It came to me in the jungle: the way I needed to share my life’s work. It is not only in words, but in images; not all at once, but little by little. Ayahuasca made me promise to begin creating in a new way, and when the Mother asks, you’d better well answer.
I’m excited to announce that I am going to begin publishing in a new format that I’ve been developing my whole life, ever since I was a kid and used to draw comic strips about everything from animals to politics. It’s hard to say whether art or writing was my first love, but I always used to combine them; I even illustrated my journals through college. In the years since, drawing has come and gone from my life due to traumatic associations and missed opportunities; meanwhile, I’ve struggled to write memoirs and travelogues that really capture the essence of what I want to express. But in one of my ceremonies at the retreat I recently attended in the Peruvian Amazon, the message came loud and clear: It was time to start really telling my story, which is also the human story, in illustrated, insightful, hopefully relatable, and even entertaining vignettes from my personal experience, anthropological research, journalism, and international adventures.
I bring you The Both-Between: The Zine.
The first issue is a snippet from my travels in Peru, when my friends from the retreat and I went traipsing through Cusco and the Sacred Valley, only to find that the ceremony wasn’t over, but in fact had just begun.
I may return to a paid subscriber format for the zines (and find a better publishing format than a downloadable asset, so please share if you know of one), but for now, please enjoy: