Short story, Youth, First Installment.

John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1965: I was waiting in the hallway in the building called “0ld Main" for the Professor of our political science class to arrive when a girl in a shaky panicky voice and tears in her eyes said the president has been shot. Shortly after that Lyndon Johnson, the name still stirs up hatred within me started pouring troops into Vietnam. Soon our campus, a large Midwestern State University, was for the first time in its history experiencing a student revolt, along with most other major colleges and universities in the United States. I was arrested as an instigator put in jail and charged with mob action. Interestingly enough Old Main also became a victim, it got burned down. I left there and went to California where I worked for a short time as a commercial artist but couldn't seem to make much headway because of a drug problem. I went back to Chicago, when the army sent me a draft notice. I told the Army that I would never go Vietnam and kill dirt poor peasants for Lyndon Johnson or anybody else. They sent me to their psychiatrist who must have thought I was crazy, they didn’t bother with me after that. That was when the heart breaking estrangement with my family took place. All the men in my family were military men, even my father, an extremely genteel mild mannered man was a navy core man, and they are the only ones who could wear either a marine or a navy uniform. He served in the pacific theater. He took my refusal to serve extremely hard. I was born in 1942 just a month or so before the untimely heroic death of the family’s greatest hero my uncle Walter. I still have the old portrait of Walter hanging on my wall, he is in uniform and looks so young now, my mother gave me the picture after my sweet brother Richard died, of course Richard was a brave warier as was his son Richard (various medals from Vietnam) Jimmy also Vietnam, and so on. It was not as easy to refuse their offer to kill gooks as it sounds. Monica, remember I said the simple things are usually the hardest?. I went through some moments of anguish its true. “Mom, I know how it looks but I am not a coward, I will stand up to any man or beast and if anybody ever tried to hurt you I would kill them without thinking, but I can’t just kill people like they want, look one day it’s Krouts and Japs then it’s commies, thin what?” It seemed that only my mom and grandfather Joseph still loved me, and he would die while I was in exile. The Vietnam War continued to grow more bloody and disgusting every day and along with it my depression. I had to leave, it would be better to be ‘a stranger in a strange land’ than to endure this disgrace. There were others who truly suffered for their honor. An old college friend, a brave anti war activist watched as they took her husband away to a federal penitentiary for refusing to serve in Vietnam and encouraging others to do the same. How he must have felt as the neighbors yelled “coward” when the FBI took him away! How Joni must have felt! It is now 1968. I flew to NY City stayed with old college friends who treated me like a prince, bought a ticket on Icelandic Air Lines and went to Europe. The reversion/conversion story soon starts. This is my “r/c” story so I won’t mention my personal encounters with Heddy Lamar, Colin Powell, and Pope John Paul, LOL, just kidding. 1968 Paris is in revolt, students and workers violently fighting with police, tearing the cobble stones up to throw at the police. It is a beautiful city but I think I’ll go somewhere else I already ruined my best pair of pants and got a large gash in my leg trying to avoid being killed by the Gendarmes. Spain is beautiful beyond words; I was raised Catholic, school, confirmation, the whole thing. I can identify, and when I hear a beautiful Spanish girl speaking to me either in Spanish or with that incredibly beautiful accent; but no let’s not go there. Still 1968, it is beautiful here I have made some good friends and watched the big riots at the Chicago ’68 Democratic convention on TV, something told me as I watched the fires and madness “that is why you are here”. I am restless, I go to Amsterdam. Fall can be beautiful when you are young. What a place, what art! I never dreamt of such a place, it is like being in a fantasy world and these people (except for the cab drivers) are all geniuses, they speak 72 different languages even the butcher boy will speak to you in most any language. I made lots of friends from all over the world, mostly young, lots of Dutch, how I love these people. I let my hair grow long and grow a beard which I keep short, it looks great, man I am starting to come out of this depression, oh Amsterdam I love you! It is getting on toward Christmas; winter can be beautiful when you are young. All the hippies are going to Morocco, although I didn’t set out to be one, I guess I’m a hippy now. Now to the reversion story, and if you think the lead in was long: LOL no I’ll shorten it down, it only took forty years to fully revert we can cover that in a few paragraphs. Petra, Lydia, Jamie, Keely and Daniel suddenly disappeared; they boarded the Marrakech express and took part of me with them. Hay! Wait for me. I met two English guys who had an older VW van and would drive from Amsterdam to Morocco and take a few people for a cheap fair. They were very decent chaps as most of the English lads were. What a trip! There were the two English lads, two Canadian girls a American (US) girl and me. I can’t tell you about the trip, it would be to long, the people the sights the smells, Germany, France the Pyrenees mountains Andorra, Spain and if you have ever been young, the magic of youth. “I can see for miles and miles and miles” are the words of a song that was going around at that time; I closely associate it with that trip. We entered Morocco, then Tangiers, and arrived at a beautiful city park near the sea, just outside the old wall, there were palm trees blue skies and waiting for me were Jamie, Daniel, and Keely. I can’t remember how they knew I was coming and I don’t think I even asked, so many new and strange mysterious things seemed to be happening to us in those days that one could hardly keep things like: how did you know that I would be here at this time after a magical mystery tour through fantasyland. God how we loved each other and hardly realized the value of it. Just then my first Islamic experience happened. You guys who were born in Muslim lands probably don’t remember the first time you heard the call to prayer. For a westerner to hear call to prayer for the first time it is truly an awesome experience. Then seeing someone actually bowing down to God almighty in prayer! Jamie grabbed my arm and said, ‘don’t stair. ‘Oh, ya sorry. OK, I see this story is going to get carried away, so inshallah I will not attempt to address the inscrutable relationships and destinies of human involvements but rather only the events leading to or touching upon my Islam. The greatest of them occurred a week or so later. It is perhaps the single greatest event in my life besides taking shahadah. I met a couple Frenchmen at the hotel I was staying; they were salty dogs who knew all the back streets and alleyways of Tangier and then some. They took me to a little tea shop that only Moroccans go to in an old section of the city. After sipping mint tea smoking Kef and listing to a Moroccan string and drum band we started on our way back when not to far away, out of a shack comes an older fellow, about forty or so, and begins the call to prayer. Here in this poor back street neighborhood out of a shack comes some kind of holy man with his call to prayer and our eyes connect and something, I can’t explain it, happened. I knew then and there that Islam was Gods true faith, it was the same faith of Abraham, and Moses, and Christianity and Buddhism couldn’t compare to it, those were the two religions I had red the most. I walked away telling myself it was just the Kef but I knew I was lying I would never be able to deny that Islam is Gods one and only people. I fell in love deeply with Islam then and there but I simply couldn’t tell anyone. I, who as a good Catholic boy, in my boyhood fantasies rode with Richard the Lion Hearted and slew thousands of wild Arabs. I even looked like a crusader all I needed was a sword and shield. Do you mean to tell me that the Muslims were right and the Catholics were wrong?
PART II. THE MARRAKESH EXPERIENCE Marrakech was unlike anything before it or after it. It was a life changing experience for all who entered those ancient portals. Ramadan was in January or February that year and there was an earthquake, a fairly strong one the night they made the traditional sacrifice: what is that day called? I was living in the Jewish section of the city and the streets were very narrow, you couldn’t drive a small car down one. It was dark and I was resting and thinking when I heard a deep rumble and everything started shaking. I went down the stairs stood in the door way and watched as bricks and mortar start falling from the buildings and a power line as it snapped and crackle, sparking in front of me doing a mad fantastic serpent dance in clouds of dust and rubble. I am ashamed to say I just took off running down that little street like a fool. At the end of the block I stopped, and questioned myself feeling terribly like a coward. I hope nobody saw me. It was all over pretty quickly, and the streets were filled with people heading for more open spaces, getting out of that death trap ghetto. I went to the Jamafna, we would hang out at the café sportief, it was just outside the main city gate in a large flat desert plane. People were pretty shook up one women was crying. I moved back to the Hotel De France which was in a better location just a block inside the old city gate and between two mosques. I didn’t feel good about leaving Jamie and Daniel in the other place, but I was starting to go down hill mentally from two much drug taking. The entire Marrakech experience was changing, one of the circle of friends, Paul, took a lethal dose of sleepers. Then some crazy Moroccan burned Jamie and Daniel’s passports and travelers checks, There seemed to be so much happening so fast, so many people looking for guidance, searching, and Satan ever present with lies and drugs. One morning well before dawn I was on the roof of the hotel, thinking, I always did too much thinking, when I noticed a golden bow stretching from one mosque to the other, it was like a rain bow but it was of a beautiful soft gold color. The Marrakech experience only lasted about six weeks but it was like the 500 billionth of a second that it takes for a thermal nuclear bomb to fully ignite. I watched the sun rise over Marrakech, it was clear and calm and red, I couldn’t conceive of a more beautiful scene; until that evening when I watched it go down. That day I kept pretty much to myself, trying to sort things out. I was feeling depressed and the Jimmy Hendrix song ‘Manic Depression’ kept playing in my head. Jamie moved back to the hotel she said Daniel just took off walking back to Europe. That evening I was back on the roof watching the sun set over the Jamafna, a scene which shall remain till I die. Off in the distance you could see and hear the Berber drummers playing their drums, they were there every evening to help the sun go down, there were a number of them with various size drums some used big curved sticks others their hands, you felt the sound, it became an extension of your mind and body. Every thing was that fantastic sunset red, the effect was intensified by the dust in the wind and the sound would waft with the wind puffs. Moroccan music is unique, they have a special gift, there was at the same time a woman singing somewhere on the radio, that sound harmonizing perfectly with all else. I felt like this trip was ending and this was the finally. I would leave tomorrow. I never saw Jamie again, or Daniel, Kelley, and Petra I did meet Lydia again in Amsterdam and then again in Katmandu. I thought of Jamie often over the years and the tears on her beautiful cheeks when we parted. I took a bus back to Tangier; the driver looked just like Paul. A little way before entering Tangiers I saw an omen. The Biblical David with a flock of sheep standing not to far from the road. He was looking at me through the window he was smiling. I thought ‘I’m in for it now. I have been strutting around Morocco like Goliath and Allah is going to deal with me.
III . I was on the bus and seeing an omen of the biblical David. I knew that the Magic had left and now I was in for trouble, what kind of trouble I didn't know. I realized that Allah had given me a great gift and I wasn't using that gift for the right purposes. I thought that I liked the lifestyle that I was living and I did not want to change it now, I was having too much fun. Allah was about to show me that change is inevitable in life and that what we think is fun may actually be not so good for us. Allah knows each of us very well, he knows our minds and our hearts, every thought we have and everything we do, yes I knew that; I also knew how compassionate and merciful and forgiving Allah is. So why should I change? Why should I become a Moslem? Allah is very patient with us, he was about to bring me through a large part of the Muslim world and show me clearly that some of these people were doing his well and they were His (I am referring to Allah as Him and His I know and have always known Allah is neither a man nor a woman he is above our understanding.) They are his unique, one and only people. And Islam has something that no other religion or philosophy or teaching or theosophy or any other religious or intellectual endeavor has. But before I could accept that I would have to go through many lessons, trials and tribulations and unnecessary suffering, I am a slow learner. Oh how I envy the really fast learners like Cat Stevens. I met a woman who had a house in Tangier in a good area, it was a nice house, it was three stories and had a basement that was tiled with ceramic tiles, it was cool down their, the toilet room was tiled also, that's where I stayed in the toilet room LOL not really but the first few days seemed like that because the day I moved in I went to a little restaurant that sold a good split pea soup and a loaf of bread for very little money. I got food poisoning on the soup; it was a very bad experience, the first day I thought it would die. It only lasted a couple of days but it caused me some soul-searching. There were two other guys living in the house an English lad and Moroccan lad I met Mohammed in Istanbul about a year or so later, we were both carrying with us and reading a copy of the Koran his was in Arabic. I was feeling depressed and decided I was going to make some changes in my life, I took a scissors and hacked off my long hair I just went right around my head at ear height. In 2004 it would look fine but in 1969 it looked a little out of place. I felt ridiculous and I remember wondering if Allah had a sense the humor. In Tangier, in the neighborhoods where the buildings are all about the same high neighbors tend to socialize on rooftops. We were lucky because there was a family right next to us with three pretty teenage daughters, but I was feeling so depressed and ridiculous I didn't even talk to them. I knew I was in a bad way because I always talked to everybody in those days. I decided to go back to Amsterdam.

A thought about spring.

Sunday, March 20, 2005.
Rainy days can be very pleasing, if a person has a dry shelter with a warm fire and food the rain can actually be a comfort.
Here in southern Utah spring comes early, the days are generally in the high 60s and the evenings are cool but not cold. This spring atmosphere has different scents and different breezes which carry them. In an area which is not inundated with exhaust fumes and other industrial pollutants you can spend countless moments savoring the sweet and pungent aromas emanating from all around you, from the breeze, from the trees, from the earth itself comes this intoxicating ephemeral ambrosial air.
When you are young the experience is so intense that the youthful heart is helplessly drawn to romance. And each spring of your all too few youthful years are a grand adventure and your life is now, and it is with little thought of what was or what will be. Youth is the same as spring; the two were made each other.
As you get older spring still holds this wonderful intoxication but the experience seems less intense and the heart is not so strongly drawn to romance and the thoughts tend to wander into the past, and the memories of the magic which seemed so natural and never-ending. A particular sound or smell will trigger a reaction in your mind, and for a moment you are utterly transformed. As you get older the sobering reality that, things do eventually comes to an end begins to stretch its dark shadow ever more closely with the passing of each season. You would like to fool yourself into believing that with old-age comes wisdom but observation proves this is not always true. Wisdom is a gift, not something that comes with age.

Movie Review

Thursday, March 10, 2005.
I feel obsessed with the thought of growing old. A few weeks ago a lovely lady, a resident of this fine apartment building, offered to give me a new television and I accepted. I have lived without one for many years and now I see why.
The building is wired for cable television and it is freely given to all the tenants. So I have the television and a full cable hookup, all as a gift. There are four or five commercial free movie channels. Almost all the movies are atrocious and insidiously addictive. There have been several movies, the themes of which are about growing old, even though they are the same superficial Hollywood artless statements; I still have a tendency to identify at least with the theme. The only one that actually approached anything meaningful was about a woman (Vanessa Redgrave), actually there were several characters in the storyline but it was seen through Vanessa's eyes for the most part. The drudgery and the futility of life, the anguish of haunting memories, and the binding chains of selfish vanity which make growing old ugly were expressed in a way that only a beautiful woman could portray even though the same concepts are applicable to the male ego.
The setting of the movie was in an aristocratic English background, which due to the gross ignorance, illiteracy, and crudeness of the average American, will certainly cause it to be less than a box office smash.
At the risk of being an awful hypocrite I recommend not only not seeing the movie but blowing up your television set.

grump

Tuesday, March 3, 2005.
I accidentally stepped on a scorpion yesterday in my kitchen, luckily I had my slippers on, and usually I go barefooted in my apartment. When I looked down I saw a flattened little scorpion in the middle of the floor; just one more thing to add to my discontent. Oh yes, I realize contentment/discontentment is all in the mind, but learning to control the mind is something I have yet to master. I never have liked scorpions living with me.
And what's more I'm not adjusting well to living in an apartment house. There's always somebody bumping about or slamming a door or some such thing. For most normal people a little bumping and thumping is no big deal, but for a person like me who is slightly neurotic, perhaps even more than slightly, it becomes difficult to deal with. I do not like to complain about people because I prefer to see myself as a compassionate loving person, but when I am in this state of mind compassion and love are lacking. Anyway I shouldn't complain because almost everything I have, the apartment, the utilities, food, clothing, just about everything material is a gift. And as I have said before, most of it is given to me by a government I detest and would do anything, within the pale of God's law, to change. I see the present political and economic system as Satanic, evil and oppressive.

Fatima

Tuesday, March 1, 2005.
The weather was very warm today; I rode my bicycle around town, as usual. First I stopped at the bicycle shop, the amount of money they want for a new bicycle is absolutely unbelievable. The average price for a fairly decent bicycle is about $800. But I think those are just Moab prices and if I went to Grand Junction I would find a comparable bicycle for about half that price.
From there I peddled down to the wetlands preserve and took a little walk, the sky was beautiful and the breeze smelled so sweet. There were no other people their so I sat on a park bench quietly meditating.
I've been depressed and lacking any semblance of inspiration. I have not done anything in the way of artistic thought for a long time.
Wednesday, March, 2nd 2005.
Sometimes I really don't know what to say, I feel so listless I feel like the life has gone out of me, without inspiration.
I have these wonderful tools, this computer and the wonderful software to paint and draw and be more creative than I have ever imagined and yet I feel so washed out, washed up and finished and I seem to hardly care.

I will tell you more about Fatima but not now, is a beautiful day, like spring, and I think I would like to go down to the wetlands preserve and just sit.