JOURNEY TO IXTLAN -- THE LESSONS OF DON JUAN

Chapter 8:  DISRUPTING THE ROUTINES OF LIFE

Sunday, July 16,1961

We spent all morning watching some rodents that looked like fat squirrels; don Juan called them water rats. He pointed out that they were very fast in getting out of danger, but after they had outrun any predator they had the terrible habit of stopping, or even climbing a rock, to stand on their hind legs to look around and groom themselves.

"They have very good eyes," don Juan said. "You must move only when they are on the run, therefore, you must learn to predict when and where they will stop, so you would also stop at the same time."

I became engrossed in observing them and I had what would have been a field day for hunters as I spotted so many of them. And finally I could predict their movements almost every time.

Don Juan then showed me how to make traps to catch them. He explained that a hunter had to take time to observe their eating or their nesting places in order to determine where to locate his traps; he would then set them during the night and all he had to do the next day was to scare them off so they would scatter away into his catching devices.

We gathered some sticks and proceeded to build the hunting contraptions. I had mine almost finished and was excitedly wondering whether or not it would work when suddenly don Juan stopped and looked at his left wrist, as if he were checking a watch which he had never had, and said that according to his timepiece it was lunchtime. I was holding a long stick, which I was trying to make into a hoop by bending it in a circle. I automatically put it down with the rest of my hunting paraphernalia.

Don Juan looked at me with an expression of curiosity. Then he made the wailing sound of a factory siren at lunchtime. I laughed. His siren sound was perfect. I walked towards him and noticed that he was staring at me. He shook his head from side to side.

"I'll be damned," he said.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

He again made the long wailing sound of a factory whistle.

"Lunch is over," he said. "Go back to work."

I felt confused for an instant, but then I thought that he was joking, perhaps because we really had nothing to make lunch with. I had been so engrossed with the rodents that I had forgotten we had no provisions. I picked up the stick again and tried to bend it. After a moment don Juan again blew his "whistle."

"Time to go home," he said.

He examined his imaginary watch and then looked at me and winked.

"It's five o'clock," he said with an air of someone revealing a secret. I thought that he had suddenly become fed up with hunting and was calling the whole thing off. I simply put everything down and began to get ready to leave. I did not look at him. I presumed that he also was preparing his gear. When I was through I looked up and saw him sitting cross-legged a few feet away.

"I'm through," I said. "We can go anytime."

He got up and climbed a rock. He stood there, five or six feet above the ground, looking at me. He put his hands on either side of his mouth and made a very prolonged and piercing sound. It was like a magnified factory siren. He turned around in a complete circle, making the wailing sound.

"What are you doing, don Juan?" I asked.

He said that he was giving the signal for the whole world to go home. I was completely baffled. I could not figure out whether he was joking or whether he had simply flipped his lid. I watched him intently and tried to relate what he was doing to something he may have said before. We had hardly talked at all during the morning and I could not remember anything of importance.

Don Juan was still standing on top of the rock. He looked at me, smiled and winked again. I suddenly became alarmed. Don Juan put his hands on both sides of his mouth and let out another long whistlelike sound.

He said that it was eight o'clock in the morning and that I had to set up my gear again because we had a whole day ahead of us.

I was completely confused by then. In a matter of minutes my fear mounted to an irresistible desire to run away from the scene. I thought don Juan was crazy. I was about to flee when he slid down from the rock and came to me, smiling.

"You think I'm crazy, don't you?" he asked.

I told him that he was frightening me out of my wits with his unexpected behavior.

He said that we were even. I did not understand what he meant. I was deeply preoccupied with the thought that his acts seemed thoroughly insane. He explained that he had deliberately tried to scare me out of my wits with the heaviness of his unexpected behavior because I myself was driving him up the walls with the heaviness of my expected behavior. He added that my routines were as insane as his blowing his whistle.

I was shocked and asserted that I did not really have any routines. I told him that I believed my life was in fact a mess because of my lack of healthy routines.

Don Juan laughed and signaled me to sit down by him. The whole situation had mysteriously changed again. My fear had vanished as soon as he had begun to talk.

"What are my routines?" I asked.

"Everything you do is a routine."

"Aren't we all that way?"

"Not all of us. I don't do things out of routine."

"What prompted all this, don Juan? What did I do or what did I say that made you act the way you did?"

"You were worrying about lunch."

"I did not say anything to you; how did you know that I was worrying about  lunch?"

"You worry about eating every day around noontime,' and around six in the evening, and around eight in the morning," he said with a malicious grin. "You worry about eating at those times even if you're not hungry."

"All I had to do to show your routine spirit was to blow my whistle. Your spirit is trained to work with a signal."

He stared at me with a question in his eyes. I could not defend myself.

"Now you're getting ready to make hunting into a routine," he went on. "You have already set your pace in hunting; you talk at a certain time, eat at a certain time, and fall asleep at a certain time."

I had nothing to say. The way don Juan had described my eating habits was the pattern I used for everything in my life. Yet I strongly felt that my life was less routine than that of most of my friends and acquaintances.

"You know a great deal about hunting now," don Juan continued. "It'll be easy for you to realize that a good hunter knows one thing above all--he knows the routines of his prey. That's what makes him a good hunter.

"If you would remember the way I have proceeded in teaching you hunting, you would perhaps understand what I mean. First I taught you how to make and set up your traps, then I taught you the routines of the game you were after, and then we tested the traps against their routines. Those parts are the outside forms of hunting.

"Now I have to teach you the final, and by far the most difficult, part. Perhaps years will pass before you can say that you understand it and that you're a hunter."

Don Juan paused as if to give me time. He took off his hat and imitated the grooming movements of the rodents we had been observing. It was very funny to me. His round head made him look like one of those rodents.

"To be a hunter is not just to trap game," he went on. "A hunter that is worth his salt does not catch game because he sets his traps, or because he knows the routines of his prey, but because he himself has no routines. This is his advantage. He is not at all like the animals he is after, fixed by heavy routines and predictable quirks; he is free, fluid, unpredictable."

What don Juan was saying sounded to me like an arbitrary and irrational idealization. I could not conceive of a life without routines. I wanted to be very honest with him and not just agree or disagree with him. I felt that what he had in mind was not possible to accomplish by me or by anyone.

"I don't care how you feel," he said. "In order to be a hunter you must disrupt the routines of your life. You have done well in hunting. You have learned quickly and now you can see that you are like your prey, easy to predict."

I asked him to be specific and give me concrete examples.

"I am talking about hunting," he said calmly. "Therefore I am concerned with the things animals do; the places they eat; the place, the manner, the time they sleep; where they nest; how they walk. These are the routines I am pointing out to you so you can become aware of them in your own being.

"You have observed the habits of animals in the desert. They eat and drink at certain places, they nest at specific spots, they leave their tracks in specific ways; in fact, everything they do can be foreseen or reconstructed by a good hunter.

"As I told you before, in my eyes you behave like your prey. Once in my life someone pointed out the same thing to me, so you're not unique in that. All of us behave like the prey we are after. That, of course, also makes us prey for something or someone else. Now, the concern of a hunter, who knows all this, is to stop being a prey himself. Do you see what I mean?"

I again expressed the opinion that his proposition was unattainable.

"It takes time," don Juan said. "You could begin by not eating lunch every single day at twelve o'clock."

He looked at me and smiled benevolently. His expression was very funny and made me laugh.

"There are certain animals, however, that are impossible to track," he went on. "There are certain types of deer, for instance, which a fortunate hunter might be able to come across, by sheer luck, once in his lifetime."

Don Juan paused dramatically and looked at me piercingly. He seemed to be waiting for a question, but I did not have any.

"What do you think makes them so difficult to find and so unique?" he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders because I did not know what to say.

"They have no routines," he said in a tone of revelation. "That's what makes them magical."

"A deer has to sleep at night," I said. "Isn't that a routine?"

"Certainly, if the deer sleeps every night at a specific time and in one specific place. But those magical beings do not behave like that. In fact, someday you may verify this for yourself. Perhaps it'll be your fate to chase one of them for the rest of your life. "

"What do you mean by that?"

"You like hunting; perhaps someday, in some place in the world, your path may cross the path of a magical being and you might go after it.

"A magical being is a sight to behold. I was fortunate enough to cross paths with one. Our encounter took place after I had learned and practiced a great deal of hunting. Once I was in a forest of thick trees in the mountains of central Mexico when suddenly I heard a sweet whistle. It was unknown to me; never in all my years of roaming in the wilderness had I heard such a sound. I could not place it in the terrain; it seemed to come from different places. I thought that perhaps I was surrounded by a herd or a pack of some unknown animals.

"I heard the tantalizing whistle once more; it seemed to come from everywhere. I realized then my good fortune. I knew it was a magical being, a deer. I also knew that a magical deer is aware of the routines of ordinary men and the routines of hunters.

"It is very easy to figure out what an average man would do in a situation like that. First of all his fear would immediately turn him into a prey. Once he becomes a prey he has two courses of action left. He either flees or he makes his stand. If he is not armed he would ordinarily flee into the open field to run for his life. If he is armed he would get his weapon ready and would then make his stand either by freezing on the spot or by dropping to the ground.

"A hunter, on the other hand, when he stalks in the wilderness would never walk into any place without figuring out his points of protection, therefore he would immediately take cover. He might drop his poncho on the ground or he might hang it from a branch as a decoy and then he would hide and wait until the game makes its next move.

"So, in the presence of the magical deer I didn't behave like either. I quickly stood on my head and began to wail softly; I actually wept tears and sobbed for such a long time that I was about to faint. Suddenly I felt a soft breeze; something was sniffing my hair behind my right ear. I tried to turn my head to see what it was, and I tumbled down and sat up in time to see a radiant creature staring at me. The deer looked at me and I told him I would not harm him. And the deer talked to me."

Don Juan stopped and looked at me. I smiled involuntarily. The idea of a talking deer was quite incredible, to put it mildly.

"He talked to me," don Juan said with a grin.

"The deer talked?"

"He did."

Don Juan stood and picked up his bundle of hunting paraphernalia.

"Did it really talk?" I asked in a tone of perplexity.

Don Juan roared with laughter.

"What did it say?" I asked half in jest.

I thought he was pulling my leg. Don Juan was quiet for a moment, as if he were trying to remember, then his eyes brightened as he told me what the deer had said.

"The magical deer said, 'Hello friend,'" don Juan went on. "And I answered, 'Hello.' Then he asked me, 'Why are you crying?' and I said, 'Because I'm sad.' Then the magical creature came to my ear and said as clearly as I am speaking now, 'Don't be sad.'"

Don Juan stared into my eyes. He had a glint of sheer mischievousness. He began to laugh uproariously.

I said that his dialogue with the deer had been sort of dumb.

"What did you expect?" he asked, still laughing. "I'm an Indian."

His sense of humor was so outlandish that all I could do was laugh with him.

"You don't believe that a magical deer talks, do you?"

"I'm sorry but I just can't believe things like that can happen," I said.

"I don't blame you," he said reassuringly. "'It's one of the darndest things."

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