Photographs courtesy of Lisa Carver.
My cousin Lorrie invited me on a ten-day retreat in Peru where we would partake in ancient ceremonies involving the Living Death Drug ayahuasca and—
“Don’t tell me anything more,” I interrupted. “The answer is yes!”
I never watch the trailer before going to the movie. I don’t want to ruin the surprise. Even if sometimes that means the surprise ruins me. I met a big-personalitied Frenchman while traveling and did not take time to get to know him before marrying him and moving into his house in Paris. I guess I don’t feel any proprietary rights over my destiny. I allow the Parisian shopgirls to choose my outfits, and now I will let the Peruvian shamans choose my insides. Whatever they’ve got has to be better than what I got going on now.
Lorrie and I tried to figure out when was the last time we’d seen each other. Thirty-six years ago, when she visited me in Philadelphia!
“I was nineteen in my second year of missionary school,” she remembered.
“And I was eighteen in my first year of peripatetic hedonism.”
“I know,” she groaned. “I was terrified coming from my little Christian school to your filthy, vile apartment with your weirdo roommates. It was furnished with things you had literally dragged out of people’s trash.” She recalled the ‘art’ nailed on the wall above the couch where she slept: a shit- and blood-stained plastic music box in the shape of a church. The music-making part was broken and squawked at random all night long, she said. “And it was so cold my Walkman froze.”
“Hahaha, your Walkman froze!” I couldn’t stop laughing. I don’t know why I thought that was the funniest thing I’d ever heard.
“Well, I loved you anyway,” she sighed.
“And I you,” I said. “Did I tell you I’m Catholic now?”
“Yes. And I’m a witch now.”
We’d traded weirdness levels, and we still loved each other the same as we always had. We were the only ones who believed each other about the stuff that had happened in our family. Well, we were the only ones who said it out loud, the only ones who didn’t care about the money, and fucked them all off.
Day One
The taxi that met me at the airport in Cusco climbed higher and higher into the mountains until the road became dirt, and then more like dust. Finally, we arrived at Casa de la Gringa, a sprawling retreat center encircled by a tall wall painted every bright color imaginable, ensuring that whatever went on within would remain secret. A giant door opened and my cousin came running; she hugged me in a way I’ve never felt in my life. What a feeling. Then she showed me around the grounds: acres of gardens with pavilions and all kinds of nooks and sculptures made of stone and jewel and rusted metal. We talked for ten hours straight, cross-legged on our respective beds in our small shared room. We’d been talking on the phone for thirty-six years no matter where we each relocated all over the globe. You’d think you’d hear someone’s voice more clearly when you couldn’t see them, but on the phone I was concentrating on her words, their meaning, not hearing her in the way I could now. Her voice was the same as when we were kids: strong and stubborn and loving. I love her New England accent. The bark and nasality of it, the ends of words bitten off, r’s dropped where they’re supposed to be and placed randomly where they aren’t. She sounds like she’s telling the truth.
At dinnertime we staggered back down the stairs. Not only does the high altitude in Cusco make your head balloon and you talk like a tweaker, but it makes your legs feel like they’re sewn on from an old man cadaver.
The owner of Casa de la Gringa, a South African named Lesley, was seventy with long white hair and a long white dress, sweet-faced and gentle-voiced and rather drifty. She kept starting to do something or go somewhere and then would forget what it was and sit back down, unbothered. Whatever needed to happen would happen, her attitude promised, and whatever didn’t happen never needed to at all. Two short, brown, kind-eyed women served a simple, unspiced soup and hard bread. They didn’t speak a word of English except lady. As in, “Lady!” and a gesture at the pot of soup with their chin, meaning: Would you like more soup?
Lesley urged us to join the six other guests gathered around the picnic-style table, and we all introduced ourselves, but not in the usual way of trying to appear attractive and successful. We flung our lives naked onto the table. As tales of woe and hope unfurled, I pictured us as a bunch of pirates, except with pieces of our spirits missing instead of limbs and eyes.
As Lesley has very little interest in worldly things like computers and money, she allows anyone who feels like it to organize retreats at her place and pocket most of the dough. The captain of our troupe was Travis, a young, muscular bald man from Seattle. He was trying so hard to be helpful, but there was something about him that felt … separate … or pushing. No one listened to him—a mutiny had begun at our very first assembling! He quickly turned sweaty and unnerved.
Xavier was between worlds: from India but lives in America, raised Hindu but recently switched to Catholicism. He felt a little sacrilegious given what we were about to do, which was some kind of Inca magic.
Scott was a tall, skinny psych nurse bearing the weight of the world on his narrow shoulders, and it was like he kept trying to literally roll the world off by twisting his body; he couldn’t sit still.
Angela was sixty-seven, Peruvian, married to a Norwegian. She spoke in a little-girl voice. She and I instantly connected.
Lorrie, unmistakably lesbian, was fifty-six but could have been mistaken for someone decades younger with her clean, chubby face and impish energy.
Laura, an emergency room nurse, was thirty-two with a pixie haircut and a fairy face; I wanted to protect her, but I also sensed a chained tiger inside her … I told myself not to underestimate her.
Cindy’s birthday was the next day. She was turning sixty-six and had never had a birthday party. Her mother was schizophrenic and abandoned her at nine months old; she thought Cindy was going to kill her. Social services said if they had found her one hour later, she would have been dead of dehydration. There was something off-putting about her. She was so shining and wanting to give—it made one suspicious, even annoyed. It’s a terrible thing that the people who need love the most repel it the most. I pulled Lesley aside and asked for craft supplies so I could make her a card we could all sign, and a present; Lesley said she’d get a cake and candles; Cindy was going to have her first party.
And then there was me. When my daughter was twelve or thirteen, she described me as “someone you can tell used to be good-looking.” Like Cindy, no one has ever given me a birthday party. Or a welcome-home party, or a congratulations-on-having-your-book-translated-into-Italian party. There must be something repellent about me, too, something too shining that makes the people turn away at some point. There’s something not believable about me.
Day Two
We gathered in a circle in the largest tepee I’d ever seen and each stated our intention while Lesley poured our cups of “Grandfather”—liquid cactus, San Pedro, which tastes like the scrapings of the bottom of a kiln. She told us to expect the effects to kick in within a half hour and to last about ten hours. She said that Grandfather is intense yet gentle; he wouldn’t take us anywhere we didn’t want to go.
To her left perched a tiny shaman in boots two sizes too big and something like paper clips holding his teeth together. He was so beautiful, and he grew ever beautifuller as Grandfather gradually enhanced my sight. His face had excellent lines and had the color and warmth of red clay earth in the sun. We took turns letting him whoosh bad stuff off or out of us with a feather while saying prayers in a language I’d never heard before. He spoke no English and maybe even no Spanish. When he wasn’t whooshing, he sat placidly, smiling and chewing coca leaves, looking like he had all the time in the world. When I thought of my husband, Bruno, being an apologist for, or at least diminishing the destructiveness of, colonialism, it became so obvious that I couldn’t be with a man like him any longer. I wasn’t exactly thinking I should be married to this little fellow instead, but something close to it. (Later, when I wasn’t high, I realized it wouldn’t be long before I’d get irritated with his constant coca-leaf chewing and too-big boots and paper-clipped teeth. I may as well stop thinking others—well, Bruno—are the ones making me cranky.)
We were instructed to each find our own perfect spot on the grounds. I found a little cabana where I lay down with a great view of the cloud show. Each cloud was a curtain and would peel back to reveal what was behind it: another cloud curtain, which would do a little dance and then be parted by the wind to reveal another, and so on. The leaves and limbs of the trees were moving quite a lot. I don’t know why we think trees are stationary. They were racing the sky!
Someone had told me that plant medicine is nature trying to protect itself by turning into a telephone with which it can let the humans know that they (plants) are alive and feeling and don’t want to die. But I’m already an animist. I said to Grandfather: “Thank you very much for the cloud-and-leaf show, but that’s not where I need to go. I need to go down. There’s someone I need to meet.”
It was me. I could see myself at four just as clear and separate from me as if there were an actual, living girl walking up to me. A slip of a girl. Stick-straight limbs, stick-straight hair that was brown in the shade, golden in the sun, as she moved out of the … the corner of me where she’d been hiding. It wasn’t exactly a corner. It was just her life—her room, her pets, her Raggedy Ann doll, her parents, the politics and the music and the feel of 1973. To me, it was like she’d been trapped in a filmstrip loop. To her, she was just living. Waiting. She’d been holding on so tight to existing—riding the line of not getting so lost she’d never be found, yet remaining unfindable to anyone but me—that she could never relax. She had become so brittle in maintaining her balance that if anyone put their hands on her, she might collapse into dust. She had to hold on for fifty years straight. And she was only a little girl! Fifty years is a long time to play dead.
“I knew you would come for me,” she said. I ran to her and took her in my arms. I was crying. Imagine the faith it took to wait that long, never doubting. God, it feels good to be believed in. And she was right. I didn’t leave her behind. I was always looking for her, always.
“We’re going to have so much fun,” I said, releasing her just enough so that I could look into her bright blue eyes. “Wait till you see everything I have now—money, power. I want to introduce you to everyone. We can go anywhere. Everything I have is yours. We can buy you dresses.”
“I don’t want anything,” she said. Wow … She really is me! “I just want to be free. I want to play. With you.”
I’ve never played. I was even uncomfortable with other people being playful. It seemed an inscrutable practice. Dangerous even. But now it sounded … just … of course. Of course let’s play! What could be easier?
I took Little Lisa by the hand and leapt up the stairs (in the real world) to show her my room. I held her and cried with joy—a lot, a lot.
The sky joined in: a monsoon erupted. We listened to it lashing every surface as we snuggled under the covers, safe.
Day Three
“I cannot sleep in a room with a bunch of men in it, I told you that,” I insisted to Travis. We were all standing at the giant door, about to leave our compound for Lesley’s neighbor Kush’s compound, as today we would embark on an ayahuasca trip, which can feel violent, and that’s just not Lesley’s thing. Kush leads the ayahuasca part of the program.
“We’re good guys,” Travis said.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “I don’t care.”
“Well, you really need to sleep in Master Kush’s dome anyway so you can hear the words from the master in the morning. His wisdom will help you. Maybe that you can sleep in a room with men is the lesson you came here to learn. Let the process happen.”
I felt hysteria rising in me. “My father prostituted me,” I said, “starting when I was a baby.”
“You don’t have to say this in front of all of us,” Scott said, his psych-nurse caretaking impulse rising in him.
“Yes I do,” I insisted. “He drugged me and sold me and made pornographic films of me. They’re still out there, men are still watching them. How many men have seen me when I can’t see them? I cannot sleep—on a drug—with men in the room!”
“You’re not the only one all that happened to,” Travis said. He sounded annoyed. “Every day for me from the age of three till six. Why do you think any of us are here?”
Lorrie stood up, took me by the hand. “I’ll walk back to our room with you tonight when the medicine wears off, Leese. We can sleep here.”
“But that’ll be 3 A.M.,” Travis protested. “There’s no one to let you in at that hour. It’s all locked up.”
Angela grabbed me by the other hand and yanked. “C’mon,” she said. “Where there’s a lock, there’s a key. You and me are gonna find it.”
***
A few hours later, Master Kush, two Peruvian female shamans, and a Polish helper gave us cups of ayahuasca, which was almost as sludgy as the San Pedro, along with murmured instructions I didn’t understand. I felt safe on a mat between Lorrie and Angela, touching the key to Casa de La Gringa in my pocket, which the night watchman had lent to us, for comfort. Within minutes, geometric shapes paraded in the air above us. The shapes wanted to show me something but they only made me madder. I don’t want to stupid hallucinate, I griped inside my mind. Is this what Travis was so eager for—a bunch of dancing quadrilaterals? I stared at him on his mat across the room and started thinking straight at him, loudly: I paid you to be my guide and you are so selfish you would rather take another psychedelic trip to the point where you can’t walk me back to Lesley’s. You’re willing to have a second paying customer truncate her trip to walk me back instead of you. How many trips have you been on already, Travis? Ridiculous!
I was getting angrier and angrier. The hallucinated shapes took on my furious rhythm and got all slashy. I got to thinking how similar Bruno’s way of talking to me is to Travis’s. Then I realized: He’s not talking to me. Bruno, I mean. I wouldn’t be hurt by his inanity. He’s bullying a four-year-old. That’s who comes out at the first sign of abuse to absorb it, because she knows how. Little Lisa sacrifices herself for me. Horrible. Horrible. He should be ashamed. So should I. The next time Bruno puts me down, I’m going to say, “I renounce you.” And I’m gonna. I’m gonna renounce him.
As for the bully Travis and my current circumstances … well, I decided to ask Little Lisa. “What do you want to do?”
She said, “I want to leave.”
So we did.
I waited till Lorrie took her second dose, knowing it would incapacitate her. I didn’t want my cousin to miss out on her experience because of me. No more sacrificing! I gathered Little Lisa in my arms and struggled to get up; the shapes kept pushing me back down. I batted at them and crawled through them to my coat and shoes. From the moment I left my mat, a tremendous murmuring started building. Now everyone who could move—the lady shamans, the master, and the helper—rushed forward, saying, “Oh no, you can’t leave.”
I said, “Oh yeah?” And I grabbed the door.
It was locked from the inside.
The Polish man, the one with the most English, warned, “You’ll be sick, you’re going to be calling begging to come back.”
I knew I wouldn’t be sick. And I sure as hell wouldn’t be begging. I got me now. I felt good.
And angry. Wow. I had never felt this. When I thought I was angry before, I’d go into a red-out, get possessed by a demon, remember nothing and feel shame if anyone told me later what I’d done or said. Now I stood there calm and cold with my hand on the door, letting the anger fill me. Anger feels like eating a healthy meal packed with calories you’re now burning and turning into muscle. Travis staggered over, greenish-skinned and wild-eyed. “Let a woman talk to her,” he suggested to Kush.
And so I was left alone with one of the woman shamans. We just looked at each other, her with her no English and me with my no Spanish. Her brown eyes were kind, humane.
On an off chance, I ventured, “Parlez-vous français?” And she nodded! I was able to explain to her that I’m not crazy, I’m not having a bad trip. It’s just right for me to leave. I’m taking care of my girl.
She didn’t answer, just stood up, went to the master, and came back with the key. She walked me home, still no words—only smiles—and I noticed her feet made no sound on the rocks either. Dressed all in white, she was very floaty. But there was no question of her not really being there. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt anyone as “there” as I felt her then.
Day Four
In the morning, our group of pirates compared experiences. Everyone but me had second or even third cups, and they all had wild times except for Xavier, who saw, felt, and heard nothing. The spirits were silent, and they’d been with the San Pedro too. But, he said, Kush had blessed him. He was pretty psyched about that. Xavier seems to be searching for a father. And I’m searching to lose mine!
Then Xavier blurted out, “Lisa, you have never liked sex. This thought came to me. Is it true?”
“How would I know?” I answered. “I was never there.”
We went to an exotic animal sanctuary. It felt so good to be with these well-treated creatures. We admired a puma rescued from a disco and a toucan from a hotel where people would grab him by the bill and carry him around roughly until it cracked and crumbled apart. The sanctuary gave him a prosthetic beak. The animals form unusual pair bonds—say, a monkey and a hawk. And all the couples are toxic. A single rescued bird or animal will be docile and allow itself to be treated. But once they find a mate or best friend, they’re diabolical. One of the animals will distract the human caregiver while the other spits and kicks or bites or pecks at the human’s testicles! If one of the pair is well again and gets released into the wild, then the one left behind—their feathers or fur will fall out, they won’t eat. And the released one will find their way back to them, no matter the distance. Now they only release them in pairs. And sometimes, once they’re both healed, a pair will just escape together in the night.
Maybe Bruno and I are two injured birds and I’ve been somewhat healed for a while now; I keep releasing myself and I keep flying back. I’m waiting for him to be somewhat healed, too.
Day Five
After I was promised that I could sleep behind the female shamans, I agreed to stay the night for our second ayahuasca trip at Kush’s. We took turns saying our question for Mother Aya before drinking from our cup, and Kush would praise the choice of question, or say a line from a poem it called to mind, or prod the questioner to set their intention deeper. Everyone but me. Prompted by Xavier’s comment, I asked, “How do I have sex? I mean as me, not as a role. How can I stay and not float away?” Kush was silent for an uncomfortably long time and then he muttered to the Polish fellow, who said to me, “He says that’s personal. He doesn’t want to say anything.” I got the feeling he was sparing me the full translation.
The master didn’t like me.
And I didn’t care!
Because I’d be staying, I decided to take the big cup. The geometric shapes knew better than to mess with me this time. Mother—that’s what they call ayahuasca, like San Pedro is Grandfather—came straightaway. I think of mothers as tender, but this one was awesome in the terrifying sense of the word. For me at least. Cindy later described her experience as riding a rainbow to the sun and touching the seed of God. I think Mother knew that Cindy had had enough rotten times in this life and needed something nice. And she knew that I am stubborn and think I’m so-o-o smart, so she would need a hammer to crack this nut. Besides … I don’t know what a God seed is, but touching it is definitely not on my to-do list.
I got right to the point. “Mother Aya, how do I have sex with Bruno? The more I become myself, the more I don’t know how. We haven’t done it in, like, six months.”
She said, “You idiot! You have everything you need. Just do it—whatever it is you will do.”
I wasn’t offended by her tone. She wanted to give me everything hard and fast because she knew I wouldn’t be in Peru again. I never go to the same place twice. I ran for the toilet as she continued yelling: “Everything is happening already. It’s not up to you to start or stop anything, or do or not do anything; just open your eyes to what is already and be it. Trust. You don’t trust anyone, not even yourself. The opposite of trust is control. Starting or stopping things is control. Control shuts the door and closes you in. No one comes in, no one comes out.”
As if to illustrate her words, all this stuff was pouring out of me uncontrollably into the toilet for like an hour. Where had I been storing it? Four times I thought it was over and I’d stand up and … oh!
I said to Mother, “After everything Bruno’s done, how can I trust? I don’t even feel comfortable holding his hand on the couch watching a movie! I thought he had to prove himself or something first.”
She answered, “That wasn’t your thought. None of your thoughts are yours. They are parasites. Someone put them in you. They grow every time you obey. Don’t listen to them or act on them and they will starve and die. There are no thoughts. Only is and is not. Which are you?”
Finally I made it out of the bathroom and back to my mat, but unfortunately I was paralyzed. Tears fell from my eyes and snot from my nose that I couldn’t move my hand to wipe. I was drooling too, the prevomit kind of drool. I was afraid the vomit would spill out of my mouth and onto my pillow because I couldn’t get to the bucket that had been conveniently placed next to my mat.
“Ask for help,” Mother chastised me. “This is your chance.”
“But I can’t speak,” I protested. “My vocal cords are paralyzed. I’m trapped inside myself. This is so horrible.”
“Of course you’re trapped inside yourself. Isn’t this what I have been telling you? Now I’m showing you. Open the door!”
I started praying: “Please let it be over, please let it be over.”
The same shaman lady from the night before heard my silent prayer and helped me onto my bucket. I laid the full weight of my head on the rim, drooling into it, but nothing came up. They’d told us before the ceremony that we were supposed to purge. I felt like a failure. It seemed even my throw-up muscles were paralyzed. The shaman pushed the back of my head with her hand. It felt like her hand went into my skull, like it was a magnet drawing it—the toxic shit in my head, as opposed to what earlier had come out of my gut—up and out because she understood my mouth portal was inoperable.
Gratefully, I collapsed back and willed myself to sleep. But without the prescription pills I’d been addicted to for thirty years, without even an audiobook to take me out of myself and into someone else’s story, there was only me. I couldn’t face any more me. And that is exactly what I did, all night long, until at last dawn padded in through the cracks at the bottom of the dome and eased the dreadful mirror out of my rigor-mortised fingers and released me, my limbs and my mind. Shake it off.
Outside: Mountains on every side, and so much sky, escorted us on our walk home. The sunrise was not orange and red and yellow like it is in Nevada. It was cool blue and purple and there were distinct beams like giant fingers pointing from behind the mountains.
Angela fell in beside me. She’d had a vision of my mother. I’d told her that my mother was orphaned as a teenager and then lived with the people her parents had been servants for. Even with all that hardship she graduated top of her class with a full scholarship to a prestigious college. Yet the only nice thing her adoptive parent said to her when she went back to her seat after receiving her diploma was: “You had the best posture of all the girls.” My mother would often repeat that story as her crowning achievement or something. She never realized she deserved more. All that pain and discomfort she bore from Crohn’s disease, the nausea. She’d go into the hospital for days or weeks on end. My mother had no friends and my father was in prison and we always moved so we were always the new kids in town, and there was no one to take care of me, so there was also the constant threat of CPS taking me away if they found out. No one ever loved or helped my mother. Not even I did. I wanted to, but I couldn’t—she would have swallowed me.
Angela said she had a vision of my mother as a thoroughbred. She said, “That’s what the posture comment was recognizing. There was something so upright about her spirit. Her body was breaking down, but she stayed alive just until you had a baby, so that you would still have family after she died. Not all thoroughbreds are healthy and strong. But they’re still thoroughbreds. That was your mother. And that is you too.”
Day Six
We had a burning ceremony. The brother of the little shaman with the too-big boots presided. We were given a sheet of paper on which to write down our wishes—mine was to laugh more, think less—and one by one we brought them to the shaman. He scattered items on a blanket to represent things—like alphabet-soup letters for wisdom. Finally he added our wishes, then gathered it all up in the blanket and led us to the fire pit. We were instructed to watch him throw the sack into the fire, and immediately turn our backs and walk away. Once the paper burned, it was in the air, everywhere, so it wasn’t a wish anymore. A wish is something that waits for you and only you to make it real. Now it was out there in the world—ash on wind—for anyone to grab. We felt some urgency to do the grabbing!
Lesley’s son led us to Heart Rock. They’d been doing excursions like this every evening while I stayed in my room. I needed time alone to think. Or so I thought. Suddenly the space in me where fear had been camping was emptied out. It hadn’t been fear so much as vigilance—searching for signs of someone wanting to trap or torture or trick me. I didn’t need to do that anymore. Of course someone may trick me still. So what? And another thing. I didn’t hear anymore the words on repeat in my head: Liar. Liar. You made it all up. You just want attention. Hardly anything happened, you’re being dramatic. I brought it up to Lorrie, and she said, “Same.” Same words she’d been hearing her whole life long, and same silence now. Fighting that voice every single day took so much energy. The fight gave Lorrie migraines and me insomnia. We didn’t realize how constant the voice was until it wasn’t there anymore; we didn’t even understand that we had a voice in our head—it was just the way life was. Past tense. Now we’ve got all this extra energy.
“What will we do with it?!” I asked Lorrie.
“Well,” she said, “I guess we just walk straight into the rest of our lives and find out.”
“Starting with Heart Rock.”
I’m social now!
Heart Rock is where, for thousands of years, people have pressed their heart against a cliff, giving and receiving energy while concentrating on what they hope for. We each took a turn hoping while the rest of the pirates visualized our hopes coming true. My hope was the same as my wish. I want to lay my burdens down and be light. I’m tired of intensity and meaning. I want to find things funny again. Afterward, we one by one crawled and climbed down and up a narrow cave crevice, because we don’t alchemize only through hoping but also through difficult journeying. It was dark and creepy in the crevice, and when I emerged a glorious sunset had come to meet me!
A few minutes later, Xavier made it through too.
“The answer came to me,” he announced. “Why you don’t like sex. It’s because you’re holy. In coitus, the less holy person absorbs the more holy person’s energy. So sex drains you, and you protect yourself from it by disappearing.”
I’d never been called holy before. At first it made me feel shy, but here anything felt possible, and I thought: Why not? Why shouldn’t I be holy, too?
Next to make it through the crevice was Scott. And wow! I could see men now! Before, I’d put like a fragmenting lens over their faces. I thought if I couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see me. I could look in their eyes and exchange words with them, but I was blurring their eyes and voices the whole time. In this moment, I could see and hear Scott bright as day. I saw someone tremulous, flawed, full of confidence and doubt. Someone in the act of becoming. And someday he would die. And people would miss him. I never thought of men as dying. Starting with my father, I saw men as unchangeable, unkillable, like the devil. But Scott I could picture in his coffin someday, surrounded by loved ones. And now that I believe men die, I can believe men live.
All these revelations are so simple: Like, of course men are people too! Maybe this is stuff other people understand in childhood or young adulthood. But instead of growing up, I made intellectual ribbons and bows out of everything. Now I can just untie them.
Day Seven
It was our free day.
Xavier asked Travis to take him when he went to see Kush, but we could all tell Travis was going to ditch Xavier and hog Kush all to himself.
“Call Kush yourself!” we encouraged him. “Make your own date with him.”
“I can’t,” Xavier whispered.
“Grab the bull of life by the horns, Xavier!”
We asked Lesley to arrange the visit, and she did.
Later, we found Xavier glowing with happiness. Kush had told him plant medicine and mysticism are not his path. That’s why he had no visions and heard no voices. But it’s right that he came, Kush added, because now he knows. Knows he is on the right path—being a dutiful husband to a wife who doesn’t understand him, a dutiful servant to a Catholicism that he doesn’t understand, and a dutiful citizen of a country that doesn’t appreciate him. He must live a life he sees no meaning in, with honor. This is how he will love God.
That’s a pretty shitty destiny, I thought, but to Xavier it made perfect sense. He was at peace.
Day Eight
After distributing doses of our second San Pedro, Lesley again instructed us to find the right place to be alone. I looked everywhere for it. I even walked into the cook’s house by accident. The last place I looked was the cabana I’d stayed in the first time, where I’d found Little Lisa. I thought, Oh great, I’ll be able to spend more time with her! But I couldn’t find her. You know why? She grew up. It’s me. I’m her.
I thought it was terror of my father that kept me tethered to the past. No. It was me. And now that I freed Little Lisa, the teetering structure I’d built of how to exist collapsed into rubble, and I stepped out of it, clean.
I stepped out of my father. All my life I fought him by saying into the wind: “You don’t own me.” All my life I left him by leaving other men. But every time I left a man, I reinforced the idea that freedom is in fleeing. And every time I disputed being owned, I reinforced the idea that it’s even possible for one to own another. No one is owned, no one is owed. The fever has broken. The father question is answered. The answer is: There is no father question.
Well! Where will you take me now, Grandfather? Where do I need to go?
Nowhere but right here. You can live now. Go see your friends. They’re waiting for you. Enjoy.
Indeed, Laura, Angela, and Lorrie were waiting for me on a terrace. How did you know, Grandfather?! They were huddled under a giant blanket even though it was warm out: Three consternated faces poking out. Still lost in the trip, fragile, unsure. “Oh you poor babies,” I said, flopping down next to Lorrie. “I’ll take care of everything. Grandfather kicked me out, I’m me again, and I’m ready to rumble. Whose ass should I kick?”
Laura held out a daisy. Lesley’s shaman (my friend with the too-big boots) had given it to her, saying—Angela translated the Quechua—that Laura is innocent and virginal like this flower. She was almost crushing the flower, muttering, “If one more word is spoken about my virginness and my womb …” It seemed that in Kush’s words of wisdom I’d missed after the first night of ayahuasca, there was much discussion of Laura not fully inhabiting her potential motherhood and not opening to the sex that gets you there. “I can’t take any masculine energy right now,” she said.
As if on cue, the shaman came over smiling and went to sit right next to her. I said, “You got this?” with my eyes. She said softly (with her mouth), “It’s okay.”
“Okay is not good enough!” I bellowed, probably obnoxiously. “It’s yes or nothing!”
“It’s … not yes,” she said.
I turned to Angela. “Can you translate?”
Angela looked uncertain. It’s nearly impossible to turn domineering men away, but the gentle ones are even harder—we might hurt them. But why should anyone be hurt by what’s simply true? I asked her to say to him, “No, it’s not the time to sit here right now.” Angela did, embarrassed, and he went away. (Later, we told him what had happened and thanked him and said he’d honored us.)
Then Scott wandered in our direction, cigarette in hand, and this time Laura did the bellowing. “Get away from here with that stinky smoke!”
He got away.
We were amazed at how easy no is. All these years we had allowed our consideration for others to destroy consideration for what’s true in us, and we vowed henceforth to destroy what’s true in us no more! We all got high on no, we yelled it at everything: our pee before we flushed it, a vine in our path on our hike, a cloud we didn’t like the look of. We noed ’em all. No is funny, no is joyful, no is the revolution where no one dies and all are freed, even the oppressor.
An Irish fellow named P.J. had joined our group for this one ceremony, and Laura got a vision that he had a seven-year-old daughter out there he doesn’t know about and hesitated about whether to tell him. I said, “Just give him the information.” She thought she shouldn’t but said “Okay.” “No,” I cried. “If it’s no, don’t okay me. NO me!” And she did. She looked in my face and proclaimed NO.
Day Nine
For our last night together, we gathered around the bonfire, thrilled to hear, after a week of soup, that Travis had ordered pizza. But when it came … CAN YOU BELIEVE IT WAS ONE LITTLE PIZZA AND HE ATE IT ALL HIMSELF?? I am against the idea of anyone going to prison for any reason, but I would make an exception in this case.
We did impromptu karaoke on Xavier’s smartphone. He belted out a passionate Michael Jackson song—I did not know he had it in him! I requested Salt-N-Pepa but stopped halfway through when I saw all the bummed-out faces. They were not in the vibe to push it, push it real good … or in any other manner. Someone requested the Disney song “Let It Go” and everyone sang along except me. I thought I would die. This was even worse than riding a rainbow to kiss a God seed. But the lyrics surprised me. Some were downright Nietzschean: “No right, no wrong, no rules for me, I’m free!”
P.J. got out his guitar and sang a Rumi poem from 1272: “Lover of leaving, it doesn’t matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vow a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come.” Laura joined in, and she had the voice of an angel. Crystalline. She said she had never sung in front of anyone before. I could see why she would want to protect that voice from the world. Till now.
I was crying and crying. It was the combination of P.J.’s and Laura’s voices, one soft like bedding, one piercing like starlight … It was like Rumi had crossed hundreds of years to whisper the lines right into my ear and to each of us sad lovers of leaving. All my life I kept trying to find a home, and I kept failing, leaving every home and everyone behind. I could neither be one nor the other—homed, nor content to be a wanderer. Rumi told me it’s okay; break your vow another thousand times. Come again, come again. You can’t come unless you’re also leaving. Come. Into the arms of the Lord, the arms of the mother, of the self, of the home, yes even of the leaving—again and again, always forgiven, always embraced. I have only to come.
Day Ten
Sweating under the midday sun in the middle of a field, our guide Arnold described to Lorrie and me the personality of each of the horses out there so that we could pick the one that would best mesh with ours. For me that was the most sensitive horse, because I hate to kick a horse to go faster, and I can’t bear to yank the bit in his mouth to get him to stop. Imagine someone doing that to you.
“Horses are different from us,” Arnold said. “We shouldn’t master them to obey or be like us. For example, we must understand that certain things could frighten them that wouldn’t frighten us. We must communicate with them so that they can understand, and we must learn to understand them. Reciprocity. There is no need for brutality or even training. Who are we to train horses?”
Lorrie and I grew up riding our grandmother’s horses. And I’ve ridden all over the world. Never once did a guide introduce horse and rider as equals.
“It is the same with people who are different from us,” Arnold continued. “Schizophrenia, autism—these we celebrate in our Inca traditions. They are blessed with direct communication with the spirits, no need for ayahuasca, no need for San Pedro. When it becomes clear that someone has these conditions, we protect them. They are getting so many messages, it can feel like too many. They need guidance in interpreting them and finding ways to let it all pass through, to let go. We train them for shamanism, we value them, and we help them. Schizophrenia can be a burden, and people experiencing life through those lenses do suffer. But suffering is considered a blessing, because it helps you understand others’ pain, which allows you to better serve them, to heal them. And that is the highest value in life.”
I thought of how different life would have been for my son, Wolf, who is schizoaffective, if he had grown up here, cherished and believed.
We mounted our horses and Arnold spoke as we rode. He gave the best blueprint for healing I’ve ever heard. In trauma, he said, part of your soul escapes your body. It’s lost out there; it’s scared. You are not whole. To heal, that piece of your soul need to come back. But if you were a terrified escaped-soul piece, would you want to come home to an angry, ignorant, blaming person? No way! So don’t be one. Don’t depend on the government or your parents or anyone to fix anything for you—only you can do the work inside yourself to make you a welcoming place for your soul to come home to. Build a fire, bake a cake, sing a song, and the lost, shivering remnants of you will have no fear about coming in from the cold and joining you.
Arnold said love is a bridge across which we send and receive offerings, between person and person, between ancestors and the living, between a being and nature, and between self and self. “Because I love you,” he said, “I would die for you, suffer for you. Because I love myself, I will sacrifice for myself.” He used to drink a lot of Coca-Cola and he thought he was loving himself by giving himself pleasure. But it’s not good for his health, so he told himself, “Arnold, I love you so much, I will sacrifice Coca-Cola for your well-being.”
And with that, I understood that because I love my son so much, I would sacrifice my need for him to keep fighting to stay alive. He visited me in Paris right before this trip, and I was still in shock. He has deteriorated so much, physically and emotionally. He didn’t want to visit anything. I made him go to one castle and he needed a wheelchair. I sent a flurry of messages to his caretaker, his guardian, and his home healthcare agency, saying I thought he needed orthopedic shoes, maybe try vitamin B injections, and other unasked-for advice. I was hysterical. I secretly felt like he was dying, and I could not accept it—I blamed, I forced, I fought.
Here in this untouched nature, with this feeling of harmony, with Arnold’s little dog, Tina, following us the whole way, her legs not much more than an inch high each, yet she kept up with the horses … in the midst of all of this just-so-ness, I said out loud for the first time, to Arnold: “My son is dying. And I can stop stopping him.”
This strange and beautiful man, my son, has always known what’s right for him, has always gotten messages. He has struggled his whole life to “get back to” the place where he will be whole, where there will be none of the brutality that he finds so unbearable. When he was at his craziest, at eight or nine, he was trying to burn a hole in the earth with a bottle of insect repellent he thought was acid, so he could fall through the earth back to heaven where he belonged. Maybe there are some people so shot through with trauma, it’s easier for their selves to go home to the lost pieces of soul floating out there than to do it the other way around. I think maybe Wolf was wiser than me, and every doctor and every program and every teacher and therapist and aide who have fought him. We’ve all tried to make him like us, who belong here. We’ve tried to make him stay. I want to vomit when I think of how I participated in some of the terrible methods, like holding him down weekly for painful and frightening ear treatments while he screamed and writhed. We were sure we were right to try to hold on to his hearing instead of just not torturing him and letting him go partially deaf. Then he could have gotten hearing aids … or not. If he can’t hear that well, is it the end of the world? But if his own mother holds him down so grown men can hurt him, again and again and again, maybe that is the end of the world. And after twenty-nine years of it, his body and spirit are so worn down, they’re shutting down, they’re helping him back there to the place where he will be whole.
I won’t try to hold onto him selfishly anymore. Maybe he won’t die but just spend more and more time in bed, in a dream, his body atrophying. Wherever you want to go now, go with love, my love.
An adapted excerpt from Lover of Leaving, out this month from Pig Roast Publishing.
Lisa Carver published the nineties zine Rollerderby and has written twenty-four books, including The Pahrump Report and No Land’s Man. She lives in Paris and Pittsburgh.
