we photograph a shaman

“I tell the old shaman my problem and show him the eye. He disappears for a few moments and returns with a face carved of wood. He takes the eye from me and puts it in the eye-hole of the wooden face and says to me, ‘This face must now be your face, you must put it on and never take it off, you must see what the eye-spirit sees!’ The old shaman is in cahoots with the hideous eye! I try to run but he blows smoke in my face and I fall into a heavy sleep. When I awake the mask is on my face - but it is stuck and will not come off! I run screaming, pulling, beating the mask with stones, trying to pry it off with sticks but to no avail! And now I see the spirit world through the eye - the sky is on fire, iron birds shriek in the sky, I am being boiled in a cauldron of blood! The hideous eye is showing me a vision of hell! I can close my own eye and shut out my own world but I cannot shut out the spirit-world of the eye. For many months I am in despair. I think of my barley and my kulags and contemplate ending my life, even though I know the eye will not let me. But the old shaman helps me and in time I learn to live seeing two worlds at once. I become his apprentice and learn the ways of the shaman. Now I have made peace with the eye and it has shown me inconceivable wonders. It was a fine gift after all!”

We peer through the mask at the eye. Westcott asks permission to touch it, and having done so pronounces that it is indeed glass. I am thoroughly convinced it must have belonged to Peter, who always carried a few spare wherever he went.* Even Balog seems impressed by the story and urges us to “capture the shaman in our black box.” The man agrees and Westcott starts setting up the equipment. After we’re finished, the shaman takes his leave and walks off in a strange zig-zagging nonsensical pattern. We ask Balog if he is lost and needs some help reaching his destination; Balog replies that the shaman’s destination “does not lie in our world.”