The dough-eyed love birds in Aladdin gear drift through alleyways under the looming Andes mountains and ripping winds. They sound like patchouli wind chimes, walking hand and hand, Arabian scarves over their mouth. Today isn’t a Tuesday- it’s day three of a Kambo cleanse, in the dry season, during a retrograde. Tomorrow will be a nice Temezcal to wash it down.
I walked by their tents by the river a number of times, the most bizarre display of new colonialism I’ve ever witnessed. French and Greek and German wanderers congregated on this “free” patch of land off a road to set up life.
Up a mountain road, amongst scrub brush and piney trees a small river runs under a bridge. The Wanderers took planes across the world. They packed buses, shuffled their hairy feet, and did piggyback rides giggling to arrive at this stream. They found the perfect grassy patch, stripped and hung their clothes up. Sometimes you’ll catch a breast glint in the sun, hear them howl at the moon on clear nights.
During the day, Peruvian construction workers on the road watch the Wanderers stumble out of the woods to slink down to the town for a day of spiritual loitering. The workers are are plowing and graveling that turn to ensure smooth passage for the local cholas going up and down with their goods. The workers barely look up as the Wanders move past.
They’re perfectly tanned, rustic body-odored, bowing as they squeeze into the town bus. Little Peruvian babies stare up at them from their mothers’ laps. The bare skin, the trinkets, their disarming smiles are completely new sights.
I always wondered whether the Pisac Wanderers were as happy as their ostentatious greetings to one another. Sometimes the most elaborate weddings are because the marriage was never meant to work out, performance art. Kissing, soul gazing, hugs last so long they seem like soldiers returning from war.
However, I couldn’t fault the singing kirtans where they all congregated once a week. They were such joyous events. Bundled together on pillows, singing in unison, making sure to always touch. Watching them I saw youth and hope and unfiltered joy that’s hard to find in America sometimes, so I was probably jealous.
I tried to extract meaning and depth, to see them as young hedonistic Theroux’s living the way we were meant to. They have tan and the crust of earth in every orifice of their body, except their perfect teeth. There had to be deeper earthly wisdom to accompany that. But so many conversations I found myself lost in platitudes, spiritual puff.
They would be delivering a monologue of the previous night’s ritual chemical unwinding, the drama and beauty and unimaginable smells. I’m nodding but lose track. I continue to eat my apple, watching a dog look for somewhere shit in the alley. Mhm. Let’s hug, transfer good energy and carry on.
What was left after the exploring the daily chemical rabbit holes and astrological visions?
I was the sober, slightly older guy enchanted by their bounce and vigor, but I usally felt a bit lost and alone at the end of the day. My bananas would end up missing, somebody didn’t flush. I imagine they may have felt the same disillusionment were it not for the cuddle puddles and living in tents together.
Sometimes they got a little too deep.
One night an older couple came over for a rapé ceremony (pronounced “rah-peh”). During this, my friend would blow a very strong tobacco powder through a horn directly into their sinuses. It induces a temporary but powerful head rush, sometimes vomiting, sometimes deities.
The couple arrived as my friend was setting up the space. They were grey, late 50s, smile lines all over, with Quebecois accents. They had deerskin or other woodland creature clothes, feathers in the hair. These were lifelong wanderers of the cosmos not recent converts. They had the patient, knowing grin that you hope to have at some point in your aged wisdom, without letting it become a scowl.
They sat upon their pillows. The candles were lit and intentions were whispered. My friend began by reading a short offering. Then the woman positioned herself upright, signaled she was ready. The horn went directly in her nose, and a loud “whoosh” sent the powder flying into her brain.
What ensued would have been considered a psychotic break depending on where and when it took place. She began shaking, in a wave from stomach up to her head. Fits that seemed to go up and down as the powder settled in her cavities.
Then began the voices. Glossalalia as they call in Southern Baptist traditions. The woman sat inches from my friend chanting a completely unintelligible language, but with all the inflections and tone of a deep confessional. 30 seconds of rabid speech, followed by a pause, then an inflection. Then on she went. We sat in silence.
I was just told there was a community dinner tonight. I should have known better. I was at the dinner table with 2 of the other girls, admittedly giggling like them. They looked to me for reassurance but I was dumbstruck.
For minutes she sat carrying on this conversation with my friend. Her eyes were closed and my friend held her hand and just kept nodding her head, not daring to turn back to look at the stunned group behind her. I couldn’t gauge whether she was freaking out, or found herself some sort of prophet to get this reaction. Head to head, hands intertwined they sat cross legged locked in this communication.
In the midst of this, 3 faces appeared at the window. Two guys and a girl of the tribe had just finished a day long peyote journey walking through the mountains. Inti, the bearded leader, came in and sprung to action. He sat next to my friend and rubbed the older lady’s back reassuredly. The other two came and sat with us, similarly amused and terrified.
Eventually it subsided, the lady and her husband spoke for a moment in hushed voices, a quick hug and that was that.
From ages 21 to 60 in this room together, witnessing an utterly bizarre spiritual /demonic moment together.
Being clear-headed is an alienating experience. But there’s being sober at a bar with drunks talking about football. Then there’s sitting at a kitchen table in the mountains of Peru with mostly strangers from all over the world, watching an elderly woman speaking in tongues. Here they elevated the game.
The Wanderers arrived fresh faced. They get older and snort spices that make them speak in tongues. They fight against the Urubamba winds and travelers gut until the money or motivation runs out, then they’re kicked up with the dust and carried away. Like clockwork the next group will creep out by the riverside. The Peruvian road workers will see them and have a puzzled look, but it passes in a second and they continue moving the gravel. They don’t give it another thought, perhaps they’re on to something.
As I write this, across the busy main street is a man with his pants around his thighs, sitting on the sidewalk sideways with his balls draped over the curb. Cars are zooming by in both directions. People to his right can’t see his sack, but my angle from the coffee shop across the street somehow offered this blessed view. Next door to him at the laundromat, theres a little kid running around outside next to her dad. Ballsack man waves, the dad waves back.
Maybe it’s better not know. Maybe I just take awareness too seriously. So I travel to a random mountain town In Peru, watch my elders snort spice, and my brain tries to put a nice bow on an otherwise inexplicable family drug dinner night. Awareness costs more in the end.
The Peruvian Road workers don’t try to figure out why the Wanderers are there. The dad is too tired to walk by the homeless man and see his balls taking a siesta against the curb. I’m sitting somewhere in the middle with the same choice. Maybe it’s better not to ask.
Wanderthoughts 