Abandoned Buildings

Yesterday, I called n. to see if he wanted to go to a movie. He hedged at first, because his friends had a plan, and he tried to get a side trip to a model store, but he eventually agreed. I picked him up, and I agreed to stop at a craft store to get some paint brushes to let him keep painting his models.
He told me a little more about his friends. His friend Nigel is about 20, and short – “four feet high”. N. finds him hilarious. They hang out with a 15 year old named Adrian. They do “missions” in abandoned buildings. Missions involve sneaking or breaking in, and exploration, and risk-taking and vandalism. The idea of mission seems to be taken from video adventure games. N. says they gain powers by completing missions. I asked him about where Nigel lives and how he supports himself and n. became defensive.
On the ride to the theater, said he has a meeting on April 26 with his CFS worker to start on “independent living” which will allow him to get social assistance to cover a place to live and some food, living unsupervised. This appears to be what he wants. He also talked about starting to hang around the St. Vital mall again, because kids are starting to hang around there again, and it’s fun.
We saw Hellboy, which was a pretty good movie. It had a comic-book sensibility with enough humour to avoid becoming pretentious. There was a strong occult and satanic theme in the plot with the satanic forces opposed by a Hellboy, who responded to teaching of his “father”. The satanists do not prevail in the end.
On the ride back to his hotel n. talked about his occult beliefs. He says that Jan has magic healing powers, but she engages in white magic (she might agree). He believes in Kthulu and dark powers. I knew from previous discussion that he had read the Satanic Bible books a few months ago, and that he had been powerfully impressed. I had already told him that the book was written by man named Anton Szandor Lavey within the last 40 years, and that I thought Lavey’s Church of Satan was basically a scam. I didn’t get far with that approach then, so I didn’t argue about it again. I just asked him to elaborate on his beliefs and I asked how he knew these things. He said he just knew. My best guess is that Satanic themes pervade metal music, that kids who like that music learn about Satanism through song lyrics and fan information, and are drawn to the modern occult literature about Satanism, and that information is passed among teens by word of mouth.
When I dropped him, I said I would try to see him again another evening, perhaps with his uncle Frank. N. wanted me to give him $10 because he needed to light up on April 20. He said there was some kind of bud event and people were going to light up publicly. I declined.
This morning, one of the headlines in the newspaper was about the Firefighers’ Union’s warning that Firefighers were at risk going to fight fires in abandoned industrial plants. There have been many abandoned industrial plants in Winnipeg, and they have all been vulnerable to squatters and vandalism. Sometimes the vandals set fires, or squatters’ fires will get out of control. Firefighters will go in, at some risk, if they believe people are in these buildings.
My brother Frank is a firefighter. I have mentioned his efforts to contact n. and to help n. to move out of his present state in other posts.
Sometimes the irony of my life becomes palpable.