New Thing in this World - Harry Truman

Remember the Good Samaritan - Margaret Thatcher

Ghost in the World

12th November of 2010

 Dear Cassi,

 

I had a conversation this week with an old neighbor of mine who moved out of the neighbor hood then moved back after finding that her new home was too dangerous. She wanted to show me her new home which was almost the same layout as my home. She had the place remodeled more or less with an emphasis on new lighting. I can't say much for it, but she was happy and that was all that mattered.

She put six sunken lights in the living room and I think two or three in the hallway. I can't say that this is a good way to make a light as it keeps the ceiling and walls darker. A dark home may look good in a horror movie, but you got to live in this place. I noted that the body work on the ceiling fans was a dark chocolate with the blades the same color. They were darker then the wood of the floors and furniture. Over the last fifty years woods have changed a lot. I think they were at their darkest in the 80s. This used to have something to do with the availability of wood.

Now days we can get wood in any color and most of it is fake wood. The bedroom fans had been made to look organic like fire hardened roots of tribal spears. Some people say it adds to the spice of life. I think they're just trying too hard.

Well, in the back yard she had six avocado trees. None had fruit and all six had to be cut back hard just to keep them alive. They had grown so large their branches tangled together making them into a big canopy. The trees had been sickly as if they had struggled to live under their own weight. My neighbor told me that she had six fig trees taken out because they had been too sick to give fruit.

You see a lot of that in California and for that matter much of the world. The bad economy has left much of the world withered and sickly. We over grew our means, and when the economy shut down it all fell into disuse. One day the dust will cover us like a gray blanket, and the rain will carry us away leaving the world barren.

After the tour my neighbor spoke to me for more than an hour. She's a grandmother now and a withered old woman with hard vertical lines on her face. On the left side of her mouth a tar stain from smoking stood out as her defining feature. She lived on my street before I was born and so we spent some time talking about my mother who died twenty-one years ago next month. No one on the block knew haw crazy my mother was. She had a hard life and died young with all the people around her taking no notice.

How many of us are ghosts in this world? My mother and I could have stepped off the face of the world and none would have taken notice for weeks. Like extras in a movie we walk along the streets as part of the back drop of the world. We all have a story, we all have an identity, but so many of us hardly exist. You got to wonder what the hell is wrong with people that they have tunnel vision, and they can't see the people around them. It seems like we all just turn away and forget.

In the end, I told my neighbor that she should get to her dinner because it was getting cold and took my leave. It's funny how she spent so much time talking to me, but maybe I'm a good listener. Then we might have had a few of the same problems. I can't imagine how this woman, with her children and grandchildren, would have a shortage of people to talk to. The world works out that way sometimes. I remember being in crowds of people and still always alone. Maybe those people were like faces in a painting: they look human but just aren't real, or they could be like veins of gold waiting to be opened with pick and drill. Either way, it's time for me to get ready for work.

Stay safe,

Richard Leland Neal

Commitment of a Kamikaze - Lou Holtz

Let it be

18^th May 2012

Dear Cassi,

The other day I came across and old black and white photograph of two people and a baby. They were sitting alongside a house in the middle of what looks like a farm. The couple was alien to me on first glance and I do not believe that I have seen this image before but after some thinking I believe the man to be Grandpa Leland and the woman Grandma Ann.

       

This would make the boy Alan the man who donated half my genetic material. I’m told that mother and Leland got on well, but that Leland had some bad times with his wife Ann. My paternal grandparents spent the last decade of Leland’s life having nothing to do with one another.

       

Back then people would shy about divorce. Ann had told me that in her day once you left home you never came back. Further, that her own father had seen the trouble her married life had come to and offered to let her come back home. This was a grand gesture that never came to pass.

       

I have never heard Leland’s side of this as he died when I was rather young. He was given some respect in death, more than Alan showed my mother, in that he was forgotten and rarely spoken of. Ann did speak ill of him but never when into specifics. She said he was a hard man to live with, but what she meant by it escapes me.

       

Still, let’s give credit where credit is due, Ann was a hard person to live with as far as I can tell. She told me that once they made a recording of her screaming at her children and played it back for her benefit. It was a badge of shame she still carries. There was enough love left for that old man for me to bear his name within my own.

When we speak ill of the dead we often speak ill of ourselves. This is not a rule but a bit to ponder over. The living can always try to make amends, but the dead are no so capable. The anger we hold for them is a cancer within yourself.

Leave the dead in the ground, little sister

Richard Leland Neal

Choices - Colin Powell

Computer Reading to Me

24^th of November 2010

Dear Cassi,

Let me get it out of the way that I'm still not sure how I should send the full novel to you more, because I think I need to give it two more edits rather than one than that I'm having mail issues. It feels like I'm never going to be done with this thing. I think this is the tenth full edit, but it all meshes together now. Endless hours of listening to a computer read it to me. I wonder if the two different computer voices alter my ability to hear the right words.

Each of my computers has its own reader voice. The laptop is a girl and the main computer is a boy and the two do sound different. The old laptop has a male voice named Sam but the computer can't handle text documents over so many pages, and it really gets its wires tied over the reader and word processor running at once.

One frustration among many in a life full of frustration. Well, what can we do the hours pass to quickly as the task takes forever, and I feel the work as a heavy load. The days pass on and I still have more work to do. Well then, enough of my lament.

I don't know if I have spoken to you about my friend, Alex, whose kidneys are inflamed. He came in Monday morning looking as if he would not make it through the day. I could hear him groan as is stomach worked at the fluids that his body could not pass. It was a pain to see him like that, and once again he admitted to not taking my advice. Feeling sorry for the man I gave him the sweet potato from my lunch and told him if he had it he would feel better. I had no other advice to give him having said it all already. What do you tell a man that will not listen?

Tuesday morning I saw him once again and he said that the sweet potato had helped him markedly. “It got me through the day.” He told me. You would think that if one right meal would change things he would have at least one right meal a day, but no he just keeps killing himself.

I don't claim to be a health expert, but what I tell him works. You have to wonder about a man that is willing to put himself through that without doing a few simple things.

Then, I asked him where he shopped, and he said that his sister did the shopping for him, and that she wouldn't by him soy milk because she was afraid of getting the wrong one. He had one carton of Costco soy milk and he was good for a week. I just don't get it. This man could be one day away from better health, and he just keeps doing the wrong thing.

I feel for the man because I've been there, and I don't want to be there again. It was agony when my kidneys overloaded. I couldn't exercise, it was hard to work, I just sat in bed for hours in misery. The worst part about it was that my body would never heal because of the nutrition deficiency. It was murderous and frustrating.

In the end I stumbled on the right things to keep my body going. It's helped some but I've still a long way to go. A man like me shouldn't go giving people health advice. I should go look after myself first. Then it’s a hard road with many hills to walk. It's a long and lonely walk. The kind that fills your boots with cold mud. That's my world.

Anyway, best get to it

Richard Leland Neal