i am still immersed in amazon beaming, mcintyre now a member of the mayoruna travels with them as they prepare for the ritual that will take them to the beginning of time, and of course the ritual is ayahuscia. here he describes his bones melting away, his mind becoming limitless, he suggests a kind of birthing. he describes the animals that grow inside the bodies of the indians, how the visions can be diagnostic tools for healing or have a spiritual nature, he talks as if demons are expelled from the body, he talks about the sharing afterwards, he talks about the way the body is revitalized after sleeping, hunting ability becomes millions of times magnified the next day, and he understands man moves through time, in all directions. he understands death.

much later in the book mcintyre has escaped the mayoruna tribe in a small raft during a terrible storm, he thinks the head shaman barnacle may have died. eventually he gets rescued and taken by sea plane back to his civilization, where he immediately writes a letter

dear barnacle
i don't expect this letter to reach you, since the postal service dosn't reach bolognesi, and if it did you couldn't read it without help from someone like cambio (hello cambio my friend) but writing it makes me feel that you are alive.
i sailed down with the flood to return to my territory, soon i will look for the beginning of time, and the mother of rivers in the andes. but i will return one day to your beginning, with my pack full of knives and medicines. together we will preform acts of kinship that no wild creatures preform, like sitting near a fire and sharing food, or making arrows, or simply thinking silently until our thoughts find a way to connect.
i wonder if you ever thought of the possibility of the space time continuum, but you probably had no time for thinking about it as you are an expression of it. you are a scientist in your own way dear barnacle, as much as i am in mine. you see everything around us as alive and therefore reachable, there is nothing forbidden to human experience. that's why you can travel in time even though you don't know what time is (me neither) and that's why you are present here and will some how earn the contents of these notes.
i want to know about time, about everything, the source of the river and the natural world it sustains.for you its less important to know about these things but to do with them. you do something with time whereas i agonize over understanding it, you have taught me a lesson. i expect you will give me further proof of the space time mind continuum, not because its important but because i arrived onto the confines of your mode of operation. and that mode is becoming my mode to.

and then later mcintyre mounts an expedition to locate the true source of the nile which he eventually finds. as he is at such high altitudes he describes he cosmic radiation, gamma rays...

those tiny particles arrive very infrequently but come in showers, they pierce our hearts, brains, organs, and drill hundreds of feet into the earth, radiation is thought to effect genetic changes. highlanders are exposed to more than lowlanders, are highlanders more evolved?
i'm thinking like an indian, everything is connected, the universe is one thing, world and mind are one.
as i ponder the gamma radiations effect on evolution i stumble and fall. tired? do i lack a gene programming my feet to step high enough to avoid tripping. it's easier to blame a galactic beam than admit a fifty four year old body can falter...

ah beautiful. i love his sense of time, i understand it completely and its great he managed to hold on to his sense of humour after his experiences, this is evolution in my opinion.

at the end of the book mcintyre finds the source, a lake in the very heights of the andes, he drinks from it. then slips over and passes out from exhaustion and disorientation and altitude sickness, in these mixed states he has a vision,

walls of ice, small humanoid figures wearing animal skins, caring spears, their passage through the landscape was sparse but warned all creatures that a new species was entering their habitat. he walks with them, following them to the majestic river sources. he was overwhelmed with the beauty and wanted to share it with the strange people, he felt the feeling was shared and recognized his companions. these were barnacles ancestors.

when he comes around he is alone, survival mode kicks in but he can't move, he's to cold and in pain. then the 'beaming' begins again, communication from barnacle who tells mcintyre he can survive, he also tells mcinttyre that now he can have the'cat people' whiskers as he has been to the source. mckintyre is rescued by his mountain climbing colleagues.


later in the evening i get a call from lisa a friend, we arrange to have dinner. i am at the restaurant and suddenly get confused about the time she said we should meet, so i call her. a boy answers..
cm: can i speak to lisa please.
boy: who the fuck is this?
cm:it's me
boy:who the fuck are you and why do you want lisa?
cm: i'm havng dinner with lisa tonight
boy: no you're fucking not you liar. you fucking tell me how you know lisa.
cm:i'm her friend, she invited me out for dinner
boy:no your not you fucking @#@* who the fuck are you.
cm:oh forget it.

later i get a text saying, 'if you don't call me back i will tell the police.'

i check the number i have with the number lisa called me on and its different, i've rung a different lisa. i imagine she gets a hard time from her boyfriend but figure i won't get involved he can work it out himself.
anyway lias and i were joined by another lisa and a few other people and we all have a wonderful time until the staff at the japanese restaurant start giving us the evil eye because they want to go home. then when we pay the bill a conflict occurs, i mention to lisa that i won't be returning for dinner there ever again. we round the evening of with hot chocolates at cachinos, a much nicer establishment.