Hey Wilson. Greetings from the Jordanian desert. After getting out of Egypt, I did manage to get back on the bike. I thought after the urban adventures of Athens and Cairo, which I have to admit were a bit overwhelming for me, I might actually be able to center myself in the desert. After all, I am from the desert. This is even the House of a Desert Voice.
That didn’t happen, though. Upon arriving in Aqaba, my strange mood of exhaustion and confusion stuck with me, and my stay at a camp in the desert of Al Quwayra actually took a turn for the super weird, but was an adventure of its own. I could write about it at some point, but probably won’t. Sorry, Wilson. Let’s just say that I have been tempted in the desert. Now Petra wasn’t exactly the most normal of experiences, but I did feel myself turning the corner in terms of maybe gaining a kind of a second wind to wrap up this journey with a bit of gusto.
Before starting this tale that I am going to tell you, I want to say that I have reached out to my friend Liat, who actually has decided to make a point of answering texts and give me a kind of a beacon to aim for. The result is that I am just getting more and more attracted to this woman who I have known was beautiful and interesting for quite a long time now. I admit that I’m quite attracted, but as that attraction has begun to wax stronger, so has old tumult begun to stir within my soul. Frankly, I feel more or less exactly like the character Graham in an old indie classic, Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Well, Graham did have one peculiar problem that he addressed with one pecular solution that doesn’t exactly apply to me in precisely the same form. But everything about the essence of the character and his general issues remind me of who I have become 34 years after seeing that movie.
Now just as this emotional revolution has started to make its course within me, I also got banned from yet another community on the Reddit social media website. I’ve pretty much at this point been banned from just about all of the religious and Jewish communities on that website, and even from one of my favorite superhero communities where I published an article about superheroes that connected the superhero genre to issues of God and theology. I’m just calling things like I see things, not really trying to be offensive or anything, and I am being systematically removed from internet discourse because the leaders of all the communities there more or less hate what I have to say. The common thread of all of these bans seems to be that I say bad things about people. For instance, one moderator banned me for saying that transexuals cause the suffering of the innocent simply by existing.
Of course I said no such thing. I just said in one place that when we do wrong, we cause the suffering of the innocent, and in another place I stated my opinion that men becoming women is wrong. Now there are complex and fascinating concepts that underly the connection between these things, and I hope to write about them at some point, but the takeaway that I want you to get from this, Wilson, is that I am being banned because people cannot be impugned. This is the theme that I am going to run with in this post to you. Human beings need to be perfect. They have great difficulty comprehending that they can be loved by someone who recognizes their flaws and who speaks matter of factly about them. They have a very hard time accepting they can be forgiven despite their flaws. So when I say something about transsexuals doing wrong, I am going to get banned by someone sympathetic to transsexuals. And if you ask me, I am going to be persecuted with extreme prejudice because I know things that are dangerous to the demons who run this world.
So we have a couple of events running at this point, Wilson. First there is getting into this chick and my emotional scars casting their shadows over that, and then there is the issue of getting banned from social media. I want to throw one more thing in. It has to do with antisemitism. At the beginning of this trip I visited a friend in the center of Portugal, and one close to Marbella, Spain. These two guys are both right wingers, and both conspiracy theorists. Yeah, quite a coincidence that these two folks who have never run across each other as far as I know would live close to each other and have a lot in common, with their only connection to each other being me. It’s as if a situation were being arranged for me by God to encounter these issues of antisemitism at that phase in this journey that I am going on, which just so happens to be an epic continent-spanning bicycle ride toward Israel.
I want to say that these guys are not garden variety antisemites, though. In fact, one of them is a Jew, and the other loves a number of Jews. They have been affected in very nuanced ways by the various media narratives that they follow, and they can really only be called antisemitic from a hostile and reductionist perspective. Ultimately what makes them “antisemitic” in the eyes of the people they tend to encounter is that they are at times critical of Jews. Remember, Wilson, this post is about the human difficulty in being impugned. My Jewish friend showed me an enounter he had on social media where he defended Kanye West during his cancellation for making antisemitic remarks, saying as a Jew himself, “hey, we need to be able to be criticized and be critical of ourselves,” and he was met with absolutely vicious and over the top charges of antisemitism.
Okay, so hopefully you are starting to see a common thread of the frustrations that we encounter when people cannot be criticised that I am getting at here. I am getting banned from social media because people cannot be criticized. My friends are being called antisemites because people cannot be impugned. But what does this have to do with Jonathan Bailey’s scars and his developing crush on his friend Liat?
Well, I am trying not to be Graham in that movie Sex, Lies, and Videotape. I’m trying to make room in my heart, and also somehow come to terms with what has happened to me. Of course that has to do with the van Ouwerkerk saga and the Electrochemical Girl. I’ve talked this issue to death, Wilson. I wrote a book about it. I wrote poems about it for years. I buried everything way down deep and dated Mayra, but things bubbled up and messed with that, and I don’t want that to happen again. So I’ve been pondering the van Ouwerkerks lately.
Now at this point, the only thing I can say about the van Ouwerkerks is that I have not been wrong about them. I have absolutely no confidence that I will ever hear from any of them, and that every one of them will take extraordinary actions to ensure with absolutely zero doubt whatsoever that none of them ever have any contact with me of any kind.
I will, therefore, give a fleshed out narrative of what I think happened. I am convinced that no one will ever contradict what I am about to tell you, Wilson. No one will ever affirm it either. Of all the people who have read about the whole drama, no one has ever taken effort to help me resolve the issue. I have never been able to make the determination posed in my book. If you will remember, Wilson, my book was basically about the quandry of the distinction between insanity and illumination. I have never been able to figure out if I was insane or illumined, or if insanity produced illumination, or if illumination produced insanity. In order to know these things, I would have to know what happened. I will never know what happened. So I will only be able to move forward with my own conjecture.
What is my conjecture, Wilson? I think that there was indeed some sort of connection between me and that girl Noah in some way and at some point, even though we never properly met. She never told anyone, however, at least initially. The entire course of events was actually determined by her father, whose actions have been driven by shame. For her part, I declare that Noah first thought she wasn’t intelligent enough for me, then she thought she wasn’t beautiful enough for me, and finally thought I would hate her for not calling me to help me. Harold cannot believe that I would forgive him for what he did, and he must reject me and deny my existence in order to maintain his comfort, and so my shizophrenia or whatever it is just festered year after year. I of course have gotten angry about this, and I can only tell the truth as I see it, and since the van Ouwerkerks cannot be impugned and need praise and nice things said about them at all times, they must delete me from their lives.
For these people, the whole issue is simply one of one person being nice to another, one person being sexually attracted to another, etc. These are the things that tend to happen to people. These are the experiences people tend to have. But for me, the issue has many additional dimensions. As alluded to earlier, I have never been able to confirm what I saw to determine just how shizophrenic I was, if at all. Maybe some kind of miracle was at play. One would have to know the whole story to be able to tell the audience what happened. I could get a handle on my mental health, friendships could be made, etc. This is of course assuming that I was just crazy. I suppose there is also the chance that miracles happened. And I said in my book and in various writings afterward that it didn’t really matter what happened. If Noah loved me or not, if I were crazy or not, if there were miracles or not, I would have a story to tell. I could tell how some random girl made a playlist that said things to me without her knowing it, or I could have a story about a connection between people who never met. I would have a story about a prophet who looks like a madman, or a madman who turned out to be a prophet. I would know how to approach the future because I would have an understanding of my past. Satan knows this. No matter what happened, I can make a story out of what happened, if I know what happened, so the only way to stop me is to make sure it never gets finished at all, and that I never find out what happened at all.
As an aside, while on this bike trip I have been pouring a fair amount of energy into a particular superhero saga that has a lot to do with how much I hate the suppression of stories. Zack Snyder, one of my favorite film directors, planned a five-movie series of superhero films, but in horrific fashion the demons who run this world cut the story short after the second movie. I am not sure I have written a blog post about this drama, Wilson. I think I will before too long. I am actually wanting to make a documentary about it. At any rate, as the story goes, the third movie did end up getting put out in a miraculous turn of events. However, the fans have continued to clamor for the rest of the movies to be made. Recently, though, the studio that owns the intellectual property of the superheroes has brought in a new creator who is basically firing everybody and changing everything and seemingly closing the door on these films ever being made. The whole drama is much greater than anything I am going to tell you about here, and there are in fact numerous spiritual dimensions to it. I have been pretty vocal about participating in the whole spectacle, and my fervent interest has to do with the fact that these movies that were being made were a powerful spiritual story, and I just can’t stand the idea of the forces of evil putting a sock in God’s mouth when he is trying to tell a meaningful story to the world. I am seeing myself try to tell spiritual truths and am getting banned right and left everywhere I open my mouth. I can absolutely and clearly see demon princes behind the scenes shutting down Hollywood directors trying to tell God’s truth just like I see moderators on the Reddit shutting me down trying to put God’s truth in comments on social media, and I see these same infernal demons making absolutely sure that the van Ouwerkerks don’t let me finish my story about them.
So Satan just inspired the van Ouwerkerks to get rid of Jonathan Bailey. Jonathan says nasty things about us, so get rid of him. He writes us love poems, so get rid of him. Everything was interpreted to get rid of and away from me. If I pestered them, I was a threat. If I left them alone, good riddance. And at every turn, their reaction was that they had to get rid of me because they cannot be impugned. They felt no obligation to love their enemy or forgive their brother as the New Testament commands. They weren’t going to be the good Samaritans and tend the wounded Jew. They just could not and cannot handle the way I saw things. These words that I am saying about them now will just make them hate me all the more and make sure I am gotten rid of all the more. That’s how they fit into this story, Wilson. They cannot be impugned.
While those guys are so good at making me go away, I can’t get them to go away. The other day I texted Liat, and she said that she had just awakened and wanted to get coffee. I responded that she had no idea how bad I wanted to make her coffee. She confirmed that she did not. So I thought about sending her a song of yearning. I thought about sending her “Sideways” from Citizen Cope.
I listened to the song and started crying. Long ago, I had told Noah that diamonds would fade before my feelings for her would go away. That song was Noah’s. I remembered Chaz telling me back in 2019, “It’s just a matter of time.” Something deep down won’t let Chaz win. I never sent the song to Liat. I only told her I couldn’t tell her how bad I wanted to make her coffee. I’m not sure I will ever be able to move forward. Every other woman will be another Mayra. I’ll be able to marry for convenience. That’s about it.
So that story will never be finished. It will never resolve itelf. Just like the remaining superhero movies of the Justice League will never be made. Because people who cannot be impugned, who cannot accept their failings, are everywhere, and they run everything, and they must everywhere at all times suppress the truth.
So I am banned from everywhere I can be banned from on social media with zero karma, zero likes, and zero followers. The Dutch Samaritan kicked the Texan Jew into the ditch and went on his way, praying fervently to the Lord Jesus Christ Almighty that nobody ever find out what happened. His silhouette is getting smaller and smaller, only a dot on the horizon, and he shows no sign of turning around. And the Justice League superhero movies are never getting made.
I’m like Abraham with his old lady for a wife. “What the fuck are you talking about? I’m never going to have a legacy.” Or I’m like Moses in the desert of Midian. “What the fuck are you talking about? I’m never going to bring my people out of slavery.”
The thing is, both of those stories had some pretty dramatic endings. One of them involved a mountain on fire and God coming down from heaven. The other one involved souls outnumbering the stars. And while I lament that we haven’t yet seen all five of the Justice League movies, I have to think about a very important thing that we got from the three that did get made.
The only thing I have is hope. Those who cannot accept their failings may be everywhere, running everything, suppressing the truth, cutting the story short, but that’s only for a little while. Eventually the truth will win. The story will be told. And everyone will know what happened. We just can’t lose hope. Diamonds they fade, but hope never goes away.
These are the things that come to mind when you ride a bicycle along the coast of the Dead Sea, Wilson. I’m sorry if it’s a rambling mess of social media posts, antisemitic Jews, superheroes, and Dutch people. It’s a kind of a confluence of blogs. It’s its own kind of crossroads.
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