I have been trying to avoid writing about the upcoming presidential election. Who needs another blog among the millions already circulating, when the choices seem pretty clear? The Republicans with John McCain will continue to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, encourage fear and domestic paranoia with perpetual Code Orange alerts, and drill offshore (even though it would have a minimal impact at best which would not be realized for 10 years). I’ve had enough of that, and I sensed the American people had as well.

My smug certainty was rudely awakened after the Republican National Convention, when Sarah Palin was nominated as the vice- presidential candidate. McCain is 72 years old and picks a 44-year-old governor of a sparsely populated state, the mother of five, a born-again evangelical Christian with strident anti-choice and pro-gun views, and zero foreign policy experience. My initial cheer came from thinking her nomination was a death knell for the Republican ticket. Sarah Palin is not a pragmatic voice of tolerance and restraint. She is a sound bite and nobody in their right mind would put her a heartbeat away from the presidency. But Palin became an overnight sensation, tilted the polls, and what I thought was a shoo-in election has become anybody’s race. In the process, we have become so captivated by the lipstick chronicles that the substantive issues aren’t being addressed.

I finally succumbed to writing this Schlagbyte after last week’s Wall Street collapse. We are facing the greatest financial crisis this country has seen since the Great Depression. McCain’s response was that “our economy is basically sound” and I can’t take it anymore.

McCain is my senator; he has to know that Arizona is already in recession, that the fundamentals of our economy are not strong, and that we are in a scary, white-knuckle financial dive. How have we gotten here? The Republicans opposed regulations for the financial markets. McCain’s former adviser, ex-Texas Senator Phil Gramm, slipped an amendment into an appropriations bill that forbade federal agencies from regulating financial derivatives. The result is today’s Wall Street collapse and the government bailout that will cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars to ensure that investors stay financially healthy.

But who is keeping the taxpayers healthy? Healthcare is the biggest sector of the economy, and Americans are struggling to repay medical debt. In 2007, 41% of working age Americans (72 million people) were paying back medical bills. People are being pushed over the edge, scrimping on food and home heating, accumulating credit card debt, and taking loans (if they can qualify), in order to make ends meet.

In our “basically sound economy” McCain is going to address the healthcare crisis by pushing the individual insurance market. This is a sure-fire program to increase the number of uninsured, because that industry is founded on the principle of maximizing profits by screening out the sick and minimizing claim payments. The US ranks highest in preventable deaths among 19 developed nations because of the uninsured and the many exclusions for chronic or pre-existing conditions. The for-profit health insurance industry has outlived its usefulness. As someone who speaks to thousands of people in all levels of healthcare each year, I can tell you we need to move to a single-payer national health insurance program.

While Obama’s healthcare plan does not yet get us to a single-payer system, he has promised in his first hundred days to require insurance companies to accept anybody who applies for coverage, expand the children’s health insurance program (SCHIP), and look at the damage done to Medicare by privatizers. This would be a much needed and welcome move in the right direction.

I want a president who can see the economy is unhealthy, that we are drowning in debt, and that much of it is healthcare related. I want a president and vice-president who will change healthcare delivery to make it more fair and equitable. I want a president who saves the lives of all Americans, not just the investors, and I don’t care if the lipstick is on a pit bull or a pig, as long as it’s Obama dancing at the Inaugural Ball.

On the last day of my recent clown trip to Peru, teams from Gesundheit! Institute (Patch Adams organization) and Bola Roja (the Peruvian hospital clowning and child advocacy organization) met with officials of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) who have supported the Belen Project. In PAHO’s flag-draped conference room in Lima, with TV cameras rolling, its Director, Dr. Manuel Pena, introduced all the panelists, and then showed a short documentary on the Project.

Afterwards, he asked Patch to talk about the clowning work we do. Patch told them a bit about his own story that included adolescent despair and hospitalization. After that experience, Patch vowed he would come to every day from a place of loving-kindness and that he would never again have a bad day. He became a medical doctor whose specialty is treating the most vulnerable in society — those ravaged by war, orphaned, diseased and scarred. His treatment protocol is to touch them as a clown and remind them they are loved and not alone.

Patch told them that Bola Roja is a national treasure and needs support to continue its seminal work. In his inimitable, passionate way, he also spoke of the work still to be done in Belen, and how their clowning connections also includes forming partnerships with local healthcare providers who continue the ongoing work (Municipalidad Belen, Selva Amazonica, La Restinga, and Amazon Promise).

When he finished, a reporter pointedly asked him whether clowning made any difference in helping suffering people heal. She said the recent Peruvian earthquake left tens of thousands of survivors to rebuild their lives. “How does a clown visit change that reality?” she asked. Patch responded by saying if you can connect for even a moment with unconditional love, then you can inspire hope. A clown can relieve another’s isolation by making a one-to-one connection that moves the sufferer beyond their loneliness, even if only for a moment.

The whole panel responded to her question about how clowning can heal. I said that the greatest injuries following the recent quake were not the physical wounds and acute trauma, but rather the emotional ones. A disaster of such proportion, with the loss of families and villages, threatens to steal one’s spirit. The human spirit that propels us forward in the hard times becomes so depleted that it leaves us unable to see beyond the suffering. If a clown can bring a moment’s smile, it sends an instantaneous message from the heart to the brain that we are still human.

I told them of my visit to an AIDS shelter in Iquitos the week before where I saw an emaciated, virtually immobilized, 25-year-old woman in the final stage of the disease. She was lying in a hammock and, as I approached her, she took one look at me in my clown persona and smiled. What she saw was a 6’6” ballerina in a pink tutu and flamingo hat playing castanets and dancing the Flamenco. One really can’t help but smile at the visage, and as I got closer the smile became a giggle. I bent over, picked up her hands and placed them on the Flamingos legs that dangled from the hat and danced in front of her. Now the giggles became a laugh and, in that moment, we felt each other’s heart beating.

You don’t have to speak another’s language to touch their spirit; it is in these moments that the heart swells and you feel a loving kindness and compassion that is bigger than yourself. It is in those moments, when souls meet, that we know we are complete. It is in those moments that clowns heal others and themselves.

During my recent Peru trip I had the opportunity to do something that’s been on my bucket list — to explore the Amazon beyond the river towns into the real jungle — to hear it, feel it, see the wildlife, and to participate in an ayahuasca ceremony with an authentic shaman.

I arranged for a two-day trip up into the headwaters of the Amazon in a dugout canoe. I went with five friends, all fellow clowns, up the Yarapa River into Cocama Indian country. On the way, we saw egrets, herons, kingfisher, fish eagles, toucans, a million butterflies and huge flying insects. We watched the famed pink river dolphins and saw turtles and fishermen netting Piranhas.

We got to the lodge (an elevated wooden shack) where the ceremony would be held and met the ayahuascero, the shaman (whose name really is Don Juan), a 67-year-old Cocama Indian, descendant of generations of shamans. No more than 5’6” tall, vigorous, smiling and engaging, Don Juan invited us to his farm. He wanted to show us how the sacred ayahuasca vine grew and was prepared. We piled back into the dugout canoe to meet his family and walk the fields. He showed us many therapeutic plants, lots of bugs, and frogs; at the sacred vine he lit a cigarette to bless it and us. Don Juan asked if any of us had ever taken ayahuasca before (one of us had), and he summarized what the experience might be like. He said we might get sick to our stomachs, but to sit up and let it out, only then could we see something new.

Ayahuasca (which means devil vine in Quechua) cleanses the body by unleashing a parasympathetic cascade that induces vomiting and can cause diarrhea; you sweat profusely and can become immobilized. Don Juan said you first have to let go of the stuff that’s trapped inside in order to make room to see things more clearly.

It is the plant “chakruna” that is added to the ayahuasca mixture that induces the visions. I hoped I might see deeper into the mind’s mystery. It was completely dark when we began; a half-hour before I could hear the shaman vomiting outside. Don Juan took it before we did to prepare himself, and that was the first time I felt a queasiness that maybe it might be a little more than feeling sick to my stomach.
We gathered in a 10’ x 20’ shack which contained six mosquito- netted beds, one toilet and sink. We sat in a small circle on the floor, in its center a candle burned. Don Juan lit a cigarette and blew the smoke over a large jar that contained the ayahuasca/ chakruna mixture. He filled a juice glass (a little less for the women) and passed it to each of us in succession. When we were done drinking it he picked up a fan (shakapa) made of branches with tiny leaves and waved out the flame. Don Juan began to whistle a tune; mixed with the sounds of the jungle night, it was an entrancing lullaby and made me think about my mother around the Sabbath lights.

Within 30 minutes I was feeling a bit woozy and the sounds got a little blurry, and in another 10 minutes the first round of nausea seized me. I got real sick (no orifice remained inactive) and my legs trembled so that I could hardly stand. I was sweating profusely, quite thirsty, and asked for water. A helper brought me a glass but Don Juan told me not to drink it so I dutifully put it down next to me. But after another 20 minutes of continued fluid loss, I was even more lightheaded, so I asked for water again. Don Juan told me not to drink because it would only make me sicker.

I’m thinking . . . I’m a doctor, he’s a jungle shaman. I’m fluid depleted, my circulating volume is down, heart, lungs and brain stressing out, I need water. It’s pitch black, he can’t see me, I’ll just pick up the glass. So I reach over to where I put down the glass but it’s not there. The glass is gone, and it’s finally clear to me that I’m in the jungle and maybe he knows something I don’t.

As soon as I saw that, it wasn’t 15 minutes before the vomiting stopped, and then I lay down. Animals came walking by. I could speak to them all, but I can’t recall a single conversation. There were no celestial lights surrounding a heavenly throne welcoming me to the Promised Land; my great vision was how hard it was for me to let go and trust that somebody other than me could get me through the night.

I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to get this through my head, especially since I thought I’d already learned this over the last years with my recent encounters with disease and loss. But the truth is that whenever I face personal crises, I prefer to have the paddle to my canoe in my own hands. To tame my ego I have to be wrenchingly sick and prostrate before I let myself trust that something or someone other than myself will get me through the night.
It shouldn’t be this hard to understand that the only way we ever get control is when we give it up.