Wow, this essay just killed me. It's very reminiscent of a short story I wrote almost 15 years about a summer I spent in Santa Fe. In it I got involved with a new age character named Snooky Jones (claimed real named Woofy Bubbles - TRUE) who had a shop in Madrid where he sold all his own clothing designs which were all inspired by or meant to resemble teeth. By the end of the story I have gotten involved with Snooky, allowed him to extract two of my teeth for his "fall line" and end up hanging with a psychic who is preparing me for a spiritual crossroads she has forecast for me based on a mystical monolopy board of sorts we prepared together in one of our sessions. She has also advised me not ot make any major changes in the next thirty days. Dare I say in the story I complain about the fact that NM is overrun that year with Malcom Forbes biker types -- CEOS w/ bad boy archetypes to put on display. I'll have to finally figure out how to scan and download stuff so I can post the silly thing to this blog. I've always liked that story. It's fairly sarcastic and full of self-parody. As for the pair below, it sure sounds like a narcotic or hallucinogen to me.
OH, this is from the LA Weekly, yet another paper that triggers an immediate privacy icon alert when I access it from the Iowa City Public Library. Don't be naive about this stuff, people. I know a guy who almost got sent to prison by the FBI because he bought some battery clips from Radio Shack for his science class in the mid-90's. It turns out that around that same time an animal liberation organization had set off some explosives in a downtown department store. My friend had given RS his phone number when purchasing the battery clips for his class so they were able to track him down. He was trying to help out the sales guy who got bonus points by getting customers to give out their phone numbers. One thing led to another and due to the fact he had very good contacts ( he learned the FBI had no leads, were under major pressure to arrest someone and having no other suspects were about to pin it all on him). He had access to very good attorneys (he had a choice between Scott Turow and a major FBI whistle blower from the state he was living in at the time) and because of this he managed to clear his name. The beautiful punch line to the story is that at the end of that school year, he received an award for best public teacher in his district --presented by The Tandy Corporation (aka Radio Shack)!! Anyway, your home computers are probably fine but be careful about the ones you use at work and in government funded facilities. Justice should be fair but it ain't. Laugh at 'em, anyway. That really makes them angry.
Karma Chameleons
A gleaming silver Porsche Cayenne sends up a smokescreen as it skids out from a dirt driveway in a hidden Los Angeles canyon and nearly sideswipes my beater ’93 Jeep Cherokee. A visibly enraged, bottle-blond, trophy-pussy, soccer mom smiles apologetically in a sort of pinched, angry-Buddha grin before kicking the pedal to the metal and careening down the twisting road.
Nowadays, these remote canyons are all about high-end, late-model SUVs and astronomically priced real estate. The occasional ghost of a VW Microbus might be spotted in flashback right around sunset, if you squint. But the Microbus is as high on the canyons’ endangered-species list as the hairy arm-pitted, guru-groupie chicks who take names like Shiva, dance Dunham and talk endlessly about their trips to the subcontinent.
I’m straight out of Silver Lake and far out of my element acting as a sort of Truman Capote “walker” — the type of fag who rich heterosexual friends trust to hang out with their foxy wives, because we won’t try to “hit it.” They cover all expenses, naturally. So here I am with my friend’s wife on a mission to see a bona fide healer. Having spent most of my time on the planet in Lower Manhattan, I am naturally aghast at the prospect of involving myself in just this kind of West Coast New Age nonsense.
As we pull up the narrow driveway, we nearly spill into a 10-by-10-foot hole next to a pile of dirt. The terrain is treacherous up here, and you really gotta keep your eyes open. We park just as Ubab, a slender aboriginal-featured, man/woman wearing a sort of East Indian outfit over a “Travis” T-shirt emerges from a shack to greet us.
I soon find myself in an ancient-looking, tent-like structure where I’m instructed to disrobe from the waist up, get horizontal on a padded, turquoise massage table (unnervingly covered with a faded Little Mermaid sheet) and put on headphones blowing Punjabi remix jams. For some reason, I mindlessly comply with these instructions. Then Ubab (not his real name) lunges deep into my tissue employing a very painful Rolfing-style massage technique.
When he mercifully finishes, I stumble back to the car and chain-smoke Camel non-filters in an attempt to normalize. I pretend not to hear my friend’s wife howling in pain nearby. She finally emerges an hour later looking like a crime-scene photo. We speed down the canyon in an irrepressible laugh riot mixed with fits of weeping and choking. Something happened back there, but I’m not sure exactly what.
Ubab’s super-secret California squat is a haven for a small fold devoted to a Westernized version of the ancient practice of entheogenic healing. Entheogenics are said to let one enter a “God-like space” without the ego, as opposed to hallucinogenics that simply distort what’s already in the mind. According to the practice, it is possible to time travel backward and forward seven lifetimes in this “God space” and thereby expose the core-clearing karma while discarding emotional armor and freeing trauma that is trapped in the flesh and bone. Once that trauma has been released into the vapor state, Ubab tells us, it can then be processed on a feeling level. Who knew?
A few days later, Ubab calls and tells us to return on Saturday at 8 a.m. In the driveway, I wedge my Jeep between a Hummer and a BMW and proceed back to the tent. Seven attractive people have gathered by the time Ubab floats in with a tray of teacups. I throw back the bland liquid without a second thought.
As the tea settles in my stomach, I put on the Sharper Image blindfold and headphones and lie in the dark. Just as the Enigma CD starts really annoying me, the portal between consciousness and unconsciousness is blasted open with the force of a small hurricane. I instantly lose sense of up, down, if I have a body . . . or, if, in fact, a body is even a thing I ever had.
My next memory comes hours later when I discover myself as a fetus in the birth canal, petrified in a claustrophobic panic, trapped in a black cave between contractions before being belched out in a convulsive fit. Then I’m sliding on my belly across a jungle floor as something I can’t quite figure out ’til it hits me all at once: I’m a snake! After a spell as a cartoonish, Mayan sex slave (by far the best part of the day), I regress further to some pre-human or animal condition before completely transcending form altogether. Archetypal imagery is still coming at light speed when the music stops. I remove the blindfold and everyone is smiling except my friend’s wife, whose hair looks like she stuck her finger in a light socket.
The drive back down the canyon is a slow roll, and we’re halfway to Hollywood before I’m completely back in my body. My friend’s wife and I try to piece the day together, pausing intermittently while she pukes out the window. I’m not sure exactly what has changed, but I sense in a general way that nothing is really going to be the same again. The therapy was traumatic, to say the least.
Before I had left, Ubab instructed me not to make any major decisions for the next 30 days. I imagine that means things like getting married, filing for bankruptcy or euthanizing my aging Dalmatian. I assume, also, it means waiting to decide if I will return to that treacherous canyon and this strange healing.
—Sam Slovick
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