Yesterday the golden clock of the heavens registered my 29th birthday.
This morning marks 10 years since I emerged from my first dark night of yagé to discover the leaves of plants waving back at me.
I took luck and fortune by the hand, and together we journeyed:
I swung in hammocks with short, tunic-clad elders and communed with the celestial folks while gunshots rang out beyond the rivers.
In Spain, sweet souls sucked poison from my knees in a yurt nestled in dusty, sacred mountains. We found a neon-and-black newt paddling circles into the center of a spring water well.
I spent hundreds of nights in southern huts built on red earth. Rainy season brought out warped wooden bridges which connected the homes, which I walked in line with skinny dogs. Here, plants that reek of gasoline and ethereal, pink, sweet heart blossoms work hand-in-hand for our healing.
On a hill in higher land, I felt rare jungle breezes clear thoughts from my humble home and my mind as butterflies and monkeys guarded the perimeter in play. There, I planted trees for eating, for dreaming and for healing. I bled WWII into the earth by squatting above a small mound. Some things there are hidden forever, only to be remembered by the forest.
These are beautiful moments of my life. I watch them from here like a dragon-shaped kite flying above as I stand on cold, hard earth. I remind myself that I hold the string, but the wind is Master.
Now, quiet, I see white-on-white; tracks of brown deer browsing in birch forests.
Mystery lowers you deeper into the well, deeper into the cave; darker into the night, darker into the past. Time has taught me the memory-cave only gets deeper. And so, like a spelunker, you descend with your light to seek the gems, to re-member.
At times it is terrifying—but I have a saving grace, and it goes by the name of curiosity.
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