Drug War Follies Column That's Not Going to Run

Well, I got my Drug War Follies in late to Skunk Magazine in February and so it didn't run. Darn it. But I am not going to have wasted all my time, so here it is for you. Enjoy.

Drug War Follies

U.S. Customs, drug dogs and the High Court; the DEA pats itself on the back despite remarkably uneven sentencing and the GEO Group flashes its cash and arrogance. Ah, ain’t life in the drug war a bitch?

By Peter Gorman

So it’s Springtime. You got your gardens in yet? Well, what are you waiting for, me to come up there with a plow? Get them in now so that I’ve got good smoke the next time I come back from Peru in July, okay? That’s right. Think of Peter Gorman and his need of good smoke and get yer asses out there and plant those outdoor babies cause I don’t like that indoor tea. Not one bit. I mean, think about a nice outdoor Blueberry or Purple Haze sitting there in the sunlight in your back yard. Or an old fashioned California Orange, smells so good you think you can squeeze orange juice out of the leaves. Now you’re thinking.

    Speaking of just coming back from Peru, well, I just came back. Took a nice small group out into the deep jungle where I had them walking in swamps, eating shrooms on an overnight riverboat ride on the Amazon, teaching them about jungle medicines, serving them ayahuasca and having some indigenous Matses friends of mine provide them with the Matses’ medicines sapo and nu-nu. Then up to the mountains and more shrooms and finally to Machu Picchu where they all drank the magic elixir San Pedro—a cousin of the Southwestern peyote.

   It was a great trip, at least till I got back to the U.S. Customs station in Miami. Normally I get there and I’ve got my luggage packed with my medical supplies, a few clothes and lots of food: Things my ex-wife and my kids, all born and partially raised in Peru, love to have, and things you can’t get here. There are certain types of peppers we don’t have in the northern hemisphere, and the limes are very different, and there are dried yucca bits called farina and spices and herbs and salt fish and all sorts of things I have to bring back or my family wouldn’t let me come home.

    Typically I spend an hour at Customs arguing over the legality of what I’ve brought back, whether it’s magic shrooms or regular shrooms, hand rolled cigarettes, whatever. “What’s this?” I’m asked, and then I tell the agent and they go look in their book to see if it’s legal and either let me have it or throw it away. Last July they got me good: A newbie who was probably on his first month on the job and he was tossing every thing I had, from jungle medicines, to dried fish to cigarettes—all legal, but you can’t really argue the case with a federal agent. When they’re done, you go.

    Things were different this time out. I filled out my form—How much money you bringing? Where have you been? And so forth, and I circled the item asking if I was bringing in any food. So I’m on line waiting to get my passport stamped so I could go get my things and get ripped off by Customs when this little beagle comes and sits down next to me. “You have food, Mr. Gorman?”

    “Yes, I wrote that I did. I also have jellybeans in my shoulder bag. I guess that’s what the beagle is smelling.”

    “Follow me.”

    “Where and why?”

    “Shut up and follow me.”

     He had the gun, I followed. I wasn’t brought to my luggage like I thought would happen. No. Instead I was brought through two heavy doors to a room filled with maybe 60 people—some of whom I recognized from my flight—and told to sit down and be quiet. I asked what was going on and was told to be quiet and wait. So I waited maybe two hours, missed a connecting flight home and still no one called my name. All the agents there, including a female who had tossed a lot of my stuff a few years ago, looked like they played middle linebacker for their high school football teams. All buff, no fluff, loaded pistols at their sides. No one would talk to anyone. All of us, or most of us, had just come in from Peru or Bolivia and we’d all been traveling nearly 24 hours, so this was an uncomfortable wait.

    Finally someone at the back of the room called my name. I went out into a hall where two agents, one behind a desk at a computer, the other near the exit door in case I decided to bolt, stared at me.

   The one behind the desk says: “You brought food again? You’ve been busted before. Several times.”

   “I know. But that’s because you keep changing the rules. One year I can bring in limes, the next year I’m fined for bringing in Limes. This time I checked. I put the lime juice in bottles with the hot peppers—the pepper seeds are killed by the lime juice, my ex gets her hot pepper sauce, I’m legal. What’s the problem?”

   “You brought food again?”

   “Yes. I wrote it on the Customs’ form.”

   “What food?”

   “The hot pepper sauce. Kitchen spices. Something called farina that’s made from yucca…”

    “What’s yucca?”

    “It’s like a Peruvian potato. It’s a tuber.”

    “So why don’t you say potatoes?”

    “They’re not potatoes. If I tell you potatoes and the farina doesn’t taste like potatoes you’re gonna say I was lying.”

    “What else?”

     I went down the list.

    Absolutely certain I was lying, we went to get my bags and they had me put them through the X-Ray machine. Then they had me open them. All four of them, including my shoulder bag with the jellybeans. Guy puts on rubber gloves and sticks his finger into the open jellybeans to see if they’re really jellybeans. “Well that’s ruined,” I note to myself.

    One by one he goes through everything. “Those are mushrooms?”

    “Yes. My wife likes to cook with them.”

    “We don’t have mushrooms here?”

    “Not like these we don’t,” I said, and smiled when he dropped them back into the kitchen spice bag.

    Half-an-hour we play back and forth with my shit until the agent declares it all legal and lets me pack up.

    “Will we be doing this same dance next time I come through or can you write a note on the computer that I was clean?”

    “Have a nice day, Peter.”

    I walked out thinking that if a person notes that they’re bringing food into the country on their Customs form there ought to be a better way to handle it. I mean, you can assume they’re being honest and do it the old way: Just check the luggage. Damn, we make it easy to dislike the U.S. government, I thought, just as Neil Young’s line from Rockin’ in the Free World came to mind: “We got a kinder gentler machine gun hand”.

    Okay, okay. There was a point to that story. It started with a beagle, right? So here’s the segue: On February 19, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a 2011 Florida Supreme Court decision that ruled that law enforcement agents had to do more than claim a drug sniffing dog had been properly trained before that dog’s hit on a vehicle would permit a full search.

    The Florida Supreme Court ruling held that simply training a dog in a controlled environment did not prove that the dog would be capable of sniffing drugs in a vehicle in the field. Which is reasonable: Lots of ball players look great in practice but can’t hit for dink during the games. But the Supremes, in all their wisdom, saw it differently, condemning all of us who travel anywhere in the U.S. to be subject to a search of everything we have in our vehicles at the whim of a dog, who might just be excited about a ham sandwich he’s sniffed.

   Damn, we make it easy to dislike the intrusive U.S. government, don’t we? “We got a kinder gentler machine gun hand.”

Over on the DEA’s official website, justice.gov/dea, they always tout their latest and biggest busts. Over there this morning, among other things, was the story of a Canadian smuggler convicted in a California court who was sentenced to 81 months in a federal lockup. He’d been busted with 66-pounds of methamphetamine and more than $125,000 in cash while in the process of buying six kilos of cocaine. He was also convicted of conspiracy to move Ecstasy, working with drug trafficking organizations and so forth. And he got 81 months.

    But then the very next story on the DEA site dealt with several people indicted for growing pot in seven  homes in Elk Grove and Sacramento, CA. Yeah, they had nearly 3,000 plants and 100 pounds of clean pot but they are each facing possible life in prison.

   Now, I don’t want anybody going to prison for non-violent drug offences, even if it involves meth. But given the state of the world, wouldn’t you think someone would notice that something is wrong when 66 pounds of meth, six kilos of coke and involvement with cross-border smuggling over a long period of time is gonna get you under seven years and fucking pot growing is gonna get several people possible life? Goddamn I am so sick of this bullshit where pot growers are getting hit harder than other drug dealers. And then I think of Dana Beal and all the time he lost sitting in a cell for a little pot, and Mark Emery paying his pound of flesh and all the rest of us who have suffered and suffer so freaking pointlessly just so the man can keep the prisons full and the GEO Group investors happy. The GEO Group—the private prison giant—which just recently bought the rights—for $6 million—to have the Florida Atlantic University football stadium named after the company.

    You get that? A private prison company specializing in detaining non-violent illegal immigrants and non-violent drug dealers gets the Federal and state governments to pay them billions to incarcerate people, then uses $6 million its got hanging around to have a football stadium named after itself.

Only in the good old USA, boys and girls. Only in the USA.

It would all be funny if people weren’t dying and the prisons weren’t full.

Sometimes I'm Upset With Ayahuasca in Peru

So someone on a blog to which I occasionally post has been pushing me a little to talk about things that bother me about the way ayahuasca retreat centers are spreading like wildfire in the Peruvian Upper Amazon. I wrote this post, then deleted it--somehow I didn't want it up there because it's got a tone of arrogance--justifiably, in my opinion, but it's still there and will be misinterpreted. Anyway, this is a very short take on a subject I'm involved with--because of my history--which means a great deal to me.

Dear X: No offense but you're an offensive pain in the ass. Why the hell do I have to give up what I've learned over 30 years to a newbie like you with just five years under your belt? Spend another 50 years and you'll probably get it all.

Yes, of course, 50 percent-80 percent of the people holding ceremonies at lodges as ayahuasqueros are not ayahuasqueros. Do the math. There is one per small river. There are 100 small rivers; half those guys were old and died. The others were lured from their rivers to work at lodges where they lost most of their power because they were put in an unfamiliar environment and have people throwing themselves at them. Ick.
So a lot of people who carried water are now serving as ayahuasqueros. And maybe they're learning, but I know of a few who've never been in ceremony but who are serving aya as curanderos.
So what do you want? People who have been around know this. This is nothing new. You get a good hearted gringo who has an epiphany that they are supposed to open a lodge and they buy 50 hectares of jungle on the road to Nauta and cut down 15 hectares to save the jungle, what do you think you'll get? Cut down jungle, ruined monkey and wild boar paths and an end to wildlife in that part of the jungle.
And then they give someone the job of ayahuasquero and that person knows little to nothing and suddenly they're being given more money than they ever imagined and power and more white girls from the States and Europe asking for sex and then people complain that they have lost their way. What do you or anyone else expect? This is a bad thing. This is people following what they perceive as visions when they are just hallucinations. And there is an enormous difference.
If I could turn back the clock and not have written the first national article about ayahuasca, I would. I can't. It's out there and everything sprung from there. I will live with it, but I will continue to rail against it.
It has not done the jungle any good and it certainly has not done ayahuasca--who has been bitch slapped recently to put her back into her place after she got too self important--any good. Things moving fast, faster, and they should be moving like LSD in the early days: Each one, teach one. Not each one teach many. The latter doesn't work well.
Capiche?

Upcoming Jungle/Mountain trips

Dear All: I've got a couple of trips coming up in June and July. The June trip will start on June 8 with a Jungle intensive--which means we take care of you but you're still allowed to be scared out of your minds because we'll be in real jungle, and deep jungle and ferocious things live there. Don't worry, even though you will bathe in the river--and the river is filled with wonderful icky monsters--my team, which will outnumber you, will go into the water first to offer their limbs. And that includes my fearless Jedi daughter, Madeleina, who will be 16 by then and doesn't have a fear quotient when it comes to jungle stuff.
    The June intensive is followed by an extension of three days, and then it's off to Cuzco and Machu Picchu. There will be more medicine--ayahuasca, sapo, nu-nu, San Pedro and probably some beautiful little sister magic mushrooms who can tickle you from the inside out--than you need, but enough to change your life.
   The July trip is a jungle intensive of 9 1/2 days that begins on July 12.
   Costs are outlandishly high, but if you consider that I have to fly down there, fly my daughter down there, pay for my hotel while I'm there, pay for my house while I'm here, pay 12 people an honest wage  (plus walking around money, plus food money) before I even take you into consideration--with your decent hotels, your cabins on the riverboat, the vigorish I have to pay the local police to allow us to enter the river we're finally getting to work on, or your food, or your flashlight batteries or your jungle boots and hammocks and mosquito nets--oh yeah, and you probably want decent sleeping sponge mats, eh? Well, given all that and your food and other expenses in Iquitos, well, the price is really half of what it should be. Just work overtime for a few years and you can make it up.
   Jungle intensive alone for either June or July is 9 1/2 days at $1900.
   Jungle intensive with 3 day extension in June (not available in July) is $2400.
   Jungle intensive, extension plus Lima/Cuzco/Sacred Valley/Machu Picchu is 21 days at $4400.
   Jungle intensive in July is 9 1/2 days for $1900.
A couple of hardship scholarships that will clip a few hundred off the tab are available.
   The trips are no baloney real jungle the way it really is. We'll feed you fantastically with the best fruit, veggies, beans, rice, plantains and a bit of chicken and fish--out in the jungle. And we'll take care of all of your costs but walking around money and a few meals--like 5 dinners and four lunches--for the full 21-day trip. But these are good trips. Maximum number of people is 12, and my jungle team comes to as many as 14, so, as noted, we will outnumber you. Which allows someone who eschews a hike one day in order to draw leaves or worms, to have one or two of my team with them to make certain that stinging ants don't ruin their day. And it allows someone with a hip replacement who cannot walk 5 miles to be able to do the one mile walk into pristine jungle at their own pace.
   Oh, and we have a wonderfully good time, while at the same time take your trip and your medicine with all seriousness.
   So like get in touch at peterg9 at yahoo . com, okay? (I'm told that's code for how to write an email address that won't attract bots--and even though I don't know what bots are, I know what botflys are and they are not fun. So just email me and sign on and then I'll give you my phone number and you can talk with me and see if you and I are right for one another. Some people prefer the luxury of lodges or fancy boat trips. I prefer a reasonable level of comfort but done in the real jungle with all the attendant adventure.
   So com'on already. Sign on and send the money and let me get it organized, okay?
Thanks for listening.
We'll now return you to your regular Gorman Blog.

My Son Italo, My Son Marco, My Madeleina, the whole damned bunch

Today I had just come from Two Buck with my four minis of whiskey. I was still on the side road to Interstate 35 at a red light about 1/2 mile from being able to enter the highway. I was listening to the radio, really loud, a new Stones song--and a great one at that--when someone knocked at my right front window. I turned with the appropriate New York "What the Fuck?" face, only to see my boy Italo laughing. He'd pulled up his truck next to mine. We spoke. I've got a seriously ill cancer patient staying at my house--having fled her fourth chemo in mid-stream--and yelled through my roll down windows that I cannot reach from the driver's seat that she's insisted on pizza tonight and wanted everyone over to make it feel like a party. He said he was busy but might make it.
    The light changed and he was gallant enough to let me go ahead of him onto the highway and at that point our paths deconverged.
    And two minutes later I was sobbing. Just freaking sobbing. I'm so proud of my kids, of Italo, and I miss them so much--after so many years of being around them every day, talking homework, talking house cleaning, talking basketball, playing baseball. Maybe some of you know. But I was driving down the highway missing him so much. Knowing that if he just shows up for 10 minutes tonight my friend with extremely terminal last stage cancer will get another month of good living just because he smiled at her. He's got that quality and I admire it. So does his mom. So does Madeleina. So do the kids. So does my other son, Marco. You might think you have the party of the year going on, but then one of my family walk in and you suddenly realize that "Oh, I get it, NOW the party is hot!"
   I don't know where they got that gift. I don't have it. But they do. And just seeing him next to me in his truck at a stop light brought me to freaking tears of joy. I waited a long time to have a family. When I got it, I blew it. We're broken now. But I still see what they bring to the table and I know this world is better for them being here.
  I love you, Italo. Thanks for being my handsome young man with the light in your eyes.

Note from a Stranger Regarding Ayahuasca

Good morning everybody. I got a note from a stranger today asking for help. It seems she read my book a couple of years ago and has an idea that I might be able to help her with a family situation. Her brother, she said, is schizophrenic and is on a downward spiral, in part due to the drugs being prescribed for him. She wants and needs help for him because she's afraid for his life. She imagines that the plants--and I think she is talking specifically about ayahuasca here--are his best hope.
   I have reservations about providing harsh jungle medicines to someone with schizophrenia. I got a glimpse of what can go wrong when a guest of mine last year--I knew the person was a bit nutty and edgy, but didn't know the person was capable of outright personality changes. At least I didn't until they drank ayahuasca and suddenly got it into their head that while I'd served everyone else ayahuasca (or that the curandero had), I had somehow poisoned him. We spent hours with this person not just ruining ceremony for everyone else, but in a deeply paranoid mindset in which he saw me as some CIA agent out to do him in for something he'd done in the past--and all the other guests were in on it. It took hours to get this person back to a rational state--after which they laughed about it all. Needless to say, that person was not permitted to do any more ayahuasca on the trip.
   So where I have always been cautious, I've become wary, and someone asking me for a recommendation about ayahuasca for a seriously ill schizophrenic--well, I couldn't do that. But that doesn't mean the writer's brother can't be helped by ayahuasca.
    This is what I wrote:
Dear X: I'm sorry about your brother's situation. But I'm not sure what you want: Do you want a recommendation for a curandero in Peru? 

   You know, traditionally the guests at ayahuasca ceremonies rarely drank ayahuasca. Generally that was left to the curandero. As background, physical or mental or spiritual illnesses or afflictions are generally seen in the Peruvian Amazon as the symptoms of a disorder on a different level of reality. The curandero drinks the ayahuasca to access those other levels, and then communicates with his spirit helpers or genios about a given person's situation and tries to find the cause of the disturbance that's producing the illness or affliction on the earthy level of reality.

   When the curandero returns from his "dream", he/she will often be able to explain what the disturbance is and what's causing it. The person with the affliction will need to change something in their life to eliminate the disturbance--or put things back into balance--which will then eliminate the symptoms on this level.

   So, if I were going to suggest anything for your brother, it would probably be to get him to a good curandero in Peru, and then let the curandero drink to try to identify what has gone so wrong on those other levels of reality that your brother is dealing with the symptoms of schizophrenia on this level. I would not suggest that your brother drink until and unless the time came that the curandero recommended it.

   Aside from the obvious problem of the curandero dealing with a potentially out of control client who is under the influence of ayahuasca, there is also the possibility that some of the drugs your brother is taking could have an adverse reaction with the ayahuasca--and you're not really going to find a curandero who knows much about that sort of thing because it's not in their world view.

    Okay, that's background. Now, tell me what you need from me and I'll try to help. No promises because I don't know everything, okay?

Peter G

Something about Sex and Drinking Ayahuasca

Someone wrote me today to say that they were involved in a new and passionate relationship and wanted to know if they would have to abstain from sex for two weeks prior to coming on my July jungle intensive course, as well as abstain during the 9 1/ 2 days of the journey.
    NOTE: My response is to a person involved in a relationship outside of the jungle. This is not a reference to a curandero having sex with a client during an ayahuasca retreat--which, in my last post, I noted was something that in my book is out of bounds, because of the vulnerability of clients.
This is what I wrote to the person asking the question:

I do not think abstinence is important before drinking ayahuasca. My teacher Julio always slept with his wife, and I slept with my wife--and had sex--without restrictions.

   I think that if you were going to do a plant dieta--where you go off by yourself in the jungle (under guidance) to learn the specific spirit and song of a given tree or plant, that would be where abstinence comes into play. It's very very difficult to be in that deeply meditative state when distracted by anything, particularly sex.

   But in terms of utilizing ayahuasca as part of a jungle experience, that is a different case.

   I will say that on the nights my guests drink ayahuasca, I prefer that couples not sit side by side--and the reason for that is simply that concern for your partner might override your ability to allow your partner to go through their experience without interference. My example: When drinking at Julio's with my wife one time some years ago, she began moaning and saying "help me, help me", and so I asked if she was okay. She sat up abruptly and said something like: "What the heck are you doing?"

     I told her she'd been moaning and asking for help.

     She looked at me distainfully and said: "I wasn't asking you for help! I was talking with the angels! Now leave me alone and let me go back to my dream!"

     So there I'd gone and interrupted her time with angels.

     But other than during the time of being in ceremony, or during a plant dieta, I've never been told by Julio or any other curanderos that there is any prohibition on sexual contact with one's partner.

A Story About Ayahuasca Predators

Dear All: On a forum I occasionally visit, there is a thread about someone I know who runs an Ayahuasca retreat. Some people are claiming this person takes sexual advantage--or worse, has raped--women in his care.
    It's a forum so people can say what they like. I know this person for probably close to 15 years, but I only know them in the context of sitting at the next table in Iquitos and exchanging pleasantries over coffee. Nonetheless, since the idea of taking advantage of people in your care came up--and much worse than that--I had to weigh in. Not on this person, but on how to handle the delicate situations that sometimes crop up when people give you more credit than you have earned, and that gets translated into sexual terms. So this is what I wrote. And if I've told this story before, forgive me for wasting your time.


Well, I'm gonna weigh in--though on a tangent. I've known X since he first arrived in the Amazon but I've never been to his place. I don't know enough to defend or damn him. I have no idea what goes on at that center--though I hope it's healing.
   What I want to weigh in on is how to comport yourself if you have guests and you allow them to drink the medicine.
   I think you have to be very very far above reproach. My best example:
   Several years ago I had a drop dead gorgeous woman with me out in the jungle. I probably had seven or eight guests on that trip and they were all beautiful humans, but this woman was drop dead physically gorgeous.
   We'd been out several days: We'd hiked in high jungle, done sapo and nu-nu, been on riverboats, collected plants, and she'd already--with the rest of the group--had ayahuasca once.
   Now normally when the ceremonies are over I invite people down to the kitchen for a slice of papaya with lime to help settle their stomachs before they go off to their hammocks to finish their dreams.
   After the second ceremony his woman stayed in the kitchen. A few minutes after everyone left she sort of blurted out: "I love you."
   I told her that I loved her too.
   "No, I want to sleep with you."
   I almost had a heart attack. I looked to the heavens, to my guides, to the kitchen pots and pans and asked for help. I knew I could not sleep with her, period. But I also knew that in her vulnerable state I couldn't just say that or she would feel rejected--because at that moment she thought she was being rational.
   "What do I do here?" I shouted to myself. And in just a moment the answer came: It was in the form of the kitchen configuration. We had two long tables, maybe six feet long each, side by side, with maybe two feet separating them. There were  6"-wide benches on both sides of the tables. The lightbulb went off over my head, and I looked at her and said: "You know, I'm going to sleep on that bench there. If you sleep on that other bench, we can hold hands and we'll sort of be sleeping together."
   She accepted the offer and she went to bed on her bench, and I on mine and in the morning she thanked me for not taking advantage of her, even though she asked me to. "I don't really want to sleep with you at all," she said. "So thanks for recognizing that and coming up with a great solution."
   She has thanked me since as well.
   When people are in your care, you have to make no exceptions. Do not take advantage, even if they ask. Keep the line there. Stay strong. To me, that's a hard and fast rule and I'm glad I was tested and glad I passed the test. And if tested again, I hope I have the strength to pass again. And I think that rule pertains to anyone serving medicine to anyone else.
    In the current context, as I noted, I don't know the person well enough to know if what's being said is true or not. But in general, the rule needs to be so steady that everyone in your care knows they can trust you 100 percent on that level. That allows them to open up and release the things they need to release from their lives. Anything less than that and I think you are doing your guests a disservice at the least--and perhaps a great deal of harm.

Sharing an Ayahuasca Vision

Since I published my book, Ayahuasca in My Blood--25 Years of Medicine Dreaming a couple of years ago, I have not shared any visions. I've had my share but thought I gave up enough of myself in the book. But just a couple of weeks ago I had one that I think is worth sharing.
    I was with a small group of guests up on the Aucayacu. I don't really drink with guests anymore. I watch them/tend to them. But over the course of a day of Jairo cooking the medicine, I certainly get a lot of ayahuasca steam in my lungs. And then when it's time to transfer the ayahuasca from the pot to a bottle, that's my job, and so I always have a couple of finger fulls from running my finger around the bottle edge or the funnel or the pot to make sure none escapes. And generally when I do that the spirit of the medicine will laugh a little and say something like: "I got you now. I'll talk with you later..." and so sometime later, generally during ceremony, she'll come back and tell me something. And for a little while, maybe an hour, maybe half an hour, sometimes two hours, I am completely under the influence. And the trick that she wants me to practice is to be both completely under the influence and completely in command of my human body at the same time. She wants me to split myself. And I do the best I can to be in both worlds at once.
    This time, it came on suddenly. Jairo was singing beautifully. The night was filled with wonderful stars over half the sky; clouds shrouded the rest. I was sitting on a bench just outside the ceremonial hut,  catching people as they lurched or scuttled on their fannies to the hut's edge to step outside to vomit out the bile of their lives.
    Suddenly she spoke. "You needed to be old, but you don't need to be old anymore."
    Instantly I was in a dream, fully awake. "What do you mean?"
    "You're going to be 62 next week. For years you've been referring to yourself as an 'old fat white bald guy'. You don't need to do that anymore."
    "But that's what I am..." I protested.
    "No. You needed to believe you were that to be able to deal with being 58, 59, 60. To come into that time of your life gracefully. But you've begun to believe it."
    "But it's true. I didn't make it up. I'm going to be 62. That's getting old..."
    "Only if you want it to be. Now that you're near 62, you have a choice. You can either believe you're an old fat bald guy, or you can realize that you have just recently entered the final third of the prime of your life. You can realize that you now have both the strength and the wisdom. Or you can see your age as the first stage of growing old. It's up to you. You'll have to work at the prime of your life part, of course, where you don't have to work at all to be old. But here is what you could have with a little work..."
     And with that, I instantly felt lighter. My body felt like I was 45 again. And then she was gone. But the lightness, the stiffness that I often feel in the morning simply vanished for nearly a week. Climbing hills was easy and fun. Everything about my body was fun.
     And then, maybe five or six days later, she came back. "That was to show you what the work could do. Now it's up to you. Do you want to be in the last third of your prime or in the first part of getting old?"
     And in seconds my feet hurt a little, my stomach felt fat, I was unsure of walking on the clay in the rain.
    Choice is mine. I'm going to opt for the prime of my life. It will take work. But boy, it felt wonderful to be a young middle-aged guy instead of an old fat bald guy for a few days. It will be worth the pain.
    I'm sharing that because I suspect a lot of us, in order to deal with a number like 60 coming on us, start to accomodate aches and pains as if they are normal for the age. And the medicine showed me that they don't need to be. And that was a beautiful lesson to be taught.

Home and Feeling Like a Lousy Dad

Well, here I go again. I just got home from a fantastic trip to the jungle and mountains and already I'm messing up. And I don't like myself for it.
     The trip was great. I will write something about what the medicine told me tomorrow, or soon. But for now I want to talk about my beautiful daughter, Madeleina.
     While I was gone she wrote me a few fantastic emails. The first, titled Bad News, told me that when she was at the house feeding Boots the Wonderdog and the Cat, Cat or Kitty, just a week or so after I left town, she noticed water coming out of the hot water heater closet. So she opened the closet and realized the fairly new hot water heater was leaking. "Sorry to have to give you bad news but it's leaking and you better do something about it or the house is going to start sinking again," she wrote (or something close to it). She was referring to the time a few years ago when I didn't realize the darned thing was pouring hot water out under the house for a week, which sunk one of the posts this old place sits on, cracking a major beam which dropped the house a full inch on one side, which caused ruptures in the floor and a small tear in the roof. I've never fixed it but certainly don't want things any more uneven around here so I called Italo and told him to shut the water to the house down.
    "Taken care of, dad."
    "Well, make sure it is...."
    "I said it's taken care of, okay?"
      Italo doesn't like to be double-checked.
     One of Madeleina's other notes made a joke about living at Chepa's while I'm not here. It was something like, "Dad, I don't mind visiting the zoo now and then, but I really don't like living in the cage with the animals..."
      But about three weeks ago she stopped writing. I don't go to the internet cafe often when I'm in Peru but it was strange that she just stopped writing and didn't answer any of my notes.
      When I came home yesterday she was waiting for me. She gave me a hug and asked if I wanted a hot shower.
      "Nice one, girl, considering we have no water at all..."
      She walked to the kitchen and turned the hot water on. "Hotter than anything you had in that cold-water flat in Iquitos, dad..."
       Then she showed me the new hot water heater. "How the heck did that happen?" I asked.
      "You have a son named Italo who happens to love you very much," she said.
      And that's the kind of love she gave me all day. And we had a great time while I unpacked and showed her the beautiful things I brought home for her and everyone. She ooh'd and aah'd at the food stuffs and medicines that Customs--after putting me in a holding room for an hour or two--allowed me to bring in, from sacha jergon for my friend who has cancer to kidney stone medicine for someone who has a friend who suffers a lot,  to lots of the Matses medicines sapo and nu-nu, to hot sauce I'd made and fish sauce and essense of camu-camu the wonderful vitamin C berry. Lots of things they sometimes take away when entering Miami. And she suffered with me when I told her they'd once again confiscated the ayahuasca, despite it having a label of something else--they knew I was lying. Nuts.
     "Sorry dad. Next time you better tell the medicine to protect itself because we're running low here and if you have another gathering of former guests and more than maybe 12 or 15 come, well, there won't be enough."
      "Well, at least the mushrooms got through for a few people who need them...."
      "Were they powerful this time?"
      "They are fantastic..."
      "That's good. I hate you taking chances at the border and then they don't work for people."
      It was just that kind of day. She was interested in the trip, the guests, the whole thing. She laughed at a story I told when she asked if I had a lot of women and I said no--truthfully--"but there was one transvestite incident which might embarrass the family..." and told her how one night, after a few drinks but not drunk, the sexiest young lady with the most gorgeous legs I've ever seen sidled up to the next table and asked if I wanted company. I said: "By all means....and if you're really a woman, I think I'm in for a fantastic night... On the other hand, if you're a man, well, we're gonna have a different situation..."
      "Oh, god, Dad. Why did you think that?"
      "Because she was sexier than women are. She moved like a man's fantasy. She had no beard, no adam's apple, slender fingers, a woman's voice....but she was almost too sexy to be a woman..."
      "So what did you do?"
      "Well, I said let's go to my place and when we got around the corner I said: "Look, I don't want sex with you. I just want half-an-hour to play with those legs. To touch them, that's it. Okay?"
      "Dad, you are so freaking gross! Why do you tell me these things?"
      "Because I'm teaching you to grow up by letting you in on what people really do."
      "Okay okay. Just finish the story..."
      "Well, just as we're about to get into a motorkar Christina--that was her name--leans close and says 'I'm really a tranny'"
       "And did you feel up his legs anyway?"
      "No way!"
      "Why not, dad? I mean you said they were so beautiful..."
      "Well on a woman they were fantastic! On a man they were like girly legs, kind of creepy if you know what I mean..."
        And she roared. What a glorious night of storytelling and talking of old friends she knows and of looking at presents and smelling spices and good good chocolate.
       Then this morning happened.
       Madeleina was up for about two hours and watching television when I told her to turn the TV off and take care of homework if she had any. She said she did, then made soup and kept watching television while she made it and ate it--slowly.
       It got under my skin just a little because she didn't start making the soup till I reminded her of homework.
       Then Chepa called and mentioned that Madeleina had missed the last two weeks of school because the was ill. Now Madeleina had told me she'd had a physical issue with her stomach but didn't mention missing school. Chepa also said that after the first week, when doctors figured out what was wrong and suggested how to alleviate the problem--I will not embarrass my Madeleina by going into it but it was one of a myriad of problems a teenager might have that would keep them from wanting to be around their peers and it did not involve sex of any sort at all--the solutions produced side effect that were worse than the problem, keeping her out the second week. So Chepa had gotten her homework for the first week so she wouldn't fall behind.
      I called Madeleina in and asked how come she didn't mention being out of school for two full weeks.
      "I thought mom told you."
     "She did, just now. You didn't. How's the homework?"
     "Did about half last week, dad."
     "Well, get on it. And then do the work the docs said to do, even if you hate it. And no more TV. Just get the work done."
     It went downhill fro there. I got on her case for loafing. I told her that if she was so stressed by going to school that she made herself ill then she should recognize it and deal with it instead of hiding behind watching television or youtube all the time. I told her I loved her but needed to be tough because last semester she fell so far behind in school work--partly because of the demands of marching band--that Chepa and I had to give her four days off to catch up and I was not going to let that happen again. In other words, I was exhausted and jet-lagged and just ruined everything by being honest but not nearly gentle enough. I messed up. And that gave her a headache, which caused her to go to sleep, which prevented her from doing any homework or getting any exercise. I took the fun away. And I knew when I did that it was wrong to do that. Anyone who would take the laughter out of a child is doing something wrong--and I knew I was. And I told her I was sorry but I knew it was late for that, at least for today.
     So she asked to go to Chepa's. She just didn't want to be in the cage with this animal any longer.
   

Off Again

Yeah, I know, off again...Gorman's off his rocker again... Probably, but what I mean is that I'm off to Peru again for a six week trip. Got some great guests and while I'm there I'll be there. So I probably won't write. So I'm letting you know that I miss you all already. Have a great start to the New Year and I'll be back in touch again before the end of February.
   

Someone Asked about Ayahuasca's Sustainability

Someone wrote to me asking what I thought about the ayahuasca vine's sustainability, given the number of people utilizing it not only in the dozens of retreat centers in and around Iquitos and Pucallpa in Peru but all over the world. My answer was short and sweet--or sour, really. This is what I wrote:
Dear X: You've hit on one of my sore points. In terms of ayahuasca use, god forgive me, but I am responsible for a lot of this. It would have happened without me, but would have taken 20 more years to start and might not have evolved as it has since I invented Alan Shoemaker and he invented Iquitos.

    No, ayahuasca is not sustainable the way it is going. Not by a long shot. In the old days, I'd just cut enough vine for Julio and I for ceremony. These days, with sometimes 12 guests, we need 20 pounds of vine. That's a lot. That might be 30 feet of 7-year-old vine. 

   Now my team has planted hundreds of vines and within the next few years they will be able to harvest a ton or more. BUTTT.....they are being asked for 20 sacks a month by the ayahuasca retreat centers in and around nearby Jenero Herrera and in Iquitos--about 1000 pounds. So for the wild ayahuasca, they are stripping it all for miles around. And they're just a few of the people collecting to provide the retreat requirements.

   Still, people will plant and there will be enough. But wild animals and wild fruit and wild vines have a strength that fostered animals/fruit/vines just don't have. 

   So if your real question is why are these novices opening ayahuasca centers when they don't have the right experience, well, I'm with you. I have met lots of people who have ceremonial centers who have never spent a day in the jungle. I'm not happy about that but I'm not the boss of the world. 

   So I'm hoping for the best, but not necessarily expecting it.

If I had not responded simply out of anger, I might have added that the value to the lives of those who have taken ayahuasca has often been immeasurable, and those changed/charged humans then go back to daily life and probably positively affect those around them. So while I'm not thrilled personally when someone with little experience decides to cut primary forest to build a camp that will probably be abandoned in a year or three, and then contacts people like my team to provide them the medicine they need for those camps, the better half of me understands that the net result, while bad for the jungle, might be very good for the world at large. Bit of a conundrum, but if people are a bit more careful, not one that cannot be fixed. Those people who open camps should plant ayahuasca before they ever start cutting forest. That might give vines several months head start on taking hold. And ayahuasca will grow quickly once it's taken hold. Then those people would be less dependent on people who know the forest to collect wild vine--a process which by it's nature disturbs the forest and habitat near those vines. That would certainly be a beginning to correcting the balance. 

That's It, I'm Spent

That's it, I'm spent. I've been back in Texas since July 17. I've written three cover stories, four inside features, eight short pieces, a couple of official blogs on the Fort Worth Weekly Blotch page, contributed to the Best of and Turkey (worst of) editions of the paper, done freelance work for a business mag and written 5 Drug War Follies Columns for Skunk magazine. I've prayed and done sings for a lot of people who asked for help. Don't know if I helped but tried. I've hosted a dozen or more people here in that time, fed a lot of good people good food. I've taken care of the dog and cat and seen to the house. I've tried to be there for my kids--though I'm probably a second rate parent. I've loved those I love as best I can, I've mowed the lawn, I've dealt with the people taking part of my meager acreage for the new road entrance, dealt with a 15-year-old Madeleina through the travails of being 15 years old, made recommendations to sick people, sent out the medicnes I had until there are none left here in the house and now I am nearly done. Time for me to spread my wings and take people out to the jungle and up into the high mountains. Time for me to breathe good air. Time to forget computers and read a good mystery or two. Time for a drink on the boulevard without having to think that I need four more interviews to fill out my story. Time to rejuvenate with life that has different parameters. I know I will miss my kids. I know I will miss my desk, my house, my own cooking. But I also need the open space, the canoe at night in the jungle, the stars overhead, the intensity of catching the snake without getting bitten. And so now I'm one Drug War Follies column away from leaving for Peru with a clean conscience that I did my work here. And then there is a list three feet long of things I need to get done before I leave but none of it makes me beholden to publishers or editors. I love my work. I'm one lucky bastard for getting to do what I love, but I also get tired of it. I need a break every five months or so for 6-8 weeks to get the juices flowing again. And now I'm nearly on it. And I'm already crying about leaving Madeleina. And I'm praying Boots, the blind wonderdog doesn't bite anyone while I'm gone, and hoping my kids remember to feed him and the cats and to keep the rodent population down in the house while no one is living there. So I'm torn. But what I know is that it is time to get away. To see the world through my other eyes. To get refreshed. And now, tonight, having put to bed the last story I have to write for my regular publication, I'm feeling suddenly lighter.
   I will miss you all. Thank you for having the patience to read through  my stories and comments. When you feel blue, just imagine me having a drink on the boulevard in Iquitos after 10 days out in the deep jungle, dirt under my fingernails and a smile on my lips. I wish you could join me. Happy New Year, everyone. Hold those you love tight.

Couscous and Tajine

So Madeleina is getting old enough to try some different tastes. The other day I served my quick Moroccan lunch feast, and then yesterday I went further with couscous and tajine. That was a dish I loved to make in the restaurants; then I went to Morocco and learned how they did it, and after that I had a hard time making it in the restaurants. People would tell me that they were in Morocco or Algeria or Tunisia when they got married and would my tajine be as good as what they had there. No, I'd say. And I cannot bring the magic back to your marriage with a meal, no matter how good I am. It was the same with people who wanted to know if my tomato sauce was a good as their grandma's. My sauce might have been 100 times better than grandmas--and generally was--but I still knew I could not compete with childhood memories.
   Now Madeleina is a clean slate. So I went and bought good lamb. I floured it and seared it in olive oil, then added lots of garlic and diced onions. While they cooked I had a pot on another burner with 1 inch pieces of organic carrots and 1/2 inch slices of a large organic potato. When they were done, at about the same time the garlic and onion was done, I drained them and added them to the heavy pot. Then I cut a yellow squash and a  zuccini, par boiled them, cut them into half-rounds and added them to the pot. To that I added 1/2 inch pieces of 4 large celery stalks. Then a diced tomato.
    While those veggies and the meat were cooking, I added two cans of good organic chicken broth, reduced the heat, and let it simmer under a cover.
   In another pot I put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil infused with fresh garlic, added a tablespoon of butter. When that was done I seasoned that with sea salt and cracked black pepper, then added a cup of water. When the water was close to boil, I added a cup of excellent couscous, stirred, tossed in a big three finger pinch of chopped fresh cilantro and turned off the heat.
   While that was turning into something wonderful, I peeled and sliced, very thinly, a cucumber and put it into 1 pint of organic Greek yogurt. I added some fresh minced cilantro, salt, pepper, juice of a lime and let that sit.
   Back to the stew: With everything marrying every other thing, I added two teaspoons of fantastic Peruvian paprika, a teaspoon of Peruvian tumeric, a teaspoon and a half of Peruvian cumin, then hot red pepper, cardoman, a bit of cinnamon, juice of three limes and a drained/washed one pound can of garbanzo beans (cheating, I know, but I didn't think of making the dish in time to make fresh beans). As the stew cooked down under medium heat, I added half a bunch of really really good fresh cilantro, minced, a tablespoon of fresh diced ginger, then sea salt and black pepper to taste.
   Then we called Italo and by the time he came over, the tajine, the stew, was done. So was the couscous, light and fluffy and flavorful. And so was the raita, the cucumber/yogurt/lime side dish.
   Then I served the tajine over the couscous with the raita on the side. Total time: About 2 hours. The meat could have been eaten by a toothless person. So tender you could have gummed it. No fooling.
   Do we eat like pigs or what? Cause that was very very good. And I'm very very glad that both Italo and Madeleina are old enough to allow me to begin to open up my recipe cabinet to include some different flavors.
   Glad I'm alive, is what I'm thinking. Glad I got to eat that last night. Cause it was very very delicious. And if you're in town, I've got left overs. So come on by.

Sometimes I'm Just A Scared Little Kid

Well, no doubt about it: Sometimes I'm just a scared little kid. Heights are one of the things that bring out the fraidycat in me. Even little heights. Just don't do them well. So today, in trying to gather up the DISH television equipment I'm sending back to them, I had to go onto my house roof. Now this is a one story house, with the roof, where I was getting on, being maybe 10 feet off the ground. I climbed up the aluminum ladder no sweat, leaned over onto my freaking fat belly and got up. But then I stood and suddenly my eyes, after I climbed to the roof's high point, were about 18 feet off the ground. Not a problem. But when I'd detached the electrical element that DISH wants back from the satellite, and it was time to come down, well, not good. I walked back to where the ladder was below the roof. I called Madeleina to hold the ladder and sort of direct my feet on where to go. I rolled over on my belly and let my first leg down. I didn't touch anything and had to pull back up. I was having a freaking panic attack! I mean, I could have jumped off the freaking roof onto the dirt below and not gotten too badly hurt, probably not hurt at all, but here I was, just scared to death.
   I waited a few minutes, decided I couldn't just stay on the roof in the cold forever, so I made a second try. This time my foot hit a step. I moved my torso closer to the edge and found another step with my other foot. And then it was a piece of cake and I was laughing at my own fear.
   I got to tell you, I'm not happy when I realize what a ninny I am. And I often am. Damnit!
   I mean, as Madeleina pointed out, I'm fine in the jungle with snakes and spiders and electric eels--not that I get too close to the eels because they will kill you--but a 10 foot roof and I'm all about thinking I may never have the courage to get down.
   I'm glad I did. And I hope that if any of you ever run into irrational fears that you take some deep breaths and move through them. Doesn't mean I won't be just as idiotically frightened next time I'm on the roof trying to get down, but at least this time I made it.

Nice Lunch

So my car battery died  yesterday in the cold here in bucolic Joshua, Texas. Just sent smoke flying and burned to a crisp. So I had no car. Then my friend Mike said he was coming in for a visit with his dad and so I started to vacuum. But the vacuum was dead. Oy vey! I had no car to go buy a new vacuum! Or food. Or food to feed Boots the blind wonderdog! Or coffee. Or whiskey. Or wine--except for a beautiful bottle of 2008 white Mouton Cadet that I'd bought for a friend. I'll replace it.
   Plus no smokes!!!! Talk about verklempt! This was bordering on Gorman being hysterical. At least till I took a deep breath or seven and remembered how many people have so little they couldn't even relate to my picayune problems. Then I relaxed. Hell. Even broke, I'm relatively rich. I got a house. I got running water. I got a computer. I got a car or two. Broken, but fixable.
   So Chepa finally came by last night and took me to get smokes. I fed Boots the left over Christmas duck bones plus the last of the hot dogs we had. The cat ate dried food. Madeleina and I feasted on a duck leg each, with good stuffing, gravy and lots of broccoli and garlic.
   Today, Marco came by and took me to the store to buy a new battery for my old (1998 Ford Ranger) truck. Once I had that, I returned to the store with my now wonderful and working truck and bought some food and a vacuum with Christmas present money. My older sister had sent me $300. She doesn't really get that I'm 61-years-old and that she doesn't have to take care of me anymore, but still, it was a great present and I bought the battery and vacuum with it and then sang to the heavens and her a big thank you.
   And while I was there I bought a new Norton antivirus for Madeleina, new ink for the printer, a new shower curtain that Madeleina insisted we needed and other things. But my friend Mike and his dad were due any minute!!! What the hell was I going to serve?
   So I raced through the store, bought good black Greek Olives, a piece of smoked Gouda cheese, good corn chips--gluten free--and a family sized portion of a good brand of hummus.
    Home, I put the stuff on the table. It lacked something. So I took out the hummus I made a few days ago from scratch, took out a red pear and sliced it, took out a Chinese organic apple, took out 10 organic Egyptian dates ($18,65 a pound and 10 is about half a pound, a once in a life time treat) that I had, added a nice piece of cheddar and a couple of pieces of fresh mozzarella cheese in olive oil and basil and then cooked 2 pounds of fresh mussels in olive oil, garlic, diced onion, diced Roma tomatoes and cilantro with salt and pepper and a bit of white wine.
   And suddenly there was a lovely semi-Mediterranean feast: Organic dates, two types of hummus, chips, smoked cheese, sharp cheddar, black olives, organic red pear and Chinese apple, and fresh mussels steamed in garlic, olive oil, diced onion, diced Roma tomatoes, spices, white wine.
   And Mike loved it. His dad questioned why I had dates instead of figs. I said, "Well, I saw those dates and they were the most beautiful dates I'd ever seen--including dates I've eaten in north Africa. These are beauties."
   He tried them. One or two or four and declared them fantastic. But still, he wondered why I didn't have figs. I told him I just didn't happen to have any. I mean, he's a dad. He's 72 and strong as an ox and I ain't gonna lie to him.
   He told me to try some figs.
   So when I went to the store after they left,  I bought a small package of organic figs.
   We ate like pigs, without eating anything. Just a taste of this and that. And the whole time we were eating, Van Morrison's Born To Sing: No Plan B was playing in the background.
    Now my car works, I have a vacuum. I have two dates, some cheese, a bit of hummus, and a package of organic figs in the fridge for breakfast.
    We ain't got nothing but we got way more than most. Thanks for that, Universe, White Light, God, whatever your name is. I appreciate it. And thanks, Mom and Tom, for teaching me how to work with food to make a feast when there is almost nothing in the fridge.
    I hope you all eat well and more than that, deliciously today, tomorrow and every day forever. And when you have more than you need, I hope you will remember that some people have not been able to afford a good Egyptian organic date in some time, or ever, and then share one or two with them.
    Thanks for listening. Happy New Year!

'Twas the Night Before Christmas

Dear All: Given that Christmas is the worst holiday in the world, and that my blood pressure is about to kill me, and Madeleina's blood pressure is about to kill her--she's had to put up with me, the family, wrapping of the family presents (and at this moment is yelling "Christmas sucks! Let's celebrate stupidity!", though I think it's mostly because she's exhausted and feeling like her brothers have not visited a proper number of times this last week or two)--we're still wishing that when all is said and done, when all the money is gone, all the presents unwrapped and discarded, when the festival falls far short of what you put into it, well, we're still doing our best to hope that you have a moment, each of you have one or two moments that are special. We're hoping for one second that everything is right enough that you find yourselves crying for no reason and are not embarrassed by doing that. And we hope, somehow, that you find yourselves in the middle of a fantastic new year, one full of wonderful surprises that delight and amaze you.
   We're going through the ebb this minute: exhaustion, not feeling needed or wanted, not feeling like we're doing anything but making more trash for the landfill. That will pass. Deep in our hearts, both Madeleina and I are generous souls and we want you all to know only the very very best of this life, despite its stressful moments. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, Everybody! Let's make it a good one!

I Hesitate

I hesitate to wash the paint from the kitchen table. I hesitate to wash the colored water from the cups or wash the brushes. The babies were over with lots of paper and a fresh set of good watercolors. Thirty, forty, fifty watercolors grace the kitchen, the floor, the table, the porch. What was left on the table, what they didn't need, is a sign that beautiful art was made here. So I hesitate to clean. Who wants a clean table when the table covered with misplaced paint is a reminder of their joy?

So I Didn't Feel Like Cooking, But....

So I had a tough emotional day yesterday. I was dying for affection, dying for attention, dying for someone, anyone to say that I mattered. It wasn't happening. And the occasion for my indulgence was a change my son Marco made--a decision to become baptized, which I go along with wholeheartedly so long as he does not forget the vitality of ayahuasca, sapo and all we have learned in the jungle. But at the baptism was Chepa's boyfriend. So I said hello. But it irked me: He's not a bad guy at all from what I'm told, but at the same time, this could have been a time for me and my kid, not that guy. That guy, even if he's swell, was not there when Marco was sick for a year. He wasn't there to watch him play soccer, have his first girlfriend, pick him up as a young teen from a party after the police told me to get him out of there. And a million, zillion other things. So yeah, I was totally indulgent in feeling sorry for myself because it was obvious that guy and the family were going out for breakfast after Marco's thing and while I could have included myself, that guy's presence would have sort of ruined it for me.
   Okay, okay, so I'm a freaking baby sometimes. But I tried to be cool.
   Still, by the time I came home, famished, I was in no mood to cook. I had walked 2 1/2 fast miles--lots of coughing, okay?--just to clear myself out. So I was hungry. So I stopped at the store and bought bacon, maybe the first time in three years, and cooked six slices for myself. Then I made potato latkas--just grated a medium sized potato, squeezed the water out of it, added an egg, sea salt and butcher ground black pepper, then made little pancakes that I put in hot oil with a bit of garlic till very golden brown. Then I made three eggs over easy with salt and pep. Then I ate like a pig.
    Four hour later, with some last leaf raking under my belt and a New York Jets win in the bag, I was starving again--I told you I needed affection yesterday, didn't I? And if it wasn't coming to my door, I was going to provide it, even though I didn't feel like cooking and don't do much fast food. So for late lunch, I made hummus. I took two tablespoons of tahini--sesame seeds I'd ground to a paste with a bit of olive oil--added a can of drained garbanzo beans, two tablespoons of olive oil with lots of fresh garlic, the juice of three limes, three diced organic scallions, a bit of fresh hot Peruvian peppers and a touch of that sea salt and pepper. Took three spoonfuls for lunch and have enough for another week. Wow, that was good.
    But then, watching the New York Giants putting a can of whoopass on the Saints, I was hungry again--I did say I was indulging, didn't I?--and so bought a loaf of sesame seeded french bread (the French would be horrified, I know, but they are big enough to deal with it), and some paper thin rawest roast beef I could find. Home, I cut a four-inch piece of the bread, opened it, pulled out the insides till it was nearly just crust. While I did that I took half a red pepper and sauteed it slowly in a bit of olive oil and garlic till it was possible to pull the blackened skin off.
   I put good Hellman's mayo on the bread shell and put it in a glass pan in the oven (350 degrees) for a few minutes, till the mayo was melting/melted into the bread. Then I took that out, put on a light layer of the roast beef, capped that with the red pepper, and topped it all with two slices of very good sharp cheddar. In 10 more minutes, that was a beauty of a sandwich. I ate half--just two inches of it, which had maybe 3 ounces of roast beef, tops--and enjoyed the rest of the game with a glass or six of champagne.
    This morning I heated up the remainder of the sandwich for lunch.
     Now it's dinner and I'm alone again--Madeleina has been at mom's for a couple of days, and while Italo was over with my granddaughter Taylor Rain last night for a sandwich of his own that mirrored mine, I was and am essentially alone again. And it's been since 5:30 AM since I ate anything. And between here and there I've worked hard, walked a couple of miles, and am hungry. Still, I'm not really in the mood to cook.
    So what I'm having is a thick pork chop, very lean, stuffed with diced spinach, one strip of cooked bacon and very flavorful bleu cheese. I cooked the bacon slice, put it aside. I scalded the spinach in boiling water for about three seconds, then drained it and put it in the bit of bacon grease that was left in the pan. I added a touch of minced garlic. When done, I pulled and drained the spinach. Put it in a bowl. Waited 10 minutes then squeezed the water out of it. Then chopped it with the bacon slice and the pungent bleu cheese. That is so good I could have eaten it by itself. Instead, I put it in the butterflied pork chop, closed it up, floured/egged/breadcrumbed the chop, browned it in a bit of oil and put it in the oven.
   On the stove top I've got sliced red onions and a good good apple (also sliced) caramelizing. I've also got some good sauerkraut working with a bit of raw apple cider vinegar and pepper on the stove. When the chop is done, I'll put the apples and onion in that pan for a minute to suck up the juices. Then I will make a good gravy. No need for rice or potato or kasha or anything like that because I used breadcrumbs.
   So that's what I do when I don't feel like cooking but at the same time need some attention.
 

Madeleina Growing Up Again

Sometimes she's a nine-year-old. Sometimes she's 35. She's always herself. But then sometimes I can't help but notice that she's actually growing up. A couple of weeks ago she asked me for curlers. I bought her what I found, a box of heat curlers. She liked them, then had her mom buy her the kind you just roll into your hair. Along with volumizing shampoo and a fancy root awakening conditioner. And a tube of blazing brunette, whatever that does. And then, after the curlers and the shampoo and other girly things started cluttering up our bathroom windowsill, suddenly she's got this grown up woman's hair that she tucked into a pony tail that shimmered in the sun as it sashayed just behind her, swinging side to side, all wavy and lustrous and chic.
    Then this morning she came in and sat at the couch behind my desk. "Dad," she said, "you have to stop smoking."
    "I know. It's not good for me..."
    "I'm talking about the smell dad. We smell. We both smell like your cigarettes. I don't mind it because I'm used to it, but when I go to school, I know that some people probably notice it and I can't have that anymore. I don't want to be the one who stinks. And dad, face it, you smell like cigarettes."
    How could I respond to that? She's 100 percent right, and even though I limit my smoking to the office here in the house, some of it probably snakes around corners and gets on her and everything else.  So how could I answer? Best way I could. Sheepishly I said, "Some people like the musky smell of smoke on clothes..."
    "I am not going to marry a French guy, dad," she deadpanned.
    And that was that.
    My baby's growing up.

Forward to Shoemaker's Book on Ayahuasca

Well, my friend Alan Shoemaker asked me to write a forward to his new book, Grace and Madness, to be published probably next year by Bear and Company or one of their affiliates. I took a few weeks to do it because I knew it would be a pain in the ass. It was. But it got it done. Might be some changes when I look it over, but  here is what I wrote, for better or worse.

SHOEMAKER FORWARD

Alan Shoemaker first arrived in Iquitos, Peru, in 1993. And he arrived with a bang, coming down the Putumayo with several friends in an outsized canoe with a 15 Hp motor. He’d come from Washington State via Ecuador, where he studied with Dr. Valentin Hampejs, the noted medical doctor and curandero, who was as familiar around San Pedro cactus and ayahuasca as he was around antibiotics.

    I didn’t intend to spend a lot of time thinking about Alan Shoemaker when he first arrived in Iquitos. I’d been using the waterbound city for nine years as a staging point for work in the jungle before he’d ever set foot there, after all, and I’d met two dozen Shoemakers already who always showed up in town, thought it was an easy place to get by and then discovered, three months later, that they were calling family and friends for money to get home.

    But this gringo turned out to be different from most of the other dreamers I’d met: It turned out, as he explained to me, that while wondering where to go for a break from his teacher Valentin, he’d found a copy of Shaman’s Drum magazine—a wonderful magazine produced by Timothy White that dealt with all things Shamanistic—in which there was an article written by me on Ayahuasca. And that led the good Mr. Shoemaker to decide to visit Iquitos, my haunts.

   Now for better or worse, I’d written the first national article about ayahuasca for High Times magazine in 1986. Yes, Burroughs and Ginsberg had written about it previously in the San Francisco-based City Light’s Books as The Yage Letters, but that had not captured the national attention. But the High Times article resounded in pre-internet times, being passed around from person to person until probably more than a million had read it and from those, more than several thousand decided to seek out the medicine.

   The article Shoemaker read was written several years later but still had influence. And so he showed up in my second home. But that is an understatement. He showed up and within a month or two had begun to publish the first modern English language newspaper in Iquitos. Months later he was making large batches of ayahuasca in the street in front of his residence, to the delight of the locals.

   He worked with several curanderos, but seemed to focus on Juan Tangoa, whom we affectionately call Airport Juan, because his home is on a block in a barrio very close to the Iquitos airport.

   But Alan didn’t just work with Juan: he became the first gringo to publicly take a Peruvian curandero on a multi-continent tour to the U.S. and Europe. While others might have done that previously, Alan did it with flair, introducing the concept of traveling curanderos to the world.

   And just as with Airport Juan, everything Alan did was with flair, and everything you might know about Iquitos and Ayahuasca has been influenced—some say for better, others for worse, but still, the influence is not disputed—by Alan.

  Within a couple of years of landing in Iquitos, Alan had set up a small souvenir shop just off what is now the “boulevard”, and not long after that a young woman came to town looking to drink ayahuasca. She wound up going with Alan to drink the medicine with Francisco Montes, at a place his family had bought him out on the then-uncompleted road to Nauta at kilometer 18. The young woman had such a transformative experience that she tried to give Alan a $500 bonus for his work. Alan refused, suggesting instead that she give the money as seed funds to Don Francisco (Poncho to those who know him) to spend on identifying and marking all the plants on his property to create the first botanical garden in Iquitos. She did, and from that first $500, Sachamama, the first Ayahuasca center was born. Every other center there owes a debt of gratitude not only to Sachamama but Alan as well.

   For me, the first hint of something extraordinary occurred probably in 1995. During the late 1980s, whenever I flew into Iquitos from Miami on the now-defunct Faucett Airlines, there were always two, three or four wheelchair-bound end-stage AIDS patients aboard. And when we reached Iquitos they were whisked off the plane and into cars and quickly disappeared into the night.

   After the third time, perhaps, my curiosity was so peaked that I managed to slip off the plane with a group of them, got a taxi and drove after them. They wound up at river’s edge and were loaded onto a fairly small boat. They then took off and disappeared.

   Something was up. These were end-stage patients. There was no going home unless there was a miracle. So I began asking around town about them. I got a word here or there about some strange near-blind bear of a doctor who was doing experimental work on them. But I could never pin it down. I just could not find out what was what, though I knew that something was up.

   And by maybe 1995—give or take—when I came down to Iquitos for a few months, Alan had taken what I’d said and actually located the doctor doing the work. His name was Dr. Inchaustegui and he was treating those dying people with a mixture of una de gato—cat’s claw—essence, sacha jergon—a jungle tuber—and other things. And while most of those people still died, some had survived and a few had thrived. It was Alan who found the man I could not find.

   A year or so later, it was Alan who introduced me to the idea of ayahuasca healing in a way I’d never considered. Remember, there were few books on it, no internet existed to refer questions to; there was just experiential knowledge. He came to me one day and told me his mother was dying and asked me to drink ayahuasca with him at Airport Juan’s house to see of we might not see what was killing his mom and what might help her to stay alive.

   I reluctantly agreed, sure I could not help.

   But that night, during ceremony, I saw her issue, up close and personal, and “saw” that una de gato would help. I wrote a note when I saw that, and the next morning I showed my note to Alan, sure that I was crazy. Alan had a note as well, which also said “una de gato” but added “sacha jergon”.

   He sent or brought the medicines to his mom—I forget which—and some months later, the woman who was supposed to die within weeks, was told by her doctors that they could not find any cancer and that they might have misdiagnosed to begin with. Alan and I knew better.

   Several years later, Alan would come with me and my mother-in-law, Lydia Cahuaza, a Peruvian woman two generations out of jungle tribal life to Airport Juan's to help heal Lydia's cancer. They did. She got another several good years, just like Alan’s mom.

   At the same time, Alan’s drawback was that he loved being the tallest rose in the garden. And he often was. He was the first public gringo to set up an official plant export company from Iquitos. Large companies had done it earlier, but no one had done it on a personal level. To do it, he had to learn how to set up Peruvian corporations, what papers and permits were needed, how to satisfy both U.S. and United Nations’ bureaucracy. It took years of painstaking work. It was done in part with the help of my family’s “paper” man, Jorge “Flaco” Panduro Perea, the best man at moving papers in all of Iquitos. He never missed or misses a trick. And he set Alan and his then-wife Mariella up as a unique company, capable of moving plant material legally from Peru to anywhere in the world.

   Life, somehow, seems to intervene at the most ackward moments. I had a bar in Iquitos, The Cold Beer Blues Bar, across the street from the Puerto Mastranza on the toughest block in town. Tourists were terrified of going there, so my clients included ex-patriots, locals, U.S. Special Forces and every CIA/DEA/NSA personnel in Iquitos at a given time. Plus drug dealers, arms dealers and every other person the DEA/CIA/NSA had an interest in following.

   Well, as luck would have it, some of those young bucks from the U.S.A. would get drunk and cry into their beer to the bartender—who was often me. Now everybody knew I was a journalist, and I told everybody that whatever they told me at the bar was likely to be published if I thought it worthy, so we didn’t do any sneak attacks. Still, over the course of the couple of years I had the place at least two or three black-ops were stopped in their tracks when I published stories about them with Al Giordano’s seminal NarcoNews.com website.

    And, as luck would have it, a couple of former Navy Seals who were then Spooks working for the CIA as merceneries, were at my bar one night. They were there at a party we had for some guests I was taking to the jungle. Well, one of the guests took a photo of me behind the bar. One of the ex-Seals thought she might have captured his image via the mirrors behind the bar, walked over to her, ripped her camera from her neck and stepped on it, breaking it. His lieutenant called him on the infraction, and the drunk mercenary then ate a bar glass. Simply ate an entire 6 ounces of glass out of shame and anger.

    But before he’d done that, he had told me what he and the other former Seals were in town to do: They were in place to head to the Putumayo River to slaughter any and all people trying to escape a pincer movement planned by the U.S. and U.S. trained Colombian forces for the following month. There would be bonuses of $1,000 for every confirmed kill, whether combatant, civilian man, woman or child.

   I wrote the story and the op was cancelled.

   A couple of days later I was in my friend Jim’s Gringo Bar. At one table was the lieutenant with a local girl. I sat with them, while Alan stayed at the bar. The fellow told me I was in serious trouble for mucking up the operation. I told him I respected the military, but not the idea of trying to force civilians to flee a U.S. paid for onslaught to the Colombian rebels in a 30-year-old civil war that would result in either he or his fellows making money by killing fleeing children. Then, for some reason that seemed to make sense to me at the time, I decided to “sopla” the fellow. Sopla is a blessing where you take magic liquid into your mouth and spray a fine spray over someone’s head and body to cleanse their aura. I didn’t have any sacred liquid, so I used beer. The lieutenant didn’t see it as a blessing: He thought I spit at him and in an instant had his finger around my thorax and told me he might kill me. I told Alan to explain that I was blessing him to not kill non-combatants, not spitting at him. Alan, the tallest rose in the garden, seized the moment and hurled a hailstorm of shit on the fellow’s head, making it clear that not only was his position finished, but that he would likely wind up doing hard time for attacking a journalist such as Peter Gorman.

    The fellow took it seriously. He let me go but told Alan that he would pay for the incident.

    And pay he did. A few months later, Alan, with all the proper paperwork in the world, sent a huge shipment of banisteriopsis caapi—ayahuasca vine, maybe 700 pounds of it—and chacruna and huambisa—the admixture plants used to make ayahuasca, along with black tobacco native to Peru and some other things to his ex-wife’s address in Atlanta.

   Now what Alan did was perfectly legal. And if the U.S. had not wanted to receive the shipment, Customs had the option to say the plant material was not wanted in the U.S. and they could offer either to destroy it or return it to sender on the sender’s dime. Of course, if the material had been mislabeled, it would have been smuggling. But as the material was all labeled properly in both English and Spanish, with local and Latin names, that was not the case.

   Nonetheless the U.S. permitted the shipment to go through Customs and then arrested Alan’s grown son for picking it up off the front lawn.

   Despite the outlandishly illegal move by the U.S. Attorney’s office—which was brought on by the former Seal’s complaint to “Get Shoemaker and Gorman”, and which was confirmed by the DEA on tape to me—when Alan tried to go through Atlanta to see his mom before she finally died, Alan was picked up, put on a bus for 30 days and then delivered to a prison. He was given house arrest, not able to leave the U.S. or even go further than a block or two from the home of his deceased mom. That lasted just under one year, the limit the U.S. Federal prosecutors had to either prosecute him for a crime or let him go. Well, they had no crime to prosecute him for: The only crime committed was done by U.S. Customs in allowing legal plants to go through and then arresting Alan’s son and finally Alan.

   So after 360 days, and I might be off by one or two, but just shy of the limit, the U.S. Attorney sent Alan’s passport to his Attorney and sent me a letter saying Alan was free to leave the country. Alan came to my home in Texas. He stayed here for a couple of weeks. Then I called the judge, U.S. attorney and everyone else and got it confirmed that he was free to travel where he wanted, so long as he’d be available should they ever decide to prosecute.

   Alan, who had not seen his wife or kids for a year, bought a ticket to Lima and on to Iquitos. I double-checked with the judge and prosecutor. And finally, knowing I had everyone on tape saying he could leave, I drove my friend to the DFW airport and sent him on his way.

    Less than a week later the prosecuting attorney in Atlanta charged Alan with Flight to Avoid Prosecution—a ridiculous lie considering she was on tape suggesting he should visit his wife in Peru. Unfortunately for Alan, if he ever returns to the U.S., he’ll have to answer to that charge before there are any “ayahuasca” charges, which means that unless he’s got a quarter of a million dollars in legal fees put away, he’s sunk.

    But none of that sunk him.

    He went back to Iquitos to discover that his family had had a hard time without him. He countered by coming up with the idea of a Shamanic Conference in 2003 or 2004. He brought in some inspiring people to talk, collected several good curanderos to offer medicine to the participants, and began what has become an annual staple for the last several years. And out of those conferences has blossomed the thriving business of ayahuasca tourism in Iquitos and Pucallpa. 

   So Alan's fingerprints have been on all things ayahuasca in Iquitos more than anyone else's. Even the beautiful mantas, weavings, done by the indigenous Shipibo that are sold Iquitos and Pulcallpa, bear his influence: At the very first Shaman Conference the weavers began to incorporate the conference logo, a stylized cross-section of an ayahuasca vine--designed by Johan Fremin--into their weavings, and now depictions of ayahuasca appear on nearly all of the mantas the Shipibo sell.
    Alan is loved by many. He’s also been called every name in the book by people of all stripes. But few of those people have ever walked a day in his shoes. Few of those people have had the courage he has shown. I am not always his biggest fan. I wish he had not set Sachamama and all of the subsequent Ayahuasca Retreats in motion. I wish it could all have been kept secret and slowly let out over the next 50 years, rather than just taking it to the streets. But that doesn’t mean I am right. History will let us know.

   What needs to be known is this: that he’s my brother, good, bad or in between. I fight for his right to be the tallest rose in the garden.

    Enjoy his story. Enjoy the book.

Peter Gorman, December 5, 2012