15. Mother Ayahuasca
introduces
6.5.23
I begin this journal—bought by Mum nearly a year before from the Kimberley Bookshop—on a powerful new moon in Scorpio.
In ode to life on Earth, it’s about a journey of ego. A journey breaking through limitations of a mind programmed to seek validation from others rather than from her own heart. A journey of the total demolition of an outdated way of thinking. For people talk about the end of humanity, but we humans hold too much power, too much potential, for such frivolous death.
No. Instead, let’s talk about the death of ego. Because in this manmade world, I see ego everywhere. It’s in myself. In my real-life interactions and in my hypothetical interactions. It’s in the way I react, spit opinions, and dwell. It’s in the way I sway with Mother Nature, wondering what this is all about, only to make sure people know that I’m not sitting around wasting time.
According to my Gene Keys, the highest potential of my heart is exquisiteness. So this, too, is my journey into exquisiteness. Exquisiteness without ego. For I am a manifester, I am a visionary, I am stillness, I am wisdom, I am writer. And I am confronted by modern society.
Only I don’t want to teach.
I’m not here to preach.
I must show.
15th July 2023
After two months is this still a diary of ego?
16th
THIS DIARY OF EGO IS THE ACCEPTANCE OF SELF WITHOUT FEARING TO BE BRILLIANT, EVEN IF IT SETS YOU APART FROM OTHERS.
It is a diary of a thirty-five year old woman whose dreams are as big as the universe. The age of the feminine. A world that grounds us. Liberation for our true selves so we all can shine.
17th July, New Moon
With this new moon, feeding myself positive thoughts makes my dark-er voice retaliate. Like I’m too sensitive, too sentimental.
No, mind. No.
I am powerful, and I am strong. I am centring myself from the deepest part of my soul, and I am asking for support in this body of Sarah.
Fear remains.
Like that he’ll be like all the other guys who soon retreat from me. But I resent that I feel like this! It feels so cruel to miss out on love in this life! Because underneath the mental complications, I love my soul, and my soul knows there’s someone as strange as me.
To invite love in, first I must love myself.
What does “life partner” mean to me?
Not losing yourself in the other, but supporting and complementing the other to be the truest and best versions of themselves
Giving the other space to be pure in their personal callings
Open communication through time—when growing bored or resentful, or experiencing other connections, be honest and present, honouring our separate dreams and purposes
Truth
Trust
No pressure that it has to be forever
They are home, support, encouragement, strength
We make up our own rules, which aren’t fixed but shifting with mutual agreement.
26th July
These days have brought a deep calm, maybe the deepest calm I’ve felt. There’s also been a return to familiar, egotistical pathways. Nonetheless, I trust. I evolve. For past Sarah would have written a multi-page monologue about the heartbreak around a Facebook post rather than reply. But. Not now. Because I have so much to offer beyond a Facebook post.
30th July.
Even in moments when people explain the world to me, like Erandi’s certainty that the problem is people are lazy, the calm continues. I listen. In the night a voice whispers to keep writing a book.
2nd August.
At a café, my iPad charges. Lovers sit nearby. They look into each other’s eyes and hold hands. I’m happy for them. I need passion. I need to listen to my heart.
4th August.
My aching body reminds me of when the reiki man gave me a massage in Delhi. I shake it off, think about my ayahuasca intention to get to the core of my purpose on Earth—Where am I from? Why am I here? Who am I? What is my potential? Meaning what is the potential for all.
12th August.
‘Plant seeds of change,’ Michael Pollen tells me on Masterclass. I pause the video. He’s talking about the Western diet. He’s mentioned cardiovascular diseases. Strokes. Dad. Connections. Connections because my gene keys mentions my need for regular cardiovascular exercise to avoid accruing tension.
Right now, my body’s accrued tension. It needs attention! To let go of some deep controlling characteristic in my subconscious. A subconscious clouded by youth and family. The family of my youth who loved me so much they wanted me to be someone else. Because being Sarah meant being different. And when you’re different, you give people more reason to talk about you. Hence, I lessened myself to fit a mould. Counterbalancing confusion by belittling and berating my failures and judgments.
The reality is I deserve infinite love, light and joy in this life.
You must have AN UNDERSTANDING OF WHO YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU NEED TO SAY TO THE WORLD.
“Living and acting out of the fire that’s in your heart will draw others to you easily and magnetically. As a role model, you can show them how to embrace their unique selves and inspire them to create their own lives in any way they desire”
“Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a community of those you love and who love you.”
13th August (written as 13th July)
It’s an intense time of my life. The sore jaw started on the bus, leading to a depressing single room with what I thought was COVID, then it was a weak body in the mountains, now it’s an early period, which could be brought on from stress. It’s very lonely here. The story is almost forgotten. I am so excited for my home. Do I need to fall before I can truly rise? Maybe. For I need an innate understanding of who I am and what I need to say to the world.
15th August 2023
After nearly dying up the mountain, I’m back in Medellin financially at a loss but proud to have had listened to my body.
After six days with only enough energy to watch or stare, today brings a spark. I spend it contemplating the embodiment of self from the deepest place possible. Which is integral to me as a writer.
Me, a writer?
You know, I used to think there are enough writers in the world. That I’m no one special. But what’s special is that I am me. And maybe sharing the way I see the world is what makes my writing so special.
Exploring my stars, I understand that for outward success—relationships, career and community—I must move through the limitations of my insecurities around my intense thoughts and stark differences, and move through the isolation and rage experienced when no one can see what I see, to then embody my truth.
In the shower, I register the speed in which I move through life.
This new moon heralds a release of how I should exist in the world. It is time for true inner confidence and authentic self-belief. It is time to reinvent myself.
16th August, New Moon
Today, my intention for ayahuasca is to live from the heart and embody my true purpose. Which isn’t about creating a successful business, but about being in service to the collective, accepting myself as a writer.
A writer.
Am I a writer?
Gee, you’d think I’ve already worked through this one. But no. I still feel like a fraud.
Forming intentions:
A deep belief I have something to say worth hearing
No longer living in hypothetical scenarios of how people might perceive me
No longer reacting to my differences
Mindful in every movement
Trusting in time
A radical, radiant kind of self-love, consciously accepting and appreciating myself.
26th August 2023
Pacullpa. Pucallpa. I’m here. Like I’m watching myself here. My body hungry for so much. Good food, great company, touch, intimacy, laughter, more good food, English conversations. Is the preparation the hard part? Because these weeks have been long, and with another month of near silence it’s hard to envision joy. I have visions, though. I have visions of being an author, a mother, a wife (without the ring and certificate), a photographer, a jeweller, a host of a beautiful space amongst trees that feeds creativity.
27th August 2023
Peru. The Amazon. Pahoyan. Kene Nete. Gary (Haiti/New York), Hendrick (Sweden), Antony (Brazil/England), and Margarita (Ukraine/Italy) sit on the verandah looking to the maloca and burnt fauna. Soft rain cools the day, while I sit cosy in my tumble, it taking serious inspiration for me to write here. Even standing from the bed, going into the bathroom and coming back out to retrieve the toilet paper on the small table makes me stop to breathe, my world spinning reminders to move from my head into my body. To free other’s energies to embody my true purpose.
Wait, let’s backtrack a little.
At the end of an already long day, the light grew dark as I lay in my tumble. Without electricity, the silence was met by the jungle, the occasional motorbike and my anticipation.
In the circular hut, the five maestros lay on their mattresses on one side, with our five mattresses on the other side. I quietly chose my mattress, coiling to the spitting sounds of the maestros, and letting a poem flow through me:
I am the ocean, I am the mountains
I am the trees, I am dirt
I am love, I am creation
That’s why I’m here on Earth
Being our first ceremony, mine and Gary’s cup were small.
Back on my mattress I was giddy, alive, legs moving, wanting to dance, waiting for something to happen.
Waiting some more, I still want to dance. To move my body into the future.
I wiggle my feet. I’m a baby and my Mum keeps tickling my toes. There’s love and joy, there’s Emma and Tom, mere children to whom I give only love for what they’re yet to experience.
Waiting for the second cup, I repeat my intention—to embody my true purpose—only the second cup never arrives. I lie on the mattress. There’s that feeling in my head again. It’s strong, like the headaches of Broome, with so many thoughts. Move from my head and return to my body, a voice whispers.
There’re books, a platform to use my purpose, wild Sarah dancing, love and spirit, a guide for others, a light, with family, friends, community, children, a calm tone.
Return to your body, I’m reminded, with the gust of another urge to dance. To think freely. To be an authority figure. To set a tone for personal freedom.
I don’t write The Gemstones of Broomerang. The book comes through me. It’s my defining work. And there’s another substantial project, only it escapes me now.
Return to the body, I’m again reminded.
Back in my body is a strong desire to be touched and held.
I’m aroused.
A shaman comes along. He sits at the end of the mattress and sings icaro that takes me to the future hearing songs that transport me back to this moment. In the future, I’m happy as Sarah, an old lady with a blanket over her lap, surrounded by my children and grandchildren as she edges closer to joining her life partner in death.
I’m in the dark maloca, and the…a boy is running across to the house carrying a monkey as I write and now I can’t finish the sentence…the oil, the potion, the tea, whatever it is, sprays onto me. The shaman holds my head, sucking my bad vibes, doubts and external energies out with the hands. He inhales it, blows it away, burps.
I sleep, stirring only to rain on tin roof.
In the morning, I wake at the same time as Mama Olinda.
Out of the maloca, Margarita the Ukrainian sits on the verandah smoking a mapacho and processing a profound night. She tells me I can’t go into nature because it’s dangerous out there and I must stay within the direct compound to rest. I speak back, Nature’s not dangerous, its meditation, its connection.
For breakfast, there’s a small portion of food and I chew slowly, appreciative to every mouthful, my mind still taking me to the familiar terrain of hypothetical future interactions that’ll never happen.
With late morning, Mama Olinda’s son (whose name I can’t remember) takes us on a tour of the master plantas and their knowledge.
It took the Shipibo people hundreds and hundreds of years of trial, error and experimentation to understand the powers of plants and their combinations. Through such a process, many people died.
For the ayahuasca, two plants’ love for each other binds them together to create the magic—a masculine plant called ayahuasca, and a feminine plant that gives the visions.
The icaro—the chanting and songs the shamans do in ceremony—is not something they want to, but something they have to do, having been trained to read the energies. The words of the icaro were given by the plants. In fact, all the tools they use in controlling spirits have been given to them by the plants. The Shipibo hold a deep connection to the plants, with Mama Olinda taking ayahuasca all year round, eating only bananas and a certain type of white fish. It’s the plants that sustain her. And while taking on our energies and clearing them can be tiring, it’s what she does.
29th August 2023
Yesterday afternoon I emerged from my tumble, where I was drawing out the words to the poem that had come when I lay waiting for my first cup of ayahuasca, to Mama Olinda sitting on the verandah with the others. She was softly spoken, like powerful people often are, with Antony translating that Gabby’s Haitian black magic is a process to release. It’s because of this that Gabby and I have the order of our teas swapped from the powerful heart opening brew to the gentle feminine brew. To me, Mama Olinda doesn’t give much. Antony translates that she knows I’m holding other people’s energies, and while she saw other stuff, first we must make me pure.
For the ceremony with the gentle feminine brew, Mama Olinda chants sounds and feelings that take me to the future, stomping my feet in dirt and remembering this moment. When she inhales the mapacho, exhales the mapacho, she’s releasing my pain.
With no electricity, I’m lying in bed by 6:30pm, hovering on the edge of a deep sleep with many dreams.
Just before the early birds and monkeys wake me at 4:30am, I have to give the last of my money to Emma to fix the bonnet of her car, which I had borrowed to drive around because I was bored. Coming to roadworks, straight ahead there were two poles close together, while to my left were two poles further apart. Despite it being so obvious that if I veered left, the car would fit through the poles, I went straight. And crashed. Not listening to my intuition costing me $4800.
Still lying on my bed, I stretch out the struggling circulation of my legs. Is this pain tied to not properly being rooted on this Earth?
When hypothetical conversations return, I let them pass into a smokey morning.
30th August Full Moon
With my body incomprehensively weak, there’s been little choice but to spend the morning staring into space. It’s okay, though, because Mama Olinda says if the body’s weak it means the spirit’s strong.
It was shy of 7:30pm when I gingerly stepped over the boardwalk to the maloca, in conversation with the near-full moon, calling on love, my higher self, spirits of light, and guardian angels, leaving a trail of nervous voices: haven’t I already spent so much time unravelling the trauma of my past? Dwelling on my shadows and trauma is exhausting, how much more can I do? My heart always ends up broken, anyway, doesn’t it?
The time waiting for the cup of ayahuasca was long. I smoked a mapacho and repeated my intention: I call on my higher self, I call on my guardian angels, I call on my spirits of light, I trust in myself, I trust in Mama Olinda, I trust in the family that surround me, and I trust in Mother Ayahuasca to release all energies that do not positively serve me to embody my true purpose.
Back on the mattress, I smoked another mapacho and lay down.
Nothing.
Agitation.
Boredom.
Desperation to speak.
Rolling onto my right side, I curled up and placed the blanket over my head. Why am I here lying in this round room in the middle of the jungle? This is all so stupid. What am I doing here what am I doing here what am I doing here. But if I wasn’t here, where would I go? Nowhere. There’s nowhere on Earth I could go. No one on Earth I can go to. Maybe I should give up on this spirituality bullshit and conform to pure science. Because I hate it all. This is all so stupid. Oh god please let me die. Please please please let me die, I pleaded.
While we tend to worship people with death, would I really leave a gaping hole in anyone’s heart, I wondered. I go through people in my life. Nah, I decide. I’m ready to die.
Frustrated, I roll onto my back and close my eyes as the maestro starts chanting. Patterns appear. Geometric shapes. Sacred geometry. Colour on black. Peering my eyes open, I’m returned to the stability of the room. But I don’t want to go back there. I want to die.
The geometric shapes create patterns that remind me of recent dreams and familiar settings. Pulled deeper, inward, is this what death feels like, I question. Because wow. Such comfort. I want to stay here. Pulled further, I break into a land of love, with sparkling water, an abundance of green, and my family. If nature’s happy then we’re happy, I understand.
Love washes through me, making my physical body shiver and gasp short breaths. Is this what it’s like to embody love? Is this where I’ve come from? I question.
Do you want to stay here, Sarah? I’m asked.
Yes of course, but wanting to share it too, I run back to Earth, arriving at Kamali’s community. Kamali, Kamali come here I want to show you something, I excitedly waved. Kamali follows me back to the world sparkling with love. He’s equally in awe to the beauty.
The timeline distorts. There’s an exchange. Do you want to remain in death or return to Earth, Sarah? I’m asked again.
Remembering friends and family, it feels unfair to leave them in the current state of Earth when I know with the utmost conviction that that so much more beauty is possible. Plus, how can I leave Earth when there’s still purpose for me on Earth?
My body zaps. Love. Everything’s love. Before returning to Earth, my family remind me: time doesn’t matter, Sarah, remember, time doesn’t matter. Because no matter how long I’m gone, my family and our magical world will still be there.
But I’m unsure. I want to know more. Like what’s going on? Is this another dimension? How does the universe work?
My family laugh.
Such knowing isn’t my purpose. For now, all I need to know is what a whole world born of love looks like. I need to know that it’s possible.
Last minute, I remember Kamali. Skipping back to call him over. He joins me before disappearing.
Back on Earth, I’m euphoric, love pulsing through my physical body. I know where fairytales comes from, and I have intention and family waiting. Revisiting the people of my life, I realise just how much I adore them, and just how much I want to focus on the positive.
It’s the time before Dad’s stroke. As I grow, his happiness declines. He’s always at work and he’s always stressed by work and he’s in an unhappy marriage. He hates the sound of the phone ringing. He tells me to take off my school tie. He tells me never to be a lawyer. I love him with all my heart, he’s my idol. Only when he had his stroke, he never actually died and so I never cried for the death of the Dad that I loved so much. Until now. Now I can’t stop crying. Now I’m sitting at Dad’s house in Castlemaine and I’m telling him that I love him—something that he’s never told me and something I’ve never told him.
I hug past versions of myself; a young girl diligently working in her childhood bedroom, a young woman living in Preston, making the last-minute decision to drive into the sunset without a planned return.
Connected to my womb, there are children. A son waiting for the right love. A daughter. The future. Early adulthood. Heartbreak. Total devastation. How can something so beautiful be taken from me? I return to the Amazon.
An ocean road, southwest Australia, two children in the back. The one that’s mine sticks its tongue out to the other, who’s slightly older. Sarah, she whines, so-and-so poked their tongue out at me, she says.
Yes sweetie, what would you like me to do about it? Because if that doesn’t make you feel good, you need to explain that to them, I gently reply.
There’s a truck. It’s hurtling towards us and we’re swerving into a ditch. The truck smashes through the side of the car. The children are unhurt while the right side of my body’s been hit. My brain’s intact but still the western medical model give grave advice. I heal myself and by the time I’m an old lady reflecting on this journey, it’s nothing but a memory.
There’s a shield around me. Like the drawing I created, with arrows pulsing outward, emitting love and taking on the energy only of those who are close to me.
Pieces of my book are dropped in, with this book incorporating a whole world born of love. Then there are more books. Children’s books. Imagine. Imagine a whole world born of love.
While travelling no longer feels a void, I move between likeminded communities around the world. We build a new world within this current world.
I feel total love for everyone in the room. Especially Mama Olinda and the maestros. What they do. For us.
Then habitual, hypothetical conversations claw at me, and I blow them away. My wit and sarcasm have been like a survival tool for so much of my life, but there’ve served their purpose. With both guys either side of me being violently sick, I blow in their direction, too.
My mind swarms with magic, and my stomach gurgles, it hurts. I struggle to grasp how I could possibly do ayahuasca again. Come back, we have more to show you, Sarah, nature directs.
There’s a major brain zap in a region of my brain I haven’t felt before. Please get this tea out of me, I respond.
Finally, I fall asleep, waking again to a burning orange near-full moon through the trees and a jungle echoing. A light moves across the sky, fizzling out amongst the trees.
31st August 2023
It’s the cusp of dark, 6:30pm, and I’m in bed, the orange supermoon rising behind the corn and banana plants a permanent photo in my mind.
This morning, I wake with throbbing legs. The day’s hot and windy, the extreme exhaustion surreal.
After breakfast, I sleep until lunch, which I eat with my mind awake and my body asleep. Writing’s still hard. I dream of cold fruit.
A mysterious quiet fills the long afternoon. Us students sit on the rocking chairs on the verandah and face the heat, chewing over tonight’s ceremony, and wondering where the family are and if the sauna will happen.
I trust that I will be shown what I need to understand my potential without the preface of hopefully, maybe, or possibly.
1st September 2023
The wind blows and I feel disheartened, my legs still aching, my mind trying to fathom why I would do this to myself. The days aren’t getting any easier. I dream about the waterholes I can swim in when back home in Western Australia. Such thoughts! Water! Trees! Indulgences! Friends! My book being published! I feel doing a market stall for my jewellery will keep me in my body, not so caught in my head.
Last night’s ceremony was void of visions and thoughts. Lying in the darkness, my stomach beating like my heart, I took comfort in the thought of the books I’ll create, in how much I love my Dad, and the idea of quitting this retreat.
Is the physical pain of ayahuasca punishment to realise how vital self-belief?
2nd September 2023
Through the night there’s a slight storm and vague dreams. What I remember most is a darkness that I’m relieved to wake from. Now light, my stomach remains a heartbeat. So weak and without excitement, I yearn to spend the day by water amongst trees.
A breakfast of banana pancakes, a boiled egg, and a few slices of tomato gives enough energy to remember the power to create my own reality, in which I need intimacy and self-love, and that what happened with the sickness and darkness in the last ceremony can happen to the maestros too. Because sometimes the energies aren’t right, and the plants shut down, feeling it’s not your time, Mama Olinda had explained, with Antony translating. I was also reminded of the need to trust in myself, in Mother Aya, and in the maestros.
My reality is the more time I spend here, the more confused I’m becoming. What am I really searching for? Am I really a writer? Why the need for labels? What if tonight’s ceremony leaves me back lying in the dark, robbed of energy, taking solace only in stories that positively contribute to the evolution of a world where you aren’t expected to follow the rules, but to listen to your heart? A world born of love. A life lived with total belief in my capabilities, loving the body of Sarah. My body, here at Kene Nete, conflicted, full of tension, needing to stretch, and move, but without the energy to do anything.
The heat’s exhausting.
In the hammock of my tumble, I sweat discomfort, staring into space, the baby chick resting underneath. What is it blocking me from experiencing intimacy and love? Where does the voice that doubts my ability as writer come from? Soy escritora!
The baby chick chirps.
What if, what if even when I failed, I kept going? What if I kept going for so long that by the time I enter the death of Sarah, I’m well beyond my fear of failure and judgment, entirely removed from living in hypothetical scenarios, barely remembering a time I lived to a stranger’s rhythm?
Sitting on a rocking chair on the porch, watching dust blow across dry dirt, the trees in the landing between the kitchen and maloca still young, the sounds take me to Australia. I’m relieved when Mama Olinda arrives through the thick air. ‘Bien,’ I tell her. ‘Pero, dolor,’ I describe, feeling my legs.
Antony translates that my circulation is struggling.
Mama Olinda fetches a plants that stings as she whacks it up and down my legs. ‘Frio,’ she tells me.
Antony translates that she can heal my legs. That the other tea that I begin on Martes, Tuesday, I will receive straight.
3rd September 2023
In the morning, Gabby and I walk down the dirt road through a tunnel of tropical trees with butterflies lighting our path. Gabby talks fast, excitedly, while I’m still nauseous, giving agreeable responses.
Last night was another dark night desperate to escape the maloca and release the ayahuasca from my beating stomach. While there had been visions, they aren’t crystal.
Create my own unique path.
Create a new world within the world.
The children’s book.
Gemstones one of a kind.
A life of creativity lived without shame.
Fantastical, feminine.
At the markets, owning myself, selling myself.
Then nostalgia: stopping at the Wycheproof bakery when driving between Mildura and Melbourne, eating good food with family, dancing with friends, smoothies, jewellery, swimming, the freedom of a car, community, sitting with Dad as he reads the paper.
I was sick when Mama Olinda rubbed my belly. The smell of vomit, spit and mapacho excruciating. Left alone, unsure I can take this seven more times, I asked Mother Aya what I should do.
You have to listen to your body, Sarah, you have to listen to your body, replayed like a broken record.
Now Peter, the chirping chick rejected by his family and who know thinks he’s one of us, is painfully noisy trying every angle to get on my bed. Through the flywire windows, Mama Olinda collects plants for our afternoon sauna.
Listen to your body, Sarah.
Is it ego that seeks external validation, with listening to your body silent knowledge?
My legs are cold and my circulation struggles.
4th September 2023
In last night’s dream I was close to climaxing before I realised what I was doing, and remembered I had to stop. With no sex allowed, I’m ravenous for sex. He’s in every part of my mind.
It’s now an overcast morning, thunder growling from storm clouds over the Ucayali. After re-plaiting my hair and putting it on my head, I’m exhausted and my legs feel limp, cold, tingling like crazy (they’ve been tingling since I woke). I give thought of blood flowing freely through them. My stomach wildly beats. The idea of more ayahuasca in my body makes me feel even more sick than I already feel.
Stretching for a good half an hour gives me enough energy to sit for a vegetable soup breakfast, which at first angers me until I feel its goodness moving through my body.
After, energy waning, annoyed by the voices of others, I leave the conversation to go sit with myself.
My body knows more than my mind does, I ruminate. So is it my body that holds the visions of my future, I wonder. Where does it come from, the dancing amongst trees, being a successful writer, the ability to travel, my partner and children, and our beautiful home space with community?
From a day nap I’m woken by a rooster at my door. Through the flywire of my tumble, I watch the family’s life with nature. Someone wanders through the plants, Mama Olinda is driven in the back of a motorbike to town and back, ayahuasca cooks amongst the trees—two giant pots on fire, one bubbling a bright yellow and the other brown. My head’s cloudy. What could I possibly get from such fatigue and boredom? Is it my ego that thinks I don’t need to do the full ten ceremonies?
Exhausted in my hammock, I see a summer spent in Denmark. Then I’m unsure. But whatever is to be, I’ll appreciate it more than ever. Just like I appreciate this cooler, stormy afternoon.
5th September 2023
After yesterday’s rain, this morning’s foggy. Watching Antony stand from his final ceremony and walk slowly down the elevated planks is like watching a memory.
For my fifth ceremony there were no visions, which didn’t surprise me. Nor did being reminded that to embody my true purpose I must move from my mind and come into the wisdom of my heart, feeling like I was an tree, and the end-of-night diarrhoea.
Once the ayahuasca wore off, my mind was hurting from all the hypothetical scenarios. Existing for other’s expectations is a major hurdle to overcome. Then again, what could possibly excite me if I don’t have future scenarios to live in? Or was that why I was a tree? To understand the beautiful simplicity to just be?
When Gaddi stirred in his sleep on his mattress beside me, my body jolted to the noise and one of the male maestros made the noise of sucking a spirit and sending it onward. I can’t see the spirits, but I feel them.
In the morning, I waited for Mama Olinda to wake for my first chiric tea. Once the sun was in our sky, Mama Olinda came to me. I understood bits and pieces of her Spanish and smiled when I didn’t as I think she explained that it’s a tea of pain, headaches, tingling and vomiting. Dolor was repeated a lot.
In my tumble I stare into space, lips tingling, feeling cold in the heat, dreaming about when I get to leave here in a billion years. The next three days of lone teas saunas, ceremonies and putting in the hard work to heal literally feels like forever. But there can’t be room for doubts. I’m ready to love my body.
Self-belief will pulse through every part of my being.
6th September 2023
The first morning alone. Grey clouds and birdsong fill the sky and a storm sets in. I watch it sitting on the verandah wearing a jumper, skirt and socks. The porridge and boiled banana fills me to my brim, then sends me straight to the toilet.
Recovering in my tumble, last night’s dream hangs with me. A dark Melbourne-like city, a familiar scene, moving down the street being affectionate with a familiar Broome crush. Huh? The scene was broken by a horn beeping; the ute to take Gaddi and Antony back to civilisation.
Back in my dreams, I was moving about. There was Lisa Fumberger and a great vintage jacket sold at Target. People are handling my photos and pieces of writing. Lisa tells me that I hold potential, that I should do something with my photos and writing. I want to, I will, I tell her.
It rains and I write by candlelight, refining my intention for tonight’s ceremony. How I want to free my mind from creating hypothetical situations! How I want to be present in my body!
In teenage years and into my twenties I thought I would achieve success by following trends, conforming to what I saw society to admire. But here I am, in the future, working not to attract likes, but unlearning all that I was taught as truth.
The afternoon is muggy, and I lie in the hammock, stretching my body out, straightening my legs, the air thick with stories. I want to emit love. I want my future self to speak from the heart with the conviction of Anna Wintour. I want my dream life of love and creativity, selling myself for a good cause.
Yet.
Yet my mind reminds me I’m unworthy of love. That it’s an embarrassment to love me. That rejection will be inevitable.
So what is it that lies between me and my dreams? A mere mental blockage.
7th September 2023
The jungle wakes to the sound of a chainsaw. In the maloca, the rising mist shows a blue skied day, and Mama Olinda comes to my lone mattress, asking if there was any dolor through the night.
‘No dolor,’ I tell her, a familiar pain shooting through my intestines with magnificent timing.
The remaining battery on my phone is used for Google translate, with Mama Olinda’s daughter’s family, who all slept in the maloca with me, helping translate.
Mama Olinda directs me to lie on my back. She presses right into the intestinal pain, explaining something in Spanish.
I respond with translations of no more rice or pasta.
Juan taps Mama Olinda’s explanation into Google translate. Tienes que confiar con las plantas. You have to trust the plants.
Last night, being given a micro dose, I dozed. When Mama Olinda sang to me, there was no mention of marijuana like there had been the nights before. There were also no visions. Just clarity of thought on my thoughts.
Building a new world within this world, time immersed in my work, creativity, community and nature with my family.
When hypothetical conversations came, I replaced them with visions of myself laughing, dancing, speaking from the heart, yearning to work hard. I’m ready to work hard. Well, soon, I still have one week and two days to stare into space, count down the ayahuasca ceremonies, colour in words, love my body, and trust the plants.
The morning’s slow, with butterflies, mariposa, everywhere. It’s hard to fathom how to pass the time. Sitting up at the small table, my intestinal pain is strong. Going to the toilet, my poo’s red.
For lunch, the girl who’s replacing the other cook (who’s resting because she’s menstruating) serves me a supersized portion that leaves me beyond full, sleeping through the afternoon heat in the hammock.
Back sitting at the table, my intestines hurt again, and Peter/Pedro persistently trying to fly onto me makes me want to scream FUCK OFF PEDRO. Chooks wander into my room. I shoo everyone out and Pedro cries at my door to be let in.
Disheartened by my seeming lack of connection with the plants, and my annoyance to an innocent baby chick, I’ll go to bed. There’s nothing else to do.
8th September 2023
Last night, again in bed by 6:30’s final spin from the sun, it took me longer to get to sleep. Part because of the small dose of ayahuasca from the ceremonia the night before, and part because my mind was stressing about money.
The pain in my intestines is intense.
‘Sara. Como estas?’ Mama Olinda calls out, walking fast to my tumble to where I sit at the table going between writing this and colouring in words, meditating.
‘Un poco dolor,’ I tell her, holding the lower right side of my stomach.
Mama Olinda speaks in Spanish, her hand gestures telling me the plants are working through the pain.
I nod and smile; yes, I feel this.
Back alone, ideas flow for my jewellery and website. This summer, I will have to spend money to make money. Going to the toilet, the toilet paper’s red. While I did eat a lot of beetroot yesterday, the colour more resembles blood.
Eating chicken and vegetable soup, I sweat, grateful to each mouthful. With each sip of water, I give love. Only then I’m back on the toilet, and there’s more dark red through my stools. You have to listen to your body, Sarah!
My afternoon mind tries to rob me of my euphoria, taking me to haunting memories with friends and family who want me to be someone else. I consciously change my thoughts from hypothetical conversations with people to conversations with nature.
Waiting for tonight’s solo ceremony, I rest on the boards under an Amazonian galaxy. A mosquito buzzes in my ear, and I remind myself that ayahuasca is medicine. I can’t foresee what’s to come, but I know that trusting in time is trusting in creation. I know we’re part of a greater plan. I know I have the power to choose my experience on Earth.
9th September 2023, one week to go
Going to the toilet there’s more dark coloured stools with blood through them. Mucus drips without pain. I haven’t eaten since yesterday lunchtime, having my final chiric tea for breakfast.
An Ethiopian girl who lives in Atlanta arrives. She’s twenty-two, and makes the afternoon go quickly. We eat dinner at 4:30pm, with the banana pancakes filling me to the brim.
For dessert, I walk away from the sun in the direction the Earth’s spin. Banana plants dressed in ivy line the narrow dirt road. When I hear a motorbike, I turn around and climb in, sitting snug against Mama Olinda, with the granddaughter driving. Fresh air races through us, the last glimpses of the sun orange through giant master trees and the deep adoration I experience to Mama Olinda’s innate wisdom visceral.
During last night’s ceremony, I could feel her watching over me. When searching for my head torch, I accidentally tapped my phone. ‘Sara, banyo?’ she spoke across the maloca.
‘Si.’
Mama Olinda directed her friend, Ines, to come help me.
Back on the mattress, I was tossing and turning, sickened by the smell of mapacho and the sound of the six maestros spitting into their buckets. There were glimpses of visions, but they were fleeting. My body spasmed. The roof was a spiderweb. A man started singing icaro and I was relieved, watching the burning orange ends of the mapacho in the dark and closing my eyes to an oak tree in multicolour. But then the man and his strong masculine energy kept singing.
When Mama Olinda started icaro, I tuned into her voice. But the man was still singing, and he was so loud, and I was so frustrated, and I rolled onto my side, and I whispered, ‘Shut up.’
Mama Olinda ended right away.
With the man still going, I was desperate to escape the thick air of the maloca. I was ravenous for sex! For intimacy! And then my legs were dangling over the edge of a star high above the ozone, observing myself alone on a mattress in the Amazon, a Shipibo family of maestro’s across from me.
I know what I have to do. Everything I seek is inside of me. Only there can be no space for self-doubt when writing from my heart.
10th September 2023
It’s the day after another ayahuasca ceremony when I feel most inspiration, mostly centred around my work.
Last night, waiting to fall asleep, I considered my intentions around healing my blockages in giving and receiving love. While it’s been the same man who’s been active in my visions, I wonder if it’s because he was already in my mind before I came into this journey. Man aside, I note my ability to give and receive love comes back to self-belief. To speak from my heart.
This morning, I wake, hang up my mosquito net, stretch, and remember visions from the last ceremony: drawing a diagram to understand what we see versus the universe within. Space-time and time-space. My sweat smells strong and my skin is clear. Writing this, feeling my face tense I consciously relax it with gratitude (there’s no need for stress when I’m creating a magical world).
Out on the porch, I spend the morning chatting with my Ethiopian sister, realising just how much goodness I can share. Maddi notes that my website journal is brave. But to me it’s not brave, to me it makes sense—I’m so sure many can relate to my vulnerability, and yet why are we meant to hide this from the world?
Wrapped by the blue tarp of the sauna, I stir the potion, focusing in on my heart, the plant’s smell satisfying.
El coraje de vivir, hablar y escribir desde el corazón.
11th September 2023
Stepping lightly down the wooden planks into a Monday morning, my body’s weak, my spirit’s strong, and the world warbles.
Last night was my eighth ceremony. The visions weren’t of the intensity of my second ceremony, but they were consequential, the shaman’s chanting a soundtrack bringing peace as I mentally danced, remembering other worlds.
Other worlds.
A scene I couldn’t decipher. A broken Earth, giant waves, and people. Was it me? Standing on the edge of a big black machine, large rocks breaking and the ocean crashing like it was the end of the world, only it wasn’t the end of the world.
Another vision.
Towering white cliff faces. Nighttime. I’m on the ground, above me are these satellite…things. I start walking over the grass towards the giant white cliff faces and a voice starts speaking to me. I look around, perplexed. The voice laughs, ‘I’m up there.’ I look to the cliff faces and the voice reads my mind. It’s the future, when technology works with the power of our mind.
Flashes of more worlds. Flashes of children and their fantastical knowledge. Most of us come to this Earth without memory. In the early years, so fresh from another realm, our imagination is free. We believe in other worlds; we believe in anything. Then we go to schools and society tells us what to think and what to dream.
Deeper in the night, I’m brought back to Earth, lying on a mattress in a maloca. A book hovers over me, it drops into me. It has a canvas mustard cover, a box around the title and name, with drawings of ivy, dragonflies, moths and geckos. When Mama Olinda sits at the top of my mattress and sings icaro, more of the book hovers before entering me. Mama Olinda finishes by tapping my pillow, and I roll over to allow the mist to engulf me. Still twisted around, my elbows leaning on my pillow, I breathe in tranquillity and hope.
Life races around. My potential’s there. It’s here. It’s in me. I can do this. I write the book for girls like Maddi. I just have to trust, I’m reminded. The pact, I remember. Lying under the canopy of stars on Bruce country, accepting my power in exchange for my family. My partner, crystal clear. No space for another. So many moments of intimacy that make my mind race. Visions playing on and on.
Today, the bags under my eyes are like bruises I’m so tired, growing weaker as the day goes on, realising it was my mind that was so desperate to leave. My body wants to stay.
12th September 2023
The dreams I’ve been having here at Kene Nete have been shrouded by darkness (besides one from a couple of nights ago when I swam into a river, so happy being watched by the trees). There have been scenes from Mildura, Rowse Court and St Joe’s. Another where existence didn’t work in the same directions, like the Earth wasn’t a flat surface but occurred from all angles.
In the morning maloca, I stretch, my shoulders edging outward to open my heart to the world. With each sip of water, I give love & gratitude. I gift my sunglasses to Ines, whose red eyes are sensitive to the sun and need eye surgery. My money’s dwindling but I’ll make more.
The afternoon’s steaming.
Under the tarp of the sauna, I stir the cauldron of plants, reciting the poem that came to me the night of the first ceremony. I am the ocean, I am the mountains, I am the trees, I am the dirt, I am love, I am creation, that’s why I’m on this Earth.
I collapse onto the boards to recover and reclaim my strength. I’m slumped in a rocking chair as Maddi emerges from her sauna. When she feints, I immediately stand and go for water, pacing back to direct in Maestro Juan and his wife to lift her up onto the boards. They can’t understand my English but she’s near convulsing and it’s scary. I shift around to pull the weight myself, show them how it’s done.
13th September 2023
Ines gifts me earrings and speaks in Spanish. I understand basic words. We exchange numbers, and I eat her chicken and veggie soup for lunch.
After filling up my water bottle, I walk my shaking legs slowly down the boards towards my tumble. On the dirt below, smoke drifts from the embers; all the papers I put amongst the logs yesterday returned to stardust. I tilt my head. The scattered logs pointing to the middle create a five-pointed star. It’s been a nearly daily meditation writing out my future reality in block lettering, diligently colouring them in.
My brain hurts.
Last night, visions returned. But when Olinda sang to me, images in pastel colours on black overtook. Everything was distorted and indecipherable and wouldn’t stop. ‘Sarah, como estas?’ Mama Olinda called across the maloca soon after.
‘No bien, no bien,’ I murmured.
A male maestro came to me. ‘Como estas?’ he whispered.
‘No bien no bien no bien,’ I pleaded.
The maestro sat at the top of the mattress, and I rolled onto my back. He pressed the sides of my head to suck out my thoughts and blow them away. The spray rained down on me. The distorted visions replaced by memories of Dad. I couldn’t stop crying.
Moving through my life, I gift the love, support and encouragement the versions of my self pined. There’s an adolescent Sarah sitting in her room, obsessively reciting lyrics of her new favourite song. I love you, Sarah, I tell her. And I do. There’s an elderly Sarah reflecting back on thirty-five year old Sarah lying in a dark maloca of a Shipibo family in the Peruvian Amazon. I love you, Sarah, I tell her. And I do.
Still there are still thoughts of doubt, laughing at myself, but they’re duller. They’re fading. I no longer need to prove myself to anybody else.
14th September 2023
It’s the day of the last ceremony, thank god. This time tomorrow morning, I’ll be done. With Saturday’s new moon, I return to the modern world.
Yesterday afternoon, Maddi explained the distorted, inconsequential visions she experienced until Mama Olinda sang to her. When Mama Olinda moved to my bed and started singing, this was when I started experiencing the distorted, inconsequential visions Maddi described.
In the evening, I walked barefooted down the jungle road. It was dark through the tunnel of green plants, trees and butterflies. On my return, I came into a wide opening where the jungle had been burnt away. High above were white, pink and yellow clouds, and at their edges was a crown. Craning my neck in awe, I was taken to the theta healing workshop when I was twenty-five, when a guy laughed to his vision of me wearing a crown of thorns.
Through the night, thunder and rats woke me, feeling the electricity in the air before returning to my strange, unappealing dreams.
This morning, light streams through grey clouds. The cooler air of an overcast sky makes the day easier as I piece together what I’ve been shown. The potential of my purpose.
15th September 2023
I sit in my tumble. It’s a dark, overcast morning with the sound of birds and chainsaws. Thankfully, these sounds don’t shock my brain, which has become a normal reaction to external noises in ceremonies. And now my brain really hurts. My stomach and body hurts. It all hurts. The constant pissing, the men talking well into the night and again in the morning, the nauseating smell of mapacho, too much masculine.
On the verandah, Ines and I share a conversation of Spanish and body language. ‘No bien, muchas hombres,’ she says of last night.
I’m relieved to hear it. I agree.
For my final ceremony, while my physical body was in immense pain, the images I were shown were of beauty, mostly.
My daughter returned to me. My beautiful daughter. My husband. Costa Rica. An old woman back reflecting on the young woman who took herself to the Amazon, confronting lone weeks of deep healing to face her shadows and to translate worlds to create stories for the collective.
When a maestro came to sing to me, he began gently in high pitched tones, and I meditated on the good that comes from embodying my true purpose. When he finished, he blew the spray and the tranquillity and hope resettled into every atom of my being. When he blew again, it was like a sheet of white light appeared over my body, and something happened, something was cemented. ‘Wow,’ I breathed, my mind, body and soul in total love and awe to myself and creation.
The shaman agreed.
Lying on my mattress with my feet to the flyscreen windows, I was thinking of other worlds when a red light moved across the sky on the same path I watched a light on the night of the second ceremony. The red light bounced, coming in and out, in and out, disappearing into the same spot amongst the trees.
When I woke, I was hungry for breakfast and so sure that it’ll be decades before I do ayahuasca again.
Waiting for the afternoon, there’s a nervousness until I’m in the motorbike’s carriage, and I’m riding through the banana plants and vines, and I’m arriving to the dusty village of stilted wooden houses with closed windows and hammocks as furniture, and I’m seeing a poverty that no longer startles me like it did in my early travels in India.
At the building with wifi there are beautiful messages on my phone. His reply makes me laugh. On the Whatsapp thread of my ayahuasca friends, they talk of the difficulty in the integration process, with the universe immediately testing them—missed flights, failed rekindlings.
The real world will be confronting, there is no doubt, but at least I have days of retreat in a motel room, taking deep breaths, staying in peace, listening to my body, excited for a summer in Denmark. Without desire to return to alcohol, smoking, coffee, processed sugars, dairy, red meat and gluten, I make an ode to my brain that I will feed it so much goodness.
16th September 2023, New Moon, Pucallpa
I’m deep in a dream with Bruce and another, we’re being pulled between tasks until a girl approaches me about a job, which I find laughable because I’m so ill-suited, but Sophie Barker’s involved. I go with the girl down a giant slide of pillows to a Vogue-like office. I’m still a great candidate for the job despite my fierce opposition to what it and its people represent. Another girl arrives and I think it’s Sophie because it looks like Sophie, only it’s Sophie’s business partner. Being a writer, I’m asked if I’ve read a book from a past employee. I’m preparing to say I’ve heard of it, but I detest the exploitative values of the genre when a horn bleats into the night.
I jump from bed. It’s 3am and my period’s heavy, having arrived a couple of hours before, on this new moon, a week late.
There’s seven of us in the Hilux, driving the ‘new road’ over a wonky bridge and bumping through the jungle. The sun rises to deforestation and I ponder what it’s all for.
Nearing Pucallpa, I’m back watching plastic along the sides of the roads, dreaming of a future living sustainably in Costa Rica.
At Casa Andina, I use the wifi to see messages from Tara and Wil. Tara’s leaving October 8th and Wil wants me to housesit Arlo for November while he’s down south sorting out a new life. I begin to contemplate this, try to make it work, please people, until I realise what the hell am I doing? No, Wil. I’ve set off to chase my life.
Out in the chaos and concrete, I wander. By the early afternoon I’m nestled in my expensive hotel room. There’s inspiration for writing and future baking endeavours.
I spend the night reading a book.
“Magic requires a tranquil mind…and harmony with your thoughts. To be that still you must know who you are—all of you.”
The Other Side of the Sky
17th September
In my dreams it’s night, like it often is, and people are taking drugs, being killed. I wake at 3:30am for my period. It’s different, the blood consistent but not so dark. Fresher. My thoughts are fresher too. They’re calm, less obsessive. I see this exchange with Wil as good practice for the use of the infinity symbol to return energies and to maintain the barrier of calm around me. Not feeling to keep sleeping, I’m reading my book by 4am. Today, I stay in my own world. I edit.
18th September 2023
My movements are slower than pre-dieta and my calves are strained (yesterday I had been writing about sore legs at Broomerang). Before the buffet breakfast, I meditate, embodying the feeling of my success in this moment. When thoughts to the future arise, I return to my creativity, where I seek no approval from others.
After two nights at Casa Andina, filling myself on epic buffet breakfasts, I move to an eco-lodge resort. Before taking the motorbike taxi between accommodations, I return to the beautiful Peruvian girl who makes organic sweet treats. It costs 33.33 sol.
At my new accommodation, I’m in room three. There’s green through the windows, and I have a cold shower. Safe in my own hotel room, a peaceful writing bubble, I prepare to release he who enraptured my visions so clearly and consistently—a Facebook message sent two days ago remains unread, but he again uploads 10 photos to his story. I’m tired by the idea of someone being really busy all the time.
19th September 2023
My strained calves show me the power of our thoughts. At 3:45am, I wake somewhere between my evolution and my past.
20th September 2023
Yesterday afternoon after a facial and massage, I came to a mood, storming to the shopping centre to withdraw money for payment, and buying dark chocolate, a quinoa/cacao bar and passionfruit cheesecake, which I ate for dinner.
Now I’m holding a hard stomach, my intestines so sore, preparing for my journey home via Santiago, bursting with excitement for the freedom of preparing my own food back home in Western Australia.
At the Pucallpa airport, I reunite with Maddi. She left Kene Nete this morning and she’s glowing. She’s different.
We take off into dusk, and I breathe memories of my arrival to Pucallpa three and a half weeks before. I’m an old lady again, hugging the Sarah who sits on the plane to Lima, tears in her eyes, looking out to smoke rising from trees. She clears her mind of thoughts. It’s not instant, but a movement through the final stages of forever vanishing the voice of doubt. Somewhere in my psyche, a new story forms. I travel to islands and rainforests, unlocking memories to other worlds.
There’s total belief. Trust.
21st September 2023
I wake in the hostel across the road from the airport to WhatsApp messages. Karin’s voice chimes: he may be a great artist but you’re also a great artist. It’s true. Because there’s something greater at play here, and I’m part of the Western frontier of seeing truth beyond words.
On the plane from Lima to Santiago, my stomach still tight from heavy foods, women hug their children and my heart pounds. So much will happen in my lifetime.
In Santiago, I sit in customs (I’m actually not sure it’s called customs, but it sounds more dramatic) waiting for tonight’s flight home to be confirmed. Having read the wrong Google information, I can’t enter Chile without a visa, which is not possible to get on arrival. And I don’t want to return to Lima. Despite the ongoing pain of my intestines, I’m unfazed, bored and hungry, enjoying the way all the Chilean men hug and kiss each other, wondering how this slight inconvenience will change my path, and finding it amusing that last minute I packed my deodorant and toothbrush into my carry-on backpack, putting on track pants instead of jeans. It’s like my body knew more than my mind.
I pay $165USD for tonight’s flight. It’s a small price to pay, and despite the money for the nights I booked in a Santiago Air BnB also lost, I’m giddy. It’s been eight hours. And the custom men have been so nice, with our banter easy and my disappointment palpable when they wouldn’t give me a denied stamp.
Bounding with joy in international departures, I decide on food, with the guys at the Asian Wok place giving me a charger.
Strolling the terminal, I hear a ‘HEY DON’T WE KNOW YOU.’ It’s Amanda and Ben, who I met two months ago in Mexico. They are the ones who first told me about Santiago direct to Australia, which made me change my flights to be here in this moment.
My iPad charges with Amanda’s charger, and my phone charges with the Asian Wok’s charger, as I’m told it’s a common story of Australian’s being dealt challenges with the Chilean visa, which was introduced with covid, apparently. Thankfully for Amanda and Ben, they didn’t have any problems because they also have European passports, which they used.
‘You’re kidding me,’ I exclaim, my Irish passport sitting quietly in my backpack.
Ben and I talk about DMT, which he’s experienced about a dozen times back home in South Australia. ‘I know it sounds weird,’ he says, ‘but I kinda understand where all religions come from.’
The near thirteen-hour journey to Auckland flies through the night. I’m seated next to a baby called Ophelia whose parents are so lovely, happy, positive and apologetic. But Ophelia keeps smiling and reaching for me, and when she cries, I still love my position. Seeing baby Ophelia’s mum watch a reality show on jewellery making, I watch it too, salivating to the thought of making jewellery.
After a midnight dinner, I nap, waking with nostalgia to the southern cross and an orange waxing moon smiling towards Australia. The crescent moon is huge on the cloud’s horizon. The biggest I’ve seen. A glowing rock falling into ocean clouds that makes me feel like I’m in another world. Our belief in technology is crucial for the technology to work.
I watch Pain and Glory, a Spanish film on a director’s inherent need to write.
Starving, I eat the plane food with fervour, readily accepting the uneaten slice from Ophelia’s mum. The intestinal pain instantly returns.
On the tarmac in Auckland, I’m so relieved to be back amongst English and power points for my devices. Ophelia’s parents and I share appreciation.
Then there’s Auckland to Sydney and Sydney to Broome, where I land with a still-rounded stomach and Spring1 by Max Ritcher peaking with the plane hitting familiar red soil. Although temporary, it feels so good to be home.
23rd September 2023
I love the people here so much! I’m so happy to see them again! I clean Wil’s fridge, and Marc picks me up to go to Amy’s for Greg’s…gathering. For timing has brought me to Greg’s fragile frame, his strong spirit, and Mark Jones telling me, ‘What you experience in ayahuasca will keep coming to you for a long time.’
I cook the fridge’s vegetables that need to be cooked, counteracting the carrot cake and bread I ate this afternoon at Amy’s, and Wil explains Greg’s deterioration; on Friday night he said his arm hurt, and now he can’t move it.
24th September 2023
When I wake in the night, it’s Greg and his cancer I think about. Despite our ego’s differences, Greg’s role in my life has been substantial He’s shown me other perspectives without fear. And yesterday at his gathering, I told him I want to talk.
‘I think we’ll have a lot to talk about,’ he replied.
It’s now just past 5am. It’s a foggy morning with the sound of droplets. Wil left half hour ago to go fishing, with yesterday’s dishes sprawled around the kitchen. I half clean the bathroom so it’s bearable for these coming weeks.
Today, I spend time with Pippa, read Isabel Allende, plant seeds for my future in the south, and allow the gluten to pass from my body, legs tingling.
25th September 2023
Waking in my old room, staring out to morning light on familiar trees, a tear rolls down my cheek. Poignant. That’s the word I’ve been searching for with Greg, death and beauty on my mind.
Yesterday, talking on the phone with Romeo I was once again blown away by his astute descriptions. What is it with death that makes us place people on a pedestal? While in life we’re so critical of flaws and contradictions and irritations and assumptions. Because Greg’s no martyr. Sure, he he holds certain sorts of intelligences, but emotions is not one. Only he doesn’t need to be everything, does he? He just needs to be Greg. And in this he was perfect to all those he reached. Like me, who could look to the hurt inner child and tightly guarded defence mechanisms to learn, knowing the era Greg’s walked this Earth conducive to such blocked emotions, and that one day people can learn from my limitations too.
27th September 2023
My last dream before waking at 3am gave me a sentence. She danced a lonely dance. An hour later I’m engrossed reading Papillon until I’m doing yoga, I’m standing in my camper, I’m watering Wil’s plants. Plants. There’s too many plants. Too many things for the hose to be caught on, reinstating my need to march onward.
Unshackled from my coffee addiction, I have afternoon energy and a sore stomach from eating too many nuts when Bruce comes by. He’s in a great mood, offering his services for my jewellery and reading my mind to describe how trees and nature are just like us. Bruce talks to them. He talks to everything. He’s protected by everything. And when people arrive, they smoke them, releasing the bad spirits through the head, just like the Shipibo.
In coming weeks is the voice referendum for indigenous representation in parliament. I don’t read much into it. It’s a no-brainer for a step in the right direction. We can’t change governments, but we can change ourselves.
28th September
I sleep to near 6am, the last dream before I wake giving me thoughts on symbolism.
I empty the camper’s contents into the living area, make a decaf coffee, and crave to make necklaces rather than edit.
It’s a beautiful morning around town, running into beautiful souls everywhere, some of who also have forward motions brewing.
In the afternoon, Carles comes by. Comfortable talking about his emotions, he asks if I’ve ever done coaching before.
29th September 2023, Full Moon
I wake just before 3am. It’s the second night in a row I’ve dreamt about funerals. One dream even had two funerals within the dream.
By daybreak I’m cleaning and organising the camper. The crush-a-dust under my barefeet hurts and I’m tired of crush-a-dust under my barefeet. I drink decaf coffee and do morning yoga, being bitten by midges and mosquitoes. The heat’s exhausting and the humidity’s so thick. I’ll leave Broome within the fortnight.
1st October 2023
The pull remains strong. Feeling supported to leave Broome, I meet it halfway, taking actions, making small movements, and noting the startling obvious of how each small step, each trivial decision, is not so small and not so trivial. Nonetheless, in the afternoon I go through a food rush.
2nd October 2023
I heart the community of Broome, and I heart having my familiar products, like a blender, and a kitchen to use it in. But I’m still waiting for the right car. And it’s extraordinarily hot.
3rd October 2023
In the midst of the night, I wake to a frog hopping onto my face.
In the morning, a rat’s eaten my avocado and bananas through the cotton bag, and the shower head won’t stop dripping. Out on the verandah, I stand tall to stretch and a bird races past my head, into the house, and straight out the window.
Elliot arrives. A VW Beetle that I test drive him with Bruce. He’ll cost me more than I intended, but he’s sweet and needs no mechanical attention.
Through the long, hot afternoon I eat too much out of boredom. I crave nights with people. My family. Finishing this book. Trusting in the waning days of Broome.
4th October 2023
After the dark dreams of the Amazon, where Lucy was a near permanent fixture (although she wasn’t part of the darkness—I’ll always love that girl), my dreams are now in daylight. They are a feeling more than an image. And in the feeling, wholly myself, people are drawn to me.
It’s the first time since being back in Broome that I wake cold with the fan spinning on high. The cooler morning brings mustard light dancing through my room and the smell of dusty air conditioners from my childhood. Appreciative beyond measure for Elliot’s unexpected arrival into my life, I’m curious to what lies ahead.
Out in the kitchen, the oven has turned itself back on, and the red lights flashing 12:00 stare my down. Yesterday, when I was writing the ending of Gemstones when the oven plays games, it went dead. Then there was Piera’s question about leaving the hose on the lemon tree. ‘Nah I turned it off,’ I told her, the memory of turning off the tap clear. I had walked past Piera’s trailer wondering if I should have turned the tap as tight as I turn the shower taps.
The leaking water, the oven, such familiarity.
5th October 2023
At Little Local, Sammy’s in the kitchen. Then I’m picking up Elliot, cutting laps with Ella, a beautiful day marked by a satisfying op shop expedition.
6th October 2023
I talk my way through the world. Appreciation to water, food, nature, my people, my future, and Kath and Neo who, newly homeless, have come to stay.
We talk a lot. Kath had inspected Broomerang before me, but she wasn’t sure about moving in because she wasn’t sure the spirits wanted her there. She can see them like she sees me, she explains. The larrikin’s an old man, white, profound belly, alcoholic, sad, wears a wife-beater. Or was it an opened shirt? Either way, he’s angry but harmless, having died in the pool room with his body found days later.
Other tenants have heard children running down the hall.
As for the corner of horripilation, Kath doesn’t know what it is.
Sitting on Wil’s wooden tree trunk chair, I share the tale of how I came to be at Broomerang and we both get goosebumps, the red oven lights behind where Kath stands showing me 22:22.
‘The house was calling you,’ Kath reckons.
I lift my feet in response. They feel like lead. Suddenly, I need to go to the toilet, where the shower head is still leaking.
Back in the kitchen Kath tells me that having a sensitive stomach is a symptom of being attuned with, what did she call it? The spirit world? Sensations that come through the sacred chakra.
Once again I wake early, rolling over and thinking of the portal of this area. My phone lights itself up. 4:44.
11th October 2023
My hips are round, my stomach flat, my body so white bobbling on clear water with a horizon all purples and greys and the Indian ocean so still. It’s early morning, my last day in Broome, and my first swim since my return.
I left Wil’s after he lost his shit at me through text messages. Again. Having gathered my belongings and gotten the camper out with a trophy of people (including Richard of the Croc Park), I now move forward with a new moon and an eclipse centred around relationships and partnerships.
It’s time to follow my fate to shine brightly.
It’s time for even more transformation.
And while it might be a bumpy road, the destination is paradise.
