Close Encounters of a different kind, part 2

In the morning at Halem’s house I tried to sleep as long as I could to put off the inevitable morning hug but my bladder, full with the water from the infamous chalice and the four herbal mates we drank during the ceremony the night before, was not collaborating.  In the bathroom there were only two items: a strangled tube of toothpaste and a bottle of "Intimate Feminine Cream" on top of a lidless seatless toilet.  I did not even want to know.

Halem prepared breakfast: a plate of papaya and cucumber arranged in a precise crop circle formation served with cold coffee water (presumably to avoid brain scrambling from the microwave radiation).  He prayed.  We ate.  And then I sneezed.

His atenas perked up like a metal detector over a gold mine.  "Hmm, you are unwell.  I have a present for you.  Come."  Back to the Ceremony Room.  

The curing therapy started with rhythmic finger taps on my face, shoulders and back.  “Is there some pain in here?" he asked, jabbing his pointer into my kidney.  

"Yeah."  Now there is.

"Hmm... I had a feeling."

The tapping evolved into a full body massage.  At that point I was 100% certain that Halem was weird and 95% certain that he was not going to rob, rape or murder me, which are the three most important characteristics of a masseuses.   So despite the apparent awkwardness of the situation, I mentally shrugged my shoulders and enjoyed the free spa treatment.  

“I have another present for you,” he said afterwards.  His abounding generosity was starting to overwhelm me.   He handed me his backpack, grabbed his guitar and signaled for me to follow him as we power-walked to the bus station.  On the bus, I was privileged to listen to conspiracy theories about Princess Diana and stories about chatting it up with Viggo Mortison and hanging out with Manu Chau.  I refrained from asking which of the stories took place in this dimension and which of them occurred on other planets.  

Suddenly: “Close your eyes.”  He huddled me with a side hug and started mumbling something to the universe about love and plants.  Thankfully my previous involvement with evangelicals of the Charismatic flavor has desensitized me to random public prayer. 

Once we arrived at our destination (a little mountain town above Pasto), we convened with a small band of flowy-pants earth people, dreadlocked and pierced, carrying miniature instruments and a box of arroz con leche to sell in the plaza.  Before introducing me to each brother and sister, Halem ceremoniously squirted all of us with his travel-size spray bottle of eucalyptus water.  We sat in a powwow around the table and sang two-chord songs about our product.

“Arroz con leche...Arroz con leche... It’s so delicious and good... For only 1.000 pesos you can have it...”  Conventional poetic rhyme is against their beliefs.

“I like your friends,” I lied at the end of the day. 

“Yeah, they're better when we’re all in the stars together.”

And that is my problem with drugs and religion (in excess). 

In the minds of the hyper-spiritual, the Utopian world takes precedent over this one.   The present reality becomes an inconvenient stepping stone, a mere portal, to the perfect celestial realm.   This world is a boring and sinful place from which one should desire escape.  It is unpsychedelic and unholy.  It is a trap, an illusion, a cage.  And all of the unenlightened people who live within it, unaware of the other-earthly Paradise, are tragic prisoners that need to be rescued.  If the poor souls do not wish to be rescued they are to be pitied, or even condemned. 

But I am not convinced that the addicted or the dogmatic are any more free than the nonbelievers.