Handler

Random sentence read online about handlers and the handled. 

(Text is in spy craft invisible ink and barely visible for some reason).

 When their operations officer gets transferred or retires from the agency, many of them do not even get to see another officer, their information isn’t deemed important enough.

This officer is the only one who knows his identity and for the rest of the agency, he is just a codename.

In The Shadows of Memory Both Real and Imagined

 It's been how long since the good cop/bad cop routine of Mike and Dave came calling?

Despite various electronic flares launched over too long a time.

Still no business cards left by the doorbell seeking a reply.

In the midst of what some call the 'Plan-demic' I launch another electronic flare.

I'm not expecting the fake named Mike or Dave to answer the call. 

Any more than perhaps someone who came after them will as it were but won't.

If there is no answer - it's just going to get chalked up to mental instability.

As it already has.

Lovely thought as that may be it's just lacking. 

I have done everything to comply, co-operate, to remain true to some idea.

An idea that was nothing more than something determined to be false at that.

The increasingly bad memory like a stale taste left in the mouth after a cheap cigarette.

The past failed. The present never existed, the future was a disappointment.

Time spent to waste time. 

When you fall in Love for a spook who is nothing more than a ghost of a memory.

Not the physical love addiction kind of Love - but something less than a statistic of sex.

A love for what one could have been under different direction but not so claimed by Eros himself.

Or the Agency of Spooks from the shadows of economic civilization.

Memories of a light beard and wild eyes focused on something at hand I have yet to comprehend.

The condescension of what went with being on the receiving end of that.

To be turned - on - discarded - abandoned - left.

The absolute to surrender to something incapable of understanding to show willing compliance.

Only to face wanton and decadent corporate disregard.

The empty house, the empty mind, the empty life. Waiting for the pulse to fade and stop. 

Steeped in Gin and a certain regret.

When everything else has stopped instead.

How many more words of confession must be lived at the level of a desperate isolated and lonesome Soul unwilling to be forgotten.

How much disregard can one man accept in this bitter hateful equation of Governmental Industrial Espionage?

Living alone with no one to care - no one to leave anything to - No one who would notice a sudden and catastrophic demise when I could give you everything I have left in exchange for a confirmation of memory.

The arrogance of this hateful equation condemns you to a miserable Hell that you cannot dare to speak from and drink to avoid as the layers of time continue the uncertain distance of memory.

 

Upon Having Gone Dark

Postscript? Perhaps.
Dave and company came and went perhaps as inter-dimensional types or perhaps they are better explained as time travelers - nudging life history trajectories like mine to suit a timeline I will never be privy to. The time travelers always enviable types with a set of rules the likes of us will never know. At some point I have to enter a request.
I've been left here on this dimensional shelf of a real estate parcel of containment. Trapped in a life I wouldn't wish on anyone. And a life despite however grim and Gothic I must practice thankfulness for. The gods know things could be worse for me just as they are worse for all too many others.
My life's residual negativity and discontent from an accumulation of too many of life's curve-balls ensures that I remain confined. Curve balls that came first to my folks life long before the meteor of 1976 struck us. As if the economic confinement of the years of my employed life always being low wage subsistence wasn't enough to make me reject everything about Capitalism, Democracy and the Republic for which no one in their right mind would stand if they could turn off Fox and just be honest with themselves.
I don't want to beg but basically that is what all of these words here and in the rest of this Shelved to Obscurity blogette are. If you are the inter-dimensional time traveling Dave or from his entourage - or know of him - then with all these words I am just asking to be remembered. And would you or any of you just come get me. This isn't where I am supposed to be. This wasn't how it was to be. No one should be in a world and yet so cut off from it as I am. If you have the ability to teleport in and out of lives to nudge history then you can certainly come here and take me somewhere else. At the least to a different climate - perhaps one less humid. At best somewhere away from down the street from everything you used me for.
Years of recurring curve balls and subsequent depression and gut disease cannot be removed my mind. There isn't much left of me. And no one is coming for me. And we both know I am stuck here - albeit whether if feels like it or not in some state of privilege for which to be gracious. Some of which I have only myself and chance to thank. But if you are out there. And if you are reading this. When you retreat into your own world outside of work - when you withdraw into your room within a house to your comfortable chair in that withdrawing room of old. With drink in hand and the lights are dim after dark - when the people in your life are quiet... will you consider me. Not then from out interviews - consider me now. Where you left me last - consider what you know now. Just pause for a moment and meditate on me now. Feel my social isolation, consider my lack of family or friends. Think about how there is no way out of the economic gridlock of a diseased life that hinders employment and no freedom from a broken healthcare system in cahoots with a predatory banking system of social control. Trapped within a miserable outer-belts clutches. 5 Days off a year. No healthcare benefits at work. Medicaid dissolving around me. Mental health precarious at best. Financial illiteracy and fragility. Daily rounds of relentless diarrhea - trying to compete with guys half my age without the baggage I have to carry.
Think about how much I just want to talk to you or someone like you. Someone who knows what it was all about for which you came to me. And having you inexplicably gone for reasons I will never know. You having left me within a vacuum that will suck up my life. Without the ability to cultivate a life of my own. I'm thankful this isn't a prison cell like Margo's 38 year containment - but I'm trapped in an illusion of a real estate parcel and containment not too unlike her confinement.
And you know more than me. And if you set your mind to it - you can grasp what I'm writing to you about and why I've written to remember. And even if we both know you weren't real and none of this happened as I am obliged to say in print. You know what did - you know what its effect was on me. And you know what your continued silence does. And though it is well within your power or the power of the people who you worked with to step through to my reality and in an act of compassion if not lend a hand up then just talk to me again to answer a few of my questions as I answered yours.
Relish your privilege. Considered my impoverished post Belgian life. Post family. Literal gay divorcee. And you and I both know that the me you worried I might have been back then that compelled your bureau to seek me out was probably more real life than what I actually was and certainly what I am now. I am a nobody. We both knew that. I'm just astonished to this day you spent as much time and department budget on me as you did. It was a privilege for me. I will never know what it was for you. But I am asking for that bit of latent compassionate humanity so professionally buried to reach out to me. Because I don't want to die with so many unanswered questions about myself - that your file on me contains the answers to.
You came into my life like a sci-fi time traveler - and you teleport-ed out as such. And the very fact that you talked to me caused a series of cascading effects that weren't for the better. There is a file on me. A file I don't get to see. A file that if I could see could help me arrange the fragments of my shattered mind and life back together as much as they can be. You could talk to me - this could all be a bit better with some conciliatory effort on you and your agencies part. And you and I both know you won't.
So as you sit in the dark and the quiet - sipping your drink. Remembering other victims who's lights you extinguished - though their hearts stopped beating. You extinguished my light but left my heart beating. Sip on that.
I forgave you for all this a long while back.
But this dark unlit candle wick that remains of my life - its all I have left after the machinations of your work obliged you to perform on me.
Forgive me if I feel like I am owed something of what your work earned you that my misery made possible.
If nothing else show me how to make the numbers of my life and lack of decimal places work so that I can navigate from today until my heart stops beating.
I hope you and the file and the answers and assessment that I don't get to learn from because I don't get to see them - redaction's aside - because you and your agency do no extend to me the humanity you all extend yourselves. Therefore I don't matter. We both I know I am a nobody. Never was somebody. The human life equivalent of Spam.
Trying to finance a spartan life of solitude and depression while wondering when will my heart stop beating and I breath my last - knowing your memory will haunt me until then. Knowing you mostly try to erase me from your memory. Knowing you lack the balls and ambition to step outside of your professional limitation to help when you very well could. Thanks for not extending me that hand of humanity. I guess we weren't all in this together. You and the list of names I carry in me - the people who profited off of my suffering - the list of guys who aren't going to give back in any way. I image your self-rationalizations. I image what you could have done to me that could have been much worse that thankfully wasn't. But now this much time later - could you not find some compassion to consider my being. Consider my longing. Consider my asking for your assistance - with what I was and what I have become as a function of your intrusion and damage.
This isn't who I am. This wasn't supposed to happen. But being marooned in the remains of all this is very hard to endure.
There are very few handshakes now. Very few hugs. There is no necessary physicality after dark in a bed shared like a life. Meals if you could call them that are canned and eaten alone.
Technology further amplifies isolation. Even watching TV as a kid from the extra added sugar TV generation eludes me now.
I can't wrap my mind around this life this many years post Belgian. I don't know why I long for you and your kind. And I can't help think you got the luxury to travel in and out of the dimension I am trapped in to return to your better place. And that you can't look back or acknowledge that my heart beats on. And though you were never obviously a lover of any kind - its either time traveling agent or former lover is my limited brains way of filing you away so I can plod on in my misery. Lover no of course but sincere admiration.
When the air and the sunlight from life and your dimension happen upon your face and you sense those natural privileges - well I am trying to imagine that - and I'm hoping you don't leave me here in this canned airless world. Trapped in this illusion of near poverty on every level imaginable. You won't call. You won't write. You won't send cash. You won't send an oblique message. You won't sent encouragement. You departed and I was left to live out what you left me with dead on my feet.
Gosh I am naive because as I write this I actually think you will move.
This is the work you do. This is what you make. This is what you don't take home after work.
This has a name. It's my name. I am a life not worth living. I am waiting for the stamp in the file with my number on it marked
DECEASED

Going dark

Perhaps there isn't much more to dredge up. Or maybe there is. Of course all of this never happened. This is all just the diary of a present day mad man. The only persons who need read this are those who occurred in it. But as it is all just a fiction my mind has made up for some elaborate reason you are wasting your time reading this. Unless of course what I wrote is about you. But it isn't. But if it is then I do want to hear from you. Which was the point of this entire blogette from the get-go. But we both know you don't exist anymore than these recorded moments existed.
So what is it like to live with such fantasies of the mind. Mostly I just battle keeping a grip on reality with a form of tinnitus that comes and goes and drives me bat shit cuckoo when it kicks into gear like a Cuban embassy office in my head. I should just blame that on these spooks but real or not I like them too much. Need and needed them. I now see them as trans-dimensional types - they are gone now and now I am too far gone to matter. Like my house and neighborhood I too am long past my use by date. Expired. Retired. Forgotten.

Cold cased as I am...

And now having lost my mind I don't know what is real or what was real. I no longer know if what I long for - a reunion of sorts is even possible if this is all just the fragmentary remains of a shattered mind and life. If all that I have written didn't happen then I have to doubt even if I am writing this or if it is in fact writing itself.

Soliloquy for the Invisible Man and Men

After my run in with those guys who do not wear black but who wear casual almost athletic attire so unremarkable you know guys like me couldn't afford to dress like that even if we wanted to - and I for one don't know that I do - well maybe now - but not then. But I can't so I don't.
There was a moment I got into the back seat of a car - the other guy - the interchangeable or random replacement was a sportish youthful type with such a clean shave I almost felt sorry for him. He was driving. I even remember his hair color and texture or so I think. The quiet one of the two was usually the driver. He was handsome this day in the textbook requirement way that guys like this have to be to be made into whatever it is they actually are. I call them the invisibles because they only let you see them when they want you too. And its probably not in your best interest in anyway if you see them. It's not so much that they are bad luck - they are though harbingers of not another person but some sort of change and it probably isn't going to mean for the better so far as you are concerned. But you never know and that is their capital leverage in this equation. The more I think back and remember these events the more it does seem crazy and unbelievable and that is exactly what they said would become of thinking, talking, writing about it, or just plain pondering it with ones basic intellect. And that is another piece of their capital over you. They can also activate your inner police man - the one you keep in your head to keep you out of trouble or jail or prison or that might save your marriage if you listen to it. But you probably won't. I didn't anyway. They can also activate your inner mentally ill self and send you to the cuckoo's nest that you won't get to fly over. They hold the keys to the Judicial system and penal system so far as you are concerned. Maybe not for themselves but certainly for the likes of us. This is precisely why I first listened to them and took them dead serious. Dead. Serious. Remember, I grew up in the shadow of my sister Margo's 38 year prison sentence that our entire family served with her. And she got her start with all of that in High School and at a mental health institution that in those days wasn't out patient. It was still then very much Nurse Ratcheds domain of feminine control and socio-gender revenge. So I knew that if these guys wanted to pay attention to me then it was either going to be prison or death or both as in Margo's eventuality. I was surprised at their casual sociability. The Men In Black days were at least for me over or happening somewhere else. They didn't even sport sunglasses. I almost remember the color of their eyes. Or think I do.
I got into the back of another nameless sedan it could have been domestic or foreign but it was bland - that was all that stood out. Unremarkable. Forgettable. And this is still a motor-city knock off. This sedan wasn't meant to stand out and I think for that reason I sort of in a mannish way felt sorry for these guys driving an aged widows unremarkable sedan. I believe this was the car park next to the River I grew up on the banks of. So they were in my territory. I think I even offered to show them around - which they dismissed without any dismissal. That ability when you are on the receiving end of it will make you feel small. It will make you feel more under endowed that you already think you are. It will make it all shrink up in that way that kills your confidence or what's left of it. There was no gesture - no word - they heard the invitation - they just paid it no mind with such an ability as only training and a busy job yields. So having started out with such a dismissal my mind wandered even as I answered questions. There was a bag next to me. As the driver was more sportier in attire than the handler that day I figured the bag was his. The bag looked like it was pulled off sporting goods store display rack - merchandised with all the items one would ideally want but could not ever afford all of. Socks so meticulously folded, A waistband of some sort of briefs or trunks, T-shirt rolled up, a towel or two... So naturally I'm hoping to see something used - something that suggests these guys are human. Something that has been worn. A sweat wet T-shirt or supporter of sorts anything jockish. Its wrong but the fact that their visits seemed so choreographed to someone like me suggests that in some Alice in Wonderland way this bag is on purpose. This bag isn't what it seems. This bag might be a test. Otherwise it would be in the trunk of the sedan or at least in the front seat. I gave the bag a once over - looked at its fabric and stitching. Either they live an upper end life and are so Military trained they live their lives as if its merchandised by their self discipline or there is something in the bag... I couldn't see anything to suggest it. I wasn't a fool I wasn't going to pry into it although I admit I wanted to. I checked the rear view mirror expecting at least one set of eyes. They were looking down at their phones or laptops. I suppose a lesser person would have ran off with the bag. I politely ignored it as it wasn't mine - this entire situation they owned even when absorbed by their devices. I try to be a man and a gentleman at that in general at this point in life. It wasn't my business. But I did wonder if it indicated a dismissive sort of default trust. That at this point they themselves knew I was a waste of time. And I knew I was. And it really cuts deep when you realize your very human existence is a waste of someone's time who is getting paid a wage you will never see in your lifetime no matter how hard you work. And they already by nature have the good looks - the strong slender builds - the keen eye and intense sharp minds - the jovial forced sense of casual humor that make life in the Midwest amicable. In short you rightly assume they are packing an enviable uncut gun as well in addition to the one in their concealed holster. They really are who you want to be. They are who you would be if you could design your genetic mortality and social fate with God before you are born and sent to this miserable life on this planet; a planet that you will never really see the beauty and majesty of from a life of retail and social servitude. And like in Plato's Book 7 of the Republic you will just see false and flickering images on your TV. They know your existential dilemma before you even knew it. And by the time you have realized it they have forgotten you. So the real question is why - when the dust settles is it impossible to hate them. They somehow bring magic - you know magick with a 'k' - almost pagan despite being so deceptively packaged in casual attire. They are physically and mentally larger than life. Their presence is formidable and yet somehow socially acceptable and in a way unnoticeable in passing. It's all enough to make you think there is some sort of master race being cultivated by these governmental agencies. My father was a WWII Veteran - I was a late comer to the family. They live in a class of people that I am not nor ever will be able to be even a janitor to. They have all my admiration after all their machinations with me and once they achieved that - then me and my admiration did not matter. If I hadn't been a US Citizen I doubt my life would have mattered. And I'm not certain it did. My only card to play was co-operation even if I was going to hell for it. It could have all ended badly - and in a way it did end badly - but it could have ended badly in a way even they would have thought was bad. And they might have given it a passing thought that that was a shame before it was forgotten. It all ended in a way I still think bad but they don't think that. My consolation is I am alive. So why did I want to blow my brains out two years ago. I dunno maybe ask them for me if you see them.
After you make your peace with their visits and conversations and what they ask even if they knew I would fail as I did - I don't know when the plug was pulled and they disappeared - something in me snapped. A significant part of my being was either lost or shut down. I'm not the person I was. I don't like or even approve of the changes - the mind changes and you learn not to fight it. You just have to submit and accept your lowly place in the natural or unnatural order of these things. No matter how hard you want to matter in this life to this class of people and above - you do not matter - you never did matter - you never will matter - they never owed you anything - they will never share anything whatsoever with you monetarily, or even just basic social egalitarian generosity like say at a cocktail party. You won't run into them on the street unless they want you to.
It's not objective of me to confess my feelings now for them. This is a blogette for chrissakes. This isn't NPR - it's not even Fox. This is my diary. My confession. Their sin. Their betrayal perhaps. My wrong. Its my brain regurgitating a history as I best can recall it. Its not all accurate because even my perception is skewed. They know this and its all part of their advantage. I admire them. They had a job to do. They won me over. The inner workings of my mind changed in time. I am someone else now. I do not approve of this or the result I just accept it. It came with social losses. I am a loner like I have never been as a result. It beats a prison cell or a grave no one knows about. A Grave no one knows about is pretty much my life anyway at present so I write this.
So regardless of your sexual orientation you will find these men affect you. All I can figure is they have some spray bottle of mens athletic brand fragrance you probably know or own yourself but they have infused it with something like a pheromone to target you with. If you are all straight then underneath the mens fragrance is some ovulating woman's pheromone that you will be unaware of - and whilst sitting in the backseat of their rented car you are trying to suppress a stubborn hardon that is making you feel conflicted just as they shut the meeting down. And that wasn't an accident or coincidence either. I am sure this is all fiction - I'm just trying to remember what I went through. But you know the situation. You have an embarrassing and continuing swelling in your crotch right when the social parameters are changed and you are dismissed and your heart is racing in your chest and even though these guys aren't your type or gender or not - you get back to your car and wonder what the f*ck just happened. And these guys driving away are such geeks that they are either oblivious or such work horses they aren't even getting a chortle out of the spontaneity of their work. Although if I remember correctly - they wait for you to drive off first so you have no idea where they are going - even though they are trained for this sort of thing and you are not.
So then you spend more time than you want to despite your orientation (whatever it is) in trying to convince yourself that none of this matters - You don't want to like them that way - etc. And you talk yourself down literally and figuratively and you go back to your mundane existence knowing that there is more out there than you will ever be allowed to enter into. And that you would do anything to be a part of it. Anything. And that you are somehow now a zombie and they can lead you to do things they  never would because its your ass on the line not theirs and somehow from now on that's ok. Wrong - oh so wrong - but its going to be ok. Or so you tell yourself because you want to know more. You want to meet with them again.
Except it won't happen. Fast forward a year or two and you are laying on the floor of an empty room against the wall trying to cradle hug yourself while crying beyond anything you have ever cried for in your life. And its not anyone thing - its everything its the summation of your life - all your deaths of family and friends all your failures and regrets. Its like everything and yet not anyone thing - there was no trigger - it just hit you one day like an invisible force and doesn't leave. And you are rocking and crying and trying to cradle yourself for so long you lose track of time. It subsides only to return. And guess who is sitting in your living room smirking - offering you his gun and showing you how to operate it and where in your head to point it. For the first time in a long time since your last handshake you feel the warmth from his larger than your hand. That goes with his larger than your life. And you wonder if he is an Angel then which kind or perhaps both. But it all in your head.
And somehow without his help you manage a call and end up in an outpatient mental health clinic and they put on you on a regime of meds for a PTSD War Veteran for what used to be called Shell Shock and you work yourself through that program and get out - then Margo dies unexpectedly taking with her to her crematorium grave all reason to be here in central Ohio. And you put your dog down because his chronic immune disorder is killing you to watch. And you hold him for his lethal injection and in just that moment before the needle - he looks like he did when you got him before he became so sick.
And if you didn't love this canine like it was your last living relative you might just realize that your relationship with this dog isn't unlike your relationship with your handler who only plays the part of actually caring about you which if you are smart you won't let your feelings mistake for anything even approximating love from these kind of guys. Which I'm glad to say I did not do. I never thought love was in the equation - love of money yes not me or them or any such combination. These are the people who can and will kill you if necessary. Its a tough job but in this world someone has to do it. And yippee now I respect that sort of thing - mind control or as I call it life control is pretty astonishing in how far we have come.
And all homosexual disclaimers aside - although I was attracted to these men - and some more than others - I think I learned a few years back while traveling through parts of the world where being a homosexual is a Capital offense - I learned how to professionally secure my physical and or emotional longing or needs - to lock them up so that I could return from those places with my head attached. So then meeting with these guys - ok yeh they are really from top to bottom more than your average man in just about all the ways possible - so you just push those thoughts down literally and figuratively because for me it was a matter of respect. Of being a gentleman. Of not needing to take my sexuality or emotional needs everywhere all the time as some must. And I was at least smart enough to know it was never going to be an option no matter what part they were playing. And gosh it still was a privilege though to be around. When you write this much for no good reason you can embed those kind of thoughts in all these words and they sort of get lost in there and generally missed or looked over. And don't matter. So no harm done. After all I guess this is my side of the story - I'm writing it for them. I think anyway. I mean its almost little more than fan mail. Its certainly not a love letter. I am though asking for some Time as I've said to pierce the digital veil between us. Which sadly isn't going to happen. So what choice is there here. I have to delve into my mind and dredge up all the memory that I can of something that I am not suppose to understand and certainly not to be discussing with you dear reader. I wish to god though Dave or Mike et al would read this and I know they won't. They will probably want to stay clear in their mind and steer clear of the kind of information such as this that is well below their pay grade now.
And maybe its my ego but perhaps if this was read then perhaps something good would come of it before it just getting dismissed upon the first scan. Perhaps maybe someone in similar shoes as I was in will have a better outcome as a result. Perhaps the money spent on interrogation and to instill fear could be rerouted to favor the information services victim to help and not do incidental harm. What if for once the cat fed the mouse. Or what if the dog killed the cat to help the mouse. Well my dog RiP would have killed the damn mouse for he was a better mouser than any cat. So maybe I am a useless carcass with a maddening gut disease that is a drain on the system and I am long past due for extermination.
Never-the-less I haven't ever wanted to talk to someone to the degree I want to with these Mike and Ike's - And that is what spooks me most now - my desire in this equation. Desire for time and to speak. To see what is there again. Somehow Dave became the hero in this story and somehow I was remade though certainly not made whole. You can't give someone like me a frontal lobotomy without some unwanted consequences. So those add to the problems before that sent these guys a knocking. I just somehow set off a lot less red flags than I used to. In short nothing was solved. and I don't want to detail that because it will only make me that much more pathetic to admit. But this desire to have at least some off the record back door access is driving me insane. This sliver in the Matrix that they somehow can step through that I cannot. As it turns out I need them more than they ever needed me. And this is beyond closure. Is there some humanity in here to respond to this. These flares. These forbidden messages of craziness and help. These reverse assessments of a non professional nature.
Shut away in a tomb of a ghetto-lite 9oo square foot house long past its use by date. Rather like its owner a gut sick depressive failing work horse in a rusting tertiary economy. Too gut grouchy to be of any use except for these unwanted words. As always and again for somebody who wasn't really named Dave. Better than a celebrity. Genuinely larger than life Dave unlike anything a celebrity could hope for.
This is all probably less than fan mail anyway. I'm not even a lab rat human trapped in a digital maze. Oh for chrissakes this is like trying to communicate beyond the veil that gets so thin this close to Hallowe'en night.

Lone Wolf

Here is my life now - There is a collection of family and friends who inhabit graves - I have a collection of tombstones or memorial markers as my loved ones. Consequently the people I know the best are radio personalities or journalists on the one hand to film celebrities on the other. These are one sided arrangements. I know them but they do not even know of my existence. They do not know my name or where I reside. They don't know my lifes strange history... Then the people who know me best - the Aye-Gents of the FB-eye know me quite well but I do not know them. Or at least they once did. They know my names - my life's history - perhaps better than me. They have their assessments their opinions and even to some degree their experience with me. I cannot say that about them. I do not know their real names. I do not even know for certain where they work or for who exactly. I know nothing about them and in fact as far as I am concerned in their minds they do not actually exist for I cannot call them by name or find them. They know my name and my worth and where and how to get a hold of me. They have their assessments of course and their conclusions and I have been filed away and shelved. But there are things they don't know despite perhaps knowing me better than I can say I know myself.
When your inventory of yourself is like mine - like this - That your loved ones lay below memorial stones and the people you know don't know you and you don't know the people who know you best - you are as I am a mad dog or as they say a lone wolf. So when I watch the news on occasion as I do and I try not to - I fear I understand those people who inexplicably become mass - well - you know - the bad guys who for good reason are vilified. Sadly I somehow relate to them. But let me underscore that I have no desire to hurt anything or for that matter anyone. Although I am not a vegetarian I am conflicted about eating meat especially meat and dairy products from factory farms - those animal Auschwitz from where our food we eat comes from. My own depression and mental health struggle just means I connect to people who have their own demons and their own battles. For chrissakes my very own sister served three life sentences before dying in an old Ohio prison - so forgive me if the perpetrators of social carnage somehow make some sense to me. Perhaps I understand the personal devastation that leads people to implode in such away as to take down others in their own life tragedy. But it ends there.
What I don't understand though is how I ended up in this corner. A corner of isolation. Yet here I am. an assortment of grave markers as my family friends. Abandoned by agents awhile ago. Stuck with the company of radio and internet and the personalities there within to bond with in one sided ways.
I've sent up flares - I have asked for help. I have worked hard to get through a mental health program to get functional enough to hold a job and not be a danger to myself or anyone else. And yet where am I. Alone. Off on my own. Disconnected. Its hard to keep a strong face in the middle of that. It is baffling to talk to people who do not have these challenges. I am painfully alone. It feels like I live under a curse. In reality I just live in the shadow of a mental health and gut condition I do not understand.
Then there are the assortment of therapists I have seen - those are also one sided social equations. They know me intimately - I only know their name and their professional qualifications and what little they tell me about their life outside of their profession. There is no social reciprocity in my life. I detest going to self check outs when stopping in at a grocery store - to be talked at by a machine I am scanning my purchases from. So I wait in long lines to go through a check out with an actual person for the small talk. Its a pseudo social moment but better than a machine and better than none at all.
It just shouldnt be this easy to end up this way and it shouldn't be this hard to change it.
I have done the best I could - I failed at most things I tried. I have to live with this - those men who know me aren't going to step in - they are not going to do the generous thing and pierce the electronic veil that separates their reality from mine - And though I hope otherwise I know better. And I know I won't have a relationship to correct this trajectory of misery. I make the best of it. I am thankful for my house and car and job and that is about as interesting as my life right now gets.
It beats thinking about the unrepentant diarrhea I am prone to. It is better than thinking there is a curse or that major depression and PTSD in one form or another dictates my mental and emotional structures.
I just live with a lot of regret and a lot of grief and a lot of isolation. And that is no reason to talk to a current or former agent of information.

As The Pendulum Swings; Beyond the Electronic Veil

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.

The Consequences of Secrets; Unrepentant Diarrhea

My weight dipped down to below 155 pounds. Then back up to 158. Unrepentant diarrhea and puking has set in and I'm not eating. Of course I suspect poisoning but the banal reality is I'm probably just reacting to one of the meds I'm already on. By the end of the week I will be below 70kgs.
What are the consequences of secrets is my question - not a secret or a specific set of secrets but what are the consequences of a career in secrets and lies to harvest information. With all the things that are seen by these Agents when things go tits up - what is the effect of that on an individual. Just because you can see the carnage and consequence what does it mean when something less bloody happened. Say a broken heart or in my case a broken life. Well at least I didn't end up in a dumpster. To which I'd add - the day isn't over...  (as the character Lana from the TV Show Archer often says).
I'm not sure unrepentant diarrhea is much better of a fate than another body discarded in a dumpster. And perhaps in some way I do have a broken heart and I don't want to admit it. To be groomed and set up for something that never made sense nor that came into the focus of my understanding to then be abandoned after coming to the conclusion that I'd do anything for these guys. There is something of broken heart within this broken life. The only thing I have left are these words. The memories are trickster at best. There are not conversations with these types anymore. No answers to these calls herein contained. No fuel for the fires of imagination. Just a broken life and a broken heart and a wasting disease.

On Having Been Ghosted By Spooks

Not much to say about this. Jefferson was called up to meet "Dave" at this public park location. At the time the meeting took place the picnic table was where the photograph was taken. That was where we sat when Dave in a rather seductive manner showed me his concealed FBI gun and holster. In the background adjacent to the shelter was the interracial couple who were making out. While they were going at it in ways that seemed to me contrived and not natural - which suggests they were a part of the same team as Dave for this meeting. And the couple happened to depart just prior to Dave closing the meeting down. That probably explains why this was one of the few times I met Dave solo. I feigned ambivalence to the gun show only because it was a bit more than vaguely sexual and it was basically attached to him. Had it been set on the picnic table it would have seemed less invasive of me to consider it. So here is the scene we met at back then as it is today. When I add up this post all I get is a big question -The confounding question of this blogette which is why. What was the price tag of this meet up. Why was I groomed and what for and why was I discarded. There are other such locations and I still go to those and remember the visits. Visits that never strayed far from a parkinglot. I am desperately seeking and searching for answers that I cannot possibly find on my own beyond these posts. What further aggravates me is if this were the DC Metro area I was living I am sure there are enough people connected to such people that I'd happen upon conversations or connections with other people who could speculate or just comprehend the splinter in my mind that has been left from all this. But as this is old Ohio I am just on my own with a bittersweet memory of something at once frightening and threatening to something that has become almost romanticized in my mind in the passing years since. I would have done anything for these guys and to be shelved as I was will be a life long regret and a burden of mystery. I rather wish they would have helped set me up in another state in a different climate far from here in some lonesome mobile home park. Than to be left in the wake of their activity and abandoned.

Dave

...Monticello's Properties Jefferson calling Dave, come in Dave...
Weighing in at 158 and still dropping.
I am pissing sh*t out my *ss at the moment from days and nights of extreme diarrhea.
Living alone and being sick is not easy and I'm doing this all whilst having put in 55 hours in one week at work. I am sleep deprived from being sick and my gut not letting me sleep. I am dehydrated from the diarrhea. More - so much more is coming out than going in and its been only liquid anyway. And I have to shower and pull a night shift in this condition.
I'm guessing any content I upload gets automatically forced into a dark corner of the Web inaccessible to most... except you.
And I'm guessing you are going to remain concealed in your own dark corner.
And I don't think there is much more for me to say.
I still do not understand the radio silence and I don't suppose I ever will.
I keep hoping that some shred of humanity buried deep within you contacts me but you and I both know that won't happen. I am not nor ever will be the recipient of any shreds of humanity within you. In short I am just the miserable contents of a file that went across your desk and was as the title of this blog states shelved to obscurity. Or rather shredded to obscurity. Deleted.
Isn't there some sort of underling you can send my way on your behalf just so I can sort of come to some reasonable way to put all this past to rest. Ask a few questions that won't be answered. Get a pat on the head so to speak.
Or how about a call or text with mysterious coordinates to meet someone at. Barring all that could you just stop and consider my dimension of life for a meditative moments. No family, living alone, aging. permanently gut sick, working a lot with no benefits. All while being heavily dosed for Depression and a whole slew of things Veterans from recent deployments face despite my not having ever served.
When I look back on my life overseas and all I tried to cultivate there disintegrating so fast and being left with this here - its beyond chilling. I has been difficult in this decade since to wake up every day here trapped in the Rustbelt like this. Knowing of better places and better ways of life. And just having to keep my head down and be stuck here within the outer belt of a 2 or 3rd tier city. Stuck here and unable to connect with anyone content with this place.
And a latent fascination and infatuation set in - I will always see you as I did those times you had the light beard of yours grown out or perhaps it was a very convincing synthetic beard. But that is how I remember you. Youthful, bearded, cocky in professional ways and yet ultimately well mannered. When I was around you and your colleague cohort du jour and/or Mike - I enjoyed the exposure to your intellect - that was the refreshing privilege to my life confined within this Rustbelt city - getting to for a moment to relate to you - it felt like getting lifted out of this reality of ghetto meth head ex-con poverty and low education types. For a few brief moments I felt what it was like to be on an intellectual level closer to the one you inhabit. There hasn't been much of that here. Except in the brief moments I get to talk to a medical Doctor or Surgeon (and often times those are just students). What baffles me about the Rustbelt is how intellectually and economically segregated we are here. I'm not saying I am all that but I have to settle for hanging out with people who have not been to college and who have not been overseas. I don't understand their struggles with addiction and the Law anymore than I understand this economic and intellectual segregation I am trapped in.
Could you not in all your stealth like expertise meet me off the Grid of your affiliations past or present or future knowing. Could you not play some character and find a way to meet me. Maybe I am wrong but some kind of communication with you or at least your kind might help me be able to lay all this to rest somehow. Or maybe it wouldn't. Maybe it would just give me something more to write to about.
Is there nothing for you to learn or benefit from such a conversation with me. And if not could you then do this out of some sort of humanity gracious generosity that I know is well within your character.
Trust me you don't want to be me. You don't want to be confined in this life as I am. This life there are reasons it all added up to this non-existence that I have to abide with. I could inventory the chain of events and decisions that brought me here and left me here.
You turned me and won me over and yet to be honest I had a better life before that. Meet me at that DC Museum is probably too much to ask. I dunno - take my car for a drive - so you can literally and figuratively grasp just about the only fun I have in life. How about some cold war era like rendez-vous over Gin tonics.
All I can say is that I am living and working for and paying for my own existence. I am stuck in economic and social confinement and its only natural that in some odd way I am pining for some trans-dimensional communique from you.

Left Behind

I'm weighing in at 162. Fatigue without fatigues or camo or anything mossy oaked.
At some point I realized no answer to these electronic flares were going to be answered. I tell myself my words so self published, however, furtively or dangerously were not going to be read by the intended person or agency or associates thereof I wrote them for. In a better world they would read these desperate construct of words and respond. A cameo in camo's would somehow manifest in my daily life. No business cards left stuck at the front door now. Mike and Dave - my very own Mike and Ike's. Well you threatened me with insanity and it happened so now what? Does this make you conclude you were successful or powerful that your words became a prophecy? Did you really see my attempt at life and free thinking as treasonous or a threat. Or was I just a curiosity for you to study? What were the moral implications of your interrogations that would play out in my personal life during your visits and well beyond. Just because you have the privilege to disappear - does that give you license to not consider the implications your work and disappearance would have on me to this day. My life is now confined in an economic strata between crack-heads, meth-heads, water-heads and "ho's" on the one hand to Nurses and Doctors on the other and in between its just retail servitude. This isn't a life. It's an existence - containment - nothing more. Had I just been taken down in those days when we met by some bullet or staged suicide - I'd argue that that would have perhaps been more humane that to build me up - to jerk my mind into thinking something genuine and "big" was happening and that I would useful. Useful is just all I have wanted to be - to whoever was paying the most for whatever cause. So that was a lie. Even though of course you said you wouldn't lie to me and that's another lie. Well I never lied to you even if I had a cloudy mind and couldn't always think clearly.
And still I think very highly of you (both). Even though you and I both know I shouldn't. I can't help it. I think very highly of you. I still feel and believe it was a privilege to meet with you. And I write this knowing your contempt and obvious critical analysis at my pathetic attempt at life. With all your brilliance and intellect did you ever stop to think what it must be like to be trapped in the capsule of my life with its intellectual and emotional limitations. Did you give thanks for that. Were you aware of how badly I wanted to break out of this encapsulation of my mortal and mental existence. And that if couldn't do that how much I just wanted to work (outside of retail) for a viable or livable wage.
Were you aware of how I wanted to pin all my medical bills to the wall in my living room and blow my brains out on those bills - spraying my brains on them - so that when my body was found weeks later someone would know why I had done it. And somehow in that equation I could think someone examining all that would care or understand.
And like a bad crush I still can't get you out of my mind - either of you - still. It's been how long now. I think about you more times that I feel comfortable admitting. A few times a day - still. Just as I do my ex - still. Mike and Ike left. My ex pushed me out of our home and life overseas. My mother had passed away - then my father - then Rebecca - then Margo - and of course Rusty. And where did this leave me. I ask myself why was I left behind. Left behind - two words that haunt me and now define everything about me. Left behind and left in a mental health and gut disease syndrome I wouldn't wish on anyone. Left behind in isolation and self doubt.
Infatuated with you guys to the point of blind faith. Still. I literally would have done anything you told me to and I would have naively thought it would have been alright. At least you did not use that dynamic to dispose of me. That is to your moral credit. But what if you had just given my failing life some help or support - how would things be different now. Perhaps I would have gotten out of retail which as I told you is all I have ever wanted. And possibly had a less crushing mental health illness. Likewise would it really be so taxing to reappear in my life to assist me in finding a way to grasp and file away my experiences with you. Whisked off to DC with some decent hotel accommodation and a couple visits. Or even just here. I miss the magic that you brought with your time. I wish you knew what it was like to witness that from my end. Mostly I just wish you wanted me to talk to you rather than me wishing I could talk to you.

What Part of Self Described "Post De-Radicalized" Man Did You Not Ketch

I'm not sure when I realized I had been "radicalized" but certain people back then close to me discussed it though never with me - although looking back perhaps they should have. Then later I'm also not sure when I realized I had been "de-radicalized". Its not like I ever set out to be radicalized or later de-radicalized. It was more like chasing a White Rabbit to quote Jefferson Aeroplane. Ah, back to Jefferson. Red haired Jefferson and an alias that I thought was moving on up to the Middle Eastside in the back seat of Monte Carlo Dave's car. Nothing is or was ever as it seemed. Which might be why I never thought in terms of being radicalized or de-radicalized but looking back it sure seems so from this post de-radicalized point on the continuum of a life so loosely lived as mine.
The White Rabbit for me were ideas - of my own - and that is perhaps why I never saw radicalization as myself. Ideas that I was chasing - fragments of knowledge from books and the media that seemed to lead me. Or perhaps quite possibly through an unseen electronic agent of any sort I was being led as one nowadays can be led by misinformation. Manipulated - directed to places in ones mind one would not normally go that can lead to other parts of the world as in my case. Either ideas that were solely my own or perhaps from an invisible electronic hand I was led into thinking those very ideas as if they were my own - Well lead me they did to worlds within worlds of this world. From Bruxelles to Paris to Dubai to Karachi to Multan to Lahore to back to Dubai to Abu Dhabi to Sana'a to back to the UAE to Paris and Brussels and then back to a cold storage interrogation waiting room for hours ran by armed military types. Waiting and waiting in the parts of the JFK airport most travelers are lucky to not know are there just beyond the main travel hallways.
To here to more operatives of service secrets - to now here years later - with too many questions for ones mental health services therapist to know how to respond to.
And here I am losing weight and sending up electronic flares from my co-ordinates and getting trapped within an electronic universe of billions and billions and billions of other peoples bytes of information and misinformation.
And time will get piled on to this electronic flare of mine - and it will go unanswered except of course by myself. And eventually from being shelved to obscurity I will get buried under obscurity and then I will be gone. And then later perhaps someone will stumble on these words and want to know more. And I wish you were here now to ask tough questions because perhaps your questions would help me with some of my own my pressing existential ones that relate to being a lost post de-radicalized soul.

Deradicalized Subject Notes to Self: Sending Up PTSD Electronic Flares Because There Is Nothing Else To Do Here. Marooned In Insanity.

I am down to 166 lbs.

I feel like I am on the verge of suicide and yet I am not hurting myself. 

I want help but I can't seem to get it. 

I'm lonely. There is no one to talk to. And so I am submitting this less than admirable non professional report. 

The music at work gets in my head and makes me crazy - that insanity is compounded by tinnitus.

My perception of time is that it either is sped up or so slow that I have fallen out of time. Either way I fall into a panic.

I am lonely. 

I'm physically and emotionally lonely. 

This isn't good writing but it is where I am at. These words indicate concerning symptoms and yet they will go unnoticed.

I'm trying to send up an electronic flare from my critical marooned isolation. If it is seen it will be disregarded. The words I fail at writing do not matter. It is only more of myself that continues to be unseen. Wasted words perhaps.

Some guy in line at a bakery I stopped in at put his hand on my shoulder to pass behind me in a confined crowd - it made me realize how long it has been since I've had any gentle touch.

He spoke confidently in a voice that had been sometime back shaped by involvement in a college Fraternity - He said that "he didn't want to 'wang' me" as he wedged himself through the narrow area at the check out. I said I wouldn't mind if he did. We laughed or rather guffawed. He went and sat down with his family.

People like me don't make family. It's for the best. But it is not easy carrying on like this.

I miss talking to the agents because at least they feigned interest and were well educated and professionally trained, intellectual and of a social and professional caliber well above my station in this country. They ran on a certain clockwork. Methodically, punctually, regularly. I appreciated the conversation. I hope I made them laugh and I hope some of those laughs will be remembered were with me. I suspect though more I was the object of their laughter now forgotten. What I haven't forgotten are their cutting comments and seemingly off the cuff assessments - the stinging judgments passed. What if they had just helped a little instead.

I feel trapped in the US - in Belgium I knew people from around the world from all different classes of life. Here I am stuck in one depressing strata of urban poverty and social malaise defined by neighbors burnt out on opiods, meth and too many blunts.

I really want help. Professional help. I really need a case worker who can grasp my somewhat deceptive circumstance. I can't seem to get connected with anyone for any assistance.

Why if my life is over am I the last one to get the message and why if my life is over must my heart still beat.

What is wrong with me and how do I get help. This nagging, nagging sense that something is very wrong.

It always feels like something is wrong. It always has. It still feels like the tragedy that unfolded in 1976 is still happening.

I'm in angst and I cry and I panic and I just want someone to talk to or be there on some level. Why am I stuck in these post family nightmare equations that wont end until I do - why can't I just be free of this and find my own life.

How can I be like this - for so long. 

Why do I just get to watch everyone else having a life and i'm trapped in a psychotic dimension of the past.

...and on to the next half-nervous break down... 

Its 5:23 am and my heart is racing. 

I can't get back to sleep.

In the 17 years with my ex this didn't happen. 

We always slept together no matter what... 

No nights of personal terror of being trapped alone.

...even if we weren't always able to reside in the same country we always shared a bed.

Their life went on.

Mine went back to where I had left it for Belgium

It hasn't gone on much from there.

When I awoke at 4 am i was thinking I don't want to die.

It's either I think my life is over and that I should be dead.

Or that I should just get the inevitable over with.

To being afraid of being dead.

And not wanting life to be over.

Then its another panic attack at 4:33 am
And to take my mind of that I think to the past as one does.

I am not the asset - Perhaps never was.

The short term asset of sorts for invisible agents.

For which I never mattered. 

The only time I think I've ever been an asset and I never understood my place in their equation.

And they never understood the toll their machinations and designs had on me. 

Nor do they now care. 

I am sure they are tucked away in well appointed addresses of a suburban nature with three car garages and insulated by a wealth I will never know.

Anyways I am not that asset now.

I am not someones husband. 

I am not someones brother.

I am not someones son.

I'm scratching my head over thinking am I someones friend.

Because no one is calling, emailing, texting. The doorbell hasn't rung in so long I periodically check it myself to make sure it still works. 

These nights are very difficult

I remember having things to look forward to. Places to go and people to go there with. 

To now. 

Trapped alone in some bachelor syndrome.
I guess this is what being a post "de-radicalized" looks like - None of this I would wish on anyone.

Lima, (Ohio) Syndrome

Google search "What is the opposite of 'Stockholm Syndrome'..."
Answer 'Lima Syndrome'...
Lima Syndrome is when the Captors feel sympathy for their hostages and set them free.
Therefore all I can surmise is that while I fell under the spell of a makeshift Stockholm Syndrome from the unknown Agents - in my effort to try to understand - they in turn were charmed into Lima Syndrome and regrettably set me free.
All of which leaves me somewhere South of Lima, Ohio.
If you can call that free.
I call it forgotten.
So no matter how much I wish a one Mr Jefferson - not the one from the moving up to the East Side to a dee-lux Apartment in the Sky-ii or one from a dream place from history named Monticello but to some referenced name like Sherman from which to move under - I call out oddly some nights from a Kafka-esque dream or some latent sexualized teen angst - for "Dave"... Dave who is no longer there or returning e-mail or phone calls.
With the remarkable beard and voice. And keen sense of obligation and intuition and then boyish charm.
And a Mr Jefferson shelved so far into obscurity only the bureacracy of mental health hallways now listen with only certain disregard. Belgian disregard.
What does it take in this misinformation age to get an answer from a Mr Dave - whoever he was from wherever he went.
For the things that need said in the Information and Informatica trade.
To Dave or his colleagues.
To make sense of where now is for he. And why. For me.
How many flares must I send up.
Desperately seeking D_A_V_E
Monte Carlo Dave To Monticello.

931 Thomas Jefferson Pkwy, Charlottesville, VA 22902

 1772

How hard can this be as a flare to follow.
Though not expecting.
Desperately seeking...

Kafka Hospital in the Orwellian Care Unit

...So it was a rough flight across the Atlantic going west - I ended up on the floor of some cold and moldy central Ohio basement replete in dog hair. My allergies kicked in and my gut flared up and I found myself in the ER and from there on some Information Control and Redirection Floor on the Orwellian Unit of the Hospital Kafka. It was my first night in there and I wasn't just woozy from the gut, the pain meds were kicking in and I was finally feeling like myself again. And I slept on some upper floor of a not so modest anymore high rise hospital with a view of the not too distant downtown skyline out the window. It was the first time I had been comfortable since departing the Southern Lowlands of a Surrealist Kingdom in Northern Europe.
...At some point in the night I was awoken by a Doctor - except it wasn't any Doctor I had seen during the ER intake or once I was moved to the Information Control and Redirection Floor. Its all vague mind you - I was exhausted, had been in quite a bit of pain so I was really out of it. I remember the room, the windows - the view beyond the reflection of the lights from within the room back into it. I remember this Doctor without a name and unlike all other doctors that day he wasn't nice. And I mean he didn't even bother with the veneer of niceness to mask the unbridled masculine ego that Med Schools across the nation turn out year after year for those who can pass tests and carry on through those grueling weed out programs. I don't know who this Doctor was or where he came from or who he actually worked for - or even if he was who he said he was - I saw him twice that I can't recall in that pharmaceutical and pain haze. The cluster of Nurses who went through my room on rotation didn't know him when I inquired and I over heard two of them conversing about the handsome older mystery Doctor who they had witness visit me. They were clearly alarmed at not knowing who he was. Alarmed that they didn't know from which floor. I remember this Doctors bedside manner or lack-there-of - He just asked me these questions in an American version of a Gestapo technique - though not even with a toothy smile - of course I cannot remember none of his questions but I remember how difficult they were to answer or how uncomfortable those questions made me feel - It was after dark - that I remember. He came by the bed and didn't tower over me the way Doctors do. He bent or kneeled down so he was next to me in some Reptilian way. Painfully close. I remember keeping an eye on his hands and my IV tubes - he didn't scan my plastic ID bracelet. I remember being very affected by his questions, irritated then mad then shamed by him with his innuendo's and implications. In short it wasn't even as if he were trying to get information out of me so much as to intimidate me with his very being there.
Still the greater worry to me to this day is the conversation between two Nurses in my room later at the foot of my bed still in that long winter night somewhere between Christmas and New Years. The fact that he was referred to as this mystery Doctor - who had access - who knew his way around and yet was not supposed to be there.
The fact that security Agents can slip in and out of Hospitals and do their work and that as the patient your defenses are less than the thickness of the plastic walls of IV tubes and catheter plugged into veins - less than all the bureaucratic security protocols within that industry - How easy it is for some such Agent to do some task assigned to them by who know what kind of higher ups from who knows where. And for me this is the true fear of Hospitals I have. Not the various killer strains of this clinical bacteria or virus spread so easily in Hospital climates through staff and visitor lazy based negligence. And that this sinister work could all get carried out so seamlessly. Organs could be harvested and sold off as you lay dying and the Hospital staff you've come to know and appreciate would be none-the-wiser.

An Anonymous Comment

"I listened as they called the President a Muslim. 
I listened as they called him and his family a pack of monkeys. 
I listened as they said he wasn't born here. 
I watched as they blocked every single path to progress that they could. 
I saw the pictures of him as Hitler.
I watched them shut down the government and hurt the entire nation twice.
I watched them turn their backs on every opportunity to open worthwhile dialog.
I watched them say that they would not even listen to any choice for the Supreme Court no matter who the nominee was. 
I listened as they openly said that they will oppose him at every turn. 
I watched as they did just that.
I listened. 
I watched.
I paid attention.
Now, I'm being called on to be tolerant. 
To move forward. 
To denounce protesters. 
To "Get over it." 
To accept this...
I will not.
I will do my part to make sure this great American mistake becomes the embarrassing footnote of our history that it deserves to be.
I will do this as quickly as possible every chance I get.
I will do my part to limit the damage that this man can do to my country. 
I will watch his every move and point out every single mistake and misdeed in a loud and proud voice.
I will let you know in a loud voice every time this man backs away from a promise he made to them.
Them. The people who voted for him.
The ones who sold their souls and prayed for him to win.
I will do this so that they never forget. 
And they will hear me.
They will see it in my eyes when I look at them.
They will hear it in my voice when I talk to them.
They will know that I know who they are.
They will know that I know what they are.
Do not call for my tolerance. I've tolerated all I can. 
Now it's their turn to tolerate ridicule. 
Be aware, make no mistake about it, every single thing that goes wrong in our country from this day 
forward is now Trump's fault just as much as they thought it was Obama's.
I find it unreasonable for them to expect from me what they were entirely unwilling to give." 
Author unknown.

Electronic Ink Doesn't Fade

The amount of money it seems to cost me to get through a month. "Ma-gawd"...

The amount of time I have to abide with to try not to spend money - but things like paint and materials for repairs of house or car cost money in a suburban motor city such as this. As does food. I go out a to eat because I don't want to eat alone - even if at the restaurant I am alone at a table. Which is why I like diner bars to eat at but there aren't many of those left. Anyway, I can't tolerate most food. So I can't really go out without elaborate plans to accommodate my gut going into revolt at any given moment because he hates me and my stupid attempt at life. 

I go to a movie sometimes which is an expensive excuse just to get out. Again its alone. I try to tell myself I am dating me. In reality I have to keep an ongoing mental note of where the restrooms are. If I fly, but these days I never travel, I'm the guy who actually wants to sit near the toilet door. ugh. my life...

I hope this small confession gives you some idea of where Ive been and how marooned I am in North Linden. Socially and culturally. And why I cling to our meetings online like this. On an exile within an exile writing from Ohio - its a long way from the heyday of my time in Dubai, Sanaa, Karachi, Bruxelles and Berlin.

I write. If you have time to read and want to read it dear reader I would of course be grateful. Especially if you can share it with others. It might be all I have going on.

Excuse the reference but I'm beginning to think I'm a one trick pony - the little drummer boy with only a blog to beat out rhythmically. I kinda don't want to think like that. But I am a definite has been. But there hasn't been a proper story told of how I got holed up here in such a place as I am now. A place I'm not it seems permanently installed. A place I am in layaway, on hold, waiting.

Again the sleeper Agent comes to mind - waiting - carrying out a mundane pointless daily life in some planted role on location waiting for a Code to be broadcast from a Source system to wake up for an operation that no longer is broadcasting because the entire scheme was shelved. And I didn't get the memo. Wasn't even worthy of one.

One odd memory of a guy I will for lack of a better term call the Godfather. He was sort of the quiet alpha male in the background. Really likeable. Hawkish in the eye and nose. Alert even when looking nonplussed. Handsome as all these men are required to be. Not quite a silver daddy yet in those days at that time. But the smoking hot middle aged guy just out of the limelight of youth who was probably the one pulling the strings. Really only slightly older than the other guys and despite his quiet he seemed to be the one in control. Occasionally it was just him and some other guy. Then there were quite a few times it was two guys and himself. He reminded me of a TV/Radio personality trying to keep his disguise out in the field. A disguise that was appropriate for central Ohio - bland. He just didn't seem from around here. On one particular meeting when there were two others he seemed to fidget. This seemed out of character to me. Looking back all I can grasp was that it was perhaps just that or it was more likely a clue to the underlings to shut the meeting down because - lets face it - we all knew this was a waste of time. And time to these people is a currency more valuable than gold.

It seems like one day in the future - (though in reality probably not) - the curtain will be pulled back and indeed I will find out these men were from a different echelon in life - Instead they went back to the daily grind in the life of a 21st century Agent, back to working for a broadcast network or not. I don't know really - they disappeared and with it the chance for the curtain to be pulled back so I could just understand why this intrusion into my life. They probably were just better educated people who were in the habit of interacting with people way above the likes I will rub shoulders with on this side of the Atlantic. Just be glad it isn't you living with a gut disease shelved away in North Linden waiting for the inevitable.

To be honest I was just happy to have some contact with "real" people. By real I mean the people you meet and who you will never forget but you were forgotten by them by the first happy hour cocktail when the program you were somehow entangled in was shut down.

What became of the Kazakhstani guy in Brussels or for that matter the remarkable fellow from Warsaw. Were these people who entered my life there so quickly, who disappeared without a trace. Really, who were these people I thought were just random social connections who would be friends. I was just wanting a friendship - they were miners of information. They didn't want a cling on like a friend. They wanted to get what they came into my life for, in some socially surgical procedure like way and leave. I have a collection of photos of people with only first names. People I wanted to know. People who didn't linger. Like the fellow from lets just call it Byzantium who was smugly proud of his formidable uncut endowment. A genuinely nice guy who could have been a porn star. A person who occasionally through online connections sometimes made a dent in the electronic radar that reached me several time zones away. Again always that harsh tone when I communicate about where my life is at when they asked. The kind of tone that when someone hard working who became something in life uses when after they asked you about your life - your answer seems to illicit a sharp critical analysis that must make sense from their vantage point - but from mine - just stings before it cuts through to my core. By this point in my life its too late for their analysis of the problem. They don't have to live with the consequences as I do - they are oblivious to this entire information exchanges effect of my being. And then they are gone back behind the ether of electronic communication into another dimension that I was never meant to inhabit much less know about.

In short whatever nugget of information they wanted they extracted like a golden tooth from my mouth and I'm left with an aching dry socket for compensation for my co-operation. If I got a dinner or cocktails or rarely laid out of it that was more compensation than they were required to give. And my co-operation was just a function of the fact that I am so totally cut off from anyone that I am always trying to just have human connection.

Whatever this industry of information is it seems when there isn't something else to do go rattle Matt. You can find him online now without the necessity of physically crossing borders anymore in this still new electronic frontier. You can find him and disturb him and play him and slam him down in the process. And forget about it along with him. When in fact the entire exchange just drove me one more notch closer to death by suicide.

It seems like Brussels and the decade there wasn't supposed to happen. But it did. And I got a Belgian passport out of it all. And I wasn't supposed to. And yet here I am with memories that just don't fit as well as they should in a place like this.

None of that experience is useful here - in fact its a liability because its alienating. My already different point of view now has another national boundary associated with it. A foreign one. Combined with my politically rancid writing from a previous administration I am fodder to slap around for recreational purposes.

Never mind all that nonsense about freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom of writing and self publishing - I now have to live with my words of dissent and questioning as a bold and rather bad tattoo across my face and hands and torso. It was something I did and I can't back away from now. For self publishing there is no tattoo removal by lasers or whatever methods there are for bodily ink. Electronic ink doesn't fade. You can't escape it once you press upload. It didn't come with a warning or disclaimers if you publish such high risk writing.

You were supposed to remind me of the interchangeable Af Am (their moniker not mine for African American) sidekick - Interchangeable in that I was never sure if he was the same guy each time with a different persona or if he were in fact a different person accompanying the handler on their visits. His voice seemed the same each time. The sidekicks were I suppose the back up - the driver usually. The witness if things went t*ts up. Usually the sidekicks never spoke but this guy would reinforce a comment the handler or I had made. He was actually likeable but he didn't get a lot of air time as it were so I never really could form an opinion other than instinctual and my instincts said he was earthy, grounded, honest, smart as a whip, perceptive and yet capable of seeing through the bullshit and had the balls to offer a guffaw or chortle where appropriate when he could get away with it. Yet I don't think he was actually supposed to verbally engage the subject. 

From these guys as I've said before you don't take the name offered with a greeting and a handshake as their actual name so its easier not to try to remember. In fact its almost better to try not to associate a name with the Agent - because when you are in my position in this equation you are just a file number. You and your name do not matter. So as a matter of reflexiveness I'd try not to remember theirs. No matter how nice, polite, intelligent and well mannered they are. I didn't write these rules. They weren't given to me. I'm guessing here.

There was another interchangeable sidekick who seemed like he had wandered onto my case or was nabbed into it against his will who was probably pulled off a white supremacist intel op. He had a particular handicap on the times I saw him that if that wasn't part of a disguise it wouldn't be a useful handicap to someone in the business of trading in secrets and lies because it sort of singled him out. He seemed like a good guy. Like, I swear I knew him somehow in the matrix of my life. But in this world feelings can be very misleading.  He was perhaps a bit green but not so green that he wasn't jaded from all this. Geeky, avid perhaps. He had a professional eagerness and inquisitiveness that was probably cultivated trade craft - he probably spent his time off just smoking a blunt and glued to an overstuffed couch with a pizza cooling on a large coffee table in front a monolithic sized flat screen TV in a room supercooled by the non stop AC. The couch he probably slept on too much that smelled of upholstery and body odor long overdue for a wash.

Like I said he was likeable. Human. A victim of unwanted bachelor syndrome. Lets face it we've all been there and if we haven't we will - our turn will come as it most certainly will.

You can't be paranoid enough in these equations and yet if you let your mind runaway on the paranoia train it won't take you anywhere but in circles. So you have to cultivate a sort of mental discipline or mental hygiene. You use the logic of the mundane world we actually live in to trample on the world of paranoia your mind just created to explain something  - to cultivate wisdom on all the possibilities but you employ critical thinking to strike down the inconsequential over effect of it. Unless you want to run a radio show broadcasting from somewhere South of the Mason-Dixon Line propagating misinformation and lies to sell something useless to an audience of stay at home unemployable over caffeinated conspiracy theorists like myself.

This is when I say - But - I digress.

That's pretty much all I do - digress.