“How big?” the shaman asked. I know by now what it means when you do this: “I’ll have a big one.” He’s a checker. “A big one?” “Yes please.” He laughs to himself. He runs deep with mischief this man. Mischief is crucially important with this medicine. He is also, in this realm, a being of godlike power. I laugh with him. Had I known what was to come, I still would have asked for that big one. But I wouldn’t have laughed.
He pours me a little glug of this deep concoction of vine and wood, this brackish viscous physical heartbrew. He blesses it. Hands it to me. I shoot it down. He sloshes water in to catch the dregs and I shoot them too, then grab a tiny chunk of apple and put it in my mouth. It just… edges out some of that taste. Doesn’t do much, but you really mustn’t eat. Second night so my body already knows where this taste is going to lead, but for now it is vital to keep the stuff in. He wishes me a good journey and I thank him. I go back to my mat in the corner to sit up and breathe.
Lots of people are waiting to receive their medicine still. Atmospheric anticipatory rainforest music doesn’t feel out of place here like it does in most other contexts. We wait. “It’s not going to have any effect this time,” I’m thinking as it worms its way into my very fabric. “I reckon my big night was last night.” This is my brain. It is often incorrect.
Before long we begin a shared sound journey, opening the chakras with noises. A chance taken with gusto to try and make the wood behind us vibrate with us. All of us and the noises are huge and as I breathe and intone and breathe and intone it goes deeper and we have already danced for an hour in the afternoon and my body is open and connected but still mister brain is saying “oh well, you had a journey last night” and after the chakra chanting there is twenty minutes of absolute silence.
I positioned myself in savasana, dead man’s pose, with a blackout mask on my face. And somewhere in that twenty minutes, eternity blindsided me. The void came. The eternal argument of everything or nothing. The void comes and it pulls and it questions, it seduces us to its will which is ultimately destruction of everything. We are part of the light, it is complete absence, always there just out of sight, don’t stare, it sucks you in.
I am arguing once more for existence, fighting the void, moving to colour and possibility, the fire and the light so blinding in the blackout mask and it is all I can do to come back to my body occasionally and remember to breathe, and that just barely, gasping like a stuck fish occasionally before departing once more. All the time I’m distracted by the void, grandmother is winding through my bones and finding the bad things. Back and forth forever and finally from the silence a chord on the piano, low and minor key. It develops into majestic requiem, something deep and vast and terrifying played live out of the silence but not forgiving, this is work music not a lifeline and it goes into my heart and all the grief and all the things denied and all the blocks and the fear and inadequacy and frustration and sacrifice it all comes right up to me in my eye mask and I’m howling for everyone I’ve ever loved and generations long dead and all the bad things and it is impossible it is too much and there’s no escape and there it is the void the void asking me seducing me and I know it wants me and then there’s nothing and I’m going to it and I realise I can pull off the eye mask and I claw at it and pull it off and FUCK I’m somewhere else, a peaceful place, less colour less light here in the world. I can’t see the 2p piece of the spark of life, the void doesn’t want me to find it, I know where it is though and I reach through a wall of foam and check it out of the library and I’ve got it in my hand and my eyes really aren’t giving me any useful information but I can feel the jagged edges and it’s all still in me that history but I can’t see it anymore I can just see this tiny box I’ve been put in and it closes in on me and my ears are weeping and my nose and face and my hands are shaking. I growl for jaguar but I’m on my own here and I don’t know where my feet are and the edges of sight begin to shiver as reality splinters and behind it is the void the void and all of it pushes up up and it is so close so close as I flip my body and the bucket is under me and it all comes out and then it all comes out again and the music reflects the purge and the purge reflects the music and I can’t stop I have to get everything out all of it the whole fucking universe and I’m weeping into that bucket and it isn’t stopping it’s that familiar gargling wretching sound and the taste and what the fuck is even in this now and I can see nothing but the bucket and I’m not okay and I’m crying and shouting and snotting into the bucket and a hand on my back just gently and two words “you’re okay” and yes, she’s right. Fuck. I’m okay. I’m okay. And she takes the bucket and I let her. I NEVER LET YOU TAKE THE BUCKET. I clean my own purge. Control freak. She took it and I thanked her because there was nothing I could do but turn around and lie down in savasana and Condor comes, almost immediately, appears at the edge of my sight dancing with feathers and Condor and I pull things out of my neck and throw them in the fire and I give her the badness and it burns and the badness and it burns and I can’t find any more badness but I offer her the weirdness and she nurtures it and she strokes my chest and I hug him and he says “Sorry mate I felt that was the right thing to do,” and tell him it was, it was. The next morning he tells me how he started working with Condor. “You came at the right time.” “She pulled me to you suddenly. I was just sitting there and suddenly I knew.”
So I lie there weeping like a stuck faucet and I’m thinking about my mother dying alone and all the things that have been knotted up inside me. I’m weeping again about them but I can’t feel them hiding in me and the lack of them feels like a loss because we build ourselves shells made of our own damage and we think that’s who we are now. I lie and I look at it and I talk to the dead and it’s going to be ok and the music is more upbeat and I can be part of this light part of the spark, and I’m safe, we are safe, so I check the coin back into the library and a bell rings and it’s the shaman “anyone who wants another cup, come up and I’ll serve in the order you come” and oh for fucks sake Al really? “How big?” “Not as big as before. I just want to check it’s all done.” He laughs again, gives me about the same. I look at with shock. “You okay with that?” “I trust you.” And I do and I do. In this room in this eternity of colour, he is a strange force for work and change and pain and heart and love.
It was almost all done. At the end of that journey a gentler time, an easier purge, I cleaned my own bucket again. Fractals. Memories. Calls to action. And then dancing until soup.
I’m shattered. I still keep occasionally crying, and I think that’s just gonna be my jam for a day or two and about time too, there was a lot of stuff hiding under that plug.
AlBarclay 