I’ve finally finished reading Carlos Castaneda‘s The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. The book documents Casteneda’s time with a Yaqui shaman named Juan Matus. In the book, Don Juan takes Casteneda, a then young anthropology student at UCLA, under his wing as an apprentice shaman, teaching him the ways of Mescalito, Devil’s Weed, and a smoke mixture containing mushroom. (During my reading, a number of people asked if the book served as a sort of manual for these entheogens. Spiritual, perhaps, but not practical.)

There’s plenty of controversy surrounding the series of books, of which The Teachings of Don Juan is the first, but I really don’t see why it matters if Don Juan was a real person, or whether he was created as a medium for the book’s message – or whether Castenada simply hallucinated the whole thing. The books explores many interesting ideas, many of which would do good to be considered by people today.

Don Juan’s personification of not only the plants mentioned in the book, but also non-living objects, such as his pipe, have been imprinted on my mind. Regardless of whether you honestly suscribe to the indigineous way of thinking – that, in Don Juan’s case, the peyote plant is actually a teacher named Mescalito with various human characteristics – it is undeniably a healthy way of living.

Try this: take one day, or one hour, out of your life and treat everything you come in contact with – from your underwear, to your boss(es)/teacher(s)/parent(s)/friend(s), to your food – not as an item to be exploited but as a being to enter into a relationship with. If you look at a tree and see dollar bills, you’ll treat it one way. If you look at a tree and see a tree, you’ll treat it another. Which way of thinking, do you think, children seven generations from now will thank you for? (Those who listened to the Derrick Jenson interview I previously linked to will find this concept not so new.)

I look forward to continuing Castaneda’s series.

Last night I finished reading Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America by Dennis McNally (perhaps better known for his biography of the Grateful Dead), a book which I picked up for a few dollars this year at Bumbershoot. I never knew Kerouac had such a depressing life. In fact, it was pretty much over by about 1960. He sure was one strange antisemitic, christian-buddhist, hippie hating, drunk.

I’ve finished reading R. U. Sirius’ Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House, as per recommendation of Douglas Rushkoff. It’s an excellent book, which covers, as the title suggests, counterculture from the early counterculture of Socrates, Tao and Zen to the Enlightenment, Transcendentalism, Beats, Hippies, Punks, Hackers, Ravers, and even mentions S.P.A.Z.. The second part of the book (it’s split into three parts – defining counterculture, pre and post Hiroshima) reads more or less as a condensed history of the Western world.

I’ve finally finished reading Naomi Klein’s No Logo. It’s been on my bookshelf for over a year, and I’ve been reading it for about a month. For some reason it was really slow reading for me, but overall it is a good book – if slightly dated (pre Seattle and pree 9/11).

It can be summed up in a few statements:

1) Modern advertising = evil
2) Corporate outsourcing = evil
3) Reclaim the Streets, Adbusting, Culture Jamming = Good

Today I finished reading The Black Pullet, a book which discusses various amulets and rings that give the bearer power to become invisible, conjure spirits, punish their enemies – you know, the usual. An entertaining read.

I’ve just finished reading John Shirley‘s Crawlers. I picked it up expecting it to be a cyberpunk book, but it turned out to be more horror than anything else. It takes about 200 pages to get actually get into the book, but I ended up enjoying it. It reminds me a lot of some of Sean Kennedy‘s fiction.