Carnival

Alright. I’m actually in Switzerland now, and I think I have wrapped my head around what all happened in the USA enough to start writing about things. I’m really getting to the end of my interest in writing all this out, particularly since I showed the last post to some people, and yet again, my only fan seems to be my mother. One “friend,” though I think I may have to redefine what I mean by that word, pretty much told me the post was just gibberish and it was just about me. As if that’s some kind of disqualifier.

This book by Carl Jung is actually about Carl Jung. It’s a classic in philosophical, occult, and psychological circles. But if I write my philosophy derived from the context of my personal experiences, I suppose I am just some kind of self-absorbed egotist or something. And my detractor was Ariella Casey, a karaite Jew in Israel whose blog I found at WordPress. Yeah, it does seem like Screwtape is making sure that all my friends, acquaintances, and connections in Israel are too busy, or I am figuring out they just don’t give a damn about me, or something else. The universe doesn’t want me to have connections there. First, Liat went by the wayside. Again. Then I just had to leave my online Hebrew Ulpan because I just couldn’t take the female drama and hostility to speaking about religion and actually trying to connect to other students.

So yeah, I’ve kind of had it with writing out this story and writing about myself, but I’ve finally gotten to a place where I can force myself to do it for the benefit of the Jewish Agency or the Misrad Hapnim in Israel or anyone who wants to evaluate me for anything pertaining to this interminable saga that I am apparently boring everyone with.

So let’s dig in. The last post ended with my interview with the Jewish Agency. Two days after that interview I stepped onto the Carnival Valor, the newly refurbished flagship of Carnival cruise lines. Being the Jungian Kabbalist I am, I can’t help but notice an ironic significance to these names. My first cruise was on the Sky Princess from Princess Cruises. That name could have two significances. First, the highlight of the cruise was Karolina, a certifiable princess no doubt, and one of the powers of the air. In the Torah, birds represent supernatural entities, namely angels and demons. Usually demons. As such, in contrast with Torah, the chief gods of the various pagan pantheons of the world are generally gods of the sky. Zeus is the most famous, but the Jade Emperor Shangdi of Chinese theology and countless others are associated with the sky, while Yahweh of the Torah is more closely associated with the primordial matter of water, from which he made the universe. I think I’ve mentioned in previous posts that only in the ancient Sumerian culture, the oldest civilization on the planet, and geographically very near to the culture of the Torah (Abraham actually lived in the Sumerian city of Ur before traveling to Canaan) was Enlil, the god of fresh water, revered highly within the pantheon of gods they worshipped. So Karolina, as a source of evil in my life, very well could be viewed as a sky princess.

Yet also, in the symbolism of the Torah, the relationship of husband to wife is seen as representing the relationship between God and the creation. That is, as humans, we are God’s wives. God is our husband. And so in that respect, I am the princess. So the name of that cruise ship and cruise line is fitting. At the beginning of this trip, I was just a little princess, heading on this journey to the sky.

And now, as I headed back to the USA, somewhat defeated by the muggings and beatings of my bicycle tour to Israel, and somewhat on my back from the Margaritaville I had subjected myself to in Spain thereafter, I was headed back on the Carnival Valor. The name was apt. If I could describe the voyage, I would say that I was being shown everything in life that I could have, so long as it wasn’t Israel. It was sort of like Satan’s victory message. “I beat you, OG. I literally beat you over the head in Frankfurt and Budapest, and then I choked you with bureacracy, so that you are going back to the USA without an approved Aliyah packet. Now, I am going to show you everything that I am going to let you enjoy. I’ve won. I am king. So here is what you get.”

My reaction was like an old Nathalie Merchant song.

So my first day or two were just in the cabin and loafing around in solitude. I quickly gravitated toward the upper deck where I hung out with the rest of the crowd that liked to laize in the sun. That was where I met Johnny Bice. This guy was a Vietnam Era Special Forces Sergeant First Class with all kinds of amazing stories about the war and life afterward.

Love this guy. But let me tell you, there is a Jungian synchronistic event in this. Remember, I am on this ship because I had reserved it long before in order to get back to the US for a family reunion on 13 July. My family has an intense military tradition, including my own 20-year career in the Army. My career pales in comparison to that of my uncle Skip, however.

My uncle Dennis “Skip” Bailey was MAC SOG Special Forces in Vietnam. Airborne. Ranger. Pathfinder. Aviator. He actually commanded SFODA 107 (Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha, or “A Team” 107) which was the team that was the factual basis of the John Wayne movie The Green Berets. We have a couple of letters that John Wayne wrote him, as they kept in a bit of contact after the actor met my uncle when doing research for the movie. This guy was a real war hero.

And that’s not all. My uncle Terry was a Huey pilot who won the Distinguished Flying Cross in Vietnam.

My Uncle Howie flew F4 Phantoms and A6 Intruders for the Navy in Vietnam and was actually shot down. My grandfather Bill was United States Marine Corps in WWII and US Army Infantry and Signal Corps officer in the Korean War. My cousin Lino was a Military Intelligence asset, Arabic linguist, and signal intelligence specialist during the first Gulf War, a certifiable genius, he invented a method of jamming that the army used for decades after that war.

My cousin Kevin is a Navy Captain (equivalent of a full-bird Colonel in the Army), medical service support, the only one of us who made field grade officer.

Then there is me, the Artillery and Intelligence officer, human intelligence source operator (also called a case manager, handler, or spymaster).

Well, this guy, Johhny Bice, actually knew my uncle back in the day. That’s right. I am going home to the US for a family reunion of a military family whose greatest war hero in a family of war heroes was Skip Bailey the Green Beret, and on the ship home I bump into another old timer Green Beret who actually knew him. What are the odds? I have this guy’s number if you don’t believe me.

Now I do have to confess that concerning myself, I actually hated the Army for most of my time in it, and as I mentioned in my last post, the Army nearly proved to be the end of me. However, after the fact, vets often figure out how their military service etched itself into their core, and I do see myself as a soldier and an officer. As far as the spiritual meaning of the voyage back to the States was concerned, I got the message from the universe that I could immerse myself into my veteran identity for the rest of my days. There were veteran clubs on the ship, all kinds of people with vet hats and vet pins, and I could just do that for the rest of my life, if I wanted.

Also on the upper decks I had the pleasure of meeting quite a number of world travelers, people on their hundredth cruise, etc. I was also shown that I could just enjoy my pension and travel all my livelong days like a lot of these guys.

Sadly I didn’t get any pictures, but a favorite pair of lounge buddies on the top deck were a couple of gay guys that were a lot of fun to talk to. Remember the guy Kyne on the Princess cruise? Remember Jeremy the gay Israeli from Vienna? Everywhere I go I run into some cool gay guys. Like my time in California, I could also spend my days advocating for progressive values and all that. At many points in life I’ve made it a point to stress that God is not as judgmental as we think. Or at least not in the way that we think. And I could spend my days telling gay people that God loves them, if that was what I was into. And yeah, God does love them.

One thing there was NOT on this ship was a Jewish religious service. There was no way to find other jews. There was, however, a Christian religious service lead by a member of a parachurch organization called the Navigators. Straddling Jewish and Christian worlds myself due to my own personal background, I went to a few of their gatherings. This navigator guy was incredibly intelligent and wise, with amazing stories of barely averting death sentences on multiple occasions as a missionary to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries. He was also impressive with his Hebrew. I actually inquired about this Navigator group as I thought it might be a good fit for my friend Rodney, a Christian who wants to do ministry stuff.

These services showed me something kind of sad. At one point This Navigator guy asked people who came to tell any stories they could about the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Now I, the Reform Jew with a 25-year history in Christianity, can tell you dozens of such stories. But I wanted to keep quiet and see what these Christians had to say, and nobody had anything to say at all. Not one person could volunteer a story.

On another one I went to, he was talking about prayer, and at the end he had us pray for each other. My prayer partner confessed to me that she hadn’t done anything like this, actually praying for someone, in decades. That blew me away. So from these services I learned that Christianity was in a sorry state. I already knew that. It’s one of the reasons I have become a Jew.

I’m not saying that Jews are incredible paragons of holiness while Christians are failures. But to be a Jew has something to do with religion, and also to do with history, culture, connections, and relationships. Yeah, I am truly dedicated to Kabbalah. But to be frank, a primary reason for my plunging into becoming a Jew is that I want to live in Israel. And along with that, I love the Hebrew language, and I have not been able to get fluent in it, and there is only one country where they speak it. Yes, there are other reasons for me wanting to live in Israel. The primary one is that Satan is telling me I can’t, and that pisses me off. So there is a lot that is going into my being a Jew and wanting to go to Israel that has nothing to do with what dogmas I believe.

I kind of like being a member of a religion with no dogmas, really more accurately termed an “ethnoreligion,” where nobody is going to tell me what I have to believe, and quite a few other things. At this point my views are so unique I could never get anywhere in any kind of Christian hierarchy no matter how loudly or how often I scream how much I love Jesus. They’d toss me out on my ear as an Apollinarian, Arian, subordinationist, Nestorian, you name the heresy, that’s what they’d call me.

But I digress. I did get the sense here that Christianity was in a sorry state, and that the trip on the ship was telling me to go do that. Go back to Christianity. Chuck everything you have been lead to over the last decade. And most importantly, forget Israel. Forget your mission. Give up. Go away.

But then finally, you guessed it, the last third of the journey was consumed with that perennial problem that has eaten at me like nothing else on earth: young ladies. I met a chick, my age actually, who I got along really well with, who was a part of the permacruise crowd, who was there with a group of friends who had teenaged kids. That’s one of the differences between the Carnival and Princess lines. On Carnival the passengers are often a bit younger and tend to have kids. This chick had a teenaged son and a friend of hers had a seventeen-year-old daughter.

I ended up becoming quite close with the chick my age and having fun with the young lady and her mother, as well as some other people on the group, such that I thought I’d actually picked up a clique of friends. It was refreshing to actually hang around with people as a normal guy in a normal social setting. I think, really, that was the greatest temptation of all. Just having a place and people and a normal life like everybody else.

Now one woman my age was a Christian, and was a bit perturbed by my dietary habits, and so I spent some time going over some New Testament verses about Torah commandments, the same ones that everybody fights over, and at one point decided to just have one of those deluxe crab dinners that I had been walking past for days. I’m not going to weigh in on that whole issue or debate here, but I’ll just say that I could see that not only was it impossible to make an Israeli friend (while Neta is still in my WhatsApp group for some reason, hasn’t blocked me on Instagram or anything, I haven’t heard a peep from her), and while my existing Israeli connections were being chipped away at slowly but surely until I know almost no one there, now my adherence to Torah commandments was being challenged.

But back to my point about my greatest temptation just being in a group of friends where I am known and to some degree loved, even if just a casual acquaintance. When we got off the ship we all hung out for a great time in New Orleans. And yes, I did take the opportunity to eat all that catfish and gumbo and all that incredible Nawlins food that my grandmother Valerie had raised me on from her secret coonass recipes that no other chef on earth could match, but were all utterly unkosher. Only Louisiana fried chick would be available to me.

Man…just a day with friends…I remember those…How awesome.

Notice the French Quarter, despite Louisiana being one of the most conservative parts of the USA, draped in rainbow flags. This oddity is the type of thing that begs me to interpret its meaning. I’ve always made significance of the fact that the rainbow flag is on one hand the symbol for gay pride but is also the symbol for God not flooding the earth again. I did take this as a message from God that I was at a turning point, and my problems would soon be over. I do want you to remember that, as this post is a bit bitter, and if it comes out like I am thinking it is likely to, the next post could just be downright sad. But now that I am here in Switzerland, I do completely see this as a certain pivot point for this journey. But I will explain that later. This symbol did, though, also tell me more of the same. “Welcome to New Orleans. Go do gay pride stuff. Even God and gays stuff…just don’t do Israel. Now have fun with the shrimp gumbo.”

“And don’t forget, there are young ladies everywhere for you to enjoy, adopt, be tormented by, whatever you wish…”

“The party never stops…”

Basically, it’s like the universe was trying to turn me into Martin Gore.

In other words, being committed to this mission to Israel, life outside of that is going to be viewed as a temptation and a distraction. Try living like that for six years.

Another thing about this group was that all of them were super-mega-diamond-platinum members of all sorts of various cruise lines, and they had all kinds of stories of being able to travel here and there all over for nearly no cost. Now as a guy who has commitments to the US and Israel and a lot of time in Europe, this actually made this group of friends not only a salve for the sadness of my soul, but also a handy group to know on a very practical level.

I’m going to end this post with an anecdote about that. So I ended up keeping contact with the woman my age up until I was at my family reunion. Strangely, the woman with the teenaged daughter suddenly got busy as soon as we left New Orleans. She told me that she really wasn’t doing anything in life at that time except traveling around and then taking care of her mother when she wasn’t. She also told me she was a traveler who was getting sick of the traveler lifestyle. Taking care of mom and being a traveler who is sick of traveling were points that I similarly connected with. But as soon as we left New Orleans, I tried to send some texts, and she was “busy.” Alrighty.

But the other woman, we continued to talk until I was at my family reunion. I was thinking that my next cruise back to Europe, and hopefully Israel, would likely leave from Florida, and that’s where she was from, and we had gotten rather close, or so I thought. But then, at the reunion, I got to the point where I needed to book my cruise back to the old world. Just as I was doing that, she sent me a text telling me I was bipolar. I have no idea why. There was no indication that she read any of my tormented blog posts, and if she did, she never discussed any of them with me. I never exhibited any strange behavior on the ship or afterward, as far as I could tell. I have no knowledge of any text that could have been misinterpreted.

Basically, she was just going to call me insane out of the blue because she was possessed by the devil, and he did not want me to go back to Israel on the cheap, so friends that knew cruise ships were not going to be allowed. Notice we got along fabulously in person and by text until the day before I set my mind to making cruise reservations. And so Satan was going to work the same program he always has…

Remember the Hostel in Valencia.

So I ended up paying $2,600 for a cruise back to Europe from New York to Southhampton on the Cunard line without expert cruise veterans to advise me. Oh well. I haven’t heard from any of those people since. The universe was going to give me friends until those friends might have something to do with helping me get to Israel.

So okay, I am going to end this post with my first day in New Orleans. I’ll start the next post with the DEA Agents that I had lunch with on the second. When I get a chance to write it, I guess. If I even should. Until then…vaya con Dios.