Table of contents
Wednesday, March 5, 1997
Dance Home, Santa Monica 8:15 to 10:15 PM
Childhood Nicknames
“They used to have strange names for kids in the town where I grew up. One kid was named ‘Hypodermica.’ Another whose father was into math was called ‘Raíz Cuadrada,’ the Spanish name for ‘square root.’ They’re coming to me lately, these strange names, with all their Brazilian last names and inflections. I don’t know why, maybe I’m scraping the barrel. I have to stop them or they take over.”
Movement Instruction – Kicking Imaginary Opponent in the Genitals
The first movement he had us do was upward knee kicks, aiming at an imaginary opponent’s genitals. Castaneda made jokes about “the family jewels.” He did an imitation of Howard Lee saying, in his halting, inarticulate way, “Mmm, maybe I shouldn’t teach you this, hmmm, ’cause we don’t want to hurt the family jewels. It very important to have children to take care of you when you are a grandparent.”
Castaneda announced he was going to be picking on Reni, but he didn’t. He did refer to someone as a bored fuck, “But their father and grandmother used to hang on her every word when she was growing up, so she learned to talk a lot. You just can’t shut her up. She thinks I’m cruel or barbaric for my rules, but what can I do? It’s terrible for a bored fuck to have been taught to talk all the time.”
“I’d rather see you as mysterious entities. Don’t give me all this day-to-day bullshit. Don’t be your day-to-day selves. Who needs that?”
People Telling Him their ‘True Identities’
“Last night we had dinner and met some people. One of them turned out to be this German translator, who eventually revealed to us that he wasn’t just a translator, that he also writes novels in Germany under the name ‘Rollo something,’ about life in America. He told us his style is a lot like John Dos Passos, and he read us something.”
Florinda interjected, “You know you bring that out in people. That wasn’t even the point of the meeting, but you seem to bring this out–people telling you their ‘true identities.’ Their hidden identities, trying impress you that they are really something more.”
Castaneda responded, “I took it as an omen. That’s why I’m telling you that if you get the temptation to let people know your true identity, or that you’re something more, that you’re not just whatever it is, restrain yourself. Don’t do that. That’s the Flyer, trying to make yourself bigger. We have to not feed the Flyer. Let it die. Let it go away. That’s our effort.”
More Movement Instruction
He showed us a couple more sections that continue the long pass he had been showing us in pieces at prior sessions. Then we went through each of the passes for Preparing for Intent. We then did the six passes he had shown us Sunday, and he added a seventh, as number four in the series, which involved crossing the arms and putting the left knuckle in the right eye socket and vice versa, with the three fingers against the temple, the little finger sticking out. He said it was for improving vision.
Editing Ourselves
“We need to edit ourselves. If you’re writing a huge novel, just save ten pages. Ten pages will be good. If you can get to the point where it’s just coming through you, where you’re not thinking about it, whatever you do, whether it’s writing, editing or music, that’s the point to get to.”
Lawrence Lipton
“I had a friend, Lawrence Lipton, who was an original hippie. He wrote this book that was finally published as The Holy Barbarians. When he first showed me the manuscript it was 7 or 800 pages long. He’d just thrown everything in it, and one page had nothing to do with the next.
He lucked out and got a really good editor who was able to make it into a 250-page book. He said he was looking for a good editor and wanted me to read it. I tried to read some of it and just got a headache because it was so unrelated. I just offended the guy for life. He had been offering that I could use his astral projection machine that allowed him to fly into the window of a woman in another building. He claimed the woman knew he was coming in his astral body and that she would leave the window open. I wanted to try it, but I pissed him off.” [Lipton was the editor of the original Free Press in California.]
Don Juan’s Penis Cream
“Don Juan used to do all kinds of things to make me crazy–to make me experience strange things. He told me once that I should watch out because sorcerers do strange things with their pinchos.” He mimicked himself blinking a lot and saying, “What? Really?”
“Don Juan gave me some cream that was extracts of various herbs. He told me to rub it all over my pincho. I did, and it gave me the strangest sensation, when my eyes were closed, that my pincho was touching the floor. When I would open my eyes I would see, again, that it was normal, but when I closed my eyes it would feel like it was on the floor. Don Juan told me ‘Watch out now!’ because one of the old naguals had extended his penis so that he could reach a woman who lived across the railroad tracks from him. He would stick it out so that it would travel over the roof and over to this woman’s window and across the room to her bed. He was doing that one night and heard the train coming. So he quickly tugged on his penis to pull it back in time.”
“Don Juan did stuff like that all the time to me to send me over the edge. I wish I could do that to you, but there’s only me. Who else is there? There’s Florinda. Muni’s gone already and Taisha doesn’t care. Taisha’s mostly gone. She’s partly here, but it’s just a percentage. She’s already gone with her dog. At some point all of Taisha will come and help lead me over. But where don Juan had 15 people to back him up, I can’t do that kind of thing. All we can do are little things, little barbarities. But you’re moving, you’re moving along. It’s happening. You’re going to see a Flyer. The energy is high. The energy is there–it’s going to happen. We’ll trap it, and you’ll just see it for a moment, which will make you puke your guts out.”
Pope Telling People They Can’t Have Sex with their Second Spouse
“Have you heard the Pope’s latest pronouncement?” I responded, “Yes, about people who are divorced not being able to have sex with their second spouses?” “Yes. It’s truly crazy. You should read it. We should get a copy and we’ll have Lorenzo read sections of it. How fantastic, on the eve of the millenium!”
“I know some really devout Catholics. A woman who was baptized at the Vatican says, ‘Nothing he does is fallible. He didn’t write it. He doesn’t write those sort of things. It must have been his secretary.”
Marijuana’s Effect on Sex
“People who smoke a lot of marijuana don’t make good lovers. The father of a friend of mine in school did a study on it and concluded that because it makes their knees and elbows weak, they just lie flat on top of the woman and smother her.” Florinda groaned. “This is a science,” he responded.
Florinda suggested, “Since they all have to be celibate [referring to the rest of us], maybe they should smoke marijuana.” Castaneda responded, “No, this is only temporary. We won’t be masturbators forever. Just to get rid of the Flyer’s mind. Just to give some space for awhile.”
More Riffs on Sexuality
“What is it that upsets us. The wife tells us that we’re a piece of shit? We should get so offended at that? That upsets us so much that it wipes us out? Why let those things get to us?”
“Another friend of ours was this old man. He wrote a long story–‘The Sexual Fantasies of an Older Man.’ I saw him once at a restaurant when I was with Kylie. So it shows up in this novel as, ‘I saw an old friend of mine at a restaurant. The woman he was with was affected by my oils. I keep my shirt open because the oils attract women.’ The guy didn’t bathe for four days at a time and then played racket ball to make sure his ‘oils’ were at the right state. He wrote hundreds of pages. He should have thrown it out. Are we that crazy that we have to imagine that our ‘oils’ turn on every woman that we see?”
“Do we have to write about everything that bothers us? Lorenzo has a terrible time turning loose of any of his pages. It just kills him.”
“Nyei lived in France until she was thrown out for immorality. She had two suitors. Ultimately they had to fight a duel. One of them didn’t bring his gun–he was a Spaniard and a coward. But the other one was French, and he came after her very ardently and scared her off.”
“Carol when she was young and naive, her first time down in Mexico, had this guy sending her flowers and taking her out to dinner. She didn’t know he was just trying to get her to bed to do this,” he made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, ramming the index finger of his other hand in and out of it. “He took her down to Acapulco, and she had dysentery. So she’s sitting there at the bar, stoned, drinking margaritas and lisping away. She had it so bad that she was dribbling it out all over the stool. Between her shitting on the stool and lisping, the guy got disgusted and left. So she comes back to Mexico City, disheartened, saying, ‘I’m thuch a loother.'”
Would be ‘Electric Warrior’
“There used to be a woman in this group who thought she was the Electric Warrior. She was very upset that she wasn’t getting the attention she deserved. She said, ‘You’ve written that the Electric Warrior comes close to midnight. It’s chiming now! You can hear it chime.'”
Trick for When You Are Tired of Dealing with Someone
“Don Juan said if there is someone you are tired of dealing with you can call them by another name. Say it’s Bob, call out to him ‘Hey John! How’s your wife?’ And you know he’s not married. ‘I heard she’s in the hospital. I hope she’s okay.’ The guy responds, ‘I’m not married.’ ‘Oh dear, what happened?’ Then they’ll surely leave you alone. I know when to try it, but I’ve never yet had the opportunity. Maybe you’ll try it.”
[The usual Cleargreen contingent was there, except Zaia, Nury, Carola, Lorenzo and Talia. But Tycho was on hand for the first time in a long time. From the Sunday class it was Greg, Thorton, Darby (later Wilkie), Marcos (later LeRoy), Keith, Pablo, Virginia and me.]
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