Do we have time to chat?
Just a second.
Anybody want to chat about anything?
Aw, the heck with you, then.
I'm going home.
The gossip about Teresita.
Well, let's see.
Where do I begin?
I had a strange breakthrough about it
and I'm rewriting it yet again.
I've been writing this book for 15 years.
So I guess I'm not in any hurry.
But I met a man over the phone.
He called me who has been working on a story about
Teresita since the 1930s.
He's got six crates full of Teresita material,
including 100 family photos.
For those you don't know, Teresita was my great aunt.
And she was known as a Saint of Cabora.
And they used to call her the Queen of the Yaquis.
And her warriors raided Nogales, Arizona 100 years ago
this last August.
And they raided it yelling Viva la Santa de Cabora.
And they blew up the customs house.
So I think that's pretty wonderful.
So more and more people are starting to write about her
and experience her.
And I've had some really interesting experiences studying
with various medicine people from various traditions
about her.
And the experiences have been very strange.
Hard to even talk about it.
I might put them in a different book because it's been--
I just don't want to seem like some insane new age shamster
with my groovy experiences.
But it's been really remarkable.
And I feel her presence quite a bit.
And I finally made the breakthrough.
So I'm going to have it written.
So anybody who's been waiting?
Because I keep talking about it and everybody's
getting impatient.
But it's going to happen soon.
And feels good for some reason.
I'm living in Louisiana.
It just seems like the right place to do it.
So the life there really gets me going.
I don't know why.
Plus the zydeco.
Bubba.
Bubba, the javelina.
Bryant.
I met a javelina named Bubba.
And we became friends.
And he was in this place outside of San Antonio called
Buffalo Roam, which is one of these mad ranches.
Anybody been there?
It's a mad ranch run by women who live with these creatures.
They've got tigers and bears.
They've got mountain lions, and timberwolves, buffaloes,
ostriches, pigs, elance.
These really like this satanic gang of donkeys.
It chases you around.
And I had an experience when I was living here out hiking.
I'd always whined that I'd never seen javelinas, you know?
And I was out hiking in East Saguaro
and came around the corner woke one up.
And he scared me so badly.
I did a minor space launch because he came
barreling out of the stuff.
So Bubba came out at this place, Buffalo Roam,
and I was astounded to know that he knew his name.
And he was quite friendly, and he was following me
around wanting to be petted.
And I'd scratch him and pet him.
But they had a pen with timberwolves a little distance
away.
And for some reason, Bubba would realize
there were wolves over there and go insane.
And I'd be petting him, suddenly he'd go wah.
And he'd go attack the wolves.
And then he'd come back to be scratched some more.
And then he'd look up and go wah, boom and go back.
And the upshot of this, which is something
I want to use for a title for a book
is when we were talking to the women they said,
oh, Bubba get crabby some time.
So I want that to be the title of a book,
Bubba Get Crabby Sometime.
And I always joke around because my Cajun friends in Louisiana
had a lot of trouble with Urrea.
So we always joke around that you add a UX
and it's now Urreaux.
So they call me Bubba Urreaux.
Oh my.
Neruda was a big influence on me.
Asian poets were a big influence on me
when I was starting to write.
Ursula Le Guin was a big influence personally, not
so much her writing.
And a lot of the Latino Chicano poets and writers, Rudy Anaya
another big personal influence on me
because he's one of the first really known writers I
got to talk to.
And I could go on forever.
Ed Abbey was a big influence on me.
Tom McGuane was a big influence on me.
Diane Wakoski, the poet was a great early influence on me.
Right now, I still fall over quivering
when I read Mary Oliver.
So I'd have to say Mary's probably a huge influence.
Oh, you like her too?
Couldn't you just kiss her?
In wandering time I say, I'll send her chocolates
on any Valentine's Day.
I love her so much.
There are a lot.
If you're going to write, you've got to read.
And I've always been a book vacuum cleaner.
So sometimes I go through these periods of mad fever,
where I've got to read a lot of somebody.
And then there's nothing left to read.
So I find somebody else.
And I read all their books.
Yeah.
I always felt like stew.
I always felt like I was some other creature.
I couldn't figure out what I was.
Era más Mexicano que las tortillas, man.
Pardon?
Sure.
Oh, yeah.
Mexicanos, we're everything.
I've got an African-American niece.
I've got relatives who are Wong Urrea in Mexico City, Chinese.
We're everybody.
I've got German people.
My family, the Stolch family.
I don't know.
I think about that a lot.
I'm not sure.
I find myself in this weird bridge position, where
I seem to get along with every ethnic group
because every ethnic group shows me mercy like Dave
the Warrior did.
You know what I mean?
And I find that's really powerful for me.
Because you have to listen, and you have to listen
I think with your heart, and your soul.
And people are willing to open their lives to me.
For example, working on Teresita.
Nobody likes people trying to do cheap shopping in their medicine
traditions.
Yet medicine people from many, many tribes without my asking
have adopted me and taken me in.
And that's a great thing.
It's a responsibility to because then you have the trust
to not betray secrets.
But I think it's something I learned working in Tijuana
that I got to tell those people's life stories like Papa
Torres.
And I'm trying really hard to do them justice.
So I think that does come from my background.
It's Leo.
Leo.
Yeah.
Go, Sherman.
Absolutely.
I agree.
It's a very delicate thing.
Sherman's position is that he doesn't want to know.
He himself.
Because I was with him when he was having a knockdown
battle with a guy.
And I happened to be between them.
So I just leaned back and let him go at it.
And he said, I don't want to know about Apache medicine.
I don't want to know about Navajo medicine.
And it's none of my business.
Why do you think it's your business?
And they thought it's a brilliant point.
And in the middle of this conversation,
because Sherman knows what I've been doing with Teresita,
he slowly turned and looked at me.
And he got this look on his face like, I'm
going to have to get you.
But I think he's right.
I came to a moment when I realized
that when you're a writer, sometimes you want to show off.
And I think a lot of writers want
to show off what we've learned.
Look at this word I have learned.
Look at this plant I've learned.
But it's not.
I don't need that plant.
And you as the reader, don't need the plant.
But the people who use it secretly
need the plant, or the word, the concept.
So what I have to do is be really careful.
And my position has been also, when
you get into things like that, things happen.
And I didn't think things happen.
They happen.
So I don't want to know anymore either.
So now, I'm focusing a lot of my studies on books.
Because I can get away with she was a midwife, for example.
And it's fascinating to me to hang out
with midwives, for example, and talk
to them or birthing coaches.
She was an herbalist.
So I can study books about herbs.
And I don't have to reveal something I shouldn't know
or if I know, I shouldn't reveal because it's
been entrusted to me.
I think Sherman is right in a real sense.
I just want to be really careful with this stuff.
And I have to say those of you who've
been following that Teresita saga know that I've
tried to weasel out of it for years
because I didn't think a man should write it.
And thank God that all the women writers
I went to in my cowardice all said, hey, she's your aunt, man.
But forcing me to try to change the way I thought a little bit.
But if you just study the verbal part,
you get all kinds of cool stuff.
I've got a great book from Mexico called Plants That Kill.
It teaches you how to kill people with plants.
[?? Estramillo, ??] if you're looking for one.
If you make a soup out of it or a tea out of it,
it'll kill people.
But if you make a cigar out of it and let them smoke it,
it cures tuberculosis.
It's good to the different.
Just enough for the book.
I'm not going to set up some hands on healing practice
when I'm done.
One last one before we go get a hamburger.
Anything?
Yeah.
You know a guy by the name [INAUDIBLE] if you want it?
No.
Well, let me say, I was five.
So I might have.
Who was she?
[INAUDIBLE]
Oh.
Yeah.
I know her.
[INAUDIBLE]
Down there with a group that [INAUDIBLE]
Oh, you did?
Yeah.
[INAUDIBLE]
And was she gone?
No.
But I [INAUDIBLE]
The Beatles.
There you go.
All you need is love.
Thank you.