It's All In the Playing (34 page)

His meditation ceremony was well into the hour mark when another rap came at the door.

“They’re ready for me again,” I said. “I’m sorry, but that is why we’re here.”

I left Benito and company and walked to the set again. By now there were whispers and sidelong glances cast toward me.

“She’s doing one of her out-of-body astrals or something, you know,” I overheard someone say.

We got the shot and I returned.

I was called to the set about five times during the course of the rest of the evening, and each time left my trailer as promptly as I could. I made a point of that because I was afraid that what happened later would happen.

Anyway, during a time period when they didn’t need me, Benito earnestly conducted his ceremony and talked to me of my life. By now he had spread a gigantic bag of coca leaves across the daybed and proceeded to caress and meditate on each one in turn, as though each told a story. I had been to enough psychics to know that tarot cards or tea leaves or palm reading or
I-ching
were only tools that enabled the psychic to attune to a higher level of awareness. That awareness is available to all of us because it is only contact with the higher self, which is all-knowing and directly connected to the Divine Universal Energy Source. But psychics have had more training in attuning to that energy level, so they are able to trust it more readily than the rest of us are.

As Benito studied the shape of the coca leaves, I could see him go into a space with his spiritual mind which enabled him to see and sense more clearly.

“You have encountered many obstacles in your life,” he said.

I nodded.

“But you have overcome. You will use your seven guides into the future to help shepherd your project through.”

He stopped a moment.

“Why are you so interested in the lives you have led in the past?”

I shrugged.

“You must give that up. Your present is more interesting.”

He stopped breathing for a moment. Then began again.

“You have separation from someone because you opened big trough in life he could not understand.”

I said nothing but I thought of Gerry. Benito looked at me sadly again but didn’t continue. He then got to the business at hand.

“You must do ceremony for good weather at Machu Picchu. The high priest of Inca agrees to help if you will do your part. Everything stems from feeling within. You will manifest what you sincerely believe. Do not doubt. Do not be afraid. Do not be mistrustful. What you believe is what will occur.”

Benito then poured more anisette into a glass which he passed around the trailer to his wife, Esther, Simo, and me.

“It is not the liquor that is important,” he said. “It is the sharing.”

We each took a sip of the sweet liqueur and passed it on.

Two and one half hours had passed. The energy output Benito had exuded just psychically was demanding for a person in such ill health, but the ceremony was winding down. After blessing each coca leaf he gathered them up into his large bag and put them aside. Then he piled all the natural objects together and made a separate package out of them. He tied the package tightly, blessed it, and handed it to me.

“You must take this,” he said, “to the highest point of Machu Picchu, face the East, and burn this packet. While burning you will think only of your vision of good weather, and your wish of good weather will come to pass. Do not doubt what you wish to happen.”

I took the packet and handed it to Simo, wondering if the animal fat and llama fetus would keep until the next day. Benito took a small packet from his jacket.

“This is infusion tea,” he said. “You may become ill when doing the ceremony. If so, drink this.”

I took the tea packet from him. Benito stood up. The candles were burned nearly to stumps and the company crew had gone home. There was a cold drizzling rain gently drumming on the roof of the trailer. Benito gave one last hacking cough.

“You must see a doctor,” I said. “You have done this for me. Let me do something for you.”

Esther translated. He nodded and said something to her.

“He says he hears you are famous. All he wants is a picture of you.”

“Certainly,” I said, making a mental note that I would have the company doctor see him as soon as possible.

“Thank you, Benito,” I said. “By the way, what is your last name?”

Esther told him what I asked. He looked at me triumphantly.

“My name means the condor of gold.”

With that he bowed to me, and with his wife in tow, he left my trailer and stepped into his Toyota—which, I was to learn later, had been rented so that he could come to me. Through the misty rain I waved goodbye to him. Then I looked up into the night drizzle. I said a silent prayer that the package he had given me would work. I also noticed that I was too self-centered to say a prayer for him.

*   *   *

   Simo woke me at 4:00 the next morning. This was the big day. Crew members all over Cuzco were rising and wondering if the arduous train trip would be worth it this time.

I did a quick yoga in my cold room, ate a piece of toast popped into a toaster by my bed, and determined to myself that everything would go perfectly for the day.

I wasn’t in the car for five minutes before it was clear that “swimmingly” was not how the day would go.

The drive to the train for Machu Picchu would take several hours, particularly at zero ceiling outside. The fog was so thick that a snail would have beaten us. I wondered how the camera truck with all our equipment was going to make it in time to load onto the train. Never mind, I thought. I patted Simo’s arm, which was holding Benito’s weather packet for safekeeping.

“Oh,” said Peter, our driver. “You should probably know—the security guard who has the key to the camera truck was out drunk all night and no one can find him. He never came back to the truck and he is the only one with the key, so unless they get the camera equipment to the train, how are you going to shoot?”

I clutched my stomach. I could literally feel it turn over. I couldn’t talk. I stared out the window as though I could see through the fog. Simo cleared his throat.

“How do you know this?” he asked Peter.

“Well,” he said, “they were going crazy in the production office when I left, but none of the bigwigs know about it yet.”

“I do,” I said, finding my voice.

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered.

Well, well, well. Talk about trying to find the purposeful good in everything. This was my big chance. The security guard got drunk and shacked up all night with a hooker who probably rolled him afterward (keys included) because his destiny was to learn something? But what
about me and the rest of us? What the hell was going on? I tried to stay calm. If the camera truck missed the train, what would be the point of the rest of us going? Sometimes the finer points of higher consciousness eluded me.

As we crawled along in the fog we passed the camera crew van. The guys inside had no idea that there would be no equipment to shoot with. What were they supposed to learn from this?

As we plowed through the rain and fog I realized that my lesson was probably “Stop projecting the worst. Somehow it will all work out.” That kind of attitude had been guaranteed to make me irritatingly perturbed whenever someone quoted it to me. I thought it was irresponsibly idealistic, unprofessional, and all-in-all hopelessly undisciplined and capricious. In sum: “spaced out.”

Yet there I was having no recourse but to accept it. Now, as I felt myself helpless to change anything, why not believe that it was all happening for a
good
reason? This attitude of mine being one of them.

In a slightly more positive—which is to say, resigned—frame of mind, I sat back. Well, at least I didn’t jump out the window as we drove.

We pulled into the train station to find Dean and Stan having coffee in one of the train compartments.

“Well,” I said accusingly, “what are we going to do? Will the train wait?”

“Wait for what?” asked Stan.

“The camera truck,” I answered.

“The camera truck will be here any minute,” he said reassuringly.

“Oh, really?” I asked. “What did you do, fly it in?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“The security guy went AWOL with the keys. It hasn’t left yet because no one had another set.”

Stan and Dean went white and jumped up. I didn’t see where they went or whom they checked with. I only
knew the fumes inside the train compartment were so toxic that I had to leave. Simo handed me an umbrella, so I took myself out in the rain, marched down to the Urubamba River, and stared into it wondering where it would take me if I jumped.

Three hours later the camera truck arrived. Someone had uncovered another set of keys. The security guy never did show up and the train for Machu Picchu waited. The lesson? The realization that we wasted three hours
worrying.

The train ride seemed shorter (in fact, it was) and certainly less lugubrious than the first one. John Heard seemed struck with wonder to learn that he had actually taken it before.

The crew was in fairly good spirits because if we got this scene we were coming into home plate of location completion. Colin had departed for L.A. several days before, so Stan and I were left holding down the creative part.

With prayers in our hearts we scanned the skies as the train pulled into the station just below the Machu Picchu monument. Perhaps it wasn’t necessary to take the drizzling rain at the train station seriously. I closed my eyes and tried to project. Simo lifted his face to the clouds and did the same. I couldn’t find Stan. Perhaps the three-hour wait at the station had prevented our seeing even worse weather. Esther patted my arm.

We piled into the buses and with uncertain emotions made our way up the winding road to the mountaintop.

Fifteen minutes later our fears were confirmed. A solid thicket of fog accompanied by a cold drizzle enveloped the Lost City. Machu Picchu wasn’t even visible.

I took Benito’s “element packet” from a bag. Simo had tied together dried twigs to make a fire which he carefully held protected from the wet. I wondered how long a fire would burn in this drizzle anyway.

I couldn’t find Stan. Esther offered to locate him in
the melee of disembarking crew members. I watched each of them as they looked up, looked around, and laughed.

“Are you kidding or what?” I heard one of them remark as he bundled up inside his raincoat. “Who can shoot anything in this and still see it?”

“Okay,” I said to Simo. “Let’s start climbing. If ever it was necessary to trust in creating my own reality, it’s now.”

Esther returned with Stan in tow.

“What’s up?” he asked.

I explained everything that Benito had said. He didn’t scoff or smirk at all. Quite the contrary.

“Let’s go,” he said. “We have a lot of projecting to do so we can get in a good day’s work. In fact the
only
day’s work at this place.”

The crew looked askance as the four of us—Stan, Esther, Simo, and I—trudged into the fog and rain and disappeared from their view.

The climbing entailed in getting to the top of Machu Picchu is no joke. Even if the sun did come out, I wondered how the guys would lift the equipment to the top. No matter. That’s show business. We climbed in the drizzle with the twigs and the package for about fifteen minutes—straight up the very narrow steps of the monument. We stopped, took a collective breath, turned around, and looked below us. Nothing was visible. It was as though we had ascended into a sprinkly fog-heaven and left the earth below us forever. We could hear voices in the lower realms, but they were only haunting reminders of those who doubted and had no faith in the potential of expectation. Miracles being opportunities that work out better than expected.

We smiled at one another and continued to climb. Near the very top we spotted a flat-surfaced rock that looked as though it might have been used for ceremonies of some kind. We made our way to it. Climbing above
the fog still higher, we found ourselves standing on the rock with a 360-degree view of mist and floating clouds around us. At the same moment a giant alpaca—no doubt the one that is said to guard the monument—materialized above the veiled rocks and—I swear—floated toward us. We didn’t move. He stopped, looked at us, chewed his cud, and as though giving us his blessing, he regally turned and disappeared back into his shrouded kingdom. A chill of wonder went up my spine. I had learned to trust those chills. They almost always meant that whatever I was thinking or saying was the truth.

We had already determined which direction was east, so we placed the packet facing the obscured, yet rising, sun. We each took a moment to acknowledge that the sun was actually above us, however invisible it was.

Then Simo placed the twigs under the packet. The packet was so wet each of us dragged Kleenex from our pockets and leaned down to light it. Slowly the twigs began to smoke. Then a thin flame appeared.

We stood up and faced the east and began our visualizations.

“Picture the weather you would like to have,” Benito had said. “Your mind’s picture will manifest if you trust it.”

Rain birds chirped in the drizzle. Stan spoke. “As a producer who has prayed for weather in many different countries,” he said, “I don’t have the chutzpah to ask for more sunlight than we need!”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to visualize a third-dimensional misty quality with sunlight shining through. I’d like clouds to hang suspended in the air.” The four of us exchanged looks as we each prepared to do what we could to enhance Machu Picchu.

Silently the “element package” began to burn. Then it crackled and snapped. Holding hands, each of us projected our collective weather desire. As I did mine, I found myself wondering what projections felt like to
other people. Did their minds respond more readily to what they wanted to see than mine did? I thought of all the stories about Lourdes and the miracles. “They occur because people want them to” was the oft-repeated repudiation. Yes, I thought, isn’t that the way it should be? Shouldn’t the patient always participate equally with the doctor? If you believe you are well, you are, and vice versa. Body following conscious belief. It was best never to acknowledge that doubt is real.