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Ayahuasca Ceremonies of my Psychic Fucking Pains
It is not your memories which haunt you.
It is not what you have written down.
It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget.
What you must go on forgetting all your life.
James Fenton, "A German Requiem." (1981)
Bar stared at me hard as he sat in his new electric wheelchair at the Fortress where I worked as bodyguard and buddy to his corpulent self in the late stages of his decay, a great man trapped in a mound of rolling, rotting flesh, his determined and agile mind capable of tasks needing strengths I sat in wonder of as he banged away through many a night and following day working on a computer problem till he had it solved, all of us amazed and most of us bewildered; and a fine soul in that rotting body, all of Bar soon enough to leave this world, though it took too long. I still see Bar sitting in his wheelchair, his sweat shirt filthy with food stains, his track pants dirtier still, he glowering at me in mock sternness, saying, as my mind reaches back to him laying on his bed, his hand searching for the telephone just out of reach, his call for help laying dormant in the gap, close to 400 pounds of disease there dead, my friend whose voice, a beautiful baritone that would fill our fortress where we worked in the midst of the lowest scum people in North America, a voice that sent shivers through the thighs of young women and a voice that made men lean forward in eager anticipation of wisdom and love, his clear blue eyes filled with humour and happiness at times, with compassion for the scum people, depression over the loss of his family, his bruises and running sores seeping through the bandages wrapped round all his limbs, the stench of his gangrene as bad as the piebald sickness sight of his skin, him rotting there, his hernia flopping like a hot head cheese between his swollen to bursting legs, his feet so huge he had them wrapped in plastic bags, his whole self a horror of dying in slow motion; Bar, a dead man speaking, said: “Who needs friends when you can sit alone in the dark and drink?”
It is not your memories which haunt you.
It is not what you have written down.
It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget.
What you must go on forgetting all your life.
James Fenton, "A German Requiem." (1981)
Bar stared at me hard as he sat in his new electric wheelchair at the Fortress where I worked as bodyguard and buddy to his corpulent self in the late stages of his decay, a great man trapped in a mound of rolling, rotting flesh, his determined and agile mind capable of tasks needing strengths I sat in wonder of as he banged away through many a night and following day working on a computer problem till he had it solved, all of us amazed and most of us bewildered; and a fine soul in that rotting body, all of Bar soon enough to leave this world, though it took too long. I still see Bar sitting in his wheelchair, his sweat shirt filthy with food stains, his track pants dirtier still, he glowering at me in mock sternness, saying, as my mind reaches back to him laying on his bed, his hand searching for the telephone just out of reach, his call for help laying dormant in the gap, close to 400 pounds of disease there dead, my friend whose voice, a beautiful baritone that would fill our fortress where we worked in the midst of the lowest scum people in North America, a voice that sent shivers through the thighs of young women and a voice that made men lean forward in eager anticipation of wisdom and love, his clear blue eyes filled with humour and happiness at times, with compassion for the scum people, depression over the loss of his family, his bruises and running sores seeping through the bandages wrapped round all his limbs, the stench of his gangrene as bad as the piebald sickness sight of his skin, him rotting there, his hernia flopping like a hot head cheese between his swollen to bursting legs, his feet so huge he had them wrapped in plastic bags, his whole self a horror of dying in slow motion; Bar, a dead man speaking, said: “Who needs friends when you can sit alone in the dark and drink?”
It
was nearly two years that I didn't see Bar at all, me sometimes
asking if he had died yet, they saying no, month after month Bar
living on against all expectations, particularly his. I had raged at
him that last day, slamming the door so hard I feared I'd broken it,
going over in my mind my screaming at him, demanding that he die
quickly like a man or that he go with me daily to the clinic where we
would take him for whatever help they could give to restore at least
some health to him, to lessen the pain somewhat, to clean him up and
wash away the stink of him. I slammed the door on my way out, leaving
him with my last words: “You'll die like Mary!”
It
took a week for anyone to bother looking in on Mary, and in that week
she had suffocated from the tumors in her throat that grew around the
machine she used to speak with, she too, like Bar, a huge hulk of
rot, wheelchair bound, her soft pink flesh marred with homemade
tattoos from her frequent bouts in gaol for petty crimes and
prostitution and drunkenness and stupidity. Mary was clever, though,
and got herself an apartment to die in, a nice place where one day
she sat in her livingroom and choked and died and stayed day after
day as the sun light shone on her and her trapped gas kept building
up in her piglike body till she exploded and hit all the walls with
her stuff that stuck so badly the cleaners had to rip out the walls
and tear up the floor to be rid of her.
It
was two years passed by, and one day as I sat working at my place the
doorbell rang and there was Bar, so hideous with running sores and
seeping cloth I could barely recognise him but for the outline of him
and his voice. Thus, we spent the evening chatting about the nature
of things, his lost family pressing on his mind, his friends who had
stayed and those who had given him up and left him. I'd been hard on
Bar that last day when I left, not so gentle as I might have been,
screaming at him and calling him names and telling him how much I
hated him, how much I wanted him to die. I left him there and
returned to my books and my ideas, my brooding. I don't have a lot of
friends. Who needs friends when you can sit alone in the dark and
think?
There
he sat in my apartment and we had dinner, a baked dozen chicken legs
that I couldn't eat at all, and Bar ate them, spooning out the grease
from the pan in the kitchen, scraping up the potato left in the pot
in the sink, and finding an apple pie in the fridge for dessert to go
with the bottles of whiskey he'd brought to wash it all down, and a
loaf of bread with mayo. He came and we talked and he came to
apologise for making me upset when I'd demanded that he die and he
was sorry about it and my psychic fucking pain and all. But he didn't
say anything, of course, we being men who don't speak like women. We
just talked, maybe about the Yankees, maybe about women. Maybe we
talked about sawing boards and hammering nails and lifting sacks of
cement. But he was there and didn't say he was there to say he was
sorry about me being sick over him dying so slowly. Yeah, we talked
about cars and motors. '57 Chevies. We sat and we talked and I
laughed a lot and not long after Bar laid in his bed and tried to
reach the phone to call for help and he couldn't and he died and we
found him dead with his hand reaching out for help as he died and he
was dead.
Here
I am far from Bar and I find myself in the healing centre of the
universe where people come to partake of psychic fucking pain healing
ceremonies of ayahuasca drinking and shitting and puking and
hallucinating that makes one somehow 'whole' again. Yup, in the
centre of people who can heal the pains in my brains and I can be a
good and decent man if only I pay a shaman from California $40.00 or
so to sit with hippies and get stupid and puke.
I've
asked people for months about this jungle drug they drink, ayahuasca,
and what it brings them they don't have already if they thought. I am
in the centre of such folks who love me and want to be my brother in
a circle where we can heal together, they ubiquitous and thick like
beetles on the ground around. I'm not so keen to sit and shit with my
psychic brothers and spiritual gurus who commune for me with the
native Mystik. Everyone pukes. Still, I'll try this trip. I feel I
must. But who needs a circle of healing hippies when one can sit
alone in the dark and stink.
I
find it offensive that folks tell me I should come to know myself and
heal my psychic fucking pains. I think I know my pains because I
caused them all by monstrous harms in this here life my own. I know
those pains each one, and why. There are those who feel nothing, and
I have written elsewhere and still believe, the less the pain, the
worse the hurt, till those who are harmed the most feel not a thing
at all. Should they suffer? No. That's revenge; that's the justice of
it all. They don't feel a thing.
Should
I wash away my psychic pains in jungle drugs and feel whole and
healed? Should I go harmonious into the cosmos attuned? Should I lay
aside my hates and rage for horrors done? Men in the world hurt. We
are small. I look deep into the endless empty skies and see the gods
that hate us. Wounded? I laugh. Healing ayauasca? The man is grand
who sits so still alone in his own pain, his rotting body, his hand
grasping in the dormant gap. We don't need others to heal or hurt; we
harm ourselves just fine. Who needs fiends when he can die alone in
the dark with the gods I thank.
A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:
http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/ 0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books& ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1
And here are some reviews and comments on said book:
http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon. html
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