DRAFT #3.0 JUNE, 2012 - by D. J. Pilibbossian
PREFACE
PREFACE
This story began as a mental consideration after attending a lecture that presented the notion of an escalating amount and frequency of invention, innovation, and change plotted on a timeline resulting in a slow X and Y curve across many years, picking up speed and quantity as the curve grows higher and steeper on the timeline. Events and characters themselves, while autobiographically referencing occurrences and people in my life, were not thought of nor fashioned until much later in this new century. My thanks to the professor that made that presentation in the last century, although I have unfortunately long since forgotten his name, and to my voluptuous and challenging muse that inspired the writing and eventual completion of the story itself. This story will be divided into twenty feuilletons for episodic or serial reading.
1. Part of newspaper devoted to light literature, criticism; printed in a section.
2. A novel published in installments.
3. A short literary piece
[ From French, from feuillet (sheet of paper), diminutive of feuille (leaf) ]
…………………………….……………………………………………………………
PROLOGUE
Forgive me as I lie to you about the golden future.
Through drifting golden grain brown air are seen wild curving angular edged buildings
of this Multi-Aged City, its lower parts pulsing with assorted sized speeding vehicles of
many ages and conditions during this era of energy climate change. Almost unseen several strong
hybrid io-warriors burst from the lower exit of one tall angular building, one after the other.
At the same time A FIRM CALM MEDIA VOICE-OVER:
“... Almost eleven thirty this fine summer morning,
with vehicular traffic beginning to unclog in a convulsion
of passable determinism this very day.”
Sunlight beaming along pavement from the east - a still, bird-chirping, summer morning in
the future present - a big, beautiful, blue sky outside the town at 11:30am in late morning.
But Jackson Kelley was in the town. And he was dying.
And not the way he thought he would.
“What the hell?” he said, un-characteristically, un-cheerfully , “What the bloody hell ?”
……………………………………………………………….………………………..………….....
Feuilleton 1 of 20
THE FUTURE PRESENT – LATEMORNING - in the town
No one ever liked him much. Jackson Kelley knew this. In spite of his friendly and up-beat
demeanor no one ever cared much about him, one way or the other. Even though Jackson shone
with old fashioned American CAN-DO attitude, they could not even remember his damn name,
let alone spell it right. No, truth be told, no one really gave a fuck about him. Well,
maybe some precious few – maybe some family, a few old friends, but their lives were all too
busy-complex to keep track of just one odd man out. And now down, down and out - and hurt –
and actually dying? He had never held anything against anyone. Kelley was more the type
to marvel at life’s turns and revelations. He would enjoy and take in all that life had to
throw at us. Always cheerfully curious in outlook, never holding any sort of grudge
or resentment from life’s reliable ups and downs.
Today Jackson Kelley was wearing the same kind of cotton pants and cotton shirt he had worn
for the better part of the last fifty years. Old cotton pants and comfortable cotton t-shirt with a
graphic printed on it – Graphic T’s, the merchants called them. Although many clothing firms
foreign and domestic had tried to change - revise - even clone cotton, he always wore
old fashioned 100% cotton whenever he could. He could only get away with this when he was
apart from his lovely new wife, as he was this time, on this ill fated western trip.
The pants had been called “blue jeans”, “denim”, sometimes even “dungarees”. They
had evolved into a new genre of clothing that was durable, understated, and very
comfortable to wear. He had always joked that they would last longer than he would.
“Dad! What!? Are you o.k.?” said one of his sons urgently, standing near him.
“Shit NO, he is not o.k.” said the other son, “didn’t you just SEE that . . . what the . . .?”
The two sons were straight upright and still. Both wore collarless shirts though completely different from each other. One had creased trousers and the other had wrinkled baggy pocket shorts that showed his pink legs covered in fine graying fur. The two sons were tall Caucasian Pillars planted solidly on off-white scuffed concrete slabs - crumpled litter at the edges by the buildings with lots of free floating scribble cuts in the walls all around them.
Mason Kelley and Andrew Kelley close in age, Jackson Kelley’s sons were next to him on that pavement. Old Jackson Kelley would wear jeans in the warm part of the year, and heavier corduroy in the colder season. Jackson’s shirt, like all the t-shirts he had worn for years, had a picture composed on it proclaiming some self-imagined part of himself to strangers as he walked down the street. On this day the graphic on the clean white cotton t-shirt was the Lucky Frog.
A shirt he had picked up in the city of New Orleans years ago … before the troubles … before the changes. It was meant to bring the wearer of the shirt good luck. Jackson wasn’t lucky in the conventional sense. He never won at gambling. Never had a winning lottery ticket. But he had been lucky in the larger sense, at least luckier than New Orleans itself. Jackson could show no winnings from card games but he enjoyed love and life and had been granted many years of pleasurable living. But now, well now it seems things had changed. But even within this burning pain right now
Jackson’s face wore expressions of bemusement.
“ Damn it. He’s really hurt . . .” Mason, the older son, said - kneeling down to reach for
his already collapsed father. Today the Lucky Frog t-shirt had an extremely accurate alteration
slit in its fabric and pattern. In fact, the Lucky Frog artwork had been finely seared with a precise
burn-line bisecting the white shirt with a thin, dark and still warmed nubby-crust border edging
along the sliced division.
“What the hell . . . wait . . . wait . . . we gotta’shut up – QUIET” said Andrew, the younger blonder son. Andrew was in the front as red haired Mason began to gently carefully prop the old man up off the warmed cement in the bright sunshine. Old Jackson Kelley had imagined, foreseen, even forecast his own death many times. But now he knew he had been wrong. His body was worn but not frail. The flab-jacket of age hung over his atrophied frame of limb and muscle. On this day he and his constantly worn clothing smelled of those laundry dryers that still used anti-static-aromatic-fresheners, slightly burnt and stuffy, nothing at all like the mountainous alpine air promised on product labels. As Jackson lay there now a wavering and remote connection to his senses came to him.
“It was from up there” Mason said to his brother, with arm raised to point directly
in front of them, just a bit to the right side.
“WHAT was from up there? What WAS it?” replied Andrew, moving
further forward to where the pointing indicated.
“A light and a sound – a light and a sound – from up there.” Said Mason.
Though confused old Kelley knew he had a problem. But there were mixed signals. The searing
cut across his abdomen ached, already cauterized by the heat blade that had made the slice. It
ached furiously with a pain that pounded in time to his pulse; he was also receiving mixed
signals from other parts of his nervous system. Unaccountably, he had a taste in his mouth of the
foods he had for breakfast earlier today as well as the new and oncoming hunger for the lunch
needed next by the body that did not quite know it was already dying.
(“Now? . . . NOW you want to think about food?”)
(“I’m hungry, can’t I be hungry?”)
The good old thick red Tapatio hot sauce that lay under that pseudo-egg no-cholesterol omelet
breakfast was still warm inside Jackson. The sweet balance of firm red ripe grapes with cold
pulpy orange juice to counteract the flame of the seasoned eggs with brown toast still remained
with him. In fact, although his bleeding pushed up inside against the heat sealed sliced edges of
his stomach flesh, part of him was already beginning to fantasize about multilayered tastes of
wrapped flatbread and turkey that he had routinely eaten for lunch each day with his hot mustard
and iceberg lettuce. Jackson Kelley was grateful that there still were real turkeys raised for
lunch-meat. At least he thought they were still real.
(“Nothing is real now. Nothing. Not turkey, not fish, and definitely not hamburgers.”)
(“Go easy, what did you expect? We knew, we ALL knew . . . that this would happen.”)
Food or no food, remote pain or not, he was finished for good this time and he began to know it.
He wanted others to know it too, whether or not any of them cared at all. He still found it very
frustratingly funny that he could have been so wrong, with so many ways and means to determine
eventual outcomes of almost anything. Maybe if he had paid more attention to all the possible
methods that had become available over the last decade or so, maybe then he could have known.
Maybe.
Mason spoke, shaking his head slowly.
“We never should have come here. No matter what he asked for, we should not have
come here.” Mason said to Andrew, holding and propping up their old man, their father.
The old man and his sons had been watching things evolve for a long time, sometimes riding
with the changes, sometimes being ridden over by them. All these sequential and parallel events
now semi-officially referred to as CURVE OF CHANGEin the many and various world-wide
dimensional wik’s, twt’s, etc. The curve that moved somewhat slowly but inexorably along,
almost flat on a time line of recorded human history - climbed a bit over the 1700 and 1800's –
really began to curve upward across the 1900's. It grew noticeably steeper after each of the
World Wars with their heavy spending on weaponizing technology.
(“Oh shut up, that’s all you ever talk about. It’s boring, everyone knows already.”)
(“Everyone KNOWS how boring it all is now and always has been so just shut up.”)
But the curve soared steeper from 1960 to end of the last century. According to the experts in
the wii-frii-cloud-node-ether-thing, all those various individual steeper curves were gathering,
sharpening, and now threatening to become a single straight line that would soon point up……
straight up. Jackson had never really been able to comprehend what “straight up” would
mean in this case.
(“would have said ‘straight up’ to avoid getting ice in his drink after it was cooled
by shaking with ice and pouring and straining it into a separate glass.”)
(“To be right or real and/or to the point! – Straightup, yeh.”)
With the rise of demographically spiked Islam, the merger-like behavior of CHIMERICA and
CHINDIA, the decline of North America’s role due to worsening weather, overly expensive
energy costs and now completely failed real estate ownership and labor markets, Jackson knew
his home land was in decline now. He lay there on sun-warmed-rough-chipped pavement
realizing that none of this new knowledge had helped him at all. Jackson looked over the sudden
and precise deadly devastation between him and the violent reason for it. All the other various
commuter vehicles on adjoining streets motion-blurred by without stopping. Jackson would
have laughed out loud if it wasn't so sad - and if it hadn’t started to hurt quite so much.
Neither Jackson nor his two sons could see clearly into the darkness where at least two of the
angled building walls converged crazily at angles into the shadows. They could not see the two
new people pulled back into those shadows. Another brother sister - a different family –
one that Jackson knew intimately, all those years ago. The new smaller boy and the new taller
girl did not know Jackson, but if Jackson could have seen their faces he would have known
precisely whose looks and physical beauty the taller girl had inherited. A distance away from
Jackson and his two sons, this new girl spoke to her smaller brother in the dark.
“Why did you do him?” she said, hidden away ahead in the shadows.
Sharply authoritative to her younger brother hidden away with her – both of them out of the
bright sunlit gaze of the old man and his two sons a small distance away.
“Why?” she continued “We did not need to do him, he’s harmless - old man - why ?”
This smaller darker younger brother looked up from the littered ground to his sister’s face.
They were both darker than the first two other siblings, the ones now posed over the fallen old man, all three of whom were very pale pink white. This new darker boy and girl were younger too. She was near the age of Jackson’s two tall pink sons, a little younger - and older by just a couple of years than her bold little murderous brother. Her bold little brother had just used his blue-line to cutfitti slash the old guy right there in front of her.
“It was an order, ourorders.” the little brother said, mystified by his sister.
The sunlight entered on a high slash angle before noon, just in front of their recessed area. Their
light angled down to hit hard paved ground and then bounced back up off the small lit up area of
pavement. The light passed through smoggy air to almost show their faces in the shadows, all lit
from below. They both wore rimmed sim glasses which caught faint pinpoint highlights. The
shades doubled as Sim-sets when required. Majed, the small young brother, spoke at Zorah, his
slightly older taller sister, in a voice mixed with adolescent anger and real curiosity.
“COMMAND said to . . . and I did . . . What’s wrong wid’at ? Why y’care ?”
Further away and back in the sunlight, as had happened to Jackson Kelley so many times before,
the surrounding sights, sounds, and smells distracted him from focusing on the problem at hand.
(“straight up. . . strained - then poured, no ice” - “wait, no, he actually meant ‘neat’ didn’t he?”)
There were no longer any colorful commercially slick billboards with liquor ads and
commercial cigarette signage to distract him as those had all been legislated out of existence
when the SAO PAULO experiment had been proven successful down there in Brazil,
( http://whenthenewsstops.blogspot.com/2011/04/sao-paulo-city-without-ads.html) spawning a whole new form of
commercial advertising that was still sweeping across the capitalist parts of the globe.
But the architecture and lighting of the city shapes themselves had quickly evolved to fill the
vacated ad space and complicate views in new and distractingly intriguing ways. New forms of artistic defacement rose up along with these new trends. Jackson had learned from local law enforcement that this explosion of mark-making fell into about eight separate categories that they noted and tracked. They fought it as vandalism and read it as predictors of things to come. The officer Jackson had met with in Canada was of military bearing, reminded Jackson of his old drill sergeant from decades previous – but more balanced, more civilized.
“ These eight or so types rarely, if ever at all, cross pollinate or mix” the officer said as he
proceeded to enumerate the separate categories of mark making he had come to know.
“Number 1. your YOUNGER HIPHOP, with their 1D sigtags, with 2D throwups,
with 3D flat pieces, some slaptags, a little scratchitti and etching – and sometimes
a little Giraffiti– that being vandalism spray-painted very, very high”
The Inspector paused briefly, Jackson looked around the room – Spartan bare but for necessities.
“ Number 2. is GANG TAGGING, for nation building, for hitup boundaries, roll calls,
memorials, and the more serious 187 death threats
3. we still have HATE TAGGING same as always
4. we also still have the earliest forms still here
FOLK EPIGRAPHY from KILROY to now
5. LATRINALIA in the latrines – from time immemorial”
He gave a sour but firm look of disapproval but lightened up for
“6. POLITICAL every election, whether we like it or not
7. STENCIL to show their art to us, also whether we like it or not
And number 8. SATANIC to still hold their rituals, those few crazy sick bastards.
They rarely mix, but recently there has been a blending of some kind, a combination of
some parts.” the Inspector explained as his eyes read Jackson’s face across his desk.
On today’s hot cement in the smoggy city, Jackson did not notice the look on the faces of his own two sons - both of them now on the front edge of what used to be called Middle Age, standing there next to him laying down on his job of Old Age. They were standing near him in the overwhelming “town” environment with its degenerating concrete, steel, and brick all mixed with the newer and more effective molecular synthetics – all surfaces already decoratively modified with the latest “cutfitti”.
“There’s a cost you know” the officer had said to him that day back in Canada. As the
day wore on and both had places they go to – things that each of them were already obliged to
attend to.
“I am sure there is.” Jackson replied.
“All the money spent on guns, ammunition, big dogs, and . . .” the officer continued.
“Yes, I am nodding my head ‘Yes’ - up and down to you.” nodded Jackson.
“. . . and fancy expensive security systems, and armed guards, and all these extra
outrageous costs are incurred when this marking-vandalism takes hold and scares the
hell out of everyone – it is a psycho-social cost to all of us.”
“Yes, yes, I see.” Jackson understood, shifting his weight to leave.
The cutfitti...evolved from key slashing ...evolved from tagging and scratchitti…evolved from
“traditional” old-fashioned graffiti…the cutfitti was vicious, specific, and dynamically bold in
appearance. It was simultaneously protest-statement-vision-catalyst and braggadocio.
“And there are all the highs and lows that come with mark-making too.” he said.
“Collateral crime hits us. Drugs and theft are inextricably linked to the marks too.”
“Sort of a gateway crime, eh?” Jackson asked.
“Worse, the dregs are drawn to it. The broken homeless go to it to die. The dregs feel safer there, around and next to it. They go to it because they know that we Normals won’t go there, so they are safer there with it surrounding them – and we find them dead in front of the decorations.”
Cutfitti’s emergence and growth was an organic vine wrapping around and feeding off of the
stronger stalk of the main curve of change that really was virtually and physically a strong line
curving steeper upward as it progressed across time. But the real blood pulsing thriller - the real
hot rush - the real blast, was the adrenaline-hit the mark-maker obtained physically during the
act – just as he, the mark-maker, ( they are still mostly he’s ) is right on the edge,
“. . . that dangerous edge of actually making the mark, of really creating the physical
crime, or in the most extreme variation, using a blue liner to cutfitti against every law
and vigilance – THAT’S the payoff, and that is their zone.” the officer explained.
Deeper into the building shadow now, Zorah and Majed posed angry at each other. They were
still not clearly visible to the old father and sons out there in the sunshine, but they were there.
“ Dammit, yes CONTROL gave an order, but it was to be on MY command.” Zorah said between sharp, even, clean, white teeth which she flashed at her little brother Majed. His cutfitti blue zip was clicking now, recharging after he dragged it and himself deeper into the shadow areas between the buildings.
Crumpled Jackson Kelley let his old eyes wipe the blue skies above him. He thought he knew the external significance of all these things, all this crazy change that was happening. Didn’t it mean that change for him had become almost constant now? Laying there he already knew that Things, Processes, Traditions, even Beliefs were being replaced rapidly now. Replaced by evolved, innovated, or invented “NU/ONES” by each sunset of each day of each week of each month. The “NU/ONES” came in various ways now. The daily/nightly broadcasts, cycle-casts, webcasts, podcasts, gossipblogs - all told events of the days, and they never stopped. The scrolling displays of news and zines on all sizes of mobile devices or pull down window shade digi-displays, or on ever-growing colorful bright display screens now worn by new sandwich-board people, formerly unskilled and unemployed who replaced the need for putting those bright ad displays on the buildings, billboards, busses, cabs and transit stands and everywhere else that never left any of them alone anywhere - all of which had been found in SAO PAULO, BRAZIL to be a cause of overly and unacceptably expensive personality shattering fragmentation resulting from environmental over-stimulus, or “visual pollution” as the Mayor of Sao Paulo had called it.
“Do you hear them?” Andrew Kelley said to Mason Kelley.
“Do you hear them just ahead of us? There in front?”
And further on, still hard to see in the darkness, the other set of siblings looked at each other too.
“Do you hear them? Can they see us?” Majed said to his sister, Zorah, within their
recessed shadow space, the tall angled buildings on either side of them.
But in his location almost flat on his back, Jackson Kelley heard nothing. He just laid there.
He laid there thinking of the NU/ONES. NU/ONES had begun with university media
programs that broadcast each day in university areas on the extreme left side of the old
obsolete radio dials. These had been adopted, co-opted, and stolen by all the major purveyors
of daily news. NU/ONES proved consistently to be the part of the shows that people always
stopped to watch and listen and learn – all the better to adapt to the next day with its next day
switches and changes in place for them to more knowledgeably live their lives by.
(“Did you see that? How are we going to deal with THAT?”)
(“Enough already, how much can we take anyway every day?”)
(“Stop whining, they are doing it – we can too, you’ll see.”)
The new innovations were coming from India and China now. The new solutions and outright inventions were emerging from Russian freelancers, Romanian, sometimes Korean and Japanese. Even the Arab peoples were birthing inventors again. Ever since the massive U.S. pre-emptive invasion, conquest, and outsourced occupation of China - to stop all new Chinese armed developments and virtually eliminate the large debt that Americans owed to the Chinese - the world shifted in multiple directions all at once. That continuing “war” and the parallel grand consumption schemes with USA using all “foreign” oil first, then finally moving to utilize its own vast untapped North American oil reserves to further extend and control the remains of its old world. A last lively series of Red White and Blue manifest destiny dance steps gave us all the new world – a new and interesting world indeed.
Jackson Kelley’s people, his family, his friends and his relatives, all seemed to be walking around with bloated but bankrupt brains. They were no longer innovating. They no longer came up with new ideas. Seemingly unsolvable local problems were suddenly and abruptly solved with unexpected inventions/interventions from many new events, characters, abilities, and never before known objects – all of them from afar, these days.
All watched the accumulated news as it piled up and dumped itself heavily into the marketplace every single day. These broadcasts were avidly sought after by commercial video advertisers as they knew the largest assembled demographic was watching faithfully and intently on all their fixed and mobile devices, even if that larger poorer demographic had less and less disposable income these days to consume things the way they used to in the good old days of continuous consumer shopping when mall parking lots used to be full - before the parking lot space striping formed a grid background for more and larger flat ground based graffiti and cutfitti.
Jackson had started looking harder at cutfitti after listening to the police about what it was
meant to be and who had made it to be seen. He could feel some of the blended intent coming
through, or at least he thought he could.
(“Aw, you’re full of horse shit.”)
(“You don’t know what all that means.”)
(Hell, we don’t even remember what real horse shit looks like anymore.”)
Jackson Kelley stared at it just the same. The cutfitti on the town surfaces that used to be called
“urban” surfaces until democratization of info allowed wide decentralization again. The
cutfitti's hard, micro-machete marks incised and decorated dwellings, vehicles, tools,
equipment, the bottoms of the tall workplaces, and the remaining poles that still carried older
transmission lines. The cutfitti was “marking” in the extreme. In Jackson Kelley’s younger days
the common popular markings had gone from the old “KILROY WAS HERE” folk epigraphy
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilroy_was_here) to various vulgarities, into gang tagging, into evolved
scratchitti using physical blades and etching liquids all the way up to today’s malicious
but strangely beautiful laser burn chisel cutfitti. Mark-making was ancient and elemental, but
it had only recently occurred to Kelley that there might be a greater significance to the waves of
mark-making; that there might be a monologue for us; that the marks might be a way to tell us of
next things that will be done, or were to be done. But that was like the mysterious silliness of
subtext, he thought. Why did there have to be subtext? Why couldn’t what needed to be said
just be said? Was this mark-making saying just what it was saying, or did it also have some
intentional semi-hidden subtext underneath it all too? It still made him smile, even today.
For Kelley the artistic perception of it had begun when old skills of drawing and hand drawn
rendering criss-crossed over each other. The official name for it then was “Cross-Hatching”. He
had been taught this in school when people had still made drawings intuitively by hand rather
than virtually by algorithm or spatial sims.
“If you can see it, you can damn well draw it” said sexy Ms. Bennett in her
too-tight 1960’s Fine Arts Teacher Capri Pants, with their oil paint smears and charcoal rubbings.
“But . . . you must see it first – do you see it?” she asked them in his drawing class.
Hand drawing firm lines in criss-cross directions with hard strokes to simulate form, texture,
light, shade - this cross-hatching had physical dimension cousins in both woven strands
of wicker rattan and rich wood surfaces of inlaid parquet. For Jackson the cross-hatching
of ink strokes became purposeful, directional slashes and marks. They were purposeful
in their graphic nature but did not contain any hidden symbolic communication other
than the description of form itself. Ancient and Elemental - yes, but after years of playing
with this, these graphic stokes became just marks to Kelley. He hardly ever illustrated anymore.
Just strokes that formed varying patterns. Unconscious patterns maybe, but they were not
consciously intended to convey any more than the eye could see for itself. It was mulling
all of this over and over that led Jackson to think some unconscious communication might be
coming through all cutfitti in all parts of all cities everywhere. He knew things that seemed
simply graphic could convey feelings and messages – intentional or not. Jackson had quit
smoking evil tobacco cigarettes even before the tobacco companies were required by law to
have scary lethal death graphics on the outside of ridiculously over priced packages. It was when
Jackson quit smoking that his own frantic hand-made drawn marks began to fill up his old
paper date-books and calendars – marks over date entries – complex busy-work for his hands.
These began to look very colorful and creative. Others that saw these commented on them.
For Jackson these marks had become the last vestige of drawing itself. That’s why
Jackson Kelley continued to hatch, stroke, and cross-hatch his date-books and calendars, long after he ceased to require them at all . . . long after they had all been replaced by various real-time wireless cosmo-cloud devices that no longer needed physical human hand strokes of any kind at any time, at all.
(“But, they are saying something – the marks are saying something.”)
Kelley certainly did not need to know or read the marks today - his body sagged, most of him lying flat on the warm rough pavement. His right arm rested its weight on his right wrist bone that contacted the cement while his hand arched upward slightly off the warm surface. His old right index finger nervously traced small rectangular shapes on the ridged thumbnail of his right hand, over and over again.
(“We don’t need to know, we know already – don’t we?”)
Kelley’s head flopped back a bit. His aging head had some of the last of the old fashioned
Natural Look Artifacts ... thinning grey-white hair, skin blotches and wrinkles from time,
heredity, and diet. He even had the annoying long hairs in his ears. The next two generations
were already quickly phasing out these no longer tolerable physical attributes - expensively at
first, then more democratically priced due to recent tax subsidization to encourage commerce and
spending to goose the economy. Laying there on his warming concrete base, Jackson felt that
he must look like the older buildings here in the “town” while his two grown sons looked like the
newer buildings. In the last decade the curving and exploding architectural shapes that had once
been so exotic and expensive to build before became prevalent in the town. Antonio Gaudi would have smiled proudly, just before he too died, under the sharp and heavy metal wheels of that 1926 Barcelona streetcar in Catalonia.
(“No identification, he had no identification.”)
(“So he had to die waiting for treatment because no one knew he was Gaudi?”)
(“Yes, he forgot to carry I.D.”)
The curves and overly dramatic sharp angles of the new buildings arched and splayed out and
over the brick and tiled and stone veneered rectangles and cubes of the old ones. The intermittent
angular steel-like spike shafts criss-crossing the open spaces to intersect old and new buildings,
stabilizing the shapes of each as they combined to newly reform the town. The sun and its cast
shadows had not changed however. Together they shone across the new jumble of town shapes,
creating a broken patchwork of shadow and reflection that was getting closer to competing with
nature's more complex and beautiful lighting of a forest at the water's edge. Light was moving
and bouncing back up onto all the surfaces all around him. Jackson Kelley’s old head flopped
against the chest of his son. Jackson was not gone yet, but his old neck was weak. He could smell
the dusty-dry dirty concrete and alloy-chemical vapors from the mixed traffic passing nearby.
From his tilted angle the townsfolk he saw going by at a distance all looked like subjects in a
vintage long-lens documentary. But now every race was represented in this cosmopolitan global
city, even the multi-racials who always looked better than the rest of us, he thought. Most of
these people on this day were too far away. Out of all of them only one person stopped to walk
over.
“ Y’needin' m’9-Pulse ? ” she said with concern.
She extended the underside of her firm dark forearm where the emergency 9-1-1 pulse pod had
been implanted. She was older, like Jackson, although with far less Natural Look Artifacts. She
wore a small diamond crucifix dangling from her neck by a fine link silver chain when she
leaned down over them. The small diamonds glinted sharp white against her smooth dark skin,
partly exposed below her collar bone. The bright cross was a window of light through her dark
soft skin.
“So if you can remember this, you won't get lost on the cross
while you're trying to get across. So we're just here to let you know about it.
I know that you knew already, 'cause y'all the hippest people in the world,
hip black and white. But you still know that you got a cross you must deal with.
So when it crosses you up, go on and deal with it, and leave it alone”,
so said Rahsaan Roland Kirk (http://www.flickr.com/photos/phillykevflicks/2550176999/)
Crucifixion symbols, crosses, were becoming more rare now as the population was more
and more dominated by growing Islamic families in all countries. The coming linguistic battle was to be waged between remnants of Moorish, Spanish, Indian and Chinese empires. Anglophone Caucasians were decreasing in number and influence, though this change was still in the early stages of transition.
The two sons said, almost in unison, with their eyes fixed a short distance straight ahead,
“No, no thanks lady, it's o.k.”
The two sons were tall. One of them crouched down holding the old man while the other
stood upright directly in front of them, facing ahead and away from them, toward the danger not
too much farther in front now. They both had com-devices but each hesitated using them. They
did not want to relay information on someone else’s either. There was a time years ago when this
flittering of alphanumeric characters from thousands of thumbs on thousands of tiny keyboards
both physical and virtual was popular, but as that generation aged the technology was put to
different and more micro-profit based uses.
The two sons wanted to know what was going on first. They would probably call their uncle,
their father’s brother, who also lived nearby in this sun-baked town and could very well be close
enough to help. They did not want to call the medical 911. That number and agency had become
highly suspect, with patients, particularly old patients from sections of town like this one, getting
lost or disappearing for God knows what reasons - most likely commercial industrial reasons.
The kind dark woman moved on down the street with her head jerking back toward them the way hers did, just a few times to see what there was to see. Then she just shook her head with short finality and walked on along her way. The fallen old man stirred again. Jackson Kelley looked up at his sons. They were so much taller than he was, Jackson thought. Jackson had always wanted to be taller himself but instead had started slowly shrinking from his average height instead. Of course that would not happen to them. Jackson’s wrinkled face smiled at the thought that all parents still want a better world for their children. It now seemed that this notion was becoming a reality these days, at least for those that could afford it. For some parents, it was only one of many new realities.
“So when? When should we call?” one asked the other.
“Now. We should call Uncle Cleveland now – you call.” the other replied.
When the two sons were still small children Jackson would sometimes fantasize walking down
some Streets of Danger with his two tall strong boys as they grew up. But in those fantasies Jackson was never old, never slow, not at all faded nor broken . . . and definitely not sprawled out immobile on old concrete. In the fantasies Jackson was always vital, strong, and moving forward as quickly and effortlessly as they were. Jackson had fantasized all his life. Daydreams as a boy, then escapist imaginings on into adulthood - he saw no reason to stop now.
Out on the very real nearby freeway, the wind and the noise was all around. Uncle Cleveland, Jackson’s brother, was driving in his vehicle. A different black woman’s old throaty singing into his phone stayed with their uncle Cleveland, as he exited off the crumbling cement bands of freeway into the city.
"Just laahk th'Shamoleeeeon, we keep a'changin ebbryday." She had hymn-sung the last
part from the Wayne Martin song on that vintage Boozoo Bajou Juke Joint collection.
Cleveland ever the journalist, though now ‘retired’, spoke at the dashboard.
" 3rd and Miramar, north of the 110.......ok..right..."
"What HAS that dumb motherfucker done THIS time?"
"What HAS that dumb motherfucker done THIS time?"
The slanting sun warmed his face around his sunglasses. He drove off the freeway. Stopped
the vehicle, made a right turn and recalled the database police number. He talked to the police on
his dashphone. They were already headed there now, they said.
“Where?” Cleveland asked and when they told him he replied,
“No, not there you assholes........come to the corner of 3rd and Miramar....... there has
been an attempted murder of an innocent citizen. How do I know he's innocent? Fuck, he
is my own brother, who would not hurt a fucking fly, that's how I fucking know.....”
A pause while dispatch talks to him - interrupted by an explosion of profanity and fear as he impolitely tells the police to have a few deep fried donut sandwiches. Cleveland drove toward the crime scene, where Jackson’s mind was unspooling. Sometimes - many times - Jackson Kelley’s imaginings were the remembered movies he used to love to watch in dark old ornate movie palace theatres. But then his imaginings themselves were movies too, superimposed right over and on top of real life – with just the right musical score and just the right sound track to move the story along, long before augmented reality devices.
(“Is this drama? Is the work moving the story along?”)
(“it probably will – it is meant. . . to do that . . .yes?”)
(“Is the quest of the hero allowing him to overcome those things
which prevent him from achieving some specific *acute* goal?”)
(“ Look - it’s like this…..Jackson had no defined goal. Just trying to live his life.
Wanted only a peaceful existence – peaceful calm and enjoyable. A breakfast on
some damned balcony overlooking green leaf tree tops in warm sun.
The living of it all was his art, his goal – if he ever even had anything
even slightly remotely approaching a goal.”)
The living of it all was his art, his goal – if he ever even had anything
even slightly remotely approaching a goal.”)
(“What does he want? What happens if he doesn’t get it? Why does this happen to him now?”)
(“What? WHAT? Just . . . wait . . . only just . . . a peaceful . . . calm and enjoyable
existence . . . with maybe . . . breakfast on a balcony, in warm sun . . . that’s all.”)
( “Bullshit, I remember when his goal was just getting laid. And before that, just getting to feel up a girl.”)
( “O.K., O.K., yes, it’s true – his goals did shift and change – from finding the nipple
on his mother’s tit to showing the world just how oh-so-important he would be – but, but, in the end
on his mother’s tit to showing the world just how oh-so-important he would be – but, but, in the end
. . . in the end he just wanted breakfast on a balcony, in warm sun . . . that’s all.”)
( No way, not good enough - but O.K., I’ll wait for it . . . I’m in no hurry.” )
The right music sound track to move today’s story along was playing in Jackson’s long ears.
Jackson wondered how many grown people did this sort of thing after they grew up. After they matured, after they became real adults - this movie sound track story thing playing right over top of real life as he lived it - did anyone do this? His sons didn’t. His sons had grown up. The older son, Mason, and the slightly younger son, Andrew - their red and blonde colors being genetic choosing at its most decisive.
After all his family, the family from which Jackson himself had come, was composed of dark, tanned Armenians – all except for his pink mother. She was fair skinned Anglo, as was the mother of Jackson’s two sons later on. So, the genes of the women ruled the day this time. Andrew, tall, solid and a strong blonde pink, stood in front of the father and his corresponding red pink brother Mason. Andrew searched with eyes narrowing against summer glare all within a growing fear of hostility around him.
After all his family, the family from which Jackson himself had come, was composed of dark, tanned Armenians – all except for his pink mother. She was fair skinned Anglo, as was the mother of Jackson’s two sons later on. So, the genes of the women ruled the day this time. Andrew, tall, solid and a strong blonde pink, stood in front of the father and his corresponding red pink brother Mason. Andrew searched with eyes narrowing against summer glare all within a growing fear of hostility around him.
The son’s face was rectangular and firm. Slightly graying golden blonde could be seen on the sides of his close cropped but still thick hair and in the stubble of his beard, unshaven from yesterday. Andrew Kelley's shadow fell down and across his brother and father. His brother, Mason was still trying to help his father up but was beginning to settle for just supporting the old man raised up a bit, slightly off the hot concrete surface. Mason Kelley had inherited the same shining coppery red hair and pale skin that the old man had when growing up as a child. This son, however, had almost completely shaved his head, so the world never saw the dense shock of red hair that grew naturally from his head. Mason's face and body were still well muscled from faithful exercise and sensible eating. His strong head pointed down to his father’s now, but his eyes clicked back and forth, up and down, searching...but still trying to hold a connection with the old man.
“Dad” Mason said, voice being more cautious.
The son’s voice could not be heard at all through all the crazed and feverish “I-TOLD-YOU-SO”
remembrances now banging about inside the old man's head. From deep inside, although safe
now from the too-warm, too-dirty, too-rough concrete with all its confusing activity spread out
around them, the old man really felt ill.
(“You are SICK? On your birthday? Again?”)
This was not really his birthday today but Jackson Kelley did feel badly, did feel ill. He could
clearly recall being ill on many of his birthdays too. So much so that it had altered the very nature
of having a birthday at all. Originally it was a way of escaping those friendly birthday parties for
him at his place of work, but eventually he really did feel sick on those days. Although he knew
various things about all the many minor illnesses, he had been fairly certain it would end up
being a heart attack that would finish him off. He just knew he would be right about that. Or
maybe it would be the heart murmur noticed by a doctor when Jackson was only twelve, or
maybe the brain tumor he was sure he had. When Jackson had been going through extreme
caffeine coffee withdrawal as a middle aged man, that time in his forties when the physical MRI
brain scans showed nothing and the pain stopped six weeks later - then even HE had to admit that
it was because he had gone without his usual too plentiful and habitual daily coffee lattes in another futile attempt to stop drinking caffeine yet again. Jackson never could break free from his coffee habit. In the end he gravitated toward a coffee from the places between Malaysia and Indonesia – a type they called CELEBES KALOSSI. The flavor of that, especially with the poor man’s latte treatment of shaken foamed cream on top ( reminding him – he thought – of warm mother’s breast milk ) had him hooked forever.
Or the end might come from that fatal LYME disease that he was sure he must have contracted from a tick bite in the Illinois forest next to their home just outside Chicago. Turned out to be, though he had been sure he was going to die, just a harmless spider bite that went away in six weeks as well.
Maybe it would be skin cancer from all those truly bad sunburns he had as a light skinned child,
trying to fit in and be a part of his darker skinned family (the ancient Armenians were religious
sun-worshipers, before they became the first nation on Earth to convert to Christianity in those
ancient times). Mostly though, he thought it would just be a heart attack. Both his grandfathers
and his father had died of heart attacks. Jackson remembered his own brother, Cleveland,
looking at him on the plane flying out of Michigan after their father's funeral back in 2000,
arching one eyebrow as he smiled in the same way their father used to do and saying,
“Well Jackson, I guess we know how WE'RE going out...”
Their parents had named them after presidents of the United States. He was named after Andrew
Jackson and his younger brother was named after Grover Cleveland.
But right now Jackson’s own two grown sons split their attention between their fallen father and a spot about fifty paces directly ahead. A series of mechanical sounds and scraping shuffling on old broken concrete dotted with small dark flattened quarter-sized black spots that had once been pink chewing gum caused the two sons to turn their heads to face the sounds at the same time.
Jackson's head fell back further, mouth open with his unintentional jagged grin against the wide
blue-blue paint-chip sample of brightly saturated azure sky visible between the town buildings.
It should have occurred to him that it might end like this, but it hadn't. Although he now knew he
should have, Jackson had never even bothered to run a simple lens-sim on his possible futures,
even though that technology had been available to him as it evolved for almost a decade. Didn’t
want to jinx it, he had thought at the time, each time the notion of using this method had come
up. But, how could he just die? How could he just die with all that science and technology were
providing and improving on every day? How? Well, because Jackson would never resort to help from a “god” coming out of the machine to solve plots and problems. Too much like the bad conventions of Greek tragedy, where a crane was used to lower actors playing gods down onto the stage. The machine could be the crane employed in the task or a riser that would bring a god up from a trap door in the floor of the earth. The device of the so-called god was always entirely artificial, manmade. Jackson did not know one could be all these things at the same time, and still know the future.
He lapsed into unconsciousness and barely heard the word spoken by his son,
“Dad”.......as darkness rose up and over him.
“DAD”
He went down. Down. Just Darkness.
Brown........black brown…..swirling umber.
The darkness rose and fell through low browns until other colors slowly began to return
and Jackson heard the word :
“DAD “
Then louder
“Say DAD”
Then louder still
“ Say DADDY “
“Say POPPA”
It was Jackson Kelley’s mother, young, smooth and happy.
………………………………………………………………………………..
........................................................................................................
MORE TO COME, but - how d'you like it VERSION#3.0 ?
Send complaints and suggestions to
danphilips@rogers.com
- thanks.
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