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eugzol в посте Metapractice (оригинал в ЖЖ)
He took off his hat and scratched his temples in feigned bafflement.
"I'm having a gesture with you, " he said softly. "Other people have had a similar gesture with you;
someday you yourself will have the same gesture with others. Let's say that it is my turn. One day I
found out that if I wanted to be a hunter worthy of self-respect I had to change my way of life.
I used to whine and complain a great deal. I had good reasons to feel shortchanged. I am an Indian
and Indians are treated like dogs. There was nothing I could do to remedy that, so all I was left with
was my sorrow. But then my good fortune spared me and someone taught me to hunt. And I
realized that the way I lived was not worth living ... so I changed it."
"But I am happy with my life, don Juan. Why should I have to change it?"
He began to sing a Mexican song, very softly, and then hummed the tune. His head bobbed up and
down as he followed the beat of the song.
"Do you think that you and I are equals?" he asked in a sharp voice.
His question caught me off guard. I experienced a peculiar buzzing in my ears as though he had
actually shouted his words, which he had not done; however, there had been a metallic sound in his
voice that was reverberating in my ears.
I scratched the inside of my left ear with the small finger of my left hand. My ears itched all the
time and I had developed a rhythmical nervous way of rubbing the inside of them with the small
finger of either hand. The movement was more properly a shake of my whole arm. Don Juan
watched my movements with apparent fascination.
"Well . . . are we equals?" he asked.
"Of course we're equals, " I said.
I was, naturally, being condescending. I felt very warm towards him even though at times I did not
know what to do with him; yet I still held in the back of my mind, although I would never voice it,
the belief that I, being a university student, a man of the sophisticated Western world, was superior
to an Indian.
"No, " he said calmly, "we are not."
"Why, certainly we are, " I protested.
"No, " he said in a soft voice. "We are not equals. I am a hunter and a warrior, and you are a pimp."
My mouth fell open. I could not believe that don Juan had actually said that. I dropped my
notebook and stared at him dumbfoundedly and then, of course, I became furious.
He looked at me with calm and collected eyes. I avoided his gaze. And then he began to talk. He
enunciated his words clearly. They poured out smoothly and deadly. He said that I was pimping for
someone else. That I was not fighting my own battles but the battles of some unknown people. That
I did not want to learn about plants or about hunting or about anything. And that his world of
precise acts and feelings and decisions was infinitely more effective than the blundering idiocy I
called "my life."