Fast Fast Fast

I was listening to the old Simon and Garfunkle song, Hazy Day of Winter, I think is the name. It's being done now by a rock band very quickly and sort of staccato but it's great. Sort of like the new version of Mrs. Robinson on radio stations, and might even be the same band. Captivating beats in both of them.
"Time time time, see what's become of me,
While I looked around for my possibilities..."
I would give you more but I can't remember the exact words and that's an indication that time is catching up with me while I'm still looking for my possibilities, eh?
Time does fly. My oldest, Italo, turns 25 tomorrow. 25. Not like 14 or 12, but 25. I remember meeting him for the very first time when he was just seven years old. He was playing soccer with the older kids. He was just so advanced. And then I married his ma and brought him to the US and New York City and put him in a baseball league on Roosevelt Island and we'd ride our bicycles up from 90th and 3rd Ave through Harlem's east side to the Roosevelt Avenue bridge and then across that woeful structure and past the crazy house there and under the enormous train tressels (spelling?????) there and on to the ball fields. And the first few games nobody knew what to make of this Amazon Indian kid who couldn't speak English and didn't know what baseball was. So they put him in right field, where all the bad players go in little league. The thing was, he'd chase down balls and look at me and I'd tell him what to do with it and they quickly learned they had an athlete on their hands.
In his second year in the league, the coach, Bobby Hoffman, a great baseball man, took his kid off shortstop and put Italo in there. He was a human vacuum. One of the few people in the world who could dive in one direction---say toward second base--stab the ball, then twist and land on his feet with his body pointed toward third base. Jose Oquendo with the Mets could do that. Luis Aparacio from my childhood could do that. Not many others. That's a cat move, not a human move.
Italo's teams won championships for several years, or came darned close. By the time he was 13 they'd have him catching and then put him in as a relief pitcher.
But soccer was his love and he still plays it. The baby he had eight months ago has crimped his style and so he's not playing semi-pro arena league this year, which I wish he would. But he's still playing in a couple of local leagues. He's finishing up his associates degree--I sort of insisted he do that just to be able to get a coaching job if he wanted it, or to teach phy ed in high school around here. He's working. He's being a good dad. I'm proud of him.
And he's turning 25 in about 12 hours.
And that just means time is moving too fast. I would have liked another couple of years at each year with him, know what I mean? I mean, I never got tired of being with him, watching him grow, getting strong, working out. I never wished the time would pass. It did anyway.
Happy birthday, kiddo. Your daddy loves you more than you can imagine.
Hope this is your best year ever.

Okay, Gonna Go to NYC

Okay, in answer to myself in the last post, I've decided to go and the hell with the costs. I've got family who need me for a few days, I've got friends and a couple of handball courts I have not seen in eight years, and I've got a daughter who hasn't seen the city is longer than that. Plus, I'm gonna get to talk about my book to an audience that is interested in that sort of thing, and I might sell a trip or three to Peru and a handful of books.
I've written the fellow who put out the invite and think it's important that I do this. And to hell with the cost factor. It will either cover itself or not but it ain't gonna break me either way. The guardians will help see to that, I'll bet.
So that's that. Done deal. Thanks all for listening. Sorry I did my worrying out loud, but I do appreciate your input.
Now let's get back to finishing another story.
Have a great day, everybody.

Here's the deal then...

Okay, here's the deal. I've just been invited to talk about my work and my book in New York City at Webster Hall on November 30. They have no speaker budget. BUTTT...Wade Davis, one of my heroes, and one of the botanists I've spend hours interview over the years, is in town (NYC) at that time, so he'll be featured on the Ayahuasca Monologues night that I've been asked to speak at.
I would love to go and love to take Madeleina. She has not been to NYC since 2001 or so. But my family and friends are there.
So the question is this: should I use my credit cards and go, hoping I can sell enough books to pay for the airfare and expenditures? I will have a place to stay, but airfare will run $700 for Madeleina and I, I think, and then we'll need $500 for taxis, food and giving some flowers to the people who put us up. Can I sell $1200 in books at an event? At $25 that would be 48 books. About 60 if you include the price of the books. The house supposedly seats maybe 750, but who knows if it will be full. So do I invest--with no funds, purely on credit card speculation, the $1200 plus $200 for books--in myself in this case or am I out of my mind?
What say? You guys often have a better sense of me than I do, so feel free to respond.
Thanks for listening.
Peter G

Ya Gotta Love My Madeleina....Or At Least I Do...

Gotta love Madeleina. Her mom tore her special sheet--old and ragged--apart last night, to make a skirt for halloween for her baby sister, two-year-old Alexa. So this morning, rather than ragging on mom because of the sheet use (Madeleina didn't care about it a whit), Madeleina took the other half of the sheet and wore it as a wrap around skirt to school. Then she took Alexa's gausy slip, and put it over her head and around her shoulders so that it made kind of a slip-stole. Then she put on about four pounds of colored rocks she'd tied onto string as a necklace. And insisted on going to school that way.
I let her.
When I picked her up this afternoon she got into the car and whacked me a couple or eight times. Whack!, with her fist on my right shoulder. Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! and then she laughed and said: "How could you let me go to school like this? I was the laughing stock of the whole place!"
Whack! Whack! Whack!
"Of course, I thought I looked great, and nobody in the whole school has the guts I have to wear something like this, so once again, I AM A WINNER!!!!!!"
Whack! Whack! Whack!
"But you, daddy, are a LOSER for letting your daughter get away with this. Sorry, POPS!"
Whack! Whack! Whack!
You all don't got to love her, but I got no choice. Anybody that cool can whack me till their fist falls off.

11 AM, Sunday Night

It's nearly 11 AM, Sunday night. I've been working on my next cover story, due today, for the local alternative. I've done the work and am just waiting for it to finish gestating and hoping it comes popping out like the last couple of hundred 5,000 word pieces. Work for a month, make 10-20-30 phone calls, sit on it for a week or two, and then write it all in just a couple of hours. Sounds easy but actually relies on you having done your homework and having 20-30 years of experience behind you.
But while I was rewriting, for the 12th time, the opening section today, Italo and Marco came over. Italo razzed me and Marco about the string roof we made over the chicken coop, but was razzed in return for not having a better idea.
They both left at 5, and I went shopping--forgot garbage bags--then went to B Wild Wings for a drink with my friend Dave, the Sunday bartender. He wasn't there. I had two drinks with his backup, then left. Don't want to be caught driving drunk and don't want to kill anybody.
Got home, was alone. Prepared a piece of fresh tuna when Italo called. Did I have any food?
"Sure, buddy. I've got chicken breasts and thighs in the oven. Made them in case you or anyone else was hungry."
"I'll be there."
A few minutes later he rolled in, found Good Will Hunting on the television, and I served him chicken, cauliflower, corn and spinach in garlic. The movie was great.
When it finished he left.
Two minutes later, Marco showed up. "I hope you dont' mind. I had a nightmare. I'm sleeping here."
And with that he flopped down on the couch in the big living room.
Now I'm happy. Now I'm a dad again. Just for a night.
Life is good.
Good night.
Hope your night was as good as mine was.

New Animals

Well, I finally got the six chicks out of the laundry room, then cleaned their business off the floor, scrubbed the table, books--that's where the cook books are--and rewashed all the clothes that normally sit on top of the dryer. And you know what? In the first two days the chicks, now about 8 weeks old, were out in the coop, three disappeared. I decided it must be snakes so I put a hose underneath the coop in the most obvious hole and turned the water on high. Nothing. An hour later, nothing. That had to be 10 gallons of water a minute, or five and Marco, Madeleina and I left it on for about two hours. Nothing. No animals came out from under the little coop house and not a drop of water escaped. Where the heck did 600-1,200 gallons of water go? we all wondered.
So then two days ago, Marco went out with a pick axe and tore up the floor of the coop. He came back--I was in the house taking a break from mowing the lawn that had grown to over two feet in that general section of yard on the other side of the creek--to announce that he'd discovered a colony of field rats. "I killed three or five, but there must have been 20 or 30 under that shed. And I only saw one part."
I gave him a bunch of rat poison cubes and he came back the next day and filled in the area under the house--seems there is a sinkhole there, which is where the water went--and then laid a new floor and that is that.
For now.
So in the last two days we've not lost a chicken to the rats, though I'm still skeptical about how the rats attacked and carried off the chickens without leaving a single feather and not a drop of blood. And I know it's not the red-tailed hawks anymore, as we've got that spiderweb of string and copper wire over the cage now and it has not been touched. And there is not a single hole large enough to accommodate a hawk with wings open--flying in--or a hawk with a chicken in it's mouth taking off.
So did the rats do it? Hard to fathom without feathers or blood. But then I'm not a farmer.
Today, to shore up the ranks, I lucked into a few chickens about two months away from laying, and a few ducks. Madeleina is now filling up the small duck pond. So until those rats get them, I'm gonna hear the sweet sound of quacking for a while. And the cluck of half a dozen chickens. And that will blend with the bleating of the goats, the insistent sound of the meow of the cat, the bark of Boots. And the birds in the house.
Lot of sound. But then it just reminds me to live every minute. Know what I mean?
PS: Madeleina just opened a Dr. Pepper made with cane sugar. It's an 8 oz bottle, but different from regular soda because of the natural, if poisonous, cane sugar.
"Dad, you're the best," she said. "Now, can you go out and feed those animals while I sit here, watch television and enjoy this soda?"
I didn't say anything. But she knew what I was thinking. Not a chance, darling. Not a chance.

This Was Last Night, But What the Heck

A friend of mine wrote a note yesterday and I responded, and then this morning she wrote back and I reread all the notes and saw this non-private part of my initial response and though, what the heck, haven't given the readers much food stuff lately, so I'm gonna give them this. And I hope my friend doesn't mind, and I hope you readers don't mind getting it a day late either.

I'm making squid tonight. Gonna saute/fry a couple of pounds. Italo, Sara, Marco, Chepa, the babies, friends of hers are coming. I was gonna just do some sesame salmon for me and Madeleina, but then the rest happened. So I bought the calamari, made a nice, hot, light tomato sauce, got good fresh-baked loaf of parmesan bread, and will serve them all that while I have both the squid AND the salmon. And you can bet Madeleina will be at my heels, saying, "Uh...dad, did you forget you bought that salmon for me?" And I'll tell her I didn't forget for a second.
Then Marco will say: "Dad, I was working on the chicken coop....any chance you have any meat?" And I'll say: "Look in the oven, the apricot-stuffed loin of pork with roast potatoes/baby organic carrots, onions and celery from last night is there."
And Sara will say: "If you have roast pork, you should have saurkraut..." And I'll say, "It's on the stove, in the little pot, with the lardons"--courtesy of Claudia V, of course, who, when editing my book, suggested I throw some tasty lardons into it to give it a bit if juice.
And everybody will eat and then they will leave and I will go to bed alone, in an empty house but I will remember that it was full of laughter for a couple of hours. And that's worth the price of admission.
And it happened just that way.

Laurels, Ain't that Nice?

Okay, so Morgan Maher, the brilliant artist and the fellow who illustrated my book, got it in his noggin to secure the ayahuascainmyblood.com webpage, and damned if he didn't do it for $10. Which is probably an indication of how much I'm not in demand. But that Morgan is designing an hellacious page, which has reviews, lots of audio interviews, pics, illos (which he did for the book), bios of myself, himself and Johan Fremin, the brilliant artist who created the book, and more stuff than I knew happened around the book.
So what about that?
Are these guys cool or what?
I'll put up the link when it's done.
And I'm also gonna tell you that an organization got in touch with me yesterday to ask if I'd be willing to accept an award for a story I did on Hemp for the Fort Worth Weekly last year. Willing? Are you kidding?
So ain't that cool too?
Here's the thing: It's coming now because of 25-35 years of hard hard work. And I'm glad and proud. But I also know that whatever it is, I still have to cook/prepare dinner for the kids, the goats, the dog, the chickens, the ducks, the cats and the birds tonight. So there is a balance and it's a tightrope. I don't mind walking it. I hope the work is good, always. I don't want to be someone who short-shrifts anybody.

Biology Class--Freshman Year

I've been in touch with one of the former Catholic Brothers, now a layman, who taught math at my high school, Bishop Reilly in Queens, New York. I mentioned how tough the biology class was and that biology simply escaped me. I might have done better if I'd ever opened the book, but I always thought I was smart enough to just listen in class and never read any of the books at home except for my geometry book--cause I loved geometry--the novels and plays in English--cause I loved English--and an occasional look through Mary Dolciani's horrible nightmare-fueling algebra books. And as if her books weren't bad enough, when I got to Hunter College, guess who I got for my first Algebra 101 class? MARY DOLCIANI HERSELF!!!!! God, she was awful. First day she announced that there would be no eating, drinking or smoking cigarettes in class. What? We were always allowed to do those things. Worse, as soon as the announcement was made, she opened a cup of coffee, unwrapped a muffin, and lit a smoke.
I objected.
"The reason I can do these things and you can't," she said, "is that I know when I am going to speak. You, however, never know when you'll be called on to answer something I ask and I don't want to waste the class' time while you finish chewing or put down your coffee."
Point well made but it only made me hate her more.
Back to biology. I told my former teacher this story about biology class.

Once, in the biology class, we had to get an animal and dissect it at home as a project. Well, I got an alligator from the pet store and Brother Walter gave me a syringe and a bottle of formaldehyde, but no directions. The formaldehyde opened on the Q-44 bus going home, and I lost the syringe, but I didn't think that was important as I didn't know what I was to do with it anyway. So I got home, put my little alligator into a pot and filled it with the remaining formaldehyde. Man did that little critter jump!
I put a lid on the pot, and then a cinderblock and waited him out. He took about an hour to die, it seemed at the time. And then I cut his head open with a chisel and hammer to take a look at his brain, which was supposed to have two distinct lobes. Of course I crushed the brain with the hammer and chisel, so I didn't wind up with much of an experiment.
BUTTTT.....what I learned, crazily, from that experience, was that I never ever wanted to kill anything I didn't have to from that day on. And even now, this morning, when a waterbug came into my kitchen I went to kill it, then decided to give it a pass, so long as he left quickly. He did.
I don't know that the experiment was meant to impart the sanctity of life, but it did. Funny world, eh?

Upcoming Trip Info

My son Italo wrote a response to my "January--Fantastic News" post of a week or so ago that I'd forgotten to give any info on the trips.
So here's the deal: On Sat, Jan 8, I'm taking a small group of people into the jungle in Peru, which will be followed by a trip to the Andes mountains to visit Machu Picchu.
It's a 21-day trip. The jungle portion is 12 1/2 days; the mountain portion is 8 1/2 days.
There will be lots of indigenous medicines/ceremonies during our time together. In the jungle there will also be riverboat travel under the Amazon sky and on the Amazon itself; there will be hikes in the most fantastic swamp I know. There will be some walking in first growth jungle, under the high trees, learning about plant medicines, collecting wild foods, canoeing in the dark, swimming in a lake that's home to pink and grey river dolphins, and anything else we can squeeze in. And we can usually find some other things to squeeze in.
In the mountains, there will be more medicine ceremonies, with two of the finest curanderos I know. And there will be clambering around breathtaking ruins, and visits to an extraordinary market, and two days at Machu Picchu and again, anything else I can squeeze in.
People are welcome to sign up for either portion of the trip or the entire trip.

Then in February, beginning on the first saturday, I've got a 9 1/2 day jungle intensive. It's similar to the 12 1/2 day jungle trip but not quite the same because no two trips are the same. My team and I always try to do at least a couple of things with each group that we've not done before.

Note on my team: My jungle team is the best team in the world. We're like the Chicago Bulls when Michael J was in his prime and Rodman was vacuuming up every rebound in sight. They will take care of you--in terms of protecting you, looking out for you and making sure you're entertained and taught well--wonderfully. And they'll do that without coddling you or getting in the way of you having your experiences.

Note on the trips: We don't go to no stinkin' lodges. Ain't no television at night. We go to deep jungle and you will get dirt under your findernails and you will bathe in the river and you will love and come out of the trip a changed person. If you currently suck, you will suck less. If you are already a diamond, we'll polish you up. These are no fooling intense trips, but they are not physically difficult. I've had some guests who were sure they couldn't do things but darn if they didn't surprise themselves.

For something of a pretty good itinerary--though note that each trip is a little different and that I've already added a second medicine ceremony to the mountain portion of the first trip--please go to pgorman.com and then go to the TOURS page.
The basics are there, including a pretty good day-to-day, a list of what's included and what is not, and the prices.
If anyone thinks that a few hundred dollars off a price would help make a trip possible, please ask and I'll see what I can do.
Now get that check book out and sign up for one of them. Your next change won't be till June.
These are really pretty special trips.
Thanks for listening.
Hope my son is happy now.

Cute Little Story

Might have posted something like this once before but it's short so if I did, just bear with me.
Someone on a forum I occasionally post on was discussing Tom Robbins the other day. It was slightly off topic but reminded me of this story. Here is what i wrote.

I've been a fan of Robbins for a long time. And I have a funny Tom Robbins story to tell. About 10-12 years ago, I got a call. I answered. "Hello, this is Tom Robbins. I hope you don't mind but Terence McKenna gave me your phone number and said you were the expert on frog hallucinogens. I'm writing a book about them and wonder if you could talk to me about them..."
Well, I worked with Phylomedusa bicolor, the Matses' sapo medicine, and Robbins was talking about the Bufo Alvarious, which I knew but certainly was not an expert on. And what I did know was from the Bufo Amazonas. So I couldn't help him much. I think I gave him Tom Lyttle's number, and for those of you who know, Tom Lyttle was a crazy genius who died way too young. The book Robbins finally wrote was Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, a terrific piece.
But while I couldn't help him out, I was thrilled to get the call. "This is Tom Robbins...Terence McKenna gave me your phone number..." Man, I thought I made it right there. It was so cool that I was probably shining for a week.
Of course, still struggling to pay the mortgage and keep shoes on my kids's feet, I know I'm not there yet, but for a minute a decade ago, well, I was sky high.

Man, Does Life Slip by or What?

Man, does life slip by or what? Last thing I knew I had my horrible big toenails--infected by some strange, still unidentified Amazon poison--cut by Chepa because the poison triples the depth and cannot be cut by me. And now they're completely painful again. So four months went by that quick. Last thing I knew, Chepa cut my hair before the June trip to Peru and now I look like a damned old hippie--which I am proud to be--who doesn't groom himself. And last thing I knew my Madeleina was just a little girl and today I found blood in the toilet. And Sierra, Chepa's 4-year old, was asking me things and now, just since June, she's reminding me to hold hands and pray before breakfast. And Alexa, Chepa's youngest at 2, now talks and tells me all the animals that have died since she last saw them. "Goat mom, died. Blue bird in kitchen, died. Bad cats died. A lot animals died."
And last thing I knew the grass in the hill space over the creek was cut but now it's 2 feet tall and all weeds with stickers. And I was out cutting it and I've got hundreds of fire ant bites and dozens of really painful-to-remove stickers on my shorts and legs and ankles and sneakers.
And the damned mortgage is due again.
Can't we slow things down just a trace? I mean, come on folks. Let's work together. If your life is changing as fast as mine, and I'm running as fast as I can, then you're all in the same boat, and we seem to be swimming up current. Which is not the right direction.
Hold on, it's probably gonna get tougher from here. Got a trip coming up in January and another in February and by the time those are both done, Madeleina will probably be asking me to buy her a car...
Lots of love to get through it to all of you. From a deep good place in my heart.

Friday Morning at the Gorman Spread

Well, it's Friday morning, 7:12. I'm drinking my coffee and reading my newspapers on the internet. I've read that there was a horrible storm that raged through New York City yesterday and wrote to a friend who lives there to see if she's okay.
When I got up in the middle of the night to take my middle of the night too-much-liquid-for-my-kidneys-to-handle break, I noticed an empty box of curlers on the bathroom sink.
When I got up at 5:30 for good, I went to Madeleina's room door and called to her to ask her if she needed to get up early. She said she needed a smidge more sleep. Normally that would mean I'd be trying to wake her every 15 minutes for the next hour-and-a-half, but this time she was up on her own in a flash. She came bounding into the living room, some of her hair in long bouncing curls.
"Hey dad, check it out. Today's picture day so I thought I'd put curlers in to give myself a different look."
"You look gorgeous, baby."
"Yeah, except that this zit came out right here," she said, pointing to something I couldn't even see. "It's so ugly. And from a distance it makes it look like my nose is bleading. Plus I have such tiny eyelashes. Why don't I have your eyelashes? Why do you have such long beautiful lashes and I'm stuck with mom's?"
"They'll grow, don't worry."
"Not in time for picture day."
"Well, not by 10 this morning, no..."
"So, dad, what would you say if I--I mean, you know I don't use makeup because that's such a girly thing, but what if I used just a little today to cover up this zit?"
"Cool. Anything you like."
"Thanks, dad. You're the best."
Five minutes later she came back into my office/the front living room, this time with about 12 bracelets on each arm.
"Do you know that I have a lot of beautiful things? I mean, these are great. I just never wear them because I'm afraid I'll break them. Maybe I'll just wear the pink ones today. Because they go with the pink earrings and they're the hardest to break because they're plastic, not stone or silver or anything...."
"You rock, Macaroni."
"Thanks, dad!" And off she went.
Fifteen minutes passed. From the bathroom I hear, "You get off. Right now. And you, you get back into place and stay there. You hear me?"
"Who are you talking with, Madeleina? Yourself or you have company I don't know about?"
"Just these stupid curlers, dad. They're not staying in place. And the mascara is going in the wrong place."
"Excellent. Everything likes a little personal attention."
Five more minutes passed and out she came. "Can you come here, dad? I think I just poked myself in the eye with makeup and now I can't see."
I took a look and got the tiny bit of dabbing cream out of her eye.
"Thanks, dad. I guess I'm just not good at these girly things..."
"I don't think make up skills are something you're born with, darlin. I think that's a practiced skill."
"I should probably ask mom....but I don't really need to because I don't like things like makeup yet..."
No, I thought. But you're starting to lean in that direction.
My baby's growing up, I guess.
Good for her.

January Peru Trip: This is Fanatastic!

Dear All: Just a quick note to say that several people who said they were going to sign up for the January 21 day trip to Peru--Mountains and Jungle courses in magic, medicines and peoples, are copping out and asking for later trips. Money is the issue and I understand.
BUTTTTTTTT....the trip is on anyway, and I should say trips, because the Jan trip is followed by a February trip which is shorter, but costs considerably less, everyone should join. These are fantastic trips.
The Fantastic News is that my teacher Victor Estrada, as well as my other teacher, Kucho, will be doing San Pedro Healing work during the mountain portion of the January trip. This is unprecedented. To have two of my teachers, two of the people who can heal illness, sadness, anything for goodness sake, is unbelieveable. So if anyone here is considering getting healed, I am telling you, no lie, that now is the time to get that healing. These two men are extraordinary and I don't use that word lightly. I'm a recipient of their work and I am just not fooling here.
So if you want to sign up, this is a good time to do it. And if you're short on bucks, talk to me about scholarships. I'll do my best. This is something fantastic.

Alexa Running at Me

Today was a sad day. I was working on a cover story for my local alternative that's going to press next Tuesday. I was having a tough time with it because it has not percolated enough in my head. My work is done, essentially, and this is the time when I try to think of the right way to present it to make it its strongest. Many false starts.
That wasn't the sad part. The sad part was that I needed to go to the hospital where Chepa's baby Alexa was born and sign a paper swearing i was not her father and that I had no parental responsibility for her. That probably sounds pretty odd to be something to feel sad about because I'm not her father, but still, it felt--and felt with Sierra before her--like I was signing a paper swearing to abandon her. Like she was nothing to me. And that's just not right. She and Sierra are Madeleina's sisters, they're Italo and Marco's sisters. They're my granddaughter's aunts. That is a lot to me. Not counting that I've helped raise them both, that this is the house they want to come visit daily, that they think of the chickens and goats and the cat and birds and Boots as their animals. So yeah, it was sad to sign a paper swearing I will have no responsibility for Alexa.
And on the heels of that unexpected sadness, Chepa came over just as I got home from the hospital and there was Alexa jumping out the car, bounding in my direction, arms raised high above her head and a welcome smile on her face while she screamed "I'm here!!!!" And I swept her up in my arms and held her tightly and swore that no matter what paper I signed, neither she nor Sierra would ever be abandoned by me.

Thoughts on the Age of Ayahuasca

Someone on a forum I post to occasionally has been pushing the idea that Ayahuasca has been in use for 10,000 years. I put up with about a dozen posts on the subject before I thought I had to weigh in. And this is what I weighed in with:

Thoughts on the Age of Ayahuasca
Another $0.02 from Gorman. There is no stone in northwestern Amazonia. There is stone along the Andes and there is stone along the upper reaches of the Amazon from west to east, but not in the Amazon basin. So no stone, nothing lasts. No written language in the Amazon, plus no stone, means the only early records we have of the entire basin come from Jesuit and Franciscans who traveled with the Conquistadores. And they wrote history like any conquering people--from their perspective. So to demand solid information from an area of the world where there was nothing concrete to carve into, paint on, draw on or build with and which didn't have a written language is a silly question. We know that early Spanish records talk about some indigenous using a substance that we can be pretty sure was ayahuasca, but that's it. Further than that is accepted speculation but that's all it is.
And this is true for a lot of things. Sapo, frog sweat--also, recently used by tribes that call it kambo--was only first mentioned in the literature by Bob Carniero, in his work with the Amahuaca--though he never saw it used despite living with the Amahuaca for a full year or more (he is currently the Director of South American Ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC). And he didn't have a name for the material, just relayed a myth in a 26 page pamphlet he published in 1972 or so. When I brought out sapo and wrote about it, it was the first time it was written about, ever, as something seen and experienced. And that wasn't until 1986. So while it might have been in use for thousands of years, all we can go on is that it's been in use since 1986. Kambo doesn't appear in the literature until about 2002 or so, so if those tribes were using it before then--highly unlikely, as it appears the Matses are the only people who perfected collecting, and using, the material and that others copied it when word spread in the last 20 years--there is no record. And as there is no stone in most of the Amazon, there are no petro glyphs we can go back to see what might have happened.
The reality is that what happens in the Amazon is lost within 20 years, when the trees in the building decay. That's just life. In the mountains and desert you can have records going back thousands of years, but not in the rainforest, where there is no permanence. I know that Ecuador is a bit different in places from most of Peru's jungle, and Colombia has its foot in the northern stone mountain crest, but nothing has been found in those places to indicate early ayahuasca use.
Which doesn't mean it wasn't used 10,000 years ago. Just that you're gonna have a hard time proving it.

The Girls Are Back, Finally

Well, Sierra and Alexa were over for a while today. Fantastic. Just holding them, just singing their songs to them, just having Sierra ask, "Did you get the donuts, Mr. P Garman?" and my heart was off and running. Chepa brought them over and while they didn't stay long--their dad came into town with them for a few days--they didn't want to leave. "Stay, mom. Stay," said Alexa, who can apparently talk now. See what happens when I miss three months with them? Chepa assured them and me they'd be over all the time now, until I got tired of them. I reminded her that I've never gotten tired of the kids. None of them. Wanted to kill Marco, occasionally, and any baby can drive you to frustration's limit now and again, especially if you work from home and they just won't let you, but I've never gotten tired of them. And if I had five more, that would be swell too. My three are great, but add in Chepa's new two and man, I'm just sitting around mostly in heaven.
So good. That's just great.

Yeah, Well, Things Goin' Good Here

Yeah, well, things going good at the Gorman house. Marco, who's been told that he's welcome anytime to come to dinner or work or sleep over, but not just to show up at midnight and raid the fridge because that makes me feel used, has been a gentleman of late, coming over in time for dinner, doing dishes, etc. Partly probably because he can't find a job here. He's in a tough spot: Nobody at the local burger joints will hire him because he's too smart, and the regular jobs don't want him because he got into a spat with his last boss and wound up getting fired. I've offered to go there and fix things as only a journalist/dad can but he won't hear of it.
Still, last night, start of a 3 1/2 day weekend, Marco ate, borrowed my newer truck and said he'd be back to go to sleep here.
Then Italo came over to say hello.
And Madeleina was in rare form, victimizing them with her acerbic tongue and I won't go into specifics.
THis morning Madeleina and I used our third ball of string, polished hemp, to complete the spiderweb over the chicken coop that ought to keep the red tailed hawks out--Ha, I'm thinking. They're predators for a reason and the reason is that they're slicker than their prey. And I'd be their prey if they were big enough--and then went and bought half a dozen new chicks. Just as we got back, here came Italo and Marco, looking for breakfast and promising to clean the rug in the big living room after they got through with their mom, Chepa's rug. Turns out, unbeknownst to me, she's left Indiana and is due back tomorrow with the babies. HOORAY!!!!! I can't wait to see the babies! I'll only have a day or two because I guess their dad is due in on Wednesday for a couple of days. Forget that, who cares. Chepa will bring the babies over daily anyway. She's pretty hard-headed when it comes to her men either towing the line or being cut from it.
So I tossed in $30 to the rug cleaning pot and Italo eventually came here while I was visiting with my friend Lynn and then he and Marco cleaned not just the big living room rug but the old Persian imitation I've had for 30 years and then my office rug and man, do we smell like a clean house! And now they're coming for dinner so I'm making hot sausage with onions and peppers--a mix of green and red bell, plus the finest in-season Hatch peppers, with garlic and finely diced tomato, over rice. I already made a good corn and red pepper and onion salad in white vinegar (salt/Pepper and a touch of garlic in olive oil). And Then I put in a rack of ribs at a low temp. I'll make a good barbeque sauce in a few minutes--start with a bit of salt pork, lots of garlic and onion and tomatoes and peppers, then good dark brown sugar and fresh hot red peppers and go from there--for those in an hour, and then I guess I'll make up some veggies to go with the works. I was gonna do shrimp and salmon but I'll hold that till tomorrow.
The gist of this is that there was a lot of noise, all my kids, good work done (I painted the new fencing on the porch again and am now officially freaking done with that), food prep (They shared an 8 egg omelet for breakfast which include freshly pan seared chicken breast, spinach, garlic, tomatoes, onion and good cheddar) along with "Smashed potatoes"--roasted potatoes put in a heavy fry pan, smashed to near flat, salt and peppered and cooked in garlic and oil and a bit of chicken stock till really crispy on the outside and pure white potato meat on the inside. The omelet and potatoes were accompanied by a thick slice of perfect cantaloupe.
And then I sold 3 more books today, and if I can do that all month I'll have sold 90. And I know I'll get a couple of wholesale orders for 10 each, so that would be great.
So things are good here. How nice. It really doesn't take a lot to make me happy. My kids, noise, cooking, a little work, a few new chickens, what else? That's plenty, eh? Don't be greedy, Gorman. That's already a real good day.

Friday Night, Ain't it Great?

So Madeleina just walked in at 7:01 and announced that the sun is too high. "Way too high. I mean, way too too high!".
And then she walked to the living room and announced she'd just found the bandaids we've been looking for the last couple of weeks and which have already been replaced.
And just before this she has been out in the front yard, herding the goats, Boots, the cat and the chickens, none of whom have been fed yet, with a broken metal broom pole and singing to them. "I am the wizard! I have made you all what you are! I can change you if I want but I don't want to! You are all fine---get over there, you stupid goat! Don't you know I'm talking to you?"
Life is so so sweet and precious. To hear her making up songs out there and hitting notes I couldn't hit before my whatever's fell some near 50 years ago is just fantastic. Her voice soars like magic. If I could bottle it and listen to it daily, I would. She shatters the crystal of my heart effortlessly.
I'm just so lucky, and happy to be alive.
Thanks white light.

Ah, My Madeleina....

Ah, my Madeleina: It is about 6:34 PM on Wednesday afternoon. Madeleina and I just had a talk about people covering up. She brought it up by asking why she was 15 pounds overweight. I explained that that happened when her mom and I broke up and she was stuck listening to lots of screaming and acrimony and decided, though she didn't realize it, to put a layer of protection between herself and her heart.
She asked why I was also 15-20 pounds overweight. I explained that while in New York I had friends, people I played handball with, people I played softball with, people I threw a football with, and that I also rode my bike 10 miles per day through New York traffic. But here in Texas, I have only one friend who is an adult, and he and I only see one another every two or three months. And I can't ride my bike--too many dogs--can't play handball, can't throw a football, and there are no handball walls. So I get bored to death and drink a little at night. Not stupidly, but enough to numb the night and let me sleep. And that's my extra weight.
She laughed at that explanation.
AND then it started to get windy and she suddenly took out her best kite and now she's running all over the yard, chased by the goats, by Boots, by the cat and by the chickens that she decided should be let loose, and the lightning is pouring down. There is no getting her inside, and as there is no key at the end of her kite string, I wont' try any further. But she is the real deal And she makes me laugh and calls me on it when I'm short. She's a real New Yorker is what I'm saying, could have been a mob moll if she stayed there and would have been a good one.
"Dad: If you lose another 10 pounds, even the 60 year old women at walmart will be looking at you!
Thanks, baby. Now go get into a cold shower and stay there for a year or two.
No, she's out in the rain and thunder.
On another note, my book, Ayahuasca in My Blood--25 Years of Medicine Dreaming was just made book of the month for the shamanportal.org website. It's a research place for all things shamanic. And no, It is not the same as winning an AAN national award for writing or two, and not the same as being the Texas Print Journalist of the Year, but it is still a nice thing. It means somebody who doesn't know me thought the book was good, informative, or even fantastic.
So thanks, God. White Light. Being-ness. Is-ness. Thanks for giving me Madeleina, my health, my crazy family, my goats and Boots.
Hope your rainstorm is as good as mine, everybody.

Okay, Here's an Answer I Gave Someone

Here's an answer I gave someone who asked what I felt the impact of ayahuasca tourism has been, and when it started, in Iquitos, Peru. It's not impossible that I've had a couple of glasses of wine with ginger ale right now and when I wrote this, so if the spelling is off in places, tough luck. HA!

I'm here and noticed your thread. I'm just under the gun with story deadlines and so have not responded yet. But I mean to.
I can tell you that in 1984 there were 2 very major and successful tour outfits in Iquitos, neither of which offered ayahuasca, as well as Carlos Grande, Moises Torres Vienna and a few other good jungle guides.
By 1990, Paul Wright and Peter Jensen, who had the two most successful outfits, came to me to say "thank you" because they claimed that my stories on ayahuasca had added more than 10 percent volume to their tour groups. And by 1993, when Shoemaker came and began his current tour of duty, they both claimed that their groups had gone up by 20 percent.
And once that ball started rolling, there was no stopping it.
The biggest single mark was Alan Shoemaker starting the Shamanism Conference, but there were other marks: The National Geo article on Blue Morpho, a couple of movies, and so forth.
And most of it has been a mixed blessing. There might be 30 places out on the road from Iquitos to Nauta, each of which has cut down primary jungle to make a lodge type place for gringos. That's tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of trees cut down, thousands of bands of monkeys displaced in the name of saving the rainforest. And each of those require probably thousands of more trees next year.
The first big time operator out there that I know of was Don Francisco Montes. He is from a great line of Shipibo healers and was basically kicked out of Pucallpa in about 1993 and sent to live in Iquitos by his family, who bought him a 20 hectare spread. He organized himself, took his work seriously and I love the guy. He is terrific. And his place, Sachamama, is certainly the most beautiful place anywhere. I think Alan S, was the first to get him a grant of $500 from a woman who was a client of his. And that money was the seed money for the Sachamama plant identification work. Francisco has earned his stripes in the years since.
During the last 4 years we have seen an unprecedented number of newbies come to Iquitos with a few bucks, fall for a curandero, and build them a place on the road to Nauta. Most of those places will disappear because of the costs. But they will have killed wildlife, stunted vegetation and done a host of harms in the name of good. The one constant in the third world is that all of the bad men have never done near the harm of those who meant well,. That's just life, and it stinks but that's the way it is. Bringing curanderos out of their river villages hurts those villages. Bringing gringos in large numbers into those villages hurts those villages. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Better to just get healed and walk away.
HA! This from one of the people who accidently promulgated the whole thing. But I saw early on, in 1987-1988 that my teacher Julio Llerena's (Jerena) only true apprentice, Salis Navarro, when hired by Peter Jensen's outfit to give ayahuasca to gringos once a week let it go to his head and was subsequently killed by a Matses man, my friend Antonio, after he seduced one of Antonio's wives while Antionio was out hunting. The alarm bells went off that I was doing something wrong. I knew it was important to write about ayahuasca, to bring or help bring it to the world, but I also knew I would have to hide the people I worked with better, so that they would be protected, from themselves and others.
So what's with aya tourism? Well, it's brought enough gringos to Iquitos to keep several gringos making money in gringo restaurants. It's brought enough money to take a dozen legit curanderos off the rivers where they worked and bring them into the city to work with gringos, or into lodges to work with foreigners to the detriment of their own people. It's brought enough money to cut down thousands of hectares of primary forest in the name of making aya retreats that are aimed at making gringos money and to share the knowledge. It's brought enough money to have at least two dozen people who never even drank ayahuasca three years ago into the realm of being "curanderos" because they've learned a few songs and have sycophantic acolytes. And it's brought enough seekers to have obscured the value of the true ayahuasca experience, what with the rules, regulations, and so forth that many of the curanderos now put forth.
So, end result? Do gooders should stay the heck out because they spawn other do gooders. Evil men are identifiable and therefore not much of a threat.
There are, seriously, many many good people out there working their hearts to the n'th degree. To denigrate them would be wrong. They're doing good, important work. But there are also people who do not understand the culture, people who mean well, but who do not have the experience with the culture to know where and how to encourage legit growth, and therefore are unwittingly encouraging non-legit growth.
Which is which I am not going to get into. But there is certainly a part of me that is sorry for having unwittingly encouraged it all. Iquitos and the northwest Amazon was fine the way it was. It didn't need help. And all the help we've meant to bring has not been a real help at all, I don't think.

Tonight on Coast to Coast AM...

I was just told that tonight, Saturday, August 28, Coast to Coast AM radio is going to be playing an old interview I did with Art Bell. I did it about 12 years ago, when I was leaving my post as editor-in-chief of High Times magazine, and heading down to the jungle to begin taking people out to the deep green. I think we discussed the failure of the War on Drugs, the Amazon and so forth. If I remember, it was a pretty good show--or seemed it at the time. According to the coasttocoastam.com website it's gonna start at 6 PM, but of course that depends on when your local station runs the coast to coast show.
So spread the word for old time's sake. And then, if there is a call in section at the end or something, call in and tell them to plug my new book!!!!!
The timing is kind of odd because just three days ago I wrote them asking for a new interview regarding the jungle and ayahuasca and my book and while I have not heard back, well, here's this. And I would not have known about it if one of Fort Worth's activists, a woman I talk with on certain political issues, hadn't written to ask if I were the same Peter Gorman as the Peter Gorman coming up on the Art Bell replay.

All I Can Figure is You're All Astounded....

All I can figure is you're all astounded into silence by my recent spate of blogs. I mean, nobody is answering except my friend G, who posted the same thing five times. Which means he was having a great night on apple cider or the trembling set in....and given that he's a freaking surgeon, let's just hope it was a great night. There was one post, from someone who didn't read my book, who wanted to know who Papa Viejo and the women of Loreto were. Papa Viejo was an old Matses headman and warrior--he fought the Peruvian military as recently as 1970 or so--who has a great scene in my book. He never became my friend for real but he certainly influenced me and his daughter Irene and some of his sons did become my friends--though Irene still looks at me like she looks at a tapir on a trap spike: Good lunch, nothing more. The women of Loreto are the women who are charapitas, women born in the area of Iquitos, Peru. Generally 2-3-4 generations from genuine indigenous life, they still have deep indigenous genetic roots--like my wife/ex-wife Chepa--with so many of their behaviors, including a secret language, a sort of a jungle Pig Latin that only the women are taught, an indigenous part of their day to day lives.
So what is it? Bored to death? What do you want me to do, come over to your houses and shake you up? Want me to write in big letters? Want me to add pictures to this perfectly clean blog? Want me to tell more Madeleina stories? I would tell you more Sierra and Alexa stories but I have not seen either one of them since May 31, and that's driving me crazy. I will see them in about 10-12 days, if all goes well, and then I will have new stories for sure. But for now? What I've got to write about is what I've got. And you guys got to go with that. If it's ayahuasca, let it be. Learn something even if you never use the stuff.
If it's cooking, go with that too, even if all you ever eat is chips. People will be impressed if you rattle off my simple but elegant recipes.
Madeleina just walked through he room saying, "Father, you're number one...!!!" as if I didn't notice that she was taking another handful of the best green grapes in the world with her after I told her no more grapes till after swordfish dinner...
And Marco came in last night and this morning my wallet was $13 lighter. Not that he can possibly imagine that a semi-broke dad actually knows how much money is in his wallet till next payday....HAHAHAHA!
And now I'm going out to do some painting on my new porch fence. It was painted three times or so while it was just in 2x4 form, but now that it's been cut and placed, it needs a couple of coats more to look right.
As for you? I don't know. Maybe it's my fault. Maybe I'm putting you all to sleep. Or maybe I'm just stunning you into silence with wonderful takes on daily occurrences.....either way, unless somebody starts talking I'm gonna assume you all died and then light candles for ya.
Or I'll just forgive your silence, figure you're still paying attention--QUIZ TOMORROW AND GOD HELP YOU IF YOU FAIL!!!--and keep wriiting. Love to everybody. Hug a tree or insolent teen today. Hint: Trees don't curse back. But they do have insidious ants.
Peace out....or Please, out...or Peas, mashed...
Gorman

On Dominating the Spirits

THOUGHTS ON DOMINATING THE SPIRITS
Someone wrote me to ask if dominating the spirits, as I’ve written about, is more important than simply trusting the plant spirits. This is what I wrote back.
In terms of domination rather than trust, I think the trust comes from the domination. When we think of the spirit of ayahuasca, we need to think of where she comes from, where her roots are. That's the Amazon. And in that world--where men are concerned--traditionally outsiders are considered bad and unwanted--at least since the Spanish brutalization of so much of that region. Therefore, when an outsider comes on a camp of indigenous, there is no greeting. Instead there is a wild confrontation with a show of arms and loud voices and threats. This is true even these days in places where there are still some old warriors living. And it's true in some mestizo villages as well: I recently had a shotgun blast nearly take my head off as I walked the perimeter of some land I own just out on the Nauta road at kilometer 14. The fellow was alone and I was with three other people and we had a shotgun and so he fired from the brush, unexpectedly, before we even saw him. He didn't want to kill us, just frighten us away because we were, to him, such a threatening and potentially dangerous group.
Now, if you can see the spirit of ayahuasca, and the spirits that are there to help you specifically--whether for short term healing or even if they are your lifelong guardians--in the light of that sort of militant posturing, then I think the domination idea is clearer than our view of domination. In other words, you will be challenged by some of those spirits, just as if you walked into an indigenous antigua's camp. You will be asked in the most frightening manner what your business is. And if you run, that indigenous antigua will chase you and take everything you have. But if you stand square, like Moises taught me with Papa Viejo, then you will earn respect, and with it, a measure of trust. But you have to earn it. And that standing tall in front of someone who is threatening, and capable, of killing you, is the domination I'm talking about. It's not that you beat the spirit into submission, you dominate by being equal. You dominate by controlling your fear or by not having fear. You dominate by not allowing yourself to be dominated.
It's the same with many of the women in Loreto, by the way. You need to dominate them by showing them you are not intimidated by their looks, actions, the way they want to brush you off. And if you do, then you have dominated them, you have captured them (conquistar is the word they use to explain it). That's another story, of course, but a reminder that the theme of domination runs through all aspects of the culture of the region, including the spirit world there.
Now, I don't think that this comes into play very often early on in one's relationship with ayahuasca and the other spirits. I think mostly that they are pretty gentle with people. But relationships change and demands get made and the bar is set higher and higher the deeper one goes. At least that's my experience.
Now, as to your journal entry suggesting that what needs dominating isn't so much the spirits, perhaps, but our fear, well, that's on the money. But our fear has to be dominated in front of those spirits when they challenge us. And while they won't steal everything we have if we lose the challenge like Papa Viejo would have, they certainly are not going to give up what they have to share with us unless we've proved ourselves worthy and capable via that domination.
Make any sense?

Wednesday Near Noon...Everything's Moving, Everything's Still

Everything is moving. Everything is still. My brain is exploding. It's a great day to be alive.
Well, I turned down the offer to publish my book with a real publisher. I just wrote a note declining the offer. And you know what? I sort of hated doing that. I mean, it would be cool to be officially published. Like the first time I saw my work in Omni magazine or in the Spanish GEO. Just thrilling.
I didn't turn it down because of the money--though if the offer had been $25,000 I might have accepted it. I turned it down because I would have had to stop anything that's going on. That means the newly released hard cover, still waiting for its first sale (only on lulu.com as yet, under Ayahuasca in My Blood--25 Years of Medicine Dreaming) would be shut down. It means the Kindle edition that Johan is near finishing couldn't go up. It means the soft cover, which has hit over 60 sales this month with a week to go, would be shut down. And while 60 doesn't seem like many, and isn't, it's double what it was last month, the second month it's been out. And I think it will double again next month. Or hope.
But Skunk magazine, the Canadian magazine I write my Drug War Follies for is coming out with an excerpt and a review in a couple of months. And MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, is due to review it in their year end issue. And Lynn and I have begun playing with the audio version and hope to have that out in a few weeks. And there are some radio shows that have asked me to talk about it. And a few bookstores have bought some books wholesale to stock.
I really don't want to stop that, even if it's not a juggernaut at the moment. To pull it off the market now and have to wait till next fall to have released, well, to be honest, that would be about as fun as being told, just at the last second: "Don't finish yet..." or some other thing. Pardon the graphic.
So that's that. I don't think he'll come back with a $25,000 offer. I don't even think he will come back with an offer to let me continue what I'm doing, to try to build steam so that when he publishes next fall there will already be interest in it. I think it's just a done deal.
Which is not the only thing on my mind. On my mind is the last section of front porch fence, the largish story I finished last night just about the time my newspaper went to press--well, that's when the rewrite was finished and so I've got one very upset boss to deal with at tomorrow's meeting. Problem was it's a complex story and I didn't have much time for it and so while I did a host of interviews--more than most people would do for a cover story--there wasn't a lot of time to let it all gel. And that is vital to good journalism. Not if you are writing about someone putting up a new pasture fence, but if you are trying to explain new policing tactics and what they might mean to minority communities and to civil rights issues of even majorities, well, that takes a bit of time to settle. And the pace I've been on, doing a good sized (1600 word) story and a small story (400) words for each of the last few weeks, as well as working on a couple of the cover stories I've got coming up, as well as responding to book readers with questions....well, it is just too hectic to have the luxury of having things settle.
The alternative is that I turned in a draft and let my boss tell me what was wrong. That helped me focus down on things and allowed me to write a pretty damned good rewrite. But it pissed her off I'm sure to be wondering if we were going to have anything printable/readable 30 minutes before the press run started. And anyone in the business knows: You really can't stall the presses. Once they are set to go, they go, whether you've got those pages filled or not.
And another thing I've been thinking about is how super cool Madeleina is. She is just fantastic and I hope i tell her that every day. Know what she did yesterday? I had gone food shopping after I turned in the draft, then picked her up from school on the way home. She helped with putting away the groceries and I started dinner. Good dinner. Fresh albacore tuna steaks sauteed in olive oil and garlic, to which I added diced onions and tomatoes, then fresh diced ginger, plenty of it, and then a small jar of capers with juice. Man oh man that got about 12 levels of taste buds going. And I served it with sweet fresh corn on the cob and simple steamed broccoli. Oh, lala! Voila! I'm laughing because I just had a couple of bites of the left overs a few minutes ago and can still taste my mouth going in circles!
So she put away the groceries and I started chopping, and while i was sauteing I got this morning's coffee ready--I like to just wake up and hit the on button, rather than start with cleaning out the pot--and then we ate. Marco was over and we watched Diehard 3, a pretty cool flick after a couple of Jim Beams, and then I went to bed.
And this morning I got up, turned on the coffee, brushed my teeth and went to pour that first cup--the thick first couple of ounces when it just starts to brew, and then realized that I had to open a new box of sweet and low that i'd bought yesterday.
And when I got it out of the cupboard, guess what? Madeleina hadn't just put it away, but she'd opened the box and cut open the silver foil packet inside for me.
It may not seem like much but I was overwhelmed at the gesture. My little girl, with no prompting, thought of me and what I would be doing this morning and knew that package would have to be opened and so she got it done. That was very very thoughtful.
I know. I'm easily moved. But if every one of us could think that way and do something like that for someone else once every day, we'd probably have half the world's problems solved in a month.
I'm glad she's my kid and hope your kids do something little but magical for you today too.

Sorry, but One More About Ayahuasca

Someone who recently read my book, someone I don't know, wrote this morning to ask about whether ayahuasca has a selfish side. It came in reference to a moment in the book when ayahuasca asks me to bring her "fresh meat", which scared the hell out of me. So I wrote this answer, and I don't think it will ruin the book for anyone since it's not that kind of book.

Dear X: Now, your question: It is hard to say, prior to understanding fully, some of the things that go on with ayahuasca. When I first saw the Man with the Hat, for instance, he was the size of the entire universe, and so it was frightening beyond words when he said I should follow him. Later, it turned out he was sent to help me--and has helped me ever since.
So the fresh meat: Does that mean she wants me to come after I've done a dieta for days so that I will be fresh meat, rather than some old white guy? Maybe.
Has my having been instrumental in making ayahuasca known and subsequently making her a destination for thousands and thousand of people gotten her ego piqued? Does she now think she's a little more important than she is and so wants "fresh meat" to work with in the way of more guests, not just from me but from others and from those who will seek her out because of things like my book? Possibly. I do believe that all spirits/life forces have will, intent, desires. So who is to say she, like the rest of us, doesn't have a bit of an ego that can get out of hand sometimes?
That is something I've been trying to figure out for nearly two years. And during that time I've only drunk a few times because of my fear of approaching her. There is a part of me that knows--and if you want you can chalk this all up to my own insane ego--that there was a reason I wound up writing the first cover story in a national magazine about ayahuasca. I wasn't chosen but I was in the right place/right time. I think my relationship with her spirit is a bit different than a lot of other peoples' because of that. I think she has made demands on me--some of which I didn't write about because they might frighten people--that she has probably not made on many people. One was once when she announced that she and the spirits would need my body, that they wanted to feel the tactile sensations humans felt. So I sent the family away, told her I'd go along with it only if those spirits didn't do anything to hurt me or the person with me, my friend Lynn. And then we drank and for several hours hundreds of different spirits moved through me for a few minutes each. They wanted to touch water, leaves, smell flowers, sing, scratch skin.....and they had to be told "no" pretty freaking forcefully when one of them wanted to cut my fingers with a knife to see how it felt to bleed. If anyone had seen me that night other than Lynn I am sure I would have been put in a looney bin. That was a frightening experience, but one I was glad to let her have because of what she has given me. And at the end of it I was led to sit under that throbbing, fantastic corona I describe in the book. I thought my body would burst from the energy that corona had.
So there are some things left out of the book, some things that will go into another book if I ever gather enough good material. Why were they left out? Because I don't have enough understanding of what happened yet. The crush of going into that black magic space, in the center of everything, I've only tasted it. What will it be like to experience that crush of myself within the gears of the machine that runs the universe? I don't know so I didn't want to discuss it much.
I am gathering up my courage. I am remembering that there is a reason this spirit and I came together, and it wasn't just by accident. If Moises hadn't said the word, if Alfonso wasn't home that day, I likely would never have tried it. But I will need a lot of courage to jump into that fire fully. It's a frightening place because it's deeper each time, more demanding each time. And yet I suppose, if I gather up my courage, it will be more rewarding as well. The spirits are as deep and dense and wonderful as our spirits are and the chance to plumb the depth of one as sturdy as ayahuasca is a rare one.
When I do will I discover her to be selfish? I don't think so. I think this is just another test, and that it is a test for both her and I. We are somehow intertwined--and she may well be intertwined with thousands of others--and that story needs to play out, needs to come out on another side. And the other side won't just be being a curandero. It will be something else. I think Julio did it. Some other curanderos have done it. But not many. I think it would mean the same thing as it meant for those spirits to inhabit my human body for a few minutes: It might mean, and I think it certainly would entail, me inhabiting her spirit for a few minutes. And that, while a wonderful thought, is also an overwhelmingly frightening one.
Anyway, if I ever find out if ayahuasca is selfish, I'll let you know.

Saturday Morning, Bucolic Joshua, Texas

Saturday morning here in bucolic Joshua, Texas. Madeleina is on the couch behind me, watching Saturday morning shows and cartoons in here, my office, because the damned remote for the living room television isn't changing any channels anymore, despite having new lithium batteries. We're headed out to the chicken coop in a little while, to continue the work Madeleina and my friend Mike did, which is to put string across the high posts around the coop as a sort of string-roof that might keep the big, beautiful, chicken-eating red tailed hawks away. We're gonna try to make it a sort of spider web, so that even if a hawk gets in, he/she will have a tough time getting out. When Mike made it he used kite string. We're going with twine. And then we're gonna do what he did, which is put silver foil strips on the string to help confuse the birds. The hawks, I mean, as the chickens are already plenty confused without any help from us.
And then I'm gonna finish the second section of front porch fencing--jeez that job has been going on forever! and get that in place, leaving just one smallish section. Hopefully it will all be done tomorrow so that I can paint it this week after I do a good Chloroxing of the porch floor.
And then I'll put a story I'm working on to bed on Monday. And then I can start working on the cover stories I've lined up. Sweet!
This morning Chepa called from her boyfriend's in Indiana. She's missing being home, missing Madeleina, Marco, Italo, Sara and Taylor Rain. Well, down here we're missing Chepa's laughter but we're also missing Sierra and Alexa. I'm glad they're getting so much time with their dad, but at the same time, how much time is too much time? What about us? Specifically, what about me? I miss the heck out of those little girls. I miss them messing up the house, pulling dozens of books from the bookshelves to give me to read to them; I miss them asking "And what about the donuts, Mr. P Garman? Don't forget the donuts!"; and I miss them jumping on the trampoline, being afraid of goatguy and having me carry the both of them to the chicken coop to keep him away from them. I miss their laughter and how they play with Madeleina. I miss 'em a lot.
The trade off is that when Chepa and the girls are here I lose time with Madeleina when she's at Chepa's.
The lesson? If you can avoid it, don't do anything to help break your family into pieces, because, like Humpty-Dumpty, even if you can later make the best of it, it will never be whole again.

My Book Offer

So the hard cover copy is actually available and a friend wrote about it and then I responded with this. Either I believe I really have a pretty good book or I am very very full of mierde, as we would say in Spanish. But you know what I'm saying. So here goes.

Dear X: IF you are so inclined and don't mind ripping your friends off, the hardcover edition of Ayahuasca in My Blood--25 Years of Medicine Dreaming is now available from Lulu.com at the outlandish price of $45.
If anyone wants to know what absolute strangers think of it, go to amazon.com and look at the reader's reviews. There are seven of them and they're surprisingly good. Better than that: One reviewer calls it the "best book I've ever read, on any subject", which is pretty high praise. One reader wrote on the forums.ayahuasca.com page (under the section on "Books") that "Peter Gorman runs through superlatives like cheap shoes," echoing Mickey Spillane to explain me.
I do think this book is great. Otherwise I wouldn't have spent 25 years thinking about it and then writing it.
So everybody should get one, tell 20 friends (assuming they like it) and then buy 10 copies to get their Christmas shopping done in August. How's that? Get it done! Have it finished! Who wants that nagging list coming up. Just buy lots of copies of my book, either through Powell's Books, Amazon.com, Lulu.com, BarnesandNoble.com or the 12 bookstores in England, France and the US that are now carrying it.
How's that for pushy?
It's really a good read, I think/hope. Anyone who buys it and thinks they were ripped off (worth less than $2 an hour for reading time) will be reimbursed by me, author, personally.
Peter G
PS: If you thought 6 hours of reading were great and worth $4 an hour, and then the other 6 hours were worthless, you will only get a $1 refund because I average out your ecstasy with your agony. But I will trust you all to tell me how it broke down.

What Do You Guys/Gals Think?

Good evening, everybody. Hope you're having a great meal or great time or great something. Here at the Gormans, Madeleina has been feeding animals, including the four hens and the two goats, goatguy and little goatguy, a new brown goat with a sprinkling of white powder on his nose, which I said looks like sloppy cocaine and Madeleina said, "Well, then why don't we call him Snorts?" and that's a name that might stick.
Marco is out running laps on the grass and he'll be in for the chicken dinner with boiled potatoes (parboiled in water, then finished in a bit of good chicken stock, some chicken juice from the chicken I'm making, some onion and garlic and a bit of basil. Relly good potatoes). Plus a cucumber/red onion sliver salad in garlic oil and good white vinegar, broccoli and cauliflower florets (have not figured how I should finish them) because the kids said they would not eat any more zuccini/yellow squash in olive oil with a touch of garlic and diced tomatoes with good parmesan cheese. And then spinach in garlic and balsamic, a staple for me.
Plus the roast chicken, simply cut in half, roasted on top of celery stalks, brushed with fresh garlic in olive oil, fresh cracked black pepper and salt on both sides, and then given a light touch of fresh achiote that I brought back from the jungle for a nice yellow color/flavor/crispness to the skin. So that's that.
What I really want is a freaking half gallon of good rocky road ice cream but I'll make do with spinach and broccoli. Damnit! Who the hell let God be in charge of people's diets? I mean, I really just want chocolate and ice cream all day. I love veggies and I love chicken and fish and I love majas, the big fatty rodent from the amazon, but if I could love weight with ice cream I probably wouldn't object to that kind of diet. So god, if you're listening, how bout rearranging a few cells in the human body for all of us, okay? I mean, we apparently love fries, onion rings, soda, ice cream, cake and chips. So can't you adjust a bit and make those weight loss items instead of killing foods????? Not a big deal for anyone who made the whole universe now, is it?
I'm having a glass of pretty cheap but pretty good champagne, Cooks.
Today I got a letter from a guy who expressed interest in publishing my book. He hadn't read it but he has now. He thinks it's powerful, fantastic, great, etc. Yes, I hope so, but thank you.
Now he publishes books on how to make movies. He's just starting a new label on spiritual books. He wants my book to be one of his first. I'm flattered.
BUTTTTT......the bottom line is that I would have to take my book out of circulation on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com and Powellsbooks.com and Lulu.com and not let the several bookstores who just started carrying it have any more until he published it next Fall. And then I'd get a decent cut--10% of sales revenues, about $1.00 a book, and 20% of foreign rights.
So I'm flattered to bits, but I'm thinking: I've paid for editors, I've paid my illustrator. I've paid for the Escher print on the cover and I'm about $5,000 in the hole after selling $5000 worth of books. But I am selling. Little by little. I've sold 45 books in August after selling 31 in July and 17 in June. I've got reviews coming out in the next few months, including in Shaman's Drum and MAPS. I've got a bunch of radio interviews coming out. And I think that everybody who reads the book tells their friends to buy it. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm thinking the circles are slowly getting larger and larger.
Am I kidding myself? Should I just take the $1,000 he's offering up front and hope for residual sales starting a year from now? Or do I believe in you and the universe that those who found the book a help in some sort of way, or those who found the book a good adventure, or a good whatever, will make the next month's sales double from 45 to 90 in half a month, and then up to 300 in October?
Maybe I'm deluded. I'm thinking it's a good book, a sort of astounding book. I know I write well. But I think this is something important for people. But I don't know. Maybe it's just my freaking ego. I'm thinking that if I keep selling it to you guys and your friends, that something good will happen. Like sell 5000 copies in a few months. And I'm thinking that if I let this guy, who would like the book, have it, I'll sell 5000 copies but only make 15% of what I currently take as the publisher. (And I'm giving away a lot of copies to book stores and reviewers so that number is misleading).
So what do I do? I'm being offered $1,000 and the promise of future sales against what I think is a small but growing audience. Am I nuts? Maybe there is no audience.
That's what I'm asking feedback on.
Thanks for your help on this.

More Jungle Stuff

Well, Madeleina's back, I've got some parakeets singing in the background, Chepa is off to wherever to pick up Sierra and Alexa and spend some time with her boyfriend; Italo and Sara and Taylor Rain and Marco were over for dinner several times this week, both my trucks are suddenly suffering--which means I'm about to suffer--and I'm on about 18 deadlines for my local alternative weekly newspaper. So life is perfect--or perfectly insane--again, and I'm close to feeling right at home.
So I'm feeling I should be talking about the goings on at the Gorman's, but at the same time I'm sort of in a discussion on that board I occasionally post to and the discussion deals with the health of the people of Peru/the Amazon. One poster talked about the vibrant health of the people of the jungle; another, a well known and very articulate author named Steve Beyer, who has a book out called Singing to the Plants--that you all ought to buy after you've bought a second copy of my book (Ayahuasca in My Blood-25 Years of Medicine Dreaming, available from all internet sources and now a few bookstores too!)--questioned the claim of vibrant health among jungle people. He sites stats of average longevity, infant deaths, deaths of mothers giving childbirth and so forth and discussed the need for external medical help and its value.
Well, I couldn't help but wade in, and so this is what I weighed in with:

And just to throw the monkey wrench into everything, if do gooders would never have brought tee-shirts to the people of the jungle, they would still pick at each other and eliminate all lice, prevent insect bite infections and so forth. My family still does it, as does my team in Peru. They just sit one behind the other, pretty naked when no other gringos but me are around, and clean each other like monkeys, head to toe.
Sweating into those tee-shirts all day after you've gotten those insect bites is where the infections come from as a rule, I think. And not having anyone clean them when they start to infect finishes the job.
Now, can we get the natives naked again?
No.
But there are a lot of doctors on trips out there who are passing out antibiotics that they are not administering dose by dose. And if you know people from the jungle, if you tell them to take 2 or 4 a day for 10 days and then disappear, well, those people will take the first day's medicine, then save the rest, putting a crimp in their immune systems. While it might make the doctor feel he's done something good and worthwhile, in fact he/she's just wreaked havoc with the health of a person or several people.
So while I like to help, I always have to keep in mind the honest adage that more harm has been done in the Third World by people with good intentions than all the harm done by evil men.
So there is a very very fine line here on what is permanent help (education); temporary help (addressing immediate needs) and what is a genuine hindrance (teaching people to wear tee-shirts all day because they should be embarrassed by their bodies, offering up medicines you will not be there to administer, handing out miracle drugs like aspirin which undermines the longer term but more permanently effective cures of the local curandero, rendering locals dependent on outsiders).
Hope you two don't mind the butt-inski in me...

To which Steve responded that yes, help had to be given in the correct way or it would do more harm than good. He then pushed on the "vibrant health of jungle people" question and so I was sort of compelled to answer. And this is what I wrote:

Well, to me it always seems they are all in vibrant health. They are just so strong, so agile, so quick. But I recognize a lot of my friends die there by the time they are 50. Some, like Julio, have lived till they were in their 90s, but most of my friends get a snake bite or something equally disastrous and are quickly gone long before that. Which I think is just a law of the jungle: Be strong enough to hunt or die.
I never thought much about the baby deaths. I know we in the West use them as a barometer of overall health to some degree, but in the Amazon, or at least deep in the Amazon, women often give the number of children they've had in two numbers: 21 and 12 for instance, or 16 and 9. That means they gave birth to 21 and 12 are still alive. Or gave birth to 16 with 9 still living. For us that is a large death ratio; for the harsh jungle I think it's simple attrition and it would be wrong to come in and supply medical care that would keep all of those 21 babies alive. That's too much fishing or hunting, that's too many people; those numbers represent too great a strain on the jungle.
Not that I like those babies suffering. I don't. But the real jungle is harsh and not for every baby to come into and survive.
I guess I don't see the life span as an issue. I think people are in great health out there until something happens and when it does, it's a disaster and they're gone.
The malaria that affects the brain swept through a huge swath of the Upper Yavari about 12 years ago and took dozens of babies and old people and people who were ill. Here that would be horrible. There it was a necessary culling process. And I know that sounds heartless and someone might ask "Well, would you want your family to lose some members because of something like that?" and the answer would of course be "no." But things are not perceived the same way out there. Out there a person who cannot hunt or fish or tend a chacra--field of yucca or plantain or whatnot--is a burden on the rest of the community and while the community is sad to see them go, there is also a sense of relief. A baby born deformed will often be strangled at birth with his/her umbilical cord. That sounds so heartless but it's not. In the Matses antigua, old ways, tradition, that dead baby would be put into a freshly made clay container--the container looked like a sort of oversized, round-ended football--and that container would be placed in a fire tended by his mother--with frequent visits by the father--for three days. At the end of that time the container would be opened and the mother and father would consume the ashes of their baby, so that the baby's spirit could come out again, be born again, this time without deformity, so that it could survive the jungle.
And I suspect that many of the babies in the "21 and 12" types of equations, even among mestizos, were often killed by infanticide, though it's not something the parents would talk about. Too many female babies, for instance--a standard in the entire Loreto region--might make for a sort of paradise for men in Iquitos and Requena, but are a disaster in the deep jungle. Who is going to hunt or fish for them when they grow up? Who will do the male parts of the living?
I know that sounds terribly chauvinistic, but it is a different world out there in the deep jungle. And I know there is less and less deep jungle but still, someone has to hunt, someone has to fish, someone has to burn the chacras, someone has to collect the food and wash the clothes and out there those jobs are pretty well defined as male or female. So female babies are often killed at birth. And never, in my little direct experience with it, in any but a respectful way that urges the baby's spirit to return in the future.
Given that, I think that those who survive have a sort of vibrant health. Yes, they get fungal infections a plenty. Yes, if family does not pick at insect bites daily, and clean the hair daily of peojos there will be lice. But in my experience most people get tended to. I know I do, even from my team. My ex, from Iquitos but just 3 generations removed from tribal life, still goes through all the kids' hair daily, and mine about once every two or three days, to check for lice eggs. And that's here in the States.
So I'm in a quandary about medical help. Yes, in villages that get too large--more than 50 people--something of a septic toilet would be invaluable. But in my experience, among people who know how to live in the jungle, the toilet is a deep hole in the ground that is shared, but constantly fed with plantain ash and sidra--jungle grapefruit--to kill bacteria. And the shack built around it is always built of saplings that prevent flies from entering. That is not the case at all in Iquitos or in many of the towns Steve mentions on the Tamishiyacu, or in Genaro Herrera. But those places are hardly jungle anymore and so jungle rules don't apply. Those people are generally not having 21 babies and too many females isn't an issue. Those females are going to go off to Iquitos or Lima and study and try to find jobs when they grow up is probably more the current day thinking, so they're not a liability. And for them, yes, medicines brought in from the outside can be a positive. Too, many of those people no longer know or have access to the full spectrum of jungle remedies and so need external medicines.
And those people are not in the same health at all as people in deeper jungle, I don't think.
It's early. Forgive me for rambling a bit. It's a subject that is often on my mind, particularly when i'm asked for medicines by jungle folk. I really prefer not to give them, but then hate to see suffering, so sometimes do.
How's that for muddying the whole issue?

And there you have it. Gorman's take on the issue of vibrant health, how to keep jungle toilets bacteria free and fresh, and the question of infanticide.
HA! And you thought you were going to get a cute little story about the new goat guy, didn't you? Or the fact that the hens are laying eggs the flavor of which I don't like, but which will change, I'm told, once they get used to eating what we feed them here--lots of fruits and veggies and rice and garlic and such. Well, no. I brought you to jungle illness instead.
And with all this writing this morning I'm already pooped.
Time for more coffee. Ah, coffee....the elixir of something...
Good morning, everybody!

A Couple of Things About Sapo

On a forum on which I occasionally comment, the subject of sapo, the Matses' tree frog medicine came up. And one of the posters noted that they had seen someone take a good dose with little effect. My response is below.
To those who don't know what sapo is, it is a protective "goop" given off by the Phylomedusa bicolor frog which turns out to be about the most bioactive substance ever discovered, with 144 new proteins (and counting) that interact perfectly with the human body in its chemical makeup. Among those dozens are being investigated by pharmaceutical houses for new medicines. The frog, in fact, opened up an entire new avenue of investigation for Western medicine, and by chance, I was the first guy to write about having taken the substance and what it's effects were. My report, made more than 25 years ago, turned out to be, surprisingly, the first account ever--so I've been told--of a human taking an animal product directly into the blood stream for the purpose of medicinal use. I say directly into the blood stream because the administration of sapo is done by burning the epidermis (generally the upper arm but really it can be done anywhere) with a red hot piece of vine, tamishi, then scraping the burned skin to expose the capillarys. The medicine is then applied to those.
Enough background. Here's my response to the question of why one person would get laid flat by the medicine and another might not appear to get much effect:

As a rule, if someone gets little effect from the sapo, it was either due to how that particular frog was collected or what happened with the frog in the previous week.
The Phylomedusa bicolor is a tree frog. It's primary predators are tree snakes. With few exceptions--like the Loro Machaco, most tree snakes are either constrictors or rear-fanged. They approach the frog and then take it into their mouths, holding it in place with their tiny backwards-slanting teeth. In that moment the frog gives off it's protective medicine, the "venom" or "sapo". (You must remember that the word "sapo" means Toad in Spanish, and so the correct word should be "rana", but that the Mayoruna/Matses from whom we originally get the medicine did not, in 1986 when they gave it to me, speak enough Spanish to know the word "rana" and so called all of the amphibians that looked like frogs and toads "sapo.")
The sapo freezes the snake as it goes directly into the mucous membrane of the snake's mouth. The frog then extricates him/herself and escapes. If the frog is a moment late and the snake can get it into it's throat, it is crushed.
Now once that frog has give up it's protection, it takes about a week to accumulate it again. Just like a snake's venom. And if someone collects that frog and extracts its cream-colored "sap", it will look just like good medicine sapo but will have no or little strength. That accounts for many people getting sticks of sapo that are not very strong.
There is also the matter of collecting the frog. When properly collected, the collector never touches the frog. The branch on which the frog sits is cut and that is carried back to wherever the extraction is going to occur. The frog is left on the tree branch while the four little stakes are put in place and the four strings that will tie the frogs' fore and back legs are made. Only when all that is set up is the frog touched, and then very gingerly. That assures that the maximum potent medicine can be extracted. If the frog is touched previously, it will be frightened and give off it's protective "venom" and so while a person can still collect the "goop", it won't have much potency.
And then even if the frog is collected properly, without being disturbed, if the collector pushes to get all of the "sap" from the frog, much of it will have diminished potency. So one end of a stick of sapo might be very powerful while the other end is not. Remember, the material is there for a split-second release that can afford the frog freedom. Anything beyond that initial release is not nearly as powerful.
Which is why four or five people getting medicine from the same stick can have very different responses to the medicine in terms of its potency. If a frog is very well collected and has not given off its 'venom' in the previous week, and if the medicine burn is made with tamishi, the vine of choice for the Mayoruna/Matses, and if the tamishi is a full 1/4 inch in diameter, then four burns will have most humans, regardless of weight, begging for mercy within about 90 seconds.
Two other points, though they are off-discussion here--I think they're interesting--is that cockroaches and waterbugs can devour several sticks of sapo in a single night. And believe me, that's annoying. So don't let them at it.
And secondly, if properly collected, I know of no expiration of power. I've still got sticks from more than 20 years ago that are as potent as brand new material. That I find pretty amazing.

Da Book, Manly Work, Feeling Sorry for Myself

First, good morning. Whew...glad we got that out of the way.
First, the book. Surprisingly, some copies of Ayahuasca in My Blood--25 Years of Amazon Dreaming are being sold. Not 1000, but nearly 100, not counting the people who have bought straight through me. Just a week ago two different book stores, one in the UK and one here in the US, bought 10 and 4 books, respectively. I don't know who they are, but I'm hoping it's an indication that some people are asking for it and then some bookstore owners are looking into it and finding it something they should have on their shelves. Cool.
So go get one from Amazon.com. And if you do, and you happen to find it good--or brilliant or whatever--write me a review on the amazon.com page. I've got six up there now and 5 of them are 5 star reviews. One was a 4 star. I have never met any of those people though one of them posts on the ayahuasca.com forums. The others? I've got no clue whatsoever. So I guess the work is making sense to some people. Now, if I can just get that number to start rolling into the thousands, well, that would make for a good Christmas for a couple of pals who could use a hand these days.
Might not matter to anyone but me, but it's nice to see that in the first month I sold 20 copies; in the second I sold 31 and this month, with the bookstore boost, I'm already up to 35 and we're only on August 8. If that trend would continue, well, that would be swell!
Now, Manly Work: I finally bought the darned new blade for my circular saw and began marking off the lengths of the wood I need to rebuild that front porch fence. Which is what I'm about to do, after I quit stalling with this blog. It's hot and it's gonna be noisy and I'm gonna use hammers and screwdrivers and a crowbar to pull the old sections apart, so that adds up to Manly Work. Ahhhh.....something I only like after it's done.
Now for being the luckiest guy in the world, man can I be a sissy. I've felt lonesome since my old college pal and Marfa cohort left town on Tuesday. So I got high on wine and soda and went to bed early the last three nights. Like 8 o'clock early. That is going to stop. As of now. No more of that nonsense, Gorman. You got a life to live, and that doesn't include being a sorry son of a bitch.
Glad I had that little talk with myself. I needed it.
And thanks for being witness to it.

Madeleina's Almost Home

Well, it's Saturday morning and my Madeleina's almost done with Peru. I'm sure by now she never wants to come home but then that's what makes traveling so fantastic. You just learn and learn and walk around wide-eyed whether you're traveling in Paris or North Africa or hitchhiking across the use or hopping riverboats in the Amazon. Everything new and fresh. Madeleina and others used to ask "why do you keep going back to Peru? Why not elsewhere?" And while I do travel elsewhere, for the big trips--aside from being able to make them work trips that produce at least a little income after they pay for themselves--the reason is that I cannot ever remember going to bed in Peru without having learned something new that day. And while she was with me, after about a month, one evening Madeleina said, "I know what you mean now, dad. Everything is new. You learn so much every day your head feels like it's going to explode!"
That's my baby and she's coming back this Tuesday. I can't wait.
And of course, that meant I had to get over to the lovely woman who sold us our goats originally and who was boarding Goatguy while I was gone. I just hadn't managed to get that done in the 10 or 13 days since I've returned from the Amazon. So this morning I got Marco over here and off we went. And wouldn't you know....well, I could see it coming even if nobody else did, I wound up with a new goat to go along with Goatguy. So now we're up to 4 laying chickens, two parakeets, one cat, one dog and two goats. A far cry from the menagerie we had but still, it's a start and gives me something to do with myself in the afternoons when it's time to feed and spend time with them.
Which is something that's been bothering me. I realized fairly recently that while I'm very sharp and very smart, I sometimes miss things right in front of my face, particularly when it pertains to me. For instance, I can't sleep lying down in Peru. I just wind up sleeping sitting up at a table or desk, a pile of pillows or my knapsack to lean on. I think it's not really apnea but more like sinuses clogged with all the jungle vegetation--or in the mountains, dust--that winds up making me feel like I'm drowning when I lie down. So I don't. So I wind up with legs the size of a house in a couple of weeks, and then, what with collecting sins and pain from people who do the ayahuasca, I wind up with this staph infection. But I'm sure the infection is aided and abetted by insect bites and not helped by my use of baygon directly on my skin as I don't put on long pants. So I was thinking, what about if I bought a pair of loose, lightweight sweatpants and wore those instead of just shorts?
See what I mean? For 25 years I've been getting bitten mercilessly out there in the deep green and never once thought to get a pair of sweatpants to solve the problem.
Not looking out for myself, I guess.
And then today I woke with the realization that just because I'm home does not mean I have to sit in front of the computer from 5 AM till 4 PM daily. I mean, today I worked my butt off on the net collecting information for the next few stories I'm working on. And now I've got 3-4 phone calls to make when I finish this. But then that's it. I will have done all I really can for a Saturday, made good progress on several stories, and I should just get the hell off this thing and go ride my bike or start cutting the slats for the new fence around the porch--I've had the wood for months but have not gotten around to that. But whatever I do, I certainly don't need to just sit at the computer like some idiot.
So I'm gonna try to start looking out for myself a little more than I have been. I think that would be a good thing. I mean, I keep talking about having an endless supply of love to give, so endless that the more you give the more you have to give, but it might be time to freely give some of that to me as well. In a positive sense. Like remembering to shave more than once a week. Or remembering to get a new shirt once in a while. Not often, just sometimes. Or buying sweatpants for the jungle. Little things I'd probably like having done.
Now just for the fun of it, do something nice for yourselves today too, okay? There will probably still be plenty of time to do what you need to do for everybody else.

Luckiest Guy in the World

Well, I hope you all feel like you're the luckiest people int he world and I hope you don't mind that I do as well. I just sit here--wherever I am--sometimes and sort of break out chuckling. Yes, I've got my problems. No, there isn't enough money. No, I'm not getting the sexual attention I want. No, the government isn't going to give me back the land they've taken through eminent domain. No, I have not become enlightened, given up cigarettes or enjoy a day without a couple of whiskeys in it. And no, my stories still won't write themselves.
BUTTTTTT, I still chuckle when I think of the joy I get by living my life. I've got everything. I've got my fantastic kids, a grandbaby, two old Ford Rangers that have nearly 500,000 miles between them but are fully paid for and run real well. I've got a house halfway paid for and a beautiful piece of property. I get to be an investigative reporter for one of the best weekly papers in the country, I got to finish my book, I even got those awards. I get to take people down to the Amazon and give them a glimpse of another way to live, partly through the medicines we use and partly just by slowing them down enough to count the leaves on the trees rather than just seeing the forest. I have gotten to rebuild my own boats on the Amazon, have collected plants and artifacts and that fantastic frog, the Phylomedusa bicolor, with that wonderful medicine. I get to work with the most amazing team several times a year down there, get to get wired up getting a trip ready and then fired up while running it and later breaking it down. I get to meet fantastic people all the time, many of whom stay in touch years later, an indication that they were touched by something on the trips.
When I was younger I was just as lucky. I got to grow up in a great family, got to learn how to eat with beggers and dine with kings, got to play sports into my 50s and will again now that I've been given the green light by my surgeon in Cuzco, Peru. I worked wonderful art galleries, helped build Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland, had a roommate in college who taught me how to be cool and smart, had three fantastic teachers in Pablo, the Matses headman, Moises, my jungle survival teacher and Julio, the ayahuasquero. I had Clare love me for years--though I didn't really know how to take it very well, something I have since grown into--and Gail, and Albie and then Chepa. And even though the Chepa marriage didn't finally work, for five-six years I was the happiest married guy on the planet. And now we get along, so even that turned out okay.
And last week I had an old college pal come into town--I hadn't seen her in 40 years--and we took a long drive out to Marfa, Texas, an artist's colony, and just had a freaking blast, talking late into the night for days.
And then the animals that died while I was in Peru have mostly been replaced and once again I hear those birds in their cage in the kitchen having a good time singing and shouting at me. And Boots the wonderdog is still fantastic.
A few minutes ago I got to load the garbage into my truck to haul it to the dump. And when I'm done that I'm driving on to go pay the water bill. And I'm happy about those things too. I guess I'm just saying thanks to the universe. And I guess I've been saying it for a while now. Thanks that the flesh eating infection on my legs has stopped eating flesh. Thanks that today is just such a great day to be alive. And I'm hoping you are feeling just as lucky as me.