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Chapter 1:
REAFFIRMATIONS FROM THE WORLD AROUND US
"Stopping the World"
1
REAFFIRMATIONS FROM THE WORLD AROUND
"I understand you know a great deal
about plants, sir," I said to the old Indian in front of me.
A friend of mine had just put us in
contact and left the room and we had introduced ourselves to each other.
The old man had told me that his name was Juan Matus.
"Did your friend tell you that?" he
asked casually.
"Yes, he did."
"I pick plants, or rather, they let me
pick them," he said softly.
We were in the waiting room of a bus
depot in Arizona. I asked him in very formal Spanish if he would allow me
to question him. I said, "Would the gentleman [caballero] permit me to ask
some questions?"
"Caballero," which is derived from the
word "caballo," horse, originally meant horseman or a nobleman on
horseback.
He looked at me inquisitively.
"I'm a horseman without a horse," he
said with a big smile and then he added, "I've told you that my name is
Juan Matus."
I liked his smile. I thought that,
obviously he was a man that could appreciate directness and I decided to
boldly tackle him with a request.
I told him I was interested in
collecting and studying medicinal plants. I said that my special interest
was the uses of the hallucinogenic cactus, peyote, which I had studied at
length at the university in Los Angeles.
I thought that my presentation was
very serious. I was very contained and sounded perfectly credible to
myself.
The old man shook his head slowly, and
I, encouraged by his silence, added that it would no doubt be profitable
for us to get together and talk about peyote.
It was at that moment that he lifted
his head and looked me squarely in the eyes. It was a formidable look. Yet
it was not menacing or awesome in any way. It was a look that went through
me. I became tongue-tied at' once and could not continue with the
harangues about myself. That was the end of our meeting. Yet he left on a
note of hope. He said that perhaps I could visit him at his house someday.
It would be difficult to assess the
impact of don Juan's look if my inventory of experience is not somehow
brought to bear on the uniqueness of that event. When I began to study
anthropology and thus met don Juan, I was already an expert in "getting
around." I had left my home years before and that meant in my evaluation
that I was capable of taking care of myself. Whenever I was rebuffed I
could usually cajole my way in or make concessions, argue, get angry, or
if nothing succeeded I would whine or complain; in other words, there was
always something I knew I could do under the circumstances, and never in
my life had any human being stopped my momentum so swiftly and so
definitely as don Juan did that afternoon. But it was not only a matter of
being silenced; there had been times when I had been unable to say a word
to my opponent because of some inherent respect I felt for him, still my
anger or frustration was manifested in my thoughts. Don Juan's look,
however, numbed me to the point that I could not think coherently.
I became thoroughly intrigued with
that stupendous look and decided to search for him.
I prepared myself for six months,
after that first meeting, reading up on the uses of peyote among the
American Indians, especially about the peyote cult of the Indians of the
Plains. I became acquainted with every work available, and when I felt I
was ready I went back to Arizona.
Saturday, December 17, 1960
I found his house after making long
and taxing inquiries among the local Indians. It was early afternoon when
I arrived and parked in front of it. I saw him sitting on a wooden milk
crate. He seemed to recognize me and greeted me as I got out of my car.
We exchanged social courtesies for a
while and then, in plain terms, I confessed that I had been very devious
with him the first time we had met. I had boasted that I knew a great deal
about peyote, when in reality I knew nothing about it. He stared at me.
His eyes were very kind.
I told him that for six months I had
been reading to prepare myself for our meeting and that this time I really
knew a great deal more.
He laughed. Obviously, there was
something in my statement which was funny to him. He was laughing at me
and I felt a bit confused and offended.
He apparently noticed my discomfort
and assured me that although I had had good intentions there was really no
way to prepare myself for our meeting.
I wondered if it would have been
proper to ask whether that statement had any hidden meaning, but I did
not; yet he seemed to be attuned to my feelings and proceeded to explain
what he had meant. He said that my endeavors reminded him of a story about
some people a certain king had persecuted and killed once upon a time. He
said that in the story the persecuted people were indistinguishable from
their persecutors, except that they insisted on pronouncing certain words
in a peculiar manner proper only to them; that flaw, of course, was the
giveaway. The king posted roadblocks at critical points where an official
would ask every man passing by to pronounce a key word. Those who could
pronounce it the way the king pronounced it would live, but those who
could not were immediately put to death. The point of the story was that
one day a young man decided to prepare himself for passing the roadblock
by learning to pronounce the test word just as the king liked it.
Don Juan said, with a broad smile,
that in fact it took the young man "six months" to master such a
pronunciation. And then came the day of the great test; the young man very
confidently came upon the roadblock and waited for the official to ask him
to pronounce the word.
At that point don Juan very
dramatically stopped his recounting and looked at me. His pause was very
studied and seemed a bit corny to me, but I played along. I had heard the
theme of the story before. It had to do with Jews in Germany and the way
one could tell who was a Jew by the way they pronounced certain words. I
also knew the punch line: the young man was going to get caught because
the official had forgotten the key word and asked him to pronounce another
word which was very similar but which the young man had not learned to say
correctly.
Don Juan seemed to be waiting for me
to ask what happened, so I did.
"What happened to him?" I asked,
trying to sound naive and interested in the story.
"The young man, who was truly foxy,"
he said, "realized that the official had forgotten the key word, and
before the man could say anything else he confessed that he had prepared
himself for six months."
He made another pause and looked at me
with a mischievous glint in his eyes. This time he had turned the tables
on me. The young man's Confession was a new element and I no longer knew
how the story would end.
"Well, what happened then?" I asked,
truly interested.
"The young man was killed instantly,
of course," he said and broke into a roaring laughter.
I liked very much the way he had
entrapped my interest; above all I liked the way he had linked that story
to my own case. In fact, he seemed to have constructed it to fit me. He
was making fun of me in a very subtle and artistic manner. I laughed with
him.
Afterwards I told him that no matter
how stupid I sounded I was really interested in learning something about
plants.
"I like to walk a great deal," he
said.
I thought he was deliberately changing
the topic of conversation to avoid answering me. I did not want to
antagonize him with my insistence.
He asked me if I wanted to go with him
on a short hike in the desert. I eagerly told him that I would love to
walk in the desert.
"This is no picnic," he said in a tone
of warning.
I told him that I wanted very
seriously to work with him. I said that I needed information, any kind of
information, on the uses of medicinal herbs, and that I was willing to pay
him for his time and effort.
"You'll be working for me," I said.
"And I'll pay you wages."
"How much would you pay me?" he asked.
I detected a note of greed in his
voice.
"Whatever you think is appropriate," I
said.
"Pay me for my time ... with your
time," he said.
I thought he was a most peculiar
fellow. I told him I did not understand what he meant. He replied that
there was nothing to say about plants, thus to take my money would be
unthinkable for him.
He looked at me piercingly.
"What are you doing in your pocket?"
he asked, frowning. "Are you playing with your whanger?"
He was referring to my taking notes on
a minute pad inside the enormous pockets of my windbreaker.
When I told him what I was doing he
laughed heartily.
I said that I did not want to disturb
him by writing in front of him.
"If you want to write, write," he
said. "You don't disturb me."
We hiked in the surrounding desert
until it was almost dark. He did not show me any plants nor did he talk
about them at all. We stopped for a moment to rest by some large bushes.
"Plants are very peculiar things," he
said without looking at me. "They are alive and they feel."
At the very moment he made that
statement a strong gust of wind shook the desert chaparral around us. The
bushes made a rattling noise.
"Do you hear that?" he asked me,
putting his right hand to his ear as if he were aiding his hearing. "The
leaves and the wind are agreeing with me."
I laughed. The friend who had put us
in contact had already told me to watch out, because the old man was very
eccentric. I thought the "agreement with the leaves" was one of his
eccentricities.
We walked for a while longer but he
still did not show me any plants, nor did he pick any of them. He simply
breezed through the bushes touching them gently. Then he came to a halt
and sat down on a rock and told me to rest and look around.
I insisted on talking. Once more I let
him know that I wanted very much to learn about plants, especially peyote.
I pleaded with him to become my informant in exchange for some sort of
monetary reward.
"You don't have to pay me," he said.
"You can ask me anything you want. I will tell you what I know and then I
will tell you what to do with it."
He asked me if I agreed with the
arrangement. I was delighted. Then he added a cryptic statement: "Perhaps
there is nothing to learn about plants, because there is nothing to say
about them."
I did not understand what he had said
or what he had meant by it.
"What did you say?" I asked.
He repeated the statement three times
and then the whole area was shaken by the roar of an Air Force jet flying
low.
"There! The world has just agreed with
me," he said, putting his left hand to his ear.
I found him very amusing. His laughter
was contagious.
"Are you from Arizona, don Juan?" I
asked, in an effort to keep the conversation centered around his being my
informant.
He looked at me and nodded
affirmatively. His eyes seemed to be tired. I could see the white
underneath his pupils.
"Were you born in this locality?"
He nodded his head again without
answering me. It seemed to be an affirmative gesture, but it also seemed
to be the nervous headshake of a person who is thinking.
"And where are you from yourself?" he
asked.
"I come from South America," I said.
"That's a big place. Do you come from
all of it?"
His eyes were piercing again as he
looked at me.
I began to explain the circumstances
of my birth, but he interrupted me.
"We are alike in this respect," he
said. "I live here now but I'm really a Yaqui from Sonora."
"Is that so! I myself come from"
He did not let me finish.
"I know, I know," he said. "You are
who you are, from wherever you are, as I am a Yaqui from Sonora."
His eyes were very shiny and his
laughter was strangely unsettling. He made me feel as if he had caught me
in a lie. I experienced a peculiar sensation of guilt. I had the feeling
he knew something I did not know or did not want to tell.
My strange embarrassment grew. He must
have noticed it, for he stood up and asked me if I wanted to go eat in a
restaurant in town.
Walking back to his home and then
driving into town made me feel better, but I was not quite relaxed. I
somehow felt threatened, although I could not pinpoint the reason.
I wanted to buy him some beer in the
restaurant. He said that he never drank, not even beer. I laughed to
myself. I did not believe him; the friend who had put us in contact had
told me that "the old man was plastered out of his mind most of the time."
I really did not mind if he was lying to me about not drinking. I liked
him; there was something very soothing about his person.
I must have had a look of doubt on my
face, for he then went on to explain that he used to drink in his youth,
but that one day he simply dropped it.
"People hardly ever realize that we
can cut anything from our lives, any time, just like that." He snapped his
fingers.
"Do you think that one can stop
smoking or drinking that easily?" I asked.
"Sure!" he said with great conviction.
"Smoking and drinking are nothing. Nothing at all if we want to drop
them."
At that very moment the water that was
boiling in the coffee percolator made a loud perking sound.
"Hear that!" don Juan exclaimed with a
shine in his eyes. "The boiling water agrees with me."
Then he added after a pause, "A man
can get agreements from everything around him."
At that crucial instant the coffee
percolator made a truly obscene gurgling sound.
He looked at the percolator and softly
said, "Thank you," nodded his head, and then broke into a roaring
laughter.
I was taken aback. His laughter was a
bit too loud, but I was genuinely amused by it all.
My first real session with my
"informant" ended then. He said goodbye at the door of the restaurant. I
told him I had to visit some friends and that I would like to see him
again at the end of the following week.
"When will you be home?" I asked.
He scrutinized me.
"Whenever you come," he replied.
"I don't know exactly when I can
come."
"Just come then and don't worry."
"What if you're not in?"
"I'll be there," he said, smiling, and
walked away.
I ran after him and asked him if he
would mind my bringing a camera with me to take pictures of him and his
house.
"That's out of the question," he said
with a frown.
"How about a tape recorder? Would you
mind that?"
"I'm afraid there's no possibility of
that either."
I became annoyed and began to fret. I
said I saw no logical reason for his refusal.
Don Juan shook his head negatively.
"Forget it," he said forcefully. "And
if you still want to see me don't ever mention it again."
I staged a weak final complaint. I
said that pictures and recordings were indispensable to my work. He said
that there was only one thing which was indispensable for anything we did.
He called it "the spirit."
"One can't do without the spirit," he
said. "And, you don't have it. Worry about that and not about pictures."
"What do you. ..?"
He interrupted me with a movement of
his hand and walked backwards a few steps.
"Be sure to come back," he said softly
and waved good bye.
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