Letters to the Editor
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faking cancer and diabetes?
somebody posted that carlos' liver cancer was "to keep us satisfied". His eyes were yellow and he would collapse in public, it was heartbreaking to see. He spoke to me about how sick he was, I assumed he talked about this with others a great deal more, like his doctors. How would this keep anyone satisfied, regardless of how many places he could or could not be at one time? it just made everybody sad and worried about the person they loved -- I don't see the satisfaction in that. And if it was all some kind of clever fakery, why did he have a variety of physicians, from Western to Chinese Medical Practitioners? Carol told me a stream of physicians came in and out of the house. To die slowly and painfully after dreaming of spontaneously combusting doesn't seem like a gift. Perhaps the poster would care to explicate on this subject. Was this the same poster who took a potshot at me for having a famous dad? Talk about "easy targets". I can't speak for Mr. DeMille, and I don't know anything about his career. Mine is varietous, and my initial impetus to write my book came because Carlos told me when he was "leaving" to do so. Because we couldn't ask questions, I have no idea at all what he had in mind. As I began to write, the desire to portray the beauty and the horror that was life in Carlos' world became my clear goal. I was very much in love with him, and many of the people in the group will remain forever dear to me. It was interesting to read the letter from Nyei's former boyfriend. She truly made many loving gestures towards me in the years I knew her, and since the sorcerer's strove to write a "blank check of affection" for all those they've loved, I can't imagine her lowering herself to feeling hostility for me. The story is not a black and white story, my love was not, is not -- a black and white story either. I have tried to preserve the complexity of my experience in my writing. Some people have criticized the book for not being a harsher condemnation of Carlos and the others, other people think I missed the magic, and on and on.
I hope this is clarifying, and I am curious how Carlos' suffering could be some kind of cover for what was supposedly really going on, in this poster's mind. I stress this because I have read similar arguments on the Sustained Action site. One thing Carlos did not do, if I understood correctly, was endorse physical pain or unnecessary illness.
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Faking it?
It's not about faking it Amy, its about not doings; the not-doings of a shaman that were brought into play to protect you from the force of thae shamans' world, whose doors were cinched open in those days. It is very powerful stuff. No joke. It was just a matter of him allowing the world and its habitudes to perceive things according to its own expectations. The nagual was going through hells, that's for sure. But that doesn't mean he was in pain or ill with cancer. He was also seeing heavens. He learnt how to appear old, ill and weak through someone quite peculiar, who was in close proximity to him back then, as well as to your little self. Have you spent even just one week working fully with the possibility that his work was non-fiction? - I don't mean just following the leaders as you did when in what you thought was 'the group'. I mean for real.
You were firm amid circumstances that the sheer thought of makes me shiver in my boots. That's why Carlos admired you, but he was revolted by your imperviousness to what lay behind the veil of things. Its good your eyes and ears were veiled, but those veils will fall. Mark my words.
It was not an option for the nagual to just vanish without a story for the world to satisfy it's reason and lack of credulity in regard to the shamans' way. You are a very fine writer, Amy. I mean it. Better than your father perhaps, but not of the same ilke as he. He was a dreamer, and Carlos needed someone who dealt well with facts to draw the cloak over him and his world for the protection of those to come with the capability and propensity to take up his challenges without doubt, and with all their hearts. And it worked. He is no longer a worldly issue. You are owed thanks.
You had some great experiences, but it won't be for a while until the butterflies start to break from their cocoons and the full visions of what occurred to you unfurl their wings. If I were you I wouldn't want to know yet either.
We have talked before at SR, just after your book on all this stuff was published. Sorry that being anonymous irks you, as it seems to do. I'm really trying to have to dispense with my need to do be anonymous with you, but it takes a certain sort of help from you, a certain letting go of things.
With all affection... anon
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Oy Vey
We corresponded on sa? I don't recall, the tone does sound familiar, though.
no, i don't mind anybody being anonymous, nor did i say so ...it doesn't make any difference to me.
as far as marking your words, i'll take a pass, but thanks for trying.
Good luck.
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Oy Voy
I used to be a bit of a punkie - dinner jacket full of pins, thinned out, snarling. It was a fantastic shield. I kept wondering against what, and then found out one amid fields of flowers. I came across this in Bruce Wagner's latest novel, and think it apt. Always so loved GMH.
To a young child
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
--Gerard Manley Hopkins