Everything Happening is Everything that Happened





PROSE
06-07-02023

I’ve this memory that runs through me sometimes. I never see it coming.

I’d expect it would run after, like, a land acknowledgment. A poor taste one . . .

“𝒯𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝒹𝒶𝓎 𝓇𝒶𝓋𝑒 𝒾𝓈 𝑜𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓊𝓃𝒸𝑒𝒹𝑒𝒹 𝓁𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝑜𝒻 𝓉𝒽𝑒 _______ 𝒫𝑒𝑜𝓅𝓁𝑒. 𝒩𝑜𝓌 𝓌𝒽𝑜'𝓈 𝓇𝑒𝒶𝒹𝓎 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝓈𝑜𝓂𝑒 𝐹𝓇𝑒𝓃𝒸𝒽 𝐻𝑜𝓊𝓈𝑒!!!”

I’d expect it would run when I see that barrel cactus in my neighbors yard. I pass it everyday . . . its springtime and homeboy is rocking a flower crown.



The memory is of a Peyote Ceremony I once sat in on. I was invited by my then lover, Seattle’s premier herbal dominatrix. For $700 an hour they’d whip clients with nettles and cram celery into their chosen orifice; commanding them to stop eating sugar and start drinking copious amounts of Vedic tea. Their memories are probably more enthralling than mine, but they are theirs, and this one is mine.

They scored an invite from an Ohlone friend. The guest-of-guest was the closest I expeced I’d get to any Native American ritual. I pounced.



It was set for a new moon evening. We headed into the mountains east of Tacoma, dirt roading up to some French lady’s agroforestry farm. She wasn’t interested in taking Peyote, she said, but she figured the ritual would imbue her land with . . .

Gටටᗪ Kᗩᖇᗰᗩ

. . . that naïve new-ager logic that pours Buddhism over everything like maple syrup (shit I’m guilty too).

This is all part of that memory that ░▒▓█ FLOODS █▓▒░ me over unexpected. This time was at the Portland Airport as I pass by an ad for Leavenworth, Washington—some faux Bavarian mock-town locked in an infinite Oktoberfest ouroboros . . .

𝕳𝖔𝖑𝖞 𝕾𝖈𝖍𝖓𝖎𝖙𝖟𝖊𝖑 ! ! !

. . . shouts a man in a lederhosen, dual-wielding pretzel & stein.

𝕳𝖔𝖑𝖞 𝕾𝖈𝖍𝖓𝖎𝖙𝖟𝖊𝖑 ! ! !

. . . and the Peyote is all up in me. I feel warm and eternal—sun on ice—

ĐⱤł₱

ĐⱤł₱

ĐⱤł₱

The ceremony began at dusk and ended at dawn. The three dozen participants loop-packed that tepee were a motley. Many natives of course, but near as many white addicts in recovery. Then a few bald-n-ponytail dudes (you know the type), French travelers working the farm, and me, curious . . . looking side-to-side . . . afraid of being outed as a ᴛʀᴇꜱᴘᴀꜱꜱᴇʀ.

The fire was lit, the tea was drunk, the ceremony burned into the night through its rites. A select few souls had sacred roles to play. I recall three roles clearly. There was Roadman (an officiator patriarch of sorts), the Fireman (the soul tasked with keeping a fire roaring all night, sculpting coals into Moon, then Hawk, then Sunrise), and, the . . . uh . . . Vomitman? I’m not sure of his formal title. His duty was to clean up our Peyote puke, brushing it into a little plastic dustpan and patching the area with fresh dirt from outside. He was to be my muse.

Since the first bitter taste of Peyote, I’d been growing despondent. I was trapped in voyeurism, like I was window shopping at sacred connections that would never belong to me. As the night went on, I felt like we, all of us, were just too late to the sacred party. A circle of starving souls unable to eat the modernity buffet, left scavenging other realms for long-gone magic. It began believe this would be my forevermore—a life in darkness, feeling for something authentic, REAL, True to run my hand over but touching only cold corpses. Soon I’d join them, I surmised . . . if I hadn’t already.

It’s a feeling I’d had before but never so bottomless, so all-encompassing.

In hindsight, I think Peyote was lulling me into an old & familiar depression, coaxing me to giveaway my wounds. Because the whole time I’d been swirling into some a kind of darkness. It was as if I’d been going imperceptibly indigo in a dye bath, each moment of the human experience seeping into me till I was the same near-black of this moon-free midnight. Then, slow, but all at once . . .

░▒▓█ FLOODS █▓▒░

. . . undifferentiated B░L▒A▓C█K.



There was this stick by the tepee entrance. To leave one had to open/close the ritual container by walking the circle round the fire counter-clockwise—always & only counter clockwise—turn the stick then turn the stick back. It was a lot to remember while surfing waves of Peyote.

Vomitman had just finished up his most recent sweep and was proceeding to the exit, but he forgot to turn the stick—𝕾𝖆𝖈𝖗𝖎𝖑𝖊𝖌𝖊!

Roadman shouts in reprimand . . .

‘Hey! Turn that stick!’

. . . and Vomitman, a dustbin full of puke in hand, harrumphs audibly, steps back over the stick, turns it, steps, and turns it again. All with a sassy & dramatic daintiness. I was worried, I though this disrespect would lead to . . . but Roadman & Fireman were laughing.

░▒▓█ FLOODS █▓▒░

I melt—I’m a puddle now, part of a plane of consistency, everything touching everything . . . all the way up, down . . .

♫ ♫ ♫ †µrñ årðµñÐ. þlêå§ê Ððñ'† lê† mê hï† †hê grðµñÐ. †ðñïgh† Ì †hïñk Ì'll wålk ålðñê. Ì'll £ïñÐ m¥ §ðµl å§ Ì gð hðmê ♫ ♫ ♫

This is REAL . . . as every single Peyote ceremony. It was to be taken seriously, it was imperfect, it’s always imperfect . . . always silly, a bit stilted. I sat there whiling out & out & out, enthralled in the back & back & back milieu of all the people who’d ever become Peyote, laughing with Roadman at the Serious Business of Vomitman. Somewhere a dog was howling. I had a basset hound when I was child, I would howl and she would howl with me. We howled from a REAL place together.

My lips form a little O and whisper breathy . . .

ᗩᗯOOOooo

. . . not pretending to dog. The howl comes from the place of howls dogs share with everything. Every emotion I taste; drunk from wells all have shared—Peyote howls.

Chant, rattle, & drum—someone is crying. Peyote, crying.



Some time later, when I found some ground, I went outside to loose goose and drain weasel. The stars were the same stars that have star’d above a comprehensive collection of human goings-ons. Vomitmen came out then, with a fresh mess. I watched him, hopping from one foot to the other, whistling every tune, dancing every dance—looking like Jesus, ready to wash some feet.

𝕳𝖔𝖑𝖞 𝕾𝖈𝖍𝖓𝖎𝖙𝖟𝖊𝖑 ! ! !

All that takes a second to feel, and all this time to tell. Do you have ░▒▓█ FLOODS █▓▒░ like that? Don’t they make you question time?

Leavenworth is looking like day drunk Disneyland. A REAL good time, in a kitschy way I bet. I walk on, past temporary walls hiding airport construction. They’re vinyl wrapped with 𝘾𝙊𝙈𝙄𝙉𝙂 𝙎𝙊𝙊𝙉! digital mock-ups of a Whiskey Bar. The faces that smile at me are eerily fake. They remind me of the persistent threat to my live-on willpower, that everything is fake—art, love, passion, connection—so many flakes of glitter tossed into my void.



But that feeling too is REAL, among the realest I think. A doubt shared with all who have ever held a ear to the Earth. A howl comes from somewhere, I can only catch it out the corner of my eye.

“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

― Albert Camus