4.
The ayahuasca, a thick, tar-green puree, ran into the glass. I raised it to my lips, held my breath, and attempted to pour it down my throat without inadvertently tasting it. The flavour was like a fist squeezing the base of my tongue. Continue reading
3.
By the next morning, I felt physically sick and exhausted. I went to the dispensary and took the thimble of turgid green medicine. As the taste worked its way into my guts as a filament of revulsion, I considered giving the final session a miss. Continue reading
2.
The ceremony itself transpires in a ritual space called a malocca, which is a large communal hacienda. Each of the participants lies on a mat on the floor with a pillow, a blanket and a bucket at its foot. The ceremony begins with each coming forward to imbibe the ayahuasca, not unlike a communion of sorts. Continue reading
“By degrees we beheld the infinite abyss, fiery as the smoke of a burning city; beneath us at an immense distance was the sun, black but shining round it were fiery tracks on which revolv’d vast spiders, crawling after their prey…
‘The air was full of them and seemed composed of them; these are devils and called powers of the air, I now asked my companion which was my eternal lot? He said, between the black and white spiders.”
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
1.
I’ve enjoyed a limited, peaceful relationship with drugs and alcohol. I had a profound experience with LSD in my early twenties which had lived up to the hype with a bona-fide religious vision. Continue reading
I just wanted to write to tell you how much I enjoyed your show, ‘Nanette.’ You don’t see a lot of genuinely incendiary stuff anymore. Incendiary and vital. Continue reading
Above: ‘Punisher’ emblem on RAAF Wedgetail surveillance plane.
“Such symbology… is always ill-considered and implicitly encourages the inculcation of an arrogant hubris.”
Lieutenant General Angus Cameron, chief of defence elect on his decision to ban the use of skulls, crossbones, The Punisher Logo, Grim Reaper and Spartan emblems amongst armed forces.
“We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won’t allow them to write “fuck” on their airplanes because it’s obscene!”
Colonel Walter Kurtz, Apocalypse Now.
She comes among us
where we are marooned on mats
She passes through the ocean of whiteness
dressed in olive and black Continue reading
Her absence
luscious and pendulous
rhythmic and sussurant
respires beside me in the darkness Continue reading
Blitz Magazine, Volume 31, Number 6 December 2017/January 2018
Okinawa is the birthplace of karate. Japan’s fifth-largest prefecture was a cauldron of conflict during the second world war and is now a bucolic territory, known to boast one of the largest populations of centenarians in the world. Continue reading
Final
I don’t believe in threats. A threat is specific, and knowable. It comes from you, and it’s contained and bordered by words. Fear, however, is personal. It’s amorphous and endless. Like a gas, it expands to fill a space.
“You’re done! You’re done!” said the others.
“I’m done when I say I’m done,” I replied, trying to find his eye. Continue reading
Theme Park at its Darkest 