"What would be a resolution that is real then?" don Juan asked with a
coy smile.
"If my father would have said to himself that he could not go swimming
at six in the morning but perhaps at three in the afternoon."
"Your resolutions injure the spirit," don Juan said with an air of
great seriousness.
I thought I even detected a note of sadness in his tone. We were quiet
for a long time. My peevishness had vanished. I thought of my father.
"He didn't want to swim at three in the afternoon. Don't you see?" don
Juan said. His words made me jump.
I told him that my father was weak, and so was his world of unreal acts
that he never performed. I was almost shouting.
Don Juan did not say a word. He shook his head slowly in a rhythmical
way. I felt terribly sad. Thinking of my father always gave me a consuming
feeling.
"You think you were stronger, don't you?" he asked in a casual tone.
I said I did, and I began to tell him all the emotional turmoil that my
father had put me through, but he interrupted me.
"Was he mean to you?" he asked.
"No."
"Was he petty with you?"
"No."
"Did he do all he could for you?"
"Yes."
"Then what was wrong with him?"
Again I began to shout that he was weak, but I caught myself and
lowered my voice. I felt a bit ludicrous being cross examined by don Juan.
"What are you doing all this for?" I said. "We were supposed to be
talking about plants."
I felt more annoyed and despondent than ever. I told him that he had no
business or the remotest qualifications to pass judgment on my behavior, and
he exploded into a belly laugh.
"When you get angry you always feel righteous, don't you?" he said and
blinked like a bird.
He was right. I had the tendency to feel justified at being angry.
"Let's not talk about my father, " I said, feigning a happy mood. "Let's
talk about plants."
"No, let's talk about your father, " he insisted. "That is the place to
begin today. If you think that you were so much stronger than he, why didn't
you go swimming at six in the morning in his place?"
I told him that I could not believe he was seriously asking me that. I
had always thought that swimming at six in the morning was my father's
business and not mine.
"It was also your business from the moment you accepted his idea, " don
Juan snapped at me.
I said that I had never accepted it, that I had always known my father
was not truthful to himself. Don Juan asked me matter-of-factly why I had
not voiced my opinions at the time.
"You don't tell your father things like that, " I said as a weak
explanation.
"Why not?"
"That was not done in my house, that's all."
"You have done worse things in your house, " he declared like a judge
from the bench. "The only thing you never did was to shine your spirit."
There was such a devastating force in his words that they echoed in my
mind. He brought all my defenses down. I could not argue with him. I took
refuge in writing my notes. I tried a last feeble explanation and said that
all my life I had encountered people of my father's kind, who had, like my
father, hooked me somehow into their schemes, and as a rule I had always
been left dangling.
"You are complaining, " he said softly. "You have been complaining all
your life because you don't assume responsibility for your decisions. If you
would have assumed responsibility for your father's idea of swimming at six
in the morning, you would have swum, by yourself if necessary, or you would
have told him to go to hell the first time he opened his mouth after you
knew his devices. But you didn't say anything. Therefore, you were as weak
as your father."
"To assume the responsibility of one's decisions means that one is
ready to die for them."
"Wait, wait!" I said. "You are twisting this around." He did not let me
finish. I was going to tell him that I had used my father only as an example
of an unrealistic way of acting, and that nobody in his right mind would be
willing to die for such an idiotic thing.
"It doesn't matter what the decision is, " he said. "Nothing could be
more or less serious than anything else. Don't you see? In a world where
death is the hunter there are no small or big decisions. There are only
decisions that we make in the face of our inevitable death." I could not say
anything. Perhaps an hour went by. Don Juan was perfectly motionless on his
mat although he was not sleeping.
"Why do you tell me all this, don Juan?" I asked. "Why are you doing
this to me?"
"You came to me, " he said. "No, that was not the case, you were
brought to me. And I have had a gesture with you."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You could have had a gesture with your father by swimming for him, but
you didn't, perhaps because you were too young. I have lived longer than
you. I have nothing pending. There is no hurry in my life, therefore I can
properly have a gesture with you."
In the afternoon we went for a hike. I easily kept his pace and
marveled again at his stupendous physical prowess. He walked so nimbly and
with such sure steps that next to him I was like a child. We went in an
easterly direction. I noticed then that he did not like to talk while he
walked. If I spoke to him he would stop walking in order to answer me.
After a couple of hours we came to a hill; he sat down and signaled me
to sit by him. He announced in a mock dramatic tone that he was going to
tell me a story. He said that once upon a time there was a young man, a
destitute Indian who lived among the white men in a city. He had no home, no
relatives, no friends. He had come into the city to find his fortune and had
found only misery and pain. From time to time he made a few cents working
like a mule, barely enough for a morsel; otherwise he had to beg or steal
food. Don Juan said that one day the young man went to the market place. He
walked up and down the street in a haze, his eyes wild upon seeing all the
good things that were gathered there. He was so frantic that he did not see
where he was walking, and ended up tripping over some baskets and falling on
lap of an old man.
The old man was carrying four enormous gourds and had just sat down to
rest and eat. Don Juan smiled knowingly and said that the old man found it
quite strange that the young man had stumbled on him. He was not angry at
being disturbed but amazed at why this particular young man had fallen on
top of him. The young man, on the other hand, was angry and told him to get
out of his way. He was not concerned at all about the ultimate reason for
their meeting. He had not noticed that their paths had actually crossed.
Don Juan mimicked the motions of someone going after something that was
rolling over. He said that the old man's gourds had turned over and were
rolling down the street. When the young man saw the gourds he thought he had
found his food for the day. He helped the old man up and insisted on helping
him carry the heavy gourds. The old man told him that he was on his way to
his home in the mountains and the young man insisted on going with him, at
least part of the way.
The old man took the road to the mountains and as they hiked he gave
the young man part of the food he had bought at the market. The young man
ate to his heart's content and when he was quite satisfied he began to
notice how heavy the gourds were and clutched them tightly.
Don Juan opened his eyes and smiled with a devilish grin a said that
the young man asked, "What do you carry in these gourds?" The old man did
not answer but told him that he was going to show him a companion or friend
who could alleviate his sorrows and give him advice and wisdom about the
ways of the world.
Don Juan made a majestic gesture with both hands and said that the old
man summoned the most beautiful deer that the young man had ever seen. The
deer was so tame that it came to him and walked around him. It glittered and
shone. The young man was spellbound and knew right away that it was a
"spirit deer." The old man told him then that if he wished to have that
friend and its wisdom all he had to do was to let go of the gourds.
Don Juan's grin portrayed ambition; he said that the young man's petty
desires were pricked upon hearing such a request. Don Juan's eyes became
small and devilish as he voiced the young man's question: "What do you have
in these four enormous gourds?"
Don Juan said that the old man very serenely replied that, he was
carrying food: "pinole" and water. He stopped narrating the story and walked
around in a circle a couple of times. I did not know what he was doing. But
apparently it was part of the story. The circle seemed to portray the
deliberations of the young man. Don Juan said that, of course, the young man
had not believed a word. He calculated that if the old man, who was
obviously a wizard, was willing to give a "spirit deer" for his gourds, then
the gourds must have been filled with power beyond belief.
Don Juan contorted his face again into a devilish grin and said that
the young man declared that he wanted to have the gourds. There was a long
pause that seemed to mark the end of the story. Don Juan remained quiet, yet
I was sure he wanted me to ask about it, and I did.
"What happened to the young man?"
"He took the gourds, " he replied with a smile of satisfaction.
There was another long pause. I laughed. I thought that this had been a
real "Indian story." Don Juan's eyes were shining as he smiled at me. There
was an air of innocence about him. He began to laugh in soft spurts and
asked me, "Don't you want to know about the gourds?"
"Of course I want to know. I thought that was the end of the story."
"Oh no, " he said with a mischievous light in his eyes. "The young man
took his gourds and ran away to an isolated place and opened them."
"What did he find?" I asked.
Don Juan glanced at me and I had the feeling he was aware of my mental
gymnastics. He shook his head and chuckled.
"Well, " I urged him. "Were the gourds empty?"
"There was only food and water inside the gourds," he said.
"And the young man, in a fit of anger, smashed them against the rocks."
I said that his reaction was only natural-anyone in his position would
have done the same. Don Juan's reply was that the young man was a fool who
did not know what he was looking for. He did not know what "power" was, so
he could not tell whether or not he had found it. He had not taken
responsibility for his decision, therefore he was angered by his blunder. He
expected to gain something and got nothing instead. Don Juan speculated that
if I were the young man and if I had followed my inclinations I would have
ended up angry and remorseful, and would, no doubt, have spent the rest of
my life feeling sorry for myself for what I had lost.
Then he explained the behavior of the old man. He had cleverly fed the
young man so as to give him the "daring of a satisfied stomach, " thus the
young man upon finding only food in the gourds smashed them in a fit of
anger.
"Had he been aware of his decision and assumed responsibility for it, "
don Juan said, "he would have taken the food and would've been more than
satisfied with it. And perhaps lie might even have realized that the food
was power too."
BECOMING A HUNTER
Friday, June 23, 1961
As soon as I sat down I bombarded don Juan with questions. He did not
answer me and made an impatient gesture with his hand to be quiet. He seemed
to be in a serious mood. "I was thinking that you haven't changed at all in
the time you've been trying to learn about plants, " he said in an accusing
tone.
He began reviewing in a loud voice all the changes of personality he
had recommended I should undertake. I told him that I had considered the
matter very seriously and found that I could not possibly fulfill them
because each of them ran contrary to my core. He replied that to merely
consider them was not enough, and that whatever he had said to me was not
said just for fun. I again insisted that, although I had done very little in
matters of adjusting my personal life to his ideas, I really wanted to learn
the uses of plants.
After a long, uneasy silence I boldly asked him, "Would you teach me
about peyote, don Juan?"
He said that my intentions alone were not enough, and that to know
about peyote-he called it "Mescalito" for the first time-was a serious
matter. It seemed that there was nothing else to say.
In the early evening, however, he set up a test for me; he put forth a
problem without giving me any clues to its solution: to find a beneficial
place or spot in the area right in front of his door where we always sat to
talk, a spot where I could allegedly feel perfectly happy and invigorated.
During the course of the night, while I attempted to find the "spot" by
rolling on the ground, I twice detected a change of coloration on the
uniformly dark dirt floor of the designated area.
The problem exhausted me and I fell asleep on one of the places where I
had detected the change in color. In the morning don Juan woke me up and
announced that I had had a very successful experience. Not only had I found
the beneficial spot I was looking for, but I had also found its opposite, an
enemy or negative spot and the colors associated with both.
Saturday, June 24, 1961
We went into the desert chaparral in the early morning. As we walked,
don Juan explained to me that finding a "beneficial" or an "enemy" spot was
an important need for a man in the wilderness. I wanted to steer the
conversation to the topic of peyote, but he flatly refused to talk about it.
He warned me that there should be no mention of it, unless he himself
brought up the subject.
We sat down to rest in the shade of some tall bushes in an area of
thick vegetation. The desert chaparral around us was not quite dry yet; it
was a warm day and the flies kept on pestering me but they did not seem to
bother don Juan. I wondered whether he was just ignoring them but then I
noticed they were not landing on his face at all.
"Sometimes it is necessary to find a beneficial spot quickly, out in
the open, " don Juan went on. "Or maybe it is necessary to determine quickly
whether or not the spot where one is about to rest is a bad one. One time,
we sat to rest by some hill and you got very angry and upset. That spot was
your enemy. A little crow gave you a warning, remember?"
I remembered that he had made a point of telling me to avoid that area
in the future. I also remembered that I had become angry because he had not
let me laugh. "I thought that the crow that flew overhead was an omen for me
alone, " he said. "I would never have suspected that the crows were friendly
towards you too."
"What are you talking about?"
"The crow was an omen, " he went on. "If you knew about crows you would
have avoided the place like the plague. Crows are not always available to
give warning though, and you must learn to find, by yourself, a proper place
to camp or to rest."
After a long pause don Juan suddenly turned to me and said that in
order to find the proper place to rest all I had to do was to cross my eyes.
He gave me a knowing look and in a confidential tone told me that I had done
precisely that when I was rolling on his porch, and thus I had been capable
of finding two spots and their colors. He let me know that he was impressed
by my accomplishment.
"I really don't know what I did, " I said.
"You crossed your eyes, " he said emphatically. "That's the technique;
you must have done that, although you don't remember it."
Don Juan then described the technique, which he said took years to
perfect, and which consisted of gradually forcing the eyes to see separately
the same image. The lack of image conversion entailed a double perception of
the world; this double perception, according to don Juan, allowed one the
opportunity of judging changes in the surroundings, which the eyes were
ordinarily incapable of perceiving.
Don Juan coaxed me to try it. He assured me that it was not injurious
to the sight. He said that I should begin by looking in short glances,
almost with the corners of my eyes. He pointed to a large bush and showed me
how. I had a strange feeling, seeing don Juan's eyes taking incredibly fast
glances at the bush. His eyes reminded me of those of a shifty animal that
cannot look straight.
We walked for perhaps an hour while I tried not to focus my sight on
anything. Then don Juan asked me to start separating the images perceived by
each of my eyes. After another hour or so I got a terrible headache and had
to stop.
"Do you think you could find, by yourself, a proper place for us to
rest?" he asked.
I had no idea what the criterion for a "proper place" was. He patiently
explained that looking in short glances allowed the eyes to pick out unusual
sights. "Such as what?" I asked.
"They are not sights proper, " he said. "They are more like feelings.
If you look at a bush or a tree or a rock where you may like to rest, your
eyes can make you feel whether or not that's the best resting place."
I again urged him to describe what those feelings were but he either
could not describe them or he simply did not want to. He said that I should
practice by picking out a place and then he would tell me whether or not my
eyes were working.
At one moment I caught sight of what I thought was a pebble which
reflected light. I could not see it if I focused my eyes on it, but if I
swept the area with fast glances I could detect a sort of faint glitter. I
pointed out the place to don Juan.
It was in the middle of an open unshaded flat area devoid of thick
bushes. He laughed uproariously and then asked me why I had picked that
specific spot. I explained that I was seeing a glitter.
"I don't care what you see, " he said. "You could be seeing an
elephant. How you feel is the important issue."
I did not feel anything at all. He gave me a mysterious look and said
that he wished he could oblige me and sit down to rest with me there, but he
was going to sit somewhere else while I tested my choice.
I sat down while he looked at me curiously from a distance of thirty or
forty feet away. After a few minutes he began to laugh loudly. Somehow his
laughter made me nervous. It put me on edge. I felt he was making fun of me
and I got angry. I began to question my motives for being there. There was
definitely something wrong in the way my total endeavor with don Juan was
proceeding. I felt that I was just a pawn in his clutches.
Suddenly don Juan charged at me, at full speed, and pulled me by the
arm, dragging me bodily for ten or twelve feet. He helped me to stand up and
wiped some perspiration from his forehead. I noticed then that he had
exerted himself to his limit. He patted me on the back and said that I had
picked the wrong place and that he had had to rescue me in a real hurry,
because he saw that the spot where I was sitting was about to take over my
entire feelings. I laughed. The image of don Juan charging at me was very
funny. He had actually run like a young man. His feet moved as if he were
grabbing the soft reddish dirt of the desert in order to catapult himself
over me.
I had seen him laughing at me and then in a matter of seconds he was
dragging me by the arm.
After a while he urged me to continue looking for a proper place to
rest. We kept on walking but I did not detect or "feel" anything at all.
Perhaps if I had been more relaxed I would have noticed or felt something. I
had ceased, however, to be angry with him. Finally he pointed to some rocks
and we came to a halt. "Don't feel disappointed, " don Juan said. "It takes
a long time to train the eyes properly."
I did not say anything. I was not going to be disappointed about
something I did not understand at all. Yet, I had to admit that three times
already since I had begun to visit don Juan I had become very angry and had
been agitated to the point of being nearly ill while sitting on places that
he called bad.
"The trick is to feel with your eyes, " he said. "Your problem now is
that you don't know what to feel. It'll come to you, though, with practice."
"Perhaps you should tell me, don Juan, what I am supposed to feel."
"That's impossible."
"Why?"
"No one can tell you what you are supposed to feel. It is not heat, or
light, or glare, or color. It is something else."
"Can't you describe it?"
"No. All I can do is give you the technique. Once you learn to separate
the images and see two of everything, you must focus your attention in the
area between the two images. Any change worthy of notice would take place
there, in that area."
"What kind of changes are they?"
"That is not important. The feeling that you get is what counts. Every
man is different. You saw glitter today, but that did not mean anything,
because the feeling was missing. I can't tell you how to feel. You must
learn that yourself."
We rested in silence for some time. Don Juan covered his face with his
hat and remained motionless as if he were asleep. I became absorbed in
writing my notes, until he made a sudden movement that made me jolt. He sat
up abruptly and faced me, frowning. "You have a knack for hunting, " he
said. "And that's what you should learn, hunting. We are not going to talk
about plants any more." He puffed out his jaws for an instant, then candidly
added, "I don't think we ever have, anyway, have we?" and laughed.
We spent the rest of the day walking in every direction while he gave
me an unbelievably detailed explanation about rattlesnakes. The way they
nest, the way they move around, their seasonal habits, their quirks of
behavior. Then he proceeded to corroborate each of the points he had made
and finally he caught and killed a large snake; he cut its head off, cleaned
its viscera, skinned it, and roasted the meat. His movements had such a
grace and skill that it was a sheer pleasure just to be around him. I had
listened to him and watched him, spellbound. My concentration had been so
complete that the rest of the world had practically vanished for me.
Eating the snake was a hard reentry into the world of ordinary affairs.
I felt nauseated when I began to chew a bite of snake meat. It was an ill
founded queasiness, as the meat was delicious, but my stomach seemed to be
rather an independent unit. I could hardly swallow at all. I thought don
Juan would have a heart attack from laughing so hard.
Afterwards we sat down for a leisurely rest in the shade of some rocks.
I began to work on my notes, and the quantity of them made me realize that
he had given me an astonishing amount of information about rattlesnakes.
"Your hunter's spirit has returned to you, " don Juan said suddenly and
with a serious face. "Now you're hooked."
"I beg your pardon?"
I wanted him to elaborate on his statement that I was hooked, but he
only laughed and repeated it.
"How am I hooked?" I insisted.
"Hunters will always hunt, " he said. "I am a hunter myself."
"Do you mean you hunt for a living?"
"I hunt in order to live. I can live off the land, anywhere." He
indicated the total surroundings with his hand.
"To be a hunter means that one knows a great deal, " he went on. "It
means that one can see the world in different ways. In order to be a hunter
one must be in perfect balance with everything else, otherwise hunting would
become a meaningless chore. For instance, today we took a little snake. I
had to apologize to her for cutting her life off so suddenly and so
definitely; I did what I did knowing that my own life will also be cut off
someday in very much the same fashion, suddenly and definitely. So, all in
all, we and the snakes are on a par. One of them fed us today."
"I had never conceived a balance of that kind when I used to hunt, " I
said.
"That's not true. You didn't just kill animals. You and your family all
ate the game."
His statements carried the conviction of someone who had been there. He
was, of course, right. There had been times when I had provided the
incidental wild meat for my family.
After a moment's hesitation I asked, "How did you know that?"
"There are certain things that I just know, " he said. "I can't tell
you how though."
I told him that my aunts and uncles would very seriously call all the
birds I would bag "pheasants."
Don Juan said he could easily imagine them calling a sparrow a "tiny
pheasant" and added a comical rendition of how they would chew it. The
extraordinary movements of his jaw gave me the feeling that he was actually
chewing a whole bird, bones and all.
"I really think that you have a touch for hunting, " he said, staring
at me. "And we have been barking up the wrong tree. Perhaps you will be
willing to change your way of life in order to become a hunter."
He reminded me that I had found out, with just a little exertion on my
part, that in the world there were good and bad spots for me; he added that
I had also found out the specific colors associated with them.
"That means that you have a knack for hunting, " he declared. "Not
everyone who tries would find their colors and their spots at the same
time." To be a hunter sounded very nice and romantic, but it was an
absurdity to me, since I did not particularly care to hunt.
"You don't have to care to hunt or to like it, " he replied to my
complaint. "You have a natural inclination. I think the best hunters never
like hunting; they do it well, that's all."
I had the feeling don Juan was capable of arguing his way out of
anything, and yet he maintained that he did not like to talk at all.
"It is like what I have told you about hunters, " he said. "I don't
necessarily like to talk. I just have a knack for it and I do it well,
that's all." I found his mental agility truly funny.
"Hunters must be exceptionally tight individuals, " he continued. "A
hunter leaves very little to chance. I have been trying all along to
convince you that you must learn to live in a different way. So far I have
not succeeded. There was nothing you could've grabbed on to. Now it's
different. I have brought back your old hunter's spirit, perhaps through it
you will change."
I protested that I did not want to become a hunter. I reminded him that
in the beginning I had just wanted him to tell me about medicinal plants,
but he had made me stray so far away from my original purpose that I could
not clearly recall any more whether or not I had really wanted to learn
about plants.
"Good, " he said. "Really good. If you don't have such a clear picture
of what you want, you may become more humble. "Let's put it this way. For
your purposes it doesn't really matter whether you learn about plants or
about hunting. You've told me that yourself. You are interested in anything
that anyone can tell you. True?" I had said that to him in trying to define
the scope of anthropology and in order to draft him as my informant. Don
Juan chuckled, obviously aware of his control over the situation.
"I am a hunter, " he said, as if he were reading my thoughts.
"I leave very little to chance. Perhaps I should explain to you that I
learned to be a hunter. I have not always lived the way I do now. At one
point in my life I had to change. Now I'm pointing the direction to you. I'm
guiding you. I know what I'm talking about; someone taught me all this. I
didn't figure it out for myself."
"Do you mean that you had a teacher, don Juan?"
"Let's say that someone taught me to hunt the way I want to teach you
now, " he said and quickly changed the topic.
"I think that once upon a time hunting was one of the greatest acts a
man could perform, " he said. "All hunters were powerful men. In fact, a
hunter had to be powerful to begin with in order to withstand the rigors of
that life."
Suddenly I became curious. Was he referring to a time perhaps prior to
the Conquest? I began to probe him.
"When was the time you are talking about?"
"Once upon a time."
"When? What does 'once upon a time' mean?"
"It means once upon a time, or maybe it means now, today.
It doesn't matter. At one time everybody knew that a hunter was the
best of men. Now not everyone knows that, but there are a sufficient number
of people who do. I know it, someday you will. See what I mean?"
"Do the Yaqui Indians feel that way about hunters? That's what I want
to know."
"Not necessarily."
"Do the Pima Indians?"
"Not all of them. But some."
I named various neighboring groups. I wanted to commit him to a
statement that hunting was a shared belief and practice of some specific
people. But he avoided answering me directly, so I changed the subject.
"Why are you doing all this for me, don Juan?" I asked.
He took off his hat and scratched his temples in feigned bafflement.
"I'm having a gesture with you, " he said softly. "Other people have
had a similar gesture with you; someday you yourself will have the same
gesture with others. Let's say that it is my turn. One day I found out that
if I wanted to be a hunter worthy of self-respect I had to change my way of
life.
I used to whine and complain a great deal. I had good reasons to feel
shortchanged. I am an Indian and Indians are treated like dogs. There was
nothing I could do to remedy that, so all I was left with was my sorrow. But
then my good fortune spared me and someone taught me to hunt. And I realized
that the way I lived was not worth living ... so I changed it."
"But I am happy with my life, don Juan. Why should I have to change
it?"
He began to sing a Mexican song, very softly, and then hummed the tune.
His head bobbed up and down as he followed the beat of the song.
"Do you think that you and I are equals?" he asked in a sharp voice.
His question caught me off guard. I experienced a peculiar buzzing in
my ears as though he had actually shouted his words, which he had not done;
however, there had been a metallic sound in his voice that was reverberating
in my ears.
I scratched the inside of my left ear with the small finger of my left
hand. My ears itched all the time and I had developed a rhythmical nervous
way of rubbing the inside of them with the small finger of either hand. The
movement was more properly a shake of my whole arm. Don Juan watched my
movements with apparent fascination.
"Well . . . are we equals?" he asked.
"Of course we're equals, " I said.
I was, naturally, being condescending. I felt very warm towards him
even though at times I did not know what to do with him; yet I still held in
the back of my mind, although I would never voice it, the belief that I,
being a university student, a man of the sophisticated Western world, was
superior to an Indian.
"No, " he said calmly, "we are not."
"Why, certainly we are, " I protested.
"No, " he said in a soft voice. "We are not equals. I am a hunter and a
warrior, and you are a pimp."
My mouth fell open. I could not believe that don Juan had actually said
that. I dropped my notebook and stared at him dumbfoundedly and then, of
course, I became furious.
He looked at me with calm and collected eyes. I avoided his gaze. And
then he began to talk. He enunciated his words clearly. They poured out
smoothly and deadly. He said that I was pimping for someone else. That I was
not fighting my own battles but the battles of some unknown people. That I
did not want to learn about plants or about hunting or about anything. And
that his world of precise acts and feelings and decisions was infinitely
more effective than the blundering idiocy I called "my life."
After he finished talking I was numb. He had spoken without
belligerence or conceit but with such power, and yet such calmness, that I
was not even angry any more. We remained silent. I felt embarrassed and
could not think of anything appropriate to say. I waited for him to break
the silence. Hours went by. Don Juan became motionless by degrees, until his
body had acquired a strange, almost frightening rigidity; his silhouette
became difficult to make out as it got dark, and finally when it was pitch
black around us he seemed to have merged into the blackness of the stones.
His state of motionlessness was so total that it was as if he did not exist
any longer. It was midnight when I finally realized that he could and would
stay motionless there in that wilderness, in those rocks, perhaps forever if
he had to. His world of precise acts and feelings and decisions was indeed
superior. I quietly touched his arm and tears flooded me.
BEING INACCESSIBLE
Thursday, June 29, 1961
Again don Juan, as he had done every day for nearly a week, held me
spellbound with his knowledge of specific details about the behavior of
game. He first explained and then corroborated a number of hunting tactics
based on what he called "the quirks of quails." I became so utterly involved
in his explanations that a whole day went by and I had not noticed the
passage of time. I even forgot to eat lunch. Don Juan made joking remarks
that it was quite unusual for me to miss a meal. By the end of the day he
had caught five quail in a most ingenious trap, which he had taught me to
assemble and set up.
"Two are enough for us, " he said and let three of them loose.
He then taught me how to roast quail. I had wanted to cut some shrubs
and make a barbecue pit, the way my grandfather used to make it, lined with
green branches and leaves and sealed with dirt, but don Juan said that there
was no need to injure the shrubs, since we had already injured the quail.
After we finished eating we walked very leisurely towards a rocky area.
We sat on a sandstone hillside and I said jokingly that if he would have
left the matter up to me I would have cooked all five of the quail, and that
my barbecue would have tasted much better than his roast. "No doubt, " he
said. "But if you would have done all that we might have never left this
place in one piece."
"What do you mean?" I asked. "What would have prevented us?"
"The shrubs, the quail, everything around would have pitched in."
"I never know when you are talking seriously, " I said.
He made a gesture of feigned impatience and smacked his lips.
"You have a weird notion of what it means to talk seriously, " he said.
"I laugh a great deal because I like to laugh yet everything I say is deadly
serious, even if you don't understand it. Why should the world be only as
you think it is? Who gave you the authority to say so?"
"There is no proof that the world is otherwise, " I said.
It was getting dark. I was wondering if it was time to go back to his
house, but he did not seem to be in a hurry and I was enjoying myself.
The wind was cold. Suddenly he stood up and told me that we had to
climb to the hilltop and stand up on an area clear of shrubs.
"Don't be afraid, " he said. "I'm your friend and I'll see that nothing
bad happens to you."
"What do you mean?" I asked, alarmed.
Don Juan had the most insidious facility to shift me from sheer
enjoyment to sheer fright.
"The world is very strange at this time of the day, " he said. "That's
what I mean. No matter what you see, don't be afraid."
"What am I going to see?"
"I don't know yet, " he said, peering into the distance towards the
south.
He did not seem to be worried. I also kept on looking in the same
direction.
Suddenly he perked up and pointed with his left hand towards a dark
area in the desert shrubbery.
"There it is, " he said, as if he had been waiting for something which
had suddenly appeared.
"What is it?" I asked.
"There it is, " he repeated. "Look! Look!"
I did not see anything, just the shrubs.
"It is here now, " he said with great urgency in his voice.
"It is here."
A sudden gust of wind hit me at that instant and made my eyes burn. I
stared towards the area in question. There was absolutely nothing out of the
ordinary.
"I can't see a thing, " I said.
"You just felt it, " he replied. "Right now. It got into your eyes and
kept you from seeing."
"What are you talking about?"
"I have deliberately brought you to a hilltop, " he said. "We are very
noticeable here and something is coming to us."
"What? The wind?"
"Not just the wind, " he said sternly. "It may seem to be wind to you,
because wind is all you know."
I strained my eyes staring into the desert shrubs. Don Juan stood
silently by me for a moment and then walked into the nearby chaparral and
began to tear some big branches from the surrounding shrubs; he gathered
eight of them and made a bundle. He ordered me to do the same and to
apologize to the plants in a loud voice for mutilating them. When we had two
bundles he made me run with them to the hilltop and lie down on my back
between two large rocks.
With tremendous speed he arranged the branches of my bundle to cover my
entire body, then he covered himself in the same manner and whispered
through the leaves that I should watch how the so-called wind would cease to
blow once we had become unnoticeable.
At one moment, to my utter amazement, the wind actually ceased to blow
as don Juan had predicted. It happened so gradually that I would have missed
the change had I not been deliberately waiting for it. For a while the wind
had hissed through the leaves over my face and then gradually it became
quiet all around us.
I whispered to don Juan that the wind had stopped and he whispered back
that I should not make any overt noise or movement, because what I was
calling the wind was not wind at all but something that had a volition of
its own and could actually recognize us. I laughed out of nervousness.
In a muffled voice don Juan called my attention to the quietness around
us and whispered that he was going to stand up and I should follow him,
putting the branches aside very gently with my left hand.
We stood up at the same time. Don Juan stared for a moment into the
distance towards the south and then turned around-abruptly and faced the
west.
"Sneaky. Really sneaky, " he muttered, pointing to an area towards the
southwest.
"Look! Look!" he urged me.
I stared with all the intensity I was capable of. I wanted to see
whatever he was referring to, but I did not notice anything at all. Or
rather I did not notice anything I had not seen before; there were just
shrubs which seemed to be agitated by a soft wind; they rippled.
"It's here, " don Juan said.
At that moment I felt a blast of air in my face. It seemed that the
wind had actually begun to blow after we stood up. I could not believe it;
there had to be a logical explanation for it.
Don Juan chuckled softly and told me not to tax my brain trying to
reason it out.
"Let's go gather the shrubs once more, " he said. "I hate to do this to
these little plants, but we must stop you."
He picked up the branches we had used to cover ourselves and piled
small rocks and dirt over them. Then, repeating the same movements we had
made before, each of us gathered eight new branches. In the meantime the
wind kept on blowing ceaselessly. I could feel it ruffling the hair around
my ears.
Don Juan whispered that once he had covered me I should not make the
slightest movement or sound. He very quickly put the branches over my body
and then he lay down and covered himself.
We stayed in that position for about twenty minutes and during that
time a most extraordinary phenomenon occurred; the wind again changed from a
hard continuous gust to a mild vibration.
I held my breath, waiting for don Juan's signal. At a given moment he
gently shoved off the branches. I did the same and we stood up. The hilltop
was very quiet. There was only a slight, soft vibration of leaves in the
surrounding chaparral.
Don Juan's eyes were fixedly staring at an area in the shrubs south of
us. "There it is again!" he exclaimed in a loud voice. I involuntarily
jumped, nearly losing my balance, and he ordered me in a loud imperative
voice to look.
"What am I supposed to see?" I asked desperately.
He said that it, the wind or whatever, was like a cloud or a whorl that
was quite a ways above the shrubs, twirling its way to the hilltop where we
were. I saw a ripple forming on the bushes in the distance.
"There it comes, " don Juan said in my ear. "Look how it is searching
for us."
Right then a strong steady gust of wind hit my face, as it had hit it
before. This time, however, my reaction was different. I was terrified. I
had not seen what don Juan had described, but I had seen a most eerie wave
rippling the shrubs.
I did not want to succumb to my fear and deliberately sought any kind
of suitable explanation. I said to myself that there must be continuous air
currents in the area, and don Juan, being thoroughly acquainted with the
whole region, was not only aware of that but was capable of mentally
plotting their occurrence. All he had to do was to lie down, count, and wait
for the wind to taper off; and once he stood up he had only to wait again
for its reoccurrence.
Don Juan's voice shook me out of my mental deliberations. He was
telling me that it was time to leave. I stalled; I wanted to stay to make
sure that the wind would taper off.
"I didn't see anything, don Juan, " I said.
"You noticed something unusual though."
"Perhaps you should tell me again what I was supposed to see."
"I've already told you, " he said. "Something that hides in the wind
and looks like a whorl, a cloud, a mist, a face that twirls around."
Don Juan made a gesture with his hands to depict a horizontal and a
vertical motion. "It moves in a specific direction, " he went on. "It either
tumbles or it twirls. A hunter must know all that in order to move
correctly." I wanted to humor him, but he seemed to be trying so hard to
make his point that I did not dare. He looked at me for a moment and I moved
my eyes away.
"To believe that the world is only as you think it is, is stupid, " he
said. "The world is a mysterious place. Especially in the twilight."
He pointed towards the wind with a movement of his chin.
"This can follow us, " he said. "It can make us tired or it might even
kill us."
"That wind?"
"At this time of the day, in the twilight, there is no wind.
At this time there is only power."
We sat on the hilltop for an hour. The wind blew hard and constantly
all that time.
Friday, June 30, 1961
In the late afternoon, after eating, don Juan and I moved to the area
in front of his door. I sat on my "spot" and began working on my notes. He
lay down on his back with his hands folded over his stomach. We had stayed
around the house all day on account of the "wind." Don Juan explained that
we had disturbed the wind deliberately and that it was better not to fool
around with it. I had even had to sleep covered with branches.
A sudden gust of wind made don Juan get up in one incredibly agile
jump. "Damn it, " he said. "The wind is looking for you." "I can't buy that,
don Juan, " I said, laughing. "I really can't." I was not being stubborn, I
just found it impossible to endorse the idea that the wind had its own
volition and was looking for me, or that it had actually spotted us and
rushed to us on top of the hill. I said that the idea of a "willful wind"
was a view of the world that was rather simplistic.
"What is the wind then?" he asked in a challenging tone. I patiently
explained to him that masses of hot and cold air produced different
pressures and that the pressure made the masses of air move vertically and
horizontally. It took me a long while to explain all the details of basic
meteorology.
"You mean that all there is to the wind is hot and cold air?" he asked
in a tone of bafflement.
"I'm afraid so, " I said and silently enjoyed my triumph.
Don Juan seemed to be dumbfounded. But then he looked at me and began
to laugh uproariously.
"Your opinions are final opinions, " he said with a note of sarcasm.
"They are the last word, aren't they? For a hunter, however, your opinions
are pure crap. It makes no difference whether the pressure is one or two or
ten; if you would live out here in the wilderness you would know that during
coy smile.
"If my father would have said to himself that he could not go swimming
at six in the morning but perhaps at three in the afternoon."
"Your resolutions injure the spirit," don Juan said with an air of
great seriousness.
I thought I even detected a note of sadness in his tone. We were quiet
for a long time. My peevishness had vanished. I thought of my father.
"He didn't want to swim at three in the afternoon. Don't you see?" don
Juan said. His words made me jump.
I told him that my father was weak, and so was his world of unreal acts
that he never performed. I was almost shouting.
Don Juan did not say a word. He shook his head slowly in a rhythmical
way. I felt terribly sad. Thinking of my father always gave me a consuming
feeling.
"You think you were stronger, don't you?" he asked in a casual tone.
I said I did, and I began to tell him all the emotional turmoil that my
father had put me through, but he interrupted me.
"Was he mean to you?" he asked.
"No."
"Was he petty with you?"
"No."
"Did he do all he could for you?"
"Yes."
"Then what was wrong with him?"
Again I began to shout that he was weak, but I caught myself and
lowered my voice. I felt a bit ludicrous being cross examined by don Juan.
"What are you doing all this for?" I said. "We were supposed to be
talking about plants."
I felt more annoyed and despondent than ever. I told him that he had no
business or the remotest qualifications to pass judgment on my behavior, and
he exploded into a belly laugh.
"When you get angry you always feel righteous, don't you?" he said and
blinked like a bird.
He was right. I had the tendency to feel justified at being angry.
"Let's not talk about my father, " I said, feigning a happy mood. "Let's
talk about plants."
"No, let's talk about your father, " he insisted. "That is the place to
begin today. If you think that you were so much stronger than he, why didn't
you go swimming at six in the morning in his place?"
I told him that I could not believe he was seriously asking me that. I
had always thought that swimming at six in the morning was my father's
business and not mine.
"It was also your business from the moment you accepted his idea, " don
Juan snapped at me.
I said that I had never accepted it, that I had always known my father
was not truthful to himself. Don Juan asked me matter-of-factly why I had
not voiced my opinions at the time.
"You don't tell your father things like that, " I said as a weak
explanation.
"Why not?"
"That was not done in my house, that's all."
"You have done worse things in your house, " he declared like a judge
from the bench. "The only thing you never did was to shine your spirit."
There was such a devastating force in his words that they echoed in my
mind. He brought all my defenses down. I could not argue with him. I took
refuge in writing my notes. I tried a last feeble explanation and said that
all my life I had encountered people of my father's kind, who had, like my
father, hooked me somehow into their schemes, and as a rule I had always
been left dangling.
"You are complaining, " he said softly. "You have been complaining all
your life because you don't assume responsibility for your decisions. If you
would have assumed responsibility for your father's idea of swimming at six
in the morning, you would have swum, by yourself if necessary, or you would
have told him to go to hell the first time he opened his mouth after you
knew his devices. But you didn't say anything. Therefore, you were as weak
as your father."
"To assume the responsibility of one's decisions means that one is
ready to die for them."
"Wait, wait!" I said. "You are twisting this around." He did not let me
finish. I was going to tell him that I had used my father only as an example
of an unrealistic way of acting, and that nobody in his right mind would be
willing to die for such an idiotic thing.
"It doesn't matter what the decision is, " he said. "Nothing could be
more or less serious than anything else. Don't you see? In a world where
death is the hunter there are no small or big decisions. There are only
decisions that we make in the face of our inevitable death." I could not say
anything. Perhaps an hour went by. Don Juan was perfectly motionless on his
mat although he was not sleeping.
"Why do you tell me all this, don Juan?" I asked. "Why are you doing
this to me?"
"You came to me, " he said. "No, that was not the case, you were
brought to me. And I have had a gesture with you."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You could have had a gesture with your father by swimming for him, but
you didn't, perhaps because you were too young. I have lived longer than
you. I have nothing pending. There is no hurry in my life, therefore I can
properly have a gesture with you."
In the afternoon we went for a hike. I easily kept his pace and
marveled again at his stupendous physical prowess. He walked so nimbly and
with such sure steps that next to him I was like a child. We went in an
easterly direction. I noticed then that he did not like to talk while he
walked. If I spoke to him he would stop walking in order to answer me.
After a couple of hours we came to a hill; he sat down and signaled me
to sit by him. He announced in a mock dramatic tone that he was going to
tell me a story. He said that once upon a time there was a young man, a
destitute Indian who lived among the white men in a city. He had no home, no
relatives, no friends. He had come into the city to find his fortune and had
found only misery and pain. From time to time he made a few cents working
like a mule, barely enough for a morsel; otherwise he had to beg or steal
food. Don Juan said that one day the young man went to the market place. He
walked up and down the street in a haze, his eyes wild upon seeing all the
good things that were gathered there. He was so frantic that he did not see
where he was walking, and ended up tripping over some baskets and falling on
lap of an old man.
The old man was carrying four enormous gourds and had just sat down to
rest and eat. Don Juan smiled knowingly and said that the old man found it
quite strange that the young man had stumbled on him. He was not angry at
being disturbed but amazed at why this particular young man had fallen on
top of him. The young man, on the other hand, was angry and told him to get
out of his way. He was not concerned at all about the ultimate reason for
their meeting. He had not noticed that their paths had actually crossed.
Don Juan mimicked the motions of someone going after something that was
rolling over. He said that the old man's gourds had turned over and were
rolling down the street. When the young man saw the gourds he thought he had
found his food for the day. He helped the old man up and insisted on helping
him carry the heavy gourds. The old man told him that he was on his way to
his home in the mountains and the young man insisted on going with him, at
least part of the way.
The old man took the road to the mountains and as they hiked he gave
the young man part of the food he had bought at the market. The young man
ate to his heart's content and when he was quite satisfied he began to
notice how heavy the gourds were and clutched them tightly.
Don Juan opened his eyes and smiled with a devilish grin a said that
the young man asked, "What do you carry in these gourds?" The old man did
not answer but told him that he was going to show him a companion or friend
who could alleviate his sorrows and give him advice and wisdom about the
ways of the world.
Don Juan made a majestic gesture with both hands and said that the old
man summoned the most beautiful deer that the young man had ever seen. The
deer was so tame that it came to him and walked around him. It glittered and
shone. The young man was spellbound and knew right away that it was a
"spirit deer." The old man told him then that if he wished to have that
friend and its wisdom all he had to do was to let go of the gourds.
Don Juan's grin portrayed ambition; he said that the young man's petty
desires were pricked upon hearing such a request. Don Juan's eyes became
small and devilish as he voiced the young man's question: "What do you have
in these four enormous gourds?"
Don Juan said that the old man very serenely replied that, he was
carrying food: "pinole" and water. He stopped narrating the story and walked
around in a circle a couple of times. I did not know what he was doing. But
apparently it was part of the story. The circle seemed to portray the
deliberations of the young man. Don Juan said that, of course, the young man
had not believed a word. He calculated that if the old man, who was
obviously a wizard, was willing to give a "spirit deer" for his gourds, then
the gourds must have been filled with power beyond belief.
Don Juan contorted his face again into a devilish grin and said that
the young man declared that he wanted to have the gourds. There was a long
pause that seemed to mark the end of the story. Don Juan remained quiet, yet
I was sure he wanted me to ask about it, and I did.
"What happened to the young man?"
"He took the gourds, " he replied with a smile of satisfaction.
There was another long pause. I laughed. I thought that this had been a
real "Indian story." Don Juan's eyes were shining as he smiled at me. There
was an air of innocence about him. He began to laugh in soft spurts and
asked me, "Don't you want to know about the gourds?"
"Of course I want to know. I thought that was the end of the story."
"Oh no, " he said with a mischievous light in his eyes. "The young man
took his gourds and ran away to an isolated place and opened them."
"What did he find?" I asked.
Don Juan glanced at me and I had the feeling he was aware of my mental
gymnastics. He shook his head and chuckled.
"Well, " I urged him. "Were the gourds empty?"
"There was only food and water inside the gourds," he said.
"And the young man, in a fit of anger, smashed them against the rocks."
I said that his reaction was only natural-anyone in his position would
have done the same. Don Juan's reply was that the young man was a fool who
did not know what he was looking for. He did not know what "power" was, so
he could not tell whether or not he had found it. He had not taken
responsibility for his decision, therefore he was angered by his blunder. He
expected to gain something and got nothing instead. Don Juan speculated that
if I were the young man and if I had followed my inclinations I would have
ended up angry and remorseful, and would, no doubt, have spent the rest of
my life feeling sorry for myself for what I had lost.
Then he explained the behavior of the old man. He had cleverly fed the
young man so as to give him the "daring of a satisfied stomach, " thus the
young man upon finding only food in the gourds smashed them in a fit of
anger.
"Had he been aware of his decision and assumed responsibility for it, "
don Juan said, "he would have taken the food and would've been more than
satisfied with it. And perhaps lie might even have realized that the food
was power too."
BECOMING A HUNTER
Friday, June 23, 1961
As soon as I sat down I bombarded don Juan with questions. He did not
answer me and made an impatient gesture with his hand to be quiet. He seemed
to be in a serious mood. "I was thinking that you haven't changed at all in
the time you've been trying to learn about plants, " he said in an accusing
tone.
He began reviewing in a loud voice all the changes of personality he
had recommended I should undertake. I told him that I had considered the
matter very seriously and found that I could not possibly fulfill them
because each of them ran contrary to my core. He replied that to merely
consider them was not enough, and that whatever he had said to me was not
said just for fun. I again insisted that, although I had done very little in
matters of adjusting my personal life to his ideas, I really wanted to learn
the uses of plants.
After a long, uneasy silence I boldly asked him, "Would you teach me
about peyote, don Juan?"
He said that my intentions alone were not enough, and that to know
about peyote-he called it "Mescalito" for the first time-was a serious
matter. It seemed that there was nothing else to say.
In the early evening, however, he set up a test for me; he put forth a
problem without giving me any clues to its solution: to find a beneficial
place or spot in the area right in front of his door where we always sat to
talk, a spot where I could allegedly feel perfectly happy and invigorated.
During the course of the night, while I attempted to find the "spot" by
rolling on the ground, I twice detected a change of coloration on the
uniformly dark dirt floor of the designated area.
The problem exhausted me and I fell asleep on one of the places where I
had detected the change in color. In the morning don Juan woke me up and
announced that I had had a very successful experience. Not only had I found
the beneficial spot I was looking for, but I had also found its opposite, an
enemy or negative spot and the colors associated with both.
Saturday, June 24, 1961
We went into the desert chaparral in the early morning. As we walked,
don Juan explained to me that finding a "beneficial" or an "enemy" spot was
an important need for a man in the wilderness. I wanted to steer the
conversation to the topic of peyote, but he flatly refused to talk about it.
He warned me that there should be no mention of it, unless he himself
brought up the subject.
We sat down to rest in the shade of some tall bushes in an area of
thick vegetation. The desert chaparral around us was not quite dry yet; it
was a warm day and the flies kept on pestering me but they did not seem to
bother don Juan. I wondered whether he was just ignoring them but then I
noticed they were not landing on his face at all.
"Sometimes it is necessary to find a beneficial spot quickly, out in
the open, " don Juan went on. "Or maybe it is necessary to determine quickly
whether or not the spot where one is about to rest is a bad one. One time,
we sat to rest by some hill and you got very angry and upset. That spot was
your enemy. A little crow gave you a warning, remember?"
I remembered that he had made a point of telling me to avoid that area
in the future. I also remembered that I had become angry because he had not
let me laugh. "I thought that the crow that flew overhead was an omen for me
alone, " he said. "I would never have suspected that the crows were friendly
towards you too."
"What are you talking about?"
"The crow was an omen, " he went on. "If you knew about crows you would
have avoided the place like the plague. Crows are not always available to
give warning though, and you must learn to find, by yourself, a proper place
to camp or to rest."
After a long pause don Juan suddenly turned to me and said that in
order to find the proper place to rest all I had to do was to cross my eyes.
He gave me a knowing look and in a confidential tone told me that I had done
precisely that when I was rolling on his porch, and thus I had been capable
of finding two spots and their colors. He let me know that he was impressed
by my accomplishment.
"I really don't know what I did, " I said.
"You crossed your eyes, " he said emphatically. "That's the technique;
you must have done that, although you don't remember it."
Don Juan then described the technique, which he said took years to
perfect, and which consisted of gradually forcing the eyes to see separately
the same image. The lack of image conversion entailed a double perception of
the world; this double perception, according to don Juan, allowed one the
opportunity of judging changes in the surroundings, which the eyes were
ordinarily incapable of perceiving.
Don Juan coaxed me to try it. He assured me that it was not injurious
to the sight. He said that I should begin by looking in short glances,
almost with the corners of my eyes. He pointed to a large bush and showed me
how. I had a strange feeling, seeing don Juan's eyes taking incredibly fast
glances at the bush. His eyes reminded me of those of a shifty animal that
cannot look straight.
We walked for perhaps an hour while I tried not to focus my sight on
anything. Then don Juan asked me to start separating the images perceived by
each of my eyes. After another hour or so I got a terrible headache and had
to stop.
"Do you think you could find, by yourself, a proper place for us to
rest?" he asked.
I had no idea what the criterion for a "proper place" was. He patiently
explained that looking in short glances allowed the eyes to pick out unusual
sights. "Such as what?" I asked.
"They are not sights proper, " he said. "They are more like feelings.
If you look at a bush or a tree or a rock where you may like to rest, your
eyes can make you feel whether or not that's the best resting place."
I again urged him to describe what those feelings were but he either
could not describe them or he simply did not want to. He said that I should
practice by picking out a place and then he would tell me whether or not my
eyes were working.
At one moment I caught sight of what I thought was a pebble which
reflected light. I could not see it if I focused my eyes on it, but if I
swept the area with fast glances I could detect a sort of faint glitter. I
pointed out the place to don Juan.
It was in the middle of an open unshaded flat area devoid of thick
bushes. He laughed uproariously and then asked me why I had picked that
specific spot. I explained that I was seeing a glitter.
"I don't care what you see, " he said. "You could be seeing an
elephant. How you feel is the important issue."
I did not feel anything at all. He gave me a mysterious look and said
that he wished he could oblige me and sit down to rest with me there, but he
was going to sit somewhere else while I tested my choice.
I sat down while he looked at me curiously from a distance of thirty or
forty feet away. After a few minutes he began to laugh loudly. Somehow his
laughter made me nervous. It put me on edge. I felt he was making fun of me
and I got angry. I began to question my motives for being there. There was
definitely something wrong in the way my total endeavor with don Juan was
proceeding. I felt that I was just a pawn in his clutches.
Suddenly don Juan charged at me, at full speed, and pulled me by the
arm, dragging me bodily for ten or twelve feet. He helped me to stand up and
wiped some perspiration from his forehead. I noticed then that he had
exerted himself to his limit. He patted me on the back and said that I had
picked the wrong place and that he had had to rescue me in a real hurry,
because he saw that the spot where I was sitting was about to take over my
entire feelings. I laughed. The image of don Juan charging at me was very
funny. He had actually run like a young man. His feet moved as if he were
grabbing the soft reddish dirt of the desert in order to catapult himself
over me.
I had seen him laughing at me and then in a matter of seconds he was
dragging me by the arm.
After a while he urged me to continue looking for a proper place to
rest. We kept on walking but I did not detect or "feel" anything at all.
Perhaps if I had been more relaxed I would have noticed or felt something. I
had ceased, however, to be angry with him. Finally he pointed to some rocks
and we came to a halt. "Don't feel disappointed, " don Juan said. "It takes
a long time to train the eyes properly."
I did not say anything. I was not going to be disappointed about
something I did not understand at all. Yet, I had to admit that three times
already since I had begun to visit don Juan I had become very angry and had
been agitated to the point of being nearly ill while sitting on places that
he called bad.
"The trick is to feel with your eyes, " he said. "Your problem now is
that you don't know what to feel. It'll come to you, though, with practice."
"Perhaps you should tell me, don Juan, what I am supposed to feel."
"That's impossible."
"Why?"
"No one can tell you what you are supposed to feel. It is not heat, or
light, or glare, or color. It is something else."
"Can't you describe it?"
"No. All I can do is give you the technique. Once you learn to separate
the images and see two of everything, you must focus your attention in the
area between the two images. Any change worthy of notice would take place
there, in that area."
"What kind of changes are they?"
"That is not important. The feeling that you get is what counts. Every
man is different. You saw glitter today, but that did not mean anything,
because the feeling was missing. I can't tell you how to feel. You must
learn that yourself."
We rested in silence for some time. Don Juan covered his face with his
hat and remained motionless as if he were asleep. I became absorbed in
writing my notes, until he made a sudden movement that made me jolt. He sat
up abruptly and faced me, frowning. "You have a knack for hunting, " he
said. "And that's what you should learn, hunting. We are not going to talk
about plants any more." He puffed out his jaws for an instant, then candidly
added, "I don't think we ever have, anyway, have we?" and laughed.
We spent the rest of the day walking in every direction while he gave
me an unbelievably detailed explanation about rattlesnakes. The way they
nest, the way they move around, their seasonal habits, their quirks of
behavior. Then he proceeded to corroborate each of the points he had made
and finally he caught and killed a large snake; he cut its head off, cleaned
its viscera, skinned it, and roasted the meat. His movements had such a
grace and skill that it was a sheer pleasure just to be around him. I had
listened to him and watched him, spellbound. My concentration had been so
complete that the rest of the world had practically vanished for me.
Eating the snake was a hard reentry into the world of ordinary affairs.
I felt nauseated when I began to chew a bite of snake meat. It was an ill
founded queasiness, as the meat was delicious, but my stomach seemed to be
rather an independent unit. I could hardly swallow at all. I thought don
Juan would have a heart attack from laughing so hard.
Afterwards we sat down for a leisurely rest in the shade of some rocks.
I began to work on my notes, and the quantity of them made me realize that
he had given me an astonishing amount of information about rattlesnakes.
"Your hunter's spirit has returned to you, " don Juan said suddenly and
with a serious face. "Now you're hooked."
"I beg your pardon?"
I wanted him to elaborate on his statement that I was hooked, but he
only laughed and repeated it.
"How am I hooked?" I insisted.
"Hunters will always hunt, " he said. "I am a hunter myself."
"Do you mean you hunt for a living?"
"I hunt in order to live. I can live off the land, anywhere." He
indicated the total surroundings with his hand.
"To be a hunter means that one knows a great deal, " he went on. "It
means that one can see the world in different ways. In order to be a hunter
one must be in perfect balance with everything else, otherwise hunting would
become a meaningless chore. For instance, today we took a little snake. I
had to apologize to her for cutting her life off so suddenly and so
definitely; I did what I did knowing that my own life will also be cut off
someday in very much the same fashion, suddenly and definitely. So, all in
all, we and the snakes are on a par. One of them fed us today."
"I had never conceived a balance of that kind when I used to hunt, " I
said.
"That's not true. You didn't just kill animals. You and your family all
ate the game."
His statements carried the conviction of someone who had been there. He
was, of course, right. There had been times when I had provided the
incidental wild meat for my family.
After a moment's hesitation I asked, "How did you know that?"
"There are certain things that I just know, " he said. "I can't tell
you how though."
I told him that my aunts and uncles would very seriously call all the
birds I would bag "pheasants."
Don Juan said he could easily imagine them calling a sparrow a "tiny
pheasant" and added a comical rendition of how they would chew it. The
extraordinary movements of his jaw gave me the feeling that he was actually
chewing a whole bird, bones and all.
"I really think that you have a touch for hunting, " he said, staring
at me. "And we have been barking up the wrong tree. Perhaps you will be
willing to change your way of life in order to become a hunter."
He reminded me that I had found out, with just a little exertion on my
part, that in the world there were good and bad spots for me; he added that
I had also found out the specific colors associated with them.
"That means that you have a knack for hunting, " he declared. "Not
everyone who tries would find their colors and their spots at the same
time." To be a hunter sounded very nice and romantic, but it was an
absurdity to me, since I did not particularly care to hunt.
"You don't have to care to hunt or to like it, " he replied to my
complaint. "You have a natural inclination. I think the best hunters never
like hunting; they do it well, that's all."
I had the feeling don Juan was capable of arguing his way out of
anything, and yet he maintained that he did not like to talk at all.
"It is like what I have told you about hunters, " he said. "I don't
necessarily like to talk. I just have a knack for it and I do it well,
that's all." I found his mental agility truly funny.
"Hunters must be exceptionally tight individuals, " he continued. "A
hunter leaves very little to chance. I have been trying all along to
convince you that you must learn to live in a different way. So far I have
not succeeded. There was nothing you could've grabbed on to. Now it's
different. I have brought back your old hunter's spirit, perhaps through it
you will change."
I protested that I did not want to become a hunter. I reminded him that
in the beginning I had just wanted him to tell me about medicinal plants,
but he had made me stray so far away from my original purpose that I could
not clearly recall any more whether or not I had really wanted to learn
about plants.
"Good, " he said. "Really good. If you don't have such a clear picture
of what you want, you may become more humble. "Let's put it this way. For
your purposes it doesn't really matter whether you learn about plants or
about hunting. You've told me that yourself. You are interested in anything
that anyone can tell you. True?" I had said that to him in trying to define
the scope of anthropology and in order to draft him as my informant. Don
Juan chuckled, obviously aware of his control over the situation.
"I am a hunter, " he said, as if he were reading my thoughts.
"I leave very little to chance. Perhaps I should explain to you that I
learned to be a hunter. I have not always lived the way I do now. At one
point in my life I had to change. Now I'm pointing the direction to you. I'm
guiding you. I know what I'm talking about; someone taught me all this. I
didn't figure it out for myself."
"Do you mean that you had a teacher, don Juan?"
"Let's say that someone taught me to hunt the way I want to teach you
now, " he said and quickly changed the topic.
"I think that once upon a time hunting was one of the greatest acts a
man could perform, " he said. "All hunters were powerful men. In fact, a
hunter had to be powerful to begin with in order to withstand the rigors of
that life."
Suddenly I became curious. Was he referring to a time perhaps prior to
the Conquest? I began to probe him.
"When was the time you are talking about?"
"Once upon a time."
"When? What does 'once upon a time' mean?"
"It means once upon a time, or maybe it means now, today.
It doesn't matter. At one time everybody knew that a hunter was the
best of men. Now not everyone knows that, but there are a sufficient number
of people who do. I know it, someday you will. See what I mean?"
"Do the Yaqui Indians feel that way about hunters? That's what I want
to know."
"Not necessarily."
"Do the Pima Indians?"
"Not all of them. But some."
I named various neighboring groups. I wanted to commit him to a
statement that hunting was a shared belief and practice of some specific
people. But he avoided answering me directly, so I changed the subject.
"Why are you doing all this for me, don Juan?" I asked.
He took off his hat and scratched his temples in feigned bafflement.
"I'm having a gesture with you, " he said softly. "Other people have
had a similar gesture with you; someday you yourself will have the same
gesture with others. Let's say that it is my turn. One day I found out that
if I wanted to be a hunter worthy of self-respect I had to change my way of
life.
I used to whine and complain a great deal. I had good reasons to feel
shortchanged. I am an Indian and Indians are treated like dogs. There was
nothing I could do to remedy that, so all I was left with was my sorrow. But
then my good fortune spared me and someone taught me to hunt. And I realized
that the way I lived was not worth living ... so I changed it."
"But I am happy with my life, don Juan. Why should I have to change
it?"
He began to sing a Mexican song, very softly, and then hummed the tune.
His head bobbed up and down as he followed the beat of the song.
"Do you think that you and I are equals?" he asked in a sharp voice.
His question caught me off guard. I experienced a peculiar buzzing in
my ears as though he had actually shouted his words, which he had not done;
however, there had been a metallic sound in his voice that was reverberating
in my ears.
I scratched the inside of my left ear with the small finger of my left
hand. My ears itched all the time and I had developed a rhythmical nervous
way of rubbing the inside of them with the small finger of either hand. The
movement was more properly a shake of my whole arm. Don Juan watched my
movements with apparent fascination.
"Well . . . are we equals?" he asked.
"Of course we're equals, " I said.
I was, naturally, being condescending. I felt very warm towards him
even though at times I did not know what to do with him; yet I still held in
the back of my mind, although I would never voice it, the belief that I,
being a university student, a man of the sophisticated Western world, was
superior to an Indian.
"No, " he said calmly, "we are not."
"Why, certainly we are, " I protested.
"No, " he said in a soft voice. "We are not equals. I am a hunter and a
warrior, and you are a pimp."
My mouth fell open. I could not believe that don Juan had actually said
that. I dropped my notebook and stared at him dumbfoundedly and then, of
course, I became furious.
He looked at me with calm and collected eyes. I avoided his gaze. And
then he began to talk. He enunciated his words clearly. They poured out
smoothly and deadly. He said that I was pimping for someone else. That I was
not fighting my own battles but the battles of some unknown people. That I
did not want to learn about plants or about hunting or about anything. And
that his world of precise acts and feelings and decisions was infinitely
more effective than the blundering idiocy I called "my life."
After he finished talking I was numb. He had spoken without
belligerence or conceit but with such power, and yet such calmness, that I
was not even angry any more. We remained silent. I felt embarrassed and
could not think of anything appropriate to say. I waited for him to break
the silence. Hours went by. Don Juan became motionless by degrees, until his
body had acquired a strange, almost frightening rigidity; his silhouette
became difficult to make out as it got dark, and finally when it was pitch
black around us he seemed to have merged into the blackness of the stones.
His state of motionlessness was so total that it was as if he did not exist
any longer. It was midnight when I finally realized that he could and would
stay motionless there in that wilderness, in those rocks, perhaps forever if
he had to. His world of precise acts and feelings and decisions was indeed
superior. I quietly touched his arm and tears flooded me.
BEING INACCESSIBLE
Thursday, June 29, 1961
Again don Juan, as he had done every day for nearly a week, held me
spellbound with his knowledge of specific details about the behavior of
game. He first explained and then corroborated a number of hunting tactics
based on what he called "the quirks of quails." I became so utterly involved
in his explanations that a whole day went by and I had not noticed the
passage of time. I even forgot to eat lunch. Don Juan made joking remarks
that it was quite unusual for me to miss a meal. By the end of the day he
had caught five quail in a most ingenious trap, which he had taught me to
assemble and set up.
"Two are enough for us, " he said and let three of them loose.
He then taught me how to roast quail. I had wanted to cut some shrubs
and make a barbecue pit, the way my grandfather used to make it, lined with
green branches and leaves and sealed with dirt, but don Juan said that there
was no need to injure the shrubs, since we had already injured the quail.
After we finished eating we walked very leisurely towards a rocky area.
We sat on a sandstone hillside and I said jokingly that if he would have
left the matter up to me I would have cooked all five of the quail, and that
my barbecue would have tasted much better than his roast. "No doubt, " he
said. "But if you would have done all that we might have never left this
place in one piece."
"What do you mean?" I asked. "What would have prevented us?"
"The shrubs, the quail, everything around would have pitched in."
"I never know when you are talking seriously, " I said.
He made a gesture of feigned impatience and smacked his lips.
"You have a weird notion of what it means to talk seriously, " he said.
"I laugh a great deal because I like to laugh yet everything I say is deadly
serious, even if you don't understand it. Why should the world be only as
you think it is? Who gave you the authority to say so?"
"There is no proof that the world is otherwise, " I said.
It was getting dark. I was wondering if it was time to go back to his
house, but he did not seem to be in a hurry and I was enjoying myself.
The wind was cold. Suddenly he stood up and told me that we had to
climb to the hilltop and stand up on an area clear of shrubs.
"Don't be afraid, " he said. "I'm your friend and I'll see that nothing
bad happens to you."
"What do you mean?" I asked, alarmed.
Don Juan had the most insidious facility to shift me from sheer
enjoyment to sheer fright.
"The world is very strange at this time of the day, " he said. "That's
what I mean. No matter what you see, don't be afraid."
"What am I going to see?"
"I don't know yet, " he said, peering into the distance towards the
south.
He did not seem to be worried. I also kept on looking in the same
direction.
Suddenly he perked up and pointed with his left hand towards a dark
area in the desert shrubbery.
"There it is, " he said, as if he had been waiting for something which
had suddenly appeared.
"What is it?" I asked.
"There it is, " he repeated. "Look! Look!"
I did not see anything, just the shrubs.
"It is here now, " he said with great urgency in his voice.
"It is here."
A sudden gust of wind hit me at that instant and made my eyes burn. I
stared towards the area in question. There was absolutely nothing out of the
ordinary.
"I can't see a thing, " I said.
"You just felt it, " he replied. "Right now. It got into your eyes and
kept you from seeing."
"What are you talking about?"
"I have deliberately brought you to a hilltop, " he said. "We are very
noticeable here and something is coming to us."
"What? The wind?"
"Not just the wind, " he said sternly. "It may seem to be wind to you,
because wind is all you know."
I strained my eyes staring into the desert shrubs. Don Juan stood
silently by me for a moment and then walked into the nearby chaparral and
began to tear some big branches from the surrounding shrubs; he gathered
eight of them and made a bundle. He ordered me to do the same and to
apologize to the plants in a loud voice for mutilating them. When we had two
bundles he made me run with them to the hilltop and lie down on my back
between two large rocks.
With tremendous speed he arranged the branches of my bundle to cover my
entire body, then he covered himself in the same manner and whispered
through the leaves that I should watch how the so-called wind would cease to
blow once we had become unnoticeable.
At one moment, to my utter amazement, the wind actually ceased to blow
as don Juan had predicted. It happened so gradually that I would have missed
the change had I not been deliberately waiting for it. For a while the wind
had hissed through the leaves over my face and then gradually it became
quiet all around us.
I whispered to don Juan that the wind had stopped and he whispered back
that I should not make any overt noise or movement, because what I was
calling the wind was not wind at all but something that had a volition of
its own and could actually recognize us. I laughed out of nervousness.
In a muffled voice don Juan called my attention to the quietness around
us and whispered that he was going to stand up and I should follow him,
putting the branches aside very gently with my left hand.
We stood up at the same time. Don Juan stared for a moment into the
distance towards the south and then turned around-abruptly and faced the
west.
"Sneaky. Really sneaky, " he muttered, pointing to an area towards the
southwest.
"Look! Look!" he urged me.
I stared with all the intensity I was capable of. I wanted to see
whatever he was referring to, but I did not notice anything at all. Or
rather I did not notice anything I had not seen before; there were just
shrubs which seemed to be agitated by a soft wind; they rippled.
"It's here, " don Juan said.
At that moment I felt a blast of air in my face. It seemed that the
wind had actually begun to blow after we stood up. I could not believe it;
there had to be a logical explanation for it.
Don Juan chuckled softly and told me not to tax my brain trying to
reason it out.
"Let's go gather the shrubs once more, " he said. "I hate to do this to
these little plants, but we must stop you."
He picked up the branches we had used to cover ourselves and piled
small rocks and dirt over them. Then, repeating the same movements we had
made before, each of us gathered eight new branches. In the meantime the
wind kept on blowing ceaselessly. I could feel it ruffling the hair around
my ears.
Don Juan whispered that once he had covered me I should not make the
slightest movement or sound. He very quickly put the branches over my body
and then he lay down and covered himself.
We stayed in that position for about twenty minutes and during that
time a most extraordinary phenomenon occurred; the wind again changed from a
hard continuous gust to a mild vibration.
I held my breath, waiting for don Juan's signal. At a given moment he
gently shoved off the branches. I did the same and we stood up. The hilltop
was very quiet. There was only a slight, soft vibration of leaves in the
surrounding chaparral.
Don Juan's eyes were fixedly staring at an area in the shrubs south of
us. "There it is again!" he exclaimed in a loud voice. I involuntarily
jumped, nearly losing my balance, and he ordered me in a loud imperative
voice to look.
"What am I supposed to see?" I asked desperately.
He said that it, the wind or whatever, was like a cloud or a whorl that
was quite a ways above the shrubs, twirling its way to the hilltop where we
were. I saw a ripple forming on the bushes in the distance.
"There it comes, " don Juan said in my ear. "Look how it is searching
for us."
Right then a strong steady gust of wind hit my face, as it had hit it
before. This time, however, my reaction was different. I was terrified. I
had not seen what don Juan had described, but I had seen a most eerie wave
rippling the shrubs.
I did not want to succumb to my fear and deliberately sought any kind
of suitable explanation. I said to myself that there must be continuous air
currents in the area, and don Juan, being thoroughly acquainted with the
whole region, was not only aware of that but was capable of mentally
plotting their occurrence. All he had to do was to lie down, count, and wait
for the wind to taper off; and once he stood up he had only to wait again
for its reoccurrence.
Don Juan's voice shook me out of my mental deliberations. He was
telling me that it was time to leave. I stalled; I wanted to stay to make
sure that the wind would taper off.
"I didn't see anything, don Juan, " I said.
"You noticed something unusual though."
"Perhaps you should tell me again what I was supposed to see."
"I've already told you, " he said. "Something that hides in the wind
and looks like a whorl, a cloud, a mist, a face that twirls around."
Don Juan made a gesture with his hands to depict a horizontal and a
vertical motion. "It moves in a specific direction, " he went on. "It either
tumbles or it twirls. A hunter must know all that in order to move
correctly." I wanted to humor him, but he seemed to be trying so hard to
make his point that I did not dare. He looked at me for a moment and I moved
my eyes away.
"To believe that the world is only as you think it is, is stupid, " he
said. "The world is a mysterious place. Especially in the twilight."
He pointed towards the wind with a movement of his chin.
"This can follow us, " he said. "It can make us tired or it might even
kill us."
"That wind?"
"At this time of the day, in the twilight, there is no wind.
At this time there is only power."
We sat on the hilltop for an hour. The wind blew hard and constantly
all that time.
Friday, June 30, 1961
In the late afternoon, after eating, don Juan and I moved to the area
in front of his door. I sat on my "spot" and began working on my notes. He
lay down on his back with his hands folded over his stomach. We had stayed
around the house all day on account of the "wind." Don Juan explained that
we had disturbed the wind deliberately and that it was better not to fool
around with it. I had even had to sleep covered with branches.
A sudden gust of wind made don Juan get up in one incredibly agile
jump. "Damn it, " he said. "The wind is looking for you." "I can't buy that,
don Juan, " I said, laughing. "I really can't." I was not being stubborn, I
just found it impossible to endorse the idea that the wind had its own
volition and was looking for me, or that it had actually spotted us and
rushed to us on top of the hill. I said that the idea of a "willful wind"
was a view of the world that was rather simplistic.
"What is the wind then?" he asked in a challenging tone. I patiently
explained to him that masses of hot and cold air produced different
pressures and that the pressure made the masses of air move vertically and
horizontally. It took me a long while to explain all the details of basic
meteorology.
"You mean that all there is to the wind is hot and cold air?" he asked
in a tone of bafflement.
"I'm afraid so, " I said and silently enjoyed my triumph.
Don Juan seemed to be dumbfounded. But then he looked at me and began
to laugh uproariously.
"Your opinions are final opinions, " he said with a note of sarcasm.
"They are the last word, aren't they? For a hunter, however, your opinions
are pure crap. It makes no difference whether the pressure is one or two or
ten; if you would live out here in the wilderness you would know that during