cool man,go straight to eroca at el molle(pronounced el moyeh) in

pisac,with a tent and sleep bag,she will recieve you.tell her you
only want to pay 60 sollies to drink.shell set you up.edwardo is
probably youre man.dont waste money paying more,take a bit here
and there,explore the area,wait for me.and we go to my teacher
some time in july.(do some real work)ill keep in touch

[Iquitos, July 2009]

I am stuck in a freaking sauna full of motorcycles, scooters and

rickshaws making awful racket day and night and filling air with
exhaust fumes. Waiting for a guide to come and take me to the
jungle. I'm to find out if I can handle mosquitoes, sleepless
nights and mental breakdowns. That's the plan, anyway... I've
just been thinking today how I'd rather be anywhere else, instead
I'm sitting on a smoke-blowing, puffing and roaring motorised
canoe, returning from sight-seeing a ten square metre patch of
land where butterflies, all three of them, are being cocooned for
their own good. To add value to the show, they keep a jaguar in a
cage with an anteater and an allegedly prehistoric animal they
call ‘cow of the jungle' that is essentially a large pig with
paws split into three toes and a trunk for a nose. Ask me again
what I'm doing here - I don't have a clue. I must be in a time-
warp...

…no one knew how old she was exactly. No one kept count. She
looked ancient. How did this wraith of a woman make it all the
way to my house? She hasn't washed her clothes for a while. No
money to buy soap. No money to buy rice. Or sugar.

The only animated part in the weathered landscape of her face are
the eyes, deep wells wherein she dwells, a slow fish, wizened by
many a fisherman's trap, having escaped every one of them to make
it to the sea of tranquillity. She must have drifted here with
the current that happen to pass by my hammock, in which I'm
hiding from the heat of the day. She wants forty soles for a
hand-woven headband intended for curanderos. Sure, I'll buy it.
I'm light miles away from having ayahuaska vision, let alone
being adept at curing illness, but an old witch needs rice and
soap. Her hair is a lair for bugs and spiders, a perfectly
mangled hideout for unsightly things to crawl into and escape the
light of day.

Not a word of castaliano, either. Elias, a distant relation of

some sort, does the talking for her. He says she used to sing at
all big ceremonies. She does a little semblance of a dance,
shuffling her feet back and forth while raising one hand, fingers
clenched, and managing to push enough air out of her lungs to
produce a weak falling and rising melody, no more than a whiff of
wind makes passing in the grass.

She left the same way she came in, an old leaky schooner
miraculously drifting half-submerged, catching just enough wind
to create appearance of motion. Later on I watched her work on
identical garment at her shack. She wanted to sell me this one as
well, half-finished as it was. They all ask as a matter of
obligation, just in case you may flip another coin their way, you
understand. Every thread is spun by hand from a cotton wad with
what they call a "fabrica", a wooden stick rotated freehand
inside a bowl. Time factor involved in the making of a garment is
immeasurable by modern science. She spoke in tongues and gazed at
me from her work without either hope or expectation, just the way
one would watch a goldfish in a pond swimming by. And then she
would go back to threading polished seed shells of beads again,
all her resources gathered in the tiny opening that the thread is
blindly trying to find, repelled five times before making an
entry. Her whole body seems to exist solely to support the life
of her hands. Her hands make her meagre living drag out a little
more each day. Strong, man-like hands endowed with long gnarly
fingers knotted around bony knuckles, thick bulging veins. Her
left wrist is no longer capable of grasping objects, therefore
taking up a bead involves bending and unbending fingers with her
other hand. An old Indian witch, toothless and put out, a
smouldering black wick dying in a pool of wax that once must have
been a bright and lovely candle flame casting shadows about,
dancing in the dark...

Peru, the end of the line. It is as far from the known world of
banking machines, traffic jams and takeaway joints as one can
get. If you are after a hamburger you will find a hamburger, of
course. That is not what I mean. There is this undercurrent of
chaotic urgency to be alert that permeates the streets, a sense
of accident lurking behind every corner that makes any planning a
hopeless affair. This is where a madman is allowed to thrive, out
in the open, in his complete true image - laughing and swearing,
rolling his eyes, blasting steam off his chest and frothing at
the mouth. This is where it is okay to collapse in convulsive
feats on the ground and a passer-by would leave one undisturbed
to chill out. All is understood and dissolved in the moment of
happening, as if the future tense did not exist in the language
of Incas.
I was shot of New Zealand like a cork out of a bottle of bubbly
wine that had a good shake. It felt like being blown towards and
away at the same time and it was like trying to get to Davie
Jones' locker... in order to do so one must get lost and
shipwrecked. Totally, thoroughly trashed and left with no hope.
Here is the raw formulae, mix in your own circumstantial
ingredients and drink it.

my advice to you is to stay in pisac at el molle.drink with various clowns in the area,for the experience
and to satisfy youre need.then join me when I go to equitos somewhere in july.and dieta with me and my
teacher for a month.if you cant pay him 300 nz dollars a week at least,dont bother.

Feeble on my feet, I follow Artidoro into the forest. We don't

have to go far: he stops in front of a neat-looking shrub called
Uno De Gato, which uses include regulation of sugar levels in
blood, help with indigestion, mood alleviation, and a score of
others. A few paces away is a plant to cure diabetes; then, a
herb to clear skin pores and make one sweat; here's a tree a bark
of which will cure malaria and yellow fever; this shrub is used
against impotency; that will heal wounds, cancer of ovaries and
stop dysentery. We barely walk a hundred paces to find more
plants for use in taking medicinal baths, against colds, to fight
infections, cure arthritis, cirrhosis of the heart or simply cool
one's head down. A bit of bark scraped off here, a bunch of
leaves snapped off there. A vine cut in half oozes out milky
liquid that is a sweet syrup ready for consumption; another
contains purest water, the best one can find in the jungle. We
come across a giant of a tree burrowing its wide ridges of feet
into the ground like a wrestler preparing for a tackle; a thick
vine straddles one of the ridges just like a lover would, naked
and strong and twisted. Artidoro strokes the vine where its torso
splits into two and repeats the word 'yoni' several times,
winking and smiling. It is an orgasmic sight. We move along, his
short machete strokes clearing a brunch here, a vine there. At
one point he gave a quick blow to the dead trunk, from which a
rather large rat-like animal fell out onto the ground, its nose
bleeding, its body seized by involuntary contortions. Once it has
stopped moving, Artidoro wrapped its carcass into a tidy package
using a single broad leaf tied with a thin vine. Una comida, he
informed me. Good for eating. Good when dead, as its bite kills.
In the middle of our expedition he stopped in his tracks and
offered me a job. I had to ask twice if what I heard was right:
he wanted me, with my zero familiarity of plants and next to zero
knowledge of Spanish to be his apprentice. To collect the plants,
learn how to prepare medicine, learn his songs. There I was, one
week into my first dieta, weak as a ghost and barely able to
move, offered an opportunity I could only conjure up in a dream.
Imagine a beggar standing in front of a royal palace, having rung
many a bell and blown many a fuse in desperation before, kicked,
scalded and bruised just from asking stranger for a bone, a speck
of nourishment... imagine his surprise when the gates slide open
and he is received like a king himself! Guided to the table laden
with gifts of the forest, offered a bath of flowers, sung softly
by maestro of Amazonian chants and put to bed till dawn when
everything is possible - everything... There will be food is
served on every corner out of steaming pots by sun baked women
wearing colourful daggy skirts and wide-brimmed hats, cheap as
dirt busses, having come aboard one never knows where one will
end up.

It could be the narrow cobbled streets of Ollantaytambo, where

ground swirls and undulates under your feet without warning and
one walks amongst Incas hunched under the sacks of corn and
potatoes, grinning and grinding their teeth. It could be a muddy
track in the jungle where treetops sway under the gust of monkey
wind and rain down branches in the middle of a perfectly still
day. It could be that we are going back to the source, to the
ancestral grandma who loves you and accepts you just the way you
are, no questions asked... back into the golden light that only
children know of.

back into the womb...

like a baby, gently coax process into itself, guide my toes with
a soft cloth, wipe the dirt off without hurting them. Step
gently, feeling the ground under my feet, least suffering pain
from a sudden stick protruding at an odd angle. Catch a moth
fluttering inside a mosquito net without damaging its delicate
velvet wings and release it into the darkness outside. I hurt
myself when I don't take time to feel my way. I stumble when I
run into the unexpected.

Time to be reborn, in the jungle hospital: pale ghostly drapes of

mosquito nets, marked with brown spots of mud bed sheets, a score
of uninvited guests from the forest - close a curtain, fast, as
you come in.

Wrapped in a moist blanket, rich tapestry embroider with sounds

of the jungle, listen to the build up of wind, ravaging treetops
in the distance, sudden darkening... and then, a heavenly release
in the drops of rain and falling leaves bringing fresh cool air
from above that one welcomes wholeheartedly. In the midst of the
storm a man appears, bearing two covered plates in each hand,
soaked right through and smiling. There's sliced apples,
mandarins and sections of peeled orange. It's a fruit salad.

Being able to perceive what is there at a glance, at a first

sight, is a great mystery to me. Small, unnoticed textures come
to life and blend into one another to create a symbiosis of
patterns and colours, in their unity acquiring softness and
mutual resonance in which a depth of vision is only determined by
the time spent on looking in. Flattened by the sheer presence of
matter beneath my mattress, I have no strength to look elsewhere
outside. I am gravitationally bound for the rest of the day.

Mareado, seasick.

Drunk, oversaturated with medicine.

Aprendido como energia functiona, says Artidoro. So I must learn

how to function in this new forgotten way, observe how my
intention shapes the mood and perception of phenomena in the
outside world.

A sight of a jet plane in the sky that would normally instigate

thoughts of lament pertaining to the intruding ways of modern
transport made me feel joy this time around for other people
doing these incredible things, such as flying. We live in a cool
fucking world, I thought. Albeit them people being passengers in
a machine, it don't matter - it will be me too one day soon,
looking out of a small fogged up window, thumbing through a
glossy magazine full of smartly dressed businessmen and their
catwalk models and ordering a complimentary orange juice.

My feet are covered by red dots of insect bites that travel up to

my knees; they all itch at the same time. Kiri says it ain't just
normal mosquitoes that bite you but also small invisible types
that you don't even see. I don't remember being bitten so many
times, not to account for an army of red dots marching from my
toes upwards, burrowing in clusters and then furrowing tunnels
from one outpost to another. I try to disrupt their communication
and supply lines by delivering frequent air-to-feet blows with
vigorous scratching and apply papaya ointment afterwards to the
raw, ravaged landscape of my skin.

What insect can produce such a high pitched sound of a diamond

cutter?... a winding of a wench? a door buzzer? Listen to them,
session musicians in the night, perfectly fitting into the jungle
orchestra while playing their own tune... I dream of a phone
ringing. It's an urgent call and my flatmate thinks I should pick
up the phone for some reason. I stumble out of bed in the dark
and grab the receiver. A man on the other end of the line wants
to know if I wish to pay for the drinks at some random place I
never heard of or been to. I don't drink, let alone drinking in
public places and paying for others. I yell back, what the fuck
are you doing ringing people up three o'clock in the morning to
ask dumb questions like that?! So I hang up the phone and go back
to bed. Shortly, it starts ringing again. I'm determined to
ignore it but it just keeps on ringing - son of the bitch really
means to keep me awake till dawn... enough is enough, off with my
bed sheet. I rub my eyes on my mattress under mosquito net in the
forest, only to realise I've been listening to this particular
cricket all along, whose call produced at regular intervals had
an exact pitch of a phone...

Last night I had drunk a brew that turned me inside out, went
through my innards with a scrubbing brush and left me a hollow
vessel for a purpose, but what it is that I am supposed to be
filled with? In this vacuum I find no strength to lift my head,
let alone contract my muscles, breathing alone is enough of an
effort make, forget about walking and breathing. To get to the
kitchen, I must walk; to eat, I must walk; and when I finally
stand up, having thought it over, I realise I'm in no position to
hold the food down even if I manage to acquire it.

Forth visit to the lavatory this night, some nights its easy to
loose count. Candle flame, when disturbed, flickers and
trepidates with high frequency, lighting the page for the passage
of pen in stroboscopic flashes.

Once stilled, write.

I'd like to deal in clear cut sentences with plenty of space in

between for thoughts and musings, a space to reflect and meditate
on irony of situations. At some point one is intimately involved
in the plot, yet all is assigned a warm, dry cosy corner in the
memory banks for prolonged storage, in case it might be useful
later on; all nonsensical linguistic process which gives birth to
this text, ironically is erased by default. Its a pleasure and
pain, distilling sense and clarity from the floating mountain of
junk which would surely sink, be it not for the infernal fumes
somewhere underneath it, keeping the pile steaming and stewing at
all times except for rare glimpses of true silence. The irony of
writing is that all talk is nonsense. Yet what else is there to
do but keep on filtering, selecting, refining. So no
contamination can get through. When we go deep, marvellous things
will happen if we are clean, shiny squeaky clean. If we are going
back to the source, back into the golden light that only children
know of...
Nature is very gentle. There is no sudden rush of chemicals to
the brain, no needles forcefully inserted in the back of one's
head. Here is a difference between a sacred plant prepared by
indigenous medicine man and a chemical equivalent of thereof
synthesized in laboratory: ayahuaska takes one on a steady climb
to the plateau where one is free to move about and explore, as
opposed to a sudden hyperbolic arc upwards of a DMT flash that
leaves one bewildered in an alien world from which one is
violently thrown backwards with little idea what has happened. As
I was recollecting the imagery of Warchovski's scene where liquid
surface of what once was a reflection of oneself is poured down
one's throat, almost flatlining the subject, pulse seizing,
something stabbed me right in the eye sending me upwards in one
motion from a rather peaceful embryo position I was curled into
with what seemed at first like an electric shock. It must have
been an ant. They sneak up on you and bite nine times out of ten;
therefore I squash little nasties as soon as they breach security
of my lodgings.

First I noticed it was a moving line that stretched along a

wooden beam just above where I laid in my hammock: an
uninterrupted flow of ants in both directions was happening at
all times. Neat borders of wax appeared on both sides, forming
main vein of traffic as well as deviating branches that ducked
out of sight following rounded curve of the beam. In less than
two days a tunnel was formed over the whole length of movement
and I could no longer see ant army marching. It was also then I
realised that my back pack was being used for an ant-house; they
laid wax along the access lines traversing from one pocket to
another. I have dealt an earthquake to uninvited squatters and
sent S.O.S. to Artidoro: my hut is being swallowed alive by
uncountable enemy force. Help! Next day we were brushing off wax
and throwing kerosene around, operation in the style of
Fahrenheit 451. It was the end of it, for the ants at least; I
saved what was left of kerosene in an empty water bottle and
forgotten all about it. One day Artidoro went around the kitchen
making jokes of setting his farts on fire and periodically
belching kerosene out of his mouth. When I came back to my shack
after lunch, sure enough the forgotten bottle was nowhere to be
seen. Maestro had drunk it all.

How long have I been lying here? Incessant buzz of insects is

overwhelming. Sharp screeching saw blades rip into my brain
cells, all I can do is watch random scenes flash past from a haze
of times and disappear again into the murky pool of memory where
they came from. Familiar faces pop in to look at my mattress-
bound corpse and mutter their silent greetings, but they cannot
reach me. I am remote, neither hot nor cold, not capable of
wanting, making decisions, not even capable of the effort of
suffering. On this tiny desert island enclosed inside a mosquito
net there is no room for dreams, wants, emotions. Everything is
blended into a white mesh of nothingness. All I'm capable of is
watching a bug cross from the left corner of my field of vision
to the right and disappear again. Time is irrelevant. Sand clock
has been rigged so that the sand falls upwards with equal ease as
downwards; going backwards and forwards in time has no meaning as
I have lost whatever sense of direction I had. Who's this
grinning Indian running around in bike tights drinking kerosene?
I could smell it all over on the way to my shack after lunch.
When does tomorrow come? It is maсana, Artidoro's favourite word.
Medicinal bath for you, friend - maсana. Tomorrow, I teach you
how to cook ayahuaska. Tomorrow was two weeks ago! Yet what can I
do? Here comes jungle doctor Artidoro, always ready to scatter
into shards of laughter, give me a paternal rub on my shaven
head, pelado, pelado? I cannot fight such a man. My weapon won't
take aim, so I gave myself in. Got a bunk in a jungle hospital
and a haircut of Tyler Durden's space monkeys. I wonder how long
I've been lying here...

I hear internal workings of my digestive tracts as gas bubbles

shift along with liquids down tubular passages, dissolving
airlocks as they make their way to the lowest dungeons where
everything stalls in front of the final flood gates that can only
be opened with a conscious permission from a higher authority to
dispense with the intestinal gathering of dregs and bodily
refuse; no matter how impatient these get I still retain a degree
of control over the rubble. With a mental order I suppress the
revolt until such time as I can master getting up. My head
swerves and specs of pain shoot outward in all directions as I
sit up; now, for a breath of fresh air outside the mosquito net -
it will give me just enough energy to stumble a short way down to
the hole in the ground covered criss-cross with a few planks to
plant my feet on. The lavatory. It's a miracle I haven't landed
into the bog yet, given that my approach to the target is that of
a drunk, out-of-his-mind pilot who cares not a thing in the world
except dumping his load as soon as possible. Such procedure takes
place half a dozen times every night I drink; this is definitely
not every man's adventure, this healing business.

The world has shrunk in size to fit inside the confines of green
walls that buzz and screech all day long; sleep never comes. My
head weighs a ton and sometimes is pulled sideways by an array of
cables that little men from Jonathan Swift's book of Gulliver's
travels managed to attach to my hair while I was detained in some
other dimension and made to watch long scratched up and faded
memory reels of past events, thinking my life over and over and
over again.

I can't wait to get out of the jungle. Drinking makes me sick

every time. I felt like puking all night. I hate ayahuaska. This
fellow started laughing while Artidoro is singing. Someone is
talking. Girls giggle. That fellow wining and wailing all night
long, then laughing idiotically. Perhaps it was a test that made
me realise I'm not ready to return home healed. I still have much
anger. Tonight will be better without the rainbow fucking
warriors, says Casper the French. As for me, I can't wait to get
out of the jungle.
 [Pucallpa]

It is dark where I sit cross-legged on my blanket, I can barely

discern silhouettes of those around me. To the left is Kiri,
who's had his share of medicine for this journey already and
tonight he is resting and watching. A few paces away is Benjamin,
maestro Benjamin, whose presence is reinforced on both sides by
two old Indian women. I am a drifting flotsam on the surface of
the merciful ocean that rocks me gently on its sonic waves,
yawning and swaying back and forth, swooning in the warm ambience
of the place. In the lulls between singing and conversing come
forth into focus ubiquitous sounds of a typical village, as if
invisible deejay skilfully adjusted the mix. There's a continuous
squabble of dogs that haven't settled their domestics during the
course of the day; there's a distant thumping of bass speakers
that fail to deliver a hint of melody; there are growling noises
of motorcars fading in and out of the audible range as they come
and go. there must be at least a dozen radio voices broadcasting
orations and late night music alike, strategically placed around
the neighbourhood to create a total coverage, which in turn is
intermittently interrupted by neurotic roosters startled from
their uneasy sleep who announce their awakening at once, as if
the world would end the minute they fail to sound off their
screeching alarm of a perpetually coming dawn that takes no less
than a night to come, regardless of all their screaming. And if
for some reason there are any gaps amongst all this carry on are
to be had, one hears the insects rasping and grinding away,
who've been there all along. In short, the day never quite ends.
At least I couldn't tell at which point night begun and when it
ended. There was no sleep on my part. As far as Shipibo Indians
are concerned, in a family of which I was a grateful (that is,
paying) guest, they sleep where they happen to lie down, on the
floor with or without a rug or a cover, placing a hand under
their cheek or lying flat on their backs. There was no preamble
to the ceremony: I was served a shot glass of supposedly sweet
medicinal syrup that I chased down with cane juice straight away,
not believing a word when it comes to palatability of medicinal
substances. Others partook of their drinks and soon the talk died
down. We were Jedi knights, and our voyage was that of the inner
space. Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away.
The warm fuzzy feeling that came down upon me when Benjamin
started singing never quite lifted off; all around me is his
presence, I am lead by his melodies down the cavernous depths of
ancient caves where hunters once dwelt in darkness, drawing upon
bare rocks naпve forms of prehistoric animals by the flicker of a
torch that threw askew shadows aside, illuminating in trembling
flashes dark skins scarred by the teeth of wild beasts? And right
there is a sacrificial altar and a sharp blade lying upon it
resonates young and vibrant, for it bears a sonic drop of fresh
dew on the very tip of it, a kind one finds on a green leaf in
the early morning sparkling in the rays of the new born sun. It
is but an opening into which two humming birds flew in on both
sides of Benjamin, and hovering on the edge of human ability to
perceive sounds delivered me heavenwards with their songs. At the
same time I remained firmly planted on the blanket, closer to the
pulse of the earth than ever, feeling my heart expanding beyond
confines of my chest, beyond the room, the house, the village?
That was when I knew and remembered the reason for coming here,
the scope of my journey lying in plain view, unfolding flat all
inconsistencies, doubts, fears. Who could have thought that this
simple room without furniture, without pictures on the walls,
without a lamp or a lampshade or any other convenience in the
traditional sense of a word, a room with no television or radio,
that this room is the place for our meeting, albeit you are not
even there physically. I am still going to give you a secret
invitation, an invitation to one and all who are ready for the
greatest adventure beyond time and limitations of the flesh and
mind of an individual human being. Friend, come!

Without saying, one needs an airplane ticket and means to feed

themselves as well as their hosts during the stay. A few words of
Spanish will help you find your way around. Also, between me and
you, it is a bloody good time to come here: Peru is ripe; it is
an immensely rich country in culture, sacred knowledge and
spirit, the very things I feel we lack the most. Spiritual
poverty is crippling all so called ‘developed' nations; all our
material possessions amount to nothing in the absence of mental
and physical health. Depression, anxiety, digestion, sore back,
neck or toe, bad skin, cancer, brain tumour? spirit is sick, how
can the body cope? Come, one can cure anything in Peru.

I think of each and every one of you, wishing you were here,
imagining how your face lights up when shadows of doubts
disappear overnight, how weight of trouble falls down from you
shoulders and how blissful you shall look in the morning.
Katsimbalis! I had this vision of an old Greek man, his white
hair floating in the wind like a flock of sheep chased to and fro
by herder's dogs amongst alpine pasture, his bare chest open to
whatever shall come to him. His breathing is easy and his eyes
are closed for there is no need to watch out. My mind wanders and
euphoria fades, still the image is there, I just have to dig for
it. Why is the man a Greek? I don't know. Perhaps its Henry
Miller's colossus of Mauroussi that I am possessed by; he is also
a shaman, a shaman literati. Bit by bit, I shall remember and
feed you the choice morsels of this incredible adventure. it
seems to never end, and I call it incredible because I cannot
believe I'm only living it now, when Peru has been here all
along. These people been doing their work all along. While I've
been hitting my head against a wall that I myself created,
hurting all around me in agony and anger. I came to the point
where nothing was a sufficient tranquiliser any longer, nothing
could suppress my pain to get out, neither work, nor
entertainment. Neither drugs, nor disciplines. No effort could
suffice. No mountain was tall enough, and if it was it would have
killed me. So I'm happy to report, after a night on medicine and
maestro Benjamin singing, tired but exalted, that I have dark
energies expunged and expelled, at least for a short spell. In
this window of opportunity I am happy to write a praise for a
shaman. one doesn't know the meaning of the word until one meets
Benjamin who sends one on a journey with a song and a hick up.
Artidoro was good, Benjamin is something else. A force of nature
would probably be most befitting description, if I was desperate
to put it down in words. As it is, I'm quite happy to quit
writing and partake in another ceremony tonight.

Benjamin and his wife Antonia at his house in Pucallpa. Sept.

2009

The liquid was thick and viscous, it slithered down the throat
and even a thimble of honey didn't clear away its passage. I
asked for my dieta to be opened last night. Benjamin said he will
put chipsies into my head, to open it up to visions, as far as I
can figure it. I asked for a thorough clean up and told him about
my mental issues, anger, loosing patience at a short notice. No
problem. After a few songs, when the medicine kicked in, he took
my head into his hands and blew mouthful of floral essence over
it. I was immediately adrift in the aromatic cloud that hung
around just long enough for its sweet oversaturated smell to
overpower all other senses and then condensed and fell in
droplets of fine vapour over me. Then I felt his hands grouped
around my bald skull for a right place to drive what felt like a
shard of semi-soft material in, complete with a snapping sound
that came from inside my head. There were five such ‘implants' in
total, two and two on the sides and one right in the middle.
After the procedure I was informed rather gravely of things I
should abstain from, such as all other substances, drugs, as from
now on I was in mortal danger if I do not follow the discipline.
And this goes not just for the duration of dieta, but for the
rest of my time on this planet. Once you are on a path, there's
no deviation. I am to half lunch at one o'clock in the afternoon
and no more food till the following day. Stomach must be empty;
if it is not, visions do not come. Medicine needs a clear passage
to work. At first one vomits, for there's much rubbish gathered
in the body from years of feeding it junk, both food-wise and as
far as emotions and thought patterns go. It didn't take long
before I was running for the door, a bowl in my hand, hunched
three times over. I bowed to the fence, to the pile of compost
that turned out to be a heap of boiled ayahuaska vines on close
examination before collapsing in front of a compost heap which
received most of my prayers that came out in flushes with deep
gargling sounds. It was a great relief and I felt at once light
and rather weak. I was trembling like a leaf, actually. Benjamin
is a far throw from Artidoro, that is for sure. His medicine and
his singing delivers the goods. He has unquestionable authority
about him when it comes to spiritual guidance. I do not normally
take kindly to people telling me what not to do, but in this case
I have to go along, as the offer is too good to refuse. He
promised me freedom, and I feel it is there to be earned. I do
not need anything else as ayahuaska is a powerful vehicle that
takes one on a gentle ascent to incredible landscapes, like a
grandmother leading a child by the hand, teaching ABCs that one
is capable of retaining. I've lost enough marbles playing with
mushrooms; no more. From now on it's a healthy choice, folks.
Make me strong, I shall work hard and diligent, earn my passage
and come back for more. That's the plan, anyway.
 [making soup: practical aspects of living with Shipibo]

After the second ceremony with Benjamin, feeling particularly

good, I thought it would be nice to shout the extended family a
lunch. Go to the market first thing in the morning, buy a
humongous fish, some vegetables, make a soup. That would be nice,
I thought, to sit around the table and watch everyone enjoy food.
There comes the morning, I do as I intended, speaking beforehand
to Roberto, the man of the house, about cooking fish soup for
lunch. We round up several women and they all smile and nod when
I tell them what I want. Everyone loves fish. Bueno. I repeat
everything once more, just to make sure, and go off to the market
to fetch veggies and choice cuts of meaty fish. I leave
everything in the hands of Roberto's wife. According to maestro
Benjamin, one o'clock is the time a dietero is supposed to have
his meal; I'm bang on the hour for lunch. To my surprise, there's
no gathering in the kitchen awaiting for me. There's a sad-
looking pot on the grill, leaking broth from its bottom, with a
lonely fish tail floating in it. That's all. I storm into the
house, as I do in case of emergencies, to enlist Antonia, one
woman I wasted my breath the most upon, to find out where are
other soup ingredients. By the time I have chopped carrots and
beetroot she peels one onion and hides the other two. Se с iora,
todo cebolla - all onions - por favour! Uno, dos, tres? todo! I'm
done with washing herbs, and second onion comes along. Bueno!
Where is the third one?! Again, its hidden in the basket on the
top shelf. Se с ora! Neccessito todo! I bought all this stuff for
the soup, comprende?... Same with garlic. Ask five times, get all
nods and smiles and bugger all garlic. Todo, se с ora, todo! Por
farvor! More fish I bought comes out from out-of-the-way cooking
pot. As I continue chopping parsnip and other herbs, one little
girl keeps bringing me peeled sections of garlic one at a time,
asking, sufficiente? mimicking the way Kiri speaks. Mas! Todo! I
keep saying, until I get just about the whole lot of garlic
segments assembled in one pile. The girl has a bright smile from
ear to ear, unlike vacant looking Antonia... During the day
Antonia is an old wench stuck in her crooked ways, hobbling about
on her stiff joints of dilapidated, over-used machinery of soft
tissue, intellect functioning at a minimum capacity. Yet after
dusk she is my grandma, lover and a friend in one; she sings
wonderfully. she rocks, she is a superstar in my books. I ended
up buying her embroidered quilts later on. Anyhow. By two o'clock
I'm calling everyone to the table. Nothing seemingly happens.
Fellows come to sit on the bench and watch women who are now
frying half a dozen chickens that magically appeared on the
grill, having awaited probably since yesterday for this opportune
moment to pop out of the marinating pot. Don't tell me you
haven't planned it! Nodding, smiling, leading me on. It's ripe
time for me to notice rounded tummies being scratched around,
well-padded necks, cute baby toes... they have been eating well
all along. I'm done with lunch and stay put, watching family come
together and get into their food. Addressing all and none, I tell
them there and then that if they don't like cooking food I buy,
it's not a problem. I shall go to a restaurant next time. As a
way of replying, Roberto says that a gas stove might improve
their situation. I should be laughing at this point, but it is
not a joke. It is a way of Shipibo thinking. Or may be it's too
much wax in their ears, take your pick. Upon returning from
Paoyhan some two weeks later, same faces, same exact story. I
arrived with Gilberto, Benjamin and Antonia, plus Benjamin's
oldest son, who helped me lay a police claim, to his credit. I
buy two chickens and give them to Roberto, asking if he can make
the lunch ready by one o'clock, to celebrate our safe passage. He
solemnly accepts chickens. Some three hours later, still an hour
before lunch, I'm looking down into the drags of rice and noodles
with an odd chicken wing half-submerged in broth that is barely
tepid and called ‘chicken soup'. Gilberto asks me, unflinching,
innocent as a python with a monkey stuck down his throat, if I
went to the restaurant to have my lunch already. Calmly and
accepting things for the way they are, I hiss through my teeth
that No, I haven't had my lunch because I bought these two
chickens for that exact purpose - to be enjoyed in the company of
dear friends who care about me in the most unselfish way. I
proceed with making fire, frying plantains and making best of
what I can save from the pot... Next day it's a whole grilled
chicken for me and me only, goddamnit!
 [lancha: from Pucallpa to the village of Paoyhan by boat]

Even before we hit infamous ferry boat, a crowd of agitated,

gesturing and shouting fellows surround our motorcar, grabbing
our bags and possessions at once. I fight my backpack off and
reach into my pocket to pay the driver his due five soles. There
is no change, in fact there is no wallet. First time being pick
pocketed in Peru... the moral of it is, as Duchess would put it,
that the small bags disappear easier than the big ones. Although
we are an hour early, there is hardly a space to sit down in the
cargo hold that is jam-packed with people that stand, squat and
lie in their hammocks stretched whenever there is a space to
string a rope across. Having purchased two sacs of rice in great
hurry as well paid our driver off, I find just enough space to
hang my own hammock at the back, next to the engine room, as I
find out later. In the mean time I'm imagining sizzling of meat
being fried as well delicious smells of chicken, all too real to
be ignored. Indeed, there is a small iron cubicle down below,
right next to the engine that finally wakes up with a rumbling
yawn. It is a roaring beast with cables and pistons rather than
contracting muscles, spurting black oil for blood. In its
proximity one is christened by infernal noise, its tremors
shaking one's bolts and nuts nice and loose. Mechanics jump in
and out of its ribcage covered in soot, wiping sweat off their
brows with blackened hands. It is stifling hot even where I lie
in my hammock watching the proceedings and generally being in the
way of those trying to squeeze past up the stairs. I venture
above and find plenty of space on the roof to stretch out between
three men at the back, quietly laughing at jokes I wouldn't
understand even if I could hear them, and a chicken coup at the
front, clucking away in the waning light of the day. As the sun
mercifully goes down, blue and pink give way till the sky comes
aflame burning in rich red that shifts towards crimson, painted
against a backdrop of a heavy velvet blue, soon to become a dark
fissure cracked and bleeding the remains of the visible end of
spectrum. The death of the day is upon the world of Amazon, it is
pleasantly warm. Someone stumbles on me in the dark and walks
off, laughing. I seem to excel at the art of being an obstacle.
This time I align myself along the roof, rather than across, and
spend a good hour in the hands of Morpheus before a loud strike
of metal against metal startles me awake. Engines grunts a few
times and comes silent with a gasp. It won't be long before
Ishmael, Benjamin's oldest son, comes looking for me; we've been
stranded on a shallow spot. Marooned, in the middle of the river.
Downstairs is a commotion, people getting up from their hammocks,
flocking to the windows, a few calmly packing their possessions.
We follow suit and to find ourselves amongst the last bunch of
passengers boarding a launch taking us to another tug boat,
having sacrificed two sacks of rice that could not be fitted in
the hurry. The new boat was much larger but only had enough room
for passengers at the open cargo bay at the front. Having
wondered in search of a relatively clean place to sit down, I
settled for a nice cosy nook behind what turned out to be a mount
of toilet paper. There I remained till dawn, having fallen asleep
on left side with knees tucked in, the only position afforded by
the space.

Waking up to daylight, I realised it was rather quiet. No sound

of engine. Look overboard, no movement, either. We got stuck
second time, alright. Nothing to do but sit and watch bags of
cement being carried to the front end from somewhere down the
back by porters some of which should be sitting behind a writing
desk in the classroom, passing time pulling each other's legs and
whistling at the ceiling, as boys of twelve and thirteen do where
I come from. For breakfast there was white goo of unknown origin,
as it had no another taste apart from being over-sweetened,
served with bread rolls and nothing else. Engine revved up again,
giving everyone an immediate boost of morale, which slowly waned
as the boat swung left and right, wiggled, squirmed and pivoted
round and round where it sat in futile attempts to free itself.
What made our situation even more unbearable was the sight of the
original ferry we embarked upon in the first place and later
escaped in the night, swimming into view and passing us without
as much as a toot. By the time the lunch was due my stomach was
growling, loudly demanding una comida. I was positioned
strategically at the kitchen table, two paces away from the
window into the cubicle behind iron girders, capable of
restraining half of Sahara's numbers of hungry lions, where the
food was being prepared. Just when I thought it was never going
to happen, chef started banging on the iron bars with a large
scoop, startling me to death. As I ducked away in fear of going
deaf, I lost a few precious seconds which cost me running an
obstacle course of hammocks hung across all the way down the
hall, growing queue forming always a step ahead of me. Half hour
later I was handing in my docket, a proof of passage, to get a
scoop of rice, half a ladle of chicken soup and a boiled green
plantain. Just like in good old soviet times when I stood for
hours outside the bread shop with a bit of paper that clarified
our family bread allowance for which one also had to pay.
Sometimes the bakery would run out of bread by the time you got
to the front of the queue… In short, the lunch on the Amazonian
ferry had a nostalgic feeling for me. One truly knows that they
are in the same boat here, I tell you. After some food, I wished
for nothing more but to get going. As luck would have it, all the
wiggling finally paid off and slowly but surely the landscape
shifted and soon we were on the way again.

[Paoyhan]

The village of Paoyhan, where no one has any money. Therefore,

being the only gringo on the block, women flock towards you from
all over the place. I'm yet to fathom the depth of the family
ties here, but it looks like everyone is someone's relation. To
start with, Benjamin is but one of five brothers, four of which
are still living and kicking, all of them shamans, taught by
their father, all of them have great many offsprings. One got to
be a mutant possessing more than ten fingers to count those on
one's hands. Perhaps it is due to the marriage arrangements, as
in the case of Benjamin himself, who has three wives.

The village of Paoyhan, where no one heard of rugby. There are at

least three proper football fields, goals and all, and a good
number of volleyball nets that spring up at late hour when the
sun starts its decline. Football is played religiously every
night. There are enough fellows to make up several teams by five
o'clock in the afternoon, and players line up on the side,
waiting for their turn. A game of football also requires some
pocket money to be staked, turning it into a serious business.

My heart was overjoyed seeing schoolgirls passing ball in pairs

across the field first thing in the morning, even before the sun
showed up above the jungle. I got used to this sight as I went
fishing at dawn. What a place to grow up! A paradise for kids,
for sure. Plentiful land, rich with fish river where water
creates impression of being boiled as the fish jumps out in
flying schools scattered by invisible threat, yet a bigger catch
that inevitably ends up in fisherman's net. Plantations of
bananas and papayas with occasional pineapple flowering beneath
the palm trees, rice fields and yucca, jungle potato, make a
staple diet that is hard to refuse or get tired of. In saying so,
I'm lucky enough to be here in August. Change of seasons,
apparently, greatly affects abundance of produce and fish. When
the river swells up and spreads into the jungle, where does one
go to find it… it could be anywhere - in the river, in the
fields, under your porch, or miles away in the forest. As far as
plantains go, which a household of, say, ten people can consume a
sack of on a good week, they are out of stock at times of floods,
I am told, which happens between November and April. One needs a
canoe to get around, even to visit the neighbour's house, judging
by the height of stilts that houses are built on.

I went several times across the river with Gilberto, at whose

place I've been staying, to gather papayas and plantains maduro,
mature plantains, which makes them sweet when cooked. Green
plantains, boiled or grilled, taste much like potatoes do. Every
time we came back bending double under the weight of jungle
goodies. I'd cram my backpack and carry a sack in my hands,
Gilberto would tie bunches of plantains with a strap, duck under
it, placing the strap on his forehead and then huff and puff and
clench his teeth trying to stand up. It was on my request that we
went fruit picking, one has to ask for everything here. Else its
fish and rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. For me especially,
without salt. Redilinda, Gilberto's spouse, is quite happy to
feed me nothing else but grilled fish and rice or a boiled fish
with a mere onion for company, rice on a side, calling it 'soup'.
Shipibo, I have noticed, are very set in the ways of cooking.
Speaking of Redilinda's menu, I thought it will be different from
the start, as I watched her nod enthusiastically when upon my
arrival at the house I produced lentils, peanuts, garlic, honey,
ginger, bay leaves, and other little bags of herbs. She promptly
stashed them out of sight and seemingly forgot all about their
existence. Since day one I asked my fish to be stuffed with
garlic before being grilled, since I got a big bag of it. She
would eventually do it, after being asked kindly so a dozen
times. In the end I was buying my own tomatoes, onions, carrots,
beets, eggs, everything I could get my hands on as nobody seems
to ever bother with making my diet a little more palatable. They
were happy eating their meat, milk and canned food which I was
not allowed to eat. It made Artidoro's efforts, who would go out
of his way to obtain fresh vegetables and an occasional chicken,
honourable and caring in comparison to the slack (and perhaps,
selfish) cooking attitudes here. Or is it a simple courtesy that
is not a part of Shipibo culture… I watched them crack many a
watermelon and was never offered one. Or may be it is the way the
diet is supposed to be? who knows. Yet, I shouldn't complain
about my diet. Artidoro ate nothing but yucca for ten years.
Others dreamt not of a treat such as a sweet grilled plantain.
Albeit a deviation from the traditional ration, it is accepted
and actually makes all the difference. not to mention having a
papaya first thing in the morning after a night on medicine...
Redilinda's menu is somewhat unappealing at such a time: I've
been cleansed inside and out, feeling light and a little seasick.
Last thing I want is a crusty amphibian in its scaly armour
scorched by the fire, glistening in its oil. Much rather I prefer
a hot drink of ginger and cinnamon and cloves and honey, a kind
of honey they sell in a bottle, it flows easily and tastes like a
syrup made of exotic fragrant fruit found in paradise only.

House of poo

The village of Paoyhan , where one should not believe a thing. in

disbelief, I've written two pages in my notebook while sitting on
the porch of the internet hut (there's a satellite dish size of a
small flying saucer inside of a communication compound next-door,
also housing an old one covered in mildew patterns. all one needs
is some gasoline to get the generator going to power up the
machines). A man promised to send a boy to bring keys for the hut
quite some time ago. Well... may be not today. May be my Spanish
lacks the force of conviction. may be they know well in advance
that I am not going to make them famous. Gilberto reckons that
Benjamin is better off as he has a webpage. Next thing he wants
me to make one for him. Perhaps he imagines a flood of sick
tourists assailing him in search of shamanic cure for their
illnesses. Bring in the sick and their money! I never understood
how exactly to pay jungle doctors. They don't ask for money, but
they complain that donations are not generous enough. They want
to know how much money you got. They tell you about legendary
generous Berna Brabeck and Kiri, and of one French guy, who must
have left them under impression that every gringo is a travelling
Santa Claus in disguise, minus the deer carriage. Bells and
whistles all the way, listen to them jingle. Sure, why not - you
want a webpage?! I was hoping you'd say that. Cause am a man with
a plan. A manager, no less! I shall manage your account. I shall
bring people in. I shall tell them to pay one hundred soles per
ceremony, nada mas. No more than hundred soles per week for your
two-by-two meter cubicle you call 'habbitacion'. Porque? Because
I bring you a sack of rice, because I hunt and gather while your
cousins lounge about all day long waiting for their five o'clock
football game. So you want a webpage? Great! I'll make you
famous. Let us sit down and write it up. No ma с ana - ahoritta.
Nowish is the word! Gilberto is all yes and si, si and bueno. I'm
sitting behind a table, pen in hand, idly hovering above a virgin
page, waiting for the word. Gilberto, my man. Think of the
tourists. Smiling, sweating gringos that have come strapped in
high-tech adventure gear, huffing and puffing under the load of
modern vacuum-packed convenience they have to carry everywhere
they go, middle-aged self-appointed gurus in search of furthering
their spiritual credentials, young hippies from a no-man's land,
whatever their country of origin might've been, clad in cool
embroidered garments hanging loosely around their undernourished
frames, looking for Amazonian zang. Be it Shizam Gasem Zang, it's
the same thing. Looking for a good kick up into the higher plane
of reality and a smooth, painless comedown. All sorts of spaced-
out pilots, ayawaskanaughts, wanted and equally unwanted pirates
on their restless search of a booty, shunned by peaceful majority
that does not believe such nonsense as inner flight of a
shaman... look here, here are lost souls, mad, sick, with purpose
and random, dying and kicking, you name it - men and women of all
walks of life, colour and age lumped together by invisible hand
into a common ball that rolls out so easily from local's tongue,
'tourist'. Think of it, Gilberto. Many a year you've been
learning the ways of your old man, many a plant swaying there in
the forest runs the magical sap that will make their feeble with
western sickness bodies strong again. Many a song you've learnt
by heart begging to be heard by an open ear.
Bueno, says Gilberto, but he won't come to the table. Sits on a
stump and watches the fire. Chases chickens. Digs a drain.
Ayawaska is boiling in the cauldron, it is the medicine cooking
day. Takes about eight hours. my pen is no longer content
surveying bare page and descends upon it aimlessly. Yep yep yep,
says Paradiso Paul of Granity. People are same same same, no
matter what continent you sail to, be it Alaska or Peru or the
west coast of the South Island.

Is the table no good, I ask finally.

Table is good, reaffirms Gilberto.

Then vamos! Let's do it, I say. I say, lets cure tourists. Tickle
their toes. Dust off their wallets. Think big! The world is big
out there. Many sick people working day and night jobs they hate,
jobs that make them sick, so that they can earn their dollars and
bring them to you, shaman Shipibo-Canibo of great Amazon,
curandero and maestro.

Okay, says Gilberto. He stands up, sits back down on the stump.
Watches fire. Watches rain. Anything but. My pen is all over the
page, pleading, requesting, raping. Twenty minutes later Gilberto
has finally arrived to the table of negotiations, clutching a
broom in his hand. Every sentence takes a bit of sweeping in
between. I fire questions at the maestro through his nephew to
get a little more perspective on his one-off mumbles. They seem
to talk a great deal amongst themselves in native Shipibo
language and all I get is a three word statement, no more.

To Gilberto, I suppose, trying to describe to a tourist how

ayahuaska works is both a futile and irrelevant task. It works!
It cures headaches, stomach aches, cancers, tuberculosis, brain
tumors, what have you. Chronic Depression, Parkinson disease,
broken heart, alcoholism. Depending on severity of condition, one
may need to stay for longer than a week. One may need to start a
dieta, a process in which a physical body undergoes cleansing by
purging toxins that requires certain restrictions on intake of
foods such as sugar, salt, meat, milk, etc., while the shaman
works on fixing energy patterns that caused the illness in the
first place. Also, there are specific dietas with specific plant
preparations for specific illnesses that may be undertaken
consecutively or concurrently as you wish. Jungle is an all-hour
pharmacy to a shaman, filling prescriptions any time of the day.
Scrape some bark here, bleed some sap there... mix it, fix it,
drink it. Rub it in. Leave overnight in water and have a tonic
bath next morning.

I've been dieting since I was twelve years old, says Gilberto.
Practicing medicine for over forty years now. All of the above
comes between sweeping, cleaning and pacing to and fro grabbing
stuff and putting stuff down. His shirt flung open, rounded belly
protruding outside, a rough-and-tumble version of Bilbo Baggins
struggling with his dragon after a night of beer drinking. Messed
up hair, far-off gaze in his fogged up eyes. That is another
thing I don't get: neither Gilberto nor Benjamin have clear eyes.
Is it age? Or, perhaps, they are not well? Benjamin's feet appear
to be swollen . He doesn't move much. Sometimes during the day he
may appear distant, as if lost in thought or watching something
that you can't possibly see. Whatever he's contemplating seems to
take place in another world. Gilberto, on the other hand, is more
likely to be homely somehow, in spite of his chronic lapses into
Shipibo dialect for the lack of Spanish. Once I fell asleep
during a ceremony and dreamt of Gilberto pressing on my back
every time I was about to exhale; I was convinced upon awakening
that he massaged me all along. I was incredibly rested, as if I
slept for a good many hours. which is a genuine bonus,
considering that one goes to bed with Paoyhan's resident deejay
Bryan Adams, latest techno beats and 'everything he does he does
it for you', his favourite lullaby. this infernal radio
repertoire is meticulously hand-picked from a collection of
popular back in you-name-it era and aired each night from the
navel of the village called 'punta', which is in fact a pub where
drinking goes on sometimes past midnight and of which activities
one is made aware through a booming karaoke machine. I definitely
prefer rocking out with shamans, grooving to the polyphony of
Shipibo tunes that chug along, like a train, complete with
hissing steam and a whistle; here comes a fork in the tracks and
the train deviates, sending a wave along its spine and individual
carriages fall out one by one, softly humming now, conserving
momentum for a spell... only to pick up where they left, come
together again and soar into the starry night propelled by sheer
abstinence, denying gravity and reason, without a crutch, without
a drumming beat, unaided in its flight that is measured only by
the pace of the heart. If one is so inclined as to indulge in
partaking of beverages, beer does not stand a chance among a
multitude of native brews that having had its effect cause
nothing apart from lightness in the morning, as if one has not
fully landed yet. I do not understand why alcohol with its
narrowing action upon the mind has spread so vast in such short
time here. It could that it is a part of symbiotic organism
comprised of gas, tax and money. These seem to thrive together in
a lovely bunch, uprooting ancient cultures whenever they go,
scattering them around, stomping out old knowledge wherever they
can. You wait; there will one day be a new entry in the oxford
dictionary: 'a shaman' - same as a terrorist, a vagabond, a
threat to progress and to beer drinking. With the shaman there is
no TV. No fast food. One is not even allowed to put salt on his
rice! Shaman does not give a damn. Shaman is always chilled. Here
goes your freezer packed with stowed away meat and beans, your
genetically modified frost-proof corn, your cryogenic capsule
into the future. Here goes every security so painfully acquired
in adult life. Can't trust a shaman! Before you know it, you
shall be in the village of Paoyhan, the paradise for
disbelievers. First of all, one doesn't quite believe he is
here... I must be one of them sick, sick tourists.
 Gilberto Ochavano Mahua, aka 'Soi Meni'

Plata quando siento como un million dollares, maestro. I shall

pay when I feel like million dollars. There we lie, listening to
our stomachs grumble and bubble as gasses pass through the
intestinal labyrinth, pushing obstacles out of the way. It's a
carefully considered decision to stay put in one place, as my
bowels should protest at the slightest jarring and cause
distraction to the feeling of unity that blissfully descended
upon me after conversing with Gilberto for some time. instead of
going to sleep I'm writing this down by the light of the candle,
having had a epiphany that there is only so much room in the
short term memory of the brain for the cluttering of thoughts and
it must be emptied in order to have another epiphany. One can
saviour a good thought only for so long before becoming dull in
the wits. I was thinking... how this whole shamanic shebang is
very much a parody in appearance that, nonetheless, delivers a
real punch from time to time, above or below the waist, no one
cares about your balls here. In this clown outfit there is a
reverse side to the costumes. think of Pirates of the Caribbean
and all the masquerade that goes with it: disheveled, cheap-
looking characters that scratch the bottom of their hole-ridden
pockets to buy a descent eye-patch, not to mention forking out a
gold coin for the gathering of pirate captains!... a mottled crew
of sticking-out bellies, missing buttons, coloured shreds tying
together loose garments and gnarly, twisted smiles that reek of
rum and freedom. fresh breeze and salt, a patch of punk art
flying high on the mast of every vessel and loaded canons
carrying screaming monkey on every canon ball... all-singing,
all-dancing weeds of the world that thrive where others perish,
grow carbuncles on their bodies and fight dirty, with zest and
defiance, to vanquish in the heat of the battle, only to come
back swinging on the end of a rope and deliver potentially lethal
blow to their opponent, whoever it happens to be at the time.
They are a haphazard school of brawlers who really need a good
knock-out before being able, or being bothered, to reach the peak
of their performance. Tyrone, come drink ayahuaska, you bloody
thunder of Spanish seas! I know your thirsty mother... you'd
merry a wooden barrel if it had a drop of rum in it. The best of
all, the more you drink, the better you feel in the morning. No
remorse, no pounding headache. No broken furniture to repair. All
bones intact...

When you write, it's hard to go to sleep as there's always a

thought lingering on, a lonely customer after the closing time
that still hasn't paid for his purchase. It's a quarter past
three in the morning; I might as well stay till dawn and go
fishing first thing in the morning when it is cool and agreeable
to move. [Speaking of fishing, it is done with a simple rig
consisting of a two-meter stick, equal length of green cord tied
to one end and a hook, nothing else. It doesn't matter how close
one throws the line, be it under one's feet, fish is everywhere.
I have originally purchased a reel of nylon and since then lost
many a great catch due to nylon notwithstanding a good snap of
jaws. My line would tighten and tremble under the mighty pull and
then break just above the hook, a very disheartening experience
evoking a range of emotions from being dumfounded and unable to
move, eyes wide open and staring blankly into space, to that of
being outraged, frothing at the mouth, and running about the
river bank, threatening to come back with a dynamite stick.]
Well, being true to myself, meaning contradicting every word I
say, I fell into slumber, instead of trying to capture every
little syllable that came knocking on my skull, clatu viratu ...
doesn't matter. Some magic needs to be saved for other times too.
I did go fishing, however. Got myself just enough for a soup
which I cooked later for lunch with all the spices that I brought
and that Redilinda never opened. Bay leaf, cloves, oregano , etc.
the only vegetables I managed to obtain on this occasion were a
couple of dwarf tomatoes that didn't add up to much taste wise.
my plan was to cook lunch for everyone, a two-course meal of
soup, number one, and rice, number two, embellished with carrots,
beetroot, onions and garlic, all of which I ordered from Pucallpa
the day before, together with much anticipated roll of film for
the camera. None of these items arrived, they were merely
forgotten. Next on my list was internet, for which I had
purchased gasoline in advance, but for the mud on the road it was
no go. Half an hour of Amazonian rain made all the difference
between a leisurely stroll down the street and a slurpy wading
through wet clay that sticks to one's shoes with a snowballing
effect. What to do? I go to see Benjamin, pay my hundred soles
for last night's ceremony and he informs me it is to be followed
by another one this evening. I was counting on some rest, by the
looks of it, not today. Doesn't matter. Who am I to plan ahead?
On close examination I am same as others - eccentric, fluctuating
currents of energy that flip, flop and whirl along the spiral of
space and time, bumping into each other just like any other
random particle would, being repelled and attracted for no
apparent reason yet in perfect accordance to the overall fractal
pattern of life. A kind of pattern that takes a lifetime to
observe, may be more, for there is a permanent foggy film on the
surface of our inner eye that blurs vision and prevents us from
seeing where we are going. Therefore one must trust intuition
blindly, which is somewhat a challenge. Especially when putting
logic and reasoning onto the back seat. As I have mentioned, both
Benjamin and Gilberto have milky glaze over their eyes. Is that
an attribute of illness present, an old age, or is it that the
information carried by visible frequency of light has become
secondary to what one perceives with ayahuaska vision? I have
been here only a week, yet I feel I know these people a great
deal. May be because they come as they are. Tricks aside, genuine
human beings, profoundly simple in their ways. all gang-ho and
now-or-never, sliding barefooted through the switch-blade jungle
grass, bent double under the weight of produce, swimming amongst
piranhas like any other fish, dying in droves from foreign
diseases, stabbings and stunt driving but never of heart failure,
being born again tenfold, smoking tobacco from hand-made pipes
and curing cancer with tobacco smoke in the same breath, singing
in high elfish voices notes of such joy that would make dead
dance... while twisting colourful artesano threads and spinning
tales of deceit by gringos with a curved down smile. There is no
Indian blood in me, but I am not a gringo either; half-baked
potato, at your service.

It's 4.30 am, no sleep for two days. Yet I am fully awake - and
fresh like a bun straight out of the oven. Last night was the
first ceremony at the house of Benjamin; the crowd has a new
flavour to that of Gilberto's. There was Ishmael, Benjamin's son
in law, who lives across the road with his wife Melina,
Benjamin's daughter. They have three kids, I believe. Then there
was Oscar, official medic by day, whose main duty is listening to
radio and keeping informed of incoming river boats. He said he
saw me in his vision the night before, but due to my abortive
knowledge of Spanish I failed to find out in what context he saw
me, exactly. then, a slightly chubby fellow named Carlos was
seated next to me, a son of police chief of Pucallpa (a jungle
city of 250,000 people), towards whom I was much disposed as he
was a helpful and considerate companion. He spoke of Cusco's
magnetism upon finding out of my travels around Sacred Valley,
its underground labyrinths to the north and a lost city they were
once, as well as a vision of Incas that his friend had while
meditating there. immediately I remembered what legend of Jasper
says about Incas: they are still there... then there were
Arnaldo, Benjamin older brother and Gilberto, his right hand in
the matter of drinking, as well as Antonia, one out of Benjamin's
three wives that seems to travel everywhere with him. She sings
beautifully with a high childlike voice and burps gruesomely
afterwards, as if she had a swamp toad stuck deep in her throat.
I'm buying her embroidered stuff tomorrow. Bags, blankies,
whatever. That's all whom I know by name; there are also a couple
of Benjamin's disciples I never learnt names of. A stellar line
up, all in all, that really delivered me to my home planet in the
end, a place I feel I truly belong to. Half a glass of ayahuaska
amarillo, sweet as a sugar syrup, also helped to transport us
where the gravity has no effect upon movements and one is free to
come and go as they please between the worlds, surrounded by
companions who cherish this liberty to the highest degree.
Transported magically into sixteenth century in the grand silent
hall of the Russian Museum, I feel the warm texture of soft
canvas, life-size subjects framed by rich deep shadows, here are
Shipibo Indians all around, lying, smoking, sleeping, talking,
nodding. suave image painted by the yellow light of the candle,
trembling shadow beneath the flame floating across the surface of
the wooden floor split with a gaping crack here and there to spit
into. speckled with brown from inside plastic bottles of
ayahuaska in the middle, to the right of Benjamin who is sitting
cross-legged, a different kind of Buddha, more human, more flawed
in features, more susceptible to being challenged by a painter.
or a mosquito that infiltrated our mosquito-proof refuge. I know
where it came from... I was ambushed by a flying squad of those
in Benjamin's open-air, hole-in-the-ground loo just before.
plenty of breeding moisture there. if I was an alien queen, I'd
surely lay my eggs there too. it is the spider web weavings of
mosquito net that induce a cocoons feel of being enclosed, as if
we are incubating on this floating island of imagination in the
vast, unexplored cosmos outside. being born of bellies sticking
out to the sound of breathing and exhausting train whistles,
swaying with the movement, pending in the moment, without
hesitation. must leave the anchorage of mind, go beyond words!
the only message that I managed to retain in my brain having left
its confines. mind is a machine. we are batteries, as Morpheus
puts it laconically. vibrating with energy, all made of swiftly
moving atoms which create an appearance of solidity so secure
that it weighs down the scales of logic on which our society is
based. Logic that enables communications on this primitive, in
cosmic view, standard. I believe that as far as flesh is
concerned, it is but a transformative tool in converting,
refining the crude energy into its pure, light form enabling
further travels and adventures for all pirates, flying all sorts
of flags, argh! what is singing if not the air accumulated in
voluminous space such as a gyrating belly, for instance, of a
shaman, that is expelled through a complex tubular passage
shaping its sonic content and volume, as well as its pitch. the
vocal aspect of singing put aside, it is a transformed, refined
and fine-tuned energy oscillating within a great range, expansion
of which is our own responsibility. immaterial, ephemeral essence
is the future of what now seems a crude, solid reality of
tangible form that possesses curves to follow, distance to
measure, external texture to be described to the attentive
listener in minute detail, felt under tentative finger, tasted,
licked, swallowed, sold as a corner store for less than a buck,
taught at schools and smashed to pieces in universities - a
higher education!- and further abused, its corpse left out in the
sun such a long time that it mummified into a genuine relic. a
final drop is that the great advantages of form are gossiped
about at international conventions of renown scientific persona
whose revered opinion is widely available in thick volumes
available in public libraries, condensed bursts of friendly fire
from the press and continuous carpet-bombing from above for one
and all over broadcasting media, whose sole existence is
justified by the loss of our intrinsic ability to communicate on
higher frequencies. call it telepathy, I don't care. I believe in
pirates, Jedi knights and all sorts of magic as of late, having
had a epiphany which fixed all broken links in my brain for a
flashing moment, lasting just long enough to gift me a residual
glow in the dark recesses of memory to bring out the goods to the
surface for immediate consumption- good things perish easily in
the eyes of scrutiny. a more gentle approach is necessary, I
believe. good things need love and tenderness that is a domain of
a child, who believes in magic and can abandon his form freely in
order to partake of all essences, experience all states...
crawling, grabbing, wide open eyes staring inquisitively,
undivided attention - I could learn that all over again.

Breathing. No one ever asks, how does one breathe, exactly?

Through the nose, through the mouth, forcefully gulping air of
letting it to be drawn in softly... or stop altogether for a
temporary repose to scratch a parasite nesting just below the
skin, have a frightful panic attack about shoes left in the rain,
vacant baggage, pre-booked tickets, unsent postcards and in the
background there's all this arranging activity going on to manage
bodily functions that continue misfiring and malfunctioning
resulting in stoppages, intestinal traffic jams and stagnant
acidic pools bubbling with rich sulphuric gasses in the presence
of which one doesn't want to breathe anyway. My body has managed
breathing all my life, why ask how to breathe now? A dumb
question, seemingly. Yet I know I am smart, and there's always a
new discovery in finding the answer. In this case, it occurred to
me that I have been exposed to prolonged periods of schooling,
fearing and anticipating retributions as well as acts of random
violence, be it physical or emotional, in the artificial
environment removed from the steady pulse of mother earth and her
soft, homely tunes and lullabies. My mum only knows one lullaby,
learnt by heart from mine and my brother's eternal requests to
watch a ten-minute television program for kids that occasionally
played cartoons featuring cigarette-smoking reckless wolf
punished and laughed at by a smartly dressed bunny with a
collared shirt, big cute eyes and prominent front teeth
maintained at razor-sharp point to facilitate grating carrots, no
doubt, teeth that drum up a rapid staccato at times of distress
and murder which inevitably fails to take place, as the show must
go on, resulting in shameful demise of the hare's best enemy and
his best buddy - wolf. Tom and Jerry in Siberia sort of thing.

Welcome into my head, a clogged-up attic of an accountant that

never throws away his paperwork. So many unpaid bills, receipts,
expired offers, carefully drawn plans and arrangements for any
number of possible futures now rendered obsolete, all wrapped in
a tangled mess of spider webs and sprinkled with breadcrumbs on
top to attract flocks of incoming messenger pigeons that fly in
for a feed, shit all over the place and leave in panic when I
come shooting my cork gun, swearing to clean the place out for
good. Those who know better don't bother moving from the spot,
the regular customers. I swear, it is time to take a gaping yawn
and let them all go. Let everything go down the street on its
merry way: yelping dogs, clucking chickens, small kids drilling
your back with their unblinking stare in the wake of your
passage, apprehending out-of-place phenomenon of a stranger,
bigger kids that miraculously learnt your name in ten days that
you've been here, folks cruising around with machetes dangling in
their hands, mirrors of eyes reflecting back at you what you are
made of, beaming midday sun baking clay banks of the great river
Amazon till the banks crack into fissures of unknown depth. brown
tepid water strewn with shreds of pallid-yellow foam skimming
over its surface, a dolphin in a middle of piranhas suspended in
their flight just long enough to show off a pink rose stamped on
the sparkling armour of theirs... in one giant yawn take it all
in, and halleluiah! - there's a booming voice of a priest
delivering his flock of the devout through PA system bought
exclusively to spread the word of God. Everyone is welcome to mud
cakes and boxed-in ears, peppermint lies and enticing promises
dangling like a shiny lure just out of reach of the one who
desires.

To walk past uncaught, unaffected by delirious smells of food

being cooked on the grill that make your mouth water, ignoring
wound up whining baby alarms. Ride a bumpy beat of a Peruvian
radio now running on a car battery thoughtfully charged during
last night when generators came on. Glide through scenes rich
with impulse and momentum as if you were a well-greased ball
bearing doing one more turn around the axle of the world.

Think not of unfinished sentence, standing at the ruins of once

so elaborately erected monument to the mind and accept it as a
tool and a friend. Annoying and futile as it may be, it's the
only buddy who will never refuse a yarn, any time, any place. By
God, ask questions. Spell yourself out, if that's what you have
to do. One syllable at a time, know thyself. I distinctly
remember having a splitting headache as I strived to leave the
confines of my brain during the closing session with Benjamin at
the end of my dieta. In India when a man dies and is placed on a
funeral pyre they crack the skull open with a hammer right at the
top to facilitate a passage of spirit. Things you think about at
night during ceremony while struggling to sit up, fighting
sickness, shrinking into a tight knot until you know you ain't
getting anywhere and you may as well lie down and rest. Stop
trying. Let go.

There is another way, which is to breathe, relax and wait. So I

start feeling this pull as if my head has been magnetized and
allow myself fall into a narrowing gravitational hole that seem
to compress my being into a condensed supermatter without a
thought, a voice or a reason, a singularity of awareness in which
this weird process is happening and I am nowhere and everywhere
at the same time. I cannot shrink any further than this: this is
it, ground zero. A critical point of giving up, having busted
myself trying.

People like me, we need a good thrashing. I dare say it must be a

universal law that requires one to screw all bolts nice and
tight, squeeze all stale air out of lungs in order to taste fresh
new wind that fills the sails and makes your vessel free to roam
the ocean. I am free, at last. Expansion became possible only
after total contraction, and hence forth happed by itself without
any effort on the part of the doer; preliminary journey was
admittedly arduous, yet ultimately rewarding... Deeper you go
into yourself, more golden glow surrounds your being. Make me
feel like a million dollars, maestro, I will pay you back.
 [back to the city]

'Es mi Vida', as I lie in a hammock, speaker's blaring right

above my head, I don't understand most of the words yet the vibes
penetrate through sheer volume, air is rich with vibrations and
my soul resonates with a trembling note released like a
fluttering bird from its musical cage of accordion to the old
fashion motif of tango. It makes one beautifully sad without
reason. perhaps it is the clarity of the instrument, or the rows
of hammocks strung up all around, its occupants swinging lightly
to the hum of the engine that keeps its monotonous beat steady,
assuring of the due arrival to the port of the destination, even
babies are silently content, lulled by invisible peaceful
presence of something old, caring and darn familiar, yet I'll be
damned to put a finger on it and declare, "this is it!".
Fleeting, undulating feeling of warmth at the pit of my stomach -
happiness! Give me a Nobel Prize now, 'cause I'm coming home. For
the first time in my life I actually know where home is. I am a
good will messenger, delivering goods to your doorstep: knock-
knock, who is there? Who could it be, still the same but
different, slightly more crazed than ever before, raving with his
mouth closed through the portal of eyes, travelling faster than
thought - I am already there! Catch me before I fade out, before
I shrink into the familiar den between my ears, dissolve into a
stranger in a crowd on a busy street entering in wake of other
customers a discount sale of refurbished revelations rearranged,
touched-up and otherwise made look palatable and fresh. In
essence, I am a pusher of beautiful junk that will do you a
jingle and a dance for a coin's worth of laughter - if you can
afford it. I ask not, I am merely suggesting approach less
arduous than taking seriously my merchandize. Let me sell you a
round-bellied shaman hanging half-way out his hammock, snoring
heavily in spite of a sonic storm raised by radio, kids and a
hefty motor propelling up-stream our three-storey tug boat. Radio
is playing a Spanish version of a House of Rising Sun now. A guy
next to me just bought a monkey on a string. Tomorrow I shall be
claiming a fraudulent sum of money at the comisaria de policia
and buying tobacco at the market most of which will be
confiscated upon arrival back home. There will be a police
officer wanting to know what I do for living and how long I've
been away. I will say I am a farmer. What does my farm produce?
Goat manure, mostly. Three goats, two bantam chickens and one
cat, but I don't mention the exact numbers. Who's looking after
the 'stock'? My girlfriend. Why didn't she come with you
travelling? What sort of relationship are you in to go off to a
foreign country for three months by yourself? Welcome back to
Naziland. A liberal kind, I say. A kind that doesn't require one
to stick your tongue down anyone else's throat to show your deep
concern. I will clutch to my story, my cacao syrup and my
medicine. This bumpy ride I am on shook loose all nuts and bolts,
the brain machine is puffing along a rusty railroad track driven
by sheer momentum of habit, from mechanical point of view its
functioning is highly dubious, if not impossible. Every ayahuaska
ceremony could potentially be a life-altering event, even if one
doesn't see any visions there is a feel of the path one is
treading and a sense of collapsed time in which the past, the
present and the future are all moulded into one amorphous glob of
apprehension and anticipation that resides in your chest like a
crab jammed in a crack between wet rocks, waiting for the tide to
come and set him free again. I don't know any of these brown-red
half-Spanish, half-Indian people yet here I am, lying in my
hammock, a bag of money safely clutched between my feet, feeling
very much a part of the scene although I don't understand most of
the words coming out of the speaker above my head, vibrations
penetrate through pores in my skin, soak and saturate me with
trembling notes that condense somewhere inside and moisten my
eyes cause I am feeling it, I am coming home. I'm singing, it is
me singing on the radio words I do not understand, and hammocks
swing to my tune. All is in perfect harmony somehow, there is
nothing to be changed or to be done, and people will go about
their day exactly the same way as before, regardless of whether
you are there or not. I am happy there is nothing I can do. Let
them drink, brawl, laugh, die, peel bananas from the wrong end.
Let them be born with a scream on the tips of their lips, let
them grow and fill the space between their ears with words,
dreams, metaphors. Let them drink ayahuaska and go down on their
knees, spewing their guts out. Let them come crawling and begging
and give them nothing, so they stand up and realize they had it
all along. They had a perfect chance, a perfect opportunity, a
perfect world. They had rivers of sparkling clarity, mountains
topped with silence and mud pools of bubbling laughter. They had
everything - everything. And most of all, they had each other.
Just one person is one more world to discover. So worth the
trouble of the journey. And here I am - to deliver Goods. A
messenger, no more.

Knock-knock! Who is there?... Nobody. Thought I leave you a note.

I am going back to the matrix. When you see me I'll be wearing a
straightjacket and there will be a zipper on my lips.

[Pucallpa to Lima]

At the bus terminal an old man wants me to buy his bottled water.
No, gracias. He lingers on a moment to make sure there is not a
sole in me for him before approaching other arrivals with the
same unintelligible proposition and mad insane glint in his eyes.
There must be some remnant of a hunter's instinct that no
invasion of tourists could ever smooth over. Now and again he'd
swap bottles from a girl with a bucket of water nearby where she
kept replacements.

I watch a slightly psychopathic-looking vendor of haphazard

selection made up of candy, chewing gum and cigarettes, mostly,
carefully arrange a selection of one-off shampoo sachets, vacuum-
sealed razor blades, chewing gum and colours strips of various
pills between the fingers of one hand. He'd tentatively approach
his would-be customer, presenting in best light his selection of
merchandise, get a quick 'no' for his efforts if he is lucky to
be paid attention to in the first place, most often getting
nothing at all, and being simply ignored turn absent-mindedly
away, forgetting where he is for a moment, for what purpose? In
this dusty God-forgotten centre of commotion size of a small
parking lot, an island of activity in the deserted landscape of
brick walls, shut garage doors and dust, interrupted by a small
tide of transit passengers waxing and waning to the rhythm of
connecting busses, in the terminal exchange of final goodbyes.
What are you doing here, peddling your time away, while everyone
else is leaving? Old man has by now forgotten I don't want any of
his bottled water, or perhaps he just want to talk but in any
case he keeps rattling his coca-cola in my face. I counter-offer
him a snack of chancha, fried maize, of which he takes a handful
and shuffles off to the side to resume his routine. Shipibo women
keep dangling their beaded necklaces in my direction, hoping I'd
pay them a look - wrong thing to do, unless one is prepared to
hear stories of sick relatives dying in droves on hospital
doorsteps without the medicine. There's a sick child up the
sleeve somewhere in need of urgent operation, you can bet on it.
I look at my feet, I check out padlocked display of frozen
sweets, ask again when the bus is leaving - one can never be sure
- anything to gobble up an hour and a half of waiting.

The old man is finally rewarded with a coin from a freshly

arrived passenger and hustles away to get a new bottle; Shipibo
woman licks a stick of chocolate ice-cream; psychopathic vendor
of pills gets nothing. I'm in the bus, pulling plastic wrapper
off my seat. They keep them on as long as they can, in a manner
of a careful child tucking a toy back into the box it came from
for safekeeping. A woman sitting next to me by now has raised her
loud concerns about me destroying the bus. Attendant comes and
helps me to adjust the footrest, one of the few that still retain
a handle for adjustment. My neighbour ain't so lucky, she turns
away to look into the window, I can tell she is bitter. I finish
pulling plastic off and take my shoes off, the street outside is
gliding past - we are finally on the way. I make friends with my
neighbour on the left and almost instantly fall into disgrace
with my neighbour at the back who is disturbed by my humming as I
try to learn some songs. Electronic thermometer on the wall gives
reading of 33 degrees, in spite of air-conditioning. I am out of
water. There's a road block up ahead, and a certain chance to
procure refreshments. I wonder if roadworks and frozen sweets
vendors are in a symbiotic relationship with each other. I
stumble out of the bus to buy chilled apple water that comes in a
sealed plastic bag of pallid yellow. I tear off a corner and
squeeze the contents through a small opening into my mouth. Half-
way through the bag explodes into my face and drenches me with
sweet apple water that makes my shirt stick. I am sure the whole
bus is watching but I only have enough air in my lungs for a
modest "damn it!..."
I am stuck in Buenos Aires for a whole day. I could leave the
airport but it's gonna cost me getting back in. There's no rest
in the rest lounge, just rows of vacant seat skeletons, stripped
of any comfort they may have offered otherwise. I'm scouting one
cafe joint after another for free cups of hot water to soak my
oatmeal in. I could get a cheap meal for twenty American bucks,
but I don't. Because an Indian woman spends a week on a piece of
embroidery she will sell for half of that price. It is a three
day's wages for a man who's lucky enough to get work in Amazon. I
meander and watch people get up from their tables leaving their
plates half eaten, even untouched. There's nothing else to do but
drink coffee, shop or watch others shopping. There is no day and
no night; one looses sense of reality sooner or later and buys
into the notion that one could half this bottle of Scotch whisky
for a very special price or that box of Swiss chocolates in the
shape of seashells since it's tax-free and labelled with a
discount stamp. One cannot ignore it, there's a man-made mountain
of it blocking the passage way, sparkling in glorious gold
ribbons. Why can't I forget how to count and open my pocket wide,
just this once? Any guru will tell you just that - your money is
your prison. There I am, living and breathing money, clutching to
my wallet in my sleep, my best pal, my power, my security. I will
not let go a cent of it if I can help it. Unless, of course,
there is a cause more noble than stuffing oneself at the airport
buffet. Hopeless, I am. There's nothing of any significance to be
bought in the world. Great things are given as gifts of free
will. By the way, I am selling Shipibo embroidery, if you want
some. May be I am stuck here for a reason. To learn patience and
the art of doing nothing. I'm going to lie down on the floor
right here and practice doing nothing. If I am lucky, I will go
to sleep.

I woke up late and would have surely missed my flight if it

wasn't delayed. A final sweep over freshly vacant tables rewarded
me with two plates of potato balls and a scoop of creamy
mushrooms, the first mushrooms I ate in long while. I was going
home, at last.