Cleargreen Night Session – Monday, January 6, 1997, Dance Home, Santa Monica
Table of contents
Our ‘Me’ Voice is Weaker
“The ‘me’ isn’t that strong among you anymore. It’s a little there, but it’s so weak.” He mimicked someone, in a weak voice, saying “me.”
“In the outside world, however, it’s really strong. Even my beautiful doctor, she says, ‘I love François.’ ‘Would you be willing to die for François?’ ‘Yes! No. Yes, yes. No. I don’t know.’ What is this love? What does she mean? We don’t even know what we mean.
Self Importance Stories
“I’ve been spending time with this reporter who’s a lovely guy, but very self important–just unbearably self important. The guy has done stories on the mafia, and he claims that all kinds of people want his little black book, that they’d kill for it. It’s really stupid because this guy drives a little car and anybody who wanted to could just break open the car and get the book–no big deal.
“It’s sort of like my lawyer [Deborah Drooz], a woman who’s got an opinion on everything–childrearing, you name it–she’ll hold forth on it very officiously. But I like her, nonetheless. We needed to talk to her today and Kylie asked me, ‘You felt shitty about the lawyer. Do you want to talk to them this time?’ ‘What? I don’t feel shitty about it. Kylie, what are you thinking?’ Kylie tried to excuse herself by saying, ‘Oh, I just don’t have a mind today.’ What kind of an excuse is that?”
Nyei piped up, “Oh, can I use that one?”
Movement Instruction
Castaneda showed us seven strikes with the tips of the fingers, in various directions, and six more that used the outward edge of the hand to strike into someone’s kidneys and the like.
Rosa’s Tricks
“There was this Argentine guy who was even shorter than I am, isn’t he, Rosa?”
Rosa responded, “Yes, much shorter than you!”
Castaneda mimicked her excitement, saying, “She’ll sleep happy tonight. She does things like insist on reading the fax from an Argentine well-wisher. I don’t want to hear it. She says, ‘No, no you’ve got to hear it. “Let me be the first to wish you happy birthday on your 75th birthday.”‘ Then she looks at me to see if I twitch or give away what my age is. She’s always doing stuff like that.
Kylie and Taisha Moving Nyei Out from Her Parents
“One time Taisha and Kylie went over to Nyei’s house to move her piano. Supposedly it was an electric piano. What are three stupid women doing trying to move a piano? There are movers for that sort of thing that specialize in pianos. Anyway, they were going to go move this piano, but it turned out to be this big huge piano, and they just couldn’t budge it. While they were there, Taisha said, ‘Well, why don’t we move you? Where’s your room?’ Nyei said, ‘Well, I haven’t had a chance quite to put things in order.’ They go to open the door, and it will hardly budge an inch. They get in and there’s stuff piled all over the floor.
“Nyei was a ‘genius,’ sort of a genius from an early age, so geniuses don’t take time to put their clothes away, they just drop them wherever. They don’t take time for cleaning, they just sit there thinking. So there were just piles. There was a little pathway to the bed, and a little pathway over to the window so you could open it a crack, but otherwise, there were just these piles. So they were working on that and packing her up. It went on for hours.
“The father was upstairs, watching TV and farting, and not really paying attention to them at all. He actually had wanted Nyei to move and was going to give her money if she would move out, but she’d have to take her sister with her, which she wasn’t interested in doing. Taisha’s going through the slides that included pictures of Nyei, sorting through each one to see which ones they needed to take, and one by one taking them out and looking at them to decide on the differences. Afterwards, the mother wasn’t upset about Nyei moving out, but she was very upset about the pictures that were missing, her precious pictures.
“They were at it literally for hours, around the clock. Not knowing what had happened, Florinda assumed Taisha was gone, so she called everyone else together and told them they were going to have to ‘go,’ tomorrow, if Taisha wasn’t back. They needed to leave, and if they weren’t able to burn, they should plan to die.
Florinda’s Plan if They Couldn’t Leave Together
“Florinda had it all worked out that she had a pilot’s license from a lifetime ago. She could fly a Cessna. So they would fly to Hawaii and rent a plane there and fly over a big volcano and drop themselves in it, to go that way. Nury had a paper due, so she wanted to get that turned in first. So she was going to turn that in and then they were going to go. Florinda had it worked out–it would be three hours to Hawaii and then an hour to get the plane, so if they left at 2 AM, they’d be gone. Finally Taisha showed up and they found out where they’d been, so they didn’t have to kill themselves.
Taisha Helping Ellis Move from Her Berkeley House
“The meticulous Taisha was at it again helping Ellis to move. Ellis had a three-story house, and every story was crammed with memorabilia. It was knick-knack city. She had every ice cream bowl she had with her father, Irving Wallace.
“Irving was the kind of man who lived for posterity, so he’d even signed them. The kind of person who asks, ‘Did you keep my letters? They might be worth something someday.’ Ellis told everyone in Berkeley the tearful story of losing her father. She used up all the ears in Berkeley, so she was looking for new blood, and she told me. But she didn’t even like him that much, it wasn’t that she missed him that much, she had to tell about her. At the hospital she cried so much that the nurse on duty said, ‘I have something for you,’ and brought her Irving’s dentures, which she kept under the bed for years, not knowing what to do with them. I don’t know what she finally did with them. I think maybe she put them under a steamroller when they were laying asphalt, so that they’re now embedded in a driveway somewhere.
“She and Taisha worked around the clock–Taisha doesn’t stop, she can work for hours and hours without stopping–going through everything–three floors of piles of everything. Taisha got her down to one small unfurnished room of stuff. I’m afraid to ask Ellis how she feels after this.
Ellis’s Maneuver with Her Mother
“Ellis also returned from Italy this week [this was a story he’d had her tell her mother–Ellis hadn’t been gone at all], where she was heartbroken after being with the doctor [Miles, who had posed as Ellis’s fiancee in order to be around her family and insult her brother, on Castaneda’s orders]. She found out that he made up stories to get money from her mother, and wanted her to have kids for the same reason. We’re mixing, putting all this stuff in the pot, since this is the kind of thing that Ellis’s brother does. So we can kill two birds with one stone. Her mother will cry and give her lots of money.”
Memmo’s Departure
“Hmmm, Rylin looks like an Arab princess.
“Memmo had to go back. He moved the Verde Claro office, trading places between Verde Claro and his house, because he’d had an office just two blocks from where his wife lived and she was always calling him up to pick up the kids, take the kids there, ‘Can you get me a quart of milk?,’ and he was doing it. So he moved himself further away, telling the Verde Claro people that the reason was he wanted to spend more time with his kids. But the real reason was that he wanted to be further away from his wife. He had taken it to heart that he was boring. So if he was going to be boring to people, including his kids, then they could just make an appointment to be bored, rather than him being at their beck and call.
“What he didn’t realize was that his wife would be in heaven with that, since she wouldn’t have to worry about him spying from two blocks down, seeing who was there. So her boyfriend could be over more. She dumped the kids on him for three days, and he didn’t know what to do. He talked to me,” Castaneda imitated his comically deep voice, ‘Is this part of the plan, Carlos? I don’t understand.'” [Afterwards, Castaneda imitated him in Spanish for Nina and Darby, using a lot of slang, with a heavy Mexican accent.]
[This was a much smaller group than usual. The Witches weren’t there, and Grant, Reni, Talia and Kylie were missing. We got the call about 6:30 PM to be there at 8. From the Sunday group were Nina, Greg, Thorton, Marcos, Paul, me, and, for the first time, Ralph.]
Cleargreen Night Session – Monday, January 20, 1997, Dance Home, Santa Monica
Women’s Passes Issues
Castaneda began by talking about the Women’s Passes, and how he’d gotten “messed up” by doing them. And others had too–with stomach problems or early menstruation. “I wanted to eliminate them from the review, but I don’t really have a rationale for doing so. You need some sort of coherent rationale in dealing with energy; you can’t just do things arbitrarily. So I can’t just drop them, without a rationale or pressing reason. So I suggest that we do them lightly and that we do a whistle, with an implosion of air, to help us do them lightly.
“Travis asked, ‘Why are their no poems to male virginity? You know there are all these poems to female virginity and the importance of it, but nobody seems to care about male virginity. It’s at least as difficult.”
Castaneda asked, “Lorenzo, why don’t you and I write a poem. Why not? Why shouldn’t we write a poem to male virginity?”
Movement Instruction – Blue Scout Passes
We did four Blue Scout passes. We started with two fingers pointing forward, bringing the hand around to the side and then back to the front with the fingers pointing up. Then pointing forward with a whistle and jabbing three times, ending with the hand in a Vulcan salute, making a skinning motion, not touching the stomach, for a finish.
A second one started with the left foot out at a 45-degree angle from the right, rocking forward and back 10 times. Then the right hand parries downward and the left jabs forward with the two fingers. You do that three times, then do the V-hand scooping finish.
Another was shaking out the hands, then going down to the foot level, hooking with two fingers and putting that energy on the back, on the adrenals. Doing it with one hand, then the other hand, then with both hands at the same time.
Reordered Oakland Passes
Then we did the Oakland II passes. The Steps of Nature were somewhat different. They used a rolling foot forward. Stepping over the Root seemed a bit higher, and then Kicking a Low Fence was on an angle. Breaking the Nugget we first practiced with one foot, hitting the floor repeatedly. The last one was Scraping the Bottom of the Luminous Egg, with a pawing step.
There were also some alterations to the other Oakland II movements, and they left out the fourth one, where the arms shoot out from the sides, and the last one. On the first one, we went up with the right hand instead of the left hand. On the third one, we scooped around and back and in front, and then brought it back and placed it with the palm of the hand outward against the adrenals–sort of a cupped hand with the back of the hand toward the adrenals. Then you turn it around and smash it into the adrenals with the opposite hand held up against the belly button area. On the last of the movements, instead of moving forward and backward and out to the sides simultaneously, it was one hand and then the other, like we’d done it originally.
Problems with Stirring Up What’s at the Bottom of the Luminous Egg
“Sorcerers don’t want to stir up what’s at the bottom of the luminous egg very much. It’s not good to disturb too much of that stuff without passes designed to do it in some orderly way. So sorcerers wouldn’t go jogging for miles; that would be very disturbing. And long strenuous walks are also disturbing. It’s much better to do 100 Steps of Nature–much less disturbing–than taking a long strenuous walk.
Carola Stories
“Carola–‘Secretary!’–is the one kids go to for advice.” He imitated her by going up to Talia and stroking the back of her head, saying “It’s okay Nana. No, really, it’s going to be okay. Don’t be worried, Nana.”
“A lot of the women recently went with the Blue Scout ice skating. I talked to Carola beforehand, asking her, ‘Can you do it?’ meaning ‘Can you ice skate?’ She thought I was asking her, ‘Can you go with them?’ and she told me, ‘Yes, of course.’ But what I meant was ‘Can you ice skate?’ which she can’t.
She spent her time helping the small children, giving them the confidence to get up on their feet, so that she wasn’t falling around, since she can’t ice skate. St. Darien was doing a lot of that too–looking out for the little kids, whereas Claude was skating all around.” Florinda said she wished they had video of Carola doing that. Nury commented, “Well, we were on a number of mini video cameras.”
“When Taisha was learning to ice skate, she was told by the instructor to skate to the music. So she identified where the music was coming from, a big speaker across the room, and she skated toward it. Then she said, ‘Okay, I’m over here. Now where do I go?'”
Stains of Power
Castaneda noticed there was a stain on his shirt. “It didn’t bother me. I didn’t see it.” Carol quipped, “Stains of power.”
“Often my socks don’t match. They’re pretty much all black, but some are browner than others, and I had a black and a brown one put together. They didn’t match them up. I’ve gone out of the house that way. One time I got ready to go eat with Kylie and I was wearing two non-matching shoes: one Mephisto and one regular tennis shoe. I get to the restaurant and the guy greets me. That’s when I notice the shoes.”
[Everyone was on hand, including the Witches. From the Sunday group, it was Darby, Nina, Paul, Greg and me.]
©️ 2024 by Richard Jennings, all rights reserved
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