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.