Meet The King of the Jingle

Last I wrote, if I remember correctly, I was going to get acquainted with Jose Martin’s family and see that the lovers are back in each other’s embrace. That was the plan. I saw the coastal plains north of Lima with stretches of bare sandy hillocks as far as eye can see; saw grey sky, grey water, and more of grey sand. The land of agreeable even climate that is neither hot nor cold. Nothing grows, neither feeling nor heart. Only coconut palms and garden variety plants I have seen on the coast. Jose kept juggling wherever he went, doing street lights, juggling smokes, juggling words, juggling time. Serena joined in with her beloved at infrequent occasions and I saw their furtive retreats for prolonged conversations but could neither take part nor bothered to know what went in between. They were unhappy at times, at times overjoyed with each other. Always crooning and always in pain. Perhaps hurting to love is one of the modern afflictions as it is hard to believe that people had luxury to do so back in the day. I imagine pastimes of humans being somewhat more cleaner, spacious, profound. More Grand. Oh, well. What can you do! Drink the potion and Grow, I suppose. Last time I saw Jose it was in his house in the village which name I didn’t care to remember. I do remember sleeping on the dirt floor with visits from ducks, cats and chickens. His mom was religious, but not obnoxiously so. Jesus Cristo is a pretty sweet guy in Americas. Brother, take heart! Mysticism is mysticism, and nobody is preaching nobody here. I wear Jose’s Sanpedritto necklace around my neck when I wish to remember him, that’s the extent of my religious belief. And when Jose sits in silence before taking his meal no words are spoken out loud but the act of meditation in itself brings forth a quality of focused intent. Take them words away. How can one not love Jose Martin? One night in town he got pretty stoned and thoroughly drunk instead of working semaphore as he intended and brought all his street cavalry along to assail the maternity ward turned hostal – at least it gave me that impression – to serenade his Dutch princess at two in the morning. Having miraculously negotiated a flight of stairs he discovered, to his surprise and amazement, that melodic words of passion issue not forth and all he is capable of in his drunken hazy state is incoherent blabber and drool. He had looked at himself in the mirror next morning and made a sound confession based on the events of previous night not to fall into same hole more than once. Especially taking into account that it was in that very place his girlfriend found out she is pregnant. Next day truce was made and prosperous lunch of bread, avocado and eggs served on the floor of their room. Then a visit to doctor and news that terminating pregnancy is illegal, which explains while Peru is bulging in breadth as such a staggering pace. Some herbs could be purchased at the market and so they were but either Serena didn’t follow the print on the package letter to letter, or perhaps the leaves were useless and dry, for three weeks later I got the message she is still pregnant and Jose is on the run for they had a fight. I put the full stop here on this story for now as my source has exhausted herself. I got a stick of freshly cut san pedro and i know exactly where i am going as i have been there before. some say boil it, filter it, render it down. i am going to eat it raw. Shavin of Huantar is going back to the beginnings… when there were no cooking pots, no trip advisors, no filtering devices. Just you and the elemental. I haven't planned on taking anyone along for this particular journey but this dog started following me all the way from the village and she stuck by my side, running silently along, ignoring other canine folk impassively. Tongue poking out, panting as we went up and around and up through stony plots of farmers, thier fences made of boulders and sticks, straw-covered huts that become few and far in between and finally there was none. Trees have disappeared together with hands that cut and carried wood to warm the night. Ahead is an open landscape stretching to the feet of snow-capped mountains Cordillera Blanca, taking a deep plunge into filled with insect activity valley behind me and climbing back up to the rolling hills that obstruct the view of a distant ocean to the east. A good time to have a snack. I want to see if the white inner flesh of the legendary cactus will give me sufficient supply of energy to make it to the lakes trapped below the glaciers by a bowl of bare rock. There and then i nickname my four-legged companion Wachuma and we move on. And what do you know, here it comes: a shifting patchy melody brought from down below by wind which i recognize without mistake. Last year when i trodded these hills i was also captured by its ceaseless meandering flow. Unrestricted, free as a nature itself to skip lightly and playfully from one note to the next without a memory of path that the melody travelled. joyfully light cascading rise of high notes alternated with deep smooth velvet descent into sadness below. The clarity of sound was incredibly pure… I drank it until my feet lost their senses and carried me to the source. It was the clarinet, a beautifully crafted instrument in the hands of a young fellow who pacified his flock of sheep as they climbed. I had with me a very precious bottle containing yogurt blended with lukuma, mango and honey which I intended to share but he would have none of it. He had satiated himself with music, a nourishment for the heart. Further up the path I left an offering of an orange and two days later as I came through the same spot the fruit was no longer there. I made two more breaks before finally settling on the camping spot, sharing dry figs and lady-finger bananas with Wachuma who’d spit out fried peanuts but ate these instead. She stuck with me so far and we have long crossed into Zone Silvestre, a sole abode of a chosen few cows that either escaped their owners’ corrals else were let free to roam here at will. Finally, quietude! I pitched the tent, cooked oats for me and the dog, which he hungrily lapped clean from the bowl and sat there looking at me until I had to tell her to leave me in peace. My peace didn’t last very long. Wachuma picked a fight with a benign-looking calf that wondered up close to us, no doubt guided by sense of communal enclosure. And throughout the night she kept running off from her place near the tent into the darkness, franticly barking. In the total silence her hysterical noise was painfully etched into quiet and peace. First I called, then I ordered, then screamed. I excelled her both in volume and anger as I swore at the top of my voice but to no avail: she’d come back to lose her head the very next minute. So she guarded me in my sleep that I hardly got any sleep that night. Next morning I was up with the sun and prepared my sacramental breakfast from the dark green peels which I carefully saved day before. I decided to pack the backpack and stash it in the rocks as I intended to go see the lakes and then come down in no hurry. An hour later I was looking at them, having climbed alongside a small but turbulent brook that took its life from the first of the two lakes jammed like precious jewels inside a crown of smooth gray rocks. So I had plenty of time and the glacial snowcap in the distance didn’t seem that distant at all. Choosing between several hoof prints I traced my way up clinging and climbing what I could climb and going around obstacles which presented unreasonable challenge. It was exhausting and thrilling at the same time as I had no idea what was behind the next ledge or row of boulders. I came across small virgin valleys that been waiting for a poet but were visited only by cows and received love verses in the form of manure... There I found myself kneeling into the gritty sand, out of breath, out of mind, throbbing with the pulse shared by all living things and that included rocks, ice, sun… looking at white puffy cotton-wool clouds floating above a vast landscape of dry yellow grass and silent boulders, naked and peaceful. I understand the cows as they lie sucking the earth with their bones, bellies stuck up to the sun, relaxing into the downward pull. the wind is breathing me inside out… god, these soft wispy clouds! My eyes are insatiable. My mouth is dry and there’s unmistakable taste of sulfuric decay, taste of death in my mouth. Ah there is only life after death, and we both know it. Wachuma has the same inkling as me for we both reach for the trickling water and drink in long gulps. I have resolved to touch the glacier and perhaps walk on the snow if I can but after a short climb we come upon a still pool imbedded in the cradle of smooth rock, reflecting its walls with such accuracy that one could literally drink liquid stone out of it. As you come close, angle changes and so does depth, colour, and image reflected. Now, in the green murky sky grows down enchanted forest of lichens, amoebae-fashioned labyrinths offer at once several dimensions to get lost in contemplating fragile beauty of intricate gravity-defying designs. Even in this apparent stillness, all is breathing, all is alive. Very quietly, rocks move back and forth as they expand and contract. What is interesting is that we are all sharing the same breath. If world starts to choke and stifle itself, it is me who is not breathing. When you climb at five thousand meters you got to fight for your oxygen. There is no room for stale air in your lungs, and no space for stale thoughts in your head either. Making friends with the boulders, asking for support with hands, knees and feet. The faith is in the touch and you better be sure in the integrity of your new acquaintance before leaning on him and expecting to hold. On my left are gray ancient walls polished by eons of snow melting and sliding from up above, offering not a crack of support. On my right, jagged broken rocks piled up willy-nilly by a celestial prankster who went to bed without cleaning up his toys. Some rocks have been waiting since the last ice age indecisively balanced on top of others, waiting for your final pound of weight to determine the course of its journey. It gives one apprehensive feeling, much stronger than a morning coffee. And what is amazing, Wachumitta is still there, panting, following me. Not a blade of grass around. I still got a few figs, saved for the very top. And when we finally arrive to where the glacier touches the rocks, it is covered in ice and there is only one way to move on it – slide. The view of the valley on the other side though is so inviting that I am not disappointed in the least. There are more lakes, and no doubt there must be a good path to follow out. The pack I can go pick up tomorrow but today I can have a real adventure. And have something to write you about. Like the snow caves gouged out of blue ice, framed by dripping icicles, each droplet sparkling iridescently with colours of a rainbow. The purity one encounters here makes one religious if one has time to stop and drop the mind. Slipping and sliding, made it downhill where a soft landing of straw was waiting for our arrival and to my joy, a path took off down past the lakes and was seen further leading in the roughly right direction. which would save me much staggering and stumbling. I was no longer lost and hoping; I was newly found and hopeful. There will be a pot of hot tea, hot shower and a bed to stretch in at the end of the day, even if I have to walk in the dark a few hours. It is amazing how much energy worrying takes and how tense the body is in such a state. The difference is seen in contrast when one becomes relaxed and calm. Mind has a tendency to race when given a chance, and it does so very cunningly. I’d put my palms together like a monk and slow down in my step in order to remember to relax and thus save my energy. Perhaps with awareness even most straining jobs can be endured relatively painlessly as I have a grand habit of hurting myself in order to learn. Teach me, oh Path, to go with Love. To place my steps with gentle consideration for the terrain underneath, and move with the rhythm of the world as it breathes itself into existence in the continuous instance that knows not how to end. And again I forget and race away in my head into the future abandoning my body to stumble unconsciously along, enduring rather than enjoying my journey. The difference in quality that awareness brings to the process is what I believe sets apart a man of joy from a cynic, tired to wade through the fog of his own making. A simple ritual is therefore very helpful in guiding attention. I frequently stopped on my walk and go went to the breath. No rush. I have to learn one day anyway, and it has been a long and desperate road. Long cold nights in high places where life vanishes with the sun… Deprived of oxygen climbs and backaches, struggling under the weight of the pack to make progress in the chosen direction. And for what? A meal, a bed? Who is waiting for me, what message have I to deliver? For whom?! One has to choose between a suicide of loneliness in the crystal palace of words and a dance of life. And when I ask do I want to dance or do I want to write about dancing the question itself explains why I haven’t written any books yet. The path goes on meandering in the yellow grass, diving into gullies and skidding over bold rocks. Take rest in the merciful shade of a tree by the brook, drink sweet cold water, pat Wachuma and discover peace all over again. A spiritual journey is what it is. Cleansing, stripping away layers to get close to the warm pulsing core and feel its rhythm. “You’ll be the King of the Jingle,” says a Frenchman, hobbling downhill beside me, his girlfriend, Matilda – why is that I remember her name?- slightly ahead, offering her shoulder for him to hold on to. Ah ha, waltzing Matilda… that’s why. I don’t know exactly where the three of us are, except that that the path is wide and demarcated with pale-white stones on both sides at regular spacious intervals on both sides. Wachuma is running ahead, she must be glad to heading down into the chakras. Fine! – I shall be King of the Jingle, then. Come monkeys and leopards! I play you my magic pipe and we make merry, no? Come, jaguars and serpents! Come, run, snake and crawl if you have to! King of the Jingle is calling the tunes and you better dance your butt off, let’s boogie! Take a walk on a wild side… As I sat on the rock, taking in last bit of quietude before coming down into the valley, this French couple turned up. It is their first day in Huaraz, they have come up this way for a daywalk and I am glad to have someone to talk to. Is this your dog? What’s her name? This dog? Well. I call it Wachuma but she is her own dog. She eats bananas, oatmeal and dry figs. I tell them about the poor calf who must gotten even less rest than I last night. And about the pathless climb and the glacier with its caves of ice. Matilda is listening incredulously and her laugh is thin and remote and she is not sure what to make of my story. I am a desperate man, I say. Perhaps your boyfriend can relate. Take D’Artanian, for example. Won’t you agree, he was a desperate man? No, no! Why you want to call him that? He was… how do you say?... I say he was desperate, and wanting to die! Did he not pick a fight with the Athos, Porthos and Aramis, three of the best swordsman, on the same day? I launch forward, making a pass at invisible opponent with my walking stick, deflecting his weapon and piercing him in the side, then retreat, holding the edge of my wide-brimmed invisible hat with two elegant fingers like they do in the movies. Theatre French do understand and this time their smiles are easy and agreeable. So when do you go back, they ask. I am not going back. I am gonna build myself a stone hut on the far end of a quiet village and spend the rest of my days digging potatoes and peeling corn. Drying figs and watching sunsets as ice-cream cones of cordilleras are dousing in iridescent glow of late blueberry syrup. In the village I try to buy some dinner for the dog that has been my truthful companion and a guide on this journey but the old man I talk to takes the money and boards the same collectivo as us to go to town. And who is going to feed the dog, then? He needs to pay for his passage, he says. I snatch five soles back and implore another fellow to take care of Wachuma. Half way to town it occurs to me that I should have bought a chunk of meat and given it to the dog myself. Welcome back to Babylonia. Lights, traffic, noise. Air that doesn’t enter the lungs. Streets filled with junk, commotion and aimless movement. Souls trapped inside half-animated bodies. I park myself by a moliente stall behind which old woman pours hot aromatic cocktails of herbs she cooks at home in large pots over several days. I buy myself a conversation and a drink and bid my time, readjusting to excessive noise and confusion of the city. The animals are just as lost as humans here. I come across a dog lying on the pavement that has bled to death. Wachumita, stay in the hills. Be safe. I have found my backpack where I left it, spent a night in the mountains and got back to El Tambo in Huaraz before midday. I had previously spoken to this young Mexican fellow, named Ivan – but not a word of Russian – about going to Bosque de Piedras. The Rock Forest. He already had his bus ticket, I had to run around and get myself one pronto. And cut another stick of cactus… all of which I managed with time left for a shower and a cup of tea. The rock forest… its full of dragons, castles, magical shape-shifting creatures. It’s what you mind makes of it. First, you don’t see it. One is just overwhelmed by it. And irresistible at the same time… Within short while I lost my boots, my shirt, and was scrambling up boulders. You got to make love to them in order to survive the ordeal. Without pure intention, you cannot feel the rock. Fingers are asking the rock, can I trust you to hold me? Butterflies fill the stomach, drops of sweat form around the eyes and mouth runs dry, does she like me that much? Is my motif pure enough to enter the temple of love? Or will I be let to plunge to a crippling agony and broken bones next moment? Will this jagged edge support the weight of my swing? Doubts can kill you. You got to know. You got ask the right question and the question becomes your prayer. At the top one lies comfortably stretched on rugged uneven surface trembling with gratitude, the dragon’s back underneath feels like a bed of a Chinese needle practitioner. The long-due treatment is now to begin… first, the muscle tissues are submitted to the electrical currents running in both directions, alternating and changing their polarity… then there’s sensation of warmth spreading in waves from head to the toes and back from tip of the toes to the top of the head and one knows no longer where his body begins and where it ends as one feels stretched and condensed at the same time into a floating gravitational field that pulsates and fibrillates propagating itself in sinusoidal waveforms. I have been disassembled into subatomic constituents for a thorough clean and an oil-up, for a lack of better description. Then the process is reversed, sense of weight comes flooding my limbs and bones are solidified into place, firmer and stronger than before, tissues and ligaments grow attachment and I feel them flexing and stretching like rubber bands, sending twitches into my fingers. And when I finally come to, I find myself still lying on a back of a stone dragon, squinting against the sun. looking at white puffy cotton-wool clouds floating above a vast landscape of dry yellow grass and silent boulders, naked and peaceful I can’t imagine what else I can possibly want so please show me – before I forget the Question I understand the cows as they lie sucking the earth with their bones, bellies stuck up to the sun, relaxing into the downward pull there is only life after death... dear friend, I have also gone mad even a fly knows more than I do the wind is breathing me inside out floating above white puffy cotton-wool clouds is a vast landscape, dry and waiting for the illusive feminine presence is yet to descend and fulfil insatiable craving to know you after death of the senses which drives armies of flint stone crashing head-on, erecting high edifices in the name of love in the name of love I’ve ruined all I possibly could show me now, I am ready of course we both know there is more of the same: the air the breath the gap in between the waiting made so exquisite by absence of thoughts I love you come close let me bow down I can’t imagine what else I can possibly want even a fly knows more than I do I remember this beautiful cow staring at me with a thousand moistened eyes. What a precious meeting! We had all the time in the world. There she stood, pure adoration oozing out the hills. Warm rocks swaying in the breeze as we breathed in and out, observing pause between each breath. Delicious thoughtlessness shared by two creatures both alien and yet so familiar to each other, the roles change as I allow. Attention flows and energy becomes condensed to know the essence and the exchange is beneficial to both in agreement to take part. What makes us rich or poor... I love the way of coin barter where you touch hands to feel the weight and count silver which everybody knows is fake. As a kid stuck in a hospital sometimes for weeks, I remember drawing layouts of monopoly game on double pages from a square-lined school book glued together one page beneath the other. Each square was given a name lifted off a foreign paper add, and value of its merchant enterprise neatly underscored. We drew our dollar money and some of those masterpieces were treasures to behold. The hiding places and the stealing in the night, the rivalries and feudal wars we had! The whole world was in the board game as we breathed money and kept piling up fake paper stocks. Yet soon as the board was put away we were released from its confines and bothered not to think about keeping count as adults do. A little man has an advantage of knowing that a game he plays is here to be thoroughly enjoyed because it ends, it does not go on forever. And then, he is free to choose another role to play and walks nobly away. Which a grown up can rarely afford... I like to watch as coins exchange hands and passengers get on and off the bus, for here people travel in shared understanding of the necessity as room is made for sacks of corn, potatoes, and spare tires. Good-bye, sexy cow. Skin draped over protruding thighs, taunt around ribcage, and naked all day long. Feliz viaje and best of luck. I leave you to your high pastures, dropping dung in lazy strides as you bend down to pluck a mouthful of tussock grass. To the clouds spun out celestial wool undoing themselves as they roll along the sky one wisp at a time. I love you, and I know you know. It wasn’t meant to be. One day I will come back as a cow, I promise, and rub against your side. Till then! Bosque de Piedras, amigo. Come surf its waves frozen in time complete with frothy lips and vacuous bubbles inside, dressed in fine filigree of foam as its crescent breaks against the thin air, a precise mathematical function hewn in abrasive stone. Lynches and moss are the only coats bare boulders wear, but what rich coats they are! Strewn with fine silver and golden threads, blue and green velvet sparkles in the sun as only a royal mantel does. Spiraling channels are driven downwards into the valley like waterslides in the amusement park of Paleolithic man. What a ride.

Inexplicably but I made it! dangling above the precipice rocks, ever-so-gently nudged to the edge echo with a dull thud from down below stereoscopic spirals of sound untwisting into the distance... what happened?! apart from quantum leaps, is there a way to jump between the crescents of these waves? they come forth without moving revolutionary sensations deep in the pit of my stomach, are these indicative of the impending death, or simply a foul play of bowls? in any case one is ought to commit suicide with such ease and nonchalance as to make Don Quixote forgetful of his pending encounter with a windmill hear them cogs and chains grind to bring another dead body of thought into view Upon closer examination there are primitive life forms just under the surface busily procreating and living out their lives as only microbes can if such existence is supposed to be poetic I am failing to see it swaying back and forth between breaths all I see is a world crumbling apart under my feet Tears turning into pebbles, pebbles nudging rocks ever so gently towards the edge of the precipice I see you standing there on the other side You made it! love is a Quantum Leap I can’t explain it Sun went down sometime ago. Back in the refugio just before dark, no sign of Ivan. I meet the small crowd of rock climbers and hug yet to get hot firebox. Like all living things, it needs air. No one is tending it, they give me permission to take charge and I hyperventilate for three minutes until ready to pass out, then the Spanish fellow takes over and even the young Germans give it a go. A cup of tea is a blessing. I finally put my boots on and give a sound staccato on the wooden floor, singing praising my leather companions. An Englishmen pours me Whisky a whiff of which is more chemistry than I need and no one around the table seems to notice I ain’t drinking from the cut I am cheering with. The game of monopoly is in full swing and stacks of money are rapidly growing and changing hands but no one is able to purchase my apple so I donate it instead. No sign of Ivan, its been two hours now. In my tent I am unable to rest, my heart wont keep quiet. I find the peelings of san pedro choking in the plastic bag. They are dead. Outside is bitterly cold. I deposit the green slimy content of spiked transluscent stripes into the circle of rocks and when I look at it from above, I see a wide-open mouth of a prehistoric reptile, its throat lined with fine sharp teeth all the way down. I am looking at death itself, its pale-green decay is stomach-turning and makes me feel sick at once. Back in the refuge, no sign of Ivan. We go looking, me and two others, an Argentinean climber and caretaker and her Peruvian friend who does the same thing. It is the full moon, you got to be either bleeding to death at the bottom of a deep crack or real twisted on medicine to get lost. I am worried about the first possibility more than anything. Do you like your job? It is a fantastical place to be. Ancient, powerful. And you get to walk around at fool moon, looking for lost Mexicans who take mescaline and get lost in the forest of rocks. I can’t recognize any of this labyrinth. Not in this gloomy light. Not when I am still journeying and seeing fortresses with crooked battle towers that snarl and prickle with serrated armour plates at us as we approach. I yell Ivan’s name but it is swallowed by the hills without an echo. Coco tells me to keep quiet – people who live here don’t like to be molested in the dead of night. We come across a hollow opening in the rock behind a low stone hedge. Inside, there are pre-Inca etchings outline of which stands out even in the dim light of the moon. They must be deeply carved. Further along, a dwelling of a mountain sheppard. A stone hut, some sheep skins, plastic bottle. No light. Animals bleat feebly as we walk past. A dog starts but is unwilling to chase after us, thanks god almighty. We do a few passes inside the labyrinth that come to think of it is straight out of Salvador Dali’s painting, just lacks a couple of melted pizza-clocks thrown around here and there and a forlorn dame in a silky night gown leaning against a boulder in the middle of it. Just as we leave, my companions stop to point out faces silhouetted against moonlight. The sharp points are sparkling with jewels that one can only carry away in one’s heart. A poor man’s treasure doesn’t weight him down. Walking in the night is good for the soul, says Coco. Half an hour later, Ivan comes home. I tell him that I was tormented by contradiction, thinking about his return. On one hand I want to murder his arse, because he ought to be back by the sundown safe and sound; on the other hand, I want to kiss him – and I do so - for he is alive and I don’t have to explain what really happened. He sits there in the dark, still as if cut in stone, in his high-tech climbing jacket and goggles pulled up on top of the woolen Peruvian hat. His makes me think of an alien Preditor come to Earth for a hunting game, detached and ominious. It feels as if he was raised from the dead, yet he is quietly smiling. he has climbed ruins at the top of the hill. Cold? Si. Cold and quiet. So how about a hot cup of tea? And dry figs? And chocolate! After midnight, Ivan serves me a bowl of traditional Mexican soup. I can see there carrots, green beans and broccoli but all I can taste is fire. HUANUCO July,15th Half way to the jungle, a stopover in nowhere in particular. Neither stiflingly hot, nor windy nor cold. Over-enthusiastic bright and shiny megaphone voice booming over the traffic, its echo bouncing of stone walls, chiseling its dominance over a horn section of a street band which undulating rhythm is fading in and out of focus. Cars, sirens and incessant beeping mixed into the final render by a stone drunk deejay that keeps the city awake and infused with confusion into the late our. I will not be here then. Just a transit passenger swapping rides, the one who needs a short rest in a tree shade by the river. Having made it over the protective barb wire, I sit in the least filthy spot watching a black rubbish bag float past like a broken-off iceberg from a continent of junk thawing away somewhere upstream. All this commotion, put-up performance and naive uppity rancour dating back to nineteen- fifties happily purging into oblivion opposite a river dressed in garbage. A smoggy exhausted town born of mud and tin and greased with engine oil into motion, sprawling up surrounding yellow hills, ancient and detached... there is a lonely white crucifixion topping the sight in testimony of futility of human enterprise that is so apparent no one seems to take notice anymore. Back to the parade. We must be celebrating another yet another anniversary of shitting, pissing and making noise and getting away with it. The smell here along the river is unmistakable. Pump up the volume, on with the parade. Horns, whistles, high hats. Take your pants down and go for it. God bless America. Long live Peru! Mister gringo man, you ain’t but a tourist, why won’t you keep on passing through? What are doing here, anyways? I see. Oh, the night bus. Pockets full of money and wanting to be a shaman. That’s nice. That’s really nice. Watch out for the tigress, king of the Jingle. There is no bus. Then again, there is. Old one is broken, the new departs ahead of schedule. We are herded back in time, tickets reissued on the spot and seats reassigned. Some are left without a seat. I step over a woman and her little one on the way to the bathroom down below. She is also going to Pucallpa. I sit back and try to rest but I can’t, not when she is there in the back of my mind, so I ask her to take my seat. She accepts at once. I find a good spot at the front, jamming myself in the gangway between the seats and leaning back on the dashboard. I am sitting in the puddle of puke but it is dark and I won’t see it until the next stop. Rivulets of precipitation roll down the windows, air is thick with sweat and cough and bacteria thrives in its richness. We are driven through the night in a petri dish of a corporeal mycologist deriving a strain of human fungus that is meant to survive on the surface of Venus, it feels like. When the doors finally open the air is just as humid as humid and rich. Yet it has fragrance in it, I am not sure if it is of flowers or freedom. I have arrived. …today I ran from a snake. It moved fast, I tell you! Machete in my hand suddenly didn’t seem like a Jedi’s light saber anymore and my heart jumped and galloped away as I watched a slither of green striped patterns move towards me. King of the Jingle backs away, keeping his eye on the spot where he saw the snake last. In the moloka, Hernan is cooking rice and plantains with fish for breakfast and lunch. I will have three pots to dig into for alimentation, a menu that will remain exactly the same for the remainder of the dieta. I will have time to ponder my life over and over and over again. I will travel back and forth between the Cordilleras and the selva without leaving my hammock. The privilege of a dietero this is, killing time and digging holes in the narrative, cul-de-sac pits from which there is no return. If you find half-decomposed corpse at the bottom of one, don’t panic! It’s just a King of the Jingle, hopelessly trapped and long dead. How did I get here in the first place? Well, there was this herbalist known as Arnaldo, Horhe, George or Charlie depending on whom you talk to. Arnaldo picked me up from the bus station, drenched in sweat and thoroughly awake, having not slept a wink, as I arrived from Huanuco to Pucallpa. When we arrived to his house in the proximity of the central hospital, I got to meet Hilda and Pablita, his spouse and five-year-old daughter, who consistently call my new found friend Horhe. His associates refer to him as Charlie and I will try to stick with it to avoid further confusion. Charlie has something of Jose Martin’s vibe around him, albeit in appearance he is diametrically opposite to lean bony and always unshaven Jose who have not long since has cut his dread locks. Charlie is precipitating with smiles like a soft puffy cloud and his complexion serves to the same end. He is abundant in all senses of the word. Well-rounded, troubles roll of his back effortlessly. I suppose rolling joints now and again helps along. Medicos and selva, they are wedded and co-dependent these days on each other. Just about the only reason forest doesn’t get is because the owner is man of medicinal knowledge. Charlie has a licensed business of exporting Amazonian plants overseas. I will throw a link to his website someplace below. He used to work for Pablo Amaringo and it is Pablo’s old playground where Charlie took me for a dieta with Hernan. What people refer to as the Jungle may somewhat deceive you. If you think of a ten-storey high tree giants fitted with ladders and ascending lifts to the tree-house villages lit by torches of Ivoks in the night, you might as well blame George Lukas for planting this image into your head. There are few true giants left and their number is rapidly dwindling, praise Hasquarna and Shtill. Most timber trees have been logged for miles up and down the Ucayali. Where there is a road or a water way, there are chainsaws. And where there isn’t, they are working on it. Burning the chakras, sacrificing forest to the god of fuego. It makes for a spectacular sunset, to watch flaming red ball go down below a brown veil of smoke. Anthony, my good friend, I have not come across an ant-eater here. Plenty of monkeys though. There is Monkey Wind when a tribe of a few dozen tails decides to go for a walk in a chosen direction. First day of our arrival we were met by a descent size chushupe, known as the mistress on the jungle, for her aggressive stance. She crawls faster than you can run and chases one if you happen to cross paths. There’s no antidote from her venom. Charlie reached out for the gun but in my ignorance I averted him from shooting. Naively I imagined the spirit of all things is one yet in the jungle one feeds upon another and being fed upon one feels uneasy, to use the most moderate expression. I am easily awoken, my sleep is shallow and as I walk during the day around Pablo’s place, exploring forest paths, I often come to rest at slightest noise, my senses attuned to the disturbance. Nine times out of ten it is lizards. Once I came upon two animals size of a cat with fluffy tails of almost equal length as themselves, they made a lot of noise and only backed away when almost bumped into my feet. The first looked up at me with appreciating glance, where I was standing one foot in front, right hand withdrawn to strike and grasping stripe of metal with shining cutting edge. At other times, drunk with effects of taking plants, I’d stumble down same paths wearing shorts and jandals, machete dangling limpidly in hand or else left behind where it was. After today there will be no such foolish behaviour. Always wear my lace-ups. Do not forget the light saber. What kind of Jedi are you?! A sleepy kind is not going to last in jungle. This is why I pay a fraction of the price one normally forks out when doing a dieta in a retreat. There’s no guarantee, no buffer from the primal and the wild. King of the Jingle shall wear many a noble mark of crossing paths with tails and claws, yet today he wears his own tail between the legs and runs for safety of his hammock. So far I had three days of the dieta. First day, five in the morning, I took Chiric Sanango root that has been soaked overnight in water. Whole day I was weak in the bones, my mouth numb and at midday I crawled into my sleeping bag as I was cold! This is what the remedy does, it restores the heating function of the body.

Second day was a nasty one. I was in between staying and going, not sure of future prospects that looked pretty pale, another seven days of stifling heat, plain rice and boiled green bananas with fish if I am lucky and feeble unadjusted body to drag along. Lethargy and grogginess, little faith. Thinking I could be listening to my beloved Shipibo right now and going fishing tomorrow. Yet the dreams… My long gone little brother comes visiting. We play at step-fathers place, he also there, chewing into his strewn with silver beard as he eats crumbling biscuits, eyes shining through slotted openings and laughing wrinkles gathering around them. We are happy, happy to be together. Then, I am sitting in the kitchen at my grandma’s place, who lives in an apartment on the fifth floor. Suddenly, the street and the trees across the road start to move. Except that it is us that is actually moving: the whole building is sliding sideways. And we are talking about a solid brick building built to last, right after the World War II, a spacious edifice with high ceilings and cozy gas-fitted kitchens. So when the view starts shifting and the edifice subsiding from under our feet, I naturally find myself hugging my grandma, pressed to the wall, sinking down and sideways. The coming down is gentle and no crash-landing follows. We just arrive to the ground level, where everything is under water. A motor boat, one of those that normally cruise the canals of Saint Petersburg for the pleasures of sight-seeing, picks us up as if timed on a schedule. Tea is served onboard from fine china with sweets and biscuits. I love my grandma and her kitchen rituals, special cups and special spoons for special occasions, of which there are many and in fact every occasion is special, her treasure-filled dark cupboard snuck in between the double front doors that gave room to pickled forest mushrooms and wild berry preserves picked throughout short Russian summer… In the kitchen there used to be a one-channel wire radio you’d plug in the wall to hear the voice of the nation, whose single speaker would go up in volume when music was played and my grandma’s humming follow suit, then a shuffle of feet down the corridor and then, the first few trial piano chords as melody steadied, gathered momentum and trickled freely from the living room into all corners and nooks, filling the house with trembling notes of her singing that always bore imprint of profound nostalgia for me. Her adoration bestowed upon me at times of peace and agreement I took for granted and only now do I realize there is no other person in the world that would the things she did for me, her quality of giving of herself, and this is why no cup of tea will ever taste the same as the one she poured for me. Another night dreamt of a sunny Sunday morning on the land up North, all was big and spacious and colors vivid as seen through the eyes of a five-year-old. In the Buddha Hall, as usual, was a gathering after the morning coffee; Deva speaks and everyone is there, attending in easy and natural silence – until I dropped a chair. It rumbled loudly, there was no other sound apart from its awkward noise. The Buddha hall has suddenly grown large, as if Alice has eaten from a wrong side of a mushroom, and we all dwindled; a platform arose for the chair to fall from. Someone voiced an opinion that if it was a truly made Sufi hall, there would be a sloping angle for things to slide down and no objects would thus make any disturbing noise when their balance was upset. They would simply slide quietly into rest. Sam padded his receding hair; Sofia giggled inaudibly to herself. The mood was light and jokes abundant. Then Yatra said “let us dance”, she was speaking for everyone and my body really felt like moving. I started swaying from side to side and then gyrating with a circular motion as if there was a wave moving through me. The motion was happening faster and faster, it took over and twisted me and threw me onto the floor and I was helpless as a shingle tossed by the tide, rolling in and out with the body of water… I realized I am standing on my head, supported by the momentum of rotation, my legs where my arms should be. I finally bumped into Sadbodhi and fell. Then we were out on the lawn and Guruta kept changing into a little girl and I knew it was him prancing around in the skirt and no one bothered… Dreams, plants give you dreams every night. I am visiting my friends, my loved ones, I am connected with everyone who opened their heart to me at one time or another. This networking capacity to connect with various people makes me buzz and tingle with currents of possibilities flowing, raising and waning and inviting to venture onwards. I am being pulled into what is yet to come rather than pushed out from what has already been, which can and does make all the difference between being haunted by the specter of the past or to be free to pursue the dream in the making as it unfolds. I have to be careful as the novelty of existence gives this very moment a fragrance so subtle one has to be still in the mind to behold it. The precious jewel, how brilliant it sparkles when lit from inside by the light of the consciousness! It makes one drunk with ecstasy, flamboyant and carefree. Just be careful with freshly sharpened knives, machetes and axes. An image comes to mind of an unshaven chap with missing teeth in the upper jaw who is squatting by a large soot-covered boiling pot bubbling away with brown-red broth of vines and leaves, one hand raised in the air clutching an axe therein. He is about to crack a seed of a Shibon palm tree and is well aware of the bullet-proof hardness of its outer shell which would deftly be employed to penetrate armor plated steel of the enemy’s tanks by the US military defense, had they knew that Shibon seeds existed… so there our hero is, balancing the bullet on a block of wood with fingers of his left hand… Slam!!! Axe comes down and naturally, bounces off to the left. Two bleeding fingers, the index finger is nearly decapitated as a result. First thing that occurs to me, me being the main protagonist in the play, is that I will have to take antibiotics and thus unable to do the dieta that I am supposed to start with Hernan the next very day. It has been a long hot day of walking sack full of vine into the bush, beating it into pulp and carrying water from a nearby creek to fill a sixty-liter boiler that needed to be carefully watched over for the duration of the cooking process, where I took a break to go get myself aforementioned seed of shibon. Now I am not only alone and tired at the end of the day in the jungle with a huge pot of boiling medicine yet to be filtered and refined, but now I also am also staring inside my split open index finger, wondering if a caterpillar is going to crawl out and give me a hint on what course of action to take. Which part of the mushroom to chew from. No, no magic, just more blood. Automatically I rip into the first aid and fix myself up. My mind is reeling like a 35 mm film spool disconnected from receiving bobbin, dribbling long windings of film emulsion into a pile down below the projector. There is no healing in a mess like this. Got to relax, brover. Positivo. I think of Jose Martin and check for leaks in the bandage. I am not only not passing out, there is hardly any throbbing, either. Not too tight, not too loose. All is well. Continue cooking. Go check up with medico mañana. That’s what Hernan refers to himself as, a medico. Long story short, I have done both the filtering and the refining with one hand and have hardly spilled a drop, have not burned any medicine either. Got it all down to the thick sweet syrup that would fit into a one liter bottle, if I haven’t spilt better half of it right at the end. It was dark, I was tired and proud and then suddenly brokenhearted. For about a minute. What can you do! Such is life. Saving pennies here and there and then spilling riches to waste. I ended up going all the way to Pucallpa next day as Hernan was still out in the forest, only to find out from Charlie that the best cure for cuts and open wounds is the fresh resin of young banana plants at which I have been staring every day since I got to Pablo’s place. That’s the way it goes. Relax, and heal from inside. My first day of the dieta turned out to be day Zero, for me and Hernan ended up fixing cow’s fencing that burned down when a neighbour of his neighbour set fire to his chakra and either was unable to control it or decided to go fishing instead. Relax if you can, King of the Jingle will sing an icaro to you and you shall remember how to heal the wounds you inflict upon yourself. Anyway, getting back to dieta… Day 3, I tell Hernan I’m no longer weak and it makes me bored to be doing nothing with the plants and he says fine, tomorrow we drink. It lifts my mood up and I spend Friday morning moving chunks of cut wood from the illegal milling site in the forest where the punters left all offcuts. The trees that were felt turned out to be Manchinga trees, each has seen perhaps five hundred years. First ceremony turned out to be a quiet one due to the fact that by the time the medicine started working for me, around midnight, Hernan long stopped singing and headed back home. The rest of eight days went smooth. Day 5, Charlie turned up with Howard, the chiropractic, and announced he bought the moloka. His eyes were throwing off sparkles as he spoke. Apart from good news, he brought wood preservants and a couple of brooms. Next day it rained and we saw no sign of Charlie. Had another ceremony and that went off big time. I remember standing in the thick carpet of the uncut lawn outside the moloka, having disgorged some god-awfulness that previously lived inside my stomach in three consequitive purges, eyes moist with tears of gratitude and yelling at the top of my lungs at a pale disk of a full Moon above, ‘Hernan I looooove yooooouuuu!’ Patience, he says. You gonna see. Stick with the dieta, poco-poco, va a ver. A tiny spew for a man, a giant leap for the spirit within. All around cicadas keeping mandalic soundscape in never ceasing well-greazed movement on its axis, spikes of sharp screeching rhythm scratching against each other. Draped over this humming background are melodic yet at times haunting birdcalls and noise of leaves parted by a plummeting dry branch waiting night after night for its opportune moment to be noticed. The moonlight paints vegetation in communal dull grey and colours lose the very frequency that sets them apart from each other. Hernan is waiting inside and I better return. I have something to tell him.

The dots in my head previously unconnected are now on the move and intricate patterns emerge, floating up to the surface from the gloomy depth of cut up and separately berried knowledge. Here’s a chuck of Lao Tzu sliced off Ten Bulls of Zen and commentaries on walking amongst the tall grass of desires by Osho; there is Gurgiev’s notion of earning a soul in this lifetime and freedom being a ladder of two directions, that of going up or sliding down; both nudging with a sharp elbow Buddhist belief in reincarnation, karma and the absence of death. Sudden flashes of recognition are dressed in the fine filigree of spiraling fractals, watermarked by omnipresent blueprints of sacred geometry and brought by a hidden hand with a wand to a symphonic crescendo in the speeding novelty of evolution that crystallizes into coherence present state of the world. It’s a bucketful, alright, and I am trying not to spill it all at once in my broken delivery. Hernan listens patiently and nods now and again and pokes me with a proper use of this or that word but I sense he has heard it all before. I stop in the middle of my exhausted and tongue-tied explanation of DNA codes and fetal cell formation during pregnancy to ask Hernan if he knows what I am talking about. Sure he does. What, from reading science magazines? Here, in the obscure little pueblo of Sapattio where one trouble getting two stroke oil for your motor, science magazines expanding on I-Ching insights applied to the development of human embryos?! I didn’t think so. How do you know, then? Ayahuaska taught him. In visions. Same way he knows what plants cure which diseases, what parts of the plants to use and how to prepare these. During one of the walks through the forest I spotted what looked like a wild bee nest, a well-sealed mud house in a shape of a giant spool, high up in the tree. ‘Ants’, Hernan said. Inside there is a small sphere full of baby ants that you can use medicinally. How is that? Externally or what, do you eat them? ‘Boil the ball of baby ants for 10 minutes and eat them’. How do you know such things? ‘Plants teach me. My father was ill and I cured him of tuberculosis in this way.’ If you get bitten by a snake, there is a song that takes care of that. Listo, meaning ‘done’. Other songs can make a girl spend sleepless nights thinking about you. Give me a first and last names on a piece of paper, and consider it done, Hernan says. In his visions while I was in the moloka he saw a lot of gringos all around and saw himself teaching lore of the plants. He likes to teach, money or no money. If someone comes and he says no, he doesn’t feel well. You going to have the vision, he says. Be patient. It will come. Dieta, dieta and more dieta. Scrub and clean, scrub and clean. Magic tricks don’t take this long to teach. Power can be taken, borrowed, stolen. Light, on the other hand, can only come down to you. When one is ready. Blessing can only be received as a gift. Go with Love and you can’t go wrong.

Dieta finished on the eight day, as planned. I came out strong and positively charged, sparkles of joy flying off in all directions. Still there was no sign of Charlie. Same day I was talking to my man at his house in Pucalpa. He lost the land to a higher bidder. On the plus side, his brother has come from Brazil. His name is Pedro and he doesn’t travel blindly. He saw himself coming and working here on the land. That was yesterday. Today there’s a ceremony at Charlie’s house to celebrate the purchase of 39 Hectares of land just five kilometers further down the road. It looks like we are back in business. Positivo. Go with love, bro.