Mi Sitio
Carlos Castaneda wrote some books in the seventies about a Yacqui medicine man. They were quite interesting and I would like to re-read them because, frankly, I don’t remember much about them. It was the seventies, you know. I do remember a few things though. At the time I was looking at it the wrong way, because it wasn’t about the herbs, it was about the viewpoint. I don’t know why Don Juan, the Yacqui medicine man, should pop into my head, as he does from time to time, but he does. Something of his teachings must have stuck. The first time I ever heard the word shaman was in “The Teachings of Don Juan; a Yacqui Way of Knowledge”. Nowadays, every new age hairdresser and counselor is a shaman. Just ask them.
The last time I thought about Don Juan was when myself, a physician where I work, and a nurse from Kenya were talking. The nurse brought up the fact, somehow, that he was black, and we Americans aren’t used to seeing real black people. That reminded me of Don Juan, explaining to his student, that crows don’t see each other as black, but as silver. Don Juan, you see, would ingest certain herbs and become an animal, and he knew because he had become a crow. That was his magic. He would take you on a trip with him. When you got back, you didn’t see things the same way again. Ever, apparently. I never looked at animals the same, realizing what I saw and what they see was not the same. It is that way with people, I realize now too.
One funny anecdote, Don Juan thought it was hysterical, when he and another shaman were sitting in the hut shooting the bull, was the story of the Mexican weightlifter. He never did manual labor, though, because he always said he had a bad back. They thought this was a hoot. Now that I have a nineteen year old son who works out for hours but doesn’t know or care how to use a shovel or a rake or an axe, I see the irony in this. Yeah, it’s a scream.
The third thing I recall about the shaman’s teaching was that everyone has a place where they are powerful. A “sitio”. In his sitio a shaman can do magic, and is safe from other shamans’ magic. I was just making a bowl of beans and rice and saw my chair and into my mind came the words, “mi sitio”. I don’t even know if that is proper Spanish, I will have to ask a friend. This is my sitio. I can do magic here, and I am safe. I have other sitios. One is by the Skykomish River where I walk Jake. He feels the energy there too, as do many others, though they may not express it that way. The third is on Ebey Island, or rather, in the slough, Ebey Slough of the Snohomish River. I was all stressed out the last week from counting the medical supply beans by a certain date. I did it. I forced myself to focus, not an easy task for this particular wanna-be shaman, who would much rather daydream. I felt so drained afterwards that I couldn’t focus on my private goals and didn’t have the energy to do them even if I could focus.
I went to my boat to finish putting the motor together after a simple head gasket replacement, and when I went to start it, it wouldn’t start. It had no spark. I didn’t have enough sparks in my synapses to contemplate it further, and no test light either. I decided I needed a nap. I lay in my bunk and drifted away, the welcome sun coming in through the portholes after a long winter. I dozed and saw the “twilight images” that come before deep sleep. Not important here. I then went to sleep.
“bahwahWhumpWHUMP……………bawway WhumpWHUMP……………bahwahWhumpWhum p” The noise of a seadragon shooting flames, looking for sailors to eat? What the hell is that? The noise kept getting closer and louder, for about three minutes, as I lay in my rack, restored, strong, in mi sitio. Seadragons, hah, I laugh at them. Maybe it was a boat, after all. I never heard such a racket, though, coming from a boat, and if it were mechanical it would surely fly apart soon. Maybe one of Mickey’s old cranes was running amock. I lay there, grateful to have some ease for the twenty or so minute nap, curious, but unconcerned. The noise reached it’s peak and then, in the space between the exertions of the monster, like massive thrusts of dragon necks and wings interspersed with a glide in between each exertion, in that relative quiet, I heard human voices, casual, not screaming. I opened the hatch above my head and saw three V8 powered jet boats, one with such a radical cam that it seemed to fire all eight cylinders in rapid succession, then have to rest, only to do it again three seconds later. What queer beasts these sea-monsters were, in the quiet of mi sitio. As they passed the marina, they opened their throttles one at a time and I watched them fly off, diabolical, yes, but this wasn’t their sitio, it was mine. Maybe they’d hit a log on the way out of the slough. This slough isn’t for dragons, but for sailors and rum-runners, lumbermen and pirates of various specialties. Dragon toys go on lakes, dead lakes where nasty fish don’t get sucked in and choke the dragons. So the dragon boats flew away, forgotten. Refreshed from my time in mi sitio, I got on my Sportster and rode back to Sultan on Highway Two. Roarrrrr, starting up, then Ponka-Ponka…..Ponka-Ponka warming up, then Roarrrr, (1st gear) Rooooooooar! (2nd) Rooooooooooooooooooooar!! (3rd) Roooooooooooooooooooooooooar!!! (4th) and onto the road, all the way home the yellow and black tiger, agile, quick and powerful, took me. Noisemakers belong on the highway, I rationalized, not the river. My personal prejudice. I noticed the ride home was less nerve wracking than the ride to mi sitio en el rio. Well, I learned a lot from Don Juan after all, but I don’t recall him talking about the power of a good nap in restoring a shaman’s power. Maybe it was in the sequel, “Don Juan Gets Really Old”.
I guess the lesson of the "Sitio" teaching is that like everything, everyone has a place, and a place for everyone, you feel it when you get there. I wonder about other people's sitios and where they are and what they do for them, I'm sure they have them.
