Egypt + Ireland: Going analog

I really needed a reset.

I spent the past few weeks traveling in Egypt and Ireland, and at first, I intended to publish the next installment of my music story, perhaps some travelogues talking about my experience, or at least an Instagram post.

I ended up publishing absolutely nothing, and it was everything I required to get back on track.

I have increasingly felt captive to the tyranny of words, of publishing, of the always-on demands of the digital world. Increasingly, I feel like I can only hear myself think or properly communicate when I sit with a journal and pen, or speak to someone, or record a rambling rap on a voice memo to no one, since I am fairly certain nobody is listening to what I am publishing here. I needed to go analog, to opt out for a while again, like I did when I first went nomad in 2019. That was the last time I was in Egypt, and the first time I found myself. When somehow, I organized most of the same private permissions on my own with a spiritual tour guide that I had just paid a lot of money to a friend to organize as part of the group trip I found myself on in 2024. When I fulfilled a childhood dream and, in some ways, was at a peak point of self-actualization.

I just didn’t realize it at the time. I was caught up in my own stories of unworthiness, feeling I didn’t measure up because nobody was seeing me in the ways I wanted to be.

Now I know that a major part of the problem was that I didn’t know who I was yet, still in denial about being trans, still in the process of becoming someone other than Holly Regan.

Now I have reclaimed myself as Riordan, fully living as queer, poly, and trans; beginning this PhD program and tearing down everything I spent the past five years building, picking through the scraps to see what comes along with me, and what goes. I came out of my morning practice all fired up about creating, inspired to start writing, and then wasted an hour troubleshooting because I broke my Instagram and newsletter connection trying to update my name.

I suppose these things happen.

I don’t know what to say about Egypt and Ireland, exactly, but I captured it in my handwriting and voice memos. Increasingly I have felt bound and oppressed by the tyranny of words.

I don’t want to write anymore, I want to speak, dance, move, perform.

Writing, after all, was developed when humans started forgetting. When we started losing the ability to communicate with each other and the subtle realms in the languages beyond words, and we had to write things down because we could no longer remember.

Words help us preserve our knowledge and lineage, but they also fix in place something that was never meant to be static. The oral tradition is what defined human history from the beginning, and it was improv: flowing like the wind or the river, always changing, a state of constant riffing. When we write things down, we make them concrete; we make them only one way when their nature is change; we create a sanctioned version of a story that used to never be the same between tellings and speakers. This is the tyranny of writing, and what McKenna means when he says language creates reality. Those who tell the stories that get written down create histories that may have nothing to do with the way things actually went down.

So, I will post some selected journal entries from my time away, because there were some major realizations and I want to remember them, but I don’t want to rely on writing and documentation to remember what happened to me, and I no longer need to share everything. In fact, I came out of this journey with immense compassion for the child self that needed to capture my experience in as many formats as possible because maybe then I would remember what really happened this time. Maybe then I wouldn’t lose everything to what my mom used to disturbingly joke was called “trauma brain,” where our true experience, memories and feelings fall out through our heads as it is happening, like a sieve. Seeing this, I no longer felt the need to do it; in fact, I have found a new degree of freedom in feeling that it truly doesn’t matter if I ever publish anything again. I have had experiences of really witnessing both my child self and other people whose paths have crossed mine, and we have held each other and smiled and cried and affirmed each other’s right to be alive, and that is all that really matters.

Suffice it to say that something really major happened over the past few weeks that is all the more powerful for being super subtle. After Egypt, I went to stay with my dear friend Aisling (Ash) in Ireland, where she lives in a haunted house called Rose Cottage that she inherited from her abusive ex-boyfriend, Stephen, on the border between counties Waterford and Cork, where my family is from. I integrated my experiences in the Great Pyramid, which showed me that I didn’t need to tell everybody everything all the time and highlighted the frailty of our human need to document everything, so desperate are we to try and explain, for sensemaking in a world where nothing is certain. We honored the day of triple ancestors, 13 Tijax on the last day of the Kame trecena before heading into Kawok, the rebirthing, all that death and transformation, with high-dose cacao and a fire on the beach in the thick fog to release ourselves from the ties that have bound us to the past. And we had a trust walk in total darkness on astronomical Samhain through the forest, keeping the sound of the water at our side to guide us, seeing and feeling and communing with the fae, the spirits, in ways I had never experienced yet completely related to the feeling I would get in California when I sat with my cacao under the moon, or surrounded by the silent Saturnian mountains in the Sacred Valley of Peru, where everything was animated with vital force.

We learned that this knowledge is more valuable than the things everyone was trying so obsessively to measure and record at the pyramids; we remembered that we could trust our bodies and follow the feelings. We knew that we didn’t quite know what was happening, but it was working. We were changing. We felt timelines rearranging, ancestral karmas behind us dissolving and quantum possibilities around us unfolding.

However it was happening, we were becoming grown-ups.

But the revelations are the easy part. Now we have to make it happen.

I have also realized a new level of what it means that “everything is the practice” and part of the PhD project. The queer and trans ecstatic dance my friends and I are building; the eco-village that might start as an artist’s co-op and city farm; perhaps even plant-based food and beverage pairing events; these community involvement projects are increasingly where my heart is, and the space we create will include artist’s and performance space, where we can break free from the tyranny of fixed things and just be ourselves, ever-changing.

Help me hold it loosely and allow the unfolding, putting in just enough scaffolding to bring things to materiality.

Fear and Loathing at the London Stansted Airport

Summary:

• - Riordan Regan begins by humorously commenting on the complexity of their shoelaces and the time it takes to tie them, reflecting on their unique situation. - They mention their upcoming journey to Saqqara, Egypt, to explore ancient secrets and the philosophical nature of wave functions and hyper-dimensional objects. - Riordan expresses their frustration with the lengthy airport security process, feeling self-conscious about their actions and questioning what "normal" really means. - They delve into their internal monologue about their state of mind, describing it as a "reality tunnel" and questioning how others perceive them.

• Exploring Identity and Reality

  - Riordan discusses their feelings of normalcy and alignment when in their current state, contrasting it with their usual restless mind. - They list various cities they have visited, including Thessaloniki, Pisa, Heracle, Cork, Copenhagen, and Dublin, expressing a desire to visit Istanbul and Corfu. - Riordan reflects on the freedom of travel and the affordability of flights, despite not having a visa for some destinations. - They express a strong desire to spend more time in Italy, feeling a pull towards the country and wanting to make the trip soon.

• Critique of Airport Experience

  - Riordan criticizes the dehumanizing nature of airport travel, describing it as demoralizing and unnecessary. - They share their frustration with the security process, questioning the necessity of removing shoes and scanning bodies. - Riordan reflects on the loss of freedom and time due to arbitrary security measures, expressing their disdain for the system. - They mention the fear and loathing that lurks beneath the surface, acknowledging the need to maintain a calm and collected demeanor.

• Journalism as a Tool

  - Riordan discusses their identity as a journalist and the tools and experiences it has provided them. - They reflect on the different personas they adopt in various settings, comparing journalism to a suit that they wear. - Riordan expresses their resentment towards the profession but acknowledges its value in providing them with skills and experiences. - They emphasize the importance of viewing different aspects of life as tools in a toolbox, rather than defining their identity by them.

• Embracing Liminal Space

  - Riordan talks about the fun and freedom of being in a liminal space, away from borders and deadlines. - They express a desire to stay in this state, enjoying the lack of constraints and the ability to explore their thoughts. - Riordan acknowledges the need to return to reality but wishes they could maintain this sense of freedom. - They conclude by mentioning the need to debrief and plug in their phone, ending the monologue on a reflective note.

Action Items:

• Plug in phone and debrief. (Assignee: Riordan Regan)

• Make travel plans to visit Istanbul, Corfu, and other destinations in Europe. (Assignee: Riordan Regan)

• Consider embracing the journalist identity as a tool in the toolbox, rather than denying it. (Assignee: Riordan Regan)

Transcript:

Hello. Who's here? It's the ghost of Hunter. Fear and loathing at the London Stansted Airport.

I'm wondering if anyone can tell how abnormally long it's taking me to get my shoelaces tied. And granted, they are very complicated. I have two separate sets. I knew this was going to prove a challenge later on, but it's the only way to keep these boots that are too big from flopping all around when I walk through the desert for two hours in Saqqara to discover secrets locked away by the ancients and the place outside time and space where wave functions collapse and particles become things that flow, that are not billiard balls, but are tentacles, spheres, hyper dimensional objects At the end of the eschaton pyramids are really dodecahedrons. But so I'm sitting here after going through airport security, and it's taken me a really, really, really long time to get my shoelaces tied and my shoes on, and I'm starting to sweat because I don't know if anyone can tell that I'm not quite normal, but what is normal? I'm actually normal for me. I'm more normal in this state than in any other one, with a microdose of LSD. This is more real than reality, to the point where, in the eternity that it takes me to get the shoelaces released, snaked through the eye holes, widening the eye to let more light in, waving the head of the snake through the eye holes, like the snake that weaves its way around my arm, like the snake that weaves its way up and down my spine, like the 13 Kan that I am, conning myself, conning everyone

because they can't tell just how normal I am, because this is how I am now, and it's going through a reality tunnel in my head, wondering what happens if I show up in Ireland and I'm straight, and she's never seen me that way, and she's probably rarely even heard me that way, because I always tend to leave her messages when I'm a bit wavy. But it's not wavy. It's actually straight. It's actually focused. I actually feel staying this way. So what's straight? Divergent to what, I ask again.

This is the only time I feel normal. This is the only time I feel okay. This is the only time I feel like my head isn't going a million miles of minutes. Is the only time I feel like the unstoppable death force isn't trying to kill me.

This is the only time that I feel aligned, that I feel like myself, in liminal space, between timelines and time zones, looking at all the places that I've been on the board, Thessaloniki, there was another one, Pisa, Thessaloniki, Heraklion, Cork, Copenhagen, Dublin. I must go to Istanbul. It must happen soon. I want to go to Corfu. There's so many places on this board I haven't been yet. This is a good reminder that I'm not dead yet, and I gotta flex my muscles while I can. Hello. There's Berlin. These flights are cheap, and while I don't have a visa, I should be doing more of this now that I've figured out that I can actually travel pretty lightly. There's Athens, Helsinki, places I want to go back to, places I've never been, Barcelona, Lisbon. I wish I could get off the plane in Milan. I really want to spend more time in Italy. It's been calling everywhere. I need to make that happen soon.

Yeah, so I'm sitting here wondering what reality means, and I say fear and loathing, just because it's the slogan. The only thing I'm loathing is the commercial drone around me. Well, I will say I was loathing the dehumanizing nature of airport travel, because that shit never stops being tired. It's so it's so dehumanizing. It's so demoralizing. I can't believe that we make people go through this every time, and we just take it. We just take it. We take off our shoes, and we take all the shit out of our pockets, and we act like we are already criminals. We act like we're already in trouble. And they scan my body because something sets off their fucking machine. Who knows what it even was probably a. Crystal that I was carried in my pocket, because the places that light up are always the places where I've had them or where my phone has been.

What are we scanning? What are we cataloging? What are we bar coding? What are we becoming? Why can't we just move freely these arbitrary lines, how much time, how much life is lost, just trying to get from one fucking place to another, where we used to be able to move freely as we wanted to. It's insane. Okay, there it is. The Fear and Loathing is just below the surface, but I have to play it straight, and we have to play cool, and that's what we have to do, right? Smile, look nice, and it's funny. I find myself saying reflexively that I'm a journalist, and in the toilet, I found myself going down another reality tunnel where I said, Why am I denying this thing?

And I keep coming back to this again and again, and I resent it whenever I have to write something, but it's really given me so many tools and so much experience, and why am I denying this thing that I worked so hard to become? Just put it in the toolbox. It's not who you are. It's a tool in the toolbox. It's not who you are. Journalism is a tool in the toolbox. It's not who you are. It's a suit we put on, just like we put different ones on every time, when we go to the bar, when we go to the restaurant, when we go to this country, when we go to that place, we have to present in certain ways. It's fucking stupid, and I hate it, but I guess it's the dance we're doing, and it's kind of fun in it. It's all just the lens you look at it through. It's fun in it. It's fun innit. Just let it be fun innit. I mean, right now it's fun because I'm in liminal space.

The problem is that I don't want to go back to the place of borders and deadlines. I want to live in this place and I can't.

Transmuting fear and loathing at Istanbul International Airport

Updated Summary and Outline Using They/Them Pronouns:

• Journey Through Istanbul Airport

  - Riordan Regan describes their experience of wandering through Istanbul Airport, feeling a sense of liminal space and transforming fear and loathing into openness and wonder. - They reflect on the importance of not needing external validation for their experiences, emphasizing that their journey and witnessing the pyramids make them real for themself. - Riordan acknowledges their role as a shaman and sorcerer, highlighting their ability to transform challenges into opportunities, such as pursuing a PhD despite a broken pelvis. - They discuss the concept of bypassing the conscious mind and making others think their ideas are their own, drawing parallels to psycho magic and charm.

• Exploring Personal Transformation and Healing

  - Riordan Regan emphasizes the need for healing and the importance of making others think their ideas were their own to bypass the conscious mind. - They mention their desire to visit Gobekli Tepe and the idea that they are all possessed by their families, who put them in a trance without their realization. - Riordan explores the concept of being a vessel, containing multitudes and being a collection of everything that came before and surrounds them now. - They discuss the role of the shaman, sorcerer, healer, and artist, and the responsibility that comes with these roles in setting spells and breaking curses.

• The Concept of Vessels and Queer and Trans Harassment

  - Riordan Regan talks about the concept of vessels and how it makes people uncomfortable, especially queer and trans people, because it points to the idea that identities are merely containers. - They explain that every being is a unique collection of information and experience, created by a specific configuration of stars. - Riordan describes the idea of being "Star people," materialized from on high by a star configuration, and how this context shapes their unique experiences. - They reflect on the importance of experiencing transformation with all five senses to make it real and grounded, and how confession plays a role in this process.

• Role of the Anthropologist Participant Observer

  - Riordan Regan discusses their role as an anthropologist participant observer, studying cultures and civilizations to put things in their cultural context. - They enjoy the experience of waking up in unfamiliar places and feeling in their element, despite the initial fear and confusion. - Riordan mentions their feelings of imposter syndrome and feeling unworthy compared to others who have published papers and done big things. - They share how being called the shaman of the group by their peers was the best thing anyone could have said, reinforcing their role as a vessel for the universe's flow.

• The Importance of Community and Mystery Schools

  - Riordan Regan emphasizes the need for open and receptive individuals to learn to work with their configurations, which were influenced by the skies at the time of their birth. - They discuss the idea of bringing back Mystery Schools and working together in a collective, possibly influenced by Jodorowsky's teachings. - Riordan reflects on the importance of community and spending time with others who share similar experiences and openness. - They conclude by acknowledging the need to keep reading and learning, emphasizing the continuous journey of self-discovery and transformation.

Action Items:

• Visit Göbekli Tepe. (Assignee: Riordan Regan)

• Bring back the Mystery Schools. (Assignee: Riordan Regan)

Transcript:

Wandering through the airport in Istanbul listening to shoegaze in a semi-LSD haze, and I'm thinking of you, my dude. Haven't slept much in days. Probably look a bit half crazed, but I like existing in this liminal space, transforming fear and loathing into openness and wonder, walking down the terminal, realizing suddenly I don't need everyone to witness everything for it to have meaning, feeling my journey and the pyramids integrating. I don't need everyone to see everything. I don't need it to be independently verified to make it real, because I know it happened, because I was there, because I witnessed it. Yes, there is something important about the holding, and sometimes there are things that need sharing, but not everything, not everything. Sometimes I can do it for myself. I am not a victim. I am not a hapless passenger. I am a fucking shaman and a sorcerer. If I can transform a broken pelvis into pursuing a PhD and the life of an artist and welcoming my trans self back home, then surely I can get a hand sanitizer stain out of a jacket sleeve, then surely I can walk through airport security in a breeze. These are not the methodologies you're looking for. These are not the passengers you're looking for. We go in through the side door and make them think it was their idea to begin with. Just like psychomagic, that's the key. It's not tricking someone so much as it is charming them, entrancing them. Maybe it's the same thing, but they're asking for it. But in the end, we all need healing. The key is to make them think it was their idea to begin with. The key is to bypass the conscious mind, maybe, and go past all claims of ownership.

I need to come back here and actually leave the airport. I need to go to Gobekli Tepe, and I need to assert myself. So I'm going to. Jodorowski says we're all possessed by our families. They put us in a trance, without us even realizing, we become associated with a personality that isn't even ours, borrowed from members of our emotional environment trying different things on, not even realizing when they've taken the helm, not even realizing when we're acting as something that We think is ourself, but actually belongs to somebody else, going through the patterns, doing the dances, stuck in trances, attached to these charms our bodies, memories places, forgetting that we are in a trance to begin with.

This is trans. You think you know who you are, but you don't. You contain more multitudes than you can ever even meet in a lifetime. You're a vessel, collecting everything that came before you and that surrounds you now, you are a whole world made unto your your whole world unto yourself, that is also made of everyone and everything else. I can't be everything. Then who's in control you are. Stay in your power. I don't want that kind of responsibility. Too bad, that's what we signed up for, the shaman, sorcerer, the healer, the psychologist, the facilitator, the artist, psychotic, Mystic, Prophet, all the same archetype, we set spells and break curses.

We charm our audiences and try not to fall under our own magic in the process, you.

Vessels is a key concept. Maybe it's a show. We can we transform the containers? We point to the fact that it's just a vessel, and that makes people really, really, really uncomfortable. That's why queer and trans people get so much harassment. We point to the fact that these are merely empty vessels, until they're inhabited by the senses, until our soul, until they are in soul, until you bring forward all the unconscious material together in a moment, crystallized around a point, the axis mundi, we are each the unique collection of information and experience that that particular vessel was primed to receive, and we incarnated the stars aligned and created a container perfectly tuned for one very specific interpretation, because the universe is seeking to know itself through every possible configuration. And so every single being was materialized. This is what it means to be Star people. Every single being was materialized from on high by a star, by a configuration of stars in the sky, bodies, matter, information that only makes sense in context, In the context of our body, our vessel, our prenda, in the context of our unique experience. I'm starting to lose it and getting distracted. I can see it in my head, the stars and the planets all align in these little configurations, little snapshots of time we are really just snapshots of the way everything appeared for a moment when we incarnated from one realm into the other, when the soul, the ether, the undefinable element, The Teo, beamed itself from one realm into another.

There's something about all five senses in the sixth and anyways, trans people make people uncomfortable because we point to the fact this is just pretend, because we point to the moon instead of suggesting it. Because if we can question the thing that seems most fixed, then what else is up for grabs? Turns out everything is

maybe you have to experience a transformation with all five senses for it to become real and grounded. But it all starts with confession. People end up doing this with me. They always say, I don't know why I'm telling you all this stuff, because I'm vulnerable. And then they are too, and this is where the anthropologist participant observer comes in, just like Jodorowsky says, I I can put things in their cultural context because I study them as a people, as a civilization, both The one they're from and the one unto them.

I like putting hurdling myself through timelines and portals. I like waking up in the airport and not knowing where I am. I developed this narrative about it being scary, but this is me in. My element. This is me. Most me. Maybe there's an element that's bypassing maybe there's an element that needs to come in and spend seasons in community. But I have to say, after a few days, I didn't miss dance anymore. However, as soon as calves walked away that day, I felt pretty sad that I had no one to share it with anymore, because that was important.

When I was having imposter syndrome. I'm gonna start saying they because that seems to be the direction they're headed. Anyway, I confess that I felt unworthy. Everyone's published papers and done all these big, grown up things, and what about me? I'm nobody, but nothing, and they looked at me and said, exclaimed incredulously, you're the shaman of the group. And it was the best thing anyone ever could have said.

There's nothing special about me. I'm just a hollow bone. I'm just a vessel, a prenda. I'm just a container, a receptacle for all the things flowing through from the universe, above and below, within and without, before, on top of all around. And we can all learn to tune in a little bit more if we listen, but some of our configurations did transpire under skies that make us more receptive than others, and so we need to learn to work with it. Those of us who are more open, we need to learn to work with it. We need the Mystery Schools brought back.

I think I see Jodorowsky, and I raise him the collective. We need to do it together. Well, maybe he has that. I guess I should keep reading first. I.

The tyranny of words

Outline: The conversation delves into the philosophical implications of writing, exploring its role in human evolution and the concept of forgetting. Speaker 1 reflects on the shift from an oral tradition to a written one, noting how it fixed concepts and introduced alienation. They discuss the importance of dance and creating spaces for divine communication, emphasizing the fluidity of change. The speaker also touches on personal growth, recognizing the value of service over self-gratification and contemplating turning their ecstatic dance project into an academically funded research study on queer, trans self-healing. The conversation concludes with a vision of integrating personal experiences and community actions to foster collective healing.

Transcript: Yeah, well, that's funny. I was talking for a long time, and I really liked what I was saying. It wasn't recorded. But I suppose that's part of the lesson of Egypt. It's not about the need to document everything. And I think it matters that I just spoke it to the universe, but I don't know if there's repeating that I woke up today so feeling that I was not taking the proper opportunity, feeling like I was missing an opportunity. That old story again,

it's a four Iq’, the day of the Divine communication, the breath. And so my natural instinct is to say, Well, I have to be writing then, like there's some old pattern that is shaking loose that I'm breaking free from now that said that writing was the only authentic way to communicate, and this is tied to the greater human story. We started writing things down in our diaries so we wouldn't have to remember. We started forgetting. Who's to say? Which came first, the forgetting or the writing? That's an interesting question. It started as an accounting system to keep track of the property when the separation culture came in, then it took on a life of its own. Became a way of reality. It was a way to keep track of things, isolate and divide, to say what was yours and what was mine, these concepts that never existed before.

Yeah, what came first? I'd say the alienation. Because we started dividing things and we started creating categories. We started looking at our world differently, and so we started forgetting. We started forgetting that we were one with everything, and that meant that we had to start writing things down. Then all of a sudden, that wasn't just how many Bucha of corn given to the neighbor we had to keep track of. All of a sudden, it was also, I mean, the families our traditions, our stories. All of a sudden we started forgetting everything. And so this way to preserve knowledge and pass things down to the people coming after.

Also fixed it in place. Fixed it arbitrary concepts we call time and space. It fixed things a certain way when in the past, they were always changing, morphing, rearranging and in the past, our way of engaging with the World reflected this shifting, changing nature in the past and it. Our way of interfacing with the world reflected the fact that things were malleable. Writing made them fixed and static. It made there be a right and a wrong. It made there be a way things were done and described. Now fuck this is where the decision archetype came in. The decision archetype emerged with writing trans is what returns us to the time before writing trans is what returns us to the feeling and so no wonder I feel like a prisoner. No wonder I feel like

I don't want to fucking write anymore. No wonder writing feels like a tearing yet, yet it's a way to pass things on to other people. For.

So the key is, I mean, no wonder I do infinite duration, so honestly too, because it's always changing. Because each day, the way I describe something isn't the same. So things just need to get out there, and the record isn't permanent. Yeah, describe them knowing that they're gonna change again.

Don't get attached just to change again the only way i feel so much gratitude that I really do feel like everything was happening was going the way it's supposed to, even if, whatever, I haven't made some deadlines that I set for myself, even if other people are frustrated with me, you know what? I don't think I care, because it's going the way it has to for me to process it, integrate it, for me to actually, feel like an adult.

I actually feel like I'm growing up.

And this morning, when I had that, I had that inflection. It was more just like a flashbulb moment. How come so often feel like there's like the activities that are planned for the day are not in alignment with what I would interpret the energy to the thing. But that's the key. It's the interpretation. Me thinking they can only be one way today, the divine communication is not just from talking like dancing, because I'm showing it to these spaces and interacting with people, and it's just so beautiful that like this is the way change is happening, is through dance and through us creating our own spaces and just making it happen. Like, after all these years of just talking about things like, all it takes is a few conversations, a few coffee dates. And so that's what I've done. I've spoken the first part of the plans into existence. Don't have to have the whole fucking thing figured out just yet. The process has started. I actually see that it will finish. Now I actually see that it will happen. Now it's happening. This dance is gonna be a real thing. It could even happen on Friday the 13th.

It's like I'm moving through options so fast. They don't even have to be realized yet for me to I don't know, get what I need from that stage and kind of advance, like already, I felt today like I was kind of transcending Ed UK, but you know, in A transcendent include way, not in a weird in that way. It's just interesting how even two weeks ago, I really needed it,

like I needed these things. And just already, I don't know if it was what was unlocked in the pyramids. I don't know if it's just the natural way The spiral is going. But,

like, already, just like, I don't need any of it. Like, in a good way, like in a way that I'm grateful for everything that comes.

I actually don't care. Well, I'm gonna cry. I actually don't care if people know who I am,

because I started this morning listening to a voice memo from someone I've only met one time at a sharing circle, who said that I had seen her in a way nobody else had. And. People say that to me all the time, all the time. Well, I barely know, like I can't even tell you how beautiful that is, after feeling like my life wasn't worth anything for so long, after feeling like it didn't get mad or if I was alive as I walked through it's already made a difference. A few people feel seen in a way they never have before. One conversation coming up like That's enough?

Yeah, there's the manager part coming in to say we can make money off of this. Coming in to say there's dad saying we can capitalize on it. And it's true. I think it does mean that I could actually pursue a career in healing, and that I should, but not because I need to get ahead, because I want to be of service. And that was really landing for me today.

I started off when I was volunteering at Ed UK. And like, it it feels like it's been years, but it's only been a couple months. And when I first started off, I was like Bella, and I really just needed the free dance, because I really just needed to work some shit out. And I showed up and I kind of did the bare minimum. That's not true. I always give a lot, but I was always kind of looking for the leverage too, and I was looking for the first chance I could get to kind of just stop being responsible enjoying the dance. And now it's like, not only do I feel like I'm working my stuff out enough other places that I don't need it so badly, but like, it's the value of service, the value of showing up and helping people. And I'm sorry, like you shouldn't be volunteering if you don't have the capacity to show up for other people. Because now, every time this person shows up and I see her on the schedule, I know I'm gonna end up doing her work for her and

and, yeah, I see myself in that, and so I have compassion, but at the same time, Richard, Richard, because it's not really fair to

the rest of us. Um, like I want to be of service. I'm looking at portals in the forest like it's actually more important to me now to just show up and help than it is to dance for me. And I don't know this is sort of a weird instant, like ego moment, but I had the realization today when I was talking to Riz about

the opportunity to change the way we're treating cacao while we both out of town,

and I was talking about how we needed to acknowledge the indigenous origins and like it just easily rolled off my tongue. And I meant it like, I don't know, I had an observer moment there too, where I feel like there was a period where I was saying these things because I just wanted to be good so badly. And it's not like I didn't really care, but it was, but it's kind of like I didn't have the capacity to, because so much of my energy was still going to, like, just, I don't know, wanting to not die, actually, is what it is, and I didn't realize that until Egypt, it takes a lot of energy to just, I don't know it was taking a lot of energy to just want to not to do not want to die.

And I saw these parts of myself from Austin, in the divorce, in the past lives, in the self, gaslighting, real way on this trip, and I set some things in motion for more directly confronting them, not confronting them. That's Wow. That's the wrong word, integrating them, witnessing them. And I think in the need to be a way for that. I.

I also like, feel like I might set the whole thing up, and by the time I get there, it won't even need it, and it'll just be like, actually, that's what's feeling really true. I think that just by making a commitment to my past selves, they're feeling like That's enough. And, well, okay, now as I'm saying that some of them are like, just not us. Okay, okay, so there's still work to do. But I also think part of the ceremony will just be about really, like, meeting and eat in a real way, my ears making noise. So I guess that's yes, yeah. Like, I don't know. I'm also just seeing that. It's like, now I'm not just going through the motions anymore because I need to be good, because I need to be the kind of person that cares about indigenous

people. That sounds bad, but like,

I just have wanted to be good so badly my whole life, and then also so rebelled against that, and so not wanted to be I've wanted to be good, but not by the standards that were given to me. I don't know, just this, this lifelong duality feels like it's a result in itself. I

Yeah, and now, honestly, it's like, it doesn't even matter what happens. Like, I want to create these community actions. That's what I want to do. I want to make dances, and I want to have conversations with people where they feel seen and but also I see the ways that the work I have done and the things that I ironically, kind of did with with ego in mind, could now be used to help the collective, because I have these contacts, these connections, so what's really cool that came to me today was, Well, shit, I could turn this whole thing I'm doing into a research study. I could turn this whole project to create a queer, trans ecstatic dance into a research project.

This could be the first academically funded ecstatic dance. And maybe it's not, because it sounds like someone else may have done this, but this could be the first academic, academically funded queer, trans ecstatic dance. This could be academically funded contribution to the body of knowledge of queer, trans, self healing, and I think that I could collaborate with the person who interviewed me for economic study in Boulder, and we could even potentially explore a collaboration I really want to explore psychedelics and ecstatic dance, even though they say that it's so birds like, let's be real. I want to look at the combination together, so maybe I could join up with them for that ethics community would hate it, but that's why I'm around, I mean, and this is where my anti authority can be a benefit, like someone's got to challenge things.

* * * * *

There's a reason titration has been the theme and that Baba Klindi Iyi appeared to me in the Great Pyramid - the message was about how by "needing" to write everyting down we lose the ability to remember ourselves. AND YET - I somehow also feel it's crucial to document these people, practices, & legacies so they can be shared w/ the new generations - so we don't need to re-create the old frameworks of oppression. He told me to find Acacea again. It comes back to mushrooms and cacao again. Now the calendar is also present. So in the Aswan botanical garden I wrote her and she said: I will go to Guatemala with you. We have to find Sarah Kane’s body. I told her I didn’t know who that was, but I was in. We are talking when she gets back from the monastery.
And as soon as I did this everyone from my group walked up and started talking about acacias, how they suddenly started smelling them and it smelled like DMT, and I laughed because Darren LeBaron called Acacea the “living embodiment of the DMT molecule” at Breaking Convention, and another group member said they had just been invited to an acacia ceremony in Giza, and folks, that’s what we call synchronicity, one at which even Jung would marvel.