The Bad Things

 

The Crying Child

25^th November of 2010

Hay Doc,

It's thanksgiving and I'm stuck at home, but it gives me time to shoot off and email I've been meaning to send. I thought you might get a kick out of knowing that I sent my essay to a friend of mine who had some trouble in the love department. By trouble I mean her husband ran off with every dime she had then she had to sue him to end the marriage. After that she got beaten by her boyfriend and so on. Sad how afoul follows you in life.

So I sent her my essay one and she got a sense of satisfaction out of it. She kept asking herself why she didn't leave either of those two men sooner and my essay gave her and answer. It's not the best answer that our studies this semester can give, but like a firefly in the darkness it gave her a friendly light.

I don't suppose you'd know how much the small things can mean to those of us who live our lives in the nether of the human experience. Well, let me tell you a story. When I was seventeen I was over at a friend's house when I heard a baby crying. As an act of instinct I picked up the child. He wasn't yet three days old but he had a set of lungs on him. I couldn't feel anything in the diaper so he hadn't soiled himself. It didn't appear as though he was hungry. Can't tell you how I knew that, but I did.

I stroked the boy's cheek with my index finger and blew air in his face only to have him stop crying for a moment then go on again. Rose, it was her house and I was a friend of her son, came in and said “you'll make a wonderful father some day.”

“I don't think so,” I told her. “I can't get him to stop crying.”

“No one can, Richard,” Rose told me. “That baby was born addicted to cocaine.”

Thing is that the essay to my friend is like my breath to the baby. It may have given her no more than a moment of peace in the deluge of suffering that is her life, but a moment can mean a lot. That's kind of the difficulty of clinical Psychology, it is impossible to take the patient out of the toxic environment, one can only aid them in finding peace within themselves.

I didn't want to mention this before you graded the paper so it wouldn't look like I was trying to get a better grade, but I felt you'd like to know.

Happy thanksgiving

Richard Leland Neal

Explain Puns

 

The Row Principle

4^th June 2015

Dear Cassi,

I ran into an old memory the other day in preparation for something, and felt I should share it with you. It’s funny how the world works like that, and something just pops back into my head after so long.

       

When I was in middle school, after my pool exploded and my mother passed away I got very out of shape. I couldn’t run ten steps without getting winded and I felt old. Funny to think you should feel old at eleven, but I felt old none the less.

       

Now I went to middle school and had P.E. once a day like every other fellow and so had to do with a P.E. teacher I’ll call Row. He kind of reminded me of an old crow carved of withered wood, but I’m going to call him Row so as not to offend that bird. I couldn’t spell his real name off the top of my head but what does it matter?

       

In any case, we were running the field one day and I was dead last with the old Row pacing me. I kept my speed even though it hurt like hell, and I had to close my eyes from the pain. I was out of breath and aching but would give him no ground. 

To add injury to insult his knee stopped working, and he ran with one stiff leg but could have out ran me at any moment. Somehow we were talking. I couldn’t give you an explanation for that, but mostly he was talking.  He told me how he won track meets as a coach by pacing the worst runner and making them keep running.

“The last runner gets down to a slow trot,” he told me. “I keep telling them not to give up. Come on, pass just one more kid.”

Row would focus on his weakest point, and this would make the largest impact on his work. It’s a funny way of looking at things until you break it down. Like I said for my projects, “if you have a car with a good engine but a bad transmission it still will never run.”

If you want to paint and you can’t paint clouds maybe you should paint clouds until you get it right. If you’re bad at something work at it until you get it right.

I will call this the ‘Row Principle’ your weakest point is where you can most improve.

Never give up, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

Potential and Sitting -Around Time - Maria Bamford

 

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

Brother of the World - Philip Bailey