Version 2006.05.21

## "The Active Side of Infinity" - ©1998 by Carlos Castaneda
The End of an Era

### Saying Thank You

"Warrior travelers don't leave any debts unpaid," don Juan said.

"What are you talking about, don Juan?" I asked.

"It is time that you square certain indebtedness you have incurred in the course of your life," he said. "Not that you will ever pay in full, mind you, but you must make a gesture. You must make a token payment in order to atone; [* atone- make amends for] in order to appease [* appease- gain the good will of] infinity.

"You told me about your two friends who meant so much to you, Patricia Turner and Sandra Flanagan. It's time for you to go and find them, and to make to each of them one gift in which you spend everything you have. You have to make two gifts that will leave you penniless. That's the gesture."

"I don't know where they are, don Juan," I said, almost in a mood of protest.

"To find them is your challenge. In your search for them, you will not leave any stone unturned.

"What you intend to do is something very simple, and yet nearly impossible. You want to cross over the threshold of personal indebtedness and in one sweep be free in order to proceed. If you cannot cross that threshold, there won't be any point in trying to continue with me."

"But where did you get the idea of this task for me?" I asked. "Did you invent it yourself because you think it is appropriate?"

"I don't invent anything," he said matter-of-factly. "I got this task from infinity itself. It's not easy for me to say all this to you. If you think that I'm enjoying myself pink with your tribulations, you're wrong.

"The success of your mission means more to me than it does to you. If you fail, you have very little to lose. What? Your visits to me. Big deal. But I would lose you, and that means to me losing either the continuity of my lineage or the possibility of your closing it with a golden key."

Don Juan stopped talking. He always knew when my mind became feverish with thoughts.

"I have told you over and over that warrior travelers are pragmatists," he went on. "They are not involved in sentimentalism, or nostalgia, or melancholy. For warrior travelers, there is only struggle, and it is a struggle with no end.

"If you think that you have come here to find peace, or that this is a lull in your life, you're wrong. This task of paying your debts is not guided by any feelings that you know about. It is guided by the purest sentiment; the sentiment of a warrior traveler who is about to dive into infinity. And just before he does, he turns around to say thank you to those who favored him.

"You must face this task with all the gravity it deserves," he continued. "It is your last stop before infinity swallows you. In fact, unless a warrior traveler is in a sublime state of being, infinity will not touch him with a ten foot pole. So, don't spare yourself. Don't spare any effort. Push it mercilessly, but elegantly, all the way through."

I had met the two people don Juan had referred to as 'my two friends who meant so much to me' while going to junior college. I used to live in the garage apartment of the house belonging to Patricia Turner's parents.

In exchange for room and board, I took care of vacuuming the pool, raking the leaves, putting the trash out, and making breakfast for Patricia and myself. I was also the handyman in the house as well as the family chauffeur. I drove Mrs. Turner to do her shopping, and I bought liquor for Mr. Turner, which I had to sneak into the house and then into his studio.

He was an insurance executive who was a solitary drinker. He had promised his family that he was not going to touch the bottle ever again after some serious family altercations due to his excessive drinking.

He confessed to me that he had tapered off enormously, but that he needed a swig from time to time. His studio was, of course, off limits to everybody except me. I was supposed to go in to clean it, but what I really did was hide his bottles inside a beam that appeared to support an arch in the ceiling in the studio, but that was actually hollow. I had to sneak the bottles in, and sneak the empties out and dump them at the market.

Patricia was a drama and music major in college and a fabulous singer. Her goal was to sing in musicals on Broadway. It goes without saying that I fell head over heels in love with Patricia Turner. She was very slim and athletic, a brunette with angular features, and was about a head taller than I am; my ultimate requisite for going bananas over any woman.

I seemed to fulfill a deep need in her; the need to nurture someone, especially after she realized that her daddy trusted me implicitly. She became my little mommy. I couldn't even open my mouth without her consent. She watched me like a hawk. She even wrote term papers for me, read textbooks, and gave me synopses of them.

And I liked it, but not because I wanted to be nurtured. I don't think that that need was ever part of my cognition. I relished the fact that she did it. I relished her company.

She used to take me to the movies daily. She had passes to all the big movie theaters in Los Angeles that had been given to her father courtesy of some movie moguls. Mr. Turner never used them himself. He felt that it was beneath his dignity to flash movie passes.

The movie clerks always made the recipients of such passes sign a receipt. Patricia had no qualms about signing anything, but sometimes the nasty clerks wanted Mr. Turner to sign. When I went to do that, they were not satisfied with only the signature of Mr. Turner. They demanded a driver's license.

One of them, a sassy young guy, made a remark that cracked him up, and me, too, but which sent Patricia into a fit of fury.

"I think you're Mr. Turd," he said with the nastiest smile you could imagine, "not Mr. Turner."

I could have sloughed off the remark, but then he subjected us to the profound humiliation of refusing us entrance to see Hercules starring Steve Reeves.

Usually, we went everywhere with Patricia's best friend, Sandra Flanagan, who lived next door with her parents. Sandra was quite the opposite of Patricia. She was just as tall, but her face was round, with rosy cheeks and a sensuous mouth. She was healthier than a raccoon.

She had no interest in singing. She was only interested in the sensual pleasures of the body. She could eat and drink anything and digest it; and the feature that finished me off about her was that after she had polished off her own plate, she managed to do the same with mine; a thing that, being a picky eater, I had never been able to do in all my life.

She was also extremely athletic, but in a rough, wholesome way. She could punch like a man and kick like a mule.

As a courtesy to Patricia, I used to do the same chores for Sandra's parents that I did for hers: vacuuming their pool, raking the leaves from their lawn, taking the trash out on trash day, and incinerating papers and flammable trash. That was the time in Los Angeles when the air pollution was increased by the use of backyard incinerators.

Perhaps it was because of the proximity, or the ease of those young women that I ended up madly in love with both of them.

I went to seek advice from a very strange young man who was my friend; Nicholas van Hooten. He had two girlfriends, and he lived with both of them; apparently in a state of bliss. He began by giving me, he said, the simplest advice: how to behave in a movie theater if you had two girlfriends.

He said that whenever he went to a movie with his two girlfriends, all his attention was always centered on whoever sat to his left. After a while, the two girls would go to the bathroom and, on their return, he would have them change the seating arrangement. Anna would sit where Betty had been sitting, and nobody around them was the wiser.

He assured me that this was the first step in a long process of breaking the girls into a matter-of-fact acceptance of the trio situation; Nicholas was rather corny, and he used that trite French expression: menage a trois.

I followed his advice and went to a theater that showed silent movies on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles with Patricia and Sandy. I sat Patricia to my left and poured all my attention on her. They went to the bathroom, and when they returned I told them to switch places. I started then to do what Nicholas van Hooten had advised, but Patricia would not put up with any nonsense like that. She stood up and left the theater, offended, humiliated, and raving mad. I wanted to run after her and apologize, but Sandra stopped me.

"Let her go," she said with a poisonous smile. "She's a big girl. She has enough money to get a taxi and go home."

I fell for it and remained in the theater kissing Sandra, rather nervously, and filled with guilt. I was in the middle of a passionate kiss when I felt someone pulling me backward by the hair. It was Patricia. The row of seats was loose and tilted backward. Athletic Patricia jumped out of the way before the seats where we were sitting crashed on the row of seats behind. I heard the frightened screams of two movie watchers who were sitting at the end of the row, by the aisle.

Nicholas van Hooten's tip was miserable advice. Patricia, Sandra, and I returned home in absolute silence. We patched up our differences, in the midst of very weird promises, tears- the works.

The outcome of our three sided relationship was that, in the end, we nearly destroyed ourselves. We were not prepared for such an endeavor. We didn't know how to resolve the problems of affection, morality, duty, and social mores.

I couldn't leave one of them for the other, and they couldn't leave me. One day, at the climax of a tremendous upheaval, and out of sheer desperation, all three of us fled in different directions, never to see one another again.

I felt devastated. Nothing of what I did could erase their impact on my life. I left Los Angeles and got busy with endless things in an effort to placate my longing.

Without exaggerating in the least, I can sincerely say that I fell into the depths of hell- I believed- never to emerge again.

If it hadn't been for the influence that don Juan had on my life and my person, I would never have survived my private demons. I told don Juan that I knew that whatever I had done was wrong; that I had no business engaging such wonderful people in such sordid, stupid shenanigans that I had no preparation to face.

"What was wrong," don Juan said, "was that the three of you were lost egomaniacs. Your self-importance nearly destroyed you. If you don't have self-importance, you have only feelings.

"Humor me," he went on, "and do the following simple and direct exercise that could mean the world to you: Remove from your memory of those two girls any statements that you make to yourself such as 'She said this or that to me, and she yelled, and the other one yelled, at me!' and remain at the level of your feelings. If you hadn't been so self-important, what would you have had as the irreducible residue?"

"My unbiased love for them," I said, nearly choking.

"And is it less today than it was then?" don Juan asked.

"No, it isn't, don Juan," I said in truthfulness, and I felt the same pang of anguish that had chased me for years.

"This time, embrace them from your silence," he said. "Don't be a meager asshole. Embrace them totally for the last time. But intend that this is the last time on Earth. Intend it from your darkness. If you are worth your salt," he went on, "when you make your gift to them, you'll sum up your entire life twice. Acts of this nature make warriors airborne, almost vaporous."

Following don Juan's commands, I took the task to heart. I realized that if I didn't emerge victorious, don Juan was not the only one who was going to lose out. I would also lose something, and whatever I was going to lose was as important to me as what don Juan had described as being important to him. I was going to lose my chance to face infinity and be conscious of it.

The memory of Patricia Turner and Sandra Flanagan put me in a terrible frame of mind. The devastating sense of irreparable loss that had chased me all these years was as vivid as ever. When don Juan exacerbated that feeling, I knew for a fact that there are certain things that can remain with us, in don Juan's terms, for life and perhaps beyond. I had to find Patricia Turner and Sandra Flanagan.

Don Juan's final recommendation was that if I did find them, I could not stay with them. I could have time only to atone; to envelop each of them with all the affection I felt; without the angry voices of recrimination, self-pity, or egomania.

I embarked on the colossal task of finding out what had become of them, where they were. I began by asking questions of the people who knew their parents. Their parents had moved out of Los Angeles, and nobody could give me a lead as to where to find them. There was no one to talk to. I thought of putting a personal ad in the paper. But then I thought that perhaps they had moved out of California. I finally had to hire a private investigator. Through his connections with official offices of records and whatnot, he located them within a couple of weeks.

They lived in New York, a short distance from one other, and their friendship was as close as it had ever been. I went to New York and tackled Patricia Turner first. She hadn't made it to stardom on Broadway the way she had wanted to, but she was part of a production. I didn't want to know whether it was in the capacity of a performer or as management.

I visited her in her office. She didn't tell me what she did. She was shocked to see me. What we did was just sit together and hold hands and weep. I didn't tell her what I did either. I said that I had come to see her because I wanted to give her a gift that would express my gratitude, and that I was embarking on a journey from which I did not intend to come back.

"Why such ominous words?" she asked, apparently genuinely alarmed. "What are you planning to do? Are you ill? You don't look ill."

"It was a metaphorical statement," I assured her. "I'm going back to South America, and I intend to seek my fortune there. The competition is ferocious, and the circumstances are very harsh, that's all. If I want to succeed, I will have to give all I have to it."

She seemed relieved, and hugged me. She looked the same, except much bigger, much more powerful, more mature, very elegant. I kissed her hands and the most overwhelming affection enveloped me. Don Juan was right. Deprived of recriminations, all I had were feelings.

"I want to make you a gift, Patricia Turner," I said. "Ask me anything you want, and if it is within my means, I'll get it for you."

"Did you strike it rich?" she said and laughed. "What's great about you is that you never had anything, and you never will. Sandra and I talk about you nearly every day. We imagine you parking cars, living off women, et cetera, et cetera. I'm sorry, we can't help ourselves, but we still love you."

I insisted that she tell me what she wanted. She began to weep and laugh at the same time.

"Are you going to buy me a mink coat?" she asked me between sobs.

I ruffled her hair and said that I would.

"If you don't like it, you take it back to the store and get the money back," I said.

She laughed and punched me the way she used to. She had to go back to work, and we parted after I promised her that I would come back again to see her, but that if I didn't, I wanted her to understand that the force of my life was pulling me every which way, yet I would keep the memory of her in me for the rest of my life and perhaps beyond.

I did return, but only to see from a distance how they delivered the mink coat to her. I heard her screams of delight.

That part of my task was finished. I left, but I wasn't vaporous, the way don Juan had said I was going to be. I had opened up an old wound and it had started to bleed.

It wasn't quite raining outside: It was a fine mist that seemed to penetrate all the way to the marrow of my bones.

Next, I went to see Sandra Flanagan. She lived in one of the suburbs of New York that is reached by train. I knocked on her door. Sandra opened it and looked at me as if I were a ghost. All the color drained out of her face. She was more beautiful than ever, perhaps because she had filled out and looked as big as a house.

"Why, you, you, you!" she stammered, not quite capable of articulating my name.

She sobbed, and she seemed indignant and reproachful for a moment. I didn't give her the chance to continue. My silence was total. In the end, it affected her. She let me in and we sat down in her living room.

"What are you doing here?" she said, quite a bit calmer. "You can't stay! I'm a married woman! I have three children! And I'm very happy in my marriage."

Shooting her words out rapidly, like a machine gun, she told me that her husband was very dependable, not too imaginative but a good man, that he was not sensual, that she had to be very careful because he tired very easily when they made love, that he got sick easily and sometimes couldn't go to work, but that he had managed to produce three beautiful children, and that after her third child, her husband, whose name seemed to be Herbert, had just simply quit. He didn't have it anymore, but it didn't matter to her.

I tried to calm her down by assuring her over and over that I had come to visit her only for a moment, that it was not my intention to alter her life or to bother her in any way. I described to her how hard it had been to find her.

"I have come here to say good-bye to you," I said, "and to tell you that you are the love of my life. I want to make you a token gift, a symbol of my gratitude and my undying affection."

She seemed to be deeply affected. She smiled openly the way she used to. The separation between her teeth made her look childlike. I commented to her that she was more beautiful than ever, which was the truth to me.

She laughed and said that she was going on a strict diet, and if she had known that I was coming to see her, she would have started her diet a long time ago. But she would start now, and I would find her the next time as lean as she had always been.

She reiterated the horror of our life together and how profoundly affected she had been. She had even thought, in spite of being a devout Catholic, of committing suicide, but she had found in her children the solace that she needed. Whatever we had done were quirks of youth that would never be vacuumed away, but had to be swept under the rug.

When I asked if there was some gift that I could make to her as a token of my gratitude and affection for her, she laughed and said exactly what Patricia Turner had said: that I didn't have a pot to piss in, nor would I ever have one, because that's the way I was made. I insisted that she name something.

"Can you buy me a station wagon where all my children could fit?" she said, laughing. "I want a Pontiac, or an Oldsmobile, with all the trimmings."

She said that knowing in her heart of hearts that I could not possibly make her such a gift. But I did.

I drove the dealer's car, following him as he delivered the station wagon to her the next day, and from the parked car where I was hiding, I heard her surprise.

But congruous with her sensual being, her surprise was not an expression of delight. It was a bodily reaction, a sob of anguish, of bewilderment. She cried, but I knew that she was not crying because she had received the gift. She was expressing a longing that had echoes in me. I crumpled in the seat of the car.

On my train ride to New York, and my flight to Los Angeles, the feeling that persisted was that my life was running out: It was running out of me like clutched sand. I didn't feel in any way liberated or changed by saying thank you and good-bye.

Quite the contrary, I felt the burden of that weird affection more deeply than ever. I felt like weeping. What ran through my mind over and over were the titles that my friend Rodrigo Cummings had invented for books that were never to be written. He specialized in writing titles.

His favorite was "We'll All Die in Hollywood": Another was "We'll Never Change": And my favorite, the one that I bought for ten dollars, was "From the Life and Sins of Rodrigo Cummings." All those titles played in my mind. I was Rodrigo Cummings, and I was stuck in time and space, and I did love two women more than my life, and that would never change. And like the rest of my friends, I would die in Hollywood.

I told don Juan all of this in my report of what I considered to be my pseudo-success. He discarded it shamelessly. He said that what I felt was merely the result of indulging and self-pity, and that in order to say good-bye and thank you, and really mean it and sustain it, sorcerers had to remake themselves.

"Vanquish your self-pity right now," he demanded. "Vanquish the idea that you are hurt and what do you have as the irreducible residue?"

What I had as the irreducible residue was the feeling that I had made my ultimate gift to both of them. Not in the spirit of renewing anything, or harming anyone, including myself, but in the true spirit that don Juan had tried to point out to me- in the spirit of a warrior traveler whose only virtue, as he had said, is to keep alive the memory of whatever has affected him; whose only way to say thank you and good-bye was by this act of magic: of storing in his silence whatever he has loved.