CAVEAT:
LONG MFing report. Worth your while if you are a SAP, inclined to outpourings of emotion or just plain love a tragi-romatic yarn.
Ok, so this is my most personal report to date. I wasn't really sure I would post it, but after a little scottish lubrication, I've found me balls. :shock:
Judge not lest ye be judged. Enough warning - I hope you enjoy!
Aya with Ay and I
The slightest drizzle and stilled fog mirrored my state in the drive past Mirabel on that treacherous stretch of road I ordinarily avoid, even if it adds to my journey – but, in all senses, there was no detour where we were going: an ayahuasca ceremony with attendant “shaman” in the lake-spattered pine-rich area north of Montreal and most of the way to Ottawa. I was exhausted and no longer even sure a ceremony was a good idea: caffeine deprived with low blood sugar from fasting - and a consequent headache - were neither encouraging me nor making it any safer on this highway of two meager lanes that thought it had eight. I was as careful as I could be in this state, particularly in light of my precious cargo: Ay in the passenger seat and her friend Ha, cramped in the seat of my two-door coupe behind me.
I missed the exit despite my caution and attention, and we had to backtrack about 20 minutes of highway.
Ha I had met 8 years ago – an actor in a few scenes of a feature film I had shot, but we had not seen each other since; Ay I had met a little over a year ago, and was a peripheral part of a crew I get together with a few times a year for epic chalet parties: a rented country house, eight to 12 intrepid voyagers, the purest MDMA available, the purest K their connections could dig up and party balloons of nitrous.
We had connected immediately, Ay and I, deepening that bond each time we met to the point that perilous questions were invoked in me – for, you see, she is married. And I know her husband (he came to one of the chalet gatherings); and I like her husband – we could easily be good friends with a little encouragement.
Enter my primary rule: HURT NO ONE. BUT YOURSELF.
A little more background is necessary:
I just vaulted off the tail end of a near sixteen year relationship – for me a joyous, long overdue breakup that left me jubilant and freed of the anger and frustration and stress I had foisted on myself trying to fix a broken thing with all the wrong pieces. A month in - and a few nostalgic moments but not one of sadness or grief – and I must believe we had been breaking up slowly for years, unaware.
I had spent time with Ay shortly after and in the weeks preceding the ceremony, at her initiation mostly, and had accepted this as friendship but was left with many unanswered questions every time. She is a very loving person and has an open heart, which, ironically, makes her extremely hard to read.
I had accepted to partake in this (expensive) Ayahuasca ceremony for a number of reasons: I had always done these things alone (meaning tryptamines), but after a few harrowing solo aya experiences and given that my ordinarily blissful high dose mushroom trips had taken a turn to sadness and self-loathing for going on a year, I thought I should give Aya a shot in a more traditional setting. Between the communal aspect, the guided tour and my newfound tranquil and smiley disposition, I felt hopeful - but nervous and fearful nevertheless.
And of course I would be there with Ay. Whatever that meant…
We pulled into the long, winding gravelly drive and parked between trees. The little log cabin was twenty feet from a gorgeous and stilled lake and when we opened it’s door, J greeted us all with a hug and a smile, paying particular attention to Ay, whom she knew from having given several other ceremonies. They seemed like old friends.
The place itself was very rustic – exposed wood all around, high triangled ceilings – and was adorned with all the trappings of a be-chakra-ed neo-Buddhist Amazonian tribal shaman.
We brought our stuff in and changed into the required all-white garb: my pants were actually the lightest of greys – I own no white pants and am not a great shopper, so after eight stores I finally made the executive decision that grey would just have to do…
We sat on the ground around a low table that had a white cloth with what I am guessing were peaceful and wrathful demons stitched into its edge; on the table were crystals, incense and candles – J told us this was the altar and we were instructed never to put anything on it. She called all of this the ceremony and referred to herself as a guide – some part of me was happy the word shaman was never employed.
J told us a little about herself: she had been drinking Ayahuasca for 13 years (I estimate she is 48 years old or so), starting in Brazil and making three to six month pilgrimages each year to “study” (and set up a business “guiding” as was clear later). She had drunk hundreds if not thousands of times, she said, with people all over the globe, but mostly Brazillians, Canadians and Californians.
She asked us a little about ourselves and I nervously, (but slowly and quietly!) rattled on about my experience so she didn’t think I was a newcomer to all of this – possibly important information, but more likely my ego cluttering the silence.
She laid down some ground rules – don’t lock the bathroom door, toilet seat down – And the asked us if we had any specific intentions we would like to share.
Ay started: nothing in particular this time, she just wanted the medicine to speak to her; Ha was 50 and said he had been abstaining from sex for two years, after a promiscuous period following a breakup in which he hurt several women and felt terrible – he wanted to know if it was time for him to start looking again; I explained my recent breakup and consequent jubilation and expressed a desire to go deep into myself to see if my feelings about this were true and genuine, or if I were merely a fool fooling a fool.
And, left unsaid, to confirm the veracity of my deepening feelings toward Ay.
Then, one by one, J called us into another room to drink. Ay first, me second and finally Ha. I rounded the corner and she poured half a small wine glass of tea that looked like, well – tea! I asked her if we were all getting the same dose and she answered, perfectly:
“I will drink less, and as for the rest – we’ll see.”
I took my place next to Ha, who was between me and Ay, while J sat across the altar from all of us.
I should note at this point that I have never been much for new-agey mumbo jumbo or the neo-hippy vibe, as many of you may know, but as this is a transitional period for me I decided to hang my preconceptions at the door and be as ready as I could to conceive OTHER, and have it conceived in me. So no judgment, no second guessing – just, well, I guess just letting it ALL BE.
So the candles were lit, the dimming light outside casting no shadows but rather a bluish hue to the room, and we sat meditating and looking around waiting. I was nervous – I have not had a good, or particularly valuable, or blissful or remotely pleasant trip for a very long time, and I was naturally worried about finding myself in that all-too-familiar hellish headscape and freaking out in front of everyone…
Then it started. Things started to flow around me, to move and wave and oscillate – like an effect in a bad trip movie.
THIS IS GOING TO BE A BAD MOVIE. No…please…PLEASE…NO…
I thought back to a recent difficult experience in which I broke my rule and did mushrooms with others. I had started with a cap of MDMA and figured it would smooth things out as it had one other time, but I was a little reckless and took 1.5g of my home grown Orissa. Not a lot, but in light of my recent experiences and that I was doing them with others – well, I could have been more cautious.
The setting was perfect – back of a friend’s vegan restaurant, tables aside and pillows and blankets scattered on the soft floor, good friends: six women and two men, one of whom I did not know very well.
But the darkness crept through and sunk its claws in my mind. Ay was there, on mushrooms, and maybe she sensed something. She came and cuddled and reassured me just with her presence. I wanted to leave but had nowhere to go and would have left nevertheless to god-knows-where to do god-knows-what had she not been there. She wrapped herself around me and I was torn between the ecstasy of her touch and the horror in my mind. Slowly it subsided and she stayed with me throughout, running her fingers along my arm, my neck, my face. And then she did the sexiest thing I have ever had done to me:
I was on my back staring up, and her face came even with mine, our noses nearly touching but faces reversed, chin to forehead, forehead to chin. With her raven pitch hair floating across my shoulders and past my ears, she traced my profile with her nose:
Up my chin, over my lips up and over the bump of nose and then sliding through the channel between my eyes, open in wonder and awe, before laying a small kiss on my forehead and dragging it into my hair, completing the journey up my face with the tip of her nose.
Were it not for her I should be forever lost.
I remembered this experience and knew that Ay was not far this time either. And I was safe. And in a completely different state of mind. I decided to banish my fear and closed my eyes. Dust of all colours floated behind my lids and I felt the terror surging and rising. I imagined all the dust gathering before me and it did. Now a pile, I wiped it away with the edge of my hand and underneath was a panorama of pure joy and geometric dancing spirals and stairs and edifices and gardens and the healthy flora and fauna of my mind. I smiled inwardly and my lips rose to match the thought. That’s all there is to it:
I stood up next to the mountain,
And I chopped it down with the edge of my hand!
Tears welled and all my mind could muster in its throes was:
Thank you thank you thank You ThankYou THANKYOUTHANKYOU!
My right hand was bristling and tingling and electric sparkles were felt inside it, running up and down and through the finger that, months earlier, I had had chopped off in an accident (and had had sewn back on after!). My whole body was tingling, but the overall sensation seemed to be concentrated in my finger and emanating from my hand.
The visions grew brighter and more present – DMT visions and architecture, but slower, more inviting than I had ever seen them. I thought of love, in all its forms, the love I have for my son, for my ex, for my parents and sister and yes, for Ay. I love her. No idea what that means, but for the moment it matters little. I open myself to all love and all loves. Never have I known such joy, such acceptance, such ability to be without my being interfering.
Language escapes, language lost, language forgotten, l-aya-nGUAGE, l-AYA-n-SCAPE and scope and cope and S-cape and back and back again…
…And language found.
I wrote. Always a pen and notebook near. I crashed into the pillows and floated away and thoughts gathered and jewels poured into my mind and something somewhere organized them and told me when it was time to write them down.
And I would sit up, scribble unseen in the frolicking candlelight, then dump back into the pillows and crash back into spiraling joy and bliss and love.
How do you experience me?
This is just one big long song, and you are melody to my rhythm.
Never forget to surprise yourself!
I look down for if I look at you too long I know I shall be blind.
I just yawned the universe!
Make wise choices for choices are all you have.
You have nothing to give that I do not already have.
These tears I shed for the day I forget what it is to touch you.
Oh, the bliss to not need conversation!
How long shall it last this silly grin of self-satisfaction? Do I get to keep it?
No one is watching me – what a revelation!
But one kiss between misery and bliss!
Stop calculating and live.
Stop letting fear be your keel.
Deep within I have found the satisfaction mechanism.
ALL MY FEELINGS ARE GENUINE AND TRUE.
This was the answer to my question! Out of the blue and red and green iridescence of my mind! For the first time in years I knew that all I had done and suffered and steered away from and back towards, and all the joy and freedom and ease and love I felt of late was GENUINE AND TRUE. For all my faults and all I have yet to live through and learn, I knew what I had suspected but knew not how to confirm:
I am a good man.
AND I SHALL DO GOOD IN THIS WORLD.
And it thrilled me to think this. I felt a power I thought had long left me returning in full blooming force. I BEAMED but knew it was not me beaming but a beaming-into I was reflecting just as it was BECOMING me.
I opened my eyes. Ay and J were singing Portuguese songs, in mellifluous and enchanting duet. My Ize were mezmered and I watched her sway and watched the sound lift from Ay’s lips and grace the air, bubbles of spiraling joy and harmony.
I was coming down slowly, feeling the harmala drunkenness more than anything now. Then the headache moved in, slowly, but building. It distracted me and eventually started to overwhelm. I laid back and thought of other things but it was always there.
We were meant to drink again (it’s usually three times, but due to our late start J was limiting it to two, which was fine with me). I wasn’t sure I would drink again. I knew where the headache came from, but still listened to J’s explanation about purging being more than just vomiting:
Purging through my head is all well and good, I thought, but my blood sugar was dipping very low. And I had abstained from coffee, so the effects of not eating all day and no caffeine were catching up to me. J gave me some sort of unlabeled unguent that I put on my temples, but it helped little.
Then Ay came over and massaged my temples and my head through my hair – she is a massage therapist with some sort of osteopathy training. Now that was doing something! It was alleviated very slightly, but enough that I heeded J’s advice and drank again, just a little less than the first time.
It was only a few short minutes before the feelings of joy and well-being surged back up, but less visual than the last time. My finger tingled again, but less intensely. I thought of my son and pictured his face. Suddenly he smiled and his face began to spin. Faster and faster and faster until the illusion seen in movies of a fast turning wheel suddenly changing directions occurred, only now, settling in to the spinning whirr of my son’s face, were the features of that very same face! It spun and spun, faster and faster and the new features emerged slowly until they took over the vision - and then began turning themselves – spinning and spinning until another face emerged! It kept going like this for a while, my son’s spinning faces whirling and reappearing and smiling and whirling…
Ha had purged fiercely in the first round, but clearly wasn’t done. He purged next to me and I suggested to myself that I would not purge, then leaned forward, grabbed my basket and let it all fly. I set the basket aside when I was done and J gave me a paper towel and swapped out the bag. I flowed down and settled back in to the pillows and the GRIN. I felt smug and powerful and sexy and lithe and supple – amazing what a little vomit can do for the ego!
I must have purged five or six times from that last cup. At one point we were listening to a german accented vocoder voice droning authoritatively about consciousness and power, followed by what I can only guess were testimonials, the first a woman:
“I don’t really get it, I try this thing you say and concentrate, but I feel empty, then nauseous and once I even VOMITED…”
Cue vomit: All three of us sat up, mere instants between, purging violently as we laughed and chortled and spit up into our baskets – we laughed for about five to ten minutes after; that we all chucked on cue and chuckled together seemed like the funniest thing in the history of humour!
The tea was fading slowly and as I lay on the floor I was treated to a show I will never forget.
J was long gone, having slipped away to her room an hour ago, wishing us all rest and peace, and Ay had moved to the sofa that stretched away from my feet, parallel to me.
Suddenly her feet came up over and settled on the armrests, naked and perfect in the flickering light from the candles and the fire in the hearth. She moved her toes to the music and her feet swayed on their heels. From my angle I could not see her face or her body, only the feet and the slight widening to soft calf. Her hands came into view as she stretched her arms up, her hands wings, the fingers flying with grace through the notes, twining and flaying and blossoming; toes tinkling to the rhythm, she raised a foot then the other and joined her hands in a spectacle I will never see repeated, an exquisite and tender dance of flickering and wavering fire-hued feet and fingers and toes and palms and heels…
She is exquisite. The thought had been rolling through my mind untended for hours, days, months… and now it spoke to me: SHE IS EXQUISITE.
…And I am doomed! But what sweet and delectable doom – were I to choose my demise, this exquisite doom would be the only blank card in the deck, the one solitary card slid on the table.
About a minute or an hour passed after this, and she came to me again. And lay next to me as the room glowed blue with the sneaking dawn. Ay ran her fingers through my hair, drew slow lines in my forehead and traced the outline of my lips. She leaned down and said softly:
“I am going into the other room now to sleep.”
Then Ay hugged me and I pulled her close and embraced her as hard as I dared. When I let up to let her go, she stayed laying with me, face nested in my neck, for about another twenty minutes that seemed longer but much too short.
One last kiss quite close to the lips but still cheeky, and she left. My mind was racing, thoughts pacing words placing replacing and chasing me back and forth and fork and bath and borth and fack fack FACK…
I tried but sleep was another continent and I was still afloat in some ocean somewhere bobbing and bobbing and robbing myself of all that I want and feel and know to be real BUT CANNOT STEAL… So I tossed, turned, lost, churned, cost and learned and crossed to burn and unlearn and sat up and read a book.
Then turned again and again, the pillow plowing cheek after cheek and then wrote pages in my head, pages of a novel I am writing, pages I tried to stop writing and tried to forget but they persisted. So I opened my laptop as quietly as I could to not waken Ha, who was sprawled out on the floor, his mouth gaping in low-snore mode. I wrote the pages as they were in my head, verbatim, all six of them. And not a moment of all this without that smug smile I had missed for so many years.
Then something happened, but I’ll get back to it… I will, I-shall…
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The morning came and fruit salad was made and I ate of this, and a sandwich I had brought, some sesame baklava type things and then sat with a coffee for the road – I had not slept a clink and I needed to be awake at least for the drive back.
Then J’s expected sales pitch came on cue:
“If you have friends… discretion… usually more expensive… come back for the solstice… group rates…”
The part of the deal I loathe, and leaves a sick taste in my mouth, cause it’s always a thinly veiled mix:
It’s such a gift, my gift to you – check or cash? Cash please and next time, full rate, my beautiful…
Worth every penny for me, but the mercantile overtones just made my poor sleepless mind gag. Love, love love, but I am ever the cynic - and idealist all wrapped in one neat little package, trying to bust out but suffocating together.
Tiz Watt Tiz and Taint Know Mar.
And yes, a small detail I left out – I got up to piss about every 15 minutes, right up until the coffee. Four times an hour for fifteen hours, 60 pisses, quite a few less flushes… I felt an apology necessary or at the very least an acknowledgement, especially for the after-hours urinations, and when I did, I guess I expected to be met with a “That’s ok, part of the cleansing, we all have our ways,” but in it’s place, I was told by J:
“Yes, I know, I hear everything at night.” And a silent loose-smiled stare. Oh, well, she’s human too. Clearly.
The drive home was sunny and warm and was greeted with three tired and sated smiles. Ay invited me for a massage, gratis, at her clinic later (she had to work from three to nine!). She had been offering me one for a while, but I had never taken her up on it. I told her I had a few details to work out, but that I would love to and would confirm later.
The massage was divine and I had to wonder where she found the energy. Her hands and fingers swam through my skin and under my flesh to the bone buried below, and I nearly drifted off to the sound of her breathing the rhythm of dream and wind.
And the day ended.
Phlegm and mucus and deep-chested coughing met my next morning, and I felt like death and life at once – hard to describe, but somehow the two co-existed in my body, yesterday and today in an erotic dance in my core, guiding me to an unknown future.
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To return to I-Shall, as promised:
After I had written those pages that came to my sleepless head from god-knows-where, Ay came out of the room and sat on the sofa across from the one I lay on. I pretended to sleep and watched her. She curled up and looked out the window. From my vantage, no ground was visible, just the sofa, the huge window, the lake and the shore beyond. Ay was in a boat, on the lake, toes curled under the old divan. She looked out over the flickering ripples and as I watched her watching, the tiny ripples became pixels and froze, then shifted and froze and shifted and froze, like the stuttering slow motion you get by pulling and doubling frames in a film. It was a digital dance of noise, but there was a message encrypted there. An undecipherable message - for now at least.
I watched her watch me then, through slatted eyes: she watched me for minutes, her gaze reflecting mine and reflected by it in turn. Then she picked up the book I had been reading and read a few short chapters:
SUM
forty tales from the afterlives
(… a fantastic book recommended to me by Gibran 2.)
She smiled as she read, and finally I sat and we chatted about the book, the night, each other, and anything else that popped into our heads. I lay back down and it was not long before she came over.
Leaning over the armrest where my head was lain, she started to trace the outline of my head with her fingers; she drew my face, filling in my features one by one with her fingers: forehead, nose, eyes, cheeks, lips...
She has drawn me and I am drawn by her.
I felt her lean further over the armrest and I opened my eyes. She was looking into them, and after a few moments, she said:
“There are many kinds of Love…”
A smile-speckled silence.
“…And I love you.”
And I knew in that instant what the lake was trying to convey, what the aya was telling me about Ay and I:
SHE WAS PREGNANT.
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And now, days later, no confirmation for this information, I am elated and devastated… but the two coil up and weave through my core, and all is well, and balanced.
Now I must go into the world and find a way to live this love and to forget it altogether.
**********
Thanks for the end you wrote and read
cheers,
JBArk
LONG MFing report. Worth your while if you are a SAP, inclined to outpourings of emotion or just plain love a tragi-romatic yarn.
Ok, so this is my most personal report to date. I wasn't really sure I would post it, but after a little scottish lubrication, I've found me balls. :shock:
Judge not lest ye be judged. Enough warning - I hope you enjoy!
Aya with Ay and I
The slightest drizzle and stilled fog mirrored my state in the drive past Mirabel on that treacherous stretch of road I ordinarily avoid, even if it adds to my journey – but, in all senses, there was no detour where we were going: an ayahuasca ceremony with attendant “shaman” in the lake-spattered pine-rich area north of Montreal and most of the way to Ottawa. I was exhausted and no longer even sure a ceremony was a good idea: caffeine deprived with low blood sugar from fasting - and a consequent headache - were neither encouraging me nor making it any safer on this highway of two meager lanes that thought it had eight. I was as careful as I could be in this state, particularly in light of my precious cargo: Ay in the passenger seat and her friend Ha, cramped in the seat of my two-door coupe behind me.
I missed the exit despite my caution and attention, and we had to backtrack about 20 minutes of highway.
Ha I had met 8 years ago – an actor in a few scenes of a feature film I had shot, but we had not seen each other since; Ay I had met a little over a year ago, and was a peripheral part of a crew I get together with a few times a year for epic chalet parties: a rented country house, eight to 12 intrepid voyagers, the purest MDMA available, the purest K their connections could dig up and party balloons of nitrous.
We had connected immediately, Ay and I, deepening that bond each time we met to the point that perilous questions were invoked in me – for, you see, she is married. And I know her husband (he came to one of the chalet gatherings); and I like her husband – we could easily be good friends with a little encouragement.
Enter my primary rule: HURT NO ONE. BUT YOURSELF.
A little more background is necessary:
I just vaulted off the tail end of a near sixteen year relationship – for me a joyous, long overdue breakup that left me jubilant and freed of the anger and frustration and stress I had foisted on myself trying to fix a broken thing with all the wrong pieces. A month in - and a few nostalgic moments but not one of sadness or grief – and I must believe we had been breaking up slowly for years, unaware.
I had spent time with Ay shortly after and in the weeks preceding the ceremony, at her initiation mostly, and had accepted this as friendship but was left with many unanswered questions every time. She is a very loving person and has an open heart, which, ironically, makes her extremely hard to read.
I had accepted to partake in this (expensive) Ayahuasca ceremony for a number of reasons: I had always done these things alone (meaning tryptamines), but after a few harrowing solo aya experiences and given that my ordinarily blissful high dose mushroom trips had taken a turn to sadness and self-loathing for going on a year, I thought I should give Aya a shot in a more traditional setting. Between the communal aspect, the guided tour and my newfound tranquil and smiley disposition, I felt hopeful - but nervous and fearful nevertheless.
And of course I would be there with Ay. Whatever that meant…
We pulled into the long, winding gravelly drive and parked between trees. The little log cabin was twenty feet from a gorgeous and stilled lake and when we opened it’s door, J greeted us all with a hug and a smile, paying particular attention to Ay, whom she knew from having given several other ceremonies. They seemed like old friends.
The place itself was very rustic – exposed wood all around, high triangled ceilings – and was adorned with all the trappings of a be-chakra-ed neo-Buddhist Amazonian tribal shaman.
We brought our stuff in and changed into the required all-white garb: my pants were actually the lightest of greys – I own no white pants and am not a great shopper, so after eight stores I finally made the executive decision that grey would just have to do…
We sat on the ground around a low table that had a white cloth with what I am guessing were peaceful and wrathful demons stitched into its edge; on the table were crystals, incense and candles – J told us this was the altar and we were instructed never to put anything on it. She called all of this the ceremony and referred to herself as a guide – some part of me was happy the word shaman was never employed.
J told us a little about herself: she had been drinking Ayahuasca for 13 years (I estimate she is 48 years old or so), starting in Brazil and making three to six month pilgrimages each year to “study” (and set up a business “guiding” as was clear later). She had drunk hundreds if not thousands of times, she said, with people all over the globe, but mostly Brazillians, Canadians and Californians.
She asked us a little about ourselves and I nervously, (but slowly and quietly!) rattled on about my experience so she didn’t think I was a newcomer to all of this – possibly important information, but more likely my ego cluttering the silence.
She laid down some ground rules – don’t lock the bathroom door, toilet seat down – And the asked us if we had any specific intentions we would like to share.
Ay started: nothing in particular this time, she just wanted the medicine to speak to her; Ha was 50 and said he had been abstaining from sex for two years, after a promiscuous period following a breakup in which he hurt several women and felt terrible – he wanted to know if it was time for him to start looking again; I explained my recent breakup and consequent jubilation and expressed a desire to go deep into myself to see if my feelings about this were true and genuine, or if I were merely a fool fooling a fool.
And, left unsaid, to confirm the veracity of my deepening feelings toward Ay.
Then, one by one, J called us into another room to drink. Ay first, me second and finally Ha. I rounded the corner and she poured half a small wine glass of tea that looked like, well – tea! I asked her if we were all getting the same dose and she answered, perfectly:
“I will drink less, and as for the rest – we’ll see.”
I took my place next to Ha, who was between me and Ay, while J sat across the altar from all of us.
I should note at this point that I have never been much for new-agey mumbo jumbo or the neo-hippy vibe, as many of you may know, but as this is a transitional period for me I decided to hang my preconceptions at the door and be as ready as I could to conceive OTHER, and have it conceived in me. So no judgment, no second guessing – just, well, I guess just letting it ALL BE.
So the candles were lit, the dimming light outside casting no shadows but rather a bluish hue to the room, and we sat meditating and looking around waiting. I was nervous – I have not had a good, or particularly valuable, or blissful or remotely pleasant trip for a very long time, and I was naturally worried about finding myself in that all-too-familiar hellish headscape and freaking out in front of everyone…
Then it started. Things started to flow around me, to move and wave and oscillate – like an effect in a bad trip movie.
THIS IS GOING TO BE A BAD MOVIE. No…please…PLEASE…NO…
I thought back to a recent difficult experience in which I broke my rule and did mushrooms with others. I had started with a cap of MDMA and figured it would smooth things out as it had one other time, but I was a little reckless and took 1.5g of my home grown Orissa. Not a lot, but in light of my recent experiences and that I was doing them with others – well, I could have been more cautious.
The setting was perfect – back of a friend’s vegan restaurant, tables aside and pillows and blankets scattered on the soft floor, good friends: six women and two men, one of whom I did not know very well.
But the darkness crept through and sunk its claws in my mind. Ay was there, on mushrooms, and maybe she sensed something. She came and cuddled and reassured me just with her presence. I wanted to leave but had nowhere to go and would have left nevertheless to god-knows-where to do god-knows-what had she not been there. She wrapped herself around me and I was torn between the ecstasy of her touch and the horror in my mind. Slowly it subsided and she stayed with me throughout, running her fingers along my arm, my neck, my face. And then she did the sexiest thing I have ever had done to me:
I was on my back staring up, and her face came even with mine, our noses nearly touching but faces reversed, chin to forehead, forehead to chin. With her raven pitch hair floating across my shoulders and past my ears, she traced my profile with her nose:
Up my chin, over my lips up and over the bump of nose and then sliding through the channel between my eyes, open in wonder and awe, before laying a small kiss on my forehead and dragging it into my hair, completing the journey up my face with the tip of her nose.
Were it not for her I should be forever lost.
I remembered this experience and knew that Ay was not far this time either. And I was safe. And in a completely different state of mind. I decided to banish my fear and closed my eyes. Dust of all colours floated behind my lids and I felt the terror surging and rising. I imagined all the dust gathering before me and it did. Now a pile, I wiped it away with the edge of my hand and underneath was a panorama of pure joy and geometric dancing spirals and stairs and edifices and gardens and the healthy flora and fauna of my mind. I smiled inwardly and my lips rose to match the thought. That’s all there is to it:
I stood up next to the mountain,
And I chopped it down with the edge of my hand!
Tears welled and all my mind could muster in its throes was:
Thank you thank you thank You ThankYou THANKYOUTHANKYOU!
My right hand was bristling and tingling and electric sparkles were felt inside it, running up and down and through the finger that, months earlier, I had had chopped off in an accident (and had had sewn back on after!). My whole body was tingling, but the overall sensation seemed to be concentrated in my finger and emanating from my hand.
The visions grew brighter and more present – DMT visions and architecture, but slower, more inviting than I had ever seen them. I thought of love, in all its forms, the love I have for my son, for my ex, for my parents and sister and yes, for Ay. I love her. No idea what that means, but for the moment it matters little. I open myself to all love and all loves. Never have I known such joy, such acceptance, such ability to be without my being interfering.
Language escapes, language lost, language forgotten, l-aya-nGUAGE, l-AYA-n-SCAPE and scope and cope and S-cape and back and back again…
…And language found.
I wrote. Always a pen and notebook near. I crashed into the pillows and floated away and thoughts gathered and jewels poured into my mind and something somewhere organized them and told me when it was time to write them down.
And I would sit up, scribble unseen in the frolicking candlelight, then dump back into the pillows and crash back into spiraling joy and bliss and love.
How do you experience me?
This is just one big long song, and you are melody to my rhythm.
Never forget to surprise yourself!
I look down for if I look at you too long I know I shall be blind.
I just yawned the universe!
Make wise choices for choices are all you have.
You have nothing to give that I do not already have.
These tears I shed for the day I forget what it is to touch you.
Oh, the bliss to not need conversation!
How long shall it last this silly grin of self-satisfaction? Do I get to keep it?
No one is watching me – what a revelation!
But one kiss between misery and bliss!
Stop calculating and live.
Stop letting fear be your keel.
Deep within I have found the satisfaction mechanism.
ALL MY FEELINGS ARE GENUINE AND TRUE.
This was the answer to my question! Out of the blue and red and green iridescence of my mind! For the first time in years I knew that all I had done and suffered and steered away from and back towards, and all the joy and freedom and ease and love I felt of late was GENUINE AND TRUE. For all my faults and all I have yet to live through and learn, I knew what I had suspected but knew not how to confirm:
I am a good man.
AND I SHALL DO GOOD IN THIS WORLD.
And it thrilled me to think this. I felt a power I thought had long left me returning in full blooming force. I BEAMED but knew it was not me beaming but a beaming-into I was reflecting just as it was BECOMING me.
I opened my eyes. Ay and J were singing Portuguese songs, in mellifluous and enchanting duet. My Ize were mezmered and I watched her sway and watched the sound lift from Ay’s lips and grace the air, bubbles of spiraling joy and harmony.
I was coming down slowly, feeling the harmala drunkenness more than anything now. Then the headache moved in, slowly, but building. It distracted me and eventually started to overwhelm. I laid back and thought of other things but it was always there.
We were meant to drink again (it’s usually three times, but due to our late start J was limiting it to two, which was fine with me). I wasn’t sure I would drink again. I knew where the headache came from, but still listened to J’s explanation about purging being more than just vomiting:
Purging through my head is all well and good, I thought, but my blood sugar was dipping very low. And I had abstained from coffee, so the effects of not eating all day and no caffeine were catching up to me. J gave me some sort of unlabeled unguent that I put on my temples, but it helped little.
Then Ay came over and massaged my temples and my head through my hair – she is a massage therapist with some sort of osteopathy training. Now that was doing something! It was alleviated very slightly, but enough that I heeded J’s advice and drank again, just a little less than the first time.
It was only a few short minutes before the feelings of joy and well-being surged back up, but less visual than the last time. My finger tingled again, but less intensely. I thought of my son and pictured his face. Suddenly he smiled and his face began to spin. Faster and faster and faster until the illusion seen in movies of a fast turning wheel suddenly changing directions occurred, only now, settling in to the spinning whirr of my son’s face, were the features of that very same face! It spun and spun, faster and faster and the new features emerged slowly until they took over the vision - and then began turning themselves – spinning and spinning until another face emerged! It kept going like this for a while, my son’s spinning faces whirling and reappearing and smiling and whirling…
Ha had purged fiercely in the first round, but clearly wasn’t done. He purged next to me and I suggested to myself that I would not purge, then leaned forward, grabbed my basket and let it all fly. I set the basket aside when I was done and J gave me a paper towel and swapped out the bag. I flowed down and settled back in to the pillows and the GRIN. I felt smug and powerful and sexy and lithe and supple – amazing what a little vomit can do for the ego!
I must have purged five or six times from that last cup. At one point we were listening to a german accented vocoder voice droning authoritatively about consciousness and power, followed by what I can only guess were testimonials, the first a woman:
“I don’t really get it, I try this thing you say and concentrate, but I feel empty, then nauseous and once I even VOMITED…”
Cue vomit: All three of us sat up, mere instants between, purging violently as we laughed and chortled and spit up into our baskets – we laughed for about five to ten minutes after; that we all chucked on cue and chuckled together seemed like the funniest thing in the history of humour!
The tea was fading slowly and as I lay on the floor I was treated to a show I will never forget.
J was long gone, having slipped away to her room an hour ago, wishing us all rest and peace, and Ay had moved to the sofa that stretched away from my feet, parallel to me.
Suddenly her feet came up over and settled on the armrests, naked and perfect in the flickering light from the candles and the fire in the hearth. She moved her toes to the music and her feet swayed on their heels. From my angle I could not see her face or her body, only the feet and the slight widening to soft calf. Her hands came into view as she stretched her arms up, her hands wings, the fingers flying with grace through the notes, twining and flaying and blossoming; toes tinkling to the rhythm, she raised a foot then the other and joined her hands in a spectacle I will never see repeated, an exquisite and tender dance of flickering and wavering fire-hued feet and fingers and toes and palms and heels…
She is exquisite. The thought had been rolling through my mind untended for hours, days, months… and now it spoke to me: SHE IS EXQUISITE.
…And I am doomed! But what sweet and delectable doom – were I to choose my demise, this exquisite doom would be the only blank card in the deck, the one solitary card slid on the table.
About a minute or an hour passed after this, and she came to me again. And lay next to me as the room glowed blue with the sneaking dawn. Ay ran her fingers through my hair, drew slow lines in my forehead and traced the outline of my lips. She leaned down and said softly:
“I am going into the other room now to sleep.”
Then Ay hugged me and I pulled her close and embraced her as hard as I dared. When I let up to let her go, she stayed laying with me, face nested in my neck, for about another twenty minutes that seemed longer but much too short.
One last kiss quite close to the lips but still cheeky, and she left. My mind was racing, thoughts pacing words placing replacing and chasing me back and forth and fork and bath and borth and fack fack FACK…
I tried but sleep was another continent and I was still afloat in some ocean somewhere bobbing and bobbing and robbing myself of all that I want and feel and know to be real BUT CANNOT STEAL… So I tossed, turned, lost, churned, cost and learned and crossed to burn and unlearn and sat up and read a book.
Then turned again and again, the pillow plowing cheek after cheek and then wrote pages in my head, pages of a novel I am writing, pages I tried to stop writing and tried to forget but they persisted. So I opened my laptop as quietly as I could to not waken Ha, who was sprawled out on the floor, his mouth gaping in low-snore mode. I wrote the pages as they were in my head, verbatim, all six of them. And not a moment of all this without that smug smile I had missed for so many years.
Then something happened, but I’ll get back to it… I will, I-shall…
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The morning came and fruit salad was made and I ate of this, and a sandwich I had brought, some sesame baklava type things and then sat with a coffee for the road – I had not slept a clink and I needed to be awake at least for the drive back.
Then J’s expected sales pitch came on cue:
“If you have friends… discretion… usually more expensive… come back for the solstice… group rates…”
The part of the deal I loathe, and leaves a sick taste in my mouth, cause it’s always a thinly veiled mix:
It’s such a gift, my gift to you – check or cash? Cash please and next time, full rate, my beautiful…
Worth every penny for me, but the mercantile overtones just made my poor sleepless mind gag. Love, love love, but I am ever the cynic - and idealist all wrapped in one neat little package, trying to bust out but suffocating together.
Tiz Watt Tiz and Taint Know Mar.
And yes, a small detail I left out – I got up to piss about every 15 minutes, right up until the coffee. Four times an hour for fifteen hours, 60 pisses, quite a few less flushes… I felt an apology necessary or at the very least an acknowledgement, especially for the after-hours urinations, and when I did, I guess I expected to be met with a “That’s ok, part of the cleansing, we all have our ways,” but in it’s place, I was told by J:
“Yes, I know, I hear everything at night.” And a silent loose-smiled stare. Oh, well, she’s human too. Clearly.
The drive home was sunny and warm and was greeted with three tired and sated smiles. Ay invited me for a massage, gratis, at her clinic later (she had to work from three to nine!). She had been offering me one for a while, but I had never taken her up on it. I told her I had a few details to work out, but that I would love to and would confirm later.
The massage was divine and I had to wonder where she found the energy. Her hands and fingers swam through my skin and under my flesh to the bone buried below, and I nearly drifted off to the sound of her breathing the rhythm of dream and wind.
And the day ended.
Phlegm and mucus and deep-chested coughing met my next morning, and I felt like death and life at once – hard to describe, but somehow the two co-existed in my body, yesterday and today in an erotic dance in my core, guiding me to an unknown future.
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To return to I-Shall, as promised:
After I had written those pages that came to my sleepless head from god-knows-where, Ay came out of the room and sat on the sofa across from the one I lay on. I pretended to sleep and watched her. She curled up and looked out the window. From my vantage, no ground was visible, just the sofa, the huge window, the lake and the shore beyond. Ay was in a boat, on the lake, toes curled under the old divan. She looked out over the flickering ripples and as I watched her watching, the tiny ripples became pixels and froze, then shifted and froze and shifted and froze, like the stuttering slow motion you get by pulling and doubling frames in a film. It was a digital dance of noise, but there was a message encrypted there. An undecipherable message - for now at least.
I watched her watch me then, through slatted eyes: she watched me for minutes, her gaze reflecting mine and reflected by it in turn. Then she picked up the book I had been reading and read a few short chapters:
SUM
forty tales from the afterlives
(… a fantastic book recommended to me by Gibran 2.)
She smiled as she read, and finally I sat and we chatted about the book, the night, each other, and anything else that popped into our heads. I lay back down and it was not long before she came over.
Leaning over the armrest where my head was lain, she started to trace the outline of my head with her fingers; she drew my face, filling in my features one by one with her fingers: forehead, nose, eyes, cheeks, lips...
She has drawn me and I am drawn by her.
I felt her lean further over the armrest and I opened my eyes. She was looking into them, and after a few moments, she said:
“There are many kinds of Love…”
A smile-speckled silence.
“…And I love you.”
And I knew in that instant what the lake was trying to convey, what the aya was telling me about Ay and I:
SHE WAS PREGNANT.
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And now, days later, no confirmation for this information, I am elated and devastated… but the two coil up and weave through my core, and all is well, and balanced.
Now I must go into the world and find a way to live this love and to forget it altogether.
**********
Thanks for the end you wrote and read
cheers,
JBArk
