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My Mythology of History

I read in a book, there is a hallucinogen that native people have used ritually to commune with their ancestors. The author describes his own experience with this drug [as well as  other portent hallucinogens]. His substance use was supervised by a shaman — who represented the sacred tradition, and an attitude of utmost respect for the drug as a spiritual tool. His aims were not purely recreational. I thought the topic was provocative and fascinating. Think Ken Wilbur, not Hunter S. Thompson. 


This made me curious, if I took the drug, as a person who to my knowledge, has never met a living biological relative: Who, or what, would my brain project? Ecuadoreans, Italians, Koreans, or just an empty void? Part of me yearns to know; the other part is afraid of what I might divine.

Everything I know about my biological parents fits, neatly inside of, a single paragraph. They were young. Neither was educated. They met at a restaurant, where they both worked. They had a brief affair. He got a job in Seoul, and promised to contact her. He did… she never responded. My mother was an orphan; my father never knew I was born. I don’t know if they spoke again.

It was a closed adoption, and the agency I was adopted though shut down… about ten years ago. I often wonder where, from which parent, I inherited my intelligence from; my questing nature; my active imagination.

My nurturing allies; my vengeful foes; I can write my own mythology; I can dwell on my own past. 

Yes, experience has also shaped my traits, but I suspect that the ground work for my personality was already established from birth, written in the language of genes.

If Self is the place, in which “you” reside: Biology is a house. You work with the structure and shape you are given; experience is what makes it your home, everything that it’s filled with. Some items are gifts that are impossible to return. Whether you like them, or not. But, you are free to re-arrange, re-organize, re-decorate, or even tuck certain unsightly things — out of sight, but never out of mind.

I wasn’t dropped off at the orphanage until I was around one-years-old. I like to tell myself that this is a sign that my biological mother tried to keep me, but like all “based on a true story” tales, the details are manipulated, and the empty spaces are filled with fictional speculation, that helps to compliment the desired narrative. She could just as easily have been an over-burdened young woman, with good intentions to seed — or an under-nourished crack whore, with bad habits to feed. 

I’m not ungrateful, to have been given a chance at a bright future. Maybesomeday, I will catch up with the vivid dawn, always just past the obscured horizon; maybe I will find the gold, at the end of my bitter-sweet rainbow. But I often wonder [I can’t help it], if my biological mother would be please, or disappointed. If she knew that the girl she left behind… grew up to be the woman — that I am.

Is she still alive… or if I took that drug, would she be waiting there for me? Would she whisper me the secrets of eternity; of love; of everything she had hoped for me?

comments

37 notes

  1. katskradlexx reblogged this from ordinarywonder
  2. clintirwin reblogged this from ordinarywonder
  3. clintirwin said: This is great stuff. They probably communicate with archetypes, dressed up in the idiom of their upbringing. From the very beginning I knew myself and was different than my siblings…too much stuff to say, here. Well done!
  4. thesealivesinme said: OMG, I’m so proud reading this, I’m sure your mother would be infinity+2 times prouder!
  5. ordinarywonder posted this
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