PARANOIA

        Don't ya just HATE gettin' sick?  You know - or perhaps you don't - or don't even care - that C. G. Jung, psychiatrist/analyst extraordinaire, wrote that one succumbs to physical illness at times because one's psyche is SO frustrated and hurt, even, about its being ignored by the conscious mind, it fiendishly causes your immune system to cave/dip/blink, if you will, thereby permitting physical illness serious enough to force bed rest.  Certainly not a protracted stay, but an amount of time to THINK, reflect, take stock of one's emotional health. 
        Thus it was that upon being visited by the 'flu' or whatever pathogen usually has its way with 'commoners', I did.  But before getting down to the business of listening to my inner self; to discovering and dealing with what must be the diabolic but dormant disturbances that are threatening my psychic equilibrium - in much the same way that arthritic joint pain threatens total immobility - I first meticulously set up 'psychic shop' in my bed. 
        I donned freshly-boiled PJ's and slid onto similarly-sanitized linens and perched - having first grabbed a yet-to-be-published manuscript written by a new friend, should enlightenment regarding potentially incipient neuroses not pounce post-haste, I reflexively hit the remote permitting an attack by purulent national and international NEWS.
        (I wish we could get into that manuscript - "A Spy at Home" by Joseph Rinaldo, something of a new friend to me but no literary parvenu to his readership.  In fact, our very meeting was somewhat 'threatening' - in a way that 'things that go bump in the night' can threaten total immobility secondary to emotional paralization.)
        On our national scene, NO movement seemed to have been made toward the discovery/recovery of that infant angel-child, Lisa.  This tragic story plods forward, a reminder of our vulnerability - in when in the supposed cocoon of our own home.  On a larger scale nationally, the convoluted circumstances surrounding "Operation Fast and Furious" is still being trotted about but the pace was moving toward canter, carting along its cargo of cold darkness and death as volatile as the barrels of the arsenal of long, metal guns aimed at ITS heart.
        (One day, not long ago, while quickly rifling through the messages on my Facebook site, a visual among them assaulted my erstwhile e-correspondence quietude.  There in the center of the list of missives from friends and fam, lurked a profile photo - strange to me and, more unsettling, taking the final shreds out of any belief I may have remaining in the 'kindness of strangers'.  This was no 'streetcar of desire'.  Rather it generated in me that ole threatening feeling - the way being thrown under a bus threatens cessation of all physical activity.
        Standing in profile was a trench coat-clad man; he was peering into a home through the front entrance door which seemed to have been rendered ajar by his advancing, silent leg; finally his intentions were as dark as the black revolver he held in his raised/poised hand.  The photo was accompaniment to the message-sender's identity - Joseph Rinaldo.  BRAIN:  'We do not know him'.  The 'icing' for me was the white, reversed-out print superimposed on the image: A Spy at Home.)
      Capping off the NEWS-NOT-TO-WATCH while one is abed, attempting to heal - physically AND emotionally, was an ominous olio of international intrigue set to be staged on 'home' ground.  The very same Attorney General Eric Holder, whose reputation for relaxed recollection had been alluded to earlier in connection with the 'Fast and Furious' debacle, called a press conference at around four in the afternoon - that coveted 'after-school/pre-dinner/homework-helping' family time - to announce that 'NOTHING HAPPENED'. BUT.  Were it not for a legion of cracker jack security/justice folks who follow HIS malapropisms and marching orders, the Israeli and Saudi embassies as well as the Ambassador from Saudi would have been 'Ashes-on-Embassy-Row'. 
        And.  The engineer of THIS 'almost' was a car salesman from Texas who enjoys dual American-Iranian citizenship and HE would have 'driven his Chevy-to-this-levee' allegedly at the behest of IRAN.  The shores of the Potomac remained calm in the face of this averted action but our Secretary of State made it crystal clear that she was NOT pleased; this plotting business was NOT nice; Iran will most assuredly be hearing from her/US.  This news was followed by a spate of specious/sporadic speculation which expressed summarily OUR distaste/dislike of ANY such 'Cloak-and-Dagger' non-activity.
        (Feeling electronically violated by this 'Spy at Home' guy, I asked my husband - still reclining at the time - what to do.  "Delete it"  was HIS trigger-response/solution.  But first I checked with a few friends about security problems on the site.  My dear friend, KD immediately inquired RIGHT ON MY WALL, "what kind of security issues on facebook?"  Daunted, I deleted, reported and changed my password for the second time in ten days. 
        Yes, I'd been 'hacked' the previous week so naturally I was getting edgy.  Let's face it, dear reader, I still recall when 'hacking' was a participle - like demonstrating or working.  I seem also to recall a time when it was associated with a taxi.  Imagine, then, my consternation as to what evil motivates the 'hackerazzi' to elevate their intrusive/injurious pastime to the level of a sacrament.  Well.  I wasn't having any more to do with it.  Rather, I visited my secure social sites - one of my PERSONAL favs
        On the third such page of unusual hunting, I found the two common denominators, whom I DID know from another venture, but my wandering orb stumbled upon a third name that had a familiar ring - Joseph Rinaldo!  No photo.  Very LONG, RESPECTED career in Tennessee in the investment industry but - GULP - now WRITING international spy fiction!  OOOPS.  It was the very same 'author' whom I had 'reported' on facebook.  He - in THAT instance - had, I came to find out when he replied to my embarrassed apology - sent me a message at the suggestion of a fellow writer we know in common, asking me to review his new book: A Spy at Home.

Joe was working with an OLD VERSION of the cover when he'd sent what I've come to call 'Scary Man' as his profile picture with the message/request to me.  PRESENTLY, you'd be looking for the cover to the left when his book comes out.  Speaking of which - his book, not its cover - Joe spins a fascinating, extremely well-written yarn of international intrigue from the vantage point of his most kind/likable/albeit competent retired CIA operative.  Indeed, I will crawl right out on that literary limb and tell you that ONLY if Iran's foiled plot of this week is committed to brightly-wrapped hard-cover fiction, will his foray be trumped.)
        Joseph Rinaldo wields a tricky quill.  Watch it.  Be alert.  Even so, you'll be shocked in the end.  But.  Better to be shocked than 'spied on', I say.  And, in that the NEWS kept 'breaking'; my endeavors to hear MY 'inner voice' and thus heal the psyche rendered impossible;  I read - an activity in and of itself therapeutic inside and out.  At the end of THAT day, I felt rested, lost in Joe's imagination, able to shut the door on the 'bad-news-blues'.  I strongly recommend it - reading AND Rinaldo.  If you're going to suffer intrusion, DO bring THIS 'Spy' into your home.  Better by far than 'chicken s____ soup.  Later, Lorane. . . . .