Nü-nü--Amazon Snuff

I was asked to write a very short description of the Matses snuff, nu-nu. So I did. Here it is. In this length it's difficult to go into detail, but I hope I got some of it, anyway.

Nü-nü

Nü-nü is the indigenous Matsés, Mayoruna, and Matis version of what other indigenous cultures call Rapé. It is a very powerful snuff made by combining the inner bark of the Theobroma cacao tree with Nicotiana rustica, the powerful tobacco ubiquitous to Northwestern Amazonia. It is generally made by two hunters, insuring that the spirit of both will be infused in the snuff.

    The inner bark of the cacao is taken from the tree and put into a ceramic bowl filled with hot charcoal. Over a period of a couple of hours it is reduced to ash and removed from the bowl.

    The tobacco leaves are stripped of their central spine then placed on a bamboo palate over a low fire until they crumble easily. The leaves are generally kept on a very low flame so that they retain their green color.

    The tobacco leaves and cacao ash are then placed in a length of hollowed out bamboo and finely ground with a stout stick into the sealed base of the bamboo.

    When the material is fully ground it is run through a fine mesh—that might be a doubled up piece of mosquito netting, an old tee-shirt, or even a piece of a woman’s stocking—to eliminate any material that is not very finely ground.

    And that’s all there is to it.

    The Matses and other groups use the nü-nü as a hunting aid—it temporarily improves eyesight, delineates color value, adding a bit of depth to vision, and steadies the hunter’s hand. Used in large amounts, as much as 20 or more half-gram blasts through a two-foot long tube made of a hollowed out reed, hunters claim it allows them to see game in the forest a day in advance, allowing them to go to where they saw the game the following day and wait for it to arrive.

    Nü-nü instills a sense of well-being in the user along with a feeling of exhileration. It is often used in conjunction with sapo, the frog-sweat medicine.

My friend, Crazy Richard Fowler, AKA Auckoo, has Passed

Iquitos can be a lonely place. People come from all over the world to Iquitos to soak in the jungle,  the ayahuasca, the beautiful women and handsome men. And a lot of them fall in love with the place and wind up staying there for months. Some wind up living there. But for most, living there becomes a sort of wretched endgame of their lives. If they have work, if they have a reason to get up and go do something there every day, then life is the same as it would be anywhere. But there aren't many jobs for gringos or Europeans or Aussies or Africans, so they end up bored. And if you wind up bored in Iquitos,  you wind up drinking or drugging or sexing yourself to death. I've lost a lot of people I called friends over the years, essentially from boredom.
     One friend who just died was Richard Fowler, known to all as Auckoo. He'd come slightly on the lam from a pot bust in Florida where he was a naturalist working in the Everglades. Prior to that he'd been a snake catcher for Bill Haast's Serpentarium. Settled in Iquitos, Auckoo took to the jungle, learned it, and began taking people out for pretty extraordinary trips sort of to the middle of nowhere. And then he brought them back. Safely.
     Then he married a beautiful woman and adopted her two young daughters and did his best to be a good dad. Oh, and he was also very crazy, and crazy smart. In any given conversation he'd come up with two, three things that you didn't know, which kept conversation interesting.
     Anyway, I heard that he took a bad fall--perhaps after a heart attack--and died a couple of days ago. I'll miss him when I'm in Iquitos in a couple of months. We generally met up a couple of times on each of my trips for a couple of hours. So i wrote something for him on a facebook page that other friends of his were writing on. Here's what i wrote:
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  I'll chime in as he was my friend as well. I was asked to write a couple of anecdotes about him. I could have written about the time the BBC asked me to do a TV show where I'd have to go into a pond of muddy water and come out with a caiman. I knew I might get lucky, but that Auckoo could do it blindfolded, so I passed it on to him and he looks great doing it. I could have written about him as a naturalist, because he was a very good naturalist, very quick and knowledgeable. I could have written about his struggles through the lean times and how he always kept his chin up. I could have written about the time he slammed a friend's shotgun against a tree, smashing it, and left me responsible for fixing it even though I wasn't in the country at the time of the tantrum. I could have written a lot of things because I knew him for a long time. Not intimately. I was a friend; I wasn't an intimate friend. So I didn't write those things. What I wrote was this:

    Auckoo was physically dangerous, from both training and experience. He also had something of a chip on his shoulder and so was always up to challenge someone, anyone. One evening on the Boulevard several years ago, he challenged me to go, right then, and jump into the Amazon River. Being Irish myself, I said sure. He took my hand and we ran toward the stairs leading down from the Boulevard to the Amazon River (really, the Itaya at that point, but close enough). We ran 50 feet and then he leaped into the air and into the reflecting pool that's one of the Boulevard's favorite places for both tourists and locals to get photographed. I mistimed the leap and wound up doing a bellyflop into the water, which was, after all, Amazon basin water.

    Another night, not long after I'd had a major operation that left 142 stitches in my belly from my sternum to below my navel, Auckoo approached and asked me to stand up. I did. He then came next to me, took a karate stance, and belted me in the stomach, saying: "Let's see how good this doc's work really is," as his punch landed. I was drunk but responded in kind. The next morning he approached me on the Boulevard with one hand covering his right eye: Underneath it was a huge mouse and a couple of stitches: I'd evidently gotten in a lucky shot at him. Secretly I was glad he hadn't killed me the previous night after I connected with that punch.

    And then one more time: Last year or so, Auckoo, a little bit high, as was I, approached my table and demanded that I fight him then, there. When I didn't move he said: "Okay, you know how serious I am? I want this to be a fair fight this time. No lucky punches. You don't believe me?" And with that he took his automatic out and slapped it on the table. "There. No gun." Then he reached into his vest and pulled out brass knuckles and slapped them on the table next to the gun. "No knuckles."

    He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a knife, putting it on the table with his other weapons. "No knife."

   "What else do you want?" he asked, going through his pockets, pulling out an assortment of coins, deadly weapons and cigarette lighters.

    When he was done he looked at the pile. "Pretty impressive, right? You ain't seen nothing yet!" and with that he pulled out his very tiny pomeranian or some sort of tiny dog like that and put her on the table as well. "Okay, now I'm clean. Let's go."

     I stood, as if ready to go.

     We didn't, of course. He just wanted to make certain you were ready when he challenged like that. As long as you were, you had his respect.

     Rip, Auckoo. Go catch yourself a frog or two up there.

Doing meatloaf tonight--Hmmmmm...

So I've got meatloaf in the oven. I'm just so sick of chicken and salmon that I wanted meat, but nothing as heavy as a real steak. Now last night we had meat, but it was in the form of sausage, red and green peppers, tomatoes and onions cooked in garlic with a little olive oil. Lots of salt and pepper--sea salt and cracked black pepper--and man, that was good. I had it plain. Guests had it over rice. It came with stuffed zucchini, which was just about perfect and way better than my mother ever made it--though I know I'm going to hell for saying that. Lots of good parmesan cheese, sauteed scallions, tomatoes, garlic, a touch of ginger root, a bit of breadcrumbs with some fresh Peruvian oregano and just a hint of butter as I was cooking it all to stuff the slightly-cooked zucchini. Cooked them whole for about 4 minutes in water that was just under boiling, just to make them soft enough that when I cut them in half-lengthwise, cleaned out the seeds and stuffed them, they'd take to baking-to-finish in the oven quickly, so I didn't have to overcook the stuffing.
    Somehow, after a lot of lawn mowing today--I'm so out of shape I was taking breaks every 12 minutes!--I decided meatloaf without rice or potato or any starch--just a salad and spinach quickly sauteed with garlic and a touch of olive oil and cracked black pepper--was the perfect meal.
    Basic recipe: 1.5 lbs of ground pork. 3 lbs of good chuck meat. Mix.
    Add 3 oz ketchup--Heinz--two eggs, a couple of ounces of good breadcrumbs with Peruvian oregano, salt and pepper--you know the drill.
    While you're mixing that, put two heads of fresh minced garlic steeped in olive oil in a pan, add a huge sweet red onion, diced, two stalks of organic celery, minced, two organic tomatoes, diced finely. Cook till everything is soft and every flavor and color is married to the others. Add to the meat mix.
    Work the meat with your hands when the cooked material is cool enough to do it, put it in two baking dishes--one bread pan, one medium casserole dish--and top with slices of very thin pork belly, pre-smoked and ready to eat, and a bit of ketchup or bbq sauce. Not too much. It makes it's own juice and you can make gravy out of that if you like.
    So that's in the oven. The kids were over all day, Italo and I replaced the rope on their swing in the front yard (so I don't have to worry about them falling when it breaks!!!!!) and Italo jury-rigged my lawnmower to work.
     I worked my butt off yesterday, doing interviews for my story due on Tuesday, for which Madeleina took the photos, delivered medicine to a sick friend--Una de Gato and Sacha Jergon, along with CBD--to ameliorate his cancer, nearly finishing up a big pot of San Pedro medicine that I'll actually finish tomorrow morning, and feeding and entertaining guests.
    And then tomorrow I get the results of my chest X-Rays, which I hope don't tell me anything really bad. I know I've been smoking 2 packs a day for 50 years, so whatever it is, I invited it, but at the same time, I'd like to think I'm not one of the people going to get cancer. Pretty arrogant I guess, but that's how I justified smoking--which I love--all these years.
     Meatloaf is starting to smell good. I mean very good. If you're in the neighborhood, I've got a lot more than I can use, so come on by. We love company, and we're not even in misery!

Not sure if I'm grousing or laughing or both

Generally when I write here, I like to write interesting things. I like to talk about medicine or food that I'm cooking or something cool that happened, or even the occasional post of a new column for Skunk Magazine. This one is different. This one goes out to all the dads and moms and grandpas and grandmas who work to get ahead only to discover that there were a million things ready to eat that couple of grand right up.
    I came home about Feb 6 from a trip to Peru. It wasn't much of a money making trip but it was a working vacation that paid for itself and i had a great time and the guests I took out to the jungle were fantastic and all that jazz. But I had a couple of freelance writing checks waiting when I came back, and a couple of work checks from Fort Worth Weekly, and two months worth of book and kindle sales and a little of this and that. I thought I looked relatively golden. So golden that I gave my son Italo $500 of the last $1000 I owe him on the 2000 Lincoln Sportster I bought from him. And I didn't even mind when my 1998 Ford Ranger needed a little work: Italo bought $220 bucks worth of parts, I gave him $150 for a day's work and next thing you know, it's running beautifully again. Except that it also needed a new battery for $150 or so and registration for $65, and then an oil change with a new air filter for $58, bringing that up to over $600. Okay, I could live with that. But then the tax assessor reminded me that I owed the final $600 on property taxes for the year, and the home insurance company reminded me that I owed $677 for the quarter. And then the Lincoln needed two new tires at $200 each. And then the microwave went out and needed replacing. And then I needed to rent the equipment to get the carpets shampoo'd and then I had to pay various doctors a total of $400--despite now being old enough to cash in on my Medicare that I've paid into since its inception. Then the blood pressure pills needed upping and Walmart just happened to take both pills off the $4 list and one is now $58 while the other is $121. And now the Lincoln needs registering and an inspection.
     And none of it will kill me, of course. The speed and quickness with which my money disappeared surprised me: Quicker than a snake strike, perfectly aimed at my wallet. The fantastic thing is that I had the monies to take care of it all, along with the regular bills, living expenses, funds for Madeleina, away at college, and for my wife/ex-wife Chepa and the girls, and dog and cat food. So I'm not really grousing. These things need to get paid and I guess normally I'd just be a couple of months late with everything. This time I'm not.
     But then today, I went to cut the lawn and neither lawn mower worked. Now I'm starting to get riled...
     But I'm still grinning and I hope you are all laughing at whatever straits you happen to find yourself as well.

Hell of a Sunday

Well, it's Sunday, last day in February. Normally. Tomorrow is Leap Day, so it's really not the last day in February today. Still, it was a hell of a Sunday.
   I had a client for sapo and nu-nu this morning. Those are Amazon medicines and we're starting an experiment to see if those medicines can permanently clear his very bad vision. The medicines work and do that already, but only for 24 hours. The experiment is to see whether with regular medicine doses that time will elongate.
   So I was up at 5 AM and cleaning house by 8 Am and then he called to beg off. "Peter, I did drugs and drank alcohol last night. I really partied. I'll come if you insist, but otherwise, I want to sleep."
   I told him to sleep. It's hard enough to do an experiment without including that the patient did LSD, Magic Mushrooms, illegal drugs and had liquor. We'll do it next week.
   But because I thought he was coming I got the kitchen cleaned from last night. And Madeleina, home from school, got the bathroom and living room cleaned. We were shining by 9 AM.
   Then Chepa, my wife/ex-wife came over with her two babies, Sierra and Alexa, and my grand baby, Taylor Rain, and her sister's two new kids, Ryan and Danica.
    Chepa took to the computer, Madeleina took the kids, I took to cooking for them.
    After food, they went outside and decided to paint my front porch with chalk. While they did that i changed a battery in my old 1998 Ford Ranger, changed a wheel on the wheelbarrow, and then sent the kids out to collect all fallen branches and small limbs from the yard. They did.
    And then I went to the store, bought organic, unfiltered apple juice, organic lime juice, good orange juice, wine and a few other things.
     When I got back, a young man who was introduced to me via facebook from an actual friend, had showed up and I taught him a lot in a couple of hours. I wish I had a recording of it.
     When I was pooped, I told him goodbye and he graciously left. Nice young guy for sure. I hope he has a charmed life.
     Then Chepa and the kids left.
     Then Madeleina said she had to go.
     So now I'm alone.
     Somehow that seems fine. I had five kids plus Madeleina and Chepa all day. Had a stranger. Got ready for work this morning. I'm tired.
     I'm gonna cook me a hamburger with a sesame bun and sauteed onions. I'm gonna dress it with mustard and Katsup. I'm gonna cook spinach with garlic and reheat those asparagus.
    To outsiders it might not have seemed much. To me, it was a hell of a Sunday.

New Amazon Jaunts Coming Up: Time to Sign Up for the Time of Your Life!

Ladies and Gents: I've got two great Amazon Jungle Jaunts coming up; one in June, one in July. These are 9 1/2 day excursions into deep jungle--roughly 250 KM out of Iquitos--that are filled with fun/adventure/medicine. I don't have a lodge: We use a rustic but very cool place. Showering is in the beautiful Aucayacu river, for instance, as no showers are allowed. We basically live as the people on the river live for a week: We take walks looking for wild and semi-wild foods and medicines, we hike pristine high jungle, we stroll in the most primordial swamp I've ever seen. We swim in a lake that's home to pink and grey dolphins. We collect the vine and ad-mix plants our curandero will utilize in his ayahuasca. We'll have the opportunity to use--at the right time, in the right place--some local magic shrooms to get people prepared for ayahuasca; we'll have a chance to utilize ayahuasca twice (three if you push me but no one ever really asks for that); and we'll have the opportunity to use the indigenous Matses' sapo (frog sweat, AKA kambo), and nu-nu (aka rapé) snuff. We'll have you on an overnight riverboat underneath the Amazon sky. We'll have you forgetting your own name. We'll have you more protected than you've ever felt. My team is spectacular and will always outnumber guests, which are limited to 12. You'll eat some of the best food--mostly fruit, veggies, plantain, rice, fresh beans daily, with a bit of chicken and eggs for those who want that--you've ever had. In short, we'll offer you an opportunity to make a fresh start by blowing up your world view. You don't have to change, of course. If you're already a shining star, then then trip and my team and the medicines, and the river will just polish you to a high gleam. If, on the other hand, you suck, we'll you'll suck a lot less when we're finished with you. How's that for a promise? You can get the dates on the pgorman.com website. Price is high at $2200, but that includes everything except your airfare and walking around money. We pick you up at the airport and if you come in a day or two early, recommended, we still pick you up at the airport. There are no hidden fees/costs. You buy presents for your family, your money. Your hotel in Iquitos, boat cabins, food in Iquitos, food on the river, food in the jungle, my team of 12-14, the medicines, the whole shebang is included. And if you're broke, which I understand, I might take a few hundred bucks off the price to help out. Questions? Email me at peterg9@yahoo.com
Thanks for listening,
Peter G

My Sink; Tonight's Food

So I was washing veggies in my sink and suddenly thought: How many hours of my life have been spent looking into sinks? For at least 59 of my 65 years I've either been employed in an Ice Cream Parlor, a restaurant or cooking at home. I've peeled tens of thousands of pounds of potatoes looking into a sink--90 percent of them while working as a 12-15 year old at Cresthaven Country Club in Queens, NYC--and spent countless hours washing veggies, washing dishes, washing sinks. It might average out to an hour a day for 59 years. That's a long time to be staring into a metal hole.
    I've also spent a lot of time--I mean a LOT of time--cutting and cooking veggies and meat and fish. Tonight, I'm alone and was not sure what to cook. I've got a rack of ribs in the fridge--but that would be way too heavy and I'd only eat two before I was turned off at the notion I was eating an animal. I have a nice piece of salmon, but I had that two nights ago and then yesterday for lunch I had the leftover, so forget that. I've got a half-pound of swordfish, but not in the mood. I've got left over chicken thighs--already roasted a few days ago--and could make one of them into a burrito (with fresh pico de gallo, beans, avocado, sour cream and cheddar), or a chicken salad with celery, onions, and mayo, or I could put them in a pot with celery, onions, garlic and tomato and make a nice soup, or do 30 other things with them (just eating things, not dirty things). But I'm not in the mood. I've also got sausage, peppers, and onions (with garlic, of course) and tomatoes left over from a couple of days ago, but again, I had it twice, once when I made it on Friday, then again for Sat. lunch, so I'm not in the mood.
     So what am I to do? I settled on a sort of Spanish Beef with Veggies. It's a concoction I make a couple of times a year and there are probably a million other people who make something like it. Start by sauteing 1 1/2 pounds of chuck chopped meat in a heavy skillet with garlic, salt, pepper and a bit of oil.
    Once brown, strain the fat and put the meat aside.
    While you're making the meat, put on good basmati rice with garlic and then add achiote for flavor and coloring. The rice will be yellow/orange and very tasty.
    While you're doing that stuff, cut broccoli and cauliflower into small florets, cut a zucchini and a yellow squash lengthwise, then cut into half-moons about 3/16 of an inch thick. Put the broccoli and cauliflower into salted, boiling water. Wait two minutes and add the zucchini and squash, cook for one more minute, remove from heat, put under very cold water until cool, then drain.
    When the pieces are ready for the puzzle, get a deep saute pan and put in four tablespoons of good olive oil that's had minced (fresh) garlic in it for a couple of days. The garlic goes in as well. Add a nice-sized diced red onion; when the garlic is done and the onion is see through, add a diced sweet red Bell pepper and a diced tomato. When that's all good, add the meat and then salt and pepper and add achiote (you can buy it from Goya) and a minced handful of cilantro. When that's looking good, add the veggies and cover with a big--maybe 5 ounces--handful of fresh organic spinach. Add a can of organic black beans and more achiote. Stir it all up for about 8 minutes or 6 minutes until it's good and hot and you're about to go crazy for it. If you're in the mood, top the meat/veggie mix with a good quality of cheddar cheese that you've minced.
    Serve that over your yellow rice.
    That's good eating.
     I've made that dish while I was writing this. Almost done. Time to add the meat to the garlic/onion/red pepper/tomato mix. So I'm still 10 minutes away but nearly done.
     Of course, now that I nearly have it finished and have written about it, I'm not in the mood for it anymore because it feels like I already ate it. Damn.
     Maybe I'll just go for a salad instead.

A Very Nice Day

So a few friends came over for a Peruvian-style ceremony the other night. The ceremony was beautiful, I think. Medicine and songs were strong; Lynn and a woman named Michelle, the guardians, were great. All survived. Thank you universe!

    Went to a regular doc today (now that i have Medicare because I'm old)—first time I've seen a doc for a checkup in at least 15 years—and he took blood, ordered a chest X-Ray, did an EKG, took urine.

    EKG was great, he said, "Perfect." Thank you, sapo, and daily garlic for 65 years.

    Urine was great, he said: "We were looking for sugar. None. Perfect."

    We'll see what the blood and X-Ray turn up.

    Started CBD oil just two days ago. That, with the Una de Gato has me feeling much better. Slept on the couch, laying down, for a total of 7 hours last night, most since just after Christmas. Took about 7 pees during that time, and swelling on legs almost gone.

    Took my blood pressure pills early and blood pressure came back 122/80. Rarely see it that close to just right. Maybe the hemp pills are cool. Hope so.

    Now I'm smoking a cigarette and having wine. Italo just fixed my green truck: New water pump, new spark plugs, new thermostat. I've apparently been running on 3 cylinders for some time. Truck has more pep now.

   Gonna eat a prime rib with onions and blue cheese with a side of spinach with garlic. No starch. There goes the blood pressure!

   Things are going good today.

   Fingers crossed I wake up tomorrow morning.

   And I hope you all had a wonderful day as well.

Reminder for Those Entering the Ayahuasca Realms

Someone wrote me recently to say they were very terrified while under the influence of ayahuasca. As the person had been a guest of mine in the jungle, I was surprised. I guess they continued the work when they got back home, wherever that is. Anyway, I sent this quick note out:
   We all get terrified and are unable to move at times in that world. I just get frozen and beg my heart to stop so that I can be free of the fear. BUTTT, remember what I told you about not having a body?
In the other realms you have no body. No one and no spirit can grab you, stab you, hurt you physically.
    Which means you are not constrained. If something menacing is engulfing you, become more menacing and engulf it. You don't need to know how to do it, if you can just tie a string around your finger to remind yourself to do it, then you can do it.
   If it's a physical monster, become a bigger one. It has 20 heads grow 100 heads.

   If it's just an overwhelming sort of darkness, turn on light—again, it will just happen—and the

darkness will vanish in it.

   If it's something you need to deal with, put yourself on equal terms and then deal with it.

   None of which is easy when you're frozen in fear.
   Hence my suggestion of a reminder piece of string around your finger.

Life is Tough; Life is Worth It

So I'm home nearly two weeks. I've written a couple of short pieces to earn a few dollars, had a couple of surprise things happen that were great; had a hole in my working truck's radiator which was not great, have an infection in my good leg that's been cultured out and it turns out it's a combination of staph and pseudomonis, not good, but not as bad a couple of years ago when there were four bacterias attacking my right leg.
    I am having trouble sleeping more than an hour at a time; I feel lucky when I go to bet at 9:30 and don't wake till 11--a full hour-and-a-half is almost like REM sleep after the last month in Peru. I've paid off thousands in bills, leaving me nearly broke, but only owing $14,000--not bad. I turned 65, so I get senior discounts at places I would never eat.
   I've got people coming to the house for ceremony Saturday and have spent close to $1000 on them--and I am not allowed, morally, to accept anything, even contributions. So what? I'll earn more next week. I've been cleaning my house, one meter at a time. Still to go? Mop floors, polish floors; do rugs; clean front and back doors of dog prints. But otherwise, I've done hours and hours, and I'm paying someone $100 to come and help me tomorrow, the day before ceremony, so that when guests arrive they don't think I'm a bum. I've already scrubbed the new tub, toilet and sink. I've done the dirty work.
   Now today is my granddaughter Taylor Rain Gorman's birthday. So I'm making a small party. Bought some presents, cleaned the kitchen, made ribs and chicken, white rice and yellow rice, salmon filet and spicy black beans. Have broccoli, cauliflower, yellow squash, zuccini, tomatoes, scallions, garlic in olive oil ready to stir in a pan. That's a lot of different things to cook for 8 people, but I know my family: They each want what they want and I take up the challenge willingly.
   I have had red wine but no whiskey, not even my three airplane bottles, since Jan 1. So we'll argue tonight, but I won't fall into the trap of being a fool.
    Every day I wake up I thank the universe for another shot at it all. I love living. Sometimes it's hard. It's hard when my legs hurt from infection. It's hard when I can't get ahead and don't have enough for what everyone needs. It's hard when I remember I'm not 21 or 31 anymore. But it's easy to love living anyway.
   And I hope you are all loving living, despite setbacks.

My Madeleina Growing Up

I just took Madeleina out of college for the day and brought her into the city to meet two formerly homeless people who are now living in Sec 8 housing--a very nice apartment--put out a street newspaper and the guy is going into chemo for lung cancer on Wednesday. The delivery system was put in place in his right upper chest today. What a marvel they were. Madeleina got some great shots and I think she's got a shot at the cover or opening photo for the Fort Worth Weekly when the story is done--she might make a couple of hundred. I love working with her. She is so non-imposing, just like when she helps with ceremony: Just there when you need her; not a moment before or after. Absolutely silent, absolutely invisible. If she could learn to use the camera correctly she'd have an adjunct income for the rest of her life the way that a short -order cook can always scrape by in lean times.

     Plus: These two were at least 350 pounds each but kept making jokes, talking about sex, talking about their 3 AM trips to the bathroom and the banter about making coffee at that hour. What a pleasure to be with them. And at the end, Madeleina, an avowed non-sexual, said something along the lines of: "I'm not saying I'm convinced, but I will say I never thought love could last like that. 25 years of marriage after years of being junkies together! Dad, they were cool!"

     Which is a step in the right direction. As long as the guy can talk enough to give me an hour or two tomorrow, and then on the weekend after the first round of chemo--and as long as his wife Annette will give me some time--I'll have a nice story about Homeless, Not Helpless. They seem to be all about sharing what little they have.

    And now, after driving 110 miles today--going to Ft Worth twice--I've got to drive Madeleina to school, another 150 miles RT. Damn. My legs are jumpy and painful already from the infections I picked up in the jungle last month, so I've taken a bit more ibuprofin than normal.

    Personally, I'd just as soon give Madeleina the week off. I love hanging around with her.

New Drug War Follies Column

Okay, I'm back from the jungle. I got leg infections, foot infections, am in constant pain since I've returned home. Way too many ibuprofin to be good for me, I cannot concentrate on anything because the damned pain takes over. I'll get past it. And my doc said the infection isn't too severe; he's giving it a few days before I start on a regimen of antibiotics hoping that I I won't need to do that.
      The trip was wonderful: The guests were just great, the jungle was beautiful, the medicine was deep. Couldn't have been better unless I was 30 years younger.
      Even that I'm going to try to take care of: Now that I'm 65 I get the Medicare I've been paying into since its inception and my surgeon said I could use it for the out-patient physical therapy the hospital has. It's supposed to be very good. I'll call early in the week, once the pain subsides a little.
     Today, in the mail, was the newest issue of Skunk magazine, the pot magazine for which I write a regular column called Drug War Follies. It is often about the drug war, but then it often strays as well. I love having the column and the freedom to rant a little. It's like having this blog. Just write what I want to write, what I'm feeling--and that is a kind of freedom we investigative reporters rarely enjoy.
     So here is the newest column, the 91st I've done for Skunk. And in the next few days, I'll start on #92. Damn, that's gonna be cool.

Drug War Follies

A little rant about guns. You know, the guns that don’t kill people. The guns that were involved in as many deaths in the U.S. in 2014 as were motor vehicles. You know, the guns that don’t kill people that were involved in 84,000 non-fatal injuries in 2014. Yeah, those guns.

By Peter Gorman

Open carry. Forty-five states in the U.S. now permit people to openly carry guns in public. I don’t mean in a gun rack in the back of a pick up truck, like a lot of people see in areas where hunting is permitted, I mean pistols in holsters and rifles and semi-automatics slung over your shoulder. You have all probably seen some news footage of nutty men strolling into fast food joints carrying enough fire-power to wipe out a small town. They’re supposed to be “the good guys with guns”, as the National Rifle Association puts it, who will stop the bad guys with guns.

    Texas, which has allowed open carry of rifles and semi-automatics for a long time, just implemented a new law that will allow anyone with a concealed handgun permit to now wear that gun in a holster on their hips. You know, football moms and dads staring each other down over whose kid is better after they’ve each had had six beers and while carrying a .45 semi-auto on their hips. What could go wrong with that? Or what about guys fighting over a parking space, or what if someone gets the wrong order at Arby’s?

   “I said no goddamned ketchup, motherfucker!”

   Nah. Nothing could go wrong there.

   And what’s the chance of a bar fight escalating when everyone is drunk and strapped?

   And let’s suppose a bad guy with a gun starts shooting people and a couple of good guys with guns start to fire at him, just as the police arrive. Are the cops gonna ask who the good guys are? And if they ask the bad guy, is he gonna say, “I’m the freaking bad guy, copper! Come and get me!” Or is he going to say: “Stop those guys! They’re crazy!”

   Okay, that was an easy test.

   And how will anyone know who has the concealed carry permit and who is the dangerous felon with bad intentions?

   Only one time in my life did I see the good guys with guns stop a bad guy. I was cooking brunch at a New York City joint call the Mad Hatter. At any given time more than half the people in the restaurant were police officers—it was a cop joint.

   One Sunday a guy came in, walked to the bar, pulled a pistol and asked the bartender for his money. The restaurant was instantly silent for a moment, then suddenly there was a bit of movement in the crowd, and probably 50 guns came out all at once. The bartended told the guy to turn around. He did, saw the guns, dropped his, and fled.

   The thing about that was that it involved 50 trained policemen, not Uncle Joe who goes to the gun range three times a year and has probably never shot at a live moving target.

   Why are we so afraid, and what are we so afraid of? Will people carry guns to ward off being the target of a street robbery? Would you really shoot someone who asked for your wallet? Is it that important?

   Or are people afraid of losing their rights in the U.S.? Do they really imagine someone is coming for their guns? And if all hell broke loose and the military decided to take over the U.S. and that necessitated disarming the population, does anyone really believe their semi-automatic rifle will be a match against trained military with military grade weaponry? Oy, vey! I get upset just thinking about all those people who are so very afraid. What a rotten way to go through life, eh?

   Upset jumps to a kind of rage when I think of the power of the NRA. The organization has nearly all of our politicians cowering. No one dares suggest real gun control laws for fear of the NRA pouring money into the next campaign to get them defeated. And I’m not talking about super stringent gun control laws; hell, no one is even willing to take on the gun show loophole.

   The gun show loophole is this: If you go to a gun show and buy a gun or 40 from a licensed dealer, he’s got to put your name into the FBI file, via telephone, for a moment. If you don’t have a felony or outstanding warrants, you’ll be green lighted to buy your guns. If there is something on your record that prohibits you from having a guy, the background check will red light you to the dealer and you won’t get your gun. In all cases, all information obtained by the FBI about people trying to purchase guns is destroyed at midnight of the same day, so there is no record of who tried to buy what.

   But there is a loophole big enough to drive a tractor-trailer through in the process: The Gun Show Loophole. Private citizens who want to sell their guns are not licensed dealers, and therefore don’t even have to do the ridiculously simple FBI background check. The seller just shows up at the gun show with his stash of personal guns and sells them, legally, to anyone who wants them. In Texas, thousands of those guns wind up in Mexico to help fuel the drug wars there. But a lot of those guns wind up in New York or Los Angeles or Toronto on the black market. And there is no way to trace them, no way to know if the gun show loophole purchaser really wanted a gun for him/herself or wanted 500 guns to later sell on the black market. Money talks, people die. The NRA hides behind the Second Amendment of the Constitution.

    Make no mistake: The NRA is the elephant in the room on this issue. If they’ve got politicians so cowed that they won’t even attempt to close the Gun Show Loophole, you can forget about any real gun control. When the subject of 30,000 gun deaths per year in the U.S. comes up, the NRA is quick to point out that half of those are suicides—as if easy access to guns didn’t help a lot of those suicides along. When it’s pointed out that Canada only has 2.2 gun deaths annually per 100,000 people while the U.S. has 10.64 per the same 100,000, the NRA is quick to point out that the problem is that too many bad guys have guns, so more good guys have to arm themselves.

    We have an estimated 300,000,000—yes, that is 300 million—guns in private hands in the U.S. That’s a lot of guns. And a lot of ammunition. But hell, when someone wants to buy 10,000 rounds, what’s to stop them? No law against it. Maybe they do a lot of target shooting. And when we have another crazy person walk into a school or movie theater or candy store and start blowing people away, well, the NRA says that’s not good, but part of the price of freedom. And it’s part of the price of freedom when a three-year-old finds daddy’s loaded gun and shoots his brother in the face. The problem wasn’t the gun, it was that daddy didn’t lock it in a safe. Bad daddy.

   I’m probably one of the few people in Texas who doesn’t own a gun. When I’m out in the jungle in Peru I have a shotgun at all times, just in case I need to scare away a predator, but not here in Texas. I don’t have a gun because I have nightmares about sleepwalking and killing one of my family, or them killing someone when they get really angry. What if I got drunk and stupid? What if I shot a stranger who came to the door at 3 AM because their car broke down and they didn’t have a cell phone and I took them for a burglar? I get chills when I have those dreams. So no guns for me.

   Obviously, I’m in the minority here in Texas and probably throughout the U.S. At the other end of the rainbow are the open carry people. They not only have guns, they walk around letting you know it.

   In Colorado recently, a man was walking around with a rifle. Someone called 911 to report him. The dispatcher reminded the caller that there was nothing illegal in that because Colorado, in addition to having legal pot, is an open carry state.

   The police were finally dispatched to look into the guy with the rifle. By the time they got there he’d killed four people he’d never met. Just killed them at random. No big deal, said the NRA. Just the price of freedom.

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

Off to Peru

Dear All: I'm off to Peru for a month or so. I hope you all get through January safely and with a good dollop of fun tossed your way. I'll see in February.
Peter G

Happy New Year, everyone!

Well, time to weigh in. What should I say? My daughter Madeleina and I are about to eat prime rib with basmati rice cooked with garlic and a touch of olive oil and seared zucchini and yellow squash with organic scallions and a Roma tomato in pan juices. Not everyone would want that. Most of the people who would want that meal cannot afford it. They certainly could not afford the olive oil, the organic veggies, the touch of excellent blue cheese on the steaks, the spinach under the steaks. They could not afford the pink sea salt or the butcher-ground black pepper or the pans to cook this meal properly. How we did it/do it, I don't know. The pans I'm using were first class and given to me at my marriage to Chepa in 1994. They've got another 100 years in them till their really broken in. My knives have been collected--by buying or being gifted--over 40 years. That means I'm old.
    None of that matters to anyone but me. And me? I'm sad, because my sons and ex and her new babies and my grand baby went to a family party that I was not included in. I'm not included because I won't stay awake till 3 AM. That doesn't bother me. But generally the kids come here for fireworks before the party and so we have a pre-party party. I upped my fireworks stash, which is good, by a couple of hundred bucks today, so it's a very good stash now. But so far they've forgotten to come.
    I guess that's good. I was a rotten son at 30 as well. Payback's a bitch, Gorman! Live with it!
    Past them, I know some of you. We've met or talked or what have you. So what would I like for you this year/ I'd like you to have good food and the time to make it and enjoy it. I'd like you to love the work you do, and if you don't I'd love  you to have the opportunity to change it to something you do love. I'd like you all to wake up every day this year with fresh eyes to see the world in a new way. I'd love you not to be sick, not to have aches and pains and illness that detract from your daily joy. I'd love you to get a raise at work that would give you enough to share $20 a month with the local food bank, or surprise a homeless person or six with fresh fruit now and then. I'd love you to be part of the skein of humanity that makes this world a better place, and we can do that without suffering for it. I'd love you to have shoes that fit so well your feet never hurt. I'd love you to love your haircut and smile every time you see yourselves in the mirror. I'd love you to lose the weight you want lose or decide to love yourself as you are. I'd love it if each of you could forgive one person completely and let them know it. I'd love you to love yourselves and soar as high as you want with the freedom, strength, and will to allow you that. Happy New Year, everyone! We can fix this world with love. And that love starts with loving ourselves.--PG

Quick Note on Taking People Out to the Jungle

I was involved with a discussion group about the need to try to be prepared when you take people to the jungle, particularly for something like ayahuasca. This was a note I posted. No big deal, but i know I'll lose that thread and want to remember this. Here's what I wrote:
       I take people out to the jungle. I've been doing it since 1998. At first I took them to my teacher, Julio. He died in 2007, and my team and I decided that his son Jairo should take over the space. My group is with me five days before we drink ayahuasca. Maybe 20 percent are not permitted for various reasons. I have six of us watching a max of 12 people; but I've got 5 more within 20 yards if we need them.I've got 3 more within 100 yards if we really need them. And I'm still scared to death that something will go wrong! Stuff happens in the jungle and you have to be prepared. Planning will never suffice because what you plan for will never occur. But the act of planning gives you a shot at taking care of things should shit rain down. And while I do not want to jinx myself, I always want my guests to be in the best possible hands. Yes, there are still septic spiders, poisonous snakes, cayman, electric eels, vampire bats and a host of bad things. The trick is to try to minimize those bad things from happening.  

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

To all of you, if I had my druthers and was king of the world, I'd give you peace. I'd share water and food and grazing land and knowledge and invite you to teach me as well. I'd give you health, a sense of joy at the little things we stumble upon daily, I'd give you lovers who never bored you or took advantage of you. I'd give you experiences that took you to the farthest reaches of your capabilities but never more than that. I'd give you sleep when you need it, comfort when you need it, a sense of belonging when you feel like an outsider, a bit of mystery to keep things interesting, and a spirit or three to help you through vexing times with clear guidance. I'd give you the wherewithal to fight through the obstacles that stand between you and your dreams. I'd give you the power to empower yourselves to be who you want to be, shamelessly, proudly, ferociously.
    Merry Christmas everyone, no matter how you say it or think it. And please have a wonderfully joyful New Year!
The Texas Clan of the Gormans

Worrying About My Madeleina

So your kid makes it through infancy, healthy, and you sigh in relief. They make it through kindergarden and elementary school without too many bumps and bruises and lots of papers saying they're good students and you sigh in relief. They make it through high school, there are some tears but they're not bullied, not molested, and you sigh in relief. And then my Madeleina is off to college, just an hour away, and has a good roommate, good classes, good teachers, and all is good. So now she's home and last night was the second night in the last week where she's come home between 3 and 4 AM. What to say? She comes home sober, doesn't go drugs, was just hanging with pals. So I say what every dad says: Nothing good happens after 2 AM. Remember that, Madeleina, and let it go.
    This morning she comes into my office, plumps down on the couch and announces: Dad, I might have a record.
    I ask, What?
    She explains that she and two friends were out in a nearby park. It was just after midnight, the park curfew, when they started walking back to the car. They weren't far from it when three police cars pulled up and told them the park was closed, then asked for identification. They scanned the IDs, asked if they had drugs or weapons, were told no, then were given a warning. Next time they'll get a citation and fine.
    Madeleina was indignant as she told it. We were so close to the car and it was only about six minutes after midnight and I wanted to give those cops a piece of my mind.....
    I reminded her that that's how people get tased or arrested. She said she knew, which is why she kept her mouth shut.
    I said good on her.
    The three then went to the home of the other girl in the trio to drop her off. That's when it got a little spooky, dad, she said. Because there was a man kind of pacing in front of her house.
    Was he on the road?
    No, he was in front of her house.
    Now the young woman's home is set back 100 feet in the middle of nowhere. There are other houses around but they've all got an acre or three, so it's pretty rural, and the road the house is on is very rural, very backwater and beautiful, but not a road someone could stumble on by accident.
    Anyway, dad, we pulled up and asked him who he was. He said he had no car but that his name was Ricky and he needed a ride. He had no phone either, which is why he was in front of the house: He was deciding whether to wake people up to ask to use their phone.
    Madeleina, it was about 1 AM in nowhere. He had no car. He wasn't walking anywhere. But he'd obviously come from somewhere. And if he came from somewhere walking, he could probably return to that somewhere on foot as well.
     Don't worry, dad, Lizzie lied and said we didn't have enough gas to go anywhere. Then he asked to borrow a phone, so we let him and he called someone and when they answered he said Hello, this is Bob. That was weird, right, because he told us his name was Ricky. Anyway, after that he walked away and we all went into my friend's house to make sure he left. And that's why I got home at 4 AM.
     Darling, did your friend L recognize the man from the area?
     Never saw him before, dad.
    So a guy with no car winds up in nowhere at 1 AM and needs a ride home? No. He had a ride. It was probably waiting in the dark just down the road. This guy was going to rob the house, and then signal his friend to come round with the car as he was leaving, so that there was little chance anyone would see the car long enough to get license plate numbers.
    Could be, dad. All in all, it was kind of scary when we got in the house and started talking about it.
    And that's why dads like me worry about my Madeleina.

On a Perfectly Selfish Note....

On a perfectly selfish note: How can it be that I've had something along the line of 4,000 people join the group Ayahuasca in My Blood, and have only sold maybe 6000 copies. Not everybody who bought the book would want to join the group. Not even anywhere near two-out-of-three. So, this month, for instance, how did more than 50 people ask to join when I only sold 14 copies so far? Am I nuts or are there sites out there giving the book away for free and people are actually taking advantage of that? No artist should have his/her work used/misused/abused that way. No musician, no dancer, no film maker, no poet, no sculptor, and no writer. As I said, this is a perfectly selfish note. But if anyone has the answer, or an answer, I'd love to hear it.

Life Goes On

Obla-di, Obla-da, Life goes oooonnn, O la la la life goes on....
Been a hectic couple of weeks. I've had 9 visitors to the house: Two young women for sapo, one guy who wanted to meet me because he read my books; one young guy from Houston who brought me a stick he thought was important; two people who are coming on my January Jungle Jaunt, my old friend, Milan, who came by just to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner with us, plus a few days; a woman, now a friend, who is a television producer, and an utter stranger who showed up at the door asking if I was Peter Gorman, and if I was, could he talk with me.
   That and a case of walking pneumonia have had me under siege. Not a lot of energy. Now it might be emphysema, which I would have to own, considering how much I smoke, but then that would mean it came on awfully quickly: Two months ago I was never out of breath. The last two months I walk 200 steps and i'm gasping. I hope this is temporary. I'm considering taking antibiotics as I'm coughing up a quart or so of phlegm from my lungs daily. That's a lot of mucous and probably more than you wanted to know.
    On the other hand: Madeleina came home from college exactly a week ago and that has been great: We laugh, yell, argue, laugh again. She's the bees-knees. I've rewarded her by cooking Uncle Clem's Chicken, chicken parmesana, duck breast with pears and port wine; Lime chicken, a hot roast beef sandwich on good sesame french bread with seared organic tomato slices; and tonight chicken breast with bok choy, ginger, daicon radish, scallions, garlic in a sesame oil sauce, over a bed of baby spinach, with a side of broccoli, cauliflower, sweet red onions, tomato, garlic, zucchini, and yellow squash.
   So I have been remiss. I apologize. I've been worried about my January trip to the jungle which will lose $3,400 that i will have to put on a credit card. Darn it. 20 People signed up for it and only four are still with me. That's unusual. I hope something will happen in the next couple of weeks to at least let me break even....
   I love you all for sticking with this loser. Thanks.
PG

New Column

Well, a week or more ago I posted a piece on how fear causes problems. Right now, they are still counting bodies from a mass shooting by what looks to be three murderers who attacked a center for people with learning disabilities. At the moment they are saying 14 dead. How does this happen? Were these foreign born or US-raised terrorists?
    The information remains sketchy, but considering that I expanded on how fear diminishes us in my most recent Skunk Magazine Drug War Follies column, I thought I'd post it here. It's not on the money, but it's part of what explains things like today's mass killing.

DRUG WAR FOLLIES 90

Too Much Damned Pain in This World. What can be Done About It?

By Peter Gorman

I know you all understand that there is a lead-time when it comes to magazine publishing. It’s generally a couple of months. So what I write about today has to still be fresh by the time it reaches you. That’s not always an easy guess for what material to cover. But what I’m writing today, and yeah, it’s serious shit this time, wrapped in sadness, are things that I would give anything to be old news by the time your read it.

    The news right now isn’t good. Yes, up in Canada you’ve had the sense to toss your very Conservative leadership and that’s fantastic for you. Here in the US, we had the great sense to do the same 7 years ago—though our incredibly short-sighted, misogynistic, pro-birth, anti-human, pro-rich, anti-poor, bible-toting, beer-chugging, anti-pot, asshole-stuffed Congress has done its best to hamstring him.

   And yes, there is good news in a lot of states concerning the cannabis movement and with the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration being called out in a lot of quarters for saying that marijuana has no medical use and serves no medical purpose.

   But so much of the rest of the news seems to be filled with palpable pain. We’ve got racial tensions blowing up due to cops killing a lot of people for no apparent reason other than that they panicked and decided to shoot, over and over and over. We’ve got hate groups putting up Facebook pages claiming to be university white supremacy unions. We’ve got ISIS recruiting thousands of disenfranchised kids from all over the world to take part on their insane and apocalyptic war meant to bring on the Endtimes. We’ve got the USA mostly keeping boots off the ground in the on-fire Middle East while our drones hit as many civilians as they do bad guys. We are watching whole countries being bombed back to the middle-ages. Millions of Syrians have become refugees because their civil war, the war that’s been going on for five years now, is being fueled by immeasurable hatred. Millions of Iraqis are being displaced as well as their cities and towns are torn to pieces by half-a-dozen different murderous factions.

   We’ve got a huge swath of Brazil facing starvation and displacement because of a dam collapse that released a huge amount of very toxic mining waste into the Doce River there.

   We’ve got climate change that is causing unprecedented extremes in weather patterns and events.

   We’ve got extremist groups in several parts of Africa that are committing atrocities against humans at astonishing levels of frequency.

   We’ve got planes being blown out of the sky and the Paris attacks and millions going hungry and homeless and left helpless and hopeless in nearly every corner of the globe.

   We’ve even got ego wars raging in the legitimate and legal cannabis business world in Colorado and elsewhere.

   The list of horror and sorrow is long. Too long. Yes, nature, through disease and cataclysmic events will always make life on Earth a bit harrowing, keeping us on our toes.

   But the madness men are creating seems to be escalating once again. The pain and suffering men are causing one another is horrendous.

   And it is all caused by fear. Fear of not being seen as strong enough; fear that people will discover your penis is small; fear of the other skin colors; fear of not having enough; fear that someone else might have more than you; fear of an unseen god who apparently demands bloodshed in his name; fear of our own shadows.

   That fear consumes people. That fear drives anger and rage and negativity and finally, it drives all of the sickening things that men do to one another.

   And while that fear was once a necessary part of man’s existence—fear of drought, not enough water for everyone’s camels at the oasis, virulent diseases, pestilence, and just being mauled by large animals of prey—it’s become as useless an appendage as an appendix. We can overcome those things that used to terrify humans while still maintaining the fight or flight reflex for things like tornados or wildfires. But to maintain the fear that people had as a safety valve 150,000 years ago, that’s no longer necessary as we’ve conquered most of those negative realities. There doesn’t need to be famine anymore. Or lack of water.

   The question is, how can we eliminate the fear. If we could do that, the negativity would dissipate of its own accord, and the brutality would vanish. Because if we could eliminate the fear for long enough to work in unison with one another, we’d find what we already know in our hearts to be true to be true in reality as well: That there is enough for everyone. There is enough food, there is enough water, there could be enough shelters, there could be enough doctors and nurses and whatever the hell else the human race needs to live.

    If we could work together we cold reforest the Sahara, replenish and refresh the oceans. We could all be sipping on good fresh water and we could all have basic plumbing and we could have a world where people do not have to hide in fear from the next massacre or the next drone bombing or the next fear-fueled teenager killing people in a movie theater.

   It should not be so hard to eliminate the fear. I wish I knew how. I’ve tried to raise my own kids not to be fearful, not to be so fearful that the heart fills with hate and rage. But then my kids were not raised on the US dropping napalm on them, or on Boko Haram slaughtering whole villages or on ISIS’ death wish or any of the other wretched things men do to one another. It will take a lot of work to eliminate the fear not just from the perpetrators of that horror, but the fear that’s been instilled in those who have suffered through it. How well do the Bosnians and Serbians get along after what they did to one another? How much fear and hatred still exists in the hearts of the elderly Jews who saw their families put on trains and sent to the incinerators? How do we eliminate that fear? What do we do?

   I wish I knew. Awareness of it is the first step. Speaking out about it—not me, not just here, but by good men and women everywhere, all the time—would bring further awareness. But how do we get to where we’ve got the mass to allow the changes to begin. Not the numbers: There are already a whole lot more good people in this world than bad ones, the fearful ones. How do we get them together to stand up and point out the fear, to start working to eliminate the issues that cause the fear?

   A lot of you younger readers are going to inherit this world. We hippies thought we would have it all set up and peaceful for you by now, the second decade of the Age of Aquarius. We didn’t get it done, but it still needs to be done. And it can be done. I’m not the guy with the answer. I do see the problem. Fear. Eliminate fear in men’s hearts and the rest will take care of itself. I wish I were smart enough to have the answer.

  Now, remember how I started this? About magazine lead-time and trying not to be dated by the time the reader reads this. Well, I would love nothing more than to discover that every bad thing I’ve mentioned and all the ones I didn’t were gone by the time this hits the newsstand and I was completely outdated. That would be great.

  Okay. Sorry to go so heavy, but I needed to say that. Take a breath or three, fill a bong. Come up with answers and let’s make this world the one we want it to be.

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