There has been a lot of doubts on my path recently. About choices, about effectiveness. We left the jungle to see, after a year of sedentary lifestyle, if road will bring solutions. Less control for sure, that ever relapsing disease. Surprise, opening to something new. After continuosly working with Shipibos for such a long time I needed to step out of this beautiful but narrow format, to be able to open more again to intuition, less to tradition and routine. Routine, killer of joy, didn’t reward me in exchange with some extraordinary technique improvements, so I decided this ain’t a fair deal.

So we arrived in the mountains, into fairy land, some call it happy gringo bubble, but this time I came more mature, not as a seeker of illusionary unknown and rare, not as explorer who needs to go, with this characteristic modern western obsession, where “no one” has gone before, but as someone who acknowledges that he is a gringo and just wants to live. So free from internal obligation to produce images ( freed, in some extent, by their excess today, as well as eyes that are not of a young man any more, these small things that help to naturally shape fate, in the face of indecisiveness and hard letting go ), I was able to land in the Sacred Valley as in a substitute of home I am barred from. There is entertainment, there is more choice of food, more diverse characters to meet. Perhaps not so many as in London or Warsaw, but that is even better, not to go so straight from hermitage into supermarket. People are calmer and nicer than in my homeland, and so is the weather. Place to enjoy, to live. But of course as an addict of action, I decided to use the opportunity to continue a bit the photo / guide project, and when I saw post about ceremony with William Koroskenyi, a gringo healer I already heard about in Iquitos, I wrote to him. This was also symbolic, to break my time with the indigenous culture by drinking with a foreigner, as if I were back in the good old Europe. I came with the intention of being once again a documentalist, but shitty low light in the place and great medicine both ruled that my input and my experience will be of a different kind. So there are no great images here, perhaps, but the experience was a great one, and that is perhaps more important and another sign about the path to follow.

To drink in the mountains is a whole different game than in the jungle. In some ways, more challenging, as ayahuasca doesn’t really like the cold, but people not used to heat and mosquitos appreciate cold air one can sip when things become to dense inside. For me this cold breeze is also refreshing these days and brings back the scent of first ceremonies on the other side of great ocean. It feels fresh, it feels clean. I don’t think of sneaky spirits of the jungle, of devils and brujeria, I think about fast brother wind, that always was close to my soul. Sacred Valley is all about “hanan”, the high world, the Father Sky, condor and flight rather than snake and chtonic ambiguity of the lowland forest. I was always rather weary of these upward gazes, feeling they often conceal unresolved issues, smelling of priests, of religion, be it our own pious men in black, spiritual functionaries of Inca empires, or any other men of the high pulpit. I have always liked the doubt, the trickster, but trickster teaches the value of change, and I have grown weary of my doubts. So when I step into the maloca for ceremony with William, I don’t think it is a coincidence that I am walking the tree of life, from the trial of fire and snakes, towards the higher realm.

William works together with his partner Pamela. He has been studying Amazonian shamanism for years now, very thorough but also open to intuition, to being guided by plants and experience itself, rather than only dogma of the culture. Pamela seems to be more of a fusion of different healing modalities, of feeling, flow, touch and direct contact with people. William creates the space, the steady rhytm, upon which others can experiment, open up, and Pamela sneaks around with her energy. They complement each other in the performance, but more important perhaps, show the integration of this medicine, so necessary in this world of many gurus who claim to love the whole world because they are unable to hold balanced relationship with their nearest person.

There is a lot of setting up the space. Preparation, grounding, talking, explanation. Cleansing and calming.  Step by step, with no hurry, with all and each and every one in proper order. It builds the climax, it prolongs the session, it gives it added value, regardless of our belief about actual value of certain gestures, such as tobacco sopladas. This is good inspiration for me, often carried away by my impatience, by inner fire, dismissing the uncessary.  Ceremonial structure can teach about that – we can either slowly dismiss everything as superflous, superstition, just take our psychedelics with Brian Eno’s smartphone app and in doing so discard all tradition, all need for human presence and interaction. But by doing so we desacralize all world, bring everything down to utility and end up in the same loneliness and despair we tried to escape in the first place with aid of plant medicines. Yes, it is cheaper, maybe even faster to do our shopping in cashierless supermarket, but I enjoy wasting time with campesinas in mercado of Pisac. Yes, I could just get my potent brew online and drink it with unlimited diversity of Spotify soundtrack, doing away with mapacho smoke, but I want to feel William’s breath in the palms of my  hand. I want everything to have meaning. To appreciate. To live for the process, rather than just the outcome.

Not only with chill of nature around us I am closing sentimental loop to my first ceremony ever. Since we came from the jungle my sinus is blocked again, eternal problem since early colds of my youth. It subsided in the tropics, but here it is again, justifying ceremonial rape, medicine that likes a good reason for its use, and without it can easily turn into another mindless habit. A round is served, and we are ready to start.

Brew was very tasty, rare thing, but not impossible, when one knows how to cook. Mostly chacruna providing light, but some huambissa too, which I could feel, it is always more physical/medicinal in my experience. The first cup, full one, started coming up strong,  I purged, apparently trying to avoid harder work, and of course then regretted it as I sat just listening to icaros, feeling a little buzz. I was in a different position however then during most ceremonies of last year, when I had been in charge of the show and somehow responsible for it, this time as a guest I could really accept whatever happens. When the time for second round came, I was of course one of the few to take it.

William sings classical ribereno style, mestizo Spanish icaros, with rich, deep voice, long, stable, he walks around with his chakapa, sometimes sits down with a particular person. Pamela is more random, less predictable, her songs can go through different, sometimes unpleasant, sometimes touching, freaky registers, which for me is always more inspiring, closer to the primitive, improvised shamanism, far from mind and memory, closer to the moment. They asked in the beginning to keep silent, not to join them, which was a good lesson of patience and somehow allowed me to save breath for a right moment, when it came. Out of difficult time, as usually, out of sickness and crisis comes the best singing, always been like this, almost as if this was to teach something about paradoxes of life. And these icaros are from gift from the source, rare time when my plans disappear and my mind takes a back seat. It was a release I have been waiting for a long time, maybe even months of routine and rising feeling of resignation and pointlessness. It was also a powerful lesson in gratitude, some hints about healing with it my greed, all these things I know from my path, all these humble-yourself-and-jah-jah will-guide-I, that I keep losing, in my hunger for more. Make amends, ask little, and the right times return, in fact they are here already, just wake up to it, Mundo.

There are challenges ahead, but this kind of ceremonies gives strength to continue. Giving thanks, not only to the captains, but to all the crew who participated, co-created, even just by their presence, more so by kind words, smiles, gratitude. It all builds the house we want to live in.

The spirit is back.

You can find William and Pamela mostly in the jungle, not far from Iquitos, Peru, where they run Avatar centre ( https://www.eywainstitute.org ), hosting retreats and dietas, and where, is Jah permits, I will be able to visit, to develop this one night stand into something deeper.

I can hardly think of any other animal species so aggressive in its development, so adaptable, so insatiable.

…

Trudno mi przywołać inne zwierzę tak agresywne w swojej ekspansji, tak zdolne do adaptacji, tak nienasycone.

[ Andes / Andy ]

Whoever drinks from it, will make him healthy  /  kto z niego pije, ten zdrów żyje

Na pielgrzymce Qoyllur Riti są całe armie przybyłe z różnych stron Andów, rzesze stłoczone w jednej dolinie a policjantów można policzyć na palcach dwóch dłoni. Kontrolę sprawują ukukus, ludzie- niedźwiedzie, jedyni którym wolno wspiąć się kulminacyjnej nocy na lodowiec, niedostępny dla zwykłych ludzi. Jeżeli ktoś odważyłby się złamać powagę miejsca i na przykład został przyłapany na kradzieży, ukukus sami zrobią z nim porządek, zaciągając go na dzikie zbocze na reedukacje.

Patrzyłem na święty dla Quechua lodowiec Sinakara, pamiętając ile go było w 2013 roku. Co roku cofa się w widoczny sposób, wszyscy stali bywalcy to potwierdzają. Nie wolno już pielgrzymom, jak przez stulecia, zabierać lodu do swoich wiosek, lodu z którego woda, jak wierzą, leczy. Być może przydałoby się by paru ukukus zawlekło na lód  i wepchnęło weń zakłamane mordy niektórych polityków, cynicznie dowodzących że efekt cieplarniany to tylko teoria. Gdyby tylko w globalnej wiosce wioskowych dupków dało się tak samo potraktować jak w prawdziwej społeczności.

…

On Qoyllur Riti pilgrimage there are entire armies from all parts of Andes, hordes crowded in one valley and the policemen can be counted with fingers. The control and order is managed by ukukus, men-bear, the only ones who can climb on the main night on to the glacier, unavailable for ordinary men. If someone dared to commit the sacrilege, and for example steal or get drunk, the ukukus will drag him onto the wild slopes and teach him discipline.

I was watching the sacred Sinakara glacier, remembering how much bigger it was in 2013. Every year it retreats visibly, all the frequent visitors to Qoyllur Riti confirm this. The pilgrims are not allowed any more, as the could for centuries, to take the ice to their villages, the ice which melts into healing water, as they believe. Perhaps, I think, it would be wholesome act for some ukukus to drag onto the glacier and push into the ice the hypocritical puppets who call themselves politicans, claiming cynically that global warming is just a theory. If only in the global village the village assholes could be treated the same way as in a real community…

Again, an hour of sleep and coca based breakfast. The crowds have already gathered, but the Father is not out yet.

***

Znów, tylko godzinka snu i śniadanie z koki. Tłumy już się zebrały ale Starego jeszcze nie ma.

There is anticipation, there are “real” photojournalists and some tourists, all of them driven from Cuzco for this occasion to the village just below the ceremony site. When the moment comes, the first rays appearing behind the mountain, the first hope of warmth after freezing night, when the crowds kneel down in front of the Father Sun, and Inca shamans ahead of them proceed with their ceremony, I see this all is serious. There is nothing to believe here again, all plain to see,  from one end of the sky to another, in first light of the day.

***

Jest w powietrzu mocne wyczekiwanie, są na zboczach “prawdziwi” dziennikarze i paru turystów, wszyscy przywiezieni z Cuzco na tą okazję do wioski zaraz poniżej, pod terenem ceremonii. Kiedy ten moment, wyczekiwana chwila nadchodzi, kiedy pierwsze promienie wystrzeliwują zza góry, pierwsza nadzieja na rozgrzanie po mroźnej nocy, kiedy tłumy klękają przed Ojcem Słońce a inkascy szamani kontynuują swą ceremonię powitania, widzę że to wszystko jest poważna sprawa. Nie ma tu, ponownie, nic w co trzeba by wierzyć, wszystko JASNE jak na dłoni, od jednego końca nieba po drugi.

Ceremonies continue for some time, and the nations are preparing for the big dance, final event of this festival. This requires a lot of coordination, they will descend across the meadows above Tayankani santuary in a complicated dancing choreography, spectacular farewell to the holy Apus, ice peaks of the Inkas.

***

Ceremonie trwają jakiś czas a narody przygotowują się na wielki taniec, ostateczny punkt programu. Wymaga to wielkiej koordynacji, i wykrzesania resztek siły, bedą zbiegac poprzez ogromne łąki ponad sanktuarium Tayankani w skomplikowanej tanecznej choreografii, spektakularne pożegnanie ze świętymi Apu, lodowymi szczytami Inków.

The signals to begin are lost in the noise but the armies are on the move   /    Sygnały rozpoczęcia giną w hałasie ale armie wyruszyły

I ja tam byłem, swoje wypiłem i wypaliłem, trochę zauważyłem, trochę zmyśliłem, kto chce wiedzieć za dużo, tego głowa boli. Pa pa !

***

And I was there and I had my share, some things I saw, some not quite so, who wants to know, he can go. Ciao !

[ Qoyllur Riti, Peru 2013 ]

After a whole day running around the festival grounds, getting high on oxygen and cannabis, when the cold night comes, I hardly have strength to follow ukukus up. It is supposed to be the most important night, when they climb the ice to do their rituals and then descend in 24 hours pilgrimage. I chew coca all evening and get anxious, laziness and perseverance struggle with each other in my brain and I stand below, looking up at groups leaving on the climb, and keep thinking. Finally I gather strength and reach halfway. I watch the fireworks, I shoot some of the climbers, I say to myself “it is important to know enough is enough’ and with this kind of excuses I go down. “I will not wait with them all night in extreme cold, I will be too wasted to work tomorrow” I say.

***

Po całym dniu biegania w te i wewte po pagórkach festiwalu, ćpania tlenu i konopii, kiedy nadchodzi zimna noc, mam niewiele sił na wspinaczkę śladami ukuku.  To ma być najważniejsza noc, kiedy wchodzą na lodowiec i odbywają swe rytuały, a potem schodzą tańcząc w 24 godzinnej pielgrzymce. Cały wieczór żuję kokę i niecierpliwie żongluje myślami, na ringu naprzeciw siebie lenistwo i upór. Stoję na dole i patrzę w górę, na kolejne grupy wchodzące w ciemność, i myślę. Wreszcie zbieram determinację i docieram w pół drogi, gdzie patrzę na fajerwerki, stzrelam co nieco fotek wspinających się pielgrzymów i mówię sobie, “ważne wiedzieć kiedy jest dosyć”, i z takimi wykrętami wracam w stronę namiotu. “Nie będę tu z nimi siedział całą noc w tym koszmarnym mrozie, będę zbyt zmęczony aby jutro w dobrym świetle mógł pracować”. Tak sobie gadam.

Finally, it turns out I will. After a hot drink  I feel the coca I have been chewing all evening had been delayed in its effect and now it hits me and dictates my next move. Plagued for years with difficulty in making decisions I went through those type of pathetic inside thought wars, and now I am more than happy to give away a lot of responsibility to the plants I use… They make me often who I am, at each particular moment, what kind of process in the stream of reality can be called Światosław, whether agitated, relaxed, aroused, focused, all those states, and decisions that follow are less mine now and more of the medicine I have inside me. So as the photos of previous day have been co-produced by cannabis, so those below , from the night spent on the edge of sacred glacier with men-bears and then descending with them in a crazy, exhausting run, need to be credited to mamita coca, and the words that I am writing now, to coffee bean.

***

Ostatecznie, jak się okazuje, jednak będę. Po gorącym napoju wchlanym przy którymś ze straganów czuję jak uaktywnia się opóźniona w swym działaniu koka, i dyktuje mi teraz następny krok. Przez lata męczyła mnie trudność w podejmowaniu “optymalnych” decyzji, przechodziłem setki razy przez tego typu wewnętrzne wojny myśli i argumentów i teraz jestem szczęśliwy, że mogę oddać część odpowiedzialności roślinom które uzywam. To one często czynią mnie tym kim jestem, w tych konkretnych chwilach i stale, jaki typ procesu w niekończącym się strumieniu rzeczywistości znajduje się akurat pod metką Światosław, czy to pobudzony, zrelaksowany, podniecony, skupiony, wszystkie te stany, i decyzje jakie z nich wynikają są teraz mniej moje, a bardziej lekarstw jakie w mym ciele akurat się znalazły. Więc tak jak zdjęcia z poprzedniego dnia współprodukowała konopia, tak te poniżej , z nocy spędzonej na skraju świętego lodowca z ludźmi-niedźwiedziami, a potem pędzenia z nimi na dół w szalonym, wyczerpującym biegu, te zdjęcia są także autorstwa mamuśki koki, zaś słowa jakie właśnie piszę, zmielonych i zaparzonych ziaren kawowca.

In the morning ukukus come down from the mountain, and those who did this sacred climb first time have their initiation ceremony. I shoot that and skip most of the Catholic part of the fiesta, I need to rest a bit before the pilgrimage across the mountains, towards Ocongate. We leave in the midday sun.

***

Nad ranem ukuku schodzą z góry, a ci którzy byli na świętej wspinaczce po raz pierwszy przechodzą teraz ceremonie inicjacji.  Fotografuję ją i opuszczam większość katolickiej części imprezy, muszę co nieco odpocząć przed dalszym ciągiem pielgrzymki przez góry, w stronę Ocongate. Ruszamy kiedy słońce w zenicie.

But it is not only plants that carry me onwards, not only input through digestive system makes me who I am now. We are shaped by all senses, by people we meet, by elements, by sounds. I become the rhythm of the drum and flute, I understand by experience, again, what it means to march, when one loses in a way a part of self, it is dissolved, after all, this is what I am looking for in all those travels.

***

Ale nie tylko rośliny niosą mnie do przodu, to co wkładam w system trawienny to nie jedyny bodziec z zewnątrz. Jesteśmy kształtowani przez wszystkie zmysły, przez ludzi jakich spotykamy, przez żywioły, przez dźwięki. Staję się rytmem bębnów i fletów idących z nami, rozumiem, poprzez doświadczenie, po raz kolejny, co znaczy maszerować, kiedy w pewnym sensie traci się część siebie, a to jest przecież to czego przede wszystkim w tych wszystkich podróżach szukam.

We reach large meadow and take some rest there.  Ukukus are very tired but big thing is ahead. I go on the side, smoke some weed, anxious as always when afternoon light meets action . I carry heavy backpack with all my things, tent, sleeping bag, warm clothes, it will be a challenge. The armies are getting ready for final descent, representing their nations, Indians from various parts of Andes, with flags, feathers, celebration of ancestral heritage, this mountain dance is what they practiced all year.

***

Docieramy na wielką łąkę i trochę tam odpoczywamy. Ukuku są bardzo zmęczeni ale wielka rzecz wciąż przed nami. Odchodzę na bok i jaram zielsko, jak zwykle podekscytowany kiedy popołudniowe światło spotyka akcję. Na plecach mam wielki plecak z całym dobytkiem, namiot, śpiwór, ciepłe ciuchy. Nie będzie lekko. Armie przygotowują się do ostatecznego, spektakularnego zejścia, reprezentanci indiańskich narodów, z różnych stron Andów, przystrojeni, pióropusze, flagi, wielka celebracja dziedzictwa przodków. Ten górski taniec ćwiczyli przez cały rok, od ostatniej pielgrzymki.

I don’t know how long it lasts, half an hour, one hour, no idea. I am in trance, running down the slope, looking for best position with the sun, trying to avoid collision with rows of ukukus running down, dancing at the same time, like human snakes, alternating, interwoven, up and down, showing no fatigue from all day long march, with drums, flutes, singing, shouts. This is true majesty,  awe, intensity of the moment. I am high, in any sense of the word.

***

Nie wiem jak długo to wszystko trwa, godzinę, pół, nie mam pojęcia. Jestem w transie, biegnąc w dół zbocza, wyszukując najlepszej pozycji naprzeciw “niedźwiedzi”, ze słońcem, usiłując uniknąć kolizji z ich szeregami przeplatającymi się w biegu jak jakieś węże, na dół i pod górę, nie pokazując zmęczenia z całodziennego marszu ( i nocnych ekscesów na lodowcu ), w kakofonii bębnów, piszczałek, okrzyków. Wspaniała kondycja, koordynacja, majestat i zadziwienie, intensywność chwili. Latam wysoko, w każdym sensie tego słowa.

Click, click, click, I satisfy my greed, until the sun hides behind mountain I have my visual feast and then crisp grilled alpaca flesh, and then off to catch an hour of sleep… We leave before rising of the moon, to continue marching all night until exhaustion delivers hallucinations in the full moon light. And it is not all done yet, when this crazy descend ends, we will pay homage to Father Sun.

***

Klik klik, zaspokajam swoją chciwość, zanim zajdzie słońce żrę obrazy a potem chrupką grillowaną alpakę i uciekam w godzinkę snu. Wyruszamy znów przed wschodem księżyca, aby maszerować całą noc aż zmęczenie uraczy mnie halucynacjami w świetle pełni. I to jeszcze nie wszystko, kiedy to szaleńcze zejście się zakończy, złożymy hołd Tacie Słońce.