It's 4:46 AM, December 31st the final day of 2014. I've been awake for the past 20 minutes just staring at the Termite tunnels bored into the ceiling of our two story hut in the back of the Hobo Hideout hostel. It's Roy's daughters Quinceanera today, and although I'm curious about how it will play out, It is hardly the most pertinent thing on my mind. Now more than ever the questions I have asked myself for decades have lost or are loosing the battle for importance in my life. In only 20 minutes of a DMT flash I have succeeded in doing what I thought could not happen, and indeed for many long lonely years what I "knew" could not happen. What am I talking about? I'm talking about discovering the soul. I'm talking about God with a capital G, but not the biblical one, surrounded by fire and brimstone, judgement and eternal damnation, the one we all know or refuse to know so well, but the ego-less God of all creation that is impartial and loving to all.Ironically what brought me to Atheism in the first place was the madness of religion itself, now the utter madness of a religious experience has brought me back to faith, although hardly in denominational form, and nothing like what it once was. For years I drew further and further away from god, but ever since my first mushroom experience, I have been coming closer and closer to the soul, to the essence of God. The funny thing about life it would seem, is that from start to finish were on straight paths we think will not change, and then somewhere along the supposedly straight line, we realize it's actually a circle, and that the lessons are learned through the journey, not from a starting or ending point.Our lives are filled with circles that teach us lessons through belief, change, rejection, and belief yet again. They seem to be unrelated, but they begin and end with an idea, usually a meme of some kind passed down to us from the depths of time, Such as "Love is Forever" "Duty above all" "Wealth before Health" or "God, King and Country." The level to which we are aware of our place in these circles depends on our point of view, and that I now believe, depends on more than luck or circumstance, we are far more than the random byproducts of chance. We are, I believe, elements of the eternal, expressions of the timeless, actors in an endless waltz, living and dying with purpose, knowingly or not. It's 4:46 AM and this where my mind is..At 5:20 Am, I heard and saw Jimmy on the patio below us smoking a cigarette and cleaning the floor, as he does nearly every day at this time. By 6 AM on days that we work on the farm he usually calls up to us, "You boys awake?" to which we always answer "yeah!" even if only having woken up from the question piercing through to us in our dreams. Today was not such a day, for at 5:30 AM I descended the winding metal staircase to the 2nd story, went through the abandoned air conditioned halls and down the grand wooden staircase, exiting the inner front door to the foyer where Jimmy was sitting in his usual spot, looking out at the early morning traffic through the large swinging window, still smoking his cigarette, but now sporting his equally usual large cup of instant coffee."Morning Jimmy" I said wiping the sleep from my eyes. He didn't reply, he simply nodded his head and washed down a quick drag of his cigarette with a large swig of the cups contents. A minute later, as though continuing a conversation we had flawlessly paused from the previous day, he said, "Won't be any work at the farm. Got to get these fucking papers signed or I'll go bankrupt!" Another drag of the death stick and a sip of the dark stimulant ensued, which was followed by long aimless stair out into the street and then a question as he turned again facing me as if noticing I was there for the first time, "what are you bozo's up to today?" I smiled, enjoying his humor, even in the early morning hours, and told him we were attending a friends daughters Quinceanera as her chaperones, which he already knew, and that not much else was planned.When a reasonable hour for business activities was reached, Blake and I went to the internet cafe and bought our tickets for Lima to San Francisco. It was a little weird really. When we first began our journey to South America we had ideas of the world collapsing around us, and life becoming something very harsh and trying. We didn't know if or when we'd ever return home, somehow buying the tickets established a connection to a different reality that we had left behind and thought broken. Home for us is a place rich in history, a place with family and friends, but also a place that has destroyed many of us, pulling us down into a slum of corrupted ideals, lost hopes, and very limited opportunities. Those of us who remain are molded into things we never intended, or wanted to be. I suppose it's much more common of a thing than I realize. Pacific Grove is a beautiful place, that much is certain, but its tremendously expensive to live there and to survive you must become a corporate stooge, be incredibility hardworking (probably just to fail anyways) or already be wealthy. In any case, I'm happy to come home for my family, if only for just a while.Blake and I returned to Aries Burger, where we met Roy II, the 62 year old Englishman whom I can barely understand a word of, both because of his low volume and his accent. He's a character for sure, I just wish I could hear him better so knew how much of one he really is. We each had a Multiorgasmo shake(Filled with natural stimulants and other strange powders of questionable affect) and then returned to the Dawn of the Amazon for breakfast. Our waitress for the night of the fire approached and kindly reminded us of our unpaid bill for the night in question. We explained that we had come the next day and settled the bill, she hurried behind the counter, conversed with the others and quickly returned, thanking us and then taking our new order.After Breakfast Blake went to buy mopacho cigarettes for our tobacco cleansing diet for the new year. Did I just say Tobacco Diet? Yes, I did.. One of Ian's other "patients" I guess you'd call us, told us about a week long tobacco diet he was doing involving drinking pure tobacco water 3 times a day, without food. Well we weren't prepared to spend our final days in Iquitos drinking nothing but tobacco, which is supposed to be the most horrible thing you'll ever do, so we went with the baby step program, which was to snort the liquid twice daily. While he was doing that I returned to the internet cafe and tried and failed to buy our tickets from Iquitos to Lima, apparently they don't accept debit cards. Something's truly wrong with the world if people prefer to accept debt rather than actual assets, if you could call Dollars such a thing.I returned to the Hideout and touched up the bathroom with new paint. While I did that Jimmy repainted the Foyer. Blake returned and the three of us spent the evening on the couch watching Game of thrones and talking about some of Jimmy's more radical stories of youth. At 10pm Roy arrived at the hideout and took us in the taxi to his house about 15 minutes away. The taxi couldn't make it all the way so we had to walk for a few minutes to get there. When we did His daughter descended the stairs wearing a crazy pink gown, with ruffles, she had a reserved smile and was beautiful. What struck me most was just how out of place she looked with the wrecked buildings, mud and sewage "streets" destitute looking children half clothed and a crippled girl on a single Jerry rigged crutch zooming down the street with her cell phone in her free hand. All of this and she looked like she was about to accept the slipper that fit in a fairy tale you might remember.
Blake took her hand and escorted her back up the same disintegrating road we came by and took the taxi to the Red Plaza for pictures, with the mother, Sister and myself trailing in another taxi. After that we returned to the house and waited for the party to begin. Roy's sister offered me a drink, which I took but did not drink, for it was obviously very alcoholic. A man sitting next to me, who had clearly been enjoying the fiery substance for some time, kindly relieved me of the burden. Before the party even began fireworks lite the sky from all over the city, it was midnight, 2014 has come and gone, and now a new circle begins.It's now 30 minutes into the new year and I'm sitting in a brightly lite room with very loud trendy music blaring, Blake's standing at the very front with Roy's daughter still in hand and all her friends and classmates on one side of the room, and their parents on the other. Roy and the family stand up to give speeches and then Blake gets to have the first dance with her, then Roy, and then every guy in the room, including me. Gifts were then bestowed and by the time food was even mentioned, which we thought there would be plenty of long before now, which is why we skipped dinner, we were ready to leave. It was already 1:40 AM and there seemed to be no end in sight for the festivities, so we thanked everyone for the experience and gracefully exited the scene, but did not easily escape the temptations of darker traditions, for we were assigned two of the less than coherent members of the party by Roy to escort us to the street. They offered us every drug in the manual and more, assuring us the party would continue at full power once they got home, and that we were more than welcome to pay for the majority.... I mean, join them with our snow shoes to enjoy the miscellaneous white powders they intended to vacuum through their brains. I just kept walking and thanked them for the offer.We made it to the street, got a taxi back to the Plaza de Arma, had a Shake at Aries Burger and made it to the Hobo Hideout at 2 AM, the cut off point for being able to return before the door would be locked till 6 AM. I fell on to my cot rolled to my back and once again stared at the industrious legions of termites busily building their bunkers of decaying wood into our abode. As I stared, thinking about everything that had been in 2014, I thought about the new year to come, and everything it would bring. I thought to myself, " It is the year 2015, and all that you know changes now. Or so they say..."
Alchemy & The Flame
It was our first full day off when Jimmy went out into town and came back with Ian's card. He handed it to us and said, "this is the guy, he'll take you where you want to go." We thanked him and then I called the number twice, leaving a message each time. From there we walked to the Plaza de Arma where we ran into none other than Roy, the maker of our jewelry."Hey Roy how are you?" We asked. "Good brother, good. Any plans for new years?" he asked."Well were trying to do pure DMT, you know anyone who has it?" I asked."I know Ian." he replied. Blake and I both looked at each other, I took out the card and showed it to him."You mean this Ian?""yeah thats him, you want me to take you to him?"yes" we said in unison, and off we went in a taxi to Ian's house. We got off the main road and walked down a descending dirt road for about 150 yards to a nice looking place nestled between other houses of similar refinement. Roy knocked for 10 minutes until finally the shutters opened and a long haired balding Chinese man poked his head out from the darkness."Thats him? Thats our guy?" I thought to myself. A passing confusion as Roy quickly snapped me back to the present, "Hey, is Ian here?" He said. The man blinked very slowly as though half conscious and then said rather fluidly, "yeah.." With that he disappeared and a moment later the gate opened. We went inside and were introduced to Ian, the man that we had truly come to Peru to see, but we didn't know that yet.He told us of his experiences with the different psychedelics, how after mastering a substance, by doing it a thousand times or more, he would get a tattoo of its molecular form on his body. He had the DMT molecule on the back of his neck, the LSD 25 on his arm, and Mescaline on his leg. He had other interesting tattoos as well, those combined with his mohawk, tall stature and lovely Welch accent really gave him a distinctly memorable persona. We met the other cast of characters staying with him, Olympia, his polish, Vietnamese girlfriend, very fiery and opinionated, mike the British born Chinese man I've already introduced and his girlfriend Kate, also from England. We then made a plan to smoke his DMT tomorrow and said goodbye, leaving back to the Plaza de Arma with Roy.When we returned he told us It was his daughters 15th birthday on new years eve, something of a big deal in latin America, and he invited us to join the party, but not just as guests, he wanted one of us to be the official chaperones for his daughter! The responsibilities of which included, a photo shoot, first dance at the party and to escort her wherever she went. I wasn't so keen on the idea but thankfully Blake said yes before I had to say no. I felt so good at that moment that we returned to Dawn of the Amazon and broke the six week ayahuasca fast with a Red curry. Blake had already broken it a few days before at the Karma Cafe with a falafel burger.Jimmy didn't need us at the farm the next day, so I painted the upstairs bathroom for him. Initially it was as a trade for two weeks stay at the Hideout, but Jimmy had to apologize later saying that he could only give us a week free, since he was nearly broke from funding his fish farm. I see the crazy stress he's under day to day, and he works his ass off, so I understood. The only thing that really sucked were the toxic fumes From the paint, it was so bad I nearly passed out, so I had to quit and save the rest for another day.We had lunch at the Dawn and then called Ian, shortly after arriving at his house. We talked for a few minutes, Ian asked which one of wanted to go first, for some reason I volunteered right away, then he gave me to the count of finishing his cigarette to prepare for the DMT experience.He walked me into a white walled room with psychedelic drawings, tapestries and feathers hanging from the walls. He asked me to lay down on the bed so that my head was a foot from the wall and then sit up cross legged, he did this so that when you passed you wouldn't fall back and hit your head.Ian waved the huge eagle feathers and blew mopatcho smoke over my body. Then he aligned each of my chakras with a sonic bell, basically a metal bowl, and with a wooden stick he rotated around it creating a lovely loud ringing. After I was cleansed he went through how I was to properly hit the pipe for a break through experience. You don't just hit it once and off you go, theres a procedure to it. You have to hit the pipe three times to make it all the way, each hit must be held and followed by a quick inhale to push it further down.I said I understood and we began. The first hit went well, the second too but it was very very harsh, by the time I exhaled and went to hit it the last time everything around me was melting and growing at the same time, an incredible buzzing noise was filling my head and Ian was barely recognizable to me, morphing between every person Id ever met. He put the pipe right in front of my face and repeated,"hit it hit it hit it.." And so I did...It was extremely difficult to take a solid drag from the pipe, somehow though, I managed to ash it. I inhaled one last time and felt all of reality being forced away from me in every way imaginable, instantly leaving my body, with my limp shell falling back and hitting the mattress, my soul exited the top of my head and trillions of entities swarmed around me in an impossibly large, but enclosed space in another dimension, each of them going in and out of my soul, adding things to me and taking others away.All of creation joined together with me, intertwining and combining then shooting away, coming back as another thing and joining yet again. I lost consciousness then, and came to at the end of the trip, descending a ladder of dimensions, each becoming more real and physical and each more terrifying than the last. They were both the inner and outer layers of the world we live in, and I knew then the great peril that humanity was in. I felt the presence of terrible predatory evil, swarming around me as eels in a barrel, circling and circling, just waiting for the reaping of their prey.Then I was on a farm in the viewpoint of a chicken, watching as the big birds established dominance through posturing and violence. I could hear the words of James, Blake's uncle and lifelong badass, coming from the top cock of the roost, as he ruled over the weaker and subservient birds, "this is mine, this is real, this is mine, this is real " He said. After that I went into a celestial realm and floated effortlessly back into my body.Ian was cross legged in the corner, smoking a cigarette and smiling at me. "Welcome back." He said. I walked out of the room and joined the others, Blake who was laying in the hammock, stared, giving me an inquisitive look which said,"and? Are we in business?" The look on my face said it all, and he smiled, joining Ian in the room to see for himself.In truth theres no way to describe what I experienced, it's just too big a thing to explain with such limited means as words.It was the most ground breaking and astonishing experience of my life, that much I can say for sure, the rest you just have to go and see for yourself. My trip lasted 20 minutes and Ian told me the parts I didn't remember would come to me in the coming weeks, in dreams and while awake. Blake's lasted 25 minutes, the last 15 of which he was laughing uncontrollably. He came out with a completely astonished look on his face, totally happy to have come back from the brink.We thanked Ian for everything, hugged everyone there and walked back to the main street, still stunned to be alive and well, solidly in reality. We had dinner at the dawn, and almost as though it was a dream the shops across from us next to the cafe went up in a blaze of fire, everyone was screaming and running about, some crying others laughing. Then people started kicking in the walls of the stands, I thought they were robbing the shops but they were taking everything out of them and moving them to the other side of the street, saving them from the fires destructive path.All the while Blake and I finished our pancakes, a first class view not 30 feet from the blaze. We joined another Roy, whose also friends with Ian, at Aries cafe and chatted about our experiences with DMT. Also eating there was the Victor the Belgian and his friends who watched us do the frog venom in the Jungle. Lol, what a crazy day!