New arrivals came today, as well as the books Wilder had promised us. Yuka from Japan, who works as a spare parts distributor to Dell and Ybon a Peruvian Chinese mix whose great- great grand father was sold as a slave in Peru way back when. We quickly got to know each other by playing cards and by the time lunch rolled around we were already getting political.We talked about 9/11 being a false flag operation. (meaning a covert staged event to blame an opposing political, economic, or religious group; well-known historical examples of which include, the gulf of Tonkin, Hitlers burning of the Reichstag, the burning of Rome by Nero to blame the christians, remember the maine. So on and so forth.)9/11 was most likely run by Black ops factions of several agencies and organizations, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and Mossad (israeli intelligence) but we may never know. Ybon knew a good amount about it all but Yuka was a deer in the head lights the entire conversation. She said she had never heard about any of it but was very interested, and also that she was sorry she couldn't communicate that well with us, which no one held against her, especially while on the subject of conspiracies, which no one considers polite conversation.Antoine and Marilou had made a deal with Wilder to have an Ayahuasca ceremony that night with Victor. Once we had finished dinner we walked together with them to our hut, and since we believed that you should only be present in a ceremony if you are drinking or interpreting we wished them all the best and excused ourselves to lay down. From what we could hear of the ceremony it was much different from the ones we had with Caesar. The ceremony went until 3 in the morning and we hadn't eaten dinner until nearly 9pm because everyone including the camp cook were partying for the 2nd round of soccer games in Liberta, so neither of us slept well.In the morning Antoine, Marilou and Ybon Prepared to leave. Wilder would be going back to Iquitos as well to get more Ayahuasca, or so he said, we've decided to keep his words in the fantasy folder of our trip until further notice.Before lunch was served a new boat arrived. Blake and I were sitting at the dinning room table playing cards, as we usually did before and after meals. I turned my head around to check them out and guessed out loud that they were German and French. One of the guides we knew from last week came in from their boat and said hello. "Where they from?" I asked him, "not sure, German and French I think," he said as he walked passed us into the kitchen."Howd you know?" Blake asked. The Germans were easy to spot, all wearing Birkenstocks, thin smart-looking glasses, sweat paints and well maintained emotionless gazes, totally textbook. The French were wearing much more relaxed and adventurous clothing, and the guy was smoking a cigarette as he got off the boat, it was a split choice really, between France and the US, I just went with what seemed the most realistic. Not wanting to go into all the details of my observations though, I just smiled and said, "lucky guess."After being shown to their rooms, each group entered the dinning room to eat and we introduced ourselves. Three of them were from Germany, 1 was from France and the other had lived in France, her father was French but her mother was Peruvian, but she grew up in Texas.. So I guess I was right either way. I didn't see the 2 other people at the back of the boat though, they were Argentinian.While eating lunch the first thing I asked David, the French guy, was about the proposed 100% tax rate in France. He said he wasn't rich so it wouldn't affect him, and he could give a shit about the French government anyways. The conversation spiraled out of control from that point on, no one but David, Laura (the french, peruvian American girl) Blake and myself even said anything, everyone else hung back and watched the spectacle.Before dinner Blake and I had yet another plant water sauna that we had helped Victor make. During dinner we weren't so chatty as before but we did play a number of card games with Laura and David. Getting to know each other outside of the political sphere, which is always nice. Blake and I started reading the books that came today and were happy for them.
Visions of Shadow and Light
I had many dreams in the night and in the morning the first thing I did was copy them down as best I could recall in my dream journal. It´s a great practice to have. You can surprise yourself almost every time when looking back on dreams you´ve had in the past. You´ll go back into your old journals and read one you can´t remember at all and wonder, ¨wow, I can´t remember this at all, but it happened to me!¨ The words spell out a fantastic experience that you swore was realer than anything you´ve ever experienced, yet now it´s as though it never happened at all. Sure it was just a dream, but dreams can be just as real as when your awake, and how many dreams have you had and forgotten? How many memories have we all lost in the course of our lives, either real or within our subconscious? It makes me wonder about reincarnation and such, having entire lives before our current ones, then forgetting them completely as we begin the next. Ponder it for a minute...Because we didn´t sleep well the night of our first ceremony, Blake and I decided to sleep in and catch up on our rest. Eventually we got up and walked out of the hut to get breakfast though, which was just a little fish. It doesn´t ever take that long for Blake´s stomach to overcome any other bodily need he may have, I could have just laid there and starved a little, but oh no, not Blake. He´d tear the head off of a mother bear to get the last piece of salmon on the table, only if there was nothing else left to eat that is.When Breakfast was finished Blake was getting antsy to get out and look around. We told Wilder we were going for a walk and he warned us to be careful and not go to far. With that we strolled off alone into the woods, and as we walked into the jungle, I thought of how best to heed his advice, keeping in mind how little I really knew of this environment, and it´s many strange and truly dangerous inhabitants. We took several pictures right away and moved further on down the trail. As soon as we left camp an army of mosquitoes coordinated a massive attack on us from all sides. Blake kept moving down the path taking pictures while I fought of as many as I could. Soon we were a good distance from camp, still within screaming distance but far enough to lose track of our bearings. ¨These mosquitoes are killing me here Blake¨ I said. ¨Yeah me too, but lets keep going a little further.¨ he replied. So we did.When he was done taking pictures with his GoPro, we turned around and realized the path we had taken led us into a three-way intersection, neither of us knew which path was the original, so we took the one furthest to the left, which would keep us closest to the river and logically the best way to return to camp. It was quickly apparent that we were on the wrong path and were going into thicker and thicker jungle, so we turned around and chose the middle path, which thankfully was the correct one and we were soon free of the woods strolling into camp with the mosquito legions trailing fiercely behind us.It was lunch time at this point and we sat down with Rachel, Lisa and the Spaniards. All of which were going back to Iquitos after they finished eating. I told Rachel id email her about the shamans she told me about as soon as we returned to the city. Midway through the meal a new couple arrived on the boat that would take everyone away. I thought at first they were from Spain, based on their rugged looks and dark hair, but they were actually German. We struck up a conversation and it turns out the guy is from Baden-Baden, the same area of Germany that my mom is from. He works as a tour guide in Hamburg now and suggested I visit there when I go back to Europe, Hamburg along with Berlin, Munich and the German Alps.When lunch was concluded and all but us and the Germans remained I decided to get some reading done in the only book I brought along with me, which is The Psychology of The Transference, by CG Jung. It´s a crazy book, I got it because Terrence McKenna suggested reading it to learn more about the Archetypes of mankind. You can find it here on Google: http://books.google.com.pe/books/about/ThePsychologyoftheTransference.html?id=7G2UPwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y
After a few chapters we went back to the lodge and at Wilder's suggestion went out fishing with Caesar and a boatman. At first I was the only one getting any bites, but I caught zipo, nothing, nada. Blake caught a silver dollar sized piranha that fell off the hook as soon as we lifted it out of the water to show everyone, that was worth the laugh. Caesar caught seven 6¨ or so piranhas, Wilder got 3, not sure how many the boatman got more than either of us that's for sure. When nobody caught anything for a good 5 minutes we pulled our lines and went bird watching. We saw two Tucans, lots Raptors* brown falcon/Hawk like birds, King fishers, crains, monkeys and all sorts of other things. We tried to get into a beautiful lake surrounded by tall exotic trees that had thousands of birds chirping and screeching from within, but the way was still blocked by the low water, jungle water lilies and other water plants.We came back to the lodge and prepared ourselves for the second ceremony in the jungle. When it came time to drink I asked the spirits to give me visions, repeating the request over and over in my mind, concentrating only on that. We drank and after 2 hours the visions came. I saw a deep water pool, with the shadows of palm leaves and water lilies lining the edges. A humming-bird with spectral color wings glowing brightly swooped back and forth over the water and disappeared into the shadows. As this happened my thoughts darkened and I again felt the pain of my family and friends at home, with this my heart wept for them, and as it did my thoughts turned darker still, to the police state that the United States has become. What will become of us under their control? I thought. And then I saw a massive tower, with an unbelievable blinding light shining from its top. The thing was so huge it would probably reach space. With this the visions ended and so did the ceremony. Caesar gave us a final blessing and we returned to our beds. Both Blake and I laid awake for several more hours still racing with thoughts and feelings, but unlike the previous ceremony, this time we were able to sleep.