Laugh at Science fiction - Kelvin Throop III

Critical or Correct - Benjamin Disraeli

Willing to Risk Giving - Sheldon Kopp

Imagination vs Knowledge - Albert Einstein

Bring Me Coffee - Abraham Lincoln

If I Try to be Like Him - Yiddish Proverb

Not Every Man Lives - Braveheart

Stress of the Unfinished - David Allen

Happy as Your Mind - Abraham Lincoln

Marriage Has no Guarantees - Erma Bombeck

No Time to Criticize - Dean Cresham

Need Love the Most - Erma Bombeck

Hurt Leads to Bitterness - Terry Brooks

Mind is Not a Bed - James Agate

Better the Devil You Know - English Proverb

Hot Dank Air

14^th July 2012

Dear Cassi,

Perhaps the reason I love sleep so is that the world I wake up to is worse than any nightmare. Today was a day of some unnatural heat and as such I spent most of it in bed with my two fans passing air over my massive frame.

The room is full of hot dank air as is my home. The world is hot outside, but the air within my home is like breath. I can’t tell if it’s the rot in the sink or the perspiration off my skin but I know I need air. I set fans and open windows; I showered the roof with water and watch the steam lift away in the afternoon sun.

The water I have sprayed comes down black with soot from the fireworks of the fourth of July. We celebrate our independents by making the air unbeatable. If only a cold rain would come and was our foul revelries from the wounded sky.

The hot air drives me back to sleep. It’s a pounding heat that drives me down and lords over my sticky flesh. The insulation in my attic has turned to dust long ago and so my home is a furnace in the summer. I long for the winter days.

I would write more, but I am stifled by the heat.

Stay cool, little sister, 

Fiat Justitia - John Quincy Adams

Very Good at what I Do

February 2012

 

Got a new one for you but it is a forum post but we have taken to writing full on letters at this point. You kind of need to have read the assignment and the response to said assignment.

Still, this is a telling letter.

(fellow grad student),

I will say that the highest grade I earned in college was an A+ in screen writing because I paid a thousand dollars for those three units and the professor said he would find a production company to send my work to.

When the class was to turn in ten pages I turned in my first draft. I could have passed that day with a C. For the duration of the semester I waited for the teacher to get my work read always turning in revisions the next day. Not the next class. We turned our work in digitally so I would normally have it for him within six hours.

I learned that I was very very good at work that I felt would directly help my situation.

He never found a company for me and he never finished reading my script the last time. In the state of California this would be called ‘breach of contract’ and that school would now be liable.

I note that I am very good at being a Security Officer, a counselor, a cook, a friend, and a writer. On the other hand I have never been good at being alive. Go figure.

I will also tell you that the last time I exhibited suicidal tendencies was in 2004 or 5 when I was willing to die to stop my father from lying to me again. I haven’t spoken to him in these last seven years.  

Get well soon, stay well long

Richard Leland Neal   

People Wish to be Deceived - Latin Proverb

Bitter Feelings

10^th July 2012

Dear Cassi,

       

The most frustrating part of my life has to be that small things that should never be an issue tend to be a major production. Such has been the case with the dishes. On Sunday Pickles said he had done no dishes for two days. I started them after he went to sleep and, taking them twenty minutes at a run, was still washing by six in the evening. I’ll grant that somewhere in there I slept, I cooked; I did homework, and laundry. Still I had to run the wash twice and wash most of it by hand.

       

This left a bitter feeling in my gut and so when I returned home from work I had no want for food and went directly to bed. I awoke at three in the hot afternoon and a pile of dishes already waited in the sink. It was the plastic containers I had put frozen food in so that Pickles would stop disgracing my kitchen with his cooking.

       

At four thirty I made smoothies. The hot California air had dried my throat and made me lethargic in my movements. I started this meal with red wine and berries which I made into a froth so thick it had to be eaten with a spoon. This revived Pickles and I some and gave us strength.

       

The next serving was simpler, just cantaloupe and coconut water. I cut and froze that cantaloupe when it was fresh and sweet so that the smoothie was a hair away from the melon. With this I felt new life. The frozen nectar of fruit gave me some relief from the heat and so I set about the house work again.

       

My life is a grind but who’s isn’t these days. In the end I have to understand that if I want to live in a clean house it just has to be up to me. The fact that out of Pickles and I only one works is irrelevant.

Stay strong, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal