CHRISTINE TRZYNA MUSING on THE ACTIVE SIDE OF INFINITY by CARLOS CASTANEDA

I've been reading Carlos Castaneda's THE ACTIVE SIDE OF INFINITY, which is his "album of memories" (memoir) written in the year or so prior to his death from cancer and published in 1998. Carlos Castaneda is a controversial figure in the realms of literature, anthropology, academia, pop culture, and the new age - spiritual movements. I've read around him, reading the accusations and proofs he was merely a liar rather than a man taken on a journey into Yaqui shamanism in the early 1960's by a character named Don Juan and that he wasn't. But let's say I had never read anything else he'd written, had never read the controversy. I would still find THE ACTIVE SIDE OF INFINITY fascinating, a good read. (One book that pretty much accused him of being a liar on the basis that he had once the audacity to take a Creative Writing class at Los Angeles City Community College was just outrageous!)

Most importantly, I believe that the directive that Don Juan gave Carlos, that he write the album of memories as a series of story/events that had turning points in his personal development, to be an excellent one that any memoirist ought to consider. Thus Castaneda gives us stories large and small, each holding the realizations he had because of his experiences for the reader to consider. He is posed as the everyman in his memoir, humbled and awed, not as an egotist.

From all the Castaneda I have read, I have borrowed two concepts from him which may simply be a matter of word use. MOOD and MOMENT. In this moment I want to write my own album of memories. Both the mood and the moment at this time in my life are strange.