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Mountain View, CA, June, '95,
couple of weeks before the Infernal Regions actually showed up.
“John, Hamilton's dead!” she suddenly remarked. I was in the middle of saying something about his life, while guzzling drinks of course, at the restaurant we were at, when she very forcefully and very purposefully interrupted me with this breaking news.
You see I had recently checked out his 'bio' from the local library and I was simply saying that it didn't seem fair that his life was so full of exciting stuff while the rest of us had to settle for being a bunch of boring slobs. And so she had to say something.
APPARENTLY!
But it wasn't just a statement of historical fact that she was making; she was also reminding me, simply by the way that she said it and by the look that she was giving me, that we both had 'been there' when he was alive and that we both had known him ‘quite well’. I caught on quick.
“He is?” I said in mock disbelief, and then in an undertone “Why that dirty rotten...“
This produced a well coordinated bi-partisan chuckle. Followed up with, of course,
“So another gin and tonic?”
“Sure!" she said, and with a new found optimism to boot! You see, for some reason she really liked that 'dirty rotten' assessment.
INTERESTING!
“So how's your schnitzel?" I finally said. I was now quite impressed with her grasp of affairs.
“Good,” she said, “how's yours?”
“Good!” I said, but of course I was lying. No sauce, no cheese.
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She is 'one of them' - they who can just 'appear' out of thin air. And in any guise. And she picked out the restaurant herself. Somewhere in Mountain View. And a wonderful Polish-American place it was. And I'm sure for a very specific reason. Well, it had schnitzel!
We had met about a week earlier when she had suddenly just 'appeared' in the guise of a bar waitress in a Mountain View, CA El Camino Real bar that I had never been in before and had just walked into on a whim. I had only been in California for about six weeks and was renting a weekly upstairs room at the S. Murphy Blvd motel in Sunnyvale.
She had 'appeared' there on purpose to deflect a scuffle which she foresaw would be very ill advised. You see I had been somehow 'tracked' to this bar, a bar that I had never been in before and had just picked at random, by another fellow – whose name I still do not know - who wanted to tussle with me, or worse, because of some stuff I had said a year earlier in supposedly 'private' conversations in bars in Virginia. Mostly a place in Vienna called “Mr. Smith's”.
SOUND FAR FETCHED?
AND OUTLANDISH?
IT AIN'T!
KEEP READING!
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He had showed up less than 15 minutes after my own arrival and immediately sat right next to me at the bar and then he 'angrily' got right to it. Apparently it was some off the cuff remark that I had once made about Julius Caesar, for some odd and ridiculous reason, that was bothering him, and he admitted it right away.
And I did remember making that remark - but it was made at least a year earlier and in a bar on the other side of the country!
SO HOW THE HELL DID HE HEAR IT?
And how did he so easily 'track' me to this bar, a bar that I had picked at random in the middle of the afternoon in a town that I had never been in before? Which made the fact that I was still so easily 'tracked' to it all the more impressive.
OR SHOULD I SAY ILLEGAL !
A PRIVACY VIOLATION !
But I was no longer surprised, not really, because this 'street tracking' thing, for lack of a better term and what I will be calling it from now on, had been brewing for years. Even before “Mr. Smith's”.
FOR AT LEAST THE LAST FOUR YEARS!
You eventually figure it out when no matter where you go on the continent people, whom you have never met before, know all kinds of things about you. And they can quote you. Like this guy could! From what you thought were private conversations that occurred years ago. And in other states!
And what made it even odder was that the entire time that this was all going on I was, or at least I thought I was, just another miserable everyday working stiff. Like everybody else. Just another statistic.
SO WHY ALL THE FUSS?
It was amazing. It was just this really weird and yet incredibly interesting 'tracking' thing. And you could be 'tracked' anywhere. And in any state - and no matter where you went. And I mean no matter where - bars, bus stops, Walmarts … heck, even in the back yards of relatives houses (I could tell you some stories).
And by anonymous strangers. Covert operatives! Like that guy in the bar. And easily too. Because apparently it's 'intelligence networks' were everywhere. The 'street' ones. And California was, in addition to being a lot of other things, one big 'street'. And there's no doubt in my mind that it still is!
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The Divine assistant / bar waitress deflected this guy with perfect aplomb (but hey that's what Divine Assistants are for). She very quickly stood right between us just when his ire had plucked up - because like I said he had bellied right up next to me at the bar immediately upon entering and angrily got 'right to it' - and she just as quickly threw her arms into the air and that was it. Like a penalty flag being thrown but without the whistle.
He understood perfectly and calmed right down. Her and I left soon after. I still don't know who the heck that guy was, or how I was so easily 'tracked' to that bar!
But I'll bet everybody else …
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And it should be noted, right now, that the most FASCINATING ASPECT of this entire occurrence, by far, before anything more is said about this Peninsula Campaign Story or anything else, is the fact that this Divine assistant could not only foresee the upcoming ill-advised disaster that was brewing, from wherever in the universe she was (?), but was also able to easily
APPEAR IN STRIDE
as a bar waitress at just the right bar and at just the right time and in just the right guise to
SEEMLESSLY DEFLECT
the potential incursion in just the right way ! If that isn't without exception the most astonishing thing that you've ever heard about in your entire life …
YOU'RE NUTS !!!
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I never actually obtained permission, BTW, from any of these Divine assistants - and there have been a lot of them over the years - to put any of this stuff down on paper. And there are spiritual rules that I don't know anything about yet and so if this is one of them and it is being violated then I guess we'll now know. I wonder what happens? Maybe my life will now be bugged by the government! But I think they're too busy. Serving and protecting. Roaches and the like. You know, the public. Instead of helping me with information. Which is the exact opposite of what is supposed to be …
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I returned to something she had said earlier while we were still just having drinks,
“So your mother really did kayak to Antarctica and back?”
“Yes!" she replied. And she was serious.
“Wow," I said. “So you're from good stock!”
Then something about desert.