Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart by Alice Walker

youngish New Yorker.
    Kate had met this group at the airport only hours before. It was the first time any of them had visited this country. The first time any of them had traveled to South America. At the airport they’d recognized one another immediately as Medicine Seekers. There they stood, speaking only a halting, basic Spanish, those who spoke it at all. Loaded down with backpacks, baseball caps and straw hats, waterproof duffels, sturdy sandals or boots.
    They had the look of people deliberately distancing themselves from the center of things, as their own cultures defined it. Seeking the edge, the fringe. But also, paradoxically, the heart. At least they hoped so.
    Again Kate found herself in a tiny boat, thousands of miles from anyone she knew, on a river, the Amazon this time, heading for the forest.
             
    He had watched her go. This time, because he was going somewhere too, they’d parted at the airport at home. He’d carried her brown duffel and her faded mauve backpack, and she’d carried her bag of oranges. They stood at the back of the line as people boarded the plane, their bundles around their feet, their bodies touching. At last it was time for her to board. He hugged her, she raised herself a bit, they kissed.
    Enjoy Hawaii, she said. I almost wish I were going with you. Somewhere safe: mellow people, danceable music, beautiful girls.
    He laughed. No, you don’t, he said.
    I don’t even know why I’m going the other way, she said, with a mock grimace, as the flight attendant took her ticket.
    You have to, he said.
    Who knew! she said, shrugging, disappearing toward the plane.
             
    Apparently enlightenment of any sort required a lot of regurgitation. Kate remembered telling a friend about her experience with magic mushrooms. How much they’d helped her when she’d been overwhelmed with grief. It had been a time in the seventies when she finally got it that the earth was being destroyed; that human beings were living in a time when Time was running out. She’d taken the medicine with no idea it would help her. It had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, an odd visitor had brought it. Really she’d taken it because she didn’t care anymore. Any reality seemed better than the one she was in. That of knowing humans had fouled their nest so badly it would no longer nurture them. And the first thing that happened was she’d gotten rotten sick. Nausea. Worse than being pregnant. And she’d thrown up.
    She’d urged her friend to try the medicine. But the friend dismissed it. I can’t bear being nauseous, she’d said.
    But there’s the other side of being nauseous, Kate said. You get to the other side. And that is where you want to get. It’s not just about being sick to your gills.
    No, thanks, said the friend. I couldn’t do it.
    Kate thought of this as she sat, shivering, hunched over a hole that had been dug in front of her in the ground.
    They’d been asked to drink half a gallon of a frothy liquid that tasted like soapsuds. This was to provoke the vomiting and the diarrhea that would clean them out. You could never put a sacred medicine into a polluted body. The heavy meat eaters, if there were any, were especially warned. Fortunately, for this trip, unlike all the others in her life, she’d read everything she could find on what this experience with plant medicines might be. She’d even gone to a local shaman at home, surprised that one lived within driving distance of her. What was happening in the world, she had wondered, that it was possible to call up a shaman who spoke your language and whose voice mail said yes, call again, there might be a space for you? She had gone, taken the horrible-tasting medicine, and for the next seven hours, after the gut-wrenching nausea and diarrhea, had sat wearing a black mask over her eyes, and watched the pictures her plant friends drew for her. It was exactly like being in school, but with fascinating text material. The