MY INDIAN

Little Priscella was a seven year old American girl who lived on a beautiful island chain called Bocas Del Toro in the Republic of Panama.

She lived there with her Mom and Dad and her six month old puppy named Bruno.
Priscella's dad made houses and sold land for a living.
Priscella's mom would have parties for all their friends in town.
They had friends from all over the world.

They had friends from Canada and The United States and Germany and England and they were even friends with some locals.

Whenever Priscella's mom would have parties she would invite a nice local lady named Susie who would cook the best fried chicken in the world.

Priscella went to a school with all the other children from all over the world, even Susie's daughter, Dorothy, went there.

Sometimes Priscella would go with her mom and dad to a place called XXXXXXXXX , Where her dad would play card games.
XXXXXXXXX was the place where all the people from all over the world would come to listen to music and drink their beers.
Susie worked there and everybody liked her a lot. Susie's daughter Dorothy would be there too and her and Priscella would play.

Sometimes, some of the adults' Indians' kids would be there as well and they would all play with Priscella.

All of the adults had an Indian that would help them fix stuff and build their houses.

Two friends of her dad who also sold houses and land in Bocas Del Toro shared an Indian.
When Priscella asked why they did not have their own Indian all the adults laughed.
One of the ladies who was playing cards said that they both liked the same Indian because he did not take things from their houses.
Another man said that they could both have the Indian for a day and split the cost
and they all laughed.

Priscella's dad's Indian was named Poto and he was very nice. Poto would come to their house very early and wait outside until her dad was ready to go to the house he was building or some land he was buying.
Sometimes Poto would cut all the grass around their house with his machete ,which is a like a big knife.
Poto also had children but Priscella didn't get to play with them very much.
When they did play together, Poto's kids would show her how to catch lizards, and also, she really liked when they climbed trees to get her Mangoes or Pipas.
Pipas are like coconuts except they are green and they have water in them instead of milk but the water is very sweet and yummy.

One day Priscella was with her dad at XXXXXXXXX and he talking with a new man who was also from Florida.

Her dad was saying, "Well if you want, I could have my Indian come up to your place and clean those gutters for you, a lot easier than you climbing all over your roof like a monkey."

And the other man said, "Thanks, that would be great. How much is your Indian?"

Her dad said, "Ten dollars for the day but give him fifteen. He could probably give you some names so you could go about getting your own Indian one of these days. You really need one if you are going to be living here full time."

This got Priscella thinking.

She really wanted her own Indian.

Her dad had one and all of his friends had one.
She was seven now and she needed her very own Indian.
That night when she was having dinner with her Mom and Dad and some of their friends she announced, "For Christmas this year I want my own Indian."

This made all the adults at the table laugh very hard. Her mom said, "That's something we have to talk to Santa Clause about about honey."

And all the adults laughed again.
Later that night when Priscella was asleep her Mom and Dad talked about it.
Her Mom said "We should get Priscella her own Indian, it is after all, only ten dollars a day and she would always have someone to play with"
That settled it.

For Christmas little Priscella was going to get her own Indian.

Christmas morning came and after Priscella had opened all her gifts her mom told her to close her eyes because they had one more special present for her.
She did and she waited for what seemed like forever.
She heard the door open and her parents and their friends laughing and then they said, "O.K Priscella open your eyes!"

She did and screamed happily, "You got me my own Indian!"

Standing in front of her was a very old and very strong Indian with a pink ribbon and bow tied around his head.

It was Hammond, her Dad's Indian's father.
She was so excited she ran up and hugged his legs.

Hammond smiled.

"mommy can we get Hammond some shoes please?"

Her mom said, "maybe for his birthday honey"

And all the adults laughed again.

Priscella was soooooo happy!

The rest of the day she took Hammond into the yard to play with her and her puppy Bruno.

Now everyday Hammond would pick her up from school and take her back to Big Creek where she lived.
Before they would go home, Priscella liked to walk around town holding his hand.
She had bought him shoes with money her Mom gave her and she wanted everybody to see them.
On Saturdays and Sundays she would stay at her house and play games with Hammond.
On rainy days she would have tea parties inside with him and Bruno and her dolls.
Sometimes she would have Hammond squish the crabs that lived in holes on her land.
The crabs that lived on her land were blue and only had one claw and they scared her a lot. She loved it when he would step on them and kill them.

When her friends from school would see her with Hammond they would ask, "who is that?" and she would say very proud, "He is My Indian!"

Now all the kids in town wanted Indians.

One night Priscella was in town for Panama's Fourth And Final Call For Independence Day Celebration which is like kind of like The Fourth Of July but they have it all the time.

Everybody was outside in the street and having lots of fun.

Priscella was walking around with her friends from school, and they walked by a different loud dance place called XX XXXXXX .
The place where the Indians all go to listen to music and drink their beers.

Outside was a whole bunch of Indians and Hammond was there, and he was very drunk!

He was almost falling over but he smiled when he saw Priscella.

One of Priscella's friends saw him and yelled, "Hey Priscella, look it's your Indian."

When her friend said this all the other Indians looked at Hammond and laughed.

Hammond started to frown.

He looked at another old Indian that was laughing at him and said something that was in English and Spanish and then that other Indian started to frown.

Now Hammond and the other Indian were yelling at each other in Spanish and English and all the other Indians were yelling at each other.

This scared Priscella's friends and they said they wanted to go away.

All the kids were walking really fast back up the street when the Indian that Hammond was yelling at shouted, "Kid, you forgot dat Indian dem yours!"

When Priscella turned around she saw Hammond push the other Indian onto the ground and stamp on his head like when he was squishing crabs.

He stepped on his head over four times and Priscella and all the kids screamed and ran.

When Priscella found her parents on the street she told them what happened but they already had heard the news.

The next day her parents told her that Hammond had hurt the other Indian man the most you could hurt anybody and now Hammond had to go live with the police.

She could not have an Indian any more.

Poor Priscella cried and cried and cried and cried some more.
She was so very sad, and she could tell that her puppy Bruno missed him too.

When her birthday came she was still very sad.

At the party she opened all her presents but she was still not happy.

Her mom and dad said "Priscella, close your eyes, we have one more special gift for you."
She did and she squeezed them very tight until they told her it was O.K to open them.

When she opened her eyes she screamed with joy and hugged her Mom and Dad.

Standing there was Hammond's grand daughter, Julia, with a big pink ribbon and bow tied around her head.

"Oh thank you thank you thank you!" Priscella was so happy and even Julia laughed with the other adults when Priscella ran up and hugged her.

Now she dragged Julia outside to meet her puppy Bruno.

She was so proud!

She could not wait for everybody in Bocas Del Toro to see her New Indian.

THREE THINGS THAT WERE VERY DISTURBING

During my last tour of duty in Panama I saw three very disturbing images that really bothered me at a primal level.

The first happened when I was visiting my mother's house out in the jungle . I was laying in the bed and looked up to see directly above me a huge wasps nest crawling with long black and yellow wasps going in and out of the nest. I was not scared but I knew that it was wrong and it somehow triggered a warning flag in my human D.N.A. It was not a flag telling me I was in danger but more like a flag telling me that this was a sign of evil and Satan was close by. It was not really Satanic but more like an image that you just don't want to pay attention to. Something that tells you to just keep walking and forget you saw it. Probably similar to seeing a ghost or a UFO, something that does not mix with us humans. I know horrible clay nests seething with aggressive wasps are part of nature and the great circle of life but I had a local Indian make it go away.

The second was also one of those things that could be a symbol for evil or the crumbling of civilization or rot. It was not the least bit dangerous but it did creep me out more than the wasps. I was outside of the house that I lived in on the outskirts of town that, although not in the jungle, still crawled at night. Any night I could go out and within minutes find some creature starring or hopping or crawling. This night it was raining really hard which sometimes brings out the frogs and lizards to my covered walk way. I looked around on the concrete and there in front of my foot was a very skinny black worm crawling around and every few moments it would hop about three inches into the air. First of all I have never seen a worm like this, all black and super skinny. Second, I have NEVER seen a worm jump into the air. Every time it would jump it would wiggle around like it was desperately trying to escape from something. I got the flashlight from my house to have a closer look. What I saw when I leaned over and shown my light onto the worm made me jump away. It was completely covered in tiny ants. The ants were eating it alive and there was no escape for the worm no matter how far it jumped in the air. I backed up fast. I guess I could have squished it and put it out of its misery if worms even have misery. Instead I just backed away and went back inside to watch TV and hopefully not dream about the worm being devoured by ants.

The third was an image that really was dangerous and really was wrong on many levels. I am sure others have seen this image and have not lived to write about it. I don't want to see it again but I would like to draw it. It is a very macho image. This happened when I was living in the town of Bocas Del Toro and renting a room at a house that probably was around 100 years old and made completely of wood. I was asleep in my bed with my girlfriend and I awoke to the sound of people pounding at my door. I opened my eyes to see about four feet in front of me my fan in flames. I did not smell it because I guess the smoke was being sucked out the window and my bed was closer to the floor then my fan. It was one of those fans that is on a stand and rotates. The image that really sticks with me was the fact that the stand itself was not on fire. It was the just the fan blades and they were still turning. Dripping off them was flaming molten plastic falling onto the wooden floor and the clothes that were on the floor. I thought it was a dream at first but then I realized my landlord was trying to open my locked door. I tried to rap my jeans around the fan and managed to catch them and some other clothes on fire before we got it out the door and threw the steaming melted mess over the railing of my house into the empty lot next door. It burned a hole into the grass before it finally went out. I lost my last pair of jeans and my girlfriend's shoes (sorry Norma) but thankfully the fan was not against the wooden wall of my wooden house and my girlfriend and I lived and did not kill the other tenants of my house.

It is always interesting to witness pure symbols of death. It is even more interesting that I experienced these things in a tropical paradise. I think that of all the three it was that poor worm that really gives me the willeys when I remember it. I wonder how long it took to die.

THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME OF MY BLOG, THE CENTER OF NOW

The first time I lived in Panama I spoke almost no Spanish. Not only did I not speak Spanish, but I definitely did not read or write Spanish. This caused some very strange misunderstandings on my part. For example, one of the few Spanish words I did know was Perro. Perro means Dog as most people know. What I did not know that Pero with one R means But. They actually sound almost the same to any untrained ear with Perro, meaning dog, having more of a rolling R sound. Me being very curious and eager to learn would listen to Spanish conversations where ever I was and try to figure out what was being discussed. As in English, people in Spanish say 'But' a lot. 'But this, but that, but everything'. I was convinced that Panamanians were obsessed with dogs! Everybody constantly talked about dogs everywhere I went. 'Dogs this and dogs that and dogs everything'. This lasted about a week until I was trying to say 'But' and asked somebody how to say it in Spanish. Ohhhh, right, Pero. That made sense.
So after a while I started learning more little snippets of Spanish that I would need in day to day life. One of the words I needed to say was 'Now'. I was told correctly that the word I was looking for was 'Ahora'. I really am very curious and eager to learn but I am also very lazy. I never learned how to spell any of this Spanish I was learning. One day a "supermarket" opened in the quaint town of Bocas Del Toro where I was living. It was a very exciting event and I went to go see what new goodies I might be able to purchase. When I got there I was amazed to see the giant sign stating the name of this new super market, Epicentro De Ahorra. I could not believe it! A store called The Epicenter Of Now. Panama and particularly Bocas Del Toro is fairly old fashioned and slightly conservative when it comes to imagination and marketing. The fact that any large super market here in backwater Bocas Del Toro, or anywhere for that matter, would call it self The Epicenter Of Now, was mind blowing for me. That was the coolest name for a store I had ever heard. It was so psychedelic and zen, and yet really worked as an advertising slogan. It was not until I had come back to the states and I was reading an advertisement that was in English and Spanish, that I realized that Ahorra with two Rs means 'Savings'. So the store was called the Epicenter Of Savings. I was a little disappointed but at least now I could use Epicentro De Ahora, The Epicenter Of Now, for any future endeavors without having ripped it off from a Panamanian super market chain.

RICHARD BRAUTIGAN

When I was a little kid my dad used to bring me to this Japanese restaurant in north beach San Francisco called Cho Cho's. Whenever I went there the owner Jimmy Sataka (Jimmy Cho Cho to me) would make me fancy kids drinks and show me what he had in the paper bags behind his bar. Guns! Big guns, which was way cool to me. He would let me hold them although I bet they were always loaded. Back then Cho Cho's was a hang out for writers and different heads of the time. Everyone from Nobel prize winning author Yasunari Kawabata to Clint Eastwood. One of the regulars was Richard Brautigan, also a gun aficionado. One day in 1984 Brautigan was hanging out and asked Jimmy if he could borrow a gun for the night. Jimmy said sure and lent him a Smith & Wesson 44. The next day Brautigan returned without the gun and said he needed it for one more night, but in lieu of the gun he would lend Jimmy a brick. This was not that strange considering the eccentric nature of his clientele so Jimmy took the brick and put it on the bookshelf behind the bar. That night Richard Brautigan killed himself with Jimmy's gun. The gun, not being registered, never made its way back to Jimmy. The brick, on the other hand, stayed on the bookshelf behind the bar. One day years later I took my girlfriend to visit Jimmy and the brick at Cho Cho's. They said Jimmy had retired and sold the restaurant. When I asked if there was a brick behind the bar (hoping they would give it to me!) they smiled and said Jimmy took the brick with him. I don't know if Jimmy is still alive but I bet that Brautigan's brick is out there somewhere.

NICE PORTLAND STORY

Here is a nice Portland story I am about to comicize. I need to write it down first so I can look at it and figure out how I can condense it down to a fifth of the words and a couple of pretty pictures and still tell the story.

Up until the 90's Portland was a great basketball town. This was before the christian right bamboozled the fans into thinking that they needed to get rid of all the charismatic players including the messianic Rasheed Wallace for whom now god is punishing the Portland Trail Blazers. Back in the spring of I forget the playoffs were in full effect and the Blazers were the team to be reckoned with. Back then, when the Blazers were in the playoffs, the local newspaper (The Oregonian) would come with these cardboard placards that said stuff like BEAT THE JAZZ or RIP CITY! or KILL THE SONICS. We were playing the the Lakers at the time so the cardboard signs said BEAT L.A! The signs were always day-glo orange with black lettering. Everybody was expected to put them in the windows of their houses or the back windshield of their cars and many people did. For being such a non-conformist hippie city it was cool the way the Blazers could bring all sorts of people together. Freaks, dorks, and rednecks alike could sit in a bar all friendly like and bond around our hometown team. This was what I was thinking as I walked through an old neighborhood on a warm and sunny spring day. The pink and white Cherry blossoms were were slowly snowing on the sidewalk and life was grand. The day-glo orange signs were EVERYWHERE! Houses, cars, the windows of small businesses, everybody was a fan and so was I. There was pride in my heart and a smile on my face for the actual sense of community I felt looking at these little cardboard signs. As I passed a small Victorian house I almost didn't notice the cardboard sign in its window because it looked like all the rest except it was slightly different. It was the exact same size as the rest. It was the exact same day-glo orange with the exact same black lettering in the exact same font except it said CURE AIDS.

HOW I ALMOST CHANGED HISTORY AND POPULAR CULTURE

I don't remember this because I was too young at the time but I was told this story by my dad who witnessed it. Once a long time ago in a galaxy far far away I lived in Bezerkeley California were my dad ran the Pacific Film Archive at U.C Berkeley. Because of his role at the archives he was down with all the bay area filmmakers. Once in the early 70s he was having a party and among others, George Lucas was there. Lucas at the time was in very early planning for Star Wars and decided to bounce his idea off me, a very grumpy and tired child. Maybe he thought I would share his vision because I am a boy and my name is George as well. He sat me down on his lap and asked, " George, what do you think about a movie with space ships and lazers and robots?!" I, with all the wisdom of a grumpy and tired child replied, "I think thats a stupid idea!"
Well, my dad could clearly see it was way past my bed time and put me to bed. I could only imagine what the world would be like if Lucas had listened to me and shelved his stupid idea for a movie about dumb things like robots and lazers and space ships.