19.

There was a problem with staying by our campsite all day. The cliffs. I noticed this once the dogs had followed the rest of my party down the trail. It is that feeling you have when you look over a big drop, which Sartre analyzed in his philosophy on human freedom, that says, "You could jump." And suddenly you are afraid: you really could jump. It would be so easy for me to walk down the steep slope, closer to the cliff, and see what I wanted to do next. This, to me, was the thought that I was afraid of. I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t suicidal. But I realized that it would be so easy to go down the slope, I could do it any time I wanted. This possibility frightened me; it was Sartre’s "vertigo of possibility", though I knew nothing of Sartre then.

I solved this problem by settling on a rock that was a good distance from the cliffs, and saying to myself, "I will not move from this rock, nothing can make me move." One would think I would get bored there. But there was a spectacular view to interest me, to fill me with fear, to overwhelm me with sensation, and I was filled with thoughts that kept coming all day. I spent the day working through these thoughts, "If P then Q, if Q then R," as they formed and reformed in my mind like soldiers going through complicated drills.

Sometimes someone would come by, on his way down the trail. I would speak a few words in Spanish with him, mostly words of greeting, as I explained that I was an American, etc. It didn’t occur to me that these men were the "Indians" I had such fear of. They weren’t the "Indians" but ordinary Mexicans who had some sort of business in the canyon. The "Indians" were the ones keeping an eye on me, offended at me, focused on me and my intrusion. These ones could kill me at any time: an arm would sink a hatchet into the back of my head, whose owner I had never heard sneak up on me, and I would never know the difference.

Sometime in the late afternoon the dogs returned. They settled themselves about me and I gave them some food. I would learn later from the others that the dogs had caused them some problems. They had come along a narrow trail to a man driving a bull the opposite way. The dogs had begun to bark at, and even attack, the bull, who had begun to mildly charge back and forth. It was a dangerous situation, so my father and Paul began to beat the dogs with stones to get them to behave. Eventually, the dogs left them and came back to me. I was glad they had, though I didn’t at the time know the reason.

I had by now given up on taking extras of my antidepressant. I still thought it was my antipsychotic. I was aware enough to know that I was breaking apart mentally, but my capsules didn’t seem to do a thing for me. I was looking forward to getting out of the canyon. Once I was out of the canyon, I would look forward to getting out of Mexico.