La Pastora.

 

I guess it was inevitable… because one day, if your “senses” are keen enough, you are bound to cross paths with her, and then, simply put, it’s up to you. Do you take her inside and ravage her or pretend you didn’t see her?

My gradual encounter with the Shepherdess began with a casual acquaintance, brought by our common love for Literature. I was sitting in class, on my first day in an English Language course, when the jittery professor asked, “So who of you here prefers Literature over Linguistics?”

Out of thirty something students, three people raised their hands, a man, a woman and I. This is how I came into noticing them. We were to become friends, but that’s later. The man, whom I will call Evros from now on (his own nickname proposal), introduced me at some point to Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson’s writing opened up all sorts of doors and windows and hatches and showed me a new way of perceiving writing and the Writer as a creative force. Then one day, while looking at HST’s trademark logo, I noticed something for the first time: a round object, clenched inside the two-thumbed, red fist, in perfect vertical alignment with a blade.

I googled the fist and several clicks later was the answer. The round “thing” turned out to be a peyote button. The most condensed with the active, hallucinogenic part of the peyote cactus, indigenous in S. America , now found elsewhere of course. For reasons unknown to me still, I was swept off my feet, dumbfounded with my newly found discovery. I wanted in. Without thinking, I called Evros and told him all about it. Evros, obviously waiting for something exactly like this to come along, was flabbergasted too. Then the research of hallucinogens began. A couple of weeks later, little by little, my search reached a dead-end. Evros, on the other hand, was running strong. When daunting info about the Peyote’s cultivation and whatnot discouraged me, it only refueled Evros’ desire, who perceived every obstacle as a necessary trial, which would ultimately elevate his experience. In essence, he was “fasting”.

For personal reasons, involving a cool, laid-back monkey, Evros took some time off school, making our meetings scarce. A few months after that first phone call, my telephone rung. On the other side, Evros’ upbeat, cheerful voice could only mean one thing: fun. He had found something and wanted to share it. Its name was Salvia divinorum (the Shepherdess), an herb used by the native Mazatec shamans of Mexico to facilitate spiritual healing, future readings etc. in the form of visions, and he wanted to tell me all about it. He had tried it, loved it and he had more. Standing clearly on the oblivious side, I had two questions: When do I try it and Will I become insane after a use or two? The answers were On a Thursday morning and No…

…

[More than a thousand words were lost because of some cancerous Word Office failure. I feel raped by the Man and loathe modern society. I will try to rewrite some of it again but only the final part… goddamn it!]

…

The trip

I lit the bong and inhaled a pinch of standardized 10x Salvia extract. Evros has told me to take in as much as I can and keep it there for 20 seconds.

[I had already done two more hits. The first one resulted to a physical alteration of my body’s sensation, including mild arrhythmia, tightness of the throat and sweaty skin. The second was an “entrance” to a world of manic hilarity. I burst into the weirdest laughing fit of my life, shouting “bookee-bookee” and then spewing more laughter until tears.]

I remember watching the counting fingers of Evros, already on thirteen, when the wind, masked as a thunderstorm, was getting louder and louder. I heard a crack in the sky. Salvia was coming to get me, hard and fast. It felt like a gigantic steel train, fast approaching, screeching and I just knew, the next stop was my psyche. Hoorah! “They’re coming for me,” I said, and I was kidnapped, exactly as Evros said.

As I was sitting on the sofa, dozens of white leather stripes, approximately five inches wide, flailed above my head and came down on me, immobilizing and strangling me. It felt as if I was a snowman and they were squashing me flat on the ground. I was melting. Suddenly, the sofa was gone and I was pinned on the edge of two opposing worlds: Ours and Theirs. Our world was pure White and their world was fiery Red. The white leather stripes were coming from the left and right side corners of the two worlds, merging into each side’s infinity. They were hooking me from the spine, penetrating me like ghost hands and each side was pulling as hard, making it impossible for me to move. I tried to turn my head and “probe” their Red side, but I couldn’t. A children’s song began to play. [It was a real children’s song playing from the television downstairs, only it was significantly altered in my trip.] I sensed a bunch of five-year-old girls were singing it, while holding hands in a circle, dancing, but I couldn’t see it with my real eyes. However, my mind’s eye was working overtime. I tried to listen, to distinguish the lyrics. I could only understand two words “the knife”. Every time they sang the chorus I could listen only of “the knife”. I began to hum the music, in an effort to float up, if you will, the rest of the lyrics. I knew there was a message for me there, something about my future. Evros, who was filming the whole thing, squeezed out a snicker, then a full-blown laughter. You see, they way it works, when something happens in the real world, you are distracted and the leather reins of the White world (our world) become stronger, snatching you away from the Red world. You return to real life, leaving behind the magical reality of the Red. I didn’t like that. I wanted to hear more, but then I started laughing as well and got completely distracted. After a while, the laughter stopped and I returned to my previous spot, on the edge of the two worlds, still confined. The song was playing quieter and I could hear of a white grand piano’s playing. The little girls were still there but everything became silent. Then I sensed a different kind of presence. Then another. Black, two-dimensional, caricatures of ghosts were breathing down my neck. Five or six of them. Their breath was burning my hair and I was mixing ecstasy with panic on the rocks. Who the fuck were those paper beings? Then they started making fun of me, finger-pointing me and mocking me, as if singing “HA-HA, you can’t move-move, but you could join us if you could-could.” The slimy bastards.

Then something in our world commanded my attention and I escaped from them shortly. On returning, I was upset. No one can tie me down goddamn it, I thought, and started screaming. Their reins tightened, my thorax was burning, and something tried to fit me in a straitjacket. I untied myself and plunged into the sofa’s left corner where the Red world was. “Why can’t I come with you?” I screamed, “Nobody wants to come with you, and I, who I’m willing, you won’t let me. FUCK” I pressed my forehead on the sofa’s corner, trying to thrust in the Red. “Is it because I smell?” I pleaded, and thought: Hey that’s my kind of joke, I have logic, “Logic, logic… It’s gone,” and just like that, everything disappeared.

My eyes were mine again and I was in the real world. Salvia exits the same way she enters, suddenly. The whole thing lasted three to five minutes. I told Evros of my experience. We were laughing. He apologized for not controlling his laughter and bringing me back. I didn’t mind. The experience was fucking amazing. How could I be upset with the dude responsible for it?

…

 

The next day found me still in trance with the Shepherdess. Everything seemed so flaccid and unable to offer excitement. Salvia ruled over my daily (and nightly) activities. Normally, I was looking forward to my drunken, Friday night frenzy but not that Friday.

All my night dreams became extremely lucid, and lingered in my conscious throughout the day, resurfacing at will. With sleep, new ones replaced them, but their lucidness was as compelling.

But what of The Knife? What was that about? While writing the article it occurred to me, it could be the one of Hunter’s logo. It was, afterall, what ignited the experience. “Live by the sword. Die by the blade” sprung to mind. Then again, if my dying is required for it to make sense, FUCK IT. I don’t wanna know. But hey, I love you guys:)

 

the end.

 

PS. I’m guessing I left many things untouched or unanswered. Most of them were lost in the “fire” of Word XP. If you have questions, drop me a line or a book or something.

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