I should have never went for orange juice. It runs through your head, over and over, like a broken record. I could have stayed at home. I could have gone without it. I could have picked another supermarket. I could have just said hi and left. But life doesn't work like that. Life can't be managed in the past. You make decisions in the moment and live with the consequences. That's life. On Sunday morning, my craving for Citric brand orange juice cost me a whole lot more than the $6.50 pesos sticker price. It cost me $450 pesos, a bit of my pride, and a hard-learned lesson about corruption, poverty, nationalism, and depravity. Ironically, I never even got the OJ.
It rained torrentially on Saturday night. It was the type of rain that happens in Buenos Aires during the spring. The type of rain that falls in streams rather than drops. The kind that floods streets, closes subway lines, and stimeys even the toughest of car winshield wipers. We closed the bar early because of it. After a quick game of darts and a trip to Burger King, my night was almost over. My friend Louis and I headed back to San Telmo just as the day, and the rain began to break. What had started out as an ugly Saturday had transformed into a beautiful Sunday morning. The outdoor Feria, or open market, was being set up piece by piece, as it always is on Sundays. The trees were green with week's worth of heavy rain and there was an odd silence in the streets. It was kind of like a tranquil calm before the storm of 4,000 tourists were to fill the streets. You would be a fool not to want to walk around and enjoy this type of morning. Even if you had been up working all night. So Louis and I did just that. We took a walk.
After a few quick passes of the plaza, a half of a joint, and some debate over whether or not pigeons could fly more than a few yards at a time, we decided to pack it in for the night. I knew I was thirsty, but a half joint will do that to you, so I really thought nothing of it. We got into the house and Louis went to his room directly. As the door shut on the basement room door, I had second thoughts. OJ. Fresh squeezed, no sugar added, delicious. Why the fuck not. It was 8:30am. The only place I knew where to get it was just opening, and a mere 3 blocks from my house. So I made a u-turn and walked to the store.
I got to the supermarket, doors just opening. Jackpot. I would be in OJ heaven within a matter of minutes. Then I heard my name called, loudly, from across the street. It was my roommate Jose, a bone-skinny 18-year-old Ecuadorian film student with a penchant for drinking, and a bad habbit of being a loud drunk. I couldn't ignore it, so I crossed. Jose was at the door of a 24-hour hamburger joint. These are pretty typical down here. It's generally a rough crowd that hangs there in the early morning, especially on weekends. They serve beer, cheap food, and most importantly, NEVER CLOSE. If the steel bars surrounding the food counter don't immediately turn you off, the smell of piss and the sight of sleeping drunks, whores, and lost-looking hippie travelers should. Almost as soon as I entered, Jose was kicked out by security for being too rowdy. "Security", and I use the term loosely, was man in his mid 20s, average built, with a shitty blue uniform and a police issued nightstick.
As I turned to make my exit and go back to the supermarket I heard my name again. "Andy, my friend!" yelled a short, well-groomed dark-skinned man dressed in a tuxedo jacket and pants, no tie in sight, and a white undershirt unbuttoned almost half way. It was Wilbur, a Peruvian man who works as a waiter in the plaza. I had met him 3 months earlier, ironically, in this very place. He's a fixture in the neighborhood, and one of those guys who remembers names, faces, where you're from, and what you do for work. He's quite remarkable in that sense, actually. Wilbur waived me to join him at one of the plastic picnic-esque tables that lined the sides of th walls near the windows. I obliged and pulled up a seat.
At the table with Wilbur were two girls, most likely in their mid-20s, and gorgeous. The skinnier one was from France. She had that look too. I knew she wasn't from around here. The shorter, darker girl was from Puerto Rico. They looked like they had been partying, but in a place like that, everyone did, including me. They had beer. Once again, I obliged. We were about halfway into our second glass, and the French girl's third cigarette, when Wilber motioned to the slender one to accompany him to the bathroom. Now, as a bartender, and a street-smart person in general, I knew exactly what that meant. Unfortunately, so did the security officer. As he glared down the aisle towards the bathroom he feverishly sent a text message and motioned towards the manager. In Argentina, cocaine is relatively cheap, plentiful, and unfortunately an all-too-normal thing to do at 9am after a heavy Saturday. I paid it no mind and started talking baseball with the Puerto Rican.
Within minutes of Wilbur's return, two P.F.A (Argentine Federal Police) patrol cars pulled up in front. My first thought was "sucks to be you Wilbur". He had witnesses, but he didn't seem to be phased. I gave the French girl a look as if to say, "you too". She was stone-faced. I will admit, however, that I felt a tinge of fear. You get used to that down here. The police have never rubbed me the right way, and as a foreigner, you can never be too careful. We've all heard of nightmare scenarios with police. Corruption, extortion, physical abuse, threats, planting evidence. This is an unfortunate side effect of a police force that is grossly underpaid, has very few checks and balances, and has a reputation for being dirty. As the two uniformed officers approached the table, I noticed that they weren't looking at the girls at all. They were looking directly at me and Wilbur. My nightmare had just started, and I already knew that this wouldn't end in a hand shake and an apology.
We were ordered to stand up and move to the back of the restaurant. The girls stayed at the table, and Wilbur and I went to a darker corner of the room, no windows. By the time we reached the wall, 2 officers had turned into 8. Four were in flac jackets, the others in plain uniform. One of them seemed to be the captain, but I couldn't really tell. The next ten minutes was like the movie "Groundhog Day". "Do you have any coke", the officer kept asking me. "No", I repeated over and over. I emptied my pockets about 5 times. Each time a different officer. I removed my shirt as well. Had my mouth searched and my pants shaken. Over and over this continued.
The officers did the same to Wilbur, had a bit of a huddle, and brought him into the bathroom. I asked if I could go and was promptly denied. Within minutes I was flagged into the hall where the bathrooms were. The bathroom hall looked exactly as you would expect it to in a place like this. The smell of urine was unbareable. The only light came from a solitary red light hanging from the ceiling. There was green mold draping the walls like it was painted there. Wilbur was in a stall with the biggst officer. He ordered me in. I panicked, and said no, trying to justify my innocence. Before he even processed his response, the other officer kicked me in the back of the knees. I fell fast. It took my breath. I was pulled up and shoved in the 5-by-5 stall.
Officer big man told me we would both be booked for cocaine posession. I gave him a look like he knew I was innocent and he was fucking with me. He didn't care. He said we were together, and that Wilbur was merely holding the coke for me. We all knew this wasn't true, including Wilbur, but the officer was fine with his story. He asked me if I'd ever been to an Argentine jail. I said no, as I've never been to any jail. He told me that if I didn't want to go he needed a favor. Money. Wilbur's pockets had been searched. Nothing. My pockets were filled with my weeks salary. Roughly $450 pesos after the Burger King and taxi costs. They knew how much I had. I had emptied my pockets a mere 10 minutes earlier. I tried to give him $100, but it didn't work. He reached in my pockets and took it all. Then he told us to leave seperately, not look back, and not be seen for the rest of the day. If I hung around, he said it would cost my legs. I didn't argue.
The walk home was short, but one of the longest ones I've ever taken in my life. "I hate it here", "I hate police", "I hate Wilbur", "I hate San Telmo". It all swished around my head like a bad dream. A confusion of anger, sadness, and the horrendous feeling of being violated. I didn't even notice that the Feria had started. No green trees, no pigeon talks, no OJ. Sleep felt good, and I settled in pretty well. I had to go back to work in a few hours, and I couldn't afford to be in a bad mood.
And so it was. I had my first real experience with police corruption. It was my first taste of what I'm sure thousands of people go through each year. In an eerie way, that actually helped me cope. I was unlucky, but certainly not an anomaly. I tried to think of it like an Argentine would. Wake up, smile, go about your life, and appreciate the good moments in your day. Move on. Hey, at least on the bright side, it made the ousting of my beloved Red Sox from the playoffs a bit easier to swallow. Life is short. I never want to forget that.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Bar Rules 101: Argentine Edition
The theme is real simple. You go out to a bar for a variety of reasons. You go to socialize, drink your pain away, celebrate, get laid, listen to music, dance, or maybe just to get out of the house. No matter how you cut it, the underlying theme is that people to bars to have fun and escape what would seem to be the underwhelming normalcy of their day-to-day grind. But once you dim the lights, crank the tunes, and get the sauce flowing, people behave in very strange ways. Most of the time, you as bargoers don't even realize this. But you know who does? Bar workers. That's right. The people who serve you drinks, listen to your stories, flirt with you, and occasionally kick you out or clean up your puke. So, as one of the aforementioned workers, I've decided to put together a list of common mistakes made by you, the customer, as well as some varying groups of typically horrible customers. Don't worry, we all have our douchey bar moments we wish we could take back. Maybe this will help you stop before you become "that guy" or "that girl".
Here it goes:
The Yeller: This is one of the greatest ways to make a bartender angry. Yelling at the top of your lungs when everyone can hear you perfectly. Alcohol kind of has the same effect on your inner volume as listening to headphones while trying to talk to someone. You can barely hear yourself, but the rest of us want to stab you in the larynx with a dull pencil.
Whistling and Snapping: Snapping and whistling is a good way to never get served a drink. And don't tell me it's cultural. You know what else is cultural? Female circumcision in parts of Africa. It doesn't make it right, scumbag. I am not a dog, nor am I "boy", "kid", "boss", or "chief". Next time try making eye contact with your server, and motioning in a polite way that you'd like something. Your mother should have taught you this, but in lieu of her knowledge, learn by reaction.
The Playboy: Now, this is a tricky one, because these guys can usually make your bar shitloads of money. A playboy is a guy who usually goes to a series of the same bars regularly with the sole purpose of scoring pussy. They're not always good looking, but they ALWAYS have money. The problem is that if you don't have a vagina, the Playboy gets a bit too alpha-male and often gets aggressive with other male customers and staff. Also, the Playboy often comes off as creepy or too aggressive, which can have a negative effect on your female clientele or staff. Which brings me to my next point...
Hitting on the Bartender: Sorry girls, but this is a double standard. Deal with it. As a bartender/customer for around 8 years, I can safely say that I've never walked into a bar and picked up the female bartender. Does it happen? Yes. Is it common? No. Believe it or not, most female bartenders I know have boyfriends. If they don't, they usually have rules about dating/fucking customers. Just because she's nice to you doesn't mean she wants to fuck you. She gets paid to be nice to you. Male bartenders on the other hand are typically whores for easy chicks. Sorry, but it's a double standard. What can I say. But when little miss C-cup with daddy issues and an effinity for making rash decisions wants to slosh around with the guy that made them a strong daquiri, it's kind of hard to say no. Sexist? Maybe a little. Don't believe me? Give it a try.
The Freeloader: No one likes a freeloader in any realm of their life, but in bars, freeloading scumbags are an epidemic. There's usually one in every group. The guy that never buys a round. You know him, don't you? Shit, you may even be him. The freeloader in a group sense rarely bothers the bar staff. After all, they're poaching free drinks off your dumb ass, not off us. However, the freeloader that makes our blood boil the most is the one that rolls in solo, buys 1 or 2 drinks, and expects a night full of free piss. In almost ANY other industry these people don't exist. But there's something about a bar (mainly alcohol and social looseness) that inspires cheapness and undeserved self importance. Of course I understand the concept of volume-based business and discounts, but most of you freeloaders are just plain old fucking greedy. EVERY bartender tosses out a free beer or two, but it's usually because you deserve it, and never because you ask for it.
The Showoff Tipper: Everyone loves tips. That is not an opinion either. It's a fact. Think about it. If someone gave you extra money for working hard, being polite, or just because they're in a generous mood, would you say no? Of course not. That being said, some people step over the line with the manner in which they tip. Flashing around your cash and showing the rest of the bar exactly how much more generous you are is pretty corney. Don't get me wrong. We will smile and take the money, but it's still lame. It's kind of like the bar equivalent of men with small penises reving up the engine to their red sports car around women to show them who's boss. We know who the big tippers are without saying anything. And we respect and treat them well. Being flashy about tipping is an attempt to draw attention to YOU, and less about showing your appreciation for the service.
Part 2 Coming Soon...
Here it goes:
The Yeller: This is one of the greatest ways to make a bartender angry. Yelling at the top of your lungs when everyone can hear you perfectly. Alcohol kind of has the same effect on your inner volume as listening to headphones while trying to talk to someone. You can barely hear yourself, but the rest of us want to stab you in the larynx with a dull pencil.
Whistling and Snapping: Snapping and whistling is a good way to never get served a drink. And don't tell me it's cultural. You know what else is cultural? Female circumcision in parts of Africa. It doesn't make it right, scumbag. I am not a dog, nor am I "boy", "kid", "boss", or "chief". Next time try making eye contact with your server, and motioning in a polite way that you'd like something. Your mother should have taught you this, but in lieu of her knowledge, learn by reaction.
The Playboy: Now, this is a tricky one, because these guys can usually make your bar shitloads of money. A playboy is a guy who usually goes to a series of the same bars regularly with the sole purpose of scoring pussy. They're not always good looking, but they ALWAYS have money. The problem is that if you don't have a vagina, the Playboy gets a bit too alpha-male and often gets aggressive with other male customers and staff. Also, the Playboy often comes off as creepy or too aggressive, which can have a negative effect on your female clientele or staff. Which brings me to my next point...
Hitting on the Bartender: Sorry girls, but this is a double standard. Deal with it. As a bartender/customer for around 8 years, I can safely say that I've never walked into a bar and picked up the female bartender. Does it happen? Yes. Is it common? No. Believe it or not, most female bartenders I know have boyfriends. If they don't, they usually have rules about dating/fucking customers. Just because she's nice to you doesn't mean she wants to fuck you. She gets paid to be nice to you. Male bartenders on the other hand are typically whores for easy chicks. Sorry, but it's a double standard. What can I say. But when little miss C-cup with daddy issues and an effinity for making rash decisions wants to slosh around with the guy that made them a strong daquiri, it's kind of hard to say no. Sexist? Maybe a little. Don't believe me? Give it a try.
The Freeloader: No one likes a freeloader in any realm of their life, but in bars, freeloading scumbags are an epidemic. There's usually one in every group. The guy that never buys a round. You know him, don't you? Shit, you may even be him. The freeloader in a group sense rarely bothers the bar staff. After all, they're poaching free drinks off your dumb ass, not off us. However, the freeloader that makes our blood boil the most is the one that rolls in solo, buys 1 or 2 drinks, and expects a night full of free piss. In almost ANY other industry these people don't exist. But there's something about a bar (mainly alcohol and social looseness) that inspires cheapness and undeserved self importance. Of course I understand the concept of volume-based business and discounts, but most of you freeloaders are just plain old fucking greedy. EVERY bartender tosses out a free beer or two, but it's usually because you deserve it, and never because you ask for it.
The Showoff Tipper: Everyone loves tips. That is not an opinion either. It's a fact. Think about it. If someone gave you extra money for working hard, being polite, or just because they're in a generous mood, would you say no? Of course not. That being said, some people step over the line with the manner in which they tip. Flashing around your cash and showing the rest of the bar exactly how much more generous you are is pretty corney. Don't get me wrong. We will smile and take the money, but it's still lame. It's kind of like the bar equivalent of men with small penises reving up the engine to their red sports car around women to show them who's boss. We know who the big tippers are without saying anything. And we respect and treat them well. Being flashy about tipping is an attempt to draw attention to YOU, and less about showing your appreciation for the service.
Part 2 Coming Soon...
Monday, September 21, 2009
Passport Wins
I'm the last person you should ever listen to about relationships and picking up girls but since you're reading this you're not really listening, yeah? So read this:
The first trip I took to BsAs I didn't party all that much the first couple of weeks, I was too culture shocked to really get into it. The first time I really went out big was after I gave a speech at the game industry conference they have down here, EVA. I gave my speech in english to a standing ovation and then rocked out to dinner and drinks in Recoleta with the VIPs from Sony and the top 4 people in the local industry. Everything was paid for, it was baller as hell. After that the Sony people wanted to know where the party was at so my local amigos took them to Crobar. The Sony expense account was charged a couple hundred dollars to reserve a VIP table with a few hundred pesos worth of drink credit. I stood looking over the dance floor and told my friend "I feel like a demon god."
I went around trying to dance with some girls, they were kinda doing their own thing and that got me nowhere. So I was sitting back drinking and my man Chilkowski who runs NGD Studios told me "we have a saying here, let me see if I can translate it. The wallet kills the stud, but the passport kills the wallet."
"No entiendo," I said.
"Speak english."
It was just that simple.
So I went around speaking english to different girls. And I started getting e-mails, if I had a cell phone at the time they would have been phone numbers. I would go up, project a good onda and say "how y'all doin?"
"Oh, where are you from?"
"Why, the good 'ol U, S and A."
"Oh what part of the USA?"
"Like, California." (Seemed like the best State to rep, I'm not really from California.)
"Oh I love California! My dream is to go work in fashion in Los Angeles."
"Yeah I've been to LA a bunch of times, hell of a city."
It was easy. The english, to a large subset of argentinas, is like a hot knife melting through any of the typical reservations from talking with a stranger. There was a time when being American was like a shining badge of hope; and I've heard stories of what Russia was like for expats earlier this decade, or east Asia. These days America has pretty well done shot its global image and the attitude is interested for sure, but more from a point of novelty rather than admiration. None of that history really matters though, its still the ultimate opener.
Lots of guys figure this out early in their time here and they fall on it like a crutch. The truth is you have to speak some spanish, the more the better. English is a great opener but its only sustainable with only one of fifty girls who really know the language. And being foreign definitely doesn't give you full license to be a total dick, you just have to be less of a dick than the typical argentino.
I say, lets cross-pollinate cultures to the max.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
My Ayahuasca Ceremony Experience
My friends have told me that I'm a very stable tripper. My friend Duncan once had a bad time on shrooms, thinking that all the blades of grass were judging him after I told him to shut up, and he sped off down the road repeating loudly "I do it because I like it." I was able to shift between a seeing god mentality to being practical about saving my friend's life, and after that was resolved I enjoyed the rest of my trip. I once walked into a Bank of America after being up all night on acid, wearing a blue-stained Army of One t-shirt, a black neon hawaiian shirt and a faded blue stripe on my face, and I had a completely straight faced conversation about BoA's international wiring terms to Argentina, which caused this cute Ethiopian girl to start cracking up at the end of the conversation when I said in monotone: "thank you, this is something I'll be considering."
Robert Anton Wilson has told me that there are 8 circuits of consciousness - I had previously lived on the seventh at the max. He also suggest that DMT, the active ingredient of Ayahuasca, is the nuerochemical key to the ultimate level of consciousness.
The thing had been built up in my head for years. In college I could score almost anything but DMT was far too exotic for Virginia Tech. I had to move to South America before it would become available to me. Going into it I wasn't sure whether it would be a tumultuous vision quest or a detached, out-of-body experience like my grandpa experienced on ketamine and scotch before deciding he'd rather blow his brains out than live with my grandmother. I was most afraid that I wasn't sufficiently detoxified and that my 300 pesos investment would be for naught. These were rather like the fears one has before losing one's virginity, until you find that you're (hopefully) with someone you love and everything is just awesome, fears were not needed. In this case, I was about to have sex with god.
On the subway three juggler kids were performing, a little girl and two boys. I had a glass bottle of coca-cola full of water that I was going to drink during the ceremony, I let the kids drink it instead and gave them ten centavos, even though I could have given them twenty pesos. The one kid wanted to keep the bottle, just to have something, but I told him I needed it and he gave it back.
I arrived at the house, a couple blocks off the Malabia subway exit. The house has a buena onda, skylight, couches, bean bag chairs, wind chimes, scented candles, stuff like that. There was a loft room where we all stashed our shoes, an entry hall with the atrium skylight and a main room where the ceremony took place. They had taken out all the furniture that was there from my contraindications interview a few weeks prior, there were little mats lined about, a pillow for each, and red and orange vomitus buckets tucked to the sides along with a liter bottles of water. People were advised to bring their own sleeping bags. I was immediately struck by the demographics of the people there, I at my age of 24 I was probably the youngest person in the room. These were not teenage psychonauts, these were mature human beings bearing the weight of decades of life experience and seeking to have a resolution forward. Clearly we were in for something of a different tenor than a party drug.
Geronimo is a young shaman with much lighter skin than I expected and short dread-locked hair, he politely greeted everyone. When I met him I asked "sos Geronimo?" and he said "lo mismo" with the kind of basic grace you'd expect from a wizened diplomat. We all sat down and he laid out the rules, during the ceremony nobody is to talk to each other or interact, the bathroom is around the corner, breakfast will be at 8 and we can all talk then. Simple and respectful, and in retrospect the whole thing had this vibe that you are an adult taking care of your own detox, respecting the rules and taking responsibility for your own experience, but they will be there to help you in any moment. I saw a used 2 liter Pepsi bottle filled with a thick, purple concoction, like the syrup for Grape Soda with the consistency of cough formula. I asked the lovely young woman sitting next to me if that was the Ayahuasca, she informed that it was. When I was asked her about the experience she said "es tu proprio" and "no esta en el mente, es en el corazon." All I could do was try to get a good stretch in so as not to waste precious brain cycles thinking about unnecessary aches and tensions in my body during the experience.
Two little girls helped in the ceremony, they were probably about 8 and 6; both wearing pink outfits with pastel-green socks. The 8-year old wreathed our heads in a fragrant tobacco while the 6-year old playfully bent her toes against the ground in rhythm to Geronimo's blowing over the Ayahuasca bottle. It was like The Holy Mountain meets Disney, but overall wholesome and family friendly. He then poured the mixture into a little China cup and the 8-year-old came over to offer it to me first, I look at her, shrugged, took it by one hand and threw it back. The taste was bitter, like everyone says, but I didn't think it was so bad. I'm the tipo to chase whiskey with beer and put tobasco sauce on everything, so maybe I'm outside the mean. The cup was returned, re-filled, and passed out to everyone in turn. When everyone had been served, the lights were cut and Geronimo began his chants.
After taking the elixer I immediately felt a sense of alteration, but I couldn't tell if it was just anticipatory jitters or a real chemical interaction. Then I started to wonder if I was going to get the experience, a concern I remember having shortly after taking mushrooms and LSD in the past, how little I learn. I just figured "no expectations, keep doing the prana yama." Geronimo's chants became more fierce, more passionate. I kept filling my lungs and slowly releasing them. I started to see faint black-and-white closed eye visuals of aymptotic cusps and centipedes, of dawns and horizons and big bangs. And before I knew it I got everything I ever wanted and more, and I was getting higher than Holy Fuck - as advertised.
It was not a hallucination. It was not a vision. It was like being held by god. It was like having sex with the universe. It was an honest, sincere consummation of everything; supreme ecstasy, an ascent into heaven. Geronimo's throat wobbling was the music of the spheres. Since DMT is produced by our pineal glands and released three times during our existence - birth, puberty and death, I was basically experiencing the awe of death preemptively. And the evangelion is that death is beautiful, death is the path to awe, death is eternal life. I saw my entire life ahead of me, the growth of my son, the love I will share with some woman out there and the other kids we'll have, working the earth, the bi-cameral local government and me and my friends having cervezas while the other political party, our wives, conspire in the other room. I felt overwhelming compassion for all humanity and a profound desire to make love every single day until I blissfully die.
Then I heard everyone start puking. The girl told me that the first time she took the sacrament only two out of twenty vomited. Well, this must have been a particularly strong batch, because everyone was puking up roses. The delicious nuances of their upchuck reflexes was the most hilarious thing I'd ever heard and I let out this satyr-ish belly laugh. Geronimo belched loudly. I laughed at that too. Then I farted a little bit.
I then decided to focus and ask the plant for some answers that I had wanted. Ever since I was 18 and I learned about both DMT and the form of programming known as the memetic algorithm, I've had the dream of building a software engine that can produce interactive content dynamically, it goes by the name of Directions-Thoughts-Materials or DMT, and I've sought out the chemical as a means of understanding directly what would be involved. I realized I already had the architecture pretty well defined, so I asked what kind of authoring language would the engine require. Geronimo's chanting gave me that answer. I received the keystone that will begin a year's worth of work. The authorship language will be a form of chant. People can just chant into the mic and lay down lines of script that will define how a bunch of data spins into a battlefield or a cathedral or a valley which is then populated with warriors or lovers or farmers, or really whatever the hell you want to come up with. Then on your second pass you can go over the text with the keyboard and the dev environment would offer a sumptuous feast of inverse parsed accents that you can add to the "nam"s and "ni"s and "chihueps" and so forth and these accents will code the permutations on the resulting creation. Finally the wave form that your ending throat wobble takes (the "hei, wueya, wueya wueeeaya wueeeeeyaaaaaaaa") will spin the matrix of variables that balance the gameplay to whatever style you desire to imbue. Obviously making that work with real software, data structures and everything, is a tall order, but I have the user experience encapsulated, and it is wonderful. We could all be shamans with this engine, spinning universes and dramas and meaningful decisions out of our tender voices. This was less than fourty minutes into the experience, and already the pearl of my quest was obtained. Ayahuasca was a gracious host.
I leaned forward, prostrate, and I realized why Moslems pray the way they do. I also realized why Arabic men sometimes beat their wives and sodomize them, they're pissed off about living in the middle of the desert, very simple. I also realized that when you pray like that it doesn't matter where you live, you are surrendering to the great lord. I resumed my upright position and sat in a hindu meditative stance and appreciated why they do that. Geronimo came by and poured florida water over my hands causing them to clasp together and I appreciated once again from my childhood why Christians pray the way they do. I hit my head against the wall and touched the top of my scalp and realized why Jews wear Yamachas on that position. Later, Geronimo came and doused my head with water, touching that top-point with the print of his thumb, and I saw a great pyramid rising into an erupting pulsar of light. There is no religion, there is only god and a multiplicity of techniques that work.
Feeling bold, I then asked the plant what was in store for humanity in 2012. The plant answered me honestly, "isn't it obvious? Humanity is on the verge of receiving Holy Death." I think what that means is that regardless of whether we all die in some massive extinction event, or there are a bunch of wars and disasters and lots of folks die and the survivors have a better attitude about living, or we have this Singularity where everything is coming up bubblegum and we all get to live forever, we will embrace the paradox of death and wake up. From this point on, death became the overriding theme of the night.
I accepted my own death, but then I started to think about some blog posts on this guy's survivalist site and I ended up getting the notion of someone pointing a gun at my head... in my head, and I couldn't get it out. I started thinking about what that would be like, then I started thinking about what I would feel if my yet unborn son had a gun pointed at his head, and I started to think, if it my was me on the other side of the trigger and pulling it meant eliminating that risk to my family, would I do it? Could I end another human life? I decided that I could, but if I had to give away ten million dollars to prevent myself from ever being in that kind of position, I would.
The weight of the hammer of a gun hung in mind my as infinite, as a halving of a halving of a halving. It was the same sensation I had when I was a child and I would have nightmares of an infinite tower that could not be climbed or two strangers on an infinite desert plane barely missing each other and by chance, dooming themselves to an eternity of solitude. I thought about Mel Gibson's Apocalypto and how these cultures bathed themselves in death rites as a way of anesthetizing the paradox, cutting off heads and throwing them down steps, while the priests know astronomy and math to pull the strings and the stern Catholics look charming in comparison. Geronimo went into an impassioned chant and I pictured starving mothers in Somalia with breasts deflated over a caved-in rib cage and eyes filled with "why?" I thought about what it would mean to be truly "safe" from those who might want me to share what I have, to pull the trigger consistently and with precision, how I would hate to be good at that, how I felt sorry for the soliders and the mercenaries who resigned themselves to professional butchery. I experienced the last minute of the life of Cho Seung-hui. I rolled the word "death" and "muerte" over my frontal lobe, tasting their textures, comparing the connotations of those sounds to the Japanese idea of death which is more of a rebirth, which seems only practical in a culture where at one point (two, now that I think about it) a hundred thousand people just evaporated in a flash of white light and a million anime plotlines would be born from the ashes. I weighed whether it is better to have the Christian mentality and guard your life and that of your family and produce as many new lives as possible and be like that, or whether its better to acknowledge that all that life-loving behavior is just what your brain wants you to do and we're all just floating around a big electron and it doesn't really matter whether someone shoots you and your kid in the head or not, which I imagined is the attitude of a lot of the people getting the poorest lot in this world.
I found myself at the brink of enlightenment, filled with love, bounding out of the socio-sexual moral circuit into the higher circuits, to the very higest, and being dragged back down to the reptilian paranoia of kill or be killed in the name of an unborn child. But then I realized, I can do better.
I realized that there's two ways this global deleveraging, this global transformation, can play out: either the gulf between rich and poor goes exponential and lots of people get shot in the head, or smart traders and people who have lots of money can act as conduits, taking it out of the markets where government bailouts have nowhere else to go and bringing it into the real world, investing it in sustainable human happiness. That's the easiest way that this process can go on peacefully. Imagine if a mere 10% of hedge fund managers decided to donate just half of their monstrous winnings to things like the proliferation of grass-based agriculture, renewable energy, water and transportation infrastructure, sponsoring children to become happy adults instead of desperate potential killers. We're already talking about a couple hundred billion dollars. That alone could make a tremendous difference, if applied intelligently. We can make this happen. We are the ones we've been waiting for.
I changed from being a person hanging on to fear and selfishness to being a person fully embodied with intent to make my life the best it can be and then leverage that to helping everyone I can. If I make 20k shorting Eurodollar Interest Rate Futures, I'll spend half of that sponsoring street kids in Buenos Aires. If I make 200k following silver or natural gas or palladium I'll spend half of that building infrastructure in rural Argentine towns. If I keep winning I'll keep giving more and more until the money itself is worthless.
I couldn't sleep. I just hung out, thinking about what I wanted to do, about the women in my life, about my son, about gentler things than Holy Death. The sun slowly arose. I got about forty minutes of sleep. Then the little girls and their mother returned to administer breakfast. We all sat around and feasted on fresh fruits, on bread with that chocolate-like substance that has no refined sugar in it, on mate and tea. We talked. It was human and divine. With much adieu I left and took the subway back home to write all the things that I had in me to write, to tell my dad that he was a great father, to get back in touch with old friends, to scream to the trading blogs I frequent that the secret is not caring about the numbers and then giving it all away. I saw a poor kid juggling on the subway and I slipped him that 20 peso bill with no fanfare.
Robert Anton Wilson has told me that there are 8 circuits of consciousness - I had previously lived on the seventh at the max. He also suggest that DMT, the active ingredient of Ayahuasca, is the nuerochemical key to the ultimate level of consciousness.
The thing had been built up in my head for years. In college I could score almost anything but DMT was far too exotic for Virginia Tech. I had to move to South America before it would become available to me. Going into it I wasn't sure whether it would be a tumultuous vision quest or a detached, out-of-body experience like my grandpa experienced on ketamine and scotch before deciding he'd rather blow his brains out than live with my grandmother. I was most afraid that I wasn't sufficiently detoxified and that my 300 pesos investment would be for naught. These were rather like the fears one has before losing one's virginity, until you find that you're (hopefully) with someone you love and everything is just awesome, fears were not needed. In this case, I was about to have sex with god.
On the subway three juggler kids were performing, a little girl and two boys. I had a glass bottle of coca-cola full of water that I was going to drink during the ceremony, I let the kids drink it instead and gave them ten centavos, even though I could have given them twenty pesos. The one kid wanted to keep the bottle, just to have something, but I told him I needed it and he gave it back.
I arrived at the house, a couple blocks off the Malabia subway exit. The house has a buena onda, skylight, couches, bean bag chairs, wind chimes, scented candles, stuff like that. There was a loft room where we all stashed our shoes, an entry hall with the atrium skylight and a main room where the ceremony took place. They had taken out all the furniture that was there from my contraindications interview a few weeks prior, there were little mats lined about, a pillow for each, and red and orange vomitus buckets tucked to the sides along with a liter bottles of water. People were advised to bring their own sleeping bags. I was immediately struck by the demographics of the people there, I at my age of 24 I was probably the youngest person in the room. These were not teenage psychonauts, these were mature human beings bearing the weight of decades of life experience and seeking to have a resolution forward. Clearly we were in for something of a different tenor than a party drug.
Geronimo is a young shaman with much lighter skin than I expected and short dread-locked hair, he politely greeted everyone. When I met him I asked "sos Geronimo?" and he said "lo mismo" with the kind of basic grace you'd expect from a wizened diplomat. We all sat down and he laid out the rules, during the ceremony nobody is to talk to each other or interact, the bathroom is around the corner, breakfast will be at 8 and we can all talk then. Simple and respectful, and in retrospect the whole thing had this vibe that you are an adult taking care of your own detox, respecting the rules and taking responsibility for your own experience, but they will be there to help you in any moment. I saw a used 2 liter Pepsi bottle filled with a thick, purple concoction, like the syrup for Grape Soda with the consistency of cough formula. I asked the lovely young woman sitting next to me if that was the Ayahuasca, she informed that it was. When I was asked her about the experience she said "es tu proprio" and "no esta en el mente, es en el corazon." All I could do was try to get a good stretch in so as not to waste precious brain cycles thinking about unnecessary aches and tensions in my body during the experience.
Two little girls helped in the ceremony, they were probably about 8 and 6; both wearing pink outfits with pastel-green socks. The 8-year old wreathed our heads in a fragrant tobacco while the 6-year old playfully bent her toes against the ground in rhythm to Geronimo's blowing over the Ayahuasca bottle. It was like The Holy Mountain meets Disney, but overall wholesome and family friendly. He then poured the mixture into a little China cup and the 8-year-old came over to offer it to me first, I look at her, shrugged, took it by one hand and threw it back. The taste was bitter, like everyone says, but I didn't think it was so bad. I'm the tipo to chase whiskey with beer and put tobasco sauce on everything, so maybe I'm outside the mean. The cup was returned, re-filled, and passed out to everyone in turn. When everyone had been served, the lights were cut and Geronimo began his chants.
After taking the elixer I immediately felt a sense of alteration, but I couldn't tell if it was just anticipatory jitters or a real chemical interaction. Then I started to wonder if I was going to get the experience, a concern I remember having shortly after taking mushrooms and LSD in the past, how little I learn. I just figured "no expectations, keep doing the prana yama." Geronimo's chants became more fierce, more passionate. I kept filling my lungs and slowly releasing them. I started to see faint black-and-white closed eye visuals of aymptotic cusps and centipedes, of dawns and horizons and big bangs. And before I knew it I got everything I ever wanted and more, and I was getting higher than Holy Fuck - as advertised.
It was not a hallucination. It was not a vision. It was like being held by god. It was like having sex with the universe. It was an honest, sincere consummation of everything; supreme ecstasy, an ascent into heaven. Geronimo's throat wobbling was the music of the spheres. Since DMT is produced by our pineal glands and released three times during our existence - birth, puberty and death, I was basically experiencing the awe of death preemptively. And the evangelion is that death is beautiful, death is the path to awe, death is eternal life. I saw my entire life ahead of me, the growth of my son, the love I will share with some woman out there and the other kids we'll have, working the earth, the bi-cameral local government and me and my friends having cervezas while the other political party, our wives, conspire in the other room. I felt overwhelming compassion for all humanity and a profound desire to make love every single day until I blissfully die.
Then I heard everyone start puking. The girl told me that the first time she took the sacrament only two out of twenty vomited. Well, this must have been a particularly strong batch, because everyone was puking up roses. The delicious nuances of their upchuck reflexes was the most hilarious thing I'd ever heard and I let out this satyr-ish belly laugh. Geronimo belched loudly. I laughed at that too. Then I farted a little bit.
I then decided to focus and ask the plant for some answers that I had wanted. Ever since I was 18 and I learned about both DMT and the form of programming known as the memetic algorithm, I've had the dream of building a software engine that can produce interactive content dynamically, it goes by the name of Directions-Thoughts-Materials or DMT, and I've sought out the chemical as a means of understanding directly what would be involved. I realized I already had the architecture pretty well defined, so I asked what kind of authoring language would the engine require. Geronimo's chanting gave me that answer. I received the keystone that will begin a year's worth of work. The authorship language will be a form of chant. People can just chant into the mic and lay down lines of script that will define how a bunch of data spins into a battlefield or a cathedral or a valley which is then populated with warriors or lovers or farmers, or really whatever the hell you want to come up with. Then on your second pass you can go over the text with the keyboard and the dev environment would offer a sumptuous feast of inverse parsed accents that you can add to the "nam"s and "ni"s and "chihueps" and so forth and these accents will code the permutations on the resulting creation. Finally the wave form that your ending throat wobble takes (the "hei, wueya, wueya wueeeaya wueeeeeyaaaaaaaa") will spin the matrix of variables that balance the gameplay to whatever style you desire to imbue. Obviously making that work with real software, data structures and everything, is a tall order, but I have the user experience encapsulated, and it is wonderful. We could all be shamans with this engine, spinning universes and dramas and meaningful decisions out of our tender voices. This was less than fourty minutes into the experience, and already the pearl of my quest was obtained. Ayahuasca was a gracious host.
I leaned forward, prostrate, and I realized why Moslems pray the way they do. I also realized why Arabic men sometimes beat their wives and sodomize them, they're pissed off about living in the middle of the desert, very simple. I also realized that when you pray like that it doesn't matter where you live, you are surrendering to the great lord. I resumed my upright position and sat in a hindu meditative stance and appreciated why they do that. Geronimo came by and poured florida water over my hands causing them to clasp together and I appreciated once again from my childhood why Christians pray the way they do. I hit my head against the wall and touched the top of my scalp and realized why Jews wear Yamachas on that position. Later, Geronimo came and doused my head with water, touching that top-point with the print of his thumb, and I saw a great pyramid rising into an erupting pulsar of light. There is no religion, there is only god and a multiplicity of techniques that work.
Feeling bold, I then asked the plant what was in store for humanity in 2012. The plant answered me honestly, "isn't it obvious? Humanity is on the verge of receiving Holy Death." I think what that means is that regardless of whether we all die in some massive extinction event, or there are a bunch of wars and disasters and lots of folks die and the survivors have a better attitude about living, or we have this Singularity where everything is coming up bubblegum and we all get to live forever, we will embrace the paradox of death and wake up. From this point on, death became the overriding theme of the night.
I accepted my own death, but then I started to think about some blog posts on this guy's survivalist site and I ended up getting the notion of someone pointing a gun at my head... in my head, and I couldn't get it out. I started thinking about what that would be like, then I started thinking about what I would feel if my yet unborn son had a gun pointed at his head, and I started to think, if it my was me on the other side of the trigger and pulling it meant eliminating that risk to my family, would I do it? Could I end another human life? I decided that I could, but if I had to give away ten million dollars to prevent myself from ever being in that kind of position, I would.
The weight of the hammer of a gun hung in mind my as infinite, as a halving of a halving of a halving. It was the same sensation I had when I was a child and I would have nightmares of an infinite tower that could not be climbed or two strangers on an infinite desert plane barely missing each other and by chance, dooming themselves to an eternity of solitude. I thought about Mel Gibson's Apocalypto and how these cultures bathed themselves in death rites as a way of anesthetizing the paradox, cutting off heads and throwing them down steps, while the priests know astronomy and math to pull the strings and the stern Catholics look charming in comparison. Geronimo went into an impassioned chant and I pictured starving mothers in Somalia with breasts deflated over a caved-in rib cage and eyes filled with "why?" I thought about what it would mean to be truly "safe" from those who might want me to share what I have, to pull the trigger consistently and with precision, how I would hate to be good at that, how I felt sorry for the soliders and the mercenaries who resigned themselves to professional butchery. I experienced the last minute of the life of Cho Seung-hui. I rolled the word "death" and "muerte" over my frontal lobe, tasting their textures, comparing the connotations of those sounds to the Japanese idea of death which is more of a rebirth, which seems only practical in a culture where at one point (two, now that I think about it) a hundred thousand people just evaporated in a flash of white light and a million anime plotlines would be born from the ashes. I weighed whether it is better to have the Christian mentality and guard your life and that of your family and produce as many new lives as possible and be like that, or whether its better to acknowledge that all that life-loving behavior is just what your brain wants you to do and we're all just floating around a big electron and it doesn't really matter whether someone shoots you and your kid in the head or not, which I imagined is the attitude of a lot of the people getting the poorest lot in this world.
I found myself at the brink of enlightenment, filled with love, bounding out of the socio-sexual moral circuit into the higher circuits, to the very higest, and being dragged back down to the reptilian paranoia of kill or be killed in the name of an unborn child. But then I realized, I can do better.
I realized that there's two ways this global deleveraging, this global transformation, can play out: either the gulf between rich and poor goes exponential and lots of people get shot in the head, or smart traders and people who have lots of money can act as conduits, taking it out of the markets where government bailouts have nowhere else to go and bringing it into the real world, investing it in sustainable human happiness. That's the easiest way that this process can go on peacefully. Imagine if a mere 10% of hedge fund managers decided to donate just half of their monstrous winnings to things like the proliferation of grass-based agriculture, renewable energy, water and transportation infrastructure, sponsoring children to become happy adults instead of desperate potential killers. We're already talking about a couple hundred billion dollars. That alone could make a tremendous difference, if applied intelligently. We can make this happen. We are the ones we've been waiting for.
I changed from being a person hanging on to fear and selfishness to being a person fully embodied with intent to make my life the best it can be and then leverage that to helping everyone I can. If I make 20k shorting Eurodollar Interest Rate Futures, I'll spend half of that sponsoring street kids in Buenos Aires. If I make 200k following silver or natural gas or palladium I'll spend half of that building infrastructure in rural Argentine towns. If I keep winning I'll keep giving more and more until the money itself is worthless.
I couldn't sleep. I just hung out, thinking about what I wanted to do, about the women in my life, about my son, about gentler things than Holy Death. The sun slowly arose. I got about forty minutes of sleep. Then the little girls and their mother returned to administer breakfast. We all sat around and feasted on fresh fruits, on bread with that chocolate-like substance that has no refined sugar in it, on mate and tea. We talked. It was human and divine. With much adieu I left and took the subway back home to write all the things that I had in me to write, to tell my dad that he was a great father, to get back in touch with old friends, to scream to the trading blogs I frequent that the secret is not caring about the numbers and then giving it all away. I saw a poor kid juggling on the subway and I slipped him that 20 peso bill with no fanfare.
Ayahuasca
I could go on an on about my own experience, but I'll save that for another post. The short of it is, I went into the experience with a lot of ideas and came out with precisely zero; and I've never felt cleaner. I am God's anointed one, an ascendant starchild, and you can be too. This isn't about me at all, this is about you, you are a genius and with the right spark you might just realize it. If you want to, here's how you can properly cash in on premature enlightenment for about 80 USD.
1) Detox for one week. All that stuff you put into your body every day to stay sane in an insane city, you gotta get that shit out. Just take it easy, deleverage, no caffeine, no cigarettes, no marijuana, no alcohol, no spicy foods, red meat, fried foods, and take it easy on the refined sugar. Get a little exercise, do thorough stretching, sweat a little. Abstain from sexual activity for the 24 hours before just to have fresh libido. You will need to at least sweep up the temple that is your body.
2) Attend an Ayahuasca ceremony, in Buenos Aires there is a service that produces these ceremonies called Urkumanta. Take of the Ayahuasca.
3) This one is very important, after you imbibe the bitter fluid you need to drink a bit of water and start breathing prana yama. Real slow in through the mouth using the tongue as a suction pump to effortlessly take in air, real slow out through the nose. Just keep at it, don't worry if you're doing it right, you're going to do great. Nice and slow, nice and deep, fill your lungs, focus on the breath. This dispels all nausea and magnifies the beneficial impact.
Do these three things and you will get everything you ever wanted out the treasure vault that is your soul, you will gain a profound appreciation of what you are, what you aren't, why you're here and why you must live for the day for now and forever; you will experience joy more profound than a multi-stacked orgasm with someone you love or the birth of your own child or being born or becoming famous or creating an immortal work of art, and most importantly you will get higher than Holy Fuck.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Its A Re Heavy Life Boludo
What do these three pictures have in common?
They all explain, in a very loose metaphorical kind of way, why we haven't updated in a month and a few monedas. We were living the palatable life here, we got caught up in some Argentina drama, and we got spat out as indigents.
Andy lived in more places in a few weeks than there were Presidents in that couple of weeks in 2001. I found myself carrying everything I owned in a relay for a few blocks to the nearest hostel, making eye contact with a leather faced guy driving a beaten 20-year-old car with a half-shattered windshield and no window pane.
"Es complicado," he said as I tried to stack a fan on top of a wheeled suitcase.
"La vida es," I replied.
At the end of the day you dust off your shoulders, look at your losses and scratches, and say "fuck it, this is Argentina."
They all explain, in a very loose metaphorical kind of way, why we haven't updated in a month and a few monedas. We were living the palatable life here, we got caught up in some Argentina drama, and we got spat out as indigents.
Andy lived in more places in a few weeks than there were Presidents in that couple of weeks in 2001. I found myself carrying everything I owned in a relay for a few blocks to the nearest hostel, making eye contact with a leather faced guy driving a beaten 20-year-old car with a half-shattered windshield and no window pane.
"Es complicado," he said as I tried to stack a fan on top of a wheeled suitcase.
"La vida es," I replied.
At the end of the day you dust off your shoulders, look at your losses and scratches, and say "fuck it, this is Argentina."
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Argenhot of the Week !
Oh how I want to be your Romeo, Julieta. That's right, this week's Argenhot of the Week is none other than 28-year-old Porteña sensation Julieta Prandi. She was first discovered at some low-end casting in Martinez in 1998, her senior year of high school (how hot is THAT?), and her career took off from there. She's been on a bunch of garbage TV shows down here making guest appearances, but her true successes came as a bikini and high fashion model. One lil' fun fact you probably didn't know; she has written over 150 poems, due for publication in her own compiled works poetry book later this year. She's also now the co-host of an Argentine TV show called "Zapping". Applaudi per Prandi !!!
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