CHOTA DARA cave July 06

The river sound is so strong it gets into my mind and the dreams which dont let me past the gate into the "real sleep" I so desperately need. Everytime I wake its from an intense dream and I'm covered in sweat from the fever. What is bothereing me this time is the nature of the reccuring dream which is all about prison cells and being trapped behind locked doors.

This time I'm just sick of staring at the locks and bars so instead I stare at the wall which has its moments of beauty and threatens to lead me to a better place but when i turn around the cell door is open and nobody is there. I'm just desperate to be free and dont have the power to rationalize anything so i start to move through the door into what seems like a maze of corridoors all leading to more prison cells with open doors and more hopeless people slumped in the corners. There MUST be a way through all this, some gap somewhere in all these doors and walls surely just a small space leading to the outside if I keep checking I will find it. Its horrible as deep in my mind I know there is NO WAY out at all, but I must try. On and on I go moving through the corridoors all leading to prison cells with open doors. Hopeless people stare back at me with the knowledge in their eyes.......No way out, no hope, no chance. So i start to hurry up there are more doors to check and of course they are all open and lead to the corridoors leading to more doors. The knowledge that the main doors will be closed anyway hits me at the same time as the awareness that i'm in a dream so i stop running and slump against the cold bricks sinking down and letting go. The heat sweat and nausea hit me then i know I,m awake again, just the huge river sound, thank goddess at least i'm not in that place. My mind and body are being taken over by salmonella TYPHOID fever but I dont know it yet as I'm in a high altitude cave and there no doctors or clinics around here.

CHATTRU

I come down to Chattru for recovery purpose and to try and find something for the constant grinding headache and body pain. paracetamol kind of helps for a few hours but Ive run out so im rooting through my medical kit and wondering what to do about the night. The cave I always stay in is dirty from years of road labour and shepherds but is built up with stones at the front and sides so is fairly water resistant. It feels good and homely when I first arrive despite the armies of beetles on the walls and floor. I hope to feel better rediscover my old self and nicely recover here.

NO , GO BACK TO JAIL

This night is destined to be the worst as ive run out of pain killers and my friends in Chattru have fed me chang (local rice beer) for the whole evening which at first felt okay but will make everything worse. I remember someone saying something about special high altitude pain killers but I dont have them and its almost time for the sickness to mutate into the 2nd PHASE.

Being trapped. locked in prisons and running, running would be the recurring theme of the night but as always the dreams dont come from nowhere they are the contents of my subconscious mind stored up from all experiences. For me there is no shortage of material from a lifetime of running running and running somemore. So now I have to ride through it all again, from the real and imagined prisons of my childhood and the moments of victory and glory when i would briefly stand far above all the jailors and captors, to the seaside caves which would escape to taste something real and meaningful for the first time in my life.... FREEDOM. The results that my childhood crimes always seemed to bring were of course various types of imprisonment ,no go out stay in house, stay in room (prison),Stay in class , no lunch breaks stand there for 6 weeks(prisontime) But I anyway wouldnt have to wait long to taste the real prison cells. i wont forget the first time it happened. To be put in a cell and left alone behind a huge locked door is truly the spirit crushing exersize its meant to be. At first the mind can panic speeding up its processes making the confinement even worse but like always we try to step back and rationalize. seeing the bigger picture may help us to get through the small no matter how bad it seems at the time. It seems like the typhoid combined with the altitude and the charas has completely removed the lid of my mind.(Its quite like this normaally with typhoid I would learn later) All sleep is just a hyperactive dreamstate and the longer it goes on the more strange material the brain would find as the content,maybe thats why I was going back further and further in time - to get more meaningful material. After all the strongest experiences we have in childhood give us the personalities with which we live our adult lives. Its not all bad. I'm sure I could have enjoyed it more had i not been so pissed off about losing all my power for bouldering. But I would have to keep going on through it. the big prison cells of bangkok and singapore left an indelible mark on my mind so I would have to keep going back there to talk to some old friends and demons before launching off back in time once again. perfect images so clear I'm sure I would never have been able to recollect. STanding alone on a huge moor I had ended up there running in the night from so many perceived threats and people but now it(they) were all dissolving into the colours of the mist and the grass in the illuminated darkness.A crystal clear moment I knew it was one of the times my mind realized the true nature of itself. I was just 12 or so but was having the effect of a huge mind expansion experiment. it was the classic heaven and hell paranoia trip but now I recalled just the best and meaningful bits before being sent back to jail for a more lengthy stay. now I,d been in these dreamstates for so long that I was aware that I was dreaming a lot of the time and sometimes caught my conscious mind laughing at my gullible and suggestive subconscious but I still couldnt control the actual content only the events and outcomes of the scenarios. Like a search engine my mind would seek out its own way of making sense of it all by finding the most meaningful and powerful memories to dream about. But the physical side effects bring me down to real earth time as by the 4th or 5th day its changed its nature and has gone to stomach and intestines ( its supposed to happen in the 2nd PHASE) All the time I couldnt have any interest in food but was trying to force myself to eat what I could just to stop from wasting away so quickly. Now whatever I had forced myself to eat would come out as undigested and rancid diarrea at 2 in morning and on through the night.The hardest thing about that was facing the cold night air over and over again with the sweat of fever. OUCH !

All the time I had been convincing myself it was viral fever which i know about and has a 5-7 day life cycle.The life cycle of typhoid though is more than 20 days getting stronger all the time and with good chance of serious complications after 12-15 days of it. After a few days in Chattru I thought "Its about time " something must change !! I had delayed much too long by the time I got down to Manali and clinic for blood test a whole week had passed since it began.

I was getting the results of blood test, the words jumping out of the page.....typhi a typhi b 1/30 1/43 etc. I knew what it all meant before taking the paper to the doc. then I went direct to internet cafe to find out about this bloody stupid thing TYPHOID I was desperate to know all about it just where i got etc. but if the incuabation period is 8-14 days its impossible to work out! But the drugs will work soon wont they ? 3-6 days but its not THAT soon is it so meantime what to do ? I had met a guy in the internet cafe who had typhoid before and I asked What should you do? he said just "ENJOY DYING" which at the time I found really annoying but when I thought about it seemed in a way really good advice...........Okay so all your life energy is running out of you day by day, all your power being eaten away, you cant sleep or eat properly and you feel like shit with constant bodypain and headache but you might as well enjoy it. I was determined to do just that and had a really nice place to stay with a balcony to slump on ,nearby a river (shanti healing sound) really good charas, nice people were nearby and a really good book which i could read about half a page at a time. So here I could transform and recover (make good energy out of bad) Maybe I had left it too long or something because it wouldnt leave me alone the nights carry on the same feverish hyperintensity, couldnt eat properly and the drugs didnt seem to be working. After 5 more days I was back at the doctor and it was sunday so evrything was closed but the doctor was there and remembered my case. He told me YOU MUST keep taking the drugs so go to pharmacy in market and buy more and see me tomorrow. It was4 aready so when I got the drugs I took one right away the forced myself to eat something and took another one (to make up for1 that I'd missed in the morning)but what I didnt realize was that these ones were twice the streangth so I'd done 2 days worth in 2 hours ! I'm sure only that day the typhoid died under that massive assault. It was obviously meant to be !! The next day i felt lighter !? (as always bUt) as if something had left me but the docs news brought me down to earth ... 10 more days of anti biotics... OUCH. But I already knew what the cure was that is to get back to the high altitude mountains collect a lot of dry horse shit cook dhal and climb boulders !! Okay so I'm skinny as a rake and have no muscles left but surely this new lightness I feel means I wont need any (many) ? ! and flexibility.... We are constantly held back by by constantly sore and recovering bouldering muscles so now maybe I can break through that and become properly flexible !

Actually I was wrong on both counts. I was stiff and brittle as an old plank and weak like a half dead stick insect !! But mentally ? surely I must be stronger there, I can feel it, something has changed , Ive lost something for sure but maybe I've also gained something ? Anything please ! it will become more clear as time goes on. I have to see the bigger picture, it looks great! , Ive learned so much, right on, fuck it, shut up