Gene – Here is part of the first chapter. Hope it capture’s your interest. Everything is true.

I was reading my diary and recalling my thoughts and the details of that day. The first
chapter is in the hospital and then my move to solitary confinement. After Chapter 1 I
will go back to the beginning and how I got here. AIDS drug, cancer research etc.... The
trial is 5 years away. I will finish chapter 1 by Wednesday.

When I started writing this thing all the memories started to come back, and I felt I need
to say it all. You’ll tell me. This is a new experience for me.

Mike
Gene, every thing I am writing you comes from notes in my diary. I am using those notes
to help bring back the feelings and circumstances at the time. Hope it works.

Window to My Soul

Chapter I

“…His Revelation will come…His Word …revealed but I have not fully
interpreted the signs…”

Kapoustin Diary Day 8

Thursday September 12 1996 4 am
Questions for the Dying -The Nameless Man

I wondered if the old man had been had been frightened or simply bewildered by his
experience last night. It was now 04:00 hours of the following morning and I had taken
the decision to sit on the bed next to him and watch. Supine the old man still looked the
good prisoner standing at attention. The fingers on each hand were extended straight on
arms set rigidly at his sides. He was completely still and never once blinked as he stared
wide eyed into the surrounding darkness. Everything about the posture suggested that like
Lazarus the old man was ready to move the instant that he received an order, until then
he’d make no sound and take no breath. His absolute stillness serving as an unspoken
warning for me not to move, that even my gentle breathing risked shattering his
transformation. At this moment everything about him, particularly the language of this
posture was silently telling me of some anticipated absolution or punishment.

It was late yesterday that the first of the signs began to appear. But I never paid them
much attention that is not until that dream woke me a few minutes before four this
morning. From the signs I wasn’t sure who it was that was to be absolved or punished,
the old man or me. And right now he wasn’t doing a lot of talking or paying me much
attention, not that he was talking all that much yesterday. But this morning he was
oblivious to everything. Including my being there next to him and watching him lay
naked and motionless in the dark. I knew from that dream that what would or wouldn’t
learn about the transformation was for me to figure out once the old man and I were
finally alone. But we were never supposed to be alone or for that matter near each other.
There always someone watching us from nearby, at least there was until this morning.
Together and alone in the same physical space was a circumstance that simply didn’t
happen but yet it had. I was here to learn why.

“Often great truths are veiled in prolixity”

All this was very strange, that odd dream with the nameless old man in it and me waking
up only to find no guards to stop me from going over to see him. The full significance of
the moment manifested itself with my seeing the old man waiting for me in a naked
repose. Yesterday he was so embarrassed and distressed by his physical state that he
violently repulsed anyone attempting to touch the sheets covering him let alone see him
naked. Now with brazenness worthy of Brad Pitt he proudly displayed to the gods and me
that nude shriveled prune of a body that was little more than skin and bone. It was not a
pretty sight.

If that wasn’t bad enough the old man’s mouth was wide open and managing to somehow
seamlessly transform his gasping for air into a frozen soundless scream. But it only
yesterday when I watched him do everything possible to conceal that humiliating now
toothless passage used by all humanity for the uttering of platitudes, the confirming of
stupidity and the vomiting of what was taken once as food. To hide this shame the old
man would expertly roll his pale flaccid lips tightly over those edentulous gums and with
eyes wide open bite down on the soft flesh pressing it hard against the bone. The head not
moving a centimeter from it’s recline as the old man jerked his eyes from right to left and
back again warily searching for any impending assault. But maybe he wasn’t so
concerned about what might go in as he was frightened by what might come out, his
pressed lips not a fortress braced for an attack but a dungeon struggling to conceal the
darkness within. Was he struggling to imprison a dark secret from bursting out and
revealing some unutterably vile truth? Well. whatever the old man’s reasons it made
feeding him an ordeal that required the physical effort of three well framed middle aged
Bulgarian women of not insignificant musculature who the afternoon before fell upon
that ungrateful orifice and started pry it open. The whole scene would have been comical,
even sexually arousing if the devils within had not condemned the players to a lifetime of
ugliness through gluttony and self imposed tragedies.

It all started with the heavyset nurse when the heavy facial hair above her thick lips
compressing into a dark moustache on that round face grimaced in readiness for the
attack, the other two looked poised as if to rape the old man with her. The first nurse’s
hands drove fearlessly between the old man’s legs as she stoutly positioned herself at the
foot of his bed. Back bent with determination and head down in commitment she bravely
blocked kick after kick with her massive shoulders. Her heavy breasts had dropped down
and were suddenly imbued with a life all there own as franticly they swung and jerked in
violate assaults to the old man crotch. Using the full weight of that short fat body she
positioned herself inside the now spread eagled legs of the old man. Her back inclined
and head hovering directly over the old man’s cock made his feeble attempts at freedom
futile. Watching him so helpless her powerful embrace, I couldn’t help but wonder if the
perverted old bastard wasn’t enjoying it. That under those huge breasts pressing against
the old man crotch was a muscle growing hotter with each passing moment as it came to
slowly life for the first time in years. The very idea of it was disgusting. And I was
relieved when the second nurse abrupt put an end to my perverted fantasy.

Using forefinger and thumb mercilessly pinched his nose in the one hand cheek while
grabing his cheek with the other and in the holding down the old man’s aonly to release
into the world a smelled worse than any sewer. Their effort to maintain his life only
rewarded by the old man spiting effusions of vile profanities in a shower of spume and
bile colored pea soup. It close to near the miraculous to find the old man lying there
naked on the bed next to me oblivious to everything except for the private visions etched
on to the plates of opaque glass that were his eyes.

The sight of the old man was truly something to behold. .

I took in the wholeness of the strange scene amd could not help but wonder what forced
had worked to bring us together.

And the gods of the night were there. More compassionate and forgiving than those of the
day they magically softened his raw ugliness into an almost but not quite childlike
quality. His face at once excited and then agitated by some expectation. Even

So an age old scene was set, the teacher and student, the watching and the watched.
Today the old man was the teacher and I was to sit very still and quietly watch. It was his
moment now, and I was outside of that moment. An outsider permitted only to observe
and record the transmigration of a nameless stranger.

How was it that I came to be here? Not here as in a specific place, that’s another story I’m
going to tell outside of this moment. And that tale will speak only of mortal men and
women, not of gods. A narrative to be told in the predictable and finite context of our
mortal concerns over money, love, jealousy, possessions, greed, desire, rapaciousness and
revenge. My story, like all such stories, reveals the wolves that appear to the lambs as
lambs and shows the lambs slaughtering one another in an ignorant effort to be like the
wolves. But only the wolves eat. That story can have no catharsis in any apologue for no
apology is owned by predator to his prey. Both are only acting out their mortal roles in a
drama nearly as old as life. And too often the laws protect the predators and not the lamb.

No, for this particular moment in time and space and I wasn’t interested in what became
of the money and who did what to whom and why. Right now all I wanted to do was
understand the meaning in why it was I came to be here with this nameless old man at the
moment of our separate transmigrations. There were greater questions to be asked.

For instance is divine providence a thing that acts through the events of accidents,
contingencies, misadventures, mishaps, and misfortunes but with purpose? Was my and
the old man being here planned by unseen forces who joined together in secret scienter
and over a lifetime or even longer moved events to bring about this meeting? Can
unrelated events in two unconnected lives somehow move with purpose towards a first
and final meeting?

Or was it all chance? And if by chance, then is the same chance responsible for our
individual creation? Is each of us only the result of a fortuitous meeting of our mothers
and fathers, followed by a random connection of one sperm from many billions merging
with one from hundreds of possible ova? My birth, all birth only a juncture of fortune for
one sperm and ova and misfortune for the others, each having a different genetic
character able to create a completely different person. Then of me if at the moment of
conception another of my father’s sperm had conjoined to my mother’s ova or vise versa?
Would my very self have been forever lost to infinity. My ego and id washed out with the
hundreds of millions of other brothers and sisters who would never know life? These
words never to written by me, these feelings never to be felt and these questions never to
be asked. Would the one who was born in my place love his son as I loved mine? Could
he or she have seen the beauty in a sunset or shared the passion for the infinite that I
shared? If someone else desides me had been conceived would he have shared this
moment with the old man? Or would chance have for ever been altered and altogether
different lives lived. Each altered life affecting another, and that yet another. There only
randomness to a human life and life having no real purpose except to be a servant to
chance.

I couldn’t help but wonder who would be there to record when my time for
transformation came.

As the early September morning air grew cooler we waited, the old man oblivious to me
and the fact that I couldn’t take my eyes off him. With every passing second the silence
and darkness grew heavier with anticipation. Neither of us spoke and that’s as it should
be. It would be unnatural and an offense that would drive away the gods before leaving us
with their answer. I was student and audience, the old man and the gods the teachers and
players. My sole task this early morning was to listen to the sounds and observe the stray
light coming from within the darkness.

I looked closely at the deep lines that fractured the surface of the old man’s meatless flesh
and withered an already tired face. His sour countenance adding to the already desolate
black bile of a visage that spoke volumes to a wasted and empty life, my nameless friend
was not to be envied.

a strange chill overtook. Far colder than the air around me it lasted for only a second and
caused me to shiver ever so briefly. “Dear God” I prayed “give me more time than he had
had”. I knew that whenever the time came I would be equally as unprepared. There never
really was enough time. , and no way to somehow avoid

Suddenly the frustration of my own worldly problems shattered my introspection.

was shattered. Shit, what was that I was doing here sitting in the dark next to a soon to be
rotting corpse? What answers to existence and God’s providence was I expecting to get!

And since when had I become so introspective?

The supposition was sound. Dead people do in fact hold the answer to the mystery of life.
But they aren’t talking, at least not in any language the living can yet understood. And
talk about desolation and melancholy. What hell else was I expecting from a dead
convict? A shit faced “happy to be leaving prison in a box” grin?

I’d be none to happy either if I were exchanging the one cell made of mortar and steel for
another made of wood. Especially, if like my nameless friend here I were a dead and
unrepentant old con long forgotten by a family whose lives I had shattered and by fair
whether friends who only after a few months couldn’t be bothered with me. Prison sets
the pattern of your life and that of everyone who still hangs around you. Love and
friendship are rarely boundless and the strongest of family ties only Gordian knots to be
cut or slowly unraveled by time and lonely women seeking comfort and security in the
arms of other men. Our children get new fathers and forget the old ones. Prison is a fine
place to be abandoned by everyone you ever loved and you thought ever loved you.
Before you know it there’s no one left. Not even someone to collect your corpse.

The naked lifeless corpse in front me embodied everything I was afraid of but knew my
family and I had to face. Alone in a foreign prison I was to be vilified by a whole people
manipulated and lied to by their elected masters. And maybe that’s why I was there at 4
am and babysitting a lonely corpse. That dead lonely con in front of me could one day be
me and some asshole would looking down and laughing at a face that was mine.

In fact was it was only a few short weeks ago I was in a German prison hospital doing my
damnedest to get ahead of this guy. I very much had wanted to die and at that moment of
meeting my nameless friend had continued to want to be a corpse who could care less
about his problems or anyone else’s. I wanted to leave everything in this world behind me
but my nameless friend had beaten me to it. And his present circumstances were about to
have a profound affect on any decision to live and a much later one to die.

I knew that the corpse in front of me was past caring about anything right now except
starting to decompose into compost. Thankfully I wouldn’t be around to watch or smell
it, at least I hoped not.

Well, better not to think about that.

Besides that question Think to hard and you lose heart. It is far easier to remain knee
deep in the shallowest parts of our lives and never venture out in the dark abyss where I
now found myself. In shallows you cry, feel remorse and immediately remove yourself
As if meeting the gods was this moment ignorance and taking in only shallow thoughts to
avoid dark deeps about what . Make lite of the But there was no escaping this moment,
nowhere to run or hide from it. Not for me or for anyone. Better to face it and learn as
much as I could. So I studied him taking in everything around me.

and took in Both of us had been forced to leave our families, he alone and abandoned by
his left Like my nameless friend I also had a lot of questions that screamed for answers.
Could he help me?
The world the nameless man and I shared is black and white, its days colorless as are its
nights. And tonight the blackness and silence particularly absolute and taking dominion
over everything around it. That included my heart and soul. No light could reach that
inner most of human sanctums, at least not for me or the nameless man. But this night the
blackness around us was broken by the pale white of a Goddess’s long fingers reaching
out caressingly towards us through the branches of a near bye tree. I watched intently as
each passing moment steadily brought fingers of soft light closer. I could not help but
compare the movement to that of a forbidden love. Cautious, even unsure the light moved
like the hand of a woman. Someone’s lover and wife If the world oblivious to me and my
nameless friend . our existence was incessantly spinning on its axis to mark the time to
my own mortality. out the time period of my mortality and our bringing the wife of Zeus,
Selene ever closer.

outwards in a movement that seemed I swore that. Are the gods in their infidelity
consumed by the same excitement and fear as a mortal woman infidelity, her forbidden
desire for a nameless man. How strange it was to sit there in the dark and watching her
approach. I asked myself how many times before similar scenes had unfolded themselves.
This was no mortal’s awkward effort at infidelity. No this was since that monumental
moment when mankind awakened to self awareness and the idea of sin. When for the first
time our ancestors could see the gods and in the gods see themselves. Did self awareness
come to mankind like a sudden flash? A powerful blinding light illuminating the colors of
everything around us. A powerful blinding light, a blinding awareness of self? Or did it
creep up on us in the same way as it was creeping up on me now.

. himself. . of . Two men, one watching as the other waits to be consumed by gods and
evils. I was caught off guard as the silence of our contemplation was broken by the
wind’s gentle breathing as it embraced the tree and made it shudder like an excited lover..
The nameless man was oblivious to their movements alive, and yet he was absolutely
indifferent to their existence or the sound of The union of two secret lover’s united in the
silence and secrecy of the night. moving backwards the the tree and caused the light
whirl like so many ballaerians the ed his face gentley adorned by the faint light of the
street. street Execpt for a faint street light the room was dark

We both waited, expectantly for some answer to that one question that plaques each of as
though seeking some answer expecting towardsforlorn eyes stared straight ahead as and.
His ;outh open, forlorn eyes forlorn and staring aimlessly towards the sky. Well, in the
present circumstances that wasn’t quite right. There no sky inside the Ministry of Interior
Police hospital. There were windows. A fact I paid little attention to at the time and
appreciated even less. The guards wouldn’t let the nameless man or me go anywhere near
them so who cared. Beside the view was shit. I would later regret not looking out those
windows more often. It would be years before I had another chance to ever look out of a
window again. And nearly a decade before I would even have a chance at seeing the
world moving beyond that glass. My life was to stand frozen in time.

I’d be none to happy either. Although

A few hours earlier my nameless friend had been alive. And he had obviously cared a
great deal about staying that way. How much he cared was only too obvious. The dead
give away, if you pardon the pun, his expression of abject terror and the constant crying.
You know the kind you see in heavy Hollywood movies and afterwards you tell your
friends how real the actor made it look. Well, trust me it’s far from real. Men and women
consciously caught in Death’s grip and not ready for him are terrified in a way that a
Hollywood actor can never imitate. There are raw complex emotions involved. And a
terror so visceral and specific as to defy description. Oh you can try and write about it.
But the best story teller in the world, which I am far from, won’t be able to do the terror
of the dying justice. Its one of those things you have to experience from inside to
understand. Problem is there are no dress rehearsals and no second chances. You get to do
it only once, and then you forget everything. And I mean everything and everyone.

Even those documentaries on the dying appearing on TV from time to time can’t do the
dying justice. A movie won’t capture the smells or tense current of being in the same
room with someone who has no faith in an afterlife. Rarely does someone succumb
quietly to infinity. Dying has a taste all its own. But you’re an observer and that’s all. The
experience of dying the dying’s conscious prelude to hell and the movie trailer for what
you can expect. And don’t fool yourself into thinking the dying are at peace once their
hearts stop and that shallow strained breathing ends. Not by a long shot.

The brain. That convoluted piece of gray and white neural matter stuck between the ears
of all us and that most of us tend to take for granted. Forget about it until hurts, the motto
of most men in prison. Well, it keeps on ticking. Yah, to the living it may only be 5 or at
most 20 minutes in real time before that last synapse fires and you’re gone for good.
You’ve probably watched enough Discovery Channel to know the medical reasons. Body
temperature and how well the blood was oxygenated at the time the heart stopped etc etc.
But to the dead guy on the bed? Well shit it feels like infinity. And that’s a long time to
reflect on your life, get greeted by all your dead family and friends as you remember
them. And occasionally there are some living ones to. You got me as to how the hell they
got there.

So Christian dogma seems to have a biological foundation, you do dye twice. First the
flesh. Then the soul. At least according to Christians. The soul only dies, in that it goes to
hell, only if you haven’t become a Christian and repented. But is that what really
happens?

Did God in His infinite wisdom allow for a final act torment before being freeing us of
this fleshy and fragile shell? Allowing some of us the chance at a conscious physical
death. You know dying in bed. But promising every one of us a subconscious spiritual
end. His judgment? Apparently dying once not enough and reserved by God for those His
providence instantly and unexpectantly requires their lives to be cut short.

So, as I stand there in the darkness of the room and contemplate this nameless cadaver I
have to wonder. Is my witnessing of this first death of the nameless man a production
done for my benefit and whoever else is around to watch? Is the chance for me to look
into the terrified eyes of an unrepentant dying a warning? Is there a message in a dying
man’s lamentations over a life filled with mistakes and unfinished business? The second
death is infinitely more frightening because of its intimately.

Or is only the biological seat of the soul, a dying mind’s Superego that’s about to start
openly criticizing everything its Ego and Id did while you were stll alive? Your Id died
with your body and now the Superego has you all to itself. And it’s going to be a hell of a
show. Technicolor and Dolby Surround Sound, hundreds of extras and special affects that
the Matrix producers would have died for. Smells and other physical sensations. It’s the
best show in town and you’re the audience and the star. It is also your last. After that you
can go to hell or wherever?

Judging by the agrised look on my dead friend’s face he was not looking forward to
seeing that movie.

I’m not saying everyone faces death terrified. Of course not. There’s the hero’s death.
Where dying is not unexpected. Usually sudden, and rarely do heroes have enough time
to reflect deeply if at all on anything more than should I do it or shouldn’t I? Few have
enough time to profoundly consider is going to happen to them or to reflect for long the
in pained faces of those they may leave behind. The dead have no regrets, but the living
and dying are full of them. Besides heroes, whether they admit it or not, are always
convinced that the honor and selflessness of their act gives some special dispensation
from God or some higher force. Few, if any hero ever saw death as being finite. SO no
matter how impossible things appear the hero considers death as most probable but not
inevitable, and definitely not “the end”. There’s also another neat trick, and its one few
known about. Death always hides his face from the hero. He stays in the shadows, a
specter. As long as he’s only an apparition then he’s not real and there’s no reason to be
afraid of him and what’s to come. It’s probably a good thing to. Otherwise we would have
had far fewer heroes in man’s short history than we have.

Let’s face it, the nameless corpse and I both believe as young men we could face Death
and do it fearlessly. I personally placed my life at risk on more occasions than I now care
to remember. All young men believe that to attempt something heroic is only natural and
right. It only the old who are afraid of Death and want to cling to life. Cowards? No.
Smart? Yes. Death is not someone you want to invite to your any party sooner than you
have to. Besides he will show up sooner or later without an invitation.

But of all the kinds of deaths that really irk me it’s the quasi-heroic or martyrdom death.
You know the one. It’s where someone with a terminal disease faces his or her inevitable
end with the courage and emotional stamina worthy of Mel Gibson’s Christ. They accept
their fate and quietly go to their death. It’s all over TV. Dying men, women and even
children going on national television to make these up beat testimonials about how they
lived a full life, or their faith and the love of their family gives them courage to face the
end calmly. Besides they know they are going to a better place.
I know you know the ones the “My pain is terrible…I am on drugs all the time” and “I
can’t face a life of pain” blah, blah and blah. They cry a little but manage to hold
themselves together. Pretty impressive shit. All of them claim to have looked into the face
of death and to be unafraid. Some even claim to have found peace in the idea of death. I
once made the same claims for myself. Fortunately for me I was in solitary and had only
myself to talk to in that 15 x 8 foot cell. I didn’t have to make any public retraction or go
through with a suicide just to show I wasn’t full of shit. Apparently some folks prefer to
ignore the fact Christ knew before his death that he would be resurrected in both body
and spirit. From what I gather he had it from a good source, the man Himself. I really
doubt that anyone else can be so sure.

Well my lifeless friend here was at least honest about how he felt. No false heroism here
or attempts at stoicism. He came in kicking and screaming and went out the same way.
Openly and unashamedly terrified of dying.

Wednesday
Wednesday September 11 1996 6 pm

It was the day before, late Wednesday afternoon when I first saw him. There I was not
more than 14 hours ago leaning against the door jam of my room when they first brought
him in. The police hospital has no bars or locked cells, only semi-private and private
rooms. Each room and floor has guards. My guard Vasco was old fart and hitting on one
of the young nurses. He could give a damn about me or my having gone into the
adjoining room to see what all the commotion was about. And there he was a screaming
crying old man.

At least he looked old. His wet eyes had a sad expression and were swollen red from all
the crying. His face was a dead mask now, but I vividly remembered how animated it was
a few hours earlier. His mouth contorted and his face twisted into anguished shapes I
didn’t think were humanly possible. He made repeated and desperate attempts to form
words to communicate what? The sounds he made were recognizable only as cries of
some. Any further meanings was lost on us and known only to him. He would take those
last thought with him

I was standing at the doorway when the nurse asked for my help in restraining him. As I
was holding one of his arms next to the bed rail she tied a prison bed sheet shackle
around his right wrist and turned to me saying “this ones not ready to die yet and doesn’t
known that’s all he’s got left to do. I just wish he’d accept it and shut up”.

He had come in struggling. And now he was as equally desperate in his struggle to free
himself from the shackles the nurses had made for him. He pressed hard against the huge
knots gracelessly knots tied around each wrist by nurses who could care less. He even
tried to reach them with his mouth to untie them. Lot of energy for a dying man. But I
was no stranger to this sight.

My mind raced back to the last days of my grandmother’s life a Dallas Texas hospital. In
her dementia grandma had removed all the intravenous tubes keeping her alive. As soon
as the hospital staff then put back in Grandma would again take them out. It seemed that
she just wanted them out so she could endlessly wring her hands. Turning one over and
through the other over and over again. She had started this routine almost immediately
after regaining consciousness. I remember my father and I watching her as she stared
straight ahead into the empty space in front of her. Lips constantly moving as she spoke
in a whisper. Prayers? Incantations? Condemnations? No idea, the words were
unintelligible. So to keep her from tearing the tubes away again the nurses had torn bed
sheets and tied grandma’s hands to the bed’s rails. Just like the nameless man grandma
died a few days later.

As I stared I could not help but wonder what his last thoughts would be. What a struggle
against the inevitable. I wondered if when my time came I would be contorting my body
in the same way. Worse, would I, like him, be dying alone in a Bulgarian prison?