Orange-Cactus-Cocktail

Scratching at clusters of bloody bites beneath the sleeve of my shirt, I stare through a third neat whiskey in front of me as rickety moto-cars speed past, momentarily blocking the sweltering Amazonian sun. Drinking, the liquid burns my tongue as it swishes around my gums, satisfyingly searing my throat when I sink it. Boy does it feel good to be off that boat.

On the street. Many bright sounds and colours to absorb in my saturation. A steady ramble of shouting drivers cut each-other up on the one-way boulevard beside me, their tiny rickshaws making them kiss the handlebars just to swear at the equally crumpled man overtaking. To my left are streets of muralled walls; the eyes of countless Christs burning holes into me. I want to poke them out, brick by brick. Street beggars hold out hands of wrinkled desperation, sheltering a small child or dog beneath a blanket as people walk on. I weave through the busy crowds, submerging myself in the humid haste of rush hour. These Peruvian streets are a concrete extension of the Amazon beyond, shaded by thick concrete trunks supporting black electrical vines that seep down to the ground. I think of London, New York, all these big cities we view as the epitome of human creation and success. How funny it is that we separate ourselves so entirely from nature and wildlife but are mutated images of its primeval, unforgiving will.

Hungry, a little drunk and bored of smoking cheap cigarettes, I push my way to the curb, dodging rickshaws, tricycles and everything in between to cross the street. How are there so fucking many vehicular dangers in a city that cannot be reached by road?

I hear the bustling market, narrated by shouts and verbose haggling, before I see it. Spanning three crude, narrow streets across and two back, it is completely sheltered by decorated sheets and filled with hundreds of crooked and colourful stalls, offering the most intriguing sights and smells. Small, cooked birds hang from silver hooks around vendors’ blood-bespeckled grins, a thick boiling broth sits upon a clay chimenea-looking stove beside a group of steaming cups. Clusters of gleaming fruit dangle from the stalls, swaying gently with the current of people moving through the market. They mingle with vibrant and patterned bags and tall unrefined piles of raw leather, wool and other materials. Deep sacks of coloured dye litter the thin avenues, sifting my hands through a couple for the sensation, I notice it has coloured the beds of my bitten nails with intense luminosity. Tasselled llamas and horses made of wicker, painted dolls and other souvenirs sit behind tarpaulin mats littered with more fruit and vegetables. I pick out a banana and place a sol into the smiling shawled woman’s weathered hand. Eating it, in the sweating heart of the market, a black sign protrudes from one of the stalls and takes my interest. ‘San Pedro 33g, 10 sol’. Next to this are three thick green arms of the cactus, surrounded by little jars of a fine yellowish powder, presumably crushed by the bearded, crow-footed man that now stood before me. I buy 100 grams and head back to the flat.

...

“You’ll want to do it in the jungle or the mountains. They're actually from the Andes.”

We sit in the compact room, shared between ourselves and four vacant strangers. A dense breeze seeps in through the single open window, licking the bottom of the yellowing cotton blind that frames it. A cigarette lays burning itself out in an ashtray on the table below, thin tresses of smoke trailing out of the open pane. My friend is perched opposite me on a chipped wooden stool, twirling the Ahyuaska root tied round his neck. I cannot remember his name. Picking at the empty box of Malerone in my hand, I am not tickled by the idea of swimming through the dense air of the rainforest floor whilst seeking divination.

“Yeah, I read that. I want it to be true. Fully out there, no phone or anything. Away from it all.”

He rubs the translucent plastic bag that wraps the powder with the short, knotted stump that loosely resembled the thumb of his left hand before he replies.

“They’re grown all over now, but the mountains it shall be for you then friend. Natural, away from the glaring eyes of the civilised world!” He grins at me. Since coming over from England he’d been heavily involved in certain Peruvian gangs with a large foothold in the country’s cocaine market, until he ‘realised’ and completely reclused to the jungle for seven years, to take the mantle as an Ahyuaska Shaman’s apprentice. Living with the Shaman and his people, in the jungle, he explored the secrets and knowledge that many hallucinogenic substances had to offer. My own shining psychedelic Oracle, of sorts. Two days later I waved goodbye to my shamanic friend and got on the boat to Pucallpa.

Coated in a thin veil of glistening sweat, I arrive at the hostel in Huaraz; a long bus journey between myself and the harbour. A band of looming mountains dominate the horizon, blowing thin wispy clouds from snow-capped chimneys into the smeared orange sky. To the west of the city they block the setting sun, cooling the evening and stiffening my brow with salt. I dump my single bag on the bed of my room, shower off my grogginess and sit in the courtyard with a pack of Camel and a cold Cusqueña. Not exerting myself too much the night before my trip.

...

Over the course of the evening, I earn a nice buzz from numerous contemplative beers and receive dedicated recommendations for the best Picante de cuy in the city. I notice four Dutch voices loudly chatting behind me about a bar in Rotterdam, where a cousin of mine had worked when I visited. Proeflokaal Faas. Not questioning how I remember the name, I creak round in the wicker chair to face them, sloshing beer around in my glass so that the whirlpooling amber liquid climbs its walls and spills onto the laminate plastic table. They had been travelling round the continent, particularly the Andean region of Colombia, for the best part of six months – fancying themselves to be quite the mountaineering type, quite unlike myself. They offer advice and warnings when I mention my mountain trip.

“How did you all meet then?” Always a good one to fall back on. My words whistle through the almost empty bottle as I raise it to my lips.

“We finished university together, in Amsterdam. Really wanted to explore and to get out of Europe, mainly. I guess everyone’s running from something!”. A teethy guy called Dean laughs, holding a beer up between his first and middle finger and clinking it against my own. “You?”

I can not give him a definitive answer. As soon as the funeral was over, I had packed my bag and left but even now, ten months down the line, I can't explain what this is. But what was there to go back to?

“Runnin’.”

“Right you are my friend, right you are!” Slapping my back for added exclamation.

We sit trading stories until well into the night, faces illuminated in the soft light of the courtyard and the moonlight streaking through the spindly branches of the discerning tree above.

...

“Happy!”, the driver catches my grin through the kinked rear-view mirror. On our drive to the mountain we cut through the bustling centre of Huaraz, thin streets walled with shops and stalls. Through the open window, a mosaic of sound floats into the car, absolving the silence. A butcher provides a steady beat, cutting the head and feet from chickens and giggling children run between parked cars and bicycles releasing sharp squeals out into the humid, sweating air, amidst choruses of nattering mothers beneath the radios of the shopfronts. Each street sports a similar ensemble, minutes apart, so as we drive the sound of the street is on a loop. Sitting eyes closed, in the shade of the backseat, picking apart of these strands of noise like threads of colour out of a jumper, I notice a warmth beginning to spread throughout my body. It moves up from my stomach into my chest, tingling the hairs of my head and warming the veins in my arms down to glowing fingertips.

…

Eating the San Pedro powder this morning, on a breakfast of Malerone and water, was one of the worst things I’ve ever made myself do. As soon as I swallowed the first mouthful, the most intensely bitter, acrid taste flooded my mouth. With great perseverance, I tried to value the new experience - a vicious test of endurance to earn my visionary adventure. However, eating three times the recommended dose was difficult and I could not help scrunching my face up with disgust as I glugged water to wash it down. I began to wonder if the dosage was based on how much one would be able to stomach in a single sitting. After two relatively small mouthfuls, hardly putting a dent in the mound of plant matter that sat before me on the table, I looked for something to ease the process. Would the acidity of orange juice rinse my mouth of this potent taste or at least tame the sourness that covered my tongue? I found the almost empty bottle of juice at the bottom of my bag, shook the warm liquid and knocked it back. It did not help. Nevertheless, I was at the table in my room pouring the final dregs onto my green tongue and drinking water from a glass half filled with powdered San Pedro, until the only remnant of the pile was a thin sheet of powder caught in the cracks of the wooden table.

Sitting back, I wiped my lips of powder and juice, when my hungover stomach became very unsettled. Mescaline, the psychedelic alkaloid found within the San Pedro cactus, is a purgatory substance, known and upheld by South American Natives to both physically and spiritually cleanse your body of the toxins that life entails and release the mind from metaphysical constraints. But as I wretched into the sand-coloured basin of the toilet, some thirty minutes later, I felt no benefit tasting my orange, alcohol and cactus infused stomach acid. What a colour. I wonder how much lye I would need to consume to neutralize my vomit. Orange juice was a bad idea.

I brushed my teeth over and over and gathered my senses and essentials, my bag packed with enough supplies to last me a few days, just in case. Leaving my phone taped beneath the hostel bed, I headed downstairs, through the dilapidated lobby and out into the burning sun, a wide grin creeping across my face. Hailing a taxi, I picked one of the three protruding peaks, raking lines through the clouds in the bright lunchtime sky. Directing the smoking and sweating driver to take me to the bottom of this mountain, the taste of adventure distracted my tongue from the bitterness that choked it.

Painting: "Pastoras (Sheperdesses)", Leonor Vinatea Cantuarias (c.1944). Courtesy of ARTnews.com.

I’m dropped at the foot of the mountain after what did not feel long, my mind and body absorbed by euphoria circling a tangible warmth throughout my veins. According to my watch, it’s been about ninety minutes since the last bitter sip of my orange-cactus-cocktail and I am definitely feeling the effects. Beginning the walk up the mountain, I see each individual scratch and chip on the loose rocks sliding beneath my feet, blemishes on the weathered face of a reverent shepherd, guiding me up the mountain. Thick white light filters through the ground around me, plunging everything into stunning brightness, accentuating all the detail and colour the world is offering. I see the definitions of each vibrant leaf, highlighted by an illustrator’s fine black pen, as they wave from the spindly, veiny branches of a few small trees surviving this dry soil. Moving up the steady incline of the mountain, I follow a worn path through the middle of a small chicken ridden village. Short wrinkled women stand beating rugs clean with wicker rackets, thousands of flakes of dust bursting in the air around them, cutting through streaks of light piercing the straw roof of the awning above, turning and weaving between each other. Children run between livestock and washing lines, throwing fistfuls of grain up into the air for the parade of chickens marching behind them. I place my own hand into the bag of grain next to the wooden hut, after a permitting smile from one of the women, attentive to every piece that enclosed my hand as it sunk into the depths of the canvas.

Departing the little hamlet, I trudge further up the mountain until the grass, appearing intensely tropical and luscious, turns to yellows and greys, like sunlight breaking through clouds of green. I am beginning to see and feel intense vibrations from everything around me, rocks, trees, all shaking separate to one another but in unison; the essential components of a machine all idly serving their own purpose. Lines of colour surround the objects I pass, a myriad of tones pulsating through their outlines with each step of mine. The beating heart of this ancient mountain is steady and strong.

From far up the mountain, I see the most beautiful valley system pushing through the land, powered by a large river eroding thick walls of rock on either side. An abundant blue corridor to trees beyond, lining the horizon like hair from the fringe of the sky. On the mountain itself, I find a shining, pearlescent lake, rimmed by technicolour lines of salt and rock that cradle the turquoise basin. The radiance of the natural world is pulled towards its surface, presenting itself to me in all its vibrant geometry. I sit at the water’s edge, smoking a joint I rolled the night before; savouring every inhalation and exhaling waves of warmth down my body. Strong winds jump over the walls of granite around me and ripple the water of the lake, it’s within these delicate swells I see colourful, revolving linear patterns dispersing through the subtle rolls of water. Intricate processes of the natural world hidden to the abstracted eye, all calculated and collected in the delicate surf that brushes the shore by my feet. Smoke rises before my eyes, forming complex geometric patterns in rapid palpitations of incandescent colour; the wind's voice translated in the smoke, then passed on into the bright sky.

Painting: "Blue and Red Abstract", Anon (c.1938). Courtesy of Bethlehem Museum of the Mind.

I re-open my eyes a few moments later, lost in the lucid arrangements of shape and colour dancing behind the closed curtains of my lids. Lifting my arm to pick up one of the flat hoary stones beside me, the limb itself remains on my leg. I toss the stone a few metres into the water as the wind dies down. The splash vibrates through me like a brass instrument, puffed by sweating lips under deep blue light. I’m in the water. Waves of pulsating colour erupt to the water’s surface, dispersing across the lake in wonderful stripes of vibrancy; fading and returning to the vivid blue of the water as it settles. Transfixed, I throw more stones, lost in the colours and revolving geometric arrangements coming out of the lake. Reaching down to pick up another, I notice a lilac light projecting from one of the rocks; its crystallised surface winking in the bright eye of the sun. I pick it up, squeezing it between my fingers. This rock is succulent, like the sweet, juicing fruit of an orange tree over-encumbered with ripe harvest. All of these rocks are organic, the pulsating fruits of the maternal mountain above; I can see them stirring, rolling in between each other in buoyant sugared waves. I place the purple stone back onto its crystal bed and my hand absorbs into the glittering stone current intensifying under gasps of wind. The mountain is shaking and vibrating like an engine. It’s moving. I’m in the water. Surrendering myself to a tide of colour and warmth… I have never seen the things that I am seeing right now… no fear…tranquillity. No boundaries between the mountain and myself… Its breath fills my lungs and I exhale aural rivulets of powerful emotion, coming deep from the primordial core of this place. Hidden, subterranean worlds of vivacious geometry, recording the processes of the natural world in thick strands of colour that run through breaks in the bark of the tree of life. I feel the steady beating pulse of the technicolour veins of nature. I expand and contract with them. The true essence of the world's spirit seeping up through the rock into my fingertips, cavorting the lids of my eyes and injecting itself back down into the warm skin of the earth.

Leaving the lake, I look out across the vast space, the bubbling sky producing plumes of steamy clouds. The serpentine river runs through the valley, licking at the horizon with its blue lips. Hairy trees walk across the horizon, the ancient Incan guardians of this land meandering in the distance.

I climb further. Mechanically finding footholds in the steep crumbling rock. Pulling myself higher. Coming closer to the mountain’s peak, inhaling and exhaling, a snow-capped accordion vibrating my chest with its warm notes.

A lurching black cloud subdues the fragrant radiance of everything around me, filtering the colourful tones that seep through the rock face. I watch the rain approach, puncturing the serenity of the river below, until it surrounds me. The cloud conquers the sky, growling with mythical wrath. The flash of a spotlight, from within the cloud, dazzles me, reflecting off the wet rock and throwing me back into momentary sunlight. Rooted to the cliff face. Unable to move. I feel each heavy pellet break as it hits my skin, exploding on contact and soaking through my clothes instantly. Loose rocks fall around me, tumbling from their place in heavy rivulets of rain that run down the cliff face. Both my feet rest on the same jutting rock, I move my centre of balance to try and secure myself. Fear gurgles in my stomach, knotting my chest and making my legs shake under my weight. I can hear nothing but the rapid pumping of my heart. I move my hand. Blood-tipped fingers slip from wet rock. It falls out of the wall of the mountain, splintering into thousands of fragments as it bounces off the ledge below.

I have two brains. One spins my thoughts like a zoetrope and the other frequently snatching thoughts from the spinning wheel, still searching for the next. That rock could have been me. I look for another hold on the rock. Is this what I was searching for, the filling end to my solemn journey facing the blind deaf stone alone? If things were different, what would they think? My legs are tingling, I can’t feel which foot of mine is standing on top of the other, holding me up on this panting stone. Lightning strikes the realisation into me that I am not going to be able to get out of this. It’s not within my capability to get out of this jam. I hear reverent wings flap above me and I look up to see a cat pawing its way down from the mountain's peak. I call to it, speaking my thought. It sulks down towards me, eyes squinted, its fur ignites with every flash of the sky. The cat speaks to me, in a language I cannot translate, but understand. Reminding me that if I fall and plummet down this 3000ft mountain onto the enduring rocks below then nothing would be lost but my physical self; the true essence of my existence, reabsorbed into the earth, passed through the veins of the natural world to re-join with the ancient bubbling core of one’s true being. Everything is connected. Complete interlinkage of internal spirit that transcends all boundaries. There is no “I”, no “them”, no “man”, no “wild”, only the whole spirit of true existence interweaving everything, sewing it into the primeval fabric of life. Nothing can ever leave or be unwritten, an endless tapestry spanning all of time. My own life a single thread. And theirs. Rotting away its physical limitations and eternalised in bright white light.

A lifetime passes on the side of the mountain, humbled knuckles glowing white with tension.

I look down at the near vertical drop beneath me. A small ledge between my feet and the foot of the cliff.

A tale inspired by true events by Joe Bird.

Painting: "Kaleidoscopic Cats III", Louis Wain (late 19th, early 20th century). Courtesy of Bethlehem Museum of the Mind.