Hello everyone We had a kind of brujo in the town where I grew up. His name was Walter. He spent most his time down by the river, drinking and fishing. Us kids would steal bottles of home-made wine from one of our dads and sell it to Walter. He'd share it with us and tell us stories. If there was one thing Walter liked doing, it was talking.
Rumor had it that Walter also liked going around to the neighbors houses at night peering in windows. Today he'd be arrested, prosecuted, and jailed but back then no one bothered calling the law. It was just common knowledge that you'd better pull down your shades at night if you didn't want Walter to come a peeping. Walter was an astrologer. He believed fervently that the motions of stars and planets guided all the goings on here on earth. I'm sure he'd have loved the Internet; he'd have attracted quite a following. People want to believe so badly that they'll believe in anything. Walter didn't care much for working... he had a job with the city going around emptying the trash bins located on the corners of each street. I think it kept him busy eight or ten hours a month and gave him a bit of drinking money. Walter didn't have much other need for money, at least it seemed that way to us kids. Walter had an old tar-paper shack down by the river. I don't think it belonged to him - he scavenged old boards and windows and a door, put up the shack, covered the outside with tar-paper, and no one told him he couldn't so he moved in and lived there. I remember he had an old army green tarp stretched over the top to act as a roof. If you looked up you could see the sky through all the little pinholes. When it rained really hard the roof didn't leak a drop but when it just sprinkled you'd get wet. He'd paint the tarp in spring with paint he'd steal from the local hardware store when the clerk wasn't looking. Inside that shack were all of Walter's astrology charts, scatteredly tacked on plywood walls and piled in disarray on all his make-shift furniture. Walter demanded to know all us kids' birthdays right down to the minute. Then he would spend hours carefully plotting all the risings and settings going on at that specific instance in time, thereby formulating intricately worked-out details of that person's personality. Walter could tell you the year you were born just by knowing the day and time of your birth. I still don't know how he did it. To me, it was all bunk. I always figured the stars and planets didn't give one good dam for all the human beings who ever lived. Some of the other kids really got into it though. Walter passed away during one of the bad winters we seemed to have back then. He'd been sick, coughing up goopy looking gray stuff that he'd spit anywhere he happened to be. One day someone tried to throw something away and the container was full. The sheriff drove out to Walter's shack to check why he hadn't been doing his job and found him laying in what served him for a bed, frozen stiff. Us kids heard about it in school from the sheriff's son. No one cared enough to have a funeral for Walter... instead they stuck him in a plywood box and buried him in the local potters field. Someone stuck a wooden cross painted white on his grave. It rotted away. Now there's nothing there at all to prove Walter was even alive. ---------------------------------------- > Date: Sat, 21 Mar 2009 03:14:34 -0700 > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [MD] The Brujo > > Marsha, > The Brujo was not some brash individual trying to bring DQ to Zuni society, > he was the straggeler, the most static of the tribe, he hadn't a place in > their society > anymore so he resorted to peeping in windows to find out what was going on > in the community. The tribe council, by making a place for him within their > government > giving him the cutting edge power once again, broke his power as he thought, > but what the Zuni did was place the position of Brujo at the dynamic cutting > edge > once more. The Brujo was'nt very happy about it at first, it wasn't the old > way > yet it was but redefined in a dynamic solution that restored his worth within > the community. > > -Ron > > > > > ________________________________ > From: MarshaV > To: [email protected] > Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2009 4:04:51 AM > Subject: Re: [MD] The Brujo > > At 08:32 PM 3/20/2009, you wrote: >>The Brujo, >>My freinds, was a dinosaur, a remnant of the old geneations. The dynamism >>lies in Zuni society. In the ability to graft the old ways with the >>new ways of >>the whites. >>The brujo, had nothing to do with the teaching parts of the story >>Pirisig told, the fact that the Brujo is touted as the vehicle for >>DQ bothers and infuriates me. Sometimes you guys are so off base >>that it's almost embarassing. > > Hi Ron, > > Please explain more, I can be pretty dense. > > > Marsha > > > > > > > . > _____________ > > Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars......... > . > . > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > > > > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™ SkyDrive: Get 25 GB of free online storage. http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_skydrive_032009 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
