Move is done!

Hallelujah! Time for a shower and buy pasta and coffee to ship.

Moving day

Packing out today. Up most the night going through papers and personal items to sort out the things I need to have with me. Also spent two hours trying like mad to get the pedals off my bicycle so I could pack the damned thing. Couldn't get enough torque. 

Antonietta and Gianni came to help me shortly after the movers arrived. I was embarrassed when I asked for their help but glad that they were there after all. It is strange and stupid to look at the things I own. There is nothing much of value - and so many odds and ends that have no real reason: the sediment of my life. We packed them in boxes and moved them out. 

It is an interesting perspective to look at everything I own and to realize that it doesn't matter to me. Apart from my bicycle and a nice writing desk, there isn't much that I own that I give two shakes about. I've lost the things that matter most to me. I've lost Sjors and I've lost my programs. Everything else is window-dressing. They can dump it in the ocean for all I care. 

I feel bad today. The exhaustive effort was a manifestation of the reality of these betrayals. 

Stuttgart

I walked from the base and took the U train and then the S train to downtown Stuttgart.
This was the first time I've been there since February 2011 when Sjors drove Christine and Ed and Chad there.
You loved me then.
So much that it hurt.
And I was confident that the love would not go away.
There was a divergence somewhere. A fissure. And as it grew, I found myself on the wrong side with no way to go back.
I believe I will be lonely the rest of my life.

Damage

I do not have words for what you've done.

You damaged me because you were trying to save yourself.

I trusted you for so long. I believed in you. I had faith in your strength and in your dedication to the truth.

Why didn't you fight for me? Why did you feed me to them to save your own neck?

How could you damage me like this?

Do you even feel it? Do you give a damn? Have you ever?

I hate myself that I let myself stay open to you for so long because you asked me to. I hate myself for trusting you. You have repaid me with ashes.

Checked out on Procida

My house is a 15 minute walk from the port of Pozzuoli. Three Ferry lines run from the port to the islands of Procida and Ischia: Caremar, Medmar and Gestur. If I remember my tour of Cuma right, the name "Ischia" means "Monkey Island". But maybe I mis-remember. The cost for a one-way trip is less than 10 euro.

 Eve voted for Procida because the island is smaller, less tourist-y and easier to reach. It also seems (to me, at least) a bit more intimate.
The houses are cluttered together, like a child's bricks spilled out of the box: lovely pastel colors tumbled to the edge of an azure sea.
I brought along a book and a notebook so I could work if there was time for it. But my brain isn't working these days. I can't seem to push myself to think. This brain, which has been the only reliable thing in my life, seems to have checked out. And I can't seem to make myself care.

Maybe it's good to give the noggin a rest. I've been so tired for years.

The island was beautiful. I am glad for beauty.

Miseria & Nobilita

Last night, Eve and Dave took me to a restaurant down the street from my home, on the way to the Flavian Amphitheater, called Miseria & Nobile (Poverty and Nobility). As with all restaurants in Pozzuoli, there are photographs on the wall of Sophia Loren, the local saint. The owner is a man named Massimo. He stops me and we talk every time I walk by. He makes fun of my bad Italian and offers to teach me. I say hello to his waiter, as well: Francesco. We kiss-kiss on the cheek and I go on my way.

I went to Massimo's restaurant with Sjors so many years ago. Sjors stole food off my fork and told me that "Conquered food is the best food!" For some reason, I've found it difficult to go to the restaurant in the years since.

But we went last night. I dressed up for Massimo - wearing a long silk dress I bought in Mauritius, and a bright red coral necklace.We ate octopus and salmon and clams and broiled sea urchin and zeppolini (fried dough balls) and bruschetta and fried anchovies and pasta, and we drank sparkling water and white wine.
Dave just found out that the Command has cancelled my employment and he was incensed - or as incensed as mild-mannered Dave could be. "After everything you've done, they owe you the professional courtesy of telling you to your face - of telling you why!"

I want to know why, as well. I want to know what information and story the Dutch Intel Boys passed along. I want to know why the Admiral didn't have the decency to ask me what the truth was. I am not surprised that the Dutch Intel boys were unethical, but I am disappointed that the Command was cowardly. Perhaps this is why I don't care to speak with any of them. Of course I want answers. But I am so disgusted by their behavior, I have written them off in my mind. The idea of having a conversation with someone I do not respect is not a good idea - I am physically incapable of masking my contempt.

Massimo was delighted to have me in his restaurant. I felt pleased and guilty about this because I have been inside so infrequently. Both he and Francesco kept touching me as they walked by - a hand out to stroke my arm or my cheek. At one point, Massimo took my chin and cheeks in his hands and squeezed. We hugged and kissed as I left. They must have felt that this visit was special - not only in its exclusivity, but they must have sensed its finality.

I drank too much wine and I stumbled home and into bed.

I'm not a heavy drinker - and I think this is a good thing, particularly in these days when I feel an interior expansiveness. Without the boundaries I imposed on myself with the work I wanted to accomplish, the borderlands are vast swaths of unknown. I feel that I have been feeding myself into this project - my blood and spirit and mind into a machine I could never adequately fuel on my own but which required this sacrifice if it was going to function at all. I could not compel myself to stop because it mattered too much to me. Now I have been released in working for this Command because of their betrayal. I will not spill another ounce for them. The machine will limp along on what I have fed it - and then it will grind to a halt. In the meantime, I will find a way to make the projects begin elsewhere and to find adequate support for the people who need it.

As I've thought about curses these days, I've thought about a curse that the Mormon missionaries believe they are able to cast. This was the apocrypha of my childhood: if a missionary testifies and finds someone beyond their reach and doing harmful things, the mormon missionary will curse them by brushing off the dust from his feet. This says, "I was here. I leave by DNA behind in the soil. When god judges you, he will find my testimony against you."

I walked around the base leaving my footprints behind, I have a sense that these must be measured somehow. I have fed my breath and life into these projects, I have left my sweat and vomit and blood; I have run the full measure of my ability. I have not kept behind one ounce that I could have given. I have left my testimony here.

I have not cursed them. They curse themselves.

Witch Burning

There is a witch-burning festival in Denmark near Midsummer's eve called "Sankt Hans Aften". In 2011, during my first visit to Denmark, I happened to be here on this night.

I had been invited by members of the Danish Navy and I was taken on a formal tour. My guide was a navy Commander, a sardonic clever fellow named Hans Ole. As we drove up the coast, he told me about the festival: how effigies of witches are burned on bonfires all over the country. People sing and celebrate. I could imagine how this tradition sprung up. When critical thinking, justice, and logic came into play with increased levels of education and self-awareness, it became more difficult to claim that some local midwife danced naked in the woods at night and had coital relationships with Satan. This inconvenient evolution meant that, without the entertainment of a witch-burning, neighborhood parties lacked a certain flair. So they had to pretend.

I still remember Hans Ole telling me, deadpan: "We burned our last witch in 1810. And it's a good thing you weren't around back then because we would have burned you as a witch."
I laughed at this. But Hans Ole did not think he had been funny and he turned to look at me with a penetrating stare.
"No," he said simply. "You would have been burned as a witch. You are far too clever."

This trip to Denmark, I've missed the witch burning. I am here three weeks late, although the timing seems somehow significant to me. It would have been around the time that my Leadership was looking through the "evidence" that the Dutch Intel boys had provided to smear my name. And they decided it was better for the soul of the village if I were burned.

The truth is that any organization will act to save itself - even if a few people are hurt in the process. I learned this in graduate school when I reported to the Ombudsman's office that my advisor had solicited me for sex. I naively believed that these people were supposed to prevent or punish bad behavior and protect the weak. Not so. They were there to limit the liability of the institution by appearing to have a response.
Never underestimate people's desire to maintain the status quo.
The advisor is still teaching physics and advising students, as is the sadistic solid-state physicist who spent two years systematically belittling and undermining me. At this point, I have no faith in the righteousness or ethics of any institution. The institution can never be wrong. The institution must be preserved. This is why we must have a witch to burn.

I am here in Denmark with friends. Daniel and his girlfriend have moved to the suburbs with their fifteen month old daughter with white blonde curls, and a son due any day now. The Danish summer is a cold bright blue with sun rising at 3AM and the sky still glowing after 2200. It is a comfortable, filial life. I make food and write with chalk on the paving stones with the little papoose. We go for walks in the stroller where we look at birds and meet the neighborhood dogs and she falls asleep with a blanket tucked around her.
This is a life I can never have. I feel my isolation even as I take part in the routine and play games. At one point, it would have been so painful to be so close to something that is forever removed, but I am a long way away from the beach in Boa Vista. I am able to give and receive affection and spend time in these peaceful domestic moments. But they are not mine.

Is it so damaging to society that someone like me exists? That I be allowed to have my own mind and thoughts, that I fight against intolerance and unethical behavior? That I insist that we be better than we are? Would I have traded my moral compass and my reason for this beautiful little life? If S had asked me to? I cannot imagine myself making that compromise. But I would have given anything to be with him.

He is gone now. As corrupted and broken as the men who made him that way. And I am the witch.

Vengence

There was a time when women were always the victims.

I walked through the Uffizi gallery today with dad. We saw the themes: the rape of the Sabine women, the rape of Europa, and so many Byzantine and Medieval depictions of a miserable Mary receiving the word of god from a winged and pissed-off Gabriel, or clutching a creepily detached naked Christ-baby. These women were always the pawns in someone else's story.

Shakespeare wrote about victimized women, as well: ill-fated Desdemona and Juliet, and Lavinia, the daughter of Titus Andronicus whose rapists cut off her hands and tongue so she could not name them; or the masochistic Anne allowing herself to be wooed by an evil Richard. Once again: the story is not about these women. They are collateral damage in stories about the lives of men.

It is no surprise that the only recourse of victimized women was to curse their abusers. Elizabeth, after Richard III murders her sons, begs Queen Margaret, "O Thou well skill'd in curses, stay awhile, and teach me how to curse mine enemies!" Strangely, I've had some insight into cursing recently. Whether it is a delusion of the disenfranchised or a true capacity for calling powerful forces into play, I've had the peculiar sense that, by speaking the words aloud I could curse the people who have betrayed me. I have so very nearly believed in this ability that I've kept my mouth shut for fear I would do something I regretted. I sense that you cannot recall a curse and I would not contaminate my soul by wielding this force.

Fortunately, unlike Shakespeare's women, cursing is not my only recourse.  Nor is physical violence (I don't need to be Judith or Salome to have my revenge). I have an agile mind and a knowledge of the world. I am not helpless. I may have been victimized, but this is not your story and I am not your victim. I will not allow my life and choices to be defined by your poor decisions or weak characters of the men who work in your organization.

So, let me tell you what happens next in this story. You have taken precious things from me, you have corrupted and twisted Sjors and you have harmed my work, and there is no recompense for this. I will take my price from you.

Listen now to my revenge:
First know that I will not allow the programs that are important to me to be harmed. I have many people relying on me in Europe and Africa (in your own Navy, in fact). I will not allow them to suffer for your fear, short-sightedness, and brutishness. I will re-establish these programs in another incarnation and ensure that everyone who wishes my support will have it. This first revenge will be that you will not be allowed to harm anything more that truly matters to me.

 Next, I will expose you. The first exposure will be the worst for you. I have warned you in the past because I sought justice and understanding, rather than revenge. You will receive no warning from me now. Above all else, you fear exposure. I will ensure that the world sees you and I will ensure that you are ridiculed. Examine yourselves. Consider every historical incident of exposure and what this has meant for your organization. I will ensure that your name becomes a worldwide synonym for incompetence. This exposure will only be the first step because I have many more years remaining on this planet and I will make sure that I spend a small fraction of my enormous energy and attention to nudge you into the light.

Finally, know that I will not become you to beat you. In these past dark years, I have not compromised my ethics. This is how I know that you have told lies about me at the highest levels: the truth would not have harmed me. I do not fear the truth. I will never fear the truth. I will move on with my life and live as I would wish to live before you caused such damage. This will be my final revenge. You will not harm me. I will not be defined by your actions. I will never be your victim.

Adjustment

I am traveling with my father through Italy. He was here on vacation from the States, had been delayed in Philadelphia for two days, and arrived in Naples only one hour after Byron gave me the news that the bastards had won and that I couldn't work in the office for a month. I knew that this was bad - but Byron was so oblique and non-committal about everything that he neglected to mention that the Command had also decided to terminate our agreement.

That news came two hours later on a phone call from DC.

My poor dad. I'd walked him down to Via Napoli while I waited for the call. The connection was so poor that the line cut out as soon as the news crackled through. So much for the walk. We hurried back up the hill to find a landline and to fight Jeff and Laura: was it really so important that I get back to the States ASAP?

In the time since then, I've cycled through dozens of different thoughts. Feelings range from outrage (at the Dutch Intel folks who have, once again, managed to invade my life and my privacy) to tremendous sadness (that I can't continue to support the programs and projects that I'd started) to overwhelming disappointment (that my leadership would not see the value of my work, not see the evil game that these bastards play, and not fight on the side of truth and righteousness) and betrayal (that Sjors would take the 30 pieces of silver and believe he is a hero as he does it).

I don't know what to do next. After years of working and fighting, I'm tired. I have been sad for a very long time.

So how does this work?

I make a posting of my ideas and thoughts and I put a name down... something innocuous like Bob or Suzy or Algernon or Sjors. Is it an actual human who peruses these pages or is it an automated bot who looks for key words? Hmmmm. I think the latter.

What, exactly, are you looking for? There is nothing you can find in these pages that you couldn't get from a straightforward conversation with me or with anyone who has ever worked with me. They will tell you that I work my ass off on projects that matter to me, that I have an over-developed sense of ethics and righteousness, and that I hate unethical lying bastards. So get out of the shadows. Put on your big-boy underpants, and have an adult conversation.

At The Close

I never betrayed you. I never harmed you. I never gave your name.

Your organization told lies about me and, today, I lost my job for it.

I have done so much good in Africa. I have built programs and friendships. There is so much I have left to offer. So many things left to do. I am stopped. 

They have taken everything now. They violated my privacy, they invaded my life because of you, and you did not stand up to them to protect me. You lied to me. So many times. For more than a year, you wrote cruel and terrible messages to the person you once cherished. You stood with them against me. 

You knew that what we had was real. It was the only thing in the world worth fighting for. I would have fought for you until the end. I would have paid any price for you.

Now, I have paid every price. 

This loss of position, of all the work I do, causes me such pain. But it is small compared to the pain I have felt for years by the separation from the man who was my soul's mate; the pain you have caused by your betrayal and lies; and the pain in seeing you become a lesser man than you ought to have been.

You lied to me. You betrayed me. You betrayed us. You promised me that you would end your career with them, that you would end your false marriage, that you would be with me and protect me, that we would have children together, and tat we would be together until we were 85. At the first test of your love, you surrendered everything. You broke your promises to me. You chose them. Why? 

It is too late for us. But it may not be too late for you. Be the man you were meant to be. Stop acting out of fear. You will wake up one day and find that you are an old man who never chose the right battles. You told me once that you are happy because you can compromise. You were wrong. You will hate yourself for your cowardice. Do not compromise the truth for your comfort or for the good opinion of others. Fight them. Fight for the things that matter. Even if your sons and parents hate you. Even if you lose your job and the respect of your Navy. Better that they hate the truth than love the lie. 

Or fucking die trying. 

You will not hear from me again. I am finished.

To My Watchers

I know you are there. I watch you back.
You are cowards. All of you.
You hide in the dark.
Like a whelp, you strike from behind.
Every step along the way, you miscalculate.
You have never understood me.
Who I am.
What I have lost.
The pain that has forged me.
You took Sjors from me.
Twisted him.
Cast him in your own image.
There is nothing you could do to me; no pain you can inflict that will match this by the smallest fraction.

This loss now dismays me.
I am shocked and betrayed.
By comparison with that first pain, it is nothing.
But you stop me from doing good work
and I will not tolerate this.

I will ensure that you are punished. With exposure. With ridicule.
My weapons are my mind and my words.
I have time now.
All the time in the world.

You should have just given him back.
You should have apologized.

Now you will have to watch your back for the decades I have left to dream and act.
If you thought you protected yourselves by this action, I assure you it is gasoline on an open flame.

The Empire Strikes Back

I may lose everything to them. As if they have not already taken enough. They want to take my job. Threaten my programs.

Not without a big fucking fight.

Never be bullied into silence. I have not done anything wrong.