by Erik Storlie
Hand in hand, we walk slowly, lingering to admire houses whose window eyes smile back at us. Colors inside glow, backlit like stained glass. We feel reverence, as if pacing through a church.
Every few minutes we come to a standstill, eyes roving over fences, into front yards and side yards, feasting on strange tropical trees, entranced by colors glowing through intricate webs of grasses, flowers, and shrubs.
I’m elated, exhilarated, blown free of despair. What’s been wrong with me? All I ever wanted was this undeniable, unutterable beauty—beauty in the tiny, intricate patterns of pebble and sand crystallized in the concrete beneath our feet. Beauty beckoning with the fingers of leaves on shrubs standing in ordinary Berkeley front yards. Beauty in modest flowers standing up in side yards speaking soundless, gentle hellos.
It’s late summer. I’m in the back of a transport truck with five Mazatec Indians and two old friends from Minneapolis, bouncing up mountain roads that wind to a little village called Huatla de Jiménez. The Indians are returning home after a day at the big market in a larger town nearby. Lon Pilgrim, Frank Farmer, and I are on a Grail quest. For help, we seek the Mazatec curandera Maria Sabina.
Lon has been studying a fast-growing literature on drugs and mysticism. He’s read Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception, which describes the mescaline intoxication and concludes that it triggers enlightenment experience. He’s read Alan Watts. He subscribes to Timothy Leary’s Psychedelic Review.
And he’s read about Gordon Wasson’s journey in the late 1950s, only a few short years ago, to this Mexican village. The conservative New York banker and mycologist, studying linguistic and anthropological evidence, had a hunch. And the Indians gave him what they had hidden for over four centuries from the tormenting, torturing conquistadores and their priests. He received the gift of a communion. He received the mushroom, teonanacatl, the “flesh of the gods.”
Maria guided Wasson on this solemn mushroom journey. He described it as a pure ecstasy, a true agape. It changed his life, and he repeated it several times before returning to the north.
Lon, Farmer, and I want to know this experience that so moved the old banker. We too want to find Maria. We too want to taste this agape.
I’ve known Farmer since childhood. We grew up together in Sunday schools and youth groups in the Minneapolis First Unitarian Society. He’s of medium build and deeply tanned from the Mexican sun. His blond hair unkempt, he sports the beginnings of a scruffy goatee and mustache, but they don’t hide his cheerful good looks.
Lon we’ve known since high school and from the Seven Corners drinking scene as undergraduates. He’s patrician, tall and thin, with long, flowing brown hair and beard. In robes he’d resemble an intent, cloistered, medieval monk—but we’re all in ragged jeans and dirty work shirts. We haul worn backpacks stuffed with sleeping bags and a few extra clothes.
Huatla de Jiménez is perched in the mountains. The gentler slopes are cultivated in corn, the fields coming down to the backs of small huts whose open front doors face dirt paths.
Unfortunately, news of Maria has spread. The village has filled with hippies this summer. Within an hour of our arrival we’re stopped in the market by the sheriff and a deputy. Lon talks to them in Spanish, then explains to us that we must follow them to the courthouse. We troop through the market and up a nearby street to a squat stucco building. Inside we’re brought before a man who appears to be the local magistrate. He sits behind a low wooden desk and eyes us lazily. The sheriff, deputy, and now a half dozen curious men from the street stand and look on.
The magistrate and Lon speak in Spanish, then Lon explains to us that the magistrate has suggested that it would be a great courtesy on our part if each of us would help the village of Hautla de Jiminez by making a contribution to the fund they have newly begun for the building of a school for the children. The magistrate, Lon explains, hopes that each of us could donate twenty American dollars to show our appreciation of the hospitality that the citizens of Huatla de Jiminez will surely extend to us.
Lon, Farmer, and I huddle in consternation. The magistrate, sheriff, deputy, and onlookers watch us intently.
“New school, indeed,” I mutter.
“Yeah, I dig,” whispers Lon. “But we’ve got to do something. And listen to me. Don’t show any disrespect or impatience. This isn’t the USA!”
“But what can we do?” Farmer asks. “That’ll take almost half the bread we’ve got left to get out of here, let alone back to the States.”
“Well,” Lon says, “we may have to wire for more back in Mexico City. But we’ve got to do something. I’ll sign a ten-dollar traveler’s check and offer it for all of us. That’s at least something. Actually, it’s quite a bit. God knows what Maria will want for the ceremony.”
Deferentially, Lon turns and addresses the magistrate. We learn later that Lon thanks him for his concern for us and commends the village on its dedication to its children. Lon reminds the magistrate that we are young Americans on a journey to learn about their religious ways and that, though poor, we want to help. With dignity Lon reaches into his backpack and pulls out a rumpled folder of traveler’s checks, signs one, and advancing to the desk, lays it before the magistrate with a bow.
The magistrate glances at it casually, then smiles and barks an order to the sheriff. Suddenly the room fills with smiles and talk. Several men break out cigars, making sure each of us has one. They are lit for us with congratulations on our generosity. Now the deputy and several of the men troop out of the courthouse with us and accompany us through the village to another stucco building by a stream. This, they explain, is a guest house where we’re welcome to stay. They assure us we’ll soon be contacted by those who can help us find Maria.
Exhausted now by the day of mountain roads and the uncertainties of this welcome, we roll out our bags, chat quietly, and as soon as it begins to get dark, lulled by the quiet rippling of the stream, fall quickly asleep.
The next morning we head back to the market, eager for food and directions to Maria. After a breakfast of corn tortillas, fruits, and coffee at a primitive little countertop shop, we bump into an Englishman. He too has come here curious about Maria and the mushroom ceremony.
As we chat, a young man, apparently Maria’s son, appears and offers to arrange things for forty American dollars apiece. Our hearts sink again. This is impossible. But after polite, vigorous bargaining, with many expressions of our poverty and sincerity, Lon gets him down to ten American apiece. We’re going to be close to broke. The young man instructs us on how to reach Maria’s hut in the hills above the village and tells us to be there at sundown the next day.
Late the next afternoon, Lon, Farmer, the Englishman, and I trudge up the hill to Maria’s hut. We’re met by the son and a somewhat older man, apparently a brother. The brother reeks of alcohol. His eyes are sunken and red. They wave us into the interior of the hut.
We sit on thin mats on the dirt floor and wait. The room is dim, the walls made of some kind of wattle. Maria appears in a few moments wearing traditional Indian dress. She’s old and wizened, with black, penetrating eyes that simultaneously convey tolerance and boredom.
She nods and speaks in Mazatec. One of the sons translates these few words of greeting into Spanish. She turns to light candles on a little altar, then leaves and returns again, bringing a dish holding small, brown mushrooms. These she sets on the altar, sits before it on a small stool, and begins to pray, invoking the names of saints over and over again.
After a time, she stops chanting and carries around the dish, giving each of us, and finally herself, several pairs of mushrooms. I chew slowly, nervously, an acrid taste on my tongue, grit from the mushrooms grinding between my teeth.
She returns to her stool and chants again. We sit listening, uneasy, for half an hour.
Suddenly Lon interrupts her, talking in English. “Maria, this stuff isn’t working. What’s the deal? We paid lots of money for this.”
She sings out a
nd the brothers appear in the door. Lon talks to them in Spanish, and they speak to Maria in Mazatec.
Then Lon turns to Maria. “We’ve got some good shit here.” He pulls a joint out of his jacket pocket, lights it and inhales, then reaches it toward Maria.
The brothers watch impassively from the door. Farmer and the Englishman look worried. I’m embarrassed by Lon. I’m sure I can feel the mushrooms beginning to work.
But Maria, unperturbed, grunts and reaches out to take the joint. She inhales and passes it back to Lon, who sends it on to us. After a few minutes, she speaks to the brothers, who speak in Spanish to Lon. Lon listens, nods, and the brothers retreat.
Lon turns to us. “She says it’s late in the season. The rains have stopped and the mushrooms are hard to find now. She says she’ll give us some of the seed of the mushroom.”
Maria disappears, then reappears rolling something between her palms that looks in the dim candlelight like gray clay. She rolls four little balls about the size of the end of a thumb and passes one to each of us.
I eat the ball—it’s like eating earth—as Maria chants again before her little altar. Within a few minutes, I’m dreamy, distant—and from the corners of the hut intricate multicolored patterns begin sweeping inward, circling, and converging on me. They seem Aztec and Mayan.
Maria’s chant weaves in and out of the visions, an endless recital of saint’s names, soothing me. I lie back on my mat, the earth soft beneath me.
Suddenly it’s late. The chant has ceased and Maria is seated on her stool in front of the altar, her face impassive, flickering in the candlelight. Occasional gusts of wind sweeping the corners of the hut carry snatches of Mexican music from a cantina far down the mountainside.
Suddenly there’s a scream. “I must get out of here!”
It’s the Englishman. He’s risen half to his feet in the dim light, one hand supporting himself on the bare ground. His eyes are huge dark puddles that dart wildly toward the corners of the room.
“I can’t take this, fellows, I simply must leave.”
He rises shakily and starts for the door. Maria sings out in Mazatec and the sons appear, blocking the doorway. Lon and one of the sons talk urgently.
Then Lon says in a hurried, low voice, “We’ve got to stay till morning, at least. That’s their agreement with the sheriff. The villagers are upset by all the gringos. Last week some guy freaked after a ceremony. They say he ran back to the village and strangled a turkey and started eating it raw.” Lon puts his hands on the Englishman’s shoulders and kneads them gently. “We can’t go, man. You’ve got to stay. It’ll be cool.”
“I must go, I can’t stand it,” says the Englishman, eyes staring. “I’ve learned my lesson! I’ll never do this again!” He struggles to his feet.
I roar with laughter. “What? You think you’re at Boy Scout camp? Cool it, man!”
The Englishman tries to push past the drunk son standing in the doorway. The son reels slightly, but roughly pushes him back into the middle of the room. He sinks down on his mat and covers his face with his hands. He’s quiet, but his shoulders heave and shake.
Wild-eyed, Lon, Farmer, and I look at each other. Maria sits quiet, impassive, carefully watching. Again Lon says, “It’ll be cool, man. Don’t worry.”
I lie back, shaky, and then I’m suddenly spun free, drifting again. The dim circle of the room is a loom weaving a gorgeous, intricate Indian tapestry before my eyes in naked space—a tapestry edged with wattle walls, and earthen floor, and huddled forms, and old brown Maria hunched before her altar where the candle dimly burns. “It’s a blessing,” I think. “An endless weaving.” “The weaving and reweaving of life itself.”
I turn my head and steal a glance at the Englishman. He’s curled up on his side now, head cradled in his arms.
“Why’d you shout at him?” I ask myself. “Poor devil! What do you think you know about all this anyway?”
I peek sideways at Maria’s face, little more than a shadow in the shadowy light. Her eyes are lidded, but she seems awake, observing everything.
Shutting my eyes, I drift again. I feel the mountaintop rolling down and away in cornfields, hear a dog’s staccato barks in the village sleeping at the foot of the mountain.
This is Mexico. It’s night. I’m on a mat in a wattle hut. Wonder rises up from the earthen floor, up through my body, into my stomach, filling my throat with an ache of sweet longing and joy. Fleas climb through my clothes, biting, tickling, as the night lengthens and cools, but I hardly notice.
Toward dawn I sleep. Then the drunk brother, bleary, wakes us with brusque commands. Maria is nowhere to be seen. He hurries us out the door, gesturing us away down the path toward the village below.
Chilled, shaken, we slowly walk down the hill. The Englishman moves off ahead, eager to leave us behind. We don’t see him again. Lon, Farmer, and I slog down the path past cornfields and huts. An occasional solemn child peers at us sleepily as we walk by.
Soon we overlook the village, cupped between mountainsides. I’m suddenly transfixed by the rusting sheet iron roof of the old cathedral, burnished now by the rising sun. “Yes,” I whisper to myself, “there is such beauty in this lovely world. It’s everywhere.”
My feet continue their walk down the steep, dusty path, but my eyes, welling with tears, caress the rusty glow, a dried blood red caught in shafts of morning light.
It’s the fall of 1964. Lon and I return to Berkeley from Mexico. Farmer has headed back to Minneapolis. Lon has decided to move to the Bay Area. “It’s all happening right here,” he says. “America will never be the same.”
I won’t teach this fall. I have one semester to prepare for and pass my M.A. orals—or I’ll be drafted. Celeste and I rent a large three-bedroom upper duplex in Oakland—lots of windows, natural woodwork and built-ins, with hardwood floors recently refinished. It even has a yard with some old plantings of roses along the back fence. It’s only ninety dollars a month because, along with a strip of housing several miles long, it’s condemned for freeway construction. My rent check goes to the Oakland Housing Authority.
Downstairs live a blue-collar working man, his thin, faded wife, and their shy little daughter, who’s about nine years old.
Celeste and I invite Striker to move in with us. He’s a black friend from Minneapolis, a Golden Gloves boxer in high school who adopted the hip scene at Seven Corners. He too has heard about what’s happening in the Bay Area and has just arrived in the last few weeks. We give him the middle bedroom.
Rosenfeld is a frequent visitor. He stays overnight when he’s in Berkeley to make his rounds of the bookstores, looking over new inventory and talking to other bookmen.
Joy and Elton drop by, too. They’re amazed at our high-class living arrangements. And we get two long-haired kittens, one orange and one gray. A family moving out down the block offers them to Celeste and she accepts immediately.
Celeste and I are excited. We’ve got a real house and yard. But there’s not much to put in it. Miscorski’s girlfriend lends us a dresser and a fine walnut coffee table. I’ve got an old armchair, some brickand-board bookshelves, a floor lamp, and my mattress—odds and ends I’ve accumulated over two years in semifurnished rooms.
As we settle in over a few days, we’re surprised that the family downstairs seems unfriendly. The wife is withdrawn, the husband cold, and the little girl apparently too shy to speak to us.
A week after we move in, we’re playing music late one night when the husband begins to hammer on the water pipes. Uneasily, we ignore him, not quite understanding his message. Then the hammering stops, and we hear him shouting furiously up through the floor, “Hold it down up there, for God’s sake. The kid’s trying to sleep and I’ve got work in the morning.”
Celeste gets up to turn down the volume, but Rosenfeld, enraged, screams back down, “Shut up, you goddamn redneck son of a bitch. We’ll come down there and bust your ass!” I’m shocked. This is not like Rosenfeld. But Rosenfeld’s
a big man, and we hear no more from downstairs.
The next day a woman from the Housing Authority calls. She’s heard complaints of noise and disorder. Further, the house is rented to Celeste and me, and she’s aware that other parties seem to come and go at the address. She threatens eviction.
“The complaints are pure racism,” I protest indignantly. “The ACLU will be delighted to hear about this case. I’ll have you tied up in court for months. We’ll be here until the freeway arrives.” I slam down the phone.
The next week, the family below moves out. No one moves in to replace them, and miraculously we’ve now got the whole place to ourselves.
Lon’s found a place in Berkeley now. He brings over copies of the Psychedelic Review and Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner’s new book The Psychedelic Experience. They’re in the papers now. They blew the stuffy professoriat at Harvard out of the water. But I’m getting uneasy about Lon. He’s talking all the time about something called zen. He’s even urging Striker and me to go to some oriental temple in San Francisco.
“This is off the deep end,” I think. “I’m an atheist. And I’ve sure got no use for religious organizations, oriental or otherwise.”
It’s an afternoon in late September. Lon and I talk Striker into taking his first acid trip. Lon suggests we drop acid and spend the afternoon meditating in the empty front bedroom. Striker and I are reluctant. What’s this “meditating”? We want to trip, to groove. But Lon is persistent. Celeste is cautious. “Whatever you do, you guys can do it yourselves. I’ll hang out and make us some tea.”
Striker is nervous. Everybody’s heard about acid now, about strange trips of unbelievable power. Lon reassures him. “Hey, man, it’s true, it’s big stuff. But it’s cool. It puts you in touch with the very deepest levels of existence.”
Striker chuckles. “Yeah, man, but I’d be okay with just getting a little happy.”
“Yeah, sure, that’s going to happen,” I say. “Anyway, people who have bad trips don’t know what they’re doing. They can’t let go. They’re control freaks.”