Transient

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May 142012
 

Sulleiman emerges from the bushes, a disoriented, quizzical look on his wizened, timeless visage. He brushes off bits of leaf and twig clinging to his brocade tunic and burgundy pantaloons, before picking himself up brightly to continue on his way. But a little girl called Lali, who is six, is standing there watching in open curiosity, with her big dark eyes that the world flows into without any resistance at all. “What were you doing in there?” She asks with irrepressible innocence and glee.
“Oh…” wiry silver eyebrows lifting with mild preoccupation, and in a layered Russian-Iranian accent he continues “a little problem I’m having with relocation.” Continue reading »

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Reflections on Peru

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Oct 022011
 

Photo album at FB: Amazon to Andes

… descending over the Amazonas, vistas of jungle, thatched roof, thin pillars of smoke, winding muddy river through low cotton cloud…

we land,

dismounting steel, into a welcome wave of humid heat, across hot tarmac, through tin pot airport, 3 wheel moto-taxi driver hustle and away, tearing like madness itself through the chaos of another 3rd world tropical city! Reminds me of Bankok 20 years ago. But this is Iquitos – different time, different place. Feels good. Unrestrained life at the pace of ungoverned humanity – dirty, chaotic, colourful, unconscious, living in the moment. Squinting against hot road dust, a thrilling roller-coaster ride through traffic governed only by the laws of nature – a fluid dirty dance, family of 5 on a moped cutting in as we cut through another narrow opening and close the gap, ebb and flow, seething into the largest city on earth with no outside road access. And it is a shit hole. There are some ragged remnants of the bygone colonial rubber boom era, Spanish tile, fading façades of faux grandeur, but tropical decay reclaims such structure fast. Continue reading »

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Doing “frog”

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Sep 272011
 

No, not the kind of frog you might lick recreationally for it’s secretion of DMT (should you be so inclined.) That would be Bufo alvarius – the Colorado River toad. This is phyllomedusa bicolor, an Amazonian rainforest treefrog,

And talk about right of passage – this shit took me down!
Sapo, frog “medicine” – or poison – is administered to boost ones mojo. Traditionally taken to hone hunting skills, keen the senses, boost immune and reset nervous system, or in other parlance – to realign the chakras, emphasis on the third – personal power, deep cleanse the body through purging for health and vitality, strength, passion and prosperity (success in hunt or business)…
OK, thought I, lets give it a try… Continue reading »

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Somewhere in the Amazon rain forest

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Aug 302011
 

After swallowing a shot glass full of the somewhat wretched medicinal brew, with some ceremonial reverence and a personal intention of what to work on for this ceremony, we sit upright in meditative postures, on mattress pads, in the darkness of the Maloka - a large circular palm thatched structure, open to the surrounding jungle sounds – 20 plus pasajeros in the broad circle and 6 Maestro/as at the center, and we wait in the stillness of the night, mid the haunting and lyrical sounds of vibrant tropical forest.

Holding down the nausea, the medicinally purgative Banisteropsis vine and synergistic DMT laden Psychotria leaves start working their mojo after about an hour as the maestros pipe up chanting their ikaros. I came to think of these as songlines navigating other dimensional space-time. Traditional Shipibo shamanic healing and blessing chants that when the maestro/as are all singing together can be divinely beautiful, and when dissonant as they individuate, breaking off in turn to sit in front of each one us, shuffling about in the dark, off their kites, puffing away on mappacho – hardcore sacred black tobacco considered the male propitiate to mother Ayahuasca – they can sound like a gang of wailing cats on heat stuck in an air duct.

And so it begins… Continue reading »

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radical short stories

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Apr 252011
 

8 out of 10 (New Yorker) short stories leave me cold as a fish in space. So whilst, like film, there is a degree of subjectivity, here’s a fistful,  captivating in their dark humour and edginess and for my money, rewarding in their poignancy, punch and pure celebration of life, love and madness:

  1. What you Pawn I Will Redeem by Sherman Alexie. A story of great humility and humour in Native American spirit and good men: Go ahead and read this story below or download PDF
  2. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, by Wells Tower. A superb, vivid and haunting anachronistic excursion into Vikingdom. Read below [P2] or download PDF
  3. Until Gwen, by Dennis Lehane. Evocative and raw, written in 2nd person perspective: “Your father picks you up from prison in a stolen Dodge Neon, with an 8-ball of coke in the glove compartment and a hooker named Mandy in the back seat.” This story is cribbed from Amazon’s viewer for my own reference here
  4. Depth Charge, by Craig Bernardini.

    5. radical right of passage story, plumbing the depths of a soul searching alcoholic 21 year old becoming a “man” (from Narrative Design by Madison Bell)

    OK we’re wandering into the region of sublime rather than sublunary here, but read on

  5. How Wang-Fo Was Saved, by Marguarite Yourcenar (from Oriental Tales) – pure nectar, art transcending the mundane download PDF
  6. Shapeshifters, by Nik Spitz. Yep, that’d me, and why not – it’s a fun story, somewhat surreal, written in 2nd person (gender neutral). Read here, or download PDF

Continue reading »

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Shapeshifters

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Apr 172011
 
Download Shapeshifters PDF (221 KB)

Download PDF (221 KB)

Shapeshifters (v3.0) – a short story

Something catches your eye starting out of the forest below.  A lone figure, it appears, coming towards you now, up the winding path towards the brow of the hill where you are standing, wolf hounds at your side.  Judging by the weathered gait, it appears to be a rather tall old man, leaning into his path resolutely, as though into the wind for a hundred years.  There’s something curious about his demeanor, and before your eyes the distance between you is covered in a space of time that is somehow unsettling.  The old man stands in front of you suddenly and lifts his head from the ground for the first time, fixing you with a beguiling gaze. Continue reading »

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mid east revolutions and err, democracy?

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Feb 232011
 

Gene Sharp, Author of the influential Nonviolent Revolution Rulebook (more here) suggests that as people develop techniques for withholding consent peacefully, regimes will crumble. This must be true whether dictatorship or western “democratic” oligarchies. So don’t vote, it only encourages the bastards – arguably a privileged notion but democracy is a failed system as there is only one party in reality, the money party, with 2 lame factions in the case of  USA, 3 in the UK last time I looked. Continue reading »

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