Lost in the Doldrums

Brian--

Hey, buddy. It's just after 5:00 AM. It's dark. Yes, I am in a dark place once again.
Lucky for me, I didn't tell you I was in the doldrums a few weeks ago. You probably would have called the Coast Guard out after me. And believe me, you don't want to mess with maritime law.
I can just hear William saying to the Coast Guard: "Brian Brown and I are very concerned about Mr. Freedman. Mr. Brown happened to come across a letter that Mr. Freedman wrote and saved on the library's hard-drive in which Mr. Freedman complains about being in the doldrums. He says he feels like a Titanic survivor adrift in the North Atlantic amid the frozen flotsam and jetsam of the icy coastal waters off Newfoundland. Then, at another point in the letter he complains, further, that he feels like a ship lost at sea, a sinking ship. And more! He compares himself to a German U-boat, prepared to sink neutral vessels on the high seas. Officer, that really had Mr. Brown and me concerned--I mean, a German U-Boat! Mr. Freedman is talking literally" (No, William, I'm talking metaphorically) "he's talking literally about upsetting the international law of the seas that's been in place since the end of the Napoleonic era. Officer, the letter Mr. Freedman wrote is literally (!) a distress signal. It's an SOS from Mr. Freedman."
Brian, I'm in the doldrums. Yes, I'm like a ship, such as "The Sea Wolf," adrift in the doldrums. GET OVER IT!
Be that as it may.
So many things struck me as odd about the Metropolitan Police interview.
First, the officers relied wholly on your interpretation of the letter I wrote, and proceeded to question me without having read the letter. I suppose that was the only practical approach. It was a lengthy letter. But still, it would have been useful if they had taken a few minutes to read the letter, then proceed to question me about the letter's content.
The most serious accusation you made about me--the accusation regarding my threat to "make people pay for the suffering I have experienced" was immediately shot down (may I say that?) once the officers were made aware by me that what I was talking about was pursuing legal remedies, and not threatening to carry out physical harm on anyone. "This isn't a threat," said the officer. "He's talking about pursuing legal remedies. That's not a threat." Do you have a problem with reading comprehension, buddy?
There was that peculiar colloquy about my intellect. William pointed out that I was very intelligent. "He's very intelligent, officers," said William. "He changed the computer icons. Why, I don't even know how he did that. But he knew how to do that?" It was as if William were talking about the devil. The devil is fiendishly clever. That's the way he's seen. His evil is insidious and inscrutable. The devil works in mysterious ways. There was a quality about William's attribution: the quality of attributing to me what, on the surface, sounds like a virtue (intelligence), only to use that attribution as a collateral attack on my character. It's as if William were saying: "He's fiendish, he's clever, he's very smart, why he's the Devil personified!" I'm not calling William an anti-Semite, but that's a quality that anti-Semites attribute to the Jews. "They're smarter than us. You have to watch out for those Jews. They're clever, and they know how to put their intellect to nefarious purposes." Watching Louis Malle's film "Au Revoir Les Enfants" (Good-bye, Children) I was struck by an accusation made by one of the anti-Semitic students about the Jews. "The Jews are evil because they're smarter than us, they have more money, and they are the people who killed our Lord."
Then one of the police officers chimed in: "You're very intelligent and well-spoken. You should be a teacher. Why don't you teach? You should teach, instead of doing nothing." I felt as if I was being attacked from all directions (that's a metaphor). What I mean is I was being subject to all kinds of contradictory sanctions and attributions. Here I was a mental patient with serious psychopathology (as David Callet would say), but at the same time I should be a teacher (according to the Police). I wonder how that officer would feel about having his child's care and education entrusted to a paranoid schizophrenic.
Paranoid Schizophrenia. That's another thing. I noticed that when I said I had paranoid schizophrenia, the police said nothing. They didn't question that. I recall the time in February 1996 when I was interviewed by Secret Service agent Phillip Leadroot. I said at that time that I had paranoid schizophrenia. He shot that down (may I say that?) immediately. "No, you don't. You don't have paranoid schizophrenia. I proceeded to show Special Agent Leadroot the letter written by my then treating psychiatrist, Dimitrios Georgopoulos, saying his diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia. Agent Leadroot simply dismissed the letter and its diagnostic assertion.
I was struck by the officer's handling of the accusation that I had changed the computer icons. As I said in a letter a few days ago, the officers didn't question anything about that. They didn't ask me precisely how I did that, or ask William what was involved in curing the problem. There was almost a paranoid quality to William's accusation: "Officer he did something evil with the computer. I don't even know how he did it!" The officer's response reminded me of the scene described by the psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson concerning his termination by the Freud Archives. Dr. Eissler accused Masson of "getting Zeplichal wrong." "I asked you, Professor Masson to find out who Zeplical was and you said apparently he had written a book on Geometry. But you were wrong, Professor Masson. The Zeplichal Freud had in mind had written a book on shorthand, not geometry." Masson said he proceeded to look around the room and there was a quizzical look on everybody's face. "Zeplichal? Who??" ("Freedman changed the computer icons." "What? What?"). It was as if the police officers' response could be described in Masson-like terms: "Yes, you changed the computer icons! Terrible! Terrible! Terrible misconduct!"
In fact one passage from Masson's book "Final Analysis" can be paraphrased to describe fully the accusations lodged against me by William.
"I believe I have a right to know why I'm being banned from the library. Why, why, William? Why am I being banned from the library?" William was calmer now, and he said everything I said was true--that I had a right to know why I was being banned from the library--and he would now tell me why I was being banned. I was being banned for three reasons. "The first is your statement that you are in a dark place. The second reason is the Computer Icon incident. Do you remember, Mr. Freedman? You sat at the computer and changed the computer icons. The third and final reason you are being banned is that you were prescribed anti-psychotic medication and you confessed that you were not taking it!" Here William paused to look up at me. William was serious and apparently considered this almost a sin.
I was too stunned to respond.
I turned to the Police officers, and I said "Well, Mr. Dacosta has told you the reasons why I am being banned from the library. I want to ask you, do you both feel so strongly about the computer icons?" For a moment, they looked confused ("What?"), then there was murmured assent. Yes, indeed, you changed the computer icons, terrible, terrible a terrible incident."
In truth there was very little reasoning or none at all. The Police officers' method was one of accusation, assumption, and denunciation.
I was stripped of my library privileges, like a disgraced soldier.
It should be unnecessary to state, at least to my friends (assuming I had any), that I was shocked.
Well, chalk it up to "life imitating art," I suppose. Uncanny, don't you think?
What was irrational about the Police officer's response was, as I pointed out in an earlier letter, that they didn't inquire into what remediation was required to fix the computer problem. Would it take an hour of assistance from Tech Support? Would somebody from the main branch of the library have to stop up to Cleveland Park to fix the problem? Yes, indeed, if that had been the case, I would say that what I had done was serious, a serious act of misconduct that merited some kind of sanction imposed against me. But to accuse me of doing something that would take all of five seconds to cure, and then ban me from the library for that absolutely trivial act is odd, if not bizarre. The strangeness of it all suggested to me that you and William had a second, hidden, unstated agenda.
You and William are quirky people, buddy. You're librarians. That says it all. I didn't want to push William (or you, Brian). I didn't want to hurt you both. Something terrible was going on inside William (as well as you), William was not capable of talking about it, but it was real, and I was the source of his pain. I did feel bad for him. And I felt bad for you too, Brian.
I wrote about that the other day. I think that at some deep level, you really like me. You really, really like me (with all the ardor of a Flying Nun). You are unable to connect with me socially or professionally. My presence in the library, day after day, is a kind of narcissistic injury or wound for you. It's as if you were a hungry fox, and I a cluster of ripe grapes, just outside your grasp. That reality tormented you. So you had to ban me from the library. Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose.
In retrospect I wonder what role envy and jealousy played in William's reaction to me. A number of pertinent questions arise.
I think we can all agree that I'm a socially attractive person. I think we can agree that my letters are witty, entertaining, interesting and, yes, sometimes even poetic. I suspect that at some level you feel flattered by my attention. And I further suppose it's possible William is envious of the attention I focus on you. William is the odd-man-out of our daily tête-à-tête. He's been left out of the ménage, so to speak. So there's this possible envy and jealousy William feels about my letter writing to you, Brian.
Isn't it possible that you and William have formed a kind of psychological coalition against me, based on your respective, individual grievances against me.
William is envious and jealous of the attention I lavish on you. And you, Brian, are threatened by the taint of homoeroticism in my epistolary relationship with you. You are threatened, too, by my social attractiveness, attractiveness that remains forever out of your grasp. You are threatened by the fact that our relationship can never go anywhere. Perhaps I'm somebody you'd like to be friends with, perhaps close friends, but your occupational duties preclude any friendship. So you and William, both, from your own individual perspectives, feel threatened, hurt, envious ("Mr. Freedman is fiendishly clever"), and jealous.
Then there's the issue of my disability benefits, and the fact that my life is a fantasy camp. William, you know, suffers from serious mental illness, but because medication cures his symptoms he is able to (more than that!)--he is required to work. Because medication works for William, William is compelled to grind out the daily wage gruel. He is unable to claim he is disabled. He can't just take it easy, like moi. I, on the other hand, live my life, as it were, as if I am on an extended vacation. I don't have to work because I can claim a mental disability; moreover, a disability that defies medical remediation. Possible validation of this belief is the fact that I've heard (or eavesdropped on) William saying he'd like to retire. He'd like to retire, and live off retirement benefits. But he can't do that financially. Additional confirmation comes from the fact that William made the odd and highly personal admission, during our conference with the Police, that he's on lithium and Risperdal. He said that in front of the Police officers. I ejaculated at that moment: "That's antipsychotic medication!" William responded forcefully: "You better believe it is!" So there is some kind of peculiar congruence between the fact that William takes anti-psychotic medication that cures him and enables him to work, on the one hand, and the fact that I was not taking my anti-psychotic medication, thus (in William's mind) enabling me not to work. You'll recall that "one of the three accusations" made against me was that I had been prescribed anti-psychotic medication but was not taking it.
All this reminds me of something my father used to say. "Politics is three people." At least three or more people will always underlie any political configuration or coalition.
Bottom line is I have a sense there's that quality of "political coalition" between you and William against me. In politics, as we all know, strange bed-fellows sometimes arise. You take three people: A, B and C. A has his own reasons for resenting C; and B has his own specific reasons for resenting C. Put A and B together, and their specific grievances against C meld. In the end C will get "impeached." At least that's the way it works in Scotland.
But sometimes C, after impeachment starts a new life, writes a best-selling book, and goes on to live neurotically-ever-after.
Check you out later, buddy. As usual, it's been great talking with you, Brian.
P.S. Tell William that Captain Freedman on "The Sea Wolf" sends his regards.

I Feel Jewish, Oh So Jewish

Brian--

Hey, buddy. Wassup? Jus chillin? It's all good, Brian.
Welcome to AllthingsFreedman.com. Or perhaps, in view of my enigmatically stoic and eternally didactic manner I should call it AllthingsFreedman.edu. Or even more, perhaps, in view of my protean nature--the cast of characters I embody--I should say: "Welcome to AllthingsFreedman.org! Yes, Freedman is an Org, a complex multiplicity of ego states and affective nuances.
I'm feeling very Jewish. What, you may ask, does it mean to feel Jewish? Well, I suppose that what it means to feel Jewish differs from person to person. For Elie Wiesel, it means Remembrance. A remembrance of the past, of past experience, of loss, of the loss of family, community, of the entirety of European Jewish civilization. It's as if Wiesel's assigned role in life is to preserve for future generations the memory of the past in word and metaphor.
For Ariel Sharon, a secular Jew for the most part, I suppose being Jewish means being the political leader of a polity of Jews, the Jewish state, the embodiment of the hope of the Jewish people, both past and present. I was deeply moved by, and will never forget ("and will never forget," that's so Jewish), something that the Prime Minister said at the height of Israel's foray into the West Bank--and the siege of Ramallah where Yassir Arafat was hold out--last year, in 2003. The Prime Minister was asked about the legitimate claims of the Palestinians to the West Bank and to the desire of Palestinians worldwide to return to Israel proper. In measured tones of proud severity, Ariel Sharon proclaimed the unalterable and undeniable ties of the Jewish people to the land of Israel: "The land of Israel," he said, "has been the home of the Jewish people for three thousand years." It was as if for Sharon nothing more need be said. Whatever the claims of the Palestinians--whether those claims be legitimate or illegitimate--the Prime Minister proclaimed (as Earl Segal might): "We, the Jews, hold title to this land in fee simple."
That one statement changed my view of Sharon as a mere conquering militarist to the view of him as man who sees himself as carrying a moral responsibility for the protection of the claims of the Jews to their historical homeland, the land of their fathers and the home of future generations of Jews. "The hope of the Jewish people" as Harvard comparative literature professor Stephen Greenblatt said at the time.
Golda Meir, another secular Prime Minister, when asked whether she believed in God said: "I believe in the Jewish People, who believe in God."
So what does it mean when I say "I am feeling very Jewish?" For me it is a feeling of the power of reason and of The Word. It is a feeling, or capacity, to suffer or experience an injustice, all the while confident that the means to right that injustice rests with the Power of the Word. Words that function as more than words. "Beyond Words," as the motto of the D.C. Public Library has it. Beyond Words: a phrase that connotes the power of words as Words, but paradoxically not "fighting words," as Justice Holmes would call them. Words as the vehicle for emotion, from the most sublime to the most disturbingly vengeful. But only words, not action--not action, not illegality.
Being Jewish for me means suffering a wrong and seeking to right that wrong by sitting down with paper, pen and ink. Or word processor. Or computer. For me the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is the most "religious," the most "Jewish" of the rights of Americans. Ironically I refer not to the Establishment Clause. For me religion is not literally "religion," that is the world of sacrifice and slaughtered rams. For me religion -- the Jewish religion--is the freedom to speak and write, to express one's self in words. A veritable Sea of Words. The freedom to navigate through the Sea of Words, which are the rational manifestation of the wild currents of variegated emotional states -- from the most exultant to the most despairing.
Words, words, words, words. Words as a vehicle of expression, of the embodiment of experience, of morality, of identity. Words as a connection between my world of personal experience, on the one hand, and to the world at large, on the other. Words as a vessel of communication, words as the conduit of the desire to "Let the World see what I have seen."
Do I recognize that a direct threat of physical harm through words is a forbidden act in our society? Yes! Do I respect the distinction between a proscribed "threat of harm" and, alternatively, the permissible act of freedom of expression? Yes! But I also recognize, as any thinking person must, that the subjective perception of threat by the recipient of a communication is not necessarily a measure of the forbidden nature of the ideas of the communicator. The fact that the recipient of a communication feels subjectively threatened is not a measure or indicator that the communicator has engaged in an unlawful act.
So what does it mean when I say I'm feeling very Jewish? For me "feeling very Jewish," as the secular Jew (or half-Jew) that I am, means being true to the best in the Jewish tradition. For me the best in Jewish tradition takes the form of recognizing that the conscious acceptable enemy, be it personal, social or societal is to be battled in a war waged largely in words within the controllable arena of social conscience within a writing: whether that writing be a letter, a play, a speech, a work of art or any collection of words--or "Words."
Well, so much for my Jewish feelings.
And how are you feeling, my friend? You who claim to be so threatened by my words!
How can one explain why someone would subjectively feel threatened by an expression that any reasonable person would not perceive as threatening?
How can one explain your bizarre act of summoning the police and having me banned from the library for a six-month period simply because I wrote a letter that communicated nothing more than the fact that I was depressed, that I wanted to avenge (through lawful means) the wrongs done to me, and that I was not following my physician's medical prescription that I take medication that did not help me in any way?
Perhaps, the reason is that you have positive feelings for me--perhaps you like me a little "too much," shall we say. Perhaps your reaction was a "paranoid one," in the technical sense of the word.
Is it possible the I am an important person to you emotionally, and that you assigned me an unacceptable quantum of malign power precisely because of your irrational investment in me?
Yes, I like you, Brian. Yes, perhaps I like you a little too much. But isn't it possible that behind your face of rationality lurks the ghost of Schreber?
You will recall from my previous letters that Daniel Gottlob Schreber was the psychotically-paranoid judge (is there any other kind!) whose bizarre memoirs, "The Memoirs of a Neuropath," intrigued Freud. Freud wrote an analysis of Schreber's memoirs, an analysis that was a tour de force of insights into the paranoid mental state. Freud's insights, which center on the homosexual import of paranoid fantasies, have informed all subsequent psychoanalytical writings on the subject of paranoia.
Freud's biographer writes: "For decades Freud had been persuaded that the craziest ideas of the most regressed psychotic are so many messages, rational in their own twisted way. In accord with this conviction, Freud chose to translate Schreber's confidences rather than to dismiss them. He read his world system as a coherent set of transfigurations designed to make the unbearable bearable: Schreber had invested his enemies, whether [his treating physician] Dr. Flechsig or God, with such malign power because they had been so important to him. In short, Schreber had come to hate them so deeply because he had earlier loved them so much; paranoia was, for Freud, the mental ailment parading with unsurpassed vividness the psychological defenses of reversal and, even more, of projection. The 'core conflict in the paranoia of a man' is, as Freud put it in his case history, a 'homosexual wish-fantasy of loving a man.' The paranoiac turns the declaration "I love him" into its opposite, "I hate him"; this is the reversal. He then goes on to say, "I hate him because he persecutes me"; that is the projection." Peter Gay, Freud: A Life For Our Time at 281 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988).
For Freud, to call a man "paranoid" was to call him a homosexual -- or at least a sublimated one.
You see, Brian, the difference between you and me is that I have insight into my feelings. I know what my feelings about you mean, and I accept that meaning. Call me grandiose, but I'm a superior person at least in my ability to have insight into my variegated "dot org" mental states. For those with poorer insight and/or a poorer understanding of their intrapsychic motivations, the real world can arouse disturbing feelings whose rationality seems ultraclear, but which are no less irrational.
Brian, in conclusion, maybe the reason you felt threatened by my letter to you, the letter of April 16, 2004, is that you like me, you really, really like me--as The Flying Nun would say.
Check you out later, buddy.
P.S. If you're ever at a party at somebody's house, Brian, never yell "library" in a crowded foyer -- it could cause a fatal stampede to the stacks.

A Tree Falling in a Deserted Woods

Brian--

Hey, buddy. What's up at the workplace?
You remember the old expression, "If a tree falls in the woods, and nobody's there to hear it crash, does the tree make a sound?" I suppose this letter--and all subsequent letters I write to you--follow that principle. If I write a letter to you and just save it on my own e-mail site, will that letter make its way to you? In my paranoid way of thinking, I suspect somehow and in some way the letter will ultimately find its way to your hands.
It's funny how I have transformed you into the invisible, absolutely incorporeal Jewish God. I can't see you, I can imagine no representation of you in the present, and I cannot communicate to you directly. I must rely on faith, my faith in the invisible and incorporeal in my communications with you. I wonder what that means. Perhaps that I'm not taking my medication. No, no, Brian. I am taking my medication. Ever since my "arrest."
That was some little production you arranged for me last Wednesday April 21. There I was in the library, preparing my latest letter to you, when in walked two police officers. Next thing I knew I was doing a little "Martha Stewart Living," answering questions, defending myself with dialectical authority against disturbing accusations and hoping, all the while, to evade a slimy prison shower. As I learned in Mr. Cades' ninth-grade English class there are certain sentences and prepositions that you just want to avoid.
Brian, I'm in a dark place. Yes, it's early morning, and I'm writing this letter by a dim light. I am in a dark place indeed. And I'm full of anger about my pain and suffering, pain and suffering caused, lo, these many years, by your friends and mine at the law firm run by the Waltz King--the world of perpetual three-four time. Someone will pay for my pain and suffering. Literally--not metaphorically. Earl L. Segal, Esq. and Malcolm Lassman, Esq. will pay for my pain and suffering--pay in an exemplary way, of course.
That was the whole problem, really, Brian. It was your failure to distinguish the real from the metaphorical. When I say I am in a dark place, I mean that (perhaps) literally, while you took it metaphorically (as relating only to my mental state).
What I meant as literal and concrete -- "Someone will pay for my pain and suffering," that is, pay out some cash from his richly-lined custom suit -- you took as a metaphor (someone will "pay" with physical harm.) For a lawyer, references to pain mean "pain and suffering," that is, punitive or exemplary damages. That's purely legal.
I think we have a basic failure to communicate. My literal is your metaphorical and my metaphorical is your literal. You have a literal, corporeal God; whereas my Divinity, like that of Glenn Fine and his ilk, is abstract: a metaphor. Curious, isn't it. What you consider to be real and corporeal -- namely, your physical being, I have now transformed into an abstraction -- a metaphor. You are now a purely abstract presence for me -- a chimera, a phantom, a ghost -- perhaps like Hamlet's father. Or the Jewish God.
And by the way Brian, I'm back on my anti-psychotic medication. Do you see the change? Do I appear more normal, more lucid, more coherent? Fat chance. The medication does nothing for me. It's a conspiracy, I tell you, a conspiracy! I think the pharmacy is giving me dummy pills. Sugar pills. I can't believe that I'm on anti-psychotic medication, can you? I have to say, I'm a little envious of William. You know, he suffers from bi-polar disorder. Yet the medication he takes works for him. He said he takes lithium and Risperdal (an anti psychotic medication). But as old FDR once said: "To some psychotics much medication is given with felicitous returns, of other psychotics much is expected in terms of therapeutic response. You, Freedman, have a rendezvous at St. Elizabeths Hospital." Perhaps I'll end up there one of these days. Only William Nussbaum knows for sure.
I can't believe the Metropolitan Police bought that line William Dacosta fed them. "Brian said he read only one letter--the letter in question, the letter dated Friday April 16, 2004." Now really!
I've been writing letters to you, Brian, since last April--April 2003. What you expect the Police to accept is that I've been writing letters to you for over a year, I've been changing the computer icons for over a year, but you only noticed this activity of mine on one occasion--and the one and only letter you read happened to be one of the few letters that, arguably, had any law enforcement interest. That's like the guy who goes to the racetrack on one occasion in his whole life, bets on a horse with a poor track record--and the horse wins and wins big! Right. How often does that happen?
And I also liked the fact that the letter I wrote AFTER the letter in question (dated April 16, 2004) discussed at length my views on violence. The letter dated Tuesday April 20, 2004--the day before the police intervention--clearly stated that I abhor violence as a form of dispute resolution and that people who resort to violence (people like the Columbine shooters in 1999) are morons. I said it's so much more fun to screw people legally with words than to physically harm a person.
We're supposed to believe that even after you were placed on notice that I had written (and saved on the computer hard-drive) a "disturbing" letter to you, that you had no curiosity at all about whether I wrote any letters subsequent to the disturbing letter. Wow! And then William provides the police with evidence that I'm an "icon manipulator." I have to laugh at that. That is an absolute triviality. And it could have been corrected with a warning. "Icon manipulation" is not grounds to bar a person from a library. It's the functional equivalent of a patron folding over a page in a book, leaving a fold mark on a page. Would you ban a patron from the library for folding over a page in a book? Sure, if he keeps doing it after a warning, that's cause for concern -- but really! A single computer click will return a computer icon to its proper form. A single computer click. Perhaps the police thought that what I had done (manipulating the computer icons) had caused a problem that would take hours to correct. In fact, it takes about two seconds to correct the problem (if you can call it a problem).
Let's look at the chronology here. Take a look at the following facts. When you consider the whole picture, Brian, you have to admit the whole thing smells -- and smells really rotten.
April 2003 to April 2004: I engage in a practice of manipulating computer icons and saving to the computer hard-drive letters that I have written to you, Brian. I engage in this activity for a one year period. You never noticed that I was engaged in that activity (so you would have us believe). But wait! There's more.
Friday April 16, 2004 -- I write and save on the computer hard-drive a letter that says that I'm in a dark place emotionally, that "people will pay for my pain and suffering," and that I was prescribed anti-psychotic medication but I was not taking it. This is the letter that you printed out--the letter William Dacosta provided to the Metropolitan Police on April 21, 2004. You, Brian, claim that's the only letter you had ever read. But wait. More.
Saturday April 17, 2004 -- I visit the library. We had a friendly chat. Computer Number 2 had been having problems with the mouse. I had brought in a replacement mouse that I paid for out of my own pocket at Radio Shack and was willing to donate to the library. I hand over the mouse to you. You thank me. You proceed to take the mouse over to Operations Director Charles Davis at the circulation desk. Charles tells you that the Radio Shack computer mouse I offered "is not compatible with" the library's computer system (which is Microsoft). You return to speak with me, to tell me that you cannot accept the mouse. You specifically used the phrase "not compatible with," information that had to have come from Charles Davis who is the resident computer expert. On this day, Saturday April 17, 2004, I write and save to the computer hard-drive another one of my letters to you. I manipulate several computer icons.
Monday April 19, 2004 -- The library is closed as usual on Mondays.
Tuesday April 20, 2004 -- I visit the library. I see you at the library, but we do not speak. I write and save to the computer hard drive a letter addressed to you, Brian. I manipulate several of the computer icons. The content of the letter dated April 20, 2004 is very important. I talk about my anger and feelings of rage. But significantly I state that I abhor violence and that I think people who commit violent acts in revenge are morons. I specifically referred to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two Columbine shooters. I called the two individuals morons.
Wednesday April 21, 2004 -- William Dacosta calls the police after I enter the library. The Police interview me in connection with the letter to Brian dated Friday April 16, 2004. The Police officers in question are from the Metropolitan Police of the District of Columbia: Officer J.E. Williams, Badge 1226, 2nd District (202 282 0070) and Officer Williams' partner.
William Dacosta denies that Brian has any knowledge of any other letters I have written, and denies knowing that I (for approximately one year) engaged in the act of tampering with the computer icons. The fact that a person could tamper with the computer icons for a year, while the activity goes unnoticed by the librarians, is persuasive (if not overwhelming) circumstantial evidence that icon tampering is absolutely trivial.
William Dacosta does not allege that I was engaged in a practice of harassing Brian (though such a case could have been made) or that I had been engaged in acts that constituted the crime of stalking Brian (such a case could have been made). The Police decide to enforce Brian's request that I stay away from the library for a six-month period--that is, until October 21, 2004. The police conclude that the letter dated April 16, 2004 does not constitute an unlawful threat to commit an act of violence. The Police officers' decision to enforce the 6-month ban on my visits to the Cleveland Park Branch is based only on my act of tampering with the computer icons. The police do not inquire of William Dacosta precisely what is involved to restore the computer icons, or question Brian's and William's failure to first issue a spoken warning to me about my conduct.
I stated in the letter dated April 20, 2004 that I prefer to vent my anger and rage with words, by writing or talking about my angry feelings. I specifically stated that I like to seek revenge by the use of words.
You didn't provide a copy of this letter, buddy, to William Dacosta to give to the police. The letter is exculpatory. I wrote the letter to clarify my views about anger and a desire for revenge--the desire to make people pay for my suffering through legal means. The letter was written a day before the Police spoke with me and William.
What you, Brian, would have the police believe is that a letter I wrote on Friday April 16, 2004 was a cause of serious concern regarding my mental health and stability--that, in effect, you were placed on notice that I had written a disturbing letter: BUT THAT you didn't bother to check to see whether I had written any subsequent letters. In fact, I wrote two additional letters after April 16, 2004. Namely, a brief letter to you on Saturday April 17, 2004 as well as the very important exculpatory letter I wrote to you dated Tuesday April 20, 2004.
I can't believe you had William feed this line to the police; your position is not credible! I have the letters I wrote to you, Brian. I'm sure the computer operators at the main library downtown (The Martin Luther King Memorial Library) can verify everything I claim about the sequence of the letters I wrote to you.
Brian-- You and William could end up being in very big trouble (with the law). Not only does the circumstantial evidence tend to show quite strongly that you lied to the police about my letter writing, there's something even more sinister going on here. There must be something bigger going on that you're trying to conceal. What is it? Why did you pick out one letter that I wrote that suggested that I was mentally unstable and potentially violent, but omit to tell the police about the exculpatory letter written a few days later?
How could you not know that I had been tampering with the computer icons for a one-year period? How could you not know that I was writing letters to you for a one-year period. And, why did you wait until April 21, 2004 to complain to the Police?
WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO HIDE BRIAN, AND WHAT IS IT THAT HAS YOU SO WORRIED THAT YOU WOULD CALL THE POLICE ON ME RATHER THAN GIVE ME A SPOKEN WARNING ABOUT TAMPERING WITH THE COMPUTER ICONS?
Anyway, buddy, I'm putting this letter and all subsequent letters I write to you on my confidential website on Netscape.
Let the world see what I have seen!
By the way, Brian-- I think your behavior to me is discriminatory. I notice that for years now you permit one of the patrons, John Conner (is that his name?) to sleep at a table in the back of the library. Would you have allowed that to continue if it was I who slept all day in the library. Not only that--sometimes the guy snores. Why on Earth do you allow John Conner to sleep all day in the library?
Check you out later, buddy. Give my regards to Earl and Malcolm.