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

Love for Pools

2^nd June 2015

Dear Cassi,

I’ve always had a love for pools which is no wonder in the state of California because of the heat, but did I ever tell you about the pool I had as a kid? It was one of those above ground jobs with steel sides and an uneven bottom. I loved that pool. I would come home from school and jump in wearing nothing but my jockeys and for most of my young life the water went up to my chin making me prance around.

I did very little swimming, but I loved the water so that I would just do laps walking from one end of the pool to the other. There was a time that the pool was heated, but the heater broke, and then we took it apart. I remember it being full of dust and old plastic bracelets. The base had been made of loose red bricks which became toys once unearthed.   

I used to build temples and army bases of those old bricks. A few I crushed back into dust, but why I couldn’t tell you. I never knew how sick my mother was until I was nine, and she never had the time to be there for me. I remember my happiest moments as a child being alone with my thoughts. I was a world onto myself back then and in a way we all are now.

You can figure that’s part of my keeping to myself now days, but there is much more to it than that condition. In the darkness of our lives we should let our mind grow distinguished and wise but keep our hearts young and able.

Well, one day I came home to find the side of my pool burst open and the back lawn teaming with insects floating in the chlorinated water. That was the worst day of my life at that point, but I didn’t know it yet.

Know what you have, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

Time for Wellness

 

To Bed When I was Sick - Erma Bombeck