What It's Like on Sunday

Well, it's a Sunday and it's gorgeous. I woke up knowing that my editor has a rewrite of my story and I can't do anything more on it till it comes back to me. So I made coffee, read newspapers, thought about 9/11 and how wretched it was and remains and how sorry I am for the people lost and the people who lost people they loved and how I was so lucky that my family, my brother and nephew working there have not gotten sick yet, and how lucky it was my son Italo went to school on 23rd street rather than further downtown and how lucky it was that I was on my way to work when the sky filled with smoke from downtown, how that blue sky suddenly was black and thick and I didn't know what had happened but learned and it was awful. And how lousy I felt for my friend Kent at Cantor-Fitzgerald who had lost so many friends that day.
And somehow I wish we could come together without a tragedy like that, without the 10th anniversary of a tragedy like that to make us forget our differences--which are legitimate but pale in the face of true horror--and work together to make something good, something honest.
I woke up so alive and so happy to be alive. And I was a bit recalcitrant but still dove into doing the first of a new three-day song for some people who have asked for help--as if I could help them, but maybe the song will--and put some black boa oil on the stove for a couple of other people who need good medicine, then found some copaiba, another medicine to send to someone tomorrow, and then talked with Marco and Italo and Chepa and the babies and though none of it is perfect, all of it is good and I've still got strength while others don't and I was feeling so strong and willing to help today. And I hope I can help tomorrow and never ask what those seeking help believe in: It cannot matter. What matters is that they think, hope, a song will help and so I hope for the strength to sing it.
And maybe this is silly but it's how the day was spent and now it's time for watching football and making dinner and feeding animals and the lawn.
So life goes on but there are holes in it. There is sorrow and there is hope and there is a wish to do more. A thought of helping someone, somehow.
And there is joy. And laughter and ain't it great to be alive? Not at anyone's expense. I wish everyone was feeling this alive.

Just Going to Feed Boots, the Goats and Trees

Okay, so this post isn't going to be something to shake up your world, but it is a post to say that every stinking day I wake up I say, "Thanks, God! Thanks for letting me wake up again!" and you know what? I could care less what your religious affiliation is or what you believe. All I know is that there is a great chance I won't wake up and so when I do, when I continue to breathe during the night I am very very happy to wake up, be it 4 AM or 6 AM. I get to see the sunrise one more time. I get to say hello to the goats one more time and to Boots, the blind wonderdog who almost ate the UPS delivery guy yesterday, along with my sister-in-law. Boots finds them both to have the perfect rear-ends to bite: He's skinny and tall, she's curvaceous and short. Dog has it down as to what he wants to bite and they both fit it.
Me? I finished a very tough story about an air quality report. Took me weeks to get through it three or four times and took three or four times to know what the hell they were talking about. Can't say more. Look for the Fort Worth Weekly's cover story at FWWeekly.com on Wednesday afternoon, okay? I think I did a good story; history grades the writer.
And Madeleina? Tired from two 8 PM and one 1 AM band things this week, along with being in 4 honors classes. Here in Texas we value Band and Football way way over reading. So she'll be behind on her reading for weeks.
The goats are good: Nice little guys. And they are digging the 95 degree temps we've had since Sept 1 rather than the 110 temps we had for the two previous months. Thank god I pad $100 each into the water and fuel bills last month to help cover this month--else I'd be crying.
And my friend C came last weekend and she was wonderful to be around. We went to a Buckwheat Zydeco concert with Madeleina and Marco and took long drives and made good food and talked about magazines. Manna for me.
And every day I went to the park by the elementary school where Sierra now goes to visit Alexa and my granddaughter Taylor Rain after I dropped Madeleina off. Chepa is very cool that way, getting the kids out and playing. I brought donuts, pigs in a blanket, bananas, oranges--the kids preferred donuts--every day these last three weeks, but I'll keep mixing it up.
And so I'm writing, reading, feeding, eating, loving, enjoying. All I'm missing is a lover. Damn. She'll come along, I guess, when I'm right for her.
But meanwhile I've been thinking of your all and hoping that you are having a fantastic transition from Summer to Fall and that you are as happy as I am for the joy of waking up each day. YAY, GOD. Or GODDESS. OR White Light. OR Whatever. OR Whomever. THANKS ANYWAY!!!!!!

Accessing the Spirit of Ayahuasca

On the board where I occasionally post, there's been a discussion of attaining the full effects of ayahuasca. Some people argued that if you don't see the lights and colors you were not getting the medicine; others disagreed. At least one of the posters argued that many people simply need a larger dose--as if ayahuasca is in the chemical components of the medicine. I disagreed and posted this:

I'm not sure I get that. Yes, if you want the full Coney Island, ask for more. But we're not dealing with chemicals here. Not at all. We're dealing with spirits. And spirits are not bound to quantities. Yes, if you drink enough you will have all sorts of wild visions. But they don't necessarily mean a thing. They're the distraction. They're the show. It's like the DMT thing at the onset of the experience: cool but not necessarily important. For those who think differently, just think differently.
For me, it's the spirit that works the magic. Just smelling aya cooking is more than enough. A drop can set off a full blown experience. It's your willingness to interact with spirit that's the key, in my opinion, not some baseline chemical reaction--which is very unimportant when dealing with living entities who have will, desires, capabilities of their own.
And yes, I have had guests who really needed the Funhouse of Desires and Fears to recognize that they'd been somewhere. So you give it to them. But you also give them the real deal, if possible, which happens only after that wonderful silliness passes.

Someone named Richard D responded with a bit of a challenge:

Nice post Sr. Gorman. I agree with you this time.
It does bring up the question though as to why Chacruna is added. If it's not for the Coney Island effect, or if the Coney Island effect is not of value, then why? I have my ideas about this, but I'd like to hear yours first, which of course may influence mine.

So I responded this way:

Okay, now you're going to make me go out on a limb. Which I don't mind doing for you, Richard D, who has added so much to so many conversations here. I don't think the spirit if ayahuasca is contained only in the vine. I think she's complex and that chacruna or huambisa, and their varities, are needed to make her whole enough to interact with us. It may be our failing; it may be something different.
I do think chemicals are involved, but only at the beginning, only to open up certain receptor sites we have and need opened to receive other spirits, whether they be hongos, ayahuasca, san pedro, peyote, Iboga, amanita....granted, slightly different chemicals, but we need those to allow the spirit entrance: The spirits don't. So we utilize chemicals to get those spaces open. But once open, we no longer need them. The spirits are real in their own right. They are there whether we ingest the chemicals or not. I'm gonna stretch here but: You don't know me. Yet I know I am real, in some sense. I am life, desire, force, intuitiveness and all the rest. You need the internet to access me. But I was there whether you had an internet or not.
Accessing the spirits might take chemicals initially, just like needing the internet for initial communication; after that we can do it telepathically--the chemicals of the internet are no longer needed.
I don't mean to know it all here. I certainly don't. But I do know that I can have full blown experiences just saying "Good morning" to the vine. Those include vomiting, healing, visions-the whole 9 yards. And I know I am not alone here. Once you've made friends, you're friends. Just call your ally--which is, after all, at least part of what a friend is. And the calling is sufficient if it's a true friend.
Make sense?

And I've reread the interchange this morning and think my answer is okay. So I'm sticking with it.

Ayahuasca Purging

I've been over this before, but someone on a forum I occasionally post to wanted to know if it was better to purge, puke, or hold it in and try not to puke, after they drank ayahuasca. As nearly everyone, most of the time, purges about 30-40 minutes after they drink ayahuasca, and as that purge is potentially the most important element of drinking ayahuasca, at least sometimes, I thought I should weigh in. Here's my response to the general blog of what purging means and whether one should allow it to happen or try to prevent it.

I sometimes feel as I'm just purging liquid. But more often, I'm purging what starts as slow motion re-enactments of sins I've committed against others or those committed against me which I have held on to for no good reason. Sometimes I watch the act--cheating on a girlfriend when I was young, lying to someone when I was a child or adult--50 times in slow motion, painfully, until I suddenly have to purge.
I think the medicine roots around for things you have hidden, sometimes well, sometimes not, and then gives you the chance to rid yourself of their weight. It's an unseen weight, something we don't know what we are carrying around but it's as real as a 20 pound dumbell hung around your neck. You don't need it. Get rid of it. Be lighter. Remember the pain you caused or that was caused to you, but forget the actual deed: we need to remember to learn; we don't need to carry the pain around forever.
I urge my guests to feel free to purge: Sometimes when they challenge me I hold my hand under their mouths: I've never had a guest puke more than I can physically hold in one hand. There's no food in their system to come out. There might be an ounce of bile and two or three ounces of ayahuasca, but that would be a lot. Nonetheless they see enormous amounts. It's as if they are purging bits of dry sponge that they envision expand as they are eliminated and the contact with air makes them grow to huge things. I feel the same when I purge, but I know that physically it's never more than maybe two, three ounces of physical matter. The rest of it is psychic: Heavy, loaded, but not physical.
So purge away and clean yourself of things you needed to learn but which no longer serve you. Let yourself be freed of unnecessary weights holding you down.
Sorry if I've overstepped my bounds here. This is a topic-one of many, granted--that's very close to my heart.

Oy Vey! Being a Dad is Sometimes Difficult

Well, last Winter, while I was in Peru, Madeleina heard of, looked up and then went to audition for a Fort Worth Independent Charter School, the Fort Worth Academy of the Arts. Or "For the Arts", I'm not sure which. She auditioned on flute and when I returned we got a letter letting us know she'd passed the audition but that they were only taking a couple of new flutes for the band so she was on the waiting list.
Summer came and went and no word. All month Madeleina has been at Marching Band School, something between bootcamp and football pre-season. She was at school for three weeks from 8-11:30 AM doing exercises, running and then learning routines. From 1-5 she was indoors practicing songs with the band on her flute. These were hot days: We averaged, according to my heating bill (which I think I mentioned in an earlier post but which was read wrongly), a high temperature of 108.9 for July 2-August 2, and then it got hot: We hit 113 a couple of days, a couple of 110s and so forth. So she'd start practicing at 8 AM when it was only 94 or so, and then finish when it hit 105. Of course, it was warmer for her as she, and the other hundred or so kids, were working on concrete.
The school finally relented for last week, the last week of Marching Band School, and had the kids come in from 6:30 AM till 11, so they'd beat some of the heat.
By the end of it Madeleina was totally in love with 4-5 hours of doing laps, pushups, running in place, marching. Last night she came home and proudly, and I mean proudly, showed me her band shirt.
Then this morning I got an email from the Arts Academy: A slot had opened up and she was in if she wanted. They needed an answer today. That stopped my work cold. I tried to calculate it. It's about $800 in fees despite being a public school, plus $200 in books and $200 in extras. Then, as it's 25 miles from my house, that's 1 1/4 gallons of gas four times a day for dropping her off and picking her up. That comes to 25 gallons a week, at say $3.40 each, or about $80 a week for gas, just to get her to school.
Then there is the time: I timed it today and going, with absolutely no traffic and all the lights in my direction, was 33 minutes. Coming home an hour later, with light traffic and missing a few lights, was 45 minutes. So let's say that's about 160 minutes daily, barring heavy traffic or bad weather. That's nearly 3 hours.
Still, it wasn't going to be right to just say no and then not tell Madeleina. She'd earned the slot in a tough school, after all. So I took her out of school and brought her in; we spoke with the principal, hoping there might be other kids from this neighborhood attending the school with whom we might carpool. Unfortunately, there are none.
Which means, even if I would give up nearly 3 hours of my work day daily to get her there and back, I would have no one to get her there in January and February when I'm out of town and working in Peru's Amazon. Chepa already has Sierra in school--kindergarden--and has to get her there at pretty much the same time Madeleina would have to be in school 25 miles away. Which would mean that even if she wanted to do it--and she would if needed--Chepa would have to get Sierra ready more than an hour early, and put Alexa in the car as well--and drive them with Madeleina to Madeleina's new school before returning to drop Sierra off. She could just leave Sierra at home with Alexa and sometimes Taylor Rain, but that's not really her style.
So after hours of deliberation and twice driving to the fantastic new school's campus, I had to tell Madeleina that it just wasn't a realistic option.
At least not until she's 16 and can drive herself there.
She wasn't happy with me. I don't know how to save it. Nobody from at school lives within 15 miles of us, so no carpool. I ain't rich, so no private car to take her and bring her back. I'm out of town two months every school year and for several days here and there during other times while I'm on a story.
Sometimes being a dad is more difficult than I wish.
Sorry, Madeleina.

Response to Some Responses Regarding Ayahuasca Dieta

Okay, so my last word wasn't the last word. A couple of people took umbrage at my saying that the Ayahuasca dieta--no salt, no hot peppers, no pork and no sex--was made up by white guys in the last decade or so. See previous post, a couple of posts down, for that one.
I felt the need to clarify.
So I did.
So here is what I wrote about the responses to my response to the question of "Does anyone here reject the idea of a traditional ayahuasca dieta?"

Ah, the sting of having my ideas smashed to pieces....Double cut pork chops slathered in rich gravy indeed, Richard! HA! Those will kill you even if you're in shape and not doing medicine.
I don't think you guys were particularly railing against what I was saying. Steve, the fact that the diets differ for different groups makes my point, I think. Yes, there are restrictions. Yes, being quiet so that you can hear the spirits whisper is vital. But ayahuasca is of the jungle, part of the jungle, not apart from the jungle. And those who use it traditionally, remember, don't even drink, or if they do, do it rarely. People like my mother in law, father in law, aunts, uncles: They all drank a few times in their life, but the drinking was for the curandero, not them, as a rule--with a few major exceptions, like coming of age, getting married, that sort of thing. How it was among truly indigenous before outside influence, I can't say; I'm only speaking for modern indigenous (the few I know who utilize ayahuasca) and regular mestizos who live out on the river or in the poorer sections of Iquitos.
The point I was trying to make was that so many gringos are now doing ayahuasca, many with an eye on becoming a curandero, that the dieta has become a sort of one size fits all: No sex, no salt, no hot peppers, no pork. And I object to that. I just think most of that can be explained away by circumstance. Which is not to say that concentracion, as Wind points out, is not vital to someone trying to learn the medicine, trying to conquiste the medicine, to win it over as an available ally.
But there is more to the story than one size fits all. As I noted about chile peppers: Those who grow them sell them; those who can't grow them cannot afford them. Yet Jairo, whom Wind speaks about, and who is my late teacher Julio's son, always has hot peppers in lime and toronja juice with his simply boiled fish. Yet he told Wind not to eat pork for 30 days. But if someone on the river has a hindquarters of boar to sell, he'll ask me to buy it and then enjoy it, sometimes just a couple of hours before drinking ayahuasca, after a long day of cooking the medicine in unbelieveable heat. He does not--and I know few who do--recognize wild boar as pork. And Wind, a vegan who eats a lot of raw food, would not be generally surprised to have a lousy stomach from eating cheap pepperoni, I wouldn't think.
Again, this does not downplay the importance of a dieta, just the idea that one size fits all.
Here's an example, not related to ayahuasca, but related to general jungle magic on the same level. During certain times of the year hunting is very bad for the indigenous Matses. That is the time when they set traps deep in the jungle for tapir--the only animal large enough to feed a couple of families of 20 or so that might make up a small village.
First time I saw a trap set I had to stay maybe 100 yards away, because Pablo, the headman/curandero of the village, didn't want my stink anywhere near it. So he set the trap while I watched, strapping a sapling to a tree and pulling one end of it across a moist muddy area, then affixing it in place and putting a spike on the end of it. It had a trip line so that if a tapir walked into the mud the sapling would break free and the spike enter the heart.
Once done, he chewed a lot of leaves and spit them on the trip line to eliminate his human scent, then we left the area.
During the next few days, Pablo did copius amounts of sapo--five good burns three times a day, I think--and we didn't eat meat at camp. We saw monkeys, we saw sahino--boar-- one day, but he didn't hunt them. I asked why. He said it was because he was getting strong enough on sapo to project his animus, his spirit, into the trap as a female tapir, to lure a male tapir into the trap, and if he hunted any animals, the spirits of those hunted animals would tell the real tapir that the female luring him into the trap was Pablo, who had recently killed them.
Now there were two exceptions to that rule: The Matses could eat both river turtles and sloths during hunting season. Why? Because the large river turtles, both the charapa and the tarakaya (sp??) were so arrogant, that even if you killed them they wouldn't stoop to talk to other animals or animal spirits.
They could also eat sloths. Why? Because while sloths are among the biggest snitches in the world, they talk so slowly that by the time they explain what's going on the whole season for trapping is over.
Point of that story? If you met Pablo during that time and watched him not hunt boar or monkeys that crossed his path, and you didn't know the circumstance, you'd probably make a note to the effect that "Matses don't hunt boar or monkeys. Very curious."
Which would be totally incorrect in the big picture but correct from your view.
And that's how I see the standard dieta that claims, in bold letters, "no salt, no hot peppers, no pork, and no sex."
To me it's simply too big a hat to fit everyone. And historically, as Steve Beyer points out, it's not a "one size fits all" for different indigenous tribes. They might all have a dieta, they might all have regulations for an apprentice to ayahuasca, but each tribe would be different, depending on their circumstance. What would be the point of a 300 pound white guy not eating salt for 10 weeks while he was in the jungle? He'd simply die. So that would not fit him.
But to get that guy to hike 10 days in the deep green, eating lightly, listening to the forest, well, hell yes, that's a great dieta, even if he needed a salt tab once in a while to keep him from dehydrating.
Double pork chops smothered in gravy with rum and coke? Not hardly. Fried food? Sheer poison, no matter what you are doing or where you live. But then, even Wind, after eating all his food and his father's left overs, was sent out on a several hour walk without water/food and had ample time to eliminate/absorb all those fresh bean/fruit/veggie calories long before he drank the medicine.
So I'm not disagreeing with the idea of a dieta, I'm disagreeing with us white guys/gals who have decided to make rules for something which is a lot older than us and has been around a lot longer than we have been visiting the Amazon trying to learn about the medicine.
Thanks, gorman
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First Day of School Sadness

Well, it was first day of school around here. Madeleina started 9th grade and I was sorry to drop her off because she's such good company. And I've had a lot of her company lately, what with going with me to Peru and all. So it's sad that I'm sitting in an empty house again. And it was sad--though I was proud--that she didn't need any help from me to go clothes shopping yesterday. "Dad, why don't you just go and have a drink with Dave at Wild WIngs, watch a little football or something and then come back in an hour or so, okay?"
Growing up.
Sierra started school today too: She's in kindergarden now. My daughter-in-law Sara bought her a bunch of nice clothes and I bought her school supplies while Chepa and the girls (Sierra and Alexa) were visiting their grandpa in Michigan for a couple of weeks. And Sierra has been dreaming of this day for as long as she can remember seeing Madeleina heading off to school.
Madeleina and I went over to Chepa's this morning to see her off: She looked so beautiful, so lost.
And then so was Alexa, who was not heading off to school. Chepa called me an hour after school started and I could hear Alexa sobbing in the background. Just sobbing. She's never been without her sister before.
To calm things down we all headed over to Sierra's school to have lunch with her. I got there first, and when Sierra came in to the lunchroom with her class a few minutes later, she hardly looked at me, just went straight to a table and sat with other kids. She didn't even join us when Chepa, Alexa and little Taylor Rain joined me. No siree. She's a big girl and all we might do is embarrass her.
So that was that. Nice that everybody's growing up, but sad that I still get growing pains when they do.

Last Note on Ayahuasca Dieta

Not to bore you guys, but once again the question of the dieta, the diet, has come up on a board on which I occasionally post. I was trying to stay out of it but it's just too juicy a topic for me to keep my hands off. So this was my response to a topic with the title of "Are there any of you out there who reject the traditional dieta?" or somesuch.
My entry:
At the Shamanism Conference in Iquitos last month, I raised some eyebrows--to say the least--when I flippantly answered a question about the dieta with something like, "the dieta was invented by white people 10 years ago."
I was flippant, but I don't think I was wrong.
I don't think most curanderos I know, among the older ones, ever adhered to any dieta as we know it. Not for the purpose of association with ayahuasca, anyway. Nearly every one ate a decent meal after they had cooked the medicine in the heat all day and before they served and drank it. I never saw one turn down a cup of coffee with milk and sugar just prior to the ceremony, nor salt if I happened to have it.
BUTTTTT, here's how I see it--and I recognize that it's my way of seeing it. And I might be seeing it through odd glasses since I never heard the term dieta until about 2002, when Hamilton, from Blue Morpho, said he couldn't shake my hand because he was on a dieta and forbidden to have contact with other humans. For him, I'm sure that was the right thing to do. And maybe others have been doing dietas for hundreds of hears. It's just that I find it odd because in the first 17-18 years of drinking the medicine it never came up.
Still, I think I can explain a lot of it to you.
Let's look at the primary things people discuss when talking dieta: no salt, no chile peppers, no pork, no sex.
SALT: In the jungle, prior to Fujimori, in the mid 1990s, supplying every tiny village in Peru's jungle a community metal boat, motor and 40 gallons of gasoline every month to ensure that people could get their goods to market, most river travel by locals from villages to towns was by dugout canoe. Once there was a community boat--a peque-peque with a 9hp motor--time to get from say, Aucayacu to Genero Jerrera, was cut from 5 hours to 2. The return upstream was cut from 6 hours to 3.
Subsequently, things people had rarely had were accessible.
In addition, in 2004-2007 or so, the Chinese brought in inexpensive peque-peque motors. So where there had pretty much only been a Briggs and Stratton available, and that was $1,300 US or so--out of the reach of nearly everybody--suddenly there were $250 motors available. A decent peque-peque motor can be had now for $180 (I just bought a 5 hp last month for a friend, so I know the price).
What does that mean?
Well, it means people go to town frequently. It means they bother to catch the large catfish, like zungaru and don seillo and can get them to town for sale in just a couple of hours. Prior to the availability of Fujimori's boats or cheap Chinese products, it was 11-12 hours to get to town and back. Which meant no fish would make it fresh. They had to be salted. So if you went to town to buy salt, you rarely used it on your food. No. It was what afforded you the ability to bring your fish, and hunted meat, to market to earn money for batteries, flashlights, an occasional shirt, a new machete. So salt was a very tightly held commodity despite it not costing very much.
CHILE PEPPERS: Chile Peppers in the jungle take a very particular type of soil to grow in. Not many places can produce them, hence, a kilo of charapitas (the primary jungle chile, the little yellow hot one) goes wholesale for 30-40 soles, and retails out at more than 100 soles when sold by the half-sol.
So nobody had chile peppers to begin with, and if you did you certainly didn't waste them when they brought in a week's pay (basic pay in Iquitos for working stiffs is still about 12 sols a day, though 20 sols is minimum wage and just a little less than police and teachers get). Pay on the river, for helping out building a house or whatever remains about 5 sols. So no one who grew charapitas would waste them on themselves and no one who didn't could afford them. So no chile peppers.
PORK: Essentially, the same as chile peppers but in spades. Pigs grow to be a couple of hundred pounds, even in the jungle. If you have pigs, you can't just eat some of it. You got to eat the whole thing. So when you raise them, you raise them for sale, not for food. So of course you don't eat pork in the jungle. BUT the dieta generally says nothing about eating sajino or wangana, the two peccaries in the jungle, and those are definitely pork. And majas, while a rodent, is the most pork like meat you'll ever find. All of these are staples of everyone who can trap or otherwise kill them, including every ayahuasquero and curandero I ever knew.
SEX: Well, I'm not sure how to explain this one, except to say that since all the curanderos I know have multiple girlfriends, wives and lots of kids--yes, there are exceptions, but not many of them out on the river--I'm not sure anyone pays attention to this. I do know that during intense periods with the medicine it never crossed my mind to have sex. That was a distraction. I mean, if you are going to be sleeping with your arms around a tree, getting bitten by all the bugs, bats, insects and everything else that protects that tree--in order to get to know it you have to get past those protectors--well, the last thing on your mind is sex. But I know of few people who've ever really slept with the plants to get to know them. Most just drink their essence and call it a day. But I do think sex is distracting and I also think that Ayahuasca has a very human trait of jealousy.
Now if what I'm saying is right, how did the dieta idea come up? Well, I think--and I've seen some videos from the 1980s and 1990s that show this--that gringos ask leading questions and then get answers and believe them to be correct answers. "When you were studying to be a curandero, did you eat pork?"
"No."
"When you were studying to be a curandero, did you....."
And so forth. What the questioner didn't ask was whether the person did those things when they were not studying to be a curandero. Because in most cases the answer would also have been "no".
I don't mean to downplay the importance of concentration in learning the medicine. I don't think you can be flip about it at all. But I don't know that what white people call dieta is anything that traditional people did specifically for ayahuasca: I think it was just part of living. Most curanderos, after all, were just fishermen or farmers who fished. They ate--and still do if they live on the river--boiled or grilled fish and plantains several times a day. It's their comfort food and it's their real staple. They'll eat rice if you give it to them but they wouldn't choose it over a good boiled plantain more than once out of the several meals they eat daily.
Even my team, my fantastic team, while they love my jungle guacamole and stir fried veggies, want plantain and fish at least 4-5 times daily. They typically go through 4 razimos--full arms of platanos with roughly 80 platanos each--in 6 days. So they really like them.
I don't think there is anything wrong with doing a dieta, mind you, I just don't think it's traditional. I think the white guys made it up asking leading questions.
On the other hand, most curanderos have told me that they have spent quiet time in the jungle, alone for weeks for the most part, unless someone was making them food, and that part of things I think is vital. Won't make you a curandero--that's something you're born capable of or not--but will help you get the most out of the medicine.
As noted at top: This is just my opinion and I totally respect those who are gonna say I'm full of it.

Doing a Song/Prayer

Okay, so sometimes you got to send something good to someone who needs it. I think it's part of the responsibility of having been shown other realities by the spirit of ayahuasca. SPOILER: If you think I'm crazy now, wait till I get on with this. So you might want to quit right now.
Now, once in a while someone asks me if I can have a healing arranged for them. Generally, I say that that's difficult, as Jairo, Julio's son and the person who runs the ayahuasca ceremonies for me and my groups in Peru, is difficult to get hold of from here. It involves getting in touch with people who will try to reach him...very long distance. So that's generally the end of that.
But several months ago it occurred to me that I might have a responsibility to try to coordinate those things I've been taught with those beings who are what I call my guardians, and perhaps they could effect cures. It seemed to me that I had to try, anyway. At the worst I'd be wasting my time. At best, something good would happen. And in between, it probably would be a little good, at least, to have that person have someone send concentrated good intentions to them--a nice force of electricity or something that wouldn't do them any harm. I mean, who doesn't like having people spend time dwelling on them?
Not that I knew what a prayer would be.
Anyway, I decided that a prayer would involve the medicines from Peru, a request to God--or whatever/whomever the big big force is to me--and to the spirits, guardians, magics and the spirits of my teachers--four of them gone now, including Julio, Pablo, Bertha and Everett--to ask for a little help in making the prayer/song have some power and oomph. It would also include a song.
I didn't know what song, but I knew that if I smoked myself with mapacho, thanked the four directions, was happy to be alive and willing to do the work, that a song would come out.
Somehow it all came together and I found myself smoking, singing, shaking a bundle leaf rattle and trying my best to suck out the sickness from someone.
At first it was for a day. Maybe one-half hour.
But things being things, I realized I needed to give it more time. So last Spring I did a 10 day song for a couple of people. Every day a different song came out and even now they change daily. And then when I came back from Peru and was asked to sing again by someone, I did a three day sing. Then a two day sing because life interfered and as I'd stalled on the third day--because it's a lot of work--I missed the third day of that. And just now I've finished a 4 day sing, though I think I will do one more day tomorrow because there seems to be some more work to do.
So here I am, an agnostic, trying my best to get the universe and many of her spirits to help me out while I try to heal some people from hundreds of miles away without the benefit of modern medical knowledge or even active plant extractions to give them. Crazy, huh?
Somehow this is a very different post than I meant to write. I meant to write about something funny that happens at the end of the song. The thanking part.
Years ago I went, after trying to be allowed to attend for a long long time, to several Southern Ute Native American Church peyote prayer meetings. Bertha, a wonderful woman who became a great teacher of mine though we never had a lot of time together, was the matriarch. Her brother Everett, was a Roadman for the meetings--the curandero--as was one of her sons.
The meetings took place in a tee-pee, at the center of which was a fire in the shape of an eagle, the firebird. We would sit around the outside wall of the tee-pee with the fire in the center, the fire-tender at one side of the door, his assistant on the other side of the door and the Roadman at the opposite end of the tee-pee from the door.
I've never been great at sitting cross-legged for long spells, and so it was fairly uncomfortable for me to sit for hours. I'd move around during the ceremony, shifting to keep my legs from falling asleep. The medicine was passed regularly, as was the water drum--a small kettle with water in it covered with hide that gave it a fantastic sound as those who were initiated played it and sang their songs.
During the night there was one break, about 15 minutes, for people to use the bathroom in the nearby house or just to stretch their legs. Other than that there really was no leaving the ceremony. So by the time 10 hours had gone by and morning was coming alive, it felt like it was time to meet the dawn. But that's not how the ceremonies went. That was when the medicine stopped being passed and the official ceremony was over, but that was just the beginning of the Thank You's. Someone would start: "I want to say thank you to the Great Father for allowing me to attend this meeting. And I want to thank all of you for sharing in this meeting that we held to help X with his/her problems. And I want to thank the Roadman for bringing his power to this meeting, and to the fire spirits for carrying my wishes through the tee-pee roof and into the air so they could reach their destination with all my power in them. And I want to thank grandma Bertha, without whom none of this would be possible...."
And I would, at least the first time, think that was that. But no. The person would go on to name their relatives, one by one, who couldn't attend. And they named their dead relatives whom they missed. And they thanked the medicine for giving them strength to admit to wrongs they'd done--and then we heard the wrongs, in detail--and then they thanked their home and the land and their animals--one by one--until you wanted to strangle them.
And when that person was done, someone else would start and do the same, then someone else, until half the people in the tee-pee had thanked a combined thousand individual people and things while the other half of the people in the tee-pee were ready to take out shotguns if anyone else dared to do any more damned thanking.
And now that I've been doing the song, I see how that happens. You think you're finished. You've done the work as best you can, as best I can, and then you just want to say, Hey spirits! Thanks for helping out! but I find myself starting to name my guardians and then deciding maybe I ought to do a quick prayer for my brothers and sisters, and suddenly I'm thanking each, along with their spouses and kids and grandkids and then Chepa and all of the Gormans here, and then I'm thanking the universe for being alive and for having this home and then.....and then I just want to take a shotgun out just to shut me up.
So there it is. 25 years removed from those Native American Ceremonies--it seems like yesterday--and I finally know why those people have to say all those thank you's to everyone and everything. It's because you're so in that moment, so in that state where you love everything, that you can't resist thanking as much of it as you can think of.
I'm glad it's come full circle on me. It's just great to be alive.

Another Decent Recipe

Okay. So today was a continuation of yesterday, which was not all that great. My little green truck has a new clutch but cannot pass inspection on emissions at the moment. Italo has changed several things to the tune of a few hundred bucks, cost, and it should pass. But the last time we took it to the inspection place, a couple of months ago, before I left for Peru, we were stopped by the police for an out of date inspection sticker and fined $245. A judge whom I've written some not great things about in the past said he basically forgave me and then lowered it down to $225. Thanks.
So I'm intimidated about trying to get the thing passed again, particularly if they're gonna sit right next to the inspection station--where I also change oil--and wait for guys like me to come in with late inspections.
And then about 10 days ago the clutch began going on my other green truck; the new one, 1998, which only has 184,000 miles on it--the other one has 299,994--and I had to rev that baby way over the top to get her to move off the red light line. Once she got to 60 she was fine: The problem was she spent a gallon of gas and was burning out the damned motor to get there. I'd asked her to last till I had a free day to fix her and she did: Italo got hurt playing soccer and had to take a couple of days off of work, so he was free to drive with me in his car to the mechanic to drop it off yesterday. I love my mechanic. I hate my mechanic. For years every bill was $473. The last two years, every bill is between $700 and $850. He's good but who knows? I believe in people but don't trust human beings, if that makes sense.
So I called Rick and asked if he could do a new clutch in one day and he said he'd try. We dropped the truck off this morning at 8:15 and it was done at 3:45. $741.43. Damn.
The clutch works but that's a lot of dough. Darnit.
Here's the thing: Rick's is about 5 stoplights past Walmart, which is where I shop daily. I shop elsewhere too, but that's where I check blood pressure, walk a couple of miles around the store a few times, say hello to people and so forth. But I don't go back to Walmart if I'm already past it. So today, picking up the truck, I was past it and just continued on from Rick's with the new clutch and light wallet to Two Bucks, where I got my four minis of bourbon and then headed home.
Home, I checked sales of my book and saw I was down 10 for the month. So if you're gonna buy it, buy it now and get me up to a reasonable $500 monthly royalty check, okay?
Then I asked Madeleina what she wante for dinner. The fridge held chicken breasts, short ribs and a couple of pieces of farm raised Atlantic Salmon.
She opted for the short ribs. So here's the meal:
Turn on oven to 325.
Heat heavy saute pan. Put in a little oil, Flour the short ribs, braise at high heat with salt and pepper.
Transfer braised ribs to glass corning ware. Add a bit of water/chicken stock to meat bits in pan along with 1/2 red onion, sliced into half rounds. Pour over meat in corning ware and place in oven.
Fill small pan with cool water. Add a little sea salt. Slice 4 medium red potatoes and place on heat. Add two tablespoons of olive oil with minced garlic (if you know how I cook you'd know there is always a small cup or jar of chopped garlic sitting in olive oil for just such occasions. Add 2 cups of good chicken stock that you happen to have in the freezer, left over from the last time you made a good chicken stock--at least once a week, okay?
Put another pan with salted water on: Put in florets of broccoli, cauliflower and chopped asparagus. Heat, cook, drain.
When the ribs are done, about 45 minutes, take them out of the oven to cool. Pour juice into saute pan with earlier drippings. Add 2 tablespoons of minced garlic--drain the olive oil as you have enough oil--, heat. Add one whole diced red onion. Add a whole diced organic beefsteak tomato when onions and garlic are done. Add one diced poblano chile if in season. Add the kernels of one ear of sweet summer corn left over from last night and cut from the cob nicely.
Sautee all veggies in juice. Add 3 or 4 ounces of extremely reduced chicken stock--just chicken jello, really--and reduce while cooking veggies. When veggies are close to soft, add your favorite barbeque sauce and mix. This is the lazy part. Then add salt/pepper and whatever else the sauce needs.
Drop meat into sauce and slurb it all around for about 15 minutes until the meat is entirely inundated with the crispness of the sauce.
Serve meat.
Drain and serve potatoes.
Put cooked veggies in what's left of pan drippings and saute for a couple of minutes till the veggies are hot and flavorful.
Serve with fresh watermelon slices, very cold, and good water and a glass of champagne.
Wear a bib. It's messy but good.
Have a great night, everybody.

Something About Medicine

Okay, for some of you this post is going to seem quite off the wall. I understand. For some others, who have worked with plant medicines, or spent time meditating and are familiar with the other realities, it might not be so crazy.
I've a good friend...well, I've a client from a fairly recent trip who has something very unique about him. Madeleina was absolutely taken by his demeanor and basic generosity of soul. So was I.
He did medicine on the trip to Peru with me, and then stayed on for months. He's still there. And he's done more medicine. And he wrote me about a month ago that he had an ayahuasca dream wherein he met a man--a spirit that looked like a man to my friend-- smoking mapachos, the black tobacco cigarettes that are common in Amazonia and vital to the rituals there. And this man was in a sort of dark museumish place. And my friend was at first startled and a bit frightened but relaxed when the man told him to "look around" a bit, to see if there was something interesting there. Now to me, that's a special thing: To get invited to look at things that seem magical to us in ordinary reality, but things we can sometimes utilize to help people in ordinary reality, is a pretty fantastic thing.
Later in the ayahuasca dream, my friend met a little girl--a spirit that my friend saw as a little girl--who told him some things about some of his past experiences and then told him she would be with him always to help him. Again, to me that is very special. That's a guardian. As someone raised Catholic, and as a former alter boy, we would have called them guardian angels. As an adult I know they're real. They're the ones that keep you from stepping out in front of that bus you simply didn't see, the one that would have killed you. And they're the ones that make your car stall utterly unexpectedly just before someone runs through the light in the opposite direction going 100 miles per hour. They protect us. Why? I've no idea. I guess they're assigned or find us curious or get something out of watching us blunder along on this plane.
But my friend got one. Very very good.
And so, that led me to write him this note. It was about his responsibility now that he's got a place to find things people might need and a spirit who's volunteered to help him.
Dear X:
Just reread this for the 8th or 12th time. How fucking wonderful. Invited to
> explore. Given a guardian to answer questions. I hope you understand what a
> rare treat this is and treat it as such.
> I've just finished the second day of a prayer. That involves cama lunga,
> mapacho smoke, florida water, a shacapa, and some invisible things. I sing
> and call on the magics, red magic that moves through all the blood of
> everything in the universe; green magic, which moves through the verdancia,
> the trees, and rivers fish, earth and and snakes; white magic, which lights
> the world with stars and suns and moons and the light inside people, and
> black magic, the deep deep magnetic field, the magma that holds all things,
> large and small, together and keeps them moving in a way that allows the
> entire universe, known and unknown, to keep moving in rhythm--I call on the
> magics to help heal someone or something that has asked me for help. I can't
> help. I'm just me. But the guardians can help and I need to pray to call
> them. I need to sing. The song arrives when I need it. That's one of their
> gifts.
> Sometimes healing happens. Unimaginably.
> So treat your guardian girl with love and respect. She's offered her
> help, as has the man smoking mapachos who said you were free to look around.
> LOOK AROUND. Dream him, dream his space. Learn his space. He might have a
> million secrets you need hidden there.
> Just be joyful you've been made aware of helpers and thankful you have
> them. Use them, don't abuse them or you might lose them.
> It might also become a burden to you someday: People will know you have
> power. You won't have power but you will have helpers and people's souls
> will recognize that and ask you for help. You will need to help when it's
> appropriate. That often interferes with what you had planned on a given day.
> But that becomes your job.
> I don't mean to rattle on. I mean to tell you something I know about my
> circumstance and think you might have been initiated into something like it
> as well. And so I have to tell you what I've told you. It's part of the
> unspoken pact.
> I will finish my three day prayer for my friend and a few others
> tomorrow. It will be inconvenient because I have a serious deadline for a
> story. So what. The prayer is what I have been assigned to and it's bigger
> than my deadline. Though actually, the prayer will not interfere. It never
> has. Sometimes I can spend an hour or more and look at the clock and see
> that not 5 minutes of real earth time have passed. And if tomorrow I'm told,
> somehow, that I need another 10 days of prayer, I will do it.
> There are leaps of faith out here.
> Take good steps with your gift and she will walk with you always.
> And don't tell too many people--unless you write a book--because they
> will think you crazy.
> I hope I'm not being arrogant here.
> Peter G

In the Dark, As Always

I'm often in the dark. People don't imagine that, I suppose, because of the way I carry myself. But I'm often in the dark. Particularly with Chepa. You know, just when I think I know, she turns the world on its head. Last week, after the kids told me she was going to Indiana and on to Michigan--to visit her boyfriend, and then to take the kids to see their ailing grandpa--all was good. Then on maybe last Wednesday, the day before she was to leave, she asked me to make dinner for everybody and then set the menu. I was fine with it as it was lime-chicken with veggies, fresh corn and I forget what else. So when dinner time came around and she wasn't there, I called. She said she'd be right over. Cool. I started the chicken. Soon after, Marco showed up with the girls, Sierra and Alexa, and my granddaughter Taylor Rain.
Seems mom was not coming over: She'd forgotten to mention that her boyfriend was coming into town and that she'd really asked me to make dinner so that I could babysit while they had some private time.
Okay. Didn't like that but did like seeing the kids.
Then Chepa showed up, said she was starving, and proceeded to eat. I went out for a smoke. Then Chepa left. Then I went back inside to do dishes: nearly all the chicken was gone. Seems she'd made a to-go plate for the boyfriend.
I was in the dark. See what I'm talking about? Just when you think you got it figured, you wind up babysitting and cooking for the boyfriend. What the heck?
I'll mention it to her when she returns from Michigan. Provided she returns. For all I know they've all flown off to live in Morocco or Bali by now. I wouldn't know. No one has turned on a light.
Right now I'm in the dark again.
I'm reading a major study as the starting point for a cover story for my local alternative weekly. The study, several hundred pages long, was written purposely to keep people like myself from understanding anything in it. I know that, which is why I know it will be a good story. If I can decipher it. Right now, I'm in the dark. I've got to learn a whole new language of sorts just to begin to get it. Then I'll have to go to the experts to interpret what I can glean. I know the people who did the study are dirty; I know their short form conclusion will not be what's actually written in the study. I also know that they know that few people will bother trying to understand the whole several hundred pages. So I'm in the dark.
And I'm in the dark with Madeleina these days too. Pretty much ever since we've come back from Peru she's challenged me on things every day. She'll ask me if I've signed certain papers yet and I'll say "no, not yet, darling." And then she'll get exasperated and say, "Dad, they have to be signed and you have to sign them now!"
"When are they due?"
"I think next week."
"Well, then I've got time."
"No, dad. They have to be signed now..."
Anyway, the first several times she did that I wound up screaming or wanting to scream. So I asked the powers that be for a little insight, a little light to be shed on my darkness.
And the powers that be were nice enough to do it. They told me, or let me see, or however it happens, an answer. And the next time Madeleina started in on something, rather than responding negatively, I said: "You know that you and I have been arguing for the first time in your life lately..."
"I know, dad. That's because you're stupid sometimes..."
I bit my tongue.
"I know I'm sometimes stupid. But here's the thing: Until the last couple of months you didn't know that. Plus, until we came back from Peru, for your whole life, you just gave me your papers and I took care of them. You didn't even read them. But now you're 14 and you're reading the papers and you're freaking out and imagining that I'm so stupid that if you don't get on me things won't get done. But here's the thing, Madeleina: You've got to think back to the first 13 years. Did you get fed? Did I remember to go to the store to buy food, remember to cook it, remember to ask you for input on what we ought to eat? Did I get all your school books--I mean along with mom, of course--and get you to school and remember to make you good lunches? Did I get all the paperwork done on time?"
"Am I supposed to answer that?"
"Yes as a matter of fact."
"Well, okay, so you didn't mess up..."
"So why are you so suddenly sure I am going to mess up now? Why do you think you won't have the dress for the quinceniera or won't get your band stuff paid for or won't get the medical papers filled out? Have I gotten so old so quickly that if you don't yell at me I won't remember anything?"
She started to laugh. "You might have Alzheimers, dad. You never can be too careful...."
"Don't wish that on me, girl,"
"I'm not. I'm just saying, maybe all that pot you used to smoke burned out your brain...."
"Not hardly, baby. I think the truth of the matter is that you're suddenly becoming a grown up and want to challenge me. Cause if you're grown up, then I must be old, and if I'm old, I won't remember anything, so you have to save me..."
"Something like that."
"Well, forget about it. You're welcome to be smart as you like, and you're welcome to fill out any paperwork you like, but it's gonna be a long time before I lose my edge. So have a little faith, eh?"
It was a nice moment of light in the darkness.
This morning she got up while I was working on the computer and came into the office/living room and crashed out on the couch behind me. She was so beautiful. She was just my little girl again for a little while.
And then she woke and remembered that she had to read Dickens' Tale of Two Cities and burst into tears. She doesn't understand a word of it. Not surprising: His writing is as complicated for her to understand as the report I'm reading is to me.
So I asked her to bring me the book--after I fed her scrambled eggs with cheese, cantaloupe and a juice made of fresh strawberries, a banana, orange juice, spring water and a little milk--and I began to read it to her. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...."
It took us nearly an hour to get through the first three page chapter. She simply has no context. So when we were done she yelled in frustration: "So why didn't he just write that it was 1775 and in England and France everything was freaking chaos and the only people who didn't know it were the kings and queens of those countries? That's it. Then end. First chapter done."
Actually, I don't know why he didn't write that. He really does write beautifully, but it's pretty incoherent for kids who've grown up with computers and who say things like RTFM as if it's English (it means Read the Fucking Manual).
I guess everybody around here is in the dark sometimes, eh?

2012 Amazon/Machu Picchu Trips

Okay, time to weigh in on next year's trips.
(Madeleina, who is cutting two heads of garlic to refill my garlic/olive oil cup, just cut in to say "Remind me to take a shower tonight!", which I will do, but where is she going to take a shower? I mean, it's heavier than it looks....)
Anyway, I'm doing 4 trips in 2012. Two of them will be 21-day long trips--in January and June--covering the jungle and mountains and Machu Picchu and include Ayahuasca and San Pedro and magic shrooms and the Matses' medicines, sapo and nu-nu. Bit trip. Expensive but worth the price of admission.
Those two trips can be done wholly or in part, either jungle or mountain. Cost is $4400 for the 21 days (not including airfare or alcohol or walking around money and some meals) but including everything else, from boats to hotels, to my team, to entrance fees to trains, to ceremonies.
The other two trips are 9 1/2 day jungle intensives: Get ready to bare your soul to the universe cause these are fantastic and intense. These cost $1800 and include everything but airfare and walking around money.
All four trips will change your life for the better. My team, the river, the jungle, the Amazon sky, the mountains, the medicines, the ruins.....hell, all I've got to do is get you to the right place at the right time and then get the hell out of the way and let the rest do the magic. And what magic there is! Ask people who have been there. I wouldn't do these trips if I didn't love doing them. And I love doing them.
Dates: The January 21 day trip starts on Saturday, January 7, and runs through the morning of Saturday, January 28. The jungle portion alone runs from Saturday, January 7 through Thursday afternoon, January 19 and costs $2400. The Lima/Cuzco/Sacred Valley/Machu Picchu end of things runs from Thursday evening, January 19 through Saturday morning, January 28 and costs $2200. Both together cost $4400.
The June 21 day trip, starts on Saturday, June 2 and runs through Saturday morning, June 23. Cost: $4400. Jungle only: June 2 through Thursday afternoon, June 14 with a $2400 cost. Mountain portion only runs from Thursday afternoon, June 14 through Saturday morning June 23 and costs $2200. See above for what's included and what's not. Essentially, your spending money for gifts, your alcohol, some meals and your airfare are not included. Everything else is included.
The February and July trips are both 9 1/2 day jungle intensives. We'll do magic shrooms, ayahuasca twice, sapo and nu-nu, go night canoeing, bathe in the river, walk in primordial swamps, hike in pristine first growth canopy, collect plants to eat and plant medicines and whatever else we can squeeze in.
The february dates are Saturday, Feb 4, through the morning of Monday, Feb. 13.
The July dates are not set yet as they are set to coincide with the start of Alan Shoemaker's Shamanism Conference. Generally we start around the 7th of July and run through the 16th, but that changes depending on when the conference is set.
Cost for either jungle intensive is $1800 and includes everything but walking around money, airfare and any alcohol you consume in Iquitos (no alcohol in the jungle, please).
These are pretty fantastic trips, I think.
So anyone interested, please contact me at peterg9@yahoo.com and we can go from there.
And thanks for listening to this advertorial.

Where Are We, Death Valley?

Whew! Not to kill you guys with two blogs in one day, but I just have to mention the temperatures here. Today was Dallas/Fort Worth's 33rd consecutive day of 100 degrees F or more. No rain for a couple of weeks prior to that or during those 33 days. A place up the road burned wildly from what's believed to be an errant cigarette butt tossed from a car. It's that dry here.
But it's also hot. Last few days, very hot. Last week it was 104-106. You know, hotter than it ever gets here but bearable. Yesterday hit 110. Today, according to the radio, hit 112. It will drop to 108 by 7 PM, and then down to 100 or so by midnight. That is not sittin' on a porch swing weather by any means.
Tomorrow might hit 113, which is, I think, the highest temp ever recorded here in the Fort Worth area, and about what Death Valley does during August. We are not supposed to be anywhere near Death Valley hot. We're north Texas, a central state and several hundred miles from the most northern Mexican border. So if we're hitting 112, it's hot.
And you know what? Not having air conditioning in the car, well, you really feel it. I've done two showers and changed three shirts today. My badly insulated house is at 84 degrees while the thermostat is set at 70. And I almost need a sweater in here after working outside for 20 minutes. Can't wait to see the electric bill. Fortunately, I'm in a co-op, so that while they'll charge me $500 for the month, they'll also send me $25 in co-op earnings. Perfect.
Tomorrow Madeleina are going to take my truck out from under the carport and let it sit in the sun. Then we're gonna fry an egg on the hood and she's gonna narrate and make that her new video on Youtube.com, under madeleinag. It ought to be good.
Next nine days look to be more of the same though a little cooler. From up to 113 tomorrow to down to 103 (highs for the day) a week from Friday. Nice and sunny though.
I'm not sure it's good to be sucking down all this superheated smog, you know? Just sayin'...
I am giving the goats and Boots a lot of water with ice in it. Everybody seems to like that. And I'm putting Boots' chicken legs in the fridge to cool them before I serve him (two pounds of chicken daily....sorry, chickens!).
I knew it was going to be hot today when I stepped from my house to go to my car for smokes at 8 AM and the temperature, in the shade, was 94. By 1 PM it was 102, and when I just came back from driving to town, at about 6 PM, it was still 106. That's in the shade. No sun whatsoever, on a porch surrounded by plants. So maybe the 112 was a little less than the real temp.
Ah, well, the good thing is that when it cools to 85 by 4 AM, and the house cools to the 70 degrees the AC is set for, well, it feels so icy cold that I put a blanket on and go into the best damned sleeps I've had since I left New York in the winter of 2002.

Get Real Lucky, Sometimes

I get real lucky, sometimes. And I don't forget to say thanks to the guardians. Today's luck came at the end of a chain of events that didn't seem to have anything to do with each other.
I was working this morning, trying to track down the answer to a question that I need to make my next column of Drug War Follies for Skunk magazine shine. Comes up around 1:15 and I think, what the hell, let's just go to Fort Worth, pick up my paycheck and some fresh fish and call it a day.
Just then a guy I'd promised to call a couple of days ago called. It was related to a new story. I didn't answer and was ready to leave when I thought, what the heck, just call him and get that done. So I did. We spoke about 45 minutes when Chepa burst in and gave me an unexpected hug. I told the guy I'd call him back tomorrow. Chepa, it turned out, was having lunch with her sisters on some salt fish I brought back from the Amazon for her and she wanted some Margarita mix--left over from the wedding--and some ice. I told her I didn't have any ice but she said that Sarah had told her I still had a couple of bags in the freezer in the garage. So I said, let's go, I'll look.
On the way to the garage Chepa pointed out that Little Goat Guy had gotten his cord all tangled up with the tree swing and told me not to forget to fix it later. He's been back a few days and is still tied up because I have not finished closing all the holes in the fencing around the property that the goat made last year.
So I came back in, brushed my teeth, and suddenly Marco showed up. He was looking for his wallet. Well, I helped look, which led us to a large closet in his old room, the floor of which was covered in college texts and notebooks that belong to someone none of us know. So I decided to clean that out, and wound up with a big box of garbage. Too much garbage to leave in the house, so I brought it out--Marco had meanwhile found his walled in Italo's room, where he and Italo and changed into tuxedos for Italo's wedding--and put it in the garbage area.
And while I was doing that I saw the bale of hay and bag of goat feed I'd bought yesterday. The hay had been annoying since one of the three rear window panels of my 1998 Ford Ranger is broken and the hay was being sucked in so fast while I was on the highway that there was a virtual hay storm in my car. So when I saw that hay, I was going to leave it where it was, but then the little goat, Minute, saw it from across the fence and started braying for it. So I decided to roll it over to where the goats were and let them have a feast. And when I got to the fence gate, I realized that Little Goat Guy had wildly exacerbated his position to where his tongue was turning blue and his eyes were popping out of his head.
I left the hay where it was, raced over and undid the collar so that he could get his breath. In a few minutes his eyes were back to normal, though he didn't try to move until he'd had some fresh water and a few tiny mouthfuls of hay.
Now this is why I talk about the guardians: Left to my own devices, I never would have needed to get that ice, and Chepa would not have pointed out that the goat was tangled up. And even later, left to my own devices, I would have left him tangled until I got back from the city. But of course he would have been dead long before that. But by Chepa coming for ice, then Marco coming to look for a wallet, which wound up producing the garbage that led me to notice the hay still near the truck, which led me to feel guilty for not wanting to do the work to get it to the goats....well, that's what saved the goat's life. And I don't think that was luck. I think that was the guardians pulling the strings to get everything in place to save that beautiful goat's life.
Thanks, universe. You're the best.

Alone Again, Naturally

Okay, so for the second time since I've been back I'm alone tonight. Chepa and the kids might surprise me with a visit for some watermelon and grapes but I'm pretty much alone. And while I was alone all day--except for bringing the kids donuts this morning and visiting them for a little while to see poor Madeleina after her first marching band practice practically dead on Chepa's sofa--Dad, when you make a mistake you have to do 20 pushups and I can't even do one!--well, I've been alone all day. Which meant I got a story done for the Fort Worth Weekly and nearly finished my column for Skunk magazine as well. Extra cool.
Lonesome, but cool.
Did get a reasonably nice check in the mail--which comes promptly between 4 and 5 PM daily--from the June sales of my book at Amazon. Nice to know it's still selling 100+ copies a month, which is pretty much what it's done since it came out last year. I would love it to go wild and sell 50,000 copies one month but still, some people are reading it. And lots of those people write me. I've got a lot of super excellent letters from strangers who found it a great read. Good. That's what I was hoping for.
Here's a story: When I was a fairly young teenager I was writing a lot of poetry--oh, the angst of youth and pimples, blue balls brought on by necking with Kathy O for hours and never being allowed to go further, and not knowing there was an end to masturbating until I'd actually had real sex with a girl--some of which I'd read to my mom. And my mom, pretty astute lady, would ask me what this or that line meant. And I'd explain. And then she'd say--and we probably did this half-a-dozen times over the years--"Well, are you going to explain that to everyone who reads your poetry? Because if you are, you won't have a lot of readers, it'll just take too long. So why don't you say what you just told me in the poem in a way that I and others can understand? Then you can sell your work to lots of people and not worry about having to go to their homes to explain it."
I hated her the first time she said that. It was so cold, so cruel, so on the money.
When I grew up I gave up poetry but always write so that everybody knows that the heck I'm talking about. I think. Or I hope. Or that's what I try to do, anyway.
And so I think even people who don't know about ayahuasca could have a reasonable change of reading my book and getting something from it, just like people who come on my trips to the Amazon and don't drink ayahuasca or do the Matses' medicines sapo and nu-nu still get a lot out of the trips.
(QUICK AD: Upcoming trips in January and February, then again in June and July. Sign up now cause I'm gonna sell out to excellent people! ALSO: Time to stock up on the book, Ayahuasca in My Blood--25 Years of Medicine Dreaming for your early Christmas/Hannukkah/Kwanzaa/Tribal Solstice presents).
Anyway, so I'm alone. But I did good and pulled the trigger on Madeleina's new flute. It is a beauty: a floor model from Taylor Music in South Dakota--from Geimenhardt, supposedly a good flute maker. it's open-hole with a B foot and a Gizmo key and comes with corks for the open holes. None of which makes sense to be but makes it easier to swallow the $895 price tag--which is a freaking bargain from the $1350 or so it sells for completely new.
I'm just thinking of my friend Phoenix, whose father bought him a cheap little guitar when he wanted to play and told him to learn enough to earn something better. Phoenix plays beautifull and so I suspect his dad was happy to shell out the bucks for something that could make his kid's music sing. I feel the same way about Madeleina. She's spent hundreds and hundreds of hours practicing, learning, and now needs to move up from a beginner's flute. Good for her. She earned it with her practice and she also earned it working with me in Peru for nearly two months. So I bought it with a thrill running up my neck rather than a knot in my stomach.
I'm getting distracted thinking of the tiny new potatoes I have on the stove. I better go check them.
They look fine. I'm cooking them in water left from cooking asparagus and then spinach. It's got real good sea salt in it, and a little garlic oil (the garlic has been soaking in the olive oil for 48 hours) a bit of chicken stock from chicken last night and then a few sprigs of cilantro. They're gonna be good boiled potatoes.
And I'm still in love with sword fish so I've got a piece of it--sorry fish. I won't complain if one of your brothers eats me. I know it will hurt but I will deserve it--in a bit of the same garlic oil. It's nice and low right now. And then, probably boring you who know the damned recipe, when it's browned on one side and nearly done on the other, I'm gonna add garlic, tiny diced red pepper (half a pepper as I'm dining alone), three diced slices of red onion, and half a tiny bottle of capers, with the juice. Maybe a teaspoon of butter to bind it all together.
The sides are maybe one of the tiny potatoes, asparagus (parboiled then sauteed in a bit of butter and good balsamic vinegar) and spinach (parboiled and later to be cooked in garlic and olive oil). I know, I've done it 100 times. But I still like it. And I never had it with the potatoes before.
And I'm gonna eat that feast in front of the television while watching Nicholas Cage and Eva Mendez in Ghost Rider, an insane movie that I happen to like watching every now and then, if just to watch Cage ride a flaming Harley custom up the side of a high rise.
Okay, so that's the single life. Not fantastic, but pretty rich if you milk it. I could do worse, right?
It's all good. I hope you're all having a great night, wherever you are.

Not Wild About Change

Okay, so we've (Madeleina and I) been back from Peru for nine days now. Seems like we should have integrated. We are. But it is always hard to switch modes, and harder still when there are changes. We came back to see that Italo's Sarah, who is so beautiful and nice, had rearranged some of the art in my rooms. Specifically, my office, the bathroom and the kitchen. Plus, a wax cast of Madeleina's left hand, made several years ago at the Wax Museum in Dallas on a school trip, had melted over the lava lamp it has sat on for several years.
That was no one's fault. No one was living here for several weeks and the family only came over sporatically to feed Boots, the Wonderdog, vet for rats and keep appliances running. No AC was on and so the hand melted. But Madeleina put all her rejection of all the changes into that wax hand and cried for hours. What she was really upset about was that the art was rearranged, my writing trophies and certicates were in different places, the art in the bathroom was now in the hallway, and new pieces that Sarah thought would be good for the kitchen and bathroom were in place. Plus, one of our beloved rugs was folded up and in Marco's old room, as were several art pieces, a couple of end tables, lamps and so forth.
So Madeleina was not crying about the hand, exactly, but that it represented change she had not designed.
I cried too, but then after 44 years of travel a couple of months a year, I know that things will be changed when I return. And so while I abhor the changes, I welcome them. If someone thinks what they're gonna buy--like Sarah bought me a 6 piece couch in the living room and threw out my old and comfy couch/chair/ottoman--well then, I cry a little and then celebrate her taste.
Much tougher for Madeleina.
And today we brought the goats home from Shelly S's. house. She is the goat lady who at times has dozens of goats. She breeds them, sells their milk for cheese and generally loves them. She's the one I got the goats from so I pay her to board them--$200 for two goats for 2 months- and she said they were easy students.
But now they are in the backyard. Over 1 1/2 acres to play in but all they are doing is braying. I'm not sure what they want but will bet it has something to with having been taken from the place where they were for the last 8 weeks.
So I'm just saying, change is tough on everybody.
To get over it I made a shrimp soup: Garlic, minced, with red onion, diced, and celery, diced, as a mirapoix. THEN sautee shrimp, then add commercial tomato soup and pepper, then add water, then shrimp shell essence, then shrimp and a few minutes later the mirapoix. Then small diced potatoes. Then diced scallions and cilantro, pepper and angel hair pasta. Then just be patient for half an hour.
So here it is: We came home las week and still don't have our seagoing feet nearly under us.
And now I have to attend the soup.
But know that Boots, the goats, the birds, and the family, are all slightly freaked at the thought that changes were made. Because we liked things the way they were. We are intimidated by change until we integrate it. I hope you're better than that, but we're not.
Sometimes we're not strong enough.

After the Party Comes the Cleanup

Okay, the wedding was beautiful. I had no idea how many touches would go into it--and I worked hundreds of weddings as a kid at Cresthaven Country Club in Whitestone, New York. This had floating lights, floating flowers, a friend of the other side of the family who drove in from South Dakota to pitch in as photographer--fantastic--and deejay--freaking brilliant. We went on a little late because it took a long time to get pictures done at the Botanical Garden of Fort Worth--a good enough reason to visit Fort Worth and hang at my house a couple of days--but otherwise no hitches.
And yes, Chepa's boyfriend and the father of her new kids came in to town and I was good: I walked up and introduced myself, and later helped patch one of the baby's knees. I provided the bandaids and he applied them. He noted that Alexa preferred the mickey mouse bandaids and I held my tongue: Did not say, "How would you know? I'm the guy raising them!" or anything like that. And when it came time, about 11 PM, that I thought I might, I simply went to bed and let the party rock on. Marco and Italo both commended my behavior. Marco was particularly nice: "Dad, you're the freaking coolest person I ever met. You made a great party, you dealt with Troy, you didn't drink all night. I want to be like you when I grow up."
I countered that it was a lucky day, but really it was just doing what needed. Difficult for me because I happen to still love Chepa. But I did it and I am okay with how I behaved.
The party part was a blast. There was food for 200 and people ate and ate. Not just what I made but what Sarah's mom and dad and grandma and grandpa made. Plus what Chepa and her sisters made. Plus platters from a supermarket. Fortunately, Italo and Sarah's friends are mostly in their early 20s, so they can eat like horses. And drink. They went through a keg of beer, a couple of cases of bottles, nearly 4 liters of Cuervo Gold in Margarita's and then 1 1/2 cases of champagne. Plus a couple of bottles of Stoli that someone brought.
Still, everyone behaved wonderfully.
And when the kids were getting married, wouldn't you know it that I was the guy standing behind all the chairs, bawling. Just thinking about my Italo and quietly sobbing. That's why I stood behind everyone. No need to go public with a private waterfall.
And the girls, Madeleina, Sierra, Alexa and little Taylor Rain, well, they were simply magic. I just cannot get enough of any of them. I mean, I just had Madeleina in the jungle and mountains of Peru with me for 50 days and I'm still thinking she is about the coolest person on the planet to hang with. And she looked gorgeous--pronounce that gojus--in her orange bridesmaid dress.
So that's that.
And just now we finished several hours of cleanup. Tomorrow the dump and then the rounds of returning things like the air conditioner unit Sarah's dad rented for the garage, or the tables and chairs, the tent guy's stuff and the beer keg I got.
But it's done yet and I've a fridge full of leftovers if anybody's hungry. Let me know.
And spend one second sending them good vibes. Marriage is tougher than most people think--as most of you know.
Appreciate it.

Back Home Again...Life is Freaking Grand, eh?

Hello all. I've been away, working in Peru for 50 days and so have not been in touch. I'm sorry. But work is hard there. I've a team of 12-15 to oversee, trips to plan for, food to buy, babies who are sick, families that need help. Hell, it's like I'm a freaking one man money machine trying to keep up with it all. Not that I mind. My guests give me the money and I distribute it. That's how I see it. And this time, with my Madeleina, now 14, with me for the second June/July trips in two years, we actually made a few bucks. How? First, because she's such a good guardian she wouldn't let me have a woman closer than 20 feet and never ever alone. Which kept me from getting robbed or so gleeful that I gave someone $500 for the hell of it. Secondly: She wouldn't let me give anyone scholarships. Last time she was with me I gave everyone a break and by the time we added it all up I'd given $10,000 on breaks and came home broke. This time she wouldn't hear of that.
"That's my new flute, dad! Let them pay! You don't even charge enough to begin with!"
Which may not be true, but I limited scholarships and came home with enough to pay the IRS their blood money from several years ago and next month's mortgage and to buy the food and booze for my son Italo's wedding to my daughter-in-law, Sarah, the mother of my grandchild, Taylor Rain.
The trip was fantastic: Those of you who have been on it and were great guests, well, you know. This was just magic all the way with all the powers lending a hand to keep me joyful, and when I'm joyful, well, the rest of the world--at least our little world on the Amazon--tends to fall in line. So that was fantastic.
And now I'm ready to cook for tomorrow. I've cleaned and minced 15 heads of garlic and put it all in good olive oil to give me a foot up, but tomorrow it's brisket, Peruvian chicken, links, sausage, fresh beans, macaroni salad, potato and egg salad, hot dogs for the kids, a chocolate fountain, marinated and bar-b-qued asparagus and broccoli,and anything else I can conjure. The sisters, Italo's aunts will bring food as well. Heck, there are 100 people supposedly coming. Unfortunately, one of them is Chepa's boyfriend, the father of her new babies, the ones I'm sort of raising about 8 months a year because he's living in another state the last several years. I've never met him, and don't need to. I know he exists. No hiding from reality but he ain't gonna be my best friend.
I'll deal with it, I guess. I won't have a drink as a first step, lest I blurt out: Why am I paying about $6000-10,000 a year to feed and clothe your babies? Why can't you carry your end?
No drinks tomorrow. Be nice. It's my kid, Italo's day. Italo and Sarah. And their baby. And that's a good thing. Everybody is coming. I'll be on best behavior.
As for you all, I'll be back soon. Sorry to keep you waiting but those who know me in Peru know that when I am there I am there 100 percent and there is no time for anything else.
Now that I'm hear, I'm here for Italo and Sarah for a few days, 100 percent. And then it will be your turn.
Thanks for letting me have the space I occasionally need. I appreciate it.
And I hope it's all going well with you. Let me know.

Something About Iquitos

Okay, so someone on a forum I occasionally write on posted something to the effect that Iquitos is a patriarchal society. I begged to differ. I think it's interesting, so here is what I wrote:
Slightly off topic but need to respond to Hazle-ra regarding the culture in Iquitos. He calls it patriarchal. I beg to differ. Very very matriarchal society. Women rule the roost. Even with sexual advances, at least among Peruvians. Enter gringas, or women of other cultures and yes, the men can seem grabby, and probably are. But then that is their culture and it is the women who let it happen and only on their own terms.
This culture, you've got to remember, didn't even exist 140 years ago. Iquitos was basically a trading post for the tribals that lived on different rivers. Many were fueding, and that was exacerbated a great deal with the advent of the rubber boom to the area--when large groups such as the Shipibo--I know we all love them, butttt--chose to offer a lot of other indigenous people to the slave trade at the time rather than be enslaved themselves.
So what you see is a city that grew up around the rubber boom, where forced slaves intermingled with one another, with Irish indentured servants, German fortune seekers, Black slaves who'd escaped eastern Brazil and even some Brazilian tribals who followed the rubber boom west from Manaus.
At the root of the culture of Iquitos is tribal life: Mostly hunting and gathering and fishing with a little agriculture thrown in during the rubber boom era. Births of girls severely outnumbered births of boys. To that, add that as hunters, men tended to die off in the jungle faster than women. Which made the disproportionate number of women even greater. As a result, men frequently had multiple wives. In Peru, a headman who had several--generally four or more--is called a curaka--a name still used by the women of Iquitos when talking about a playboy type.
It was important in tribal communities to have more than one wife. The simplest example I can give is my now-dead Matses headman friend, Pablo. He had four wives when I met him, though he had sons old enough to suggest he'd had earlier wives as well. Each of the four had their own duties: MaShe, the primary wife, ran the camp. Amelia breast fed all the babies of all the wives and kept the camp clean. Marta went hunting with Pablo and carried the meat back to camp (leaving him free to hunt any additional animals he saw along the way; the fourth, whose name escapese me, was the primary tender of the chacras, the yucca fields they had.
All of the women interchanged roles, but over several years, what I'm describing would best describe the situation.
MaShe couldn't have run the camp, taken care of babies, carried meat and tended fields alone. So she welcomed the other wives. And the wives, in turn, enjoyed each other's company. So much so that Pablo wasn't really needed. His job was to hunt, provide the food, then get out of the way. Not that the women didn't enjoy his company now and then--they did. But not all day, every day. That was women time when chores were done.
Now that model remains the model for Peruvian households in Iqiutos. Not the several wives, but the man's role. And any gringos married to Iquitenos will know what I'm talking about. Your role as the male is to hunt--these days that is probably a job, but still, it's to provide the food. After that you will be looked after, but you're not otherwise needed. The sisters, their mothers, the aunts, they will sit all day making food, washing clothes, doing their chores together; the man is not really included or invited into that circle very often.
And when you marry, chances are very good that your wife will pick your lover. Might be a sister of hers, a friend who has no man, but your lover will be given to you by your wife. And you are expected to take care of her, both intimately and financially--which might mean an entire second extended family. And if the man chooses more lovers, well, I've rarely known the women to care very much so long as the man continues to hunt--provide--for the primary family and extended primary family and the amante and extended family. If you can do all that and have more lovers, you are a curaka and that's admired by an awful lot of people. Means you can shoulder your burdens, take care of things. You're strong.
And while the hunter who cannot hunt any longer might well be fed poisoned soup by his wives--particularly if they are young enough to get new husbands--a man who cannot support his family will lose all respect of the women--from grandma to the aunts, to the wife, the amante and so forth. And if they can possibly move on to another man, particularly as a group, they will.
So I'm seeing that as a matriarchal society, not a patriarchal one. On the surface, men are allowed to walk around with their chests puffed out, but they know who runs the show. And they are so far outnumbered as a rule, that there's little they can do about it.

Getting Ready to Go: Wonderful Day

Okay, I recognize that I've not been treating you fairly. And I'm sorry. My only defense for not posting more often in the three months since I've been back from Peru is that I've been under the deadline gun every stinking week. And I don't mean with six weeks to do a story. I mean, like last week, I was handed a story on Thursday afternoon that was 1,500 words long and told to turn it into a cover story by Sunday. Then this week, at my weekly meeting of my alternative weekly, I was asked to produce two 2,000 word stories in the next nine days. Can do it but it takes all I've got. Which means you get short shrift.
And, just for the heck of it, since I came back from Peru on Feb 20 or so, I've done three cover stories, five 1.500 word stories, 5 400 word stories, two columns for Skunk and a cover for MPI One+ mag. And I've still got 3 stories to finish before I leave town on May 30.
So I apologize and can only say I had nothing to say. The work has left me empty. Like a vacuum. I've not promoted my book for two seconds, not tried to finish the next book--nearly done, but so far away--and have not begun the third one.
And I have not been lazy.
Apology accepted, I hope. I'm sorry I left you.
Tonight is Friday. Chepa, the wife/ex-wife (and much more the latter for those who just joined) picked up my Madeleina, 14 and going on 40, from school and was to take her to Academy Sports to buy sneakers. Instead, she took her to the mall, whatever that is, in north Dallas, a couple of hours from here. And evidently bought herself nice clothes but didn't find anything for my daughter, who leaves for Iquitos, Peru--middle of the Amazon--with me next week.
All okay. My daughter will get the clothes she needs. I'm guessing Chepa got what she needed. Tomorrow is another day, and Madeleina can take $100 or $200 and I'll drop her off wherever she wants for a couple of hours to shop without her mom, who happens to be a fantastic and sexy shopper (Okay, I fell in love with the girl 15 years ago, and even though the marriage didn't work out I used to love being invited into the fitting room to check out how the new jeans would look) using all the money or taking her to stores that are more suited to 40-year-olds than 14-year olds.
So right now I've got nice salmon, Chinese style, with sesame oil, sesame seeds, diced tomatoes, scallions, ginger, garlic and cilantro ready to do. I've also got bi-color corn, which I hope won't kill us, and fresh spinach, fresh broccoli and fresh asparagus (with a touch of balsamic vinegar) ready to go.
And Marco came by, and my son Italo came by to say he's ordered an oxygen sensor for my old green truck, and the goats are happy, and Boots the blind wonder dog is happy and the birds are happy and you know what? I'm happy. I'm thanking whatever god or powers that be that I woke up this morning breathing instead of dying in my sleep. Because this was a great day. And tomorrow will be another if they'll let me have it despite my cigarettes.
So that's my apology to you. I'm living, and living hard, working like a dog, barely making ends meet but who cares since there is a paper up on my wall that says I'm grateful that I have enough to pay my bills.
And I hope you can pay your bills. And if not, I hope you find new and better work that will let that happen.
Life is fantastic, even out on the edge. I'm hoping you're enjoying it.

Madeleina's New Movie

Well, while you've all been missing me, I've been living large and hard. I've written three cover stories, four 1500 word pieces, six 200 word news stories and two columns since I last wrote, not including yesterday. I've had a clutch replaced in my old green truck, wrote three or four pieces for Huffington Post, of which they only put up two so far, unfreakingbelieveably. Oh, and Italo and Sarah decided to get married, at my place, with me presiding, under the watchful eyes of over 100 guests, all of whom I am supposed to feed--including Chepa's boyfriend--just 48-hours after I return from 50 days in Peru. Good luck with all that shit. I'm almost just hoping they'll break up for a week or 10 days to give me a little time to get the yard and house and food in order!
Oh, and yesterday, at Chepa's, when I went there to pick up Madeleina for school, she came bursting out of her room to say: "Don't even start with me!" to me. What? I know Italian guys in my neighborhood growing up who used that phrase, and it meant something, trust me, but my 14-year old daughter? Just trying to get her to school on time? What was she going to do if I started with her? I mean, com'on...that's a serious phrase where I grew up. It meant just what it said: Don't start with me or this will end very badly for you.
Now my daughter thinks she can say that to dad? Oy, vey!
And now this evening, in the midst of a torrential downpour and extreme lightning storm, she's in the midst of making a new Youtube.com video. She publishes under the name madeleinag, so look for her. She's pretty fantastic. But she hasn't made a new video in three weeks.
Tonight she got in the creative spirit and decided to involve me: I was supposed to be the meanest dad in the world and when she decided to play in water several inches deep, she had me coming out and screaming at her. We did about 10 takes. Each time she was like: "Dad, you have to be more mean..."; or "Dad, sound like you're going to kill me..."
And I finally did, screaming harshly as I walked into the ankle deep water and off she ran screaming.
"That was good, dad. You're going to jail for that one. You were an absolute psychopath...."
"Thanks, baby. Keep the outtakes so the department of social services can see that you were the one directing the film,
okay?"
I had another scene where she took a soda, in total excitement, and I reached my hand in and scowled, "What are you doing? That's my soda!!!!"
I had a third scene but she cut me out of it.
So go to youtube.com tomorrow or the next day and check it out. My baby is one crazy woman when she decides to be. And she's a great director. I'll bet it's a good video.
She just said this one sucks. But who knows. Check it out anyway.
Me? I'm thinking of all of you and hoping you are having as much fun on the road to dying as I am. Which means living voraciously.
Oh, and Sierra, Alexa, and my granddaughter Taylor rain are all fine. So is Italo. So is Sara, my daughter in law, though I can never remember if she has an "h" at the end of her name or not. So is Chepa. So is Marco. We're all doing well. I think.
I hope.
And I hope you're all doing well, too.

Guy Asked Me for Advise...

Someone wrote to me asking for advise on how to become an investigative journalist. I really don't have any, so instead I told him the story of how it happened and I hope it helps him somehow. Here it is:
Dear X: I'm not sure what to tell you here. That's because I didn't start out as an investigative reporter. I started out writing plays, poetry and finally short stories. I got a book called the Writer's Market (I think) about 30 years ago and went through the listings of journals and such to figure out who might print my stories and such. I used to send out 5 every week. They were often the same story, just photocopied and sent out. And the first year, I averaged about 1 sale for every 50 stories I sent out. And that sale was usually for either nothing or $25.
The second year I sold about 2 for every 50 stories I sent out.
Then I had a breakthrough: I was normally taking about a month to write a story. Way too long. So I made a deal with myself: I was going to write one story a day for 30 days, and that meant write it completely so that I could send it out at the end of the week with the other stories I'd written that week.
It was crazy impossible but I did it: At the end of the month I had 12 short stories, three or four opinion pieces and a 160 page novella. Amazing. And armed with that supply I was able to start getting sales about 1 out of every 10 places I sent stories to. And one of those places, a non-paying music weekly paper in the Village in New York, had an editor who called me to ask me to write him a non-fiction piece. He'd already printed four or five of my stories and wanted to try me at non-fiction. So I did. And it was okay.
About a year later, I was headed down to the Amazon for the first time and I told him I'd write a report every week on what happened that week. Which I did. I spent a lot of time on those reports.
Unfortunately, I discovered when I got home that he hadn't printed them. All of the hand-written stories were in my apartment mailbox. Seems he'd gone out of business while I was away.
But I looked at those stories and thought they were good. So I went to the Writer's Market and looked at the non-fiction category of magazines and papers. And then I started sending those stories out. And damn if High Times didn't buy one, then a magazine called Overseas Living bought one, and then Walking Magazine bought one and someone else bought one. Of the seven pieces, I think I sold 4 or 5. Better yet, I earned about $1,700, from those sales, which pretty much paid for the whole trip.
So I decided to concentrate on non-fiction--since it apparently paid so much better. And High Times asked me to do another story on the Amazon, which I did, and then another. And then finally the bosses called me into their offices one day and asked if I could do an investigative piece. I said I'd never done one but that I would try.
They said they wanted me to get an interview with Dave Foreman, the head of a group called Earth First!, a great environmental action group. The problem was that the FBI had put the key members of Earth First! on their most wanted list and so nobody knew where to find them or how to get in touch with them.
So there I was being asked to find this guy whom the FBI couldn't find. Sure.
I thought about it for maybe a week. How the hell could I find Foreman? I read anything I could about him from before he was on the list and then got this: He came from either Montana or Wyoming, or at least had lived in those places. And he looked big. So I suddenly got the idea that he probably played high school football, since most big kids in the midwest do, and I thought I might call all the schools in those states to find out if he had ever gone there. That didn't go anywhere because schools wouldn't give me the information. So I thought about it again and it hit me that maybe he liked to have a beer and watch football...
So I decided to call every bar in both states to see if I could find him. I picked Wyoming first and I don't know why. I call information--this was long before computers--and asked the telephone operator for the names and phone numbers of the first three bars listed in alphabetical order in Wyoming. I would have asked for more but three was the limit per call. So I called information again and got three more numbers, then again, and again until I had some two hundred or so drinking joints in Wyoming. Took about two weeks to collect that information.
Then I began making calls, in alphabetical order. At each I would say: Hello, this is Peter Gorman, and I'm with High Times magazine. I'm trying to reach Dave Forman of Earth First! and if you know him can I give you my number for him to call me?" Or something like that. Of course no one admitted knowing him. That went on for a couple of weeks.
And then, while I was working somewhere in the middle of my list, I got a call one day. "Hello, is this Peter Gorman?"
"Yes."
Click.
That happened again the next day. And then the next day and maybe two more times until one day when I said "Yes," the person at the other end said: "This is Dave Foreman. You want to talk with me?"
And I did and I got the interview and right then, I knew I was going to try to be an investigative journalist. All it took was coming up with a way to get information that no one had thought of. Imagine how I felt knowing that the FBI had Foreman on their most wanted list and couldn't find him and here I was in my little apartment in New York City and I got to him. Incredible feeling.
After that, I took every hard story--and tried to come up with some of my own--that I coudl get my hands on for High Times. And then other magazines started calling me, sometimes for regular stories, sometimes for investigative pieces.
So what advise can I give you on becoming an investigative journalist? None, really. Just keep your eyes open, keep trying to sell stories somewhere, anywhere, and sooner or later an editor will cal you and you go from there and see where it leads. And if you can get in with a weekly alternative paper--I'm with the Fort Worth Weekly here in Texas--there is plenty of investigative stuff to work on. How to do that? Just keep trying, even when you're only selling one story out of 50. The key is to keep sending material out. I was sending out 250 pieces a year for four or five years before enough editors knew me that I didn't have to do that anymore.
I hope that helps.
Peter G