The Road Into Infinite Wonder: Carlos Castaneda discovers innumerable worlds in the aura of dreams. (Part II)
© Robert Edward Bell
"He was a wonderful liar(el tipo mas fabuloso para mentir). A very capable fellow, likable and rather mysterious. A first class seducer(un seductor de primera linea.). I remember the girls used to spend the morning waiting for him at the Bellas Artes." (1)
So begins a narrative to describe the writer Carlos Castaneda by one of friends and artistic companions, Victor Delfin. Victor Delfin had lived with Castaneda in the early years of his artistic endeavors in Porveuir District in Lima, Peru. Another friend who also shared the same apartment with two other artists, Bracamonte, would describe him as, "always thinking up unlikely stores--tremendous, beautiful things....He was always talking about Cajamarca, but oddly about his parents."(2) It also seems to add to the mystery surrounding the life of this amazing writer, who took his readers into worlds that only could have haunted the most surreal of landscapes. Carlos had the gift to make the world of dreams appear alive, and to bring them closer into the realms of reality. But, when researchers begin the search for the origins of this dreamweaver, they ran into several problems. For one, his chosen given birthdate appeared to contradict itself in a variety of interviews. He also seemed to have disappeared at different times in his life, and his imagined world never quite measured up to the world of his surrounding environment. There seemed to be conflicting views with the world of his literary surreal creations and the reality of his biographical life. Even his sister had an interesting story to tell. Once in 1951, as he was traveling into San Francisco, he would tell her that he was disappearing for a few weeks to join the military. This story soon turned out to be hoax, for Carlos had never entered the military at all, he had spent the time wandering around the fabled big city of the western shores.
Carlos Castaneda was born on December 25, 1925 in the small town of Cajamarca, Peru to Cesar Arana Burungaray, a watchmaker and goldsmith, and to Susan Castaneda Novoa. The family lived in Cajamarca for three years, while Carlos attended Public School 91 at San Ramon High. In 1948, the family would move to Lima, Peru, where Castaneda would graduate from the Colegio Nacional de Nuestra Senora. When his mother would die in 48, Carlos would lock himself in his room for three days. Upon emerging from behind his locked door, he would make the decision to move into the apartment with his two artist friends Victor Delfin and Bracamonte. Two years later, Castaneda would
