La Pastora: the other trip

Yes. Well. Here we go again. More adventures with la pastora … riding me. But before we get to it, before we jump into my brainlake (or whatever, since I don’t own a “brain”, at least not in the “real” sense), let me just state that I am NOT a drug addict! Haha, just kidding, I totally am.

So…today’s ingredients: 20X Salvia divinorum extract, a thai-bong, a lighter and a friend named Tak.

second trip:

I lit the bong, inhaled and held. Tak was counting to twenty. My heart was pounding. My eardrums tightened and, now sensitive to my blood pressure, I could hear my heartbeats. Fast, faster, skipping a beat, idling, slow-motion beat, silence, she was already here.

Blackness.
Enter: Thousands of gilded mouths, stringed together from the smirk, were singing simultaneously a distorted version of Leadbelly’s Good Morning Blues. I was constantly zooming in from a thousand to one, closer and closer, watching the lip’s details, only to find them transformed to another thousand. It repeated for a dozen times when the gold mouth-chain started swaying into space and slid away, as if a snake on a burnless fire.

Blackness.
I felt tight inside. Something was constricting my lungs. Breathing became laborious. I tried to be aware of my inhaling so I would not asphyxiate. Suddenly I found myself in a maze. Pitch-black tunnels were everywhere. Tubes made of black flesh became slightly visible by a phasmic fireball illuminating their ridges. I was moving freely through the tubes, back and forth, back and forth. It was amazing. I had become the air of my lungs. I was inside me. Pun not intended. In and out-in and out I went. Ok, now it’s too obvious. Maybe it was hermaphroditic but who cares? I started scrutinizing my lungs, traveling through my vesicles, searching for any defects. Sound as a bell, I thought, if you can overlook that asthmatic whizzing.
Briefly, I rubbed against the psychedelic fireball, which I was convinced was my soul, and I was ejaculated…

On a kitchen floor. Feet in shoes. I was a thing, probably edible, balancing between two cold tiles. I felt so helpless without any moveable limbs. I just existed. A golden retriever’s head hovered above me, sniffing. I was scared. Its nose was cold and wet. Healthy, I thought. Oh well it could be worse, and prepared to die. A 4-year-old boy kneeled next to Goldie and craned his head, observing me. The dog retreated. (haha, the golden retreater… anyway)
In the blink of an eye, the boy was sitting by the kitchen table, and his mom picked me up, put me in an even colder plate, flew me all the way to the table, sat me in front of the kid and I waited. He swallowed me dry. I ran down his esophagus and before I hit his stomach’s acidic whirlpool, I was discarded on the plate again, from what felt like an inaudible coughing. Then his mom retook my ‘flying saucer’ and threw me in the steel sink, while it mutated into a giant clepsydra, filled with beautiful black sand. Once again, I was sinking.

“Are you ok?” asked Tak. He was just checking on me.
“Yes,” I mumbled, as I returned to the real world. I was lying on the floor. I slit open my eyelids and watched my legs, puzzled. They were breathing peacefully. Tangled up, like two pythons seconds after lovemaking. “My legs are snakes, man. And they’ll eat my willy.” We both laughed. Then, I closed my eyes, smiling.

I was standing on a patch of blue-white ice. My feet were freezing. Under it and around me was a warm black fabric. It felt safe and inviting. However, the ice patch started growing and growing, as if Iceman’s cancer, spreading for miles and then raising upwards, building solid walls and skies of more ice. I was alone, shivering.
”Is the door [, facing the backyard,] open?” I asked as I came to. My feet were numb.
“No,” he lied, unknowingly.
“Because my feet are dead… I think.”
Tak chuckled for a while…

I was drifting in a cartoonish village. Small blue creatures, with an elastic ‘skin’, resembling water-filled balloons, were wobbling around the slick floor. The plants were made out of gemstones; emeralds, rubies, diamonds. The ground was solid gold.
“Hey,” said one of the blue wobblies, bumping on my leg. “Watch it.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there,” I responded. He was 5 inches tall, smiling. I smiled back.
“Ok. Now listen to me carefully… Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“Ok. Listen.”
“I’m listening.”
“Sshhh… 4, 5, 18, 23, 16.”
I repeated them aloud. Tak stirred.
“So what’s the sixth number?” I asked, thinking of a lottery ticket.
Tak burst into laughter.
“Ssshhh, write them down,” I blocked. “Twenty eight? Tak, Twenty eight.” I felt a sure winner when my legs started melting into the golden earth…

Blackness.
A torch was burning in the distance. I felt heavy and stiff. I was turning into metal when I found myself molded on the torch’s wind-protector. I was part of the decoration. A stained metal gargoyle, one of six, circling the flame. My body was arched backwards, forming a painful bow. My head was shaved, horns protruding, eyes wild, mouth open in a frozen scream. Not a vowel heard. I was gagging on blood. It dripped slowly from my mouth’s edges. Suddenly I sputtered it all out, spraying it through my fangs. I breathed in slowly, relieved.
An invisible hand put my head between his thumb and index, squeezed firmly, and slid me in the fire, headfirst.

Warm yellow light. Dusk. I was standing by the foot of a doorstep, looking outside at a patio. It was the 1900s, in a southern State. A young woman was facing the sunset beyond the corn fields, with her back turned my way. She knew I was there and was expecting me. Her untamed blonde hair was partially tucked in a white bonnet. Her bare neck and creamy shoulders were slightly flushed. I walked towards her. The wooden planks were complaining under my shifting weight. Her head twitched and she knew I was advancing. I placed my black arm on her shoulder and turned her around. Her face was a flesh sponge, covered by thousands of worms, drilling and consuming her. I stepped back in disgust, while thinking, hell no, I don’t need this…

I was flying over fields, covering acres and acres of fertile land. The breeze on my face was refreshing. Sort of like Keira Knightley’s breath, after chewing peppermint leaves and sucking on my nose.
I flew and flipped and twirled in the sky until I reached over some scorched land. Dusty, plantless and hot. An old shaman was sitting on a rock, brooding. I felt compelled to speak with him and tried to fly by him. I couldn’t. An enormous bubble protecting the shaman’s area obstructed me. I shouted:
“I respect Salvia so much. Please let me speak to you.”
He nodded me in and I hovered near his weary face. I repeated, almost weeping, that I have the deepest respect for Salvia and I want to learn from it. He nodded again as if saying: You’re ok, my son. Don’t be afraid. I know you mean well. Then in a hole next to us, fit for a human, he showed me his dead ancestors. One after the other, they were lying in the hole, dead. Images of them were changing rapidly, and the earth was closing like a clay body bag. Hundreds of those changing faces were giving up their place to the next, when they all morphed into one face. That of a wooden American Indian statue which, nowadays decorates bars. I started crying moistless tears.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to kill all those people. I’m so sorry,” I wept, confusing Tak.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he laughed.
I didn’t answer. “Please, forgive me,” I repeated. The shaman nodded reassuringly. He knew it was not my fault. “What? It’s not my fault?... Great, thank you,” I said, and felt warm and safe again. I was smiling in both worlds when I turned up and saw her. She was wearing a sky blue dress with white chiffon patterns. She was THE Shepherdess, resembling a Disney stereotype of Alice (only older). Her radiant smile was beautiful. I was overwhelmed. I was growing in the crotch and I was worried of an indecent exposure.
“Thank you,” I said, remotely embarrassed.
She laughed coquettishly and evaporated.
I was back.

 

the end.

P.S 1: Of course I won the lottery. That’s why I’m writing this and not Limbo-ing under Keira’s miniskirt in Barbados…
P.S 2: This article is dedicated to my brother (seen here)

 

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