Tuesday, March 4, 2014

The old indian compacted his body and folded his arms against his chest like paws and looked up and said, the jaguar crawled. He spread his arms up and out and said, and the eagle flew. It flew over the tops of the trees and it saw everything. Everything. It saw the jaguar and the man and what was within the man. He pointed to the boy, and he saw what was within the heart of the man, and the man walked among the trees and asked the jaguar and the eagle if he could hunt for his people a pig, and the jaguar spoke, and said you may. When the man had found his pig with which to feed his people, the jaguar spoke again, he said you must not return to your people, for you have offended me. The man asked the jaguar how could he offend him, and the jaguar said, but you did not ask me what I wanted of you. And the man asked what he could give a jaguar that he did not have, and the jaguar said, you must kill your neighbor's neighbor. And the man asked why, and the jaguar said, because your people have taken too much. Because your people have taken too much and the debt is large. And the man said, I cannot kill my neighbor's neighbor, for they are a distant cousin of mine, and the jaguar said then I will take your child in the night. The old indian put his chest out and closed his eyes and sat with his legs crossed and said, so the man stood in the jungle and peered into his village and watched the children of his people at play. He stood in the jungle and he did not know what to do and he thought like this for a long time. He finally asked the jaguar, what did the last man do, and the jaguar said that the last man did what the jaguar asked him to do and his family was large and happy. The man put down the pig and he said that he did not want many sons, and that he could not kill his cousin, and so he left the pig there for the jaguar. And the jaguar took the pig from him and left the man there, but the man took frog from the river with him when he left. He took the frog's poison from it and he placed it at the end of an arrow and he came back to the jungle and he found the jaguar asleep beside the pig and then shot the jaguar with the poison arrow and the jaguar ran at the man to kill him, but he was slowed by the poison, and all the man's village was behind him. They ran the jaguar down and killed him and the eagle saw them, and now the eagle warns the jaguar of man's presence, and the man of the jaguar's, and man no longer kills his neighbor's neighbor. He hunts the jaguar when the jaguar threatens to take his child in the night, and that man, that first man who hunted the jaguar, he is our father and his family is this tribe. That is why we hunt and jaguar and why we do not kill our neighbor's neighbor.