LETTER TO A FRIEND

Hey Bryan!

Man, I’m sorry its taken so long to get to you. My writing juices have just almost been dried up! I hadn’t really posted anything since 10/25.

Been very busy. I started looking at houses to buy last month. My apartments had decided to raise my rent by 25%. That ought to be criminal, yes? So I gave notice and went house hunting.

I’ve got a contract on a house over in Meadowbrook. I shitty little house really, it needs wood siding replaced, paint, and has grading and drainage problems. The roof might make it another year or two. I’ll be lucky if it passes insurance inspection. These people that flip houses, they do all this sexy stuff inside, but forget the big stuff.  But it has a huge kitchen (big enough for bunk beds and a television) and a big master bedroom, like no house you’ve ever seen, and once I’d seen it I couldn’t un-see it. Me, leaning against the kitchen counter drinking coffee watching my kitchen television; me, sitting at my picnic table in the kitchen, just over from the formal dining room table set with fancy dishes from The Pottery Barn, waiting for a supper party to happen; me, lounging around the master bedroom in my smoking jacket, mint candy sitting on the pillow on the made up bed and artwork on the walls, and a big mahogany desk where I take care of business, maybe pick up a quick million on e-trade while three or four junior Playboy bunnies frolic and lounge around my huge combination bedroom/office/parlor and purr things like “Hurry Sugar, come back to bed”.
Anyway it’s a shitty little house that needs a lot of work on the outside. I could sure use your expertise.

We just finished having the groups 38^th Anniversary. It was full of angst, drama,  sturm and drang, and I wont bore you with the details, or get involved with rumor and loose talk about what all went on. As Moneyhandler I can say we made about 600 bucks and no one got knifed in the parking lot so it was a complete success.
A friend of mine from High School, Bill, was asking me what we did at the group. Bill and  I, when we were Seniors at LD Bell were in the first High School philosophy class in the state of Texas. The teacher had tried for years to get it on the curricula, and finally had done it. She wanted 3 volunteers from the class to do a film presentation about the class to take to the State Teachers Convention. Bill and I did that. We were already buds, but that cemented it. It was about a 15 minute presentation, with Moody Blues music and everything, and except for the debate team, the only thing worth having gone to High School for!

I’l try to get another note off to you soon. I have to get your address from Trish. In the meantime I’ll leave you with a David Foster Wallace quote a ran into a few weeks ago. It really stuck with me, and in some way makes me think of you.

“What he'd do, he'd never go out to the length of the chain. He'd never even get out to where the chain got tight. Even if the mailman pulled up, or a salesman. Out of dignity, this dog pretended like he chose this one area to stay in that just happened to be inside the length of the chain. Nothing outside of that area right there interested him. He just had zero interest. So he never noticed the chain. He didn't hate it. The chain. He just up and made it not relevant. Maybe he wasn't pretending--maybe he really up and chose that little circle for his own world. He had a power to him. All of his life on that chain.”
― David Foster Wallace, The Pale King