You don’t believe me, do you? she asked.
Without giving me time to answer, she squatted and began
again to produce her display of sparks. I was calm and col-
lected and could place my undivided attention on her actions.
When she snapped her fingers open, every fiber of her muscles
seemed to tense at once. That tension seemed to be focused
on the very tips of her fingers and was projected out like rays
of light. The moisture in her fingertips was actually a vehicle
to carry some sort of energy emanating from her body.
How did you do that, Gorda? I asked, truly marveling
at her.
I really don’t know, she said. I simply do it. I’ve done it
lots and lots of times and yet I don’t know how I do it. When
I grab one of those rays I feel that I’m being pulled by some-
thing. I really don’t do anything else except let the lines I’ve
grabbed pull me. When I want to get back through, I feel
that the line doesn’t want to let me free and I get frantic. The
Nagual said that that was my worst feature. I get so fright-
ened that one of these days I’m going to injure my body. But
I figure that one of these days I’ll be even more formless and
then I won’t get frightened, so as long as I hold on until that
day. I’m all right.
Tell me then, Gorda, how do you let the lines pull you?
We’re back again in the same spot. I don’t know. The
Nagual warned me about you. You want to know things that
cannot be known.
I struggled to make clear to her that what I was after were
the procedures. I had really given up looking for an explana-
tion from all of them because their explanations explained
nothing to me. To describe to me the steps that were followed
was something altogether different.
How did you learn to let your body hold onto the lines
of the world? I asked.
I learned that in dreaming, she said, but I really don’t
know how. Everything for a woman warrior starts in dream-
ing. The Nagual told me, just as he told you, first to look for
my hands in my dreams. I couldn’t find them at all. In my
dreams I had no hands. I tried and tried for years to find them.
Every night I used to give myself the command to find my
hands but it was to no avail. I never found anything in my
dreams. The Nagual was merciless with me. He said that I
had to find them or perish. So I lied to him that I had found
my hands in my dreams. The Nagual didn’t say a word but
Genaro threw his hat on the floor and danced on it. He patted
my head and said that I was really a great warrior. The more
he praised me the worse I felt. I was about to tell the Nagual
the truth when crazy Genaro aimed his behind at me and let
out the loudest and longest fart I had ever heard. He actually
pushed me backward with it. It was like a hot, foul wind, dis-
gusting and smelly, just like me. The Nagual was choking
with laughter.
I ran to the house and hid there. I was very fat then. I used
to eat a great deal and I had a lot of gas. So I decided not to
eat for a while. Lidia and Josefina helped me. I didn’t eat any-
thing for twenty-three days, and then one night I found my
hands in my dreams. They were old and ugly and green, but
they were mine. So that was the beginning. The rest was
easy.
And what was the rest, Gorda?
The next thing the Nagual wanted me to do was to try to
find houses or buildings in my dreams and look at them, try-
ing not to dissolve the images. He said that the art of the
dreamer is to hold the image of his dream. Because that’s
what we do anyway during all our lives.
What did he mean by that?
Our art as ordinary people is that we know how to hold
the image of what we are looking at. The Nagual said that we
do that but we don’t know how. We just do it; that is, our
bodies do it. In dreaming we have to do the same thing, except
that in dreaming we have to learn how to do it. We have to
struggle not to look but merely to glance and yet hold the
image.
The Nagual told me to find in my dreams a brace for my
belly button. It took a long time because I didn’t understand
what he meant. He said that in dreaming we pay attention
with the belly button; therefore it has to be protected. We
need a little warmth or a feeling that something is pressing
the belly button in order to hold the images in our dreams.
I found a pebble in my dreams that fit my belly button,
and the Nagual made me look for it day after day in water
holes and canyons, until I found it. I made a belt for it and
I still wear it day and night. Wearing it made it easier for me
to hold images in my dreams.
Then the Nagual gave me the task of going to specific
places in my dreaming. I was doing really well with my task
but at that time I lost my form and I began to see the eye in
front of me. The Nagual said that the eye had changed every-
thing, and he gave me orders to begin using the eye to pull
myself away. He said that I didn’t have time to get to my
double in dreaming, but that the eye was even better. I felt
cheated. Now I don’t care. I’ve used that eye the best way I
could. I let it pull me in my dreaming. I close my eyes and fall
asleep like nothing, even in the daytime or anywhere. The
eye pulls me and I enter into another world. Most of the time
I just wander around in it. The Nagual told me and the little
sisters that during our menstrual periods dreaming becomes
power. I get a little crazy for one thing. I become more daring.
And like the Nagual showed us, a crack opens in front of
us during those days. You’re not a woman so it can’t make
any sense to you, but two days before her period a woman
can open that crack and step through it into another world.
With her left hand she followed the contour of an invisible
line that seemed to run vertically in front of her at arm’s
length.
During that time a woman, if she wants to, can let go of
the images of the world, la Gorda went on. That’s the
crack between the worlds, and as the Nagual said, it is right
in front of all of us women.
The reason the Nagual believes women are better sorcer-
ers than men is because they always have the crack in front
of them, while a man has to make it.
Well, it was during my periods that I learned in dreaming
to fly with the lines of the world. I learned to make sparks
with my body to entice the lines and then I learned to grab
them. And that’s all I have learned in dreaming so far.
I laughed and told her that I had nothing to show for my
years of dreaming.
You’ve learned how to call the allies in dreaming, she
said with great assurance.
I told her that don Juan had taught me to make those
sounds. She did not seem to believe me.
The allies must come to you, then, because they’re seeking
his luminosity, she said, the luminosity he left with you.
He told me that every sorcerer has only so much luminosity
to give away. So he parcels it out to all his children in ac-
cordance with an order that comes to him from somewhere
out there in that vastness. In your case he even gave you his
own call.
She clicked her tongue and winked at me.
If you don’t believe me, she went on, why don’t you
make the sound the Nagual taught you and see if the allies
come to you?
I felt reluctant to do it. Not because I believed that my
sound would bring anything, but because I did not want to
humor her.
She waited for a moment, and when she was sure I was not
going to try, she put her hand to her mouth and imitated my
tapping sound to perfection. She played it for five or six min-
utes, stopping only to breathe.