SLEEPING THROUGH AN EARTHQUAKE
Appeared in Cæsura: Reset 2022, published by Poetry Center San José
We were driving to the Okanagan Valley to meet a shaman and eat five grams of mushrooms. It was my anniversary gift to Kate. The shaman had told us to fast ahead of the private ceremony, so my grumpy brain had stopped listening when Kate read the directions saved on her phone.
“Did you hear me?” she asked.
“Yeah. I heard something about a ranch and Trout River.”
She shook her head. “You missed the turn.”
I stopped and made a five-point turn—the dirt road crackling beneath our tires.
“Sorry. I’m just in my head.”
“You’re always in your head.”
“I was thinking I’d like to live out here… I’m just so sick of the traffic and neighbours—there’s no goddamned space in the city, you know? No time to write.”
“Can you be grateful?” she asked. “We’re not in the city now, are we?”
When I looked over, I saw her blinking to hold back tears.
I took her hand. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re exhausting,” she said.
That got me. It was quiet the rest of the way. There was no reviving our excitement.
Kate had been looking forward to the ceremony since her last trip with friends, when she’d run circles inside her own brain to the bouncy refrain: “You are magical! You are beautiful! You are happiness!”
But the last time I ate mushrooms, I’d wound up convulsing and had an out-of-body experience. I floated in darkness, and heard my dead father’s voice tell me to take care of my mother. I’d been dreading this trip, yet I hoped the mushrooms would rid me of my habit of darkening Kate’s colourful life.
“That’s it,” Kate said. “Blue mailbox.”
Under branches of quaking aspen and white spruce, we tunnelled down the driveway.
Kate leaned toward the dash. “It’s like a carwash,” she said.
“Yeah. We can’t turn around now.”
She rested her little hand over mine. “It’ll be okay. We’re ready.”
Kate was ready enough for both of us. She had practically held my hand all week, as we prepared in accordance with the shaman’s instructions: Hydrate properly. Eat mostly plant-based. Avoid sugars, alcohol, drugs. The waiver we’d signed released the shaman from responsibility in the event of temporary or permanent disability, injury, or death. We’d agreed that if we perceived unusual hazards—whatever that meant—we would remove ourselves from the ceremony. And we’d also agreed we did not suffer from suicidal tendencies or psychosis. But according to doctors, I had twice experienced drug-induced psychosis.
The property opened up under blue skies—a simple log home with a tin roof, mini-van, smoking fire pit, and woodshed.
“You find it okay?” a voice called from the house. It was the shaman—also known as Vera, my sister’s tarot card reader. She was in her forties, with long, dark hair and tanned complexion. Layers of beaded bracelets and necklaces, and tooth-like pendants hung around her neck. Maybe she was Indigenous, but maybe she was just some New Age white woman. She hugged us, held our hands, and peered into my eyes with a motherly gaze and said, “Relax. You’re in good hands.”
Vera walked barefoot, as we carried our packs down a path. I fell behind the women and thought only of turning back, until we reached a slatted-wall shack with a slanted tin roof. Vera slid open the wood door. The room smelled of wet moss. Tarps and rugs covered the ground. There were pillows, blankets and half-melted candles. Bones, skulls, rattles, and dried herbs decorated the walls.
“Set your sleeping bags on the rug in the centre,” Vera said. “And get into your comfy clothes. I’ll be right back.”
Kate and I rolled out our bags—the quiet between us still heavy. Kate put on her flannel pyjamas, wool socks and a toque. I now wore my hoodie, sweatshorts, and knee-high hockey socks. We sat on the ground, looking up at the slanted ceiling, open about three feet, revealing trees outside—leaves flapping in a wind that promised rain.
I shivered. “It’s getting cold,” I whispered. “I hope my sleeping bag’s warm enough.”
“You should have brought pants,” she said.
“I didn’t want to be too hot.”
“Why are you whispering?”
I wrapped my arms around my legs, burying my face in my knees, and whispered, “I don’t know.”
Vera entered with a steaming teapot. She sat cross-legged in front of us on a pile of pelts, handed us a piece of paper and a pencil, then asked us to write our intentions for the evening—something she could remind us of, if things got “hairy”.
“Can you read them to me?” Vera asked.
Kate read as she tied her long, black hair in a ponytail. “To find courage.”
Find courage? She was already the most courageous person I’d ever known—the woman who found skydiving disappointing. Had I discouraged her?
“Eli, what’s your intention?” Vera asked.
“To be grateful.”
“Wonderful intentions,” Vera said, rolling a ball of sage between her hands. She plopped the sage in a shell, then lit it with a lighter and smudged every corner of the shack, then us. “I invite our guides to watch over us this evening.” Vera reached for a leather satchel, pulled out two small, aluminum containers and dumped ground-up mushrooms into two brown cups that looked moulded from the forest floor. She poured tea over the mushrooms. “These are Golden Teacher mushrooms. I like to take them with tulsi tea and honey. Kate, come sit here.”
Kate moved to sit on the ground in front of Vera, who lit a cigarette, took a drag, and blew the smoke over Kate’s cup.
“Make sure you swoosh the tea around and get all the loose bits,” Vera said.
Without hesitation, Kate downed the cup.
“Eli,” Vera said. “Come.”
My heart pounded, begging me to pull out. I thought, maybe I’ll just sit and watch over Kate. But when I looked at her excited face, I remembered I was doing this for us.
I crawled forward and sat at Vera’s feet. She blew smoke over the cup, and handed it to me. I took a long, deep breath and downed the tea. It tasted surprisingly good, with the tulsi and honey, even the loose bits.
Vera smiled. She almost looked proud of me when she said, “Remember your intentions as we meditate.” Vera reached for her cellphone and small Bluetooth speaker.
Kate and I did our best impressions of people who meditate. Then, a voice came from the speaker—an old man speaking in a tape recording over a loud hum.
“Concentrate on your breath.”
I breathed in… out…
“Out,” the voice said, disrupting my rhythm. “Focus on your breath,” the voice said.
That’s what I’m doing, man!
Within five minutes, I felt… off. My body was hot, but cold, and I was sweating.
The voice said, “Become aware of your skin.”
I peeked over at Kate. She breathed softly—her eyes closed. Vera sat with her eyes closed, too. Only I could see the walls bulging in and out, breathing like lungs, the scale-like pattern on my sleeping bag slithering like a snake.
“I am love,” the voice said. “Bring your awareness to your love—”
“Can I speak?” I asked.
Vera’s eyes opened. “Yes.”
“This meditation thing—this guy’s voice—is really not doing it for me.”
In the silence, I sensed the awkwardness I’d created.
“Okay, it’s almost done,” Vera said. “Then you guys can lie down, if you want.”
I pretended to meditate, but the whole room wobbled, like reflections in a funhouse mirror. Kate now had her eyes open—gazing at the tin roof, and I knew she too could see through it and into the clouds, where the water droplets quivered and clumped into rain.
Finally, the meditation stopped, and Vera said we could lie back. She tucked Kate into her sleeping bag, while I slipped into mine and pulled it over my shoulders, which is all I wanted in that moment—to close my eyes and disappear. But then came the chorus of voices in my head—laughter and imbricated voices saying things like, “You did too many shrooms! You’re fucked! Kate knows you’re toxic! You’re schizophrenic! This is Death Town! Nya nya nya nya nya nya!” I writhed on the ground and rubbed my face in my hands to shield me from the waves dragging me down the swift current of despair.
“What’s wrong, Eli?” Vera asked.
I didn’t want to ruin Kate’s trip. I knew later she’d tell me all about the moving lights and colourful ancient symbols lining the walls, and the beautiful song flooding her mind. She’d tell me about the pulse in her third eye, heart, and groin—how she felt at home and was happy in that moment—the moment I was going permanently insane.
“Are you okay?” Vera asked.
I whispered to Vera about the tormenting voices that awaited me in Hell.
“You’ll have to push through those voices,” she said.
“I can’t. What if I get stuck there? What if the voices never stop?”
Vera crawled to my side. “Wow, you’re really attached to this life, huh?”
I looked up at her, and her hair turned white—her body and clothes unfurling and melting into the rug.
My legs trembled. “Oh no. This has happened before.”
“What?”
I struggled to not say the words—to not make it real.
“Seizure.” I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Try to breathe.”
“Am I not breathing?” I asked, taking a shaky, deep breath. “I forgot how to… what if I forget how to breathe?”
“You won’t forget. Just relax.”
“Relax? It’s like sleeping through an earthquake.” Then, for what felt like an hour, I took one quivering breath after the other. “I’m dying.”
Vera spoke calmly. “So? What would happen if you died?”
So? I felt the urge to punch her in the face. Don’t think of that! I forced my clenched fists open. Don’t make a fist! I thought of running away, and squirmed in my sleeping bag like a suffocating fish. I knew Vera’s attempts to calm me wouldn’t work because I knew what would happen if I died right then, and nothing about it calmed me.
Kate would have to drive alone to my sister’s in the morning—tell my nephew I was dead. I wrestled to remember my family, now distant and nearly forgotten, somewhere between memory and imagination, characters from a book or movie.
Then it was dark—the darkness that flowers inflict upon sunlight. And then came the stars, and silent twilight, before the thunderous rush of water, and I found myself on a riverbank where a sun rose from the mud. From somewhere, Vera’s voice chanted a song with no words, but I understood it to say, roaming angel, slumber-breathing roaming angel.
I felt a cold mist, and opened my eyes.
Vera took another sip of her drink and spat it at me, spraying my face.
“What would happen if you died?” Vera asked again.
“I’d leave Kate behind.”
“She’d be okay, eventually.”
I smiled. “Yes. She’s brave.”
Kate rested her hand on my shoulder. I rolled over, witnessed her resting quietly, and understood we were safe. I sat up. The walls were now lined with shimmering lights.
“Is this… real?”
I turned to Vera.
Her hair was black again, and she smiled at me. “You just went through a portal.
You were afraid a minute ago. How do you feel now?”
I knew the words she was speaking… but I had no idea what she was saying. “I can’t believe this life is real.”
Vera nodded. “Why do you think you’re so attached to this life?”
With a long sigh, I felt a burden release me. “Because write about my life—hold on to everything and relive it, trying to make sense… Fuck. My books don’t matter, do they? I thought they were so important.”
“They’re not,” she said.
As I wondered what then is the point of my life, Kate said, in a groggy voice, “What happened?”
I turned to her and took her hand. “Nothing happened. I’m okay. You just relax.”
When she smiled, I turned to Vera. “She wakes up happy every single day… It always amazes me.”
“She has positive energy,” Vera said.
“And I get to wake up to that face.”
I lay close to Kate and studied the lovely curves of her profile.
“Let’s travel,” she said. “I don’t want to experience… a job for a while.”
“Okay. We have everything we need,” I said.
Kate squeezed my thumb. “I want to sleep. Is there still morning? Where’s Vera?”
I’d forgotten about Vera. Gone were the shimmering lights. I couldn’t find her in the darkness. I cuddled with Kate. “I guess Vera went back to her house.”
“Maybe you created her,” Kate said. “A therapist for consciousnesses.” She took my hand. “We’ll create the life we want. We’re walking bookends of time—two consciousnesses.”
I laughed.
“What?”
“Nothing. Maybe you should be the writer… Wait, is consciousnesses a word?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter.”
We closed our eyes, held each other in the cool breeze, and fell asleep as the raindrops landed.