My sincerest apologies from the Notes From A Solitary Confinement about getting all colonic on you but from unrepentant diarrhea and vomiting my bowels and innards have swung to being in lock down with my guts bound up in opiate like induced constipation and some more puking. On the plus side my weight isn't in free fall. At the moment anyway. Regrettably all without the relief of any opiates. Well I write this to a ghost like handler who disappeared while hoping against hope that beyond the electronic veil these submissions are being read despite the obvious lack of electronic foot prints. Not only is the intended ghost handler not there and not reading this neither is no one from any bureau or department. Because case closed. File filed away and shelved to obscurity like my writing either by chance or purpose is confined somehow to recesses of the electronic frontier no one - friend or foe - will happen upon - at least while I am alive. And my days are numbered like my pulse and it all feels like its closing in. The noose is getting tighter as the veins clog and my mind slows. The weight drops and my mortality has become all too apparent. I was mined for information like gold. And then left hollow. Strip mined. Abandoned, polluted and left to rot like most corners of the Rustbelt if you look.
I joined The Dissappeared. Except I am here. I function in a life of spartan economics. Without holidays or moments to look forward. Forgotten. Family and friends all died and left me with an assortment of tombstones.
Like every attempt in my life this too was a waste of time - except this time it wasn't a waste of time for me - it was a privilege to engage for a few rare moments with better minds from better economic classes with better educations with these Agents of the dark. Their privilege rubbed off on to me as my lack of privilege soiled their hands and minds and perhaps wasted their precious time in their remarkable careers. Perhaps that is my only consolation. I somehow managed to waste the time of someone better than me - wasted the budget of a department that I question the ethics of. Although that was never my intention it was at the beginning of this entire charade a thought that has been there since this all started. A thought long since forgotten that writing like this has drudged up from my memory. Like when they first came a knocking that day - they went to my neighbor who then called me to tell me these nefarious men in black were on their doorstep looking for me - and it was all so laughable - and for once in my life - some strange force - an instinct for survival rightly welled up in me and I had a good laugh. Back then it was Scott and Mike. Dave hadn't yet been brought in for what I presumed was training. In those days I thought I was being used as a training exercise and I acquiesced out of curiosity and perhaps hope that I would be needed outside of the trap of the Rustbelt. That I would end up back over seas to other worlds I was then keenly interested in - places that have now been reduced to near rubble. Or I had hoped I would find a path to work just out of the Rustbelt - at the least. Or that my forays into real estate wouldn't have been trampled on and questioned by Spooks to such a threatening degree as they were. It was a courageous and naive attempt on my part to try to make something for myself within the confines of the Rustbelt - and though it was all my fault... I learned some good lessons ...my only regret is not having a property now with which to rent to apply the lessons learned from my mistakes. Well Spooks a spooking and gut disease and the subsequent mental health complications that go with a cocktail such as all that aren't good for business. I take the blame. And they blamed me for it then callously and perhaps ballsy of them and they walked away and didn't look back and they have no regret or shame or conscience about it. I am out of their picture - beyond the scope of their sacred secret realm where they can choose to apply their conscience to their world. But I don't inhabit that world. And boy did they let me know that. I only saw an inaccurate glimmer of their world from the privileged moments I got confined to the back seat of rental automobile.
And all I am left with is laughing at myself. Being embarrassed by myself. By learning very fast how inconsequential I am and how entirely expendable. I'm so expendable I am not even worth the trouble of being expended. I was left to being confined to the cave of my own ineptitude and failure within the Rustbelt. My college education nor decade overseas nor time spent beyond the confines of the West to those places few Americans seldom ever see was going to save me from my own ineptitude without my spouse there to help steer me away from the traps of my own making. But these guys left me on that collision course - watched it happen - perhaps even egged it on with snide commentaries. And here I am confined to anonymity in the Rustbelt and within the electronic frontier. And I just have to be thankful it isn't the literal prison cell my sister Margo inhabited for 38 years that I am confined to in the Midwest. I have to be content that I am not in a coffin or another unaccounted for corpse beneath the surface somewhere. But this - this life of mine - is an existence much like being buried alive. No partner. No one to date. Because I wouldn't want to share my gut disease or mental health with anyone. I have to be a stalwart bachelor lacking a hug since Margo died back in '15. Buried alive in a burnt out neighborhood. Stuck in a used house long past its expiration date. And despite the stock markets historic achievements at present I am stuck in entry level retail where I struggle to compete. With no vacation days to look forward to. No retirement. Just existence - and confinement trapped in a casket of a life none of these Agents I knew would care to inhabit with me for even a week.
And I have to be thankful to do so everyday I have without having to drag a colostomy bag around. My life is in effect over. It ended in the Spring on 2013 with Daves farewell conversation via a telephone call. Little more than a text message break-up. A call he was making out of obligation - a call he didn't seem to want to make but a call that wasn't really pleasant either. And as it became apparent where it was going all I could blurt out was something like from a song from the old film the Breakfast Club - really - really that was the best I could summon for such a moment. Don't forget about me. A line once delivered I regretted. But getting basically told as much as to be fired or broken up with - I've survived divorce and I possibly found this departure from my life much harder. Because at least in divorce I knew what was wrong on both sides of that equation. In this equation all I wanted to know was why. Why this. Why me. Why the interrogations. What were you guys up to and what did you want from me. And I never, never knew. And I had to use my imagination to fill in the blanks. And when they retreated from the ether of reality from whence they came that curious imagination turned on me and sent me into a modern day suburban out patient insane asylum. And well some of that dynamic is on their conscience - As of course it was one of their threats. Or somehow fullfilling prophecies - and I had to will myself to get better with no help from the consequences of their superior meddling forces. And so I write this appealing to their sense of humanity and compassion to just somehow - be there - on the other end of this electronic line - to pierce the electronic veil that they control - and to for chrissakes - offer a hand up - if not a hand out. And just because some of their victims are dead - and I'm not - not reaching up with a skeletal arm from a grave beneath the surface - I am alive - and reaching - wanting to know some why's - and also - how's so as to get out of this rut of economic entrapment that is the Rustbelt. I have always maintained that a better tactic they could have used would have been just that. No hand out - but a hand up. To understand something of the world I was in. To be illuminated about the economics of this place - and instead of threats of consequences for trying in real estate - some analysis and gee - even just encouragement - would have gone a long way.
So now I sit at home alone - sip the occasional Gin Tonic and watch some Spy related TV show, or documentary or movie to get closer to the memories I have of them. I haven't had a crush like this in a long time nor one so enduring. And like crushes are its all so one dimensional. Its only happening on my side - the forgotten side - of the electronic veil. I am not even a foot note in their careers memory or a regret - or a nagging voice from within their buried conscience that their formidable careers and paycheck and benefits - formidable when compared to mine - keep them detached from having to deal with.
I am here though. Waiting. Like a widow on the roof walk of a house in denial about a husband who will not come home from having met with the Siren of the song from the sea.
I am here - I will wait. Tending to gravestones and not going anywhere. Steadfast in my own way. Having accepted the curse of the Rustbelt economic containment. Accepting being dismissed. Grateful for having been relieved even if I didn't want to be. Perhaps even grateful I wasn't killed off.
I will though regret always not being sent to some lonesome mobile home in a dry climate away from whatever went on around me here.
That is perhaps my one bit of criticism to that Agency. To those men. That I was left like a sitting duck and perhaps that was the fate they assigned to me to have to face. The consequences for something I was to never be illuminated on that happened around me. That's a bitter realization to face in these revealing words.
I did matter enough for the budget for that. I don't matter enough still.
And here I am waiting for a source code that will never be broadcast to this sleepers uneventful life.
Waiting for someone to come in from the dark. Waiting on the wrong side of the electronic veil.
Confined in economic containment too close to the epicenter of something I wasn't supposed to understand.
Abandoned like I was by the dead in my life.
I rattle on. Because its like missing a dear friend. But these men are like the people one misses who weren't good for you to care about.
They used me and took what they came for - whatever that was. Everything with them was a game - a game they understood and a game they knew the rules of - a game they didn't play to win because they had done so already before they even contacted me.
I am perhaps proud to say I don't have a name but I am among the losers in the world. The nameless losers. They never had a name with me. But they had a name for me.
I never asked them much - it wasn't as I assume they thought - out of some narcissism on my part. I just wanted to keep their lies to a minimum. I assumed Dave wasn't a Dave anymore than Mike was a Mike. I knew better than to ask about their personal lives or family. I knew their amicability wasn't real. And though I was so lonely at the time - I couldn't help but fall for their brilliant acting abilities so as to convince me I matter and that I was perhaps a bit more than just an acquaintance. Gosh Dave was really good at that. So I never asked the questions of them that I would have if they hadn't been in the line of work they were. But I thought about it. In fact I thought about it so naturally because they strung me along as if I was almost a friend that I'd reflexively think about them in reciprocating ways. And with some self discipline I had to turn off my questions of their personal life because I am sure they would answer in convincing ways within the part of a character they played like an actor. So trying to just stay within a dimension as real as possibly out of respect for them and their work and private lives - I didn't indulge those tendencies in me to ask. Perhaps that is what I want to say. I was very interested in those guys. But to be polite and to keep the lies and the character parts being played to a minimum - that that was a form of respect and admiration. But then I admired these guys more with respect and admiration that they would scold me for even having if ever we could talk off the record.
I don't know.
But do they understand the Rustbelt or what it is like to be a trapped Rustbelter. Contained. And even if they understand do they care. What kind of people were they - who did they become. One thing is for sure they don't wonder what I am doing at this very moment - as often as I wonder that about them.
They altered my mind which changed my values - but in some way my life didn't really change. I'm still stuck under the mantle of the massive mill stone that is the Rust Belt of the Midwest's neck. Stuck in the confines of economic limitation that drove everyone here to back Trump and hand him the White House - only to then have him forget us by the time he bothered to even make the appearance for the media of attempting to start the privilege of downsizing it and to begin residing in the White House.
I say its time for a new National Anthem - or perhaps at the least the addition of another one and with this post I am submitting my nomination for the theme song to the original Hawaii Five-O TV show.
I have thoughts and opinions to contribute and perhaps if considered - perhaps even if experimentally implemented - yeah well - ha reality is knocking - what is this blogette about - it is about being confined to obscurity - electronically circumvented so as not to be seen. Threat neutralized. Case subject all but deceased. File closed. Boxed up - filed away and inaccessible. The thought police came in did their surgery and left me with the psychic equivalent of full frontal lobotomy (full frontal pun couldn't be resisted because gosh those guys were all sexy aye-Gents) and the work of my hand by writing has resulted in my miserable existence being rerouted information and imagination to the lonely corners of the web of obscurity and oblivion unseen and unread - unavailable even if Googled. Such is my electronic banishment.
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