Dear Norm,
You didn’t believe me when I reported the black helicopters, even when their spotlights bathed your own cars on the commute, hovering in the sun while the trees writhed. You suspected I was intoxicated or embellishing when I reported the very bright very quick, crackling, rushing away early one morning as I took the parkway past the C.I.A. I probably did not even tell you how
strange things levitate over the Interstate ‘tween Shreeveport and South Shriver,
where the blazing skies have dazzled the eyes of many a Sunday driver,
so absurdly, so stupidly, unremarkably familiar were those two enormous cake molds, separated by a shadowy grille, dwarfing the strip mall’s garden of glittering industrial lampposts, and the lamps of the interstate, dwarfing those incredibly tall signs gas stations sometimes use so you can see them before the exit lane over the tree line as you rocket down the high. You wouldn’t have believed me; I tried not to believe me and tried not to look at cakes being baked, and learned self-cynical oblivion. And it was in that oblivion I persisted, mostly suppressing the rising urge to scream out at the top of my lungs Look Out Look Out! Big Brother Slouches to the Polls to be Born!, and to dilute it with the comical aspects of the syncretistic genres of conspiracy literature.
So, it was with absolutely no such thoughts in mind that I ventured out today. No thought of conspiracy or COINTELPRO, not of black helicopters, urban-camo helicopters, Apache attack helicopters in stylish midnight chrome with iridescent lime green highlights that pulse like a subwoofer when viewed with night vision, or even the big pink one from that detective show; no thought of F.B.I. or C.I.A. or D.O.D. or the C.I.C. nor H.S.A. and certainly not of the many initials and capitals of broadcast disinformation; no thought of U.F.O.s or cakes.
I live at the top of Meridian hill, and get my fix over at Clarence’s coffee shop on Harvard. You get a pretty good swath of sky crossing over broad 16th street, between the spires, and across Georgetown to the airport lanes: You can always see an improbably fat jetliner creeping down to land to the west. But to the south, and the north, usually you can only see sky and cloud, the high horizon of flat apartment block planes a frame of reference for the direction they are driven on the wind. I always look at the clouds on the corner, waiting for the light to change; always, except when there are none—then I cringe and squint in the glare, eyes furtive for the change. But it has been cloudy for weeks and today was no exception: an unbroken but luxuriant down comforter, the color of clean white wool, where it folds in pale shadow, rolling, stately, in the usual fashion, from the northwest. Raising my eyes across the boulevard, and sweeping them past the extravagant garden of the Peace King Center and on up the facade of the Unification Church , up the spire, into the sky —
— I stopped. You know the ritual: I looked away, and I looked back. And I took off my glasses and looked at them; and I squinted and rubbed my eyes, and I squinted and, replacing my glasses, looked back. I don’t know how many blimps Goodyear had, but I remember at baseball games in my youth, the whole crowd craning up in shared joy and awe from the stands as the icon rolled across the ellipsoid stadium sky. A kid, I thought it was great and special as fire-works, or John Candelaria pitching a perfect inning. And maybe it was—
—There, over Georgetown , just whiter than the bank of clouds, and apparently halfway between that ceiling and the city floor, floated the blimp. Although there was no visible signage, no tail flash with the Homeland Security device affixed in light, it was obvious that’s what it was. I looked around for any sign of Luftwaffe bombers, or the Al Qaeda air force, but saw no threat. It must be working.
I was a little dazed. The absurd white craft was swimming up the sky, north, passed behind the Unification Church spire, and began turning east, as though it would cruise over to where I, the only person in the city who had stopped mid-stride, rubbed his eyes, then, stood there gaping at it. I looked around again. If there had been another pedestrian waiting to cross, I would have asked that person to look over there and tell me whether they saw it too. There was no one nearby but some people lined in cars at the light, not looking at the sky. There should be people in the square, gawking at it—a father holding his daughter up on his shoulder, her face shining with wonder, a mother kneeling next to her pointing son, patiently explaining lighter-than-aircraft—but the people in the square looked at the cars, those in the bus stop looked at the ground. A scene from the successful hollywood blockbuster moving picture spectacle Independence Day popped into my head, a TV news report “Los Angelinos are asked not to fire their guns at” the alien craft squatting over the city. I thought, don’t have to worry about that much here. I got my coffee, asking Clarence whether he’d seen the blimp, and was treated to, shall we say, a more colorful report on his feelings about the current state of the world than I have ever before enjoyed. He said he read about it in the paper, and that the Shrub had to do something to make it look like he was doing something, and that the bill repealing the handgun ban in the District had passed the House. But he was angry about misallocation of resources that would buy the city a ‘ball team while children are killing each other on the street. He’s not a Senators fan, these days; nor I.
Fred Barbash and Carol Morello in the newspaper say “it’s nothing to worry about. It’s on our side,” but I’m not sure who they are, or whether I am on their side. But I’m sure that must comfort the pinks. They report, further, that the Army “craft will conduct test runs . . . designed to determine how effective electro-optical and infrared cameras are at detecting potentially threatening movements on the ground,” here, over the more-or-less enfranchised citizens of the capital of the United States, although “the equipment already is used in Iraq and Afghanistan.” There must not be a sufficient presumption of privacy in those lands to allow an effective test of its capabilities there, where we’re involved in war. So it would stand to reason that they must test it here. I wondered what those “potentially threatening movements” were, then remembered how I had stopped suddenly, planted both feet, and stared at that thing while the hair on my body stood up. Luckily, I had left my rocket-propelled grenade launcher in the apartment, opting for the more versatile coffee mug. Well, they didn’t hit me with the minimally-lethal microwave pain device this time.
So anyway, although you didn’t believe all those other things I said I saw, I thought I’d tell you about the Homeland Security Blimp, which makes no sound but the soft susurration of blood pounding past flushed paranoid ears. Which makes no sound. Maybe I am paranoid to think we’re always being watched. Maybe the presence of the Homeland Security Blimp, in this bad year, will soothe me: You are being watched, dear boy, for your own good. Get used to it, and you won’t be paranoid anymore.
Suspiciously yours,
“Deviant” Don