Re: Have you ever tried toad medicine?

10–29–2017 //

My grandmother had passed away days before.

I returned to California from the Long Island funeral to meet my friends in the lost canyons south of Hollister.

Arriving late at night I wandered into an unwelcome Amerikan yard, where I was greeted at gun point.

The flashlight of my friends shone the way just in time to get the hell out to the right campfire.

They had been in an Aya ceremony all day. The night found them grateful and unwound.

During the night my sleep was interrupted by a game with a fox after our food supplies. Half-conscious, I’d hear her rustle into our snacks and I’d flick her away with repeated yet playful bursts of my flashlight. Soon it was sunrise.

By 8 a.m. the lagging fire had been restored, and the ceremony began.

We received words of courage, wisdom, and humility from our young guide. He smiled through the logistics: pull in the medicine for a minute straight, no stopping the inhale. The effects will hit early, but don’t get get stuck. Break through.

Out of the group of ten I went first. Another participant would go after I’d hit to make each round into a pair.

Wrapped in a red red rebozo blanket in the dry dry crisp California canyon air with two dear dear friends on either side of me, I took in our guide’s flame through the pipe.

I met the sapito 15 seconds in and held up a moment. As the husk of my life peeled away, I managed to fulfill my dose to the end.

Notoriously the ravens around us barked loudly as I finished inhaling.

Like a breaking body in revelation from a bullet, I lay back into my friends’ hands, who helped me find the ground.

For the next 20 minutes I’d stay there in zen like shivasana, while my consciousness was dissolved and resurrected.

Looking up into an open cyan sky framed with gentle tree tops, my eyes immediately discovered three hawks circling in formation 100 feet directly above me.

Taking their presence as an auspicious omen I ejected my awareness through the center of their ring with all my might as far as I could imagine.

I ended up in orbit directly above our ritual grounds, but beyond reach of the earth’s gravity. Remembering the Christopher Reeves Superman movies of my childhood, I elected to do a few laps around the planet.

I felt the curves and radiance of a satellite’s exhilaration. My liberation surrounded the earth without giving up my place on the ground.

Then the young woman from across the campfire, who had finished her dose began to shriek.

Her screaming ran through the canyon like a banshee on fire, like a child being separated from her family at the border. And it didn’t stop.

It began to overwhelm my sense of transcendence, tugging to pull me into her torment. Though I was cool I felt the well of sweat readying within my pores. And she kept screaming bloody murder. A cry pitious enough to atone for all life’s suffering.

My friends lightly took either hand of mine, and I caught my breath from a thousand miles up.

Below the importance of our gathering, the trust in our task, and the common desire to heal guided me back into unity with my body between the mountains.

She screamed still but we began to sing. She languished while we smiled, a gentle band holding our ground. She exercised countless demons, and we pulled our souls through the eye of a needle.

The doses wore off and all were silent. I lay still, completely spent, and without a nerve of resistance. Like coming through the Valley of Death with a whistle.

The tip of my tongue tingled with a taste of burnt copper or magnesium. For days after I’d feel as if I’d been injected into a new skeleton and skin.

I sat up to see tears streaming in my friends’ eyes. They hugged me completely. Whatever I was now.