nned warrior" in the romantic frontier sagas of my childhood. My romanticism carried me away and the most insidious feeling of ambivalence enveloped me. I could sincerely say that I liked him a great deal and in the same breath I could say that I was deadly afraid of him. He maintained that strange stare for a long moment. "How can I know who I am, when I am all this?" he said, sweeping the surroundings with a gesture of his head. Then he glanced at me and smiled. "Little by little you must create a fog around yourself; you must erase everything around you until nothing can be taken for granted, until nothing is any longer for sure, or real. Your problem now is that you're too real. Your endeavors are too real; your moods are too real. Don't take things so for granted. You must begin to erase yourself." "What for?" I asked belligerently. It became clear to me then that he was prescribing behavior for me. All my life I had reached a breaking point when someone attempted to tell me what to do; the mere thought of being told what to do put me immediately on the defensive. "You said that you wanted to learn about plants, " he said calmly. "Do you want to get something for nothing? What do you think this is? We agreed that you would ask me questions and I'd tell you what I know. If you don't like it, there is nothing else we can say to each other." His terrible directness made me feel peeved, and begrudgingly I conceded that he was right. "Let's put it this way then, " he went on. "If you want to learn about plants, since there is really nothing to say about them, you must, among other things, erase your personal history." "How?" I asked. "Begin with simple things, such as not revealing what you really do. Then you must leave everyone who knows you well. This way you'll build up a fog around yourself." "But that's absurd, " I protested. "Why shouldn't people know me? What's wrong with that?" "What's wrong is that once they know you, you are an affair taken for granted and from that moment on you won't be able to break the tie of their thoughts. I personally like the ultimate freedom of being unknown. No one knows me with steadfast certainty, the way people know you, for instance." "But that would be lying." "I'm not concerned with lies or truths, " he said severely. "Lies are lies only if you have personal history." I argued that I did not like to deliberately mystify people or mislead them. His reply was that I misled everybody anyway. The old man had touched a sore spot in my life. I did not pause to ask him what he meant by that or how he knew that I mystified people all the time. I simply reacted to his statement, defending myself by means of an explanation. I said that I was painfully aware that my family and my friends believed I was unreliable, when in reality I had never told a lie in my life. "You always knew how to lie, " he said. "The only thing that was missing was that you didn't know why to do it. Now you do." I protested. "Don't you see that I'm really sick and tired of people thinking that I'm unreliable?" I said. "But you are unreliable, " he replied with conviction. "Damn it to hell, man, I am not!" I exclaimed. My mood, instead of forcing him into seriousness, made him laugh hysterically. I really despised the old man for all his cockiness. Unfortunately he was right about me. After a while I calmed down and he continued talking. "When one does not have personal history, " he explained, "nothing that one says can be taken for a lie. Your trouble is that you have to explain everything to everybody, compulsively, and at the same time you want to keep the freshness, the newness of what you do. Well, since you can't be excited after explaining everything you've done, you lie in order to keep on going." I was truly bewildered by the scope of our conversation. I wrote down all the details of our exchange in the best way I could, concentrating on what he was saying rather than pausing to deliberate on my prejudices or on his meanings. "From now on, " he said, "you must simply show people whatever you care to show them, but without ever telling exactly how you've done it." "I can't keep secrets!" I exclaimed. "What you are saying is useless to me." "Then change!" he said cuttingly and with a fierce glint in his eyes. He looked like a strange wild animal. And yet he was so coherent in his thoughts and so verbal. My annoyance gave way to a state of irritating confusion. "You see, " he went on, "we only have two alternatives; we either take everything for sure and real, or we don't. If we follow the first, we end up bored to death with ourselves and with the world. If we follow the second and erase personal history, we create a fog around us, a very exciting and mysterious state in which nobody knows where the rabbit will pop out, not even ourselves." I contended that erasing personal history would only increase our sensation of insecurity. "When nothing is for sure we remain alert, perennially on our toes," he said. "It is more exciting not to know which bush the rabbit is hiding behind than to behave as though we know everything." He did not say another word for a very long time; perhaps an hour went by in complete silence. I did not know what to ask. Finally he got up and asked me to drive him to the nearby town. I did not know why but our conversation had drained me. I felt like going to sleep. He asked me to stop on the way and told me that if I wanted to relax, I had to climb to the flat top of a small hill on the side of the road and lie down on my stomach with my head towards the east. He seemed to have a feeling of urgency. I did not want to argue or perhaps I was too tired to even speak. I climbed the hill and did as he had prescribed. I slept only two or three minutes, but it was sufficient to have my energy renewed. We drove to the center of town, where he told me to let him off. "Come back, " he said as he stepped out of the car. "Be sure to come back." I had the opportunity of discussing my two previous visits to Don Juan with the friend who had put us in contact. It was his opinion that I was wasting my time. I related to him, in every detail, the scope of our conversations. He thought I was exaggerating and romanticizing a silly old fogy. There was very little room in me for romanticizing such a preposterous old man. I sincerely felt that his criticisms about my personality had seriously undermined my liking him. Yet I had to admit that they had always been apropos, sharply delineated, and true to the letter. The crux of my dilemma at that point was my unwillingness to accept that don Juan was very capable of disrupting all my preconceptions about the world, and my unwillingness to agree with my friend who believed that "the old Indian was just nuts." I felt compelled to pay him another visit before I made up my mind. Wednesday, December 28, 1960 Immediately after I arrived at his house he took me for a walk in the desert chaparral. He did not even look at the bag of groceries that I had brought him. He seemed to have been waiting for me. We walked for hours. He did not collect or show me any plants. He did, however, teach me an "appropriate form of walking." He said that I had to curl my fingers gently as I walked so I would keep my attention on the trail and the surroundings. He claimed that my ordinary way of walking was debilitating and that one should ever carry anything in the hands. If things had to be carried one should use a knapsack or any sort of carrying net or shoulder bag. His idea was that by forcing the hands into a specific position one was capable of greater stamina and greater awareness. I saw no point in arguing and curled my fingers as he had prescribed and kept on walking. My awareness was in no way different, nor was my stamina. We started our hike in the morning and we stopped to rest around noon. I was perspiring and tried to drink from my canteen, but he stopped me by saying that it was better to have only a sip of water. He cut some leaves from a small yellowish bush and chewed them. He gave me some and remarked that they were excellent, and if I chewed them slowly my thirst would vanish. It did not, but I was not uncomfortable either. He seemed to have read my thoughts and explained that I had not felt the benefits of the "right way of walking or the benefits of chewing the leaves because I was young and strong and my body did not notice anything because it was a bit stupid. He laughed. I was not in a laughing mood and that seemed to amuse him even more. He corrected his previous statement, saying that my body was not really stupid but somehow dormant. At that moment an enormous crow flew right over us cawing That startled me and I began to laugh. I thought that the occasion called for laughter, but to my utter amazement he shook my arm vigorously and hushed me up. He had a most serious expression. "That was not a joke, " he said severely, as if I knew what he was talking about. I asked for an explanation. I told him that it was incongruous that my laughing at the crow had made him angry when we had laughed at the coffee percolator. "What you saw was not just a crow!" he exclaimed. "But I saw it and it was a crow, " I insisted. "You saw nothing, you fool, " he said in a gruff voice. His rudeness was uncalled for. I told him that I did not like to make people angry and that perhaps it would be better if I left, since he did not seem to be in a mood to have company. He laughed uproariously, as if I were a clown performing for him. My annoyance and embarrassment grew in proportion. "You're very violent, " he commented casually. "You're taking yourself too seriously." "But weren't you doing the same?" I interjected. "Taking yourself seriously when you got angry at me?" He said that to get angry at me was the farthest thing from his mind. He looked at me piercingly. "What you saw was not an agreement from the world, " he said. "Crows flying or cawing are never an agreement. That was an omen!" "An omen of what?" "A very important indication about you, " he replied cryptically. At that very instant the wind blew the dry branch of a bush right to our feet. "That was an agreement!" he exclaimed and looked at me with shiny eyes and broke into a belly laugh. I had the feeling that he was teasing me by making up the rules of his strange game as we went along, thus it was all right for him to laugh, but not for me. My annoyance mushroomed again and I told him what I thought of him. He was not cross or offended at all. He laughed and his laughter caused me even more anguish and frustration. I thought that he was deliberately humiliating me. I decided right then that I had had my fill of "field work." I stood up and said that I wanted to start walking back to his house because I had to leave for Los Angeles. "Sit down!" he said imperatively. "You get peeved like an old lady. You cannot leave now, because we're not through yet." I hated him. I thought he was a contemptuous man. He began to sing an idiotic Mexican folk song. He was obviously imitating some popular singer. He elongated certain syllables and contracted others and made the song into a most farcical affair. It was so comical that I ended up laughing. "You see, you laugh at the stupid song, " he said. "But the man who sings it that way and those who pay to listen to him are not laughing; they think it is serious." "What do you mean?" I asked. I thought he had deliberately concocted the example to tell me that I had laughed at the crow because I had not taken it seriously, the same way I had not taken the song seriously. But he baffled me again. He said I was like the singer and the people who liked his songs, conceited and deadly serious about some nonsense that no one in his right mind should give a damn about. He then recapitulated, as if to refresh my memory, all he had said before on the topic of "learning about plants." He stressed emphatically that if I really wanted to learn, I had to remodel most of my behavior. My sense of annoyance grew, until I had to make a supreme effort to even take notes. "You take yourself too seriously, " he said slowly. "You are too damn important in your own mind. That must be changed! You are so goddamn important that you feel justified to be annoyed with everything. You're so dam important that you can afford to leave if things don't go your way. I suppose you think that shows you have character. That's nonsense! You're weak, and conceited!" I tried to stage a protest but he did not budge. He pointed out that in the course of my life I had not ever finished anything because of that sense of disproportionate importance that I attached to myself. I was flabbergasted at the certainty with which he made his statements. They were true, of course, and that made me feel not only angry but also threatened. "Self-importance is another thing that must be dropped, just like personal history, " he said in a dramatic tone. I certainly did not want to argue with him. It was obvious that I was at a terrible disadvantage; he was not going to walk-back to his house until he was ready and I did not know the way. I had to stay with him. He made a strange and sudden movement, he sort of sniffed the air around him, his head shook slightly and rhythmically. He seemed to be in a state of unusual alertness. He turned and stared at me with a look of bewilderment and curiosity. His eyes swept up and down my body as if he were looking for something specific; then he stood up abruptly and began to walk fast. He was almost running. I followed him. He kept a very accelerated pace for nearly an hour. Finally he stopped by a rocky hill and we sat in the shade of a hush. The trotting had exhausted me completely although my mood was better. It was strange the way I had changed. I felt almost elated, but when we had started to trot, after our argument, I was furious with him. "This is very weird, " I said, "but I feel really good." I heard the cawing of a crow in the distance. He lifted his finger to his right ear and smiled. "That was an omen, " he said. A small rock tumbled downhill and made a crashing sound when it landed in the chaparral. He laughed out loud and pointed his finger in the direction of the sound. "And that was an agreement, " he said. He then asked me if I was ready to talk about my self importance. I laughed; my feeling of anger seemed so far away that I could not even conceive how I had become so cross with him. "I can't understand what's happening to me, " I said. "I got angry and now I don't know why I am not angry any more." "The world around us is very mysterious, " he said. "It doesn't yield its secrets easily." I liked his cryptic statements. They were challenging and mysterious. I could not determine whether they were filled with hidden meanings or whether they were just plain nonsense. "If you ever come back to the desert here, " he said, "stay away from that rocky hill where we stopped today. Avoid it like the plague." "Why? What's the matter?" "This is not the time to explain it, " he said. "Now we are concerned with losing self importance. As long as you feel that you are the most important thing in the world you cannot really appreciate the world around you. You are like a horse with blinders, all you see is yourself apart from everything else." He examined me for a moment. "I am going to talk to my little friend here, " he said, pointing to a small plant. He kneeled in front of it and began to caress it and to talk to it. I did not understand what he was saying at first, but then he switched languages and talked to the plant in Spanish. He babbled inanities for a while. Then he stood up. "It doesn't matter what you say to a plant, " he said. "You can just as well make up words; what's important is the feeling of liking it, and treating it as an equal." He explained that a man who gathers plants must apologize every time for taking them and must assure them that someday his own body will serve as food for them. "So, all in all, the plants and ourselves are even, " he said. "Neither we nor they are more or less important. "Come on, talk to the little plant, " he urged me. "Tell it that you don't feel important any more." I went as far as kneeling in front of the plant but I could not bring myself to speak to it. I felt ridiculous and laughed. I was not angry, however. Don Juan patted me on the back and said that it was all right, that at least I had contained my temper. "From now on talk to the little plants," he said. "Talk until you lose all sense of importance. Talk to them until you can do it in front of others. "Go to those hills over there and practice by yourself." I asked if it was all right to talk to the plants silently, in my mind. He laughed and tapped my head. "No!" he said. "You must talk to them in a loud and clear voice if you want them to answer you." I walked to the area in question, laughing to myself about his eccentricities. I even tried to talk to the plants, but my feeling of being ludicrous was overpowering. After what I thought was an appropriate wait I went back to where don Juan was. I had the certainty that he knew I had not talked to the plants. He did not look at me. He signaled me to sit down by him. "Watch me carefully, " he said. "I'm going to have a talk with my little friend." He kneeled down in front of a small plant and for a few minutes he moved and contorted his body, talking and laughing. I thought he was out of his mind. "This little plant told me to tell you that she is good to eat, " he said as he got up from his kneeling position. "She said that a handful of them would keep a man healthy. She also said that there is a batch of them growing over there." Don Juan pointed to an area on a hillside perhaps two hundred yards away. "Let's go and find out, " he said. I laughed at his histrionics. I was sure we would find the plants, because he was an expert in the terrain and knew where the edible and medicinal plants were. As we walked towards the area in question he told me casually that I should take notice of the plant because it was both a food and a medicine. I asked him, half in jest, if the plant had just told him that. He stopped walking and examined me with an air of disbelief. He shook his head from side to side. "Ah!" he exclaimed, laughing. "Your cleverness makes you more silly than I thought. How can the little plant tell me now what I've known all my life?" He proceeded then to explain that he knew all along the different properties of that specific plant, and that the plant had just told him that there was a batch of them growing in the area he had pointed to, and that she did not mind if he told me that. Upon arriving at the hillside I found a whole cluster of the same plants. I wanted to laugh but he did not give me time. He wanted me to thank the batch of plants. I felt excruciatingly self conscious and could not bring myself to do it. He smiled benevolently and made another of his cryptic statements. He repeated it three or four times as if to give me time to figure out its meaning. "The world around us is a mystery, " he said. "And men are no better than anything else. If a little plant is generous with us we must thank her, or perhaps she will not let us go." The way he looked at me when he said that gave me a chill. I hurriedly leaned over the plants and said, "Thank you, " in a loud voice. He began to laugh in controlled and quiet spurts. We walked for another hour and then started on our way back to his house. At a certain time I dropped behind and he had to wait for me. He checked my fingers to see if I had curled them. I had not. He told me imperatively that whenever I walked with him I had to observe and copy his mannerisms or not come along at all. "I can't be waiting for you as though you're a child, " he said in a scolding tone. That statement sunk me into the depths of embarrassment and bewilderment. How could it be possible that such an old man could walk so much better than I? I thought I was athletic and strong, and yet he had actually had to wait for me to catch up with him. I curled my fingers and strangely enough I was able to keep his tremendous pace without any effort. In fact, at times I felt that my hands were pulling me forward. I felt elated. I was quite happy walking inanely with the strange old Indian. I began to talk and asked repeatedly if he would show me some peyote plants. He looked at me but did not say a word. DEATH IS AN ADVISER Wednesday, January 25, 1961 "Would you teach me someday about peyote?" I asked. He did not answer and, as he had done before, simply looked at me as if I were crazy. I had mentioned the topic to him, in casual conversation, various times already, and every time he frowned and shook his head. It was not an affirmative or a negative gesture; it was rather a gesture of despair and disbelief. He stood up abruptly. We had been sitting on the ground in front of his house. An almost imperceptible shake of his head was the invitation to follow him. We went into the desert chaparral in a southerly direction. He mentioned repeatedly as we walked that I had to be aware of the uselessness of my self importance and of my personal history. "Your friends, " he said, turning to me abruptly. "Those who have known you for a long time, you must leave them quickly." I thought he was crazy and his insistence was idiotic, but I did not say anything. He peered at me and began to laugh. After a long hike we came to a halt. I was about to sit down and rest but he told me to go some twenty yards away and talk 10 a batch of plants in a loud and clear voice. I felt ill at ease and apprehensive. His weird demands were more than I could bear and I told him once more that I could not speak to plants, because I felt ridiculous. His only comment was that my feeling of self importance was immense. He seemed to have made a sudden decision and said that I should not try to talk to plants until I felt easy and natural about it. "You want to learn about them and yet you don't want to do any work, " he said accusingly. "What are you trying to do? My explanation was that I wanted bona fide information about the uses of plants, thus I had asked him to be my informant. I had even offered to pay him for his time and trouble. "You should take the money, " I said. "This way we both wouId feel better. I could then ask you anything I want to because you would be working for me and I would pay you for it. What do you think of that?" He looked at me contemptuously and made an obscene sound with his mouth, making his lower lip and his tongue vibrate by exhaling with great force. "That's what I think of it, " he said and laughed hysterically at the look of utmost surprise that I must have had on my face. It was obvious to me that he was not a man I could easily contend with. In spite of his age, he was ebullient and unbelievably strong. I had had the idea that, being so old, he could have been the perfect "informant" for me. Old people, I had been led to believe, made the best informants because they were too feeble to do anything else except talk. Don Juan, on the other hand, was a miserable subject. I felt he was unmanageable and dangerous. The friend who had introduced us was right. He was an eccentric old Indian; and although he was not plastered out of his mind most of the time, as my friend had told me, he was worse yet, he was crazy. I again felt the terrible doubt and apprehension I had experienced before. I thought I had overcome that. In fact, I had had no trouble at all convincing myself that I wanted to visit him again. The idea had crept into my mind, however, that perhaps I was a bit crazy myself when I realized that I liked to be with him. His idea that my feeling of self importance was an obstacle had really made an impact on me. But all that was apparently only an intellectual exercise on my part; the moment I was confronted with his odd behavior, I began to experience apprehension and I wanted to leave. I said that I believed we were so different that there was no possibility of our getting along. "One of us has to change, " he said, staring at the ground. "And you know who." He began humming a Mexican folk song and then lifted his head abruptly and looked at me. His eyes were fierce and burning. I wanted to look away or close my eyes, but to my utter amazement I could not break away from his gaze. He asked me to tell him what I had seen in his eyes. I said that I saw nothing, but he insisted that I had to voice what his eyes had made me feel aware of. I struggled to make him understand that the only thing his eyes made me aware of was my embarrassment, and that the way he was looking at me was very discomforting. He did not let go. He kept a steady stare. It was not an outright menacing or mean look; it was rather a mysterious but unpleasant gaze. He asked me if he reminded me of a bird. "A bird?" I exclaimed. He giggled like a child and moved his eyes away from me. "Yes, " he said softly. "A bird, a very funny bird!" He locked his gaze on me again and commanded me to remember. He said with an extraordinary conviction that he "knew" I had seen that look before. My feelings of the moment were that the old man provoked me, against my honest desire, every time he opened his mouth. I stared back at him in obvious defiance. Instead of getting angry he began to laugh. He slapped his thigh and yelled as if he were riding a wild horse. Then he became serious and told me that it was of utmost importance that I stop fighting him and remember that funny bird he was talking about. "Look into my eyes, " he said. His eyes were extraordinarily fierce. There was a feeling about them that actually reminded me of something but I was not sure what it was. I pondered upon it for a moment and then I had a sudden realization; it was not the shape of his eyes nor the shape of his head, but some cold fierceness in his gaze that had reminded me of the look in the eyes of a falcon. At the very moment of that realization he was looking at me and for an instant my mind experienced a total chaos. I thought I had seen a falcon's features instead of don Juan's. The image was too fleeting and I was too upset to have paid more attention to it. In a very excited tone I told him that I could have sworn I had seen the features of a falcon on his face. He had another attack of laughter. I have seen the look in the eyes of falcons. I used to hunt them when I was a boy, and in the opinion of my grandfather I was good. He had a Leghorn chicken farm and falcons were a menace to his business. Shooting them was not only functional but also "right." I had forgotten until that moment that the fierceness of their eyes had haunted me for years, but it was so far in my past that I thought I had lost the memory of it. "I used to hunt falcons, " I said. "I know it, " don Juan replied matter-of-factly. His tone carried such a certainty that I began to laugh. I thought he was a preposterous fellow. He had the gall to sound as if he knew I had hunted falcons. I felt supremely contemptuous of him. "Why do you get so angry?" he asked in a tone of genuine concern. I did not know why. He began to probe me in a very unusual manner. He asked me to look at him again and tell him about the "very funny bird" he reminded me of. I struggled against him and out of contempt said that there was nothing to talk about. Then I felt compelled to ask him why he had said he knew I used to hunt falcons. Instead of answering me he again commented on my behavior. He said I was a violent fellow that was capable of "frothing at the mouth" at the drop of a hat. I protested that that was not true; I had always had the idea I was rather congenial and easy going. I said it was his fault for forcing me out of control with his unexpected words and actions. "Why the anger?" he asked. I took stock of my feelings and reactions. I really had no need to be angry with him. He again insisted that I should look into his eyes and tell him about the "strange falcon." He had changed his wording; he had said before, "a very funny bird, " then he substituted it with "strange falcon." The change in wording summed up a change in my own mood. I had suddenly become sad. He squinted his eyes until they were two slits and said in an over dramatic voice that he was "seeing" a very strange falcon. He repeated his statement three times as if he were actually seeing it there in front of him. "Don't you remember it?" he asked. I did not remember anything of the sort. "What's strange about the falcon?" I asked. "You must tell me that, " he replied. I insisted that I had no way of knowing what he was referring to, therefore I could not tell him anything. "Don't fight me!" he said. "Fight your sluggishness and remember." I seriously struggled for a moment to figure him out. It did not occur to me that I could just as well have tried to remember. "There was a time when you saw a lot of birds, " he said as though cueing me. I told him that when I was a child I had lived on a farm and had hunted hundreds of birds. He said that if that was the case I should not have any difficulty remembering all the funny birds I had hunted. He looked at me with a question in his eyes, as if he had just given me the last clue. "I have hunted so many birds, " I said, "that I can't recall anything about them." "This bird is special, " he replied almost in a whisper. "This bird is a falcon." I became involved again in figuring out what he was driving at. Was he teasing me? Was he serious? After a long interval he urged me again to remember. I felt that it was useless for me to try to end his play; the only other thing I could do was to join him. "Are you talking about a falcon that I have hunted?" I asked. "Yes, " he whispered with his eyes closed. "So this happened when I was a boy?" "Yes." . "But you said you're seeing a falcon in front of you now." "I am." "What are you trying to do to me?" "I'm trying to make you remember." "What? For heaven's sakes!" "A falcon swift as light, " he said, looking at me in the eyes. I felt my heart had stopped. "Now look at me, " he said. But I did not. I heard his voice as a faint sound. Some stupendous recollection had taken me wholly. The white falcon! It all began with my grandfather's explosion of anger upon taking a count of his young Leghorn chickens. They had been disappearing in a steady and disconcerting manner. He personally organized and carried out a meticulous vigil, and after days of steady watching we finally saw a big white bird flying away with a young Leghorn chicken in its claws. The bird was fast and apparently knew its route. It swooped down from behind some trees, grabbed the chicken and flew away through an opening between two branches. It happened so fast that my grandfather had hardly seen it, but I did and I knew that it was indeed a falcon. My grandfather said that if that was the case it had to be an albino. We started a campaign against the albino falcon and twice I thought I had gotten it. It even dropped its prey, but it got away. It was too fast for me. It was also very intelligent; it never came back to hunt on my grandfather's farm. I would have forgotten about it had my grandfather not needled me to hunt the bird. For two months I chased the albino falcon all over the valley where I lived. I learned its habits and I could almost intuit its route of flight, yet its speed and the suddenness of its appearance would always baffle me. I could boast that I had prevented it from taking its prey, perhaps every time we had met, but I could never bag it. In the two months that I carried on the strange war against the albino falcon I came close to it only once. I had been chasing it all day and I was tired. I had sat down to rest and fell asleep under a tall eucalyptus tree. The sudden cry of a falcon woke me up. I opened my eyes without making any other movement and I saw a whitish bird perched in the highest branches of the eucalyptus tree. It was the albino falcon. The chase was over. It was going to be a difficult shot; I was lying on my back and the bird had its back turned to me. There was a sudden gust of wind and I used it to muffle the noise of lifting my .22 long rifle to take aim. I wanted to wait until the bird had turned or until it had begun to fly so I would not miss it. But the albino bird remained motionless. In order to take a better shot I would have needed to move and the falcon was too fast for that. I thought that my best alternative was to wait. And I did, a long, interminable time. Perhaps what affected me was the long wait, or perhaps it was the loneliness of the spot where the bird and I were; I suddenly felt a chill up my spine and in an unprecedented action I stood up and left. I did not even look to see if the bird had flown away. I never attached any significance to my final act with the albino falcon. However, it was terribly strange that I did not shoot it. I had shot dozens of falcons before. On the farm where I grew up, shooting birds or hunting any kind of animal was a matter of course. Don Juan listened attentively as I told him the story of the albino falcon. "How did you know about the white falcon?" I asked when I had finished. "I saw it, " he replied. "Where?" "Right here in front of you." I was not in an argumentative mood any more. "What does all this mean?" I asked. He said that a white bird like that was an omen, and that not shooting it down was the only right thing to do. "Your death gave you a little warning, " he said with a mysterious tone. "It always comes as a chill." "What are you talking about?" I said nervously. He really made me nervous with his spooky talk. "You know a lot about birds, " he said. "You've killed too many of them. You know how to wait. You have waited patiently for hours. I know that. I am seeing it." His words caused a great turmoil in me. I thought that what annoyed me the most about him was his certainty. I could not stand his dogmatic assuredness about issues in my own life that I was not sure of myself. I became engulfed in my feelings of dejection and I did not see him leaning over me until he actually had whispered something in my ear. I did not-understand at first and he repeated it. He told me to turn around casually and look at a boulder to my left. He said that my death was there staring at me and if I turned when he signaled me I might be capable of seeing it. He signaled me with his eyes. I turned and I thought I saw a flickering movement over the boulder. A chill ran through my body, the muscles of my abdomen contracted involuntarily and I experienced a jolt, a spasm. After a moment I regained my composure and I explained away the sensation of seeing the flickering shadow as an optical illusion caused by turning my head so abruptly. "Death is our eternal companion, " don Juan said with a most serious air. "It is always to our left, at an arm's length. It was watching you when you were watching the white falcon; it whispered in your ear and you felt its chill, as you felt it today. It has always been watching you. It always will until the day it taps you." He extended his arm and touched me lightly on the shoulder and at the same time he made a deep clicking sound with his tongue. The effect was devastating; I almost got sick to my stomach. "You're the boy who stalked game and waited patiently, as death waits; you know very well that death is to our left, the same way you were to the left of the white falcon." His words had the strange power to plunge me into an unwarranted terror; my only defense was my compulsion to commit to writing everything he said. "How can anyone feel so important when we know that death is stalking us?" he asked. I had the feeling my answer was not really needed. I could not have said anything anyway. A new mood had possessed me. "The thing to do when you're impatient, " he proceeded, "is to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you catch a glimpse of it, or if you just have the feeling that your companion is there watching you." He leaned over again and whispered in my ear that if I turned to my left suddenly, upon seeing his signal, I could again see my death on the boulder. His eyes gave me an almost imperceptible signal, but I did not dare to look. I told him that I believed him and that he did not have to press the issue any further, because I was terrified. He had one of his roaring belly laughs. He replied that the issue of our death was never pressed far enough. And I argued that it would be meaningless for me to dwell upon my death, since such a thought would only bring discomfort and fear. "You're full of crap!" he exclaimed. "Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.' " He shook his head and seemed to be waiting for my reply. I had none. My thoughts were running rampant. He had delivered a staggering blow to my egotism. The pettiness of being annoyed with him was monstrous in the fight of my death. I had the feeling he was fully aware of my change of mood. He had turned the tide in his favor. He smiled and began to hum a Mexican tune. "Yes, " he said softly after a long pause. "One of us here has to change, and fast. One of us here has to learn again that death is the hunter, and that it is always to one's left. One of us here has to ask death's advice and drop the cursed pettiness that belongs to men that live their lives as if death will never tap them." We remained quiet for more than an hour, then we started walking again. We meandered in the desert chaparral for hours. I did not ask him if there was any purpose to it; it did not matter. Somehow he had made me recapture an old feeling, something I had quite forgotten, the sheer joy of just moving around without attaching any intellectual purpose to it. I wanted him to let me catch a glimpse of whatever I had seen on the boulder. "Let me see that shadow again, " I said. "You mean your death, don't you?" he replied with a touch of irony in his voice. For a moment I felt reluctant to voice it. "Yes, " I finally said. "Let me see my death once again." "Not now, " he said. "You're too solid." "I beg your pardon?" He began to laugh and for some unknown reason