Friday, December 15

Dear Jim,

It´s a hazy day in Sacto, like a day South of Market in San Francisco, only there is no wind. I feel like going to The City, but I don´t know what I would do. I can´t walk like I used to.

Walking in The City always gave me hope. All the great views inspiring me for the future. I thrived on hope. Everything will work out I thought.

Six years ago dad and I took a walking tour. Actually we did two. The first was along the Barbary Coast, up to the park on the edge of Chinatown, then down to the Trans America building.

We rested at the park in Chinatown. There was a great view of Coit Tower. I thought of what the view would have been like when Montgomery Street was the shoreline.

There was no view of the bay from the park because of all the buildings, but in the old days the view would have been beautiful, or at least soothing. I read that a skyscraper is planned that will block the view of Coit Tower from the park. That´s what made the park magical, somewhere to go to contemplate a landmark and to dream.

When we got to the park it was very crowded with Chinese. It was orderly and safe. There was not a lot of noise. It was the way I wish cities and neighborhoods were all the time. It reminded me of the time you and I were outside the de Young.

A Chinese child was sitting on the ledge around the pond. He was looking at the fish or something. His mother was keeping an eye on him, but not being bossy. You marveled at how well-behaved he was.

The other walk dad and I took was in the Mission where you lived when you were born. It was a Sunday, a yucky day like today. It wasn´t in the real sunny part of the Mission like Florida Street. It reminded me of the Avenues. Boring.

But dad liked it. After the official walk we went into the business next door to where you guys lived. Dad told the clerk, ¨I lived next door when I first got married in 1945. Is there still …?¨ So the guy led us out back then left. Dad looked around reminiscing and marveling.

Then we walked to one of the bars dad used to go to. I didn´t like being there. Bars scare me. You never know what can happen. Dad had a beer and I had orange juice. I didn´t like the crowd, but dad was thrilled to be there.

It was a great day for dad. He loved San Francisco back then. He loved mom and the people he met there.

It was a bummer for me. I don´t have great memories. I never loved San Francisco. I´ve met great individuals, but I have never loved a group of people or a neighborhood.

One time I did a tour before I went home to Sacto from mom´s and dad´s. It was of Market Street near the hotel mom and dad stayed in on their honeymoon.

I was cutting it close and carrying all my crap. I got to the group just as it was beginning the walk. As I hurried up, the guide said something like, ¨Look who just blew in.¨ He was laughing. I wanted to say, ¨Fuck you asshole. You don´t look so good either.¨

It ruined the walk. What he should have said was, ¨Welcome. Glad you could make it. Love to have you.¨

It was a great example of San Francisco snobbery: We´re superior to L. A.; People in L. A. are phony; People in San Jose are rubes; We´re sophisticated here in The City.

The guy thought he was hot shit. He had worked for years in one of the famous buildings we walked by. Oh boy! You´re so cool!

Remember the girl from San Jose I dated after high school? She was beautiful. Everyone I met through her had class. They weren´t at all like the rowdies I hung out with, or like the snobs from North Beach or the Marina.

It was a great experience. The rubes in San Jose made me look my San Francisco snobbery in the eyeball. But I couldn´t get beyond being less of a snob to being warmer.

Some things just ain´t gonna happen.

I wish I had your personality.

Love,

Dave

Friday, December 8

Dear Jim,

Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Remember the shortstop for the Big Red Machine, Davey Concepcion? He was called the Immaculate Concepcion because he never made an error.

Have I been sacrilegious?

You and mom and everybody in heaven probably had a big party. You, mom, mom´s favorite sister, and auntie and uncle loved Mary.

Since I was downtown for a meeting this morning, I thought of going to the noon Mass at the cathedral, but I decided not to. I did not want to be around all those people and I didn´t want to spend the money.

When I talked with dad this afternoon, he didn´t know today is the Immaculate Conception. He said he doesn´t know any of the holidays, birthdays, or anything anymore.

I told dad I had thought of going to Mass but did not want to. I told him I don´t like being on film at church. Dad thought I was making too big of a deal out of it. He said with all the bullshit that goes on today, the churches have to protect themselves with film.

He said look at all the guys who rob the poor boxes. Then I said that that shows you how screwed up the country has become. Churches were respected when I was a kid. Dad agreed.

But still. I would like churches to be the only places that didn´t have cameras. I wish the Mass was not filmed. Really make churches sacred places.

Like I said in my last letter, the weather has been incredible. We will have another week of 61° days and 35° nights with sun all day. You can´t beat that.

Sunny winter days are great to go to a 1 pm Mass at the cathedral. The sun is low and it is beautiful shining through the stained glass.

I wish you were alive. We would go to Mass together. I would be willing to go to a Mass in Latin.

Remember a couple of letters back I told you I was reading a travel book about Russia? One of the things the book mentioned was the way Russian Orthodox Catholics bless themselves – with the thumb, index finger, and middle finger pressed at their tips.

It got me wondering about the Byzantine Rite, so I asked dad. He said he grew up blessing himself like Russians do. I asked him, ¨The three fingers symbolize the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?¨ Dad said yes. There might even be sacred geometry involved. Do you know?

I love Russia. There was a long article about Russia in October´s Smithsonian. October was the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

The author was fascinated by Russia as a kid. Then in the nineties he got to travel there so he could write about it. He made another trip or two, then went back at the beginning of this year to write about the revolution.

He mentioned John Reed, the American writer who lusted for adventure. Reed went to Mexico for the Mexican Revolution, then to Europe during World War I, then to Russia for the Russian Revolution.

Reed did not speak much Russian. He had Russian officials he was friends with sign papers for him so he could pass through check points. But as the revolution got nastier, many checkpoints were not official. They were controlled by revolutionaries.

Twice Reed was stopped by them. Each time he said, ¨I have my papers.¨ But each time none of the revolutionaries could read. Each time he was lucky that someone he knew happened to be there to prevent him from being shot.

It is incredible that twice the revolutionaries did not know how to read. That helps me to understand what Russia was like. I guess what our Appalachia was like.

Here´s some good news but probably too little too late. The other day my boss told me that administration is putting in new types of light bulbs in our office. The fluorescent tubes will be removed.

I´m glad. I hope I am not as stressed.

The light in heaven must be beautiful.

Love,

Dave

Friday, December 1

Dear Jim,

What a great Fall. The sycamores are beautiful. A lot of leaves have fallen. We´ve had perfect temperatures. There has not been a lot of wind. And the hills are green, though barely.

Today I talked with dad. I felt sad listening to him. He needs people to tell him he is a wonderful man and has led an exemplary life. He is helpless and needs a thousand hugs.

He is slipping. He said, ¨The days are getting longer.” Then I said, ¨No dad. They are getting shorter. Today is December 1st.¨

Twice more he said the days are getting longer. I said, ¨No. They are getting shorter.¨ He said, ¨The 25th or something, then they´ll get longer.¨ I said, ¨The days have been sunny so you think the days are getting longer.¨ ¨That´s right.¨

It is supposed to be sunny through next week. This is the kind of weather you would ride all day in in Golden Gate Park or the Marin Hills.

Remember that Christmas I gave you the baseball book with the painting of Big Rec on it? I think of the games we used to watch there. A lot of times it was really cold.

I´ve been thinking of San Francisco a lot. The City had great baseball fields – Big Rec, Funston, Balboa Park. I liked Crocker Amazon field best because of the dugouts. They were real dugouts. Dug out, cemented, stairs put in, and a roof put on. Very classy.

That was when The City and the nation had confidence in themselves, and the money to spend on classy things. When I was in high school those dugouts were also used as watering holes on Friday and Saturday nights. So many wonderful parks were made a lot less wonderful by the kids in the seventies who were always out drinking.

I think about this all the time. We boomers led the nation down the tubes. We owe the country a huge apology. It probably wouldn´t forgive us, but we don´t deserve it.

I´m listening to a book about a forty-three year old black man who got strangled to death by a cop on Staten Island three years ago. The guy was selling cigarettes in a park. He sold them for a lot less than they cost in a store.

A huge tax had been put on cigarettes in New York City after 911 to pay for reconstruction. But people wanted affordable cigarettes. So cases of cigarettes were bought out-of-state and brought into NYC where people bought them from guys like this forty-three year old.

The man started selling cigarettes when he got out of jail for selling drugs. He figured selling illegal cigarettes would be better than returning to selling drugs. But the cops did not want a black man selling illegal cigarettes in this park across the street from a fancy apartment house that had just been built.

The author talks about jail. He says when Marion Cuomo was governor of New York, 20-30 prisons were built.

The Progressive Media also talks about the prison boom of the eighties and nineties. The Progressive Media says the boom was a plot to put black and brown men in prison.

But the Progressive Media forgets how violent black guys were in the sixties and seventies – how many white guys were beat up. I´ve been thinking that the so-called revenge of Middle America against Black America may have really been pissed off white boomers who remembered getting beat up in high school by black guys, being afraid to take the bus because of black guys, or having to transfer to a different school because of the black guys. Progressives are offended by such a statement.

It´s a great book. Great narrator. It´s nice to save my eyes listening instead of reading.

Well Jim, there isn´t a lot of razzle dazzle in this one, but I wanted to stay in touch.

Love,

Dave

Thanksgiving

Dear Jim,

I´m sitting at the Sacramento River listening to the freeway and watching the water. It´s overcast but not cold, so I will be able to stay out for at least three hours.

Every time I come down to watch the water there are slobs. It´s creepy. Between the homeless, the freeway, the ugly skyline behind me and just plain rude people, it usually is not enjoyable.

But once in a while I need to see the river, especially on cloudy days like today and when the river is high in winter. I like to watch logs float down after the rain. One time there were birds standing on a log pecking at it as it floated.

When I got here today there were two slobs with their pit bull sitting where I wanted to sit. I walked until I saw a nice spot to lean on the rail to watch the water.

Just as I got comfortable putting on my ski cap and head phones, three 20 year olds passed on their bicycles. As they rode by, one of the guys patted me on my (a woman just rode by with her husband and yelled, ¨Happy Thanksgiving!¨ I turned. We waved as we looked at each other. I said, ¨Happy Thanksgiving!¨ She made me feel good) butt where my wallet was. He said something that ended in ´ay´. I don´t know if he was saying have a nice day or perceived me to be gay.

My first thought was ¨That asshole.¨ My second thought was ¨My wallet!¨, but it was there. Then I took it out to put in my front pocket. The nerve of the bastard.

I don´t know what I would have done if they wanted to beat me up or hassle me for money. I tell myself to be careful. I say stay calm and breath deep. But something like that! If they had stopped I would not have known what to do, even if I had been breathing deep.

Something like this happened on light rail four years ago. I was sitting in an aisle seat wearing my sun hat when a black kid tapped my brim – he flicked his fingers up from underneath it. I almost got up to punch him, but the light rail company probably would have blamed me.

I´ve been gone from home an hour forty-five minutes and I still do not have to pee. I was peeing all day Tuesday and yesterday.

You know the song Yesterday by The Beatles? 3,000 singers recorded it. That´s amazing.

I´ve been reading a lot. I´m still reading biographies for children in Spanish. Tuesday I read about The Beatles. Yesterday I read about Neil Armstrong – the guy who walked on the moon.

It´s good for me to read about people whose field does not interest me – Walt Disney, Einstein, Steve Jobs, Neil Armstrong. It makes me face the fact that I hate these times while they thrived on them.

Jobs, Armstrong, Disney help me put my youth in perspective. I will never like movies, but I wish something could have happened in the eighties to get me interested in computers. How much more confident and happy I would be. How much more money I would have.

When I read about Armstrong, I was fascinated by the simple diagrams of the trip to the moon. They showed the orbits and the separation of the different parts of the rocket and the rejoining of them for the return to earth. When they got to the moon Armstrong had to use his training to search for a place to land because where they expected to land was not flat.

What do you think of this? Armstrong had a speech prepared to deliver to us when he landed on the moon. He was going to say, ¨A small step for a man, but a giant leap for all mankind.¨ However, his words got garbled and what was recorded was, ¨A small step for man, a giant leap for all mankind.¨

Reading about Armstrong got me interested in flying, so I ordered a short adult book about the Wright Brothers.

My butt´s getting sore. I´ll write you when I get to another spot.

My Coffee Shop

I walked most of the way from the river to here. Boy is Sacramento eerie. It´s one thing to have weird people at the river or in parks, but it´s another to have so many one and two story ugly piece of shit concrete office buildings across from a row of beautiful old houses, and then another thing to have a ton of sterile new condos and apartments that nobody who is already here can afford.

Downtown, Midtown – it is stifling, soul-killing, phony. Remember the saying Are we having fun yet? Well, Sacramento is trying desperately to be a big city and a cultural center. Are we world class yet? Do we have soul now?

Even with all our trees we are nothing. A movie came out about the time you died – Edward Scissorhands. At the beginning was a panorama of an unbelievably sterile suburb with unreal trees. It terrified me. That´s how I feel about Sacramento. It´s unbelievably sterile.

I´m terrified of being old here. The beautiful trees in this ugly town make my bitterness worse. What happened to America?

I was reading a travel book about Russia. There was a lot of history in it. One of the things the book said was that Russia looks upon itself as female – Mother Russia.

That got me thinking about America. I can´t imagine referring to America as the motherland or the fatherland. There is no deep unfathomable American soul that I want to go down to the river on a sultry night to revel in as the water of my ancestors passes.

Wouldn´t it be nice if America had a connection to the earth and a connection to the great beyond?

We´re nothin´.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Love,

Dave

Friday, November 17

Dear Jim,

How are you? I´ve been weak since last Saturday. I stayed home for two days, then yesterday I got a helluva headache at work. It was so bad that when a customer asked me a difficult question, I went to get somebody else to answer it. I would have gotten sick if I had tried to help her.

My headache was an allergy headache. I took the wrong kind of painkiller after lunch. I wish I had taken something different. I almost didn´t make it until the end of the day.

You got a lot of headaches in high school. They had something to do with your glasses or needing glasses. When you returned from Seattle in your twenties, you got lots of headaches. I remember you refused to take aspirin.

All of us kids get lots of headaches. Sis I only gets them during allergy season. I used to get a lot of headaches like the one I had yesterday. One of the reasons I don´t get as many now is because I do not eat as much bread, cereal, soy milk, and pastries. I have more energy too.

Remember how your hands used to turn purple in the cold? I think that kept you out of Vietnam. I had really cold feet and hands for a long time, especially my feet, but in the last few weeks with the start of the cool season, they haven´t been as cold.

I think it has to do with eating more salt. I read a review of a book on salt in September. The review said that many people today do not eat enough salt, and that even more people eat too much sugar. It said that salt is essential and people should eat more. I knew I wasn´t eating properly, that I had to cut down on sugar, eat more protein, and increase the variety of foods I ate. So I went out and bought some classy salt.

Wow. It tasted great and I felt better. I felt lighter.

When the book about salt arrived for me at the library, I read it intensely. A lot of it was too hard to understand. But when I read the list of symptoms of possible salt deficiency, I felt good when I saw ¨cold appendages¨.

I´ll see how it goes the rest of the winter. I wonder if your hands were cold and purple because of a salt deficiency. I laugh thinking about your story of asking the guy in the mountains to go into your pocket to take out the car keys and open the door for you because your hands were so cold you could not feel.

I talked with dad today. He sounded really good and he felt really good. It is interesting to hear him struggle to be articulate. He´ll ask me what I ´ve been doing. I´ll say, ¨I just got back from the store. I wanted to go before it rains.¨ He will hesitate then say firmly, ¨You never know when a big storm will blow in.¨

I feel sorry for him. He also reminds me of myself and my struggle with speech.

I have been telling myself and others for years that I do not have enough people to talk with and that I desperately need to talk. When I go to work it is difficult to talk because, like I told you, most people are not interested in talking with me.

My talk at work is like the speech of a desperate man. I struggle to speak and sometimes I make no sense. I feel like I am an old man lost in the world he is no longer part of and that does not want to recognize him.

The other day I was working on a project with a guy. As we were finishing, a woman walks in and hears me sigh then say OK as I walked over to do something. She said, ¨People say ´OK´ a lot around here. Always talking to themselves.¨

Then two more people came into the room. She said, ¨I hear ´Allright´ a lot too.¨ I said ¨I say ´allright´ a lot.¨ Somebody laughed. ¨Yeah you do.¨ Then I gestured with my arm and fist – ¨Allright! Right on!¨ – and everybody laughed.

We bantered about more expressions from the 60´s and 70´s. I said, ¨My generation is easy to make fun of – ´Far out man!´¨

I don´t laugh much at work, but I did that day. I cut loose too – but that can be dangerous at work.

The problem at work is I need the people there to provide me with the conversation I do not have outside of work. It´s like people would rather give money to a successful man than a homeless man, so people would rather talk with somebody with a lot of friends than somebody with hardly any friends.

I´m worried about my mental health. I do not know what to do to have people to talk with like you and I used to talk, and the guy I used to play music with talked, and the way my friend who I met on the quad at Sac State talked, and the way I talked with some of my girl friends.

They say you´ve gotta grab the bull by the horns. Everything I have tried to do to embrace the world and meet people hasn´t worked.

I remember you telling me about a Scandanavian woman you met. She told you that friends in her country had long intimate conversations. You contrasted that with the horseshit relationships people have here.

I don´t move quickly. It would take a lot of time to make intimate friends, but I´m running out of time. Help me to think of something, and to have the courage to do it.

Love,

Dave

Friday, November 10

Dear Jim,

It´s been an incredibly beautiful day. More like March than November.

I walked over to my barber. I was there for an hour and a half. When I walked in he laughed. He often says my wild look reminds him of Paul Newman in his first movie. Newman played a professional artist. Since he mentions it so often, I´m going to have to watch it.

I love going to him. He´s one of the few people I can express my political opinions to. We feel free to cut loose to each other. At work I would get fired if I said a lot of the things I say to him. He and I are not politically correct.

Today I went to Midtown, the politically correct haven, to look at apartment buildings. An acquaintance of mine lives in one building. Another acquaintance owns the other. I might have to move so I want to have some leads.

In each building you have to enter through a main entrance, then close the door and walk to your apartment. I don´t like that. I like coming through a gate and feeling the air in the courtyard as I walk to my unit.

It´s boring in Midtown – so lifeless. There´s a contradiction between Midtown trying to be a neighborhood where artists live and promote politically correct ideas, and the banners on J Street light poles promoting the Kings, who stayed in town because of a $360,000,000 bond issued by the City. That $360,000,000 could have funded a lot of affordable housing and a lot of $5,000 loans to college students or artists. The new downtown arena that was funded through the bonds has increased property values Downtown and in Midtown and ran a lot of people and artists out.

Why subsidize a team whose owner is a billionaire? It doesn´t make sense. The City Council members are eager to favor these bastards.

I think $360,000,000 in bonds would be great for housing and job training. But all these artists who want to rock the boat, who think they are shit disturbers, who hate Big Business and Capitalism, grovel to get a grant from the City. They should be ashamed of themselves.

What was great about graffiti artists in the 80´s and first half of the 90´s was that they were shit disturbers. They did not want a grant. They risked getting arrested, getting shot by a property owner, getting shot by a rival tagger, getting run over by a train, or falling off of a roof or a ladder. And their work was far more creative and skilled than what most artists do.

Midtown doesn´t have that daring do anymore. There are a lot of murals – some are really good, but most of them are fashion statements – a phony blend of sci-fi, comic books and Aztec art. Graffiti, whether you liked it or not, and whether it scared you or inspired you, was not contrived. It was art. It had conviction and meaning.

Artists always complain that the City should fund programs for the arts and give grants to artists, but they are not talking about introducing teenagers to Gregorian Chant, or teaching kids ancient Greek so kids can read The Iliad, The Bible, and Plato in that language when they are older. Artists want Native American programs and rectal intercourse programs and voices of jailbirds programs, anything that isn´t Western and anything that will make them look open-minded.

What they never talk about is funding to study the role of beauty in art or funding for a class on how to create beautiful art for our ugly times. Our times are incredibly ugly. I think artists have done a lot to make our world ugly.

I don´t mean graffiti. It´s scary. Graffiti was America´s chance to look our ugly cities in the eye, but we pussed out. We got rid of graffiti, but continued to build ugly buildings. The buildings are even uglier with cameras.

Maybe one of the reasons so many artists hate sports is because sports are filled with beauty. The beauty and violence, the tension between them, is something artists should be attracted to – ¨What a beautiful catch!¨ Crunch!

Sports are inspiring and scary. Wouldn´t I love to be able to be a pro athlete, but the career can end at any time.

That´s what I liked about graffiti. Though it was not beautiful, it was inspiring. It was also scary. Why are these kids so pissed off? But also, how come I am not on fire like they are? How come I do not take risks like they do? How come I am so afraid of these smooth-flowing bright letters?

Graffiti was a step away from beauty. Artists respected graffiti, but they would probably be afraid to say it now. They might lose their grant.

If an artist applied for a grant to paint pictures of heaven, he would be laughed out of town or hounded out of town.

But I want to keep going with beauty. Even though most people follow sports for excitement and for something to motivate them, artists should follow sports for the beautiful things the players do with their magnificent bodies. A light should be going off in an artist´s head when he sees sports – ¨Even the worst professional athlete is far more talented at what he does than we are at what we do. We should practice more. We should try to inspire people with our skill, our courage, and how much we practice.¨

Artists just don´t get it. Even though sports tickets are too expensive and pro players make too much money, the public doesn´t want to pay for a book of poems almost anybody can write. Going to a game is a better buy.

I lose either way in Midtown. I don´t care about the Kings. I would if the owner built his own arena. I would love to love the Kings, to watch them do godlike things.

I love to hate artists. They are full of bullshit. I know you hated graffiti, but I grew to love it in the middle nineties, just before the City cracked down on it.

One of my biggest heartbreaks was the murder of graffiti.

Love,

Dave

Friday, November 3

Dear Jim,

Today is mom´s death day. Like her death was a relief to her from living in a place she hated, today is an end for me of the family strife I am reminded of every October.

Poor mom. I think a lot about her. I broke her and dad´s heart. The sadness in her face will never leave me. Dad was disgusted with me, but there was no pain etched in his face and he never spoke to hurt me.

They had been so proud of me, then became so heartbroken. What happened to our son? How come he did not say anything? We thought everything was going well.

I would have loved to say something, but nobody would have understood. They would have mentioned a thousand horrible options. I would have said what I really need is … and they would have said but the reality is … so that´s why I never said anything.

What I needed were nice offices to work in and nice libraries to read in. I needed good lights in offices to make me feel good. I always felt sick and fought for my sanity in offices with bad lights.

I wonder what jail is like. There is no healthy light to come home to.

When I stopped gardening I wanted to work with people. That meant working in an office. After all my rebellion, I wanted to embrace the world, come out of my shell, get loose. But the fluorescent lights scared me. They made me really tense and I had to fight to stay sane. I was ready to blossom, to glory, to bring my manliness and pride into the world, but the lights defeated me.

You hated them too. That´s one of the reasons you hated your job. I think of how much better you would have sounded when you called on Saturday night if your office had a nice ambiance, if there was a great interplay of light. You wouldn´t have had a monotone.

After I started my current job, I was reviewed. My boss said I talked in a monotone. I was very aware that I did. But I could not help it. I hated the place even though it had a fair amount of windows.

It was nice to be able to see outside. It kept me from cracking. But what I needed was relaxing light and a great sense of light play so it would be exciting to look around.

It was dreadful. I sounded dreadful. I sounded like you on your Saturday calls.

The lights aren´t as bad now as in the 70´s, but they are still horrible. There isn´t the buzz and flicker that there was. The shadows in the office aren´t as dreary as they were. But the lights still overstimulate me. They are like a drug – a fight or flight drug.

I can´t leave the job. I don´t fight so much as succumb to the over stimulation. An architect told me a fluorescent light is ¨like a lightening bolt going into your brain.¨

That´s a great way to look at it. It´s how I feel – zapped.

There is another way to look at it. You know the controversy around football players and concussions? I always feel punchy at the end of my shift. A lot of times my temples hurt during work and at home because of the stress from work. I feel like I have been hit in the head too many times like a football player.

I´ve been saying for years, ¨My brain´s shot.¨ A lot of times it is difficult for me to speak because I am battling the stress from the lights.

I used to argue with a friend about the lights. I said companies are too cheap to put in good lights. I said companies don´t want their employees to feel good. He said companies aren´t trying to make their staff feel bad, the companies just do not want to spend money for good lights. He said it is not a conspiracy by business to make staff feel shitty.

I remember when I worked at a coffee shop. The lights were soothing in the public area, but in the staff area there were fluorescent lights.

I´ve been in government buildings where the lobby and the public auditorium next to it have wonderful soothing light. I could work there all day and never feel stressed, but upstairs where the offices are, the light is horrible like any office.

One time I worked in a restaurant. The fluorescent tube burned out in the kitchen. The boss brought in a lamp from home while he shopped for a new tube. I felt great.

I laughed. I smiled.

When he returned with the new tube, he left without taking his lamp. So we turned off the tube and turned on the lamp. When he got back he was furious. He yanked out the cord and turned on the overhead light. He refused my request to leave the fluorescent light off and the incandescent light on. What a fucking asshole. I´m glad he went out of business.

It´s been a great day. I´ve been sitting outside under the clouds for three hours, but it doesn´t look like it´s going to rain.

It rained the day of mom´s funeral, then it stopped when we went to the graveyard to bury mom on top of you. You loved graveyards, especially the one´s in Europe. I used to love them, but now that time is moving on, I´m not fascinated in one anymore.

Something happened at mom´s funeral. When Sis I spoke about mom at the service, she said that when mom was in boarding school in Berkeley, she used to look across the bay and cry with homesickness. I never knew that. Did you?

I wish I had known. I might have been less rude to mom when I was young, and I would have been nicer to her as I got older. You used to tell me to be nicer to mom.

That´s all for now.

Love,

Dave

Friday, October 27

Dear Jim,

Happy dad´s and mom´s anniversary. Today is number 72. I told dad it was number 62. Do you think I am getting Alzheimer´s?

When dad and I talked at the beginning of October, he was already remembering his anniversary. He remembered the Blue Angels flying over his and mom´s 50th celebration at the fancy club in the Presidio.

It was a great party. Indian Summer in The City. Mom and Dad looked great and were in their glory. Everyone from everywhere was there. People were very happy for them and told me how much they respected mom and dad.

But it wasn´t so great for me. On the way to the party with dad and mom and our relatives from Ohiuh, mom made fun of the sun hat I was wearing, the one I wore when I was gardening and felt unique in.

It hurt my feelings because it was true. I didn´t look good in it.

It also hurt my feelings because I knew I would not be able to continue gardening for very long, but I did not know what I was going to do. All the effort I was putting into gardening, but I was failing. All the pride I had in being independent, but it wasn´t making me money. All my lust to be outside living my truth working with my body, but it was going to have to end.

When I talked with all the solid accomplished people at the party, I was very uncomfortable. I had to pretend I was confident and that things were going well. I shoveled shit a few times to make myself look good.

Another reason the party brought me down was the place it was in. It was beautiful.
How come I do not have a place like this? How come I´m not a hot shot like the pilots in the Blue Angels? How come I´m not prestigious like the officers who drink here? How come I do not like to wear a suit and tie like other men? Oh I wish things were going will so I could glory too.

The party was so good people talked about it for years. Some people asked dad and mom to have one for their 60th.

So they did. It was at the church hall, which I never liked. But at least the celebration was in the afternoon when the hall is sunny.

The party was very good, but nobody took pictures. Mom was mad after. It hurt her. There should have been a designated photographer.

I think the reason none of the parishioners took photos of mom and dad was because as much as they wanted to support a church member, they were envious of their great marriage, they didn´t like mom´s outspokenness, and they felt threatened by dad´s humble silent goodness.

I liked the party. I was not comparing myself to anybody and I sure as hell would not want to own the church hall. What I remember about the party was the priest who said the blessing.

He was ten years younger than dad and mom. He looked like a man sure of his place in the world. We listened.

He said that mom and dad were truly a great couple who had an exemplary marriage. The greatest testament to Charles and Dolores, he said, was how they handled the murder of their son. It was truly remarkable, the forgiveness they granted the man.

Jim, you´re the product of dad´s and mom´s wedding night.

Congratulations,

Love,

Dave

Sunday, October 22

Dear Jim,

It´s the Dodgers v. s. Astros in the World Series. I´m glad eastern teams are not in it. Houston plays in a dome. It isn´t going to be cold or rainy in L. A.

The season is already too long. I don´t want a rain delay.

Today I was telling dad the Astros used to be the Colt 45´s. How Texan. I don´t know if the name was changed to be modern or because of political correctness.

It´s been a stressful week. My mouth is still recuperating from gum surgery.

I was going through all my papers and cupboards to see what I can throw away. I made four trips to the donation store with my day pack full. I threw out a kettle, toaster, waffle iron, a card table. I will be throwing out a big pitcher, a crock pot, and a 4 inch pile of notes I took.

I am worried the landlord will raise the rent or evict us. He hired a property manager because he cannot do as much work here as he used to. He´s 80. So, I want to be ready to move quickly and easily.

It´s amazing. I have only kept a few books: a bible in Spanish, two Spanish poetry books, a small Spanish verb book, a Spanish/English dictionary, a small English dictionary, a Ty Cobb book, and the family bible. I love the family bible. So does Sis II. I think we all loved it.

Remember all the books you had? They were in dad´s garage until at least 2000. I brought Why Catholics Can´t Sing back to Sacramento. I loved it. I underlined in it. I kept it until last year.

A friend of mine joined the choir at his church. He can´t sing either, but at least he sings in key. I would love to be in a choir. I wonder how often a choir feels like one – like they are experiencing God.

Love,

Dave

Wednesday, October 11

Happy Mom´s Birthday Jim,

I haven´t called dad yet. I want to sing Happy Birthday to You with him, but my mouth hurts from dental surgery on Monday.

I guess you know about the fires in Sonoma County? I did not find out about them until dad told me yesterday afternoon.

He went for a ride with the owner of the rest home to look at the damage. He was surprised at the destruction, but he didn´t tell me 1500 buildings had been destroyed.

Sis I and our cousin are in danger of losing their houses. They can´t sleep because they worry about being evacuated.

Sonoma County. God´s country. It´s not supposed to happen there. The wind picked up again last night and today is smoky.

Sis I has a great piece of property. All her hopes and memories. All our memories. How abandoned the people who lost their homes, businesses, and jobs must feel sleeping in a gym with hundreds of other people. ¨What am I doing here with all these bastards?¨

Dad said yesterday that we never know what the next day might bring. People were watching burning pieces of whatever fly over their houses. Our nephew hosed down his house before they evacuated it, but it turned out to be a false alarm. He bought the house last year.

In one area eight blocks were burned. People said it looked like a war zone. One radio
announcer´s voice trembled as she reported.

I remember the Labor Day weekend after graduating from high school. We went to Clear Lake to get plastered.

On night we watched the glow of a forest fire on the other side of the hill. It was pretty.
I´m surprised they didn´t evacuate us.

But it isn´t pretty in the day. I´ve seen two daytime fires. They terrified me.

Last night I was listening to Public Radio. I always listen to Public Radio when I am sick or real weak.

They interviewed an 87 year old American who lived in Moscow in the 1950s. He attended college there and ended up working for our government or a U. S. business there.

He talked about Kruchev. We all know that Kruchev criticized Stalin. But I didn´t know that his statements brought a loosening of the Russian police state. The cops didn´t arrest anyone who criticized Stalin and Kruchev.

There was great hope in Russia and eastern Europe, but it did not last. Kruchev invaded Hungary during its´ rebellion. He turned out to be just like Stalin.

I remember when Sis I was in high school. She was reading a paperback about the Hungarian Revolution. She came crying into the room where dad and I were. She showed dad the book and cried to him, ¨Why didn´t we help them!¨

It´s been forty-nine years since you were in Poland and Czechoslovakia. I remember the charred and mud-splattered piece of the Russian flag you brought home from Prague. It hung on the wall in my bedroom until after you died.

I remember the story you told about the Polish family you stayed with.
The kid told his dad, ¨If you don´t let me go out tonight, I will tell the authorities you have that thing in the garage you are not supposed to have.¨

That was the adventure of your life. You wanted to experience a real culture, the great Catholic and Western tradition you loved profoundly. You wanted to free yourself from the horribly anal life here in America. You slept in the snow in Poland so you could make up for the suffering you did not have to undergo in Vietnam. You wanted to prove your manhood to yourself.

You almost didn´t make it.

´67 and ´68 were the most challenging years of your life.

You went to Europe just as it was rejecting Catholicism and its´ pride in being Western.
It´s too bad you didn´t get to meet John Paul and Benedict when they were in their forties. You would have loved to hear how much they knew about The Church and European history. You would have loved to feel how much they loved The Church.

You have suffered a lot bro. I want to acknowledge it.

I love you,

Dave