From whiskey river:
As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think.
(Native American Indian saying)
Not from whiskey river:
Don Juan and don Genaro stood up and stretched their arms and arched their backs, as if sitting had made their bodies stiff. My heart began to pound fast. They made Pablito and me stand up.
“The twilight is the crack between the worlds,” don Juan said. “It is the door to the unknown.”
He pointed with a sweeping movement of his hand to the mesa where we were standing.
“This is the plateau in front of that door.”
He pointed then to the northern edge of the mesa.
“There is the door. Beyond, there is an abyss and beyond that abyss is the unknown.”
Don Juan and don Genaro then turned to Pablito and said good-by to him. Pablito’s eyes were dilated and fixed; tears were rolling down his cheeks.
I heard don Genaro’s voice saying good-by to me, but I did not hear don Juan’s.
Don Juan and don Genaro moved towards Pablito and whispered briefly in his ears. Then they came to me. But before they had whispered anything I already had that peculiar feeling of being split.
“We will now be like dust on the road,” don Genaro said. “Perhaps it will get in your eyes again, someday.”
Don Juan and don Genaro stepped back and seemed to merge with the darkness. Pablito held my forearm and we said good-by to each other. Then a strange urge, a force, made me run with him to the northern edge of the mesa. I felt his arm holding me as we jumped and then I was alone.
(Carlos Castaneda, Tales of Power — the last words of the book. I always thought Castaneda’s entire “Don Juan” series would have ended perfectly at this point, but no: he went on to write numerous further books, none of which attained the convincing — and impeccable — power of the early ones.)
