Chardi kala

I thought they were hawks, the birds circling in the purple sky. Fierce fighters, patrolling the fields of prickly shrubs and tangled seagrass, before the land dropped into white sand beach. A good omen, surely, bringing the protection of the gods.

I lay on a yoga mat in the middle of a wide yard bordered by mango and ackee trees. A white scarf wrapped around my arms as thin armor against the mosquitoes that had risen as the sun set. The heat of the day lingered, heavy and damp, with no breeze blowing in from the sea.  The weight of it pinned me down, unable to do anything but stare at the birds wheeling overhead.

I wanted them to be eagles, those birds. Eagles remind me of the Sikh phrase “chardi kala.” I had that engraved on a silver bracelet I once wore every day. It translates as something like “ever rising,” a concept symbolized by the way an eagle does not get battered by strong wind currents but uses them to fly higher.

I had hoped to be flying now, too. From the darkness of the yard drifted soft sobs or sudden eruptions of giggles as my fellow travelers embarked on their journeys. My fingers hugged the shawl tighter, as I hunkered into the misery of the leaden heat, the twisting pain in my stomach, the headache squeezing the base of my skull, and the thoughts buzzing in a fretful cloud around my mind. “This didn’t work. Stupid to come here. I need to write. I can’t write. What do I do?”

“Stop writing.” The voice spoke clearly in my head, but I’d never heard it before. I’ve heard people refer to this voice as the higher self or some aspect of divinity, but simplest, I think, to call it the voice of the mushroom. That is, after all, the voice I had invited in. Eight gel caps full of Psilocybe cubensis, dried and ground to fine powder, dissolved in my stomach, making me squirm with nausea.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I argued back. I knew all about these kinds of reverse psychology tricks. They never worked on me. “I can’t stop writing. I just need to know how to make it stop hurting when I do.”

Do you know this pain? This seizing of the chest, choking out all breath, the panicked freezing of all thought, caused by the simple act of putting fingers to keyboard or pen to paper.

“Stop writing,” the mushroom said again.

We argued, for who knows how long. It seemed to me a whole night passed, but I could still see the birds circling above while I writhed and whined like a feverish child, until I finally snapped, “I can’t stop writing! Who will I be without it?”

Nothing. Silence. The weight wrapping me, entrapping me, lifted so suddenly I felt like my body had disappeared.

The mushroom spoke again, lightly, enticingly. “Let’s find out.”

The birds flapped their wings then and flew off into the night sky, following the path of the Milky Way. Jamaican vultures, I found out later. Harbingers of death, they carried away everything I thought was me.

This is all that remained: the grass, the beach, the ocean, the sky, the stars. My journey began.