Just Don't Look At Your Hands

by Dina Mutar

long distance phone calls to foreign boys whilst sitting in a diseased japanese maple tree, listening to bob dylan's lady of the lowlands on repeat for hours, riding bikes in the darkness down steep hills screaming, "i can feel the wind blowing my leg hairs! weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"  laughing so hard you cry, crying so hard you laugh.  sleeping underneath a grand piano with eyes open- staring up at the stars, this is what friends are for.  realizing that eating carrots or granola on shrooms is not a good idea, realizing that swimming on shrooms is scary and nauseating.  opening throat chakras, opening the top of my head where worms are coming out, crows following me from block to block, telephone wire to telephone wire, they're after the worms!  bike riders off into the sky, huge fat guys in miniature convertibles, watching family birthday celebrations through windows from the curb.  talking to slugs, talking to flowers, talking to myself, "did i say that out loud?"  embodying past lives, fleeting emotions of deep love and intense disgust.  understanding everything, loving everything, hating everything. 

coked-out peruvian hostel workers, even more coked-out ex-israeli soldiers travelling in large, obnoxious groups all wearing headbands, listening to techno music and smoking spliffs.  one is clipping weed from a giant branch of marijuana.  they make me hold a cigarette vertically between my knees then balance the another one horizontally on top of the other with my two index fingers, now they tell me to start moving my feet up and down, "fast, faster faster!"  i feel like a chump.  "haahaahaaa, you are an elephant on a bicycle... ha haaa! get it?"  he pulls out a photo album and proudly shows off photos of at least 60 people around the world doing the same thing, "what the FUCK?"  it's a conspiracy.  i'm paranoid, i don't trust them.  "you guys are sick."  the shrooms are kicking in and mixing with the spliff, the coke is wearing off from earlier.  good thing we didn't drink the "floripondio" tonight that would really fuck shit up.  i see jesus, he is before me, christ lives!  incan designs stamped on the wall and bedspread, then knocking, the fucking israelis- are knocking on all the doors, running up and down the halls singing and chanting in hebrew.  they're packing their bags.  "but i thought they weren't leaving until monday" i'm in my head again in a mist of paranoia... "they're going to kill us- we've got to get out of here" my heart is racing.  we leave the hostel but we couldn't find the room key so we leave it open.  we catch a taxi to a hotel across town.  we stay for a while until i smell smoke, "something is burning, we are getting smoked out, the place is on fire!"  we get in another taxi and go to the house of a gay prostitute who lives in a shanty town in southern lima, we sleep on a bed with lice.  we return to the hostel in the morning when the shrooms have worn off, a picture of me is missing from my things at the hostel and i've misplaced my passport along the way.  i've got to get out of this place.

grandmother tree will save us all,  she is a pokey bitch.  possessing superhuman powers, climbing to the highest branch.  cows are holy, we should give thanks before eating them.  an uprooted tree requires emergency 911 care, "quick!  buckets of water, NOW"  water is life, this one is saved.   walking, walking, walking, walking, walking.  a missing puppy from the litter, did the coyotes get him?  "bella- take care of your fucking kids and be mother for once!  oh, here he is."  squishy sunsets and quicksand,  a train goes by- it's the strangest thing.  70's record covers.  needing to slow down, needing to just be, needing to be a plant.  we are one, god is one, god is love, we are god.  god i love shrooms!  "please don't get lost in the mirror and whatever you do, just don't look at your hands."  

Dina Mutar's favorite word in the english language is hemoglobin and her least favorite word is tether.  She can be found navigating the earth's surface in many different capacities.  In her free time she likes to vacuum, drink iced tea, grow etibles and eat etibles.  She's thinking about getting another tattoo.