This poem for me summarized a whole lot
of things that were sort of running around loose in some
of the other poems or not really in any of the poems
so much as between them in the book.
And finally raises a question, which
is a difficult one and which of some
of the poems later in the book try to respond
to one way or another.
And there's a scene in the newest Teachings of Don Juan
book that kind of fascinated me.
This is number three.
I don't know if The Journey to Ixtlan has come out now.
And are you familiar at all with this book?
I presume you are coming from the Southwest and all,
The Teachings of Don Juan--
A Separate Reality and the new book?
Some people nodding and some not.
I have a suspicion that Don Juan resides somewhere
in the vicinity of Tucson from the descriptions of things
in the third book.
But anyway he has-- he has Carlos
out trying to learn how to be a hunter and so on.
And comes a particular crucial day
when Carlos has built his trap on the spur of the moment
and he catches the rabbit that he's supposed to have caught.
And Don Juan's explained to him beforehand but
that this is all well and good.
He's done it many times.
Each time before this, Don Juan has undertaken
to kill the rabbit and to prepare it
right then for eating and they've eaten them.
This particular time he catches the rabbit
and he tells Carlos he's going to have to kill it.
He's just going to have to kill it.
He doesn't say you're going to have to kill it by yourself
and suddenly Carlos realizes he's never killed one before.
And so he sees it in his trap and proceeds
to go through all kinds of complaints and whatnot
with Don Juan telling him you know I really can't do this.
I've decided it's not that important.
We'll let the rabbit go and we'll just come back and so on.
Don Juan's say it's too late.
You can't turn back like that now, it's not even a choice.
All the powers have brought you this rabbit
and now you have to pay respect to the rabbit
by doing what you set out to do by finishing killing and eating
it and thanking it.
And Carlos plays with it.
He can't handle it.
And so he proceeds to try and open the cage and it's stuck.
And so having tried to begin to open the cage
and it's being stuck he begins trying
to kick the cage and finally stomps on the cage
to break it open and does and kills the rabbit.
[LAUGHTER]
That book is full of things which are--
we're laughing if you consider that-- if we
consider that funny which of course it is in a way.
That's a much more one of other scene that's in that book is--
if you're not familiar with it, the two people
who run through it are Don Juan who
is an old Yaqui Indian and this amount of knowledge.
He's teaching Carlos about a little-- about mescaline.
About mescalito, as he calls it.
But he isn't really.
He's stringing Don Juan along throughout a long period
of time so that he can get him prepared to begin
to learn about it.
Anyway at one point Carlos is plotting,
he's an anthropology student from Berkeley.
He has some saving graces which it
takes a long time to perceive but which Don Juan has
immediately perceived.
And almost everyone else who reads the book
goes through very frustrated with what
seems to be the bull headedness on Carlos part.
But he always gets there finally.
And in this particular case, he's
been put up on top of a rock to watch for the wind at twilight
out on the desert, what he insists on calling the wind
and what Don Juan insists on calling the powers.
And he stood up here for hours, you know.
He got up well before twilight.
And he's just standing there studying scanning the horizon
and waiting.
Waiting for the chaparral to blow and rattle or whatever.
And every time it does, he dutifully calls to Don Juan
and says you know it's right over there.
And Don Juan says no, no you fool that's the wind.
And so he starts and he looks around again
waiting for the right ripples.
And he's just there for hours.
And finally, Don winds down below him
all this whole time just paying attention.
Don Juan leaps up, he has tremendous agility.
He leaps up and runs to this huge rock
that's about 30 feet away and ducks around behind it.
And Carlos thinks, oh my God there's
something horrible back there.
There's a spirit or a mountain lion or something.
And Don Juan knows it, you know.
And then Don Juan comes back from around the rock and just
calm as if nothing the world has ever happened
but he's just been out for a walk
and is coming back from it.
And he says Don Juan, Don Juan, he says what did you do?
And Don Juan replies you know.
He waits until he gets right up next to Carlos on the rock
and then he replies.
There was nothing behind the rock, very loud.
And Carlos is very relieved that there
was nothing behind the rock on the one hand
and on the other hand almost falls over backwards
that Don Juan is shouting at him.
And he says Don Juan, what are you doing?
What are you doing?
And Don Juan says, I'm not doing anything.
And then proceeded to do a whole bunch
of really weird antics standing on his head and cartwheeling
and whatnot.
[LAUGHTER]
And Carlos was getting quite upset.
And finally he jumped down off the rock
and he grabbed Don Juan.
He shook him and says, what are you doing?
He says, you're driving me crazy.
You're behaving so unpredictably.
That's the kind of language that Carlos would use too,
you're behaving so unpredictably.
And immediately Don Juan caught him dead in the eye
and said you've been driving me crazy with how
predictable you've been acting.
And then they proceed.
"This morning when I had to kill a mouse
to free it from my trap, I remembered
the rats gnawed fore leg my father made me see.
The sheer bone protruding from a thin clenched bar.
And this was our secret, father's and mine
kept from mother safe in her kitchen for years.
When he died at the verge of my manhood,
she fled north with me.
There I learned the seasons in a long, strange year.
I saw the crippled trees crumble into colors,
shedding their brilliant disease of leaves
that left the branches dead and trembling
in the snow white wind, magical and stark between street lamps
and starlight.
I learned to set out traps for muskrats, mink, and rabbits.
And each dawn of the long first winter
silent in the moonlight I hiked through
the frost bright dreamlike sleeping trees
that jutted like black bone from wounded snow.
Alone among the creatured drifts and banks
that piled up in the months between my father's
death and my own beating flesh.
I was fearful and desirous of the gray silent wolves,
a crushed thing's single shriek could summon from the dark.
With my strong Confederate bayonet,
I'd pry slick frozen steel apart,
freeing stiff legs severed in my traps.
Now and then, a worthless skin.
One morning early in the wind and while the blowing moon
still wobbled jostling the dark fixed chunks of night,
I heard a chain snap tight then beating wings.
Something white was fumbling at the base of the trees.
Like snow rising from snow, a silver fox
locked in its talons, the great white owl rose then fell,
dragged back by the trapped weight.
Dazzled by the brightening air, its lunar eyes
blazed in their mask of blind snow
as I tripped on ice, reared to meet its stare.
It challenged, I froze.
It's white breast was wide with the heavy wings of a warrior
angel.
It dipped the hook of its beak in slow deliberation
and stole a vivid eye from the skull
then turned to me, impatient.
In an outburst of brilliance, it battered up out of the snow
blindly clumsy at first.
Then transfigured by the highlight of a scent
a glide and glowing in the pale soaring sky.
Wet blood bright in the decomposing snow,
wound in a desperate circle of struggle, round and round
the strict radius of the staked chain.
All around me the horizon tensed for dawn,
encircling my vision with the limits of a saw
toothed land sharp against the sky.
And from this trap's dead center,
I looked up at the fatal stars so innocent
in a slow prison of seasons and hours.
This morning when I sent my wife and daughter from the room,
they fled as if to witness death were death itself.
Am I to die?
This accusation and their fear has followed me
until I feel as if my own is the small nodding skull
I've crushed and mine, the one bright eye
staring from its ruin.
So I am the child again facing your calendar,
knowing this time you must die, your face pass into my face,
mine into others.
What shall I tell them, father?
What can we tell to these strangers
we've made from our love.
Somewhere in the belly of the owl and the Earth
we all stare incessantly from darkness to darkness soaring."