Walking on Thin Ice

street parade below our second floor window - foto by smith

traffic here is loco. our taxi was in the middle lane of three, turning left. the car on our left that was supposed to turn left went straight, cutting us off. the car on our right that was supposed to go straight, turned left right in front of us, just missing the car on our left that went straight.

if a driver hits and kills a person, they get out of the car and run away, or else they go to jail. if you don’t want to run or go to jail, you have to buy the dead person’s family off. there is no “accidental death,” or jury - just run, pay off, or go to jail.

almost every block here there’s a tope. a “toe-pay” is a concrete speed bump that forces traffic to stop before slowly driving over it - slowing down doesn’t work - you have to come to a stop. sometimes the topes are marked with warning signs, sometimes not. any private citizen can have a tope poured on the street in front of their house, as long as they’re willing to pay for the concrete out of their own pocket. fail to slow, and the concrete lumps can break your suspension, your transmission, your axle. i’ve seen topes on dark mountain roads with no people or houses or logical reason for existing. there are thousands of topes in downtown oaxaca.

the buses and taxis speed like mad from tope to tope, stop, creep over, then pedal to the metal to the next tope one block away.

the cars, trucks and buses here have no pollution controls. trucks and buses belch diesel smoke, cars clouds of dirty unburnt gas. there are no noise standards so all the vehicles screech, clang, bang, rattle and roll.

most street intersections have neither stop signs nor traffic lights, so cars slow a bit, look both ways (sometimes) and just keep going. i see near misses every day, but have yet to see an accident.

cars, motorcycles, and bicycles go both ways on most one-way streets. they park on both sides of narrow streets, or on the sidewalks whenever they feel like it.

crowds of people march down the middle of major traffic streets in protest or celebration whenever they feel like it, without getting official permission. traveling store and food vender bicycles weave in and out of traffic, going both with and against the flow. street dogs roam at will.

folks block off streets whenever they feel like it for a carnival, celebration, concert, party.

the sidewalks are so bad, broken, narrow, pot-holed, dangerous and disappeared that pedestrians frequently have to use the streets as sidewalks.

there are times when cars are parked on both sides of the street, another vehicle is double parked, pedestrians are walking in the street, and a big bus is trying to weave its way through the small gap between. often the bus driver’s assistant gets out and walks the bus through the gauntlet with hand signals.

driving here for me would be like playing russian roulette with a fully loaded gun.

pedestrian below our kitchen window - foto by smith

12 channel rhythm report - foto by smith

today’s the first day of lady’s volunteering once a week at the english language library for 3 hours. she offered them her computer programming and web design skills, so they put her behind the food counter and to sell toasted bagels, drinks and snacks to the gringos.

she volunteered because she’s trying to expand her social circle - she needs to find some younger people to interact with. i’m 62 and the youngest gringo in her group. she does have a younger mexican friend - our language instructor - but she’s leaving in two weeks for a year in los angeles.

not having young friends around is one of the lesser known drawbacks of a may-december relationship. another is the younger partner’s inevitable worry about the declining health of their older partner.

i had an ekg and a heart ultrasound yesterday as part of my preliminary check-up so i can get my hernia operated on. trouble is, my arrhythmic heart makes anesthesia doubtful which makes operation doubtful which makes my current life impossible.

cardio doc was going to give me medicine to stabilize my heart but can’t because the medicine slows the heart and my heart is already as slow as it can get. always thought the reason i did larger drugs dosages than my friends in the 60s was due to my lower heart rate and slower metabolism.

so doc’s giving me another medicine which is supposed to prevent extra heart beats, which is odd because i’m missing heartbeats.

with the ultrasound, i got to see my heart beating from 4 different angles. saw electrical flashes. weird to see my own meat beat.

proves i have a heart.

ultrasound meat beat manifesto - foto by smith

wall advert frags - foto by smith

in the first monthly sunday open mic poetry lady hosted in june here in oaxaca, 10 folk showed up.

for the second reading, we were in the u.s. for a court date with lady’s dead beat ex-husband, and a local poet said she’d cover for us. she didn’t show, and the four folk who did were unhappy.

in both cases, the cafe was too noisy, and mexicans told us sunday was a bad day for a reading because that’s essentially family day, so we decided to hold it in our home on the first saturday each month. we held our first home salon yesterday, and 2 folk came. had a good time, read a few poems, sat around and talked, and ate the spring rolls, potato pancakes and chutney lady made.

so home salon-wise, we’re starting small. try to put out the word and get more folk next month.

found out one of the attendees, our friend madmanmax, was with poet john berryman (”a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and often considered one of the founders of the Confessional school of poetry” per wikipedia) when he committed suicide. berryman told him what he was going to do, max asked if he wanted company, berryman said yes, so max walked with him to the bridge and watched him jump. i asked max how it affected him and he just said “i wished he’d chosen another path.” max don’t think it’s his job to run another’s life.

so, madmanmax roomed with bob dylan in college in the early 1960s, and walked with berryman the night he died. he was also an after-hours club manager and a mississippi boat chef, as well as a serious drug experimenter in his day.

Dream Song 85: Op. posth. no. 8
John Berryman

Flak. An eventful thought came to me,
who squirm in my hole. How will the matter end?
Who’s king these nights?
What happened to . . . day? Are ships abroad?
I would like to but may not entertain a friend.
Save me from ghastly frights,

Triune! My wood or word seems to be rotting.
I daresay I’m collapsing. Worms are at hand.
No, all that froze,
I mean the blood. ‘O get up & go in’
somewhere once I heard. Nowadays I doze.
It’s cold here.

The cold is ultimating. The cold is cold.
I am—I should be held together by—
but I am breaking up
and Henry now has come to a full stop—
vanisht his vision, if there was, & fold
him over himself quietly.

death - foto by smith

Huautlan mural of Maria Sabina, the magic mushroom curandera - foto by smith

in god we’re trussed. i keep looking for answers in the great answer sham. keeps turning out to be a scam.

part 1.
ate the last of our mushrooms. we turned 3 doses into two to up the amperage. we had kept the remaining mushrooms in the fridge in their banana leaf wrappers inside a ziplock baggie, and a white mold grew on them. researched it online and it says the mold is harmless but look out for black slimy mold shrooms. we did. now we wait and wonder - wonder if we’re going to get off, wonder if we’ll get sick.

part 2.
well, we got off. colors, patterns, hallucinations. but no joy or feeling of one-ness for me. no being born away by forces greater than myself, which is what i’d hoped. i want to be taken outside myself because i’m weary of being inside myself. lady being a smaller lighter creature got some joy and intellectual awareness of oneness. she would have had more, but this is her 3rd mushroom munching in 9 days, and her trip switch needs time off to reset.

part 3.
don’t understand it. the fresh magic mushrooms here don’t seem to be as powerful as the dried mushrooms i did in the states over the years. and the trip duration is about two hours, a much shorter duration than stateside. evidently need a larger dose. a single dose did nothing. a dose and a half got colors and hallucinations. perhaps a double dose would bring some spirituality and joy. unfortunately i’ve lost interest in the process.

lady’s interest on the other hand is fueled, fanned, and flamed. i’ve got myself a mind searching psychedelic alternate reality seeking vision questing pilgrim on my hands, so i assume i’ll be trying other things along the way. she’s seeking salvia divinorum now, is wondering about lsd, and is considering a journey to the town of “real de catorce” to try their peyote cactus buds.

i walked through the doors of perception 40 years ago. it changed me. did hundreds of trips since for fun and intellectual profit, enough to have been there done that and be done with it. now i’m solely interested in reality sifting in a soul setting situation, exploring the other side in a reality weighing way. i need to try again with a shaman guide, although i expect that’s just one more money making spiritual scam. it goes back to that old saying “if you meet buddha on the road, kill him” - you can’t go outside yourself to do work on your inside. we’re all our own shaman. external shamans give you the shaft.

part 4.
and so today we begin our third year living outside the united states. it’s been an eye heart mind soul opening experience.

Huautlan painting of Maria Sabina, the magic mushroom curandera - foto by smith

Huautlan centipede - foto by smith

finally went to a doctor today about the pain that appeared in my left groin 5 months ago - it’s a hernia. doc says the pain i’ve had in my right groin from trying to lift my 250 pound collapsed mother off the floor 4 years ago is not a hernia but rather a damaged tendon.

so i’m having the hernia surgically fixed - between $1,300 and $1,800 dollars will take care of everything. our small savings become ever smaller.

the doctor was around my age, the most easy going pleasant mannered doctor i’ve come across. he asked lady if i were her father. i replied no, i’m her husband. he looked down, mortified, smiled ruefully and said “I blew that one.” told him not to worry, that’s what everyone assumes. you just cannot get around a 27 year age gap in couples. folk don’t think it’s natural. if i weren’t on the inside of us, i’d wonder what the heck in perversion was going on myself.

but before they can operate, they need to get my arrhythmic heart beating correctly, so it could be 2 weeks of medicine before i’m repaired.

i’ve been walking around town with my left hand down my pants holding the hernia in - been getting some odd looks from folk wondering why i have my hand down my pants in public. i tell them my penis is lonely and i’m keeping it company.

it’s a relief to know for sure what’s wrong and to have started the repair process. my body is not me. my mind spirit is me. my body is mere vehicle. unfortunately, it’s an essential component in this life on earth.

if we sell the book, i’ll get the right groin tendon fixed as well, then take the dancing lessons i’ve promised lady if i ever got repaired.

did a bit of self cure too. my left forearm blistered. not sure if it was too much sun or brushing against some toxic plant, but it itched like mad and wouldn’t go away. lasted months. put anti-biotic cream on it but it just made it worse. finally i rubbed it open raw with a towel, then poured rubbing alcohol over it. burned like hell, but it got rid of the rash. rash & burn.

this getting old and breaking down is a finite process. only so much body to break. i’ve lived a hard fast life, so who knows how much of me is left to fail. unfortunately for younger healthier lady, if she wants my warped mind and twisted stories, she must follow me around and pick up the broken pieces that fall off me as i lurch from marijuana mound to mushroom mold.

Maria Sabina museum, Huautla, Mexico - foto by smith

Lady in bathroom thru roof stairs window - foto by smith

i told Lady she’s getting feisty since eating magic mushrooms - now she’s in chat rooms calling folk on their logic. she says i’m right, that during the trip she remembers thinking “Now I don’t have take anything from anyone anymore.” going to the other side and coming back gave her more confidence in her own strength of thinking.

now she’s researching other “other side” logics - including astral projection, learning how to trip naturally with the mind, and hallucinogenics. she’s also interested in getting her physical, mental and work life flowing better. before our trip, she said the mushrooms for her were for doing psychological work, and it worked.

i’ve gotta get some jump-start clarity because i’m still yesterday - lady’s now.

ps - she has two poems just published online at Poetz.com.

Lady in front of her assemblage at Sara & Mike’s in Cleveland - foto by smith

Lady in Huautla, on town hall steps - foto by smith

pensive Lady - foto by smith

my sacred mushroom packet - foto by smith

i’ve tripped on hallucinogens between 300-500 times from 1968 through 2000 - mostly lsd, but dozens of mushrooms, mescaline, psilocybin, thc, dmt, stp, and other stuff i’m not sure what it was. i tripped for fun, for adventure, for spiritual growth, out of habit and boredom. but coming to huautla was to be my first controlled trip guided by a curandero shaman - i was solely interested in the spiritual path this time. for once i was going to go pure, do it right.

of course we didn’t find an affordable guide thanks to our miss-screw-everyone-but-me traveling companion, so goal one shot down. goal two was to analyze myself during the trip - see what part of me was good, what needed work, what had to go.

my banana leaf had fewer shrooms than lady’s, but they were much larger. i ate half my mushrooms at 6:30, could immediately feel the alkaloids moving through me. by 7 i knew i needed more and ate the rest. by 8 i had the classic physical symptoms of pressure in my body, a sense of sound and growing movement in my head, the remoteness of a body wrapped in insulating cotton, and a thickened sense of mucous and phlegm. but no high, no color, no visions, no patterns, no happy, no nothing. and that is as far as i got. no trip for smith.

i was flabbergasted. i was prepared for the trip to fail, for us to not even reach huautla. i was prepared to arrive and not find mushrooms. but once i had the mushrooms, i never even considered the possibility they wouldn’t work on me - after all, these are the sacred fresh ultra-strong magic mushrooms the beatles, bob dylan and donovan took and praised. this is the super source for magicville.

i thought of multiple scenarios why i didn’t get off. maybe i’m already tripping all the time now and don’t even know it, so the mushroom high was merely business as usual. or perhaps we have a finite number of trips in our being and i’d used up mine over the past 40 years. or reality and the mushroom gods were angry at my negative thoughts about our unpleasant traveling companion. or perhaps my two days without food, three days of traveling and energy expenditure of walking down the mountain twice overwhelmed my spiritual high potentiality.

but most likely the dose wasn’t large enough for me. ever since i started doing drugs in 1968, i always required a higher dose than those around me due to my size, metabolism, and mind. back then folks would have me do the drugs first so they could judge their dose by how high i got. i figure the curandero gave us small doses because we were doing them on our own and he was worried about our losing it. he didn’t realize my size and past use made a difference. or maybe they were weak mushrooms, or a stingy dose. all i know for sure is the other two got off fine. (i learned since that with the selfish couple, the man said he didn’t feel a thing, and the woman claims she had a fine time but none of us believe her).

by 9 p.m. i knew i wasn’t getting off, not even a smattering of joy would be mine, so i gave up, ate some crackers and a small avocado and drank a lot of water to fill my empty stomach. lady went to sleep and i smoked a joint to try to slow down my body which still felt like it was going to get high. took an hour before i could try to sleep and then it was troubled and mediocre.

got up at 5:50 to put my glasses on to check the time - and i couldn’t see. during the night, the left lens had fallen out and i couldn’t focus. how can a lens fall out while the glasses are sitting alone unworn? i laugh, thinking what a marvelous metaphor - i couldn’t have visions last night, and now i can’t see this morning. seems to me there’s some serious smith work i need to do.

we get up, pack, check out, see hummingbirds dart in the sunshine while waiting for a cab back to the center of town. watch a hummingbird land on a leaf - i’d never seen one land before and it looked like a large alien scary iridescent green insect. we gave up getting a cab and started walking up the mountain to town when a cab came by and took us. sat on the city hall steps watching kids play soccer (hoping for more mushroom offers), then rode the uncomfortable 5 hour van ride back to oaxaca.

back side of Maria Sabina banner hanging from City Hall balcony - foto by smith

i told lady since she loved the shrooms so much, she could have the remaining 4 folded banana leaf packets we’d scored the day before, and i’d stick to grass and hash until we could get some larger doses. i couldn’t see depriving her of her joy by my trying another useless dose or a dose and a half. she was sad for my loss but happy about 4 more trips and talked of tripping after our 5 hour van ride home. told her that wasn’t a good idea because she’d be wasted from the van ride, and the body required a week or so between trips to recharge its spirituality.

she couldn’t wait, and she tripped last night - which left 3 days between trips. she got high, saw colors, some hallucinations, but the universal oneness and the joy wasn’t there - it was just a high, which is rather sad after experiencing oneness. she took a couple hits of hash to give her high a push, and the hash heaviness melded with the mushroom intensity to give her a heavy wasted days & wasted nights kind of high.

she said the shrooms would go bad within two weeks so she had to eat her remaining 3 doses every 3 days or lose them. i explained each trip would be less and less fun and more and more disappointingly frustrating, so suggested we wait a week, then turn the three remaining doses into two and we’ll both drop. the extra half dose might get me off and might be enough to get her to oneness again. who knows - this spirituality business has a lot of crap shoot clauses in it, so we’ll have to wait to find out what happens and where we go.

an added insult to injury, i bought a maria sabina tee-shirt with gorgeous flourescent green mushrooms on the back to celebrate my huautla mushroom trip. the trip didn’t trip, and the tee-shirt don’t fit, so i have a non-souvenir of my non-trip. how apropos.

what are the gods telling me? i think my mind and soul have become too hardened, too selfish, too cynical. i need to become nice again. then maybe the mushrooms will work. try again in 5 days with larger dose and see.

the trip was a great success because the important thing was for lady to experience her first hallucinogenic trip. she had a grand time, took to tripping like the natural magic mushroom munching mama she is. the ride up and back through the mountains is gorgeous, and huautla itself is a special magic place. we’re considering living there for a month or so, doing mushrooms as often as feasible.

now all i have to do is get my magic mojo working again so i can munch shrooms myself.

back side of my too small Maria Sabina tee-shirt - foto by smith

cleaning magic mushrooms - foto by smith

i’ve always done my hallucinogens in daylight, or in the dark, or any time or place between. there’s as much to be said for walking though sun slants in the woods while tripping as there is for lying quiet in the dark and following the colors within. but, both online articles and both curanderos said they are to be eaten in the dark while lying down with a candle burning, so we tried to wait for dark for her to eat her first mushroom.

one curandero said start at 8, the other at 7. lady was impatient to begin and began eating 10 mushrooms at 6:45. but this was oaxaca daylight savings time - most huautlans refuse to acknowledge daylight savings time - so the curandero meant 8 our time, and lady had an hour of light to play with before dark.

i opened the drapes to the round topped bar-Y window (foto below) and put our pillows at the foot of the bed so we could lay and look out window up mountain where the town was strung hung on terrace after terrace climbing to the sky and cloud and changing light and large eagle birds soaring overhead in between back and forth.

after 30 minutes she didn’t feel enough and began eating the rest, slowly holding them on her tongue so her mouth membranes absorbed the hallucinogen more quickly. 90 minutes in she starts smiling. she’d look past me, say “wow.” look at me, said “wow” again. she saw an antenna leading upward from my temple into space, said i was alien. in artificial robot voice i said, “you’re not supposed to be able to see us. don’t fear. we come in peace.” she laughed, so i told her more surreal lies about missing stars and trip tied shoe laces. once everything kicked in, she was “i like this. i like this a lot. i could stay here.”

in the middle of her trip, our door was unlocked by 2 males with a pass key. we snapped “HEY” and they closed the door and left too fast for me to see but had the impression it was the young manager. i then screw-locked the door so it couldn’t be unlocked from without and filed it under another lesson learned - always dead bolt or screw lock. i surmise he knew our couple friends were staying overnight at the curandera’s* and assumed we were too, so he was coming in for look and take or simple curiosity. what was weird was lady didn’t freak out. calmly accepted this unexpected potentially mood damaging intrusion with a cool well it happened let it pass.

Y-bar window tv terrerium - foto by smith

i lit a ceremonial candle on the tv stand and we lay looking the other way out the window, watching the sky loose its light. as dark descended–and it moves fast in high mountains–the mountain disappeared in black and twinkled with the lights of huautla strung up and up and up uphill, cloudmist drifting in between the top of town and us.

drugs don’t cause things - they just let out what’s already in. lady glowed in goodness, kindness, caring. she’s a much nicer person than she thinks she is.

then the inevitable “i want to do this again. a lot. we have to get more.”

next day we go back to the government building, hoping someone will offer us mushrooms. way too early, so we try tracing our way back to the curandero’s place. lady asks wee child in door if daddy is home. we buy 4 more banana leaves. he lights incense and taps lady about the face and body front and back–with discrete detours for decency–with a piece of incense while chanting, then hands the incense to her to toss in the burner - all this in front of a virgin mary shrine alter. he did the same with me, then waved each of the 4 banana leafs through the incense smoke chanting more. he said my name over one while in the smoke so i memorized its folds for later.

we start wandering the town again but my groin starts hurting so we find our dirt path and walk down the mountain again, though this time there’s no boy running after us with offers of mushrooms and our legs are tired and sore from yesterday’s descent. and it had rained, so it was muddier, slipperier, and more difficult too. and i was tired - i hadn’t eaten much the day before because you need an empty stomach for the mushrooms and i was going to trip tuesday night with lady. didn’t, so ate crackers. didn’t eat much wednesday either for same reason.

waiting for my 6:45 take-off time, lady takes a nap while i air out my mushrooms - the curandero said unfold the banana leaf and let them breath before eating. rather like a good wine. i last until 6:30 and start eating.

that’s our second 24 hours in huautla - pronounced WOWt-luh.

* curandero / curandera - A Mexican man / woman who practices healing techniques inherited from the Mayans

mural on front wall of city hall and police building - foto by smith

Huautla looking west from hotel roof - foto by smith

weird trip up magic mushroom mountain back down.

eight folk talked of going to huautla to try magic mushrooms. seven said yes. five showed up - a 70 year old male, a male 65, female 62, me 62 and lady 35 (the indians call lady she-who-runs-with-old-farts). our transport was a white van built for nine passengers, with 2 more seats welded in, into which they squeezed 12 of us - plus a live chicken in an open handbag. lady & i ended up squished 4 abreast in the rear seat, which varied from no padding at all to random metal protrusions. ride was $12 US. every day the young driver drives 5 1/2 hours from oaxaca to huautla, unloads, fills the van with people, drives 5 hours back - 7 days a week. i think if everything went right, he could do it in 12 hours, but 14 seems more likely, 16 not unrealistic. those are long days. add in eat and sleep and it don’t leave much. our driver drank a can of red bull and ate a sugar lollipop driving us back - a sugar speed run.

the ride up was up down in around mountain after mountain. after we got high and dry enough, the mountains became covered in cactus forests which gave way to over-abundant green even higher in the cloud forests. huautla is tucked in amongst mountains within mountains, a town of 33,000 flung and strung down mountain at a 45 degree angle. you stand in town and look down at clouds, across through mist at more mountains.

in retrospect, i doubt the wisdom of a group of people going on a spiritual quest together - too many needs, too many egos, too many directions to go with too little give and take. one of the folk who didn’t go was a zapotec shaman. he backed out because he didn’t feel comfortable spiritually with one of our group. unfortunately he was our key to the journey - without him, we were just four gringos and a mexican american. since we lost our guide, we become our own.

next morning, we asked the hotel manager where we could find a curandero* (shaman, healer) to conduct a mushroom ceremony. he offered to take us to one of his relatives. we had to split up because we had to find some feminine napkins, so 3 of us taxied to a store while the other two said they’d taxi to the curandero’s, scout the info, and we’d all meet back at the hotel to evaluate. our taxi decided we were going to the curandero’s house even though lady kept telling him to take us to a store. at the house we finally got him to go where we wanted. got the napkins, then had to fight with the driver again because he wouldn’t take us back to the hotel - took us instead to the markets because he thought we needed to buy stuff - because that’s what gringos do. finally convinced him to take us back by promising we’d maybe come back later and use him if we could.

back at the hotel, our friends return and the woman informs us she’s paid $21 a piece for her and her friend and they’ll be staying at the curandera’s house that night for the ceremony - and oh, it’s a small house and there’s really no room for us. says she didn’t reserve a place for us because she “wasn’t sure what our plans were.” i want to tell her what i think of her, but this being a spiritual journey, i keep my mouth shut - although secretly i’m pleased because i’ve been dreading the thought of tripping with her.

three of us cab into centro and ask a young lady if she knows where we can find a curandero. she says sure, takes us through twisty climbing alleys of market stalls to the main government building in town. the front is painted with portraits of maria sabina (the curandera who turned on the beatles, bob dylan, donovan, timothy leary, albert hoffman in the 1960s) and mushroom fantasies. this is where the curanderos stand on the steps waiting for customers. there’s dozens of stands selling feathers, incense, candles, chicken eggs and other accoutrements of the mushroom ceremony in front of the church next door. it’s too early for the shamans to be out because the ceremonies start after dark, so she takes us through more alleys to a curandero’s house. as children watch tv, a lady explains she can arrange shamans for us but it’ll be $70 each (perhaps because her curandera mother is world famous). we find this too steep, so she says they can sell us each a dose of shrooms for $10 a piece and we can do them ourselves in our hotel rooms. we go for this and a curandero comes out with three folded banana leaf packets of shrooms, says eat a third, wait thirty minutes and if you don’t feel enough, eat more. gives us his phone number in case we have emotional problems during the night.

our friend cabs back to the hotel while lady and i wander the town. i follow lady as she leads us from one terrace of the town down to the next. the town is nothing but terraced flat spots chopped into the mountainside. finally we’re wandering through car-less streets with burros tied up, old wrinkled women washing clothes by hand, chickens, ducks and dogs. we look down the mountain and can see our hotel. lady finds a dirt path heading down and says “let’s take this, it’ll take us where we want to go.” i’m thinking she’s mad, but it’s a long way back up to where we were so agree. path gets steep, muddy, we’re in sandals, tired, but going the right direction. go by a tin shack. a boy runs out after us, asks if we want to buy mushrooms. i laugh because i’m on a side of a mountain on a very steep path i don’t know where it leads and i’ve got our previously purchased shrooms in my bag, mushrooms we found after a good bit of effort and trouble and suddenly this young stranger has run after us trying to sell us the very thing we came to town for. we say no, but now know we should have said yes. but then this was before lady discovered HOW VERY MUCH she likes mushrooms. the path gets wetter, muddier and steeper (red clay sticky slick mud) but eventually crosses a wee stream and comes out on the highway by a small waterfall, almost at the hotel.

back at our hotel, our friend seems kind of sad after the day’s stresses and says he’s going to wait a night until he gets back to oaxaca to take the shrooms in familiar friendly surroundings. lady and i decide to stay an extra day. i tell her we can also wait until oaxaca if she’d feel safer. she says she can’t wait, she’s too curious and wants to KNOW. since this is her first psychedelic trip, i offer to not eat any mushrooms so i can be there for her. i figure this will make her feel safer, and she goes for it.

that’s our first 24 hours in huautla - pronounced WOWt-luh.

* curendero / curendera - A Mexican man / woman who practices healing techniques inherited from the Mayans

Huautla looking east from hotel roof - foto/collage by smith