journey

Justin Hall
26 February, 1996
Shamanism, Grant

journey
spring hole
grassland
dog
suck down
rat
artichoke
rabbit
ditch down
cave
halfdome
tree sparrow squirrel
ground flower
deer eat
shat river
bubble rise home

9pm class gathered in the Quaker Meeting House. Tea candles in plastic cups, lights out, bruce on a big drum beating a measured pace after little introduction
do it the michael harner way, or whatever.
January 9, over chrismas break, I walked down Bootjack trail on Mount Tamalpais. I did a bit of walking off the trail, because.
I saw a spring, and while I avoid wild water for fear of intestinal disease, this I drank some, sweet clear cool.
it was this brown rock green moss springhole I pictured as my entry into the "lowerworld." I was having trouble fixing the details, as I was supposed to, so I just imagined myself real small, like five inches tall, and I strode into the hole.
I bouldered a bit, jumping up down, over rocks, around corners, the water flowing against me. I was determining my consciousness level - am I dreaming? what happens next? can I decide? well somehow the water started flowing back into the cave, and I was swept up.
increasing speeds! careening around corners!
for a moment it looked like I was in the sewer scene from Dark Forces, but I didn't want to be in a computer game, so I titled back and floated on my back down the stream
but that was unchallengingly like my prone physical position
I saw through my eyelids at this point - large purple shifting shapes, unclear but rich, fuzzy pleasure sight, but not a destination, not an entrance to another world
the water picked up further and took harried corners, actually scooting me almost straight up at one point
until I was ejected forceful gentle from a gray rock similar hole except flat from a steep steep sloping cliffside
and I was floating and falling fairly fast down the side of this cliff, and the land was spread out around me, everything covered in straw, in dead pale grasses
and I was grounded, then floating coasting over the landscape
wondering what to do
and I realized I wanted to get in touch with my dog nature
so I became the dog that attacked me
things were happening fast now
I was running along a trail
I saw me,
I bit me,
I kept running
now in time with the drum
and my heart rate too
I was an athelete dog
on coyote ridge
then I became darcy
a little yippy ornery pooch
(from cyborganic a few years back)
I couldn't run so much
so I flew
and then I was justin again
hanging off of flying darcy with my arms around his furry belly
I was thinking I would next become
Duffy, the dead dog of the Darby's
but it seemed too much like all the dog's I known before review
so I fell to the ground
and I was sucked down
a bit of ground swimming tumbling into a cavern
there was a rat
he showed me his teeth
I was not scared, he wasn't interested in me
he became a profile rat,
seen from the side
then many rats, I could see him from above
this one big rat
was made up of many many many thousands of rats
and I climbed on this one big rat
and rode clinging to his back
as he climbed into a tight tunnel
how nice it is the year of the rat
I thought.
he lumbered along, I felt his fur
he started climbing up and I let go
falling gentley into limbo
what now I thought?
and a pussy willow bud appeared
growing larger and spiking
to become a mountainous artichoke
of phosphorescent colours
I approached it to climb
and this shape appeared to me
and I was suddenly a white rabbit
running again to the drumtime
along one left furrow
leaping over a middle ledge to the right furrow
and back over
back and forth and forward
along this trail lined with crop stalks
I leaped over to the right
and collapsed on the ground
sucked in
falling human feet first
fast but not worried
found I could carve rock by scraping a trail with my hands and feet
I dove side through the rock
out of the downward speed
hanging in a self-made rock hole
then back in the stream
and in a cavernous
I thought I heard the drum speed up
our signal to return
so I shouted, screamed once
to create fissure in the cavern ceiling
that I might exit
sunlight peaked through
I climbed out
I was on the side of half dome,
in yosemite in california
I needed to get back to swat
so I started flying east
flew through norfolk nebraska
(birthplace of johnny carson!)
came upon chicago
and detoured straight up
no concrete for me
swooping through clouds
I joined a flock of sparrows
we swung back to swarthmore
where I became a tree
planted firmly
feeling mighty grounded
and wondering how to scratch an itch
and supporting life
sparrows and squirrels picking at my flesh for food
bugs and nuts
I look at a squirrel
he appears demonic
eyes red and wide opened
teeth bared
I boo right back at him
momentarily human I puff my chest
he blinks and goes back to eating
a storm is coming
I branch clasp the sparrow and squirrel to my chest
the sparrows beak in my left neck cant
the squirrels teeth in my right
I am bleeding gray tree sapblood
and hail strikes hard my back
further bloodied in spots
I descend to the ground gradually
push the sparrow and the squirrel down beneath me
we, I become part of the ground
feeling spread out
and I am drawn up
as a bud
a flower bud
I rise from the ground
stemmed
I am a sunflower
someone is softly snoring near me
I feel the suns rays on my petals
next to a well cleared path
a deer comes by, passes
hey, come back here,
he eats me
the drum is faster now
time to come back
I thought he might chew me in faster time with the drum
but he swallowed me whole
I hung in deer gray stomach sludge
until he peed/shat me out in a river
right over into a scary steep waterfall
descended quickly
and river flow fast
uphill
still a flower
I am expanding
then a bubble
till I am as big as the sky
too big
I am again a small bubble, I rise out of the water
awake.

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