23 April 2011 by Proofreader
In August Dot became ill. My mother passed when I was a child, so in some ways Dot’s role had become akin to my mother’s. I know of no other children Dot had other than my mother.
In September 2001, Dot would be 101 years old, and she still lived in Rochester, New York. I am the eldest son, and probably took more responsibility for looking after Dot than if I had not been the eldest son. My next elder sibling suggested I visit Dot. I consulted Persistence, and she agreed. I shopped around for flights to Rochester, New York.
In recent years, the best prices I found were on Asian airlines. I avoid American airlines. I have repeatedly advocated the opening of American airspace to international competition.
Airline market protectionism has prevailed largely because, I suspect, of the ability of many commercial airliners to carry surveillance equipment, particularly the flag carriers. I have no concrete evidence of this, except for what I have deduced from the obvious. The surveillance is to collect political, diplomatic, military and industrial intelligence.
Countries without satellite observation capability could rely on aircraft mounted equipment. The information collected by the airline could be of use to the government regulating the airline or the airline might collect the information for resale. If American skies were open to international competition, commercial aircraft that was less amenable to the US Federal Government could easily collect information which is presently concealed.
My experience, and the experience of people with whom I speak, is that service and prices on foreign airlines are generally better than American airlines. However, as I called around for a ticket in August 2001, I found that the only seats available were on American airlines. In addition, on this occasion, if I called and found a good price, checked another agent to compare prices, and called back the first agent, the seat was no longer available.
This went on for several days, including an agent interrupting a lunch appointment to say the seat that had been available was no longer available. The agent asked me if I wanted to make a new reservation, and if so, would I be using the same agent. The agent was probably trying to make a point about my lunch partner. In any case, Dot’s death appeared imminent, and I became a bit frustrated with the abuse I was receiving.
Calling the Embassy . . .
Before I left, I called Jim Moynihan at the American Embassy. This was the first time I had ever contacted him. Moynihan promptly answered the phone. I told Moynihan, who had also grown up in Rochester, I was returning to Rochester. I asked him if I should buy a mobile phone I could use internationally.
There was no doubt in my mind that if anyone was plugged into the Incubator, Moynihan was one of them. The Affiliation Product: telephone was as accessible to him as that Affiliation Product was to me. Americans call mobile phones: cell phones. I avoid using the word ‘cell’ because cell is also a term used to explain communist political structures.348 My conversation with Moynihan was a veiled reference to releasing information freely as opposed to keeping a closed mouth.
I was more inclined to speak freely and openly, and I was giving Moynihan an opportunity to tell me to shut up. The mobile phone I had only worked in OriginSun. Moynihan said that whether I buy a phone that works internationally depends on how much the phone company would charge me for the calls. I asked Moynihan if I should send his regards to someone in Rochester, and if there was anything I could do for him while I was in Rochester.
He told me to contact a high school classmate of his who was the founder of a chain of hamburger restaurants in Rochester, not McDonald’s. The founder’s name was part of the name of the restaurant. Moynihan said to call Moynihan after I returned to CapitalEast so he and I could meet for drinks. This was in August 2001.
I had accepted a job with Phoenix Associates. I had started training, but not working. Phoenix Associates was explicitly not an English conversation school. The person that hired me, Adrian P. Crawley, was clearly a Handler, and my trainer for the employment.
Crawley alluded to the fact Phoenix Associates was doing more than just English training for OriginSun corporate clientele. He discussed his experience with Britain’s intelligence gathering personnel in the UK. While we were standing on a balcony overlooking CapitalEast, he referred to the ability of mobile phones to track movement for surveillance.
I replied to Crawley in the same way I later replied to Joe Albert when Albert raised the same issue with me when I went to visit Albert on my trip that ended on 9/11: they can also track me by looking out the window. Frequently, entire training sessions involved conversations that had nothing to do with education, but everything to do with the sorts of Game I had been playing at Asahi and Rutan. What I found curious about Crawley’s remark was how someone who seemed to be a Handler or at least a Freelancer, had no conception of the activities of the Monitors. I suspect Phoenix Associates may be connected to a United Nations Project.
Writing on Empty: Foreigner Games
In August, one of the foreign bar associations held an outdoor barbecue for the legal community at the American Embassy housing compound. I attended hoping to meet attorneys who knew of firms that were hiring. I spoke at length with an attorney or recruiter who gave me his business card.
His name on the card was Towers Perrin, the name of Steinharter’s employer, and Persistence’s former employer. Since drafting this treatise, Towers Perrin, Asahi Bank, Asahi Law Offices, Arthur Anderson and other institutions have changed their names or went bankrupt. The Asahi merger with Nishimura & Partners was foreshadowed for me by the claim that ButtocksInlet hated Mr. WesternVillage.
During a conversation with Perrin and others, Perrin drifted back and forth to confer with some attorneys. One of them was Matthew Cahill. Another of the attorneys Perrin conferred with was Cahill’s law associate, whom I will call Mr. Associate because I do not recall his name.
Towers Perrin might have introduced Cahill to me. The experience calls to mind the attempted initial introduction of Moynihan. Cahill invited me to join the after party near the United Nations University.
I accepted the invitation. On the way in the taxi, I sat next to an attorney working for Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceuticals company. I mentioned Phoenix Associates, and the attorney, a woman, made a point of asking me if I knew what a phoenix was. I did.
A phoenix is a bird in Egyptian mythology that lived in the desert for 500 years and then consumed itself by fire, later to rise renewed from its ashes. The 500 year figure becomes significant with the aerospace industry, but she was also trying to point out my ability to overcome adversity. After the OriginSun video game company fired me in Los Angeles, the Incubator quoted Winston Churchill: “Success in science is defined as moving from failure to failure with undiminished enthusiasm.”349 I felt like a W.C.350
The host and sponsor of this August 2001 gathering, Cahill, was then a partner in the CapitalEast office of Tanaka, Akita, Nakagawa/Clifford Chance. At this function, Mr. Cahill sat at the head of the table of attorneys at a restaurant in BeforePrincessGods351 called Las Chicas. Las Chicas is Spanish for the girls, the feminine form of chico.352
To Cahill’s left sat Mr. Associate. I sat next to Mr. Associate. With Cahill looking on, Mr. Associate confided in me that Clifford Chance always vetted potential clients thoroughly before taking on their business. Three years later, the court appointed their firm as my defense counsel at trial. The Incubator was planning my arrest at least three years in advance.
Stringer
During August and early September 2001, WisteriaThatOne was visiting CapitalEast from his home in New York. At our home in ValleyAstringent, I explained to WisteriaThatOne, Weinsaft, and Persistence the monitoring of my actions. I did not use the word ‘Incubator,’ but I tried to relay my experience of many of the incidents I have cited in this chronicle.
According to what I had read on the OriginSun Ministry of Foreign Affairs website from my computer at Asahi, there was a contingent of OriginSun government employees providing aid in Israel, the West Bank, and war torn areas of the Middle East. I suggested that after my upcoming visit to the US, on my way back to OriginSun, WisteriaThatOne, and I visit the Middle East.
I told WisteriaThatOne we could personally experience the area to consider what we could do. In an effort at lighthearted encouragement, I suggested we would call the results of our efforts the “WisteriaThatOne Accords.” This remark resulted in introductions to numerous people named WisteriaThatOne.
Viewed in hindsight, reading this nine years after these incidents took place, I cannot help but think my idea to go to the Middle East was a bit bonkers. However, this example of my interest in the Middle East does illustrate how ubiquitous, and overwhelming certain Incubator Administrators can be. The Middle East Component was and is a bit cloying, and I felt I had to do something, anything to alter the Incubator’s inculcation.
Perhaps an analogy would be the image of the Devil’s Tower perceived by the Indiana electrical lineman character of Roy Neary played by Richard Dreyfuss in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The character’s occupation is not a coincidence given this treatise’s theory of Electrical ___(s). Playing the Name Game with Roy Neary we may find:
- Roy = acronym for Return on yen
- Neary = near why
A note to anyone trying to associate the Devil’s Tower, the devil or evil, and the Middle East: Spielberg is an Identity associated with American Judaeo-Christian priorities, one of which would seem to be the crusades in Afghanistan and elsewhere. My illustration using the Neary character’s experience is not to suggest I think that the Devil’s Tower is valid representation of the evil of Middle Easterners, or Middle Easterners are analogous to agents for the devil.
Middle Easterners are simply in fashion as America’s bogeymen to unite Americans against a common foe. One of my purposes in writing this chronicle is to illustrate American propaganda against irrational targets evidenced by Sinophobia, Japan-bashing, Islamist oppression, or others, as may be convenient. Mr. Spielberg could have chosen many places for the climax of his movie. Devil’s Tower was incoincidental.
The evil in this instance has more to do with religious wars, and the propaganda necessary for fighting those wars. The evil, if any, has more to do with self-defeating American hegemony than Middle Eastern bogeymen. Besides the Neary character’s occupation and the Judaeo-Christian imagery, other incoincidental correlations from the movie would be the obsessive nature of telepathic imagery, and the twin towers: Devil’s & WTC.
One of many uses of 9/11 was to attempt to instil in me the proper fear of the Incubator. My diatribes, such as the Affiliation Product: Allen return to Asia discussion at What the Dickens, and other seemingly offhand remarks, were, according to the Incubator, carte blanche for the Administrators to create Events such as 9/11. This was war, and the Administrators wished to make clear to me that they would stop at nothing. Moreover, the blood of the deaths would be on my hands. At least, that was their hope and theory, which has been more successful than I would like.
Given the nature of the introduction and conversations with these WisteriaThatOnes, I began to see a pattern, even though WisteriaThatOne is a very common name. Playing a bilingual Name Game using OriginSun and English: the sound of the name, ito, sounds similar to the OriginSun word frequently used word for string or thread353. The Incubator wished to emphasise that there was a common thread running through my life which I have tried to explain in this chronology. Also, a stringer is: “A freelance correspondent not on the regular newspaper staff, especially one retained on a part-time basis to report on events in a particular place.”354 Some reasons for the Incubator are to provide me fodder, a method to collect information, and a reason to report my experiences much like a stringer.
After about fifteen minutes of discussion, WisteriaThatOne, Weinsaft, and Persistence were skeptical of the evidence which I suggested indicated repeated surveillance of my activities. I said: ‘there is no need for me to go on explaining this to you. If you were able to understand me, you would understand me by now.’
Persistence and Weinsaft agreed. WisteriaThatOne disagreed, and left open the possibility that if I continued explaining myself, I might persuade him. At that point, I began to suspect WisteriaThatOne might be a Handler.
He continued pressuring me for more information. WisteriaThatOne and I met for lunch. He encouraged me to write my thoughts down. I am grateful to him for that encouragement. I explained that I had not developed my thinking enough to write down.
WisteriaThatOne encouraged me to visit New York City when I went to Rochester. WisteriaThatOne told me about a good sushi place in New York. Naturally there were many good sushi shops in CapitalEast, and encouraging me to visit a sushi shop in NYC was a bit like trying to sell coal to Newcastle.355 Perhaps other than repetition, the best hint someone is sending you an Affiliation Product is if the sender is a normally well-reasoned person and does something that does not seem well-reasoned.
For many years I had known that the Meaning for the Affiliation Product: sushi is sex. This Meaning may be due in part to the cliché regarding the similarity of the smell of fish and the smell of women’s private parts. Also, sushi is not usually a home prepared meal, and ordering sushi could be analogous to obtaining a prostitute. As indicated above, my first job (other than delivering newspapers) was working at Price’s Seafoods, a fish shop in Brighton, New York.
To me, the meaning of the sushi Affiliation Product that WisteriaThatOne was using was the Incubator was arranging a tryst for me in New York City. I said I would try to visit him in NYC. I began to suspect WisteriaThatOne was working for American or United Nations purposes.
WisteriaThatOne confided in me his dream to build a huge real estate development. This huge city might be underwater, or where expansion is profitable only by a large-scale enterprise. This seemed to be best suited for an inhospitable environment.
Visiting Dot
I left RicePaddyReach on 23 August 2001. On the flight from RicePaddyReach to America, I sat next to a passenger with the initials LT. I initially used initials for individuals in this treatise. At one point, I deleted her name completely and used pronouns to refer to her.
After the first few months, I decided to use names. For the early drafts I saved the previous day’s draft in an archive folder, so even though I had deleted even her initials at one point in the drafting process, I could refer to an archived draft to find her initials. Also for the early drafts, before standing up to leave the computer I saved the current draft on a 3.5” disc to avoid losing data when the Windows computer crashed. The computer almost always crashed more than once a day.
After finding her initials in an earlier draft, I looked in my PDA to find LT’s full name, but her name no longer appeared in my PDA. Similarly, not long after writing about the IME function on my pocket PC, supra, the pocket PC ceased to adequately function. Since initially finding her name in my PDA when citing her for the first time, one of two incidents occurred. Either, I erased her name in the PDA, or another entity erased the name from my PDA.
If another entity erased her name in my PDA, that entity would need to select one of two methods to erase data in my PDA. One method is the entity would have someone manually access my PDA and erase the name. The other option is the entity remotely accessed my PDA to delete the name.
I was led to believe in 2001 that technology existed to remotely access digital machines via power line communication. In 2010, I provided a manuscript of this treatise to an editor, and explained that understanding in the draft. The editor was skeptical of the existence of such technology.
However, after the editor conducted a simple Internet search, (s)he found a web site describing the technology. I viewed the home page of that site as well. The site’s URL was http://www.cepca.org/. On 23 April 2011 at 05:39 JST I tried to view that site. I received: “Bad Request (Invalid Hostname).”
LT’s full name is not the first example of data that has been lost to ‘technical malfunction.’ Given the frequency with which I find names in my PDA, but I am unable to find the same name later, one would normally expect to recall deleting at least one of those names oneself. In any case, for LT, rather than a full name, I will use the initials in this instance because I no longer have access to her full name.
Ms. LT claimed to be a teacher in the New York City public school system. Like many public school systems in American urban centres, the New York City public school system is plagued with endemic problems. LT had two political issues to discuss: one, a candidate from the New York City mayoral contest; and two: education.
This was the same mayoral contest which Mr. Michael Bloomberg eventually won. Mr. Bloomberg is the founder of the company Mr. O’Leary now works for: Bloomberg LP.
After commercial uses, political purposes are the most common use for the Incubator. For instance, LT’s mayoral contestant had several political issues confronting him. The issues the Incubator would poll me on could be strategic, as in political opinions or tactical, as in how to manoeuvre best for position in the political contest. The Incubator’s main purpose is to provide a source of counsel and wisdom for these political contestants or office holders.
Perhaps because her ancestry might have been Latino, or because of her build, or the issue of education, which President Bush had recently made a primary priority of his campaign, LT reminded me a bit of Bush’s wife. LT encouraged me to visit New York City. Two men who reminded me of partners from Rutan & Tucker were sitting in front of us, but on the other side of the airplane aisle. They were talking loudly, motioning, and indicating an erect penis.
This was, I found out later, related to WisteriaThatOne’s reference to sushi. The two Rutan-types turned and looked at me repeatedly. I put earplugs in my ears. When they turned to look at me, I looked out the window, and pointed to one of my earplugs. They quieted down.
I arrived in Rochester. On a visit to Dot, I entered the lobby of the Rochester Friendly Home where Dot lived. I signed in at the front desk.
The front desk receptionist, an older woman, was reading the book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. On the cover of the book was a picture of Atlas holding the world above his head. The receptionist and I made pleasant conversation.
She encouraged me to read Atlas Shrugged. Non-OriginSun people have repeatedly brought Atlas Shrugged to my attention. In contrast to the map incidents which involved both OriginSun and non-OriginSun people, the Atlas Shrugged incidents were brought to me solely by non-OriginSun people.
Playing the Name Game with the title: an atlas is a book of maps356, and just a few months before, the Incubator was barraging me with maps until I wrote the Geography 101 email. Alta, Utah, where I spent a year skiing, is atlas spelled backwards followed by my first initial. Alta is the name of a tall building in RelayStationNew. The large sign on the building is a common gathering point.
The proper noun, Atlas, is an English word derived from the Greek language.357 American public schools teach democracy began in Greece. In Greek mythology, Atlas was a Titan condemned by Zeus to support the heavens upon his shoulders.
Titans in Greek mythology are a family of giants, the children of Uranus and Gaea. They sought to rule heaven. The family of Zeus overthrew and supplanted them.
The satellite Titan, the second from Saturn and the second largest in the solar system358 is “the only natural satellite known to have a dense atmosphere, and the only object other than Earth for which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found.”359 If one accepts the supposition that I am describing a Search for Zero in this chronology, the Affiliation Product: double refers to my ability to duplicate the Search for Zero. The proposed artificial satellite explained later would be duplicating the largest satellite circling Earth: the moon.
Titan, also referred to as a moon, is Saturn’s largest and the eleventh in distance from Saturn. “Titan was a family of U.S. expendable rockets used between 1959 and 2005.”360 In 2001, I watched Remember the Titans on the in-flight entertainment on one of my flights to OriginSun. Shrug means: “to hunch (the shoulders) up to express doubt, indifference, or dislike.”361
The Incubator wanted to affiliate Atlas Shrugged and the Geography 101 email. The Americans knew I had no military connection, except for joining an extracurricular club at St. Lawrence, and no computer industry connection, except for my law clients. The Americans thought I just did not care. My indifference was largely due to the distrust I have for America. I am not as apathetic, as I am afraid to cooperate with such a violent, chaotic, infantile government.
Dot’s condition improved until she was able to walk. I spent time with her, until I thought she was bored of me. I contacted Joe Albert from TUJ Law to see if I could stay with him if I visited New York City. He said yes, so I went for a few days.
In New York City, LT invited me to dinner. She claimed to be ethnically Latin American, and was attempting to affiliate herself with George Wilson Bush’s spouse. Bush’s initials are GWB, the same initials as the George Washington Bridge, and the Incubator had told me when I lived in New York City that the George Washington Bridge is the best way to get out of New York.
LT and I went to a private, respected club for journalists in New York City. She claimed to be a member. This could suggest one of two things. First, she may have been a journalist, or this dinner was in some way connected to journalism. Second, this dinner and journalism had no connection. In other words, the type of the club was intentionally misleading.
“According to Lao-tzŭ, whatever is, or can be, designated by a word, i.e. “name,” is not real. Contrary to Confucius, who attaches great importance to names as indicators of the ontological essences of things, Lao-tzŭ regards them as so many delimitations, and therefore so many deformations, of the eternally limitless and absolutely undetermined Reality.362
“The names by which distinctions are made between things are all nothing but conventional names established for the convenience of practical life.”363
In cultures where information is more valuable than commodities, people often label things what they are not. Symbolism is often created by naming something the opposite of what that thing is. One example is the use of restoration in the phrase: ‘GovernmentBright Restoration’ which occurred about 1867. Despite the use of the word restoration to suggest power was being restored to the Chrysanthemum throne, power has practically never lived in that throne, so restoring the power there is an oxymoron. With only brief exceptions, the Chrysanthemum throne has never been the center of OriginSun political power.
To claim a restoration occurred at the beginning of the GovernmentBright Era implies a primacy that never really existed. ‘Restore’ is hardly the right word for returning political power to a throne that had possessed these powers only briefly more than a thousand years ago, and, arguably, briefly at the lead-up to the hot war portion of the Pacific War. A better translation of the word would be renovation or revitalisation.364
Americans in America are more inclined to label things what things are, what things will become, or what Americans hope the things will become. The frontier mentality encourages this. In a developing nation such as America, to develop something, one creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Calling America a melting pot is just one example of this.
More so in the English language than the American language, for example in British literature, symbolism involves calling things what they are not, as well as what they are. In contrast, average Americans are less inclined to subterfuge simply for symbolism. In some of the more sophisticated cultural aspects of OriginSun culture, one may find more similarities to British culture than American culture.
For example, OriginSun culture labels things to misdirect those who are unable to recognise the true essence of a thing without a label. This is a bit Taoist. By doing so we develop the true essence of a thing, although the true essence of the thing may be the opposite of what we call it.
People’s names are an example of this. The characters of the name ideographically portray the parent’s hopes for the child. As often as not, the child becomes the opposite of what the parent named the child.365
Partially, this may be a child’s natural instinct to develop individuality. More importantly, this may be the result of the conflict with an exterior and interior existence. The exterior differs from the interior, and the recurring dualism arises. At the very least, the difference in the label and the reality creates a distinction. That distinction can create a friction that can give an item more power than if that item were simply accurately named.
The exterior and interior are never one. Even the exterior or interiors taken separately are not one. Nothing is entirely pure. Consequently, names tend to have a conflicted nature.
“What he is interested in are ideas, eternal ideas beyond all temporal and spatial limitations. What he is interested in is not concretely existent persons, things, and places, but Something lying behind or beyond these phenomenal forms and names, as it naturally emerges out of the existential depths of Being in the form of eternal, archetypal images.366
There is a huge difference between actual and perceived reality. To rectify this, I try to interpret symbolism as a path to better understanding my reality. Because I have more experience with American culture, the OriginSun interpretation of symbolism is the one I strive to learn. My American is good enough. Consequently, I strove to develop my ability to interpret OriginSun symbolism using Image Guidance.
Returning to the incident with LT, I was not attracted to this woman in the least. She introduced me to a good-looking member of the staff, with whom she seemed to have a romantic connection. If LT and I had tried to have sex unassisted, I would not have become erect. After dinner in the taxi, I suddenly had a solid erection. Until that day, I had never consumed a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction, but I suspect such a drug had been put in my dinner.
Always feeling the itch to leave
Strawberry Fields is an area in Central Park dedicated to, and maintained by a foundation created by ChildWesternStyle ArchPlain367 and John Lennon. In 1996, Persistence and I were supposed to have been married in Strawberry Fields. Because of the weather, we were married across the street. In September 2001, I was sitting not far north of Strawberry Fields when I met an OriginSun woman.
Within a few moments, she volunteered that she had worked for a woman’s organisation started by Ms. ChildTaka CommunityEarth368. Ms. CommunityEarth and Persistence graduated from the same university, which is where I met Persistence. CommunityEarth was a prominent OriginSun politician until her retirement in 2005. CommunityEarth was born in and represented StorehouseSoldier Prefecture369 in the House of Representatives. She was a member of the OriginSun Socialist Party from 1969.
The same year CommunityEarth retired from the Diet is the same year I moved to GrandHill Prefecture. StorehouseSoldier Prefecture borders the prefecture where I now live. CommunityEarth is the name of the principal of my daughter’s day care center.
In about the first week of September 2001, I went for dinner with this young woman from Strawberry Fields. We went to a restaurant close to Fort Greene, where Persistence and I used to live in Brooklyn. The restaurant was a favourite Asian restaurant of Persistence’s and mine in Brooklyn Heights. The woman and I took the subway to dinner, and planned to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge on the way to the restaurant. We alighted from the subway at the Brooklyn Bridge – City Hall Station.
I started up the stairs from the subway station to the street level, but my date was dawdling. Some years ago at this corner on a sleepy Sunday morning, I had politely corrected a driver for turning right on red. The driver apologised and claimed to be from New Jersey. In most areas of the US, a law permits one to turn right at a red stoplight, if you treat the red light as one treats a stop sign. In New York City, except to and from a one-way street, there is no such law, so autos must wait for the light to turn green before turning.
At the bottom of the stairs leading to the street, my companion was talking to someone, or looking at something out of my eyesight. In hindsight, I realised she was probably intentionally dawdling to cause me to pause. As I came to the top of the stairs exiting the subway heading southwest, I looked to my left across Centre Street to the southeast at the Brooklyn Bridge. On the northeast corner was the old City Hall, the building where Persistence and I had received our wedding license. Under that building, although I was unable to see them at the time, there was a camera crew filming in my direction.
I turned back around to my right to look back down the stairs for the woman. As I turned, while glancing west southwest, I saw a plane bank over New Jersey, and appear to head into the WTC. I looked down the stairs, and called to the woman. I then suddenly realised what I had just seen, and quickly turned back to look for the plane.
Behind me on the other side of the street, filming over my shoulder in the direction of the banking plane, and the twin towers of the WTC, was the camera crew. In front of me was the World Trade Center. The camera crew would have film footage of me facing the camera, then turning around while standing in front of the Twin Towers appearing to observe a practice run of 9/11 which was to occur less than a week later.
The plane had now turned so it was heading straight for the WTC, and I was standing behind the World Trade Center, so I could no longer see the plane. However, the camera crew had taken footage that appeared to be the exact angle of footage replayed scores of times on television a few days later. This became an Image in the Affiliation Product: 9/11.
My date eventually ascended the stairs. We crossed the street where I then first saw the camera crew under the old City Hall building. The woman and I then walked to dinner.
The food was terrible, and my date and I did not enjoy each other’s company. I missed my wife. After dinner, the woman took the subway home from Brooklyn Heights, and I went for a walk in our old neighbourhood.
Parachutes
Joe Albert, my classmate from law school in CapitalEast who looks very similar to Bill Clinton, was my host while I was staying downstate. He had an undergraduate science degree, and we both had considered becoming patent attorneys. Albert is at least ten years older than I am. When I lived in Virginia, he had offered me a job.
In school in CapitalEast, and when I stayed with Albert at his home in Sleepy Hollow, Albert discussed an idea he had to put parachutes on airplanes. The American space shuttle uses parachutes to slow down on landing, but Albert’s idea would be for emergency use. Albert would laugh, saying it was a bit of a strange idea, but a good one. I laughed too. I am not laughing now.
9/11
On my return to Rochester, Dot was doing well, so I changed my flight to return to OriginSun about a week early, departing on 10 September 2001. At the baggage claim in RicePaddyReach airport, I met an Event Planner. I took the train home from RicePaddyReach. About the time I was falling asleep in ValleyAstringent two planes110 entered the World Trade Center Towers, one plane110 went down in Pennsylvania, and one110 supposedly bounced into the Pentagon.
If the Incubator is to be believed, the American military shot down the last two alleged planes. The Incubator provided me with the reports that the last two planes were shot down by the US military using discreet methods. Information reported to me by a screen flashed on the Internet while another page is loading, or other sources which are equally impossible to substantiate, indicated that less damage could have resulted if Colin Powell had been quicker to ignore the century old prohibition on using the American military on American soil. This century old prohibition is also an American obstacle to importing the OriginSun Constitution’s Article IX.
On 11 September 2001 Mr. ThreeGlory WisteriaThatOne was on a flight to New York from OriginSun. He had used an American airline based in Texas at the insistence of Weinsaft. About the time he crossed the date line, traffic controllers rerouted the flight to Anchorage, Alaska where WisteriaThatOne stayed for several days.
I try to blame WisteriaThatOne for not having the courage to travel to the Middle East with me. Instead, I blame myself. Things would have turned out the same probably, but at least I could say I had made the effort.
Enron went bankrupt the next month. Supposedly, this was the largest non-governmental bankruptcy in American corporate history. The only larger bankruptcy ever in America was the 1994 municipal bankruptcy of Orange County. Rutan & Tucker is the largest law firm in Orange County, and the only law firm in Southern California with a Public Law department. I had heard when I was working at Rutan & Tucker there were still some sore spots among attorneys who had been involved in the Orange County bankruptcy fiasco.
Costa Mesa, Orange County, where Rutan & Tucker is located, had also been the home to a corporation from the defense merger I worked on at White & Case. The corporation had sold its aerospace and defense businesses to another corporation110 and in 1999 transferred headquarters to the hometown of Allen-Bradley, the corporation’s leading brand. Allen, Bradley is my father’s name. My father was born in Michigan. Allen-Bradley’s headquarters is in Wisconsin, a state bordering Michigan.370
When I returned to CapitalEast, I went to see Crawley at Phoenix Associates. I told Crawley what happened to me in New York City. Crawley, a British National, was not impressed. I quit Phoenix Associates. According to the Daily Yomiuri delivered to our door, Yusen Yagi died of a heart attack.
During the unfolding of the Enron bankruptcy scandal, the Incubator media featured the US arm of Asahi Arthur Anderson: Arthur Anderson. One of the American partners resigned due to his responsibility in the scandal. This was an Affiliation Product for the Asahi Arthur Anderson executive with whom I had bonded when I was working at Asahi.
Moreover, “Arthur Andersen LLP, based in Chicago, . . . voluntarily surrendered its licenses to practice as Certified Public Accountants in the United States after being found guilty of criminal charges relating to the firm’s handling of the auditing of Enron. [ ] One of the few revenue-generating assets that the Andersen firm still has is Q Center, a conference and training facility outside of Chicago. [ ] The former consultancy arm of the firm, now known as Accenture, which had split from the accountancy side in 1987 and renamed themselves after splitting from Andersen Worldwide in 2000, continues to operate and has become one of the largest multinational corporations in the world.”b
God of War
Persistence and I visited her mother in BeforeBridge. For several hours I took her mother’s dog for a walk along a river close to her mother’s home. I was at a loss on how to proceed, and I appreciated the solitary time alone, walking in the countryside. The dog, who spent almost all of his life chained up, enjoyed the walk too.
As I walked along the river’s embankment, I was again left with the nagging problem of what direction in which to steer. My peace in the Middle East Project had, to say the least, not turned out well. Now, what was I going to do? I thought about the themes in my life that went back the furthest.
What things did I find interesting? Whose life should I use as a role model? If I could be anyone, fictional or real, who would I be? If I could do anything imaginable, what would that be? Again, I had to think of something that was worthwhile because of how much time, money and energy appeared to be wasted in my direction.
No less strange than coming up with ‘peace in the Middle East,’ my mind turned to Star Trek, and Jean Luc Picard. If I could do anything I wanted, I would explore the galaxies in a spacecraft. Thus begun my first concrete understanding of the Aerospace Project.
I visited the GodOfWar (Hachiman)371 PalaceShrine372 near my home. This is a shrine to one of the three OriginSun gods of war.373 The ideographs for this god can be literally translated as eight flags. Eight is a lucky number in OriginSun.
One of the Roman gods of war, Mars, was the God of War and Agriculture. The next furthest planet from the Sun after Earth is called Mars in English, a red planet. The ShipSun374 flag of OriginSun has a red globe.
“The war god Hachiman, for example — to whom parish-temples are dedicated in almost every large city ― is the apotheosized spirit of Emperor Ojin, patron of the famed Minamoto clan.”375 My legally registered alias in OriginSun, and the name I intend to take if granted OriginSun citizenship, is transliterated as Minamoto376 which means source or origin377. GodOfWar could also be translated as ‘metal globe,’ which relates to a Dyson’s Sphere.
At the offices of the shrine, I inquired about how I could study. The caretakers of the shrine directed me across the street to the AbundantHarvestProsperousFoxDeityShrine378 place of the way379. At the place of the way, I spoke with the master. After a brief conversation, the master and I sat in silent contemplation. The master broke the silence to suggest I go to CapitalCapital380. Four years later I moved to the neighbouring prefecture.
Welcome to the Hotel California
In October I called Jim Moynihan at the Embassy. Before I had left for America, he suggested I call him when I returned. Moynihan suggested meeting at the bar Paddy Foley’s. About 25 October, I met Moynihan, and several others, including Moynihan’s spouse, a friend of Moynihan’s who I was supposed to suspect was associated with the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and the alleged son of the alleged IRA friend.
Moynihan and I discussed his work. Moynihan claimed to be working on a new security detail. The details were still fuzzy, but the operation was not in the public sector. Moynihan was suggesting he was working on my Aerospace Project.
I began teaching English to Yoko Ueki,381 a member of the American Embassy’s Personnel Office. When I taught English, as at Rutan & Tucker/Asahi, I received money to talk to the people the Administrators sent after me. The pay at Asahi had not been enough for unproductive chatting and nonsense. The hourly rate in my English lessons was even less.
The agendas people wished to discuss with me were not very entertaining. I have taught English from time to time. I find it painful. I have no training in teaching English, and casual conversation bores me. These people must have been fully aware of the Incubator.
I met with Moynihan in his office at the American Embassy, and we went to lunch in the embassy cafeteria. American embassy complexes are very similar to forts. In contrast, OriginSun embassies are more like inns.
I told him I was interested in becoming Ambassador, and a Diet Representative. He said he did not know many people at the Diet so he could not be much help there. About this time, I applied for a Trade Specialist position at the American Embassy. I spoke with Ira Kassof. Both his first and last names are traditionally Jewish names.
On 03 October 2001 I interviewed with Alan Turley, the ranking Department of Commerce officer, and his assistant Steve. Both men share one of my names. From the start of the interview, I could sense they were toying with me, and were not going to offer me the job. During the interview, sirens in the building began wailing, and lights flashing, but no one seemed very alarmed. Mr. Turley said this was a drill.
At the end of the interview, Turley and Steve walked me via the elevator to the guard station at the building exit. As we were saying our goodbyes, Turley suddenly began a story about when he worked at the American Embassy in London and a taxi driver had left an unexpected package for Turley at the entrance. The package contained no note or indication of the package contents. Initially, the London Embassy treated the package as a security threat. He opened the package and found a bottle of Scotch whisky.
McIntire is Scottish. Scots make Scotch whisky in Scotland. Scots are famous for being brutal.
When I lived in the United Kingdom, I was a courier driver in London. Couriers bring messages. Kassof and Steve likely believed they were receiving messages from my Image Guidance.
Also, while I lived in London, there were multiple transportation disasters killing hundreds of people. One of these disasters was in Lockerbie, Scotland: a jet110 allegedly bombed by a Libyan. The bomber’s sentencing was now regularly in the media. Turley was euphemistically explaining that Moynihan, or someone, had told Turley I was a possible security threat, but Turley did not find me dangerous.
E.D.
For years, wherever we lived, I had encouraged Alkalay, my law school housemate, to come visit. Persistence and I had repeatedly visited Alkalay in New York City before we moved to the City. I had met Alkalay’s mother and grandmother. I had visited Alkalay in Washington, DC. I wanted to repay his hospitality.
After the phone call from Alkalay while I was driving to Rutan & Tucker, I still thought we could serve a purpose in each other’s lives. I could not play this Game in a vacuum, on a field of one. There were people who were and are useful to me, no matter how much I hated and despised them. No matter how much I disagreed with what they were working to achieve, I realised that I might need to help those people understand me to move the Aerospace Project forward, and steer them in a direction which would be best for all.
Nevertheless, I was suspicious of Mr. Alkalay. World Events transpiring since that phone call, particularly 9/11, had only heightened my suspicions. However, for years I had adhered to the American organised crime proverb: ‘keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.’
Alkalay called me by phone from Washington, DC. He was hoping to visit OriginSun. He asked me for advice about the trip, and because of OriginSun etiquette I suggested he bring business cards. I feel ill at ease, principally in OriginSun, when someone offers me a business card, and I do not have one. Conscience dictates I reciprocate generosity. I try to be as strict with my acquaintances as I am with myself.
Ms. Ueki, my English student working at the American Embassy, had told me the US government does not provide civil servants with business cards. Alkalay confirmed this. I suggested Alkalay have business cards printed with English on one side, and the OriginSun language on the other.
He thought that might be easier to do in CapitalEast than Washington, so he suggested I make some up for him. I agreed, and ordered and bought the cards. He reimbursed me the next month in CapitalEast.
While determining how the card should read, I became confused: for whom did Alkalay work? He had always claimed he worked for the Department of Justice. Now, he suddenly instructed me to have Department of State printed on the cards.
He explained: the work he did related to both, and the official supervision came through the Department of State. Besides the Department of State, the division or bureau Alkalay instructed me to put on the cards was not something one associates with the Justice Department. The bureau was more like an information agency. My suspicions increased.
Alkalay asked me where to visit in OriginSun. I suggested a visit to a rural area not a tourist destination. I thought by doing so Alkalay could better appreciate what I identify as the real OriginSun.
I suggested Alkalay visit CastleConstellations. Alkalay liked the idea, so I contacted Mr. HusbandBecome TreeSmallBell to see if he could host Alkalay on an introduction to rural CastleConstellations. TreeSmallBell had now been transferred from the RollingStone Board of Education to the RollingStone Mayor’s office.
I was hoping TreeSmallBell, a village elder, could show Alkalay around TreeSmallBell’s hometown, a village close to RollingStone, CastleConstellations. TreeSmallBell agreed. Alkalay arrived at RicePaddyReach, stayed with us for a couple days, visited TreeSmallBell in CastleConstellations, and returned to stay with us in CapitalEast.
While in CapitalEast, Alkalay and I went to visit a well-known shrine. The shrine was popular with foreign and OriginSun tourists, and today was no exception. An OriginSun man suddenly walked up to me and started discussing Christianity. I will call this stranger Mr. Born Again.
Mr. Born Again asked me if Christ was this or that, and I told him that Christ is that or this if he believes Christ is. After he left, Alkalay promptly walked up to me and asked me why Mr. Born Again began speaking to me. I knew the moment Born Again had approached me that this was a setup, and Alkalay understood that as well. Born Again and people like him are just one tiny part of the daily Incubator to which I had become accustomed.
However, I think Alkalay saw this as just one man who had been sent to mess with me by, Alkalay believed, Alkalay’s coworkers in the US Federal Government. Alkalay had no idea of the scale of the forces in OriginSun or elsewhere. Alkalay had no substantial conception of the Incubator. Alkalay’s visit to OriginSun seemed to be dedicated to derailing me, and orienting Alkalay to the Incubator, if possible.
At Kojima Law Offices, and at Asahi, there had been attorneys who had spent time in mental health institutions. At Asahi, I was introduced to a senior partner who had recently returned from a leave of absence for mental health reasons, or so I was told. When his past inpatient status was explained to me in front of him, I distinctly recall the look in his eye. I do not recall his name, so I will refer to him as Not Sick Partner.
The person who introduced me to Not Sick Partner explained that Not Sick Partner had just returned to work after being institutionalised in a mental health facility. After hearing this, my gaze went from the speaker to the Not Sick Partner, who had a mischievous look in his eye. Not Sick Partner knew they had been messing with him.
He knew the ‘mental health treatment’ was a farce, and Not Sick Partner knew at the time I met Not Sick Partner they were toying with me, just as Privacy Partner from Rutan knew they were toying with me. There were no words spoken, but I could tell Not Sick Partner knew that if you did not play along, the going would only become more difficult. There was no beating the Incubator. If you struggled against them, you were not going to win, and no one would thank you for your efforts.
My experience at Rutan and elsewhere had exposed me to the psychological meddling that I knew the legal industry liked to visit on members to see of what they are made. Since I left Asahi, I made no secret of my disdain for the way law was practiced at that law firm; if one can call that practicing law. Except for a registration number, the legal profession seemed to be almost identical to organised crime. I was not shy about telling people who told me they knew ButtocksInlet, such as Attorney BlessingTrust CenterSmall, that Asahi used fictitious clients, and the other sort of hijinks that occurred while I was working there.
Asahi undoubtedly heard of my accusations. Perhaps I had been blacklisted from finding another legal job the minute I resigned from Asahi, or perhaps I became blacklisted because I would not keep quiet. I knew if I had shut up and played their game, contrast the Game, I could have gone back to the ‘profession,’ but if I had to compromise my ethics, principles and calling in that manner, was that a profession? I suspected people like Born Again were sent to me by Administrators who wished to protect the way ButtocksInlet and others practiced law.
To some extent, I think I can serve OriginSun, and some OriginSun individuals appreciate that. Alkalay is unable to see the potential advantage to OriginSun. Nor can he see the harm America does to my country, or the world. My value to these OriginSun individuals as a mouthpiece may be immeasurable. I do think there are Factions in OriginSun who value me, and could use me.
Alkalay’s concern was Born Again’s Faction was successfully persuading me I was a Christ figure. I have never been, nor hoped to be, anyone’s saviour, Christ figure or anything similar. We are all our own saviour. Each of us must save ourselves, and any help that anyone else gives any of us along the way is only marginally effective, if not counter productive.
Alkalay believed the Search for Zero, if Alkalay recognised the Search for Zero as such, was duping me into believing I was a Christ figure. I spent a considerable amount of time fending off people like Born Again, so I had much practice, and I was not being duped. I clearly understood the role these Freelancers, such as Born Again, play in the Incubator. The fact that I was willing to play along with Born Again’s Game was not a problem for me, but my playing along was a very big problem for Alkalay.
I knew then that Handlers and Freelancers are, if not a farce, simply playing at theatre. I thought that, again to use the martial arts principle, if I could use my opponent’s strengths against my opponent, I could throw them over to the side of the Aerospace Project, and move us both beyond this nonsense. The problem was Alkalay did not know, nor do I suspect he now knows, the extent to which I understood or understand the necessity of using the Incubator against itself. What I do not know is: is there a Faction that wants to put me to use, not as a Christ figure, but as a mouthpiece for OriginSun’s goals, as a focal point for driving forward the Aerospace project, and instituting an IMF?
After the shrine, we went for lunch. We were eating in a small, basement restaurant. We had a leisurely lunch, so as we ate many of the weekday lunchtime patrons came and went during the lunch hour. When we first entered, the mood of the room was neutral. The positive and negative mood in the room fairly well balanced each other.
I expressed my ideas, and I felt some Image Guidance in the room. Particularly the conversations around us were positive and constructive. However, at one point I felt as though the positivity abandoned me, as if the spirit(s) were sucked out of the air. Perhaps the change in mood was due to Alkalay, and/or the gradual exiting of patrons. Perhaps the point of the sensation of the abandonment of positivity when the patrons exited was: this was how I would feel all the time if I left OriginSun.
The restaurant became nearly empty. Left there alone with Alkalay, I could feel the negativity, distrust, and insecurity emanating from him. Alkalay said something discouraging, and I shot back: “They don’t think you’re a god.” To some extent, the Search for Zero is an attempt at deification, a search for a Holy Grail, and I was doing my best to derail those who were pretending or really believed I could be some sort of deliverer of salvation. However, to some extent, the Aerospace Project is an effort at salvation, providing a fountain of youth, travel to the heavens, and delivery from our worldly woes, so the line could be easily blurred, if one is not vigilant.
The other side of a blurred line across which a Zero might fall is, to use a phrase from Star Wars: “The dark side.” A Zero could easily be tempted to megalomania, and my remark: “They do not think you are a god,” or other actions or statements of mine could be interpreted that I had succumbed. I suspect Alkalay was eager for evidence of my slide into that dark side. Perhaps that was Alkalay’s job duty with the US Government. However, I was trying to explain that I was being vigilant, and that I was aware what I was up against.
Megalomania requires assent by the putative megalomaniac. If one realises they are blowing smoke up your ass, and one is taking precautions against being duped, the accusation that one is a megalomaniac is problematic. One way to take precautions against being duped by others is to acknowledge and draw attention to these external forces that are falsely luring one towards an unbalanced assessment of one’s place in the world.
There is a breed of legal practitioner who permits all the hot air and flattery (s)he receives to go to her(is) head. They become a sort of blowfish, so entirely puffed up on their role as a functionary, but not wishing to acknowledge their relative impotency. The sort of treatment that Born Again and others were giving me was different in manner and degree, but not fundamentally different from hot air.
On at least one occasion, my father had said they treated us like gods in Myanmar. On my visit there in 1994 I felt as though I received special treatment. Certainly, Asians treat Caucasians deferentially in Asia. Appearance alone causes this, but there is more.
The influence of Hollywood and Madison Avenue are one factor in the Caucasoid being treated differently in Asia. Another factor may be the Asian perception that Westerners cannot understand the Asian thought process. While most Asians deftly disguise this you-will-never-understand-this-so-let-me-help-you-with-it attitude, the feeling is pervasive.
I am no more a god than anyone else. If I am a god, we are all gods. “‘All the dead become gods,’ wrote the great Shintō commentator, Hirata.”382 Polytheistic religions reinforce the understanding that we are all capable of achieving deification.
We are each masters of our own incubators. “But destroy consciousness, and the Reality becomes cognizable. Annihilate the illusion of Mind and the light will come.383
If others control our incubator, they do so because in some way, we have released some authority in our lives. Naturally we all release control to some extent. Societies require this to maintain a shared reality.
The issue I confront continually is to what extent to release control of my Incubator. If others may further my process of enlightenment, do I want them to Administer the Incubator? Trust is the most essential component, yet the method to building trust seems to be unnecessarily difficult.
Rutan Redux x 2
Alkalay’s visit brought back Rutan & Tucker’s theme of trying to separate Persistence and I. Alkalay was not married at the time. Alkalay and I visited the GodOfWar PalaceShrine.
As we sat on the steps outside of the shrine, we discussed OriginSun philosophy. I tried to explain fatalistic OriginSun attitudes by using an example. I said: if I have a child with Persistence, and that child grows up to be a jingoist, something good will grow out of the forces rising up to defeat that danger.
Alkalay suggested we not have children, and laughed. I suspect Alkalay thought Persistence too hypocritical, and me too disloyal to be good parents. For the remainder of Alkalay’s trip, I tried to be hospitable, but he had offended me more than words can describe.
While walking under the MagnateCapital & HeadOfTheCommunity Lines384 I discussed my visit to the place of, and the practice of the way of the sword with Alkalay. Alkalay thought I should pursue the study of the way of the sword. I have always admired fencing: European and OriginSun.
I enjoyed the exercises at the place of the way for the way of the sword. However, I try not to focus my mind on violence. Persistence and I had attended a martial arts class together while we were in Virginia. We both chuckled at how unsuited I was to striking the pads used for martial arts practice.
Another goal of the Incubator Administrators resurrected by Alkalay’s visit was the ‘America First’ theme. We visited the Irish pub What the Dickens. The clientele is generally half OriginSun, and half Commonwealth. I sensed that Alkalay’s attitude and America First philosophy was not popular with these customers.
Alkalay was going to visit CapitalCapital and IslandDissemination. I wanted to accompany him. The nuclear apocalypses the country of my former citizenship had visited on my country of residence are a constant source of incredulity to me.
Except as an infant, I had never been west of Mount SamuraiAbundant385 in OriginSun. I had spent most of my time in OriginSun in CapitalEast, yet I knew from my experience in CastleConstellations that CapitalEast was not representative of OriginSun. Similarly, I knew from the years I had spent in New York that New York City is not representative of America.
CapitalEast and New York City may have more similarities than differences. Of course, OriginSun never firebombed New York. Notably, Americans do not limit firebombing of civilians to foreign wars. On 13 May 1985 the Philadelphia Police Department killed six adults and five children “by dropping a four-pound bomb made of C-4 plastic explosive and Tovex, a dynamite substitute, onto the roof” of a row house.386
The old capital seemed to be a better source to unearth history, and I was also interested in the mysticism. Just a month or so before the master of the place of the way at the AbundantHarvestProsperousFoxDeityShrine suggested I study in the old capital. I walked Alkalay to the train. I carried no luggage with me, and I suggested I join him.
Alkalay was not agreeable. We went our separate ways. Alkalay returned from his trip to Western OriginSun, stayed with us again, and returned to Washington, DC. I did not respond to his efforts to contact me until he sent me an email in 2009, at which time I replied to him with an expletive.
Saudi Arabia
In October 2001, I met Mahlo Farhad, an Iraqi, at Tipness sports club in ValleyAstringent. Note the similarity of his personal name to Larry Mahl’s family name, with the addition of an “o.” Farhad had Moynihan written all over him. He practically smelled of Moynihan.
Although I did not realise it at the time, Farhad was probably Moynihan’s Asset. I will refer to this stamp of approval, connection or representative relationship as a Seal387. In these sorts of situations, the Seal Owner is the person who instigated, crafted or sent the Seal Holder to interact with me. In this instance, Moynihan would be the Seal Owner, and Farhad the Seal Holder.
At Paddy Foley’s, I believe Moynihan had arranged to have a Spaniard introduce me to Moynihan. The Spaniard had a manner of speaking, a repertoire, and an agenda. The Spaniard had Moynihan’s Seal.
At the time I first met Farhad or the Spaniard, I could see a connection, but this Seal arrangement was not clear. There may be no specific mention of the Seal Owner, but one can feel, sense that there is something going on behind the scenes of the superficial conversation, or meeting with the Seal Holder. Perhaps this is due to assistance from Image Guidance.
There is a subtext that one has heard somewhere before, and that subtext that your mind harks back to was also instigated or crafted by the Seal Owner. Sometimes repeated meetings would be required before I recognised a Seal connection. Sometimes I could tell right away. Later I met Mr. Strong WisteriaAdjusted,388 Mr. Osman Baffour and similar people in comparable circumstances. I gradually learned to recognise Moynihan’s Seal.
Part of the process of learning Jim Moynihan’s Seal was from occasionally finding out after the fact that these people did have a connection to Moynihan. For instance, in the case of the Spaniard, when I met Moynihan and company for drinks at Paddy Foley’s in October 2001, months after I originally had met the Spaniard at Paddy Folly’s, Moynihan told me the Spaniard was now in Australia. The Spaniard has also lived in Phoenix, Arizona. In the case of Farhad, Farhad accused me of working for the American Federal Bureau of Investigations. I think I found out later that Moynihan knew Farhad had left the country.
Moynihan seemed to be running these people. By the manner that Moynihan spoke, Moynihan had arranged for the Spaniard to go to Australia. Later, Farhad was to go to the United Kingdom, and WisteriaAdjusted to New Zealand.
Moving this easily internationally may require money or connections, and these people did not seem to have much money. Although I may appear to be painting people with roles such as Moynihan as the villain in this chronology, a reminder about my earlier caution that decades, probably centuries are required to sort out the black hats from the white hats. Frankly, all the hats seem fairly grey.
Farhad told me about a Saudi Arabian mosque in HempClothSource389. I had been to numerous churches, synagogues, and temples, but never a mosque. Living in OriginSun I regularly went to Buddhist and RoadToDivineMorality places of worship.
At various times in my life in America I habitually attended Unitarian and Catholic ceremonies, and as a child I frequently attended services at synagogues. I enjoyed visiting various Christian and Jewish houses of worship. In January 2010 I began regularly attending an Orthodox synagogue.
My parents taught us to learn from different beliefs. I study belief systems. I try to learn from all philosophies.
My interest in religion is a bit voyeuristic. Some might label my participation as ‘religious tourism.’ However, I believe the accumulation of knowledge for understanding is never a bad thing.
Although I was born Ashkenazi, baptised Christian, raised atheist, and developed agnosticism during adolescence, I became an animist in my 20s, and my beliefs have remained animistic. Animism is the root of all religions: the Earth Mother worship that spawned all other beliefs. The best preserved belief system of any practicing animists in the world is the RoadToDivineMorality.
In 2001 I visited the Sunni mosque in EasternCapital, and was very warmly welcomed. Many of the faithful I met were diplomatic staff. I was encouraged to attend the Arabic courses at the Arab Islamic Institute in the mosque, and I did study Arabic there for a semester the following year.
The essential similarity of religions has always been obvious to me, and Islam is no exception. Lao-Tzu identified that:
“What is of fundamental importance is the fact that the thought is there, and that it has a very peculiar inner structure which, if analysed and understood in a proper way, will provide an exceedingly interesting Chinese counterpart to the ‘Unity of Existence’ (whaɮdah al-wujūd) type of philosophy as represented by Ibn ‘Arabī in Islam.”390
“「道先天地」 lit. ‘The Tao precedes Heaven and Earth.’ The concept of tao in this respect may rightly be compared with the Islamic concept of quadîm.”391
There are universal truths. These similarities are easy to find if we are willing to look for them. For self-assurance we emphasise the differences more than the similarities.