Blame It On The Moon

Apparently my ability to predict the future isn't so great.

We arrived at the first stop on the way to the ceremony, the house of this German guy called The Rider, who had lived in Ibiza and Goa for something like twenty years - talk about 24 hour party person. Two things struck me within a few moments of getting there. The first was the house. It was situated at a dip where two small hills met, which didn't seem that impressive as you approached, but when you entered the living room and looked at the back wall which was entirely glass, you saw that it looked out over a broad shallow valley that seemed to extend endlessly into the distance: infinity in dusky green. Walking through the living room, you see that walls slide open to let you onto a huge deck. Upon closer examination, you realize that both the back wall and the front wall are mades of giant sliding glass doors, so that the whole space can be opened up - front deck, living room, back deck, view to infinity. It was genius. I work on film sets which takes me into a lot of homes I think I'd love to be able to afford, or stay in for awhile, but rarely do a I see space and think about killing the owner so I can move in the next day. The way this place worked with the land was amazing. It wasn't a particularly big or expensive, it was just some really well placed glass. The decor was cool, an interesting combination of cut stones and polished steel, which seemed to be channeling eighties club aesthetics and upscale ski resort at the same time. Cool, but perhaps a little to austere for me. I decided to let the guy live.

The second thing that struck me was that this guy was into Human Design. As was Cyan and they both seemed to be pretty excited that I was a "Reflector" the rare kind of person who is supposed to not really work, float around a lot, sample things and assess them quickly. When I wasn't completely occupied drooling over the house I listened to them talk about it a little. I had to admit I was warming up to the idea a little. First of all these guys seemed a lot more sane and coherent than Chatty. And based on architectural tastes, more likely to have common interests. Secondly, anyone who knows me will tell you that I don't particularly think I'm supposed to work that much and that I do tend to float around and come to opinions about things and especially people very quickly. People tend say I judge prematurely, but I've always been of the opinion other people don't pay attention to the right details- you can tell a lot by looking. And of course, I definitely get it wrong sometimes. And here were these people saying that it was cosmically designed to do exactly that. Kind of appealing.

I chewed on all of this as we headed out, to a little tiny house where Cyan lived where we we're going to make the ceremony.

Despite all sorts of transportation concerns based on the fear of tons of people wanting to come, only one other person wound up showing up, this Italian girl named Bambini. She lived in the house with all the kittens and all the people and I really hadn't separated her in my mind from teaming mammalness there. She seemed quite young, had eyes that seemed to alternate between beautiful and awkward which matched her disposition which seemed to alternate between sweet and combative.

The ceremony was outside - it wasn't so much a temple as a consecrated ground with a few poles that had baby aya vines planted at the bottom. My contribution, ironically enough, was to take a make a circle of crystals around the whole thing. As crystals are not really my area of expertise, in sort of the same way that nursing is not really a navy seals area of expertise, I was a little concerned that I would somehow go about it the wrong way. I was instructed to point them up, to direct the energy up. Seemed simple enough. And I appear to have survived the process, but I was definitely out of my element.

By the time the ceremony started, the full moon shown down on us like infinity, and the earth seemed to extend endlessly in all directions. My intent before we started was to really take the aya into me fully. As I've said, I'm well grounded in this here reality, and was trying to figure out how to dive more deeply into the mystery. Everyone made a little ceremonial gesture before drinking. I put the glass below my nose like wine and wafted it in, really trying to unite with it, then savored it's taste on the way down.

Nothing to exciting happened at first but I eventually got up to pooh and the world had gotten interesting. Plants had a spooky life like quality and the bathroom smelled gnarly. I'd really been thinking about the possibility of malicious transdimensional entities, so stuff that seems spooky seems significantly more spooky because the possibility that genuine evil might be able to make it's way through the space time continuum still lurked in the back of my head. Anyways, I got through all that, and I was lying down tripping out a little. Patterns that were more organic then geometric. Not quite as many eyes as before and a little more death imagery - mostly skulls and bones. It didn't seem scary, just like the truth: passive, eternal. I saw faces in the clouds . Plants looked very much like faces and figures that you might see in those kind of indigenous carvings that have always made me pretty dismissive of indigenous art: Simple figures, big eyes and mouths, exaggerated gestures. Apparently they were actually taking pretty good notes. Shows what I know.

And then the fun started.

First I felt a some tension or pain. I couldn't figure out if I was cold, having some kinda normal toxic reaction to the aya, or processing something ugly. It wasn't that bad, but it did feel kinda like poison. I wasn't worried though, because I had the plan: just love the fuck out of anything scary or unpleasant. But…

My heart wasn't pumping. I mean it was pumping blood, but I couldn't get it to pump out any love. Everything felt really constricted and tight. This was not life threatening, but it wasn't going to produce a Burning Flame of Love that would slay the unspecified unpleasantness. I was a little freaked out. My whole whole plan for navigating weird stuff on aya had just been stopped cold. And I was shivering and uncomfortable. Heart must be opened! So I started to rub around heart, and send lots of opening energy into the area. It took awhile, but eventually it worked. I felt the stuff around my heart open up, and then my heart. I kept rubbing and rubbing and my heart felt more open and happy alive. Not in some abstract emotional sense but a completely tangible physical feeling, just like a water splashing on your face is a tangible physical feeling. I looked up, and saw the beautiful moon shining right down on me, just pouring love into my heart. It made me think of my partner, and how we had gotten into some argument about what love was - I was arguing for something about love should require one to consider or be aware of the person one is loving. She had said something like 'Does the moon consider how it loves each blade of grass or does it just love?' It seemed pretty lame at the time but suddenly there the moon was, just shinning her love into my wide open heart, and my god it suddenly made complete sense. It just felt so good to be open to that loving feeling and shinning right into me. It was like nothing else mattered. It was so beautiful. Open and love, open and love, what a hippy, I can't deal with myself.

And it had a very feminine and vulnerable quality which quite surprisingly, was wonderful.


And this is the weird part



I mean really



I…


became …





My partner!


For real!



Or her in some sort of prototypical girl-becoming-a-women sense. And it was totally awesome. I went from feeling this oddly enjoyable open feminine energy in my heart, to just being her. Full stop. Like I had hips and long hair and a proclivity to get stoned and devour an entire bag of organic blue corn chips in less time than it takes to burp. Suddenly she made so much more sense to me. My partner is pretty fetching and I guess the best way to put it is kind of too much women. And that's exactly how I felt. Like I just wanted to love, or at least flirt with everything and like I had this almost supernatural power of attraction. Like I was this volcano of desire and love and attraction. It felt like it was to much, like it should be illegal - there was no way the world was ready for it, particularly the fashion world she had worked in when she was younger, with it's demonically circumscribed take on all things feminine. Or perhaps more significantly, her midwestern military family. It was like all this potential and desire and beauty that was forbidden to happen. But since it was aya, and not the real world, I just lay there and let the energy of that possibility roll through me. I just became this super affectionate, delicious gluttonous cuddly loving creature.

Love. Cuddle. Puppy. Repeat. Brilliant. The only problem was I was starting to get cold. At about this time, Bambini comes over, and says something I don't understand. And then I think she's gonna curl up with me and cuddle, which normally would be odd, but makes sense because I've become the ayahuascic version of my already very cuddlable, partner. And then Bambini says 'I can see you're wide open which is so beautiful and anything is possible for you in this moment, but you need to protect yourself' Which made sense, it did seem like a very a vulnerable place, but the moon was shining her love down on me and I was all that love between my partner an myself and I really didn't wan't Bambini to go on some heavy trip about entities and danger and blah blah blah. That's one of my big problems with the aya scene. Everyone's so cautious and concerned and worried. And then she said, 'For now this blanket will keep you safe.' and put a blanket over me. Best thing ever! I was like some annoying candy-cane raver who had just been given a soft fuzzy blanket to keep them warm. Actually come to think of it, I was embarrassingly like that.

That went on for awhile. It was kinda to much fun to leave. Eventually I got up and danced - it was a little of the jester thing again but even lighter, really feminine, but more working with and playing with energy kind of dancing. If my stomach hurt, or I had an ache somewhere, I could just feather it away with my hands. Very lightly. Totally cool. They should teach all the kids this.

And at some point I was kind of taking a tour of my own body and realized that deep in my sexual make up there is this sense of frustration threaded in. Like sex just comes with frustration. I was definitely not a smooth operator as an adolescent and young man and in a certain sense this had led me to assume things would just never go well romantically or sexually for me. I'm definitely doing better these days, but what
I realized was that all those years of not getting what I wanted had cause me to weave in frustration as necessary part of sexuality. Basically I realized that at a certain level I manifest the energy of not getting what I wanted and a sort of fear around pleasure. Not to useful. But magic aya: she just washes it all away.

The rest of the night was basically more me being my partner and realizing/understanding things about her. They really belong more in a blog about relationships than drugs, so I'll just sum it up by saying that a lot of stuff that bugs me about her, seemed very clearly a reaction to her having felt stifled in who she wanted to be, or judged for the way she lives and loves (she is a little out there) or something else had that fucked with her natural expression of herself - before I'd even met her.

A lot of this stuff we had talked about before, so it wasn't really a news flash. But to go from understanding some ones perspective, to embodying it. Damn. Seriously! Suddenly everything made so much more sense. I have every confidence that if all couples, or people in any kind of relationship, romantic or not, could experience this, we would live in a completely different world. There really aren't words in English to describe the degree of empathy and understanding the experience provided.

And then Bambini wanted her blanket back. The moon remained magical, but alas, the body was cold and the drugs were wearing off. Eventually some suggested inside, which of course meant warmth. Soon I was happily snoozing the in the living room.

The next morning we woke up to a breakfast of quinoa and Japanese sweet potatoes. Cyan eventually gave Bambini a ride back to town. I looked around at the wide open land and the sky above and decided I would stay.