I woke up kinda late (8:30) and had to get to the mess hall before they stopped serving breakfast at 9. Then I relaxed for a little while, did my morning meditation and some tai chi. Today was pretty low key, as tonight was my first ceremony. We were encouraged to take it easy and focus on our goals and intentions. At lunch I sat next to Joe, who did the presentation in Mesa that got me to sign up for this place. He arrived last night amidst a rainstorm, having to traverse the muddy roads on a motorbike. We, and some of the nearby guys, got on the subject of music which I find to be an easy topic to converse about. I think it broke the ice between us a little.
After lunch I hammock’d for a while before going to get my first dose of plant medicine, piñon blanco in my case. I was assigned piñon blanco at my meeting with Maestro Ricardo for it’s ability to open the heart and bring in light. It was administered in a double shot glass and tasted like wheat grass juice. Joe came over and showed us a few of the plants they used for medicine, including the ayahuasca vine. It was interesting.
We had a meeting with one of the facilitators, an Italian named Markus, about what to expect during the ceremonies. It wasn’t anything I didn’t already know from my previous research. The verbose Aussie had to add his 2¢ a few times which I could tell was annoying Markus. After the meeting I took a nap in a hammock for a while.
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| mushrooms are everywhere out here! |
After I woke I went to see if anything was happening in the lounge, where I ran into Joel. Joel reminds me A LOT of my dearly departed friend Tony, only hispanic. They look similar, they like the same kind of music, they have a similar temperament and sense of humor… it’s really cool. Needless to say we get along pretty well. Lieke came in while we were talking about music and started talking about how she didn’t want to “drink” tonight. After she left Joel explained that it was because one of the other visitors, a french guy named Sasha, professed his love for her (after having known her for all of 5 days) and drama ensued. Joel said it was like Melrose Place out here.
Joel and I continued our conversation about music, comics, Dune, and Jodorowski until Joe needed him for something. Now I’m killing time until 8pm when we start. I’m not really nervous at all. I just want to get started.
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| cabin visitor |
A big honkin’ wasp just found its way into my cabin! The battle was epic, but I managed to defeat him with the ol’ hat/shoe combo. That sucker was sturdy!
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