PIRATE FRAGMENT 4

Seu Adamastor knew how to prepare Daime like no one else.

While the slow twilight covered the waters of the Xingú River with a fire of slow reflexes, the crew's caboclos gathered their things in the corners of the speedboat ready to set sail.

From daybreak until that hour, I was at the raft site—I had dived from seven in the morning until noon, something unsuitable for health. One should never spend more than three hours underwater. And to make matters worse, I had volunteered to stay up all night diving and washing debris from the drain carpet.

When the speedboat set sail with the caboclos, darkness fell over the river and the raft, on the bank where we were anchored. That's when Seu Adamastor took the bowl of Daime, filled a gourd with a quarter of it, and told me to drink. Then he drank too.

For a long time, we occupied our ears with nothing but the lapping of the river and the slow exhale of our cigarette smoke.

While the old man seemed lost in a silence that grew within him, I mentally wrote in my notebook, miles away:

"A new form of hope gathered from the bottom of the river, gold --- mutual and daily. Until it starts filling our pockets, we live only on hope. Until we see it shine with our own eyes, we never give up, nor rest. Right? All I need to do is stay young, no matter how long. Something in life that needs to be scraped with an iron brush every day, perseverance. Then, that point suspended in the light --- from the category of inviolable principles of cooperation, pass, reduced to the ephemeral fragility of loving, urban relationships, that mental word in the notebook, LOVE, blown by the inhuman wind of the confines, unreliable, in my emotional channels squeezed by the deserted vastness of the jungle. That woman's name again: JOANA. At the moment, however, my smile of fine mischief is a bit desperate. The calendar, the march, the river. I remember a slap in the face she gave me, shortly before I left. Her tone was alarmed on this morning of laziness and idle chatter in the living room. Even after meditating all morning, she sounded irritated. Our relationship was no longer intact. Sabrina's acidic sap, that endless meeting on the beach with Sabrina until a few minutes after 3 PM (at a time when I should have been home with Joana), full of indecisions being revised for the worse under the effect of the powder. I was stunned by so much unexpected information about Joana. No liberating effect at all. THANK YOU GOODNESS YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND Sabrina said WE SWAPED ROLES FOR A WHILE And she said SOFT REDDISH FLAME IN JOANA'S EYES And she said SHE'S FIXED ON ME DESPITE HAVING MY DIRTY THINGS ALWAYS ON THE TIP OF HER TONGUE she said WHAT'S THAT STRANGE FACE K? HAHAHAHAHA she said HER WAY OF WALKING AND NOT SAYING ANYTHING she said I MYSELF DROPPED HER UP SEVERAL TIMES she said. Sabrina had a thousand lovers, as many as she wanted, men and women. NOW JOANA HAS DECIDED TO MEDITATE, she said. The proximity of truth, along with the ayahuasca, was now causing me the effect of equations I didn't quite understand. I wanted a coffee. It had been a nauseating journey so far. Full of forebodings here and there. I wanted to read the newspaper. WOMEN ARE NOT INTERESTED IN POETS' DREAMS she said THEY ARE INTERESTED IN FACTS she said IT DOESN'T MATTER IF THEY'RE FALSE she said SHE DOESN'T BELIEVE YOU she said WHEN YOU CALL ALL THIS ART she said. Still purely on the social level of a visitor who must entertain and be entertained, Sabrina was already a strange interference, I bet she would stay with me in the end, because I would be alone.

Of course, that was a vision caused by ayahuasca. I remember once reading a study that examined the ayahuasca ceremony as practiced by the shamans of the Quichua Indians, South American Indians known as ayahuasca practitioners of the Montane Rainforest (in Colombia and Brazil). The study concluded categorically stating that the ceremonial use of the entheogen as a medical treatment was effective and successful. And Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, in his book "Cultural Context of an Aboriginal Hallucinogen," says that "the purpose of taking ayahuasca is to return to the womb, the source and origin of all things, where the individual sees the tribal deities, the creation of the universe and humanity, the first couple, the creation of animals, and the establishment of social order." It also "may allow the spirit to leave the body and gain a heightened perspective on the cause of its own illnesses."

It was precisely that journey through the psychocosm that I was experiencing, there on the ferry, at that moment. Relentless beta-carboline! My anxiety had dissolved into a skeptical and hopeless disbelief that transformed the toxic arsenal of my memory into an impermeable and useless Castilian painting, and thus ceased to disturb me. Something like an exorcism or intensive psychotherapy.

Terrence McKenna's hypothesis that DMT, present in several indigenous entheogens, such as ayahuasca, could have provided the spark for the initial development of language and human consciousness, immediately recalled Jeremy Narby's idea that DNA is in fact the source of shamans' knowledge and inner visions. According to him, DNA is capable of transmitting visual information through the emission of ultra-weak photons in the nuclei of cells. The photon of biological origin apparently contains a type of holographic laser, with a high level of coherence, comparable to technical fields. And a coherent light source, such as a laser, gives the sensation of brilliant colors, luminescence, and the impression of holographic depth. holographic. Narby believed that the hallucinations and inner healing visions that shamans experience are triggered by the coherent emission of biophotons produced in the cell nucleus by DNA, which occur when plants containing DMT (such as ayahuasca) activate certain receptors in the brain: "This is the shamans' source of knowledge, DNA, living in the water and emitting biophotons, like a fire-breathing aquatic dragon." For Narby, this biophoton transmission is responsible for the transmission of images through which knowledge and information are obtained that are extremely difficult to obtain through testing and proof methods. Harvard botanical etymologist Wade Davis, in his book "Science, Adventure, and Hallucinogens in the Amazon Basin," described the beginning of an ayahuasca trip as the experience of being "shot from a gun barrel, streaked with baroque paint, and landing in a sea of electricity."

The hallucinations provoked by ayahuasca are even better captured by Terrence McKenna's words: "Under the influence of ayahuasca, the world becomes an Arabian labyrinth, a palace, a more than possible Martian jewel, vast and with motifs that flood the mind, momentarily suspended in a complex and undeniable wonder. The color and sensation of a secretly unlocked reality permeate the experience of the immediate present. There is a sense of other times and of one's own childhood, and of wonder, wonder, wonder."

Undoubtedly: a ghost of an old man from nowhere. While in that state, we were empty specters floating in the middle of nowhere.