To Iquitos and the Jungle
by Scott KloosAll the myriads of Eternity,
All the wisdom of joy and life,
Roll like a sea around him,
Except what his little orbs
Of sight by degrees unfold.
And now his eternal life
Like a dream was obliterated.
-William Blake, The Book of Urizen
All the wisdom of joy and life,
Roll like a sea around him,
Except what his little orbs
Of sight by degrees unfold.
And now his eternal life
Like a dream was obliterated.
-William Blake, The Book of Urizen
As ever, and in my life, I'm the only gringo on the boat. I don't feel connected with anyone. I'd prefer to be alone on a small boat enjoying the river by myself. I am still reeling from the absurd trip-two full days on bus and colectivo descending through the cloud forests of the eastern sierras and the ceja de la selva (literally 'brow of the jungle') to Yurimaguas and the heaviness of the lowland jungle. Intellectually I have known, but only now does my body begin to recognize and feel that I will be flowing downstream on the Rio Huallaga, which spreads out before me but yesterday was only a line on paper connecting the dot of me to one of the dreams of my life-the Rio Amazonas and the heart of the jungle.
A rainbow forms as the Morona prepares to leave the dock. Porters rush aboard from the muddy banks bent low under heavy loads of last minute cargo. Horses and cows are coerced over gangplanks. The sky is a riot of cloudform. Everything is in flux. Each part of the forest creates its own weather. There is no way to predict.
Our wake in the light of the setting sun is the largest most beautifully intricate brown, pink, lavender, and blue plumage in the world. Like a bird seeking a mate, we announce ourselves to the jungle.
I wake up and piss off the side of the boat into the shimmering yellow-orange, just after dawn water. Birds squawk loudly over the din of the boat's engine. We pull up to a small settlement to load bunches of green plantains and black sacks of grain. Villagers leap on deck to tear open crates filled with sawdust and uncover blocks of ice that are strapped with rope to the backs of waiting men.
Today the river is calm, filled with a strange dirty, brown sponge-like foam that clings to river debris like floating thoughts of home cling to my being. I try to forget, to feel the river rumbling beneath me. I become acutely aware of the tensions in my belly. I haven't shit for two days. I try not to think or even attempt at an imagination of what lies beyond the edge of the shore. I think about Ayahuasca. The river answers with swirling and undulating visions of tiny-bubbled foam. Like the mushroom, the effect of the vine seems to ripple back through time.
The shore is an endless ribbon of green, broken only by the small settlements that dot the shore. Two men paddle by in a shallow canoe. A guy fishes water out from the river in a paint bucket at the end of a string to give to the horses and cows below. The Huallaga has merged with the Maranon. There are herons, egrets, parrots, terns, a hawk with white undersides and a long curved beak, white spots on the ends of brown wings. River dolphins with truncated dorsal fins slide through the brown miso-like water. Logs, branches, bits of trash, and floating plants drift by on this river that in this moment seems like the safe, known world. I am tempted to jump off and enter the green jungle vastness, to swim ashore and leave everything behind.
As I lie here gently rocking in my hammock reading Blake's Book of Urizen, I am almost overwhelmed with feeling. It is this that I someday hope to share with others. Nothing would make me happier than to share the dark depths of feeling that reside within my being. I cry at the sadness of this lack. I want nothing more than to authentically connect. This very writing is an effort to open parts of myself to others but I can only scratch the surface...
Ages on Ages rolled over them,
Cut off from life and light, frozen
Into horrible forms of deformity.
Los suffered his fires to decay;
Then he looked back with anxious desire,
But the space undivided by existence
Struck horror into his Soul.
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