"THE
ACTIVE SIDE
OF INFINITY" - "АКТИВНАЯ СТОРОНА БЕСКОНЕЧНОСТИ"
Все Женщины - Dreamers,
правда некоторые - более одарённые, чем другие ! Dreamer - это человек,
который умеет себя гипнотизировать и поднимать себя на более высокую
вибрацию, зная или не зная этого. Обычно среди мужчин это : Колдуны,
первопроходцы Роберта Монро, маги, индийские гуру, некоторые монахи и
т.д. У всех Женщин этот дар есть из-за того, что у них есть Матка (если
она не вырезана), но этот дар иеется у очень малого количества мужчин и
этот дар ещё должен быть развит огромным трудом. Dreaming-Awake -
означает быть в самогипнозе, т.е. сознательно или бессознательно
поднимать себя выше, на более высокую вибрацию, не теряя контроль над
собой и исполняя поставленные задачи !
All Women are Dreamers,
though among them there are more gifted, then others. Dreamer is a
person, who can hypnotize herself and lift herself up, to a faster and
higher vibrational level. All Women are Dreamers, but Dreamers among
Men are usually: Sorcerers, Robert Monroe' s Institute explorers, some
magicians, indian gurus, some buddists, some priests/cledgy and so on.
All Women, because of their Womb (if it's still inside), have this
gift, but Men have to work a great deal to develop this ability !
Dreaming-Awake is
self-hypnosis,
means consciously or subconsciously raise herself to a higher
consciousness level (vibration), without loosing control and to perform
certain tasks.
"The
Active Side of Infinity" by Carlos Castaneda
"The Sorcerers'
revolution," he (Don Juan) continued, "is, that they
refuse to honor agreements, in which they did not participate. Nobody
ever asked me if I would
consent to be eaten by beings of a different kind of awareness. My
parents just brought me into
this world to be food, like themselves, and that's the end of the
story."
Syntax
(the system of
rules in operation in computer systems and other systems)
A
man, staring at his equations, said , that the Universe had a
beginning. There had
been an explosion, he said. A Bang of Bangs ("Big Bang"), and the
Universe was born. And it is
expanding, he said. He had even calculated the length of its life: ten
billion revolutions of the
Earth around the Sun. The entire Globe cheered; they found his
calculations to be science. None
thought, that by proposing, that the Universe began, the man had merely
mirrored the syntax (system
of rules in operation) of his mother tongue; a syntax, which demands
beginnings, like birth, and
developments like maturation, and ends, like death, as statement of
facts. The Universe began and IT'S GETTING OLD, the man assured
us, and it
will die, like all things die,
like he himself died after confirming mathematically the syntax of his
mother
tongue.
The
Other Syntax
Did
the Universe really begin? Is the theory of the 'Big Bang' true? These
are not
questions, though they sound like they are. Is the syntax, that
requires beginnings, developments
and ends as statements of fact, the only syntax, that exist? That's the
real question. There are
other syntaxes. There is one,
for example, which demands, that
varieties of Intensity be taken as
facts. In that syntax nothing begins and nothing ends; thus birth is
not a clean,
clear-cut event, but a specific type of Intensity, and so is
maturation, and so is
death. A Human of that syntax, looking over
his equations, finds, that he
has calculated enough
varieties of Intensity to say with authority, that the Universe never
began and will never end, but
that it has gone, and is going now, and will go through endless
fluctuations of Intensity.
That man
could very well conclude, that the Universe itself is the chariot of
Intensity and, that one can
board it to journey through changes without end. He will conclude all
that, and much more, perhaps
without ever realizing, that he merely conforming the syntax of his
mother
tongue.
Introduction
1-2
THIS BOOK IS a
collection of the memorable events in my
life. Don Juan revealed to me
as time went by, that the shamans of
ancient Mexico had conceived (form in the mind) of
this collection of memorable events, as a bona-fide device to stir
caches of energy, that exist within the self. They explained these
caches, as being
composed of energy, that
originates in the body itself and becomes displaced, pushed out of
reach by the circumstances of
our daily lives. In this sense, the collection of memorable events was,
for don Juan and the
shamans of his lineage, the means for redeploying (bring force into
action) their unused
energy, gathered them, following
the recommendation of
don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian shaman from Mexico who, as a teacher,
endeavored for thirteen years
to make available to me the cognitive world of the shamans, who lived
in Mexico in ancient times.
Don Juan Matus's suggestion, that I gather this collection of memorable
events was made, as if it
were something casual, something, that occurred to him on the spur of
the moment. That was don
Juan's style of teaching. He veiled the importance of certain maneuvers
behind the mundane. He hid,
in this fashion, the sting of finality, presenting it as something no
different from any of the
concerns of everyday life. Don Juan revealed to me, as time went by,
that the shamans of ancient
Mexico had conceived (form in the mind) of this collection of memorable
events, as a
bona-fide device to stir caches of
energy, that exist within the self. They explained these caches, as
being
composed of energy, that
originates in the body itself and becomes displaced, pushed out of
reach by the circumstances of
our daily lives. In this sense, the collection of memorable events
was, for don Juan and the shamans of his
lineage, the means for redeploying their unused energy. The prerequisite
for this collection was the genuine and
all-consuming act of putting together the sum total of one's emotions
and realizations, without
sparing anything. According to don Juan, the shamans of his lineage
were convinced, that
the collection of memorable
events was the vehicle for the emotional and energetic adjustment,
necessary for venturing, in terms
of perception, into the Unknown. Don Juan described the total goal of
the shamanistic knowledge,
that he handled, as the preparation for facing the definitive journey:
the journey, that every human
being has to take at the end of his life. He said, that through their
discipline and resolve,
shamans were capable of retaining their individual awareness and
purpose after death. For them, the
vague, idealistic state, that modern man calls "life after death" was a
concrete region, filled to
capacity with practical affairs of a different order, than the
practical affairs of daily life, yet
bearing a similar functional practicality. Don Juan considered, that to
collect the memorable events
in their lives was, for shamans, the preparation for their entrance
into that concrete region, which
they called the Active Side of Infinity. Don Juan and I were talking
one afternoon under his
ramada, a loose structure made of thin poles of bamboo. It looked like
a roofed porch, that was
partially shaded from the Sun, but that would not provide protection at
all from the rain. There
were some small, sturdy freight boxes there, that served as benches.
Their freight brands were
faded, and appeared to be more ornament, than identification. I was
sitting on one of them. My back
was against the front wall of the house. Don Juan was sitting on
another box, leaning against
a pole, that
supported the ramada. I had just driven
in a few minutes earlier. It had been a daylong ride
in hot, humid weather. I was nervous, fidgety, and sweaty. Don Juan began
talking to me as soon, as I had comfortably
settled down on the box. With a broad smile, he
commented, that overweight people hardly ever knew how to fight
fatness.
The smile, that played
on his lips, gave me an inkling (hint), that he wasn't being
facetious (elegant). He was just pointing out to me, in a most
direct and at the same time indirect way, that I was overweight.
3-4
I became so nervous, that I tipped over the freight box, on which I was
sitting and my back banged
very hard against the thin wall of the house. The
impact shook the house to its foundations. Don Juan looked at me inquiringly,
but instead of asking me if I was all right,
he assured me, that I had not cracked the house. Then
he expansively explained to me, that his house was a temporary dwellingfor him, that he really
lived somewhere else. When I asked him, where he
really lived, he stared at me. His look was not
belligerent (aggressive); it was, rather, a firm deterrent to improper
questions. I
didn't comprehend what
he wanted. I was about to ask the same question again,
but he stopped me. "Questions
of that
sort are not asked around here," he said
firmly. "Ask anything you wish about procedures or
ideas. Whenever I'm ready to tell you, where I live, if ever, I will
tell you, without your having
to ask me." I
instantly felt rejected. My face turned red
involuntarily. I was definitely offended. Don Juan's explosion of
laughter added immensely to my chagrin. Not only had he
rejected me, he had insulted me and then laughed at
me. "I
live here
temporarily," he went on, unconcerned with my
foul mood, "because this is a magical center. In fact,
I live here because of you."
That statement
unraveled (clarified) me. I couldn't believe it. I
thought, that he was probably saying, that to ease my irritation at
being
insulted. "Do you really live here because of me?" I
finally asked him, unable to contain my
curiosity.
"Yes," he said
evenly. "I have to groom you. You are like
me. I will repeat to you now, what I have already told
you: The
quest of every nagual, or leader, in every generation of
shamans, or sorcerers, is to
find a new man or woman,
who, like himself, shows a double
energetic structure; I saw this feature in you when
we were in the bus depot in Nogales. When I See your energy, I See two
balls of
luminosity superimposed,
one on top of the other, and
that feature binds us together.
I can't refuse you any more, than you can refuse me."
His words caused a most strange agitation in me. An instant before I
had been angry, now I wanted to
weep.
He went on, saying, that he wanted to start me
off on something, shamans called the warriors' way, backed by the strength of
the area, where he lived, which was the center
of very strong emotions and
reactions. Warlike people
had lived there for thousands of years, soaking the land with their
concern with war. He lived at that
time in the state of Sonora in northern Mexico, about a hundred miles
south of the city
of Guaymas. I always went there to visit him under the
auspices (support) of conducting my
fieldwork.
"Do I need to enter
into war, don Juan?" I asked, genuinely
worried after he declared, that the concern with war
was something, that I would need someday. I had already learned to take
everything, he
said, with the utmost
seriousness.
"You bet your
boots," he replied, smiling. "When you have
absorbed all there is to be absorbed in this area,
I'll move away."
I had
no grounds to
doubt what he was saying, but I couldn't
conceive (form in the mind) of him as living anywhere else. He was
absolutely part of everything, that surrounded him.
His house, however,
seemed indeed to
be a temporary dwelling. It was a shack typical of the
Yaqui farmers; it was made out of wattle and daub
with a flat, thatched roof; it had one big room for eating and sleeping
and a roofless
kitchen.
"It's
very
difficult to deal with overweight people," he
said. It seemed to be a non sequitur (?), but it wasn't.
Don Juan was simply going back to the subject, he had introduced before
I had interrupted him, by hitting my back on the wall
of his house. "A
minute ago, you
hit my house like a demolition ball," he
said, shaking his head slowly from side to side.
"What an impact! An impact worthy of a portly (fat) man." I had the
uncomfortable feeling, that he was talking to me
from the point of view of someone, who had given up
on me. I immediately took on a defensive attitude. He listened,
smirking, to my frantic explanations,
that my
weight
was normal for my bone
structure.
5-6
"That's right," he conceded facetiously (elegantly). "You have big
bones. You could
probably carry thirty
more pounds
with great ease and noone, I assure you,
no one, would notice. I would not notice." His mocking smile
told me, that I was definitely pudgy (fat). He
asked me then about my health in general, and I went
on talking, desperately trying to get out of any further comment about
my weight. He
changed the subject himself. "What's new about
your eccentricities and aberrations (deviation from proper course)?" he
asked with a deadpan expression. I idiotically
answered, that they were okay. "Eccentricities and aberrations" was how
he labeled my
interest in being a collector. At that time, I had taken up,
with renewed zeal, something, that I had enjoyed doing
all my life: collecting anything collectible. I collected magazines,
stamps, records, World War
II paraphernalia such
as daggers, military helmets,
flags, etc.
"All I can tell
you, don Juan, about my aberrations, is that
I'm trying to sell my collections," I said with the
air of a martyr (person, who endures a great suffering),
who is being forced to do something odious (offensive, hateful).
"To be a collector
is not such a bad idea," he said, as if he
really believed it. "The crux (critical point) of
the matter is not
that you collect, but what you collect. You collect junk, worthless
objects, that imprison you
as surely, as your pet dog does. You can't just get up and
leave, if you have your pet to look after, or if you have to worry
about
what would happen to your collections, if you were
not around."
"I'm seriously
looking for buyers, don Juan, believe me," I
protested.
"No, no, no, don't
feel, that I'm accusing you of anything,"
he retorted. "In fact, I like your collector's
spirit. I just don't like your collections, that's all. I would like,
though, to engage your collector's
eye. I
would like to propose to you a worthwhile
collection." Don Juan paused for a long moment. He
seemed to be in search of words; or perhaps it was only a dramatic, well-placed
hesitation. He looked at me with a deep,
penetrating stare. "Every warrior, as a matter of duty, collects a
special album," don Juan went on, "an album, that reveals the warrior's personality, an album,
that
attests (affirm to be true) to the circumstances of his
life."
"Why do you call
this a collection, don Juan?" I asked in an
argumentative tone. "Or an album, for that
matter?"
"Because it is
both," he retorted. "But above all, it is
like an album of pictures made out of memories,
pictures, made out of the recollection of memorable events."
"Are those
memorable events memorable in some specific way?"
I asked.
"They are
memorable, because they have a special
significance in one's life," he said. "My proposal is, that you
assemble this album, by putting in it the complete account
of various events, that have had profound significance
for you."
"Every event in my
life has had profound significance for
me, don Juan!" I said forcefully, and felt instantly
the impact of my own pomposity.
"Not really," he
replied, smiling, apparently enjoying my
reactions immensely. "Not every event in your life
has had profound significance for you. There are a few, however, that I
would consider
likely to have changed things for you, to have
illuminated your path. Ordinarily, events, that change our path, are
impersonal affairs, and yet are extremely
personal."
"I'm not trying to
be difficult, don Juan, but believe me,
everything, that has happened to me, meets those
qualifications," I said, knowing, that I was lying.
Immediately after voicing
this statement, I wanted to apologize, but don
Juan didn't pay attention to me. It was, as if I
hadn't said a thing.
"Don't think about
this album in
terms of banalities, or in
terms of a trivial rehashing of your life experiences," he said. I
took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and tried to quiet my mind. I was
talking to myself
frantically about my insoluble problem: I most
certainly didn't like to visit don Juan at all. In his presence, I felt
threatened. He verbally accosted (accused) me and didn't
leave me any room
whatsoever to show my worth.
7-8
I detested losing face every time I opened my mouth;
I detested being the fool. But there was another
voice inside me, a voice, that came from a greater depth, more distant,
almost
faint.
In the midst of my barrages (bombardment) of known dialogue, I heard
myself
saying, that it was too late for me to turn back. But
it wasn't really my voice or my thoughts, that I was experiencing; it
was, rather, like an
unknown voice, that said
I was too far gone into don
Juan's world, and that I needed him more, than I needed air. "Say whatever you
wish," the voice seemed to say to me, "but
if you were not the egomaniac, that you are, you
wouldn't be so chagrined."
"That's the voice
of your other mind," don Juan said, just
as if he had been listening to or reading my
thoughts. My body jumped involuntarily. My fright was
so intense, that tears came to my eyes. I confessed to don Juan the whole nature
of my turmoil. "Your
conflict is a
very natural one," he said. "And believe me, I don't exacerbate
(irritate) it that much. I'm not the
type. I have some stories to tell you about what my teacher, the nagual
Julian, used to do
to me. I detested him with my entire being. I was very young,
and I saw how women adored him, gave themselves to him like
anything, and when I tried to say hello to them,
they would turn against me like lionesses, ready to
bite my head off. They hated my guts and loved him. How do you think I
felt?"
"How did you
resolve this conflict, don Juan?" I asked with
more, than genuine interest.
"I didn't resolve
anything," he declared. "It, the conflict
or whatever, was the result of the battle between my
two Minds. Everyone of us, human beings, has two Minds. One is totally
ours, and it is like a
faint voice, that always
brings us order, directness,
purpose. The other mind is a Foreign
Installation. It brings
us conflict,
self-assertion (evaluation), doubts,
hopelessness."
My fixation on my
own mental concatenations (connection in chains) was so intense,
that I completely missed, what don Juan had
said. I could clearly remember every one of his words, but
they had no meaning for me. Don Juan very calmly, and looking directly into my
eyes, repeated what he had just said. I was
still incapable of grasping, what he meant. I couldn't
focus my attention on his words. "For some strange
reason, don Juan, I can't concentrate on
what you're telling me," I said.
"I understand
perfectly, why you can't," he said, smiling
expansively, "and so will you, someday, at the same
time, that you resolve the conflict of whether you like me or not, the
day you cease to be the
'me-me' - center of the world. In the meantime," he continued, "let's
put
the topic of our two Minds
aside and go back to the idea of preparing your album
of memorable events. I should add, that such an album is an exercise in
discipline
and
impartiality. Consider this album to be an act of
war."
Don Juan's
assertion
(evaluation),
that my conflict of both,
liking and
not liking to see him, was going to end whenever I
abandoned my egocentrism, was no solution for me. In fact, that
assertion (evaluation)
made
me angrier;
it frustrated me all the more. And when I
heard don Juan speak of the album as an act of war, I
lashed out at him with all my poison. "The idea, that
this is a collection of events, is already
hard to understand," I said in a tone of protest. "But that on top of
all this, you call it an album and say, that such an
album is an act of war is too much for me. It's too
obscure. Being obscure makes the metaphor lose its meaning."
"How strange! It's
the opposite for me," don Juan replied
calmly. "Such an album, being an act of war, has all
the meaning in the world for me. I wouldn't like my album of memorable
events to be
anything,
but an act of war." I
wanted to argue
my point further and explain to him, that
I did understand the idea of an album of memorable
events. I objected to the perplexing (confusing) way he was describing
it. I
thought of myself in those days, as an advocate of
clarity and functionalism in the use
of language.
9-10
Don
Juan didn't
comment on my belligerent (aggressive) mood. He only shook his head as
if he were
fully agreeing with
me. After a while, I either completely ran out of energy, or I got a
gigantic surge
of it. All of a sudden, without any effort on my
part, I realized the futility of my outbursts. I felt embarrassed no
end.
"What possesses me
to act the way I do?" I asked don Juan in
earnest. I was, at that instant, utterly baffled. I
was so shaken by my realization, that without any volition on my part,
I began to
weep.
"Don't worry about
stupid details," don Juan said
reassuringly. "Every one of us, male and female, is like this."
"Do you mean, don
Juan, that we are naturally petty and
contradictory?"
"No, we are not
naturally petty and contradictory," he
replied. "Our pettiness and contradictions are, rather, the result of a
transcendental (mystical)
conflict, that
afflicts
every one
of us, but of which only Sorcerers are painfully and
hopelessly aware: the conflict of our two Minds." Don
Juan peered at me; his eyes were like two black charcoals.
"You've been telling me on and on about our two Minds," I said, "but my
brain can't register what
you are saying. Why?"
"You'll get to know
why in due time," he said. "For the
present, it will be sufficient, that I repeat to you,
what I have said before about our two Minds. One is our true Mind, the
product of all our
lifeexperiences,
the one, that rarely speaks, because
it has been defeated and relegated to obscurity. The other, the Mind we
use daily for everything we do, is
a Foreign Installation."
"I think, that the
crux (critical
point) of the
matter is, that the
concept
of the Mind, being a Foreign
Installation, is so outlandish, that my Mind
refuses to take it seriously," I
said, feeling, that I had made a real discovery. Don Juan did not
comment on what I had said. He continued
explaining the issue of the two Minds, as if I hadn't
said a word.
"To resolve the
conflict of the two Minds is a matter of Intending
it," he said.
"Sorcerers beckon (signal, summon,
attract) Intent
by voicing the word Intent
loud
and clear. Intent
is a Force,
that exists in the Universe. When
Sorcerers beckon Intent,
it comes to them and sets up the path for attainment (accomplishment,
acquisition), which means, that Sorcerers always accomplish, what they
set out to do."
"Do you mean, don
Juan, that Sorcerers get anything they
want, even if it is something petty and arbitrary (random)?" I
asked.
"No, I didn't mean
that. Intent can
be called, of course, for anything," he replied, "but sorcerers
have found out, the hard way, that Intent
comes to them only for something, that is abstract. That's the
safety valve for Sorcerers; otherwise they would be
unbearable. In your case, beckoning Intent
to resolve
the conflict of your two Minds, or to hear the voice
of your true Mind, is not a petty or arbitrary matter. Quite the
contrary; it is ethereal and abstract, and yet as vital to you,
as anything can be." Don
Juan paused for
a moment; then he began to talk again
about the album. "My
own album,
being an act of war, demanded a super-careful
selection,"
he said. "It is now a precise collection
of the unforgetable moments of my life, and everything, that led me to
them. I have concentrated
in it, what has been and will be meaningful to
me. In my opinion, a warrior's album is something
most concrete, something so to the point, that it is shattering."
I had no clue as to, what don Juan wanted, and yet I did understand him
to perfection. He advised
me to sit down, alone, and let my thoughts, memories,
and ideas come to me freely. He recommended, that I
make an effort to let the voice, from the depths of me, speak out and
tell me, what to select. Don
Juan told me then to go inside the house and lie down
on a bed, that I had there. It was made of wooden boxes and dozens of
empty burlap (woven cloth of fibres of jute) sacks, that served as a
mattress. My
whole body ached, and when I lay on the bed, it was
actually extremely comfortable. I took his
suggestions to heart and began to think about my past, looking for
events, that had left a mark
on me. I soon
realized, that my assertion (evaluation), that every
event in my life had been meaningful, was nonsense.
11-12
As
I pressed myself to recollect, I found, that I didn't
even know, where to start. Through my mind ran endless disassociated
thoughts and memories
of events, that had happened to me, but I couldn't
decide whether or not they had had any meaning for
me. The impression I got was, that nothing had had any significance
whatsoever. It looked, as
if I had gone through
life like a corpse, empowered to
walk and talk, but not to feel anything. Having no
concentration whatsoever to pursue the subject beyond a shallow
attempt, I gave up and fell
asleep.
"Did you have any
success?" don Juan asked me, when I woke up
hours later.
Instead of being at ease after sleeping and resting, I was
again moody and belligerent.
"No, I didn't have
any success!" I barked.
"Did you hear that
voice from the depths of you?" he
asked.
"I think I did," I
lied.
"What did it say to
you?" he inquired in an urgent
tone.
"I can't think of
it, don Juan," I
muttered.
"Ah, you are back
in your daily mind," he said and patted me
forcefully on the back. "Your daily mind has taken
over again. Let's relax it by talking about your collection of
memorable events. I should
tell you, that the selection, of what to put in your
album, is not an easy matter. This is the reason I say, that making
this
album, is an act of war. You have to remake yourself ten
times over, in order to know what to
select."
I clearly
understood then, if only for a second, that I had
two minds; however, the thought was so vague, that I
lost it instantly. What remained was just the sensation of an
incapacity to fulfill don Juan's
requirement. Instead of graciously accepting my
incapacity, though, I allowed it to become a threatening affair. The
driving force of my life, in those days, was to
appear always in a good light. To be incompetent was
the equivalent of being a loser, something, that was thoroughly
intolerable to me.
Since I didn't know how to respond to the challenge,
don Juan was
posing, I did the only thing I knew how to do: I got
angry. "I've
got to think
a great deal more about this, don Juan,"
I said. "I've got to give my mind some time to settle
on the idea."
"Of course, of
course," don Juan assured me. "Take all the
time in the world, but hurry." Nothing else was
said about the subject at that time. At
home, I forgot about it completely, until one day
when, quite abruptly, in the middle of a lecture I was attending, the
imperious command to
search for the memorable events of my life hit me
like a bodily jolt, a nervous spasm, that shook my entire body from
head to toe.
I began to work in
earnest. It took me months to rehash experiences in my life, that I
believed were meaningful
to me. However, upon examining my collection, I
realized, that I was dealing only with ideas, that had
no substance whatsoever.
The events, I remembered, were just vague points
of
reference,
that I remembered abstractly. Once again,
I had the most unsettling suspicion, that I had been reared just to act without ever
stopping to feel anything. One of
the vaguest events I recalled, which I wanted to make memorable at any
cost, was the day
I
found
out, I had been admitted to graduate school at
UCLA. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember what I had been
doing that day. There was nothing
interesting or unique about that day, except for the
idea, that it had to be memorable. Entering graduate school should have
made me happy or
proud of myself, but it didn't.
Another sample in
my collection was the day I almost got
married to Kay Condor. Her last name wasn't really
Condor, but she had changed it, because she wanted to be an actress.
Her
ticket to fame
was, that she actually looked like Carole Lombard. That day
was memorable in my mind, not so much, because of the
events, that took place, but because she was beautiful and wanted to
marry me. She
was a
head taller, than I was, which made her all the
more interesting to me. I
was thrilled with the
idea of
marrying a tall woman, in a
church ceremony. I rented a gray tuxedo.
13-14
The
pants
were quite wide for my height. They were not
bell-bottoms; they were just wide, and that bothered me no end. Another
thing, that annoyed me immensely was, that the sleeves of the
pink shirt, I had bought for the occasion, were about
three inches too long; I had to use rubber bands to hold them up.
Outside of that, everything
was perfect, until the moment, when the guests and
I found out, that Kay Condor had gotten cold feet and
wasn't going to show up. Being a very proper young
lady, she had sent me a note of apology by motorcycle messenger. She wrote, that she didn't
believe in divorce, and couldn't commit herself
for the rest of her days to someone, who
didn't
quite share her views on life. She reminded me, that I snickered every
time I said the
name "Condor," something, that showed a total lack of
respect for her person. She said, that she had discussed the matter with
her mother. Both of them loved me
dearly, but not enough to make me part of
their
family. She added that, bravely and wisely, we all had to cut our
losses. My state of mind was one of total numbness. When I tried to
recollect
that day, I couldn't remember whether I felt horribly
humiliated at being left standing in front of a lot of people in my
gray, rented tuxedo
with the wide-legged pants, or whether I was crushed,
because Kay Condor didn't marry me. These were the only two
events I was capable of isolating
with clarity. They were meager (scanty, deficient in quantity)
examples, but
after
rehashing them, I had succeeded in re-dressing them as tales of
philosophical acceptance. I thought of myself as a
being, who goes through life with no
real feelings, who has only intellectual views of
everything. Taking don Juan's metaphors as models, I even constructed
one of my own: a
being, who lives his life vicariously (acting in place of someone or
something), in terms of what it
should be. I believed, for instance, that the day, I
was admitted to graduate school at UCLA, should have been a memorable
day. Since it wasn't, I tried my best to imbue (inspire, saturate) it
with an
importance, I was far from feeling. A similar thing
happened with the day I nearly married Kay Condor. It should have been
a devastating day
for me, but it wasn't. At the moment of recollecting it,
I knew, that there was nothing there, and began to
work as hard, as I could, to construct what I should have felt. The next time, I
went to don Juan's house, I presented to him
my two samples of memorable events as soon, as I
arrived.
"This is a pile of
nonsense," he declared. "None of it will
do. The stories are related exclusively to you as a
person, who thinks, feels, cries, or doesn't feel anything at all. The
memorable events of
a shaman's
album are affairs, that will stand the test
of time, because they have nothing to do with him, and
yet he is in the thick of them. He'll always be in the thick of them,
for the duration of his life,
and perhaps beyond, but not quite
personally."
His words left me
feeling dejected, totally
defeated. I sincerely
believed in those days, that don
Juan was
an
intransigent (uncompromising) old man, who found special delight in
making me feel
stupid.
He reminded me of
a master craftsman, I had met at a sculptor's foundry,
where I worked while going to art school. The master
artisan used to criticize and find flaws with everything his advanced
apprentices did, and would
demand, that they
correct their work according to his
recommendations. His apprentices would turn
around and pretend to
correct their work. I remembered the glee of the master, when he would
say, upon being presented with the same work: "Now you have a real
thing!"
"Don't feel bad,"
don Juan said, shaking me out of my
recollection. "In my time, I was in the same spot. For
years, not only did I not know, what to choose, I thought,
I had no
experiences to choose from.
It seemed, that
nothing had ever happened to me. Of
course, everything had happened to me, but in my
effort to defend the idea of myself, I had no time or inclination to
notice
anything."
"Can you tell me,
don Juan, specifically, what is wrong with
my stories? I know, that they are nothing, but the
rest of my life is just like that."
"I will repeat this
to you," he said. "The stories of a
warrior's album are not personal.
15-16
Your story of the day, you were admitted to
school, is nothing, but your assertion (evaluation) about you, as the center of
everything. You feel, you don't
feel; you realize, you don't realize. Do you see, what
I mean? All of the story is just you."
"But how can it be
otherwise, don Juan?" I
asked.
"In your other
story, you almost touch, on what I want, but
you turn it again into something extremely personal.
I know, that you could add more details, but all those details would be
an extension of your person
and nothing else."
"I sincerely cannot
see your point, don Juan," I protested.
"Every story, seen through the eyes of the witness, has
to be, perforce (by necessity, willy-nilly), personal."
"Yes, yes, of
course," he said, smiling, delighted, as usual,
by my confusion. "But then they are not stories for a
warrior's album. They are stories for other purposes. The memorable
events, we are after, have
the dark touch of the
impersonal. That touch permeates them. I don't know how else
to explain this."
I believed then,
that I had a moment of inspiration and,
that I understood, what he meant by the dark touch of
the impersonal. I thought, that he meant something a bit morbid.
Darkness meant that for me. And I related to him a
story from my
childhood. One
of my older cousins was in medical school. He was an
intern, and one day he took me to the morgue. He
assured me, that a young man owed it to himself, to see dead people,
because that sight was very
educational; it
demonstrated the transitoriness of
life. He harangued (pompous speech) me, on and on, in order to convince
me to go. The
more he talked about how unimportant we were in
death, the more curious I
became. I had never seen a
corpse. My curiosity, in the end, to see one, overwhelmed me and I went with him. He showed me
various corpses and succeeded in scaring me stiff. I found nothing
educational
or illuminating
about them. They were, outright, the
most frightening things, I had ever seen.
As he talked
to me, he kept looking at
his watch, as if he were waiting
for someone, who was going to show up at any moment.
He obviously wanted to keep me in the morgue longer, than my strength
permitted.
Being the
competitive creature, that I was, I
believed, that he was testing my endurance, my manhood. I clenched my teeth and made
up my mind to stay, until the bitter
end. The bitter end came in ways, that I had not
dreamed of. A corpse, that was covered with a sheet, actually moved up with a rattle on
the marble table, where all the corpses were
lying, as if it were getting ready to sit up. It made
a burping sound, that was so awful, it burned through me and will
remain in my memory
for the rest of my life.
My cousin, the doctor, the scientist,
explained, that it was the corpse of a man, who had
died of tuberculosis, and, that his lungs had been eaten away by
bacilli, that had left enormous
holes filled with
air, and, that in cases like
this, when the air changed temperature, it sometimes forced the body
to sit up or at least
convulse.
"No, you haven't
gotten it yet," don Juan said, shaking his
head from side to side. "It is merely a story about
your fear. I would have been scared to death myself; however, being
scared like that, doesn't illuminate
anyone's path.
But I'm curious to know, what
happened to you."
"I
yelled like a
banshee (wailing female spirit)," I said. "My cousin called me a
coward, a yellow-belly, for hiding my face against
his chest and for getting sick to my stomach all over him." I had definitely
hooked on to a morbid strand in my life. I
came up with another story about a sixteen-year- old
boy, I knew in high school, who had a glandular disease and grew to a
gigantic height.
His heart
did not grow at the same rate, as the rest of
his body, and one day he died of heart failure. I went with another boy
to the mortuary out of morbid curiosity. The mortician,
who was perhaps more morbid, than the two of us,
opened the back door and let us in. He showed us his masterpiece.
He
had put the gigantic boy, who had been over seven feet, seven inches
tall,
into a coffin for a normal person, by sawing off his
legs.
He showed us how he had arranged his legs, as if the dead boy
were
holding them
with his arms like two trophies.
17-18
The fright, I experienced, was comparable to the fright, I had
experienced in the morgue as a child, but this new
fright was not a physical reaction; it was a reaction of psychological
revulsion.
"You're
almost
there," don Juan said. "However, your story
is still too personal. It's revolting. It makes me
sick, but I see great potential." Don Juan and I
laughed at the horror, found in situations of
everyday life. By then I was hopelessly lost in the
morbid strands, I had caught and released. I told him then the story of
my best friend, Roy Goldpiss.
He actually had a
Polish surname, but his friends
called him Goldpiss, because whatever he touched, he
turned to gold; he was a great businessman. His
talent for business made him a super-ambitious being. He wanted to be
the richest man in
the
world.
However, he found, that the competition was
too tough. According to him, doing business alone, he
couldn't possibly compete, for instance, with the head of an Islamic
sect, who, at that time, got
paid his weight in gold every year. The head of the
sect would fatten himself as much, as his body allowed him, before he
was weighed. Then my friend Roy lowered his sights to being the richest
man in the
United States. The competition in this sector was
ferocious. He went down a notch. Perhaps he could be the richest man in
California.
He was too late for that, too. He gave up hope that, with
his chains of pizza and ice cream parlors, he could
ever rise in the business world to compete with the established
families, who owned
California. He settled for being the richest man in
Woodland Hills, the suburb of Los Angeles, where he lived.
Unfortunately for him, down the street from his house lived Mr. Marsh,
who owned factories, that
produced
A-one quality
mattresses all over the United States, and he was rich beyond belief.
Roy's frustration knew no limits. His drive to accomplish was so
intense, that
it finally impaired his health. One day he died from
an aneurysm in his brain. His death brought, as a
consequence, my third visit to a morgue or a mortuary. Roy's wife
begged me, as his best friend, to make sure, that the corpse was
properly dressed.
I went to the funeral parlor, where I was led by a
male secretary to the inner chambers. At the precise moment I arrived,
the
mortician, working on a high marble-topped table, was
forcefully pushing up the corners of the upper lip of
the corpse, which had already entered rigor (attack of shivering)
mortis (cavity), with the index and
little finger of his
right hand, while he held his middle finger against
his palm. As a grotesque smile appeared on Roy's dead face, the
mortician half-turned to me and said in a servile (submissive) tone: "I
hope all this is to your satisfaction, sir."
Roy's
wife, it will never be
known, whether she liked him or
not, decided to bury him with all the garishness, that,
in her opinion, his life deserved. She had bought a very expensive
coffin, a custom made affair,
that looked like a telephone booth; she had gotten
the idea from a movie.
Roy was going to be buried
sitting, as if he were making a business call on the telephone. I
didn't stay for the ceremony. I left in the midst of a most violent
reaction, a mixture of impotence and anger, the kind
of anger, that couldn't be vented on anyone.
"You certainly are
morbid today," don Juan commented,
laughing. "But in spite of that, or perhaps, because of
that, you're almost there. You're touching it." I never ceased to
marvel at the way, in which my mood
changed, every time I went to see don Juan. I always
arrived moody, grouchy, filled with self-assertions (positive
declaration, evaluation) and doubts. After a
while, my mood would
mysteriously change and I
would become more expansive, by
degrees, until I was as calm, as I had ever been.
However, my new mood was couched in my old vocabulary. My usual way of
talking
was, that
of a totally dissatisfied person, who is
containing himself from complaining out loud, but whose endless
complaints are implied (hint, suggest) at every turn of the
conversation.
"Can you give me an
example of a memorable event from your
album, don Juan?" I asked in my habitual tone of
veiled complaint. "If I knew the pattern, you were after, I might be
able to come up with
something. As it is, I am whistling hopelessly in the
dark."
19-20
"Don't
explain
yourself so much," don Juan said with a stern
look in his eyes. "Sorcerers say, that in every
explanation there is a hidden apology. So, when you are explaining, why
you cannot do this or that,
you're really
apologizing for your shortcomings,
hoping, that, whoever is listening to you, will have the kindness to
understand them."
My most useful
maneuver, when I was attacked, had always
been to turn my attackers off by not listening to
them. Don Juan, however, had the disgusting ability to trap every bit
of my attention. No matter
how he attacked me,
no matter what he said, he always
managed to have me riveted to his every word. On this
occasion, what he was saying about me, didn't please me at all, because
it was the naked
truth. I
avoided his eyes. I felt, as usual, defeated, but it was a peculiar
defeat this time. It didn't
bother me, as it would have, if it had happened in the World of
Everyday Life, or right after I had arrived at his house.
After a very long silence, don Juan spoke to me again.
"I'll do better, than give you an example of a memorable event from my
album," he said. "I'll give you a memorable
event from your own life, one, that should go for
sure in your collection. Or, I should say, if I were you, I would
certainly put it in
my
collection of
memorable events."
I thought don Juan
was joking and I laughed
stupidly. "This is not a laughing matter," he said cuttingly. "I
am serious. You once told me a story, that fits the bill."
"What story
is that, don
Juan?"
"The story of
'figures in front of a mirror,'" he said.
"Tell me that story again. But tell it to me in all the detail you can
remember."
I began to retell
the story in a cursory (hasty, superficial) fashion. He stopped
me and demanded a careful, detailed narration,
starting at the beginning. I tried again, but my rendition (пересказ)
didn't
satisfy him. "Let's
go for a
walk," he proposed. "When you walk, you are
much more accurate, than when you're sitting down. It
is not an idle idea, that you should pace back and forth, when you try
to
relate something."
We had been
sitting, as we usually did during the day, under
the house ramada. I had developed a pattern: whenever
I sat there, I always did it on the same spot, with my back against the
wall. Don Juan
sat in various places under the ramada, but never on
the same spot.
We
went for a hike at the worst time of
the day, noon. He outfitted me with an old straw hat, as he always did,
whenever we went out in the heat of the Sun.
We walked for a
long time in complete silence.
I tried to the best of
my ability to force myself to remember all the details of the story. It
was mid afternoon, when we sat down under the shade of some tall
bushes,
and
I retold the full story.
Years
before, while I was
studying sculpture in a fine arts school in Italy, I had a close
friend, a Scotsman, who was studying art, in order to become an art
critic. What
stood out most vividly in my mind about him, and had
to do with the story, I was telling don Juan, was the bombastic idea he
had of himself; he thought, he was the most licentious (lacking moral
discipline), lusty,
all-around
scholar and craftsman, a man of the Renaissance.
Licentious he was, but lustiness (похоть) was something in complete
contradiction to his
bony, dry,
serious person. He was a vicarious (acting in place of someone)
follower
of the English philosopher Bertrand Russell and dreamed of applying the
principles of logical positivism to art
criticism. To be an all-around scholar and craftsman
was perhaps his wildest fantasy, because he was a procrastinator
(puting off doing something until future time); work
was his nemesis (retrebutive justice). His
dubious specialty wasn't art criticism, but his personal
knowledge of all the prostitutes of the local bordellos, of which there
were plenty. The colorful and lengthy accounts
he used to give me, in order to keep me, according to
him, up to date, about all the marvelous things he did in the world of
his specialty, were
delightful. It was not surprising to me, therefore,
that one day he came to my apartment, all excited,
nearly out of breath, and told me, that something extraordinary had
happened to him
and,
that he wanted to share it with
me.
21-22
"I
say, old man,
you must see this for yourself!" he said
excitedly in the Oxford accent, he affected every time
he talked to me. He paced the room nervously. "It's hard to describe,
but I know
it's
something you will appreciate. Something, the
impression, of which will last you for a lifetime. I am going to give
you a marvelous gift for life. Do you
understand?"
I understood, that
he was a hysterical Scotsman. It was
always my pleasure to humor him and tag along. I had
never regretted it.
"Calm down, calm down, Eddie," I said. "What are you trying to tell
me?”
He related to me,
that he had been in a bordello, where he
had found an unbelievable woman, who did an incredible
thing she called "figures in front of a mirror." He assured me
repeatedly, almost stuttering,
that I owed it
to myself to experience this
unbelievable event personally.
"I say, don't worry
about money!" he said, since he knew, I
didn't have any. "I've already paid the price. All
you have to do is go with me. Madame Ludmilla will show you her
'figures in front of a
mirror.' It's a blast!"
In a fit of
uncontrollable glee, Eddie laughed uproariously,
oblivious to his bad teeth, which he normally hid
behind a tight-lipped smile or laugh. "I say, it's absolutely great!"
My curiosity
mounted by the
minute. I was more, than willing
to participate in his new delight. Eddie drove me to
the outskirts of the city. We stopped in front of a dusty, badly kept
building; the paint
was peeling off the walls. It had the air of having
been a hotel at one time, a hotel, that had been turned into an
apartment building. I could see the remnants of a hotel sign, that
seemed to have been ripped to pieces. On the front of
the building there were rows of dirty single balconies filled with
flower pots or draped
with carpets, put out to dry. At the entrance to the building were two
dark, shady-looking men, wearing
pointed black shoes, that seemed too tight on their
feet; they greeted Eddie effusively. They had black, shifty, menacing
eyes. Both of them were wearing shiny light-blue suits, also too tight
for
their bulky bodies. One of them opened the door for
Eddie. They didn't even look at me. We went up two
flights of stairs on a dilapidated staircase, that at one time must
have been luxurious. Eddie
led the way and walked the length of an empty,
hotel like corridor with doors on both sides. All the
doors were painted in the same drab, dark, olive green. Every door had
a brass number,
tarnished with age, barely visible against the
painted wood. Eddie stopped in front of a door. I
noticed the number 112 on it. He rapped repeatedly. The door opened,
and a round, short woman with bleached-blonde hair beckoned us
in without saying a word. She
was wearing a
red silk robe with feathery, flouncy (strip of gathered material)
sleeves and red slippers with furry balls on top. Once we were inside a
small hall and she had closed the door behind us,
she greeted Eddie in terribly accented English. "Hallo, Eddie. You
brought friend, eh?" Eddie shook
her hand, and then kissed it, gallantly. He acted, as if he were most
calm, yet I noticed his unconscious
gestures of
being ill at ease.
"How are you today,
Madame Ludmilla?" he said, trying to
sound like an American and flubbing it. I never
discovered why Eddie always wanted to sound like an American, whenever
he was
transacting
business in those houses of ill
repute. I had the suspicion, that he did it, because Americans were
known to be
wealthy, and he wanted to establish his rich man's bona fides with
them. Eddie turned to me and said in his phony
American accent, "I leave you in good hands, kiddo."
He sounded so awful, so foreign to my ears, that I laughed out loud.
Madame Ludmilla didn't
seem perturbed
at all by my explosion of mirth. Eddie
kissed Madame Ludmilla's hand again and left.
"You speak English,
my boy?" she shouted, as if I were deaf.
"You look Eyipcian, or perhaps Torkish."
23-24
I
assured Madame
Ludmilla, that I was neither, and that I
did speak English. She asked me then, if I fancied her
"figures in front of a mirror." I didn't know what to say. I
just shook my head affirmatively.
"I give you good
show," she assured me. "Figures in front of
a mirror is only foreplay. When you are hot and
ready, tell me to stop."
From the small
hall, where we were standing, we walked into
a dark and eerie room. The windows were heavily
curtained. There were some low-voltage light bulbs on fixtures,
attached
to the wall. The bulbs
were shaped like tubes and protruded straight out at
right angles from the wall. There was a profusion of
objects around the room: pieces of furniture like: small chests of
drawers, antique tables and
chairs; a roll-top desk,
set against the wall and crammed
with papers, pencils, rulers, and at least a dozen
pairs of scissors. Madame Ludmilla made me sit down on an old stuffed
chair. "The
bed is in the
other room, darling," she said, pointing
to the other side of the room. "This is my antisala.
Here I give show to get you hot and ready." She dropped her red
robe, kicked off her slippers, and
opened the double doors of two armoires, standing side
by side against the wall. Attached to the inside of each door was a
full-length
mirror. "And
now the music,
my boy," Madame Ludmilla said, then
cranked (started) a Victrola, that appeared to be in mint (hardly used)
condition, shiny, like new. She put on a record. The music was a
haunting melody, that
reminded me of a circus march.
"And
now my show,"
she said, and
began to twirl around to
the accompaniment of the haunting melody. The skin of
Madame Ludmilla's body was tight, for the most part, and
extraordinarily white, though she was not young. She must have been in
her well-lived late
forties. Her belly sagged, not a great deal, but a
bit, and so did her voluminous breasts. The skin of her face also
sagged into noticeable jowls (flesh under lower jaw). She had a small
nose and heavily painted
red lips. She
wore thick black mascara.
She brought to mind the
prototype of an aging prostitute.
Yet there was something childlike about her, a
girlish abandon and trust, a sweetness, that jolted me.
"And now, figures
in front of a mirror," Madame Ludmilla
announced, while the music continued. "Leg, leg, leg!"
she said, kicking one leg up in the air,
and then the other, in time with the music. She had
her right hand on top of her head, like a little girl, who is not sure,
that she can perform
the movements. "Turn,
turn, turn!"
she said, turning like a
top. "Butt,
butt, butt!"
she said then, showing me her bare
behind like a cancan dancer. She repeated the
sequence over and over, until the music began to fade, when the
Victrola's spring wound
down.
I had the
feeling, that Madame Ludmilla was twirling away
into the distance, becoming smaller
and smaller, as
the music faded. Some despair and loneliness, that I didn't know
existed in me, came to the surface, from the depths of my very being,
and made me get
up and run out of the room, down the stairs like a
madman, out of the building, into the street. Eddie
was standing outside the door, talking to the two men in light-blue
shiny suits. Seeing me running
like that, he began
to laugh
uproariously. "Wasn't
it a
blast?" he said, still trying to sound like an
American. " 'Figures in front of a mirror is only the
foreplay.' What a thing! What a thing!"
The first time I
had mentioned the story to don Juan, I had
told him, that I had been deeply affected by the
haunting melody and the old prostitute, clumsily twirling to the music.
And I had been deeply affected
also by the
realization of how callous (insensitive) my friend
was. When
I had finished retelling my story to don
Juan, as we sat in the hills of a range of mountains in Sonora, I was
shaking, mysteriously affected by something quite
undefined.
25
"That story," don Juan said, "should go in your album of
memorable events. Your friend, without having any
idea, of what he was doing, gave you, as he himself said, something,
that will indeed last you
for a lifetime."
"I see this as a
sad story, don Juan, but that's all," I
declared.
"It's indeed a sad story, just like your other stories," don Juan
replied, "but what makes it different and
memorable to me is, that it touches every one of us -
human beings, not just you, like your other tales. You see, like Madame
Ludmilla, every
one of us, young and old alike, is
making figures in front of a mirror in one way or another. Tally
(reckon) what
you know about people. Think of any Human Being on this Earth, and you
will know,
without the shadow of a
doubt, that no matter, who they are,
or what they think of themselves, or what they do,
the result of their actions is always the same: senseless figures in
front of a
mirror."