As soon as I found out about Claire's book, I felt compelled to go out and buy it. I found it curiously disturbing, as I was walking back to the homeless shelter gulag, that so many people on the downtown sidewalks were trying to see what was the book I was carrying.
As I was reading the book, there were several parts that hit my mind with a strong feeling I describe as a painless lightning bolt. It is hard to really describe that feeling. It is not unlike trying to describe another indescribable feeling I have about missing my family, people that I cannot actually remember, but yet I still miss them. It is probably a new type of loneliness that only I have discovered.
Anyway, there was the one part that really hit me. It is the part about the F-16 pilot named "Raz." As soon as I saw that name, I decided it represents all or part of me, as Thomas Ray. At some point, I established the pattern of using names and places that are one-letter off from the real name. The only difference between "Ray" and "Raz" is "y" and "z" and they are sequential.
I also noticed a couple other things. One that seemed unusal was the way one of the pilot's in the group photo was looking off to one side. Another is that in the photo of the 8 pilots that went on the strike, there is a 9th person off to one side. I may write about this later as I have symbolic memories on this topic. Another is the pilot named "Hagai Katz". I matched numbers for letters and discovered something interesting. If you take the numbers "6 7 1 9 8 1" which was the date of the strike, you get the anagram "F G A I H A." I turned that into "Hagai F." Hagai's last name is listed as Katz so I think the "F" is for "Feline" or "Katz."
Even more interesting is this information I got from micro-film:
Iraqi press agency reported there were 9 aircraft
New York Times June 9, 1981 page A-1
At 1837 a formation of nine planes raided the nuclear installation
New York Times June 9, 1981 page A-8 Iraqi press statement
The part that really struck me was about a maneuver "Raz" made over the target. Claire describes it as a "360-degree back-flip", and also as a "circus-like loop-de-loop" which seems a highly improbable maneuver. But yet, I remember something about that. Or more properly, I think I have recurring dreams about something similar. They are not so much nightmares, just tense and anxious dreams. As with most of my recurring dreams, the details tend to change, but there is always a common theme. In this case, it was about being in a vehicle, either a pickup or a Jeep. I am sometime on a hill or some similar surface, covered with sand or some similar surface. And I am always traveling backwards. I either am stepping on the brake as hard as I can or I am pressing the accelerator as hard as I can. But I can't stop moving backwards. I just keep going backwards and backwards no matter how hard I try to start moving forwards. I believe these are recurring dreams of being in an aircraft and of those few seconds when my forward motion is carrying me backwards because I just flipped the plane over and I am still moving backwards trying to build up forward momentum. I believe I am reliving those tense moments in my dreams and I can't even remember the real life experiences that trigger those dreams. There are others too, others of life and death situations where I can't move fast enough.
Here is an actual entry I made in my journal one night when I was asleep in the Pioneer Square gulag. I was completely oblivious at the time to the possibilty that I was a pilot in the military.
Sleep journal 2/13/06
In this latest dream, there is a recurring theme, lately it always seems to involve sand. Today I was driving a pickup along a road on a sandy hill. I was trying to stop to talk to someone that was walking along. But then I was traveling backwards, down the hill I think. I put on the brakes but I still keep traveling down the hill and away from the person I wanted to talk to. Then I put the transmission in Drive and pressed the accelerator, but all the wheels did was spin and I kept moving fast backwards, I felt frustrated. I eventually stopped and the person I wanted to talk to caught up with me but I don't remember anything after that. There was some other stuff going on, possibly it was dream manipulation to respond to my metaphor about being in an H-bomb experiment. But the recurring theme has something to do with traveling backwards and not being able to stop where I want to. It actually reminds me of controlling a ship, in that it takes time and space to stop one.
