A Tale of Thunder and Dreams

Thunder woke him up from a restless sleep. He was no longer dreaming but could not quite get back to the unpleasant reality he was living in. The end was close and he knew it. An image from the past, an unwanted call from ancient spirits, was a reminder of better times. Rolling over the bed, the lawyer-turned-writer suddenly remembered everything: a trip to the Amazon jungle with his father when he was seven years old, the discovery of a endless world painted in green and the trademark noise made by the engine of the long canoe-boat they boarded at the city port to reach the other shore of the lake; the heat, the blue sky turning dark, the symphony created by the river pouring from the sky, the silence that brought a cloud of insects after the storm; the native community they visited and the brief meeting with the chief of the tribe, Martin Munoz, a retired sergeant from the military that returned home after serving in a pointless war with a bordering country. Two things remained in the mind of the future lawyer-writer for over twenty years: the happiness he felt after a canoe model signed with the initials M.M. was given to him as a gift, and the name of the craftsman who made it. Sergeant Martin Munoz.

Well under his twenties, the lawyer-not yet writer started exploring the boundaries of his mind. He was no longer satisfied with the simple explanations he was given and wanted to dig into his brain for answers. A friend of a friend told him about a miraculous brew that, in his own words, turned the soul inside out: Ayahuasca, the vine of the dead. The lawyer signed up for the experience, filled with excitement, and two days later he was talking to the shaman before the ceremony.

— Where are you from? — the lawyer asked.

— From San Francisco, a native community near Pucallpa — the shaman replied, not particularly interested in the conversation they were having.

— What a coincidence! I visited the place once, when I was a child — the lawyer said — . I met someone there and still remember his name: Martin Munoz.

The eyes of the shaman opened wide, like a deer blinded by a flashlight. He looked up for a second, then looked down and folded his hands in prayer.

— Martin is my father — he finally said with a warm smile. Somehow, the shaman knew that the encounter with the lawyer was not a coincidence, but could not yet figure out the gears that were already in motion.

Many Ayahuasca ceremonies followed over the next few years, but the lawyer never found the answers he wanted. He even rented the house where he had that first ceremony without recalling that it was the same house, and lived there for a while. He found out the truth when an ancient spirit started to wander around at nights, crying and making noises. When asked, the landlord explained that a previous tenant organized ceremonies intended to summon unholy forces, and the lawyer connected the dots. He got a dog, started traveling a lot for work, met a girl, met another, got heartbroken many times, and gained a well deserved reputation as a corporate lawyer, but deep down he felt really sad because he was unable to figure out the purpose of his life.

One year, a week before New Year’s Eve, the lawyer was really tired and wanted to take a vacation. He called an airline.

— Are there any flights available for Iquitos? — he asked.

— Sorry, the flights are full — replied the lady on the other side of the line.

— What about Tarapoto? — he insisted.

— Sorry, fully booked — she said.

— Any flights to the jungle? — the lawyer cried.

He could hear the lady typing, her breathing pattern steady, searching for available flights.

— We have room in a flight to Pucallpa on the 27th, returning on January 2nd.

— I´ll take it! — he exclaimed with joy.

The day he arrived to Pucallpa and with nothing else to do, the lawyer decided to find Martin Munoz. He checked into a cheap hotel, took a taxi to the port and started asking around. After many tries, a man resembling a fat frog informed him that Martin had a house in the San Francisco community, forty minutes away from the port. Filled with enthusiasm, the lawyer rapidly embarked in one of the boats that were available and had to wait until it was fully loaded. The landscape during the ride was fantastic: a few tiny clouds were floating around the dark blue sky and some pink dolphins jumped close to the boat just for fun. As soon as the lawyer set foot on land, he asked for instructions to a girl that was passing by and she pointed a narrow path that leaded to the house he was looking for. After walking for a few minutes he arrived to the house, excited to the bone and determined to answer the call of destiny. It was noon, very hot, and some clouds started to grow bigger. There, in a corner of the immense hut without walls, Martin was covering with a bandage the hand he wounded a few days before with a machete. Upon recognizing the old man, the heart of the lawyer skipped a beat. The old man was about seventy years old and looked mature, not aged; compact, not dwarfed. His eyes were gray, as if they were burned by the sun. The lawyer approached to him and gave him a warm hug, and Martin returned the hug without knowing the identity or the intentions of the visitor.

After salutations, Martin invited the lawyer to sit on a beautiful embroidered cloak. When they felt comfortable, the lawyer shared his childhood memories. The old man looked at him baffled, without understanding anything the young man said but nodding as if he were. Infected with the virus of enthusiasm, Martin showed his photo album and the lawyer recognized a few acquaintances in the pictures. He also found out that the main character of one of his few childhood memories was a renowned shaman that traveled all around the world. He knew, for instance, that at the shores of the Ganges River the old man confronted some holy men and managed to defeat them with the magic of his ancestral medicine. In Paris, he was venerated like a deity. In the Brazilian jungle, he participated in a religious ceremony where yagé was used as a replacement of consecrated wine. After a couple of hours exchanging life experiences, the old man and the lawyer agreed to perform an Ayahuasca ceremony that same night, at around seven.

The old man said goodbye and mentioned that there was no need to return by boat since there was a road connecting to the city. Following the instructions of the shaman, the lawyer went again across the narrow path, turned right when he reached the port, walked two hundred yards, found the road, stopped a taxi and was back at the hotel after fifteen minutes; had a black coffee and a cheese sandwich at the hotel restaurant, climbed the stairs and entered into his room; showered with cold water, crawled into bed and took a nap. The lawyer woke up shortly after six, opened the velvet curtains and saw black clouds on the horizon. «It’s going to rain», he told to himself. Arranged some clothes, put them in a backpack and hurried out of the hotel. Stopped a taxi and later took a bus that left him in San Francisco. As expected, an intense rain started to fall and the path leading to Martin’s house turned into thick mire that the lawyer barely managed to walk through. The old man received him with an ample smile and introduced his wife and daughter, informed him that he had everything ready and that the ceremony would start after the rain stops.

The lawyer greeted the women and Martin unaffectedly asked him if he wanted to lie down with his daughter in the small cabin located nearby. The girl was no more than fifteen years old. The lawyer interpreted the gesture as a display of generosity, but could not accept. He refused politely, sat on the embroidered cloak that remained on the floor and got distracted with the rhythmic sound made by the raindrops clashing against leaf-covered roof. Martin, ashamed and embarrassed, blamed the girl for the rejection and sent her to sleep with a bark.

As planned, the preparations began right after the rain stopped. It was a moonless night and there was no electricity, but they succeeded lighting up the place with candles carefully distributed on the floor. The clothes were soaking in sweat due to the humidity and the intense heat, a cloud of mosquitoes attacked the lawyer with relentless fury. The old man dressed up for the occasion: he was wearing a chest piece made of jute with shipibo designs and a feather headdress. The wife shook the hammock where the lawyer would sleep and covered it with a mosquito net. She would also be part of the ceremony. On the embroidered cloak where the lawyer was sitting, the old man placed a receptacle containing the murky brew, a plastic cup to drink it, and a bottle of Florida water. The participants sat in line facing the interior of the hut, with Martin at the center, and the singing began. Long, guttural sounds from the past, haunting the present. An instant before he drank the brew, the lawyer thought about the consequences of closing a circle and also about the purpose of an arrow after reaching the target. During his whole life he associated his first trip to the jungle with a name, Martin Munoz, the person sitting at his side that turned out to be an eminence in ancestral medicine. The man with whom he was about to begin an Ayahuasca ceremony in the middle of the Amazon jungle four days before New Year’s Eve.

After ten minutes of chanting, the old man stopped for a moment and reminded him that they had to make a petition to the sacred plant. The lawyer knew the drill. Finally, long awaited answers were coming. He closed his eyes, lowered his head and mumbled: «I want to see everything». When he uttered the last word he realized he may have asked for too much, but could not take it back.

What happened next is sometimes described as an awakening, a journey to the unknown or a peek into the origin of the universe that brings out a sense of Oneness with all beings. Yet language is often a limited carrier of meaning when dealing with the infinite world or the chemical reactions of the brain. Some people see a god and some others believe they turn into one. For the lawyer, the trip began with a colorful kaleidoscope, as if the lights of the candles were decomposed by a prism. Time and space were merging in front of him and he was able to travel anywhere he wanted. The Door was in sight and he crossed it. On the other side, he found himself inside a dark spiral structure reaching the skies and a voice urged him to climb, so he did it joyfully. But someone from afar was calling, pulling him down. When he opened his eyes, the old man was standing in front of him. «You went too far», he said with a toothless, tender smile. «Leave me alone», the lawyer replied with anger. Feeling powerful, he raised his hand and touched the old man’s shoulder, causing him to bend, his face distorted by pain. The lawyer closed his eyes again and tried to return to the other side, but nothing happened. The magic was gone and the dawn was near.

In the aftermath of the ceremony, the lawyer tried to explain his experience using a soft voice until the shadows disappeared and the chirping of the birds replaced that of the crickets. They talked and talked about the visions using metaphors when it became apparent that they were unable to describe what they saw and their drawings turned out to be just unintelligible doodles.

— This knowledge cannot be explained nor described in any human language — the old man said at last, trying to put an end to the discussion — . It belongs to a world beyond ours and should remain there. It is of no use here.

— Yet I´m sure we witnessed the same vision — the lawyer replied.

— Yes, we did. I remained close to you all the time.

— So we can agree on what we saw and name it, create a new language, right?

— You went too far.

— What do you mean?

— When someone goes too far, it may be difficult for him to return to our world with a sound mind. I´m sorry, I did what I did because I wanted to save you from getting crazy. If you learn to control your strength, you shall become a king. Otherwise, you will fail and die.

A wall of silence grew between them. The old man wanted the lawyer to acknowledge the lesson, while the latter concluded that Martin’s understanding of the world was, unlike his, rudimentary and unsophisticated. A few minutes later, the lawyer stretched his legs, thanked the old man and his wife for the ceremony and was ready to leave when Martin demanded payment. «We are very poor and any help shall be welcomed», he said. The lawyer searched his pockets and gave the old man all the cash he had, except for the few coins he needed to get back to the hotel, and left the place with a bittersweet feeling: he did not know whether the entire ceremony was a scam, but believed all the same that a payment was fair.

During the following days, the lawyer made long walks around the city and found it very poor and undeveloped. Due to the heavy rains and the extreme weather, only the main avenues were paved and most of the houses were made of plywood. However, the exuberant vegetation disguised the real living conditions of the population and made the city look like paradise on earth for some foreign visitors. Oftentimes, the lawyer concluded while waiting at the airport for the return flight, reality is a matter of perspective.

Over the years, the lawyer was able to remember the details of the trip he made to the Amazon jungle and was sorry for ruining his childhood memories. He was a changed man: all the happiness he had inside was drained and replaced by a sense of profound dissatisfaction. He wanted to see it all and, unfortunately, he saw his wish granted. He found out that his meaningless bourgeois life on a tiny planet circling around an average star meant nothing compared to the vastness of the universe, and that any attempt to succeed was ultimately vain. What could he do with the years he had left? Without a god, without a destiny, a calling or a purpose, he would eventually die, fade into the background and disappear, just like everybody else. «You shall be king», the old man said that night, a night the lawyer desperately wanted to forget ever since. Perhaps one day, in another life, he would understand the lesson, get back to the other side, and reach the summit of the spiral.

The room lit up for a moment with a bright flash of lightening, and thunder rattled the windowpane. A storm was coming. It was time for another dream.