JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Journal May 22, 2006
I kept notes of my thoughts last night, but I am conflicted. It was around midnight when the a strong feeling came over me telling me that all my memories are true. My first thought was that if they can manipulate my mind to even have that thought, then who knows what is true. An hour or so later, I thought about the question: which ones? Which memories are true?
The only reason it really matters in the context of this conversation with who know who, is that I don't want to mention names of people in my life. They are people that, as far I as know, aren't accustomed to media coverage and I don't want to throw them to the wolves, so to speak, without at least asking their permission first, and advising them on what they might be getting in to. It's not that all the people in the media are wolves, it's just that the media, specifically media exposure, can have that kind of effect. Interacting with the media, I assume, can be not unlike interacting with Microsoft.
So anyway, this whole train of thought began with one thought. It may have been an image that presented itself into my mind. I had this strange feeling that Homer Burgess and Ronald Reagan had a similar appearance. In my conscious memory, Homer was my father's uncle. My maternal grandmother later remarried and Homer was her second husband, making him my step-grandfather. Then the thought struck me: Davis, as in Nancy Davis and Patti Davis. Davis was my maternal grandmothers maiden name. Betty Davis married Coleman Newman. I also had a girlfriend long ago with the last name Davis. In my memory from the Navy, people sometimes called me Homer as a nickname, along with Leroy.
February 6th, my last day at Microsoft, is also Ronald Reagan's birthday. He was born in 1911, according to info on the web.
And then a thought struck me: RR! I went to see that movie An Officer And A Gentleman with a girl with the initials RR. Maybe I once dated Ronald Reagans granddaughter.
In my conscious memory, 9/10 is my mother's birthday. It is also the historical peak of the Atlantic hurricane season. It reminds me of The Tempest, as in born of a.
In the movie An Officer And A Gentleman, Robert Loggia plays Richard Gere's father. If memory serves, his father was a Boatswain's Mate First Class Petty Officer when his son is sent to live when him in the P.I. Later I think he is a Chief. Anyway, in my memory, Loggia has a strong resemblance to the BM1 I worked for on the Taylor. The Chief Boatswain's Mate at the same time on the Taylor, bears a strong resemblance to Louis Gosset, Jr.
In the episode of TNG where Picard is assimilated, the battle occurred at Wolf 359. I am wondering today if 359 is supposed to represent March 1959.
I am thinking today, from earlier this morning, that I should look at opposites to my memory of the past. That means to me that my real life is a lot different from my memory, consistent with the episode Tapestry of TNG. I buying it, but I still haven't fully bought into it yet. That's probably part of the plan, to move into this gradually.
It was at this point in the sequence of my notes where I noted that my maternal grandfather and grandmother were Coleman Newman and Betty Davis. I was also thinking somewhere along the lines today about something I told my memory-mother about my paternal grandfather. He always reminded me of Jimmy Stewart.
My memory-mother's birthday was 9/10/48, which seems important somehow. Probably about the hurricanes, but also for that four and the eight. I can't remember exactly my father's, Joseph Burgess, birthday, but I am pretty sure it was in 1946. I thing it was April 4th. Maybe 4/6. The thought dawned on me that it was 4/16, but I don't think that is correct. Somewhere in all my stuff that I lost control of, is a document that has his birthdate on it.
You could say I got an extra 5 minutes on my 15 minutes of fame.
One of my teachers from my artificial past, the 6th grade I think, was named Welch. I can remember a while back, several months ago, wondering if that teacher was related to Laura Bush, although I actually was wondering if they were the same person.
I remember telling someone a long time ago how interesting it was that I grew up in a place that was so close to where Clinton and Perot were from.
One of my step-fathers, the wounded Vietnam veteran, has the initials R.R., too. He is the guy I used to hear talking on his HAM (is that high amplitude modulation?) and he always started off with "C Q C Q C Q." In my memory, it was almost lyrical in a way that he pronounced those letters, with the last part stretched out. Today, I have been remembering it in the context of hearing Picard pleading with Q to get his real life back. My step-father had this huge radio tower constructed next to our house, on 4th street I think. I once climbed it one night to parachute off it with a towel. I don't remember how that turned out. Another time, I climbed up it with a model rocket I had constructed to test the parachute on the rocket. The rocket was a model of R2D2 from Star Wars. That memory triggered awareness of something else I'll get to in a moment. What was R.R.'s call sign? Was it Oil Man, or Gas Man? He and his brother owned some kind of oil distribution company in the town where we lived, De Queen, Arkansas. They also had a gas station and garage in town that my step-father managed. Their father had started it, I think. Later today, thinking of that reminded me of something else extraordinary. My memories of that gas station are remarkably similar to that town in Back To The Future. The town square and everything, the gas station reminds me a lot of that Texaco station in that movie. I don't remember a diner though, but I do remember my best friend's father ran a barber shop there on the square.
I made a list today of the step-fathers I remember my mother being married to, it seems important. My father was a truck driver. She remarried to a guy named James who was a U.S. Marine. I think he went back into the service after they married and then we moved around to the bases he was stationed at. I think first we went to Santa Ana. I think that is where the El Toro base is at. Then we were at a base in McAlester, OK, where I think he was a guard. She then married Dale Parker, the guy who was electrocuted. He was some kind of hospital worker when they got married and then went on to work in construction, building houses. We were living with his parents for a while. I remember mowing their lawn one day and getting the notion to carve out some kind of message in the grass that people above in aircraft could read. Then she married the Vietnam veteran. He was a pretty nice guy when he was sober, but when he got drunk he was beserk. From what she told me, he had stepped on a landmine in Vietnam. The doctors told him he would never walk again but he made out ok. I remember finding his Purple Heart medals. I think he had three. This was also the time I liked to play around with live ammunition, pulling apart cartridges and shells for the gunpowder so I could blow up the model ships and aircraft I had put together. The next guy she married was the supervisor of a rock quarry, or gravel pit as it was called. I hope he isn't a real person because this would be embarassing to him, but I think this detail was programmed into my mind as a humorous reference to Fred Flintstone. She remarried someone else, 1998 I think, but I can't remember his name. For some reason, I have been thinking that she was married 8 times, but it looks like it was only 6.
And here's a real kicker: R2D2. RR DD. My stepfather, with the radio tower I dropped my R2D2 rocket from, had the initials R.R. My mothers next husband had the initials D.D.
I was thinking more about the timeline here of the possible divergence point. I have been assuming it was anywhere from 1996 to 1998. Possibly '94 or '95, but I am more confident in it being 1997, because I remember that as a low point, almost a blank point in my memory, a shadow. But, this person I am now could have shifted in to Microsoft at any point from 1998 to when I left. It would have probably been around a time when people were commenting about a change in my appearance. The change was explainable though, so unless you knew what to look for, you might not have known what had really happened.
In the movie Cast Away, when Tom Hanks was stranded on the island, his only companion was Wilson. Wilson is also Ronald Reagan's middle name.
In 2001, when I saw Mogge again for the first time in several years, he told me that I looked just like I did back in the '80s. In the context this mystery revealing itself to me, that may mean he told me that to reinforce what I have been, for lack of a better word, brainwashed to believe about myself. I am wondering if I have actually had some kind of facial reconstruction sometime in the past. I don't see any scars though to suggest I have had surgery, but maybe that doesn't matter.
In my apparently artifical memory, the person I remember as my mother was telling me that my father, JWB, used to like to watch the original Star Trek. I thought that was surprising, I wouldn't have guessed that about him. She also told me several times that my first words as a child was "Batman."
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Re: Journal May 22, 2006, Supplemental
Goddamnit this place is driving me crazy.
In my artificial memory, I didn't know my paternal grandmother. I think details like that are important clues. There is just so much of it. I remember thinking about the interesting difference between my father growing up without his mother while I grew up without my father. It was wasn't that long ago I remember his father, Fletcher, telling me that he (Fletcher) had been married four times, which was surprising because we only knew of two. His last wife called him Joe. Her name was Pauline. Fletcher and I used to go fishing. I liked his house, it had what I thought was a modern look, something of that '60s era, clean living, bright future kind of appeal.
I've been thinking about how my father in my memory had four children. Two of us were from his first wife and the other two from his second wife. The birth order was boy, girl, boy, girl.
I've been thinking about one of my favorite tv shows from the 70s: The Six Million Dollar Man. I liked The Bionic Woman too. I've been thinking about it today and there seems to be something there I can't quite grasp yet. In my artifical memories, I played tennis in high school for a brief time, maybe the 12th grade. I was thinking about that when I was watching ST:DS9 because the doctor was some kind of tennis star. Since my life isn't what I think it is, these kinds of details probably mean something more than what is obvious.
I don't know if they are producing the strong emotions I feel occasionally or if they are decreasing some kind of inhibitor mechanism. I remember when I was about to die from that bowel obstruction last year, I was glad they put me into that private room at Shoreline so I could at least suffer in private. Not so lucky here.
I don't know what this means, but it reminds me of something Ballmer was saying during his speech at a Microsoft company meeting. I forget what year it was, 2003 maybe, it was that day at Safeco Field that was very cold. Anyway, I noted it because I had been speaking out in aggravation about people at Microsoft that were pretending to be some kind of military units, or boot camps, or whatever nonsense they were talking. One group was even calling themselves "Delta Force," which was comical, but also aggravating to me. Anyway, Ballmer, at the beginning of his speech, was saying that none of us was a prisoner of war, and something seemed odd about that.
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/08/08/maureen.reagan.obit/
[...]
She once wrote that a 1993 conversation with her father should have triggered concern about his health. She said she was talking with her father about a movie he made in the 1950s, "Prisoner of War."
"Finally he looked at me and said, 'Mermie, I have no recollection of making that movie,'" she said.
