After what seemed to me to be a fairly obvoious interjection of the world of Israel and Jews into my thoroughly gentile and bicycle driven life in Cyprus, I was shocked at the speed and rapidity with which they left. The three men and the suitcase returned to the Holy Land, and I did not follow. I couldn’t. I had been banned from that place. I would have to overcome this ban somehow. However, a thousand times before I had taken efforts that had been stalled by disparate individuals making decisions against me. I’ve listed them many times before in previous chapters of this trip. There seemed to be no limit to the ridiculous decisions against me completing this journey dished out at me because I was just a lone traveler. Nobody was watching.
Cyprus has so much to offer from fun to meaningful work, as long as it doesn’t involve Jews or Israel, a conspicuous detail since the country is supposedly overrun with Israelis. I celebrated the Passover Seder in Paphos where I met a Rabbi Asher, who was impressed with my interest in Israel, Hebrew and Judaism, but because of the holiday, we could not exchange contact information. I rode my bicycle to his workplace afterward to leave my phone number with him, but he never contacted me. When I returned to Limassol to get to know the rabbi at Chabad here once again, he was constantly busy. I decided to and just sit at the restaurant at the Chabad until a rabbi came by and constantly missed anyone with whom I could talk. I had been disappointed previously about just showing up for shabbat services to find myself in situations where I couldn’t really say what I wanted to say to who I wanted to say it to.
It seemed like my mind was playing with me. Things that I loved to do like riding the bike began to consume my time. I would often think I wanted to write out another chapter of my story to clarify things for whoever might read it before my next effort to talk to this person or that person, but I would procrastinate and be pulled in other directions. Then nobody would read what I wrote anyway. I would suffer writers block because I would find that in order to write out this story and my difficulties I would have to say negative things about people that I was actually interacting with on a regular basis, so a part of me would hesitate to write things down.
In the realm of making progress toward finishing this trip to Jerusalem, I was like a dog running all over the yard looking for a place to take a dump and just not being able to find one, only to dart back into the house through the doggie door and lay an enormous turd square in the middle of his master’s bed. Elsewhere, in life, though, so long as I remained alone and unknown, my life resembled a dream of my own making.
For example, I mentioned that I took up a passionate interest in politics with Operations Roaring Lion and Epic Fury. As I had been associating with the Christians of Limassol, the State of Israel took extraordinary efforts to show grace to Christianity.
I posted several impassioned rants on Facebook about what I thought should happen politically or militarily, and it seemed as if what I wanted to happen actually happened! On March 13 I blurted an entire battle plan to send the US Army and Marines to the Persian Gulf.
The next day, I saw articles about Marines moving to the Gulf.
Remember, I had just written about a very psychologically powerful encounter with a Marine in Limassol at the end of last year during my first weeks in Cyprus. I haven’t written about it elsewhere, but among the Christians I had been hanging around with during this time there was another Marine who impressed me greatly with his courage to talk about God and his faith anywhere at any time. Marines were all over my life at the time, and there they were, all over the news. They still are all over in my life, in fact. Frank Castle, the Punisher, a superhero, just showed up with a new show, “One Last Kill”. I’m on my last trip…to kill Satan. The Punisher does what he does because they killed his family. I do what I do because they killed my family. Frank Castle is a Marine.
At one point I became interested the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and posted about it on Facebook.
I posted that on 22 April. On 23 April I read an article that talked about the possibility of finding the Ark of the Covenant south of the Temple Mount.
Finally, there was the debacle where the US Secretary of Defense was pilloried by the media for referencing Quentin Tarantino’s rendition of Ezekiel 25:17.
The Secretary of defense was lambasted to no end for falsely quoting the Bible, but the guy was quoting one of the most important scenes in film for me, Quentin Tarantino’s final scene from Pulp Fiction. I send it to friends regularly when I want them to understand what I see as the essence of the Bible.
In fact, if you read the last chapter of my story, you might just notice that it centers around a case. A briefcase. A suitcase. Same same.
So there I was, sitting in my apartment by myself and riding bikes all around, taking invitations to play chess and watch sports and other normal activities, walking around and talking about Jesus with Christians to next to no effect, helping friends who can’t speak English write e-mails, and other normal life activities. Nobody knew what the three men and their suitcase meant to me. Nobody knew about my mission or calling. I sent my story to authors in the area who never read it, or if they did, they never told me so. But in my own little private world, I was synchronized with the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of Israel, and the US Secretary of Defense. Just like I thought I was with Noah van Ouwerkerk but could never find out if that were actually the case. Just like I thought I was with Zack Snyder but could never find out if that was actually the case. I guess there is something brilliant in the case…but I still don’t know what is in there. No one returned calls. No one answered texts. But I was going completely haywire in that apartment by myself. I was in another galaxy altogether sitting quietly in the Georgian restaurant looking at my phone, trying to figure out if I was in a coma in Budapest hallucinating all of these coincidences and patterns or if God was trying to tell me something.
Although sitting down and talking face to face with a rabbi proved to be impossible, and although getting those Christians to pay attention to me just wasn’t going to happen, and although the world at large considered me some traveler whose mission in life was to ride a bicycle around to pretty places for fun, I had in my own mind that I was somehow synchronized with the beyond, and I just needed to finish this trip to Jerusalem. However, as I have just written above, every effort I took over the past six years to get where I was going ended in failure. There is no limit to what the devil can and will do to you when nobody is watching. The only way I was going to get to Israel would be if someone was watching. Everywhere I put my footprint on social media, I attach a symbol of a concept very important to me: the sign of the watchman. It comes with a message: who watches the watchmen?
So, if I was going to get to Israel, someone was going to have to know what was going on. Now, for me, the greatest force of destruction that I have encountered in life has been women. I’ve come to the understanding via sundry experiences that my connection to women has been irrevocably scorched. This picture was never clearer than in 2023 in Venice Beach. The cavernous lancing blows to the depth of my soul had reached their abyssal nadir long before that, however, with the treacherous divorce from my wife and the destruction of my military career at the hands of feministic Army psychologists and the corps of female army officers to whom they were beholden. And so it was in those days long ago, when I felt that the scent of romance was forever beyond my reach, that I concluded the only form of love for women I could continue to muster must exist in the form of chivalry. If a woman was going to own everything and decide everything, and if the world at large was always going to ensconce the full flavor of my destruction with the armor of protecting women from me, then my only salvation would lay in swearing an oath of fealty to a woman of nobility. To be a servant warrior. So it was during those years of studying superheroes that I gave my sword and shield to Gal Gadot, an Israeli icon of the superhero genre.
Years before, lost on the sandy hills east of the Jordan river, when the Israeli Border Guard kicked me back to morning’s scorching sun, I did not call my lady to my aid, but now, I thought I might again take a shot at that, so I looked around to see how I might do so. Superheroes often work in teams, so the first place I thought I might look was at Hawkman. Hawkman had told me on many occasions that the only chance anyone would ever have of making contact with any famous Hollywood personality would be via having a personal agent. A film agent or a literary agent or someone of that type.
There was a point at which Hawkman even helped me to find one. He told me that he knew someone by the name of Steve who helped a lot of writers get started. He told me to prepare a sample of writing to show this Steve guy my writing ability. I had high hopes. People with the name of Steve had shown up in a number of places on this trip. The first Steve worked for Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles. I wrote a poem about him. The second Steve was my case manager at Nephesh B’Nephesh. He called himself Casriel Accardi. Casriel is a Hebrew name that means “God’s crown.” Steven is a Greek name that means “crown.” Just when he began to follow the details of my application for immigration to Israel in depth, however, he had a family emergency and was taken off my case, just as Deborah my case manager at the Jewish agency was taken off my case as soon as she started to pay attention to what was going on after everything that happened in Marseilles.
So when Hawkman told me a guy named Steve could hook me up with an agent, I was excited. I picked a page from this WordPress blog to send to Steve in order to showcase the nature of my trip and my writing ability. Weeks later, not days later, but weeks later, the answer came back from Hawkman that Steve’s recommendation was that I start a WordPress blog. I pointed out to Hawkman in shock that Steve told me to start blogging on WordPress after he had been sent a page from my WordPress blog. The whole matter was just too strange to be real. I had to be in a coma in Budapest, I thought to myself. This had to be some kind of DMT nightmare that nobody would believe if they were told. I asked Hawkman if I could talk to this Steve person over the phone to determine what happened. Had he read anything? I wanted to get to the bottom of how a guy charged to read a WordPress blog to determine if I was a good writer could come back with advice telling me to create a WordPress blog. Hawkman said he wasn’t comfortable with that. I didn’t press further. I didn’t want to jeopardize Hawkman’s relationship with his friend or contact. This would just have to remain one of life’s bizarre mysteries.
It would seem that God would bring some other strange details to my attention that would guide my efforts, however. From following the Lady on Instagram I became a fan of a filmmaker Danny Abeckaser. I’ve written about him before when I was in Los Angeles. He worked in the nightclub industry earlier in life and decided to get into filmmaking. He makes films that usually go direct to video. His movies are usually caper films about mobsters and the like. I tend not to be a fan of this type of film, but I watched his filmography just to be familiar with him. He does have some good stuff. It was quite interesting that he broke from his caper film mold to make a Schindler’s List type of film called Bardejov about a clever rescue of young ladies from Nazi forces during WWII. I noted that Danny’s films would often top video sales such as in the Apple Store or Android store, but he normally didn’t get theatrical releases. He would turn up getting interviewed in some fairly mainstream media, but he wasn’t a household name.
I got incredibly excited when I learned he was shooting a film about October 7th, 2023, in Israel, around the time I could potentially arrive in the country! I even thought I might like to intern with the guy to see what sorts of talents I could offer as well as learn some filmmaking. I never marketed my self-published book. I never finished my Zack Snyder Superman project. I want to do something with this trip to Israel, and there is so much video involved, the thing might make a better documentary or vlog or something like that than the book I’d originally intended. Actually, shooting this with a real filmmaker was something I might seek to do rather than just paying $10K to a wedding photographer to make it into a documentary. If I had the chance to do something like that. And of course, then I have my own film ideas that I would like to pursue, including one about Israel getting invaded by an Army of robots in an apocalyptic scenario that I have a story treatment written up for and a few scenes described. But I never finished my trip, I have found connecting to Israel impossible, and my life just tries to lead me where it will.
Suprisingly, the Christians here have shown absolutely no interest whatsoever in sending me to Israel, say even as a missionary. I mean, I haven’t taken that approach, as honestly. My going to Israel is about my personal life journey, my personal art project (this “Last Trip” book or documentary or whatever), and about going there to make movies. But not a single one of the Christians around me has said anything like, “we will help you finish the trip if you want to be a missionary.” Christians are supposed to care about that. But these don’t.
Anyway, back to Danny Abeckaser.
I just thought the idea of an October 7th movie was an incredible idea. This is one of the most shocking terrorist attacks of history. There have been movies about the Twin Towers. There have been movies about the Iran Hostage Crisis. The Munich Olympics. But these days the world at large, especially much of Europe, wants to wipe Israel off the map, forbid Israel from participating in Eurovision, advocating divestment from and sanctioning Israel, but these people have not seen a movie about October 7th.
When I saw Danny’s movie, I was underwhelmed. Not because he is a poor filmmaker, but because a movie about October 7th would just require a significant budget and a whole lot of legwork. If you really want to be circumspect about October 7th, you’d want to include some prologue. Show some Israeli fighters bombing schools and killing kids. Show some Hamas fighters shooting rockets from schools filled with kids. Show some Israeli intelligence activity telling the audience how the IDF decides to develop targets and conduct strikes. The US military regularly cooperates with Hollywood. Take Top Gun and Tom Clancy movies for example. I have no doubt the IDF would have loved to provide information, maybe even footage, so long as the coverage was supportive. This is a kind of movie that should be built on legwork. As a retired US Army Intelligence Officer, I would have LOVED to work on a movie like that. And I’d have done it for free. Of course, the movie would have had to be rated R…AT LEAST. October 7th contained the most sickening expressions of inhumanity one can find. Babies in microwaves. Terrorists on meth. Beheadings. Rape of grandmothers. If Danny would have let me have input, I’d have made Saving Private Ryan look like a baby shower. Apocalypse Now would have been an after-school special compared to my October 7th movie. But while the guy was in Israel shooting, I was getting told my Aliyah application was denied because I hadn’t hung around enough Jews and I didn’t hate Jesus enough.
Then came Danny’s next film. Perfect Gamble. This is a weird story. The film was cinematographically a milestone for Danny. Yes, it was a caper film, again, not my cup of tea, but very well-shot. There was a fan in almost every scene. Much of the movie was darklit. And the movie was shot in Tblisi, in Georgia. Remember, I have been hanging around at a Georgian restaurant as my primary hangout ever since I have been living in Limassol. I was actually sitting in a Georgian restaurant when I learned he was shooting a movie in Georgia. Then I see a clip of him on Instagram saying how much he likes Georgian food!
Yes, this kind of thing will make you want to check yourself into a sanatorium. This was just like when I was reading that Danny worked in the New York night club scene just as I was walking past the Los Angeles Palladium. This is not normal stuff. How do you call up Danny Abeckazer and talk about this kind of thing? On Instagram, Gal Gadot has 104 million followers. I am one of them. Gal Gadot follows on Instagram only 1,354 people. Danny is one of them. If I really did want to talk to the Lady, Danny might be able to help.
Finally, about the film Perfect Gamble, it starred Quentin Tarantino’s daughter Daniella Pick. Quentin Tarantino is one of my Magnificent Seven directors. Quentin promoted the film personally. The film was distributed through Saban Films, the company that put Dark Water and a number of other notable films in theaters, but Perfect Gamble went more or less straight to video. I really can’t explain that.
I ended up leaving Danny a voice message. I think it sounded something like, “Mr. Abeckaser, I’m a random idiot off the street who can’t put coherent sentences together” or something like that. But to this day I have never talked with him personally. That is, in fact, my aim. But other things have also been going on.
Remember a chapter or two back, I mentioned Danny Finkelman, the guy whose blindness was cured by the Lubavitcher Rebbe? Well, it turns out the guy is a New York film producer, and I actually know a Rabbi who knows him personally. I left a voice message with his IMDB contact as well but haven’t gotten through to anyone. The Rabbi I know was for some strange reason unwilling to call the guy for me. This is more of the weird stuff that goes on with all of this. When I try to make a call, it doesn’t go through, no one responds, etc. It looks to be technodemons a lot of the time. Remember, I only get to ride my bike around mediterranean islands and drink mojitos with teenagers in my lap. For many men, that is the very definition of paradise. For me, it’s just a life wasted.
I am still looking for that video of Danny Finkelman to put on this blog. I got his contact information from IMDB Pro and left a message. Of course nobody would actually pick up the phone during business hours. Of course nobody would call me back.
I watched a movie Danny Finkelman produced just to get familiar with him. Menashe. A movie about a Litvak in New York struggling with the haredi culture in order to maintain his relationship with his son during a divorce. The movie was produced by A24 studios. You can’t imagine my connection with A24. Their movies have affected my life so profoundly and in so many ways. I have no doubt that studio would be interested in a story about a guy riding a bicycle around planet earth who does not know if he is schizophrenic or a divine prophet seeking to serve as a knight like Don Quixote to an actress who played Wonder Woman because of his divorce issues if she will keep tabs on his entrance into the Holy Land on his homeresque journey that has been thwarted at every turn by servants of the devil. The abject lunacy of my story is EXACTLY what A24 is looking for. Especially since it contains actually verifiable violations of the law of probability that indicate that at least some aspects of this complete insanity might actually be true. If only I could get one of these two Dannys to pick up the phone. I ink Danny Abeckaser actually might if I call him 20 times per day. But when he does, I have to sound like a coherent adult. I pray I can make that happen.
I returned my attention to Hawkman. In my life pretty much everyone is too busy to pay attention to basically anything, especially me. I started looking at just paying people to interact with me. So, I called Hawkman and ask him if I could just pay him to get me in touch with Gal Gadot. Hawkman has done executive protection for Jim Caviezel and Zack Snyder.he has produced award winning podcasts for Audible. He is no stranger to this world. However, he refused to help out in this case. I asked him if he refer me to anyone who I could pay to get me in touch with Gal Gadot, and he would not. I think from his perspective, it would have been like receiving money from a maniac to assault a movie star or something. I can’t explain it. Getting a handshake from a movie star can’t be that hard. Yes, I know she is the most famous Israeli actress. I know also she gets a lot of hostile comments and attention and very likely has a very robust security apparatus surrounding her. But, you know, get me in touch with that security apparatus, for goodness sake. I mean, there are kids with bone cancer whose dying wish is to get a pat on the head from Robert Downey Junior, Iron Man in their eyes. So, the hospital calls Make a Wish Foundation, and in comes Rbert Downey Junior to spend an hour with the kid, there are a few news articles written, and life goes on. getting in touch with a movie star can’t be absolutely impossible. My parents have money. I could call them up and with their support possibly have a donation made to some charity that Gal Gadot supports. Something. Anything. Just to get some powerful eyes looking at me and all of these difficulties I am having getting into Israel. Plus…well…you know…I am actually kind of crazy…and well…the nutty knight on a bike would actually kind of personally enjoy getting an autograph from his lady. Not gonna lie about that. But it really is about more than that. It’s about finishing this story successfully and really getting into the Holy Land because nobody is going to say I can’t come in because I don’t know any Jews if Gal Gadot says “hey, let this guy in.” And it’s about having a story that A24 might actually want to make into a movie. “What? The crazy guy riding around on a bike who swore an ideological affiliation with the movie star while being driven insane in Venice Beach actually met the movie star? No freaking way…we can’t not let this story get told…”
How do we know that Gal Gadot would not like being involved in a story about a United States Army Officer and PTSD veteran riding a bicycle six thousand miles to come to see Gal Gadot and support her home country? Has anyone asked her? It might make a cool story, don’t you think? And it might improve my chances of getting this ridiculous travel ban removed and get me into the country to finish my story in a particularly dramatic way, don’t you think? But Hawkman just couldn’t see the possibility. He couldn’t offer any sort of help whatsoever. I couldn’t even pay him for it. When I was riding my bike through the sweeping descents of the Swiss Alps with a cracked frame that could split the bike in half at any second, Hawkman stopped what he was doing and told me he was going to get me a new bike. I had to tell him I had a plan and that I was just going to have to ride one more day and I would be okay. That was the only way I could get him to calm down. If you have a 200-man film crew that you are taking through the Amazon to make a movie like Zack Snyder’s The Last Photograph, you call Hawkman. But if you want an autograph from Gal Gadot to finish the story of a century, don’t even think about it. I really was blown away. Some strange spirit was at work here. Maybe the same spirit who had the guy tell me to start a WordPress blog after reading my WordPress blog.
I promise you, I am in a coma in Budapest, and this is my nightmare.
More weirdness was taking place on a local level. I went to a breakfast with the Christians where I met this guy who said he worked in local media and specialized in connecting people with each other. I was looking for agents and media connections. I described my bicycle trip in the typical Homeric terms and there at the breakfast he said he loved the idea, was super interested in seeing how the story turned out, that it all sounded so fascinating, all that. I sent him a WhatApp message after the breakfast, and he didn’t respond. TWO MONTHS later he shows up at another breakfast, and I remind him of my existence. I also offered to pay him for assistance meeting agents and connections, and he refused. Again, he told me everything sounded so interesting but refused to take money to help me get my story finished. He then commented subtly that things would be different if he had a chance to establish a relationship with me. I thought of him not responding to me on WhatApp and figured I was talking to some kind of…I don’t even want to say…but black magic has to be involved in whatever was going on here. I could have established a relationship with him if he had answered my WhatsApp texts and calls.
That’s pretty much where I am today. I am still working on a Human Trafficking project for Hawkman, though I haven’t talked to him in weeks. I am still dealing with these Christians who generally seem to think I am a heretic with nothing to offer because I am unchristian and unbiblical, and who are uninterested in my unique theological perspectives, with a few exceptions. I’m trying to continue my passion for the bicycle without letting it distract me from this current concentration on film. I still don’t have a Jewish friend on the island. I have run into several, but nobody has any time for anything. Absolutely everyone on this Island is “busy” from the minute they wake up until the minute they go to sleep.
Tomorrow I am going to start cold calling people. This has to open up somehow. I am writing this chapter now because I want it online when I do. So I will put it together nicely at a later date. For the first time in about a year, I am actually caught up on my writing.
That’s it for now.