The Late Carlos Castaneda
"A computer
warrior must have unbending intent," said Don Juan. At least,
that’s what I think he said -- I’m not entirely sure.
Hours earlier, I had consumed several cups of a strange tea, prepared for us by Doña Elena. I don’t know what the ingredients were, but Don Juan assured me there wasn’t a trace of tea in it.
"But Don Juan," I protested. "Why would I want to drink tea without tea in it?"
Don Juan laughed his trademarked, mirthful belly laugh, and exchanged a knowing glance with the aged, 400-pound Don Estrango, who was sitting on the floor next to us, swilling a bottle of cheap Agave.
We had purchased it yesterday with the remains of my Fulbright scholarship money.
"El gringo es muy estúpido," Don Estrango offered, grinning widely, and toothlessly, between swallows.
"El no puede ayudar," said Don Juan, looking suddenly grave. "El usa una computadora Macintosh."
"El es un triste tonto!!!" said Don Estrango, suddenly and inexplicably bursting into tears.
Don Juan turned to me to explain.
"Don Estrango thinks you are a fool because you use a Macintosh computer. I think you are a fool because you expect your tea to have tea in it."
"But Don Juan!" I said. "It is only natural that…"
"Tea is a stimulant, a substance that accelerates the engine of your mind, without modifying the underlying mental machinery," said Don Juan, calmly. "In your case, it would be foolhardy to accelerate the pathetic bucket of bolts that passes for your mind. It would merely shake and rattle apart, and you would never return to this world…at least, not in a recognizable form."
"Don Juan, I don’t like…"
"What you need instead," said Don Juan, ignoring me as usual, "is a complete rebuild of your mental machinery -- using premium components -- performed with precision and care. That is why I gave you the tea."
Don Estrango’s tears stopped suddenly, and he began laughing again – more hysterically, if possible, than before.
"What exactly was in that tea, Don Juan?" I asked, feeling a wave of mild nausea, accompanied by what appeared to be a shimmering, electrified purple curtain sweeping across the room.
"That’s not a simple question to answer," he replied, looking off into the distance dreamily. "The tea we gave you works on two levels – the biological, and the vibrational. Both are necessary to produce the desired results."
"What do you mean, the vibrational level?" I asked, trying not to slur my words.
Looking at me paternally, though not patiently, Don Juan answered, "While the foolish scientists in your world argue whether matter is comprised of particles or waves, we understand that matter is simply matter, active at different levels or degrees of vibration.
"Low vibrational matter is dense, like rocks or metals. Living things, like animals and people, have a higher vibration. Spirits, ideas, feelings -- the components of the unseen world – possess the highest vibrations.
"Material, non-material, it doesn’t matter. It is one continuum, one spectrum; everything that exists falls somewhere along it."
Don Estrango was leaning out a window, retching, but between heaves we heard him say, emphatically, "Almost everything, Don Juan, almost everything."
"Of course, of course, Estrango," said Don Juan, harshly. "I’m keeping it simple for el gringo."
"Si, si, por supuesto," said Don Estrango, vomiting again.
"But you still haven’t told me," I said to Don Juan, "what was in the tea – on either the biological or the vibrational levels!"
Don Juan’s expression was that of someone who had dropped a bag of groceries, and had to stoop to pick them up.
"The tea is brewed with some very rare psychoactive plants found in secluded areas here in the high desert plains of northern Mexico, and in the Amazon river basin. But in your peculiar case, it is the vibrational elements that are much more important."
It seemed appropriate that Don Juan mention vibrations, because now, my whole body was shaking in convulsive fits.
"How do you influence the vibrational elements in the tea, Don Juan?" I managed to ask.
I wasn’t shaking any more, but I had a strange feeling that my ears had grown to the size of an elephant’s. I was surprised that no one had remarked on them.
"Controlling the vibrational elements or aspects of anything is the essence of the sorcerer’s art," he said. "It is the work of a lifetime – and beyond."
Here, Don Juan paused to light a filterless cigarette, and then continued, smiling broadly.
"Speaking metaphorically, I dare say you are far behind in your studies. But a good smart American student like you will pull through somehow. You’ll consume large quantities of some stimulant drug, stay up all night writing some worthless academic paper, and pay some friend, using your parent’s money, to type it.
"Then you’ll run across campus to hand it to your idiot professor just minutes before the deadline, who you’ll probably catch in the act of screwing some attractive yet vacuous coed."
Don Juan laughed in what seemed to me a very sarcastic, unkind manner; I took this to be his customary deep devotion and love for me.
"The vibrations," I said, shaking again, wildly.
I wasn’t sure whether I was asking about the tea, or simply describing my condition to Don Juan, as one would describe symptoms to a physician.
Oddly, it didn’t seem to matter; I had the sensation that my communication with Don Juan had shifted from the verbal to the telepathic level.
We continued the conversation in this manner, which was convenient, because I felt my jaws clamped shut, as if held tight in some cosmic vice.
"Es la mano de Dios!," screamed Don Estrango at this moment, his eyes bulging.
Don Juan shot him an angry look back. "Quiet, Estrango," he said. "Remember the Scorpion."
Then he returned his attention to me.
"In your case, the process of preparing the vibrational elements of the tea was simple," Don Juan said calmly. "Come into the next room, and I’ll show you how we did it."
Miraculously, Dona Elena came into the room at that moment with a pair of old wooden crutches, and helped me onto them. I was thus able to accompany Don Juan into the adjoining room.
In it, I saw nothing but a bunch of cheap, beat-up old furniture, in loud, hideous colors. Opposite a huge soiled chartreuse couch, on a stack of wooden vegetable crates, sat a small, inexpensive color television set, connected to an old VCR.
Propped up about three inches in front of the television screen was a clear glass pitcher, filled with a brownish liquid that resembled Don Juan’s hallucinogenic tea.
Strangely, the television set was playing the infamous "1984" Apple Computer commercial, directed by Ridley ("Alien, Blade Runner") Scott – first broadcast during the 1984 Super Bowl, and repeatedly thereafter.
It was the commercial with which Apple introduced the Macintosh computer.
As I sat and watched this odd setup, I noticed that the commercial was playing over and over again. Don Juan read my mind.
"Just a simple videotape loop -- no magic there," he said, laughing.
"But the pitcher…" I managed.
"Yes, the pitcher, the television pitcher," said Don Juan, cackling, sounding for all the world like W.C. Fields.
"To facilitate your healing, we are saturating the tea with the essential vibrations of this corrupt and deceptive television advertisement," he explained.
"Each batch takes several days to prepare. When you drink the tea, every cell in your body will absorb its essence, in precisely the same manner as the tea absorbs the essence from the light rays emanating from the television screen."
"But why…" I began.
"Although it would be a stretch to call this process homeopathy, we are borrowing an idea from the Krauts, which is, "like cures like."
"A person raised in horrible poverty may vow never to be poor again, and thereafter become a great success in life. Likewise, it is essential for you to become saturated with the intent of this misleading and manipulative advertising masterwork – a real triumph of the dark forces," said Don Juan, smiling grimly.
"But why…" I said again.
"Because it will either kill you or cure you," Don Juan said, laughing.
The last thing I remember -- my head was spinning – was Don Juan placing his arm around Don Estrango’s shoulder, and both of them heading out the front door.
I awoke hours later, sitting at my computer desk. There was an air of unreality about the scene. The desk, the computer that sat on top of it, the pens and papers, they were all mine.
But the room in which I was sitting was unfamiliar – and yet, very, very familiar at the same time.
It was a common, comfortable, suburban, middle or upper-middle class bedroom, situated, no doubt, in a common, comfortable suburban home.
There was carpeting on the floor in a tasteful muted
beige tone. There was a bookshelf filled with books; the bookshelf was sturdily constructed of pressed fiber-board, covered with a wood-grained vinyl – fake, but a good quality fake.
There were framed pictures of smiling males and females, looking desperately happy and decidedly young. There was a model of an airplane, some kind of U.S. fighter plane, perched on a stand so it could appear to be soaring through space. There was a collegiate pennant pinned to the wall at a precise 45-degree angle.
Somebody’s mother was probably downstairs, preparing dinner. Meatloaf? Tuna noodle casserole? Whatever, I knew it would be good. Somebody’s father was probably returning from the office right at this moment, driving – what -- a Buick LeSabre, or Oldsmobile Cutlass? A station wagon?
I felt comfortable, familiar, utterly safe in this room. I felt I could spend the rest of eternity here and be completely free from harm. Maybe I’d never grow old here, even. Or if I did, it wouldn’t hurt, that was the most important thing.
And so when I turned naturally to the Macintosh on my desk and saw the familiar little hard drive icon and trusty trash can, I felt the same way.
Until the trash can started speaking to me.
It seems appropriate that a trash can would have a trashy mouth, and this one certainly did. For the sake of my readers, however, I will excise the expletives and leave the basic flow of the dialogue intact.
"Hey you, big guy!" he said.
(That’s definitely not what he said).
"Are you talking to me?" I reponded, resisting the temptation to imitate Robert De Niro.
"Yeah, you," said the trash can. "You like this little computer?"
"It serves my purposes,"
I said, smelling a trap. "A little word processing here,
a little spreadsheet there, maybe the internet once in awhile…"
"A little of this, a little of that," the trash can
said, mocking me as he danced a little dance around the screen
before returning to the lower right-hand corner and settling back
there.
"When you were a kid you wanted everything, you wanted the world, right? But the problem was, see, your parents, right? All they could afford was the room you’re sitting in now. It may look like nothing to you, but to them it was a king’s palace, and it cost them a king’s ransom. It was everything they had."
The trash can did a little dance again.
"You mean, they did it all for me?" I asked, confused.
"No, you sentimental fool, they did it the way they wanted to do it. ‘I’m the daddy, she’s the mommy, that’s why.’ They bought the train and they ran it. You were a passenger on the train. It was no democracy kid. It was just a train."
"But what does this have to do with the Macintosh?" I asked, genuinely puzzled.
"If I was a religious trash can, which I’m not, I’d call it ‘free will.’ So I’ll call it choice instead. CHOICE. Got that, kid?"
"Choice?" I said, mystified. "I don’t get…"
"Jeez, Juan was right about you," said the trash can, laughing. "Thick-skulled and thin-skinned! But it’s not your fault…listen, I’ll boil it down for you, make it easy for you, like I’m speaking to a retard, okay? You got a pencil? Are you ready?"
I looked on my desk and picked up a pen. It said "YOUR COMPANY NAME AND TELEPHONE NUMBER IMPRINTED HERE." I tried it, it wrote.
"Ready," I said to the trash can.
"The reason that Russia went down the trash can is the same reason that Apple Computer is going down the trash can – IMAC or no IMAC," said the trash can.
"What is that reason?" I asked, sounding to myself at that precise moment as utterly ignorant as I had ever sounded in my life.
"Choice," said the trash can. "Just choice.
"From day one, Apple’s philosophy was, ‘we can do it all for you. We can give you everything you’ll ever need. Printers, hard disks, peripherals, upgrades, killer software apps…we’ve got it all right here in Cupertino, and our way is always the best way...’ You with me here, kid? I feel like I’m losing you."
"I’m writing," I said, furiously scribbling notes like I was back in my freshman political science class at State – and feeling equally fog-bound.
"If they had stopped there, they’d be guilty of bravado, nothing more. But they tried to enforce their intentions by closing off the architecture and stifling innovation. And so, tragically, at the moment they gave birth to the child, they killed it -- because they were so afraid of losing it.
"There’s a nice little fairy tale for you, kid."
At that moment, I looked around the room and my eyes fell upon a framed picture of one young woman whose sparkling eyes and winning smile were completely authentic.
And at that moment, my pen gave out.
"I need another pen," I said to the trash can apologetically.
"Don’t worry," said the trash can. "With luck, you’ll remember what I’ve said long after you’ve misplaced your notes."
"Besides," he said right before he vanished from the screen, "you’re not in college any more, kid."
At that moment, the trash can morphed into a recycle bin. I enlarged my vision to encompass the entire desktop and saw that I wasn’t running the MAC OS any more, but Windows 98. And my Macintosh had become a PC!
Was it a bad dream, or had I finally woken up?
Don Juan and I were sitting on a park bench in the plaza of Yuriria, a small town about two hours outside of Mexico City. I checked my bearings, both internal and external, and determined that we were, for the moment, both in the so-called "Real World."
Off in the distance was the lake, shimmering large and blue in the mid-day sun. The old monastery was there, with its ancient bell. An old man was giving young kids rides around the plaza in a little gas-powered wagon.
We were surrounded by the incessant chatter of life. It wasn’t heaven, maybe, but all the same, it was good to be back.
"Did you enjoy your journey?" asked Don Juan casually, lighting a cigarette.
"I think so," I said. "But there is still one thing I want to know…"
"There is always something you want to know," he said, exasperated. "May God save us all from the devastating effects of your curiousity. What is it this time?"
"About the tea…" I asked.
"Lipton," he said, winking. "Come on, I said we’d meet Estrango at the pool hall at noon, and it’s half past. Let’s join him."
