Infinite Possibilites

Whispered Words Through the Jungle.

 Intro: Nicaragua

The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.- Lester Bangs

Nicaragua is a strange place. I lived for a long time in Masaya where I could see the top of a volcano of the same name. Still active, some nights we would all be surrounded by smoke and would even see the flames emerging from the volcano. The smoke would envelop our little village in what really seemed like a really thick fog, making everything look so unreal, as if we were in some weird movie. Nobody seemed to be bothered at all. In fact they seemed to be rather enjoying the hazy dazy feel that had suddenly invaded our surroundings, following us even inside our tiny chambers. All the natives were smiling joyfully, making fun of my worries, merely calming me down, saying that the volcano simply was in a bad mood that day.

There are around 20 volcanoes in Nicaragua, most of them still active. It’s a lot if you consider how small the country is. I’m telling you this because we all know that natural catastrophes can be felt by animals and most probably humans too, imagine how it feels to be living in a country that could be wiped out by any of these volcanoes that are still very much ”alive”…

I had been in Nicaragua for a year when it started. I went over there to do some humanitarian work with a worldwide organisation created to help people who have drug problems. I had been in the Canadian part of this program myself awhile and felt I had received a lot of help so I wanted to give back what I had received and go and help out in Nicaragua.

Problem is it was a lot harder than I thought. The heat, the poor conditions, the sudden realisation that I had spent more than half of my life being a drug addict and that I was now an adult at 32 years old. It all came back to me and it was like a huge hangover during which you constantly discover the damages. I learned Spanish quite fast. There was this kid who was very nice to me right when I arrived and showing me the words I needed to know. Everyone was telling me to beware of the kid thought but I couldn’t see what I could fear from him besides getting robbed of my clothes or other stuff, which happened anyway. This kid would just create trouble and spread false rumours about others. It wasn’t the first time this little guy was making such allegations that were later proven to be unfounded. I later learned he was doing that so he could leave and go live with his grandmother whom had brought the little guy there in the first place because she just couldn’t take care of him,

Nicaragua is a very unstable territory. Very  mystical, the Nicaraguans have their own spiritual beliefs. Weird things happen there. Everyday. I have learned to acknowledge, respect and if needed fear the things I cannot understand. It took me awhile to gather the courage to tell my story about what seemed to be a spiritual awakening or some sort of initiation. It felt as if  I had connected with s spirit, flying through the jungle of Nicaragua as if I was riding on the back of a giant insect. Destination and motive unkown. At the same time I was feeling as if a third eye had opened and I was receiving all the data in relation to the present moment. In my mind unfolded an infinite of possibilities, none being better than the other so when asked a simple question, I could not respond. I was paralysed by the number of possibilites, no reference to logic or compass for morals. I distincly remembered asking again and again to my grandfather that he would grant me extreme conscience about everything that was happening to me and those around me who would be touched by my actions and thoughts….  I think soemone up there thought I was ready cuz I got my wish. I very much thought I had lost my mind but I still wanted to have that gift. Problem is that I totally lost my ”self”. Let me try to definie you how I felt.

Let’s say my spiritual self is like a serie of geometrical figures representing different aspect of my values that are fitted into one another to compose this image I have of myself, that those geometrical figures all jointed together paint a ”final” picture of my spriritual self and enable me to act upon the result of the values that these figures represent. I was now feeling as if all those gometrical figures were disjointed, I was decomposed and all the data were gicing me all the reverse aspect of my moral values, for there is always a flip side to a coin and if you look at it without any moral compass, your logic cannot withold all the data you are getting and makes it impossible for you to take any decision whatsoever. Mt ”self” just ”imploded” and I was now just a computer receiving data from a source wihich I had no idea if it was reliable or not. Let’s call that source the Mothman.

That’s how it started at first, I thought they were just crazy dreams that would come back to me during the day.physically and financially. His parents were both killed during The Nicaraguan Revolution  that encompassed the rising opposition to the Somoza dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s, the campaign led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) to violently oust the dictatorship in 1978-79, the subsequent efforts of the FSLN to govern Nicaragua from 1979 until 1990 and the Contra War which was waged between the FSLN and the Contras from 1981-1990.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

– I think we can assume that these entities are more advanced than us. Why don’t they just come right out and tell us what’s on their minds?

– You’re more advanced than a cockroach, have you ever tried explaining yourself to one of them?

The Social Jungle:

My father then came to visit me and I got to spend 2 weeks of vacations with him. It was a very welcome time off and took away a lot of the stress that I got from living in Nicaragua. We got to stay in a Hotel and I almost immediately hooked up with a very good-looking girl who told me she was in love with me, then she presented me all of her friends and by God they were all pretty and fun to be with. I had a really good time and when my father left the owner told me I could stay and work there. So of course I did. I had made a girlfriend during my vacations and I felt I just didn’t wanna go back to the kind of live that was lived in the organisation which would make having a GF very hard, rather impossible I should say. For some reason my mental stability started to shiver at that moment, realising I was now on my own in a country when you could get killed simply over a Timex watch or a pair of shoes, or just for the fact they thought you were American. I had no real friends except the driver of the hotel, Carlos, who used to be with the rebels during the civil war and who got either very violent or very sad when he was drinking but still was a very good drinking companion. Now the girl who had the most interest in me wasn’t the one I wanted to be with but for some reason I never understood she is the one who seemed to have ”exclusive right” to be my GF, I guess she was the strongest and threatened the others to stay away from me. Problem is she was turning tricks and I was stupid enough not to notice, I wouldn’t have minded but it would have been fair for her to tell me. Anyways, when I found out I still got to go with the ones I prefered and hung out with who I choose to but it seems all I managed to do is getting in a situation where everything got very complicated and I felt I was in some slapstick love comedy only it wasn’t funny at all but rather really stressful simply because almost everyone there is armed and utterly jealous. Lucky me, since I was also working as night guardian of the Las Palmas Hotel I was armed with a brand new AK-47 Kalashnikov and an old handgun from second world war that had no security latch and was quite dangerous to fall asleep with, having to hold it and be ready to use it at all times. Thieves attacks at night are a common thing in Nicaragua. Even more so if you are the night watch for a ”luxurious” hotel. So yeah, girls and guns go hand in hand. Over there if you happen to get home and your wife is in bed with another man and you kill him or harm him without being unreasonably cruel, you might get off easy.

In fact the very first day I arrived in Nicaragua with this organisation that was called La Fundacion El Patriarca (The Patriarch) stopped at a restaurant and left me waiting in the car, I got out just to walk around little, I had been on the plane for over more than a day because of the transfers, It took no more than 5 minutes to have a beer bottle thrown at me from a passing car that missed me by only a few inches. I bet they thought I was American.

Sitting on a Volcano:

All this to say I was in a fragile state of mind. My father was gone now, I had no money, the job at the hotel wasn’t paying much, it was totally disorganized, I tried to make myself useful but I just didn’t know what to do. Doing the best I could, waiting on the tables and stuff, discovering my so-called girlfriend was a prostitute and was only after my money (which she thought I had just because I was from Canada). One day I simply decided to return to the center and I asked for directions, I then realised I was followed by 2 guys with ”machetes” (sort of very sharp short sword), they were getting closer and closer and I knew if something didn’t happen to save me I would be found dead, I was carrying all my clothes, a CD player and a few CDs which was more than enough to justify a murder in Nicaragua as I said earlier. I was lucky enough that at that precise moment a Jeep from the organisation was passing by coming from the direction I was going and they were heading right where I was supposed to go. In other words, I was shown the opposite direction when I asked and they clearly were out to get me that day and very probably would have killed me if that Jeep wouldn’t have passed by at that very precise moment.

 

Never before I had been happy to see this rough, edgy, Spanish guy called Pedro who was constantly swearing, and complaining about everything and everyone. He was a good-hearted guy though and saw right away I was in deep shit when he saw me being followed on this rather desert trail in the forest by 2 guys with ”machete”.  So I got back into the association but deprived of all my previous privileges that I had. Before I had left from my vacations I was working with the top administrators and answering the telephone and the radio and keeping records and who was in what center and who needed what, where, and so on, and more… In other words, I wasn’t doing the tough work anymore like working in farms and construction but rather handling files and lists and organizing the logistic of who had to go where using what transportation and so forth. When I got back, they put me in a center I had never been before, a farm, very little, hard work, being the only guy in the center that wasn’t a native.

First Symptoms

Now it was back to basics. Because I had gone out, I had to ”assume” and they sent me to this center no one wanted to go near Jinotepe, far in the jungle and the mountains. They called it ”Rivas” and it was run by this crazy guy from Belize who looked like Hulk and was running his center near Jinotepe a bit like some dictator whom everyone truly feared. It was way up in the jungle, nothing around, no roads, there was like 7 portals you had to go through to get there. Barbwire everywhere. I was the only not Nicaraguan guy over there and I truly felt they all hated me. Plus the fact that I had left was interpreted by the guy who thought I had molested this kid as a proof of my guilt and that I had tried to run away. Still that didn’t bother me, I always had felt that when someone is innocent, the truth always comes out. Still, I was feeling very weak partly because when I was out I had been drinking quite a lot and also because this girl I was with who was turning tricks had on various occasions put pills into my drink so that I would fall asleep and she would then have time to go with some other Johns while I was knocked out sleeping. Fuck I wish she would have simply told me!!! These pills  were sold legally everywhere so after I learned she had fed me some I had also bought some at the convenience store of the hotel a couple of times. I later learned they were amphetamines and/or benzodiazepines and that some people even shot them up!! I didn’t know that at the time so I never took those mysterious pills intravenously thank God!

It was a that time that I felt something really weird was happening. I would get those flashes during the day of flying through the jungle, not quite remembering the whole thing, just a feeling that I was traveling in some other dimension during my sleep, we were 4 roommates in each room and the others started to complain I was talking in my sleep, loud and clear. I started to have some kind of divination powers. I could tel you that this or that person would be in a bad situation in advance without quite knowing why or how I knew that. It was very strange though because I could very clearly see that something had been divulged to me but only me could interpret those signs but sometimes it was loud and clear. Plus I was having ”Déjà Vu” moments non-stop. One day we started to talk about music while listening to the radio when each time I would talk about a song, or a band, it would play on the radio. To give you a precise example that I remember; once we were talking about this movie ”Midnight Cowboy” when all of a sudden the main theme from the movie started to play. Remember that this is happening in Nicaragua, you do not get to hear those songs very much….  So I get those like kinda divination powers which were already unsettling, I think that my mind was pretty much open at this time because I had prayed to God to open my mind and that I wanted to understand everything that was happening around me, I had missed so much already being on drugs that I didn’t want it to happen anymore. More than anything I wanted to be in the here and now and be able to understand each and every implications this present moment had in store for me. Well I think The Mothman heard my prayers. I could now predict things before they happen and people were definitely getting spooked by me now. These people are very superstitious and they firmly believe in spirits and stuff like that, which I did up to a certain point but never as much as I was about to get in myself. I remember saying look if I truly am right about what I’m feeling now send me something about ”Gravediggaz”, that was completely random,I was listening to the ”6 Feet Deep” album when I made that prayer. The next day is visiting time. Don’t forget I never told anyone about that prayer I had made in my head. The very next day, during visiting time, one of the guys  received the visit of his family, I thought it was curious cuz they were all wearing baseball or football or some kind of sport  team shirt, homemade, like the ones you see in those little friendly leagues. Guess what was the name of the team??? Yes you got it. It was written in white on a black shirt, each with a different number ”Gravediggaz” spelled precisely that way. I freaked. I really started to freak. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. I was stuck in my own mind. I tried to talk about it with one guy who seemed more friendly, just a little, just testing if he would like, just be a little open-minded about it but he went around my back and told everyone I was going berserk. I was digging myself a whole and facing 2 possibilities, talk and become the idiot of the ”town” or shut up and try to deal with it alone. Which I chose to do. I was stuck with The Mothman whispering numbers and thoughts at me at various time of the day and night.

Murder by Numbers

You know sometimes you get those ”Déjà Vu” moments? Well now I was getting them nonstop. Plus there where moments I would become totally unconscious for a couple of moments up to 4 hours. To me it was as if 10 minutes had passed, like I had just left to work in the fields  and 10 minutes later it was lunchtime. I wasn’t to bothered by it at first cuz I thought time just went by fast , I know what it is like to feel like time just flew but this was something else. Plus people would be looking at me funny when I would mention how fast time had passed. Finally someone told me that I literally ”FROZE” for all the time I thought had gone by so fast. There was no  way they could get me back and it freaked them out  AND pissed them off cuz, of course, I did not help them a bit to get the job done. Then I would start to get those numbers I would wake up with in my mind. I would be running like crazy cuz I would get at the same time this sense of emergency, that something terrible was about to happen. I wasn’t brushing my teeth anymore, not taking showers, totally trapped with those numbers and looking for their significance until one day I got my hands on a newspaper and learned that this numbers i have had in my head for like a week was the number of victim for such or such accident or natural catastrophes in different parts of the world. I was getting more and more disorganized, totally incapable of leading a normal life. They transferred me from this center to back where I was before but they immediately realised I was totally out of it. My ancient work mates immediately sensed I was not in my right mind. Ube and this guy from Belgium tried to help me a little but I was very rude to them simply because I thought that including anyone in my visions might them as crazy and unstable as I was then. Adding to all my being unable to trust anyone, I should have thought that of course this fucking guy from the center used this again to confirm again I was just plagued by guilt and that it was driving me crazy. OMG!! Now I was NOT capable of ignoring those looks I thought some of them were giving me… I needed help and all I was getting was this. Now I was almost hysterical and I thought it made me look even more suspicious which made me feel even more hysterical and defiant. I took everything as a warning from people, thinking they were about to hang me from a tree because they thought I was a pedophile and a homosexual, neither of which I am of course. I just had lost the faith that the Truth always come out and rather now had a very negative and pessimist set of mind.Plus this sense of emergency that I had to get out of this country ASAP!!! I was now getting HUGE numbers… That was terrifying….The numbers I was getting were those of a phenomenal natural catastrophe and the feeling was about to hit close, very close. I finally managed to leave the country and get back to Canada but I was still getting numbers…. I left the Nicaragua in late July on a trip that would require that I change plane 3 times. I got arrested on the second change by the FBI in Florida because I was doing cartwheels in the airport. Thinking I had to do something really crazy in order to save those people who were about to board the plane from an imminent catastrophe. I got stuck in the loony bin for 2 weeks before being put in a plane going DIRECTLY home. Little did I know that 2 month later Nicaragua would be hit by a tsunami earthquake of apocalyptic proportions. I got really lucky.

Earthquake and Tsunami of September 2nd 1992 

 

A major tsunamigenic earthquake occurred off the Pacific coast of Nicaragua at 18.16 local time, (00h 16m GMT) on September 2, 1992 . The initial surface wave magnitude was estimated at 7.2 and its epicenter was at 11.761° N, 87.419 West, about 120 Kms West/Southwest of the city of Managua. The magnitude was later revised to a moment magnitude (Mw 7.6.) The main earthquake was followed by several strong aftershocks. Tsunami waves of up to 10 meters reached the Nicaraguan coast. Over 170 people lost their lives and lot more injured. The Hotel located in what is called ”La Boquita” were I was working was completely and totally destroyed, I never got in touch from no one that knew me over there. I got echoes of people I knew who were there before or after I was there remembering having heard of some fucked up Canadian that was there and had totally lost his mind. That would be me.  

Now I never could explain what happened to me there until I saw the movie ”The Mothman Prophecies”.  I am a very sensitive person but can also be very logic. I will very seldom act upon this logic because i believe in trusting my feelings and my heart more than logic but when I saw this movie and learned about the Mothman (to me is also the Owlman), both the logic and the feeling that this was what had ”possessed” my soul during the months preceding the catastrophe was overwhelming. I finally had an explanation about what had puzzled so many people, friends, family and professionals alike.

It still took me at least 2 years to manage to get back to normal but if you ask me today what was all this about, I can now answer without missing a beat, that The Mothman saved my life. I cannot know why he did, but he sure did. If it wasn’t him, it was someone watching over me, probably my grandfather, but I know my grandfather would not have done it like that. He would not have torn my soul apart. I did not put a lot of emphasis on that aspect but trust me I was a wreck. When I came back from Nicaragua my mum thought I was gone. She told me that there was nothing behind those eyes. She cried the day I got better, it was then and only then she told me she thought she had lost me forever. That I was condemned to be there physically but totally spiritually gone.

Of course some of you might interpret this in many different ways, I KNOW you will but I was there, I felt it, I KNOW how it felt and I am telling you, there was something really fucked up about it.