praying the file in question is just tired and will open later today. Or the computer tunchis--ghosts--are playing tricks with me. Like the coffee pot that refused to work when I returned from Peru in July. I just waited a month, cooking coffee on the stove in a saucepan, then tried the coffee pot again and it worked first try and every try since then.
But if this is something worse than that--and this is certainly something I've never seen from a computer before--well, then I'm dreading what I'll tell my boss.
Cause she needs that story and the people of this town need that story printed and she ain never in a million years going to believe my computer ate my homework.

POSTSCRIPT: Marco worked his butt off in the tight, wet, muddy confines beneath the house. He didn't manage to get the broken pipe changed but did locate the small hole, used duct tape to close it, then sealed it with a pressure patch he made from a screw-tightening clamp. And so far it's holding. So we all took showers and smell better around here.
For the story notes, I went into the hard drive and discovered that the drive had very nicely made several copies of them for me. I love this old souped-up Mac G3 I've got.
So I'm back on the story, all clean and fresh, happy with the world again. Turns out to be a great day after all. HOORAY!!!!! Hope all of you get a couple of nice surprises as well.

A Michael Jackson Moment

Couple of nights ago Madeleina got the urge to see Michael Jackson's Thriller video and as she's 10 now and can work the internet she found it and was just starting it when I went to bed.
Yesterday morning when she got up she came into this livingroom that I use as my office and sat on the couch for our morning chat, the one where the tells me her dreams, asks me for answers to things she's been thinking about and so forth. But yesterday the talk was about Thriller. Turns out she was too afraid to watch it through because nobody else was home and I'd gone to bed. She felt badly that she hadn't had the courage to simply watch it. "I knew it was only a video, dad, and that they were just dancers, but I was still afraid. Why don't I have the guts you have?"
I told her that everyone gets afraid in the dark when they're alone or something like that, but inside I was shouting to myself: What guts? I don't have any anymore! I'm afraid of everything!
And while I don't think anyone would notice, that's really true. Lately I've been waking in the middle of the night wondering if I offended anyone the previous day, or written anything completely idiotic, anything that will let all of you know how gutless, worthless and useless I am.
I'm not sure where these feelings come from, but they're here and they've been very close to surface for weeks now, not just occasionally as a reality check, but daily, as reality.
And I don't like them. I don't want to have to second guess myself every five minutes. I don't want to be frozen in fear.
I know about the deer-like moments of frozen in fear. After my marriage broke up and we left Peru where we'd been living and ran our Cold Beer Blues Bar, I was a pretty busted fella. Real busted up. But I got on with things.
But when I had guests to take out to the jungle and would return to Iquitos, I would feel--at least until the guests arrived--as if every breath was an effort to suck in thick air and every step felt as though my feet were trapped in molasses. Whereever I went I was reminded of my marriage failing. There were days when I had to force myself to move, to breathe.
It took me a while to exorcise those ghosts and make Iquitos my city again. And I'm still not quite there but nearly.
And now that dread is on me again, here in my head, here in my house. There's a woman I want to ask out and I will but I havn't yet--what if she laughs at me in the store where she works? How will I be able to go in there again?
The other part then rears back and shouts: Who gives a damn? You're just asking a girl to go dancing. If she says no she says no. If she says yes, cool. Either way you'll still go to that store.
And I will because I generally wind up with enough gumption to do what needs doing, whether it's asking the girl out or writing the story and making the deadline.
But I sure wish I should shake these cobwebs of scaredness from my head.
Back to Madeleina: after our chat she went and watched the video for probably an hour before I heard the music change to another Michael Jackson song.
And moments later, I heard my Madeleina shouting: "Why? Why did you do it? I Hate you! I hate you!"
She was shouting and sobbing at the same time and in a moment came back to my office and floomped onto the couch. Her face was streaked with tears. "I hate him! I hate him! How could he do it? Why?"
When she calmed down enough to breathe she wanted me to explain why Michael Jackson had become a pasty-faced white person. She was less delicate than that. I mean, she'd seen photos of him before of course, but for some reason yesterday morning it hit her really really hard that he had done the changing to himself, rather than it being a medical issue.
So she sat there and sobbed and I told her he'd probably begun the changing because he didn't like himself. Because he was a deer in the headlights and couldn't figure out how to move any longer.
I told her that's how I felt too these days.
She told me if I dared to change like Michael Jackson to try to not be afraid anymore that she'd hate me too.
"Just be you dad. It's only temporary. You'll get your guts back. And if you ask me, even when you're afraid like you say you are you still have more guts than most people. So don't worry about it."
That's my baby. Thanks Macaroni.

The Reality of What Things Cost in the Amazon

On a discussion board I occasionally post on, the question of the cost of going to a jungle compound to drink ayahuasca with a curandero has been getting a lot of play lately. And some of the posters think that curanderos who charge $50 a night for a gringo to visit their compound is way too high. They argue that deep in the jungle or even in Iquitos, locals don't pay nearly that for a traditional Tuesday or Friday night ayahuasca ceremony. Which is true: Locals on the river often pay with work, or a chicken or some bananas. Locals in the city often pay with prepared food or with what money they can afford.
But in the last several years, with ayahuasca interest having spiked among tourists, several curanderos have built jungle compounds, places where people can come to drink the medicine and then sleep surrounded by rainforest without having to take riverboats a half-a-day up or down the river, deal with mosquitos and possibly snakes and so forth. The new compounds have simply made the medicine more accessable to a larger number of foreigners who would otherwise not be able to get it.
And, of course, that brought up the question of paying for medicine and that brought out some tempers. To help clarify matters, I posted this note to give those who don't know an idea of what's involved in building and maintaining one of those jungle compounds.
Here's that post:
I don't have any horses in this dance, as nearly all of my work with ayahuasca has been done way up the river with Julio and now with his son Hairo.
But I think what's often missed about the costs in Peru is the reality that the more you make, the more people you'll wind up supporting. I don't know, for instance, Percy's personal circumstances [Percy is a young curandero who charges $50 a night, evidently], but I'll bet he paid good money for the land he's using on the Nauta road. I'll bet he had to pay several men for several day's work to demark it, and, if it's fenced, to fence it. He had to pay to get his buildings built and for any equipment he has, from a stove to buckets to carry water. And all of that stuff had to be bought in Iquitos and hauled in, piece by peace, leaf-roof section by leaf-roof section.
Those things are not inexpensive: On a small piece of land I bought recently three kilometers off the Nauta road and a kilometer into the jungle, the initial cost of the land was just $3,000. Getting title changed, having a path semi-cleared to get into the land, having red paint markings put on trees to demark the land--under the watchful eye of two officials from the Dept. of Agriculture, eliminating a squatter who was buring primary rainforest to make charcoal, having a jungle hut and kitchen built, having a swimming hole dug and paying for a part time guardian---those simple things cost more than double the cost of the land. And my joint is anything but a compound that anyone but the heartiest soul would want to visit.
But in the case of people who actually accomodate guests at their compounds, there may be four or five people who work full time at maintaining the place, building new accomodations, cutting wood for fires, hauling water, checking for snakes, guarding the property, going to town to buy food, cooking and so forth. And each of those people might be the head of their household, with several people depending on them.
So the guy asking $50 a night from visitors could easily have a payroll of $500 a week, not including his own families' needs, whether or not he has visitors on a given week.
And he or she is probably happy to be able to provide so much work to so many. But someone has to pay the freight for it to happen because the curandero can't do that all by him/herself.
I think any evaluation of costs-to-the-gringo has to include this reality. To ignore it is to not understand how things work in the Peruvian Amazon.

Political Lession 101- Media Manipulation in Your Favor

AN August 27 report released by the United Nations claims that Afghanistan's opium production has again reached record levels, despite $600 million contributed by the US to stem the farming of the poppy crop in that country. Moreover, the Taliban, once the scourge of poppy growers in Afghanistan, are said to now be protecting the crops as a means of raising funds for their continued insurgency. Ironically, the US once promoted opium production by the tribal leaders and warlords in Afghanistan's north as a means of raising funds to continue their insurgency against the USSR takeover of that country--and later against the Taliban (which the US ushered into rule there in the first place).
One news story on UN's report particularly caught my eye. It was the Aug. 28 New York Times story, in which the reporter noted that "Afghanistan still produces more [opium] than Colombia, Peru and Bolivia combined."
In the very next sentence the reporter notes that Afghanistan "accounts for 93 percent of the world’s opium..."
Now the actual UN report said that Afghanistan produces more 'narcotics' than the three Andean countries, but the Times didn't include that. So, going by the Times story, given that Mynamar (nee Burma), Mexico, Pakistan, China and India also produce commercial quantities of opium, how much of the 7 percent of the opium not produced by Afghanistan might be produced in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia? One percent of the world share each? Less? Okay, if that’s the math, then how on earth can it be said that Afghanistan produces more than Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. That's not more, it’s at least 93 times more than any of those three countries.
So why put that in there if it's such a ridiculous comment to make?
Well, and here's the political lession: It was put into the Times story to keep the Andean countries involved in Plan Colombia and the Andean Initiative on the tip of the tongue right next to the words opium production, from which heroin derives. To keep Plan Colombia and the Andean Initiative coca-plant eradication money rolling in. No matter that coca and opium are worlds apart. No matter that the story makes it clear that those three countries produce only an infantessimal amount of opium. That's a detail most readers miss. What was important was to get those countries named in a story about hard drugs and by extention, terrorism.
And the NY Times fell for it. Infuckingcredible. Way to bend over and take one for the Feds, Gray Lady.

One of the comments asked which companies were benefitting from Plan Colombia and Andian Initiative. Someone else asked how a line like that might have ended up in the TIMES story.
Here's the response off the top of my head. Smarter men could be more specific but this is one prong of the fork.
DynCorp and Halliburton are the two biggest recipients of Plan Colombia/Andean Initiative funding that I know of. But then there is the company that makes GLyphosate--the name of which I'm drawing a blank on this second but which has traditionally had many US govt. contracts. Then there are the arms makers, with whose arms we are arming the armies down there. Then there are the covert cartels whose black-market monies the US government needs to keep its unfunded black-ops (as opposed to its funded black-ops) funded....hmmmm. Then there are the oil and mineral companies who not only stand to make a great deal from these places, but who hire the companies whose men protect those oil lines (some are US troops; others are generally former troops hired as...well, mercenaries, for lack of a better word) who also make a great deal. Toss in Lockheed Martin and the jets needed in the region, Bell Helicopter, and by gosh, you've got a smorgasboard of US companies each taking a piece of a very large pie.
As to how the line gets in the story, well, the word "narcotics" not 'Opium" was in the UN report. Normally an editor, in my experience, wouldn't add a line like that, but might suggest that the writer had missed something potentially important. EX: "X, do you realize that Afghanistan is now producing more opium than Colombia, Peru and Bolivia combined? That might be something to mention to give the story a tag that readers can relate to."
That would be an agregious error but possibly human.Really nothing more nefarious than that. But the writer, if he didn't put the line in him/herself, and if he/she is under deadline and not thinking clearly, will generally go along with his/her editor in order to minimize arguments in the newsroom.
Now even the editor might not realize, under deadline, that they're being manipulated or simply equated "narcotics" with "opium". The whole reference might have come about when a congressman or senator or an aid to one or the other, called the Times heirarchy and noted that there was something important in the UN report that they wanted to be sure the Times didn't miss. That might start the ball rolling.
And even the Times higher-up who got the heads-up didn't realize they were being manipulated. Given all the ink that Colombia, Bolivia and Peru have gotten for their newish poppy fields, on first glance it might seem something to include. It's only if you take a step back and see that 8-9 countries are now being held responsible for 7 percent of the world's opium traffic that you notice that this is a red herring.
And if you have been following things and know that the opium yield in Afghanistan is sufficient to supply the world for nearly 10 years with each year's crop, then you know that the other countries are irrelevent at this time. Their opium is mostly being stockpiled, in Newark, in South Carolina, in Wyoming and elsewhere, for some future time when there is a clampdown on Afghanistan.
It's mostly just round and round the mulburry bush and little else. Everyone needs the money from the illicit trade. That's a fact of life in a capitalist world. Cash still counts despite everyone using credit cards. And dope is cash. Twenty-dollar bills. Unmarked. Spend them where you want to.
Step right up.
Step right up.
Three for a dolla.
Three for a dolla.
Step right up.

BILL WEINBERG, a fantastic reporter and my former partner in the hard news section of High Times magazine who runs World War 4 REPORT (WW4REPORT.COM) has posted my original post here on his site and added this commentary at http://ww4report.com/node/4343#comment-306950:
Did Gorman shame the Times into correcting an error? The story by David Rohde in the Aug. 28 print edition states clearly: "...the amount of land in Afghanistan used for opium production is now larger than the amount of land used for coca cultivation in all Latin America." But a Google News search for the offending text (sans clarifying reference to coca) indicates that it appears (verbatim) in the Detroit Free Press. Strangely, Rohde's piece also shows up on the Google search—yet the reference to the Andean nations does not appear in the actual text. This indicates the text was there when the Google-bots first crawled it, but has since been removed. The Free Press presumably picked it up from the Times before it was removed. The version of Rohde's piece in the International Herald Tribune states (correctly) that "Afghanistan still produces more narcotics than Colombia, Peru and Bolivia combined." (Emphasis added.)

So are the folks at Times (whose garbled Mexico coverage we recently had to call out) reading Peter Gorman's blog? We didn't think they were that smart!

The Trouble With Names in the Age of Homeland Security

Man, oh man, I never thought names would get us into this pickle. Here's the family problem, typically a la Gorman's, which means there's more drama and fireworks than there should be.
In 1992 I met Gilma Aguilar in Peru. In January, 1994 I married her. At the time she had two boys: Italo Marcial Coral Aguilar and Marco Vinicio Ruiz Aguilar. The way they do it in Peru is to put the dad's name first, then the mom's father's name. So Chepa--Gilma was always called Chepa, which is short for Josefa, her middle name, as it's an extreme invasion to call someone by their first name--had been married once, to Italo's dad (Italo and Marco both insist we use their first name, against Iquitos' type) a man named Coral. Now Mr. Coral disappeared about the time Italo was born, victim of a Colombian neck-tie, a particularly brutal way to go and generally reserved for talkative drug-dealers, which he probably was as the Peruvian government forfeited everything Chepa had on his demise. What did she know? Probably not much, being a girl from the chacra--a field girl--who married at 16 and had a son before she was 18.
She subsequently spent a couple of years living with and bearing a son, Marco, to a man named Ruiz. I met Mr. Ruiz. Not a bad man at all, but somehow he and Chepa split up.
So when I met her and she went to work for me out on the Rio Jivari in the middle of no-man's-land in the Amazon Jungle, she was free. And I fell for her like something out of a storybok. She schooled me on how to pilot a boat on the dangerous Amazon, stood with me as the two of us held off a boatload of marauding priates with just two machetes and a knife ("First one of you on the boat is going to die. So is the second. Who want's to be number one and two????), and was beautiful to boot.
Anyway, we married and had Madeleina.
Now Madeleina's last name is Gorman. Same as me.
But Italo and Marco came to the US as permanent residents before their adoptions were done. And because both of their dads were not in the picture, the Peruvian Passport agency gave them the last name Aguilar on their passports. But the US Embassy gave them the names Coral and Ruiz on their green cards and Coral Aguilar and Ruiz Aguilar on their social security cards. Their Texas Driver's Licenses have them as Coral and Ruiz. At schools in New York and Texas they always went by the name Gorman.
It's a small problem we've been trying to fix for 12 years. And nobody will give. The adoption papers from peru, which took several years to get, have me as the birth father for both Italo and Marco, but the US won't accept that because there is no record of me having known Chepa at the time of the boys' births. The local colleges won't let Italo attend as a local because he graduated from High School as Gorman and his driver's licence says Coral. He works under the name Aguilar because bosses always insist in seeing his passport, which means he's been given a second social security number under that name. And now Marco is losing jobs because his Passport reads differently from his green card and Social Security Card and both read differently from his High School Diploma....
Oy vey. So I'm trying to fix it and now that they're both over 18, I called a dirty lawyer in Cleburne, Texas--a lawyer I've called on the carpet for corruption in printed articles, but one who can get this sort of thing done--to ask for a hearing before a judge to get their names changed officially to Gorman, assuming my kids want that. (They both did until last night when I yelled at them both for not pitching in on the lawn or housework, assuming I'm a happy slave to them.) And the lawyer will represent us for the name change for a measly $2,500 but when told the story of the three names said the price might go up geometrically. "Hell, they're latinos to begin with, and in this age of Homeland Security, plus you being a former editor of High Times magazine, well, the court is libel to see them as some sort of who knows what? In which case my fee would be $25,000. Course we won't know that till you pay me the $2,500 and we get to court. All I'm saying is I'm not promising anything in this time of terrorists and what with your kids having multiple names..."
Know what? They're my kids. Cut us open and the same DNA will appear. I've raised them for 14 years. That ought to be enough.
It may not be. Welcome to 1984 in 2007.

Lawnmowers and Kids

You ever get a couple of acres, most of it grass, you had better get good lawn mowers. And you'd better have enough money to pay someone to take care of it.
For five years I've been out there pushing a mower almost daily from April till October except when I'm in Peru and then raking. Raking and raking. I mean 25 wheel barrows each time I mow the lawn.
And now my stomach's bad. The kids, 22 and 19, were going to pick up the slack. Unfortunately, they tell me they can't get the small tractor to run. Forget the three lawn mowers or the edger or the weed-eater. Forget the machetes.
So I'm looking at three weeks of lawn, the worst in Texas, and no one is responsible.
So I'm going out with a machete and I'm going to do it.
And I might just take the kids' cars away this week and see how well they do walking 30 or 40 miles daily. I'm just in that kind of mood.
I don't think all of you will understand, but I'll bet there are some of you with lazy teens who will know just what I'm talking about. You know, plenty of time to party and plenty of time to get 20 bucks from dad, but not one minute to keep the place up.
And then, just 10 seconds ago, when I told Madeleina to get her butt out to the yard to do something--play with the goats, kick a soccer ball, rake, put bird food in the feeders--she said "you jerk", under her breath as she left.
I'm sure I am, but how the heck am I gong to get a cover story done, a new part of the shamanism piece finished and more school-clothes-shopping done for her by Friday if I don't buckle down? And how am I going to get everyone fed tonight if I don't have a little pitch-in from the troops.
Problem is, mom left without notice for a couple of weeks yesterday to see her boyfriend halfway across the US. And that's my fault for being such a lousy husband that she left. And the kids have to take it out on someone. And I get that. But I still have to deal with the reality. And my reality says you cannot have six Brigs-and-Stratton motors all under a year old, all die on you the same week.
Ahhhhhh......Why didn't my father clue me to some of this?

Tough Being a Dad Sometimes

Most of the time I think it's the greatest job in the world, but sometimes being a dad stinks. Yesterday, for instance, me and Madeleina had a great time driving into town to pick up a paycheck. We blasted music on the radio, caught every traffic light and stopped into the grocery to pick up the ingredients for Uncle Clem's Chicken. Clem was my uncle and god father. And about 30 years ago he won a national cookoff for a cooking oil company that netted him a new car and $5 grand, as well as got his picture in all the major women's mags of the day. He did a basic chicken/asparagus/cheddar cheese thing with a tasty sauce under the cheddar. Clare years ago bastardized it into a chicken and broccoli dish with a great sauce baked under mozzerella.
So I was having fun being a dad and planning dinner. And Italo was going to be home and Chepa and Sierra were coming over--only Marco, whose girlfriend's birthday it was,and Sarah, who was working, weren't going to be there.
Anyway, dinner was great, but at the end of it Chepa pulled me aside to let me know she was leaving town for a couple of weeks to visit her boyfriend. She was leaving this morning. Which sort of stunk because it was then left to me to tell the kids mom left town,
And then Marco came in and said he wanted to go to an orientation at a school he applied to, a tech institute. Well, we'd been there several times. It's a national chain but I know nothing about it--like whether it's good or not-but I do know that it costs about $44,000 for a two year associates degree. Which is a lot of dough, something like $700 per credit hour.
I'm not sold on the school. They were upfront about the costs but said the were great at getting grants. I followed along. Then they gave Marco a test in private and came back and said he'd passed.Marco said it was a crazy test with questions like "Favorite color?" on it.
I didn't think much of that until I saw the same recruiter we had tell a dozen other kids they'd also passed, including one who admittedly couldn't read. So I was suspicious, right?
Then last week we had a meeting about finances. The financial aid officer shows us a video about a parent PLUS loan and in the video they discuss loans with interest rates of 6 Percent. When it's done I suggest that 6 percent seems high for a college loan and she mentions that the loan rate is actually 7.8 percent. I didn't care for that little bait and switch at all. (In fact when I checked the loan rate for the PLUS loan on the computer at home the rate is actually 7.9 percent.)
But the financial aid officer says that while we watched the film she's gotten Marco a Pell grant for $3,500 and another kind of loan for $3,500, leaving us just $9,800 or so to cover with the PLUS loan.
Now that's just for the first eight months. We'll borrow that $13 grand again in April (if there's another Pell grant) and then another $10 grand for the last 8 months.
So I ask when the loans kick in and they tell me the first day of class. But then they bring up the orientation today and I ask if that counts as a class and I don't get an answer. I ask again and they tell me not to worry about it.
I didn't wind up signing the application for the big loan, but had already signed off on the smaller loan and the Pell grant before they could even find out if we were eligible.
When we left, I told Marco that I wanted him to find me five companies that recruit grads from this tech school and I'd call their Human Resources departments and find out if they geneinely do recruit, and if they do how they rank this school's graduates and what sort of jobs they get.
I reminded him again three days later that I wouldn't consider signing for a loan that will cost more than my mortgage and will be backed by my house unless we knew more about the school.
Short form: he didn't. But funny enough, the school put in an application for the loan anyway-in Marco's name--and just yesterday morning I got a rejection on it because Marco has no credit history. I thought that odd, since I was holding off on applying for it, and Marco hadn't signed for it himself.
Then last night, just after Chepa told me she was leaving town for a couple of weeks, in walks Marco and says he needs my car to go to the orientation at school this morning. And I had to tell him that since he hadn't even bothered to stop by the school once in the week to get me the names of the companies they brag recruit from there, well, there wouldn't be a loan right now. He said they were insistent that he go to the orientation anyway and I had to tell him that I think that if he did the $3,500 loan would kick in and that they'd probably collect the Pell Grant, at the least, and perhaps even charge me the other $9,800. So he couldn't borrow the car to go to the orientation.
He was devastated. He looked at me with such anger, such hatred. He felt and feels I'm trying to ruin his life by keeping him from this school that he imagines will be his open door in life.
He hated me even more when I told him he ought to go to Community College for a semester, get a job and between now and January, when the tech school has another starting class, find out something about the school.
I know I'm right on this. The school's too much about the money and the money is too high-I'll bet you could go almost anywhere in the country for $700 a credit hour. But the slight deceptions, the filing for a loan in Marco's name that marco didn't sign off on, the video of a 6 percent loan that actually goes for 7.9 percent, the ambivalence to my question of whether orientation counted as the first day of class for the purposes of the loans kicking in....well, I just think they probably paint a true picture of the place.
But it sure wasn't fun being a dad and having to squash Marco's dream, even if it's not a realistic one.

Truth Is....Well, Little Truths and Iced Coffee, Anyway

Truth is that when I ask you readers to respond, I don't mean to say I expect you to have lots to say. IF you do, that's fine. I would never underestimate you as I think you're all a pretty discerning lot. But just getting the occasional nod from a reader lets met know that there are readers out there. And that is enough to make me want to write more for you. I already investigate dirty politicians for a living. I already try to find the lie in the well-spoken phrase. Something like this blog is more me just talking with you. I always imagine we're sitting in New York or at a bar in Texas or Iquitos, having a beer and you've asked me something. Often I delete entries because I realize the question I imagine you've asked is something I can't answer, not just with authority, but even decently. So I'm thinking of you as intimates. Like it's a round table and this blog is my turn at the table. What a wonderful thing that you give me this space. Thanks a million!
Someone, for instance, just said they didn't often have much to add to a post and didn't want to simply repeat: 'Nice writing' for fear it would sound old hat pretty soon. Fact is, I don't think it would ever sound old hat, just like I don't think standing when a woman comes to your table is ever old hat. It's simply a bit of respect and Women's Rights included, is a nice thing to do.
So by all means, please think of this as your blog too. Ask questions. I'll be honest if I don't have an answer. Most of you already know what my strong points are and where I'm weak. If you ask me how to fix a transmission, I'll have to come to your house and beat you. But if you ask what it feels like to be bitten by a baby bushmaster or have a septic wound that results from a relative of the brown recluse cleaned by riverinos using the ultra caustic ubos tree, then I'm someone who might have something interesting to say on the subject.
My goal here and elsewhere in my life is to be brutally honest: With my flaws, my convictions, my crazy life. With one codicil: I'm allowed to exaggerate my family to make a story better. But even then, I've never told you anything that wasn't true. And my invite to come to dinner if you're in the neighborhood is legit as well: Tonight we're falling back on bar-be-qued country pork ribs with grilled asparagus and a potato-egg salad. We're starting off with some cold mussels I cooked a couple of days ago and will probably include a few shrimp in vinagrette as I've got some that might go bad if we don't eat them soon. So if you're nearby, come and get it.
Which leads to this, in an odd sort of way: As a former chef---no credentials, just having run restaruants in New York City for 18 years or so and getting some pretty good write ups during that time at some of the finest joints in town, (Joint is a NYC term for bar-restaurant: A place that depends on food sales till 11 PM and liquor sales from 11 PM till 4 AM)--I grew fond of a lot of things. I grew fond of being able to get a fresh strawberry shake at 4 AM coming home from work. I grew fond of places that aged their meat till it was just rotten enough with bacteria to be tender when served raw or near raw. And I also grew fond of good Iced coffee. After I quit cocaine in 1980 I still needed something to keep me up and so Iced coffee was it. At work I'd always make my own. But to chill out afterwards while waiting for Claire, who was a waitress at different restaurants, to get off at 5 AM (an hour of cleanup after the bar closed) I had to find places that would serve good Iced Coffee. Now there is a soda sold on the east coast in 8 oz bottles that was basically just that. It was fantastic: A sugary sweet drink of strong coffee with milk and a spritz of bubbly soda water. I forget the name now though I'll probably go to hell for that because I must have drunk 10,000 bottles of it in my lifetime.
Anyway, it gave you the rush that existed before Redbull and all the copycats without the dangerous things I believe you get with those drinks.
But last week I went to one of the most venerable coffee shops in Fort Worth and ordered an Iced Coffee and the guy takes $2.87 and then gives me a cup full of ice and points me to the coffee in thermouses in the rear of the store. So there I was with a cup full of ice and a thermous full of hot Ethiopian coffee. I put some sugar and milk in the cup (I drink coffee black but take a little milk in iced coffee) and then put the hot coffee on top of it. So I ended up with a three buck cup of lukewarm, watered-down coffee. Madeleina laughed as she watched me try to drink it and spit it out from the 1994 Ford Ranger window on Interstate 35.
"What's the matter dad? Don't like the coffee?"
"Baby. How about you take this?"
She took a sip and handed it back.
"No dad. How about you take this?"
Man, that was just awful. Who the heck makes Iced coffee by pouring hot coffee over ice?
You have to brew regular coffee or expresso, then let it sit, off the heat, for a couple of hours. It can't sit in the sun. It can't cool in the fridge. Just put in in a good container-porcelain is the best--and let it sit in a cool, shady place on the kitchen counter for a couple of hours till it's cool. Then cover it and put it in the fridge. Add sugar while it's hot because neither sugar nor sweet and low will mix well with cold coffee.
Then wait a couple of hours or a day. If it's covered well it won't pick up any refrigerator smell.
Then, when you want to serve it, put the milk or cream in the bottom of the glass over ice. Then pour in the coffee. Then stir as fast as you can to try to make a bit of froth (ok to use an electric beater or stirrer or even a blender at this point if you like, and then drink.
Ahhhhhh.....now that's cold on your tonsils. And that's caffeine in your blood stream. That's true iced coffee.
And all truths are as simple as that, even if I'm not smart enough to elucidate them all. I still know truth is simple. Like good Iced Coffee.
So ask me questions. I'll give the best I got.
And thanks for being at the bar with me.
P

Fellas and Gals...Let's Get to It....

Look. I don't mean to be a nudge. I just mean to be me. Here's the deal. Is anybody reading this stuff? You got to let me know, cause I'm not Emily Freaking Dickenson who writes without response. So for the four of you who write regularly, forgive me. For the rest of you, stop being bums and sign in, register, go through whatever hoops you have to go through and let me know you are reading. Reason I've never published books is I don't want to do the work without knowing that a couple of million of you are going to read them. Not buy them, just read them. Reason I'm spending this much time writing things on the blog is to inform/be interesting/affect you. If I'm not doing that then I'll stop. I don't mean to waste your time. I certainly would rather be retying my shoelaces or sweeping the floor than spending 30-40 hours writing something on Shamanism that only 5 of your are going to read.
At the same time, I understand that these pleas for response are inappropriate for the few of you responding, so please forgive me. And L, Arbol, Bamboo, Dr. Grossman, The Grudge, Triche, Wind, I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about the others. Certainly I love your posts, but I'm getting tired of not getting posts from the others.
What a wimp I am, eh? I'm just the fourth kid of six and so I guess I need attention. HA!
But I never meant to write to an audience of six. I am trying to change the world here, in at least a little way, and I want to know if it's affecting people.
So those who regularly respond don't need to pay attention to this. The rest of you, get with it, boys and girls.
Or else....what?
I don't know.
But it might just make a stinking shambles of your lives. SO START RESPONDING!
Peace, love 'n out,
GORMAN, the hell raising Queens Boy.
Careful of us.
Peter G

Yeah, Well, Good and Bad Stuff Happens

Yeah, well, good and bad stuff happens. The bad has been the hurricanes to the Islands, Jamaica and Mexico this week. If I was a shaman maybe I could have changed their course. I suspect that some real shamans did, so that while there are still dead, the toll is smaller by geometric proportions than what was expected. Thanks you beings of light for that.
The bad was also the earthquake in Peru last week. The death total is at about 550 as I write this but I expect it to be much higher once things are investigated. And nearly everyone I know in Peru has family affected. Aunts, cousins, people who used to live with them.....the extended family has long arms, and in a situation like this, where most are too poor to help, the arms reach out to gringos like me, friends of the family. We do what we can....I'm already stretched pretty thin. But if you want and don't know where to contribute, I'll do the legwork and find out which outfits are really getting aid to those who need it. And there are a lot of people on the Southern Peruvian coast who need it. Unfortunately, there are already--and there will be more--more than enough phony groups collecting money that will go no further than the local bar. And while I support my local bar, I don't do it with monies given in the name of someone else's tragedy. So don't do it either. Contact the Red Cross or someone like that: WHile they probably use too much on overhead, their heart is in the right place.
Now here at home, Chepa was due for another sonogram. Not really due, but she hasn't been sleepng well and the baby hasn't been kicking hard during the last week so she was frightened. Well, her doc charged her $500 for a visit and sonogram last time and that's simply not possible, so che called me, freaking, and I told her I'd look into it. And three hours later I found a clinic in Weatherford, Texas, that gives free sonograms to anyone. So I jumped on that and the good news is that Chepa is going to have another in her incredible string of beautiful babies.
I wish it was mine, but I don't really care: I care that the fetus is healthy and jumping around inside her water sack like a dolphin. Two arms, two legs, one head. All good signs.
Even better, My Madeleina got to watch the sonogram and see the little thing jumping around. Afterward I reminded Madeleina that I had footage of her doing a series of front kicks that turned her completely around and around in the womb, making a fantastic mandala in slow motion, like a nautilus fossil.
Sierra, on the other hand, had to be removed from the sonogram room because she kept trying to touch the million buck equipment and I couldn't afford to replace it. Instead, I let her slide off the roof of my Ranger and into my arms for an hour. She loved it. I loved it too, but my healing stomach is still not certain if that wasn't more than I should have been doing.
Then I was thinking about a few of the meals I made this week: Last night was grilled marinated chicken thighs, sweet and smoked sausage with grilled broccoli, tomatos and onons; the night before it was mussels--in garlic, onion, fresh tomatoes and white wine with good garlic italian bread and fresh steamed spinach; the day before that it was roasted country stle pork ribs with garlic with basmati rice and kidney beans along with fresh asparagus and fresh corn off the cob seared with garlic, tomatoes and balsamic vinegar.
Tonight I'm alone so I made a quick putanesca: garlic, onions, diced tomatoes, black olives and capers over bow-tie pasta. I might have a piece of left over chicken parmesan we made a few days ago and some of last night's left over grilled broccoli, onions and tomatoes.
So today was about sonograms and the food you can afford if you can find a sonogram that doesn't cost you $500.
Ain't we lucky sometimes?
Anybody who's hungry, we generally eat pretty good over here and have enough left overs to feed a couple more. So if you're in the neighborhood, do drop in and we'll see what we can fix you up with.
What a world, eh? I mean, I was going to write something sour and I wound up writing a "YeaH God!" type of piece. Who'd a thunk it? Guess there's a part of me that is still simply amazed that I am allowed to be part of this sideshow called Earth.
THANKS EVERYBODY!
G