It would be great if, but it is necessary to admit, the life of a blogger is not all Julie and Julia. That is to say, time for less regimental bloggers as myself, instead of being a cut and dry, cute little day after day line drawn across the screen as we witness it to be created for Amy Adams as Julia, tends to pool in an amorphous web of past situations and present reactions. Then, to take the convoluted twists and twirls between past and present, I then have the power to post whatever was once the present whenever I feel like it, which is what I am doing today. Thus I leave you with this caveat and a date within the title of this post to explain that the publishing date of this experience, while connected to the original situation, has stretched a long cord in the time frame of this cyber diary.
----------------------------<0 VISION Hello to you out there in the fog. A brilliant morning began smoldering fog up from between the cracks in the mountains and by the time we reach the beach the high rise hotels hold their heads in the clouds. The sand remained combed since the massagers and beer slingers were the only ones to make tracks. We had to borrow a sheet from the drying rack from one of our roommates because ours is still wet from washing and the purple sheet turned out to be a single so we cuddles up close while the wind blew gently and the fog seemed to hang lifelessly. Dani says it seems like we are in San Francisco. ----------------------------<0 PRAISE FOR CARLOS CASTANEDA Yes, after closing the third book, here I am, wishing that the books had come with my own little pocket-sized don Juan like a Chicken Soup for the Soul cookbook would come with an apron smeared with inspirational phrases. Well, actually, before I go off and search for my own little psychedelic Yaqui Indian sorcerer guide, I´d have to verify the facts of the books in general for there is dispute about their realism. Metaphorically we can easily call the writings valid, but similar to the scepticism about the work of Marlo Morgan Mutant Message from Down Under, Castaneda´s alleged nonfiction texts have been suggested as fiction to me on numerous occasions. While I would love to get the facts and figure out if I will ever have the chance to take my own Journey to Ixtlan, the meantime leaves me with the plethora of sage lessons provided by Castaneda and perhaps don Juan, if he ever really existed. Never have a unearthed a book or series of books with so much factual folklore. That is to say, the methods and practices revealed in the books are indisputably salient as they seem to spring from the pages as lessons in common sense that always danced in and out of the corner of your eye but never became fully clear. For example, don Juan suggests that carrying anything while walking is absolutely absurd, and that to quicken ones pace, all one must do is to gently curl ones fingers in towards the palm. I tried these techniques and they work. That is to say, I believed they worked. The truth is that the books are a great read for anyone who has always been tempted to read such self help soul searchers as The Secret or The Power of Now but only found themselves wanting to shut themselves in a closet and scream because of the shear weight of the didactic tone. Castaneda provides a keen alibi for those of us feeling some unpleasant sense of responsibility when Eckhart Tolle explains that the path to peace with oneself is easy because X, X, Jesus, Buddha, X and Santa Maria could do it. I mean, I´m sorry Mr. Tolle, but we´re not all Jesus (subjectively speaking, I mean). And Castaneda stresses this point. Though his character grows throughout the texts, an enormous saving grace is constantly offered to the reader via a humility he provides when he himself describes his learning process. Using ethnographic style, he paints his character to be the dumbest of the dumb, the way anthropologists are taught to perceive any new information from the field as if they were aliens experiencing it for the first time. So though the lessons of don Juan may be dense at times, Castaneda´s character in the text is always dumber than you the reader and is always willing to ask five too many questions, even after you have picked up on the general trend of each lesson. This humble writing trend of Castaneda not only saves the face of the reader but also helps to elaborate and cement each lesson for the reader as each is elongated just to the perfect point of understanding. I started reading the series and had finished the first book in a hand full of days. I systematically finished the trilogy shortly thereafter and now recommend it to anyone looking for inspiration but also searching for a good story and little didactic guff. I enjoyed the books tremendously. Oh, and my final note is that some may shy away from the fact that the series begins by exploring the effects of mind altering psychotropic plants but the last book moves far from that investigation, only using the visions as an occasional building block to help explain the more profound lessons. That is all for now from me. I have to go buy some cornflakes. Love you! MDO
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