Death of a Friend

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

Just Something Short on a Detail of Healing

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

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

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

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

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

Taxes, Madeleina, The Catholic Mass

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

Today's Opinion--Or Rant...

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

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

Okay, So I'm not really happy right now

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

A Moment of Pure Magic

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

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

New Radio Show

Everybody: Here's a link to a radio show I did recently. It's one of several I have done with this fellow. He's very nice. Don't know where my half hour is in the show, but what the heck, it's all worth listening to. The url is
http://hotfile.com/dl/98450614/b497392/Radiohuasca18.mp3.html
And if you hunt around in his area, you'll find that I did a two-parter a year or two ago with him. This group of interviews--I think we did 5-6 hours altogether, includes me talking/answering questions, as well as me reading from the book. Which I hope is not totally and horribly boring.
Now, on another note: sad thing is that Chepa's boyfriend is moving back to Fort Worth from Indiana or Wisconsin or wherever next month. Which means I'll have a lot less access to Sierra and Alexa than I currently have. That's is painful. Cause I love them calling me and asking: "P Garman? You bringing donuts?" from Sierra, with Alexa in the background shouting: "P Garman, don't forget the donuts! Don't forget the donuts, you butthead!!!"
Still, if Chepa loves the guy and he loves the kids, hell that's the best thing that could happen. So I'll be resolute and fine with it all. Just stinging while thinking about it.
And then there is my Madeleina, who is currently out in the back yard on the tree swing, twisting the ropes so tight so that she can spin out and nearly puke.And, she's making up songs while she's spinning.
If you want to see her in action, she made a new youtube.com video last night. Just go to youtube.com and punch in madeleinag--note the spelling--and look for her video on homework. It is pretty hilarious. I know I'm prejudiced, but damn, I think she's very very good for a kid who has only made 5 videos in her life, a total of maybe 7 hours of working with a little $150 camera and her own spontaneous ideas. I'm impressed.
And I think you will all get a laugh.
SO GO AND WATCH HER!!!!
THanks,
PGarman

Trouble On Returning Home

Oy vey! I got home 5 days ago. The soles of my feet are so cracked and bleeding that I can hardly walk. The flesh eating infection I had last year is rearing it's very ugly head on my calves--though not as strong as last year, it still makes being awake difficult.
And just before I left the IRS sent me a note saying I owed $6450 from 2009, a year in which I helped pay for Chepa's two babies, her mortgage, my mortgage and Madeleina on a gross income of $35,000.
I wrote them a letter saying they were wrong and they adjusted things down to $5,150. HA!
I came home to that adjusted figure and discovered that a warrant for my arrest has been put out in Tarrant County for a supposedly unpaid traffic ticket in 2004. I investigated and found out it was for not having my insurance card. The $10 fine is now $575. or so. So I went to my insurance guy and he said, "yup, you lapsed that in Nov. 2004".
He also said I renewed two days after the ticket, and then I went out to the garage to the tax boxes and found the receipt I paid to Tarrant county on the day I got my insurance reinstated. So I'm gonna beat that one.
Today I came home from food shopping to find a letter from Getty Images, a photography bank, saying I am illegally using an image on my website for a photo taken of a Matses woman with child in 1986 by Jeff Rotman. They say I owe them $600 for the use.
Whatttttt????? I got that image from Jeff, with permission to put on my website and to sell it as well (for him), when my website first went up in 2000. I had the permission for the image back in 1986, about 20 years before Getty Images came into the picture. Heck, I was the one who took Jeff out to the Matses, which is where he got the shot.
I called Getty and explained and said I'll try to remove it from the site if you don't want it there. No problem. They responded that they still wanted their money.
Or they wanted proof that I had permission from Jeff. I asked: "You want permission from 25 years ago? Are you insane? The IRS only asks you to keep records for 7 years and you want permission in writing from the photographer from 25 years ago?"
The answer was "Yes, or else just pay us...."

Well, folks, ain't gonna happen. I don't think I'm paying a penny. Jeff will explain things to them.
But ain't it rich? And wouldn't it be nice if I had all that money to give all these people?
Damn. I feel like Iodized salt: When it rains, it pours....."
Wish me luck. I'm gonna need it.

Dengue in Iquitos

Well, part of my job when I have a group in the Amazon is to talk with the Universe and ask that anything bad that is going to happen to any of my guests happen to me instead. And the universe, cool spirit that she is, obliges. While my guests generally go home without nary a scratch, I wind up with the flesh eating staph infection or the flesh eating spider bite. I get the broken ankle and the exploded intestine. Not that I like getting those things, but I've been a jungle rat long enough to know my body can handle them and I won't utterly panic. If my guests got those things it would be really awful. So I ask to get them if they have to come and then trust that my team, my fantastic team, can doctor me safely through the crisis. And with the exception of the intestinal ulcer explosion a few years ago, they have.
This year it was dengue fever. I've never had it before so it was an interesting learning experience. And of course, I was glad that none of the guests got it or anything else. Thanks, Universe...sort of.
What I had was called hemorrhagic dengue--but I didn't hemorrhage so that's the good news. There was an epidemic down there and here's what happened:
Every year, every house, tree, park, river bank, store and so forth get sprayed for mosquitos in Iquitos. The men just come and knock on your door on the designated day and they come into your house looking for any place where mosquitos could thrive. If they see you have piles of old clothes soaking wet in a corner or newspapers (leaky roof), they take them and burn them in the street. Everything else they spray.
They go from neighborhood to neighborhood for a couple of weeks till the whole city is done. It's a pain in the ass--you're not allowed to leave your house on the day it's your neighborhood's turn--but it keeps malaria and dengue at bay by eliminating mosquito larvae.
Last year the people in charge of the spraying money--millions of dollars--kept the money and claimed that Lima never sent it to Iquitos. They did the same this year and so an epidemic of each: malaria and dengue broke out. Thousands and thousands of people were sick. Hundreds died. People protested wildly, demanding blood from the thieves when they discovered that Lima had indeed sent the money for the spraying.
Finally, Lima sent more money and the spraying got done, but not before an awful lot of us were sick.
The malaria didn't bother me because I already have it and those parasites just live in my liver until I get sick, overworked and so forth, and then they come out and I have malaria for a few days. Rotten but I can deal with it.
The dengue is not nearly as severe for most people but the mosquitos that carry it put something in your blood that thins it. Thins it a lot, which is why people often hemorrhage. If you don't, you're better in a week. If you do, you have to get to a hospital quick to get blood coagulant or you just bleed to death. So a lot of people who live on the river died. And a lot of little kids and old people died. For me it was just 7-8 days of being real sore, puking unexpectedly, muscle aches, head throbbing, hilariously puffed face and other soft tissue and no ability to eat or sleep. Oh, and your body itches from the inside wildly, so that you have to scratch yourself all the time without getting any relief...
But I made it so that was good. A couple of neighbors didn't, which was bad, particularly considering that the whole epidemic was created by someone or a few someone's purposely keeping the funds meant to prevent it.

Back Again to Torment You All...

Hello, everyone. I'm back from Peru and I've been back 72 hours and though I have thought of you I have not been able to write.
I'm finishing a very nasty bout of hemorrhagic dengue and the stupid septic flesh eating bacteria are back on my calves and my feet are all cut deeply and so I can't walk without extreme pain...
What a sissy I'm turning into!
But then, it's to be expected, says my Madeleina.
"Dad, you turned 60 while you were away. Let's face it: You are old. I mean, you could just die sort of old. I mean, I don't want you to die but in another month I'll have to learn to cook so I can spoon feed you because you won't be able to take care of yourself....as if you ever could..."
"I'll kill you, beautiful...."
"No, dad. You won't. Why? Because you're officially an old man and old men can't kill anyone. They can't even dream of it because they can't think straight. I'm sorry dad. If I had money I'd put you in a home where people would be paid to pretend they like you.
"Oh, and speaking of money, can we afford piano lessons now? Better now than later because I read that old people go deaf and what's the point of practicing for you if you can't hear me? So can I?
"
I love my kids. I didn't love coming home to a house without heat and water. To a house with dirty dishes and pots and pans piled up not only in the sink but on every surface in the kitchen and living room. Marco, my beautiful son, explained it this way: "Dad, let's face it. We always expect you to die in the jungle so why bother to clean up if you're never going to see the mess?"
My son Italo explained it this way: "I told Marco to clean up but he's a lazy son of a bitch. He didn't even fix the water pipes. Why can't you just beat some sense into him?"
They each blamed the broken rear window on one of my trucks on each other.
Good to be home. I missed you guys. I mean you, the readers. You're the only ones I can relate to and that's probably because you don't write to me to express your disappointment in me. Doesn't matter. I'll take that as love.
What else happened? Well, I had two trips with wonderful people who put up with me and more than that, loved the jungle, the medicines, the whole damned thing. Oh, and the IRS wants more than $6000 for 2009, when I was raising Madeleina and Chepa's two babies, plus Chepa, on $30,000. i don't like their math. And the City of Fort Worth claims I had a ticket I was never told about back in 2004 and that the $10 fine for not having my insurance card with me is now nearly $700. Which is about 25% of what I made doing two jungle trips.
And there is more to come, says Madeleina: "Except you don't want any more bad news right now, so I'll wait a few days and then, when you're calm, I'll tell you. Cause it's much worse than you can imagine..."
She wouldn't even give me a hint. So I checked everything I could check and didn't find what she's talking about. Which means it's something more serious than I can imagine. I can't wait.....
And then one of the most wonderful people in the world asked me to get involved in sharing recipes. Well, I didn't get the email till today as I don't do email well when I'm in Peru and it was dated Jan. 17 and had a 5-day window on it which I missed by several weeks.
I sent her three recipes anyway.
And here they are. And I would love to be cooking any one of them right now except that Chepa and Italo and Sara and Marco and the babies were all due for dinner so I made ribs and chicken instead of the fish I love (Cause I didn't have enough fish for everyone) but then Chepa called to say she was dying from a hangover from drinking Tequila last night at a club till 8 AM this morning and since she is not coming over, no one is, so now I'm not only not eating what I wanted and what my body craves, I'm stuck with five pounds of baby back ribs and a chicken and pasta salad that no one is going to eat.....
Not complaining, just noting how it is around here, hear?
So these are the three recipes I sent. I didn't double check them but I think they're pretty accurate considering that I never measure anything in teaspoons or tablespoons but prefer to use cook terms like "Two-finger bit" or "three finger dollop" to signify amounts. So take these with a grain of salt and check your seasoning. All three are strong recipes and you will love them if you make them with fantastic courage and the willingness to fail. Just take the step and you'll be fine.
And thanks for listening and I'm glad if you're still reading and all that jazz. I'm back, so I'll be back soon.
RECIPES I SENT MY FRIEND FOR THE RECIPE ROUNDUP:
1) Swordfish and capers: Saute 8 ounces of swordfish steak per person in scalding olive oil. When you turn the swordfish, add one tablespoon of fresh, minced garlic to the pan per portion, and add 1/4 of a diced red onion per person at the same time. When the garlic and onion are cooked through, add 1/4 diced red bell pepper per person, and continue to saute.
When swordfish is done, remove from pan. To the garlic, onions and redpepper, add minced scallions and 1/2 of a small jar of capers per portion.
When boiling, add 1 tablespoon of sweet butter per portion.
Season with salt and pepper and lime (if necessary) to taste.
Pour sauce over fish.....excellent.
SIDES: Basmati rice with garlic
Spinach or asparagus (steamed) and then sauteed in a bit of olive oil with fresh minced garlic. Finish with a touch of balsamic vinegar.

2) Sesame Salmon: 7 ounces or so of salmon filet per person.
Heat a saute pan. When hot enough, put a little olive oil with freshly minced garlic in pan. When garlic is cooked, remove and save.
Place salmon filets in pan skin side up. Scald flesh in garlic infused olive oil. When black, or close to it on the meat side, turn over with skin side down. Place cooked garlic on meat side, toss 1/4 cup of diced red onions, 1/4 cup of diced roma tomatoes and another tablespoon of minced garlic into pan with fish.
Place roasted sesame seeds (one tablespoon per portion) in with the veggies cooking around the fish), and one tablespoon of sesame oil on top of each cooking portion of fish.
When fish is done, remove and place on plates.
To the veggies and oil in pan add 1/4 bunch of diced fresh cilantro and a dash of Teriyaki sauce per portion of fish. When sauce is done, pour over fish.
SIDES: Basmati rice with garlic OR roasted red potatoes with a dash of butter
Steamed broccoli/cauliflower/cut string bean melange with a touch of cilantro and teriyaki sauce.

3) Jungle Guacamole:
For 6:
Three large, ripe avocados.
Place avacado meat in bowl, mash thoroughly.
Dice 3 cloves of garlic per avacado and saute in pan with 3 tablespoons of good oil.
Add 1 diced red onion (about 5 ounces) to garlic in pan.
When garlic and onion are cooked, add one diced roma tomato per avocado to the garlic/onion mix and continue to saute.
Season garlic/onion/tomato mix with salt and cracked black pepper to taste (less is better here; you can add more later but you can't take it away.
When garlic/onions/tomato mix is thoroughly done, ADD to mashed avocado.
Wait 10 minutes until guacamole is no longer scalding. ADD juice of TWO limes.
Stir. Correct seasoning, serve with good crackers.

Wishing You All...

Wishing you all the most wonderful, incredible, fantast, surprise-filled, HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope that for each of you it proves to be the best year you've ever had! FELICIDADES!

A Good Roast Beef Sandwich

Okay, so it's the day before New Year's eve. Tonight Madeleina and I, and Marco, if he comes over, are having swordfish again. I cannot get over the flavor--although I'm going to hell for killing those beauties and will soon be a vegeterian--or more likely a nut-arian since lately I tend to feel ill when thinking about killing animals and vegetables to eat.
That said, last night Madeleina didn't want chicken. I was going to slice chicken breasts very thin, then marinate the pieces in Peruvian spices (achote, vinagre, dried hot peppers, oil, garlic) and then roast them.
Instead, I made her a roast beef sandwich.
Here it is:
Turn oven on to 350 degrees.
Turn one stove top burner on low.
Get a nice loaf of good french bread with sesame seeds.
Cut a piece that you think will be appropriate for your sandwich.
Take a red pepper, and clean it, then put it in a saute pan with a touch of olive oil and pepper and cook on stove top burner till both sides till done. When done, peel skin and eat that (just because we're pigs).
Cut the french bread open, pull out excess bread.
Put Hellman's Mayo or Miracle Whip, your preference, on both sides of break. Like a shmear. Don't be cheap.
Place mayonaise'd bread open in oven.
Remove bread when toasty warm and the mayo or Miracle Whip is melting into bread and bread is starting to brown.
Put paper thin roast beef (substitute ham or cucumber slices for roast beef as you see fit) on both sides of bread.
Salt and pepper roast beef or ham or whatever.
Place bread with roast beef or ham or whatever in oven. KEEP OPEN.
Take a nice red onion and slice thin. Put two/three slices (optional) in pan with red pepper when pepper is near done.
When roast beef is done and bread is at next level of browning, remove from oven. HOT. Be careful!
Take red pepper and sauted onion and put on roast beef.
Cover with pepperjack cheese or good cheddar or even better, horseradish cheese. Put cheese on both sides of sandwich.
Place in oven till cheese melts.
Remove from oven, close, and then eat.
Enjoy, everyone!

Here's Madeleina, In Living, Crazy Color

Well, you've read about my Madeleina. You've thought you met her. But you don't know the half of it. Last night, she and a friend decided to have a sleep-over and make a youtube video. And so they did. While I was sleeping.
So here is Madeleina's first youtube video. She's got two/three others that will quickly follow. You can look her up on youtube.com as madeleinag. If that doesn't work, look for MadeleinaG.
Here's the url to the first insanity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye1bUeHek-0
And yes, she's worth every moment I have with her.
If I was in Hollywood--and note that I am copywriting this idea as we go--I would write a sitcom based on dueling siblings who are trying to go viral on youtube. Trying to outdo each other, or the several of them, while the dad and mom, or just dad or mom, go insane as the kids record every second of their lives trying to become youtube stars. Those who make it make millions. Go viral just once and you are set for life./ That's what kids are aiming for these days, rather than good blue-collar or city government jobs. At least the clever ones.
So here is my Madeleina. Enjoy her wonderful insanity.
Me

The Michelle Obama Weight Debate

An awful lot has been written about Michelle Obama's push for better foods in schools, more recess in schools, more exercise in schools and an overall push for intelligence in exercise and food consumption that will lead to healthier lives for an awful lot of folk. And less insurance cost for all of us. (NOTE: I'm a smoker, so I'm a bad guy here.)
The debate is silly. When I was a kid, John F. Kennedy, soundly disliked in my home, took Dwight D. Eisenhower's Council on Fitness to the next level, and Johnson did the same, and millions of high school kids had to participate in a physical fitness program that had us running a mile, sprinting 100 yards, climbing ropes and peg boards, doing sit-up and push-ups and so forth. I thought it was fantastic, and even my father, who didn't like either Kennedy or Johnson, approved of that government intrusion into our lives.
So Michelle Obama's pushing for better foods in schools than what my sons and daughter have been offered--corn dogs/pizza/breaded fried chicken nuggets (I made them nearly every lunch they ever had just to keep them away from that crap)--and more exercise to begin to control childhood obesity is hardly something new from a resident of the White House.
But, say so many writing on boards all over the net: She's just the wife! No one elected her!
Absolutely. But Laura Bush's reading program came from someone who wasn't elected and that didn't seem to cause such a stir.
If one really wants to look at a First Lady who pushed her own agenda, one need only look at Nancy Reagan and her Just Say No (to drugs) effort. That effort led to the now-debunked DARE program in schools--which we saw actually caused a serious rise in youthful drug experimentation. It also led, by extension, to the demonization of those who didn't Just Say No, which produced the Three-Strikes Yer Out! sentences, a refusal to make needle-enchange programs available nationally--a calamitous error, gave the Feds the public backing they needed to implement mandatory-minimum sentencing, which caused the jail population to swell to the point where the insidious privatized-prisons became the norm...And generally messed up the lives of millions of people who wound up with felony convictions and long prison sentences for absolutely no societal good.
I railed against Reagan then and for years and still rail against privatized-prisons and their lobbying arms and the demonization of non-violent drug users.
But I see more vitriol about Michelle Obama pushing veggies on school kids and encouraging them to play outside each day than I ever did about Nancy Reagan effectively hijacking the criminal justice system.

Jim Beam and Me

I don't keep liquor in the house. Haven't for years because when I do I generally drink it. All of it. What I do is buy 4 minis of Jim Beam at the liquor store daily--none on Sundays--and that's the limit.
Yesterday was an exception. I was on a road trip to Mexico for a few days on a new story and picked up a bottle of Beam at a duty free shop in Reynosa. Had a few drinks at the motel before bed. Did the same the next night. Brought the rest home. So I had it in the house. Just under half a quart. Much more than 4 minis.
Had a drink or two before dinner. Had a drink while I made dinner, which was steak with rice and broccoli for Madeleina, and salmon with diced red pappers, garlic and sesame seeds for me. With rice, spinach and broccoli.
Only I didn't eat dinner. Sometime in there the Beam and the exhaustion from the trip--mostly the Beam--caught up with me and I fell asleep while cooking. So I turned off the things on the stove and went to bed.
Or so I thought.
Woke this morning wondering what exactly happened between turning off the things on the stove and going to bed.
Madeleina very cheerfully reminded me just a few minutes ago.
"So dad, were you drunk last night?"
"Yup. Sorry..."
"I thought so."
"Did I do anything bad? Any screaming or yelling?"
"Nope. You were hilarious. First, I saw you sleeping while you were cooking. And by the way, the steak was not cooked well enough. Plus, you took out a pack of sausages after you turned the stove off and tried to cook a sausage in a cold pan, then you took a bite. That was raw sausage dad and you're probably gonna be sick today..."
"I saw that in the pan this morning. Neatly cut in half. I thought maybe your mother came over and decided to cook, then decided against it..."
"No dad. That was you. You already had chicken for Boots in the oven, salmon for you, steak for me and then you said you really wanted sausage..."
"Was that it?"
"Not completely. After you took a bite of the sausage you fell asleep standing by the sink. Then you woke up and picked up the big black flashlight"--she demonstrated--"and started drinking it, like this"--second demonstration of me holding the butt end of the flashlight to my mouth, head tilted back--"and then you said 'it's empty, I guess', and then you put it down.Then you fell asleep standing next to the counter. Then you walked over to Marco's door and sat down on the floor and went to sleep for about an hour. Then I woke you and you went to bed. That's why I thought you were drunk, because you don't usually fall asleep standing up--like three different times--and then try to eat raw sausage..."
"I'm sorry kiddo."
"No, it was pretty funny. Wish I had a video camera. You'd be a U-Tube star this morning..."
"Cross that camera right off the Christmas list..."
"Is that why you don't keep liquor in the house?"
"You got it."
"You know, you keep writing about me and everybody on the blog. So, you know, you should probably write about your embarrassing thing too..."
"Oh, shit. Yeah, you're right again. I'll do that now."
"Oh, and I put your plate in the microwave if you're hungry...the steak was way undercooked but that salmon was just fantastic!"

Reagan, Trickle Down, My Madeleina

My daughter Madeleina, 13, got off from school early today and just a few minutes ago came into the kitchen while I was sweeping and asked: "Was Reagan a good president?"
It was sort of out of the blue and probably prompted by a mention of him on the television or computer.
"No, he was horrible. An awful lot of people loved him though."
"Why don't you?"
"Well, you've heard me talk about his team's work in Central America, right? I mean..."
"I know, I know," she said, cutting me off. "Presidents shouldn't encourage foreign rebellions over duly elected governments as happened in Nicaragua on Reagan's watch. Particularly if it involves permitting the sale of enormous quantities of cocaine to US citizens, the profits of which are then used to buy arms for an attempted government overthrow. And especially particularly if those US-citizens caught using that government okay'd cocaine are going to be incarcerated for long periods of time in prisons. Particularly privatized, for-profit prisons, which also began to occur on Reagan's watch. I have heard all that before dad. Like a million times. So why else don't you like Reagan?"
"The money. His idea was that if you gave huge tax breaks to the rich they would open factories and provide jobs to the middle and poor classes. He called it trickle-down. I think it was more like pissing on everyone who wasn't rich."
"Sound like a good idea to me. What's wrong with it?"
"Well rich people often don't open factories. They invest their money, they guard their money, they build themselves mansions... none of which really produce a lot of jobs."
"Building a mansion does..."
"Yes, for one construction firm and some contractors for a few months. On the other hand, if you give those tax breaks to the middle class, they start to buy cars. And when people, I mean whole groups of people, millions of people, start to buy cars, that makes jobs for all sorts of people. And then they have money and they want apartments and houses and that makes all sorts of jobs for other people. And then all those people with jobs start needing more stores and restaurants and middle class people open those and give more people jobs...."
"Why don't rich people open stores and factories and restaurants?"
"Some do. But a lot don't. I mean, if you had a few million stashed away and you could invest it with a bank and get a guaranteed interest--profit--or open a factory which might or might not wind up making you money, or a restaurant, which in most cases will lose money, which would you do?"
"So why do middle class people take chances and open factories and restaurants?"
"Cause it's their chance at becoming rich. If it works--and it's a lot of work to make things work right--they win. And if they're lucky, they win big. And then they take their money and invest it. Or build a mansion. Generally."
"So Reagan's plan basically sucked?"
"Totally. Robbed from the poor to give to the rich."
"Screw Reagan! Long live the middle class!"
"Now you're talking, kiddo. That's my girl."

Cheap Shot

Well, a couple of years ago I posted 117 times. This is my 117th time this year. Which leaves me open to post one more time to break the record. Now I'm not saying I was very clever this year. I'm not sure what happened. I was just living and life was passing fast. Whether it was the flesh eating staph infection that took a couple of months or my work in Peru and the Jungle, or taking Madeleina with me to the jungle or coming to grips with Italo and Sara not needing me anymore, or pure stupid pride on being named best journalist in Texas for the second time, or simply trying to raise 9 people on $29 grand...who knows. But this year steamed by.
And so this is a cheap post, just to match my highest number.
All I can say of value is that this morning I got up at 4 AM, and by noon was hungry. So I made a simple piece of sauteed swordfish--garlic, onion and capers--with grilled tomato, and then this evening roasted a duck on celery, red onion and baby carrots. Seasoned with salt and pepper. Cooked at 340 rather than the recommended 375 but for 3 1/2 hours instead of the recommendeds 2 1/2 for a 7 pound duck. Added lots of orange juice from fresh oranges. Pulled off the juice and put it in a small pot in the freezer to separate out the fat (normally would do that by sight with hot grease, but was trying to teach my son Marco a simple way to eliminate the fat). Fat removed, I made gravy with the fatless drippings, lots of orange and some good raspberries I had frozen while fresh.
THat was a good sauce.
Kids loved it.
First time I've made duck in years, since the kids refused to eat duck when I last made it, maybe 10-15 years ago. Tonight they devowered it.
Man, that was good.
The babies are acting like a wildfire in the desert, jumping all over the place, taking turns feeling the pain.
And that's what I got. Not a lot.
Peter G

Hello, Everybody

Hello, everybody. Just checking in. I have been working so much lately, and with the New York trip and now getting ready for the Peru trip and trying to finish up two cover stories for my weekly before I go and getting my column in--which is due tomorrow--well, I feel like I've abandoned you. I don't mean to. And life here has been as good/crazy as always. Last night little Alexa, Chepa's baby, wanted to get tickled. So she started in with Mr. Peta Garman butthead!
Which got her tickled.
And then again: Peta Garman butthead!
Which got her tickled again.
That went on for 10 minutes until Sierra, Chepa's four year old, noticed it.
"Alexa. You can't say Peta Garman butthead. That's not right. You have to say Mr. Peter Garman ButtHead!"
Which got her into the tickling frenzy. And they both kept at it until I was exhausted. Even Madeleina and Marco started in because they wanted to get tickled by dad too.
And then there was the ice cream fight the other night, where Chepa bought the ice cream and I suggested that eating it was just like putting it on your hips--though she's getting pretty thin and could use a few--which wound up with her bombarding me with ice cream to the accompaniment of: "So, you don't want to eat it? I'll just put it on your fat belly!"
Which of course the kids thought was grand because it meant there was a lot of free mint chocolate chip all over the kitchen floor.
"Mom! Keep throwing it. This is good!" was Sierra's refrain, while Madeleina was all about: "Mom, you're disgusting. Just give it to me and forget about showing off to dad. You hate him anyway, remember?"
So we've been us and we've been okay. I've just been to busy to see how nice it's been, but it has been nice.
So know that I'm with you, I'm just dog tired.
And not nearly ready for Christmas. I got to go to Mexico for a story on drug gangs on the border in a few days and won't think about that fiesta till I get back. Whew! I'm living a good, fast, crazy freaking life. Guess it's just what I need.
I hope you're having a slightly more relaxed time than I am right about now.

This Just Came: Nice About My Book

Selfish post, I know. David Jay Brown just published this review of three new ayahuasca books, including mine. in the new issue of the MAPS newsletter. If I posted something like this before, I apologize. But what the heck, I'm proud of it, so I'm posting it here.

Drinking the Sacred Jungle Juice: Three Ayahuasca Book Reviews
By: David Jay Brown, M.A.
Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon
By Stephan V. Beyer University of New Mexico Press, 2009 532 pages, paperback, illustrated, $29.95 www.singingtotheplants.com
Ayahuasca in My Blood: 25 Years of Medicine Dreaming
By Peter Gorman Gorman Bench Press, 2010 252 pages, illustrated, softbound, $25 www.pgorman.com
Fishers of Men: The Gospel of an Ayahuasca Vision Quest
OBy Adam Elenbaas Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, New York, 2010 288 pages, hardbound, $24.96
OVER THE PAST FEW MONTHS, I’ve been reading a series of books about ayahuasca- based shamanism and will be reviewing three of them in this Bulletin. Each of these books explores this fascinating phenomenon from
a different angle, and each of them offers a unique perspective on the magical landscape associated with ayahuasca, a powerful psycho- active brew made from several plants found
in the Amazon. The brew is prepared from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, which contain harmala alkaloids, and is usually mixed with the leaves of a dimethyltryptamine (DMT)- containing species of shrubs from the Psycho- tria genus. The resulting brew contains the alkaloid DMT, which is a strong psychedelic, and MAO-inhibiting harmala alkaloids, which are essential for making the DMT orally active.
Stephan Beyer’s Singing to the Plants is the most thoroughly and systematically researched of the books I recently read on this subject, and although it’s the most scientifically objective of the three books, like the other two, it also captures some of the author’s personal impres- sions, experiences, and insights. However, unlike the other two books, which are more personal stories, Beyer’s thoroughly explored analysis of ayahuasca-based shamanism is encyclopedic in scope, and it serves as an academic reference book that carefully catalogs the important anthropological aspects of the traditional and culturally-blended ayahuasca- based healing ceremonies in the Upper Ama- zon. According to Bonnie Glass-Coffin, Ph.D., Singing to the Plants will “be recognized as the definitive work on this topic.” In Beyer’s comprehensive volume he sees the ayahuasca healing ceremonies as primarily
being a theatrical art form, a type of perfor- mance that combines costumes, props, music, conjuring, poetry, movement, plots, suspense, stagecraft, dialogue, and sleight-of-hand stage magic. “The ceremony,” Beyer writes, “like other compositions in art, dance, and music, does not contribute a single message sent intact to receivers; it relies instead on the spectators to make meaning of the performance.”
Like all psychedelics, ayahuasca has a ten- dency to increase both suggestibility, as well as a sense of enhanced meaning, and when this experience is combined with the proper type of ceremony, or guidance by an experienced shaman, it is often reported to help the body heal itself from a variety of difficult-to-treat illnesses. The body’s innate ability to heal itself from illness is often brushed aside in medical research trials as “merely” the placebo effect. However, with ayahuasca-based shamanism the body’s innate healing ability takes center stage, where it seems to become magnified, and there are numerous stories of people who have had both long-standing medical illnesses suddenly and miraculously vanish, or vastly improve, after an ayahuasca healing ceremony.
Peter Gorman’s 25-year personal journey with ayahuasca, which is chronicled in his book, Ayahuasca in My Blood, reads like a page- turning, action-adventure story, and his exqui- sitely described experiences with the sacred jungle juice certainly stretched the boundaries of what I thought was possible into paranor- mal realms. It’s hard for someone raised in the West, with a materialistic mindset, to read Gorman’s book and not shake one’s head in disbelief, wondering, “how could this really happen?” He describes absolutely incredible
encounters with nonhuman spirit entities and transcorporeal shamans, psychic experiences with remote viewing and telepathy, contact with the dead, and striking synchronicities that confirm his ayahuasca visions.
The wise and generous shamans that Gor- man worked with, the spiritual allies that he gained, and the plant teachers that challenged and educated him are all described in fascinat- ing detail, intimately woven into his personal story about the many years that he’s spent living in the Amazon. Gorman, who was my editor at High Times magazine years ago, was one of the first Westerners to start spending time in the Amazon. As Dennis McKenna said, “Long before ayahuasca tourism became a pastime for rich gringos, Peter Gorman was knocking around Iquitos and the Amazon... This is the intensely personal story of an old- school jungle rat for whom ayahuasca is not just a hobby, but a lifelong quest.”
Like Gorman’s book, Adam Elenbaas’ Fishers of Men is also a personal journey and a spiritu- al quest. This inspiring book—which engages the heart and challenges the mind—alternates perspectives between Elenbaas’ childhood in Minnesota, where he grew up as the rebellious and hedonistic son of a Methodist minister, and the jungles of Peru, where he purges the “toxic waste” from his troubled youth during shaman-guided ayahuasca sessions. Elenbaas’ eloquently-crafted passages that describe his ayahuasca journeys, and his emotionally-grip- ping and unusually honest testimony, makes for a very unique coming-of-age story. Along with Beyer and Gorman’s books, I highly rec- ommend Elenbaas’ work to anyone interested in learning more about ayahuasca.
All three authors discuss the important role that icaros (the songs that are sung by the shamans during an ayahuasca healing cer- emony to invoke particular plant spirits) play, and I read repeatedly about the vital roles of purging, blowing tobacco smoke, and sucking transcorporeal phlegm and evil “magic darts” out of ill patients. I also came across a lot about of discussion about brujos, people who learn a little about ayahuasca-based shamanism, and then use that powerful knowledge for selfish reasons or personal gain. Apparently, there are long-standing rivalries in the Upper Amazon between these brujos and the more healing- focused shamans, where ferocious dark ener- gies and nefarious magic darts” are reportedly exchanged in a kind of psychic warfare, which almost sounds like the witches battling it out in Bed Knobs and Broomsticks.
Thus the three books explore both the light and dark sides of ayahuasca-based shaman- ism. Like any form of power or technology, ayahuasca, it appears, can be used to both
heal and harm. Whether it opens up a portal into other dimensions, where interspecies or spirit communication become possible, or whether it merely amplifies the body’s own ability to heal or harm itself through mys- terious means, almost everyone who tries it agrees – ayahuasca is pretty powerful stuff. So when ayahuasca-based sessions are motivated by jealousy, revenge, or less than noble human emotions, the result, it seems, can be quite dangerous. But with the proper mental set, and the right ceremonial setting, it appears that an ayahuasca experience can also be a doorway into amazing new worlds that offers profound life-changing insights, miraculous healings, and lasting spiritual fulfillment. •
David Jay Brown, M.A dajabr@well.com
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maps bulletin • volume xx number 2 27

My New Huffington Post Blog

So here's my new Huffington Post Blog

Obama Cave? I'm Concerned About Social Security

Okay, what I'm most worried about is not my president's abdication of power to the Repubs in the Tax War. I know he didn't just capitulate, he caved. And that bothers me, especially from someone who claims to play basketball. Personally, I was never a very good b-ball player. I never had game. But I'll tell you what: You shot over me or pushed by me or fouled me a few times and well, next time your feet left the ground I was at your knees, taking them out and watching you fall hard on your face. That's basketball. That's the way it's played in New York parks. Don't push me, don't embarrass me. Because sooner or later you will have to leave your feet for a jumper or a rebound and you are not gonna have any feet to come down on. Deal with it.
So I'm not sure Obama does have game, regardless of what he says. Now, if he'd have agreed to extend tax breaks on everyone for a year, well, maybe. Because that would mean it would come up again while he was president. But two years? That means it doesn't have to come up till after the next presidential election. And there is a very good chance he won't have to deal with it then. Which is too bad because he means well. Just doesn't apparently have the stomach for the job. And mind you, I'm rooting for him.
That said, the even worse part of the cave or compromise or whatever you want to spin it as, is the 2% reduction in payroll taxes for social security. That has me frightened. Because while that helps mollify the middle-class today--as in $10-$20 bucks a week, about the cost of a pack of smokes in New York--it is going to lend a great deal to the people who say social security is underfunded and should be privatized. And even more to the people who consider it a government handout.
Handout? I started paying social security when I was six years old and went to work at Louie's Candy Store in Whitestone. I worked probably 12 hours a week for him and paid maybe $15-$20 a year in social security. I'm a journalist and so have never paid much. But after 53 years of paying into it I've accrued enough to earn a few bucks when I'm old enough to collect in a few years. If I don't die first. So there is no government handout there. That's my money that's been saved and invested and if I live to be 80 the social security bank will probably still win on betting on my lifespan.
Add to that the millions and millions of illegals who pay social security on fake cards on which they can never collect and the social security bank ought to be worth trillions more than will ever be needed to pay back the workers who paid into it.
But to cut back on the payroll tax to fund it, in my view, really just gives ammunition to those who want it privatized. They'll point to the new tax cut as a reason it's not sustainable. They'll be lying, of course, but a gullible American public will buy into the lie.
And to have my president, my Obama, walking into that obvious trap, signals to me that he's a deer in the headlights. Too frightened to move. And I am disappointed in him for that. For tossing my money to the wolves. I thought he was a ball player who played in city parks in New York and Chicago. Evidently not. Because if he had, there would be a lot more people walking on crutches in the Senate right now. If you can't win, the least you can do is submarine people so they know you were at least serious about playing.

So Today I Got Asked a Crazy Question

Okay, so today I got asked a crazy question. Someone I know is a publisher in Canada. The cost of shipping a magazine across the border is higher than you can charge for the magazine, so while cross-border subscriptions look good on paper, they lose money except for advertising revenue.
Anyway, when this publisher started publishing and told me about that, I suggested he rent an apartment in the company's name on the US side of the border, and then once a month have an employee drive the US destined magazines over the border into the US and mail them using the company's US address. Seemed pretty straightforward to me--though I also suggested he contact a lawyer to make sure it was legal and all that jazz.
So I guess he did that. Or thought he did. Until today, when he called and said he needed a little favor. He said he was paying a courier to make the cross border trip once a week, but that with handling fees and courier fees he wasn't really saving anything. And worse, when magazines were returned for wrong addresses or such, the courier always sends them back to Canada, costing even more.
So he asked if he could use my address. Just for the returns. Then I'd go through them and email him and tell them what the postal service had written about why they were returned--"no such address"; "Person moved" or what not.
I said, "Just for the one magazine?"
He paused. "No. I got to be upfront with you. We also have a line of porno mags. We have 43 titles, then we have porno books and videos. Straight, gay, fetish, you name it...That would come to you as well..."
My turn to pause. "You know I'm not necessarily liked in my town. I mean, I've gotten some people reprimanded, some people fired for corruption, that sort of thing. And I'm thinking that if my home became the place where your porno came, we'll if I'm not under the microscope yet, I probably would be pretty quickly."
He said he understood and that was that.
He hung up and I had to laugh. I can just see me trying to explain away box loads of heavy fetish porn to the local gendarmerie while I have Madeleina and Chepa's babies here half the time. That would go over real big, eh? Probably about 400 years in the pen worth of big.

Yeah, Well, While You All Were Living....

Yeah, well, while you all were living, so were we. Marco, Madeleina and I hit Manhattan on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Hated giving up the left over turkey and a bunch of the other stuff, but kept the stuffing and gravy and had it for breakfast this morning. Man, you should have been at my house for breakfast! Wow! That was good. And I might just have it again tomorrow morning at about 10 AM, which is about five hours after I wake up. First though, I'll have my dark coffee/dark decaf mix. Maybe three cups while I read several newspapers. Then I'll go rake the front lawn--the hell with the others--and then I'll be in the mood for that rich rich stuffing with that turkey dripping gravy.....If you got time, be here. You won't be sorry.
As for New York, well, we saw the whole family, and I mean my four sister, my brother, and all their spouses and kids and grandkids. And we had hot dogs at Papaya King on 86th and 3rd Ave. And we had Pizza at Arturo's on 85th and 3rd, and then at Joe's in the Village. And we had sushi and we had real New York Chinese food, and we had fresh bagels with a shmear twice! HA!
And then we walked five miles daily, through Central Park, past the Alice in Wonderland statue to the zoo, to FAO Schwartz, to the American Museum of Natural History, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Everywhere we could. Madeleina saw a real Broadway show, Phantom of the Opera, one of her favorites, and got a red-haired wig that looks freaking awesome. And Marco got to revisit playgrounds he used as a kid and climb rocks he used to think were so very hard to climb but now were easy.
And I spoke at Webster Hall in front of 400 and sold some books and think i acquitted myself well, talking about ayahuasca and then working the room. And I kissed an old friend and she liked it.
So New York was just as perfect as it always is. What a town! Every five minutes you see 300 different types of people, and almost none of them fat. They just walk too much to be grossly overweight. Not like here in Joshua where one out of four people at Walmart uses an electric cart because they weight 300-500 pounds. And I'm fat so I'm not pointing fingers, but if I lived back in NYC I'd lose 20 in a month just walking up and down subway stairs or climbing tenement stairways.
Anyway, it was grand. It was perfect. I know you all rooted for us and thank you for that. You made it come true/through. And Madeleina and Marco and even I got to have some closure on the city we loved but left too quickly and for the wrong reasons. That was important. And it was important that they kids--as well as I--got to see the family, got to remember that we are part of something large, mostly Irish, and wonderful. There is some Latin, a little German, some Italian, a bit of Austrian mixed in, and on my kid's side--and probably on the Irish side as well--a bit of Black too. So it's a good mix. And one smile from any of them is worth a novel from most other people.
And I got closure too. It was too long I was away from home. And I don't mind being where I am. And I never worked better than I do now. And I love my little broken house and my yard and my animals and all that. But New York is home and my family is home and while grown up men go where they are needed, there is still a soft spot for the family you grew up with. And they hit it this last week. Like darts.
It was a grand few days.

Well, Alright. It's Thanksgiving!

Well, it's Thanksgiving. Already, if you can believe it. Whoosh! and another year zips by. Tomorrow I head out to New York City, hometown, to see the family and reintroduce Marco and Madeleina to all the wonders: good street hotdogs, the American Museum of Natural History, FAO Schwartz toy store, the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center, the lobby of the Plaza Hotel, Central Park, our old building, Chinatown and on and on. My sister Reg will take Madeleina and Marco to a Broadway show and Madeleina to get a manicure/pedicure. We'll have a big family dinner on Sunday and they'll come to hear me talk at Webster Hall on Tuesday. We'll bump into old friends, make a couple of new ones. Have not checked the weather but Madeleina and Marco are definitely hoping it snows at least a little.
So I'm getting juiced up about it. It's gonna be really fast but that's okay. Eight years has been a long time to be away from New York. I've adjusted to Texas well, I think, and I love my work and our little house here, but damn, it ain't the city. No handball courts here. And no bike riding because there are no shoulders to speak of on the country roads around here and the speed limit is 60 mph on every two-lane blacktop. I always loved riding in the city. I was careful but carefree. Just look at the drivers I was coming up on to see if they were going to make a move on the wheel--hands get tense and they turn their heads before the move is made. So I found riding there fantastic. Not here.
The day is a bit strange. My wife/ex-wife Chepa's boyfriend decided to come in at the last minute to be with her and their two babies. So that group is at her house. Italo's Sara went to see her grandparents in Oklahoma and took little Taylor Rain with her, so she's up there. Italo, Marco and Madeleina are over here for turkey. We've never been this discombobulated for Thanksgiving before. It's okay, but a bit strange. I'll make sure the gang goes to visit Chepa later today so she doesn't feel forgotten about by them.
Of course, her having to cook a turkey has already produced at least a moment of hilarity when she called me to ask how to do it and what she needed to do to make stuffing and what else to serve with it. She'd bought the turkey but nothing else--it's not a traditional Peruvian dish so it's something I always made and she's clueless on it. So she's on the phone asking questions about the meal she's gonna make for her boyfriend. Ah, well. I wound up sending Marco over to her house with a couple of onions, a head of celery, stuffing, chicken stock, cranberry sauce and peas. She'll probably send him back for some potatoes, yams and a stick of butter.
There is lots to be thankful for this year. More than you want to hear. The kids are healthy and my granddaughter Taylor Rain arrived. The flesh eating staph infection in my legs didn't cost me my legs. My cars are running. My book came out and some people are actually buying it. Madeleina is playing Moondance on her flute. I'm going to see my family. I wrote great stories and won great awards. My mortgage managed to get paid every month. I had two great groups of people out in the jungle with me and had Madeleina along as well. Boots the wonderdog got his ears fixed and isn't crying anymore. I lost a few pounds. Now, if I could just end wars, prejudice, unfairness, the war on drugs, sickness, hatred, greed, sloth, and the rest of it, now that would be a really really really good year. So I failed a lot, I guess. But I'm still happy that things weren't worse.
And for you all? I hope you're near people you love and if you are that you remember to tell them and hug them and hold them tight, okay?

Christmas Shopping, The Book

Well, in all selfishness, a friend of mine just ordered three copies of my Ayahuasca in My Blood from me that he plans to give out to friends as Christmas presents. Cool. He suggested I pass the word that they might make good presents. I think I've already suggested you all--or demanded that you all--purchase lots of books for Christmas. But here is the thing: If you order them from my website, pgorman.com, and pay via Paypal--Just use my site link or my email address--I can sign them to whomever you want and then send them out gift wrapped if you like. Madeleina will get a cut for gift wrapping them and getting them addressed and such. Just an idea.
Hope you're all having a wonderful late November day.

New York City Next Friday!

Okay, well, come next Friday I am off to New York with Madeleina and Marco, two of my kids, for 5 days. We'll see family and friends we have not seen for 8 years and then on Tuesday, Nov. 30, I'll get to speak at the Ayahuasca Monologues at Webster Hall at 125 E 11th street. We'll be in the big room, which has been used by the Rolling Stones, among others, and I'm told to expect 300 plus people there. So I'm psyched. Get to talk about my book and my trips and all that jazz.
On the other hand, I dreamt that I was there last night and when I got ready to speak someone started hammering behind me. So I waited till they stopped. Then I started to speak and a band with two base fiddles began to play and then stepped in front of me.
So I went to the organizer and asked when I was going to actually get to speak. He told me not to take it so hard that I'd caused a massive exit of people from the hall but that I was just too boring. And no, I wasn't going to get another chance to speak.
I hope it goes better in the live version.

Just a Quickie

So it's Friday evening and I'm cooking dinner. Last night we had thick pork chops sliced open to make a pocket that I decided to stuff with roast pecans sauteed in garlic and olive oil, then mixed with swiss cheese. Topped with nice gravy. Madeleina wouldn't have any of it. "Just take the stuffing out of I will be throwing up all over you," she said.
"Why? This is great stuff!"
"You might get away with that in New York, but not in my stomach."
Ah, well.
Italo came over today, had one of the chops and demanded to know why I didn't make them like that when he was growing up.
"Because you would have acted like Madeleina. You would have thought it too grown up and refused it. Like you refused a lot of stuff."
"Like what?"
"Like lamb vindaloo, like roast duck, like stuffed zuccini, like most fish, like calamari, like....."
"I get your point. But I would have loved this and now you cheated me out of 25 years of this and I'm gonna tell you that I resent it."
"Sure, buddy. If you really mean that, look in the back of the fridge. I think there are some eggplant stuffed shells you refused to eat just last year...."
"Oh, really? You think that's touche? That's nothing. Give me another pork chop and we'll talk."
Then this evening Madeleina announced that I'm a bad grandpa.
"Remember that time you picked up Taylor Rain and she was holding onto the chair and you picked her up and the picked up the chair? We were all screaming at you to stop..."
"Well she was bonding with the chair. Who was I to put a stop to that?"
"Right. Wrong. Don't even go there dad. I'm bleeding and that makes me right."
"No, it makes you invincible but not right."
"Look. All I'm saying is that you lean over the baby. Too much. And I don't care if you can't take criticism. I'm in the mood to give it. And if you don't like it I guess I'll just kill you while you sleep to put the rest of us out of our misery."
"You don't think that's going a little far on the hyperbole scale?"
"Whatever, old man. Just remember, you're getting slow and I'm getting faster every day. Won't be long..."
"Thanks for the notice, girl."
"It's only fair, dad. After all, you're the one who made me who I am..."
"Well, I'm proud....in a prey sort of way..."
"Whatever..."

Madeleina for the Millionth Time, but Never Enough

How many times have I written about my beautiful Madeleina on this blog. A hundred? It may seem like a lot to you all but it's never enough for me, given who she is.
Lately she's been crabbing about not wanting to go to school, about how all the kids there are too dumb to talk with, too narrow minded to hang around with, or just too boring. I think that just means she has no friends this year and hates that. So I'm trying to encourage her to see some good spots. I recognize that most of her peers have not had the upbringing she has. I also recognize that she really is smarter than most of those kids, and more well read, and more well traveled and all that. But, I remind her, there must be someone who's as clever as she, or someone who, like her, makes up songs. There must be someone who's funny.
Well, I'm sure there are, and I've put it to her to find that interesting trait that will make someone appeal to her so that she's got a lunch buddy or someone to hang with after school if I'm late. Not that she helps with the outlandish outfits she wears. Yesterday she wore a children's sheet that Chepa had made into a long halloween skirt, striped socks, and a blouse I never saw because it was covered with another skirt that she put over her head and let drape on her shoulders.
"I look fabulous, don't I?" she asked.
She looked ridiculous, but I told her she looked great. But that she should look in the mirror just to double check her choices.
"Dad, those kids are so dumb they won't even notice that I'm dressed like an insane old lady who has two skirts on."
"Darling, they might very well notice and then stay away, the way people tend to stay away from crazy old ladies."
She wore the get up anyway and came home complaining that she hated school because the kids are so dumb.
I let her rant.
This morning she came in to the office and lay down on the couch at 4:45 AM. I was up early and it was beautiful to have her sleeping just behind me.
At 7 on the dot she got up, stood in the middle of the room and announced, "I hate school. School is for losers..." and then she pointed a finger at me. "Losers like you."
And then she went off to get dressed.
When she came out she announced that the funny people at school weren't really funny, they just wanted attention. And the smart kids were smart, maybe smarter than her, but all they talk about were things she finds boring, like television shows and junk.
"What I want is to go to a school where people talk about being spies. I want to be a spy. I want a hook I can throw on top of a building and then climb up a rope attached to it. And I want to be a singer. A famous singer and secretly a spy. But then everyone would be jealous, wouldn't they? And they'd try to kill me. Assassination on stage, during a brilliant performance. Oh, god, why? Why do I have to die?"
There's just not many places a conversation can go after that. So I went off to make her a tuna sandwich while she practiced her dying swoon.

Another Ayahuasca Post

When I posted my last piece on ayahuasca, a friend who read it wrote to ask if ayahuasca was used to clean up the "kinks" in people's lives. I think it's more than that, much more profound than that. So here's what I wrote her in response.

The ayahuasca cleans you out physically, but only in that it eliminates parasites and worms and such--very common ailments in a place where sun-dried fish might get wet in a shower, then dried a second time, then wet again, then dried again---a hotbed for icky stomach stuff.
But ayahuasca primarily cleans out your emotional closet. It can make you relive the bad stuff you've done--I know you haven't done any bad stuff, but a lot of people have been petty, or lied to their girl/boy friends at some time. And it sometimes makes you relive those moments a hundred times--and then lets you eliminate them. And you also get to eliminate the angers and resentments you carry around, even if you're not aware of carrying them around. You just see them, deal with them, and then let them go.
Part of the way I think that's accomplished is because ayahuasca also lets you glimpse into the spirit of things: of trees, of the sun, of rocks, of a mosquito--lets you really glimpse the enormity of the whole damned shebang, or at least a much bigger slice than we normally get to see. And in that enormity, when we suddenly remember a former friend who we resent because they did something bad to us, well, it's so small in comparison to the really really big picture we're seeing at the same time that we no longer feel we have room to keep that resentment in our hearts, or those hurts in our soul. So we let them go.
Do people think it's for working out kinks in their lives? I don't know. Most of the people I deal with have never done it before but have an inkling that the world is as big as it is in their dreams and want to see that while waking. They, my clients, are also generally people in a crisis, whether they know it or not. People whose marriages are breaking up and they don't know why sometimes get to see that They are the problem and glimpse a way to fix themselves that might in turn fix their marriage. Others are at an age where they wonder if there is any meaning to living any more after the kids are gone and such. Others just want to see if there is a big picture at all.
Ayahuasca can be the key that opens those doors. Of course, the people have to make the changes themselves. Being shown alternatives doesn't just make your life better. It just means you see that you have choices where you didn't see them previously.
And for some people, like one fellow coming on my Feb trip who has already been with me, well, he just wants more of the kind of learning he was given by the medicine. He feels there is more to get. He was a big hunter and after the trip with me found he couldn't hunt anymore. Just lost his taste for taking a life once he saw, really saw and felt, the value of life. He's already an emergency room doctor, so he already valued life but didn't understand that the deer he was killing for food and sport were as vital to the whole skein of things as he did once he had the medicine.
So it's bigger than "kinks". It's really about affirming the hugeness and brilliance of the whole universe in everything that makes that up. It's about learning how small and petty we are, but at the same time how vital we are to that universe. It's about being allowed to see, or glimpse, the living spirit in everything. And something like that doesn't just work out kinks, it resets your soul.
At least that's what I think.

Shamanism and its Possible Effects on the World

A friend of mine recently posed four questions regarding shamanism. They're not really my style of question, so they made me think a little. Well, I read over the questions and answers today and think they're okay. Not brilliant, but worth a read if you've a few minutes. So here are the questions, with my answers below.

1) What impact on the world do you envision with this renewed interest in Shamanisitc/Toltec knowledge?

2) What results have practitioners seen in their lives through the practice of energy work, and Toltec/Shamanistic knowledge?

3) How do you feel about the blending of the indigenous world, and the world of modern man?

4) What do you see as the role of Toltec/Shamanistic knowledge and practice in the future?





1) Impact on the world is a big phrase. Yet not unattainable, as we've seen with the movements personified by Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and Rachel Carson, as well as the movement toward (nearly) worldwide abolition of slavery, the women's rights movement, the gay rights' movement to name a few. In all of those movements, there were cathartic moments and catalytic personalities. The moments seized the attention of huge groups; the personalities were able to understand that someone needed to step to the fore and declare that those moments would become movements and not remain isolated events.
When we think about shamanism in the 21st century, we can see that there has been a build up of interest from the west in ancient traditions that can be traced, most logically, to the earliest work of Carlos Casteneda. But Casteneda never assumed the mantle of public leader of a shamanic movement. Nonetheless, interest in shamanic tradition has grown considerably during the 40 years since Don Juan Mateus was introduced to the Western world, and is getting close to a small but critical mass. Within the next few years there will be an opening for someone with the right credentials, courage, conviction and charisma to step to the fore and bring shamanism out of the shadows and into mainstream awareness. Tim Leary did it with mushrooms and then LSD, but his appearance was early and he was both marginalized and criminalized. The time is certainly more ripe today because of the number of people who have been introduced to shamanism since Leary's era.
What will their message be? If it were me it would be one of sharing the knowledge that there is life in everything. Which means intent, will, desire, memory. But that's easier to say than impart. But to me that is the central tenet of shamanism: Awareness that everything is sentient. More than that, that the sentience can be communicated with by broadening the bandwidths of our senses. For many of us, that's required the use of sacred plant medicine, and there is little liklihood of getting the whole world to utilize those medicines. But someone who knew how to impart that knowledge, someone who was a consummate shaman, could really bring that awareness to fruition, well, I think we humans would completely alter the way we interact with not just each other but with everything we come in contact with.
What change would that have on the world? It would be unimaginable. Just think of the flowers in your home and how they grow in a positive atmosphere, as opposed to flowers growing in negative spaces. Now imagine everything in the world reacting to that positive energy. And awareness of the sentience of everything almost automatically produces interaction, positive interaction with those things.
A lot of us already try to "grow the world" and "grow with the world", and there have been positive changes from that work. But we are all still moments. We need to make it a movement to have a lasting and powerful, and powerfully positive, impact on the planet.


2) What impact has shamanic work had on the lives of its practitioners? I can't speak for others, and when I speak for myself it should be noted that I'm probably the worst student of all time. That said, simple awareness of the life in everything has had an enormous impact on my life. There is a level of communication with things normally considered inanimate that is just fantastic.
For instance, my trucks love me being proud of them. I've one truck that has a short that keeps the "check engine" light on. It's been on since I bought it in 2006. Which means I can't pass my annual inspection. So when I go for the inspection, I fail. And then the truck and I have a talk and I explain that it won't be able to be a truck and do truck things if it doesn't let me pass that inspection. So I ask it to please shut the light off at some point during the 30-day grace period a failed-inspection gives you to repair the vehicle.
And my truck, understanding that it wants to be a truck, and not a lawn ornament, has always responded by shutting the "check engine" light off within a couple of days of the failed inspection, just long enough to pass inspection, at which point, generally while I am driving away from the inspection station, the light comes back on and stays on for another year.
But in the course of a day there are probably a dozen things attributable to shamanic practice that occur. Parking spaces that open up at the right second, freelance work that appears out of the blue at exactly the right time, things like that. Now, the other side of the coin is that you can't be asking for things that benefit you directly. I can't ask to sell a million copies of my book, or for the spirits to bring the perfect woman into my life. Those are selfish things and shamanism and selfishness do not mix well. Other than the car insepction, of course.
On other levels, the practice, however imperfect, has helped allowed me to make the best of a bad family breakup and turn it into a wonderfully positive experience for all involved. Not perfect, but still full of a whole lot more love than anger and resentment. And I don't think I could have helped make that come about without that shamanic practice.


3) Blending the indigenous shamanic world with out modern world? I think there are pitfalls. I think there are problems when westerners raise simple healers to the position of guru. I have never met a real curandero, a real shaman, who thought they were anything more than doctors who worked with spirit helpers and the spirits of plants and other things to effect healing on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual issues affecting their patients. So telling them they are amazing beings for being able to make it rain, or to stop raining, for instance, can confuse them, can throw them off balance. Add to that relatively enormous sums that westerners pay to use those curandero's medicines or to study plant medicine with them, and you can really throw off the balance of a healer's life. And you can throw off the balance of whole communities which have always depended on that fisherman/curandero who might no longer have time to tend to their needs now that he or she is in such demand by westerners.
There is also the positive: when westerners show respect and are willing to pay real money for the work of a local healer, that generates interest in learning to heal within that community. Many healers now have several apprentices where just five years ago they had none.
Next, there is also the negative of westerners coming back from indigenous or mestizo areas of Central and South America thinking they have shamanic knowledge and trying to pass it on when they have learned nothing, and so have nothing to pass along to their students.
On the other hand, I think there are enough honest western students working with shaman in Central and South America--people who are also aware of their impact on the communities with which they work--that I hope and trust that the wheat will separate from the chaff.
There really is no going back. I was certainly one of the first to talk about ayahuasca use in Peru--not the first, but the first who wrote an accessible article in a national magazine (High TImes, June 1986, I think) about ayahuasca, and I've had to live with whether that was a good or bad thing ever since. How it turns out, well, we'll see. I hope it turns out positively for most involved.

4) The role of shamanic knowledge in the future? That's not something I've ever spent time on. I think that once a person is aware of the life in everything, they can begin to access the spirit of everything. And once they can do that they can interact with those spirits. I'm talking about the spirit of the creek, the bricks in your house, the hundreds of spirits roaming your kitchen. This universe is full full full of life and life force. The roll of shamanic knowledge for us westerners introduced to those spirits is to spread that knowledge, make communication easier. And if we can do that--a big task, no doubt--then the way people interact with the world and the spirits of the world and universe will change, automatically, from one of dominance to one of cooperation. And when we, mankind, begin interacting with the world, rather than trying to dominate it, well, I think mankind will be better off. The world and its spirits don't really care if we do, for the most part. Trees will be here long after we're gone, and so will stones and bricks and clouds and the moon. So it's really up to us to take an interest if we are to make the friendship of those spirits. And thus far, for most of us throughout mankind's short history on this planet, that effort has not been made. Which has left us losing out on so much we might have learned. Who knows what we have missed simply by not asking a plant what benefit it might have for mankind, rather than saying "tree, chop it and burn it for fire."
I think the universe has all the secrets of the universe. And our arrogance in trying to continually conquer the universe rather than communicate with it, has kept us from being taught those secrets. And how delicious they might be!