It was too hideous to face head on. We couldn't help but to deny it.
About six weeks ago, while I was in the Lacondon Jungle, a fly bit me on the forehead above the left eye. Another bit me on my left shoulder. A short while latter a fly bit my friend and comrade of the jungle, Ian on the back of his neck.
The flies had fed on the sickly, dispirited cows that inhabited the cleared jungle near the Evangelico Lacondon Mayan Pueblo of Nueva Palastrina. Their bite embedded the larvae of the worm deep in wounds we already had. Several days latter it seemed as if the wounds had healed. But then blood and pus oozing volcanos emerged from our flesh.
Of course we were in denial.
We surmised that the origins of the volcanos involved something in the jungle. Ian suggested that we had spent enough time of the jungle to become somewhat like the jungle in having layers of life and death encrusted on ourselves.
But of course a part of us knew that the sharp vibrating pains in my head, my shoulder, Ians neck, was the worm eating, the worm burrowing deeper into our flesh, that the bubbling in the blood and pus oozing from the wounds was the worms' respiration, that the vent holes of the flesh volcanos was actually the mouth of the worm, that sooner or latter we are all food for the worms, that sooner or latter we return to that mystery from which we came, to which we return.
Denise, our German Chilangra amiga, who was traveling with us, would say that it was an alien, like in the movie of the same name, that was preparing to break out of our heads and attack all humanity.
I laughed nervously.
I am proud to be an American without health coverage. You will not get me to a doctor until I am mostly dead, or until I am stopping crowds of locals in the pueblo of Copan Ruinas, Honduras, in disgust of the great white worm, in concern for my life.
People were being stopped in the streets of Livingston, Guatamala with the morbid spectacle of our blood and pus oozing volcanos. But many were trying to use our volcanos as an opportunity to do a jive bush doctor routine in the hope of getting money.
A nurse from the Livingstone clinic checked out the volcano in my head, and advised that I keep ice on it.
The people in Livingston really didn't know Guisano Terselo.
But as I approached the Honduran border with Denise there was no doubt that these Mayan people knew the worm intimately. They told me of their worms. And they advised me to go to a doctor, immediately. They said they had never seen a larger worm then the one in my head.
I arrived with Denise in the pueblo of Copan Ruinas on Wednesday, March 29 and first thing Thursday I went to the government clinic.
The place was already filled with mothers and their sick babies. After a while a very beautiful, overworked woman, Dr. Maritza Nathaly looked at my head, and said that even though the next day was her day off, she would get the worm out if I came next morning at 7 a.m. sharp.
The worms knew something was up. They were very restive the night before. And when I sat in the main street of the pueblo talking to the artisanos, and artisanas selling their wares, a crowd formed to stare at the blood and pus spewing volcano in my head, the biggest worm they had ever seen pulsating in the head of another human.
They said I needed to attend to the worm in my head, immediately, that it was muy peligrosa. They grasped in disgust as they saw the movement of the worms, blood and pus filled mouth. They ripped apart cigarettes and put wet tobacco on the worm's mouth. Others smoked cigarettes and blew the smoke into the volcano. Others blew cigarrette smoke into their hands until there was a wet nicotine stain, which they smudged on the volcano in my head. Others wanted to stick their chewing gum in the aperture of the wound so the worm wouldn't be able to breath.
It became a mass, spontanous act of healing. The main street was blocked and congested with the mass healing ceremony.
A beautiful grandmother Maria Luis, much respected for her wisdom, stepped forward and showed me the nearest doctors office. The doctor wasn't there.
Young men offered to cut me with their knives right there, and rip the worm away from head, Indian style.
But an Australian artisana, Cheri, stepped forward and said she was coming from a doctor's office and she would take me there.
Dr. Javier Carrion, kept on warning me that it would be incredibly painful when he squeezed the worm from my head. It wasn't. By just applying pressure he popped the worm out of my head. He proudly presented me with a cup with a great white grub of a still living, still squirming worm.
He charged me about five dollars Americano.
Even though the doctor is in his twenties, he said he has removed many, many Guisanos Tercelos from the local people's flesh. He said that, easily, I had the biggest, fucking worm he had ever seen.
Next morning Denise and I were at the clinic at 7 a.m. sharp.
As Dr. Maritza told us of the horror of treating small children with as many as ten guisanos in them, she sliced my shoulder to the bone, and wrestled with the worm. She removed three just hatched larvae, a large black egg mass, and another white grub, about half the size as the one in my head.
It was a bloody, horrifying thing.
Dr. Maritza only asked that we buy plastic cups, plastic forks, and cookies for a party she was having for volunteers who report pregnancies and births in the outlying pueblos. In addition I gave about five dollars Americano.
And I made a vow to be her niggah, to do all I could to serve her.
Meantime Ian had gone to Belieze, where they also knew the guisano. They call it beef worm. A wise grandmother had squeezed two worms out of Ian's neck. One was alive. One was dead.
It wasn't like the movie, 'Alien.' It is more like the Star Trek movie, the 'Wrath of Khan,' where Ricardo Montelban plays a genetically enhanced mutant human. He tries to get information from Helmsman Sulu, the Japanese dude, by having an earwick, which looked very much like the guisano, go into his ear and eat its way thru the brain and out the other ear.
But Sulu be a stand-up dude. He doesn't talk. Later in the movie he reports back to duty.
This voyage of the bloody, snake chariot has always been about the bringing of the good news, the real gospel. And it is about making amends for all the bad news and fear-mongering that I use to do as a newspaper reporter.
Where is the good news in this hideous tale - you might ask?
It is like a poem by Rumi.
The medicine, the cure is seeking the disease, the affliction, as the disease, the affliction is seeking the medicine, seeking the cure.
In working the vineyards of the not-business-as-usual, we will be supported by the universe. We will find the right places, the right people, to rid ourselves of the great, white worm.
And to paraphrase Nietsche, that which doesn't kill me - could make me stronger, if it does not totally fuck me up, and leave me a crippled broken thing.
And there is no reason to be anxious or to fear.