Task 6 - "Peyote" by Yan Kiev

The sensation is … sublime, as if the big fatherly hand of God is caressing your brain, his long fine fingers strumming the strings of your soul, drumming the tam-tams of your heart… And then he’s singing, singing of the broad beautiful cosmos, of Space with billions of brilliant stars and purple nebulas and bright pulsars pulsating rhythmically pulsating rotatingly in your head exploding expelling gigantic galactic domes of dust and gas giving birth to universes growing expanding eternally.

I float outside myself and look at my own face, looking back at me, angelic blue eyes smiling. I smile back at it and extend my arm to touch it, at the same time feeling the soft touch on my cheek. The world moves in concentric circles pulsating pulsating pulsating the sweat glistening on my forehead and little beads streaming down my chin dripping drip drip drip to the ground.

After a time I reluctantly get back to my body in the sweat lodge, the air almost unbreathable with the heat of the steam from the stones. Dozens of pleasant human bodies around me, warm little centers of pulse and desire, rhythmically swaying with the beat of the tam-tams, their faces shining like suns in the darkness.

By one of the stone heaps I see a girl, her long hair glittering and her feet bare, like an Indian princess. I go over to her and yell HI over the sound of the drums. Her gaze is steady ahead, cosmically uncomprehending, so I lean over and yell again in her ear:

“The feeling is like God’s hand is caressing your brain”

Her red lips part slightly but I can’t make out any sound so I yell again:
“The hand of God,” I point upwards, “is caressing your brain,” and I stroke her hair, warm and soft and smooth like a cat’s coat. Her face shines incessantly, eyes still looking steady ahead, so I leave her and find my way out through bodies lying and sitting meditating and empowered for the first time, for the first time truly silent, truly humbled by the majesty of the gods and their Universe.

Outside alone, I slide my hand on the canvas of the lodge as I walk around it, every sensation magnified, the sound of the tam-tams still audible pulsating through my chest pulsating through my stomach pulsating through my groin, the sweat cooling off my body in the night.

I lay down on the ground, still warm from the day’s sun and look up, past the walls of the canyon which I know are sandy red in the day but only colourless shadows now, into the giant sky upwards, where brilliant stars sparkle, they’re suns and planets and galaxies, their pulsating rays brought here to me by divine volition and I brought here at divine behest.

You can’t see this light in the city, not so bright and incandescent, not so pure. The only light in the city is neon and dull, nobody shining from within luminously, everybody conditioned into bluntness and mediocrity, into greed and gluttony, consumers and corporations the lot of them, not one ray of starlight or sprout of grass. Only here do you find harmony, here under the vastness of space, here under the quantum divinity, here under the cosmic rays.

“Mister Ray,” somebody’s yelling. “Mister Ray, they can’t breathe!”

It’s that lady, the nurse. I get up from the ground and slowly round the sweat lodge again towards the entrance and there she is, dragging somebody out of the entrance, there are bodies everywhere lying on the ground and the nurse is sweating, running between them, squatting checking their pulses but there’s none, not even the drums are pulsating anymore.

“Mister Ray,” she says to me, “help me please, they’re not breathing.”

I look at her and shrug, ten twelve eighteen bodies are lying, and somebody’s brought their car shining its lights on to the scene, the lights so bright they’re concealing the stars. In the distance I can hear the wail of an ambulance or police car, they’ll probably want to talk to me too soon. Their souls chose not to come back, I want to tell the nurse but she’s gone by the time I can bring that up to my lips so I sit on the ground and look for the Indian princess.

She’s one of the bodies on the ground, her bare feet dug deep into the dust where she’s been dragged out, her hands clutching her throat. But when I walk up to her, I can see her eyes are joyous, her soul saw the glory of the Universe and didn’t want to come back in the corporal, she now understands more than anyone out there in the concrete neon world will ever know.

I lean down and caress her hair, warm still and soft and silky, then I grab her and lift her up. We walk like that, me carrying her body, through the lot of scared brown-motion running people and around the lodge, to where there’s no longer any artificial light, only the brilliant stars and the looming shadows of the canyon walls.

I lay her down on the ground and unclutch her hands from around her throat and lay them down gently, each palm pointing down. I put my ear to her chest but there’s no pulse there. I lay my body next to hers and take her hand in my hand and together we look up, where the stars are.