Feuilleton 10 of 20 draft# 3.0

almost done now, almost - THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE

Jackson flew back home to L.A.  Back to a wife that had once again relocated with her sons – again.  Right now she resented Jackson for not taking her with him to the exotic locations he was sent to by the new studio.  The same wife that never wanted to spend any time with him, and that had spent all the money they had as quickly as he earned it so he really could not afford a ticket for her anyway.  He went home to his family who were all asleep.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Feuilleton 10 of 20

After a night’s sleep he returned to work in L.A.  After a long demoralizing day of work he drove home on the crowded freeway, but it was a short commute.  When he entered the house the TV was on.  The television screen showing perfectly formed teenagers & young adults on MTV’s noisy, raucous full-screen “Spring Break” coverage.  He had seen these each year at this time as his sons grew older and older. They watched it at first to be “cool”. They watched it now for the “babes”.   He sometimes watched it from the long dining room table across the room while doing his somehow always requisite paper work.  Bouncing, flouncing, prancing, posing, shiny anatomy in designer swim suits on a stage in front of the ocean’s constant crinkled surface of foam, crash, and spray.

“FSSHHHT”…. (the sound of cable channel change with remote unit.)

            Cable Porno Channel with sexual goings on barely visible                                                  

            through the scramble-pattern, undecoded visuals.

“FSSHHHT”

            Cable Religious Channel with “Rapture” goings on over the fullscreen.

“FSSHHHT”

            Back to the bouncing babes and hulking hunks on MTV’s live                                                        

            and delayed Spring Break Annual Event.

If a camera were in the room seeing all of this its view could widen, going wider than the TV set

it has been watching.  It could continue back, tracking, dollying, and widening the view more to

reveal the small group of young teen adult males sprawled on parents’ furniture, handheld

“FSSHHHT”ing the channels so quickly they are almost multi-channel-parallel viewing them.  If

the time exposure were to be measured, however, the bouncing bits of young human female

anatomy would win for longest elapsed viewing times.

Continue the camera move back, look past the scene to the walls of the Southern Californian

hallway moving by the lens with an assortment of props revealing the family living there.  The

normal assortment of family photos, but undercurrents of turmoil as we see a bump or nick in the wall - a picture frame with cracked glass/damaged frame - a survivor of one of the family’s formative episodes over the last years.  Visual clues mixed with photos of grandparents, with cutout and framed text from poetry written by an ancient immigrant great grandparent thousands of miles from his home.

            “Heavy with sleep and I give you into God’s tender care to keep.                                                    

            I live for those who love me, for those who know me true;                                                              

            for the heaven that smiles above me and awaits my spirit too                                                          

            for the cause that lacks assistance, for the wrong that needs resistance                                            

            and the good that I can do.”

Move down the hall to the bathroom at the far end.  See the white steam from the shower.    

Jackson Kelley now in his hot shower, washing off the work of the day.  Light and dark shapes were seen to wobble their changing way past his eyes as he crouches down to pick up the slippery bar of Ivory soap. Jackson saw the shapes moving downward toward the floor where his bare feet felt the wet tiles. Over the top of all the wobbly shape images seen through the glass shower door as they moved down, came a nameplate. As Jackson completed standing up, stretching his bones vertically, the small identifying name plate came squarely into view.

            american

            SHOWER DOOR CO. INC.

            Hollywood 38, California

That’s what the metal name-plate tag said.  Jackson was not really in Hollywood, in fact there

was no Hollywood “38” any longer.  He was in the quiet bedroom community of quietly snooty

La Canada Flintridge, north of Los Angeles.  North of all of them: Hollywood, North Hollywood,

Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena.  Years ago when this little bungalow had been built the owners

purchased this shower door from an enterprising young American company in young Hollywood.

Every day, as the last century finished and the new one began Jackson started or ended his day

with this reminder in anodized aluminum.

This is the view Jackson Kelley always saw, just before the wobbling shapes seen through the rippled shower door glass gave way to clear tree-top vista viewed through the small bathroom window just a few feet away from the small glass shower stall.  Almost flat-topped gently curved trees that looked as though they belonged on the African plains. In front of the trees, a few strong power lines stretched heavily across always solid blue sky. In front of that mighty California Oak trees stood with massive thick arms moving out and up, holding thousands of tiny California Oak leaves.  All stacked up for his morning viewing.  He liked it. 

Jackson was glad to switch centuries in this way, in this place.  There was so much change going

on everywhere. This daily ritual of the shower door from Hollywood 38 California revealing the

local vegetation against the big blue paint chip of a desert sky always made him smile. It was a

good way to wash each day, surrounded by trees and reading that small metal tag plate:

          american

            SHOWER DOOR CO. INC.

            Hollywood 38, California

Jackson’s older feet now felt their bone structure as he stepped from the shower, drying off. 

                ( Wait Wait – NOW you are going to drone on in an even longer chapter? )

               

                                ( Have you no sense of balance? )

Having enjoyed the daily  view out the small window, Jackson’s older feet now felt their

clearly defined bone structure as he stepped from the shower, drying off.  She stood there.

            “They don’t twinkle.” Shari said to him. 

His eyes she meant. She wanted them to twinkle.  While he seemed content pulling a smile from himself using shower door signage each day,  she really wanted him to be happy all of the time. Or maybe she wanted herself to be happy and thought if he was, she would be too?

Jackson’s relationship with his wife Shari never really got any better, though he felt he had tried. There had been Meditation, Psychologists, Psychiatrists, various interventions and therapies.  After all, they were living in Los Angeles in Southern California and these were all growth industries in the larger city of Angels.  Nothing helped Shari to really love Jackson again.  And there were the problems with their sons.  Since early teen age years it had been a cyclical roaring battle of hate/vengeance/forgiveness - never resolved no matter how hard any of them tried.

Jackson watched her, trying to decide if either of them were ever happy.  He really could not tell. He did see that her nose was always in a book now.  Mrs. Shari Kelley was a reader of books of all sorts.  He enjoyed reading too, but could only read when all else was done.  This generally left little time for reading.  The life he seemed to have chosen for the making of money did not leave space for that.  From time to time this bothered Jackson.  Even the notion that he had actually chosen this daily life that he was consuming at an ever faster pace each year bothered him.  Knowing that he wasn’t an avid reader he was curious as to who was.

            “Who ARE the readers ?” he wondered.

Quite often, it seemed to him, the middle class of humanity spent much time reading about the richer segment of their species - or the poorer.   His own life, and the lives of his many peers (wherever they were hiding these days - he rarely encountered people his own age anymore?), they had mostly come from upwardly mobile blue collar ranks.  To a great extent they seemed unaccounted for.  Unwritten about.  Oh, there was much written about the aging “baby boomers”. Because there were so many of them traveling through the economy at the same time.  Most of that had to do with how they wanted to spend their money.  Or how they had no money left after the recessions and depressions of recent times.  He did not hear much about, or read much about what the lives of his peers were actually like. Just how did they really live? How had they come to live the way they did?  How had they come to regard their neighbors and other people differently?  Differently than they had been taught in their well funded public schools long ago. They had been taught they were all equals.  Back then in public school that’s what he remembered - at least the public schools Jackson had gone to as a boy in the 1950’s.

The world was changing rapidly, and Jackson hoped he was changing with it.  With so much technological experimentation like the work he was involved in everyday he knew that he had already helped to bring about a world that would no longer need him, or any other human. 

Jackson knew he must give up insatiable appetites and perverse enjoyments of all this change.  He knew he must come back.  He must save the day in his own life - for his wife, for his sons.  So it became ever more clear to Jackson Kelley, that he had been an idiot.

…………………………………………………………………….

LATER 1990’s – AA, and DANCING IN LOS ANGELES

During these confusing times and once when their younger son, Andrew, ended up in severe lockdown treatment they all met.  It was group therapy where all the kids and all the parents  gathered in one big room to testify, talk, share.  In one of these sessions Jackson Kelley’s young son, Andrew, turned toward him to reply to Jackson’s verbal request to his son to please stop all the drug abuse.

            “Well, you drink all the time! “ Andrew spat back at him angrily.

And that was true.  It was becoming more true than ever over the last few years.  The lack of love and the presence of hateful hurt made it easier for Jackson to not only cave into his constant over-work to escape, but also to booze for a cushion.  As time went on, Jackson would drink and drink, but no longer get drunk at all.  So on this occasion, with everyone else there in group therapy as his younger son challenged him, Jackson agreed and said he would join AA to quit all the damaging drinking.  He said it publicly.  Then he did it.  Things had gotten so bad at home that on two separate occasions each of the sons over abused to the point of peril.  Spending time in the local hospital looking at their young sons whose grown bodies clung to life in spite of their reckless attempts was more than could be borne.  Jackson joined a local AA and started going to the meetings.  He found a sponsor that he would stay connected with for more than a decade.  The sponsor wore a black eye patch and a Poncho Villa mustache. The sponsor was an older Mexican whose family had lived in this area since before the Americans arrived to take the land. The sponsor had been pardoned for violent crimes and released from prison if he did volunteer work in his community.   Jackson Kelley attended the meetings to hear the speakers featured at those meetings.  On weeknights, after work, he would grab a fast food chicken burger and eat it in the car as he drove to the meeting.  Traffic was heavy.  He got there late this time. When he got there, it was GWEN the PEN that was about to be the speaker in front of the assembled crowd.

Gwen had spoken at other local Alcoholics’ Anonymous meetings. She was both informative and entertaining.  Why was it that criminals (or at least ex-criminals) were not only the nicest people, but also the most interesting ?  She was still attractive after all the years of self abuse with booze and smoking and drugs in the hot California sunshine.  An attractive old criminal lady.  These were the thoughts of many at the meeting.  But Gwen-the-Pen, and her stories of lawlessness during her youth, made Jackson think about his own.  Gwen had been called THE PEN because of her unique talent in forging checks for a source of income. Those were the days, before electronic digital verification.  She told tales. She told the tales to help explain to the crowd her terrible decline and fall. This was an A.A. meeting and all were there to hear things that would help them be free of the addictive behavior that was alcoholism.  Her stories sounded like things that might have been happening in one of the apartments next door to Jackson in one of the cities of his youth had these not been occurring to her in London, England, and Los Angeles rather than Detroit or San Francisco or Vancouver.

Jackson had not even set foot in England until very recently.  And that was for yet another responsible job commitment with yet another legitimate company. Jackson’s older days as a young one, before restoring his responsible legal work ethic, were similar to hers.  There had been moments in time back when his friends and colleagues and acquaintances went from having tidy white Norman Rockwell names like Bob, Jack, Marilyn, Janet, and Maryann, to monikers like King G, Scotty the Who, Lil Richard (because he was tall, hi-toned with a shining nickel-plated 38 revolver),   Snake (one of his many mothers as he slowly grew up), Natasha (from  Northern California ), and Green Zeke the Pimp (one of his first freelance clients to pay for his artistic skills using illustration techniques on a shotgun stock as well as Zeke’s girlfriend’s torso).

After attending more AA meetings, it eventually came to be Jackson Kelley's turn to stand up there in front of them to speak the assembly. To take his place behind the rough podium with the shelf on the front that held a tattered copy of Bill’s AA Blue Book.  Around Jackson, hanging on the photographically reproduced ‘wood-grain’ wall paneling were insignias and war banners of the AA organization. The famous 12 Stepsilluminated as if by dedicated monkish brethren in a 12 step-of-service monastery, with large flourishing hand calligraphy, decoratively and nicely contained in thick heavy gold frames on the wall to either side of him.  He stepped up to the small Radio Shack audio mike at the podium - and did not know what to say. 

He knew that real experiences in his current life, that he might relate to them, would probably bore these folks.  Most of these people were needing and seeking stories of severe crashing down, followed by lifting back up with the help of the Organization and a Higher Power.  Jackson’s current life was sad.  It was depressingly sad.  It was a criminal waste of life-time.  But not very exciting to talk about or listen to.  So, Jackson decided to lie. To make something up that was worthy of their time. Something that would be worthy of their listening.

            “Well, I was driving down the 405…”  they all looked up at various spots on the uneven old white acoustic tile ceiling, as though only a drunk idiot would choose to get on LA's 405 freeway to go anywhere in anything resembling a reasonable amount of time.

            “the 405 was kinda busy, traffic was stop and go…” , some of them made the “pfff” sound with their mouth while turning their heads sideways, with eyes rolling even further to

the side, as if to say,   “I can’t listen to this dolt”.   Others said things like

             “kinda busy, on the 405?, gosh THAT never happens.”

            “ and as I was driving south on the freeway”… Jackson paused shortly as his voice caught for a moment in his throat, then continued with a larger sound of recklessness in his voice as he leaned into the microphone and the task at hand.… “drinking out of bottles in both hands while steering the car with my elbows”, he threw this in as he noticed he was losing some of them to boredom, disappointment, and side conversations.

            “…and as I was sloshing the sweet swill down my gullet, piloting my vehicle crazily at a stop-and-go 70 miles per hour, swerving and cutting people off,  I realized …. I knew….  I had a moment of clarity.  I saw myself for what I was.  I saw what I was ACTUALLY doing, as my car raced past family vans with innocent little kids in car seats, with their faces pressed to the window watching me flash by at damned dangerous speeds.”

 The midsized crowd went quiet and leaned into it.

            “ I knew then that I must give my life over to a higher power and end this madness.”

Not a creak or rustle or sound from all the folding chairs.  They were with him now.

            “ I did something I never told anyone about.  With both hands I threw both the bottles     over my shoulder, behind the front seats, clinking and sloshing down onto the floor mats        in the back…and I PRAYED, I prayed straight up through my open sunroof!”

They were still with him. The front row was angled into him.  Jackson was loving the attention from the assembled audience.

            “I prayed UP through the open sunroof to my higher power in the big blue LA sky!”

There were creased smiles and rusted nods, plus some side to side positive sounds of support.

            “ I looked through that sunroof hole to that clear California sky and gave myself completely over to  

              the higher power.”

The smiles grew wider and the growing murmur of agreement became loudly continuous.

            “And as I was looking up through the sunroof, about to declare my new commitment with

            the best words my messed up head and tromped on heart could manage…”

The smiles locked in their positions. Their sounds dropped to a hush.

            “…I ran smack-damn into a bulging fat water-filled day-glo pressure bumper on

            the back of a solid old Volkswagen bus in front of me…”

The room stopped suddenly - with a thick block of silence holding everyone still - a long pause that Jackson thought would never end.  Then the entire room tore wide open, exploding all at once with loud laughter and free running tears of enjoyment.  Jackson Kelley always liked AA meetings and had always wished he could be an accomplished speaker at one of them.  Even though he lied to get their attention Jackson really did stop his useless and wasted drinking.   Attending the AA meetings and his stopping drinking did not really help or alter the feelings and bad behavior between Jackson and his wife Shari though.  She continually said that she really wanted him to be happy all of the time.  Jackson also wanted to be happy but he was sick of hearing about it from her.  He had been raised that way.  He’d been raised happy.  He’d always been taught that happiness was one’s right, here in these United States.  Not just the pursuit of it, but the inalienable right to *be* happy.   When he had lived for about one half century, he had learned that there was either much more to this, or one hell of a lot less.

On the outside, away from the meetings in real life, Jackson Kelley sadly learned from the media that  “A.W.O.G.” was the latest identifying acronym for those like him.  A.W.O.G., for the words Average White Old Guy.  He was also beginning to understand enough to know he might be playing a small part in actions resulting in the total end of humanity as he knew it.  He was, in part, responsible for at least some sad tradigital results.  Jackson’s accidentally adventurous life was being blended in binary ways, forming some rational monotony or monotonous rationality, cloaked inside that ever increasing curve of change. The newly evolved, cloned, cyborg’d, scanned, stitched, and landscaped group portrait in the world of work would not need him any longer.  He would not be needed to maintain balance, harmony, or efficiency.  He would not even be needed for progression forward to the even newer times.  It was depressing enough to begin drinking all over again.  But he did not.  Jackson sought other ways to accept and survive, if not prosper.  As he sought an answer to the many questions facing him at home, at work, and in life, he decided firmly that he must take some action of some kind, before it was too late.  So after a cursory look around, he decisively decided to sign up to be a Bronze person at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio. 

Jackson did this to moderate the blandness of his AWOG existence.  AWOG’s may reservedly drum their fingers to the music while others are moving and jiving to the actual music.  AWOG’s may reservedly shuffle their feet under the table while others gyrate or syncopate.  AWOG’s may reservedly nod their head slightly while others neck snap and shoulder chug.

But the two MAIN reason Jackson decided on dancing lessons were :
            1. When dancing his wife Shari, she was actually nice to him, intrigued by him, and open to him, in marked contrast to their usual relationship, or at least what it had grown into over the years.
            2. He had to (or could get to) actually *lead* his wife... …. an opportunity denied him in the brave new real world of men and women in the 50/50 construct emerging for life in 2000 C.E. in Southern California, but not in the world of dancing.
The entrance to the dance studio, close to where they lived, was on a large main street in Glendale, California. The physical environment of the studio put him at ease. It brought back echoes of the things he liked about cities. There was the retrofit entrance that had attempted to put a slick new facade on an aging decrepit building. One had to make their way through the strange double entrance first.  Then one was faced immediately with a steep bank of older stairs with new surfaces layered over them.  And all of that leaned a bit to the left and creaked as you walked up narrow treads.  Upon reaching the dance studio’s upper level a large almost clear plastic sheet hung down from a securely pinched place in the old dropped stained white acoustic tile ceiling. The sheet was there to channel rainwater down from a leak in the old roof and ceiling, through the newer dropped white acoustic tile ceiling, and down into a plastic drain bucket on the floor in the corner.  It hasn’t rained in weeks; this building is in Los Angeles. But the drain sheet remains ready to drain.  Jackson Kelley never asks about it. Next to the plastic drain sheet is a very friendly thin dark haired woman from Armenia who answers the phone and makes the schedule bookings for teachers and dance clients.  Jackson can never remember her name.  He always feels awkward when standing in-person in front of someone that schedules him, for anything. He’s always been much more comfortable doing these things by phone, or now by computer.

Jackson finds out that Mayva and Miguel will be working with them, with Jackson and Shari Kelley - the two new dance trainee students.  These two dance instructors, Mayva and Miguel, can be seen gliding across the large open spaced wooden floor that defines the dance studio. They are not dancing. They are simply smoothly moving about, briskly doing things independently of each other.  Mayva is headed for her glass cubicle office on the edge of the dance floor.  Miguel is headed for the old CDplayer nestled in a rack flanked with assorted plastic plants and knickknack decorator items like the planter with the drooping vine-plant-leaf that reminds him of the fairies that magically glisten and sparkle down the animated vine-plant-leaves in the original FANTASIA animated movie.

Jackson and his wife dance for a while – or rather, they learn to dance for a while.  Based on this first trial experience they arrange to meet each other there each week.  Jackson leaves work slightly early to make sure he gets there on time to learn the next Ballroom Dance with her.  He dances with his wife Shari.  Although he does get to ( has to ) lead, the initial thrill of physical contact and closeness dwindles.  He does not seem to be able to loosen up enough to appear anymore fluid and dashing than a large dry heavy chunk of log wood.  Inwardly even he knows he looks like an old Al Gore trying to be on that old DANCING WITH THE STARS TV show. 

In the end this attempt at rejoining his wife in some workable reality to revive their old original feelings fails.  Jackson does not accept it easily, but he does accept it.  He never returns to either the Dance Studio or to Glendale, California.

…………………………………………………….………………….

FUTURE PRESENT- Why you care ? 

On the warm chipped pavement Jackson Kelley would laugh out loud if it did not hurt him quite so much. His mind and focus alternate between mush and clarity.  Now Jackson can hear a pin drop.  Now he can hear them.

            “Why did you do him?” the young woman repeated not quietly to her younger brother.

            “Why?” . . . . “We did not need to do him, why ?” she says.

The younger brother snaps up to his sister’s face a few feet away.  They both wear dark glasses catching sharp white pinpoint highlights.  The shades double as Sim-sets when required.  Majed, the young brother, repeated to his Zorah, his older sister

            “COMMAND said to . . . and I did.  Why you care ?  WHY?”

She did not answer him.  She looked at her young brother.  She looked at where they were.  Zorah turned her head from side to side then up the marked walls.  Scratchitti and etching into cutfitti with GANG TAG for hitup boundaries right into HATE TAGGING same as always, using more STENCIL now to show their art - SATANIC wove through it all to hold ritual possible.

            (Oh Jeez, again – again with the mini-chapters, again with the nickel-and-dime quick crap)

……………………………………………………………………

1990’s  TO 2000’s “C.E.” - AMUN-2

Mary Lynn Folsom and Amun Adjo had their baby boy who they named Amun too.  Mary Lynn was fourteen and Amun was eighteen. Poor little Amun-2 lost his father almost at once.  Mary Lynn tried.   She did her best to raise him on her own, and her family helped.  As Amun-2 grew the darker Arab Adjo side of his family was as concerned about him as the white bread American Folsom side of his family. He had been a cute and beautiful child, but as he aged he became himself.  It all began when he was doing those bad imitations of dance moves invented by Michael Jackson. He began to rap in a hybrid Arabic-English and even though people could not understand what he was saying he found he could get them moving a little.  Amun’s Arab relatives had kept a distance ever since his father’s funeral after the gang killing, but in various ways they began to express concern about what exactly should be considered an "Arabic" performance. They talked about Arabic music. They were disturbed about loose interpretation of Arabic traditional dance.
Having lived too briefly with Amun’s father before his gang slaying Mary Lynn would reply to them,
            “So what would be a traditional Arabic performance, a sword fight?”

They would fret and politely make noises about Amun’s childhood development and how they wanted him to turn out better than his father had. They said he needed training.
            “Talent without skill is like a desert without an oasis, says an old Arab proverb” they would say to her. The music they had grown up with was not at all like the music Amun wanted to make. While he liked their music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOO2bV7yI2k , Amun Faraj had his own.  They passionately explained to Amun and to his mother Mary Lynn that history has been full of Middle Eastern singers, poets, and dancers, many of whom given royal treatment as they resided in a ruler's court.  They told about Ibrahim al Mausili who remained the favorite singer of his time, kept in the court of the fifth Abbasid caliph, Harun al Rashid - right up until he died in the 800’s. 

With growing troubles between Islam and Christianity the traditions of favoring Arab performers was eventually phased out across modern and newly chaotic times.  Amun was coming up at a time when the children and grand children of North and West African Muslim immigrants were coming of age during a combining of peoples. Their mixed identities became the content of their music.  Islamic ideals are in their music but these young ones explored issues of exclusion and tensions in their urban communities.  Their new music was the Arab community singing the harsh difficulties they go through every day as a minority in the Western cities.  Amun’s Arab relatives and the elders of the Arab community thought of the music listened to by the younger generation as "noise", not art.  The young ones seemed immune to these criticisms and went ahead and incorporated family roots into the present by fusing rap-hip-hop with the music listened to by their parents.  African and North African music all mixed into this musical and performance and life style mixture.

But instead of being celebrated, the potent mixture gets looked down upon or worse is just unacknowledged. The less harsh and more soothing sounds within this represent for the young ones spiritual Islam that is tolerant and mystical, to loosen the high tensions of prejudice against Muslim immigrants in their urban neighborhoods.  Many of the bold young ones, before they turn angry and bitter, spread positive messages about Islam and tolerance, often combining a multi-ethnic make-up in their performing groups including members that are Madagascan, Senegalese, Algerian, Spanish, and sometimes even white.  But Amun’s Arab relatives deferred instead to  many scholars and Muslim clerics that studied whether or not hip-hop and music in general should be permissible (Halal) in Islam. For some conservative Muslims this entire musical consideration verges on blasphemy; "haraam" – and should not be allowed in their strict interpretation of Islam. These things were beginning to push Amun away from the conservative people who cared about him as he grew up.  There were crossovers between faiths that led Amun down his path too.  Growing up as a child Amun had learned that when God created pbuh ( the Christian’s Adam ) and when God directed his assembly of angels to prostrate themselves before this pbuh, a Jinn named Iblis was there in the court that day too. While all the angels obediently prostrated before God’s pbuh, Iblis – being a Jinn - refused. This transgression of Iblis gave him the name Al-Shaitaan (the Satan).  God turned Iblis out and sentenced him to punishment. Iblis asked God for respite till the Day of Judgment.  He declared that since God had sentenced him to punishment because of man, he would be an enemy to man. He would do all to turn man away from the path of God - so that man would suffer the everlasting punishment of hellfire.  Unlike the Christians, Islam introduces Iblis as Jinn - who by free will opted to disobey God.  God allowed this Satan only the authority to suggest evil to man. Iblis cannot force man into evil. Instead, this Satan must incite man to do what is against God's commandments and thereby risk loss of the path of eternal success.  Giving man life was to test him too.  Giving him authority to choose between 'good' and 'evil'.  The incorrect use of this authority results in evil.  Jinn are also given this same authority and Iblis became the Satan for using this freedom of choice wrongly.

All of this made sense to Amun.  Even now as he walked the alleys with their markings of

SATANIC for rituals by those few, it all felt right to Amun – made sense.  It all eventually pushed him into the gangs that welcomed Amun, the son of Amun, back into their fold. Mary Lynn cried as she prayed for him.

………………………………………………………..

A CHICAGO ROAD TRIP - 2000

Going to Chicago 2000 A.D. (now they called it C.E., Common Era?, . . . how long before a new CHINDIAcalendar was given to them all?), Jackson had left Los Angeles behind for good and forever.  Before he left he had soul searching to resolve, but did not finish.  Jackson’s still new Corvette headed out for the desert first.  Then on down the southern west coast.  This time the desert was solitary and quiet.  He liked it.  He could live in the desert. 

Drove down to Santa Barbara and the ocean.  Tried to get his mid-life mess more clear in his mind.  Jackson had been with shrinks, counselors, A.A. sponsors, yoga meditationists, and out of all of this there was a theme, a reoccurring echo.  People had been telling him for years that all of this was ‘predestined’. 

            “O.K.”, he thought – “so this had all been one long struggle with DESTINY?” 

No. No way. Jackson was even less comfortable with this notion and now rarely happy at all anymore either.  The ragged remains of love that he and his wife Shari had once had seemed near final death.  Both his sons were passing painfully through a wringer that Jackson felt more and more guilty about.  His wife Shari with her A.A., her Landmark Education, her Prozac, her God, and her sheer determination of Spirit persevered through all of this.  Could this all be just that? Predestined?  Or should it be changed?  Could Jackson put a stop to all of this?  Any of it?  He was reaching some kind of decision point. Things could not continue to go on as they have. Things must get simpler?  People, especially in this land of plenty, must be happy once in awhile.

After one more session of even more LA therapy with his wife at yet another LA therapist’s office, Jackson achieved some focus.  He felt what he needs to do next.  Jackson would open up to love one more time again, but if it goes bad again this time – he must stop.  After this last session of therapy he does stop.  No more therapists, no shrinks,  no more doctors, etc, etc. 

He was saturated and completely fed up he drove away.  Jackson’s days of enjoying the little house with the big pool in lovely Southern California had come to an end.  More and more he needed to get out.  He drove away.  He drove to Santa Barbara.

Jackson Kelley sat in room #226 at the little Cabrillo Inn in Santa Barbara.  He sat at the small round laminate table facing the window overlooking the parking lot and the wide ocean.  Jackson’s head pained from crushing headaches that Jackson assumes are depression from the  failure of all he has tried to do.  He strolls along the ocean.  It is wonderful even with the headache.   Jackson gets his toes into the water as he walks slowly along.  Two dolphins arc up out of the water about 40 feet from shore. A weekend night in this resort town with the Spanish name.  Many young women, many older men - all of them white people like himself.  Jackson decided to just stay put for a while, here on the edge of the ocean beach.  He can see his parked car from the window and it all feels much more secure than his previous desert lodgings in 29 Palms.  As the golden Santa Barbara sun went down romantic couples came out walking around dressed as minimally as possible to enjoy the warmth of the sunset at the shore.  Jackson had just seen this minimally dressed look earlier today, north of town when he was driving in.  He had stopped at the old mission there.  In the mission museum there were small statues and paintings with a few life sized mannequins made to look like the barely dressed Chumash natives that had lived there in that place for thousands of years.  They had come here over a land bridge between Mongolia and Alaska thirty five thousand years ago.  They had lived, loved, worked, fought and played in idyllic small communities here until the good Fathers of Spain came and built the missions.  The good Fathers enticed them with western objects, dressed and converted them, then held them captive to a daily regimen of work and prayer.  Their entire multi-thousand year old culture and language was destroyed in a mere 200 years.  They did not get away. 

Jackson had to get away.

With the sandy salt water washing through his toes on the beach he began to run.  Just a quick walk at first but then the jog turned into a full run on the long stretch of empty beautiful beach ahead of him in the sunset.  Ocean wind in his ears convincing him he really was determined to leave behind big Hollywood Animation Studios.  Even though he had always wanted to work for them - from the time he was a small boy he had wanted to be in the movie making industry.  But now, his feelings, his continual headaches, he had enough.  Too many politics, too much extraneous B.S., and not enough real work being done.  Too many people being hurt, too much management requiring hostile angry competitive behavior, it was not worth it. The movies did look great but were not worth all the excessive posturing, pretending, protecting that the life in the big studio really did require. 

But it wasn’t just that.  Jackson needed to leave behind the hollow empty hateful life that had crimped any hopes of love or happiness ever taking hold.  It was over, really over.  A small part of Jackson felt that there was still hope for him and his wife, but not there, not then.  The FOLK EPIGRAPHY might have said “KILROY was here” on the sea walls, but that was done too – over.  KILROY was gone now.  Jackson had to go too.  If he did not get away he would go mad.  Jackson was afraid of going really certifiably crazy.  

He had to get away.