CreativeVortex; the Blog

I’m sitting in my room at the Metropol Hotel over looking Red Square in Moscow, I can see the onion domes of St Basil’s above the other buildings and marvel at the colors. I wonder who goes up there to clean the domes so that the colors remain vibrant. The Metropol is an interesting place to stay. The rooms are decorated ith vintage furniture I am a little nervous, I’m about to consummate this mission.  I grab my back pack and head down to find a taxi.  Today is my first day at the Moscow State University Lomonosov.  I hail a taxi give him my destination and hand him some rubles.  I’m still having a bit of time adjusting to the exchange rates in rubles but the taxi driver is very helpful.

Lomonosov Moscow State University: the Largest University in the World shown in its reflecting pool.

My journey started many years ago. In school no one would tell me what my IQ was: I just figured I wasn’t smart enough.  I was born in Munich, Bavaria to a Russian Mother and an American Father who was stationed in Germany with the CIC an early precursor of the CIA.  My Mom, a former Nazi Financial Auditor, was forced to work for the Nazis or face the death of her parents.  As soon as the Allies were within striking distance of Berlin my Mom took what she could carry and she and her parents took different paths to the frontline and squeezed through to the other side. Immediate arrest and interrogation.  My Mom turned in a lot of information to the Allies: names, addresses, occupations, organization titles and phone books.

My Father happened to be the agent de-briefing my Mom. One thing led to another and they were married. Shortly thereafter I appeared.  My Grandfather was my constant companion, he used to play games with me, give me mechanical things to take apart or put back together again, tell me stories of Old Russia, and play games with me.  I didn’t know it at the time but my Grandfather was a Professor and the Head of the Department of Mathematics at the University in Moscow. Most of the games he played with me were actually mathematical exercises, or exercises in logic.  I just thought they were games.  We spoke Russian and English at home and I went to local German schools. My Grandfather took up the task of teaching me Russian and we spent a lot of time reading History of Russia, Russian literature, Russian Poetry (to this day one of my favorite poets is Sergei Nekrasov).  I even got to learn the Archaic Russian because one of the books my Grandfather had me read and copy was an ancient Bible.

We moved around Europe, Switzerland, Austria (one of my favorite homes was on Mozart Platz Strasse!). It was a lot of fun.  I saw little of my Dad, he always seemed to be busy.  One day he came home with a German Shepherd Dog, not a puppy but an adult and already fully trained. As a child I had no idea that this was a guard dog, she was just a dog to play fetch with.  A dog my Mom liked except when she went swimming and my Mother was a swimmer: she represented Serbia at the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany.  The same Olympics where Jesse Owens rubbed Hitler’s nose in the dirt and Germany’s the Great White Hope was decked by the US boxer! Jesse Owens was black and the Nazis considered the Blacks as schlechtes menschen or substandard humans.  I guess old Jesse showed them! Mishka (that’s what the dog was named, in Russian it means bear) would get alarmed when my Mom used to swim away from shore and she would run into the water and try to herd my Mom back into shore. Mishka was a very good guard dog.  One day I came home from school and saw my mother sitting in a chair in the middle of the living room, there was blood around a broken window. In her hands was a 1911A1 .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol.  It appeared that someone had tried to break into the house to harm my Mom but Mishka tore him up. Darn good thing because the way my Mom was holding that pistol she obviously was not comfortable enough to actually use it!

Growing up in post war Germany was quite exciting. There was constant rebuilding.  The Russians tried to grab all of Germany and the US stopped them in their tracks. There was the Berlin Airlift and It a interesting to go through the different sectors especially the French. We spent a fair amount of time in the French sector and I started to pick up some French.  When we moved to Switzerland we lived on the shores of Lago Como. The official languages of the Swiss are German, French and Italian. I studied French in Swiss schools as well as Italian.  Anyway we finally arrived in the US when I was 10.  My Father was from Maine, Bangor to be exact and we took the train from New York to Bangor to visit relatives.  I met my Maternal Grandmother for the first time and also some cousins.  My father had to go to Fort Williams in Cape Elizabeth to muster out.  We then moved to Sebago Lake while my Father worked in Westbrook at as a purchasing agent at a paper mill.  I went to school in East Sebago and then to Potter Academy.  While at Potter Academy I was taken in hand by a science teacher named Mr. Haslam. It was curious he used to drop by and visit with my Mom and my Dad and kept me under his wing.  In November of my Junior year President Kennedy was assassinated.  Being in a small semi-private school on Douglas Hill there was a lot of confusion initially but we all wound up in the cafeteria where the school had set up a television and we watched the drama unfold.  At home we continued to watch over the Thanksgiving weekend.

We used to go to Florida in the Winter, to Key West specifically.  In 1964 my Dad had to go to Havana and my Mom wanted us all to go but my Dad said he had business and we would all go the next year when we came back.  We came back but Cuba had become a communist nation antagonistic to the US and we were no longer able to go.  It was still interesting because we spent some time on the Navy base.  It was fun for me to see the Navy ships and the aircraft.  I’d wander around town and head on down Eisenhauer Blvd. over to the Martello Towers which was an ancient Spanish fort which had a museum with an eclectic collection. I had my first love relationship there but one day My Dad asked if I could pass on a piece of paper to my Girlfriend to give to her Dad. It was cryptic code and when she saw that she totally freaked out and refused to see me again. My Dad was nonplussed.

I Graduated Valedictorian and was accepted at the University of Maine in Portland. In school no one would tell me what my IQ was: I just figured I wasn’t smart enough. I had a lot of fun but not much serous studies and after one semester I decided to leave. In those days the military conscripted soldiers and seamen and when I received my Draft notice I ran down to the Air Force recruiter and enlisted.  Shortly I was in Basic at Lackland AFB in San Antonio Tx.  After basic I sent to tech school to become a member of the Air Police. It was really funny, I was at the base exchange one day and this airman looked at my name tag and ran. In a moment he was back dragging another Airman with him with the same name tag.  It turned out to be my Cousin Dave whom I had met in Bangor years ago.

My cousin David and I. David is on the right!

I figured I was all set: no combat for this kid! Well fate never sleeps.  I received orders to go the 3628^th Squadron at Kadena AFB: 3628^th was one of two combat groups within the Air Force.  Kadena was a great base. Everything one could want was there.  I wasn’t into going carousing so I kind of hung out at the base and one of my Buddies asked if I might be interested in the Martial Arts.  I had nothing else to do with my spare time so we worked out. Eventually we started going to a Dojo (Karate Studio) in down town Kadena.  It was very rudimentary.  We practiced on a dirt floor with just a cover to keep the Sun off.  We sparred with the local kids daily and soon we became very good.  I received my first Dan there.

While at Kadena I was visited by a member of the NSA.  I was asked all kinds of questions and sent to Silver Spring Md. At Silver Spring I was given a barrage of tests including language and history tests.  They were concentrating on Russia and wanted to know everything I knew about Russia. Well I guess my Grandfather was a pretty good teacher because soon I was transferred to Silver Spring and released from the Air Force as a convenience to the Government.  Many years later I found that same comment on my Dads DD214 (Discharge paper) he was released to the CIC. I started getting special briefings and found out that because of my Dad and my testing in school the Air Force had been keeping an eye on me from my Sophomore year: Mr. Haslam it turned out was an NSA operative.

The time at Silver Spring was a lot of fun.  I learned about special clandestine weapons handling, weapons of mass destruction, how to destroy things especially bridges and big buildings and I did a lot of physical training, Karate, sparring, and special techniques developed by the NSA.  I was drilled in Russian again and again until I spoke and wrote like a native. Russian is a living language and I was speaking the language I learned from my Grandfather: outdated. I learned Orienteering, compass work, I learned the location of things in Moscow and the surrounding area.  I learned the interior of the Kremlin.  And then I was tried out.

My first mission was to do a surveillance of an area on the Black Sea. I wound up on a nuclear submarine (a fast attack) and entered the Black Sea through the Bosphorous while carefully sailing under a freighter between the shaft logs near the props to avoid detection.  Once in the Black Sea we listened to radio broadcasts and were even able to read newspapers through the periscope that people were reading on the shore. We spent several hours there and then found a convenient freighter leaving the area and we were out of there.

When I got back I was debriefed and given my next assignment.  Russia was studying mind control as a weapon.  Very little was known about the program but its home was at the Lomonosov institute of the Government University of Moscow.  I then was sent to Georgetown University to be brought up to speed on mind control.  There I found out that My Dad was an Ordained Priest who left the Church because of philosophical differences. After leaving the Priesthood he enlisted in the Infantry and earned a Bronze Star before being released to the CIC. Things were really taking a strange turn.  The NSA wanted me to enroll at Lomonosov as a student and enter the mind control program.  I was curious how I was to do that and was told that my mental abilities were already of interest to the Russians. Mental abilities? Me? Surely you jest! But I applied and was immediately accepted.

Two weeks later I was living in an apartment on Red Square with two other students. We had a good time. Moscow is like a huge Museum.  The Kremlin has incredible buildings and the Churches are Grand! We drank lots of Vodka and ate pilmeni (kind of like a spicy, meat-stuffed ravioli) in the outdoor cafes surrounding the square.  We went to se great shows and listened to music, great Balalaika music, great classical music and the Bolshoi Ballet… I got a chance to visit Ekaterinburg where there are specular minerals.  I had seen the malachite that was in Chapultepec Palace in Mexico City but what they had in the Kremlin made the Chapultepec malachite pale by comparison.  My room mates were upperclassmen and so we had different schedules and I started at Lomonosov in the morning.

Taxi drops me off in front of the university and all I could do is stand there and look at it. My Grandfather walked those same steps, he taught in the classrooms and here I was at least physically following in his footsteps.  It was a wee bit overwhelming.  The university is a very Imposing building, it was founded on January 25, 1775 by Mikhail Lomonosov. The school has over 6000 professors and lecturers and about 5000 researchers. The building is huge with a floor space of over 1 million square meters. It is also the tallest University in the World.  It’s imposing!

I entered and went to the guidance councellors office where I was signed in, given books and was put in the care of a fellow student to show me around. I had classes in psychology and neurology.  I was to attend a class simply called 348. When I inquired what 348 was I was told to never mention that again. That afternoon I sound up in aa small auditorium for class 348. Everybody was just flaked all over the hall and nothing was going on.  When I walked in the Professor gave me a hand out and pointed to a seat.  I took my seat and began to read it was a treatise on altered mental states along with some basic exercise to experience the altered states.  Many people think that you need drugs to reach altered states but if you have ever gotten into your car and driven to a location and not remember driving there you were in an altered state of mind, a very shallow altered state but that is how you start. There are many levels of mentally altered states and they take you deeper into the mind. So I practiced being in an altered state.  At the end of the class we were told that we were going on a field trip.  Tomorrow we were to meet at the Federal Courthouse. I was intrigued.

The next morning I got into a taxi and headed for the court. At the Courthouse I met up with the professor and the rest of the class.  I asked wat we were going to do and the Professor said we are going to watch.  It was a trial of a political dissident.  One of the students who had been in the program told me that this was an exercise in mind control and that our assignment was to alter the results of the case and make the political dissident recant and spill everything he knows.  I was skeptical but entered the court room.  The case appeared to be stacked.  The Judge was obviously a political apparatchik. The students spread out and we watched.  The judge acquitted the political dissident much to everyone’s surprise and we left.

The professor told us that we failed and better luck next time. He wanted us to try harder and study more. It seems that dissidents were frequently getting passes. I was invited to dinner at one of the student’s homes and thought it would be fun and it was but it was also revealing! The student took me aside after dinner and told me that the students were successful this afternoon. I was curious how did he believe we succeeded but the Professor said we failed. The student told me that many of the students get together and they found out that they really can alter actions but never in a negative way. The acquittal was what the students wanted because the dissident was on the side of truth and the Judge a Government hack.  Extremely valuable and interesting information.

TO BE CONTINUED.