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[00:00:36 - 00:00:40]	 Chapter two, "Into the Devil's Paradise."
[00:00:40 - 00:00:43]	 Did I say we were a party of five?
[00:00:43 - 00:00:47]	 We were a party of five when we arrived at La Churrera,
[00:00:47 - 00:00:49]	 but we were a party of six departing
[00:00:49 - 00:00:51]	 from Puerto Leguizamo.
[00:00:51 - 00:00:54]	 Ev and I were living together as much as a couple can live
[00:00:54 - 00:00:57]	 together when they sleep in a hammock every night
[00:00:57 - 00:01:00]	 and pile off a boat with four other people
[00:01:00 - 00:01:02]	 to hang their bed in the trees.
[00:01:02 - 00:01:06]	 And he was with us too, Sia.
[00:01:06 - 00:01:10]	 I must explain Sia.
[00:01:10 - 00:01:13]	 There is a phenomenon happening in South America, which
[00:01:13 - 00:01:15]	 I didn't meet in India.
[00:01:15 - 00:01:19]	 It has to do with fringe religions, the New Jerusalem
[00:01:19 - 00:01:23]	 whose devotees seem to be mostly fruititarian.
[00:01:23 - 00:01:26]	 There is a tribe of such people, Americans,
[00:01:26 - 00:01:31]	 who since 1962 or '63 have been drifting down
[00:01:31 - 00:01:35]	 through Latin America, chiseling on each other,
[00:01:35 - 00:01:41]	 living with each other, loathing each other, weaving intrigues.
[00:01:41 - 00:01:44]	 They communicated through Ouija boards with these things
[00:01:44 - 00:01:47]	 they called the beings of light.
[00:01:47 - 00:01:51]	 And a whole mythology was built up around reincarnation.
[00:01:51 - 00:01:54]	 According to them, everyone is a reincarnation.
[00:01:54 - 00:01:58]	 One person was the reincarnation of Rasputin.
[00:01:58 - 00:02:01]	 Another was a refugee from the inner circles
[00:02:01 - 00:02:04]	 of the Hare Krishna cult who wore white robes and white rubber
[00:02:04 - 00:02:06]	 rain boots.
[00:02:06 - 00:02:09]	 He was the reincarnation of Erwin Rommel.
[00:02:09 - 00:02:14]	 And then the leader, the central mystery of the whole group,
[00:02:14 - 00:02:16]	 was Sia.
[00:02:16 - 00:02:19]	 He had been Eve's companion for four years.
[00:02:19 - 00:02:22]	 He was very strange and believed that he
[00:02:22 - 00:02:26]	 had been several prominent people reincarnate.
[00:02:26 - 00:02:28]	 I was in a peculiar dilemma.
[00:02:28 - 00:02:31]	 My categories were not very rigid either.
[00:02:31 - 00:02:35]	 I thought, aren't we all happy hippies?
[00:02:35 - 00:02:38]	 I had been in Asia perhaps too long,
[00:02:38 - 00:02:42]	 and I don't know that much about how the universe is put together.
[00:02:42 - 00:02:45]	 But among these people, it turned out
[00:02:45 - 00:02:51]	 that there were a lot of funny categories difficult to tolerate.
[00:02:51 - 00:02:53]	 If Sia didn't want you to do something,
[00:02:53 - 00:02:56]	 he would have a blank look for a moment
[00:02:56 - 00:02:59]	 and then announced that it had been revealed to him
[00:02:59 - 00:03:02]	 on the instant by the beings of light
[00:03:02 - 00:03:08]	 that you shouldn't, for example, peel fruit with a metal knife.
[00:03:08 - 00:03:11]	 The tiny minutia of existence were
[00:03:11 - 00:03:14]	 controlled by these hidden forces.
[00:03:14 - 00:03:17]	 He had monkeys that were Christ incarnate.
[00:03:17 - 00:03:22]	 Sia traveled with animals-- monkeys, dogs, kittens,
[00:03:22 - 00:03:23]	 parrots.
[00:03:23 - 00:03:27]	 He insisted that all the animals be vegetarian.
[00:03:27 - 00:03:30]	 So the animals were twisted and unhealthy.
[00:03:30 - 00:03:33]	 Their eyes were going around in circles,
[00:03:33 - 00:03:36]	 and he was telling me, this is Buddha, this is Christ,
[00:03:36 - 00:03:38]	 this is Hitler.
[00:03:38 - 00:03:41]	 It was not actually this demented.
[00:03:41 - 00:03:45]	 I exaggerate to give the flavor, but in Sia's head,
[00:03:45 - 00:03:48]	 I'm sure it was this loose.
[00:03:48 - 00:03:53]	 As we put off from Puerto Leguizamo, we were therefore six--
[00:03:53 - 00:04:01]	 Vanessa, Dave, Ev, Dennis, and myself, and Sia, six people.
[00:04:01 - 00:04:03]	 Sia hated me.
[00:04:03 - 00:04:06]	 Ev had left him in San Augustine and come to Bogota,
[00:04:06 - 00:04:10]	 where they had kindly said we could have their apartment.
[00:04:10 - 00:04:12]	 In the two weeks while we were getting together
[00:04:12 - 00:04:15]	 the equipment for the expedition,
[00:04:15 - 00:04:18]	 Ev and I began a relationship, or the beginning
[00:04:18 - 00:04:20]	 of a relationship, which may have
[00:04:20 - 00:04:24]	 been a source of resentment for Vanessa.
[00:04:24 - 00:04:27]	 There was a lot of tension around all this.
[00:04:27 - 00:04:33]	 But I said, look, I like this woman, and she speaks Spanish.
[00:04:33 - 00:04:37]	 This was my best argument, appealing to reason.
[00:04:37 - 00:04:39]	 Now, are you seriously suggesting
[00:04:39 - 00:04:42]	 that we trek many days into the Amazon basin
[00:04:42 - 00:04:45]	 with our specious grip on the local language?
[00:04:45 - 00:04:50]	 It makes very good sense that Ev should come.
[00:04:50 - 00:04:52]	 Eventually, there was mutual agreement
[00:04:52 - 00:04:54]	 that she should come with us.
[00:04:54 - 00:04:57]	 However, in the meantime, Dave, who had not
[00:04:57 - 00:05:01]	 kept track of this intrigue, cabled Sia
[00:05:01 - 00:05:03]	 and invited him to meet us in Florencia
[00:05:03 - 00:05:06]	 and come with us into the Amazon.
[00:05:06 - 00:05:10]	 We piled on a vintage Colombian Air Force plane
[00:05:10 - 00:05:12]	 and then landed at Florencia.
[00:05:12 - 00:05:16]	 Dave, Vanessa, Ev, Dennis, and I, Ev's dog,
[00:05:16 - 00:05:20]	 and 10 tons of equipment which was to be transported down
[00:05:20 - 00:05:22]	 the Putumayo.
[00:05:22 - 00:05:25]	 Sia was at the airport waiting, thinking
[00:05:25 - 00:05:28]	 that the woman he had lived with for four years
[00:05:28 - 00:05:31]	 had gone to Peru with the person in white robes
[00:05:31 - 00:05:33]	 and matching rubber boots.
[00:05:33 - 00:05:35]	 Actually, no.
[00:05:35 - 00:05:39]	 There was an emotion fraught sorting out of all this
[00:05:39 - 00:05:43]	 at the airport fence.
[00:05:43 - 00:05:46]	 Later in town, Ev and I took one room at the hotel,
[00:05:46 - 00:05:50]	 leaving Sia to sort it for himself still further.
[00:05:50 - 00:05:53]	 With there seeming to be no possibility of grace
[00:05:53 - 00:05:56]	 on anyone's part, I was attempting to signal Sia
[00:05:56 - 00:05:59]	 that since he had last seen Ev, her life
[00:05:59 - 00:06:03]	 had taken a new direction and become something else.
[00:06:03 - 00:06:07]	 I was disconcerted and am a bit of a milk toast,
[00:06:07 - 00:06:10]	 hating tension, so I chose to think
[00:06:10 - 00:06:13]	 that it was out of my hands.
[00:06:13 - 00:06:17]	 He came to our room and said, well, it
[00:06:17 - 00:06:19]	 looks like there is nothing here for me.
[00:06:19 - 00:06:22]	 I am planning to fly back to Bogota.
[00:06:22 - 00:06:26]	 Thank God, thought I.
[00:06:26 - 00:06:28]	 Then he went to his room and went into communication
[00:06:28 - 00:06:30]	 with the beings of light.
[00:06:30 - 00:06:33]	 He came back two hours later to say,
[00:06:33 - 00:06:36]	 you can't find it without me.
[00:06:36 - 00:06:38]	 By this, he meant the ucuhe.
[00:06:38 - 00:06:41]	 You don't know anything about the jungle.
[00:06:41 - 00:06:43]	 I'm a man of the forest.
[00:06:43 - 00:06:47]	 He was into an image of himself as a man of the forest.
[00:06:47 - 00:06:51]	 With great reluctance, I went along with this idea.
[00:06:51 - 00:06:55]	 When next we flew, it was on to Puerto Leguizamo,
[00:06:55 - 00:06:59]	 and we now had him, his dog, his cat, his monkey.
[00:06:59 - 00:07:01]	 Sia wore robes.
[00:07:01 - 00:07:08]	 He had a staff, a staff with flowing fajas.
[00:07:08 - 00:07:12]	 I had already determined that the boats leave Puerto Leguizamo
[00:07:12 - 00:07:14]	 very irregularly.
[00:07:14 - 00:07:16]	 I thought we would have to wait.
[00:07:16 - 00:07:19]	 Perhaps even up to two weeks wouldn't be unusual.
[00:07:19 - 00:07:23]	 The hotel is tiny, the food terrible.
[00:07:23 - 00:07:25]	 I figured we would rub up against each other.
[00:07:25 - 00:07:27]	 Then he would leave.
[00:07:27 - 00:07:30]	 He was being very unpleasant to have,
[00:07:30 - 00:07:33]	 and it was a strain for everyone involved.
[00:07:33 - 00:07:36]	 I had actually been with Ev only two weeks
[00:07:36 - 00:07:39]	 and thought, these people have been together four years.
[00:07:39 - 00:07:41]	 They've traveled to India together.
[00:07:41 - 00:07:46]	 What role should I be playing in all this?
[00:07:46 - 00:07:50]	 But it did not happen as I had anticipated.
[00:07:50 - 00:07:54]	 It turned out that there was a boat in two days.
[00:07:54 - 00:07:56]	 And so in what seemed like hours,
[00:07:56 - 00:07:59]	 the arrangements fell together, and we
[00:07:59 - 00:08:03]	 paid the 600 pesos to secure our fair down river.
[00:08:03 - 00:08:06]	 At dawn, the appointed morning, all our animals--
[00:08:06 - 00:08:10]	 cameras, I Ching, butterfly nets, plant presses,
[00:08:10 - 00:08:14]	 formaldehyde, notebooks, Finnegan's way--
[00:08:14 - 00:08:19]	 all the things that one must have to go into the Amazon
[00:08:19 - 00:08:21]	 were piled at the river's edge.
[00:08:21 - 00:08:24]	 On the tiny trading boat that was to be our vessel,
[00:08:24 - 00:08:28]	 Ev Mito, our captain, indicated that we
[00:08:28 - 00:08:32]	 were to have the area on top of the cases of bottled
[00:08:32 - 00:08:34]	 fluorescent soda.
[00:08:34 - 00:08:37]	 We were informed that it was six to 12 days to where
[00:08:37 - 00:08:41]	 we wanted to go, depending on business.
[00:08:41 - 00:08:45]	 Puerto Leguizamo disappeared, and the river,
[00:08:45 - 00:08:49]	 the green bank, the shrill of insects and parrots,
[00:08:49 - 00:08:52]	 the brown water became our world.
[00:08:52 - 00:08:55]	 [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:08:55 - 00:09:15]	 We made our way under power, but slowly,
[00:09:15 - 00:09:18]	 to the middle of the shining brown river,
[00:09:18 - 00:09:23]	 under an immense sky, under an immense sun.
[00:09:23 - 00:09:27]	 A delicious moment when one has done all that one can
[00:09:27 - 00:09:30]	 for a journey, and is at last in motion.
[00:09:30 - 00:09:34]	 No longer responsible since giving that burden up
[00:09:34 - 00:09:38]	 to pilot or engineer, boatman or ground control.
[00:09:38 - 00:09:42]	 The world one is leaving has been truly broken away from,
[00:09:42 - 00:09:45]	 the destination still unknown.
[00:09:45 - 00:09:49]	 A favorite kind of moment, more familiar in the sterile
[00:09:49 - 00:09:52]	 environs of ocean crossing passenger planes.
[00:09:52 - 00:09:56]	 And so how much richer here, surrounded
[00:09:56 - 00:10:01]	 by the cargo of sun dried fish and brilliant gaseosis.
[00:10:01 - 00:10:04]	 I made a small space where I could sit cross legged
[00:10:04 - 00:10:05]	 and roll the joint.
[00:10:05 - 00:10:09]	 The flow of the river was like the rich smoke I inhaled.
[00:10:09 - 00:10:14]	 The flow of smoke, the flow of water and of time.
[00:10:14 - 00:10:18]	 All flows said a beloved Greek.
[00:10:18 - 00:10:21]	 Called the crying philosopher.
[00:10:21 - 00:10:23]	 But why crying?
[00:10:23 - 00:10:24]	 I love what he says.
[00:10:24 - 00:10:27]	 It does not make me cry.
[00:10:27 - 00:10:30]	 What a luxury to be smoking in the tropics.
[00:10:30 - 00:10:35]	 Again in the light, away from the season and places of death.
[00:10:35 - 00:10:40]	 Away from living under the state of emergency in Canada,
[00:10:40 - 00:10:43]	 on the edge of war bloated mad America.
[00:10:43 - 00:10:47]	 Mother's death and coincidentally all my books and art,
[00:10:47 - 00:10:52]	 carefully stored, carefully collected and shipped back,
[00:10:52 - 00:10:53]	 burned.
[00:10:53 - 00:10:57]	 Fire and cancer, cancer and fire.
[00:10:57 - 00:11:01]	 Away from these terrible things, sudden fissures
[00:11:01 - 00:11:05]	 in the psychic landscape that open and swallow
[00:11:05 - 00:11:07]	 one's whole world.
[00:11:07 - 00:11:10]	 Monopoly houses waxy green go tumbling
[00:11:10 - 00:11:15]	 into fissures in an animated psychic landscape.
[00:11:15 - 00:11:20]	 And before all that, Tokyo, its Jovian atmosphere,
[00:11:20 - 00:11:23]	 the pretension of fitting into the work cycle.
[00:11:23 - 00:11:27]	 How inhuman does one become in an inhuman situation
[00:11:27 - 00:11:28]	 for a little while?
[00:11:28 - 00:11:32]	 Tokyo demanded the spending of money, the saving of which
[00:11:32 - 00:11:35]	 was the only way out.
[00:11:35 - 00:11:38]	 10 months of deepening alienation
[00:11:38 - 00:11:40]	 that began with leaving tropical Asia
[00:11:40 - 00:11:45]	 and like a comet being drawn in to nearly brush its star,
[00:11:45 - 00:11:51]	 being drawn through Hong Kong, Taipei, Tokyo, and Vancouver,
[00:11:51 - 00:11:55]	 before being hurled over war toiling America
[00:11:55 - 00:11:59]	 and on into the outer darkness of other wretchedly poor
[00:11:59 - 00:12:01]	 tropical countries.
[00:12:01 - 00:12:03]	 The flight from Vancouver to Mexico City
[00:12:03 - 00:12:06]	 passed over my mother sleeping in her grave
[00:12:06 - 00:12:11]	 for the first winter on over Albuquerque,
[00:12:11 - 00:12:14]	 only a pattern of freeway interchanges in the desert's
[00:12:14 - 00:12:21]	 night emptiness, on and on into what was then only an idea,
[00:12:21 - 00:12:21]	 the Amazon.
[00:12:21 - 00:12:34]	 Out on the river, the past could enter the stillness
[00:12:34 - 00:12:38]	 and exfoliate before the mind's eye like some dark rose
[00:12:38 - 00:12:40]	 of interlocking kazooistry.
[00:12:40 - 00:12:44]	 Forces visible and hidden stretching back
[00:12:44 - 00:12:48]	 into one's past, migrations, religious conversions,
[00:12:48 - 00:12:51]	 discoveries make each a microcosm
[00:12:51 - 00:12:56]	 of the larger pattern of history on a scale of millennia.
[00:12:56 - 00:12:59]	 The inertia of introspection is toward memory,
[00:12:59 - 00:13:04]	 for only in memory is the past recaptured and understood.
[00:13:04 - 00:13:07]	 In the fact of experiencing and making the present,
[00:13:07 - 00:13:09]	 we are all actors.
[00:13:09 - 00:13:12]	 But in the lacuna, in the rare moments
[00:13:12 - 00:13:15]	 when experience in the present is a minimal thing,
[00:13:15 - 00:13:18]	 an indolent self-examining thing,
[00:13:18 - 00:13:23]	 then memory is free to speak and call forth
[00:13:23 - 00:13:30]	 the landscapes of our striving in other moments now past.
[00:13:30 - 00:13:34]	 Now, the now that is a time beyond the confines
[00:13:34 - 00:13:38]	 of this story, a now in which this story is past,
[00:13:38 - 00:13:41]	 I do not worry the past as I did then.
[00:13:41 - 00:13:46]	 It is now set for me in a way that it was not set then,
[00:13:46 - 00:13:51]	 not set then because so recent, still to be relived in memory
[00:13:51 - 00:13:55]	 and learned from, five days of river travel
[00:13:55 - 00:13:59]	 lay before us, undemanding, freeing the mind
[00:13:59 - 00:14:00]	 to roll and scan.
[00:14:00 - 00:14:15]	 Two all-inclusive categories emerged in the world
[00:14:15 - 00:14:18]	 that was our vessel and crew and ourselves
[00:14:18 - 00:14:22]	 out on a broad river whose distant banks were no more
[00:14:22 - 00:14:26]	 than a dark green line separating river and sky.
[00:14:26 - 00:14:31]	 Two categories, the familiar and the unfamiliar.
[00:14:31 - 00:14:34]	 The unfamiliar was everywhere drawing inane analogies
[00:14:34 - 00:14:37]	 into common conversation.
[00:14:37 - 00:14:40]	 The Putumayo is like the Ganges.
[00:14:40 - 00:14:42]	 The jungle invokes Ambon.
[00:14:42 - 00:14:46]	 The sky is similar to the skies of the Serengeti plain,
[00:14:46 - 00:14:50]	 et cetera, the illusion of understanding, a lame way
[00:14:50 - 00:14:52]	 of getting one's bearings.
[00:14:52 - 00:14:56]	 The unfamiliar does not give up its secrets in this game.
[00:14:56 - 00:15:00]	 The Putumayo does not become like the Ganges.
[00:15:00 - 00:15:03]	 The unfamiliar must become known as itself
[00:15:03 - 00:15:06]	 before it is correctly recognized.
[00:15:06 - 00:15:09]	 The familiar things are people.
[00:15:09 - 00:15:12]	 The people here appear as known quantities
[00:15:12 - 00:15:15]	 because they have been known in the past.
[00:15:15 - 00:15:18]	 So long as the future remains like the past,
[00:15:18 - 00:15:21]	 they will remain known quantities.
[00:15:21 - 00:15:25]	 Certainly, this is not New York, Boulder, or Berkeley.
[00:15:25 - 00:15:29]	 But we are trying to become extra-environmentals,
[00:15:29 - 00:15:34]	 develop a sense of appropriate action that is never at a loss.
[00:15:34 - 00:15:37]	 It is the familiarity of these people
[00:15:37 - 00:15:40]	 that makes them windows in my imagination,
[00:15:40 - 00:15:42]	 opening onto the past.
[00:15:43 - 00:15:46]	 [VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[00:15:46 - 00:15:49]	 - [INAUDIBLE]
[00:15:49 - 00:15:51]	 - Dennis, of course.
[00:15:51 - 00:15:56]	 He is the time tunnel longest on a parallel track to my own.
[00:15:56 - 00:15:58]	 No need to mention genetics.
[00:15:58 - 00:16:01]	 Back our connection goes until lost
[00:16:01 - 00:16:04]	 in primal, unlanguaged feeling.
[00:16:04 - 00:16:08]	 We grew up in the same household, shared the same constraints
[00:16:08 - 00:16:11]	 and freedoms until I left home at 16.
[00:16:11 - 00:16:14]	 But I held close to Dennis.
[00:16:14 - 00:16:17]	 And in the middle of my 21st year,
[00:16:17 - 00:16:20]	 returning from Seychelles to Bombay
[00:16:20 - 00:16:23]	 in the hold of the British steam navigation company liner
[00:16:23 - 00:16:28]	 Caranja, wracked with hives, heartbreak, and dysentery,
[00:16:28 - 00:16:31]	 I was weak, semi-delirious.
[00:16:31 - 00:16:35]	 Eight days of passage from Port Victoria's Seychelles
[00:16:35 - 00:16:40]	 to Bombay was then $68.35.
[00:16:40 - 00:16:42]	 In spite of being ill, I was obliged
[00:16:42 - 00:16:46]	 to travel the lowest class, or my funds would not
[00:16:46 - 00:16:47]	 carry me home.
[00:16:47 - 00:16:51]	 My bunk was a metal plate that folded down from the wall,
[00:16:51 - 00:16:55]	 public toilets and the hammer of the engines.
[00:16:55 - 00:16:59]	 Bilge water sloshed from one corner of the passageway
[00:16:59 - 00:17:00]	 to the other.
[00:17:00 - 00:17:03]	 1,500 displaced Indians from Kenya,
[00:17:03 - 00:17:08]	 victims of the Africanization, were traveling in the hold.
[00:17:08 - 00:17:11]	 All night long, the Indian women came and went
[00:17:11 - 00:17:13]	 from the toilets down my passageway filled
[00:17:13 - 00:17:16]	 with bilge and engine throb.
[00:17:16 - 00:17:20]	 Without Hashish, it would have been unbearable.
[00:17:20 - 00:17:23]	 After many days and nights of this,
[00:17:23 - 00:17:26]	 I awoke feverish in the middle of the night,
[00:17:26 - 00:17:30]	 the air redolent with curried food, excrement, and machine
[00:17:30 - 00:17:31]	 smells.
[00:17:31 - 00:17:35]	 I made my way to the exposed deck on the stern.
[00:17:35 - 00:17:39]	 The night was warm, the smell of curry not altogether lost,
[00:17:39 - 00:17:41]	 even here.
[00:17:41 - 00:17:45]	 I sat down with my back against a heavily painted metal box
[00:17:45 - 00:17:47]	 of firefighting equipment.
[00:17:47 - 00:17:51]	 I felt my fever then lift and a great sense of relief
[00:17:51 - 00:17:52]	 come through me.
[00:17:52 - 00:17:56]	 The recent past in the Seychelles and in Jerusalem
[00:17:56 - 00:17:59]	 seemed then to release their hold on me.
[00:17:59 - 00:18:02]	 I had a clear space in which to turn toward the future
[00:18:02 - 00:18:04]	 and discern it.
[00:18:04 - 00:18:08]	 Unbidden then came the thought that I would go with Dennis
[00:18:08 - 00:18:09]	 to South America.
[00:18:09 - 00:18:11]	 It was a certainty.
[00:18:11 - 00:18:14]	 And so in time, it happened.
[00:18:14 - 00:18:19]	 Not immediately, not before much more wandering in the East,
[00:18:19 - 00:18:23]	 but eventually by February '71, the prophecy
[00:18:23 - 00:18:25]	 was all around us.
[00:18:25 - 00:18:29]	 River, jungle, and sky enclose us and bear us
[00:18:29 - 00:18:34]	 toward La Churrera, this boat very little like the Caranje.
[00:18:34 - 00:18:39]	 But it's small diesel engine, an echo of the larger engines
[00:18:39 - 00:18:42]	 further away in time.
[00:18:42 - 00:18:46]	 Yes, Dennis came with the first.
[00:18:46 - 00:18:50]	 These others, different histories.
[00:18:50 - 00:18:53]	 Vanessa and I had been together in the experimental college
[00:18:53 - 00:18:55]	 at Berkeley.
[00:18:55 - 00:18:58]	 She was from New York, the Upper East Side.
[00:18:58 - 00:19:01]	 Father, prominent doctor, older sister,
[00:19:01 - 00:19:03]	 a practicing psychoanalyst.
[00:19:03 - 00:19:07]	 Mother gives teas for the wives of UN delegates.
[00:19:07 - 00:19:12]	 Private schools, then in a gesture of liberal chic,
[00:19:12 - 00:19:14]	 Vanessa is supported by her parents
[00:19:14 - 00:19:18]	 in her choice of Berkeley as a university.
[00:19:18 - 00:19:21]	 She is intelligent, a slightly feral twist
[00:19:21 - 00:19:24]	 to her gaucish sexuality.
[00:19:24 - 00:19:28]	 Her brown eyes hid schemes and puns.
[00:19:28 - 00:19:30]	 We were part of a group at Berkeley.
[00:19:30 - 00:19:34]	 But in the fall of '68, I went to New York
[00:19:34 - 00:19:36]	 to try to sell the tortured manuscript that
[00:19:36 - 00:19:39]	 had been generated by my self-enforced seclusion
[00:19:39 - 00:19:42]	 in the Seychelles Islands.
[00:19:42 - 00:19:46]	 This was a rambling, sophomoric, electro-political diatribe
[00:19:46 - 00:19:49]	 that was to die a-borning, fortunately.
[00:19:49 - 00:19:53]	 But in the less jaded light of autumn '68,
[00:19:53 - 00:19:57]	 I took that work and flew to New York, in which place
[00:19:57 - 00:20:00]	 I knew no one but Vanessa.
[00:20:00 - 00:20:09]	 She dug me out of a thwap house on West 43rd,
[00:20:09 - 00:20:11]	 where I had crash-landed and persuaded
[00:20:11 - 00:20:16]	 me to move up to the Hotel Alden on Central Park West,
[00:20:16 - 00:20:20]	 musty but stiff with a Yiddish-type respectability.
[00:20:20 - 00:20:25]	 Our riverine departure for the heart of Kamasari-Amazonis,
[00:20:25 - 00:20:28]	 followed by three years, the languid moment
[00:20:28 - 00:20:31]	 when she and I sat together at the outdoor restaurant
[00:20:31 - 00:20:34]	 near the fountain in Central Park.
[00:20:34 - 00:20:38]	 She with her dubonnet and I with my lowenbrow.
[00:20:38 - 00:20:41]	 In the eyes of the poor scholar and revolutionary
[00:20:41 - 00:20:44]	 that I then imagined myself to be,
[00:20:44 - 00:20:48]	 the scene seemed staged in its casual elegance.
[00:20:48 - 00:20:53]	 We were talking about Dennis, whom Vanessa had never met.
[00:20:53 - 00:20:56]	 He really is some sort of genius, I guess.
[00:20:56 - 00:20:59]	 Anyway, I'm his brother, and I am quite in awe of him,
[00:20:59 - 00:21:02]	 having seen it all from up close, as it were.
[00:21:02 - 00:21:07]	 And he had an idea that you think has great potential.
[00:21:07 - 00:21:09]	 Actually, that's putting it mildly.
[00:21:09 - 00:21:12]	 I think that he may have seized the angel of Gnosis
[00:21:12 - 00:21:15]	 by the throat and borne the beast to the mat.
[00:21:15 - 00:21:19]	 This idea that he has that somehow the synergins work
[00:21:19 - 00:21:22]	 by fitting into DNA is startling.
[00:21:22 - 00:21:25]	 It has a ring of truth that I can't ignore.
[00:21:25 - 00:21:28]	 The political revolution has become too murky
[00:21:28 - 00:21:29]	 to put one's hope in.
[00:21:29 - 00:21:33]	 So far, the most interesting unlikelihood in our lives
[00:21:33 - 00:21:36]	 is DMT, right?
[00:21:36 - 00:21:38]	 Reluctant agreement.
[00:21:38 - 00:21:40]	 Reluctant because the conclusion that it leads to
[00:21:40 - 00:21:45]	 is so extreme, mainly, that we should stop fucking around
[00:21:45 - 00:21:48]	 inside the flaming madhouse of fascist America
[00:21:48 - 00:21:52]	 and go off and grapple with the DMT mystery
[00:21:52 - 00:21:54]	 because, you know, we are schooled
[00:21:54 - 00:21:56]	 in the Western cultural tradition
[00:21:56 - 00:22:01]	 and can readily see that this drug is some kind of outrage
[00:22:01 - 00:22:04]	 that properly understood might, you know,
[00:22:04 - 00:22:08]	 that I think that it would have tremendous importance
[00:22:08 - 00:22:11]	 for the historical crisis everybody is in.
[00:22:11 - 00:22:16]	 Okay, so say that I suspend my judgment.
[00:22:16 - 00:22:18]	 What's up?
[00:22:18 - 00:22:19]	 I'm not sure.
[00:22:19 - 00:22:21]	 How about a trip to the Amazon?
[00:22:21 - 00:22:23]	 That's where these drugs are endemic
[00:22:23 - 00:22:27]	 and that's enough solitude for anyone.
[00:22:27 - 00:22:28]	 Maybe.
[00:22:28 - 00:22:30]	 I'm trying to get on a dig that will happen
[00:22:30 - 00:22:32]	 in the Gibson Desert next year.
[00:22:32 - 00:22:35]	 I understand and I am committed to going to Asia
[00:22:35 - 00:22:38]	 in a few months for who knows how long.
[00:22:38 - 00:22:40]	 No, this thing about the Amazon,
[00:22:40 - 00:22:43]	 if it happens at all, is off in the future,
[00:22:43 - 00:22:46]	 but you should think about it and something else.
[00:22:46 - 00:22:49]	 He lowered his voice mysteriously.
[00:22:49 - 00:22:52]	 Right, the something else is flying saucers.
[00:22:52 - 00:22:54]	 They're mixed up in this somehow.
[00:22:54 - 00:22:58]	 It's pretty murky now, doesn't matter yet,
[00:22:58 - 00:23:02]	 but DMT is somehow linked to the whole notion of saucers.
[00:23:02 - 00:23:06]	 Deep water, it's a hunch, but strong.
[00:23:06 - 00:23:08]	 Dave was something else.
[00:23:08 - 00:23:11]	 We called him the flower child.
[00:23:11 - 00:23:15]	 He was a delight provoking paradoxical amalgam
[00:23:15 - 00:23:18]	 of naivete and strong-willed insight.
[00:23:18 - 00:23:22]	 A Polish count, ambassador to the court of great Elizabeth
[00:23:22 - 00:23:27]	 and friend of Dr. D, brightened his genealogy.
[00:23:27 - 00:23:30]	 I had met him during the summer of '67 in Berkeley.
[00:23:30 - 00:23:32]	 We had both been hitchhiking
[00:23:32 - 00:23:34]	 from the corner of Ashby and Telegraph.
[00:23:34 - 00:23:37]	 And when one kind soul picked both of us up,
[00:23:37 - 00:23:41]	 we became acquainted on the ride over the bridge.
[00:23:41 - 00:23:44]	 Since those days, Dave had graduated,
[00:23:44 - 00:23:48]	 both from the upstate New York commune he idealized
[00:23:48 - 00:23:51]	 and from Syracuse U in ethnobotany.
[00:23:51 - 00:23:55]	 In letters that passed between us when I was in Benares,
[00:23:55 - 00:23:58]	 he became determined to be part of the venture
[00:23:58 - 00:23:59]	 to the Amazon basin.
[00:23:59 - 00:24:03]	 He found in the jungles and mountains of South America
[00:24:03 - 00:24:07]	 a world even more spellbinding than he expected.
[00:24:07 - 00:24:10]	 To this day, he has not returned.
[00:24:13 - 00:24:17]	 Vanessa, Dave, and I gathered in Victoria, British Columbia,
[00:24:17 - 00:24:21]	 near the Nashing beast, but not yet of it.
[00:24:21 - 00:24:25]	 We lived there three months, ram-sacking articles,
[00:24:25 - 00:24:28]	 writing letters, maintaining constant correspondence
[00:24:28 - 00:24:30]	 with Dennis, who was in Colorado,
[00:24:30 - 00:24:33]	 amassing information on a near mythical world
[00:24:33 - 00:24:36]	 that none of us had ever seen.
[00:24:36 - 00:24:39]	 I had wandered through Southeast Asia and Indonesia,
[00:24:39 - 00:24:41]	 viewing ruins in the former
[00:24:41 - 00:24:44]	 and collecting butterflies in the latter.
[00:24:44 - 00:24:48]	 Whether that gave me an edge and experience seemed unlikely.
[00:24:48 - 00:24:53]	 Vancouver Island, lost in swirling snow, fell behind
[00:24:53 - 00:24:55]	 as by a series of telescoping leaps,
[00:24:55 - 00:24:57]	 the barriers to our entry
[00:24:57 - 00:25:01]	 into the anticipated magical world fell away
[00:25:01 - 00:25:06]	 until we come to this indolent moment, February 6, 1971.
[00:25:06 - 00:25:11]	 We are at last freed of our umbilical connection
[00:25:11 - 00:25:12]	 to civilization.
[00:25:12 - 00:25:15]	 This morning under the uncertain skies
[00:25:15 - 00:25:18]	 which marked the Amazon during the dry season,
[00:25:18 - 00:25:20]	 we have at last gotten underway,
[00:25:20 - 00:25:24]	 part of a flotilla of gasoline and fruit soda suppliers
[00:25:24 - 00:25:27]	 who are on their way to La Churrera
[00:25:27 - 00:25:30]	 and will certainly carry us as far as Alicante
[00:25:30 - 00:25:32]	 on the Rio Caraparana.
[00:25:32 - 00:25:34]	 Moving toward the absolute center
[00:25:34 - 00:25:36]	 of the geography of the secret,
[00:25:36 - 00:25:39]	 I am moved to ponder, as ever,
[00:25:39 - 00:25:42]	 the meaning of this truly strange search.
[00:25:42 - 00:25:45]	 I am having difficulty processing
[00:25:45 - 00:25:48]	 the intense content of my expectations.
[00:25:48 - 00:25:50]	 There can now be little doubt
[00:25:50 - 00:25:53]	 that given that we continue to press forward as we have,
[00:25:53 - 00:25:56]	 we shall reach a state of satisfaction.
[00:25:56 - 00:25:59]	 We have been so long seeking this thing
[00:25:59 - 00:26:02]	 and it is so difficult to understand.
[00:26:02 - 00:26:04]	 Projections concerning who we will be
[00:26:04 - 00:26:08]	 or what we will do when this excursion is over
[00:26:08 - 00:26:10]	 are unconsciously based on the assumption
[00:26:10 - 00:26:13]	 that our experience will leave us unaffected,
[00:26:13 - 00:26:16]	 an assumption which is doubtless false,
[00:26:16 - 00:26:19]	 but its alternative can hardly be imagined.
[00:26:19 - 00:26:21]	 Later.
[00:26:21 - 00:26:25]	 Two hours out of Puerto Leite-Samo,
[00:26:25 - 00:26:29]	 upriver winds have caused us to tie up on a Peru side
[00:26:29 - 00:26:31]	 to await calmer weather.
[00:26:31 - 00:26:34]	 We are at Puerto Naranja.
[00:26:34 - 00:26:37]	 It is not shown on the Atlas Kodazzi.
[00:26:37 - 00:26:41]	 The pattern of river travel immediately asserts itself.
[00:26:41 - 00:26:44]	 Following the channel means moving from side to side
[00:26:44 - 00:26:48]	 of the river, usually near one of the banks.
[00:26:48 - 00:26:51]	 The land is thickly covered by a dense canopy of jungle
[00:26:51 - 00:26:56]	 reminiscent of central Ceram or the coast of Angbon,
[00:26:56 - 00:26:58]	 a Venusian forest.
[00:26:58 - 00:27:02]	 The dull drum of the engine, the cooing of pigeons,
[00:27:02 - 00:27:05]	 part of our cargo, like the sacred Ganga,
[00:27:05 - 00:27:09]	 the brown smooth water of the Putumayo soon flows
[00:27:09 - 00:27:12]	 through all our dreams and daydreams.
[00:27:12 - 00:27:15]	 Sia watches me, fixedly.
[00:27:15 - 00:27:18]	 (birds chirping)
[00:27:18 - 00:27:20]	 (gentle music)
[00:27:20 - 00:27:23]	 (birds chirping)
[00:27:24 - 00:27:27]	 (gentle music)
[00:27:27 - 00:27:29]	 (gentle music)
[00:27:29 - 00:27:32]	 (gentle music)
[00:27:32 - 00:27:35]	 (gentle music)
[00:27:35 - 00:27:37]	 (gentle music)
[00:28:02 - 00:28:06]	 The familiar falls behind, the river is broad.
[00:28:06 - 00:28:09]	 The mystery for the present is in the strangeness
[00:28:09 - 00:28:12]	 of this place, the watery flatness.
[00:28:12 - 00:28:16]	 Five days, the real Putumayo will put us at the mouth
[00:28:16 - 00:28:18]	 of the real Caraparaná.
[00:28:18 - 00:28:22]	 There is a mission there, San Rafael.
[00:28:22 - 00:28:25]	 We are looking for Dr. Horacio Guzman,
[00:28:25 - 00:28:28]	 mentioned in one of our papers as the source
[00:28:28 - 00:28:32]	 of an authentic sample of the accubey we are looking for.
[00:28:33 - 00:28:36]	 Guzman is an anthropologist working with the Wetoto
[00:28:36 - 00:28:40]	 up river from San Rafael at a tiny village
[00:28:40 - 00:28:44]	 charmingly called San Jose del Encanto.
[00:28:44 - 00:28:46]	 This village is situated at the beginning
[00:28:46 - 00:28:51]	 of a 110 kilometer trail through the jungle to La Chorrera.
[00:28:51 - 00:28:55]	 Not only can Guzman be helpful in our search,
[00:28:55 - 00:28:59]	 but he can help us hire bearers for the trek over land.
[00:28:59 - 00:29:03]	 many days to anticipate this personage.
[00:29:03 - 00:29:13]	 [BLANK_AUDIO]