Alejandro Jodorowsky - The Dance of Reality - A Psychomagical Autobiography

I did not know what to do. The teacher and the driver left me sitting on the back seat. It took me half an hour to decide to get out. There were hard-boiled eggs on a flat rock. Feeling myself submerged in the same solitude that surrounded the old woman with the single tooth, I took one and scaled a tree. Although the teacher urged me to get down off the branch and jump in the stream, I remained sitting there, immobile, and did not respond. How could she know? How to tell her that this was the first time I had ever seen a stream of fresh water, the first time I had climbed a myrtle tree, the first time that I had smelled the fragrance of vegetable life, the first time I had seen mosquitoes drawing macramé patterns with their ethereal feet on the surface of the water, the first time I had heard the sacred croaking of toads blessing the world? How could she know that my sex organ, with no foreskin, resembled a white mushroom? The best thing I could think of to do was to remain quiet in this alien, humid, aromatic world in which, not knowing me, no one could yet establish that I was different. It was better to isolate myself before they could reject me, thus denying them the chance to do so!

Murmuring “he’s stupid,” they left me alone and soon forgot me, absorbed as they were in their aquatic games. I slowly ate the hardboiled egg and compared myself to it. Removing my exterior shell was in my best interest; it made me strong, but also made me sterile. I had the sensation of being too much in this world. Suddenly, a butterfly with iridescent wings landed on my brow. I do not know what happened to me next, but my vision seemed to extend, penetrating time. I felt as if in the present I was the figurehead on a ship that was all things past. I was not only in this material tree, but also in a genealogical tree. I did not know the term genealogical at the time, nor did I know the metaphor of the family tree; and yet, seated in this vegetable being, I imagined humanity as an immense ocean liner, filled with a phantasmal forest, sailing into an inevitable future. Unsettled, I asked the Rebbe to come.

“One day you will understand that couples do not come together by pure chance,” he told me. “A superhuman consciousness brings them together according to a set plan. Think of the strange coincidences that led to your arriving in this world. Sara lost her father before she was born. Jaime’s father had also died. Your maternal grandmother, Jashe, lost her fourteen-year-old son José after he ate lettuce irrigated with infected water, which left her mentally disturbed for life. Your paternal grandmother, Teresa, lost her favorite son, who drowned in a flood on the Dnieper River when he was also fourteen years old, which drove her mad. Your mother’s half-sister Fanny married her cousin José, a gasoline seller. Your father’s sister, also called Fanny, married an auto mechanic. Sara’s half-brother Isidoro is effeminate, cruel, solitary, and ended up a bachelor living with his mother in a house that he, an architect, designed. Jaime’s brother Benjamín, homosexual, cruel, and solitary, lived alone with his mother sharing the same bed until she died, and a year after burying her he died. It would appear that one family is the mirror image of the other. Both Jaime and Sara are abandoned children, forever pursuing the nonexistent love of their parents. What they had to go through, they are now putting you through. Unless you rebel, you will do the same thing to the children you have. Family suffering repeats itself generation after generation, like the links of a chain, until one descendant, in this case perhaps you, becomes conscious and changes his curse into a blessing.”

At ten years old, I understood that my family was a trap from which I must free myself or die.

It took me a long time to gather the energy to rebel. When my teacher told Jaime that his son was deeply depressed, might have a brain tumor, or might be showing the effects of intense trauma due to relocation or familial abandonment, my father took offense rather than worrying about my mental state. How could this dumb, skinny, hysterical bourgeois woman accuse him — him! — of being a negligent father and his offspring of being a sissy queer? He immediately forbade me to go to school, and taking advantage of having found a location for his shop moved us out of the Eden of Croesus without paying for the last week.

Sara had wanted the shop to be in the city center in order to be well regarded by her family, but Jaime, driven by his communist ideals, decided to rent a storefront in a working class area. Thus we were immersed in Matucana Street.

The business district was only three blocks long. A swarm of indigents, domestic workers, laborers, and hawkers circulated there every Saturday, which was payday. Next to the railroad gate, people squatted, selling rabbits. The carcasses, skin still on with open abdomens revealing shiny black livers the size of an olive, were hung on the rims of baskets, necklaces of flesh assaulted by flies. Street salesmen announced the availability of soap that would remove all stains; syrups to cure coughs, diarrhea, and impotence; scissors strong enough to cut nails. Thin children with the jaundiced tint of tuberculosis offered to shine shoes. I am not exaggerating. On Saturdays it was difficult for me to breathe so thick was the stench of filthy clothes that arose from the multitudes. All along those four hundred meters, like enormous somnolent spiders, three used clothing shops, a shoe shop, a pharmacy, a large warehouse, an ice cream shop, a garage, and a church all opened their webs to the public. In addition, there were seven bustling pubs that were jammed full of patrons and reeked of vinegar. All activities revolved around alcohol. Chile was a nation of drunkards, from the president, Pedro Aguirre Cerda, who was known as Don Tinto (Sir Burgundy) due to his heavy drinking and red swollen nose, to the miserable laborer who would drink what remained of his pay each weekend after buying new underwear for his wife and shirts and socks for his children, then plant himself in the middle of the railroad tracks — in Matucana long freight trains ran between the road and the sidewalk — and defy the locomotives, fists raised. The virile pride of drunkards knew no limits. Once, I happened to be walking along the street just after a train had smashed a foolhardy man to pieces. The onlookers, yelling with hilarity, made a game of kicking around the pieces of human flesh.

My father, determined to become the king of the neighborhood, hired more and more extravagant loudmouths to attract customers outside the shop door: a surgeon-clown stitching up a bloody doll with a dollar sign on its forehead (“El Combate forces prices down!”), a guillotine on which a magician decapitated fat men who represented exploitative businessmen, a dwarf with a booming voice dressed as Hitler (“War on high prices!”), and so on. Despite the prevalence of shoplifters he placed all the merchandise in piles on the tables, always wanting to give the impression of abundance. He set up a wooden counter with an opening in the center where he sat in plain view of customers using a sharp knife to cut thick cotton fabric according to patterns copied from American clothes. He hired girls who would sew the pieces of fabric together on the spot, making cheap articles of clothing that went directly from production to the consumer. He installed loudspeakers that played cheerful Spanish songs, always with lewd lyrics, at high volume: “ Garnish the cock with cherries. While I put the moves on the hen. cinnamon, sugar, and cloves. ” Fascinated laborers filled the shop. Many came in carrying baskets. I was forced to go to El Combate after finishing my homework to keep watch on the hordes of customers. If I saw some wretch trying to hide a wool vest, skirt, or some other piece of clothing at the bottom of his basket I would give a sign to my father. Jaime would then leap over the counter in a single bound, fall on the thief, and demolish him with blows. The poor man, feeling culpable, would meekly accept his punishment without defending himself. If the thief was a woman he would deliver huge slaps, rip off her skirt, and push her out into the street with a single kick, her knickers about her ankles.