The Active Side of Infinity Read Online Free PDF Page B

my
very being, and made me get up and run out of the room, down the stairs like a
madman, out of the building, into the street.
    Eddie was standing outside the door talking to the two men in
light-blue shiny suits. Seeing me running like that, he began to laugh
uproariously.
    "Wasn't it a blast?" he said, still trying to sound like an
American. " 'Figures in front of a mirror is only
the foreplay.' What a thing! What a thing!"
    The first time I had mentioned the story to don Juan, I had told him
that I had been deeply affected by the haunting melody and the old prostitute
clumsily twirling to the music. And I had been deeply
affected also by the realization of how callous my friend was.
    When I had finished retelling my story to don Juan, as we sat in the
hills of a range of mountains in Sonora I was shaking, mysteriously
affected by something quite undefined.
    "That story," don Juan said, "should go in your album of
memorable events. Your friend, without having .any idea of what he was
doing, gave you, as he himself said, something that will indeed
last you for a lifetime."
    "1 see this as a sad story, don Juan, but that's all," 1
declared. "It's indeed a sad story, just like your other stories,"
don Juan replied, "but what makes it different and memorable to me is that
it touches every one of us human beings, not just you, like
your other tales. You see, like Madame Ludmilla, every
one of us, young and old alike, is making figures in front of a mirror in one
way or another. Tally what you know about people. Think of
any human being on this earth, and you will know,
without the shadow of a doubt, that no matter who they are, or what they think
of themselves, or what they do, the result of their actions
is always the same: senseless figures in front of a
mirror."
     

 
2. - A Tremor in The Air: A
Journey of Power
    At the time I met don Juan I was a fairly studious anthropology
student, and I wanted to begin my career as a professional
anthropologist by publishing as much as possible. I was bent on climbing
the academic ladder, and in my calculations, I had determined that the first
step was to collect data on the uses of medicinal plants by the
Indians of the southwestern United States.
    I first asked a professor of anthropology who had worked in that area
for advice about my project. He was a prominent ethnologist who had
published extensively in the late thirties and early forties
on the California Indians and the Indians of the Southwest and Sonora, Mexico. He patiently listened to my exposition. My idea was to write
a paper, call it "Ethnobotanical Data," and publish it
in a journal that dealt exclusively with anthropological issues of the
southwestern United States .
    I proposed to collect medicinal plants, take the samples to the
Botanical Garden at UCLA to be properly identified, and then
describe why and how the Indians of the Southwest used them. I envisioned
collecting thousands of entries. I even envisioned publishing a small
encyclopedia on the subject.
    The professor smiled forgivingly at me. "I don't want to dampen
your enthusiasm," he said in a tired voice, "but I can't
help commenting negatively on your eagerness. Eagerness is welcome in
anthropology, but it must be properly channeled. We are still in the golden age
of anthropology. It was my luck to study with Alfred Krober
and Robert Lowie, two pillars of social science. I
haven't betrayed their trust. Anthropology is still the master discipline.
Every other discipline should stem from anthropology. The entire
field of history, for example, should be called
'historical anthropology,' and the field of philosophy should be called
'philosophical anthropology.' Man should be the measure of
everything. Therefore, anthropology, the study of man, should be the core of
every other discipline. Someday, it will."
    I looked at him, bewildered. He was, in my estimation, a totally
passive, benevolent old professor who had recently had a heart attack. I seemed
to have