The Shaman transcends the material through a combination of belief, drugs, and quite madness. Is that then what De Mesa intends? To entice us towards a similar transcendence? Not necessarily through narcotics and ritual, but rather through text, through provocation, through a consistent and insistent displacement, if not utter disregard, to what a reader might want to feel or think. In these works there is a strong, forceful hand, similar to that of a shaman putting one into a trance. The words are ones that we know, ones that we have heard, and indeed the worlds that are portrayed are not so different from our own. And yet, when these things mix, the words, the worlds, and the strong hand, the guiding voice behind these stories, we are driven to places that are strikingly different and at times difficult to endure but at the same time are places that we have been, or have almost been in, or could imaginably go to.