The Courier Book I The Shamans The Story

My name is Jean. I'm a screw-up of the first water. I'm not going to tell you how or where I screwed-up, but I'll say that it was bad-it cost me and others I cared about much. Since then, I've lost my vector. I don't know who I am, anymore, or what I believe in exactly. I have an abstract faith in God but it doesn't amount to a practical impetus in my life. I find myself at loose ends in Oceanside, drifting aimlessly and out of a job-which may have been at Camp Pendleton. My notably few friends, besides some key contacts on the Marine base, include an eccentric landlady and the uncannily-mature kid who manages a local pizza joint and routinely provides me with free burnt pizzas and sage council. With a background in police work and physical security, I gravitate to the periphery of law enforcement; I get a shiny, new P.I. license. Summoned to a Carlsbad mansion, an enigmatic host solicits my services as a courier of a mysterious package. I am told to become a catalyst for change-not only in myself, but more importantly in others. I am enjoined to dig and dig deeply for the answers to my questions and fulfillment of my needs. I am encouraged to delve deeply to holy scripture-particularly the Book of Genesis--and into nature for understanding. I am charged to experience the ocean for inspiration and direction. The host doesn't tell me what's in that payload I'm to deliver, and he-or it could be she--doesn't even tell me who or where the recipient is-I'll have to figure that out from a fat envelope jammed with goofy clues, like a bandolier of syringes of veterinary vaccine, a Shoshone medicine pouch, a canister of fairy shrimp winter eggs, a newspaper article on the Rosenberg spy trial, a cumulative impacts chapter from an E.I.S. on geothermal mining, and a copy of Mao Tse Tung's Little Red Book. I am told, further, that temporal and spatial references are relative-inferring that I should think in terms of spirals, and perhaps even Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. I'm curious. I systematically sleuth through the local libraries and historical archives. I research a strange assortment of references including the Holy Bible, property records, Missing Lost & Stolen property reports, and an Environmental Impact Statement on geothermal operations in the earthquake-prone Eastern High Sierras where water control is in constant controversy. I find Marines and civilian environmentalists on base who are willing to point me in the right direction. I become immersed in Native American history, culture and mysticism, guided by a disabled Navy veteran and BLM ranger. Likewise, I am led through a maze of intrigue surrounding atomic weapons and geothermal energy development, by an imposing B-movie actress, a poetry-spouting Hell's Angel, and a flamboyant Mountain Dew-swilling show-off-all modern day shamans and true heroes in their own rights. I learn about the confluences and divergences of social systems including communism, socialism and democracy from an unlikely assortment of classic and popular literature and films. I begin to understand how authentic patriotism can blossom and fully-flower notwithstanding the most hostile circumstances. Following the bread-crumbs lain down by the envelope-full of clues and the quirky host's repartee of double-entendre and innuendo, I cascade into a new place and time where past and present as well as terrestrial and subterranean environments coalesce into spirals like DNA double helixes. I come to know how everyone and everything is interconnected-perhaps through God's plan, as well as what Albert Einstein meant by The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything and Time is only an illusion, but a very convincing one. Most of all, I learn that only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile. Where does my mission take me? What and whom do I encounter there? Yup, I'm curious, and I hope you will be, too.