Tim Martin, CEO of iZOCleanze, a.k.a. juice cleanser to the stars, admonishes me as I load my hot-pink bass into the back seat of his Prius, along with too many overstuffed duffle bags.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he asks.
“I need to practice my scales, and I need wardrobe options,” I explain.
We’re road-tripping to Sedona for the Raw Spirit Festival, where unprocessed people with radiant skin gather to geek out on bee pollen and superfoods and quantum-healing stuff. On the way, we pick up Naada, Tim’s iZO video-blog co-host.
As we head east, toward drier air and pricklier plants, we pass the time trading tattoo tales (specifically, the tetrahedron on the palm of Naada’s hand) and making up Raw Spirit names. Naada goes in for the cute ones, like Spirulina Starfruit and Sparkle Strawberry, while I opt for the absurd: Nutritional Yeast and Omega-3. We dub Tim “Pete Moss” and fight over Alkaline. We share our intentions for the weekend — various declarations of fun and frolic and magic and synchronicity, and a chance run-in with the man of my dreams — and garnish them with a shared mantra: Everything is Perfect.
Tim tells us that one of our housemates is an “Ormus-head” and speculates that he’ll be bringing “barrels” of the (outrageously expensive) monoatomic mother lode, which he might even share. (Ormus, a.k.a. monoatomic gold, is powdered gold isolated to a single atomic state. When taken orally, it acts as a superconductor of thoughts and intentions, allowing for a rippin’ high.)
We pull into the Radisson parking lot just as the sun slides behind the massive architectural slabs of magnificent red rocks, and head to the tables set up in front of the lobby for preregistration. A couple dozen sparkly sorts mill about in natural fibers and sensible footwear.
“Welcome to the land of the five-minute hug,” Tim snarks.
We head across town to our rented vacation home, where the alleged Ormus-head has yet to arrive, and the sounds of singing cicadas and whirling vortexes lull us to sleep.
The festival is fantastic. The (sprouted-coconut) cream of the crop of the raw-food community are gathered to share their knowledge, hawk their wares and connect with like-minded glowing, happy health freaks. Between the raw-food chefs, the Essential Living Foods gang, the musical lineup and Rainbeau Mars — yoga ambassador for planet Adidas — L.A. is well-represented.
There are workshops, yoga classes, meditation circles and lectures on everything from sun gazing to “quantum eating.” Water’s a big thing with this crowd: ionized, structured, hexagonal, alkaline, wetter, better, cleaner, greener. Minerals and micro-organisms, probiotics and powdered greens, fermented ocean things and magnetically charged copper rings — these are what Raw Spirit Festivals are made of.
I weave my way from tent to tent, gobbling chocolate-covered dried durian, popping handfuls of chlorella tablets and hustling as much liquid Ormus as I can find. My vintage green-glass water bottle is like a street urchin’s beggar’s bowl, which I eagerly thrust at every opportunity: “Can you give my water some love?” I ask, arm outstretched, which is code for — give me all you got — Shilajit (an adaptogenic, Ayurvedic, antiaging type of Himalayan dirt), ionic minerals, marine phytoplankton, spagyric medicine tinctures and, of course, Ormus, Ormus and more Ormus.
By Saturday, my Ormus fixation has kicked into a whole new level. I’m now an expert on whose Ormus is the best (a tossup between Sacred Health’s liquid blend of monoatomic metals, which give an instant jolt of spin and sparkle to the brain; or Ascended Health’s powdered variety, clean, unprocessed and harvested from an ancient meteor bed), as well as an addict, buzzing from my high, jonesing to keep it, fiending for my next fix.
I see a cute conservative type buying a $100 jar of the stuff near a sand trap.
“Can I have some of your Ormus?” I ask, fluttering my eyelashes, head tilted to the left (my most persuasive angle).
He rolls his eyes as he pours some into my jar, and softens when I offer him the first sip.
Be Live, an L.A. chap, is rumored to be holding some quality monoatomics near the back nine. A gorgeous snack with a Tree of Life tattoo across his torso mans the table, upon which tiny jars of white powder scream for my attention.
“Can I sample your Ormus?” I ask.
“We don’t have any samples,” he tells me.
“How ’bout you put some in my water, and we can split it?” I propose.
He ponders, then concedes. “Do you have anything to scoop it out of the jar with?”
I rummage through my backpack for a business card. He dumps some into my jar and we trade massive gulps, swallowing Ormus-laced, supercharged wetter water, getting? higher and higher with each mouthful.
