Judge of True Greatness - Mahatma Gandhi

I Gave You Fat for Christmas

25^th December 2011

Dear Cassi,

Well, I guess for the expanse of the western world it’s still Christmas day a time that brings joy and love so for folks and leaves others out it the cold. If there were only so much joy in the world this would make a peck more sense to me, given that the joyful spend their time soaking up the happy like sponges.

    

I spent the day baking personally. Corn bread muffins were my holiday gift to those folks on my block this year, and I made them in what variety I could. The blueberry and the cranberry were traditional picks for the time of year. I made a few with ginger which give them a nice golden color and a good amount with cinnamon with makes them looks dull, but they taste good.

    

The folks on my block gave back some. I found the normal array of fresh Mexican food, chocolate, candy, and cookies. One of the houses on my gift list always gives my brother a five dollar bill when he comes by with gifts. That makes me wonder, but I pay it little mined as baking is what I like about this practice.

    

You have to wonder why we as a people tend to give out unhealthy food for holidays. In some cases people brag about how bad it is for them and then give it out to their friends as if heart disease was the greatest gift to human kind.

    

I imagine no one would be thrilled to have salad for Christmas, but in today’s world that would be the better gift. I grant that I gave every one of these folks something I made with my own hands and in return normally got nothing, secondly got store bought, and in the rarest case got handmade.

    

Still, it stands to reason that I’m not doing any of these folks a favor with handing them something loaded with sugar and starch. I do this because of tradition but is there a better way?

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal 

Guts to Bite - August Strindberg

Valve Disaster the Second

Reading back over this letter I feel it has to be a bit rushed.

Look, I’m starting a new job, getting my home in order, starting grad school, and then my washer brakes down! Cut me some slack will you? This has been one of the longest years of my life.

10^th December 2011

Dear Cassi,

   

As I said before my neighbor called me just as I was to get into the shower to help me with my washer and dryer. I put my shirt back on and ran outside where he was standing in my driveway.

   

He was talking into his phone looking at the street. “Turn around” I said into my phone and he finally realized I was standing there behind him. I had Twenty minutes to get out of the house but he couldn’t come back in the morning after I got out of work. I got the dog out of the garage and jumped in the shower as he carted off my old washer and dryer.

   

I washed up to the tune of my dog crying to be let back in and jumped out of the shower to find him sweeping up after the old dryer. I told him I was going to mop there when I got home in the morning and closed everything up, let the dog back in, and got to work.

   

I came home and mopped up. My neighbor came home just after the delivery company called me and said they would be at my place in half an hour. It was a race to get things done at that point. The biggest goof was that one of my valves was miss-shelved, so I got the wrong one. It turned backwards even though it looked just the same. We could still use it, no big thing, just figure if I wanted to deal with getting another one.

   

It took us another hour or so to get the washer and dryer in, and they are running a cycle just to get cleaned up. It was a full day, but for the rest of the weekend I’ll be doing laundry.

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal

Hint of Innocence - Brandon

Valve Stem Disaster

9^th December 2011

Dear Cassi, 

   

It’s been a hard day. I finally got the call on Friday that my new washer and dryer would be in, and I decided to mop under the old ones. I’ve had issues with things growing in the detritus of my home so getting it into the garbage has been a major push for me over the last few months.

   

I pulled the washer and dryer away from the wall and tried to close the shutoff calves on the washer when one of the valves broke. The handle came off in my handed leaving the exposed stem in the wall.

   

I looked into the pit of old chrome and there around the bolt was a star of brass which was the end of the stem. This was bad. I had dealt with this kind of bad before, but it was bad that was never easy do deal with.

   

I snapped a picture of the stem with my cell and ran out to the hardware store to get a replacement. When I got there I looked at the new brass and had no idea which one would work so I took out my phone, and the images hadn’t saved.

   

I grown and came back home realizing that there was no two ways about it, I had to have the old valve with me when I got the new one. Then came the fun part, the valve was not only stuck but plastered over and too deep to get a wrench around.

   

I pounded the wall open then found a box wrench that fit and finally got the dang thing out. I ran out and got two new valves in the holiday traffic, came home, and got the water on in time to shower for work.

   

Just as I’m getting ready for work my neighbor calls to tell me he can help. It’s been a long day.

Plumbing sucks,

Richard Leland Neal

If there is No Enemy Withing - African Proverb

Unless We Stand for Something - Peter Marshall

The Jew with a Charismas Tree

6^th December 2011

Dear Cassi,

   

One of the more quirky things I recall about the holidays is that before she passed away my mother insisted on having a real Christmas tree. This was a point of note only because my mother was a practicing Reform Jew.

   

To be honest, my mother was never very religious but was a stubborn sort who held to her belief as a protest to the world around her. We celebrated Christian holidays as did anyone else but kept also the days of the Hebrew calendar. 

   

The tree was a large business for us with wood ornaments and lights. Under it we put our Chanukah gifts and opened one a day. Trimming the tree was something family did together and anything like that was something my mother loved. To be honest with you we had Chinese New Year ever now and again and it was loads of fun.

   

The real tree was a major point of conversation for my father who complained about it with my mother sixteen years in the ground. Given that they had not been married twenty three years at the time makes me think that the old man was one to hold a grudge.

   

That would be the nature of my family for you, even the good things turn bitter. The old man wants to pretend nothing is wrong, but no one asks why I’m not there during the holidays.

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal

The Key to Failure - Bill Cosby

Nightmare Story

I wrote this when I was greenly fifteen and the darkness of its nature tells of my own mental state. It can be considered reasonably coherent if disjointed and out of tense.

The whole thing is supposed to be a troubled dream of both the past and future for the character, but it came out mostly past.

Trying to write at the time was like drowning, I couldn’t keep a clear view of events. I believe I edited the first eight percent of it or so before forgetting about the rest for sixteen years, but this comes to you almost exactly as I wrote it back then.

Nick Strike was a nom de plume I had worked out for myself, because I thought it was cool. As I have said before, I wasn’t that bright.

28^th December 1994

A Silk Cloth Soaked In Hate

by Nick Strike

Above the earthly skies a battle wages. In a flash of flames half of an alien craft crashes towards earth, the moon turned red and the light of stars broke into colors of a grim rainbow. The explosion is heard planet wide. In its center a distorted onceman's metal mask is shattered and the face beyond is of metal and it to falls to the ground. Behind it mounds of scar tissue are seen. 

          

An 18 year old boy sits up in bed the night-mare he has seen left him sweaty and petrified. As his mind cleared he renumbered the death of his family just hours ago. A race of fly like creatures had attacked his little town and they had him to.... 

         

He goes into a transient state and remembers the time just hours ago, where his family was slaughtered. He remembers the faint typing of his computer. The sound of information being stored on a disk is music to his ears as he smiles in triumph. He pulls the disk from its slot and puts it in an iron box, obviously fire proof. He walked across the concrete floor, carrying the box as if it were pure gold. He lifts a crow bar that sat beside him, setting down the box. He quickly went to work lifting an enormous slab of concrete and setting it to the side. He lifted the lid of a trunk which was in a separate room beneath the concrete floor. He closes the lid of the trunk, locking it tightly, and then sliding the concrete over. 

   

As if a miraculous recovery from a horrible disease he leaped up. Seconds before he touches the ground, he is caught by an explosion and barred into the far wall. Despite the force set out upon his body, he stands up.  Flames dance about him as two hideous creatures with four arms and an extremely large, long nose hurl themselves from the flames toward him. He dodges the first and meets the second with his fist. It falls to the ground, screaming in agony. He stops for a second, examining his hand and marveling at his extreme power. The skin on his hand is torn by the collision of his hand against the alien rib cage. The next attacks him from behind but he quickly pulls the alien over his head as if it were a rag doll. And before he knew what he was doing, the alien body is crushed into the concrete.

   

He looked at the alien bodies. They were crumbled down, dead. Suddenly, he remembered his family, and he streaked toward the door on one of the walls.  He hit the door before he could stop himself, and tore through the heavy wood as if it were paper. Suddenly he was surrounded by the creatures.

           

Instantly he jumped to combat, but he was overwhelmed. His last waking moments are of his family burning too death. 

Listen More - Erma Bombeck

The Death of Gatsby

Ah, the spectrum of things we have all done in our lives thanks to our under par education. This is a song I wrote in my freshman year of high school. The date on the file was the 19^th of May in 1995. How true that is I can only speculate, it’s probably not that far off.

I had a group project based on the novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald and we each had to write a song. I do recall my English teacher commenting on how much he liked the work. Well, you can’t get the full version by reading it, but tell me what you think.

The death of Gatsby

you wanted it all,

but you’re too late

you wanted it all,

your life’s carved in slate   

you wanted it all

so you had to fall

and that’s not great

now the water runs red

in your estate  

a bullet sealed your-ur fate

 

you had it all you wanted more

you had it all and you know the score

you wanted more

and you took it

but it wasn't enough

you had it all

and you let it rot

you took from them

and they tore you apart

and now it’s over

you had it all you wanted more

you had it all and you know the score

you wanted it all

so you had to fall

and that's not great

now the water runs red

in your estate

a bullet sealed your-ur fate

you had it all you wanted more

you had it all and you know the score

you had it all

and you let it rot

you took from them

and they tore you apart

and now it’s over

you had it all you wanted more

you had it all and you know the score

you wanted it all

so you had to fall

and that's not great

now the water runs red

on your estate

a bullet sealed your-ur fate

you had it all and you let it rot

you took from them

and they tore you apart

and now it’s over

ooooh now it’s over 

God Uses Broken Things - Vance Havner

Eyes on Marriage - Benjamin Franklin

Why Didn’t I Listen To Me

If there is one thing I know about myself it is that I don’t give up easily. I fought with my father until it became clear it wasn’t worth having him in my life, I was friends with this person until he became miserable to be around, and finally I was a theatre student until my teachers honestly wouldn’t tell me how to look for work.

If only I had listened to myself back in 2007 and left the theater major I could have had three college degrees by now.

7^th October 2007

Dear (soldier deployed in Iraq),

It’s been some time and I haven’t written because school has been such a pain in my ass. The first thing that happened was that I was told I couldn’t work on any of my pre existing scripts in class. The second thing that happened was that everything I turned in was said to be not interesting enough. That includes every play I sent you. 

It really is time I change majors and move on to something more reasonable or at least give up writing entirely. There is one possibility and that is to give one of my full length scripts to the department chair and see if she wants to put it on. I have little confidence in this idea but with no other option I must do so.

I will be handing her “Levi” with “student written play” on the first page. I’d say there is a 50% possibility that I will get her to read it and even less then that that it will be put on. Well, what can I do, old friend, time is short and this 17 unit semester is kicking my ass. Anyway, I’m going to e-mail this, and if I don’t get a response I’ll snail mail it by Friday.

Stay safe out there,

Richard 

If I did Not Laugh - Abraham Lincoln

You Don’t Get it

I don’t recall what I was responding to with this letter, but it was the practice of the addressee to try to get me into situations that I found stressful. He tried his best to sabotage my life, and then he got vengeful when I finely walked away from him.

Human decency is so rarely human that I must consider it a goal to aspire to rather than a fact of our nature.

8^th August, 2007  

Now look, (Soldier on deployment in Iraq),

 Once again you just don’t get it. I could get another job, yes, but not a better one. I’ve now been hired by twice as many security companies then I’ve worked for and the biggest obstacle on my way to getting another job has been school. Read “The Applicant” I go over my problems.

Getting another job as a security guard is not consistent with getting out of college and getting into what I want to do with my life. You said I was wrong in what I did with (my first job), but if I hadn’t done it I would still be at (that job) making twelve thousand dollars a year. I’ve made up my losses, and now I can pay for school.

This is much like the time that I gave those two hundred dollars back to my dad. That was me making it totally clear that I was done with his bullshit, and you couldn’t understand. Now, two hundred dollars is pocket change. When you said that you were looking at used laptops I said “maybe I should send him my old pile of shit and go by a new one, I can get an Apple for eight hundred”. If I didn’t just plunk down eighteen hundred for school the thing would be in the mail for you right now. As it stands I really should hold off, but you get the point.

I’ve said time and time again that my life is going to suck, and that I need to let it suck, but remember that my experience as a security guard is conducive to my work as a writer much like your army days are for you. I get something out of my every day shit storm, and that’s important. I’m working on a set of one acts involving security and “Welcome to the Gurd Shack” is about my experience at (my current job).

I’m trying to move up, and you’re telling me to move sideways. Frankly, one of the guards who was giving me problems has already quit and two of them are realizing how idiotic they sounded. One of the guards was really upset about what happened, and he is a long standing officer.

Not that I’m upset with you over this but the point remains that I’m just telling you what is going on with my life and not complaining. I don’t have anything ells to talk about so I talk about work.

You should probably save all my letters and read them again when you’re on leave so you can get my meaning better, but then it’s all not that important.

Stay safe out there,

Richard Leland Neal

Shines a Good Deed - Shakespeare

You Dare Expect Decency

This isn’t a letter it’s a report sent to loss prevention of one of my previous clients. In this situation I had a number of guards who felt they had a right to steal, destroy property, and make the client’s employees suffer.

Because of the nature of this report I have to come up with names for the guards involved to protect the guilty so let me do that for you now.

Officers Mango, Pipes, and Dingbat will be the players in today’s event.

I have no idea where the mentality comes from that people thing they should be able to do as they please at work and never get punished for it, but I can tell you that any of the events listed should have been grounds for termination or transfer.  What it came down to was mismanagement on the part of both my company and client loss prevention.

Problems like this tend to get bigger until they explode and I know that eventually all the guards and management staff mentioned were eventually terminated for related incidents.

Report submitted July 28, 2007

For: (Loss Prevention)

Report submitted at your request regarding misconduct of security officers working at the feeder gate.

Upon arriving on duty on the 27^th of July of 2007 at twenty-three hundred hours (11:00 p.m.) I was approached by Officer (Pipes) who stated “I’m getting tired of you running your mouth.” He remarked that I told (the area manager) about guards throwing seals around and about a toy monkey. I stated that I reported what I thought was stolen freight, and that I didn’t want to get fired for stealing.  (Officer Pipes) then said “so out of all the guards out here they’re going to single out you. No one was going to see it.” Security Officer (Mango) then said, “no one likes a snitch”. (Pipes) also stated that the seals could be picked up, and I said that had he picked them up I would not have made an issue of it.

The incident with the monkey had occurred on a Thursday or Friday morning on or after the 12^th of July. I’m almost sure that it happened on the 12^th or 13^th, because I don’t remember having a bandage on my head that morning and I had been injured at the gate the following week. It had been ordered by a supervisor that at two hundred hours (2:00 a.m.) I takeover traffic in the three lanes furthest from the street and the other officers work the one remaining lane, so I had almost no contact with them.

I noted that morning around one-forty-five (1:45 a.m.) a stuffed monkey sitting on the ground in the building next to the door leading to the smoking area. At around five that morning I noted what looked like the same monkey hanging from the ladder on a sixty-inch seal. As soon as the other officers left I called the front gate and spoke to the commanding Officer stating “I don’t know if it is the same monkey just that it looks like the same monkey that was in the building.” I was instructed to cut the monkey down and place it in the guard office. I complied.

The issue with seals has been on going for some time. I have been finding twelve-inch seals sealed to sixty-inch seals so that the two were stuck to the ladders, sixty and twelve inch seals sealed into themselves so that they could not be used, and twelve inch seals sealed together. The two pre-mentioned guards and Officer (Dingbat) have made a game of throwing seals over the ladder and into a box.  As a result we have been finding seals in the bushes by the handful.   

On the night of the 27^th after it being stated to me that my “snitching” would be met with ill tidings I noted (Dingbat) holding a twelve-inch seal with cones from cone seals covering it so that it could not be used. I did not see him actually put the cones on the seal, but this is destruction of (client) property.

Your Mission on Earth - Richard Bach

Right Implies a Responsibility - John D. Rockefeller Jr.

Injured at Work

If there is one thing that strikes me about these letters it is the warmth with which I wrote them. That’s the funny thing is that the best part of this eighteen year friendship was when he was the furthest away from my company.

What does it say about a person when their absents is more pleasing than their presents? What does it say about the folks who feel that way?

21^st July, 2007

Dear (soldier deployed in Iraq),

The most interesting thing that happened to me this week is I had an accident at work. It was funny, no pain, just and odd tingling sensation. I was setting a “breaker bar” on a spin lock seal when the seal broke prematurely and the bar came down and hit me in the head. 

At first I thought that I was okay, and then I started to bleed. I was cutting seals and washing blood from my head when I thought, “okay, this bleeding isn’t going to stop so what do I do?” Get my shirt off and use it for a bandage. That was when I heard honking, and a driver was holding out a role of paper towels. Nice to know that some people still give a shit.

I could hear the driver telling the other guards “the guard back there is bleeding,” and one other driver got out of her truck to come and see. The other guards just kept saying “you’re going to need stitches; you’re going to need stitches.”

“Oh, how bad can it really be?” I said and went to go look at it in the mirror. The wound was less than an inch, no exposed bone, no pealed back skin. Just a deep cut but nothing to worry about.

After all that fuss they didn’t even let me go home early. I worked for more than six hours with the wound open so if I had needed stitches I would have been screwed. You can’t stitch a wound that has been open too long or you seal in infection.  

When I got home I could see that blood had soaked through my shirt, into my under shirt, and left a red stain on my chest.

I’ll have a new scar now, but other than that no ill on me. I was lucky; about a year ago another guard had his head knocked in the same way. He lived but needed surgery and the company didn’t give him a dime for it. All it did was leave me bleeding from the head.    

In other news I’m sending you another play “the Applicant”. You will note now that I have the title on the header so you can tell what play it is, and the page numbers are there for you. It being a true story I may have to lengthen it before I send you the end so the number of pages may change.

The problem with the true stories is that sometimes you remember stuff later that needs to be there to make it all work. The problem with fiction is that you must establish plausibility. I have one part of the story where what really happened is that the man started talking about the cold war then started farting and farting and farting until the interview was over. I couldn’t find a way to put that in and I think it may be too much for this one play.

I don’t know, old friend, again the silly squabbles of my life pale by comparison to what is happening in yours. Then the truth is that you have an end in sight. A defined end with a sure promise of the reward you seek. I wonder if I need too much to make me happy or if what the executor of this estate said is true that I’m just an unhappy person. It may even be possible that the problems of my life are necessary for my creative mind to work.

I hope not. If that were the truth I’d compensate by having thirty to forty hour movie marathons were I drink monster and watch crappie movies until I get a good story idea.

My major project for the summer is still “A Mind Bending,” but I’m having problems with the script. I have a total of twenty one pages and only ten in the story line before I start skipping around. That’s one of the things that had really helped me in the past is writing parts that happen later in the story and then connecting the scenes.

Writing for me, (soldier), is like digging a trench. You know where it is going to start and were it is going to end, but you can’t get every one of the diggers digging at the same place or they just get in each other’s way.           

One of the best parts in this play so far is when David, the main character starts to hear voices. The three voices are Rage, Fear, and Control, three parts of him that have broken off to become their own personalities. They then explain to him what they think he should do to end his problems, but their advice is incomprehensible to him. They give him an analogy of his life and provide the audience with greater understanding of the character. 

For that scene I will need to add production notes to simulate the reality of this event and what we know about its real happenings. This is one of the reasons I’m hoping to take more psychology classes. I don’t intend to change my major but if the events of this semester are as bad as that of last I will. 

Were it not for the fact that I can’t stand being a security guard any more I would have considered a double major, but that is water under the bridge at this point. My total tuition payment for this semester was 1,800 dollars. I have the money, that’s no big deal, but it is still clear to me that I would have never been able to go to the (the state college) working for (my first employer). I really should have changed companies and hoped, but I think I have a problem with taking abuse. I keep doing it and not walking away when the walking is good.

To life, love, and the new dawn,

Richard Leland Neal

Who Holds Tomorrow - Albert Einstein

Security Blues

If there is one thing I need to get out of my “to be posted” box it’s the letters sent to Iraq.

That was a dark time in my life and I said so many idiotic things. Well, laugh at me why don’t you?

13^th July, 2007

Dear (soldier on deployment in Iraq),

I got your letter today, and I can’t tell you how much I regret not joining the army as a young man, and I can’t tell you how much I want to get done with school now. I hate everything about college at this point, but I want my degree and to move on with my life. (My evil sister) and his wife are now trying to do things with (my brother), meaning that they intend to do something about the Richard problem.

No typo here. My sister is very manly, and it has always been an inside joke that my brother-in-law is the wife of that marriage.

The same way the military should be moving is how I should be living my life. Move fast, hit hard, and get your ass out of there before they get a sight on you. That’s not how it’s happening I know, but if everyone wants to go killing each other in Iraq who are we to go stopping them? That’s the attitude I have to take with my family. Let them tare each other apart and get my ass out of here.

The plan at this point is to stage a few daring raids while building up a large force and then, when the moment is right, everything will charge. The night must become day and the day night. They will not know how to respond and be defeated. That is why I work on plays now, so that I will have a better chance of getting out of this shit faster.

As for your father, honestly, direct conflict is not the best action. If it were me in your shoes I would ask why he didn’t love me anymore. Seriously, why get angry and have him say, “That woman turned my son against me,” when you can make him feel like a shit? If you said “I don’t call you, because I don’t want to hear you tell me I’m as screw-up” or something of the nature it will change the way he looks at this.

You could also tell the truth, and say that (your wife) is helping you get your life back in order, which she is, and that he is standing in the way of that. In the end you could always say: “I thought you wanted me to be happy “. That would do the job.

Not that this is anything new with your family. They never understood how we could be such good friends. It’s like we are old army buddies, and I have never been in the army. In the end we must remember that life goes on no matter what may happen in the lives of men like us.   

In other news you would not believe what happen at work. One of the most junior officers got pissed off because he thought that I wasn’t doing enough work and started screaming at me. I told the company that he should be suspended because it’s obvious that I do the most work and that he is just lazy. They confirmed that I do the most work but refused to do anything about (the guard)'s actions. The next day at work one of the guards called me “wonder bread” it loud enough for me to hear. I promptly called (my supervisor) and left a voicemail about what happened, and now the other guards aren’t allowed to talk to me at all.

I was assigned to one of the out bound lanes, and I worked entirely alone. Only thing is that it’s less work for me to work one lane alone than to help other guards with two. I get more reading done now, and I’m far happier working this way.

I have no faith in the company’s ability to end this problem but my goal is not to find a comfortable place in security but to get out of security and move on to something better. That is why this is a change for the better. I’m unimpeded by the actions of the other officers.

Stay well my friend,

Richard Leland Neal

Full of Themselves - Dwight L. Moody

Darkness of Dawn

22^nd November 2011

Dear Cassi,

   

   

The details of my mother’s death should now be clear to you, but the final note in this sad song is the topic for today. A good amount of my inheritance both in liquid assets and in overall value disappeared.

   

My home had always been a livable one. Not lavish by any standards but well kept. Within six month my father had ripped up the carpets and replaced them with the cheapest tiles he could find. The thin acrylic tiles were laid atop older wood, and so the wood rotted and expanded making the acrylic come up.

   

In six months my home went from middle class to a slum, and a slum it has been ever since. The old man felt no need to come home on a normal day, and so he came to see his children on the weekends just as he had when my mother lived. This gave my siblings free reign to do as they wished.

   

It is during this time that I learned to believe that abuse was normal as every day I came home to be beaten down. I lived in a family with no rules other than who can lie the best is right. It is from this darkness that my depression came.

   

Later when I complained of these things my grandmother could come up with no better defense for her son than that he could have stolen more.

   

From that time in my life was shrouded in darkness. I’d like to think that dawn has finally broken, and that I can see the sun. If that is true then it will be a slow sun rise.

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal

What Mama Knows - Erma Bombeck

Listen to Pity's Call - Phoebe Cary

The Nature of Forgiveness

A good amount is said about forgiveness in this world, and I’m one of those folks who needs to have an idea of when it’s time. This is what I think, and you can tell me if I’m right.

17^th November 2011

Dear Cassi,

   

Something happened at work on my second day that struck a note with me. I was manning the front desk alone, and I had no business doing so as I was still training, when one of the managers came out training another new employee.

   

A conversation was had of which I can give little detail, but the subject of forgiveness came up. My take on is that you should only forgive those who admit that they were wrong and pledge to right things.

   

If a person stole and would not return their plunder with interest, then you cannot forgive them. In this regard we must understand first that everyone makes mistakes, and second that it is so much easier to harm than to heal. Those who freely admit that they were wrong, are sorry, and will work to make it up to us are worthy of forgiveness.

   

The interesting thing about my argument was that it brought a tear to the manager’s eye. I found it strange that a man who had worked around so much suffering could be so easily moved. My words were not profound or eloquent. I would even call them rushed and incomplete, but I think my point was made.

   

I’ve been told that you should forgive four your own sake. That bad idea was hatched from those who are consumed by their anger. We forgive the dead because they have no more option of redemption. For those of us still living we should place in the nature of our resolve the understanding that forgiveness comes at the price of honesty and hard work. It is as much a crime to forgive the unworthy as it is for them to transgress. All forgiving the unworthy will do is give them leave to be bad people once again.

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal

Footprints in Your Memory - Nicholas Sperling

Webcomic WTF

At one time it was my practice to send as much in one envelope as I possibly could, and so every letter I sent out had two sided pages. I got away from that at some time in the depths of my depression.

So that can fall will also rise, and I have rekindled the practice. Now if I sent one envelope every day I’d be back on track in one week.

15^th November 2011

Dear Cassi,

   

If there is one thing I have an affinity for it is projects, and today I’m introducing you to the latest of these. In an effort to get things in order I have been putting my webcomics together in a book. As I have no record of what comics I sent out to you I have no real alternative but to send you the whole thing page by page. If nothing else this should be an easy read for you, and it will get me motivated to get the thing squared away.

   

I want to send a nice letter to the old website designer asking him to remove my work from his site. I want to have all the original post dates well logged in by then, but with over two hundred comics to go now I have my work cut out for me.

   

If there is one thing I should do it is set the story strait to that fellow. I imagine your ex-husband/my ex-friend had words with him. It had to have gone something like “he won’t talk to me so don’t talk to him,” but the web geek was in the room when I told your ex that I wouldn’t come see him again unless he called first and left me a voice mail. A ten second call was too much to ask.

   

In any case, I need to cut ties with this fellow and anyone that thinks that I was so wrong in making those small requests. Honestly, I sat over your ex-husband’s bed side when he was in the hospital, sent him two letters a week when he was deployed in Iraq, and even let him move in with me, but none of that was enough for him to simply be polite.

   

You will see comics on the back of my letters once again. I hope you and Scott gets a kick out of them.

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal

The Experience of Others - Otto Von Bismarck

Heater Rat

13^th November 2011

Dear Cassi,

   

I gave you the run down on my crazy bills. Well just as crazy as the bills was the story of my heater. I think it must have been on the frits for two years but most of the time I was at work so it made little difference. However, with the new developments I felt it was time to get the thing repaired.

   

First I called a company that sent me something in the mail. They said they would come in five days and it would cost me a hundred dollars for them just to look. They said it would be a fifty dollar fee if I canceled in less than 48 hours.

   

Smelling a rat, I pulled out the old paperwork from when the heater was installed in 92 and called the company that had installed it in the first place. They said it would be sixty nine dollars, and they would be here within the day. Getting warmer, but still not great.

   

Then my neighbor came across the street and told me that he was getting his air unit worked on, and the repair man would come over and look at my heater for free. That was the first bit of good luck I’ve had in a long time. This fellow came over and looked at my heater and said it was the fan exactly what I had thought. He said he had to check on part availability and that he would call me in a few hours.

   

I called the second company back and told them that I had already found the problem. I gave them the whole story. They asked if I wanted a second opinion. ‘I wouldn’t mind one,’ I said, ‘but I’m not paying sixty nine dollars for it.’

   

You have to figure that they would have been better off taking down what information they could have over the phone and giving me a price, but if they want to be stubborn they can lose business.

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal 

Always Watching - Robert Fulghum

And I May Not - William Arthur Ward

The Innocent

This poem was transcribed from paper in nineteen ninety five but written when I was in Junior High School. I believe this style is called diamante. I recall studying it in class back then.

What happened is that I first worked on a PC in nineteen ninety four, and the work processor I had before then did not translate into the new format so I transcribed things.

You tell me if this is right for the mind of a 13 year old.

Sometime between 1992 and 1994

The Innocent

flowers

fragile, precious

growing, reaching, blooming,

soldiers, boots, guns, blood,

wilting, braking, falling

tattered, Bloody

war

The Time We Really Look Big - Kevin Leman

Pen Pal Ish

I remember this well. We had pen pals for Spanish and I never made the connection that I was only supposed to write in Spanish for them.

What can I say? I lived in a home where I had to accept violence as a way of life. I came to school and was harassed and berated. At no point was there even one voice to cut the hell storm.

I had identity problems then, and I have identity problems now. I wrote letters as R.L.N., and Leland, and Richard, and so forth.

It comes to me that I should have some refrains as to what was so wrong with me at that time so I can let any new readers know. Then again, I may just want to do that to settle my own mind.

18^th January 1995

Dear Lydia,

         

How does it go in Trinidad, I am Richard L. Neal, but you can call me Leland. I am also known to my friends as Mr. Neal, and by a girl I know as Neal.

          

I’m always typing on my computer, it dominates my life. Most of the work I do is for school, but school never really helps me. It seems to get harder every time I walk through those gates the 1st day of school.

          

My friends are little company they seem to not understand my actions or my words, so the insults rag on, and I feel bad. It just seems that there spiteful, and they know it. So I feel strange and I seem to study everything that they do. Then I feel like I'm above them all.                

          

If I am not mistaken they speak Spanish in Trinidad, do you want letters in Spanish? It will be challenging, but doable.

          

I believe that it is harder to get mad at a pen pal because you really do not have the opportunity. I must continue searching for the best way to have a friend, despite the advantages of a pen pal it would be expensive if you had a lot of them.

          

So much for that, tell me about you, everything, anything, all I know is your name and where you live. Hope to write weekly, but that plan may be compromised. I fear that my letters will be short; because most of the things I write are, you will see this in all probability.

         

All I can say is that I will move in 6 years, and I have a lot of name labels to use, but that is not important. What is important is that we will be communicating in the time to come, and I hope it will be stimulating. The normal company I keep is my cat, and all she has to say is Food, out, and milk, so you can imagine how important your letters will be to me. Not to mention the growth of the stamp collection that is to become a family tradition if past on, you will find me a man with lots of hobbies in time it is all too obvious how I attempt to cloud my mind with possessions that are worthless. All I have said is that my life is anything but plain, and that all my friends think I am insane.

         

If you have any questions I would love to hear them and answer them to my greatest ability. I will be waiting for your letters. It will be up lifting to get more mail. It is not often that I get anything but junk, and it is boring. I think I would prefer if you wanted the letters in Spanish now that I think about it. It gives me a reason to learn the language better, and if it helps you to understand it helps us both.

         

I am afraid I must go now.

                                                                                                    Sincerely,

                                                       Leland