MICHAELANGELO BARNEZ

"Yes, this is a great party and we are the host..." Jim Brown, a strong and mature gentleman, said to himself.

"My God, lot of people had gathered around to welcome us!" He exclaimed in his thoughts while watching the yard from the second floor window of his parents’ house. There were, in the courtyard, many people talking and laughing. They all were relatives and friends.

"As soon as my wife and daughter arrive at we’ll come out to the yard to greet them" Jim said to himself, looking at his watch, who had headed to his family to coordinate the arriving arrangements.

Then he began to recognize everybody and started babbling each one of the attendees’ names, besides the precise relationship that united with them.

"John, Peter, Charles, Mary... -and he stopped to go on mentioning names-… My Goodness!... –he exclaimed-… almost everyone from my school’s Promo is here... and so the teachers!"

"Robert!... My older brother, you don’t know how much I missed you since you left us" Jim whispered watching him at the corner of the yard very busy with the barbecue grill.

He also saw several children who he didn’t recognize, playing in the pool.
Then his eyes sparked. "Beatriz!..." That name came out from his lips abruptly when he saw a beautiful woman, his dream lover from youthness, with whom he would has married if it wouldn’t has been for the circumstances, but he never forgot her.

His parents and his wife’s parents were there also. They were supervising and directing the waiters that everything was in order, as planned. Also, from time to time, they welcomed the newcomers and talk to them briefly until they felt comfortable in the party.

Suddenly his father turned his head and looked at the window of the second floor, exactly where he was watching it, and their eyes met at the distance. It was like a muted sign because Jim felt that his wife and daughter were about to come.

Jim came down the stairs and went to the porch of the house to receive them.

He didn’t have to wait a bit because he saw not faraway a white and radiant limousine coming home, which then it parked just a front the house.

His wife, Sophia, and her daughter, Sophia Beatriz, got off from the limo and as always they amazed to Jim with their beauty and aura of energy. Jim who was smiling and eager to meet them opened his arms.

"They are waiting for us in the yard!" Jim said while was taking both ladies from their waist and the duo started to walk at each sides of him.

"Mom got late in the Beauty shop!" Sophia Beatriz complained and apologized.

The patio’s door got wide open and the happy trio made their triumphal appearance being acclaimed by all.

Yes, there were many people. It would be better say: a crowd; because beside his family and close friends there were also the baker, the milk deliverer, the paperboy, the meat market butcher, the Chinese man from the corner liquor store, many neighbors... Yes, many, many people shearing just an exceptional detail: Everyone looked young and healthy, with no worries that disrupt their smiling faces.

Without a doubt, this would be the unforgettable party of the Brown family, which evens the memory for those who stayed on earth crying, would disrupt the celebrating welcome to his everlasting happiness.

“What’s your first name?”

“Peter”

“And your last name?”

“Nobody”

“What?” Exclaimed the journalist.

Hello, my name is Peter and I’ve got the nickname of “Nobody” for two reasons. One, it was because at the age of seven years old, when my mother died, the pimp who pretended to be as my father thrown me out to the street. Why? He needed the room where we used to live in to continue with his business. And second, because just that year a Spanish song, “Peter Nobody”, of a certain argentine singer named as Piero, was a hit.

Yes, at that tender age I was a no nobody’s son … Peter Nobody.

Saying, “I’m a street boy”, it’s just a phrase or an empty expression, which means nothing for those who don't know what is like to be an abandoned boy. I strolled for years and slept in the bleakness of streets until… Did somebody rescue me? No, but until I became a teen.

My only “friends” were other kids like me with whom we organized our gang to be able to survive, which means to steal everyday the every day’s bread. We couldn’t make it against stronger people than us, as you will be able to imagine.

So I learned and I developed inside me the street code behavior. And the first hint that I got in my mind was that we should only attack to the weakest. Therefore I only assault and steal old women and men, pregnant women or with the baby in their arms, blind men or lame beggars, or defenseless rich kids too. That was the way I learned how to take care of myself.

It’s not a waste of time to tell you that my life wasn’t an amusing adventure, by no means, but a terrible misfortune that marked me forever. That night, as soon as I arrived to the group, the older kids raped me. And they repeated it as many times as they wanted, until I learned how to use my knife, and I stabbed one to make myself respect.

The coldness and heat of my street life hardened the skin of my body, but also for the beatings that I took from my own friends. Others times for the fights against enemy bands, or when I fell caught for my victims or the police.

I learned, from that tender age, that if somebody came closer to me and lifted his hand it was to attack me or to molest me. Same as the priest of the church did in exchange of a plate of food and a roof to sleep. But he didn’t imagine that my self-defense intuition was already shaped and at the first dirty pawed “I sliced” his face with my inseparable and faithful friend, my knife.

Later, when my needs grew up, means to drug me, we begin to steal bigger people because we needed more money. It was when I began to stand out in the group for my cruelty. I attacked without mercy to anyone, without caring me the disadvantages for their size or stoutness. With the only advantage that gave me to I stab them first, and then, when they screamed seeing their own blood, my gang assaulted him.

It was this way how I became the leader of the gang, but, undoubtedly, I had “to take down” the boss first in a clean fight, surrounded by all and under the moonlight. In the fight, after I received several cuts on the arms, the ‘son of a bitch’ falls in my trap when I pretended to be weakest to mislead him. He trusted on the street code, when I faked tumble down.

He believed that it was the right moment to finish with me, and when he lifted his arm to give me the final stab, I stabbed him first right in his nuts… Did he die? I don't know and we neither cared, because we left him on the ground. We walked away to the beach to celebrate with a bag full of glue that we inhaled to feel happy and to avoid the coldness. That way I became the leader and we didn’t know any more about him. Ah, it is not a waste of time to remark that it was him who had led to whom raped me the night when I arrived to the group.

At the age of 12 years old I already had my own gang, the one that nobody gave me as a gift but I won for my dexterity with the knife and my cruelty.

But suddenly something began to change in me at that age, something that I could not explain, and I didn't have anybody to ask. My voice changed, hair covered my pubis and I began to dream. It was exactly the moment when a 10 years old girl and her little brother arrived to the group, and in the night the gang wanted to rape her. The rape to newcomers was a natural matter for all of us, for our code, being boy or girl, there was not difference, we had passed through it as a baptism, but it wasn’t for me.

“Nobody touch her damned!!!… -I roared, and I took out to glitter my knife -… and anyone that gets near to her I’ll stab to death!!!”

“Ok, ok Peter… It’s ok bro… If you want her only for you, it’s ok,” the one that pretend to be my second one in the band said despite being bigger than me.

“Fuck none!!!… From now on not more baptisms in my gang!”

That night I went to sleep away of the group, and I hidden among the darkness I cried. In the coldness of my cardboards and clothes bed I remembered my mother and the last teacher that I had in the school.

I remembered that we used to live in a piece of shit hotel room. But it was my home, where my mother made my meals, loved me and at the bedtime she tucked me saying: “Little Peter, my sonny boy, dreams with angels”.

Therefore that night I cried, I cried as I’d never done it all this years, and among my tears I remembered my school’s friends, my teachers and my games… And I missed them all.

Luckily, I learned to read in the school. Since I lived on the street and I slept in the landfills, I read as much as I could do it. So, I devour with my eyes any piece of newspapers or stories for children every time they fall in my hands.

Therefore, the next day that I forbid the rapes I began to teach reading to my close friends, of course that it was after the assaults. What would you think or expected from a delinquents boy as me? Do I have food and roof free? No, I learned that everything has a price in the life and that I have to get it myself in the only way the society has taught me. And I warn to anyone that comes closer to me with the lifted hand, to hit me or to caress me, it will receive a cut in the face… or maybe more.

“Hey, if you wanna talk me… make it from a distance, asshole!!!… Otherwise, I cut your neck mother’s fuc#*& …!”

“To be continuing…?” the journalist asked.

“What should we do?” I ask you.

This one has been around for a while, in many ways... As Thanksgiving is just around the corner it's worth another go around…

A young man named John received a parrot named 'Chief' as a gift. The parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary.

Every word out of the bird's mouth was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity.
John tried and tried to change the bird's attitude by consistently saying only polite words, playing soft music and anything else he could think of to 'clean up' the bird's vocabulary.

Finally, John was fed up and he yelled at the parrot.

The parrot yelled back. John shook the parrot and the parrot got angrier and even ruder.

John, in desperation, threw up his hand, grabbed the bird and put him in the freezer.

For a few minutes the parrot squawked and kicked and screamed.

Then suddenly there was total quiet. Not a peep was heard for over a minute.
Fearing that he'd hurt the parrot, John quickly opened the freezer’s door.

The parrot calmly stepped out onto John's outstretched arms and sadly said:
”I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions.
I'm sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully intend to do everything I can to correct my rude and unforgivable behavior”
John was stunned at the change in the bird's attitude. As he was about to ask the parrot what it’d made such a dramatic change in his behavior, but before anything the bird continued: 'May I ask what the turkey did?'

It is important to me to make a statement about the video “AYAHUASCA… THE WEDDING”

I will begin saying emphatically that this is not the traditional ceremony of the wedding consecrated by the Ayahuasca of our Amazon natives. We are just children of the western culture that we feel a deep respect for our mother nature, and in her to all their creatures, included ourselves; and we wanted to consecrate a relationship of love with the Ayahuasca.

In general, a wedding is a symbolic act. It is a public demonstration of the declaration of love of a couple that decides to take a great step forward and to be united, in body and soul, for a lifetime. Of course, a wedding is not the indispensable requirement for that declaration and to assume such a responsibility. Those ceremonies have been carried out since immemorial times under different customs and religions, all of them respectable and genuine if the main ingredient were present: The Love.

Our guests, Andrea and Alí, came to Peru along with my son's family Miguel Junior, his wife Crystal and his daughter AnaKalia, to visit Cuzco; impressed by so many histories that I told them about the Incas since we immigrate to California in the 80's.

Andrea and Alí were already in love when they arrived in Peru coming from Long Beach, California, the last May, 2008. Also, in theirs minds and heart were already the idea that their relationship could go beyond of being just lovers, although there was not yet the purpose of a marriage.

It was the magic of the Inca’s sacred sanctuary, Macchu Picchu and its energy vibrations, that bewitched the couple for a blessing on their lives; and when they returned to Lima they told me their desire to make it publish in a ceremony: The Wedding.

The arrangements were quick and simple, since what prevailed in them was assuming that level of responsibility and love to which they were desirous of committing their lives and their future.

My identification with the preservation of the nature and my deepest respect for the teachings of our ethnic roots made me proposed spontaneously to them a wedding consecrated with the Ayahuasca. Proposal that it was accepted, perhaps with some adventurous curiosity from them, but even so during the ceremony and the drink of some drops of Ayahuasca, they were able to let it out that torrent of emotions of love, fondness and happiness, that you all will be able to see it in the video.

Moreover, all those that we were present were not only mere witness of a formal ceremony, but rather we felt, shared and absorbed the energy of emotions that the couple emanated.

Yes, to carry out the Wedding was the consequence of many fortuitous facts. Alí is like a son for me since many years ago, they both met the perfect partner, Andrea and Alí, their coming to Peru, the spontaneous and abrupt desire of marrying, and also, my great friendship with the well-known Shamán ayahuasquero, Ronald Rivera, made possible this Wedding… Enjoy it.

Michaelangelo Barnez