Asakiyume mita

Elsewhere on the interwebs, I follow Glenn Shepherd, an ethnobotanist who works in ... guess where? (If you guessed the Amazon, you (a) are correct and (b) have been reading this blog for more than two entries.) He wrote about an ergot-related fungus on a certain sedge which is used medicinally by the Matsigenka people.

One time when Shepherd had a headache, he was treated with some of this sedge. The headache disappeared almost instantly ... and he gained a temporary ability to juggle. He writes:

[the sedge] instilled in me a remarkable, albeit temporary, ability to juggle grapefruits. To amuse people who invariably hang around my tent, I sometimes pick up a few fruits and begin a clumsy juggling act, only to give up amidst laughter and a shower of fruits splattering on the ground. After taking the sedge for my headache, I happened to repeat the juggling act, but surprised myself as I noticed that all the fruits stayed in the air without thought or effort, no longer drifting frantically about as in prior performances. To my amazement, I was able to perfect a number of tricks and variations I had never mastered before. My Matsigenka friends laughed, but I was intrigued. Somehow, the sedge plant had improved my hand-eye coordination, turning a clumsy, hack juggler into a polished showman, at least temporarily: I repeated the performance the next day without the benefit of the sedge root, to the usual disastrous effect.

It got me thinking. That facility for juggling: it came, and it went.

But you can imagine people wanting to harness that improved hand-eye coordination forever. You can imagine Big Pharma coming in and swiping this wisdom and trying to market it to athletes and marksmen. And you can just imagine the movie of how this goes wrong as all those alkaloids work other, different changes in the brain.

I totally get wanting to keep hold of something magical and wonderful. (I doooo, I do.) But it's like a rainbow or snowflakes in your hand--they just can't stay there, and if you try to hold onto them, you're very likely going to be disappointed. The only thing you can do is try to carry an interpretation of the magic forward, let it open your eyes to other magic, like once you recognize a pattern of feathers, you can see that bird again.

... And I mean, if you like juggling, you can keep practicing. I have never been able to master it, but I used to try, back when my kids were small and had soccer games. If I were visiting a Matsigenka community, I can imagine wishing for a headache, so I might get a headache remedy and maybe be able to experience some great juggling. Just for a moment. But then too, that might have been just how the medicine worked on Shepherd. No guarantee I'd be so lucky ;-)