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."
"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."