Achuar Victory! A Dream Come True Is An Awakening

"We have fought long and hard against Talisman. Now we've achieved this, but it doesn't end here. We have to remain awake." Achuar (FENAP) President Peas Peas Ayui

See the Amazon Watch report 

Proof: international networks of civil society and allied global citizenry make unprecedented change in the policies of big business and government. 

See my past posts on the Achuar struggle (Here & Here & Here), and we must remain aligned!

__________

An acquaintance, a young African-Canadian woman, confident and jovial, meets with me on literary terms, to edit a short story of mine. The story is in its very beginning stages of development, only a few phrases and scattered ideas. She is diligent, and always supportive. As I begin to tell her the story, I penetrate the image-letters and enter into the mystery of its narrative continuity, to explore experientially.

The concrete walls, unfinished, breathe with shadow. A well-known author sits in a dim corner, incommunicative. He is deep in listening, with headphones on to gather the soundscape of the strange, even horrifying darkness surrounding. Then, I notice his subject, a grumbling bunch of ruffians thirsting in the mud of Mexican pain. They secrete primal sounds from unlit depths below, before trailing off into the endless night. In that moment, the famed author saunters off with recording equipment in hand, leaving me to the bare depths, an empty memory.

I bleed on through the folds, with pain-stricken mind, searching through memory, confronted with a hollow mixture of painted nostalgias. A university campus, brimming with beer gush fads and costumed throwbacks to the glorious sexual revolution of their parents, now filling their pockets with the fool’s gold of American savagery. As I wander through the woods, the clouds gather above, warning of a rainstorm.

On the forest path, exiting from the campus, a friend and I are spotted by a group of peaceful youth, with meditative eyes and friendly sight. One remarks on my shirt, a gift from Israel. Soon, I find he is from Israel. He asks me, “Why is it that Americans never emerge from the forest?” I understand his referring to the colonial history. I empathize with his heart, worn from the break of political waves crashing in mid-sea. The Mediterranean harbors of our once shared ancestral home are now given speed to the sacrificial meaning of e-state.

We clamber on, my friend, an Aboriginal man, and I, as he critically rethinks the statement by the Israeli, “Haifa is a place not unlike Halifax? A seaport, where you fly from America without heed to the other?” We walk on into the city, through art galleries, attendants offer free espressos and truffles, through the museums of old travesty, and in an off-white room, sightless without a spot of focal interest, we separate.

__________

your eyes crack open
with subtle wanting
in the cold

drop

mourning

...

with the unforgiving pull,
a soft whirr from the sky's clear vacuum
exhaling
the rusty kisses of lips gone stale
with a life
lived too long

- excerpt from "Morning Dew"

No Country Mother West, Birth of Father Sun East

"...it was like we was both back in the older times, and I was a horseback going through the mountains in the night, going through this pass in the mountains, it was cold and there was snow on the ground, he rode past me and kept on going, never said nothing going by just rode on past, he had his blanket wrapped around him with his head down, when he rode past I seen he was carrying fire in a horn the way people used to do, and I could see the horn from the light inside of it about the color of the moon. In the dream I knew that he was going on ahead and he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark, in all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he’d be there..." from No Country for Old Men by The Coen Brothers

_______

The road from the American Southwest opens in a lightning flash northward. A literal streak of beaming spectral intensity whitens the sand-whipped pavement unto the Canadian border beyond. This is my road, from Mother’s home of her dreams, to the creative migrant’s expatriate sway. A great triangle figures over the backdrop of North American flight. A sweet host of ethereal musing enlightens our unforeseen paths with adamantine wisdom. More southerly, the Peruvian fleet screams in my head with a need to lie beneath a doctor’s analyses, feet pointed horizontally, outstretched and fixed on the meridian point of loosened stress. Though, I am always late.

Waking up, exhausted and bedraggled, I find a representative from Amazon Watch at a doctor’s office, telling me I’ll be seen on the morrow. He’s an astute Englishman, proud and busy. I head back to Mom’s. A car pulls up in our driveway as we serve dinner. A human rights organization representative accompanies my old friend from Sudan.

My heart flies to cerulean heights under the darkening late feast of sky. His African build glows through a rejuvenated skin. His head, bald as usual, is unblemished and perfectly globular, fitting for such an astounding brilliant balanced mind. He greets us and I immediately have my mother fix him a decadent plate of meat. After dinner, he and his organizational representatives stay for conversation. My parents have retired upstairs.

“You have been a father and a friend,” my eyes tear with conviction at understanding our separate paths, crossed by pure benediction in our shape-shifting inglorious world. “Thank you for visiting me in person.” I am ever relieved to see him healthy, glowing and taking on his dream of working for his people, forced migrants of Egypt, in the comfort of a socially and technologically developed country as we enjoy in the West. His road is unlighted. With pronounced intent, their vehicle sets off into the unforgiving American night.

_______

West
To dream of going west represents fulfillment, opportunities, and growth. Alternatively, west symbolizes death, old age or an ending of something. (Source)

_______

western civility estranged
captivity in genital awareness
a rough and tumble, hide
and seek gathering
pushing into skin
draped exotic
law, broken by
caress and
gentle magic,
winning over
the ravaged tragedy
of attraction:
a sounding
for the war
on sex

- excerpt from "monosexuality"

  

The Achuar Remind Us Not All Dreams Are Visions

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak directly with a Oscar Gutierrez and Jiyukama Irar Milk (the actual narrator of the video linked, not the name incorrectly attributed in the film) about dream interpretation in the Amazon. They told me that all the indigenous people of the Amazon interpret dreams regularly, however, there are two different kinds of dream. The first is the common dream, the second is the vision. Dream are important as they may carry a vision. The dream vision is prophetic and speaks of what will occur. Such a dream is a message from without, while the common dream is simply an internal component of one's personality. 

We also spoke on many other subjects including the use of Ayahuasca, which is a fundamental tradition in Achuar territory. In the old days, the use of Ayahuasca was preceded by three months of fasting (restricted diet), no sexual relations or any negative thoughts, and followed by the same. Nowadays, it is often a simple drink. This is another facet of disrespect for the Achuar and Amazonian culture. We are quickly drinking the sacred fluid of our Mother without thought to vision. 

Oscar, who quickly spoke to me as a good friend, told me that in life we have different food, we have the food we take as an infant, as an adolescent as an adult and as an elder. Just as in life, our spiritual food changes throughout life. I think this is mirrored in society. We need to move on from the food of fossil fuels to a new source of sustenance. 

Hear the Achuar speaking to Calgary in a full presentation VISIT MEDIA CO-OP

__________

With my stepsister and cousins, we traverse a riverine flood. The rich jungle environment encases us in a dense canopy. The sky is revealed through a slim corridor directly above. The river craft glides easily through a welcoming glade. As the river opens up, a mass of white fog blows with violent extremes into our unprotected bow. We careen at the edge of the river, where spindly trees and submerged bushes angle us awkwardly over the final brink of this newfound overflowing mass of storm-drowned winds. The impenetrable beyond, throws us sideways, with escalating velocity as we hold on to a mass of ant-festered branches. Others wildly match our weight on the other side in a chaos of organized adrenaline, concentrated at the core of our one human-bound vessel against the raw throat of nature, howling with supernatural emotion. The sight of the open river, where three massive tributaries open into the glory of the Amazon is a wicked sight to behold on this late morning of disastrous weather, an impasse into the lone being of nature, an uninvited resting place for her untamable heart, calling for the incendiary flood of the world to cry with her. We finally reach out beyond the swamplands. My sister exits from the boat first, muddy and soaked, yet unscathed. We find rest in the scintillating folds of a day passed under the thumb of her gorgeous rage. 

__________

Step-sister

"To dream of a step-sister, denotes you will have unavoidable care and annoyance upon you."

__________

This night, this life,
I have too many things.

In this society, that brings the free to seek
again
the wizardry of greed and foul upbringings of nameless increase.

Our lands, that strove for a scintillating hate
against the enemies of needless suffering.

Believing the want and designed haunts
of spells
of advertised gore.

Shaven religion
perfectly watching

Into the embittered ear
the strange gods of money.

Bastards from wars of holy judgment,
burning at the feet of a character flaw,
bleeding profusely from a nail

Shot, bridges hollow in the tooth of a filthy savior
trapped with anger and speed.

The rats of knives speak in the trunks of battered forests
flee into the naked feeding,
avenues of the poor
treating the flies to an ambush of praise
in the flat, rusted movie of dead order

Morbidity, for a war that drew earth into a mild farce
for the wicked and insane

- excerpt from "Of Sex and Intellect"

Peruvian Hallucinations before the Muted North African Migrant’s Story

People and Landscape of Michoacan by Alfredo Zalce

Early Dream

I walk by a dim street in Latin America, seems very much like a bus stop sidewalk eatery in Mexico or a humble restaurant in the outskirts of a Peruvian city. Immediately outside the restaurant, a man is holding a relatively sophisticated looking, tall type jar. The jar reads something about Ayahuasca. I pass by the first time, however the second time, I drop a few coins in and receive a small bit of the Ayahuasca mix that this man is selling. I sit down in the restaurant, I feel as if I am with loved ones, good friends or my wife. We sit and I start to feel a bit woozy. Suddenly, I see a classical/jazz ensemble performing their music in a relatively nice hall setting immediately before me. I am making a mental commentary on the music. The effects seem to have subsided, as expected, I tell myself I am proved correctly that the Ayahuasca that was sold had no real effect.

Late Dream

I am at a seaside café on the Mediterranean. In some ways it reminds me of a small restaurant in Malibu, California that I went to with my brother. I sit down with an unidentified young woman and a man who resembles my old friend and colleague in Egypt, a Sudanese man. He also resembles an interviewee in Sudan who was asked about his return experiences to Sudan as a returning migrant from Egypt. The man begins speaking with me in Arabic about his father, his homeland, and a story regarding his village. The story is very interesting and has many features of local history and identity related to the man and his originating village. He is telling a story about fishing. I ask him to confirm with me that he is from Algeria, he nods. Just as I begin to translate the story for the other individual present, she begins talking over both of us to proclaim her ideas about racial barriers. The man seems disinterested, and I am somewhat bereft, though only wish to convey the man’s story and practice my translation efforts in relaying a beautiful, genuine story of home in the midst of migration and conflict.

Monday Oct, 3 2011