Карлос Кастанеда. Путешествие в Икстлен (engl)
Карлос Кастанеда. Путешествие в Икстлен (engl)
Carlos Castaneda. Journey to Ixtlan
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Carlos Castaneda — "Journey to Ixtlan"
INTRODUCTION
On Saturday, May 22, 1971, I went to Sonora, Mexico, to see don Juan
Matus, a Yaqui Indian sorcerer, with whom I had been associated since 1961.
I thought that my visit on that day was going to be in no way different from
the scores of times I had gone to see him in the ten years I had been his
apprentice. The events that took place on that day and on the following
days, however, were momentous to me. On that occasion my apprenticeship came
to an end. This was not an arbitrary withdrawal on my part but a bona fide
termination.
I have already presented the case of my apprenticeship in two previous
works: The Teachings of Don Juan and A Separate Reality.
My basic assumption in both books has been that the articulation points
in learning to be a sorcerer were the states of non-ordinary reality
produced by the ingestion of psychotropic plants.
In this respect don Juan was an expert in the use of three such plants:
Datura inoxia, commonly known as jimson weed; Lofihophora williamsii, known
as peyote; and a hallucinogenic mushroom of the genus Psilocybe.
My perception of the world through the effects of those psychotropics
had been so bizarre and impressive that I was forced to assume that such
states were the only avenue to communicating and learning what don Juan was
attempting to teach me. That assumption was erroneous.
For the purposes of avoiding any misunderstandings about my work with
don Juan I would like to clarify the following issues at this point.
So far I have made no attempt whatsoever to place don Juan in a
cultural milieu. The fact that he considers himself to be a Yaqui Indian
does not mean that his knowledge of sorcery is known to or practiced by the
Yaqui Indians in general.
All the conversations that don Juan and I have had throughout the
apprenticeship were conducted in Spanish, and only because of his thorough
command of that language was I capable of obtaining complex explanations of
his system of beliefs.
I have maintained the practice of referring to that system as sorcery
and I have also maintained the practice of referring to don Juan as a
sorcerer, because these were categories he himself used.
Since I was capable of writing down most of what was said in the
beginning of the apprenticeship, and everything that was said in the later
phases of it, I gathered voluminous field notes. In order to render those
notes readable and still preserve the dramatic unity of don Juan's
teachings, I have had to edit them, but what I have deleted is, I believe,
immaterial to the points I want to raise.
In the case of my work with don Juan I have limited my efforts solely
to viewing him as a sorcerer and to acquiring membership in his knowledge.
For the purpose of presenting my argument I must first explain the
basic premise of sorcery as don Juan presented it to me. He said that for a
sorcerer, the world of everyday life is not real, or out there, as we
believe it is. For a sorcerer, reality, or the world we all know, is only a
description.
For the sake of validating this premise don Juan concentrated the best
of his efforts into leading me to a genuine conviction that what I held in
mind as the world at hand was merely a description of the world; a
description that had been pounded into me from the moment I was born.
He pointed out that everyone who comes into contact with a child is a
teacher who incessantly describes the world to him, until the moment when
the child is capable of perceiving the world as it is described. According
to don Juan, we have no memory of that portentous moment, simply because
none of us could possibly have had any point of reference to compare it to
anything else. From that moment on, however, the child is a member. He knows
the description of the world; and his membership becomes fullfledged, I
suppose, when he is capable of making all the proper perceptual
interpretations which, by conforming to that description, validate it.
For don Juan, then, the reality of our day-to-day life consists of an
endless flow of perceptual interpretations which we, the individuals who
share a specific membership, have learned to make in common.
The idea that the perceptual interpretations that make up the world
have a flow is congruous with the fact that they run uninterruptedly and are
rarely, if ever, open to question. In fact, the reality of the world we know
is so taken for granted that the basic premise of sorcery, that our reality
is merely one of many descriptions, could hardly be taken as a serious
proposition.
Fortunately, in the case of my apprenticeship, don Juan was not
concerned at all with whether or not I could take his proposition seriously,
and he proceeded to elucidate his points, in spite of my opposition, my
disbelief, and my inability to understand what he was saying. Thus, as a
teacher of sorcery, don Juan endeavored to describe the world to me from the
very first time we talked. My difficulty in grasping his concepts and
methods stemmed from the fact that the units of his description were alien
and incompatible with those of my own.
His contention was that he was teaching me how to "see" as opposed to
merely "looking, " and that "stopping the world" was the first step to
"seeing."
For years I had treated the idea of "stopping the world" as a cryptic
metaphor that really did not mean anything. It was only during an informal
conversation that took place towards the end of my apprenticeship that I
came to fully realize its scope and importance as one of the main
propositions of donJuan's knowledge.
Don Juan and I had been talking about different things in a relaxed and
unstructured manner. I told him about a friend of mine and his dilemma with
his nine year old son. The child, who had been living with the mother for
the past four years, was then living with my friend, and the problem was
what to do with him? According to my friend, the child was a misfit in
school; he lacked concentration and was not interested in anything. He was
given to tantrums, disruptive behavior, and to running away from home.
"Your friend certainly does have a problem, " don Juan said, laughing.
I wanted to keep on telling him all the "terrible" things the child had
done, but he interrupted me.
"There is no need to say any more about that poor little boy, " he
said. "There is no need for you or for me to regard his actions in our
thoughts one way or another."
His manner was abrupt and his tone was firm, but then he smiled.
"What can my friend do?" I asked.
"The worst thing he could do is to force that child to agree with him,"
don Juan said.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that that child shouldn't be spanked or scared by his father
when he doesn't behave the way he wants him to."
"How can he teach him anything if he isn't firm with him?"
"Your friend should let someone else spank the child."
"He can't let anyone else touch his little boy!" I said, surprised at
his suggestion.
Don Juan seemed to enjoy my reaction and giggled.
"Your friend is not a warrior, " he said. "If he were, he would know
that the worst thing one can do is to confront human beings bluntly."
"What does a warrior do, don Juan?"
"A warrior proceeds strategically."
"I still don't understand what you mean."
"I mean that if your friend were a warrior he would help his child to
stop the world."
"How can my friend do that?"
"He would need personal power. He would need to be a sorcerer."
"But he isn't."
"In that case he must use ordinary means to help his son to change his
idea of the world. It is not stopping the world, but it will work just the
same."
I asked him to explain his statements.
"If I were your friend, " don Juan said, "I would start by hiring
someone to spank the little guy. I would go to skid row and hire the worst
looking man I could find."
"To scare a little boy?"
"Not just to scare a little boy, you fool. That little fellow must be
stopped, and being beaten by his father won't do it.
"If one wants to stop our fellow men one must always be outside the
circle that presses them. That way one can always direct the pressure."
The idea was preposterous, but somehow it was appealing to me.
Don Juan was resting his chin on his left palm. His left arm was
propped against his chest on a wooden box that served as a low table. His
eyes were closed but his eyeballs moved. I felt he was looking at me through
his closed eyelids. The thought scared me.
"Tell me more about what my friend should do with his little boy, " I
said.
"Tell him to go to skid row and very carefully select an ugly looking
derelict, " he went on. "Tell him to get a young one. One who still has some
strength left in him."
Don Juan then delineated a strange strategy. I was to instruct my
friend to have the man follow him or wait for him at a place where he would
go with his son. The man, in response to a prearranged cue to be given after
any objectionable behavior on the part of the child, was supposed to leap
from a hiding place, pick the child up, and spank the living daylights out
of him.
"After the man scares him, your friend must help the little boy regain
his confidence, in any way he can. If he follows this procedure three or
four times I assure you that that child will feel differently towards
everything. He will change his idea of the world."' "What if the fright
injures him?"
"Fright never injures anyone. What injures the spirit is having someone
always on your back, beating you, telling you what to do and what not to do.
"When that boy is more contained you must tell your friend to do one
last thing for him. He must find some way to get to a dead child, perhaps in
a hospital, or at the office of a doctor. He must take his son there and
show the dead child to him. He must let him touch the corpse once with his
left hand, on any place except the corpse's belly. After the boy does that
he will be renewed. The world will never be the same for him."
I realized then that throughout the years of our association don Juan
had been employing with me, although on a different scale, the same tactics
he was suggesting my friend should use with his son. I asked him about it.
He said that he had been trying all along to teach me how to "stop the
world."
"You haven't yet, " he said, smiling. "Nothing seems to work, because
you are very stubborn. If you were less stubborn, however, by now you would
probably have stopped the world with any of the techniques I have taught
you."
"What techniques, don Juan?"
"Everything I have told you to do was a technique for stopping the
world."
A few months after that conversation don Juan accomplished what he had
set out to do, to teach me to "stop the world."
That monumental event in my life compelled me to re-examine in detail
my work of ten years. It became evident to me that my original assumption
about the role of psychotropic plants was erroneous. They were not the
essential feature of the sorcerer's description of the world, but were only
an aid to cement, so to speak, parts of the description which I had been
incapable of perceiving otherwise. My insistence on holding on to my
standard version of reality rendered me almost deaf and blind to don Juan's
aims. Therefore, it was simply my lack of sensitivity which had fostered
their use.
In reviewing the totality of my field notes I became aware that don
Juan had given me the bulk of the new description at the very beginning of
our association in what he called "techniques for stopping the world." I had
discarded those parts of my field notes in my earlier works because they did
not pertain to the use of psychotropic plants. I have now rightfully
reinstated them in the total scope of don Juan's teachings and they comprise
the first seventeen chapters of this work. The last three chapters are the
field notes covering the events that culminated in my "stopping the world."
In summing up I can say that when I began the apprenticeship, there was
another reality, that is to say, there was a sorcery description of the
world, which I did not know.
Don Juan, as a sorcerer and a teacher, taught me that description. The
ten year apprenticeship I have undergone consisted, therefore, in setting up
that unknown reality by unfolding its description, adding increasingly more
complex parts as I went along.
The termination of the apprenticeship meant that I had learned a new
description of the world in a convincing and authentic manner and thus I had
become capable of eliciting a new perception of the world, which matched its
new description. In other words, I had gained membership.
Don Juan stated that in order to arrive at "seeing" one first had to
"stop the world." "Stopping the world" was indeed an appropriate rendition
of certain states of awareness in which the reality of everyday life is
altered because the flow of interpretation, which ordinarily runs
uninterruptedly, has been stopped by a set of circumstances alien to that
flow. In my case the set of circumstances alien to my normal flow of
interpretations was the sorcery description of the world. Don Juan's
precondition for "stopping the world" was that one had to be convinced; in
other words, one had to learn the new description in a total sense, for the
purpose of pitting it against the old one, and in that way break the
dogmatic certainty, which we all share, that the validity of our
perceptions, or our reality of the world, is not to be questioned.
After "stopping the world" the next step was "seeing." By that don Juan
meant what I would like to categorize as "responding to the perceptual
solicitations of a world outside the description we have learned to call
reality."
My contention is that all these steps can only be understood in terms
of the description to which they belong; and since it was a description that
he endeavored to give me from the beginning, I must then let his teachings
be the only source of entrance into it. Thus, I have left don Juan's words
to speak for themselves.
PART ONE
STOPPING THE WORLD
REAFFIRMATIONS FROM THE WORLD AROUND US
"I understand you know a great deal about plants, sir, " I said to the
old Indian in front of me.
A friend of mine had just put us in contact and left the room and we
had introduced ourselves to each other. The old man had told me that his
name was Juan Matus.
"Did your friend tell you that?" he asked casually.
"Yes, he did."
"I pick plants, or rather, they let me pick them, " he said.
We were in the waiting room of a bus depot in Arizona. I asked him in
very formal Spanish if he would allow me to question him. I said, "Would the
gentleman [caballero] permit me to ask some questions?"
"Caballero, " which is derived from the word "caballo," horse,
originally meant horseman or a nobleman on horseback.
He looked at me inquisitively.
"I'm a horseman without a horse, " he said with a big smile and then he
added, "I've told you that my name is Juan Matos."
I liked his smile. I thought that, obviously he was a man that could
appreciate directness and I decided to boldly tackle him with a request.
I told him I was interested in collecting and studying medicinal
plants. I said that my special interest was the uses of the hallucinogenic
cactus, peyote, which I had studied at length at the university in Los
Angeles.
I thought that my presentation was very serious. I was very contained
and sounded perfectly credible to myself.
The old man shook his head slowly, and I, encouraged by his silence,
added that it would no doubt be profitable for us to get together and talk
about peyote.
It was at that moment that he lifted his head and looked me squarely in
the eyes. It was a formidable look. Yet it was not menacing or awesome in
any way. It was a look that went through me. I became tongue tied at once
and could not continue with the harangues about myself. That was the end of
our meeting. Yet he left on a note of hope. He said that perhaps I could
visit him at his house someday.
It would be difficult to assess the impact of don Juan's look if my
inventory of experience is not somehow brought to bear on the uniqueness of
that event. When I began to study anthropology and thus met don Juan, I was
already an expert in "getting around." I had left my home years before and
that meant in my evaluation that I was capable of taking care of myself.
Whenever I was rebuffed could usually cajole my way in or make concessions,
argue, get angry, or if nothing succeeded I would whine or complain; in
other words, there was always something I knew I could do under the
circumstances, and never in my life had any human being stopped my momentum
so swiftly and so definitely as don Juan did that afternoon. But it was not
only a matter of being silenced; there had been times when I had been unable
to say a word to my opponent because of some inherent respect I felt for
him, still my anger or frustration was manifested in my thoughts. Don Juan's
look, however, numbed me to the point that I could not think coherently.
I became thoroughly intrigued with that stupendous look and decided to
search for him.
I prepared myself for six months, after that first meeting, reading up
on the uses of peyote among the American Indians, especially about the
peyote cult of the Indians of the Plains. I became acquainted with every
work available, and when I felt I was ready I went back to Arizona.
Saturday, December 17, 1960
I found his house after making long and taxing inquiries among the
local Indians. It was early afternoon when I arrived and parked in front of
it. I saw him sitting on a wooden milk crate. He seemed to recognize me and
greeted me as I got out of my car.
We exchanged social courtesies for a while and then, in plain terms, I
confessed that I had been very devious with him the first time we had met. I
had boasted that I knew a great deal about peyote, when in reality I knew
nothing about it. He stared at me. His eyes were very kind.
I told him that for six months I had been reading to prepare myself for
our meeting and that this time I really knew a great deal more.
He laughed. Obviously, there was something in my statement which was
funny to him. He was laughing at me and I felt a bit confused and offended.
He apparently noticed my discomfort and assured me that although I had
had good intentions there was really no way to prepare myself for our
meeting.
I wondered if it would have been proper to ask whether that statement
had any hidden meaning, but I did not; yet he seemed to be attuned to my
feelings and proceeded to explain what he had meant. He said that my
endeavors reminded him of a story about some people a certain king had
persecuted and killed once upon a time. He said that in the story the
persecuted people were indistinguishable from their persecutors, except that
they insisted on pronouncing certain words in a peculiar manner proper only
to them; that flaw, of course, was the giveaway. The king posted roadblocks
at critical points where an official would ask every man passing by to
pronounce a key word. Those who could pronounce it the way the king
pronounced it would live, but those who could not were immediately put to
death. The point of the story was that one day a young man decided to
prepare himself for passing the roadblock by learning to pronounce the test
word just as the king liked it.
Don Juan said, with a broad smile, that in fact it took the young man
"six months" to master such a pronunciation. And then came the day of the
great test; the young man very confidently came upon the roadblock and
waited for the official to ask him to pronounce the word.
At that point don Juan very dramatically stopped his recounting and
looked at me. His pause was very studied and seemed a bit corny to me, but I
played along. I had heard the theme of the story before. It had to do with
Jews in Germany and the way one could tell who was a Jew by the way they
pronounced certain words. I also knew the punch line: the young man was
going to get caught because the official had forgotten the key word and
asked him to pronounce another word which was very similar but which the
young man had not learned to say correctly.
Don Juan seemed to be waiting for me to ask what happened, so I did.
"What happened to him?" I asked, trying to sound naive and interested
in the story.
"The young man, who was truly foxy, " he said, "realized that the
official had forgotten the key word, and before the man could say anything
else he confessed that he had prepared himself for six months."
He made another pause and looked at me with a mischievous glint in his
eyes. This time he had turned the tables on me. The young man's confession
was a new element and I no longer knew how the story would end.
"Well, what happened then?" I asked, truly interested.
"The young man was killed instantly, of course, " he said and broke
into a roaring laughter.
I liked very much the way he had entrapped my interest; above all I
liked the way he had linked that story to my own case. In fact, he seemed to
have constructed it to fit me. He was making fun of me in a very subtle and
artistic manner. I laughed with him.
Afterwards I told him that no matter how stupid I sounded I was really
interested in learning something about plants.
"I like to walk a great deal, " he said.
I thought he was deliberately changing the topic of conversation to
avoid answering me. I did not want to antagonize him with my insistence.
He asked me if I wanted to go with him on a short hike in the desert. I
eagerly told him that I would love to walk in the desert.
"This is no picnic, " he said in a tone of warning.
I told him that I wanted very seriously to work with him. I said that I
needed information, any kind of information, on the uses of medicinal herbs,
and that I was willing to pay him for his time and effort.
"You'll be working for me, " I said. "And I'll pay you wages."
"How much would you pay me?" he asked.
I detected a note of greed in his voice.
"Whatever you think is appropriate, " I said.
"Pay me for my time . . . with your time, " he said.
I thought he was a most peculiar fellow. I told him I did not
understand what he meant. He replied that there was nothing to say about
plants, thus to take my money would be unthinkable for him.
He looked at me piercingly.
"What are you doing in your pocket?" he asked, frowning. "Are you
playing with your whanger?"
He was referring to my taking notes on a minute pad inside the enormous
pockets of my windbreaker.
When I told him what I was doing he laughed heartily.
I said that I did not want to disturb him by writing in front of him.
"If you want to write, write, " he said. "You don't disturb me."
We hiked in the surrounding desert until it was almost dark. He did not
show me any plants nor did he talk about them at all. We stopped for a
moment to rest by some large bushes.
"Plants are very peculiar things, " he said without looking at me.
"They are alive and they feel."
At the very moment he made that statement a strong gust of wind shook
the desert chaparral around us. The bushes made a rattling noise.
"Do you hear that?" he asked me, putting his right hand to his ear as
if he were aiding his hearing. "The leaves and the wind are agreeing with
me."
I laughed. The friend who had put us in contact had already told me to
watch out, because the old man was very eccentric. I thought the "agreement
with the leaves" was one of his eccentricities.
We walked for a while longer but he still did not show me any plants,
nor did he pick any of them. He simply breezed through the bushes touching
them gently. Then he came to a halt and sat down on a rock and told me to
rest and look around.
I insisted on talking. Once more I let him know that I wanted very much
to learn about plants, especially peyote. I pleaded with him to become my
informant in exchange for some sort of monetary reward.
"You don't have to pay me, " he said. "You can ask me anything you
want. I will tell you what I know and then I will tell you what to do with
it."
He asked me if I agreed with the arrangement. I was delighted. Then he
added a cryptic statement: "Perhaps there is nothing to learn about plants,
because there is nothing to say about them."
I did not understand what he had said or what he had meant by it.
"What did you say?" I asked.
He repeated the statement three times and then the whole area was
shaken by the roar of an Air Force jet flying low.
"There! The world has just agreed with me, " he said, putting his left
hand to his ear.
I found him very amusing. His laughter was contagious.
"Are you from Arizona, don Juan?" I asked, in an effort to keep the
conversation centered around his being my informant.
He looked at me and nodded affirmatively. His eyes seemed to be tired.
I could see the white underneath his pupils.
"Were you born in this locality?"
He nodded his head again without answering me. It seemed to be an
affirmative gesture, but it also seemed to be the nervous head shake of a
person who is thinking.
"And where are you from yourself?" he asked.
"I come from South America, " I said.
"That's a big place. Do you come from all of it?"
His eyes were piercing again as he looked at me.
I began to explain the circumstances of my birth, but he interrupted
me.
"We are alike in this respect, " he said. "I live here now but I'm
really a Yaqui from Sonora."
"Is that so! I myself come from-"
He did not let me finish.
"I know, I know, " he said. "You are who you are, from wherever you
are, as I am a Yaqui from Sonora."
His eyes were very shiny and his laughter was strangely unsettling. He
made me feel as if he had caught me in a lie. I experienced a peculiar
sensation of guilt. I had the feeling he knew something I did not know or
did not want to tell.
My strange embarrassment grew. He must have noticed it, for he stood up
and asked me if I wanted to go eat in a restaurant in town.
Walking back to his home and then driving into town made me feel
better, but I was not quite relaxed. I somehow felt threatened, although I
could not pinpoint the reason.
I wanted to buy him some beer in the restaurant. He said that he never
drank, not even beer. I laughed to myself. I did not believe him; the friend
who had put us in contact had told me that "the old man was plastered out of
his mind most of the time." I really did not mind if he was lying to me
about not drinking. I liked him; there was something very soothing about his
person.
I must have had a look of doubt on my face, for he then went on to
explain that he used to drink in his youth, but that one day he simply
dropped it.
"People hardly ever realize that we can cut anything from our lives,
any time, just like that." He snapped his fingers.
"Do you think that one can stop smoking or drinking that easily?" I
asked.
"Sure!" he said with great conviction. "Smoking and drinking are
nothing. Nothing at all if we want to drop them."
At that very moment the water that was boiling in the coffee percolator
made a loud perking sound.
"Hear that!" don Juan exclaimed with a shine in his eyes. "The boiling
water agrees with me."
Then he added after a pause, "A man can get agreements from everything
around him."
At that crucial instant the coffee percolator made a truly obscene
gurgling sound.
He looked at the percolator and softly said, "Thank you, "nodded his
head, and then broke into a roaring laughter.
I was taken aback. His laughter was a bit too loud, but I was genuinely
amused by it all.
My first real session with my "informant" ended then. He said goodbye
at the door of the restaurant. I told him I had to visit some friends and
that I would like to see him again at the end of the following week.
"When will you be home?" I asked.
He scrutinized me.
"Whenever you come, " he replied.
"I don't know exactly when I can come."
"Just come then and don't worry."
"What if you're not in?"
"I'll be there, " he said, smiling, and walked away.
I ran after him and asked him if he would mind my bringing a camera
with me to take pictures of him and his house.
"That's out of the question, " he said with a frown.
"How about a tape recorder? Would you mind that?"
"I'm afraid there's no possibility of that either."
I became annoyed and began to fret. I said I saw no logical reason for
his refusal.
Don Juan shook his head negatively.
"Forget it, " he said forcefully. "And if you still want to see me
don't ever mention it again."
I staged a weak final complaint. I said that pictures and recordings
were indispensable to my work. He said that there was only one thing which
was indispensable for anything we did. He called it "the spirit."
"One can't do without the spirit, " he said. "And you don't have it.
Worry about that and not about pictures."
"What do you . . . ?"
He interrupted me with a movement of his hand and walked backwards a
few steps.
"Be sure to come back, " he said softly and waved goodbye.
ERASING PERSONAL HISTORY
Thursday, December 22, 1960
Don Juan was sitting on the floor, by the door of his house, with his
back against the wall. He turned over a wooden milk crate and asked me to
sit down and make myself at home. I offered him some cigarettes. I had
brought a carton of them. He said he did not smoke but he accepted the gift.
We talked about the coldness of the desert nights and other ordinary topics
of conversation.
I asked him if I was interfering with his normal routine. He looked at
me with a sort of frown and said he had no routines, and that I could stay
with him all afternoon if I wanted to.
I had prepared some genealogy and kinship charts that I wanted to fill
out with his help. I had also compiled, from the ethnographic literature, a
long list of culture traits that were purported to belong to the Indians of
the area. I wanted to go through the list with him and mark all the items
that were familiar to him.
I began with the kinship charts.
"What did you call your father?" I asked.
"I called him Dad, " he said with a very serious face.
I felt a little bit annoyed, but I proceeded on the assumption that he
had not understood.
I showed him the chart and explained that one space was for the father
and another space was for the mother. I gave as an example the different
words used in English and in Spanish for father and mother.
I thought that perhaps I should have taken mother first.
"What did you call your mother?" I asked.
"I called her Mom, " he replied in a naive tone.
"I mean what other words did you use to call your father and mother?
How did you call them?" I said, trying to be patient and polite.
He scratched his head and looked at me with a stupid expression.
"Golly!" he said. "You got me there. Let me think."
After a moment's hesitation he seemed to remember something and I got
ready to write.
"Well, " he said, as if he were involved in serious thought, "how else
did I call them? I called them Hey, hey, Dad! Hey, hey, Mom!"
I laughed against my desire. His expression was truly comical and at
that moment I did not know whether he was a preposterous old man pulling my
leg or whether he was really a simpleton. Using all the patience I had, I
explained to him that these were very serious questions and that it was very
important for my work to fill out the forms. I tried to make him understand
the idea of a genealogy and personal history.
"What were the names of your father and mother?" I asked.
He looked at me with clear kind eyes. "Don't waste your time with that
crap, " he said softly but with unsuspected force. I did not know what to
say; it was as if someone else had uttered those words. A moment before, he
had been a fumbling stupid Indian scratching his head, and then, in an
instant he had reversed the roles; I was the stupid one, and he was staring
at me with an indescribable look that was not a look of arrogance, or
defiance, or hatred, or contempt. His eyes were kind and clear and
penetrating.
"I don't have any personal history, " he said after a long pause. "One
day I found out that personal history was no longer necessary for me and,
like drinking, I dropped it."
I did not quite understand what he meant by that. I suddenly felt ill
at ease, threatened. I reminded him that he had assured me that it was all
right to ask him questions. He reiterated that he did not mind at all.
"I don't have personal history any more, " he said and looked at me
probingly. "I dropped it one day when I felt it was no longer necessary."
I stared at him, trying to detect the hidden meanings of his words.
"How can one drop one's personal history?" I asked in an argumentative
mood.
"One must first have the desire to drop it, " he said. "And then one
must proceed harmoniously to chop it off, little by little."
"Why should anyone have such a desire?" I exclaimed.
I had a terribly strong attachment to my personal history. My family
roots were deep. I honestly felt that without them my life had no continuity
or purpose.
"Perhaps you should tell me what you mean by dropping one's personal
history, " I said.
"To do away with it, that's what I mean, " he replied cuttingly.
I insisted that I must not have understood the proposition.
"Take you for instance, " I said. "You are a Yaqui. You can't change
that."
"Am I?" he asked, smiling. "How do you know that?"
"True!" I said. "I can't know that with certainty, at this point, but
you know it and that is what counts. That's what makes it personal history."
I felt I had driven a hard nail in.
"The fact that I know whether I am a Yaqui or not does not make it
personal history, " he replied. "Only when someone else knows that does it
become personal history. And I assure you that no one will ever know that
for sure."
I had written down what he had said in a clumsy way. I stopped writing
and looked at him. I could not figure him out. I mentally ran through my
impressions of him; the mysterious and unprecedented way he had looked at me
during our first meeting, the charm with which he had claimed that he
received agreement from everything around him, his annoying humor and his
alertness, his look of bona fide stupidity when I asked about his father and
mother, and then the unsuspected force of his statements which had snapped
me apart.
"You don't know what I am, do you?" he said as if he were reading my
thoughts. "You will never know who or what I am, because I don't have a
personal history."
He asked me if I had a father. I told him I did. He said that my father
was an example of what he had in mind. He urged me to remember what my
father thought of me.
"Your father knows everything about you, " he said. "So he has you all
figured out. He knows who you are and what you do, and there is no power on
earth that can make him change his mind about you."
Don Juan said that everybody that knew me had an idea about me, and
that I kept feeding that idea with everything I did. "Don't you see?" he
asked dramatically. "You must renew your personal history by telling your
parents, your relatives, and your friends everything you do. On the other
hand, if you have no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is
angry or disillusioned with your acts. And above all no one pins you down
with their thoughts."
Suddenly the idea became clear in my mind. I had almost known it
myself, but I had never examined it. Not having personal history was indeed
an appealing concept, at least on the intellectual level; it gave me,
however, a sense of loneliness which I found threatening and distasteful. I
wanted to discuss my feelings with him, but I kept myself in check;
something was terribly incongruous in the situation at hand. I felt
ridiculous trying to get into a philosophical argument with an old Indian
who obviously did not have the "sophistication" of a university student.
Somehow he had led me away from my original intention of asking him about
his genealogy.
"I don't know how we ended up talking about this when all I wanted was
some names for my charts, " I said, trying to steer the conversation back to
the topic I wanted.
"It's terribly simple, " he said. "The way we ended up talking about it
was because I said that to ask questions about one's past is a bunch of
crap."
His tone was firm. I felt there was no way to make him budge, so I
changed my tactics.
"Is this idea of not having personal history something that the Yaquis
do?" I asked.
"It's something that I do."
"Where did you learn it?"
"I learned it during the course of my life."
"Did your father teach you that?"
"No. Let's say that I learned it by myself and now I am going to give
you its secret, so you won't go away empty-handed today."
He lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper. I laughed at his
histrionics. I had to admit that he was stupendous at that. The thought
crossed my mind that I was in the presence of a born actor.
"Write it down, " he said patronizingly. "Why not? You seem to be more
comfortable writing."
I looked at him and my eyes must have betrayed my confusion. He slapped
his thighs and laughed with great delight.
"It is best to erase all personal history, " he said slowly, as if
giving me time to write it down in my clumsy way, "because that would make
us free from the encumbering thoughts of other people."
I could not believe that he was actually saying that. I had a very
confusing moment. He must have read in my face my inner turmoil and used it
immediately.
"Take yourself, for instance, " he went on saying. "Right now you don't
know whether you are coming or going. And that is so, because I have erased
my personal history. I have, little by little, created a fog around me and
my life. And now nobody knows for sure who I am or what I do."
"But, you yourself know who you are, don't you?" I interjected.
"You bet I ... don't, " he exclaimed and rolled on the floor, laughing
at my surprised look.
He had paused long enough to make me believe that he was going to say
that he did know, as I was anticipating it. His subterfuge was very
threatening to me. I actually became afraid.
"That is the little secret I am going to give you today, " he said in a
low voice. "Nobody knows my personal history. Nobody knows who I am or what
I do. Not even I."
He squinted his eyes. He was not looking at me but beyond me over my
right shoulder. He was sitting cross-legged, his back was straight and yet
he seemed to be so relaxed. At that moment he was the very picture of
fierceness. I fancied him to be an Indian chief, a "red-skinned warrior" in
the romantic frontier sagas of my childhood. My romanticism carried me away
and the most insidious feeling of ambivalence enveloped me. I could
sincerely say that I liked him a great deal and in the same breath I could
say that I was deadly afraid of him.
He maintained that strange stare for a long moment.
"How can I know who I am, when I am all this?" he said, sweeping the
surroundings with a gesture of his head. Then he glanced at me and smiled.
"Little by little you must create a fog around yourself; you must erase
everything around you until nothing can be taken for granted, until nothing
is any longer for sure, or real. Your problem now is that you're too real.
Your endeavors are too real; your moods are too real. Don't take things so
for granted. You must begin to erase yourself."
"What for?" I asked belligerently.
It became clear to me then that he was prescribing behavior for me. All
my life I had reached a breaking point when someone attempted to tell me
what to do; the mere thought of being told what to do put me immediately on
the defensive.
"You said that you wanted to learn about plants, " he said calmly. "Do
you want to get something for nothing? What do you think this is? We agreed
that you would ask me questions and I'd tell you what I know. If you don't
like it, there is nothing else we can say to each other."
His terrible directness made me feel peeved, and begrudgingly I
conceded that he was right.
"Let's put it this way then, " he went on. "If you want to learn about
plants, since there is really nothing to say about them, you must, among
other things, erase your personal history."
"How?" I asked.
"Begin with simple things, such as not revealing what you really do.
Then you must leave everyone who knows you well. This way you'll build up a
fog around yourself."
"But that's absurd, " I protested. "Why shouldn't people know me?
What's wrong with that?"
"What's wrong is that once they know you, you are an affair taken for
granted and from that moment on you won't be able to break the tie of their
thoughts. I personally like the ultimate freedom of being unknown. No one
knows me with steadfast certainty, the way people know you, for instance."
"But that would be lying."
"I'm not concerned with lies or truths, " he said severely. "Lies are
lies only if you have personal history." I argued that I did not like to
deliberately mystify people or mislead them. His reply was that I misled
everybody anyway.
The old man had touched a sore spot in my life. I did not pause to ask
him what he meant by that or how he knew that I mystified people all the
time. I simply reacted to his statement, defending myself by means of an
explanation. I said that I was painfully aware that my family and my friends
believed I was unreliable, when in reality I had never told a lie in my
life.
"You always knew how to lie, " he said. "The only thing that was
missing was that you didn't know why to do it. Now you do."
I protested. "Don't you see that I'm really sick and tired of people
thinking that I'm unreliable?" I said.
"But you are unreliable, " he replied with conviction.
"Damn it to hell, man, I am not!" I exclaimed.
My mood, instead of forcing him into seriousness, made him laugh
hysterically. I really despised the old man for all his cockiness.
Unfortunately he was right about me.
After a while I calmed down and he continued talking.
"When one does not have personal history, " he explained, "nothing that
one says can be taken for a lie. Your trouble is that you have to explain
everything to everybody, compulsively, and at the same time you want to keep
the freshness, the newness of what you do. Well, since you can't be excited
after explaining everything you've done, you lie in order to keep on going."
I was truly bewildered by the scope of our conversation. I wrote down
all the details of our exchange in the best way I could, concentrating on
what he was saying rather than pausing to deliberate on my prejudices or on
his meanings.
"From now on, " he said, "you must simply show people whatever you care
to show them, but without ever telling exactly how you've done it."
"I can't keep secrets!" I exclaimed. "What you are saying is useless to
me."
"Then change!" he said cuttingly and with a fierce glint in his eyes.
He looked like a strange wild animal. And yet he was so coherent in his
thoughts and so verbal. My annoyance gave way to a state of irritating
confusion.
"You see, " he went on, "we only have two alternatives; we either take
everything for sure and real, or we don't. If we follow the first, we end up
bored to death with ourselves and with the world. If we follow the second
and erase personal history, we create a fog around us, a very exciting and
mysterious state in which nobody knows where the rabbit will pop out, not
even ourselves."
I contended that erasing personal history would only increase our
sensation of insecurity.
"When nothing is for sure we remain alert, perennially on our toes," he
said. "It is more exciting not to know which bush the rabbit is hiding
behind than to behave as though we know everything."
He did not say another word for a very long time; perhaps an hour went
by in complete silence. I did not know what to ask. Finally he got up and
asked me to drive him to the nearby town.
I did not know why but our conversation had drained me. I felt like
going to sleep. He asked me to stop on the way and told me that if I wanted
to relax, I had to climb to the flat top of a small hill on the side of the
road and lie down on my stomach with my head towards the east.
He seemed to have a feeling of urgency. I did not want to argue or
perhaps I was too tired to even speak. I climbed the hill and did as he had
prescribed.
I slept only two or three minutes, but it was sufficient to have my
energy renewed. We drove to the center of town, where he told me to let him
off.
"Come back, " he said as he stepped out of the car. "Be sure to come
back."
I had the opportunity of discussing my two previous visits to Don Juan
with the friend who had put us in contact. It was his opinion that I was
wasting my time. I related to him, in every detail, the scope of our
conversations. He thought I was exaggerating and romanticizing a silly old
fogy.
There was very little room in me for romanticizing such a preposterous
old man. I sincerely felt that his criticisms about my personality had
seriously undermined my liking him. Yet I had to admit that they had always
been apropos, sharply delineated, and true to the letter.
The crux of my dilemma at that point was my unwillingness to accept
that don Juan was very capable of disrupting all my preconceptions about the
world, and my unwillingness to agree with my friend who believed that "the
old Indian was just nuts." I felt compelled to pay him another visit before
I made up my mind.
Wednesday, December 28, 1960
Immediately after I arrived at his house he took me for a walk in the
desert chaparral. He did not even look at the bag of groceries that I had
brought him. He seemed to have been waiting for me.
We walked for hours. He did not collect or show me any plants. He did,
however, teach me an "appropriate form of walking." He said that I had to
curl my fingers gently as I walked so I would keep my attention on the trail
and the surroundings. He claimed that my ordinary way of walking was
debilitating and that one should ever carry anything in the hands. If things
had to be carried one should use a knapsack or any sort of carrying net or
shoulder bag. His idea was that by forcing the hands into a specific
position one was capable of greater stamina and greater awareness.
I saw no point in arguing and curled my fingers as he had prescribed
and kept on walking. My awareness was in no way different, nor was my
stamina.
We started our hike in the morning and we stopped to rest around noon.
I was perspiring and tried to drink from my canteen, but he stopped me by
saying that it was better to have only a sip of water. He cut some leaves
from a small yellowish bush and chewed them. He gave me some and remarked
that they were excellent, and if I chewed them slowly my thirst would
vanish. It did not, but I was not uncomfortable either.
He seemed to have read my thoughts and explained that I had not felt
the benefits of the "right way of walking or the benefits of chewing the
leaves because I was young and strong and my body did not notice anything
because it was a bit stupid.
He laughed. I was not in a laughing mood and that seemed to amuse him
even more. He corrected his previous statement, saying that my body was not
really stupid but somehow dormant.
At that moment an enormous crow flew right over us cawing That startled
me and I began to laugh. I thought that the occasion called for laughter,
but to my utter amazement he shook my arm vigorously and hushed me up. He
had a most serious expression.
"That was not a joke, " he said severely, as if I knew what he was
talking about.
I asked for an explanation. I told him that it was incongruous that my
laughing at the crow had made him angry when we had laughed at the coffee
percolator.
"What you saw was not just a crow!" he exclaimed.
"But I saw it and it was a crow, " I insisted.
"You saw nothing, you fool, " he said in a gruff voice.
His rudeness was uncalled for. I told him that I did not like to make
people angry and that perhaps it would be better if I left, since he did not
seem to be in a mood to have company. He laughed uproariously, as if I were
a clown performing for him. My annoyance and embarrassment grew in
proportion. "You're very violent, " he commented casually. "You're taking
yourself too seriously."
"But weren't you doing the same?" I interjected. "Taking yourself
seriously when you got angry at me?"
He said that to get angry at me was the farthest thing from his mind.
He looked at me piercingly.
"What you saw was not an agreement from the world, " he said. "Crows
flying or cawing are never an agreement. That was an omen!"
"An omen of what?"
"A very important indication about you, " he replied cryptically.
At that very instant the wind blew the dry branch of a bush right to
our feet.
"That was an agreement!" he exclaimed and looked at me with shiny eyes
and broke into a belly laugh.
I had the feeling that he was teasing me by making up the rules of his
strange game as we went along, thus it was all right for him to laugh, but
not for me. My annoyance mushroomed again and I told him what I thought of
him.
He was not cross or offended at all. He laughed and his laughter caused
me even more anguish and frustration. I thought that he was deliberately
humiliating me. I decided right then that I had had my fill of "field work."
I stood up and said that I wanted to start walking back to his house
because I had to leave for Los Angeles.
"Sit down!" he said imperatively. "You get peeved like an old lady. You
cannot leave now, because we're not through yet."
I hated him. I thought he was a contemptuous man.
He began to sing an idiotic Mexican folk song. He was obviously
imitating some popular singer. He elongated certain syllables and contracted
others and made the song into a most farcical affair. It was so comical that
I ended up laughing.
"You see, you laugh at the stupid song, " he said. "But the man who
sings it that way and those who pay to listen to him are not laughing; they
think it is serious."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
I thought he had deliberately concocted the example to tell me that I
had laughed at the crow because I had not taken it seriously, the same way I
had not taken the song seriously. But he baffled me again. He said I was
like the singer and the people who liked his songs, conceited and deadly
serious about some nonsense that no one in his right mind should give a damn
about.
He then recapitulated, as if to refresh my memory, all he had said
before on the topic of "learning about plants." He stressed emphatically
that if I really wanted to learn, I had to remodel most of my behavior.
My sense of annoyance grew, until I had to make a supreme effort to
even take notes.
"You take yourself too seriously, " he said slowly. "You are too damn
important in your own mind. That must be changed! You are so goddamn
important that you feel justified to be annoyed with everything. You're so
dam important that you can afford to leave if things don't go your way. I
suppose you think that shows you have character. That's nonsense! You're
weak, and conceited!"
I tried to stage a protest but he did not budge. He pointed out that in
the course of my life I had not ever finished anything because of that sense
of disproportionate importance that I attached to myself.
I was flabbergasted at the certainty with which he made his statements.
They were true, of course, and that made me feel not only angry but also
threatened.
"Self-importance is another thing that must be dropped, just like
personal history, " he said in a dramatic tone.
I certainly did not want to argue with him. It was obvious that I was
at a terrible disadvantage; he was not going to walk-back to his house until
he was ready and I did not know the way. I had to stay with him.
He made a strange and sudden movement, he sort of sniffed the air
around him, his head shook slightly and rhythmically.
He seemed to be in a state of unusual alertness. He turned and stared
at me with a look of bewilderment and curiosity. His eyes swept up and down
my body as if he were looking for something specific; then he stood up
abruptly and began to walk fast. He was almost running. I followed him. He
kept a very accelerated pace for nearly an hour.
Finally he stopped by a rocky hill and we sat in the shade of a hush.
The trotting had exhausted me completely although my mood was better. It was
strange the way I had changed.
I felt almost elated, but when we had started to trot, after our
argument, I was furious with him.
"This is very weird, " I said, "but I feel really good."
I heard the cawing of a crow in the distance. He lifted his finger to
his right ear and smiled.
"That was an omen, " he said.
A small rock tumbled downhill and made a crashing sound when it landed
in the chaparral.
He laughed out loud and pointed his finger in the direction of the
sound.
"And that was an agreement, " he said.
He then asked me if I was ready to talk about my self importance. I
laughed; my feeling of anger seemed so far away that I could not even
conceive how I had become so cross with him.
"I can't understand what's happening to me, " I said. "I got angry and
now I don't know why I am not angry any more."
"The world around us is very mysterious, " he said. "It doesn't yield
its secrets easily."
I liked his cryptic statements. They were challenging and mysterious. I
could not determine whether they were filled with hidden meanings or whether
they were just plain nonsense.
"If you ever come back to the desert here, " he said, "stay away from
that rocky hill where we stopped today. Avoid it like the plague."
"Why? What's the matter?"
"This is not the time to explain it, " he said. "Now we are concerned
with losing self importance. As long as you feel that you are the most
important thing in the world you cannot really appreciate the world around
you. You are like a horse with blinders, all you see is yourself apart from
everything else."
He examined me for a moment.
"I am going to talk to my little friend here, " he said, pointing to a
small plant. He kneeled in front of it and began to caress it and to talk to
it. I did not understand what he was saying at first, but then he switched
languages and talked to the plant in Spanish. He babbled inanities for a
while. Then he stood up.
"It doesn't matter what you say to a plant, " he said. "You can just as
well make up words; what's important is the feeling of liking it, and
treating it as an equal." He explained that a man who gathers plants must
apologize every time for taking them and must assure them that someday his
own body will serve as food for them. "So, all in all, the plants and
ourselves are even, " he said. "Neither we nor they are more or less
important.
"Come on, talk to the little plant, " he urged me. "Tell it that you
don't feel important any more."
I went as far as kneeling in front of the plant but I could not bring
myself to speak to it. I felt ridiculous and laughed. I was not angry,
however. Don Juan patted me on the back and said that it was all right, that
at least I had contained my temper.
"From now on talk to the little plants," he said. "Talk until you lose
all sense of importance. Talk to them until you can do it in front of
others.
"Go to those hills over there and practice by yourself." I asked if it
was all right to talk to the plants silently, in my mind. He laughed and
tapped my head.
"No!" he said. "You must talk to them in a loud and clear voice if you
want them to answer you."
I walked to the area in question, laughing to myself about his
eccentricities. I even tried to talk to the plants, but my feeling of being
ludicrous was overpowering.
After what I thought was an appropriate wait I went back to where don
Juan was. I had the certainty that he knew I had not talked to the plants.
He did not look at me. He signaled me to sit down by him. "Watch me
carefully, " he said. "I'm going to have a talk with my little friend."
He kneeled down in front of a small plant and for a few minutes he
moved and contorted his body, talking and laughing. I thought he was out of
his mind.
"This little plant told me to tell you that she is good to eat, " he
said as he got up from his kneeling position. "She said that a handful of
them would keep a man healthy. She also said that there is a batch of them
growing over there." Don Juan pointed to an area on a hillside perhaps two
hundred yards away.
"Let's go and find out, " he said.
I laughed at his histrionics. I was sure we would find the plants,
because he was an expert in the terrain and knew where the edible and
medicinal plants were. As we walked towards the area in question he told me
casually that I should take notice of the plant because it was both a food
and a medicine. I asked him, half in jest, if the plant had just told him
that. He stopped walking and examined me with an air of disbelief. He shook
his head from side to side.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, laughing. "Your cleverness makes you more silly
than I thought. How can the little plant tell me now what I've known all my
life?"
He proceeded then to explain that he knew all along the different
properties of that specific plant, and that the plant had just told him that
there was a batch of them growing in the area he had pointed to, and that
she did not mind if he told me that.
Upon arriving at the hillside I found a whole cluster of the same
plants. I wanted to laugh but he did not give me time. He wanted me to thank
the batch of plants. I felt excruciatingly self conscious and could not
bring myself to do it. He smiled benevolently and made another of his
cryptic statements. He repeated it three or four times as if to give me time
to figure out its meaning.
"The world around us is a mystery, " he said. "And men are no better
than anything else. If a little plant is generous with us we must thank her,
or perhaps she will not let us go." The way he looked at me when he said
that gave me a chill.
I hurriedly leaned over the plants and said, "Thank you, " in a loud
voice.
He began to laugh in controlled and quiet spurts. We walked for another
hour and then started on our way back to his house. At a certain time I
dropped behind and he had to wait for me. He checked my fingers to see if I
had curled them. I had not. He told me imperatively that whenever I walked
with him I had to observe and copy his mannerisms or not come along at all.
"I can't be waiting for you as though you're a child, " he said in a
scolding tone. That statement sunk me into the depths of embarrassment and
bewilderment. How could it be possible that such an old man could walk so
much better than I? I thought I was athletic and strong, and yet he had
actually had to wait for me to catch up with him.
I curled my fingers and strangely enough I was able to keep his
tremendous pace without any effort. In fact, at times I felt that my hands
were pulling me forward. I felt elated. I was quite happy walking inanely
with the strange old Indian. I began to talk and asked repeatedly if he
would show me some peyote plants. He looked at me but did not say a word.
DEATH IS AN ADVISER
Wednesday, January 25, 1961
"Would you teach me someday about peyote?" I asked. He did not answer
and, as he had done before, simply looked at me as if I were crazy.
I had mentioned the topic to him, in casual conversation, various times
already, and every time he frowned and shook his head. It was not an
affirmative or a negative gesture; it was rather a gesture of despair and
disbelief.
He stood up abruptly. We had been sitting on the ground in front of his
house. An almost imperceptible shake of his head was the invitation to
follow him. We went into the desert chaparral in a southerly direction.
He mentioned repeatedly as we walked that I had to be aware of the
uselessness of my self importance and of my personal history.
"Your friends, " he said, turning to me abruptly. "Those who have known
you for a long time, you must leave them quickly." I thought he was crazy
and his insistence was idiotic, but I did not say anything. He peered at me
and began to laugh.
After a long hike we came to a halt. I was about to sit down and rest
but he told me to go some twenty yards away and talk 10 a batch of plants in
a loud and clear voice. I felt ill at ease and apprehensive. His weird
demands were more than I could bear and I told him once more that I could
not speak to plants, because I felt ridiculous. His only comment was that my
feeling of self importance was immense. He seemed to have made a sudden
decision and said that I should not try to talk to plants until I felt easy
and natural about it.
"You want to learn about them and yet you don't want to do any work, "
he said accusingly. "What are you trying to do?
My explanation was that I wanted bona fide information about the uses
of plants, thus I had asked him to be my informant. I had even offered to
pay him for his time and trouble.
"You should take the money, " I said. "This way we both wouId feel
better. I could then ask you anything I want to because you would be working
for me and I would pay you for it. What do you think of that?"
He looked at me contemptuously and made an obscene sound with his
mouth, making his lower lip and his tongue vibrate by exhaling with great
force.
"That's what I think of it, " he said and laughed hysterically at the
look of utmost surprise that I must have had on my face.
It was obvious to me that he was not a man I could easily contend with.
In spite of his age, he was ebullient and unbelievably strong. I had had the
idea that, being so old, he could have been the perfect "informant" for me.
Old people, I had been led to believe, made the best informants because they
were too feeble to do anything else except talk. Don Juan, on the other
hand, was a miserable subject. I felt he was unmanageable and dangerous. The
friend who had introduced us was right. He was an eccentric old Indian; and
although he was not plastered out of his mind most of the time, as my friend
had told me, he was worse yet, he was crazy. I again felt the terrible doubt
and apprehension I had experienced before. I thought I had overcome that. In
fact, I had had no trouble at all convincing myself that I wanted to visit
him again. The idea had crept into my mind, however, that perhaps I was a
bit crazy myself when I realized that I liked to be with him. His idea that
my feeling of self importance was an obstacle had really made an impact on
me. But all that was apparently only an intellectual exercise on my part;
the moment I was confronted with his odd behavior, I began to experience
apprehension and I wanted to leave.
I said that I believed we were so different that there was no
possibility of our getting along.
"One of us has to change, " he said, staring at the ground. "And you
know who."
He began humming a Mexican folk song and then lifted his head abruptly
and looked at me. His eyes were fierce and burning. I wanted to look away or
close my eyes, but to my utter amazement I could not break away from his
gaze.
He asked me to tell him what I had seen in his eyes. I said that I saw
nothing, but he insisted that I had to voice what his eyes had made me feel
aware of. I struggled to make him understand that the only thing his eyes
made me aware of was my embarrassment, and that the way he was looking at me
was very discomforting.
He did not let go. He kept a steady stare. It was not an outright
menacing or mean look; it was rather a mysterious but unpleasant gaze.
He asked me if he reminded me of a bird.
"A bird?" I exclaimed.
He giggled like a child and moved his eyes away from me.
"Yes, " he said softly. "A bird, a very funny bird!"
He locked his gaze on me again and commanded me to remember. He said
with an extraordinary conviction that he "knew" I had seen that look before.
My feelings of the moment were that the old man provoked me, against my
honest desire, every time he opened his mouth.
I stared back at him in obvious defiance. Instead of getting angry he
began to laugh. He slapped his thigh and yelled as if he were riding a wild
horse. Then he became serious and told me that it was of utmost importance
that I stop fighting him and remember that funny bird he was talking about.
"Look into my eyes, " he said.
His eyes were extraordinarily fierce. There was a feeling about them
that actually reminded me of something but I was not sure what it was. I
pondered upon it for a moment and then I had a sudden realization; it was
not the shape of his eyes nor the shape of his head, but some cold
fierceness in his gaze that had reminded me of the look in the eyes of a
falcon. At the very moment of that realization he was looking at me and for
an instant my mind experienced a total chaos. I thought I had seen a
falcon's features instead of don Juan's.
The image was too fleeting and I was too upset to have paid more
attention to it.
In a very excited tone I told him that I could have sworn I had seen
the features of a falcon on his face. He had another attack of laughter.
I have seen the look in the eyes of falcons. I used to hunt them when I
was a boy, and in the opinion of my grandfather I was good. He had a Leghorn
chicken farm and falcons were a menace to his business. Shooting them was
not only functional but also "right." I had forgotten until that moment that
the fierceness of their eyes had haunted me for years, but it was so far in
my past that I thought I had lost the memory of it.
"I used to hunt falcons, " I said.
"I know it, " don Juan replied matter-of-factly.
His tone carried such a certainty that I began to laugh. I thought he
was a preposterous fellow. He had the gall to sound as if he knew I had
hunted falcons. I felt supremely contemptuous of him.
"Why do you get so angry?" he asked in a tone of genuine concern.
I did not know why. He began to probe me in a very unusual manner. He
asked me to look at him again and tell him about the "very funny bird" he
reminded me of. I struggled against him and out of contempt said that there
was nothing to talk about. Then I felt compelled to ask him why he had said
he knew I used to hunt falcons. Instead of answering me he again commented
on my behavior. He said I was a violent fellow that was capable of "frothing
at the mouth" at the drop of a hat. I protested that that was not true; I
had always had the idea I was rather congenial and easy going. I said it was
his fault for forcing me out of control with his unexpected words and
actions.
"Why the anger?" he asked.
I took stock of my feelings and reactions. I really had no need to be
angry with him. He again insisted that I should look into his eyes and tell
him about the "strange falcon." He had changed his wording; he had said
before, "a very funny bird, " then he substituted it with "strange falcon."
The change in wording summed up a change in my own mood. I had suddenly
become sad.
He squinted his eyes until they were two slits and said in an over
dramatic voice that he was "seeing" a very strange falcon.
He repeated his statement three times as if he were actually seeing it
there in front of him.
"Don't you remember it?" he asked.
I did not remember anything of the sort.
"What's strange about the falcon?" I asked.
"You must tell me that, " he replied.
I insisted that I had no way of knowing what he was referring to,
therefore I could not tell him anything.
"Don't fight me!" he said. "Fight your sluggishness and remember."
I seriously struggled for a moment to figure him out. It did not occur
to me that I could just as well have tried to remember.
"There was a time when you saw a lot of birds, " he said as though
cueing me. I told him that when I was a child I had lived on a farm and had
hunted hundreds of birds.
He said that if that was the case I should not have any difficulty
remembering all the funny birds I had hunted.
He looked at me with a question in his eyes, as if he had just given me
the last clue. "I have hunted so many birds, " I said, "that I can't recall
anything about them."
"This bird is special, " he replied almost in a whisper. "This bird is
a falcon."
I became involved again in figuring out what he was driving at. Was he
teasing me? Was he serious? After a long interval he urged me again to
remember. I felt that it was useless for me to try to end his play; the only
other thing I could do was to join him.
"Are you talking about a falcon that I have hunted?" I asked.
"Yes, " he whispered with his eyes closed.
"So this happened when I was a boy?"
"Yes." .
"But you said you're seeing a falcon in front of you now."
"I am."
"What are you trying to do to me?"
"I'm trying to make you remember."
"What? For heaven's sakes!"
"A falcon swift as light, " he said, looking at me in the eyes.
I felt my heart had stopped.
"Now look at me, " he said.
But I did not. I heard his voice as a faint sound. Some stupendous
recollection had taken me wholly. The white falcon!
It all began with my grandfather's explosion of anger upon taking a
count of his young Leghorn chickens. They had been disappearing in a steady
and disconcerting manner. He personally organized and carried out a
meticulous vigil, and after days of steady watching we finally saw a big
white bird flying away with a young Leghorn chicken in its claws. The bird
was fast and apparently knew its route. It swooped down from behind some
trees, grabbed the chicken and flew away through an opening between two
branches. It happened so fast that my grandfather had hardly seen it, but I
did and I knew that it was indeed a falcon. My grandfather said that if that
was the case it had to be an albino.
We started a campaign against the albino falcon and twice I thought I
had gotten it. It even dropped its prey, but it got away. It was too fast
for me. It was also very intelligent; it never came back to hunt on my
grandfather's farm.
I would have forgotten about it had my grandfather not needled me to
hunt the bird. For two months I chased the albino falcon all over the valley
where I lived. I learned its habits and I could almost intuit its route of
flight, yet its speed and the suddenness of its appearance would always
baffle me.
I could boast that I had prevented it from taking its prey, perhaps
every time we had met, but I could never bag it.
In the two months that I carried on the strange war against the albino
falcon I came close to it only once. I had been chasing it all day and I was
tired. I had sat down to rest and fell asleep under a tall eucalyptus tree.
The sudden cry of a falcon woke me up. I opened my eyes without making any
other movement and I saw a whitish bird perched in the highest branches of
the eucalyptus tree. It was the albino falcon. The chase was over. It was
going to be a difficult shot; I was lying on my back and the bird had its
back turned to me. There was a sudden gust of wind and I used it to muffle
the noise of lifting my .22 long rifle to take aim. I wanted to wait until
the bird had turned or until it had begun to fly so I would not miss it.
But the albino bird remained motionless. In order to take a better shot
I would have needed to move and the falcon was too fast for that. I thought
that my best alternative was to wait. And I did, a long, interminable time.
Perhaps what affected me was the long wait, or perhaps it was the loneliness
of the spot where the bird and I were; I suddenly felt a chill up my spine
and in an unprecedented action I stood up and left. I did not even look to
see if the bird had flown away.
I never attached any significance to my final act with the albino
falcon. However, it was terribly strange that I did not shoot it. I had shot
dozens of falcons before. On the farm where I grew up, shooting birds or
hunting any kind of animal was a matter of course. Don Juan listened
attentively as I told him the story of the albino falcon.
"How did you know about the white falcon?" I asked when I had finished.
"I saw it, " he replied.
"Where?"
"Right here in front of you."
I was not in an argumentative mood any more.
"What does all this mean?" I asked.
He said that a white bird like that was an omen, and that not shooting
it down was the only right thing to do.
"Your death gave you a little warning, " he said with a mysterious
tone. "It always comes as a chill."
"What are you talking about?" I said nervously.
He really made me nervous with his spooky talk.
"You know a lot about birds, " he said. "You've killed too many of
them. You know how to wait. You have waited patiently for hours. I know
that. I am seeing it."
His words caused a great turmoil in me. I thought that what annoyed me
the most about him was his certainty. I could not stand his dogmatic
assuredness about issues in my own life that I was not sure of myself. I
became engulfed in my feelings of dejection and I did not see him leaning
over me until he actually had whispered something in my ear. I did
not-understand at first and he repeated it. He told me to turn around
casually and look at a boulder to my left. He said that my death was there
staring at me and if I turned when he signaled me I might be capable of
seeing it.
He signaled me with his eyes. I turned and I thought I saw a flickering
movement over the boulder. A chill ran through my body, the muscles of my
abdomen contracted involuntarily and I experienced a jolt, a spasm. After a
moment I regained my composure and I explained away the sensation of seeing
the flickering shadow as an optical illusion caused by turning my head so
abruptly.
"Death is our eternal companion, " don Juan said with a most serious
air. "It is always to our left, at an arm's length. It was watching you when
you were watching the white falcon; it whispered in your ear and you felt
its chill, as you felt it today. It has always been watching you. It always
will until the day it taps you."
He extended his arm and touched me lightly on the shoulder and at the
same time he made a deep clicking sound with his tongue. The effect was
devastating; I almost got sick to my stomach.
"You're the boy who stalked game and waited patiently, as death waits;
you know very well that death is to our left, the same way you were to the
left of the white falcon."
His words had the strange power to plunge me into an unwarranted
terror; my only defense was my compulsion to commit to writing everything he
said.
"How can anyone feel so important when we know that death is stalking
us?" he asked.
I had the feeling my answer was not really needed. I could not have
said anything anyway. A new mood had possessed me.
"The thing to do when you're impatient, " he proceeded, "is to turn to
your left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is
dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you catch a glimpse of
it, or if you just have the feeling that your companion is there watching
you."
He leaned over again and whispered in my ear that if I turned to my
left suddenly, upon seeing his signal, I could again see my death on the
boulder. His eyes gave me an almost imperceptible signal, but I did not dare
to look.
I told him that I believed him and that he did not have to press the
issue any further, because I was terrified. He had one of his roaring belly
laughs. He replied that the issue of our death was never pressed far enough.
And I argued that it would be meaningless for me to dwell upon my death,
since such a thought would only bring discomfort and fear.
"You're full of crap!" he exclaimed. "Death is the only wise advisor
that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going
wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that
is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really
matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you
yet.' "
He shook his head and seemed to be waiting for my reply. I had none. My
thoughts were running rampant. He had delivered a staggering blow to my
egotism. The pettiness of being annoyed with him was monstrous in the fight
of my death.
I had the feeling he was fully aware of my change of mood. He had
turned the tide in his favor. He smiled and began to hum a Mexican tune.
"Yes, " he said softly after a long pause. "One of us here has to change,
and fast. One of us here has to learn again that death is the hunter, and
that it is always to one's left. One of us here has to ask death's advice
and drop the cursed pettiness that belongs to men that live their lives as
if death will never tap them."
We remained quiet for more than an hour, then we started walking again.
We meandered in the desert chaparral for hours. I did not ask him if there
was any purpose to it; it did not matter. Somehow he had made me recapture
an old feeling, something I had quite forgotten, the sheer joy of just
moving around without attaching any intellectual purpose to it. I wanted him
to let me catch a glimpse of whatever I had seen on the boulder.
"Let me see that shadow again, " I said.
"You mean your death, don't you?" he replied with a touch of irony in
his voice. For a moment I felt reluctant to voice it.
"Yes, " I finally said. "Let me see my death once again."
"Not now, " he said. "You're too solid."
"I beg your pardon?"
He began to laugh and for some unknown reason his laughter was no
longer offensive and insidious, as it had been in the past. I did not think
that it was different, from the point of view of its pitch, or its loudness,
or the spirit of it; the new element was my mood. In view of my impending
death my fears and annoyance were nonsense.
"Let me talk to plants then, " I said.
He roared with laughter. "You're too good now, " he said, still
laughing. "You go from one extreme to the other. Be still. There is no need
to talk to plants unless you want to know their secrets, and for that you
need the most unbending intent. So save your good wishes. There is no need
to see your death either. It is sufficient that you feel its presence around
you."
ASSUMING RESPONSIBILITY
Tuesday, April, 1961
I arrived at don Juan's house in the early morning on Sunday, April 9.
"Good morning, don Juan;" I said. "Am I glad to see you!"
He looked at me and broke into a soft laughter. He had walked to my car
as I was parking it and held the door open while I gathered some packages of
food that I had brought for him.
We walked to the house and sat down by the door. This was the first
time I had been really aware of what I was doing there. For three months I
had actually looked forward to going back to the "field." It was as if a
time bomb set within myself had exploded and suddenly I had remembered
something transcendental to me. I had remembered that once in my life I had
been very patient and very efficient.
Before don Juan could say anything I asked him the question that had
been pressing hard in my mind. For three months I had been obsessed with the
memory of the albino falcon. How did he know about it when I myself had
forgotten? He laughed but did not answer. I pleaded with him to tell me.
"It was nothing, " he said with his usual conviction. "Anyone could
tell that you're strange. You're just numb, that's all."
I felt that he was again getting me off guard and pushing me into a
corner in which I did not care to be.
"Is it possible to see our death?" I asked, trying to remain within the
topic.
"Sure, " he said, laughing. "It is here with us."
"How do you know that?"
"I'm an old man; with age one learns all kinds of things."
"I know lots of old people, but they have never learned this. How come
you did?"
"Well, let's say that I know all kinds of things because I don't have a
personal history, and because I don't feel more important than anything
else, and because my death is sitting with me right here."
He extended his left arm and moved his fingers as if he were actually
petting something.
I laughed. I knew where he was leading me. The old devil was going to
clobber me again, probably with my self importance, but I did not mind this
time. The memory that once I had had a superb patience had filled me with a
strange, implicit euphoria that had dispelled most of my feelings of
nervousness and intolerance towards don Juan; what I felt instead was a
sensation of wonder about his acts.
"Who are you, really?" I asked.
He seemed surprised. He opened his eyes to an enormous size and blinked
like a bird, closing his eyelids as if they were a shutter. They came down
and went up again and his eyes remained in focus. His maneuver startled me
and I recoiled, and l laughed with childlike abandon.
"For you, I am Juan Matus, and I am at your service, " he said with
exaggerated politeness.
I then asked my other burning question: "What did you do to me the
first day we met?"
I was referring to the look he had given me.
"Me? Nothing, " he replied with a tone of innocence.
I described to him the way I had felt when he had looked at me and how
incongruous it had been for me to be tongue tied by it. He laughed until
tears rolled down his cheeks. I again felt a surge of animosity towards him.
I thought that I was being so serious and thoughtful and he was being so
"Indian" in his coarse ways.
He apparently detected my mood and stopped laughing all of a sudden.
After a long hesitation I told him that his laughter had annoyed me because
I was seriously trying to understand what had happened to me.
"There is nothing to understand, " he replied, undisturbed. I reviewed
for him the sequence of unusual events that had taken place since I had met
him, starting with the mysterious look he had given me, to remembering the
albino falcon and seeing on the boulder the shadow he had said was my death.
"Why are you doing all this to me?" I asked.
There was no belligerence in my question. I was only curious as to why
it was me in particular.
"You asked me to tell you what I know about plants, " he said. I
noticed a tinge of sarcasm in his voice. He sounded as if he were humoring
me.
"But what you have told me so far has nothing to do with plants, " I
protested.
His reply was that it took time to learn about them. My feeling was
that it was useless to argue with him. I realized then the total idiocy of
the easy and absurd resolutions I had made. While I was at home I had
promised myself that I was never going to lose my temper or feel annoyed
with don Juan. In the actual situation, however, the minute he rebuffed me I
had another attack of peevishness. I felt there was no way for me to
interact with him and that angered me.
"Think of your death now, " don Juan said suddenly. "It is at arm's
length. It may tap you any moment, so really you have no time for crappy
thoughts and moods. None of us have time for that.
"Do you want to know what I did to you the first day we met? I saw you,
and I saw that you thought you were lying to me. But you weren't, not
really."
I told him that his explanation confused me even more. He replied that
that was the reason he did not want to explain his acts, and that
explanations were not necessary. He said that the only thing that counted
was action, acting instead of talking.
He pulled out a straw mat and lay down, propping his head up with a
bundle. He made himself comfortable and then he told me that there was
another thing I had to perform if I
really wanted to learn about plants.
"What was wrong with you when I saw you, and what is wrong with you
now, is that you don't like to take responsibility for what you do, " he
said slowly, as if to give me time
to understand what he was saying. "When you were telling me all those
things in the bus depot you were aware that they were lies. Why were you
lying?"
I explained that my objective had been to find a "key informant" for my
work.
Don Juan smiled and began humming a Mexican tune. "When a man decides
to do something he must go all the way, " he said, "but he must take
responsibility for what he
does. No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it,
and then he must proceed with his actions without having doubts or remorse
about them."
He examined me. I did not know what to say. Finally I ventured an
opinion, almost as a protest. "That's an impossibility!" I said.
He asked me why, and I said that perhaps ideally that was what
everybody thought they should do. In practice, however, there was no way to
avoid doubts and remorse.
"Of course there is a way, " he replied with conviction.
"Look at me, " he said. "I have no doubts or remorse. Everything I do
is my decision and my responsibility. The simplest thing I do, to take you
for a walk in the desert, for instance, may very well mean my death. Death
is stalking me. Therefore, I have no room for doubts or remorse. If I have
to die as a result of taking you for a walk, then I must die.
"You, on the other hand, feel that you are immortal, and the decisions
of an immortal man can be canceled or regretted or doubted. In a world where
death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts.
There is only time for decisions."
I argued, in sincerity, that in my opinion that was an unreal world,
because it was arbitrarily made by taking an idealized form of behavior and
saying that that was the way to proceed.
I told him the story of my father, who used to give me endless lectures
about the wonders of a healthy mind in a healthy body, and how young men
should temper their bodies with hardships and with feats of athletic
competition. He was a young man; when I was eight years old he was only
twenty seven. During the summertime, as a rule, he would come from the city,
where he taught school, to spend at least a month with me at my
grandparents' farm, where I lived. It was a hellish month for me. I told don
Juan one instance of my father's behavior that I thought would apply to the
situation at hand. Almost immediately upon arriving at the farm my father
would insist on taking a long walk with me at his side, so we could talk
things over, and while we were talking he would make plans for us to go
swimming, every day at six a.m. At night he would set the alarm for
five-thirty to have plenty of time, because at six sharp we had to be in the
water. And when the alarm would go off in the morning, he would jump out of
bed, put on his glasses, go to the window and look out. I had even memorized
the ensuing monologue.
"Uhm ... A bit cloudy today. Listen, I'm going to lie down again for
just five minutes. O.K.? No more than five! I'm just going to stretch my
muscles and fully wake up."
He would invariably fall asleep again until ten, sometimes until noon.
I told don Juan that what annoyed me was his refusal to give up his
obviously phony resolutions. He would repeat this ritual every morning until
I would finally hurt his feelings by refusing to set the alarm clock.
"They were not phony resolutions, " don Juan said, obviously taking
sides with my father. "He just didn't know how to get out of bed, that's
all."
"At any rate, " I said, "I'm always leery of unreal resolutions."
"What would be a resolution that is real then?" don Juan asked with a
coy smile.
"If my father would have said to himself that he could not go swimming
at six in the morning but perhaps at three in the afternoon."
"Your resolutions injure the spirit," don Juan said with an air of
great seriousness.
I thought I even detected a note of sadness in his tone. We were quiet
for a long time. My peevishness had vanished. I thought of my father.
"He didn't want to swim at three in the afternoon. Don't you see?" don
Juan said. His words made me jump.
I told him that my father was weak, and so was his world of unreal acts
that he never performed. I was almost shouting.
Don Juan did not say a word. He shook his head slowly in a rhythmical
way. I felt terribly sad. Thinking of my father always gave me a consuming
feeling.
"You think you were stronger, don't you?" he asked in a casual tone.
I said I did, and I began to tell him all the emotional turmoil that my
father had put me through, but he interrupted me.
"Was he mean to you?" he asked.
"No."
"Was he petty with you?"
"No."
"Did he do all he could for you?"
"Yes."
"Then what was wrong with him?"
Again I began to shout that he was weak, but I caught myself and
lowered my voice. I felt a bit ludicrous being cross examined by don Juan.
"What are you doing all this for?" I said. "We were supposed to be
talking about plants."
I felt more annoyed and despondent than ever. I told him that he had no
business or the remotest qualifications to pass judgment on my behavior, and
he exploded into a belly laugh.
"When you get angry you always feel righteous, don't you?" he said and
blinked like a bird.
He was right. I had the tendency to feel justified at being angry.
"Let's not talk about my father, " I said, feigning a happy mood. "Let's
talk about plants."
"No, let's talk about your father, " he insisted. "That is the place to
begin today. If you think that you were so much stronger than he, why didn't
you go swimming at six in the morning in his place?"
I told him that I could not believe he was seriously asking me that. I
had always thought that swimming at six in the morning was my father's
business and not mine.
"It was also your business from the moment you accepted his idea, " don
Juan snapped at me.
I said that I had never accepted it, that I had always known my father
was not truthful to himself. Don Juan asked me matter-of-factly why I had
not voiced my opinions at the time.
"You don't tell your father things like that, " I said as a weak
explanation.
"Why not?"
"That was not done in my house, that's all."
"You have done worse things in your house, " he declared like a judge
from the bench. "The only thing you never did was to shine your spirit."
There was such a devastating force in his words that they echoed in my
mind. He brought all my defenses down. I could not argue with him. I took
refuge in writing my notes. I tried a last feeble explanation and said that
all my life I had encountered people of my father's kind, who had, like my
father, hooked me somehow into their schemes, and as a rule I had always
been left dangling.
"You are complaining, " he said softly. "You have been complaining all
your life because you don't assume responsibility for your decisions. If you
would have assumed responsibility for your father's idea of swimming at six
in the morning, you would have swum, by yourself if necessary, or you would
have told him to go to hell the first time he opened his mouth after you
knew his devices. But you didn't say anything. Therefore, you were as weak
as your father."
"To assume the responsibility of one's decisions means that one is
ready to die for them."
"Wait, wait!" I said. "You are twisting this around." He did not let me
finish. I was going to tell him that I had used my father only as an example
of an unrealistic way of acting, and that nobody in his right mind would be
willing to die for such an idiotic thing.
"It doesn't matter what the decision is, " he said. "Nothing could be
more or less serious than anything else. Don't you see? In a world where
death is the hunter there are no small or big decisions. There are only
decisions that we make in the face of our inevitable death." I could not say
anything. Perhaps an hour went by. Don Juan was perfectly motionless on his
mat although he was not sleeping.
"Why do you tell me all this, don Juan?" I asked. "Why are you doing
this to me?"
"You came to me, " he said. "No, that was not the case, you were
brought to me. And I have had a gesture with you."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You could have had a gesture with your father by swimming for him, but
you didn't, perhaps because you were too young. I have lived longer than
you. I have nothing pending. There is no hurry in my life, therefore I can
properly have a gesture with you."
In the afternoon we went for a hike. I easily kept his pace and
marveled again at his stupendous physical prowess. He walked so nimbly and
with such sure steps that next to him I was like a child. We went in an
easterly direction. I noticed then that he did not like to talk while he
walked. If I spoke to him he would stop walking in order to answer me.
After a couple of hours we came to a hill; he sat down and signaled me
to sit by him. He announced in a mock dramatic tone that he was going to
tell me a story. He said that once upon a time there was a young man, a
destitute Indian who lived among the white men in a city. He had no home, no
relatives, no friends. He had come into the city to find his fortune and had
found only misery and pain. From time to time he made a few cents working
like a mule, barely enough for a morsel; otherwise he had to beg or steal
food. Don Juan said that one day the young man went to the market place. He
walked up and down the street in a haze, his eyes wild upon seeing all the
good things that were gathered there. He was so frantic that he did not see
where he was walking, and ended up tripping over some baskets and falling on
lap of an old man.
The old man was carrying four enormous gourds and had just sat down to
rest and eat. Don Juan smiled knowingly and said that the old man found it
quite strange that the young man had stumbled on him. He was not angry at
being disturbed but amazed at why this particular young man had fallen on
top of him. The young man, on the other hand, was angry and told him to get
out of his way. He was not concerned at all about the ultimate reason for
their meeting. He had not noticed that their paths had actually crossed.
Don Juan mimicked the motions of someone going after something that was
rolling over. He said that the old man's gourds had turned over and were
rolling down the street. When the young man saw the gourds he thought he had
found his food for the day. He helped the old man up and insisted on helping
him carry the heavy gourds. The old man told him that he was on his way to
his home in the mountains and the young man insisted on going with him, at
least part of the way.
The old man took the road to the mountains and as they hiked he gave
the young man part of the food he had bought at the market. The young man
ate to his heart's content and when he was quite satisfied he began to
notice how heavy the gourds were and clutched them tightly.
Don Juan opened his eyes and smiled with a devilish grin a said that
the young man asked, "What do you carry in these gourds?" The old man did
not answer but told him that he was going to show him a companion or friend
who could alleviate his sorrows and give him advice and wisdom about the
ways of the world.
Don Juan made a majestic gesture with both hands and said that the old
man summoned the most beautiful deer that the young man had ever seen. The
deer was so tame that it came to him and walked around him. It glittered and
shone. The young man was spellbound and knew right away that it was a
"spirit deer." The old man told him then that if he wished to have that
friend and its wisdom all he had to do was to let go of the gourds.
Don Juan's grin portrayed ambition; he said that the young man's petty
desires were pricked upon hearing such a request. Don Juan's eyes became
small and devilish as he voiced the young man's question: "What do you have
in these four enormous gourds?"
Don Juan said that the old man very serenely replied that, he was
carrying food: "pinole" and water. He stopped narrating the story and walked
around in a circle a couple of times. I did not know what he was doing. But
apparently it was part of the story. The circle seemed to portray the
deliberations of the young man. Don Juan said that, of course, the young man
had not believed a word. He calculated that if the old man, who was
obviously a wizard, was willing to give a "spirit deer" for his gourds, then
the gourds must have been filled with power beyond belief.
Don Juan contorted his face again into a devilish grin and said that
the young man declared that he wanted to have the gourds. There was a long
pause that seemed to mark the end of the story. Don Juan remained quiet, yet
I was sure he wanted me to ask about it, and I did.
"What happened to the young man?"
"He took the gourds, " he replied with a smile of satisfaction.
There was another long pause. I laughed. I thought that this had been a
real "Indian story." Don Juan's eyes were shining as he smiled at me. There
was an air of innocence about him. He began to laugh in soft spurts and
asked me, "Don't you want to know about the gourds?"
"Of course I want to know. I thought that was the end of the story."
"Oh no, " he said with a mischievous light in his eyes. "The young man
took his gourds and ran away to an isolated place and opened them."
"What did he find?" I asked.
Don Juan glanced at me and I had the feeling he was aware of my mental
gymnastics. He shook his head and chuckled.
"Well, " I urged him. "Were the gourds empty?"
"There was only food and water inside the gourds," he said.
"And the young man, in a fit of anger, smashed them against the rocks."
I said that his reaction was only natural-anyone in his position would
have done the same. Don Juan's reply was that the young man was a fool who
did not know what he was looking for. He did not know what "power" was, so
he could not tell whether or not he had found it. He had not taken
responsibility for his decision, therefore he was angered by his blunder. He
expected to gain something and got nothing instead. Don Juan speculated that
if I were the young man and if I had followed my inclinations I would have
ended up angry and remorseful, and would, no doubt, have spent the rest of
my life feeling sorry for myself for what I had lost.
Then he explained the behavior of the old man. He had cleverly fed the
young man so as to give him the "daring of a satisfied stomach, " thus the
young man upon finding only food in the gourds smashed them in a fit of
anger.
"Had he been aware of his decision and assumed responsibility for it, "
don Juan said, "he would have taken the food and would've been more than
satisfied with it. And perhaps lie might even have realized that the food
was power too."
BECOMING A HUNTER
Friday, June 23, 1961
As soon as I sat down I bombarded don Juan with questions. He did not
answer me and made an impatient gesture with his hand to be quiet. He seemed
to be in a serious mood. "I was thinking that you haven't changed at all in
the time you've been trying to learn about plants, " he said in an accusing
tone.
He began reviewing in a loud voice all the changes of personality he
had recommended I should undertake. I told him that I had considered the
matter very seriously and found that I could not possibly fulfill them
because each of them ran contrary to my core. He replied that to merely
consider them was not enough, and that whatever he had said to me was not
said just for fun. I again insisted that, although I had done very little in
matters of adjusting my personal life to his ideas, I really wanted to learn
the uses of plants.
After a long, uneasy silence I boldly asked him, "Would you teach me
about peyote, don Juan?"
He said that my intentions alone were not enough, and that to know
about peyote-he called it "Mescalito" for the first time-was a serious
matter. It seemed that there was nothing else to say.
In the early evening, however, he set up a test for me; he put forth a
problem without giving me any clues to its solution: to find a beneficial
place or spot in the area right in front of his door where we always sat to
talk, a spot where I could allegedly feel perfectly happy and invigorated.
During the course of the night, while I attempted to find the "spot" by
rolling on the ground, I twice detected a change of coloration on the
uniformly dark dirt floor of the designated area.
The problem exhausted me and I fell asleep on one of the places where I
had detected the change in color. In the morning don Juan woke me up and
announced that I had had a very successful experience. Not only had I found
the beneficial spot I was looking for, but I had also found its opposite, an
enemy or negative spot and the colors associated with both.
Saturday, June 24, 1961
We went into the desert chaparral in the early morning. As we walked,
don Juan explained to me that finding a "beneficial" or an "enemy" spot was
an important need for a man in the wilderness. I wanted to steer the
conversation to the topic of peyote, but he flatly refused to talk about it.
He warned me that there should be no mention of it, unless he himself
brought up the subject.
We sat down to rest in the shade of some tall bushes in an area of
thick vegetation. The desert chaparral around us was not quite dry yet; it
was a warm day and the flies kept on pestering me but they did not seem to
bother don Juan. I wondered whether he was just ignoring them but then I
noticed they were not landing on his face at all.
"Sometimes it is necessary to find a beneficial spot quickly, out in
the open, " don Juan went on. "Or maybe it is necessary to determine quickly
whether or not the spot where one is about to rest is a bad one. One time,
we sat to rest by some hill and you got very angry and upset. That spot was
your enemy. A little crow gave you a warning, remember?"
I remembered that he had made a point of telling me to avoid that area
in the future. I also remembered that I had become angry because he had not
let me laugh. "I thought that the crow that flew overhead was an omen for me
alone, " he said. "I would never have suspected that the crows were friendly
towards you too."
"What are you talking about?"
"The crow was an omen, " he went on. "If you knew about crows you would
have avoided the place like the plague. Crows are not always available to
give warning though, and you must learn to find, by yourself, a proper place
to camp or to rest."
After a long pause don Juan suddenly turned to me and said that in
order to find the proper place to rest all I had to do was to cross my eyes.
He gave me a knowing look and in a confidential tone told me that I had done
precisely that when I was rolling on his porch, and thus I had been capable
of finding two spots and their colors. He let me know that he was impressed
by my accomplishment.
"I really don't know what I did, " I said.
"You crossed your eyes, " he said emphatically. "That's the technique;
you must have done that, although you don't remember it."
Don Juan then described the technique, which he said took years to
perfect, and which consisted of gradually forcing the eyes to see separately
the same image. The lack of image conversion entailed a double perception of
the world; this double perception, according to don Juan, allowed one the
opportunity of judging changes in the surroundings, which the eyes were
ordinarily incapable of perceiving.
Don Juan coaxed me to try it. He assured me that it was not injurious
to the sight. He said that I should begin by looking in short glances,
almost with the corners of my eyes. He pointed to a large bush and showed me
how. I had a strange feeling, seeing don Juan's eyes taking incredibly fast
glances at the bush. His eyes reminded me of those of a shifty animal that
cannot look straight.
We walked for perhaps an hour while I tried not to focus my sight on
anything. Then don Juan asked me to start separating the images perceived by
each of my eyes. After another hour or so I got a terrible headache and had
to stop.
"Do you think you could find, by yourself, a proper place for us to
rest?" he asked.
I had no idea what the criterion for a "proper place" was. He patiently
explained that looking in short glances allowed the eyes to pick out unusual
sights. "Such as what?" I asked.
"They are not sights proper, " he said. "They are more like feelings.
If you look at a bush or a tree or a rock where you may like to rest, your
eyes can make you feel whether or not that's the best resting place."
I again urged him to describe what those feelings were but he either
could not describe them or he simply did not want to. He said that I should
practice by picking out a place and then he would tell me whether or not my
eyes were working.
At one moment I caught sight of what I thought was a pebble which
reflected light. I could not see it if I focused my eyes on it, but if I
swept the area with fast glances I could detect a sort of faint glitter. I
pointed out the place to don Juan.
It was in the middle of an open unshaded flat area devoid of thick
bushes. He laughed uproariously and then asked me why I had picked that
specific spot. I explained that I was seeing a glitter.
"I don't care what you see, " he said. "You could be seeing an
elephant. How you feel is the important issue."
I did not feel anything at all. He gave me a mysterious look and said
that he wished he could oblige me and sit down to rest with me there, but he
was going to sit somewhere else while I tested my choice.
I sat down while he looked at me curiously from a distance of thirty or
forty feet away. After a few minutes he began to laugh loudly. Somehow his
laughter made me nervous. It put me on edge. I felt he was making fun of me
and I got angry. I began to question my motives for being there. There was
definitely something wrong in the way my total endeavor with don Juan was
proceeding. I felt that I was just a pawn in his clutches.
Suddenly don Juan charged at me, at full speed, and pulled me by the
arm, dragging me bodily for ten or twelve feet. He helped me to stand up and
wiped some perspiration from his forehead. I noticed then that he had
exerted himself to his limit. He patted me on the back and said that I had
picked the wrong place and that he had had to rescue me in a real hurry,
because he saw that the spot where I was sitting was about to take over my
entire feelings. I laughed. The image of don Juan charging at me was very
funny. He had actually run like a young man. His feet moved as if he were
grabbing the soft reddish dirt of the desert in order to catapult himself
over me.
I had seen him laughing at me and then in a matter of seconds he was
dragging me by the arm.
After a while he urged me to continue looking for a proper place to
rest. We kept on walking but I did not detect or "feel" anything at all.
Perhaps if I had been more relaxed I would have noticed or felt something. I
had ceased, however, to be angry with him. Finally he pointed to some rocks
and we came to a halt. "Don't feel disappointed, " don Juan said. "It takes
a long time to train the eyes properly."
I did not say anything. I was not going to be disappointed about
something I did not understand at all. Yet, I had to admit that three times
already since I had begun to visit don Juan I had become very angry and had
been agitated to the point of being nearly ill while sitting on places that
he called bad.
"The trick is to feel with your eyes, " he said. "Your problem now is
that you don't know what to feel. It'll come to you, though, with practice."
"Perhaps you should tell me, don Juan, what I am supposed to feel."
"That's impossible."
"Why?"
"No one can tell you what you are supposed to feel. It is not heat, or
light, or glare, or color. It is something else."
"Can't you describe it?"
"No. All I can do is give you the technique. Once you learn to separate
the images and see two of everything, you must focus your attention in the
area between the two images. Any change worthy of notice would take place
there, in that area."
"What kind of changes are they?"
"That is not important. The feeling that you get is what counts. Every
man is different. You saw glitter today, but that did not mean anything,
because the feeling was missing. I can't tell you how to feel. You must
learn that yourself."
We rested in silence for some time. Don Juan covered his face with his
hat and remained motionless as if he were asleep. I became absorbed in
writing my notes, until he made a sudden movement that made me jolt. He sat
up abruptly and faced me, frowning. "You have a knack for hunting, " he
said. "And that's what you should learn, hunting. We are not going to talk
about plants any more." He puffed out his jaws for an instant, then candidly
added, "I don't think we ever have, anyway, have we?" and laughed.
We spent the rest of the day walking in every direction while he gave
me an unbelievably detailed explanation about rattlesnakes. The way they
nest, the way they move around, their seasonal habits, their quirks of
behavior. Then he proceeded to corroborate each of the points he had made
and finally he caught and killed a large snake; he cut its head off, cleaned
its viscera, skinned it, and roasted the meat. His movements had such a
grace and skill that it was a sheer pleasure just to be around him. I had
listened to him and watched him, spellbound. My concentration had been so
complete that the rest of the world had practically vanished for me.
Eating the snake was a hard reentry into the world of ordinary affairs.
I felt nauseated when I began to chew a bite of snake meat. It was an ill
founded queasiness, as the meat was delicious, but my stomach seemed to be
rather an independent unit. I could hardly swallow at all. I thought don
Juan would have a heart attack from laughing so hard.
Afterwards we sat down for a leisurely rest in the shade of some rocks.
I began to work on my notes, and the quantity of them made me realize that
he had given me an astonishing amount of information about rattlesnakes.
"Your hunter's spirit has returned to you, " don Juan said suddenly and
with a serious face. "Now you're hooked."
"I beg your pardon?"
I wanted him to elaborate on his statement that I was hooked, but he
only laughed and repeated it.
"How am I hooked?" I insisted.
"Hunters will always hunt, " he said. "I am a hunter myself."
"Do you mean you hunt for a living?"
"I hunt in order to live. I can live off the land, anywhere." He
indicated the total surroundings with his hand.
"To be a hunter means that one knows a great deal, " he went on. "It
means that one can see the world in different ways. In order to be a hunter
one must be in perfect balance with everything else, otherwise hunting would
become a meaningless chore. For instance, today we took a little snake. I
had to apologize to her for cutting her life off so suddenly and so
definitely; I did what I did knowing that my own life will also be cut off
someday in very much the same fashion, suddenly and definitely. So, all in
all, we and the snakes are on a par. One of them fed us today."
"I had never conceived a balance of that kind when I used to hunt, " I
said.
"That's not true. You didn't just kill animals. You and your family all
ate the game."
His statements carried the conviction of someone who had been there. He
was, of course, right. There had been times when I had provided the
incidental wild meat for my family.
After a moment's hesitation I asked, "How did you know that?"
"There are certain things that I just know, " he said. "I can't tell
you how though."
I told him that my aunts and uncles would very seriously call all the
birds I would bag "pheasants."
Don Juan said he could easily imagine them calling a sparrow a "tiny
pheasant" and added a comical rendition of how they would chew it. The
extraordinary movements of his jaw gave me the feeling that he was actually
chewing a whole bird, bones and all.
"I really think that you have a touch for hunting, " he said, staring
at me. "And we have been barking up the wrong tree. Perhaps you will be
willing to change your way of life in order to become a hunter."
He reminded me that I had found out, with just a little exertion on my
part, that in the world there were good and bad spots for me; he added that
I had also found out the specific colors associated with them.
"That means that you have a knack for hunting, " he declared. "Not
everyone who tries would find their colors and their spots at the same
time." To be a hunter sounded very nice and romantic, but it was an
absurdity to me, since I did not particularly care to hunt.
"You don't have to care to hunt or to like it, " he replied to my
complaint. "You have a natural inclination. I think the best hunters never
like hunting; they do it well, that's all."
I had the feeling don Juan was capable of arguing his way out of
anything, and yet he maintained that he did not like to talk at all.
"It is like what I have told you about hunters, " he said. "I don't
necessarily like to talk. I just have a knack for it and I do it well,
that's all." I found his mental agility truly funny.
"Hunters must be exceptionally tight individuals, " he continued. "A
hunter leaves very little to chance. I have been trying all along to
convince you that you must learn to live in a different way. So far I have
not succeeded. There was nothing you could've grabbed on to. Now it's
different. I have brought back your old hunter's spirit, perhaps through it
you will change."
I protested that I did not want to become a hunter. I reminded him that
in the beginning I had just wanted him to tell me about medicinal plants,
but he had made me stray so far away from my original purpose that I could
not clearly recall any more whether or not I had really wanted to learn
about plants.
"Good, " he said. "Really good. If you don't have such a clear picture
of what you want, you may become more humble. "Let's put it this way. For
your purposes it doesn't really matter whether you learn about plants or
about hunting. You've told me that yourself. You are interested in anything
that anyone can tell you. True?" I had said that to him in trying to define
the scope of anthropology and in order to draft him as my informant. Don
Juan chuckled, obviously aware of his control over the situation.
"I am a hunter, " he said, as if he were reading my thoughts.
"I leave very little to chance. Perhaps I should explain to you that I
learned to be a hunter. I have not always lived the way I do now. At one
point in my life I had to change. Now I'm pointing the direction to you. I'm
guiding you. I know what I'm talking about; someone taught me all this. I
didn't figure it out for myself."
"Do you mean that you had a teacher, don Juan?"
"Let's say that someone taught me to hunt the way I want to teach you
now, " he said and quickly changed the topic.
"I think that once upon a time hunting was one of the greatest acts a
man could perform, " he said. "All hunters were powerful men. In fact, a
hunter had to be powerful to begin with in order to withstand the rigors of
that life."
Suddenly I became curious. Was he referring to a time perhaps prior to
the Conquest? I began to probe him.
"When was the time you are talking about?"
"Once upon a time."
"When? What does 'once upon a time' mean?"
"It means once upon a time, or maybe it means now, today.
It doesn't matter. At one time everybody knew that a hunter was the
best of men. Now not everyone knows that, but there are a sufficient number
of people who do. I know it, someday you will. See what I mean?"
"Do the Yaqui Indians feel that way about hunters? That's what I want
to know."
"Not necessarily."
"Do the Pima Indians?"
"Not all of them. But some."
I named various neighboring groups. I wanted to commit him to a
statement that hunting was a shared belief and practice of some specific
people. But he avoided answering me directly, so I changed the subject.
"Why are you doing all this for me, don Juan?" I asked.
He took off his hat and scratched his temples in feigned bafflement.
"I'm having a gesture with you, " he said softly. "Other people have
had a similar gesture with you; someday you yourself will have the same
gesture with others. Let's say that it is my turn. One day I found out that
if I wanted to be a hunter worthy of self-respect I had to change my way of
life.
I used to whine and complain a great deal. I had good reasons to feel
shortchanged. I am an Indian and Indians are treated like dogs. There was
nothing I could do to remedy that, so all I was left with was my sorrow. But
then my good fortune spared me and someone taught me to hunt. And I realized
that the way I lived was not worth living ... so I changed it."
"But I am happy with my life, don Juan. Why should I have to change
it?"
He began to sing a Mexican song, very softly, and then hummed the tune.
His head bobbed up and down as he followed the beat of the song.
"Do you think that you and I are equals?" he asked in a sharp voice.
His question caught me off guard. I experienced a peculiar buzzing in
my ears as though he had actually shouted his words, which he had not done;
however, there had been a metallic sound in his voice that was reverberating
in my ears.
I scratched the inside of my left ear with the small finger of my left
hand. My ears itched all the time and I had developed a rhythmical nervous
way of rubbing the inside of them with the small finger of either hand. The
movement was more properly a shake of my whole arm. Don Juan watched my
movements with apparent fascination.
"Well . . . are we equals?" he asked.
"Of course we're equals, " I said.
I was, naturally, being condescending. I felt very warm towards him
even though at times I did not know what to do with him; yet I still held in
the back of my mind, although I would never voice it, the belief that I,
being a university student, a man of the sophisticated Western world, was
superior to an Indian.
"No, " he said calmly, "we are not."
"Why, certainly we are, " I protested.
"No, " he said in a soft voice. "We are not equals. I am a hunter and a
warrior, and you are a pimp."
My mouth fell open. I could not believe that don Juan had actually said
that. I dropped my notebook and stared at him dumbfoundedly and then, of
course, I became furious.
He looked at me with calm and collected eyes. I avoided his gaze. And
then he began to talk. He enunciated his words clearly. They poured out
smoothly and deadly. He said that I was pimping for someone else. That I was
not fighting my own battles but the battles of some unknown people. That I
did not want to learn about plants or about hunting or about anything. And
that his world of precise acts and feelings and decisions was infinitely
more effective than the blundering idiocy I called "my life."
After he finished talking I was numb. He had spoken without
belligerence or conceit but with such power, and yet such calmness, that I
was not even angry any more. We remained silent. I felt embarrassed and
could not think of anything appropriate to say. I waited for him to break
the silence. Hours went by. Don Juan became motionless by degrees, until his
body had acquired a strange, almost frightening rigidity; his silhouette
became difficult to make out as it got dark, and finally when it was pitch
black around us he seemed to have merged into the blackness of the stones.
His state of motionlessness was so total that it was as if he did not exist
any longer. It was midnight when I finally realized that he could and would
stay motionless there in that wilderness, in those rocks, perhaps forever if
he had to. His world of precise acts and feelings and decisions was indeed
superior. I quietly touched his arm and tears flooded me.
BEING INACCESSIBLE
Thursday, June 29, 1961
Again don Juan, as he had done every day for nearly a week, held me
spellbound with his knowledge of specific details about the behavior of
game. He first explained and then corroborated a number of hunting tactics
based on what he called "the quirks of quails." I became so utterly involved
in his explanations that a whole day went by and I had not noticed the
passage of time. I even forgot to eat lunch. Don Juan made joking remarks
that it was quite unusual for me to miss a meal. By the end of the day he
had caught five quail in a most ingenious trap, which he had taught me to
assemble and set up.
"Two are enough for us, " he said and let three of them loose.
He then taught me how to roast quail. I had wanted to cut some shrubs
and make a barbecue pit, the way my grandfather used to make it, lined with
green branches and leaves and sealed with dirt, but don Juan said that there
was no need to injure the shrubs, since we had already injured the quail.
After we finished eating we walked very leisurely towards a rocky area.
We sat on a sandstone hillside and I said jokingly that if he would have
left the matter up to me I would have cooked all five of the quail, and that
my barbecue would have tasted much better than his roast. "No doubt, " he
said. "But if you would have done all that we might have never left this
place in one piece."
"What do you mean?" I asked. "What would have prevented us?"
"The shrubs, the quail, everything around would have pitched in."
"I never know when you are talking seriously, " I said.
He made a gesture of feigned impatience and smacked his lips.
"You have a weird notion of what it means to talk seriously, " he said.
"I laugh a great deal because I like to laugh yet everything I say is deadly
serious, even if you don't understand it. Why should the world be only as
you think it is? Who gave you the authority to say so?"
"There is no proof that the world is otherwise, " I said.
It was getting dark. I was wondering if it was time to go back to his
house, but he did not seem to be in a hurry and I was enjoying myself.
The wind was cold. Suddenly he stood up and told me that we had to
climb to the hilltop and stand up on an area clear of shrubs.
"Don't be afraid, " he said. "I'm your friend and I'll see that nothing
bad happens to you."
"What do you mean?" I asked, alarmed.
Don Juan had the most insidious facility to shift me from sheer
enjoyment to sheer fright.
"The world is very strange at this time of the day, " he said. "That's
what I mean. No matter what you see, don't be afraid."
"What am I going to see?"
"I don't know yet, " he said, peering into the distance towards the
south.
He did not seem to be worried. I also kept on looking in the same
direction.
Suddenly he perked up and pointed with his left hand towards a dark
area in the desert shrubbery.
"