Writer Who Knows Depression

3rd January 2018

All righty,

Looking at your craigslist ad I can see you’re looking for a writer who knows depression. I have credits as a writer on IMDB and I have been diagnosed with Persistent Recurrent Depression. I also hold a BA in Psychology so you could say I have a good understanding of the condition.

I am on the old side for your criteria given that I’m in my late 30’s and you want a younger man, but I’m told I look young. I have no connection to Portland as your ad mentions as I live in LA.

I think the big question is, ‘what is this for?’ and that would determine if I should be involved. If you’re looking for someone to be on camera I’m not sure that would be me. I can’t see flying up to Oregon to get my face in something, but if your big goal is to have a clear depiction of depression that I can do.

I know a few production folks here in LA but not a group of people who are looking to work for free.

Best,



Richard Leland Neal

Putrid in My Clothes

30^th November 2017

Dear Cassi,

I am putrid in my clothes not having washed for almost three days being hard at work in the drafting of comics and such. The nature of my garments is a disgrace as they are raggedy and stained with cat fur bristling from them. I have discarded my undergarments some hours ago as they had grown too saturated with the substances of the body.

The washer hums and so does the drier with the items scraped from the floor after the garage had been cleaned. I sort them finding in there long idle nature they had found detritus. Little bits of things fall to the concrete as I go. Long stained garments and towels, things you would revolt to touch, are a constant company to my work.

It has been longer than six hours since I took food, but still I feel no hunger in this less than an hour past midnight. I dine only when my hands become too shaky for the drafting table as I draw comics as I work on other things.

This is me in the odd twilight of being a man of employment and yet still surviving off an unemployment check. The company for whom I work has no hours for me, and in the low point I work every day as if I will never return to my labors. I work every day as if I will never get another job.

I draft my comics as if my livelihood depends on them. I draft hard and long, but as always I am behind in my work. With some it is a matter of months with another it is more than a year of work waiting for my hand to lift a pen.

The long hours are hard on my body and my gut lives in me as some parasite digging into me and causing pain in my back. My body groans as I rise, but I can only sit so long before my blood demands motion.   I know I need water as the skin of my cheeks is cracked beneath my unshaven beard, but again I will soon need to force myself to eat.

For the whole of my life I have struggled with depression and this is only another battle in that long war. I fear I will fight until my dying breath, but what else can I do.

Live strong, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

Dragging Along in My Ideas

5^th December 2017

Dear Cassi,

Dragging along in my ideas I have to clear my head of all the nonsense of high school, because this year my character, JonnyAmerican, will graduate. The funny thing is that I think I’ve gotten over high school. Every now and then a memory pops up that upsets me, sure, but that is more do to being reminded of other things that invoked the same emotions. 

The funny thing about memory is that you tend to remember the beginning and the end, but all that stuff in the middle gets fuzzy. Still then, I have not decided if Jonny’s younger brother, Nick, will be depicted as attending high school after Jonny. I really haven’t given nick an age at this point. Some of my memories could be attributed to Nick but the point is that at the end of this year I need to be focusing on Jonny after high school. 

My high school was a remnant of Cold War America with the mascot being originally a titan missile. The Titan family of rockets was the first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile operated by the United States, and they had been around since 1959 with the Titan I being taken out of service in 1965.

The Titans are now a thing of the past being retired in 2005, but even as I went to high school from 1994 to 1998 the namesake of the school mascot had been out of service for nearly thirty years. They had changed it to the Greek Titan by then, but the legacy of the cold war stuck. 

When this was adopted the Titan was a symbol of American strength. The missile was a great protector that kept the Russians from waging war against us. Then the Cold War ended in the eighties and so it had become a symbol of American decay.

At the main entrance to the school they had built a mock launch pad that looked like a bowl to hold a boiler flask. In this trees had been planted making the sculpture look like the ruins of some high tech facility.  That was my high school all right, a ruin of a better time inhabited by the ghosts of the past.

Rise from the ashes, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

Anniversary Angus

5^th December 2014

Dear Cassi,

       

It’s funny how things get turned around. Yesterday Pickle took me out for the anniversary of my birth and, as is my custom, I permitted him to choose the restaurant.

       

Let’s be clear that he needed me to take him to the store and that when I take him to the store he pays by taking me to eat. I never press this issue. We go where he wants to go and eat what he wants to eat. I just drive. In this manner he cannot legitimately call me overtaxing or a burden.

       

In any case, Pickle decided on Black Angus Steakhouse because he had a coupon for the place. I shrugged, and said I didn’t care if we went to the Costco food court. I made a few jokes about Angus sounding like anus, and Pickle took offence.

       

He said I was calling him an anus, and I burst out laughing. A few years ago we had gone to that same restaurant and he had called me the same thing only with far ruder the tone. It was on his birthday and he was having the most expensive thing on the menu.

Some folks take you for granted,

Richard Leland Neal

Venus Candy Corn

Buff Candy Corn

Candy Corn Bat

Candy Corn Gets Green

Candy Corn and Fly Trap

Candy Corn Gets Extra Eyes

Candy Corn Chemistry

Candy Corn Exploration

Candy Corn Comes to Life

Books of Learning

04/21/2010

Dear Children's Books (Publisher),

What you have here is a children's picture book manuscript written in rhyme and teaching children the difference between pear the fruit and pair as in two things with some mention of to pare.

I yield to your better authority how it is all to be edited and produced. I have only the experience of reading to children as my guide in the area. I do know something of art work and printing so I can easily understand what limitations you set up. The poem is fifty-two lines but how many lines appear on one page is up to you.

I have been published three times in the past as a poet in periodicals. Once with my junior high school and twice in high school but have submitted nothing professionally.

Thank you for your time,


Richard Leland Neal

Evils of Life

15^th January 2012

Dear Cassi,

Another week has passed and grad school, work, and being sick come together as a pill a snake would have trouble getting down. I have little idea what to do with myself. It’s nothing new that I feel as if there simply isn’t enough time, but now the hard coughing and runny nose are getting the better of me.

   

As it has always been with me, and most folks I think, I wish I could just turn the world off and take stalk. If I had six weeks of nothing to do I would just piss it all away so turning the world off wouldn’t help. That’s what happened during my unemployment. I spent my time reacquainting with TV shows and movies I had missed.    

   

If you think I’m mad at myself your right. I let depression and despair get the better of me and now look. I’m truly no better off than I was a month ago. I will say that I’m better off than I was six months ago, and last year round this time I could hardly get out of bed.

   

Okay, so I just feel bad, and it’s honestly no big deal. I still should have all three of my comics posting instead of just one. Then I guess I’m putting too many steps in the way of getting them squared. I’m trying to seek out the spelling errors and replace the text when I have to, but I need to get all those old comics up on the new sites.

   

Sometimes, Cassi, I feel like the only real link to who I am and who I was is that old comic site that I need to ask that fair-weather friend, Eric, to take down. That old comic site is like some beacon of hope to the evils that once dominated my life.

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal