A Girl and Her Note

28^th May 2012

Dear Cassi,

       

Do you remember a time when you were young and gave nicknames to so many folks? I know I haven’t written about middle school in a moment or two, but a thought came rolling to me when I saw a girl in tight jeans.

       

In middle school I knew a rather chubby girl who would wear these tight tapered jeans every day. She looked rather good in strait legs but the tapers just made her look fat.

       

At first Potato Head had a thing for her. He had heard a story about one of her male friends seeing her with her shirt off and wrote her a note asking about it which I delivered.

       

As she was a girl with flesh to spare and she was one of the first to grow a chest which she had to shame in showing. That and gray denim stretched over those two cantaloupes must have made Potato go nuts. This meant nothing to me as I have always, even then, been a hard one to impress.

       

Now I think back and every third moment I sat “what was I thinking” or “gross” but when you’re thirteen I guess wanting to do whatever thirteen year old should do together is okay.

       

In any case, this chubby girl made a bee line for me once I left the note and was convinced that I had written it grilling me for more than an hour. I had promised not to disclose the writer and so was rather determined to keep mu silence.

       

Potato on the other hand came off with it himself and she was insulted and upset. Further she had stated that she had been so young at the time that she had no chest to see. The boy who had seen her ivory skin we all thought was gay anyway.

       

I got the impression that the chubby girl had her eyes fixed on me brining us back to the conversation even after Potato had set her strait. I can only imagine how ugly of a couple we would have made. It would have been like two white elephants snuggling.

       

For the next two years Potato called her buffalo chips. I guess he was a spurned lover. I wish folks could get past that mentality, but I doubt anyone ever does.

Know when to be mature, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

Biological Canyon

27^th May 2012

Dear Cassi,

An event of some note in my labors with the homeless was the arrival of two females. This was nothing new as clients come all the time but not all of them make a pass at the security guard.

       

Professionalism and company rules prevent me from having any kind of none work relationships with my clients. Further from that, most homeless smoke and smoking is a deal breaker for me. This is to set aside all the other reasons my clients are undesirable like their mental quarks, high incidence of HIV, etcetera.

       

Regardless, I know of no penalty for the client messing about with staff and clients try to get that going all the time. This I normally pay no mind as I know better. In this case it was a rather ample woman who bent over her bag and let her rather ample back end come almost completely out of her tights.

       

This was a time for a man with proper restraint to keep his mind on his work and so I did checking the belongings of her friend for contraband. When this biological canyon was removed from view its owner looked at me in a disturbed way likely wondering why I hadn’t been enjoying the view.

       

Girl, it’s not worth my job. That and if I had looked I would have gotten my nose stuck in that crack.

Keep your nose clean, little sister

Richard Leland Neal

A Ship in Harbor - John A. Shedd

Ghosts of Might Have Been

10^th January 2012

Dear Cassi,

       

Was it two days ago that you spoke to your father for the first time in 16 years? So does it feel that the empty spots in your chest feel fuller? I feel like I have ice in my guts just thinking about it, but I know the feeling of having that thing that needs to be there and has never been.

       

I had no such feeling when my mother died. Most people think she left a void, but she will always be with me in her way. No, I feel an empty spot where I should have had a father. I feel an empty spot where a family should have been. These are things I never had and it was the never having that was so much the spring of pain.

       

There are so many things in this life I missed out on and most of them due to that deep cut in my soul that left me so drained of blood. Crying over that time lost will give me no solace so I try not to think about the ghosts of might have been. Still their moaning never leaves my ears. Even now they haunt me keeping me awake when sleep should drag me into beloved silence.

       

If I could have the silence every day for just a few hours a day I think I could put a few of those ghosts to bed. I can never say if that will fill those empty bits in my chest until the deed is done. I can tell you it will always be worth a try.

       

Whatever happens live life. Live it as best you can because there is no turning back. The world we leave behind us is a cold one and the shadows that envelop it are fitting.

Let us always move toward the warmth,

Richard Leland Neal 

To Have Lived - Michael Crowgey

My Illness Drags On

9^th January 2012

Dear Cassi,

My illness drags on and the frustration of work and school adds to the grit that slows the turning of my life and wears me down. Frustration is a particularly bad point with me as it stirs from much of my memory the ill feeling I have for my family.

       

All the anger I have for my father came up this morning like the stink of rotten plants in a bog. I wish I could just turn my brain off until this fever has passed, but that amount of time is not mine to spend so loosely.

       

What would I give for a few hours in a cool darkness right now? Unfortunately work looms over me like a great mountain to be climbed. I will leave the house soon and have to face the world again knowing this time that I haven’t the strength.

       

I went and got the generic flu medication for both night and day. Smartly, they came as a pack and I need them both. Now I cough so badly that I can hardly function. The fits leave me dizzy and feeling as if the lights flicker. Then end with me hacking up a thing that looks so much like a slug that I almost expect it to move.

       

The clear goo constantly running from my nose puts stains on my shirts no matter how diligently I wipe my nose. Wiping my nose was bad for about a day. I had to rub Vaseline on my nostrils to take the pain out. That works well, better than lip balm, and forget lotions they smell and wear off in five minutes. I guess I’m being innovative here but it works.

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal

Strange Mirth

8^th June 2012

Dear Cassi,

       

Yet another of the quirks of Grandpa Leland was his tendency to hire his grandchildren to do things around the house. Again, I can only hear stories of this, as I was too young to take part in the actions but grandpa made everything a game.

       

He would have the grandkids over for the weekend and pay them to wash the kitchen floor. This was nothing to do with a mop and bucket mind. No, Leland was nothing of the mop and bucket sort of folk. He would dowse the floor in soap then water, and have the boys run about with sponges on their feet. Then he would bring the hose in and wash it all out the back door.

       

Grandpa Leland had installed tile that went a few inches up the wall to make this possible and when he was done the kitchen shined. This is what I mean when I say the grandpa was very much alive. All his world was mirth and fun so as even to make washing the floor a party.

       

He also hired the kids to paint his car with interior paint for the walls of a home. This made the car a site to see and that was how he liked it tooling around in what little he drove heads turning in astonishment.

       

With this car he would take the grandkids to Saturday breakfast at the ice-cream shop. He’d get the lot of them out of the house without a shower or grooming and have the blurry eyed bunch still in pajamas as he drove along. 

       

Saturday morning when the roads were empty he would love to pull up to a red light like this and have another car pull alongside. He would spy the other driver looking over at him in his funny house paint car and all his half sleeping grandkids and give it some gas.

       

At this point the other driver would pull into the middle of the intersection. If this ever caused a wreck they have never told me but that was Grandpa Leland. He was just a peck too much alive.

Let your mirth harm no one,

Richard Leland Neal

First Fail

8^th January 2012

Dear Cassi,

The first assignment I turned in to grad school was given a do over. I guess I should be glad they let me rewrite it, but I rather felt the teacher was less than tactful about the whole thing. I mean, she wanted a more “professional” paper, but we are just students.

       

It was my first paper for this school, and I had no idea what to expect. Not only that but I turned it in a full day before any other student. You would think that would have counted for something. I did turn the second copy in last out of the class I think, however, I was still within the standard due dates so I should not be penalized.

       

I’m so sick at this point that I can only work for a good forty minutes at a time. Around that time I need to stop and sleep some. I have no memory of ever coughing this hard, and that has to have a negative impact on my work.

       

I feel rotten and I perform in a rotten manner. The worst of this is that having one bad week in this grad school can have a much larger impact on your grade than in most other schools. I think the teachers are a little more understanding, but as a graduate student a C is no longer considered a passing grade.

       

To add insult to injury the two classes I have do not operate on the same standard for what is and is not acceptable in a paper. One class requires me to post the work in the forum and the other as an attachment. One class requires two page papers and the other five. The whole thing is a jumble of loosely fitting parts made to be a cart but swishing across the road hither and thither with no real direction.

I hope you feel better than I,

Richard Leland Neal

If it Works

Here we have another post to one of my classes.

10^th January 2013

In the world of mental health it is rather hard to argue with the client saying “it makes me feel better”. How can we say that improvement is psychosomatic when all psychological improvement is reasonably psychosomatic? If a client carries a lump of quartz around with them wherever they go because they feel better when they have it who is the clinician to say that this is wrong?

Further along the point is that doing anything may be activating to a client and thus aid in the recovery of depression or anxiety.  There is a form of assessment for childhood abuse where the child is asked to draw an image of themselves and their family. The client failing to draw hands and or feet on a self image indicates that they feel incapable of helping themselves.  One of the definitions of mental stress I have heard is a constant or recurring problem that the client cannot find a solution to.

If we take these examples into account it becomes clear that some mental clients have a feeling of inability to accomplish. It becomes irrelevant if what they do is weed a flower bed, win a video game, build a model, or learn a new skill as all these things are therapeutic.

Energy psychology, the expression of chi and chakra, may be no more than snake oil. However, in mental health the proof is in the pudding. If the client feels that it works then the technique is worthwhile.

Sick

6^th January 2012

Dear Cassi,

I’m sick. I hate being sick but who doesn’t? However, for the first time in my adult life I broke down and got flue medication because I was coughing so hard I had a headache and I have papers due.

       

You could say I’m being a crybaby, but I can’t read the school books if they’re all covered in snot. My nose is running like a fountain and I keep waking with stains on my sheets from its flow. That which comes from my nose is white or clear, that which comes from my mouth and deep coughing is green and nasty.

       

I knew this would happen because most of the folks at my work have been sick. Many of the residents as well have taken ill and been sent to the ER. The nature of humans in close contact is that we will all grow ill together. One person can get the nearly two hundred workers and residents ill. The good thing is that over time our immune systems should strengthen from constant assault.

       

I wish I could call off, but in fact I have been called in for overtime this week. If I call in sick they have no guard for the night, and I can’t do that to them. As they depend on me, I need to be dependable. Even now with my homework looming like a cloud overhead and my head pounding like a jackhammer.

       

Ah, the working world, what indifference it has to those human things that created its being and facets. The human in this world is little more than another part in the machine and we are treated as if we are so easy to replace. Let’s hope I don’t breakdown.

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal

First Day of Grad School

4^th January 2012

Dear Cassi,

Well, today is my first day of grad school and this online business is the pits, but it’s better than nothing. I’m going to this place because I’ll pay half of what I would pay any place else, but I would still rather go down to a classroom and hear a lecture. 

       

Today I put together my online profile and described myself to the other students. How much this description will make a difference I cannot say. Like many of my online works this may be just another voice in the darkness. Folks from all around the world go to my Grad school and they insist I put up a photograph of myself so that these folks can know me by site.

       

The online world can never replace real life. It exists in the world of over worked, under informed, super consumers who go about their lives in a fog of exhaustion trying to do no more than survive.

       

The more labor saving devices that exist in our world the more we have to work every day. The technology that makes our lives better only serves to chain us to it and the cart we once pulled as laborers is now a mass of digital bights.

       

I don’t know what this new iteration of technology will hold for me. The road ahead is dark and shrouded in trees. Still, I know that I will walk it no matter what the footing will be, and find my way to its end.

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal  

Online Vs. Brick and Mortar

10^th January 2013

Hay (Flow student),

I’ve found two common condition that apply to both ‘Brick and Mortar’ schooling and online class work. The first of these is that you pay around a hundred dollars for the book and ten two twenty times more for the professor. Then you find that the book is the standard and class time is time poorly spent. The other condition is that you by the book, open it once during the class, and come away angry that you paid for the thing.

The problem here and universally in education is that a teacher is paid to teach a class not to insure learning. To be a good teacher, much like to be a good therapist, one must be copiously qualified and have a honest desire to help the client. These qualities are rare. Thus in both online and face to face education the burden of learning falls on the student. If you are truly invested in learning skills in mental health you’ll do well in either setting.

Face to face education is superior in interaction, social experience, and expanding your group of friends. In some majors there is simply no replacement for hands on experiences. Majors like hard science, theater arts, repair work, and other fields were one needs to learn to deal directly with materials face to face education is just a must.

Online education is equally useful as face to face education in social science, English and literature, writing, and other situations where the mind is the main functioning factor. Online education is convenient and more geared to those who have a true love of their subject. If you’re a go getter then online classes better suit you as you are more able to work at your own pace.

Now this class has a relatively inexpensive text so using outside materials shouldn’t be a major point. I haven’t worked with this professor before and so will not comment on his love for subject and honest desire to teach and help. However, once you get through the readings the professor is simply there to see that you understood the text.

Worrying over how you will do is unnecessary. If you have a problem simply email the instructor and get the help you need. By worrying how you will do in an online class you sell yourself short. Trust me on this, have confidence in yourself, you made it this far.   

Cost to Society

5^th November 2011

Dear Cassi,

I told you the other day that I learned the man responsible for my termination and eight months of joblessness had himself lost his job. Truly, this event is one that I have mixed feelings over.

       

From what I understand they cleaned house in the office and most of the folks were terminated. This was no layoff; the company had concluded that issues within the office had become so much of a problem that it was time to terminate the management staff. 

       

I had no idea this happen until when looking for another job I was told that one of my references had fail to remember who I was. I called him up and learned that they had failed to give him my last name and so he had no idea who they were asking about.

       

Then he said that he had run into my old manager at a super market. The man was buying cheap alcohol but had misjudged the price and hadn’t the money for a twelve dollar bottle. My old friend paid for the manager’s drink because he felt that sorry for the old antagonist.

       

I feel some satisfaction that what my ex manager had done to me he had done to himself, but what he was now doing to himself, killing himself with cheap booze, is another story.

       

If I believe the philosophies of Sigmund Freud humans who do these things are sick but not evil. Was my manager evil? He broke the law for one. He thought he could bully me into giving him what he wanted. Then when I called human resources they refused to take a report. They knew what they were doing was wrong, and they did it anyway.

       

I can feel sorry for this man. He may have thought at first that what he was doing was good for business. Then when it became clear that I wouldn’t put up with his bull he cost his company hundreds if not thousands of dollars. He grabbed the gun, pointed it at his foot, said watch this, and pulled the trigger expecting it not to hurt. If not for the cost to society I would laugh.

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal

Breath I Tell You

This is another post to my psychology class. The kind of marital you will see if I post every day is shorter and explanatory without the normal moral to my story.

If this is the kind of thing that my readers like I wish they would let me know.

10^th January 2013

On the subject of breathing, I commonly have to advise my clients on breathing techniques because of the high incidence of anger problems among them.  Breathing and heart rate are closely connected and by breathing slowly we can slow the heart. As the heart is more neurons than it is muscle we really do feel with our heart.

Anger and depression both have anxiety components so this deep breathing that I teach my clients should help to ease both conditions. I advise the client to take in a deep breath filling the lungs slowly and completely then let this breath out slowly. This will stabilize the client so that they can gain control over their faculties.

It sounds rather simple but clients have told me that this has changed their life. This is because I often work with violent cases and this simple technique often serves to keep them out of jail which is a major improvement in their lives. To truly correct their problems more advanced techniques are needed but I rarely have the opportunity to use or teach them.

Unfortunately, I am commonly criticized for operating outside my duties and I work in the safety and security department and this cognitive restructuring is under clinical services. I deal with this by operating under a policy of transparency. I write a report to a client’s case manager when I conduct an intervention.

Leland’s Garden

26^th May 2012

Dear Cassi,

I wrote to you that grandpa Leland was a grower with his hands in the earth. This was a side aspect of his love for food and cooking. Ann hates to cook. Ann has always hated to cook. For many years Ann loved to have her only son Alan live with her because he did the cooking.

       

When she still shared a home with Leland he did the cooking and once more the children had their friends come over, more often than not, for dinner. It is my understanding that dinner was a big affair at the Neal house and Leland preferred to make more than his family could get down.

       

“The girls had this friend who only had hotdogs at her house so she came over for dinner almost every night. Leland never made hotdogs so when the girls wanted them they went over to their friend’s.” Ann told me a few times.

       

In this way Leland always had room for guests at dinner and Ann told me that every now and then they would look at his vegetables and say “what is this? I don’t eat this.” I learned this one day when I was making a roast and included parsnips.

       

At the time I had never before eaten parsnips but I had heard the name and decided I wanted to know what they were like. Leland grew them in his garden along with rhubarb and carrots. This is the extent of my knowledge of his garden.

Ann once told me that he would dry the carrot blossoms when they went to seed and grow new carrots from them. He would say that they never yielded as well as the seed he could buy. The old man probably kept this practice because he loved to have his hands in the earth. This is why I think of him as an earth spirit, because his connection with the natural world was very real.  

Love the natural world, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

The Salad Bowl vs. the Melting Pot

LTC 2013 01 13

This is a post to my Energy Psychology class describing myself and experience. You can say I’m an odd one and I do have to admit I’m writing these longer and with a greater level of clarity because I wish to post them on my blog. You can tell me if this is a bad thing.

11^th January 2013

Hello I guess,

To start with I am a safety and security officer for a homeless rehabilitation program in Hollywood California. I work with a group of 18 to 24 year olds and specialize in de-escalation. This is a fancy way of saying I’m a security guard. Both my clients and coworkers tell me that I excel at what I do for my clients. For many of them I act as a life coach and for all of them I act as a communications hub between them and their case manager. I right more case notes in one month than all other employees in my program write in six months.

I did my undergrad work at CSU Fullerton in psychology but I would say that my own study is more helpful in this area. For example some people sat that ghosts are a mental photographs and that would be printed in the energy we are talking about in this class. Further this energy has an impact on the electromagnetic spectrum as the presents of ghosts have a relationship with an electromagnetic field.

Further about me, I suffer from a dangerous and persistent level of depression for which I am heavily medicated. My doctors tell me that I function surprisingly well given my pathology. You’ll find me to be a man with an odd way of thinking and a broad scope of relevance.

The idea of the salad bowl vs. the melting pot is one I first heard in 1992, but the melting pot holds because it is so much older and authors of history texts rarely keep current of what happened in the past. Our knowledge and understanding of history has evolved quite a lot in the last twenty years but the old ideas persist.

The idea of looking at American society as a melting pot meant that we as a people would take on the qualities of the cultures that immigrate. This may have been understandable when looking at europium immigration where the cultures were rather similar by comparison. 

The salad bowl idea is more respectful of diversity. In this idea as a tomato is still a tomato in a salad so is an Asian still a member of their home culture. They may be marked by the flavors of the other things on your fork and the whole salad is often oriented around a dressing, but the parts make the meal more palatable.

That is my understanding of the subject and I admit that it is somewhat limited. If anyone has more to add it would be helpful. 

Commendable

25^th May 2012

Dear Cassi,

       

I’d say you know you’ve done well when you impress a policeman with your actions, but the truth is they are just people like us. Still, as I have done my part to save a life today I have some cause to stick out my chest. I helped bring in a suicide risk today.

       

Never in my life have I been one to break my arm to pat myself on the back. Then, thanks are a rarity in my line of work. Still, as you well know, there are days when handling oneself well is commendable.

       

There are a good number of details I cannot say. However, I can put out there that I was on the phone with the suicide risk for more than an hour with four police officers staring me down asking me to find out where she was and folks coming in and out, getting in my way, and asking me what was going on as I tried to focus on what I was doing.

       

Over time I was able to get enough details about where this person was for the police to find them and take them into protective custody. It was one of the longest conversations of my life but I got the job done. I wouldn’t say I saved a life. That would be going too far. I handled myself well and even the policemen commented on how patient I was even with the pressure.

       

I tried to hand off the phone to other more experienced people but she would talk to no one but me saying that no one else would listen. Her life story came pouring out like the flood of a burst dam and all the while I had to try and ford the waters to find out where she was hiding. I kept asking if she was safe and warm. ‘Are you safe?’ I would ask. ‘Is there light? Are there cars where you are?’

During this conversation two of the policeman looked at each other and nodded. They walked out and my heart skipped a beat. The last thing she said to me was that she could see the police, and then they had her in custody.

                                                                               

Stay strong, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

Who was Grandpa

24^th May 2012

Dear Cassi,

It is a truly odd note that I should rack my brain over Grandpa Leland, but the door twixt he and I has long shut. Those who would recall these stories for me are as dead to me as he is because of the pain they have caused.

       

Who was my paternal grandfather? He was a grower with his hands in the earth, a tinkerer in things mechanical, and a carnal earth spirit. I know these things from the stories of him and how they called him a monster. There are some folks, Cassi, who are terrible because they exist. Those like Alan and Ann are folks of this thread as they demand my suffering for their own pried.

       

There are folks in this world who are wonderful because they exist but still are just normal people. These are the people I work with who spend their lives in the service of the less fortunate. From the work done in my building the hungry are given food, the cold given blankets, and the street people can become honest working folks.

       

Grandpa Leland was described to me as a man who chose to be horrible. However, this is by folks who thought poorly of my mother, and my mother’s greatest crime was to live hard to make use of what short a life she was given.

       

As she got on well with her father-in-law I must think that his tenacity was a hunger for life. A bit of grandpa never stopped being young and adventurous, and maybe he came off poorly because he was misunderstood. He lived in the moment because he knew no other way to live. Would life be so bad if we all did the same?

Live your moments, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

Give and Keep

From Where Grandpa Came

23^rd May 2012

Dear Cassi,

A point I should have made about Grandpa Leland is that the photograph I sent you was most likely taken in Canada. My understanding is that Leland was born in Utah and left the United States hoping to evade military service in World War II.

       

Leland was a Mormon and so did not believe in armed services. I’m not sure how that works but I think that he was just a coward with no love for his country. I’m told that his father was one of fifty two children by twenty six wives. However, the telling was done by Alan who argued with his mother over a supposed Polish ancestry. The Mormon Neals had been a wealthy family at one time but polygamy changed all that leaving us common folk.

       

I have never heard the utterance of Ann’s maiden name and never met a relative from her branch of the family. When Leland passed on a good number of folk from Canada wanted to come down but Alan refused saying that you remember a man when he was alive. Those that come to see the dead, he believed, are only interested in what they can steal.

       

“They wanted to stay in my father’s house and take home his silverware,” Alan would often say of his branch of the family.

       

So it has come to pass that I have no link to my Canadian or Utahn ancestry. This is no loss from what I understand. The Neal family is a big thing, but we have few folks worth mentioning.
       

Alan cut ties with most of his family and then inspired me to cut ties with him. It comes to me that I adopted you out of lack of relations and you adopted me keeping with my sentiment. Blood is thicker than water and makes more the mess when it runs.

Keep the ties the hold you well, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

Duty of Love - Tillich

Battle with Junk

22^nd May 2012

Dear Cassi,

Monday was a so-so day for me but today I was just useless. I recall that I took a sleeping pill just after six on Sunday and fell quickly to sleep. I was in bed until nine the next morning when I finally worked up the energy to stand.

       

Monday was a day full of laundry, dishes, and cleaning. I’ve been working for more than two weeks now and I have hardly cleared one room from the grip of the clutter that has consumed my life. I feel like I’ve been in a coma for the last ten years. It was some kind of waking coma where I was sleepwalking through my life. The result is trash and garbage in every room of my home.

       

The big problem with my depression is that it was spawned by a dysfunctional environment. That environment grew more problematic as my condition worsened until this manifestation is what I came to know. It is a beast to fight, wear down, and kill. Still, the doing of the thing takes time.

       

I’m told that if you took someone with my problem and fixed everything for them then it would just get messed up again. There is no way to resolve my problems other than to take them head on. No one can do this for me.     

       

In the nature of this I need to find my footing and stand against the currents. The trek to stable ground is slippery and studded with jagged rock. I wonder if I will ever know what it is to stand tall and unfettered again.

Never give up, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

Mask on Mask - Xavier Forneret