Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious!
The first snow graced us just past Thanksgiving, icy and crystalline. Children and dogs cavorted, cars careened off roads, and the brightness was quite welcome in the dark of the deep forest. There’s something about snow weighing down evergreen branches, it’s classic.
Then we were into the dank, dark wet again.
The cormorants are very busy this time of year, making sure those damn crappie in the lake get eaten. Sometimes, when it’s very quiet, I can hear them dive, or make out the familiar slap-slap-slap of paltry wings powering their long, shallow launches back into the air.
How some birds evolved to ‘fly underwater’ to fish and still fly conventionally seems like an odd puzzle of evolution. (And why the fuck do marbled murrelets balance their eggs on old-growth fir limbs. Seems like a bad strategy, Darwin-wise. Shit, I digress.)
There exist puzzles that can not be solved conventionally. Some appear so difficult that most people don’t even try. The Gordian Knot and - more recently - Rubik’s Cube come to mind. (I’ve not even seriously tried to solve it since it came out in the faraway 70s. But people solve it, in seconds now. The unconventional has become common wisdom, a rote strategy. A mental technology, albeit limited to one curious toy/puzzle.)
I suppose any ‘counseling’ is an attempt to solve a puzzle.
My own puzzle, for instance, isn’t a Rubik’s Cube. More like a 10000-piece jigsaw puzzle thrown to the winds during a chaparral firestorm fueled by Santa Anas.
Some of the borders are obvious.
My sense of organic family and ‘home’ pretty much disappeared in the closing months of the Sixties, when it seems almost everyone was sleeping with someone else. As a toddler, all I knew was that my Dad wasn’t around anymore. We moved out of the dark-blue beach house (where we raised the US flag every morning) in Maxwelton, on Whidbey Island, to a dreary apartment in Lynnwood, then into a shit-hole house in White Center, (West Seattle) shared with my step-father’s sister and 2yr old daughter. A few months later we moved to Kennewick. A few months later, Spokane. A few months later, Colfax. A few months later, Dusty.
Before first grade was over, we moved yet again, to Hazel Dell. What friends I had made in the Palouse were hundreds of miles away, back in the days of party-lines and hefty long-distance charges.
I never heard from any of them again.
The pattern emerging in my childish mind was pretty clear. Everything in my close world was temporary. “All is as trite as it is transitory.” Just when a place started to get comfortable, and I was making and enjoying new friends, we were gone again. After Hazel Dell, we moved to Battleground, then Keno, Oregon, then Edmonds. Before 6th Grade, I had attended 6 different primary schools. Sometimes I didn’t unpack my toys and stamp collection until we’d been there at least three months. (I learned how to entertain myself with what would fit in one old blue fiberglass suitcase.)
Somehow, it created a craving for family stability and normal home-life. A craving that has never been sated. Perhaps, it began my desire to find a ‘do-over.’ It was fairly basic; meet a (nice, smart, funny, sexy) girl, get married, have kids and grow vegetables. Never be lonely again. Watch the future unfold, surrounded by a family I knew loved each other.
A normal fantasy, I thought. Not a puzzle.
However, some fantasies dissolve into wicked puzzles, it would seem.
Before I joined the Army in 1986, I had a sweet girlfriend, a petite blonde cross-country runner who brought homemade cinnamon rolls to my apartment.
We literally couldn’t keep our hands off of each other.
The basic plan then was to get to Europe, get some rank, and eventually marry. I could see us together, raising vegetables and goats and children.
On Christmas Eve 1986, she was lured - by a woman (under the guise of a babysitting job) into a violent sexual attack by several men, one wielding a rattling, small-caliber semi-auto handgun.
Her life changed in milli-seconds. Both of our lives changed within minutes.
An hour later, I heard the news from my mother, via German pay-phone, while I was on guard duty, between shifts, my .45 strapped to my chest, loaded.
There was nothing I could do for her. I was nearly 5000 miles away and on duty. Because the Army doesn’t recognize ‘girlfriends’ as family, there was no compassionate leave or a Red Cross message. My handgun was useless from that distance. I had to bide my time until I could take a break from training.
I was fully aware that each day I didn’t see her she would slide farther away. After 4 long weeks, I finally got the okay to go home for a spell. I listened to Journey on my way across the white of the Arctic. I was very anxious to see her again.
As far as I could tell, she was gone. Our relationship had dematerialized into the fog. There was an unfamiliar, faraway look in her once-bright blue eyes. She wasn’t an innocent anymore, and I was too late.
She broke up with me my first night back from Germany, and that was that. (I proceeded to get exceedingly drunk with a few close friends.)
We didn’t even speak after that, for 22 years.
In 2009, I sent a message to her sister, who relayed it.
Phones rang, a 1000 miles apart, for a few days. We had a lot of catching up to do.
Now, I can call her up and we can laugh and be goofy together, and the hurts of the past are smoothed over by our friendly support of each other. We know each other’s pasts and present situations, and that makes our retroactive memories of that lost relationship a hell of a lot easier to deal with. It is truly sweet to call her a friend again. I actually look forward to seeing her in person someday, witnessing how the years have treated her. Sometimes the mileage can be rough, but she still looks pretty in my eyes.
I’m no spring chicken, so there’s no need for judgment here.
That puzzle is still in play. The edges are filled in, and the main sections filled out, so there’s just a few straggling pieces. Maybe, they fell under the table. Maybe, we’ll find them, and each other, before the inevitable ‘shuffling off of the mortal coil.’ Who knows?
I love puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles, word jumbles, crosswords, sudoku. Almost all of them, except the easy ones. Why bother to solve something you KNOW you’ll solve? I don’t even look at 1 or 2 star sudoku anymore, there’s just no challenge. The harder the puzzle - like a Friday or Sunday New York Times crossword, or a 6-star sudoku - the more my interest is piqued, even if I suspect I won’t eventually solve it. I remember my grandmother spending hours on Jumbles when I was young, scribbling notes in the margin, a dictionary cracked open nearby. Bless her heart, she was so methodical, just not quick at re-arranging things mentally. I can solve them in my head, often in less than a minute, almost autistically. I’ve always been able to read backwards, so it’s kinda close to that. Playing Scrabble isn’t even challenging anymore. (Wanna play? You’ll lose. Seriously.)
Recently, I was trying to explain to a young friend that I have a mental blackboard right behind my forehead. Things I have to spell just magically appear on it and all I have to do is recite the letters in order. It functions very quickly. (It works as a video player, calculator, map and logic-tree, as well.) For the longest time, I thought everyone had a blackboard. She grilled me on some huge words, but I got them, in seconds, all of them. I always do on hard words. The blackboard is remarkably efficient.
I make her look up big words so that she’ll ace her essays in college someday. This week’s word discussion was “intransigence vs. being reticent vs. being stubborn.” So, ‘taciturn’ came up. Great word. She knows a horse - at the stable she works at - that acts that way, she told me, like it was a secret.
Maybe we all know a taciturn horse-puzzle, in one way or another. I know I do.
To me, 9/11 is still a gigantic, unsolved puzzle. For what it’s worth, I have pieces of evidence no one on this planet has. Damning, actual pieces of the airplane that hit the South Tower, which I retrieved from a roof close-by in late October of 2001. That there are residues of PETN means that some complex American-made explosives were used that day, without a doubt. The “?’s” abound.
Many have tried to unravel the bullshit story the government report has put forward. It is a puzzle that has had its ‘key’ destroyed, on purpose. Architects and engineers and airline pilots all know and agree that the ‘Official Story’ is full of outright lies and obfuscations.
I stand with them. And all that evidence.
There are thousands of questions, and the evidence that would provide answers has been destroyed and recycled or, outright ignored.
They threw away and cremated the center of the puzzle and the untidy box it came in.
But we know the edges.
People don’t like the incongruity of it all being an ‘inside job,’ so most won’t even entertain the idea. They have chosen to believe a pack of lies because the truth would be world-shattering to unveil. Cognitive dissonance in action. Research, people. Do your research.
Let’s break down (or codify) some parts of that infernal puzzle... the questions ‘they’ don’t like to be asked. (For our purposes, ‘They’ are the people that know the truth, and probably made it, or let it, happen. They profited greatly and pretend it is in the past. It is in their best interests that the truth never be known, or believed. They label, and thus tarnish, ‘conspiracy theorists,’ despite the overwhelming evidence of a conspiracy.)
Why were the NY and the Pentagon planes flying at speeds and making maneuvers that’d rip the wings off of a 757 or 767?
Why did President George W. Bush sit there for 7 minutes? That dog don’t bark. If the attack was real, he’d have been shuffled out in seconds. Unless, it wasn’t real.
Why did WTC1, WTC2 and WTC 7 collapse in free-fall? (Free-fall is basically the definition of controlled demolition.) How were all those columns severed simultaneously?
Why didn’t the massive cores of the Twin Towers stay intact?
Why was there molten iron and steel deep in the rubble, like a foundry?
Why were there explosions deep in the WTC Complex before any plane strike occurred?
Why were the bomb-dogs called out of WTC the Thursday before that fateful Tuesday?
Why did 17 armored cars go underneath WTC4 on Nov 2, 2001 and then disappear to history? (I’m probably the only person in the world who witnessed that, as far as Google is concerned.) Where is all that gold?
Why did none of the plethora of cameras on the Pentagon or at its helipad capture an image of a plane? Why are there 82 missing videos, in FBI custody?
Why did ‘Flight 77’ make a huge near-circle in the sky before dropping down to the Pentagon? Wouldn’t that have given any air defense time to react?
Why did all the planes divert to areas without any radar coverage, and then reappear?
Why did all the employees of Israeli-owned Odigo get a message telling them to all stay home from the WTC that day?
Why does the Flight Data Recorder from Flight 77 show that the cockpit door never opened after leaving Dulles Airport? Were the ‘hijackers’ already at the controls?
Why didn’t any of the veteran pilots squawk the hijack code, ‘7500?’ (which is drilled all the time?) Why didn’t they invert their planes to prevent a hijack/take-over? Why didn’t any distress messages get sent by the pilots?
If you can answer any of these, (which you CAN’T,) then the bigger questions emerge.
“Of each particular thing, ask, ‘What is its nature?’” wrote Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a stoic and brilliant man.
Some of the time, the bigger questions loom large. Some of the time, we just raise our hands to shield our view, pretend it all ‘isn’t real,’ the connections, the information that is evidence. We fail to find the ‘nature’ of things that happen because it requires real mental work.
We in this country choose to be ignorant, because it’s infinitely easier than doing the mental legwork that the leaders have actively discouraged.
The majority of Americans agree like lemmings, nod their heads at what the Report says, and get back to their Cheesy-Poofs and ESPN remote controls and juice machines.
Reduce the whole into fractions and September 11th is a near-miracle of failure upon failure. There’s just no way.
The day that defies training and protocol at all levels. The day that several wargames simulating the very things that were happening were scheduled and running.
FEMA arrived in NYC on the 10th of September, is that a coincidence?
While working for Merrill Lynch, at World Financial 4, I met their main telecom guy, a man named Ivan (last name not needed.) We shared a number of long elevator rides together between the roof and the basement, and he informed me of some very odd things that occurred pre-11th. White vans pouring into the underground garage at early hours and disappearing a few hours later. The ‘loosening’ of security around the WTC complex in the days before... and just about every person working or living in that neighborhood there knew something was a’brewin.’ Perhaps everyone there was aware, whether they knew it or not.
“Put the Tinglev into an L4, swiftly.”
“Blinx, Klargen,” The helmsman replied. “L4 over Indonesia in 6.3 seconds.”
“Very well.” The Rotatey Chair sucked me in, but the inertial dampeners were functioning just fine, so there was no need. Maybe it liked me.
I pushed hard, to the XO only. We’re renaming the ship.
“Klargen?” He tilted his big head the way they always do.
“We are changing the name of our ship, Number One. Suggestions?”
He bowed in thought for a brief moment, then I heard him sorting through names. Spectacular names, full of syllables and strange constructions. Some caught my ear and I had him explain them, entre nous.
“Plorit-ahss” (with the pronounced ’s’ sound) is the word for ‘faraway adventure.’
“S’Tirkinx,” the imperative of “roundly seek,” is a good one. I knew that one already, can’t remember where I heard it...
The XO suggested “Buransi’flort.” He knew I would reject it. We didn’t star-travel much.
Suddenly, I had a plan which distracted me completely.
“XO, configure the ship for a quickie decloaked flyby of the ISS, they need some ‘fun.’” I put up the air quotes, and he had no idea what I meant. They never use their hands or arms to accentuate language. Some mimic me at it, good for a chuckle.
“Blinx, Klargen.” The XO glided to the HELM panel and began making decisions with the officer there.
The Rotatey Chair sucked me in briefly as we ‘dove’ back to low earth orbit from the L4. It was subtle, and unneeded, as the inertial dampeners have been repaired.
The ISS is massive, but built like a stretching spider with partially entangled legs. It maintains a constant orientation relative to Earth, so it was easy for HELM to figure out the biggest boom for the buck as they came by. We knew where the cameras were situated, and that made it no small task. We wanted the astronauts to see us, but not have any video or photo opportunities. They may also record their radar, so we could only de-cloak at very close range.
I watched us home in on the ISS. There was a new resupply ship attached since the last time. The screens on the bridge wings began rapidly filling with data and pictos.
“VISUAL, give me blueprint overlay on MAIN, with their data coverage clouds, please.” I privated to the XO that we could find a way in and then decloak. Zero-G pants would be shat.
“Blinx, Klargen.”
(They didn’t really find any humor in it, which was troubling. If I was an astronaut, I’d be flattered by our close presence, and befuddled that we would leave them no real evidence, except memories.)
“HELM, hold at 3 distances in matched orbit, sun at our stern, please.”
“Blinx, Klargen.”
The XO privated a “st’oump,” which means their version of WTF?
I privated back that we need to wheedle through multiple layers of surveillance, and that that was a fun puzzle to unravel. With the overlay graphics, we could thread the needle in 3-D simulation, before we ever tried to finagle our way into their perimeter. The cloaking doesn’t remove us from phase-space, it just bends some visual photons, carefully. The ISS’s cameras might record visual ‘smudges’ that a clever techie person could figure out if they were bored or stoned, or both.
The overlay for video was cherry-red, and photo was lemony-yellow. The radars were for orbital junk, and docking, a sphere of broken coverage in bright orange. The XO and the helms-grey rotated, manipulated, analyzed all that data on the HELM sub-screen, and found a ‘sneaky-fucker’ route.
“Klargen, we’re 5-by-5 on this one.”
“Very well, take us in.”
We cork-screwed into the quadrant below the station, and came ‘up’ under the solar panel infrastructure. Then we went end-over-end around it and towards the command pod as flatly as possible.
There’s a small window they hang out by when they’re on break, and they don’t always have a camera handy.
“Dropping to Lower Bridge, XO. Prep to open hatch and maintain ionic separation.”
“Blinx, Klargen,” he privated, as I dropped down in the Rotatey Chair to the empty Lower Bridge. The lights and ambient heat came up, and I noted the oxygen level was a bit low, but not enough to make me dizzy.
“De-cloak, ionize and open lower hatch, Number One.”
“Blinx, Klargen.”
The door shushed open and there it was, the command pod. A female astronaut was squeezing some food into her mouth, apparently reading texts off an Ipad. She was occupied, not aware. Damnit.
“XO, landing lights, please.”
“Blinx, Klargen, you want just a flash?”
“Affirmative, XO. Get her attention.”
The ISS 3C-pod was illuminated briefly, and she looked up. Her jaw dropped open and I could see she was trying to wrap her mind around it. I waved and she shook her head, not believing that a human was 20 feet from her, without a spacesuit, in a large craft that had threaded a needle to get there.
She didn’t have time to reach for a camera.
“Secure and dog the hatch. Cloak the ship and extract us, XO. She’ll have a good story for the grandkids now.” I chuckled loudly and tittered my way back to the Rotatey Chair.
“Blinx, Klargen.”
Those of you that read this know I’ve purged the puzzling issue of ‘Her’ from this blog, as much as possible. It was time. She knows what she needs to know - my questions - and won’t deal with them in any way. That’s her prerogative. She has no apparent recollection of the year before the Revised Fable, or has submerged it too deeply to let it bob to the surface, let alone breathe and be purified by the sun.
In the jigsaw puzzle metaphor, I assume she has swiped it into a roaring fire.
The borders and outlines are still there. They don’t burn, no matter how long they stay in the coals. No fire but the end of time itself can consume them.
I accept that I may have started the fire that eventually consumed the center of that puzzle. I held on too tightly as she was slipping away, which just hastened her decision to run like a coyote. (Everyone knows Canis latrans has no inborn sense of loyalty - even to a pack - unlike their cousins.)
Inasmuch as I have been soul-searching (these last 4 months with a trained counselor,) stupidly waiting 8000-plus days for anything, there are probably no answers she can provide that I don’t already likely know. I don’t want to be her friend if she can’t remember that at one time, we were friends, then lovers. There is no reconciling with the actual ‘Her.’ Upsets are ‘challenging’ to deal with, from her ‘enlightened perspective.’
Pour moi, it’s just symbolic now. The uplifting power of ‘Yes’ versus the karma-sucking power of ‘No.’ One is easy, and lazy, and the other means confronting assumptions, which may require some actual mental and emotional work.
Hate is so enduring, until you let it go. (It isn’t easy to do in a vacuum.)
Sorry I smothered you, Lady of Many Names. I was smitten, and the existential conundrum of Desert Storm made me a psychological test-tube of sorts. I craved normalcy and hope, life and love, connection and consort. A sense of family.
In the end, I was worse off than if it had never happened. It took decades to get over the sense of betrayal, of deep insult, of focused group-hatred and boorish indifference. Of Threat.
I wouldn’t be me if it hadn’t happened as it did. Fucking Growth Opportunities.
Back to the puzzles. I have many strategies, and they work. There is one puzzle that will have to resolve itself to being incomplete, missing wide swaths of color and order. Of never being whole, or even part, and in some places, never spoken of or recalled. So, if the metaphor is correct, it has to be happy being completely useless, treated as a taboo.
Back on the bridge, my crew was almost smiling at the joke we’d played on the ISS. I could feel it. They’re very playful, when it’s explained to them.
“XO, 1-MC.” The Master intercom, albeit telepathic.
“Blinx, Klargen, you’re on.”
I could feel the anticipation of the crew. Even the Greys in Engineering were paused.
“Crew, thank you for this last three years. We are re-naming this ship. After some discussion with our beloved XO, we have come to one conclusion: we all like clever surprises.”
I could ‘hear’ a lot of telepathic static from the crew, odd glances with question marks attached. Big, black almond-shaped eyes met each other’s in the many spaces of the ship.
“The AIV Tinglev is no more. Our ship is an adventuring, exploring ship. We seek the answers to puzzles, both human and alien. With that in mind, you may suspect our new name.”
Nothing. Tumbleweeds.
“Crew, welcome aboard the AIV Glur’Kibur’nx.”
If they could laugh, they would’ve. It was quite clever.
“XO, Helm, make calculations for Kona and punch it.”
“Blinx, Klargen.”
Thirty seconds later, I dove from the lower hatch into the warmth of the Pacific. A sea turtle was waiting for me. They always seem to be there when I get in the ocean in Hawaii.
Isn’t that a puzzle?
Glurg.
