it's a beautiful day here at mission control, sunlight fills the the rooms, my plants all seem happy, pan sits outside chewing on a bone, the birds chirp and if i had a pet octopus i'm sure he would be ecstatic. i've been head buried in 'amazon beaming' by petru popescu, an amazing true story based around loren mcintyres travels with the legendary mayoruna tribe in the amazon. he gets left in their company and learns about them through the head shaman who literally beams information into his head. the book is so well written, it's like an adventure story but with lots of information about the amazon and the belief systems it's inhabitants use to navigate their reality. i love it, especially mcintyres commentary as he struggles not to loose his mind when it is obvious his mind is lost. this tribe are the 'cat people' who had never had outside contact before, mcintyre and the tribe are on the same quest, to find the beginning of time. this is brilliant writing and a truly brilliant story. descriptions of the jungle at night are enough to totally freak anyone out, there's one scene where mcintyre is loosing all his sense of boundaries as the depth of the jungle becomes the depth of his awareness. he's being eaten alive, lost and alone and his mind is slipping away into the frontiers of another reality.
there's an amazing scene where the tribe start bringing out all their possessions, even things that help them survive, cooking implements, arrows, clothes and they all pile them into a heap and then burn them. mcintyre wanders around confused, why would they do this, he thinks and then beamed into his head, he hears the voice of the head shaman, 'They hold us still.'
go out and buy this book, go and read about these people from amazonia, learn what they have to say about us, it's profoundly moving and wonderful and learn what our response is, that bits terrifying.