"On my seventh night, a plant spoke to me. It wasn't an ayahuasca plant. It was just a simple rose plant on the grounds of the center, near the medicine hut, a plant I liked. It appeared to me and it talked to me, with a mouth and everything. It explained to me that plants ran the world. They kept the Earth from blowing away, they kept the sea from rushing headlong over the Earth, they made things cool, they were food, plants were everything. You're not in charge, the plant said to me, as clearly as if it were a person. We are in charge. Your health is good or bad because of us. We are everything, and you are here as our guests.
...
I thought about how most of my experience of going to Peru to drink ayahuasca had been about working through the shame of having done such a thing in the first place. I spent half a month's salary and met some awful people and a few good ones to discover a fact that I disclose with not a little embarrassment: plants can communicate. Some people will think I'm a crazy asshole for saying so, but they never gave a plant money and had the plant tell them actual facts in return."
—Sarah Miller, "Pirates of the Ayahuasca," n+1, Number Fifty, 2025, pp. 72-73.
