The Forgotten

 

I woke up sweating in a hotel room that smelt like gas and wet cement, with the ceiling fan making more noise than wind. My friend was snoring softly in the other bed, bare-chested, a machete tucked under his pillow like a joke nobody would laugh at twice. We were in El Salvador, again. Or still. You never really leave, especially when you’re trying to forget something.

--

She was a freelance reporter. Sarah or something like that. Gringa. Young, blonde, and probably used to lattes and Netflix recommendations. She had come down with a padded notebook and a press pass printed at home. “Investigative,” she’d said. “Immersive.”

We were drinking cheap local whisky out of water bottles and eating potato chips from a plastic bag. The conversation had turned into a slow spiral of abstractions—poverty, memory, global conscience. She said, with this blank conviction that only people who had never been afraid for their lives can manage:

“There are no forgotten people anymore. Not in the modern world. Everything’s documented now.”

I laughed once, loudly, and then stood up. My laugh startled my friend, who had been half asleep in his chair, like an old jaguar that never stops listening.

“You stupid bitch,” I said, “Of course there are forgotten people. Most of the world is made up of them. You don’t see them because people like you are the ones who did the forgetting.”

I was shaking now, and she blinked. My friend was on me before I got any louder, pulling me out of the room with a force that felt like compassion, or at least strategy. As the door closed, I saw her shaking her head, like she was disappointed but determined. She was going to prove her thesis. That was the story. That we were all accounted for.

--

We were dropped off somewhere east of Cojutepeque, or maybe it was further. No signs. No signal. No clear instructions. We were supposed to find a woman—his aunt, allegedly—who might help us with something undefined. Food. Shelter. The story.

The sun was vertical and overwhelming, and the road was all dust and dog piss. Within five minutes, we saw them—three young men standing beneath a tangle of barbed wires and dying yellow flowers. Tattoos up to their throats. One of them had a glass eye that didn’t track with the rest of his face.

 “Buenas,” I said, with the forced casualness of someone pretending not to smell death in the air. “We’re looking for my friend’s aunt. Maybe you’ve seen her?”

My friend tensed like a wire pulled too tight. He said:

“Tía? I don’t have a tía here, vos. You must be confused.”

 

They left us alone. But as they walked away, my friend leaned in, whispering to me:

“You don’t ask people things like that around here. If they think you’re looking for someone, they’ll want to know who, and why. Then they’ll go find her before you do. Not to help her. To find out what she knows. You get me?”

I got him. We were walking blind, in a game rigged by ghosts. Every question was a clue in a crime we hadn’t committed yet.

--

Later, I started thinking about her again—Sarah, or whoever. I imagined her stumbling across the cracked tile of some comedor, asking old women with cataracts where the child soldiers had gone. I imagined her recording quotes that sounded profound in English but were just tired fragments of survival. She’d be somewhere not far, I thought, lost too, only in a prettier way.

She would write about hope and resilience. She’d quote a man who used to be in a gang but now makes jewelry out of shell casings. She’d miss the man sleeping on cardboard behind the cantina who used to be the mayor’s brother.

Eventually, I thought, we’d run into her again. Maybe in the town square. Maybe on the edge of a dry riverbed where bones are buried. And I’d ask her if she still thought everyone was remembered. And I’d point.

To the old woman with no teeth who once taught algebra and now sells candy from a tray. To the child drawing cartoons in the dust with a nail, whose mother was disappeared, whose father was dismembered, whose name no one says. To the man with the glass eye who used to be called Alejandro but now answers to no name.

I’d tell her:

“This is where the census ends. This is where maps curl at the edges. This is where God forgets to answer the radio.”

And maybe then she’d understand. Or maybe she’d write a grant proposal. Or maybe she’d shake her head again, because some truths can’t be carried back on an airplane.

--

That night, my friend and I slept in an abandoned house. Rats scratched under the broken sink. The roof leaked even though there was no rain. I had a dream I was a boy again, looking through a keyhole into a room full of people who had forgotten my name.

When I woke up, I wasn’t sure where we were anymore. I looked at my friend, who was staring at nothing, his face lit by the slow, blue dawn.

“Do you think she’ll make it out?” I asked.

“Probably,” he said. “They like her type.”

Then we got up. We kept walking. Looking for a woman who may or may not exist, in a village with no name, to prove to someone who didn’t believe in the forgotten that they were still here.

Still waiting. Still hiding. Still real.

After the End of Everything

 
Once upon a time in a land very much like our own, a lone boy traveled so far away from everything he had ever known that he found himself in trouble. He was alone in a world of turmoil, treachery, confusion, very close to the death of all things, beyond which there is only darkness.
The boy was frightened by all that he saw around him and he felt helpless and alone, so he called upon a second boy to come and help him. The second boy arrived the next day, as he lived some distance away in another city. They talked for a while and all the fear that had consumed the first boy slowly went away, as he sensed the presence of true friendship and he remembered that this was not the first time he had found himself at the edge of nothingness.

***

“In the middle of the night, I saw powerful weapons flying steadily towards each other against the waning sun, messengers of total extinction, immune to all pleading or negotiation, impervious to human suffering or desperate pleas for mercy. As the sky turned gray and violent thunderstorms took over the earth, I saw showers of dust and tornadoes of gravel everywhere around me.
It is the end that has come, I said to myself, the end that we have anticipated for so long. I saw animals running around in a state of nervous hysteria as if they knew with a kind of unspoken certainty what I could only imagine: that this was it, this was the end of all things, these were our final moments.
And just then, just as the world ended, just as there was about to be a final period at the end of our long human story, I asked you if you could see what I was seeing, if you could feel what I was feeling.”
He nodded with a sense of recognition and he sat on the floor next to me.

“I myself saw many different strange things last night, so many I lost track of them. I saw a kind of living purple cloud twirling around me, dancing in endless purple spirals, intricate thin shapes that embraced me in their translucent folds and I became lost in the touch of this purple nothingness; and I did feel the earth shake all around me, as if responding to some terrible heat that came up from the depths and I felt a dark cloud of fiery weapons approaching in the distance, each equipped with the power of massive destruction, each ready to turn the world itself into a maelstrom of fire, burning it so deeply it would be impossible for life ever to come back.
When that terrible moment faded out, when it seemed that a kind of peace had emerged from the chaos, I tried to bring it all back together, to weave it back into a form I could still understand. That’s when I knew that you were still here, you were safe, you were still alive. The moment had passed and we had survived. In a few hours, I would see you again.”

***


“Yesterday, without any prompting or questions, my youngest daughter handed me this book. She said that the day before, after she came home from school, she grabbed it at random from the bookshelf in my office. She had this sudden strong feeling that I needed to have it. She felt that I would need whatever was inside very soon. I kept it with me since she handed it to me and today I read it as I traveled here to see you. It spoke about many things; about the sacred animals that come to you after dancing in the forest for many hours, letting the sunlight die around you while the birdsongs and the rustling of the leaves are all the music you need; about the arcane shapes that emerge from the sky when you open your eyes wide and keep them open long enough to allow that thinnest of veils to break. And it spoke about the intimate process of death, that most private of spaces; it described standing at the edge of the final cliff, precisely at the very edge, where you most strongly feel the call of the darkness below, feel it so strongly that it becomes almost impossible to turn away,  and yet you refuse to jump. You are almost ready to do it but you don’t go through with it. You just stand there on the edge between one reality and another, between one dream and the next. The book also spoke about the function of another, someone who wants to bring the first one back, back from the edge, or someone who wants to help them to let go, to give them that final push that will allow them to fly.”

I looked at him then as I had rarely looked at him and I saw that he was in good health, that he was strong and calm and present, and he was clearly enjoying himself as he talked to me.
He leaned over towards me and said very softly:
“The old ones say that we are all born with an animal that takes care of us throughout our entire lives. They call this animal the tonal. But he is only half of us. There is another animal that will also stay with us through our lives. They call this second animal the nahual. He is the one that brings you advice from the Unspoken, the kind of advice that burns, the kind of advice that is hard to hear.”

***

I saw that a long eternity of exile loomed ahead of me and I was afraid of the cold and the loneliness that it would entail. Years of solitude and aimless wandering opened up before me like a gigantic gray mouth ready to swallow me whole.
Just as I shivered with dread and sorrow in front of this gateway I couldn’t avoid, I understood that it would be wise to use this expanse of time constructively. It would be a time to gain knowledge, to weave together the strands of my future self. I should not remain idle while I was lost, I should not fall into cursing my fate, here where I am, lost and alone, here is where I will find all that I have been missing.
“Use these years of exile wisely,” he said, “travel across the world. See all kinds of new places. Learn new skills. Spend time with forgotten sages and other learned folk. All this will help you to gain wisdom. And on your return to this chamber, you will be much better for it and we will talk once again.”

***

Once upon a time, I walked aimlessly around San Francisco listening to music on my headphones and seeking without searching. I ran into her a few blocks away from the pyramid, right when I least expected it to happen. We had not seen each other in many years and I had almost forgotten the chills that would run up my spine every time I saw her smile, every time her gaze fell upon my eyes.
We talked briefly, sitting in a little coffee shop in North Beach. I asked her about a writer I had read recently and she said:
“No, I haven’t read him very much. I have heard the name a few times but I have never read his work.”
Then I said:
“I just wanted to tell you about him. He is very interesting to me. Not only does he talk about ancient myths, but also about modern trends and even about the future. It all comes together in a way that is hard to describe.”
“Isn’t he known to use a very old fashioned language? Full of cliches and simple phrases?”
“Yes, he is, that is part of his unique charm,” I said, “in some ways, he reminds me of the Magician. You know… how he will give long drawn out lectures, just like the Magician used to do every Saturday afternoon. And just like the Magician, he would talk about anything and everything without limits, without a particular theme or thesis, without a script, for hours at a time.”

***

Once upon a time, after coming back from a long day of evoking simple illusions, still wearing his purple cape and his shiny pants that he used as a performer and popular showman, the Magician found the God Tlaloc waiting for him at the entrance to his home.
Right away, the Magician recognized him as the fearsome God of storms and destruction that was there standing at the doorway, blocking his entry.  Tlaloc had assumed the form of a large black cat and he was covered in blood, and the blood formed a deep red puddle all around him. He also had a garland of tiny red flowers around his neck, flowers of such a deep redness that they seemed to have emerged from the blood itself.
 The Magician bowed down before him, and asked for his blessing.
“I believe you are here to say something to me,” the Magician said to the cat who was a God, “but everything is very confusing to me right now. I remember a long time ago you told me to not do something and I believe I haven’t done it. What were you saying to me back then?”
“What I was saying to you,” the black cat said, “was that there was a small point of tension in your body, a point right beneath your stomach, and I told you that you were doing something with your mind, with your energy, that made that tension grow and grow and I said that you should stop doing that, you should stop feeding that tension daily, you should release it into the wind. Something has been happening inside of you, deep in places beyond your sight. As much as you call yourself a Magician, you don’t know about it, you remain blissfully unaware of the damage you are causing. As long as you hold on to that tension, you will remain blind.”

***

“This is like that time when we drove to El Salvador, when we drove all the way through Mexico and Guatemala with one single and clear mission: to see the Magician once again, to talk to him, to finally ask him everything we had ever wanted to ask.
During the drive, on the fifth or the sixth day, I said to you that there was something that you had to know but you couldn’t remember if you knew it already. That is my question now for you: do you really not know? You don’t know what I am talking about? Are you still blind?”
“It’s all very strange,” he nodded and responded slowly and carefully. “It’s as if I can’t fully believe, as if I can’t bring myself to fully focus on your words and the answer remains beyond my grasp.”
“Have you talked to the Magician recently?”
Suddenly I felt a strong cold wind flowing through my body and I closed my eyes.
“What is happening?” I asked, “what has happened?”

***

“Sometimes the function of the tonal is to keep the nahual out, to keep it at bay, to make sure it doesn’t come to disturb the steady routine of your daily work.
But sometimes, the function of the tonal is to organize the world in such a way that the nahual can come into it and be fully present where it is normally not welcomed.
And sometimes there is a struggle between the two, a fierce, violent struggle. That’s when we can die, that’s when all that we are, all that we have been, can be obliterated, that’s when we feel the ultimate fear.”

***

“I’ve been hesitating to tell you. For such a long time I have hesitated. Even now, I still don’t know if I should tell you. I still don’t know if I should say it.”
“Why?” He leaned towards me and his eyes opened slightly wider, “What is it? Is something going on with the Magician’s daughter?”
Instead of giving him a clear answer, I told him the story of the dog.

***

“Once upon a time, the Magician sat down in his office all by himself and consulted the Tarot as his private oracle. He asked a question he had always been afraid to ask.
The Tarot responded by describing a special ritual which involved the sacrifice of the family dog. This ritual involved setting the dog loose and allowing it to roam freely for a day anywhere throughout the city. No limitations, no restrictions. The dog would be free to wander as it pleased.
As the dog roamed around the Magician would patiently follow, with a notepad in hand. All the houses, all the particular places that the dog visited, would now become a new organic part of the Magician’s magical map.
On their eventual return to the family home, the dog would be sacrificed. It would be hung upside down in the backyard from a branch of the old mango tree and the Magician would cut its throat and let the blood flow over the ground seeding it with the power of life and death. This would invoke a magical transfer that would transcend time and place and all the power and glory held in his family’s blood from time immemorial would now be manifested within the Magician’s body. He would become the one man who would hold it all in his hands.
It was sad to see the dog go in this cruel way, but the new power that emerged from the Magician after the ritual was complete could not be denied.”

***

“We have a lot to talk about, you and me. Last night, when I tried to communicate with the Magician, when all hell broke loose and the end of all things seemed imminent, I believe I caught a glimpse of the precise moment of this sacrifice.
When the blood came down, when it flowed over the ground and made intricate little red rivers among the pebbles and the dust of the Magician’s backyard, everything fell apart.
There was complete chaos all around me. There was no up or down, there was no clear sense of gravity, there were no lines to hold onto, no clear categories, no sense of order, no language that could give things a shape or a sense of distinctiveness, the world itself was about to fall into the black void from which it once emerged. All of it happened last night. I saw it.”
“And if it happens once, if it really happens, it keeps on happening forever. We catch a glimpse of it every now and then. The end is always around the next curve.”

***

“It’s all about the Magician. Everything has to do with him. Do you remember that I told you once, that at some moment I would have to decide between you and him?
That first day, when we arrived to see him after our long journey through Mexico and Guatemala, I felt something very intense within me, a kind of deep surrender, a shift in the way I understood my life and all that we had done together up to that point - all the psychedelic journeys, all the work with magick, all the trance experiments, all the altered states and secret invocations.
And at the same time, precisely as I realized that his power was real and more overwhelming than I had ever imagined, I also saw that there was something wrong, there was something dark in that room, in that house; something had gone terribly wrong a long time ago and it had left its traces all over every single object that surrounded me, the paintings, the masks, the little statues of clowns and sacred animals.
I tried to ignore it. I tried to bury it deep within my mind where it wouldn’t show up even in my dreams, even in the subtlest shifts of my eyes. Did that happen to you?”
“I sensed one day that you had felt things like this. In a flash, I knew that you must have. Is it true or not that there are things you haven’t told me. Things that happened when you were down there with him? When you were down there alone after I left.”

***


Once upon a time, I sat in the Magician’s living room quietly examining his many mementos and paintings, breathing in the peculiar atmosphere that impregnated even these small things which he had only touched or selected, when he suddenly came out of his room in a rush and told me to go with him. Just the two of us.
We drove for a while through downtown and then through old rundown neighborhoods that I didn’t recognize. Eventually, we arrived at an old building in the middle of a large unkempt garden that seemed to stretch out forever in all directions.
He parked and we walked into a large hall at the center of the building, a solemn place covered in spider webs and moss. I could hear soft hypnotic music playing in the distance, a piano being played very gently, soft unresolved suspended chords and the barest hint of a melody. There were many people there in that ominous hall. Most of them were standing, a few of them were very old and sat on little wooden chairs, all of them were looking straight ahead without saying a word.
The Magician suddenly walked away from me and acted as if he didn’t know me, as if we didn’t just walk into this place together. I felt unsure of myself and I ran after him and touched his shoulder, just to make sure that he knew that I was still there. He turned around and signaled for me to stop, shaking his head lightly but firmly.
Just as he shook his head, something happened on the other end of the room. A woman screamed and several men came running towards her. I turned on my video camera and I was about to run towards the incident as well, ready to film whatever was happening. The Magician then touched my shoulder and whispered:
“It’s better if you don’t go there right now. It’s too dangerous…”
I was furious.
“You have led me into a strange trap here,” I said, “I am here with you but I don’t understand what is happening. What made you bring me here if you weren’t going to explain the nature of this place or this gathering. If you can’t tell me what is happening, if I can’t even film it so I can explore it later, why bring me here at all?"
He repeated:
“It’s too dangerous right now. Stay where you are.”
I did as he said.
After a while the screams stopped and everyone remained as silent as they were to begin with. After about half an hour I followed him back to his truck and we left that place.
On the way back, we didn’t talk at all. Even in the days that followed, I didn’t ask him anything about that place or about the people that were there staring into nothingness or about the woman’s screams. After a week had passed, I realized my memory had started to fade and I knew I would never bring it up with him at all.
Now I still remember the events but I know so many details have already faded away and will never come back.

***

Once upon a time there was something that needed to flow and there was something else that was preventing it from flowing.
One day, the Magician suddenly raised his right hand. The two of us were sitting alone in the middle of the cemetery, at the same white stone bench where the three of us once talked about our future and our underlying archetypes. All of a sudden, he raised his hand.
“This is the core of your personality,” he said, “this is the way it is and the way it always has been.”
Then he raised his left hand and he said.
“And this is your inner spirit. This is what we need to accomplish, what the world doesn’t want us to achieve, what the world will stop from happening through any means possible. This is what is nearly unreachable. Almost a lie…”

***

I felt that I was deluded. I had been deluded all along by a world of frail illusions and the resultant habits that these illusions had given birth to. I was unable to know myself, the true nature of myself that had been hidden, the truth that was above all these illusions and was completely resistant to change.
In spite of all that or maybe because of it, I saw him then as an evil doer. I saw him among the ignorant, among the absolute worst among men.
And as I saw this, I was afraid. I was afraid that by seeing what I was seeing I would lose all the knowledge I had gained. I would fall back into the vast illusion I had only briefly escaped.

***

“There is something… Well, maybe many different things that I haven’t told you. Not stories from a long time ago already fading into myths and legends. These are recent. These are fresh. Even now, I hesitate to tell you… What do you say?”
“You will have to decide.”
“If I haven’t told you, it’s not to mess with you. I would never do that. It’s because I feel bad about it. It’s out of an urge to protect you. I feel as if, by telling you, I will be destroying something inside of you. I will put your knowledge at risk just as mine has been hanging in the balance due to my premature discoveries. I have peeked behind the curtain and I have been hanging on the edge ever since…”

***

“Once upon a time, the Magician spoke to us. He told us that he was always trying to teach his daughters, he was always trying to find new ways to work with them in their daily life and reach their innermost being so that they would learn from him and evolve as deathless beings. Do you remember hearing something like that? I always give them lessons, he said. I always give small lessons to them, he said. Every time I can, he said. Right then, I felt something was wrong. Something was harsh, ugly, horrible. There was something in his voice and in his words that made me shiver inside even if I couldn’t say what it was.”

***

Once upon a time we went searching in the middle of the night. We drove all around San Salvador looking for the Magician. We looked in the old neighborhood which was now dark and quiet and unfamiliar, and we looked in his old house which now was just a house like any other house and no longer a mysterious center for esoteric studies, and we looked in his old headquarters which had turned into an ordinary office with its requisite share of typewriters, file cabinets and bored secretaries and guards. We finally found him in one of his old hiding spots - those secret little places where he went to do his workings, away from people, away from prying eyes, away from the light.
He was surprised to see us but he welcomed us without saying a word. We sat on a rock at the edge of a dark river, we sat together in silence for a very long time. When I finally spoke and presented my doubts to him, my floating questions that had never been resolved, he responded with a proposal. We would perform a sacrifice to the red goddess of the moon.
‘Perhaps this will please her,’ he said.
‘She may then clear up what is bothering you,’ he said.
I hesitated to ask the nature of the sacrifice.
‘It can’t be just anything,’ he said. It’s going to hurt.”

***

Once upon a time, Stella and me decided to walk together all the way to the radio station where the Magician was about to do his weekly show. It was about an hour walk so it gave us plenty of time to talk.
We walked hand in hand down that long mysterious street that reminded me of some unfortunate incidents of my own childhood, night skies covered in fiery explosions and asphalt covered in firecracker debris. The sidewalk was flanked by a dirty white wall covered in moss; long branches overflowed from the inside and reached over our heads. During that walk, she finally said all that she had been holding back from saying since the first day we talked.
She told me how the Magician beat her, over and over, for one thing or another. All of her life. From the time she first came to live with him to a few weeks before we met. For saying the wrong thing, for not saying what was expected, for being silent, for being too loud. He even broke her mouth open once and there was blood everywhere, on her face, all over her shirt, on the floor and on the wall. He did this because she had tried to hang herself in a vain attempt to escape from the harsh horror that he himself had created all around her. The Magician found her with the long thick rope around her neck and proceeded to beat her senseless as a punishment for her blasphemous attempt to run away from his god given power.
As she told me these things, her revelations cleansed her. They fell off her like heavy weights that had been crushing her insides for years and I could feel the change all around me, as if the world itself was changing with every word that came out of her mouth.
As she told me more and more of her secrets, her eyes became clear and pure, at least for that vanishing moment and I was able to see her as I couldn’t see her before. A barrier had been broken and a new one had just begun to form.

***

“It was something I didn’t want to see, something I wished wasn’t true. I found myself in a twisted dilemma. I didn’t know if I should be angry or sad, violently wrathful or deeply depressed. Or maybe I should feel guilty for looking away - for having looked away when I could feel it earlier, so many years before; a presence just out of sight, right on the edge of my vision. And yet I still wanted to look away because everything else surrounding them felt so good, so perfect, so true. Everything else resonated within me in a deep way, it lifted me above my usual habits and made me come alive.
That’s why I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want to know this. And I didn’t want to tell you. I was unable to save her honor, unable to avenge her repeated humiliations. I was unable to erase the past or cleanse the future of its indelible presence. When I looked at it, when I remembered, I felt hurt, distraught, hopeless, and this was ripping me up inside. I didn’t want to hurt you in the same way. I didn’t want you to feel this impossible dilemma. Until yesterday, when everything came to an end, and that end gyrated ferociously around the Magician, around his power, around his heart, around his overwhelming presence… I couldn’t tell you until yesterday when I opened my eyes.
I saw it all and I was able to simply observe it without rushing to judgment or running away. I took a long bath in an ocean of angry energy and it burned me to my core.”

***

Once upon a time in the apartment, our little sanctuary away from the world and all its many distractions, Stella told me that the Magician preferred his other daughters over her. She said he found them more beautiful, less rebellious, more loving in the straightforward way of simple beings that love without questions and do their chores without their minds wandering towards forbidden subjects. She told me that he often exploded in uncontrollable fits of rage, sometimes without a clear cause that any of them could understand (which made them impossible to prevent or prepare for.) On one of those days, he cursed her, saying:
‘Someday your own children will meet the same fate. Someday you will know what I feel like right now.’
She protested saying:
‘I have no fault. I haven’t done anything knowingly.’
Then the Magician told her a story of Pedro Urdimales.

***

“Once upon a time, Pedro Urdimales gave a cow to an old witch as a well-intentioned gift. He simply wanted to please her and make her happy.
On the following afternoon, without his knowledge, the cow escaped from the witch’s farm and returned to his cowshed. Pedro, without realizing that it was the same cow, gave it away again to another witch, again with the best of intentions, again just to make her happy. He didn’t know he was giving away the same cow twice.
Even though he had done this unknowingly and without any intention of hurting them or tricking them, the angry witches discovered what had happened and came to visit him full of rage. Using their magical powers together, they cursed him.
For several lives after that, Pedro had to be reborn as a lizard and he lived his lizard lives regretting the things he had done without knowing.
Every action of ours, however innocent, has a consequence that we have to experience. If not in this life, then in the next. There is no way to escape from this law, regardless of our good intentions.”

***

“You can’t imagine all the things that happened when you were not around. The Magician got so angry with me for not doing what he wanted me to do, for listening to his own daughter even more than I listened to him, for deciding to make love to her before we were married, for questioning his philosophy and his religious ideas, both in private and in front of his wife and family, for daring to look at him, not as a teacher, but as an angry father protecting his animal territory.
As time passed, and as I did more and more of these things that he perceived as betrayals, he grew more and more angry. And the angrier he got, the more he lost control and the more he lost control the less I respected him and the less I respected him the less I loved him.
There was something there from the start. There was something beautiful. I wanted to continue feeling those things I had felt for him. The respect, the love, the sheer admiration. You understand? But I felt those things less and less the more I saw him losing control.  So he got more angry because he saw that I loved him less than before, because he could feel that I didn’t see him the same way I once did. Did you ever feel that?”
“He did not get angry with me. He was not out of control with me.”
“No, he didn’t. No, he wasn’t. But he is angry within himself, deep in the places where his power comes from, the same place from which his love emerges. I am only a part of it, a very small part, an irrelevant addition to an emotional hurricane that has been raging for years.”

***

I asked her how she perceived all of this, how she processed it and understood it. I asked her how she related it to all his talk of spiritual enlightenment, of peace and understanding, of deep meditation and profound love.
Without any hesitation, without thinking for even a moment, she said it didn’t fit at all. It was all pure contradiction and hypocrisy. It was all a lie.

***

Once upon a time, I found him where and when I didn’t expect to find him. I saw that he was horribly stuck within a dark cave and he couldn’t get out, no matter how hard he tried. I saw him in an impossibly tight spot between forces far too strong for him to move, forces that originally had come from within himself, from those secret places inside of him that were too deep to reach directly.
From that dark cave, he called out to me, to the one he once claimed as his imaginary son. I was the only one that could truly see him. I was the only one that could understand him. He reached out to me and asked me what he ought to do to save himself, to escape from this impossible trap in which he found himself.
I gave him an answer I didn’t expect to give. When I spoke, I couldn’t recognize my own voice. I couldn’t even recognize the emotion behind the words I was speaking.
“You have adopted the features of a man and in the process of masking yourself as a man, you have hidden the truth of your being. Now, you must remember who you really are and act accordingly. As soon as you act as who you truly are, this trap will be a thing of the past and you will find yourself free and light and able to fly through the heavens as you were meant to do from the very beginning.”

***

“Once upon a time, he read one of her letters without her permission. He searched her entire room when she wasn’t home and he found this letter, a letter she was in the process of writing to me. He searched for it and found it and then he read it out loud in front of the whole family when she came back. He wanted her to be present during this reading, he wanted to confront her with her evilness.
As he read it, he trembled and shook with anger and pure resentfulness. They all trembled together and shared in his anger as they listened to her blasphemous words. It was a kind of free form poem, full of sexual desire and a kind of innocent perversion that accepted no boundaries or limits of taste or morality.
The words were also full of mockery towards him, her own father. She laughed at what she saw as his pretentiousness. She laughed at his claims to wisdom and truth. She laughed at his own perversities, hidden away behind doors but not hidden well enough.
After he had finished reading it, they were all silent for a moment, shocked speechless with all that they had heard. And then they all cursed her and laughed at her and then they cursed her some more. Four voices joined together in sheer hate of her traitorous presence, of her poisonous words.
Then he got brutal with her and all of them approved of his brutality. He beat her senseless.  His fists were covered in her blood by the time he was done and they all felt sorry for him for all the pain that this was causing him and they all blamed her for what she had done to him.
She cried alone in her room for hours that night, covered in bruises and covered in blood and there was nobody there to comfort her and there was nobody to cry with her.
That is one thing that happened. That is one thing that I couldn’t tell you.”

***

“Even before we left… when we were on our way to see him together, when we made our way through the valley of death and through the long dark night alight with fire, I felt it.
This is why I was afraid of going there. I was afraid of what we would find at the end of the road.
I saw it. There was something in him that wanted to control everything around him. Back when I tried to be his assistant, back when the study center was still alive and we were his little youth group that hung on every word that came out of his lips. Back then he did something with me, he tried to control every last word I said, he tried to limit the words that would come out of me, he tried to restrain me and make me into a kind of puppet that would move according to his exact and specific instructions.”

***

“He was brutal with all his daughters but specially with her. With Stella. Merciless, cruel and brutal.
He smashed her face more than once, his fists beating against her pretty face until it was unrecognizable. He tied her to the ceiling once and whipped her until there were red bloody marks all over her brown skin, marks that stayed there for months. He stripped her naked and forced her to lie in the sun until blisters came out all over her body.
All the while, her sisters laughed at her humiliation and her stepmother laughed as well. They felt that it was only right that she should be punished as she was the living product of an unforgivable sin, a living entity that confirmed and reinforced an act of darkness, her very existence was an intrinsic affront against nature and God.
They all saw her as the source of all their troubles, the dark spot in life that highlighted the wrongs that the Magician had committed, the recurrent wrongs that could never be washed away no matter how much they tried.
After it was over, Stella only wanted to seek vengeance, to see him beaten and brutalized, to see him humiliated. She wanted to destroy all that had come from him, all the things he had taught her, his fame, the admiration that people showered on him all over the country, all the wondrous tales that were told about him.
She wanted to destroy it all until there was nothing left.
I dissuaded her as well as I could. I advised her to let go of her anger and forgive him. I reminded her that the Magician, her father, would die one day and that was all the curse that was needed, that was enough punishment for any and all of us.
‘An act of vengeance,’ I said ‘only creates a spiral of vengeance.’
Stella eventually understood this and agreed to abandon any quest for revenge. She learned to let go of her anger and forgive the man who had hurt her so much and for so many years.
But it still bothers me that we could not see it. Did we not realize it when we were there? Did we not see the signs of secret violence? Of silent suffering? Of words unspoken and restrained? At least I know that I tried to ignore it, I tried to look away. It went against everything I wanted to believe. It simply couldn’t be true.”
“When the tonal is threatened, when it finds itself in trouble, everything becomes more difficult. When the Magician is helping others, when he is dealing with the many people that come to see him day after day asking for advice and for healing… in that situation he has learned to fulfill his recurrent duties without much resistance. Conventions and standard morality are all set aside in the service of a clear and self-evident goal: to help another being in the most objective way possible. But when it comes to his own family, his daughters who understand nothing of what he does, his wife who looks at the world through conventional eyes much like all the others around her, then he thinks of decency, of scandal, of purity, of sacredness. That’s when he acts based on his sleeping understanding of human activities, based on his acquired prejudice, based on his twisted private dreams. Anything that threatens those dreams, even if only slightly, he sees as negative, as evil, as the ultimate enemy. That’s when the conflict begins.”

***

“Once upon a time in the city of angels, on a small road that branches away from the long main street that goes from nowhere to somewhere and all the way back, a complete stranger came to see me. As an introduction, he told me that he knew the Magician very well and that he knew of my relationship with him. I was startled but listened closely to him. The stranger told me not to worry. He told me I shouldn’t be concerned about being so far away, so far removed from his sphere of influence. He told me the Magician knew what I was doing and that he agreed that I should do it far away from him. He said that the space I had made around myself would allow me to develop and grow and that I should be comforted in knowing that the Magician approved of my actions.”
“Who was this?”
“I don’t know who he was. I would say it’s someone that stands behind him. Sometimes it’s difficult to recognize even those who stand beside you. The very proximity makes them so invisible that it’s hard to even remember that they’re there.”

***

Once upon a time I walked through the woods at midnight. There, in the middle of the darkness of the forest, the untouchable chaos of the wilderness, I attempted to conquer all the fears that had always troubled me, all my many horrors of the dark. I was on my way to find a vision that would clear away my fears like cold water washing mud, when I came across an old monkey who blocked my path. Or rather, at first, I was certain it was a monkey in the shadows, based on its shape and size, the loud and high animal sounds it made, all its sudden movements. I tried to get around him but it grabbed at me and forced me to stay. He pushed me violently without any apparent regard for my safety. At one point he even bit me.
I could neither kick it away nor lift its tail to pull it off me. After many hours of battling against this wild dark figure in the shadows, it dawned on me that the monkey was none other than the Magician himself. He had come to stop me before it was too late.

***

“Once upon a time, I saw you slowly walking up a hill towards me. I didn’t expect to see you at that time. I was at the old farm and, as far as I knew, you were very far away in another city, in another world. I could see the rows of cotton and the little plastic greenhouse down below me and I was getting ready for a long day of work under the sun when I saw you making your way up the dirt path that runs around the field.
I quickly ran towards you - eager to greet you and hug you. I hadn’t seen you in many years. And then I saw that the Magician was standing behind you, walking slowly but surely in your shadow. I ran to hug him first. I did it without thinking, without hesitation. Out of love, out of respect or maybe out of simple shock.
‘It’s so good to see you here!’ I said to him, ‘I tried to call you once but I never got an answer. Nobody said anything to me. There was no response at all. Even last night… I was still calling…”
But he didn’t respond even then. He didn’t say anything at all. He just stood there looking at me without saying a word.

***

“That is what I felt last night when I tried to go to him. I wanted to tell him to calm down. I wanted to tell him that everything was alright. That I loved him and cherished him and nothing would ever change that. But there was total silence coming from him. An angry absence. A bitter void.
‘Don’t do it for me,’ I said, ‘not even for her,’ I said.
‘You have to calm down for yourself,’ I said,
‘you have to look into yourself and bring your mind down to a still point. Then we will finally be able to speak to each other. Openly. Honestly.’
It was precisely at that moment, when it seemed that a gateway was about to open between us, when it seemed that there was hope for a complete renewal of our contact… it was precisely then when I felt something horrible taking over, something overwhelming.”
“That is the tonal. You should understand that his tonal is very strong, very intense. It craves power but does not know how to use it. His nahual is also very strong but the tonal is not mature enough to be able to coexist with the nahual. There are only some moments when he is able to achieve that kind of coexistence and in those moments, he shines. We have all seen it. But otherwise, it is impossible for him to hold himself still, to allow for time to pass before taking a sudden action.”

***

“I have come to understand that I should focus on doing what I am doing here in the north, far away from him. I can’t fix him, I can’t help him. I can’t even fully communicate with him. He made me what I am, at least to a large extent. He made us what we are. And yet I can’t help him. Not at this time. He knows what I am doing now and he accepts it and he is content with it, and he agrees that it is better if I am far away from him at this time. Sometimes physical presences may interfere with each other, the electric field that flows around the physical body can have an intense effect on another electric field, even to the point of bending it out of shape, distorting it to the point of sickness, a general malfunction. Of course, an external field sometimes can help as well but often it gets in the way. At this time, in order to do what I am doing, in order to be what I am here and now, it’s better for me to be away from him. Something inside of him knows all this already and he has come to terms with it. He also knows what he is doing with you, he knows that he has misstepped, not once, not twice, but over and over, and yet he can’t stop doing it. As much as he sees himself in the middle of a disaster, he can’t stop himself from falling into the same trap, over and over again.”
“And what is he doing with me?”
“He is surrendering to anger. He is losing his clear vision and falling into a pit. Despite being a deeply spiritual being, a radiant source of light for so many around him, as a reaction to you, he has now transformed himself into an angry monster, a beast intent on establishing his dominance and power and nothing else.”

***

“Once upon a time I saw you walking up the yellow hill that looms over the old farm. As soon as I saw you, I quickly ran towards you. Then I saw a shadow moving behind you, a dark shape which I couldn’t identify, not at first.
But then I felt his presence and I knew that it was the Magician. It could be nobody else. He was standing behind you but I could only see him as a kind of darkness.
I stood before him and said:
‘I tried to call you… so many times. I wanted to speak to you but I never got an answer. Nobody said anything to me. Nobody let me know everything was alright. There was no response. Even last night in the heart of the overwhelming maelstrom that shook the very foundations of the world at the very apex of a long path leading towards a clear and open meeting, I still found myself calling… and still there was no answer.”

***

Once upon a time in the small country of El Salvador, resting in the heart of Central America, there was a young girl who was the daughter of a powerful Magician, an Illusionist, a Healer and a Prophet. The Magician was married to a woman who was not the girl’s mother and he had two daughters with her. The young girl lived elsewhere with her own mother and never saw her father except on very special occasions.
But her mother was very poor and the Magician had a big house and a bit more money so he decided it was best for the girl to come live with him and become a part of his household. Somehow, he convinced the girl’s mother to give her up and she came to live at her father’s house.
It was a beautiful house with many rooms and a large dusty garden. In the middle of that garden there was a beautiful tree of fire. This became the girl’s new playground, the stage for endless fantasies that multiplied in all directions every afternoon, every time she had a chance to let them fly.
But her new stepmother didn’t like her and would often punish her for the slightest mistake or seeming transgression. And her stepsisters, who were a bit younger than her, would take the side of their mother against her and she would be very sad and she would miss her old life with her own mother even if she couldn’t remember it very clearly.
The Magician tried to teach her his secret arts and she did learn some of what he had to teach but she was very rebellious and she would question his ways and his motives and his methods, even his words (which everyone else took to be impeccable pearls of wisdom.)
When faced with her questioning he would fly into a rage and punish her, he would strike her violently and scream at her with a kind of passion that made her whole body tremble with fear.
The screaming and the rage and the punishments would all keep on going until the whole house was screaming at her, her stepmother and her sisters all screaming at once. She would cry for weeks on end and nobody would come to help her.
One day two of the Magician’s most treasured apprentices came back to El Salvador to visit their old teacher. The Magician was overjoyed and filled with awe when he saw that they had returned after so many years of being so far away and he was overwhelmed with feeling when he heard that they had returned with the specific purpose of seeing him again. They were both still full of admiration and love for the Magician and he bathed in the glory of their adoration.
One of the apprentices was also there to become the girl’s prince, the one she had wished for. They all recognized him for what he was, even the stepmother, even if he didn’t know it yet. He had no idea what they were seeing, he didn’t know the hidden details of the story he had stepped into.
After a few days had passed, it was clear to everyone, including himself, that he loved her in a desperate way that he had never loved before, and it was also clear that she loved him back.
Eventually he took her away from that house which she had come to see as a place of punishments and sadness, and he stood up for her when she was attacked by the stepmother or by the stepsisters and even by her father who was also his teacher.
And the Magician and his apprentice clashed in a way they had never clashed before. He questioned his teachings and the Magician resented him for it and that resentment coming from his teacher made the apprentice question everything he had ever learned. And all the admiration and all the adoration went away and, after some time had passed, the apprentice and the girl left on a plane headed for a distant land far north.
The Magician saw them go and something inside him began to burn ferociously. It might still be burning even to this day.  

***

“That is not the only thing he did. It was just one of many.
For years, he was their terror, the heavy voice that overwhelms and destroys all arguments, a cold wave of fear that would leave them paralyzed, shaking with anxious anticipation.
As much as I want to forget, as much as I want to look away and remember him the way we used to know him, there’s so many things I’ve heard, so many stories that have now become my second hand memories, that I am forced to remember, I am forced to see what I would rather not. Horrible, despicable things I wouldn’t have believed possible. Not coming from him who I held so much higher than all other beings.
Despite being born of him, despite being his image in more ways than one, she saw him transform into this ravenous creature that would stop at nothing to be temporarily satisfied. And when this transformation occurred, there was nobody there to help her, nobody to stand by her side, nobody to let her know that ultimately things were going to be alright, that she would pass through this trial and emerge transformed on the other side, ready to shine.”

***

“He was power incarnate and it was that power that we were attracted to. It flowed through him and out of him in concentric circles  that distorted the atmosphere around him. Causes were bent to his vibrant frequencies and the foundations of reality danced to the beat of his delicate inner desires.
That radical power emanated from him but he didn’t know how to use what he had, he didn’t know how to apply it with subtlety. When you can’t control it, it takes over and does with you what it wants.”

***

“Over and over, he beat them savagely. And when he did it, his eyes were red as fire and his face was sweaty with rage, shining with a watery brightness borne of raw desire. This was not a long time ago, back when we were too young to question or understand and we might slip it all behind us like one more myth that it was pointless to analyze too closely. This was just a few months ago, when they were already little grown women, when they could already drive, when they all had boyfriends and were starting their college lives.
And I don’t mean just a slap across the face here and there, a maybe not so gentle way to get their full attention when it wandered too far off the clear track that he had planned for them. I mean he beat them. Harshly, brutally, wildly, without mercy.
This happened just a few months after we saw him, after that day when we sat in awe before him in his living room and asked him all the questions we had been waiting to ask for so many years, all the questions we had stored away in the hopeless expectancy that this moment would eventually arrive.
I can’t say what that means to you, what ramifications it holds, or how it changes what you see in him or how you approach him. But at least for me, I was shaken to the depths of my consciousness. It shocked me. It shifted me inside. It made me question every assumption I had ever made regarding my own childhood and all the time we spent together, listening to him and gathering what we thought were the purest, most delicate pearls of his wisdom.”

***

“It’s not something I hadn’t seen through the murky depths of the sideways viewing, the nighttime explorations that I learned to achieve precisely because of him.
I am not really surprised, I admit. As I have come to understand how things work with him, something like this seems to fit in to what I already knew even if I didn’t know about it first hand.
It’s definitely not something I would mention to people when I tell them about the Magician. It’s something I would stash away, something I would keep to myself.”

***

Once upon a time, I saw a video of the Magician doing his illusionist act. The video was very old and full of glitches. It kept on cutting up and breaking into tiny explosions of white static, and some of the segments were spliced together so it had become impossible to tell where they started or how they ended.
In spite of all that interference, it still transported me back to that other time, those days when we had first met him, when we first learned from him, when the world opened up to us through his gentle pushing and counseling and, most of all, through his warm acceptance.
I could hear his voice in the video talking to the audience. He was dressed in his cheap imitation of a formal frock with a red rose shining from the left side of his chest and pure white gloves covering his hands. I saw him moving effortlessly, pulling out rabbits from hats, moving playing cards around in his hands like a concert pianist plays the keys, transforming into a wise old Chinese Man and disappearing behind clouds of white smoke.
Just as I saw him through my old eyes again, I could also feel his resentment at not being recognized, at not being more famous and respected, at least in Latin America, if not all over the world. That resentment came through in every graceful move, in every smile, in every twinkle of his eyes.
His ability was so much greater than anyone gave him credit for. He was definitely the best Magician of our country, at the very least, the best escape artist. He had managed to complete all of Houdini’s famous escapes, including the one that killed him. He was simply the best.
But the crowds were too distracted to notice, too preoccupied to care. And he seemed condemned to pass away poor, forgotten and ignored by the world at large.
Following his teachings, I spent my life killing the demons within me, all those vicious personalities that would burst out of me from some dark hidden hole behind my eyes.
And now, in the process of meeting the love of my life, the girl that had opened my eyes to the true possibility of complete and selfless love, I came across a shadow that blocked my path. I couldn’t kick it away nor push it away from me, nor banish it out of existence.
And it took me some time to recognize that he was that shadow, and that he would be forever present, wherever I saw you, wherever I saw her. Whenever I looked into the mirror and I allowed my eyes to lose focus, he would be standing behind me, smiling, angry, laughing, weeping, ready to pounce with fury, willing to offer me the sanctuary I’d never had in exchange for a simple denial, a simple moment of forgetfulness, a simple dismissal of the truth.

***

Once upon a time, the Magician’s secret lover gave birth to a beautiful baby girl with big curious eyes and a shining forehead that closely resembled the Magician’s own. The Magician kept the baby but banished the lover, warning her to never again come into his presence. (She was a being ruled by lust and it was that very unbridled lust that had attracted him to her but now she could only become a shameful spot, an aching mistake that would tarnish the illusion of a perfect family which he was in the process of constructing.)
As the little curious girl grew up, she secretly desired to avenge her mother’s banishment. In her quiet rage, she would destroy everything around her - the people, the plants, the cars, the houses, the world, all the elements which formed the scene in which she didn’t quite fit.
When she confessed it all to me so many years later, I asked her to hold back, I pleaded for her to let go of her anger and forgive her father who could only do what he would do. (Just like all of us.) I reminded her that her mother had been banished as a consequence of a magical act and such acts are always just a step beyond our common understanding, a step beyond even the ones who make them happen.
“An act of vengeance only creates a spiral of vengeance,” I said. “It comes from darkness and it leads to darkness.”
In time, she came to accept this simple truth and she agreed to abandon the forbidden ritual which would have destroyed everything that ever was, leaving nothing but dust and a vague sense of loss without a place for life. Through many years of struggle, she eventually learned to forgive. And only then, was she able to rest. And only if she rested could the original magical act from which she came from continue in its process of becoming and go on to reach new levels of unsuspected fertility.

***

Once upon a time, I found an old rough video of the Magician doing his illusionist act. I don’t know where it came from, I only knew it had landed in my hands. In the video, he was doing a particular trick I vaguely remembered. Dressed in a silken robe, he was intent on defying gravity - without ropes, a harness or any other apparent help, he would walk up a wall, his body parallel to the ground.
I could see the thin little sticks in his hands that allowed him to walk sideways. There were gasps in the audience as he moved smoothly up the vertical surface like a kind of human spider or a restless spirit attached to the illusion of a body but breaking free of its inherent limitations.

***

“Last night, I felt something was coming towards me. Directly from him, from the Magician. And that’s when all hell broke loose. That’s when I saw him flying in a rage.
For a short space of time I could see everything from above, from a higher place than I have ever been. And then the confrontation came and it all became a dark gyrating chaos, a lethal storm that threatened to erase me from existence.”
“That’s what I felt. From the moment you called me, I tried to connect with you through the aethers and at times I felt that I had managed to find you but it was only in parts- sometimes only through the emotions, other times only in a very physical way. I felt your pain, I felt the sensations you were feeling as the waves of chaos and darkness overwhelmed you; I saw a lot of movement, colors, shapes, memories, dreams, future projections. I saw a long dark hallway and I saw two people walking through it on their way to an open doorway… but everything was only half way, all of it was shrouded in mist.
Then there was a moment when I remembered something. I was very high up, higher than I have ever been, and up there, in the uppermost reaches, that’s when I saw you… It was a single brief moment and it was gone before I could fully react. When I was so high up, so elevated above everything… that’s when I saw you, that’s when I felt you.
Back in the old days, when we went up into those rarefied regions together, even though we were in fact together there was something of you that I couldn’t see, something hidden, something blocked. But this time, last night, I found you there complete and I said to myself  ‘ah, there he is!’ at last…”

***


In the old video, he suddenly let go of the sticks and of the wall and, like a huge black bird that pushes off into thin air, defying gravity completely, he began to fly freely over the audience. He flew fast, recklessly and I could see that he was smiling brightly as he flew, smiling as if the whole world was opening up for him and there was nothing more to wish for.
Then he rushed directly towards the camera at a frightening speed and just as it seemed he was about to crash against the lens he turned towards the shocked audience, that frightening overwhelming grin on his face, and he gave them one clear order:
“Scream! Scream! That’s all that is left for you to do! Scream as if your very lives depend on it. Scream! And know that you are in my hands.”
I saw him proclaiming his fearsome greatness and I felt that I was in a tight spot. I knew that this could not be an actual video and yet it seemed so real. That’s when I called out to you and I asked what I should do.
From nowhere, I heard your voice saying:
‘You have adopted the features of a man and hidden what you really are. Remember who you are and act accordingly.’

***

“That’s why I mentioned the nahual earlier. The nahual invites you to let go of all that you hold on to, it invites you to pull away from all that restrains you and jump forward into freedom. This is what we would need to say to the Magician if we ever get a chance to speak to him again. This is what he needs to hear and what we could say to my own self as well.
Because that is my problem too, that is my own barrier. There’s something I can’t let go of.. it’s something you have seen in me before. When we were kids playing by the farm or up and down the streets of the old neighborhood, you said that I understood, deeply and fundamentally what it meant to be a father. You could see it in the way I interacted with the other kids, you could see it in the way I made sure they were not in danger, in the way I tried to outline clear boundaries that they should not cross. I was the living fence that kept them in place; in a world of gaping doorways crawling with poisonous evil, I was the gatekeeper. I understand this. I truly do.
But I can’t stop doing it. I can’t ever stop being a father. It doesn’t matter where I am or who I am with. I can’t stop.
This is why I understand the Magician perfectly. We suffer from the same problem.”

***

“When I saw him flying recklessly over the crowd, I was happy. I felt connected to him through the screen. I felt as one with his grace, with his freedom, with his daring. I was so proud of him, so proud of his sheer skill, so proud of his amazing power, so proud to know that he was my teacher, that he had been my teacher; that he was, in a certain sense, my second father, as he said more than once.
At one time, that is what I thought I was learning from him: to be skillful, to be powerful, to be strong. I wanted it all to be true. I didn’t want to face anything that could possibly contradict my deepest wishes, my fevered dreams fed by borrowed fantasies. Is it even possible to be completely honest with yourself in a situation like that? Really honest? Is it possible to even look directly at those things you really don’t want to see?  Those things that give shape to the world within which you have carved an identity. How can you honestly examine the contradictions that sit at the foundations of your mind?”

***

Once upon a time, two young boys walked aimlessly around a little suburb in the outskirts of San Salvador. As they walked, they passed by little gardens covered in flowers and they passed by smooth lawns where other children played with plastic balls and they passed by little neighborhood stores where men drank soda from plastic bags and young girls laughed uproariously at even the faintest attempt at humor or irony. After walking for a while, they stopped on a quiet corner by one of the main streets and sat down on a short wall which encircled a lawn as of now only half covered in grass.
The first boy turned towards the second boy and said:
“You perceive me right now as very strong, powerful, skilled, heavy with certainty and presence. And you see yourself as the opposite, as very weak, aimless, drowning in self doubt and timidity. You can’t trust yourself the way I do. And yet you are honest, you are brashly honest in a way that I can’t be, in a way that for me is very difficult. I need you to see that.”
They both nodded at each other and were quiet for a while. The passing cars honked at nothing and the buses roared as they turned the corner and a woman whistled nearby, a simple familiar song aching with melancholy.
The first boy spoke again:
“I trust myself completely. I do. But you can be completely honest in a way I find breathtaking and difficult to even comprehend.”
And they both nodded again.

***

Every action of ours, every single apparent choice, no matter how innocent, no matter how apparently innocuous, has a reaction that we have to experience, an effect we will have to enjoy or endure. If not in this life, then in the next.
Our conscious knowledge of the consequences makes no difference. The reaction comes whether we expect it or not, whether we understand the web of secret structures that caused it or not. Our understanding, or lack of it, changes nothing.

***

In the video, the camera moved towards the audience again, slowly, methodically, without any rush. As it moved, it allowed me to see all of the various people staring at the Magician in disbelief as he flew wildly over their heads. Their mouths were wide open - and their eyes were open even wider – in a mix of admiration, shock and fear. They didn’t know how to react, what to say or what to do. What was happening went far beyond their understanding of reality so they had no clear guideline as to the nature of their response. A few of them were muttering, a few were crying, a couple had fallen to their knees and were praying in a quiet monotone. A man in the corner had stood up and was screaming something incomprehensible.
Watching all of it through the screen, I was unsure of how to respond myself. What was the best reaction in such a situation? Should I be angry at him for his recklessness? Should I fall to my knees and worship him for his amazing powers? Or should I feel guilty for having failed him, for having betrayed him when he most needed my loyalty, for having entertained thoughts that put him in a bad light and would eventually lead to a complete breakdown in our connection?

***

“I feel an overwhelming sense that something unnatural is happening, something unusual, bright and transformative, something irrevocable. I feel as if I am just opening my eyes for the very first time after many years of silent meditation. It is early morning and I am sinking into mildly warm water in a beautiful lake up in the snow covered mountains. The cool water flows all over me, it cleanses me, it makes it possible to say the truth. To speak it openly and carelessly. I feel as if right now, I could be completely honest with you in a deep way that is somewhat frightening but also deeply reassuring.”
“That is good.”
“It’s shiny and clear and so easy, like an open, inviting doorway and calm beautiful music comes from the other side. And yet, at the same time, I perceive a rough edge that tells me that I shouldn’t. There’s things I can say now that will become a problem later, they may become a problem for you, a raw bit of unpleasantness that eventually won’t let you sleep, won’t let you rest in the comfort of your own basic fundamental beliefs; or they may become a problem for us, a bit of resentment that will poison the free flow of our communication. Later, much later, when I am no longer swimming in these cleansing waters, the words I speak now may come back to haunt us. And once spoken, they will keep on resonating forever and there will be no way to make them stop. I find myself tangled up in this dilemma.”
“That is not good.”

***

When the flight was over, he quickly slipped into a small room above the stage. There was a little doorway very close to the ceiling, high up in a spot where only one who could fly would be able to reach it, as if the room itself had been built for one such as him and for nobody else.
The camera zoomed in just as the tiny doorway opened, and I saw that the edges were lined with jade snakes and tiny clay figurines with upraised arms and open mouths. Ancient messengers singing an eternal greeting.
He gave us all one last boastful smile and he slipped through this strange little doorway, head first, and disappeared into the darkness beyond.
“That is a Magician!” I heard someone say.
“Not just a common illusionist but a real Magician!” someone else said.
I nodded quietly where I was sitting watching the screen, where nobody could see me.

***

“Last night I searched for him in that same place, that strange theater of midnight, in that secret room above the stage that could only be reached by one in flight. I found tiny traces, small clues that revealed his recent presence but he wasn’t there anymore.
So I went to that other place where we went together so long ago, back in the days when we were most careless and didn’t hesitate before making radical decisions and jumped headfirst into oceans of consequences unknown to us. And there, above the vast web of language, above all strict categories, above the dismal prison of linear time, there I found him.
There was nothing to see. No body. No face. No shape. But it was clearly him. And he was still flying, just as I had seen on the video. And he was still smiling, still reckless and strong and full of power.”

***

“There is something that needs to flow, clear as the fresh river water in the high mountains, strong as the fire of the sun… something pure and untouched by petty human motives.
But there is also something else. Something heavy, dark and twisted, something that is preventing the first from flowing, something that is holding it down, pressing down and holding tight, something that won’t let go.”

***

Once upon a time, the Magician sat with me in the old cemetery where we used to talk for hours, where he used to teach us about the secret invisible pathways and the subtle hidden doorways that lead from one world to another, where he used to warn us about the right ways and the wrong ways to live.
We sat on the white grave of a long dead important man, someone who once had power and now was forgotten. The Magician turned towards me and looked at me with a heavy intensity in his eyes. Then he raised his right hand above his head and spoke slowly and firmly:
“This is the tonal. This is the way it is by definition. Where everything is distinct and clear, where everything is understood, where everything is predetermined and known. Even as it constantly changes, even as it is constantly in the process of becoming something else. This is the way it has always been. This is the way it always will be. There is no escape. There is no use in trying.”
Then he stretched out his left hand and pointed down toward his feet.
“And this is the nahual. This is what we need to do. This is what we want to do. This is what remains impossible. This is the unreachable jewel of untold value, the shining diamond at the end of the road.”
I looked back at him, unable to add anything, unable to find anything to ask.

***

“I see everything falling back upon itself, and everything we have ever known, everything we have ever encountered and everything we have loved and lost and loved once again, all of it is created fresh from scratch, one step at a time, all backwards, all against the tides of time.
And in these strange resultant conditions, we lose all the knowledge we had once accumulated and we begin the process all over again. This is what it means to die. This is what it means to forget.”

***


“As soon as I saw you, in the middle of so many vibrant waves of colored sound, I knew it was your choice. It is always your choice, your decision. If you want to die, you should die. But if you want to return, if you choose to return, then we should go and visit the Magician together, we could go and find him in his secret room behind the stage, we could face him in his private darkness. We should go and sit with him, talk to him, listen to him, play with him, at least one more time.”
“I heard what you said back then just as I hear you now. And back then I didn’t know what to do… I wasn’t sure which path to take. If I did choose to return, we would be able to do something together, something strange that would make everything come alive again, that would make everything return to what it once was. But if I really wanted to go, I wanted you to wait for me, wait for as long as it took, so I could be with you as I stepped beyond that shining doorway into a new and vast unknown.”

***

Once upon a time, I went to see the Magician in his secret liar. This was long after it was all over - after the wars became a distant myth, after you and her were gone and all our shared memories had begun to disappear. The storm had passed and a certain measure of calm had returned to the world.
I went to see him precisely to try it all out, to see what we had missed, to see what once we couldn’t see, to see if he still was as angry as he ever was.
I found him sitting in the old spot in the cemetery, wrapped in a black robe, his eyes fixed somewhere far away, without moving, without making a sound.
He saw me approaching and he didn’t respond. I sat close to him and waited. I closed my eyes and felt the swirl of vibrations around him, a swirl that seemed to envelop me in turbulent emotions that I couldn’t quite grasp. That’s how I discovered that he was still angry, still furious, still seething in the deep pain that can only be described as wrath. He was still tied into a blind knot that refuses to be untied.
After some time had passed, he turned towards me and dismissed me, banished me from his presence without a second thought. As bad as he once was, this was worse than ever. He was so far gone that I found no way to reach him, no quiet space in which to even begin to talk.
So I simply walked away and I didn’t turn back.

***

"He left us and now we are helpless. Now we are nobody’s student. Now we are nobody.”
“Yes. There was no point in going to see him. Nothing could be gained and everything could be lost. His anger towards you, towards us, was still flaring, raging white hot, as new and strong as if it was the first time you raised your voice and disagreed with his pronouncements, as if it was the first time you took his daughter away from him and you both turned your back and walked away.
Seeing him now wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t change anything at all.”

***

“Was it a good idea? I don’t know. But high up there in those upper realms of unfathomable meaning and spiraling melodies, where reality becomes thin and pliable and dances like oil on a vibrant hot pan, where the boundaries shift and tend to disappear and forget their own ephemeral existence, in that precious moment when we could finally communicate with each other so directly, so clearly, without uttering a word, without making a sound, it made no sense to ask that question.
There was only one important decision to make. It seems to me now that there is only ever that one decision, regardless of how many other dilemmas may seem to be lurking on the side. There is only one question that really matters.
Sometimes the function of the tonal is to keep the nahual out. Sometimes the function of the tonal is to organize the world so that the nahual can come into it. And sometimes… sometimes there is a violent struggle between the two.
That’s when we can die, that’s when we can feel a terrible fear, a vast cold terror that has no beginning and no end, so cold that our very fear seems to shrink into ice so brittle that at any moment it will shatter into the vast nothingness of multiplicity, and as it vanishes it will take us with it; even our memory will be scattered into a million pieces that will never find each other again.
But in all these situations, in all the many treacherous chambers through which we can travel, there is only one important choice. Only one.
From my point of view, you made the right choice, you made the right decision. The sacrifice.
Let the dog loose and allow it to roam freely through the world, allow it to be what it wants to be, to do what it wants to do, and when it eventually comes back, sacrifice it. Give it up as an offering to the Absolute, and when the bones are burning, turn away and don’t look back.
It is the same decision I made a long time ago, in a different place, in a different way, but the same decision nonetheless. And from that moment, it’s as if death can’t really touch me.
Please, don’t misunderstand me. I am going to die. There will be a sudden transference as there always is and I will experience the same things as all others, the same pain, the same anguish, the same fear, all the same things that would happen otherwise.
But I will still be here. And all the power and all the glory will remain. Present and alive, burning with self-aware consciousness.
I can never leave, and thus I am never fully here.
In the deepest sense, it doesn’t matter. Whatever happens, no matter what the mind can come up with, no matter what the vast unpredictable world can throw at me, it all doesn’t matter. And that, my friend, that deep overwhelming nonchalance is what sets me free.”

***

“This thing that I feel right now, this vibrant sense of infinite yet shapeless meaning… is it going to stay like this forever? Will it remain solid and firm within me? Or is it only temporary? Will it vanish with the coming of the dawn?”
“I remember meeting a blond boy full of questions back in the old neighborhood. I had known about him all along but I had never talked to him. I had only seen him from afar. For years we had lived so close to each other and yet we had remained suspended in this ambiguous mutual silence.
And then one day we talked and talked and talked. As if the gates had opened and, once opened, they would not be shut down. The way I remember it now, it all seems very strange and unlikely, and yet they are my memories and they seem to be true. I don’t believe that I am making them up, constructing them out of thin air.
I know that my mother didn’t trust him and she still remembers him just as I do. A blond boy that lived close by. Back then, she told me to stay away from him.
One day, I asked him what he wanted, what was he looking for in me. The answer I got from him was: ‘We’ve done this before. You know it already. You are the god of destruction and I am the god that brings it all back.”
“It’s so similar and yet never the same. I don’t want it to go away. But I can’t hold on to it. There’s nothing to hold onto. By its very nature it is fluid and even as I try to grab onto it, it’s already gone far beyond my grasp.”
“A couple of years ago, I watched a video of the boy playing in a dark room with stone walls. He was covered in blood and he had a garland of heads around his neck. He was dancing and singing and laughing. I liked watching him on the video. After so many years, I told my mother that I had decided that, regardless of all her many warnings, I liked him. Regardless of all the strangeness, regardless of all the unknowns, I liked him. I even loved him.”
“It’s somehow painful too. There’s a sense of despair. As if something keeps on trying to block the doorway and I keep on pushing against it but I never push hard enough. I can never have enough strength.”
“On the afternoon I visited the Magician, I talked to his whole family. The youngest daughter didn’t recognize me anymore. She was running around the house half naked, shameless and pure. I tried not to look but it was impossible. At one point, she turned to the Magician and said: ‘He is not how I had pictured him. He is very calm, very easy going, very nice… I don’t see anything to fear. I might stay with him for a while.’

***

“When I was there, I felt very clearly that this was real. All my doubts had vanished. This was no dress rehearsal. This was no simulation. And that realization disturbed me. I got terribly frightened. A cold wave of terror washed over me and left me paralyzed, unable to find a way out, unable to understand what this could even mean; or if there could be a future in which I would understand it.
Eternity had opened up to me like a flower of ever multiplying petals, and it was steady and vibrant and relentless. Shocking in its pure lack of direction, terrible in that it offered no promise of an incoming climax or resolution. No reward, no punishment, no final settlement of accounts.
I could see this all the time if I wanted to. Now I know this clearly. I could experience it now and always. But I don’t.
Since then, I have spent so many years in exile, I have traveled so far and for so long… I have seen all that I wished to see and more. I have learned so many skills and I have spent time with so many wise men, learning all I could from them and learning their ways by simply observing and imitating; the way they live, the way they work, the way they play.
But in a way, I never left that one confrontation with the endless. I am still in the same dark room where it happened. I am still seeing it all for the very first time.”
“It’s the same for me. It’s the same always. It has been years since we first saw it together, long strange years full of experience. And yet, I also feel it like you do. It is as if it just happened a moment ago, just a brief moment ago. As if at any moment, we can be there again. As if we never left.”
“The Magician once told me that we are all born with an animal that takes care of us. He called this animal the tonal. He said that this is one half of us. But there is another animal: the nahual. He didn’t say much more than that. But his silence resonated with me through the years and it has brought me back from the edge of darkness more than once.”

***

“I want to be honest… I want to be completely honest. As honest as I can be and even more honest than I ever remember being.
Sometimes I forget. Or rather, I get distracted. I go off on tangents in my mind and I wander away from that singular space of clarity.
But there’s a bridge now, a bridge solid and strong, old and marked by the ages.
And the sky can turn gray and violent thunderstorms can take over the world around me, showering dust and gravel everywhere, threatening to fill the land with despair and pain…
But the bridge is still there and I know how to cross it. I remember how to make it to the other side. Do you understand?
Sometimes it’s difficult to find it. Sometimes it’s difficult to get to it even when I know where it is. Even when I know it is there. Sometimes it’s difficult to find my way across after taking the first tentative steps. But it is ultimately there, waiting for me, always.
And if I need help at any step along the way, I ask for it and help arrives. Sometimes in unwanted forms, sometimes in forms that are difficult to discern for what they are, but it arrives. The vision doesn’t always come with the same strength as it did before. Sometimes it’s weak, sometimes I feel doubts. But there’s always something there. A definite echo of that one moment, that one moment that shines above all others.
Sometimes I want to talk about it just like I’m doing right now, but there’s very little to say to someone that hasn’t been there. And there’s no point in speaking about it to someone that has.
In any case, hardly anyone wants to listen anymore to these things that have no clear use in the world. There is no practical objective, no visible or understandable consequence. I’m just an old man now, a strange old man with strange fading memories, an old Magician with nothing important to say and nobody left to talk to but myself.”