More about Lucius the Martian

Lucius, like St Anthony of the Desert, has spent a lifetime cutting himself off from real life. (Perhaps 'common life' is the better word: life as it is lived by most men, the life known to him as koyaanisquatsi, that is, the life not worth living). At this task he has succeeded. He is totally and completely alone.

But then every now and then he attempts to connect with other men and when he does, they always fail him: they don't have time for him; they don't have a strong interest in him (as a Martian, he isn't of much use to them); they don't understand him; perhaps they fear him; they don't have much to say that he cares to hear. When that happens, he feels disappointed, though he shouldn't. What else can he expect?

In the final chapter of The Journey to Ixtlan, a wizard tells a story in which he attempts to return to his home village to see Mom and Dad. Everyone along the way turns out to be a ghost and he seems unable to find his way. The narrator fails to understand the story. Don Juan, his preceptor, explains: it takes a passionate man to choose the life of a wizard (Mexican wizards, like St Anthony, and like Lucius, live in the desert); but such a life puts us beyond the pale of social life, beyond the pale of normalcy; it interferes with our human contacts which thrive on normalcy: henceforth, everyone who is not a wizard is to us merely a ghost (and we to them, merely weirdos); passionate men find this separation from mankind very painful. It is the high price one has to pay for freedom from ordinary life.