The Wheel Of Time

Commentary

The last book that I ever wrote about don Juan as a direct result of the guidance of Florinda Matus was called The Power of Silence, a title that was chosen by my editor; my title had been Inner Silence. At the time that I was working on the book, the views of the shamans of ancient Mexico had become extremely abstract for me. Florinda tried her best to deviate me from my absorption in the abstract. She attempted to redirect my attention to different aspects of old shamanistic techniques, or she tried to divert me by shocking me with her scandalous behavior. But nothing was sufficient to deviate me from my seemingly inexorable drive.

The Power of Silence is an intellectual review of the thoughts of the shamans of ancient Mexico, in their most abstract guise. As I worked alone on the book, I was contaminated by the mood of those men, by their desire to know more in a quasi-rational way. Florinda explained that in the end, those shamans had become extremely cold and detached. Nothing warm existed for them anymore. They were set in their quest their coldness as men was an effort to match the coldness of infinity. They had succeeded in changing their human eyes to match the cold eyes of the unknown.

I sensed this in myself, and tried desperately to turn the tide. I haven't succeeded yet. My thoughts have become more and more like the thoughts of those men at the end of their quest. It is not that I don't laugh. Quite the contrary, my life is an endless joy. But at the same time, it is an endless, merciless quest. Infinity will swallow me, and I want to be prepared for it. I don't want infinity to dissolve me into nothing because I hold human desires, warm affection, attachments, no matter how vague. More than anything else in this world, I want to be like those men. I never knew them. The only shamans I knew were don Juan and his cohorts, and what they expressed was the furthest thing from the coldness that I intuit in those unknown men.

Due to the influence that Florinda had on my life, I succeeded brilliantly in learning to focus my unwavering attention on the mood of people I never knew. 1 focused my recapitulation attention on the mood of those shamans, and I got trapped by it without hope of ever extricating myself from their pull. Florinda didn't believe in the finality of my state. She humored me. and laughed at it openly.

"Your state only seems to be final," she said to me, "but it isn't. A moment will come when you will change venues. Perhaps you will chuck even-thought about the shamans of ancient Mexico. Perhaps you may even chuck the thoughts and views of the very shamans you worked with so closely, like the nagual Juan Matus. You might refuse his being. You'll see. The warrior has no limits. His sense of improvisation is so acute that he will make constructs out of nothing, but not just mere empty constructs; rather, something workable, pragmatic. You'll see. It is not that you'll forget about them, but at one moment, before you plunge into the abyss, if you have the gall to walk along its edge, if you have the daring not to deviate from it, you will then arrive at warriors' conclusions of an order and stability infinitely more suited to you than the fixation of the shamans of ancient Mexico."

Florinda's words were like a handsome, hopeful prophecy. Perhaps she was right. She was of course right in asserting that the resources of a warrior have no limits. The only flaw is that in order for me to have a different orderly view of the world and myself, a view even more suited to my temperament, I have to walk along the edge of the abyss, and I have doubts that I have the daring and strength to accomplish that feat.

But who is there to tell?