Pattern of Life for a Boggart

Do you remember the Boggart in Harry Potter? Unlike the soul-sucking Dementor which required a powerful  Patronus charm to be banished, the Boggart was made to look ridiculous and, therefore, laughed at and vanquished.

In one fell swoop tonight, a boggart was vanquished, and in much the same way.

To be honest, ever since I knew I would encounter him, I’ve been terrified about speaking to Mac. I didn’t want to have to deal with him, and I believed that he might actually be capable of fucking things up for me. I felt that I might have to speak with him at some point, but I wasn’t sure what I would say.  He had become a symbol for me: a terrible and oppressive enemy.

Now, consider the scene: it is the officer’s mess on the Dutch ship in the night before the Ship gets underway. The bar is open and music is playing. People are relaxed. A bad Nicholas Cage movie is streaming silently in the background. Richard has already secured a red wine for me and has a coke for himself (he does not drink alcohol). He has been an exceptionally fine host, walking me around the ship, getting linens, and giving me his own T-shirt as a pillowcase when the pillowcases have not been cleaned yet.

We are both data-obsessed, and both hopeless optimists. Already I’ve learned that he is driven by the same things that drive me: a desire to see the big picture, to fill in the missing pieces. A desire to make things work. Richard is a man who makes things go. He also has a good sense of humor and I smile a lot around him. I have learned tonight about difficult missions he has conducted (and one really remarkable mission). I have respect for him.

He is also gaining respect for me. I have given him vast swaths of data; he is a man who reads my assessments and writes his own. We have discussed my future plans and his future plans.  He is impressed that I identified the real issues surrounding the recent VBSS training and then worked with the Defense attaché in to solve the problem.

Mac walks into the bar. We have already seen him several times. He sidles next to a woman in a turquoise shirt. I look at him, but I don’t look at him. All at once I want to stare him down and ignore him.

I say to Richard, “Which people do you like working with most?”

“I always respect the people who are able to get the mission done,” said Richard. He looks at two bespectacled chubby men behind him. “When the sickbay was full of casualties, these guys really went into action. They were extremely professional.”

He glances around the room some more.

“The woman in the blue shirt,” he said. “She is our lawyer. She’s worthless. She is always waiting to be told what to do. She wants to take over whatever you’re doing but she doesn’t come up with anything.”

“That guy next to her,” he goes on.  My heart skips a beat. He means Mac. “He’s our intel officer. He works for me and I’m trying to coach him a little.”

As if on cue, Mac gets up and walks out of the room. Likely, my presence is difficult for him to bear. The last words sink in: Richard, my host, my new friend, the man whose company I have genuinely enjoyed, is Mac’s BOSS. And Mac keeps seeing me with him. This is cool.

I feel I should at least come clean a little with Richard.

“I know him,” I say. “He was in Naples in 2010. That was when I met Sjors.”

The news doesn’t seem to strike Richard and he goes on.

“He works from 0600 to 2300,” he tells me. “And he doesn’t even know why. He doesn’t do any Physio. He doesn’t sit in his bunk and read a book. His reports are rubbish. He can’t tell the difference between good information and the useless stuff. “

“He can’t prioritize,” I observe.

 

“Exactly,” says Richard. “He puts these slides into the brief.  He puts everything into the brief, and he can't tell when what he's saying doesn't make sense. The briefs to the Admiral when I came on were 137 slides. I’ve worked them down to 99. He gets up at 0615 and showers and starts work. I asked him why he did it. He said it was because his roommate got up at 0615 to do Physio and he wants to use a shower when his roommate isn’t using the shower. I told him to sleep another three hours and shower at 0900 when his roommate isn’t in the shower.”

“I asked him, “when do you schedule your physio? When do you read a book? When was the last time you fell in love with yourself in the shower?” He got very uncomfortable and said, “that’s a very personal question.” I told him, “You can’t get anything done if you’re so tired from working all the time. Here, for the next twenty minutes, make me up your schedule here on the computer. Write down when you’re going to do physio; when you’re going to read a book; when you’re going to sit in your bunk; when you’re  going to fall in love with yourself in the shower.” He told me, “I’m too busy. I don’t have time” So I stood next to him while he made up his schedule. When he gave it to me it was a mess. It was so chaotic and worthless.”

At this point, I’m laughing so hard that my eyes are glazing over with tears. They are tears of hilarity; tears of relief;  tears of sheer pleasure. What had been this demon-horror is now a truly pathetic little man. I actually feel sorry for the guy. I feel a bit guilty that I terrorized him so thoroughly that he took down his facebook page. Here is a man who is so uptight and incompetent that he can’t even masturbate properly. While he holds the compassion of his compassionate boss, he does not hold a place of respect. And Richard holds a great deal of respect for me.  It is all smoke and mirrors. Maybe nothing is as it seems.

I know that Mac did covert work. Patrick told me this. So that part is real. But he was certainly not the mastermind behind all the bullshit. He was definitely the snitch, though.  He noted what Sjors was doing and knew it was out of regs, and ratted him out. Is that enough to punish him? Maybe. But I’m feeling less and less the need to exact punishment on the man. I thought I would never say it, but I consider it now: Perhaps he has suffered enough.

Maybe I give him the opportunity to come clean with me. And let that decide. Maybe I give him the choice: tell me what happened. All of it. And if I’m satisfied that you haven’t left anything out, I promise to drop the charges. What sort of a bargain would that be for him? For me? You and I have both wanted to know the rest of the story, so maybe we get to fill in the gaps.

So the Boggart is gone. I am glad that I did not betray my fear. He wasn’t worthy of it, afterall.

London

I write because I must. The thoughts tangle up in me and must stroll to stretch their legs. The thoughts are, as always and without reprieve, for you. When I write, I let myself believe you are my friend and are interested in them. I know that you wish that I did not exist for you - that I had never existed. But you cared once, and I write to that person, even if he is dead.  Maybe he is locked up in some corner of your mind and he likes to see my name and hear my voice.

I sometimes share bits of our correspondence with Eve and Christine because they've both met you. They tell me, “He existed. He loved you once. He is gone. He is dead, but he loved you once very much.” They both have such incredible empathy for you. They say such kind things about you still, and that comforts me. I care that you are treated well - even in memory - because you have been through so much, and I don’t want hatred towards to you for the choices you’ve made.  I fight enough dark thoughts of my own, I don’t have it in me to fight their anger as well.

I was in London this week; a hotel in Trafalgar square just across from the National Gallery and the church of St. Martin in the Fields. More than a decade ago, I spent three months in London and saw (and fell in love with) Da Vinci’s Madonna of the Rocks, and ate in the church’s “Café  in the crypt”. This Thursday, I ran in the misting rain, saluted Lord Nelson, jogged past the theaters, and fantasized about the day when I will come back and sit in the audience.  My childhood friend Stacey came to meet us at the hotel. Stacey moved to the UK several months ago so that she could be with Daniel, the Scotsman who took her heart. She had been an actress in New York for fifteen years, taking work as a salesperson and nanny, and working in off-off-Broadway roles. Daniel is a British actor and they eek out an existence together, learning one another, and loving every minute. We met for drinks and she stayed the night with me so we could catch up.

We sat together with Jim in the swanky hotel bar, sipping cocktails and prepping for the meetings the next morning. Jim is my business partner, not my lover. It might be convenient if I was attracted to him. We have common vision, common interests and a shared drive for work. I’ve traveled to the UK five times since August to work with him. We work from early morning until well past midnight, and he reaches inside my brain and fiddles with the gears, finding ways to shift every time it gets fatigued or distracted or dark. Jim’s an impressive man: with years of experience managing human tragedies for the UN. He was responsible for the Rwandan refugee camp during the 1994 genocide and was made a member of the British Order for this work. He would fly over the rivers leading into Goma every morning, counting bodies for the tally so that the UN would finally say “genocide” and intervene. When cholera broke out in the camp, killing 60,000 people in ten days, he shipped in lye to line the graves and bottled water to stop the spread, and bulldozed the contaminated bodies into pits. He had to fight the Hutu disinformation campaign that came over short-wave radio into the camp: they told the refugees that the ration wrist-bands would leave a secret tattoo to track them for life. In response, Jim and his workers wore dozens of the wristbands up their own arms as they worked.

Jim was shot in Bosnia as he ran the refugee camp there. He negotiated through border crossings and was one time drawn into a trap as he negotiated to move food through a contested territory. He was trapped for a day in a cement building with several Serbian men who cooked rats in a pot as they waited for the firefight to stop. Two of the men had been neighbors before the conflict. When the ethnic cleansing began, one man killed the wife and children of the other man. Now, they seemed to be friends and allies. "It is my fault," explained the man with the murdered family. "I should not have married a Croat."

Jim told me this story when I asked him how your thinking could be twisted and converted by the people you work for, turning you into their tool.

He is such a private person, nobody would ever guess that this is his past. It’s taken me months to elicit this information from Jim as we’ve worked together. In return, he walks with me through the Suffolk farmland or along the seaside after I’ve received a detached or cold message from you. He doesn’t ask questions and he distracts me with our current project, directing my pain into productivity.

I admire and respect him, but we’re platonic as brother and sister when I stay at his country home and work late in the night. It’s good for me that way because I can offer brain, but nothing of my heart. The heart is not mine to give. The mind is all he asks, though, and he gives me his mind in return. We will be business partners for decades. We will change the world. He encourages me to protect myself. His tradecraft is learned from playing politics at the highest levels of government. He eats organizations like yours for breakfast. He has advised me on prosecuting your bastard organization, and he will stand beside me as I eviscerate Mac on a global stage.
 
Jim and I met with three of the top law London firms on Thursday. Three firms with very British names. I wore a skintight black dress with heels and the necklace you gave me. By itself the necklace is bittersweet, so I add a heart-shaped quartz stone that was a gift from Stacey years ago. It seems to neutralize the sadness.

After it was over, we had dinner that night with Nick and Fiona in their London home. I’ve fallen in love with Nick and Fiona and their two semi-adult children. Nick is a barrister who cooks me bacon and eggs for breakfast and offers me wine and legal counsel, and Fiona executes the most hilarious running commentary about British politics and the British social scene. If I was ten years younger, I would marry their 18-year-old son, Alex, simply so I could integrate into their fantastic dynamic and enjoy them all the time. It has been such a surprise for me that I can be a part of other families, out of pleasure and not obligation. People have extended families and in-laws. I will never have these things, but I have friends all over the globe who open their homes to me because they are good and I am good, and we seek one another out.

I have a sore throat and fever today. I wish that I did not. I travel to Africa again soon and I hate being sick when I travel. I need to be well so that I can watch for signs of malaria. After this last visit to Senegal, I’ve learned that I can't take the chemical prophylaxis (the side-effects were dangerous), so I have to wait until I’m infected with the damned parasite before I act. I can't know to do this if I already have chills and a fever. It feels pretty bad today - but I remember that you once told me that the worst sickness in the world is the one you're currently experiencing. This makes me laugh now as I feel sorry for myself.

I have sympathy for you, Sjors. I don't understand your decisions, but I don't think you're any happier than I am. Like me, you throw yourself into your work to compensate for the pieces that are missing. Does this give you relief as it gives me? This work consumes me and gives me a future again. I intend to use my energies and the leverage I will gain with my current work to fix things: to pressure companies and governments to behave ethically. Of course, I haven't had success yet! Consider that I haven't had any luck in getting your government to behave ethically - but they haven't felt the pain yet so I still have time. I think you are like me: constantly driving with work and brain so you won't have attention to feel the loss.

I have several questions lingering from past messages to you. I asked you if you ever cheated on me and you did not answer this. I ask you again. I also ask you again to meet with me. You know my reasons for asking this; true friendship requires honesty and commitment. So, I suppose my question remains from my last message to you: will you be my friend? I am your friend and let you into my life. You are welcome. But, in spite of all the rules and restrictions you live under, I want you to be my friend as well. I want you to let me into your life and to be honest with me, whether the picture is good or bad. It goes against all your training, and everything they wish you to do. But I think you should give them the finger and do it anyway.

I've been reading Le Carre's books recently. He is one of my favorite authors and I pace myself with his writings (like good bottles of wine). I particularly like the Smiley series. I just finished "Smiley's People" and I've started reading, "Call for the Dead" about George's recruitment and initial years in the British Secret Service. A passage struck me with particular poignancy: "His emotions in performing this work were mixed and irreconcilable. It intrigued him to evaluate, from a detached position, what he described as "the agent potential of a human being", to devise miniscule tests of character and behavior which could inform him of the qualities of a candidate.  This part of him was bloodless and inhuman. Smiley, in this role, was the international mercenary of his trade: amoral and without motive beyond that of personal gratification. Conversely, it saddened him to witness in himself the gradual death of natural pleasure. Always withdrawn, he now found himself shrinking from the temptations of friendship and human loyalty. He guarded himself warily from spontaneous reaction. By the strength of his intellect, he forced himself to observe humanity with clinical objectivity and because he was neither immortal nor infallible, he hated and feared the falseness of his life."

I wonder, my friend, if this is what you hate and fear. You are, by nature, an intellectual man. Empathy comes to you as a secondary effect after you have been able to logic your way through another person's perspective. But I like the spontaneous Sjors, and it will be sad if you guard yourself warily from spontaneous reaction. They should let you be more than this. It is a false choice they offer you. Do you sense this?

The Promise

In your message to me you expressed the belief that I've broken a promise to you by staying as I have: because I told you that I would leave if it was best for you. You seem to feel angry at me for not following through on this.
 

I have to tell you: I've thought about this promise quite a lot during the last year when I've wanted to be finished with you so that my soul would heal. Sometimes, I try to pretend that I've closed the door on you because I fear the darkness that has sucked me down so many times. I know that it is a risk to have this door open (even a crack). It is always possible that the darkness will swallow me again and I tell myself that it would be best if I could just forget you. But I have this strange difficulty in lying to myself.
 

I ask you now to lend me your dispassionate mind. I appeal to your logic, not your emotions. Please consider the reasoning of my words and perhaps you will understand what has happened, and help to know what to do next.
 

Consider that the problem is the promise itself. Consider that I have not broken my promise to you: I will leave you if it is best for you. Like every other promise I made to you, I meant this one sincerely and I seem to be so bound by it that I can't make it budge. But also consider that the converse of that promise is true as well: if it is not best for you (or harmful to you), I cannot leave you. I think that this is what has happened to me. This is why I cannot leave, in spite of all my attempts. I have never believed that I would be leaving you to happiness or truth. And so I can't leave. I stay for exactly the same reason (and for the same promise) for which you think I should be gone.
 

Do you remember when I tried to leave last October and I couldn't do it? I changed my ticket, then, lost my luggage and left Schiphol on foot, feeling like I'd made a terrible mistake. I stayed in the Netherlands then for the same reason I stay now: because I would break my promise by going away. I physically could not make myself leave.
 

I truly believe that I would damage you if I left. If I leave, then I am agreeing that you have chosen the right path: the path that will make you the happiest and bring you the greatest joy and peace. I would be adding my vote to the hundreds of other votes you have collected: from your friends and your family and your colleagues and your boss who tell you that the life you live now is the right thing to do. But I absolutely, in the depths of my soul, cannot believe this. I believe that you are lying. Some of the lie was deliberately formed by you, and other parts of the lie have become integrated into you. I believe you have lied to me and that you have lied to yourself. I believe that the life you live now is a lie. I believe that you have many incentives to continue living the lie. I believe that it is likely you will live the lie for the rest of your life. And if everyone else in your life believes the lie, that's not my concern. All I'm concerned about is my truth and your truth and the promises I made to you. I believe that you are doing something that is terribly and irrevocably damaging to you. There is nothing I can do to stop it, but I cannot condone it. Please understand: I am not able to condone it.
 

When you wanted me to walk away last October, I think you wanted me to agree with the story you told yourself. I could not. I did not have the emotional wherewithal to fight it logically, but I felt instinctively that it was very wrong and so I stayed, even though I was fragile and unable to fight.
 

For a while, I believed that you lied because you had some external threat hanging over you - because you feared losing your children. When I became strong enough, I did my best to remove this threat so that you would be free to make decisions without the ugly influence of your masters. If I had succeeded, I may have been able to walk away then. But I did not succeed and you seem to have become such a zealot for their cause, I don't think that you will ever be freed. You stepped willingly back into their cage and shut the door behind you.
 

I have no expectation that I will ever see the man I fell in love with. For all intents and purposes, that man is dead and I have grieved him tremendously. I can honestly say: I have no hope. But the promise I made to him is immovable.
 

Let us say (for the sake of argument) that I am wrong in my instinct and my assessment. Let us say that you are living honestly and that you have reconciled all of the fractured parts of your identity. Let us say that you are living in a loving and reciprocal and mutually supportive marriage with a wife who understands and loves you, and that you have integrity in all parts of your life and that you are a whole, complete and healed man. Let us say that you are really and truly happy.
 

If this is the truth of your life, if you are telling and living the truth, then the best possible solution is to give me the peace of letting me see and experience this firsthand. If you are happy and living the life you wanted, then let me see this so that I can be released. Be my friend. Really and truly. Let me into your life. Let me see and know that you are well and release me.
 

Here is the rub, though: you cannot paint a pretty enough picture that I will not see through. You know me. You know this is true. You have tried to give me pretty pictures and lie to me so that I could walk away, but I have not been able to go because I see through the bullshit.

If you are not happy or truthful, then give me the peace of being your friend and ally. Give me the respect of being truthful with me. I cannot leave you, so let me be your friend, rather than your tormentor.

Rota

I went for a run along the ocean this morning. The beach in Rota has fine sand and I took my shoes off to run barefoot in the surf.  It was dark when I began but the sun was rising when I finished, reflecting pink and quicksilver off the water. I waded deep into the ocean then, hiking my shorts up to the underwear-line to keep them dry, but a large wave pummeled me and drenched nearly everything. Already wet, I thought about going in: swimming out to sea. It would be relaxing, I thought. But it is still too tempting for me to swim out and not return.  Even today, the idea tugs at the corners of my mind.
 

I asked god about you. I am not a holy person and my prayers have more than their fair share of profanity. But I calculate that god is more offended by personal dishonesty and hypocrisy and cruelty than my prolific fucks and damns.  It will come as no surprise to you that there were quite a few fucks and damns in my prayer for and about you!

Years ago, in my first time in St. Peter’s in Rome, I found myself in a chapel with obscenely ornate gold seraphim flanking an elaborate altar. I knelt with the penitents and tried to be respectful of their silence. Suddenly, without meaning to, I found myself saying words I had not intended to pray: “I give you the fire of my mind.” The prayer was so fierce and unexpected that I jumped up right away, embarrassed, and walked briskly from the room so that people would not stare. As I think about my passion, my insatiable intellectual curiosity, my drive for truth, and need for justice and compassion in equal measure, I wonder whether god took seriously my words and has stoked this fire even though we’ve never talked about it since and I have so little faith or belief in deity. The thought gives me comfort, though, and makes me feel that my actions and drive could, at some point, have some sort of purpose and resolution. It is important to feel a sense of purpose when all hope for personal happiness has fled. People tell me that I’m a workaholic but I do not attach a negative connotation to this concept. At the very least, it was the fire of my mind that kept me alive when my sorrow would have drowned me in the ocean of Cape Verde that day in August last year and every day since when I feel the hole in my soul and I wish to be finished.

“What is the purpose of this pain?” I asked god. The pain is a constant thing with me, and becomes stronger in the afterglow of a particularly notable professional accomplishment because I cannot share my victory with the man who loved me, and who would be happy for me. Because I have the knowledge that this professional win is the only type of joy I will ever know and it seems so inadequate compared to what I had when I was with you. Then, I felt your soul; I felt truly happy; I thought I would have a lifetime to learn you; I thought we would share our days and nights and help one another become our highest and best selves; I taught myself Dutch so I could talk to your kids and I thought that we would raise children together. “Is there a reason why I haven’t been able to excise this pain from body and soul?” I asked god. “Is the purpose of pain to smooth off the sharp edges?” But then I laughed because that seemed wrong. “I think you like my edges,” I shouted to god and the ocean. “I think you like my sharp edges!”

 Somehow, I felt that this was true. The tougher I become, the more capable and angular and able to fight bullshit and lies, I have the sense that the god I was raised to believe in, the weak and shaming god who wanted blind followers, was the lie all along. When I sense there might be a god, I feel more kinship with the Jesus who kicked down the money-changers stalls in the temple days before his crucifixion.

During this last week, I met with fourteen naval officers from all over the world for ten hours each day. I taught them critical thinking. I taught them research methods. I gave them data; showed them how to conduct qualitative and quantitative analysis. They each conducted a research project and I struggled to make sure that they each understood and could do it on their own: question; hypothesis; study design; data collection; analysis; conclusion; assessment.  I have never been a good instructor but I need them to know how to do this. I’m convinced it’s the only way anything will ever change in Africa. People have to be able to self-examine and check where they are.  This program is my program. My idea. The Command supports it and now I’m executing it. Sent to Spain on my own to execute my own program. In retrospect it was a pretty neat deal. And exciting to have my program underway.

I had the weekend free. I had work to do but I saved it for Sunday and I left Rota on Saturday. I set the GPS and drove to Seville. Sjors, it was wonderful! What a tremendously beautiful city! I can’t honestly tell you all the reasons I was charmed, but it made me ache inside with how wonderful it is. I didn’t have time to see everything – so I picked the Cathedral and saw Columbus’ tomb and the art on the gothic walls. There is an orange grove in the church courtyard, and clever brickwork pavement designed to channel rainwater to the trees. A stone well burbled fresh water and I washed my dusty feet and hands in it.

Afterwards, I went to the bullfighting stadium and learned that the sport had originally been developed to train soldiers to fight unpredictable and dangerous enemies. They fought the bulls on horseback. The matadors were the “assistants” on the ground, much like the modern rodeo clowns (If you haven’t seen a rodeo, I recommend it. It’s quite the cultural experience). When they make the death strike, it is with a sword through the spinal column and cleanly into the heart.  I learned that bullfighters feel that the only noble death is a reciprocal death in the ring. So many fighters are gored and trampled by the bulls. Men will continue bullfighting well into their seventies rather than risk dying in their beds. In a strange way, I feel I understand this. It is not the worst death I can think of.
 

In my wanderings, I met up with some French and British tourists. We had tapas and drinks together and then found a club with authentic Spanish guitar and Flamenco dancing. The dancer was so intense, her face full of passion and pain. I know it was theatrics and not real, but I wonder if every woman has some sense of what it is to feel like this.

 

The Frenchman and the Sea

He drank far too much alcohol.
Sangria, and then a beer. And another. And another. And another. And...
To convince himself that it was socializing and not thirst, he ordered me a drink when he collected his own. 
And the glasses of wine lined up on the table, waiting for me as though they were spare sodas.
There was no way I could drink them all.
I tried to understand him: the train of thought. The ideas. They were jumbled in  his head and in his words. Every time I thought I could address one of these, hold it down and analyze it, it skidded away from me like a cockroach in the light.
"Docotor," he said to me, his eyes bleary and the consonants in the word pronounced independently. "I find you very attractive."
"Thank you," I told him.
But I did not want him. Sjors is still the only person I want. Fantasize about.
But I like Marc. With his crooked nose and his celtic, devil-may-care attitude and his encyclopedic knowledge of American action films. He asked me, "Do you find me attractive?"
"Have you not listened to me?" I ask him. My eyes still sting with the tears that come, even now, unbidden every time I think of Sjors.
"I'm in love with someone else."
He shows me pictures of his three-year-old son in France.
"His mother...tries to erase me," he says. 

Out on the Spanish coast, the waves crash. Full of too much wine, we scramble over the wall and I walk, sand sloshing into my sandals.
"There is a philosopher," he says. "He said that there are men who are dead, men who are alive, and then there are sailors."
I laugh. It is a loud, raucous laugh that seems the match the waves. Maybe he is talking about himself but, to me, he describes Sjors. I know that if I stop laughing long enough, he will take my clothes off there on the beach. I don't want him to.
"I am here," he tells me. "Because my life in France is shit."
I nod. Overhead, the sky is dark with stars. Behind us the city lights from Rota are glowing in the the drunken haze.
"You are here," he tells me. "Because your personal life is shit."

I look in the waves in the dark. I think about another ocean. One year ago. I would have gone out into it. Into the darkness. I would have stopped things then. Ended the pain.

And I wonder: what I have I gained by staying here a little longer?

He wants to come back to the hotel. He wants to order champagne. I order him a taxi.

"Do you find me attractive?" he asks me.

But I have gone beyond attractive long ago. When I decided to stay alive. Something about this has changed me.

He is angry when he gets into the cab. I cannot give him more. I don't have it to give.

Ugly Rich Man

Today, I was backed into a corner and yelled at for 30 minutes by a man who owns tens of millions of dollars and contracts his vessel to the US Navy.

His name is Al. I'd never met him before but, according to the contracting officer I spoke with after the fact, she was surprised that he was so awful - even concerned for his physical health. He'd always been so lovely to her.

Of course he had. Why on earth would he bite the hand that feeds him?

The issue revolves around food. Specifically, the food that is given to Africans during training.

There is a strange and disgusting world view that I frequently encounter: that any problem, large or small, that arises during an engagement in Africa, is a booger that can be wiped off on the "condition" of working in Africa. It's only Africa, afterall. Were you expecting us to bring our A game?

So when African students complain about the quality of food that they're given, people say, "They should be grateful for what we give them."

Because it's Africa and nobody's supposed to notice when you're exploiting them. All I can say is: if an African can't eat the food, then its really inedible.

Never mind that the ship is given a fixed sum of money to feed the students (and can pocket the change when the meals are cheap). Somehow, the African students never manage to get the same food that is fed on the mess-decks: the food that the crew eats.

In July, we had a meeting with the Ship's crew and with the trainers and the coordinating staff: a "Hotwash" to identify issues with the mission. This discrepancy was brought up. The captain violently denied that there was a problem. The instructors starting keeping records. They passed the information to me. It looked something like this:

Day 1: Crew Meals A & B. Student Meal: C  Mismatch? Yes.
Day 2: Crew Meals  D & E. Student Meal: C. Mismatch? Yes.
Day 3: Crew Meals F & G: Student Meal: H. Mismatch? Yes.

and so on... you get the picture.

I passed the information to the appropriate people. I assumed that the "reasonable man" approach would be taken and the behavior would change.

Then this ugly rich man backs me into a corner today, and began an attack that does not stop for nearly 30 minutes. Apparently, the ship's Captain had received an e-mail message this morning with instructions on having "fair meals" between the mess decks and the classrooms.

Al is upset. He wants to know what the issue is. I give him a brief overview of the hotwash. Why hasn't he heard about it until now? He tells me that "any issues should be addressed through  the appropriate channels" (the irony being that he was addressing THIS issue through an inappropriate channel). I believe that the issue had been addressed during the hotwash and I tell Al that his people had been present and were well aware of the concern. I tell him that the minutes of the hotwash and the lessons learned had been shared. I recommend that the appropriate fix is to ensure equality
in the meals.

Then the Captain jumps in and insists that "all the meals are equal and have always been equal". I mention that the instructors had tracked the meals that were served on the mess decks vice the meals served in the classrooms and that this was not true.

At this, the rich man's head nearly pops off his shoulders and goes hissing around the room in a big ball of fire. He accuses me of "opening an investigation", and asks why I am "interrogating his staff" and notes that I had been "very interested in the engine room" (I was dragged along on a ship's tour yesterday and couldn't give a damn about the engine room. I presume he's accusing me of being a spy). I try to diffuse the situation and explain my role on the ship (training the Staff to conduct assessments).

I tell him that I need to get back to my job, but he continues his tirade for several more minutes. It becomes clear to me that, whatever the real issue is, I'm not going to find it out, and that I'm not in a position to fix or diffuse anything.

He will not let me go. He blocks my way. He yells at me until I repeatedly tell him that I will not speak with him further about this and that he would need to talk to my boss. I tell him that he is being inappropriate and ask him to leave me alone.   

I think he expected me to be ignorant or easily manipulated. But I am always armed with more than enough knowledge and I tend to be just pissed off enough to fight back.

Meet me in Prague

Havering,

I try to understand you, what you are thinking and doing. But without success.

Some time ago I discovered that I don't know you as well as I thought. I think this has lead to miscommunication in the past. I also think that this is why my recent attempts to communicate with you were in vain. We sent emails back and forth but I dare not speak of communication.

This email is my attempt to communicate with you.

You wrote me 16 messages, including one not adressed to me but people reading with me.

There are no people reading with me. I can't explain the things that appearantly went wrong with your facebook. I am convinced that it must have been a normal error. Nor have there at any time been people listening in.

From what you write I destilled that you believe we love one another and a third party makes this impossible. You decided to fight the third party.

You must know that it was my wish, personally motivated, to break contact. It was not influenced or laid up by a third party. You wrote about Mac.I assess you try to fight him. Please know that he has got nothing to do with it. I ask you to leave him alone. I know you think I am pursuaded to write this, but I am not. I don't know how to convince you but I ask you to believe me for it is true.

I care about you. It hurts me to see you hurt. I want to communicate with you if that helps you. I offered you my friendship in the past. I offer it again. But it can only work if you want it and stop blaming and fighting others.

I am here as a friend.

Regards, Sjors

Dear Sjors,

I apologize for the delay in responding. I’ve been in the UK again, working with Jim and running in the Suffolk countryside. It has been very beautiful, with a clear sky and warm sun – even at the end of September.

I feel at a loss for what I should write to you so I hesitate. What can I say that I have not already said? How can I communicate with you when you seem not to understand me and when your responses carry those obligatory attempts to paint me as irrational or paranoid? I feel so sad to be confronted by your prioritizations: you make it clear that you will support and protect their lies, even when they harm me. You choose to align yourself with the people whom you once thought that, with me by your side, you could fight.  What do I say to that?

You tell me that you wish to be my friend. If this is a genuine offer, then meet with me. It is clear that we cannot “communicate” via messages. You feel misunderstood by me. If you wish to convince me of the truth of your words, then look me in the eyes and tell me in person that your organization never harmed me.  Tell me that they are not actively looking for ways to harm me.  Tell me to my face that they are not reading your messages and informing your words and influencing your decisions.

You say that you are trying to understand me, what I am thinking and doing. If you truly wish to know, then I will tell you. In person.  I will tell you whatever you want to know.

If we are to be friends, then we must trust one another. I cannot trust you when I believe you are lying to me, and you cannot trust me when you think I will be your downfall.

It should be on neutral ground. Not Italy. Not the Netherlands. You pick the place (in Europe, preferably) and I will meet you. Madrid, Paris, London, Prague. It doesn’t matter to me.

I will be unavailable until the middle of October. After that, plan to take time off and spend two days with me over a weekend during the last two weeks of October. Not two hours. Not a single awful lying meeting that leaves me drained and dark for months. If you want my friendship, then earn my trust and invest in me as you would invest in a friend. If you want my wellbeing, then be a friend. If you are truthful with me, I will be truthful with you. I will cancel meetings on a weekend and give you my attention and we will build a friendship.

If you want to bring someone with you, that would be fine. Bring your brother or your friend or your wife or a colleague. It may be better that way because I will not be a “secret” friend again.  

It’s your choice.

Sincere wishes for your wellbeing,

E

To My Watcher

I've wanted to write to Sjors but I find myself writing to you instead. You: the watcher. The monitor of all my words. What do you think of this situation? I sometimes wonder what its like to be you: looking in on someone else's life. Do you have any opinions about this? Do you feel like a voyeur? Do you feel the irony of responding to my accusations of privacy violation by  violating my privacy further?

I confess there is something interesting about voyeurism.  Actually, there are few places better suited for this than your country. When I first visited the Netherlands, it was Christmastime. I was in Haarlem visiting Hans and I remember enjoying all of the lighted windows with orchids on the sills: nobody closed the curtains. People would be talking or eating or watching TV and I would look in on them as I walked by. Sometimes I think it makes us feel like part of humanity to watch, unobserved, the little things that make other people human: preparing food or patting the dog or playing with the kids.

But my relationship with Sjors is so intensely private and it matters so much to me. Surely you have some sense of this. You must know how deeply I care for him. Do you also have a sense of how the actions of your organization have profoundly affected my life? Sjors made a choice to return to his cage and shut the door behind him. This is a decision that haunts and pains me and separates me forever from him.

Does the ethic of national martialism outweigh the ethics of love? Do you believe it does? He is lost to me in every way that matters. And he matters more to me than he will ever matter to your people. Do you feel like this about someone in your life?

I do not hate you. You are only doing your job. But consider that I am not an abstraction. When your organization chose to treat me as an abstraction and a liability, they took something fundamental of my person-hood from me. When they pressured and coerced Sjors to give me up and re-frame his paradigm to exclude me, they took something fundamental from his humanity.

I remember reading George Orwell's 1984 when I was very young. Have you ever read this? If you haven't, you should. I'm sure you've heard of it. To me, the horror of the book was not merely the totalitarian regieme, or even the re-writing of political history, or the constant surveillance. The horror was the complete invasion of the independent and personal thoughts and ideas and the personal love of Winston and Julia: the fact that the party so alters Winston's paradigm, making him betray and, by so doing, hate Julia. 

During Winston's political "re-education", Winston is told (of the party's assertion of reality): "there are three stages in your reintegration . . . There is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance.' But Winston resists. In his prison cell, he awakens, screaming: "Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!"  But, after torture and re-education, he does betray her and "loves" the party instead. When he sees her again, Winston finds that he dislikes Julia. Likely, her presence forces him to suffer the subconscious pangs of his own betrayal. When we experience loss of our individual integrity, we often rewrite our paradigm so that we don't have to confront this truth. Do this enough times and it becomes easier to compartmentalize and entertain two opposing ideas at the same time. Orwell calls this Doublethink. Doublethink requires its true practitioners to hold contradictory and self-nullifying beliefs simultaneously and persistently. Winston practices Doublethink. Sjors practices Doublethink.

I do not believe that the people in your organization wish to be malevolent. From my interaction with members of the Dutch military, I find you to be individualistic and motivated by the desire  to impact the world positively. I'm drawn to your people. Very likely, your organization views itself as good, and performing essential functions. So how do you reconcile this with the tremendous evil you have done to me and to Sjors? Do you have any concept of the wrongness of these acts? You may monitor and remove bad actors from the world stage. I support these actions. But I was never a bad actor. I was never a threat to him - nor to your organization. I never wanted anything but to love him and be with him and support him. I have had so many professional and personal passions in my life - but I would surrender every one of them if I could be with him. Even now, I would give up everything I have if it meant I could make love to him every night, and wake up with him beside me. If I could see him smile and know that I was the one making him smile. Indeed, I have trusted him so deeply and loved him so much that it nearly cost me my life. Have you ever loved someone so much that you would trade anything you have for their wellbeing and happiness? After more than a year of knowing he was lost to me, my heart still involuntarily reaches out for him. When I awaken in the morning, I feel a pain in my chest and it sometimes takes me a few minutes before I can identify it: I feel the lack of Sjors as a physical and psychic pain. His physical and intellectual and emotional and spiritual removal from my life have injured me beyond what I can hope to articulate to anyone else. How can an organization do such great harm and still consider itself to be "good"?

These are my thoughts. How I wish I could have a genuine discussion with you and know what you think! There is this inherent barrier between us. You cannot answer or acknowlege me. But I believe you're a thinking and intelligent person with a strong system of ethics and beliefs. How else would you be selected for the job you perform? I wish that you could talk to me - even if you disagree with my ideas. I  wish that I could convince you to help me somehow. But I don't know how. What would I even ask? Maybe you know what you can do. Maybe you will do something for me.

I think that Orwell's ending to 1984 is likely and believable. But it is not inevitable. I believe in forgiveness, and I have faith in the power of love. I believe that love has the ability to overcome many evils. Orwell depicts the final betrayal of Winston and Julia for one another as an irreversible ending for the both of them: a final termination. But I have been both betrayer and betrayed. I know what it is to long for forgiveness and to also feel such love that it is possible to forgive terrible things. If you have been briefed on my background, maybe you know what these things are.

Alkmaar

Today, Jan and Mandy gave me Alkmaar.

I wish Sjors had given me that gift a long time ago. He should have walked beside me. I should not have been his secret. He should have been proud to have me with him. But he could not acknowledge me publicly and maintain his separate lives - and he lived in Alkmaar with his wife and children. To be seen with me would have been to acknowledge his infidelity. In many ways, I think he made me less than I am. As I have mourned the loss of Sjors,  I have also mourned what I lost because of him.

Mandy wore red boots and Jan made sure that I bought cheese because Alkmaar is a cheese town. It was Noordwouds oud. This is Hans' cheese.

Hans used to put it on brown bread in the morning for me with rucola.  When he was being extravagant (and could afford it), he would buy smoked salmon and put this on the bread too because he knew that I liked it. He used to make me coffee, and then he would put his chair next to mine because he wanted to be closer to me when we ate. He would smile this shit-eating grin and snuggle next to me: leg to leg and hand on my shoulder, or leg, or the crook of my neck.

I haven't been able to eat Noordwouds cheese since I flew to Schiphol for Sinter Klaas and then told him I could not be with him. We went shopping in Haarlem and I bought his sister wine glasses.  I bought himan i-pod that year and went with him to his family's house to open presents. He never used the i-pod.

Sjors knew I was flying to see Hans and, though he told me sometimes,"Go back to Hans",  he also told me, "We will be together until we're 85". He told me, "When we have children, we'll have to hire a nanny. And a housekeeper because, darling, you're a disaster in housekeeping." He picked me up and carried me into the rain. He danced with me in a chocolate shop in Amalfi. He made love to me like his life depended on it. He did the dishes naked. He told me bits and pieces about his work and his ethical dilemmas. He told me that he could do difficult things if we were together. We could fight the world together, he said. He told me he could fight the people he worked for. He said he would get out. He sent me a picture of the engagement ring he wanted to buy me. He talked about the characteristics of the children we would make together. During all those minutes and hours and days and weeks that I agonized over the way I felt about Sjors and my relationship with Hans, he did not tell me he was married.

 I wonder whether Sjors and I would have been able to develop a true and lasting friendship if he had told me this. If he had allowed me to be his friend then, and been honest with me, I could have been his supporter and ally during difficult times. Maybe with the right friendship and support, he could have gotten that divorce afterall. And done it peaceably. But this requires a high level of
trust. He had no precedent for trust. And the people he worked for fed his distrust. So he pretended that his life was different than it was. He imagined what it might be, but then feared the consequences if he tried to be truthful with himself and me and his wife and parents and friends.

I think that we are all so afraid of what people see when they look at us. For me, it is still so difficult to think of how Hans looks at me in his mind. He removed me as his facebook "friend" after I visited him in Haarlem over this last new-years-eve to tell him that I had been unfaithful to him with Sjors before I'd broken our relationship. I remember how he used to look at me with such love and deep affection, and I saw that look die forever. It still is so painful to consider.

I am slowly becoming reconciled to my own shortcomings and frailties. I wish so deeply to be forgiven by Hans but I do not expect it will ever happen. I can imagine that Sjors has the same horror and fear of his own. How can he begin to ask forgiveness from others when he can't forgive yourself? When you can't come clean about the things you've done? Your other option is to compartmentalize yourself into smaller and smaller pieces until you can't remember which box you put things.

Jan and Mandy know much about my history with Sjors and Hans. They know that it is difficult for me to come visit the Netherlands because of the memories and the meanings. They also know about Sjors and Mac and about the shit his organization pulled. I do not fear telling people the truth - but I found myself withholding his name. I'm not sure why, and I don't know if I will continue to withhold (Mandy calls him "mister Alkmaar" and tells me I deserve better). I think I don't want to make things bad for his wife by putting this information into a tight community of submariners and wives. She should hear it from him first. He should tell her. It would be a start, at least.

looking

It is strange for me to talk to people. Keep them on the subject of work, or their lives, or tell them funny stories or about one of the hundreds of books I read. But then they ask about me. I think that they mean to be courteous. But I hate this part. I talk around it, redirect. I am not very good at redirection. Because what I am thinking is, "Every day, I look. Every second of every day, I am looking for a new thing. A new person or project. I'm looking for a reason I should stay on this planet a little longer." I've lost something fundamental to my life. So what do I have to do to keep breathing?

Evigheden

The rain has started. In Naples, during the winter, it rains. There is only one word for this. Rain. This is not true for rain everywhere. When I was in London two weeks ago, an old lady was describing the weather. She said, "when I went to my car, it was spitting...but by the time I arrived at Tesco, it was fairly tipping down". If you live in a country with perpetual rain, you simply MUST have multiple descriptors. Like the Eskimo's 200 words for snow. Sometimes I wish that the English language was more adaptive.

I have often felt that, if I could find the right words, I would be able to find that secret language that we both understood once. I would speak and you would hear me with your soul. And the spell would be broken. You would know who I am and you would remember us.

Sometimes I am Kai perpetually trying to form the word, "Evigheden" with his shards of ice. And I am sometimes Gerda, pleading with you to be my Kai again.

Lament of the Syndicate

1. They said unto the man: The woman is forbidden. For she is fearful to us. For she caught us in our wickedness and, verily, she hath it in her power to hand our respective asses to us.
2. Is it not right and good that we should do as we wish? Even that which is illegal and sneaky - for it is our will to behave in this manner and, behold, we have the blessing and sanctification of the State. Does this not justify our illegal actions?
 3. We have taken the man and bent him to our will, yeah even over a barrel; telling him to turn this way or that, demanding his compliance. And, behold, he has complied. He has become our tool to do with as we please. And we glory in his compliance. 
4. But the forbidden woman threatens our peace.She tells the man that he has his own will and own heart. Yeah she maketh him to think that to be our tool is not good for him. She will prosecute us and bring our actions into the light. And in that day, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

5. If it come to pass that we are exposed for our evil deeds, we shall take the man who has become our tool. And we shall turn our tool into our scapegoat and, verily, we shall cast him to the wolves.

E-mail from dad

My father is amongst the most well-intentioned of men. He would not hurt me deliberately - and he would be sad to know that he had hurt me.

I've wanted to write to him lately. I think about him and mom a lot. I am the second of six kids and don't really require much from them by way of physical or financial support. Accordingly, those who need attention get it. But it is difficult to almost completely lose contact with them as they focus on the other kids and the grandkids. So I try to write more frequently. Dad writes back. Today, these were his words:

"Let me be frank. So good to hear from you... Quite independently, I've been thinking of you.... I've been thinking that you should decide what kind of man would be the very best husband and father for your children... Then move back here, which I think is the very best place to find a good husband... Then put these men through the test to find the best one.  Simple.  Oh yeah... and then there is the part where God who can read hearts... finds the guy with the true heart."

I pulled the message down just before I got on a train through Germany. I meant to spend the time on the train writing a response. But the process made me cry. So I sat on the train, my computer propped in my lap, writing to my dad and crying. I used the blue linen scarf I carried as a handkerchief.

I have to think of all the things he doesn't mean. But it is difficult to miss the things that he does mean. It is so simple for him. So straightforward. It is a calculation in the same way that relationships are calculations for so many other people: seek out a target-rich environment and find a suitable companion. Marry. Reproduce.

Does he not see me? How can he not understand what has happened? Does he not know?

Does he not even remember who I am?  I am the woman who would absolutely terrify the shit out of any good Utah Mormon boy.

I decided to be as honest with him as I could.

"I appreciate that you try to think of ways for me to be happy. I know that you love me and want me to be happy. You have been frank with me so I will be frank with you. You think that it will make me happy to be married to a man with a good heart who can be a good companion and a good father to my children. You believe it is lack of opportunity that keeps me single.

"If I could name companionship as my goal then I could find a companion. I could find someone who has good intentions and a good heart (even outside of Utah!). Before now, this may have been sufficient. Sometimes I wish very much that I could have stayed with Hans and never known anything different. I loved him so very much and he has such a good heart.  But I found the companion soul to my soul. I knew this the first moment I saw Sjors.

"When I am honest with myself (and I try to be) I know that, to be with anyone other than him is a lie. Even if I could somehow adjust my feelings so that I could spend the rest of my days with another man, it would not be kind to this theoretical good-hearted man to commit to be with him when I will always know that I belong with someone else.  I often wonder why I was damned enough to see and feel and know this truth only to spend the rest of my life feeling its lack.

"Why be shown a truth if you cannot touch it? If there is a god, then there is such cruelty in this act. But I suppose it is unreasonable to believe that everyone is supposed to have happiness. So few people do.  I see suffering all over the world and know that mine is not the only pain, nor the greatest.

"If you pray for anything, then pray that this deep sorrow will be alleviated enough so that, even if I can’t have the husband I was meant for, then I can at least have children.  Daniel has kindly volunteered to donate for me – but it is so unkind to have children if you are unhappy and I have been tremendously depressed.  Children should be born and raised in a place of joy. I would not be so cruel."

Street artist for one night

I haven't sketched anything for a long time.

The last time I thought I might want to draw something, I was sitting in a meeting with a bunch of military personnel getting a five-day forecast from a meteorological officer. I kept drifting off to sleep and, in this state of half-dreaming, I thought I might want to paint a picture: a cat wearing flight goggles and a specially-made harness which was attached to helium balloons allowing the cat to fly. So that's been the extent of my creative impulse: a flying cat. Oh, and there were sunflowers.

I guess you had to be there.

But I bought a sketch pad anyway and I walked down to Via Napoli to see what things might hold still long enough for me to draw them. 

I sketched a sixteen-year-old girl snogging her boyfriend (actually, I ended up by mostly sketching her backside - her bum tucked into a pair of incredibly short shorts that kept revealing the crease where the gluteus maximus meets the hamstring.)

Later, at a restaurant, where I sipped wine and ate heavenly Pozzuoli bread, I sketched the shoulder muscle and flabby tricep of a smoker. Then,a nice couple with a six-month-old baby sat nearby. When the woman sat off to one side and started feeding the baby from a bottle, I decided to try my hand at the subject which every artist from Giotto to Da Vinci can't help but get very wrong: an infant.

I worked quickly: the bottle wouldn't last long.  Eventually, I had some semblance of the child: his chubby arms and legs splayed out and her strong hands manipulating his little body.

I flipped the sketch pad around to try something else. But the movement caught the father's eye and he saw what I had done.

He went ecstatic. He came to the table and oohed and ahhed over the pencil sketch. I gave him the page and he marched it around the restaurant, showing everyone. I was embarrassed, but pleased. I thought, "hey. This is a nice and rewarding moment. Someone appreciates my work."

But the moment wasn't going to last. Next thing I knew, the page was shoved under my nose and the father was saying, "Please, the face."

I knew what he meant: I'd sketched their son with the bottle covering most of his face. He wanted the rest.

Oops.

I took out a fresh sheet of paper and, while the mother abandoned her food to prop up the boy as my model, I began to madly sketch. 

It was awful. I don't have the tricks used by street artists. I imagine that they use special techniques to rapidly fill in the important bits. I wished desperately that I knew what they were.

I drew a circle. The kid was squirming around - attention caught here and there. How was I supposed to do this? The mother was looking intently at me. Smiling. She'd left her food on the table and her husband walked over occasionally to deliver single bites on a fork.

I tried to fill in the features - but people came to stand behind me and see my work and this made things even worse. Every attempt I made - made the kid look like a bobble-headed troll. I was sweating by now. I considered telling them that I couldn't do it. But everyone looked so damn hopeful!

After the third try, I landed on something that looked like a human being. It was rough...but I made it do. Little smile on the face; fat little cheeks; eyes distracted in a sideways glance. When I thought it was passable, I took it to them so that the mom could eat. I didn't wait to see if they liked it. I couldn't do any better.

But as the next course came to the table, the father brought the baby to mine.

He told me his name (Antonio) and the cherub's name: "Francesco".

I held Francesco, snuggled against me the sweet milky baby smell, and he took my fingers and tried to put them in his mouth.  I tried not to think the sad thoughts I always have around babies, tried to quell the longing, and I just enjoyed this one. He was all rolly polly and wobbly. It was beautiful.

Antonio insisted on buying me a slice of cake and a shot of Limoncello. And we said goodbye.

An eternal soul

It doesn't make any logical sense, does it?

I am a sophisticated biological machine. My 'self'-hood is tied up in chemical potentials and electrical impulses and synapses and all these fantastic, remarkable systems working together to make me me.

I speak about the soul because it seems the only way to explain the depth and breadth of an emotional experience that seems to alter the essential self. But is there any real part of the concept that is actually - physically and empirically - true? The dualism of body and soul. Two entities tethered together until the one finally fails to provide sufficient host and the other escapes, somehow in tact and carrying all of those essential pieces of us into...where? heaven or hell?

My parents believe in these concepts - and my sisters, too. Most of the world believes in some form of life-after-death. I did once, as well, when I eagerly devoured Lewis and Tolkien and L'Engle's essays about the love of God and the salvation of Jesus Christ. Michelangelo painted the judgment on the altarpiece of the Sistine Chapel, with the dead called from their graves and the saints demanding justice and the sinners carted off across a Styxian river. But these things seem so illogical to me.

The ideas of an afterlife replete with punishment or reward seem so utterly absurd to me. They seemed particularly absurd to me when I stood on the edge of self-termination (and any time I return there). Hamlet may have worried that the Almighty set his hand against self-slaughter, but I worried that some good friend of mine would have to find and manage the carcass. That my family would have to face the horror of this decision. (If my need to terminate stems from unbearable pain, how could I therefore impose any terrible pain on someone I loved?)

Still, the concept of soul - even the concept of faith remain the only way that I have ever been able to describe what it was to be with and know Sjors. I felt so strongly that my soul knew his soul: as though we had existed for billions of years, linked together as companions through the creation and destruction of stars. It wasn't as though I was meeting him for the first time - but that I'd found him at last. And this is the reason for the depth and horror of the pain I experience every day, knowing that he is lost to me. That he lied to himself. That he lied to me. It feels like a rending - and his absence feels like some horrible wrongness. A loss of self. After long and dreadful months, the pain is still there as awful as if it had happened yesterday. How would this be the case if I did not have a soul, and his soul was not meant to be with mine?

"In the beginning was the deed"

Goethe tells us that this was Faust's rewrite of the opening phrase of the bible.

Not the Word. The Deed.

How interesting that Faust requires that God should act, not speak, to exist. To create the universe.

Is it action that defines us? This was what Faust thought. Faust was an intellectual - but action mattered more to him than words. 

I think about this now. What is the core of me if I remove the deed? If I define myself outside of my actions, I feel a broken person entirely. I am a paper doll: intellect and pain.

Was this Faust, as well? The constant striving; the inability to be at peace? 

If Mephistopheles can give Faust a moment in which he no longer wishes to strive, but begs for that moment to go on, can he win Faust's soul:

"Werd ich zum Augenblicke sagen:
Verweile doch! du bist so schönn
Dann magst du mich in Fesseln schlagen,
Dann will ich gern zugrunde gehn!
Dann mag die Totenglocke schallen,
Dann bist du deines Dienstes frei,
Die Uhr mag stehn, der Zeiger fallen,
Es sei die Zeit für mich vorbei!"

 If I shall say to the moment:
Only stay a while! You are so beautiful!
Then forge the shackles to my feet,
Then will I gladly perish!
Then may the death knell sound
Then are you free of your servitude,
The clock may stop, its hands fall still,
And time for me be complete.

I have had this moment and time should have stopped for me. I was completely at peace in his arms and I would have stayed there forever. Willingly died if death could have been so merciful and taken me then. If only I could have stayed there with him. Where I was born to be.

And the moment passed. And Mephistopheles took his due.

And I am damned now.

Goethe was correct.No action. No other pursuit matters.

Clockwork

I once observed to Sjors that life without him was clockwork, not life.

It has been three weeks since his last ugly message to me, four months since I last saw him, and more than a year since he had hope that we would be together. In the first week of October, I will find the two-year anniversary of the day that I first saw him, jaunty in his blue uniform, striding down the hall of the C4I building. In that moment, everything changed for me: all my assumptions about the way that life and love worked. My soul rejoiced, cried out in recognition: "There you are! Where have you been? I've been looking for you for 33 years!"

It is probably true that I will never see Sjors again, but I try not to ever think about it directly. I look at the fact in my periphery or glance at its reflection. The way you are told never to look directly at the sun or it will burn your eyes and blind you. The truth is: I have not been truly "seen" by Sjors for much longer than a year already.

After fighting Mac in that bizarre e-mail correspondence, and filing in the Italian criminal courts, and watching Sjors lie to me again and again, trying to deceive me the way that he has already deceived himself; I am beginning to recover. I do not suffer the crushing depression that contaminated everything for more than a year. I work on as many projects as I feel I can take on. I try to live as much as it may be possible. 

But no matter what I try to tell myself, I know that I will not be whole again. Back in the days when I believed that there were multiple people in the world whom you could meet and attach to: many men in the universe who could be compatible - I thought it was just a matter of finding someone suitable and loving. But for me, this paradigm has become a lie and I know it.

This is the catch about the soul-mate: when you lose that person, you realize that you will always be half-alive. Half finished. You will live a life that is clockwork, not life.

Emily was here for nearly two weeks. We were in Florence, Rome, and drove along the Amalfi coast. This time, I saw beauty. And I enjoyed her company so much. I was happy to have her near. I was not perpetually confronted with the horrendous sense of loss and despair that has accompanied me everywhere for so long.

But I am also very alone. I feel inside me all of the pieces that are missing, and everything else rattles about restlessly. There is the constant in and out of my breath. And the whirr of clockwork.

Know the enemy

I needed to understand my adversary. 

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle”   - Sun Tzu, The Art of War 

In May, I started the conversation with Mac with a fairly good idea of who and what he was. I invited him to be a Facebook friend. Miraculously, his vanity and curiosity and fear were stimulated enough and he responded. I wrote, and confronted him, and he responded again. I startled him and he gave away more than he meant to.

I realized very quickly as the correspondence continued that I needed to understand the world of espionage and covert action. I didn't care about the logistical aspects of tradecraft: blending into scenery or cracking safes or entering secure buildings undetected. What I wanted to know was: "Why? What are their guiding principles? What do they care about? What drives them? What do they want? How do they function?" And, most importantly, "How can I negotiate for Sjors?"

I have my own guiding principles. They have to do with truth-telling to self and others; with being good (rather than nice. They are different things); there is something about protecting the weak and fighting injustice. As I've gotten older, a greater portion of my character is consumed with this last piece. I don't seem able to tolerate injustice anymore.  Like Daisy in Gaiman's Anansi Boys, my personal song has in it the repeat refrain, "Evildoers Beware!"

I know myself. I knew that I had lost too much. I knew that I had lost what mattered most. Sjors was lost to me. What did it matter if I launched an insurgency now?  As it got underway, I knew that this fight was more important than any other fight I'd been in.

I knew what I was willing to do, but I didn't know what Mac and his organization would do. Would they come after me? Would they ransack my apartment? Take my stuff? Would they monitor me? Would they confront me in person? I reconnoitered my neighborhood with a friend in case I needed to know a particular egress. I stored my electronics off-site. I packed a "Go bag" and squirreled it for a quick getaway. I'm not Jason Bourne. I don't have special skills in evasion and I could never win in a street fight, but I didn't want to be an easy target, either.

So I began to research. I read articles and books. I watched movies. John Le Carre was helpful. And there was a book about the British spy ring in Washington DC during WWII: The Irregulars, by Jenet Conan that helped me begin to understand the type of thinking and the egos involved in covert collection.  But the most useful information about the methods and motivations of espionage organizations came from David Perry, an ethicist who interviewed CIA handlers and agents and then wrote a 1995 article about it in the Journal of Conflict Studies: Repugnant Philosophy: Ethics, Espionage and Covert Action.

The article shocked me. The most horrifying realization was: my assumptions about Mac & Co. had been built around a general business model, and the reality was far far worse. I have a fairly good grasp of organizational dynamics and the driving principle to protect the institution. This knowledge and instinct has saved me before now (just try to file a gender complaint within any HR department and watch them circle the wagons). When I read Dr. Perry's article, I realized that the model I had built to understand Mac & Co. wasn't malevolent enough. 

Agencies like Mac's are in the business of deception. Lying isn't merely a company recommendation. It is a requirement. All employees must become expert liars. Dr. Perry cites an observation by Hulnick and Matausch:

The Central Intelligence Agency ex-pects, teaches, encourages, and controls these tactics so that the lies are consistent and supported ('backstopped'). The CIA expects intelligence officers to teach others to lie, deceive, steal, launder money, and perform a variety of other activities that would certainly be illegal if practiced in the United States. They call these tactics 'tradecraft,' and intelligence officers practice them in all the world's intelligence services

Okay, then. So they lied. I could tell that after a couple of exchanges with Mac (and it wasn't as though Sjors had been brilliantly truthful to me, either). What else was there?

It was the management of  operatives and agents that made me sick at heart. I saw in Dr. Perry's description of these methods a form of manipulation that I recognized all too well: the "Subtle web of irresistible compromises" and gently guiding the operatives down a path of self-deception. E. Drexel Godfrey, Jr., former Director of Current Intelligence at CIA, strongly criticized CIA methods of recruiting agents, stating that CIA officers are "painstakingly trained in techniques that will convert an acquaintance into a submissive tool... shred away his resistance and deflate his sense of self-worth."

I had seen these manipulations used against Sjors. Or, I should say: I saw the repercussions in Sjors' psyche as the methods were used to bring him in line and keep him there. Ultimately, they succeeded. Sjors is as lost to me as if he had died.

Mac's organization would not use dirty tactics as a last resort. It was where they started. Knowing this, I walk into this with my eyes wide open.

Flatland

When Meg and Cal and Charles Wallace "Tesser" through space, they accidentally find themselves in a two dimensional universe. Their three spatial dimensions can’t survive in this universe and they nearly die, constrained like paper dolls on a flat surface.

We live in three spatial dimensions – and one dimension of time: a four-dimensional universe. Behind us, the past stretches out immutably, and before us lie the infinite probabilities of future time.  When I met Sjors, my time dimension became irresistibly tangled with his. Where he went, I would be. We would talk and live and breathe together and make love. We would have children, adventures, and I would touch him and know him every morning and every night. When we turned 85, we would step from the universe hand in hand. He promised me his future and I promised him mine only as a formality: it was already his. 

When I lost Sjors, I lost my future. For more than a year, I have lived in this flatland: having only this moment. Constrained to one single point in time. Like Charles Wallace, I have not been able to move or breathe and I’ve felt it killing me. I knew that the pain of living in an insufficient universe would become too great, and I would step out early. My future time was hopelessly slim.

In the past two days, I have glimpsed the elusive fourth dimension. 

I spent the weekend in Suffolk.  Jim invited me out to his home in a converted barn. Not a romantic getaway: a working weekend. Jim only needs to sleep four hours each night and I tried to keep up with his frenetic pace. Saturday, we worked for fifteen hours and Sunday, seventeen. We had pots of coffee and fridge-fulls of diet coke, and an occasional walk through the freshly cut barley fields: golden yellow to offset the black-green silhouettes of trees and the pale sky.  

We worked on my physical chemistry concept, resurrecting the stalled-out project one conversation at a time: mapping our ideas onto complementary computer screens on opposite ends of the same desk. He pushed and prodded me – drew out my ideas, brushed off the dust, dressed them with his insights and handed them back gleaming. Excited, I would work again until my back ached and my feet twitched. We ate our meals twice in a small seaside town, and walked onto the pebble beach to see the grey water reflecting the mood of a gloomy sky.  Late at night, to revive bloodflow, I propped my legs on the desk and kept working. It was painful and long. I lost track of time, of myself. He put chocolate in front of me and I made us sandwiches. Jim fed the fish. I wandered out into the dark, pacing the gravel along the edges of his porch light.

He said, “With the power and value of this tool, we can influence how pharmaceutical companies do business. We sell them polymorphs of their drugs in exchange for donations to humanitarian causes and drugs to third-world places.”

“Benevolent blackmail,” I christened it. I’d had a similar idea: “We offer discounts to pharmaceutical research into lifesaving drugs – vice lifestyle drugs.”

“You can do more with this than what you’re planning,” he said. “What if…”

And so it went. And, just like that, I had some future again. And it wasn’t linked to the pain of knowing Sjors won’t be in it. It wasn’t a reminder of the children I would not have. It was just: a hopeful future that was all mine. For a few hours this weekend, Jim handed me a compass and map.

There may be a way to leave Flatland.