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Addendum: Lessons Continue (1999-2007)

Thursday, September 2, 1999- Well, it's been 3 months since I submitted my book to the publishers and I haven't heard anything. Indeed, how stupid it was of me to think I might experience any sort of relief beyond a very belabored bowel movement.

At any rate I'll continue my "apprenticeship" narrative for my own therapy, and I'll do it in the form of a journal. I've busied myself this past month doing drawings as best I could.

I still haven't made any friends here in St. Louis and am more lonely than ever. Maybe I made a big mistake moving back here from Kansas, but I had to move somewhere, and at the time it seemed important to me that if the end came it was best I be back here. Sure I had friends I visited during the day, but I was alone every other time. And I knew it was only a matter of time until those that I visited at their workplace during the day either got tired of me hanging around or moved on themselves.

On the positive side, I did get a pleasant surprise a couple days before my 54th birthday. Billie Murphy, Audie's sister, called me from Texas. She was real nice and mentioned that the post office was coming out with an Audie Murphy stamp this coming March. And she asked me if I would do a painting for the day-of-issue festivities at the local post office. I told her I certainly would. But I didn't tell her how dissappointed I was that they weren't using one of the 7 paintings that I had already done of him. I am happy for Audie's sake and it's a good thing they're going to commemorate his life. I went ahead and sent a submittal of my work to the post office, even though I'm sure it's too late. I also offered the USPS my services for any future stamp projects...that was before I got a real bad attack last week.

My feet have been burning nonstop for right on 3 years and I was just about adapted to it...when I suddenly started getting excruciating stabbing pains in my left hip and leg. It's the worse when I sit down. It's so bad that my feet hardly bother me anymore. I suppose the brain gives priority to whichever pain is the greatest. And this is real fuckin' bad. I can't believe it. I cried about it several days last week, and now I've just about accepted it. But I can't, and won't live like this. Just today I wrote out a will and had it notarized, giving all my paintings and writings to my cousin Joel, in exchange for his pledge to take care of Sparky and Pip for the rest of their natural lives.

I don't have a doctor here in St. Louis, so I'm going to a walk-in clinic tomorrow just to make sure there's not something physically wrong with my leg that might be fixable.

I don't think I'll bother seeing a neurologist. I tried all the muscle relaxers and other mind-numbing drugs a year ago, and all they did was make me nauseous and depressed. My only hope is that this pain will spontaneously go away in the next few days. Because I just about can't do anything the way things are now. I haven't taken a shower since last week because I never know when my leg is going to lock up. And the pain is so bad, I cry out, even when it cramps up in public. I can barely get dressed in the morning. Putting my shoes on is the hardest part.

If there are no further entries in this journal, you can guess what I was forced to do. And I'm really pissed about it.

Friday, September 3, 1999- Before that happens, though, I hope to give my Moses painting to Shaare Emeth as a gift from my parents, with their name on it. I need to do as many mitzvahs as I can.

I've been going to temple every Saturday and observing the sabbath as far as not doing any drawing or computer work. I've also been going to Torah study the hour before the service. But, as usual, I don't know how much longer I can continue to go, because I just don't agree with the liberal theology of Reformed Judiasm. I'll miss going, though, because I enjoy the worship service itself and seeing a couple people I know, Marvin, an old friend of the family, and Al, the brother of my Uncle Izzy. But I suppose going to sabbath worship services isn't supposed to be a social thing.

I just hope I can hold out long enough to get my website up and running, but it's very difficult with this stabbing pain in my hip and leg to sit down for very long.

To fill some of my painful hours of solitutude I've been spending some time out at Forest Park and at the Art Museum, but I'm not sure how much longer I can drive myself there.     I would be looking forward to going to Temple tomorrow but I don't think I can shower and get dressed properly. I can't bend over and take care of my feet like I need to.

So I repeat, if there are no further entries in this journal, you can guess what I was forced to do. And I'm really pissed about it. Not bitter, just pissed.

Sunday, September 5, 1999- Well, there is a further entry, but I'm not sure how many more there will be. I was barely able to get dressed yesterday for Temple. The stabbing pain in my leg is its worse when I try to bend down and tie shoes or pull off pants. Sadly, taking a shower is still out of the question. I've been washing as best I can with a wash rag everyday, but not my hair. I hope to be able to try and wash it in the kitchen sink later today. Last night was the first night that I barely got any sleep at all because of the pain. I've still been crying a bit, especially when I think of what would be my best solution, just to be able to lay down peacefully one night without pain and with my dogs at my side and the three of us fall asleep. I just wouldn't wake up, and Joel could come and take my dogs in the morning. But I have no idea how I could guarantee I wouldn't wake up. Poison or drug overdose is very uncertain and if I didn't die I'd probably end up in an institution someplace. A gun is the surest way, but it's so messy. And I certainly have no money to go to some country where euthenasia is legal. If only there was a Dr. Kevorkian who was a pleasant young lady.

I hope to get my Moses painting to the Temple by the Jewish New Year, which is only two weeks away. I'm going to have the nameplate read, "From Norman and Fay Krause." I'll try setting up an appointment with Rabbi Stiffman about it this week.

My painting and drawing days are through and I'm thankful they worked out as well as they did...very thankful.

I'll go look at the book "Final Exit" today and see if there is any sure and easy way. Nut I dount there is.

I'm sending a copy of this journal, up to yesterday's point, to Mark at the art store in KC. I want at least somebody to know that if I do end things, it's not because I was mentally ill or a coward, it's because I just can't take the increasing physical pain and continuing loneliness anymore. I've done enough; I think God will not judge me too harshly.

I also have to do this in a way which will not be too traumatic for Joel.

 

Saturday, December 25, 1999- It's almost four months later now and I'm still here. God gave me a reprieve in September when the weather cooled off and, over a period of a couple weeks, the horrible pain in my left leg got increasingly better..until it was all but gone. Though the burning in my feet remains as bad as ever, ther things are going much better.

As I said earlier, I sent a submittal of my Audie paintings to the post office, but after waiting a couple months, it turned out that they decided to do their Audie stamp from a photograph. At least I wasn't beat out by some other artist.

I never heard from the temple about my Moses painting. I have the feeling they didn't want it because his pointing fingers are too intimidating for liberal Judaism.

On the positive side, Richard Rodgers put my Audie paintings on his website and I got a bunch of fan mail for a week or so. I've been going every Tuesday with Joel and his son Aaron for dinner, a real bargain $5.99 steak at Shannon's Bar, and then to the Banana Bicycle Brigade. They're all nice people and it gives me something to look forward to each week.

Because I still spend most of my time alone..working on my website. And it's shaping up quite well. I've had some really good reviews from people who have visited it and I'm hoping it may be my venue to finding an audience, and some piece of mind.

On the subject of peace, I found quite a bit at my high school here in November. An old friend from high school that I hadn't seen in 35 years emailed me that he was coming to St. Louis and that we should go to the high school to see my painting of Lincoln. I had put off going there because I knew I would be dissappointed. I figured they probably had it in some corner of some small dingy room. And I had preferred to imagine it in some grander setting. But I went to meet Gary at the high school anyway. And was I super surprised to see it hanging at the most prominent point in their beautiful library. It was better than I could have ever imagined. We spent about 4 hours at the school and it was like being young again. I took a photo of the painting in the library and have a framed 8x10 of it hanging on the wall right next to my pillow. It gives me great comfort.

And most recently, via the internet, I've joined up with some really brilliant modern realist artists and professors and collectors who have come together in a group called "Goodart." We're going to bring goodart back to the world and change the world in the process. We're getting ready to begin an online magazine and I am going to help.

I had to quit going to temple because I just couldn't take their liberal anything-goes dogma.

Anyway, today, Christmas, I'm going to have dinner with Joel and his mother, my Aunt Anita. Thank God, my boys are ok though Sparky has a small growth on his rearend that needs to be removed next month.

Y2K is only a week away, I look forward to a good year ahead, burning feet or not. Whatever happens I have had more satisfaction of late than I had ever anticipated and I will always be wonderously thankful for that.     If only some financial independance could come my way in the near future so I don't have to worry about being stuck in an institution if my health, patience, and/or sanity, finally fails.

 

Sunday, January 15, 2000- Well, Y2K turned out to be a non-event. And my affiliation with Goodart is beginning to look like it will turn out to be a non-event. The guy that runs the show made a laughing stock out of me over an economic comment I made and things haven't been the same since.

I simply said that I hoped that Goodart might influence wealthy capitalists to set greed aside abit and to voluntarily use good moral judgement as their major motive instead. At any rate the members who visited my site didn't seem extremely impressed with my work anyway.

So I'm back in the same old leaky, painful, and isolated boat. But at least I have building my website to fill my time and I've made some really good friends through it, too. God only knows what the future holds. I certainly have no idea. I'm just really thankful to have made it to the year 2000, and with a peaceful feeling that I have indeed contributed something worthwhile to the world. I am ready to sleep peacefully in the dust, if need be, and meant to be.

I found out I had real high blood pressure awhile ago. And I found out last week that the medicine to control it makes me nauseous and depressed. So I'm in the process right now of weaning myself off it, and already feel better. Unless I'm mistaken, this is the endgame and I need to keep my mind as clear as possible while nature takes her course.

So I guess my heart will just have to keep pumping real hard for awhile until I find some stress relief. Not to complain on this present entry, but only to explain. I live in physical pain 24-hrs a day and never know when a new attack will force me to make the final exit. I can find no diversion in TV or radio. I only watched and listened to 9 hours in all of 1999. My feet burn worse when I watch, as they do when I try to lie down and rest. I drive an old car with 150,000 miles and real bad steering that just started to bind up. And for the last 3 years I've had to work the pedals with my cane because of my burning feet. Somebody broke into my car last week and stole my art supplies, because the locks jam if I lock them, so i leave the car unlocked. And I refuse to take disability assistance much longer. And I haven't been on a date for 15 years. And I've never owned a square-inch of... Shit...I'm tired of listening to myself complain. If only I knew I would never be shipped back to an institution and kept in a drugged stupor.

My boys are with me now and always will be. And the only reason I'm optimistic about my teluric future is that I don't think God would have sustained me all these years just to be cut off at the end like this. But I guess everybody thinks that about their apprenticeship and obviously many are cut off prematurely://

 

Sunday, February 20, 2000- Pretty much the same old stuff, but my social life has been increasing. An old friend from high school came into to town for a month and we got together several times. And I've been spending more time at the bicycle club getting ready for the Banana Ball this coming Saturday. I have a bad tooth but have put off getting it pulled until next Monday, after the ball. A tooth extraction is made more painful than it needs to be by not having the money to pay for it, not having anyone to give me a ride home after the general anesthetic, not being able to tolerate pain medication, because of my burning feet, not being able to lay down and rest while the pain heals itself, etc., etc. In lieu of all other miracles, I pray daily that I'm allowed to leave easily, with as little pain as possible.

Wednesday, March 8, 2000- I have been doing some long-distance talking with my good friend Warren lately and I have come to realize that both his and my own lifes' struggle have not been because there was or is something wrong or dysfunctional with us, only because we're different...and because we don't fit into one of the several niches society has available. I'm not bitter because of this, only a bit sober. So at this point I have decided to seek as much personal comfort (for myself and my boys) as possible, to paint a bit and work some on my website...until that time when the inevitable (one way or another) becomes unavoidable or available...and pray for strength to maintain my dignity (as limited as it may seem to the casual reader).

And I pray even more emphatically for Sparky and myself to be sustained through the surgery he faces next week.

 

Thursday, July 6, 2000- Sparky survived the surgery back in March. It was a touch-and-go struggle for about 2 weeks, but he recovered 100%..and the three of us even went back to walking everyday out at Forest Park...for a couple months anyway.

Then, 5 weeks ago, Sparky's back legs became totally paralyzed. The vet prescribed steroids. After a few days, Sparky started to walk a little, but then suddenly got worse again. Finally, the vet said Sparky needed back surgery. So I rushed him to an animal hospital at the University of Missouri at Columbia. They operated that night and for 8 days I drove 250 miles every day to visit Sparky and take him some lunch meat. He seemed to be getting better. Then suddenlt late in the afternoon on Friday, June 23rd, Sparky died.

I was hysterical, so my cousin Joel drove me up to Columbia that night to get Sparky. We brought him back to St. Louis and buried him where I can visit him everyday.
Pip and I do visit him everyday, but a big part of us died too.

Tomorrow will be two weeks since Sparky died and I know now that things will never be the same.

I buried my tarnished baby cup, the broken decoration off my Bar Mitzvah cake, my favorite shirt, and a couple milk bones with Sparky.

My brain just refuses to believe that Sparky will never come home. I had planned for years that the three of us would go at the same time, but it didn't happen that way.
I would burn every painting and every page of writing I've ever done if I could have my boy back. But it doesn't work that way. But at least Sparky is out of the misery he suffered for the last 3 weeks of his life.

"In Good Hands"

 

Thursday, July 13, 2000- Life is so empty without my boy. Everything I had hoped for in the future had included him. Now anything without him seems meaningless. I suppose, despite all the hard times I've complained about, I had been spared such a loss.

This time has given me time to stand back and think. In 1985 I awoke from a 20 year medicallly induced daze to find I'd missed out on the best 20 years of life. After grieving about it for a year, I consciously decided to set all personal pleasures and social comforts aside and try to make up for lost time. During the next 15 years, I wrote my book and did my painting.

Yes, I must say that I have made up for lost time and have done the sort of things I would have wanted to as a young kid.
But, now, I must move on, without Sparky, to somehow make a secure life for Pip. I've decided to leave behind any aspiration to make art or writing a career.

If necessary, I will try to get some part time work as an engineer so I'll never have to accept financial help from my parents. My parents, that's right. Until this time I've left all reference to family members out of this writing. But I no longer can. I owe it to Sparky's memory to tell the whole truth.

Yes, everything told supposedly as fiction in my novel about my family is true. And 3 weeks ago today both my parents refused to loan me the money to pay Sparky's hospital bill and the next day he died. And the morning after he died, with my dead boy laying in a cardboard box at my feet, I begged my father to loan me the money to have him properly buried so I could visit him, and my father said, "We'll see."

I'll write more later. I have to go out to the park with Pip and eat a Jumbo Jack near where Sparky lays. It's a peaceful place.

 

Saturday, July 15, 2000- I only wish I knew Sparky was at a peaceful place...but of course I don't. I know I'm not. I've been trying to find a cheaper place to live, but anything cheaper than the $545 a month I pay now seems to be pretty much a depressing shit hole. I guess I'm just kidding myself that I can find some part time work. My feet burn so bad that I haven't been able to watch TV or listen to the radio for 4 years. So how am I going to sit at a desk and do something I didn't like doing when I was relatively healthy.

As far as the burning, just in the past few days it's changed to a sharp stabbing pain, like someone drove a giant spike right thru my right foot. My already diminished ability to sleep a few hours a night has been further comnpromised and I'm getting real depressed. I've considered amputation for a couple years but the doctors say it might make it worse.

Many times in recent years I used to tell my boys, "When one of us goes, we all do." Well, my quality of life was marginal before Sparky's death. Now, I have to think real seriously about what I want to do. I don't kid myself that I'm going kill myself and wake up in heaven with Sparky. I just feel I may have completed my obligatory tour...and enough is enough. I have to think about it real hard. My friend Warren could take care of Pip and I would give him the rights to my omnovel, because he does take it seriously.

And at this point I need to apologize to the forces that be for sometimes appearing to have a Jesus-complex. It's just that so many thousands of synchronous events over the years have misdirected me to think that what I was doing was of some special significance. If I've learned nothing else over the course of my life, it's that connected events (unexplainable billion-to-one coincidences) should never be misinterpreted as Divine intervention. They do mean something as far as the reality structure of our experience, but certainly nothing divine...in this unpublished writers opinion.

Ae any rate the image below sums up my feelings at this particular time.

 

Wednesday, July 25, 2001- Yeah, it's been over a year since my last entry and I'm still grieving for Sparky real bad. I haven't missed a day lighting a candle for him and have missed only 4 days going to visit him in the park. I've been able to pass most of the time by working for a couple hours a day on my drawings, sitting in my car at Forest Park. I don't really enjoy it but it makes the pain in my foot a little bit better for a short while.

I've been doing a lot of thinking since Sparky died and I realize how animals are just as important as humans. So I quit eating meet as the year 2001 arrived. I also just really can't believe in any sort of messianic deliverance from God which wouldn't first deliver the earth and its creatures from humans who have wrecked it. I can't believe that there is a god of any sort who has allowed humans to do what they have.

At any rate, I've grown all that much closer with Pip since Sparky is gone. I painted Sparky into my Mona Lisa to honor him. Last month I went to Texas for an unveiling of my 7 Audie paintings in a museum down there. They really treated me well and even put my picture on the front page of the sunday newspaper. I was actually a celebriuty for a couple days. I even made a speech that was very well recieved. I was scared to death before I started to give it but once I got started I sort of enjoyed it. I had to speak very loud tot he seventy or eighty people because the pa system was out and the air coditioner was real loud. The ac was blowing right on me and it was real colol and that helped my whole body feel better. I almost had to yell ovedr the sound. And for a very little while I was under the delusion that i was picking up where I left off in 5th grade as class president. Here's the text of the speech:

_____________________
What an extreme pleasure it is to be here in Audiemurphysville with you as a part of these very first Audie Murphy Days of the new millennium.

To tell you the truth, the last time I spoke in front of a group of people was to read out-loud a few lines of advice from Poor Richard's Almanack, 40 years ago in high school English class. And I didn't do too good (I mean well) then.

So, when Director Adrien asked me to say a few words, I only agreed for fear these paintings might be banished to the museum's basement if I didn't.

The few words I should say are simply, "I'll let my paintings speak for themselves."

But knowing I may not have the opportunity to speak in public again until my next childhood and then it may be to read "Moby Dick," I'll take this last chance to get some practice and I'll say something about why I did these paintings, paintings that I hope will in some small way help perpetuate the memory of a towering soul, a soul that lived for at least one tour here on earth as Audie L. Murphy.

In this year 2001, most role models, sadly, are over-paid men playing boys' games. Audie, on the contrary, was a boy playing a man's game, and playing it, not for riches, but for righteousness.

I realized this as I was working on this first painting, "Just Another Nightwatch." Thanks to the freeze-frame on my VCR, I was able to do it from a frame of "To Hell and Back." I had done quite a number of paintings of other historic or public figures that interested me for one

reason or another. And I had always found that the more I read up on them, the less highly I regarded them. But with Audie it was just the opposite. The more I learned, the more I admired. His motives were pure, his heart unstoppable. Indeed, he proved to me that "Right does make Might." Indeed, this little country boy's favorite girl was Lady Liberty...and he didn't care if he was destined to die to protect her.

A couple months after I finished this painting I came across the Audie Murphy Research Foundation on the internet and sent them a photo of the painting. Larryann Willis and Audie's son, Terry Murphy, welcomed my efforts with such open arms and gracious assistance, I decided to do another painting.

I had seen a publicity still on the back of the "To Hell and Back" video, but the face was too tiny to work from. Larryann sent me an 8x10 of the pious pose, and she attached a note that said, "Hope this helps, keep up the great work!" Coming from someone that actually knew Audie Murphy, that's all it took to send me back to the grindstone with my two little Dachshunds, Sparky and Pip, at my feet.

And, completely original or not, I consider this piece, "By the Dawn's Early Light" the best painting I've ever done. Doing a painting, at least for me, is a long, solitary process, and I add things to the picture just as much to entertain myself as to make any artistic or social statement. So I'll let the empty helmet, the Dove flying upward with the dogtags, the crushed swastika, and the illuminated cross on the mountain-top speak for themselves. Not to ignore, of course, the barely visible jeep and American

flag appraching a pair of cuffed hands that just happen to be praying.

Larryann also sent me a photo of her favorite shot of Audie and said she liked it so much because it looked like Audie was gazing at her from, as she put it, "the winds of time." Coincidentally, before taking up painting,! had spent five years writing a book titled, "In the Winds of Time," so I decided to do this painting, "All's Well," for her personally.

This next and 4th painting I did was actually the one I had considered for my first and only painting of Audie. But I had decided the face was not exactly the face I visualized when I heard the name Audie. So I had put it aside; but when ! got this publicity photo from "To hell and Back" I decided to morph the the older face in it with the younger one, and I came up with this face, "The Mettle of Honor," I spelled medal, M-E-T-T-L-E, meaning substance, the substance of honor.

Still, my hunger to portray Audie properly was not satisfied, so I decided to combine both his war and cowboy persona in one picture, "In the Course of Human Events." Indeed, "in the Course of Human Events" it becomes necessary for a righteous citizen to do things he does not want to do, but which he knows must be done...like metaphorically blow a hole in the evil head of Adolph Hitler and liberate the concentration camps in the process, enabling the folks back home to tend to their Victory Gardens and watch cowboy movies at the Saturday matinee.

By the time I got around to these 6th and 7th paintings I felt I had dealt with the warrior side of Audie enough. In this still from "Ride Clear of Diablo," I felt like Audie looked like an incarnation of the American eagle.

So I did this "Where the Eagles Reign," to depict Audie's passion for the great outdoors. And I did this final installment "Let Freedom Ring" to show his warmth for the totally human and creative, musical side of life.

So, I had done seven; why stop? Well, I decided that if I stopped at seven I could title the whole group, "Murphy's Seven." I liked how this sounded sort of like "Murphy's Heaven," so I went ahead and stopped the painting.

And I'll go ahead and stop my palavering. But not before I dedicate these paltry paintings, for paltry they are compared to the deeds and goodness of Audie himself. So, dedicate them I will, to Audie and his many buddies, past and present, who have given us the freedom to gather here...and to my Dachson Sparky who passed on to Murphy's Heaven exactly a year ago this afternoon , on June 23, 2000.

May God Bless and sustain the spirit of Audie's goodness through the millenial gauntlet ahead. Thank you.
________________________________

 

But after the unveiling and the speech I could only go back to my motel room and cry bexcause Sparky wasn't with me and because the wporsening pain in my foot keeps me from enjoying anything. I went to a doctor last week to see if I could get it amputated, but he referred me to a pain clinic, and that doctor tried to block the nerves at my spinal column, but it didn't do anything. So..I just can't justify living much longer in this pain.

Pain or not, I had a nice little showing of my paintings at a church across the street from Wash. University and had several friends and a few family go to it.
    My cousin Joel introduced me to a guy at a bookstore yesterday ewho seems interested in my book. So I'm thinking about signing the rights to it over to him in the event of my demise. And I plan to do the same with my paintings, to my Cousin Ronnie Gorman and hus wife Sally.

I've gained about 15 pounds since Sparky's death, for a variety of meaningless reasons. My car now has 189,000 on it and is giving me alot of trouble. I almost panic when it starts acting up for I depend on it for my sanity. I'd go crazy if I was stuck at home alone with my pain. Going to the park helps me tolerate it.

I guess the bottom line is that for years, for some arcane reason, i was holding out hope that the year 2001 would bring me some salvation, but...

In summation, it's amazing how all the unbeleivable coincidences have made me hold very unrealistic hopes. It looks like my pain, in more ways than one, is not going to go away, not in this lifetime anyway. But I've had more satisfaction than I had expected, so I can't complain...only bitch...

 

Sunday, July 29, 2001- I felt a little better about things after writing a few days ago, and I know I've mentioned it before, but I continue to live everyday with one overriding fear...the fear that this pain will force me to take medication. And that that medication will make me so sick, either mentally or physically, that I'll end up in an institution and forced to live out my days in medicated agony. And I will never allow that to happen. Never.

Sunday, August 19, 2001- Things continue to deteriorate. I'm starting to get stabbinbg pains in my face. I've been to a pain management clinic a couple of times, and after a failed nerve block, they recommend methadone. I of course refused. I talked to an old friend at the company where I used to wirk as an engineer to see if I could get some part timew work, but I never heard back from him. Just as well, I really didn't want to subsidize my suffering by... Oh, what's the difference. In summation I had hoped all the years of pain would be for some worthwhile purpose to be realized before demise, but...

I guess life and the infantile notion of justice is just nothing but bullshit. I've even taken to cursing god again. The bottomline is...enough is enough...and I've had fuckin' enough. I don't care what anyone else may say, I am not mentally ill except in two ways, if they be mental illness..I need a fresh mental challenge veryday to be at peacve, and I hold onto false hopes of salvation for too long..for alifetime to be exact.

Sunday, September 30, 2001- I need to apologize if I repeat things becausde I'm just not in the mood to reread the bullshit I've already written. Yeah, it is the same old shit but stinkier. I've begun to get all my teeth pulled out, a couple at a time, because I can't afford dental work. I tried acupuncture for my oot and it only made it worse. Pain medication is almost $200 a month so I of course can't go that route, even if I wanted to. A couple weeks ago the terrorists bombed the World Trade center, actually the very day I took my paintings down from the church where they'd been for 3 months. Just a couple days ago I started trying to foind a railer to live in, because I can't afford my apartment any more. Sadly, anything cheap in St. Lpouis is also dangerous.

Monday, January 28, 2002- Alot has happened in the past few months. I've been going to the Vetrans Hospital for medical care, but unfortunately i can't take the mind-numbing medications they prescribe, not even the medicine for my 200+ high blood pressure. Or at least I chose not to, considering the effect it has had on me in the past. A ugy in Kansas City had my hope up really high, saying he could get $50,000 a piece for my paintings, and, of course that fell through, after elading me on for four months. My parents, who had been sending me a few hundred dollars a month went bankrupt, so I dobn't even have money for rent. I tried working at a bookstore for minimum wages for a few weeks, but it just mad em horrible sick. It reminded me that for the past 15 years, I've only been able to write my book and do my painting because I only work an hour or two at a time, a couple times a day. And, of course, it was inevitable, my foot pain is getting worse and I can't find anyone to amputate it. Present situation, i lay in bed 15 hours a day with my foot pressed against the wall, just to get 6 or 7 hours sleep. I eat large amnounbts of turjkey hor dogs, and turkey bologna, and curry chicken and Church's chicken, because anything else makes my foot worse. My car just turned 200,000. I sleep in my clothes because taking my pants off over my shoes cause too much pain. I'll spare any possible reader the details of my bathing practices, or lack thereof.

Thursday, November 14, 2002- Well, I'm still here, and so is my pain and frustration. I've been working at the bookstore part time for almost a year now. I get paid $30 a day for 6 hours of my time. Working so exhausted me, I quit shaving for the first tike in my life and I have a scraggly beard. My father died in March. The few dollars I have earned went to keep my old car running for the daily forty mile round trip to work. Now, at 215,000 its finally finished. I spent my spare time all summer doing a painting of Charles Lindbergh, and when I took it down to the history museum the curator just loved it so I left it with her. But now, the same old shit, I haven't heard from her in 3 weeks. The owner of the bookstore is oyur all-too-typical supertight Jew. But I guess he knows a bargain when he sees it so he' been giving me a ride to work every day since my car crapped out. But I don't think that will last long.

Tuesday, December 17, 2002- Well, I been stuck here at home for a few days with a bad case of the flu. I think I cauight it riding the bus last week. I spend 3 hours on the bus now everyday to get down and back from my $30 a day job. I managed to get some money otgether for a different car a few weeks ago and it ran good for 500 miles until the transmission went out. I finally got a hold of the lady at the history museum and she said the big wigs are more interested in lewis and Clark, but she'll see if they want to display it in the giftshop or restaurant. At this [point, I gues in between the urinals in the mens room would be better than nothing. I'm posting a picture of it right here so it can be seen that I have not totally lost my touch.

 

Saturday, December 21, 2002- Quite a number of people have read parts of this bio since I've psoted it on my website, and lots of them said they enjoyed reading it and hoped it had a happy ending. Well, until very recently, I thought that was impossible. But now I realize it has become a reality. Maybe not a happy ending, but certainly a satisfying and meaningful ending, at least for me. That ending comes in a realization after all these long frustrating often ainful years. The realization being that since I was 12 years old and first relaized what a meaningless life modern society had to offer, I've been led to believe that it was because there was something fundamentally wrong with me. Now, 45 years later I realize life was painful because there was something very fundamentaly right with me...I was able to see thru the bullshit that the greedy shakers and movers have made of human life, and the irreversible agony ithas inflicted on the entire earth. Yes, for me, that is a happy ending.

 

Friday, January 17, 2003- Since my last installment less than a month ago the MissourHisotrical Society has shown themselves not interested in my Lindbergh or Lewis and Clark work and the Strategic Air Comman first showed an interest in my Lindbergh but then I never heard from them. I was at an all time low this afternoon...until I got the following email, an all-time happy ending indeed:

__________

I too am an artist (though far from your caliber). The only time I was moved enough by art to cry was in the Louvre looking at Winged Victory. Until today that is. I got choked up looking at the paintings on Audie's Web Site, then I came here to your site and saw the proposed Memorial and openly wept at the beauty and intense impact of it! Thank you. Now I feel that I have to say something, give something with my own art. I really never felt that way before. I always measured how good it was by how much I could sell it for. I won't take up any more of your time, only to say you have forever changed how I see things. Sincerely, Jimmie Sue Bowman

__________

 

 

Saturday, July 5, 2003- A lot has happenned since the happy emding of January. I supose I hoped I'd just fade away into satisifed bliss and turn to a pain-free dust in the wind. But that wasn't to be the case. During the frigid winter I began getting neck pains hwen I'd walk with Pip from the parking lot to the bookstore everyday. They kept getting wprse and I'd get out of breath and felt like I was dying. To make a long story short, it was my heart. One of the main arteries was 90% blocked and I gave into modern technology and allowe them to put a stent in. I felt ood for three weeks then started getting horrible stomach cramps all the time. It was from all the blood presure medicine. I'd never been so physocally miserable in my life. 15% of all people who get a stent in their heart have it close up during the first year. I gues I got th lucky number, because mine totally closed up abou month ago and I had to go back in the hospital twice. They put a new stent in but I still get some angina pains when I walk with Pip before work. And my sotmach cramps are continual. My diet consists of 4 baked potatoes and sometimes an eggroll every day to try and minimize it. My blood pressure is low now, except when I see the giant pile of medical bills I have no way of paying. Yes, enough is enough, and I told the doctors I didn't want to go on anymore while I was onunder the influence of morphine and that being born carried with it no obligation to subject yourself to suffering for as many years as possible. I'm lucky they didn't lock me up then. A couple of people have told me things could be worse, and I think to myself, "Yeah I know, but I need to make sure they don't...while I still can."

The whole situation reminds me of a couple sentences in my novel I worte over 10 years ago.

Mr. Sam said, "In the Pacific, I learned that with discipline and the ability to adapt a person can do anything - except live forever." Then he asked me what I thought about living forever.

     I flinched a bit. "One tour is enough for me."

Tuesday, August 5, 2003- Just the same old stuff. I can't live with these gut cramps for 7 years like I have with my foot pain...and still counting. I'll give a very truncated summary of my tour status at this time, so you can see why I need to make the "big decision" real soon.

No I won't bore you with all the details, but just say muy only pleasure in life (other than Pip. a coulpe friemds, and my art work) was until recently driving my car out on the highay on the weekend. Now I can't even do that because of a horrible MS pain in my back. Of course I haven't been able to esscape life like most people by watching TV or listening tot he radio in years now. My pains get worse when I do.

The bookstore where I work and subject myself to the abuse of the owner is closing in a couple weeks and I'm too sick to look for anything else.

Yeah, i had dreams that being "dsicovered" as an artist would relieve my discomfort. But I now realize that;s just bullshit. How stupid I've been for so long. Now I need to be smart.

So is it really such a big decision?? I guess the logistics of it are.

 

Wednesday, October 29, 2003- Yes, you guessed it, I'm still here, too chicken I guess to take the easy way out. Alot has happened since last entry oin August. Over the course of the summe my doctor had been gradually reducing my blood pressure medicine, almost to the point of tkaing none at all. My pressure was still good and the gut cramps were getting better, even though I oculd tell the angina would come n easier when I walked, or hsould say hobbled. But, in all honesty my hobbling was becoming better almost ot he point of normal walking, until....Two days after the bookstore closed, where I hated work to work for the asshole who owned it but ebjoyed talking to the varied customers who wandered in. My doctor had cut my blood pressure medicine down to nothing the week before, and on a Monday evening I was sitting in my car in front of the muny at Forest Park, feeling pretty relaxed and pretty good that I had recently started an email group for my high school class from 1963 to talk to each other.

So I decided to go for a short walk wth Pip. Twenty feet out of the car, the angina pains started in my teeth, then moved to my neck, where they had lawayss topped. But this time, for the first time, just as I was stumbling back into my car, they moved into my chest and I felt like somebody had put a plastic bag over ny face. It was horrifying. I had hoped tp die peacefully, not in agony like this. I unable to dial 911 on my cell phone, but I did manage to hit the button that automatically dials my ocusin Joel. I blurted out to him where I was in front of the Muny and he called 911.

To make a long story short, wheen they ctaherized me the next day at the hospital they discovered the second stent was still wide open, but the trunk artery that fed all three coronaries had a blockage. The next morning the doctor gave me three minutes to decide if when they catheried me again in a few hours with some ultrasound thing they push up into your heart to see the exact details of the blockage, did I want a stent put in or did I want to have an open-heart bypass. He said the risk was about the same wirth either, because of the location putting the stent in was very high risk. I opted for the bypass. But wondered where I was going to go to recuperate for several weeks.

Anyway, when they did the ultrasound catherization they found the trunck artery wasn't blocked. It wa just oval shaped and had looked that way...but that it idd have a spasm. So they put me on new medication for the spasm and discharged me. Two days later I has the sort of attack, but worse. back in the hospital for the 5th time this year, they changed the medicine after endess test which showed my heart was healthy except for the spasm in the one artery. The medicine they put me on made me terrible depressed. But so I went home again, the gut cramps returned fully from the new medicines.

But now almsot two weeks later the cramps and depression are both gettting beter, and I'm hoping for the best.

Talking about the best, Gary Scheinkman took vare of the Ladue email group while I was gone and it is doing very well I believe. Of the 40 people I originally invited to join, 30 have. And it's given me untold satisfaction to know i've helped at least a few people get reacquainted after 40 years. From what I've read in the 350 or so messages that hav gone back and forth in the groups first month, I would tend to agree with the old cliche, "Good people improve with age." And I hope there are many more messages that are being exchanged privately.

Some of them have stumbled upon this bio so I'll have to try and keep the sobbing, profanity and bathroom talk to a bare minimum, ofr the time being anyway.

 

Tuesday, March 30, 2004- I think the Ladue email group is doing well, up to abut 45 members, and I continue to feel good about starting it. I figure any of them that might have read this so-called bio have already done so, so I can get back to brass tacks. Its been 6 months now since the bookstore closed, and I can't look for any other work because of my gut pains. To make them as mild as possible I have, for almost a yer now, eaten only baked potatoes and grilled cheese sandwiches. So, including the turkey bolgna I buy ffor Pip, I only spend about $20 a week on food, but it's still hard getting by on $900 total a month.
My Aunt Anita died about a month ago. She loved me more than y parents ever did amd I miss hewr much.
On a lighter note, my website is going good. I've been getting about 4000 visitors a day, especially to a page of humorous Swapshots I have. I've tried to find a publisher for the 120 of them in a book, but have had no luck so far. Not that it really nmakes a difference with these contining gut cramps. My feet, though or doing better, with my blood pressure lower and I walk 2 miles three times a week. I've lost about 35 pounds in the lasy year.
I rented a small stall at Ladue Antigue Galleries, but so far none of my stuff has sold.
Something noteworthy did happen back in january though. I got attacked by a 350 pound thug, and was able to fight him off. Obviously my adrenalin is stronger than my body is weak. An account of it I wrote up to send to the newspaper, which I have as yet not done and do not know if I will, follows:

To whom it may concern,

It is March 16, 2004 as I, Richard Krause, begin to write this account. I'll first mention a bit regarding my physical state as I feel it has a bearing on the blatant audacity of the crime committed against me. 58 years old, 5'7" tall, weighing 170 lbs, I have walked with a cane for the past 13 years due to one of many symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis. Additionally, I was hospitalized seven times in 2003 for a heart blockage. Five of those times I underwent surgical procedures to remove the blockage and continue to this date medications for a spastic coronary trunk artery in my heart.

To purchase a particular over-the-counter drug to deal with the harsh side-effects of said heart medications, I stopped at the Schnucks Supermarket in Overland at about 10:30 pm on the Friday evening of January 9, 2004, just days after enduring several episodes of heart angina and treatment for them.

On my way out of the store, a fairly well groomed and dressed, very large man came up from behind and asked if I had a light. I said no, and continued toward my car which was no more than 30 feet away, parked in a handicapped space.

The 6 foot plus, 250 pound plus man then asked if I had a way home or if I was riding the bus. I began t deel very uncomfortable, figuring maybe he was gay. Politely. i told him that I was just fine and began to search my pockets for my car keys. By that time this suspicious but soft-spoken man was about 15 feet past me, but then suddenly turned around and walked back towards me, scratching his head. He asked me if I knew where the Metro Link Station in Wellston was. I told him that I did not know and with keys in hand I began to open my car door. No more than forty feet from the front of the store in its well-lit parking lot, he suddenly jumped me, knocking my cane out of my hand and pinning me against my car while grabbing me in a bear hug. I was shocked and totally surprised. The thought that he was out to attack and rob me had not crossed my naive mind.

Holding me with one arm, he began began grappling for my wallet with the other. I managed to grab hold of his giant hand which was in my pocket and a violent struggle ensued. It lasted quite awhile and I started screaming for somebody to get help, because I knew I couldn't fight him off and/or keep him from getting away for long.

After what seemed like an eternity but in reality was probably no more than a very long minute, a few people gathered not far away. Even my super-surged adrenalin couldn't hold onto the guy anymore. He ran and I chased as best I could. Caneless, with a spastic knee and severe foot neuropathy, I harbored no foolish hopes of catching my assailant but did want to be as close to him as possible in order to read his license plate in the event he fled in a vehicle. Just as I ran out of breath and collapsed against a shopping cart stall, he jumped in a van. Able to read the license number, I began shouting it out repeatedly, screaming for someone to write it down.
A lady who I later discovered was one of several eye witnesses to the entire skirmish jumped in her car and chased the van across the expansive parking lot. It turned out she not only confirmed his license number but got the company name and phone number painted in large letters on the side of the van.

I remained motionless, breathless and feeling neck angina pains as a group of high school girls approached me. They offered to get a chair for me and cell-phoned 911. Still disoriented by the ordeal, as I had never before in my life, except in the military, been physically attacked, I nevertheless felt self-satisfaction that I had at least attempted to fight the guy off and keep him from fleeing. But at the same time I felt frustration that he had after all gotten away with my wallet and keys...and certainly would repeat his crime of choice another day.
The Overland Police arrived just as Schnucks' manager emerged from the store and helped me back toward my car...where I recovered my cane and to my pleasant surprise I discovered my wallet and keys lying on the ground, intact.

After some preliminary questioning, the Police, myself and the lady who had chased the van followed the manager inside the store and up to his office. For an hour we viewed surveillance tapes of persons entering and exiting the store, as Schnucks has no outdoor cameras. Finally, both the lady and myself positively identified the guy has he had walked into the store. He appeared just as both the lady and myself had described him and his dress before viewing the tapes.

After the kind and brave lady informed the Police that the assailant had fled in an Emergency Medical Supply company van and gave them the phone number painted on its side, I remarked to the Police that it must certainly be a stolen vehicle. "No one would be stupid enough to attack someone and then drive away in a van with a company name on its side," I said naively.

But the Police checked and it had not as yet been reported as stolen. The Police stated they had a strong suspicion the vehicle was indeed not stolen, and that the overlarge thug figured that since I'm not a very young or big guy and don't walk very well that I was an easy mark, that the thug thought I would offer no resistance to his overwhelmng presence and that he would stroll easily away with my wallet. They stated this was definitely a case of felony assault and felt this might be one of the few cases in which they would be able to apprehend and convict.
Also of interest, the same lady that later chased the guy across the lot and got his license number, told both the manager and the Police that she first ran into Schnucks and told the security officer a man was being attacked right outside the door. The security officer claimed she only worked indoors and did nothing. The manager later told myself and the Police that the security guard was wrong, that she was responsible for the security of both the inside and outside.

The Police informed me they would take a still from the video and show it to the company who owned the van, but probably wouldn't be bale to do it until Monday.

Still quite shaken, I drove home at about midnight, but could not sleep. Late the next afternoon I received a phone call from the Overland Police. They had already shown the video photograph to the company that owned the van and the company had confirmed that the suspect worked for them and was driving the van the night before.

I immediately proceeded to the Police Station and easily picked the man out of a photo lineup. I was informed it was indeed the man the employer and also the eyewitness lady had identified. I was assured a speedy arrest would be made and proceeded home. Though sleepless and exhausted I felt very good that maybe this one time justice would be done, and that my frenetic efforts at the scene of the crime had not been in vain.

The following Monday I tried contacting the Overland Police Officer who had given me his card. Several days later he got back with me and informed me the case was now in the hands of the Overland Detective Department. I was eventually, two weeks later, able to get ahold of the Detective. He told me that he was so confident he would get a conviction in this case that he had dropped another less promising case to take it on. It was also mentioned that the suspect had a rap sheet a mile long and had recently finished up a seven year term in prison. Furthermore, I was informed, the suspect had committed a robbery since mine and that they questioned him on my case for three hours while he was in custody for that crime, but then released him. The Detective told me the next step would be to convince the St. Louis County Prosecutor's office to issue a warrant for the assailant's arrest in my case.
Several weeks later, after gearing nothing, I contacted the Detective again and he informed me the Prosecutors Office had indeed issued an arrest warrant, but that the legal process was slow and that I would be contacted when needed.

I heard nothing for some time, but my heart seemed to be doing well even though I was still in continual neuropathy pain and was unable to eat anything other than baked potatoes and cheese sandwiches (as I had been doing for a full year) because of the side-effects of the medication. Nevertheless I was in relatively good spirits with the satisfaction that I was not only not so lame as to not be able to defend myself, but with the even greater satisfaction that I had been instrumental in being able to facilitate the eventual imprisonment of at least one of the countless criminals who people our society.

Like I said, I felt rather satisfied with myself and satisfied that the system was indeed grinding its way slowly towards a just conclusion...until Thursday, March 17, when I received an unexpected phone call. It was from a pleasant young lady who identified herself as Amanda, a representative of the St. Louis County Prosecutor's Victim Service Division. She said she was simply checking to see how I was doing. I told her I was okay and told her that I guessed the guy was behind bars awaiting trial, plea-bargainong or whatever. She replied that no, he was not in custody and that the case was currently classified "Inactive."
I told her that I didn't understand. "The Detective told me a month ago they know his address and that a warrant for his arrest had been issued. I was even told the guy was living wirh his parents and now employed by a temp agency."

"That's right," Amanda replied.

"What? Did he leave town?" I asked.

"Not as far as we know. I sincerely hate to have to tell you this," Amanda said, "but unless the crime is murder or a very high profile crime such as that there is no active attempt made to arrest. His warrant is in the system and if he is ever stopped for a traffic or any other offense the warrant will show up and he will immediately be arrested."

In disbelief, I asked, "You mean the Police won't drive a few miles to arrest someone who could have killed me and has even committed another crime since??"

"That is the prevailing policy," she replied

.
Emphatically, but as politely as possible I stated, "I do not accept that, and never will accept that!"

As our conversation winded down, I sincerely told her I knew it was not the Police force that was at fault, that it was the overburdened system which has tied their hands. Finally, I asked Amanda if she could at least give me the criminals name, which, to my surprise considering all the rights criminals have today, she did. When I asked for his address, she simply inofrmed me that the Prosecutor's case file is public record. She gave me the case number and told me I could go to the County Courthouse in Clayton and to view the file.

Immediately I drove to the supposed Halls of Justice. The first lady I encountered in the warrant office keyed the case number up on her computer and curtly asked me what I wanted to know. I told her I was the victim and I'd just like to look at the details of the case to date. She said the case was inactive, "So what specifically do you want to know other than that?"
I told her I wanted to know the guy's address amongst other

things. She replied matter-of-factly, "Oh, we're not allowed to tell you that."
I told her the prosecutors office had told me the file was public record. She scoffed a bit and eventually went to get her supervisor who immediately brought me the file. The guy was actually a little bigger than I had figured. He weighed 350 pounds. He was 32 years old and I got Mr. Charles Hervey's address. Later in the day I used the internet to get his phone number, and have since confirmed that he does with great probability still live at the address in the file, but 2 miles from the Berkeley Police Station.

I visited the Overland Police department, talked to them about it and was told that Amanda had been right in that only murders or similar high-level crimes warrant an active attempt to arrest. I reiterated to them, "I will not accept that."

They told me since Charles lived in Berkeley, the St. Louis Fugitive Department would be handling the case and they gave me the phone number. I called the Fugitive department and the lady I spoke with denied there would be no active attempt to arrest "Mr." Hervey. She said, "We have already mailed him a letter informing him there is a felony warrant out for his arrest and that if he does not surrender himself within three days he will be considered a fugitive."
I even told her that I had been able to get his phone number and had called twice and ascertained that he did indeed live at the address in the Prosecutors file. She asked for the phone number and I gave it, thinking to myself, "Isn't it nice that I risked my life trying to stop this guy, but the Police will not even drive 2 miles to arrest him, and even if they did plan on doing so, they give him three days notice...to decide if he wants to go back to jail or runaway or hide. I wasn't even given a second's warning notice before he attacked me. Maybe now that I've given them the phone number they'll give him a courtesy call to make sure he got the warning letter."

The lady at the Fugitive department did however give me the name of the Fugitive Officer handling the case and after I requested she have him call me, she assured me that she would have him do so.

He never did, and the icing on the cake is that just a few days later I received a form letter from Robert McCulloch, the St. Louis County Prosecutor. The letter ended with the sentence, "I appreciate your co-operation. Your help is vital in keeping St. Louis County the kind of community in which we can all feel safe and take pride."
I thought cynically as I read it, "Doesn't he really mean a community where the criminal can feel safe?"

What are my motives for writing this account? To possibly nudge an arrest in my particular case, one case of countless thousands like it? To make it common knowledge that unless a crime is murder or similar no active attempt is made to arrest? To harbor asny absurd notions of changing the system would be too naive for even my idealistic self to contemplate.
In sad reality, it will probably turn out the only good done by this writing will be to get it off my chest. No, I will not accept that.

And maybe I just won't have to accept that. One Tuesday night, the evening of March 16 after spending the afternoon writing the account you have read to this point, I was around a group of people I know, telling them the latest frustrating developments in the "inactive" case. Someone told me, "Richard, you need to learn to laugh it off!" I got instantly angry, and even in the heat of the moment used a racial slur to describe the guy that could have killed me. Needless to say, I was now the criminal.

And I'm glad I didn't accept it and that I didn't laugh it off. Because, as I mentioned, that portion of the account up to this point was written during the day on March 16.

Big surprise, the next morning, March 17, while correcting some typing mistakes in preparation to send this writing off as a "letter to the editor" to the Post-Dispatch, the telephone rang.
It was Sargeant Smith o

f the Fugitive Department and he told me, "We've arrested Charles Herves and he is behind bars."
I thanked the good Sargeant and felt a sigh of relief. But not total relief. Charlie would certainly be back on the streets before long and I still had to live with the racial slur I had unwittingly used in front of certain people I knew.

At any rate, two days ater getting the phone call from the Fugitive Department sargeant, knowing that Charlie was temporarily in the cooler, I drove over and talked to the Schnucks manager that had been on duty the night I had been attacked and asked him if he could find out why their Security Officer had refused to do anything the night of the incident.

The manager was a very nice guy, but told me that the guard didn't work for Schnucks, that the guard worked for a company they had contracted for security...and only they were allowed to communicate with the guard. The manager did though apologize to me on behalf of Schnucks.
Lastly I needed to decide, for the first time in my life, if I needed to purchase a firearm of some sort to protect myself from Charles Hervey or his buddies. And I started to think about if I should afterall still send this writing to the newspaper to show that once in awhile persistance and giving justice a bit of a nudge can help a pretty helpless system.
Certainly to be continued...

Richard Krause

Well, I guess we'll see what happens from here. I'm going to the Courthouse today just to confirm that he really was arrested. Then I'm goong to the park to eat my baked potatoes and cheese sandwiches and try to relax for an hour or so, before checking into how much a gun will cost. I'll try a downrown pawn shop first.

But before I end this day's entry, I must add in good faith that this problem with my gut might not be because of the heart medicines. Worst it might be a symptom of the MS triggered by the stress of the whole heart ordeal last year. For ten years in the late eighties and early nineties I had a continual burning in my hands, which I hadn't mentioned heretofore, which threatened my existance but I eventually learned to control and live with. Then came 8 years of burning and pain in my feet whicvh it now seems the heart meicstions have reduced by about 50%. But I can nor and will not live with years of this gut problem. It's torture. If it is the MS I am finished, Kaputski for sure. More later. I have an appointment to talk to a psychologist today and maybe I can have her relay to my doctors the severity of this stomach problem.

On another, more general subject, having nothing to do with heath problems, I jusr recently realized that I was born into a world in which there is no place for a person like myself (whatever a person like myself is). And I was surprised when I talked to two good friends that felt the same thing about theirselves.

Actually it is sort of funny, I suspected this intuitionally when I was 13 years old, but it took me 45 years to realize why it was so.

Two years ago a local art gallery which catered to fans of modern art rejected my work. I was down about it, until a friend asked me, "Richard, would you really like your work hanging in a place like that?"

Similarily, I now think, "Do I really want to struggle to live my life in an artificial world like this?"

Well, off to the psychologist, the courthouse and the pawnshop...fairly sure that at least the pawnshop won't lock me up.

Friday, April 2, 2004- I got a call from the Prosecuting Attorney's offic yesterday that Charle Hervey has already been indicted by the Grand Jury and that he will be arraigned before a judge on Monday April 7, just to inform him that the Grand Jury has indicted him and he will be going to trial. I was also given a number to call to see if he had made bail. I called and was informed he had not and that he was still in jail. I had mixed emotions. I feel a bit sad about being responsible for anyone being locked up in a cage, but I know I did the right thing in being persistent to see that he was arrested, because I know if he was back on the streets he would just attack someone else again. As mentioned he already had done it once since his attack on me before they locked him up a couple weeks ago. I'm tryng to decide if I should go to the arraignment Monday, just to get a look at the guy again and to let him get a look at me, to remind him that these are very real people he has been attacking.

Thursday, April 15, 2004- I got a call from the Victims Service and was informed that a trial scheduling meeting between the prosecutor and Hervey's lawyer was set for April 26. I was also informed that at anyttime during this process if Hervey decides to plead quilty a plea bargain could be arranged and sentence rendered. Since the prosecutors record contains only a sketchy description of the incident, saying Hervey tried to reach into my pockets and a scuffle ensued, i am trying to reach the prosecutor in charge of the case and fill him in on all the details, so as not to allow Hervey to get off with a hand slap.

Maybe Someday Soon?- I'll buy a gun, my mugger will come after me and we'll kill each other. Then I can title this bio "Just Another Aprenticeship and Mugging." Yeah, that sounds pretty good. What more could I ask for? I will have indeed saved the world afterall...be it but from one nasty criminal. Joel already has instructions to sprinkle my ashes where Sparky is buried at Forest Park and I'm sure Joel will take good care of Pip until he's ready to join Sparky and me.

Thursday, March 17, 2004- Well it's not someday soon and it's been almost a year since my previous entry and none of Hervey's buddies have shown up to relieve me of my gut pain. As a matter of fact Hervey finally pled quilty in November and I was asked if I wanted to appear in court to give a victims statement before his sentencing. I wrote a statement up and went to court. There were alot of people there and I felt a bit nervous about reading it myself, so the prosecutor offered to read it to the judge for me, as he said he often does. But when Hervey walked up in front of the Judge and the judge told Hervey that though he plead quilty the week before he understood that the sentencing had been postponed so the victim could make a statement. I had no idea the sentencing had been postponed just so I could make a statement, so I stood up and called to the prosecutor that I owuld read the statement myself. I walked up there and here is what I saidd, not nervously at all if I might say so myself:

November 5, 2004

Knowing full well that the court is already overburdened with the fallout of habitual criminal behavior, I'll be as brief as possible.
To the court, I say that Charles Hervey is just plain lucky that he is not about to be sentenced for causing my death. Last January he deceptively and viscously attacked me and pinned me against my car which was parked in a handicapped spot 20 feet from the exit of Schnucks Supermarket. He knew I had just left an ATM machine; he knew that I was half his size and almost twice his age and had considerable trouble walking...thus making me his seemingly easy prey. But what he did not know, not that it would have made any difference, was that I had already been in the hospital 7 times that year and had undergone 4 heart surgeries made all the more risky by the worsening Multiple Sclerosis I have lived with for a good part of my adult life.

So, knowing I could kill myself, why did I so frantically, and I must add, successfully, fight him off, then spastically chase him just barely far enough to get his license plate number before collapsing into a group of grocery carts. After all, I had in my wallet only $20 of my $800 monthly income. So why did I resist so desperately? Because I value my personal freedom from molestation and attack, i.e. my liberty, more than I value life itself.

Due to health problems, I may not be alive when Hervey is released from prison, but there are countless other citizens and law enforcement persons who try to contribute to, rather than detract from, our society. And, I increasingly believe they will be waiting for Charles' sort to step out of line...just one more time.

At any rate, in conclusion, I say to you, Criminal Hervey, think about your future very hard, every long day of every long year that you remain behind bars...where you and all your character-flawed, uncorrectable kind so justly belong...if our society is to ever to be truly free.

Respectfully submitted,
Richard Krause

     For some reason the prosecutor liked it and asked for a copy to show his colleagues. The judge then saentenced hervey to 9 years, 85% of which he must serve because of it being his third violent felony. The prosecutor said that the judge was only going to give him 8 years but raised it to 9 aftre hearing my statement.

I felt good about following the thing from finish to end and about keeping at least one criminal off the streets for 7 or 8 years.

But my gut doesn't feel good, even though I sold a painting of Moses for a good sum and so have some financial breathing rooom. My website gets about 6000 visitors a dday andd I feel good about that and the high school e-mail group continues and I feel even better about that.

Why did I pick today to write something?

Because in a few hours I take Pip into the vet to see what a growth in his neck is. I'll continue this entry this evening after I find out.

Wednesday, April 6, 2005- Well, its been almost three weeks since I took Pip in and its been a long 3 weeks because Pip is my whole life, the reason I keep going. He sleeps with his head on my shoulder, he rides with me everywhere I go, he knows when I'm upset and cheers me up by doing a little dance while throwing his milkbone around the room. The first vet took a sample of the neck growth and said it wasn't cancerous. He gave me some antibiotics to give him for a week, but they didn't help. Then he gave me another weeks worth of antibiotics and some steroids. I wouldn't give him the steroids, but did give him the antibiotics for another week and was just about ready to start the steroids. Because the vet had said that if they didn't work he'd have to operate. But before I started the steroids which are really rough on a dog especially a 14 year old one, I decided to get a second opinion. I took Pip to another vet and he took a sample and said it wasn't a tumor, but a saliva buildup from a blocked canal leading from the gland to the mouth. He referred me to a specialist to see if surgery was necessary, especially considering Pip's heart murmur. But thank goodness, if there is any goodness, the lump got smaller each day, until today it is almost gone. I'm waiting to make sure it doesn't come back before I can take a breath of relief.

In the meantime Google's computers arbitrarily removed my favorite page from their index, my illustration page containg my statue of liberty, garden of eden, and other images with a moral message of which I am most proud, many of them, including lady liberty ranked 1st in the world amoong tens of thousands of other images in their subject class.

But Pip is far more impoortant to me than my website so I'm not too upset, even though on top of t all I have to work in a dingy office at an antigue shop for a week, mostly just answering the phone and a few computer things and photo taking of antigues and old playboys for minimum wage...to fill in for a friend while he's on vacation. I'll be glad when the week is over and I can go back to doing my so-called aertwork at home and trying to relax drawing movie star faces in my car at the park with Pip laying in the seat beside me.

Forgot to mention that I've received a number of not threatening, but nevertheless suspicious phone calls in the past few months since the guy who attacked me went to the state prison so I went ahead and got a permit and bought a used gun. It was refreshing to discover what an involved process in Missouri what with all the permits and background checks and stuuf it is to buy a handgun.

Since its been over 30 years since I fired a pistol and I wanted to make sure the used pawnshop pistol worked, I went to a range and fired 24 9mm rounds, surprisingly all within 3 inches of the bullseye. One last thing, I forgot to mention that I''ve had two confrontations this month, one with a foul-mouthed cussing hotshot at the casino I've been taking my mother to on saturday nights and the other with a college punk at Forest Park whose big dog was running loose and started bothering Pip. It may seem like I look for trouble, but I don't. It's just that I don't run away from it. ..especially not the biggest confrontation of them all.  The euphemistic Big Sleep.  Though of course there aren't any dreams or morning awakening or feeling of ocmfort that you are no longer in pain that goes along with it.

Saturday, April 16, 2005- It's about noon and I'm typing this from my car out at the park. When my father died about 3 years ago he had an old laptop and my sister in Florida got it, but hever used it so she just sent it to me this week.. It's really slow but at least I now can type in my car. The old thing is only worth about $150 and I had to get a new battery which cost $200 but it's still cheaper than a new one

After I finish this typing Pip and I will find a shader place to park and eat our lunch...the same thing every day. I haven't eaten anything but food I make at home for almost two year now since this stomach cramp thing started after I started taking the medicine for my heart. Now the doctor seems to think its from the MS. I think it's a combination of both.

At any rate, before I tell you what I eat for lunch I'll tell you what I eat for breakfast everyday. My gut pains would be better if I didn't have to eat anything for breakfast, but I have to take a certain heart medication with food, so I eat a griled cheese sandwich I cook on a George Foreman grill which is starteing to wear out.

Oh, I might as well start at the beginning of an all too typical day. After sleeping with my shoes on and waking up several times during the night because of the foot pain, I finally get up at 7. I take some medicine at that time that I have to take on an empty stomach and can't eat anything for two hours. I have to take it with two glasses of water. By the way, water is about the only thing my gut cramps will tolerate so water is all I ever drink. Sometimes I cheat though. When I'm tired I drink one or two gulps of Coke. My foot hurts worse and my gut hurts abit, but not too bad. Any back to my schedule. It's 7am and I get up and start fixing my lunch and dinner that I'm going to take with me tothe park later in the day. Like I said, first cook my grilled cheese sandwich which I will eat in two hours at 9am. Then I microwave a plastic container of greens beans and carrots and potatoes with absolutely no seasonig. I fix seven containers of them at a time, once a week and keep them in the ice box I then cook 3/4 of a pound of ground turkey I get for 78 cents. I put 1/4 pound on a sandwich for myself for dinner and wrap up a half pound for Pip.

I put it all in a lunch box even though I haven't even eaten breakfast yet and am not going to leave home for the park for maybe 5 hours. I also microwave some popcorn which I will eat on my way out to the park.

In the meantime, it's about 7:30 and I start doing my artwork, my writing, or working on my website, whether its on my computer or in the bedroom where I do my painting. I stop whatever I'm doing at 9am and eat breakfast so I can take my second heart medication. It takes about 5 minutes to eat and gulp down another two glasses of tap water. Cold water bothers my teeth. Anyway whenever I finish my work for the morning I go shave and get dressed and dry my socks and put a different pair of shoes on, reheata ll my food and head out to the park with Pip. Usually I leave around 1pm, but that can vary, depending on what I'm working on.

Like I said, on the way, Pip and I eat some popcorn which actually makes my gut feel better. We find a shady place and eat our lunch, then I put my seat all the way back and try to relax for almost an hour sometimes and my feet and gut feel better. I nevr listen to the radio because for some unknow reason it makes my foot hurt worse. I know that spounds like its psychosomatic but a doctor told me it has to do with way the brain processes chronic pain. At any rate, after that if I go for as long a walk as I can with Pip. It hurts terrible and I don't really enjoy it while I'm walking but I feel better afterwards. We get back in the car and try to find some shady place in the park again and usually work on a drawing. I only draw faces, usually famous people, and I have over 200 of then on my website.

Before the afternoon is over, I usually try to drive over and visit a friend of mine for about an hour that works at an antugue gallery. Its usually about 6pm by then and I go back to the park and eat my turkey burger and maybe do some drawing or just try to relax. I try not to go home too early unless I have specific work I have to do, because I don't watch Tv fir the same reason I don't listen to the radio and wouldn't have anything to do unless like I said I have a special project I'm working on.

At any rate I take moire medicine at 10 oclock which take an hour or so to make my foot feel good enough to go to sleep, so I find something to work on until about 11 or so when I get lay down on my rollaway bed in my living room with my shies on and my foot pressed against a oplastic box. Forgot to mention one thing i take my cane to bed with me. If my foot starts hurting real bad I press the cane against my toes and it helps.

And that's the way the day goes with few exceptions. But some of those exceptions are positive. Though I don't go to the Bicycle Club meetings anymore, a friend from high school stops by a couple times a week in the late morning and we talk or work on the computer for an hour or so. And soketimes I give another friend of mine I ride someplace since he has no car......and I talk on the phone alot to out of town friends.

It's about time to end this long entry before my battery goes out, but I just wanted to mention that even though Pip's lump in his neck is almost 3/4 gone, thank God, even though I don't believe in God, so thank Goodness if there is such a thing anyway, I'm still going to take him to the specialist Tuesday.

Saturday Evening, April 16, 2005- Well, I'm still in my car at the park. It's still too warm for Pip to go walking at his age, so I might as well add a few comments since I don't have anything else to do on this Saturday night. For the past few months I have been taking my mother to play blackjack at the casino, but she's goin out with my sister tonight.
     What I need and I'm sure I'd stop alot of my complaining is a nice girlfriend. But.... For the past 18 years since I started writing my book I've made no real attempt to find a girlfriend, thinking it might distract me from making up for my lost twenty years with my writing and art work which seemed until recently so important. Over the years since I started painting a number of women, young and old, have seen my work and showed more than a casual interest in me, but I felt I needed to get in a financial situation where I could afford to take care of a lady in high style before I could pursue any sort of relationship. But now I realize just some companionship would be nice.
     Maybe I could join one of those dating clubs on the internet or advertise on the bulletin board up at the grocery store or in the classified ads, and saysomething like "single white male, almost 60 but looks fairly trim and fit, even though unemployed with coronary artery disease, multiple sclerosis, constant gut cramps and foot pain, and delusions of being a great artist...looking for a vibrant young lady to share both public and private moments with. I'm not really feeling sorry for myself at all. It could be worse, I suppose I could be physically impotent and mentally unable to frequently laugh at myself . But all kidding aside, the fact that I've painted the world's greatest portraits of Moses, Audie Murphy, Charles Lindbergh, Ronald Reagan, Mona Lisa,and the Statue of Liberty ought to mean something to some naive young or old art student. Delusions about the paintings?? No. Not that it makes any difference though. And not that it should.
     Enough for now, I'm starting to ocnfuse even myself. It's enough on this or any saturday night just be breathing the fresh park air and getting ready to take Pip for a walk around the lake now that the day is cooling off. I think my mood changes more than the weather.
      What would I do on a date anyway? Tell my true love how I feel human beings are destroying themselves and the Earth and everything on it while we (the hypothetical date and myself) dine on mashed potatoes and grilled cheese sandwiches.

Sunday High Noon, April 17, 2005- Well, you might have guessed, now that I have this computer hooked up in my car I can cram your ear more often than ever and this entry is going to be the start of some of my philosopical and political blabbering maybe.
     I left off my last entry last night talking about females.
Well, when I got home after giving a friend a ride to a so-called modern art opening, which I refused to even go in and look at, I checked my email and found a real nice email from a female.
She had visited my website and just wanted to tell me it was the greatest thing, that she enjoyed the humor so much, and that she thinks it's great how I give it out for free and that she was going to hang my pictures in her boudour. When I get home tonight I'll get the exact text of the message so you can read it for yourself. And I got home and here it is:

While researching for something serious one cloudy morning, i stumbled upon your website.  it's hilarious, to say the least.  you are so gifted, whoever you are.  humor is your gift to the world. we all need to laugh at ourselves more often than we're willing to.  another gift of yours is your generosity--imagine, you're giving your artwork for free?!  does this mean i could print them out and paper my boudoire walls with them?
 
thank you, thank you, and thank you!  and i wish you more fun-filled creative hours of using your gifts to the hilt!
 
May the Farce Be With You! Theresa

    Anyway, I felt real good about it...for awhile. Now I get on the average of 5-10,0000 visitors to my site each day. So that would come to about 2 Million a year. Just about the number Jay Leno gets each night. But even if I could get 2 million a day instead of 2 million a year, is that really what I want to do? Do I really want to entertain large numbers of people, or any people at all for that matter? Because mass entertainment does one real big thing, by making people laugh it diverts their minds from the real problems in the world, problems that are bigger and worse than ever in the history of not only human beings but in the history of our planet.

What would people do without the diversions of mass humor and other forms of mass entertainment? They'd go crazy, because they'd have to think about the oh so serious things that entertainment helps us not think about or dismiss as harmless.
What would happen if suddenly all the TV's and radios in the world went dead. If people didn't first go crazy and bring on a total collapse of society, they would be forced to find satisfaction in their own lifes. They'd no longer be content to go to their assembly line job without being able come home and gulp a beer or sip a glass of fine wine while watching a football game or a moving drama or hilarious comedy on television. They'd have to find their own enjoyment and fulfillment in life and they'd discover how difficult, if not impossible it is in the world today.

The human brain took millions of years to evolve (well, there goes my religious readers), and our brain evolved to be unsatisfied if it could not constantly be performing creative survival tasks. But where are these tasks today??? Of course, I don't exclude myself from this monumental dilemma.

 

Monday, April 18, 2005- I'm in the car again and Pip and I just finished eating the same lunch we did yesterday. I also just finished spending two hours trying to correct the format of this chapter because after I finish typing on this laptop computer I take it home and the only way I have to get it on my main computer is to email it to myself...and the format gets all messed up in the process. Anyway, back to yesterday, I met at the art museum with two high school friends just for a half hour. It was good to see them.

But anyway I'm going to just try abd relax with Pip out here today if we can find some good shade, because I have to take him to the specialist tomorrow. The lump in his neck is much better, but not gone.

Friday, April 22, 2005- I was wrong about Pip's appointment. It's not until the 26th. My dejection continues, but at least it's easier to type in the car now. Instead of having to get a bunchh of converters and adaptors hooked up to the car battery I now have a new battery for inside the computer and simply turn it on. Much easier.

I did do some writing yesterday on something I might call The HumaniFest, a rather depressing but I feel accurate overall assessment of the state of the human experience or I should say experiment, but I've decided it to make it a separate thing from this so-called autobiography bullshit.

 

Tuesday, April 26, 2005- Well, I took Pip to the specialist today. I guess the hardest part was making him go without any food for about 15 hours before. The specialist said it would best be just to watch the lump and if it doesn't get more than twice the size it is now not to worry about it. He said even if it does get big, surgery is not mandatory. A vet can just drain the leaking saliva out of his neck every couple months maybe. But he did say Pip''s teeth needed to be cleaned before too many months because if they get infected it could harm his heart which already has a murmer. And they have to give him a general anesthetic to do that.
They also drew some blood and are doing a lab workup on it to check all his organs. They're supposed to call me within the next few hours. The visit cost $240 but I actually enjoyed spending it even if it is what we spend on food for 10 weeks.
I've been watching dollar dvd's of old tv shows like Ozzie and Harriet and Bonanza on my computer at home at night to help pass the time. Life seemed so black and white, good and bad, right and wrong inj those old shows back then. But I guess in reaality that real life even back then was notr so simple.

The same lady that bought my Moses painting is now interested in buying my Statue of Liberty "With Goodness We Grow" painting, so I've been retouching, fine tuning it a bit. I really don't mind parting with my paintings nw that I don't have any delusions that I'm going to have a grand showing of them someday. I'm in my car at the park and it's raining off and on and my top leaks so I'll sign off now until I hear from the doctor.

Thursday, April 28, 2005- You'd think for the $250 I paid the doctors office up-front they would have called me like they said they would, but I ended up calling them and they gave me the very good news that Pip's blood work-up looks good. I guess that means all his organs are functioning properly. It just hurts me so bad when I see how he's slowing down though. I carry him whenever we come to a fairly steep hill. So now I just check Pip's neck several times a day and hope it doesn't start getting any bigger.

The last couple days I've been editing on the computer in my car the 40 page synopsis I write for my big 600 page book...with plans that I may eventually gather the will and the energy to re-edit the entire thing...edit 14...the first since the 13th which I did over 13 years ago when I thought the book was done. I should be ready to put this synopsis on my website in a few days.

If I do it, it will take about 3 months or 90 days editing an average 6+ pages a day of the entire big book. But I'm not sure it's worht it, as I can now look at it more objectively after 13 years and see the characters are caricatures, the language is too florid, and the story sort of silly and far-fetched. But I just hate to flush 5 years of work down the drain. Maybe I can find someone to help me edit it and give them 50% of the credit and moneys, if any, from the book.
Does anyone reading this disjointed bio on my website want to volunteer??
I suppose I really have to just go ahead and do it myself. But I'm not sure I can. Years ago I thought for sure as soon as I finished I would find a publisher. Now I hold no such false hopes. Nevertheless, just for the people who read it on my website I want to depart this world knowing it was in someway representative of my own thoughts on things, trivial, monumental, or otherwise.

I've taken to drinking half a cup of Coca Cola in the asfternon to give me some extra energy. But so you odn't think I'm totally unproductive, I did a swapshot of Glen Campbell as Souperman this morning, worked on my synopsis as I said and am now going to start a drawing of Lorne Greene. I already did drawings of Dan Blocker and Pernell in the past week. I watch these dollar dvd's of Bonanza before bed now and felt like doing drawings of all four of the Cartwrights. I did one of Michael Landon 4 or 5 years ago. That's all for now. My battery is running low.

 

Thursday, May 5, 2005- I had one major buildup and letdown in the past week having to do with my so-called art. The same lady that bought my Moses painting about 7 months ago called and said she wanted me to come to the synagogue where she donated it and make a statement at the unveiling. I placated her by saying I would. I did appreciate the poffer but I really have nothing to say about the goodness of a god while I'm instide a polished up, germ free temple while millions of people and hundreds of millions of animals are suffering in squalor while a handful of homo spaiens float on their sweet donut in a cess pool they made but have isolated themselves from. At any rate, I'm wandering again. The lady also said she was interested in buying my Statue of Liberty painting, the one which is ranked by Google as second most popular image if the Statue in the world. Hedr and her husband came over and her husband looked at all my work which I have plastered all over my apartment and told me that god had given me a golden brain, a golden touch...no, a magnificently brilliant one. I thanked him for his kind comment and they asked me how much I owuld sell the Liberty painting for. I said I really hadn't thought about it and would have to think about it for a day or two and I'd give them a call.

I had mixed emotions about itt. The money I could have used to live on for almost a year..but live on to do what??? I had hoped to someday have the painting on public display. with the poem I wrote for it, "Young or old, moneyed or wanting, lame or fortunate, abandon your diversions of greed and revery. Flood my torch with only your goodness and together our spirits will soar forever." There is a sash across Lady Liberty which reads, "With Goodness We Grow." But I did need the money. But the lady called the next day and said she liked the little print of it that I gave her better than the large painting. So i aced myself out, I guess you could say. I just hope my car's air conditioner makes it throu the summer hwich is about to begin.

At any rate, the reason I happened to decide to write something today is because a received an interesting email today from someone in Brazil who had read my autobiography on my website. When I get home I'll insert it in this entry and make a few comments on it maybe.

My life has nothing to do with god, but the email did get me to start thinking once again about the thousands of strange coincidences that have occured in my life. I know that many similiar things happen to other people but some these I think are sort of bizzare, humorous, or terribly sad. I'll probably insert the letter tonight and start typing again right here about those coincidences or connected eevents tomorrow as I sit here in my car with Pip beside me as he is now. Right now we have to go for our walk. Pip's one eye lid is now swollen but Sparky had the same thing and some ointment eventually got rid of it, so I'm not too worried..poor guy. He doesn't seem to be in pain though. On second thought maybe I'll make a list of as many of the connected events as I can recall and compile them in a separate appendix to this autobiography. I'll see.

One last thing. Actually gettting the email today was sort of a mild connected event. Just this morning a friend of mine offered to help me rewrite my big so-called omnovel which I haven't workrked on in 13 years, but I thought maybe it would be better just to have him help me work on this autobiography, to take out the parts which sound like I'm feeling sorry for myself. My webstats show about 20,000 people have read parts of this bio in the past 5 years since its been on my website but today I got the first email from a reader about it...the same day for the first time in about 7 years since I started writing it that I htought about ahving oseone help me edit it. No big deal, but worth mentioning.
One big deal worht mentioning. I type with only two fingers and just starting the past couple years my one finger increasingly osmetimes gets ahead of the other, thus many of the words aqren't really misspelled they just have pairs of letters reversed. Sorry, but what do you expect for free??:)

I'm home now and here's the misguided but well-intentioned email I received this morning and mentioned this afternoon and will comment on tomorrow or soon anyway:

Dear Krauser

You´re amazing...

The last 3 hours I read your "Just another apprenticeship" and frankly I don´t know what to say...

It can´t be invented...

The only thing is that I just cannot accept that God would put you up through so much suffering without equivalent compensation on the bright side. Either you are a new Van Gogh that we will be hearing from after you die or... you have a filter that does not allow you to tell just about everything your life is all about...

A couple of years ago Van Goghs letter´s to his brothers were unveilled and an editor from National Geografic took a sabatic and did not only a through research on them, but repeated all the routine they refflected.

You should read it.

Best Regards from Brazil,

 

Roque Ehrhardt de Campos

 

Friday, May 6, 2005- As you can see in the email above,Rogue says he cannot accept that God would put a person through so much suffering without equivalent compensation on the bright side. First, of all, many, if not the majority of people have considerable suffering thru their life; it's just that most of them don't write aabout it. And my whole life isn't about suffering. I've had some very bright spots scattered here and there and a number of good friends.

Yes, I admit, for reasons having to do with the kind of person I am and my aspirations in life and my inability to fulfill those rather unrealistic aspirations, I have never really enjoyed a single entire day since my early teens..but that has nothing to do with god...it has to do with me and the world I was born into.

By saying I never enjoyed an entire day I meant that even if I had a happy time with a girlfriend or at a party, after it was over for the day, my mind would always remember that I had not yet done what I felt I needed to do to justify and/or earn my existance.

At any rate, even if I was the most tortured soul on earth, why does there need to be a bright light at the end of the tunnel. Do not millions who lives in third-world squalor for their entire or millions of osldiers who suffer intolerable hardships, do not they die every day without some bright light balancing out their pain?

But I am getting off the track and right now do not have the patience to explain more lucidly what I am getting at. But I have decided, as I mentioned yesterday, to relate some of the unusual connected events that have occured to me over the years. I think you, the reader, might find them interesting and might understand that I, myself, for a time thought I might be some sort of operative of god or when when they were negative events, maybe even an operative of the devil...though I now believe now neither a god or a devil as we understand them do exist. But I do believe there do exist things related to what we label time and reality that we have no knowledge of and that we probably never will and I also believe there is definitely some sort of collective awareness and possible higher level of awareness that some could call god. But I believe this god-like collective awareness is neither omnipotent nor righteous. I believe it is simply a product of all its components.

Anyway I'm going of onto a tangent and will now refocus to describe some connected events to not only excplain why I once thought I hasd some sort of special mission but also to possibly let some people know there are some humbling forces or at least universal elements of somehting which we may be but a small part which we have no knowledge of.
Most people call them coincidences, simply random in nature. Most professionals in the metaphysical speculation field call them "synchronicities." I simply call them "cennected events," events that are connected in some way other than random occurence, but in a way which we have no knowledge of.

I know I have already mentioned a number of them here and there over the course of this bio, but I don't remember which ones and am too lazy to reread the whole thing. So I apologize if I am repeating myself.
It would seem logical that I begin at the beginning of my life, but I will instead first point out a series of events very recent because they relatye to the lower than sual mood you can tell I have been in recently.

I never mentioned this before because I felt it might upset the person involved, but I now realize there is nothing for her to be upset about. She did not cause these events to take place and is not responsible for my silliness and never did a single thing to encourage any romantic hopes on my part.. Anyway, about 4 years ago I met and became friends with a 30-year old school teacher who belonged to the bicycle club I used to go to every week. I'll call her Sally Acres, for indeed she does have an uncommon last name. Sally was so very nice to everybody. Charming...beyond description. I saw her as an angel, and always enjoyed talking with her every week when the group would meet.

Actually, the first time a cnnected event occured was while I was describing another connected event to several people including Sally.

I was telling them that just a few weeks before I had told my father for the first time in my ife that if I evr had the money I wanted to rent my grandparentts old and now vacant dry goods store and use it to live in and have a small studio. I had visited the old store many times the couple years before, since I had moved back to St. Louis from Kansas after spending 20 years there. I was very fond of my grandparents and visiting their store were they both lived and worked for 40 years made me feel very close to them. Any way, I told my friends at the club that the Southwest Bank had owned the building where their store was since the it was built in the 1920's and my grandparents had rented it from them. And I complained to ym friends that after telling my father I'd like to rent it someday, within a week the Southwest Bank sold the building after owning it for 80 years and that the building was going to be gutted.

Sally suddenly spoke up and asked me where the store was. I said that it was in South St. Louis. She said that she lived in South St. Louis, which I had no idea of, because the club met in the downtown area of St. Louis. So I tolds her where it was...and she told me she lived just a few houses down the street from it. And St. Louis is a big place.

So I of course took this as a rare coincidence. A girl I was very fond of lived right next to a place I was very fond of. It mad me prematurely jump to a conclusion htat just maybe htis young lady I so adore is the light at the end of my tunnel.

Many other connected events happened with Sally, but I'll only mention the most noteworthy. When I was in the hospital for my heart, Sally called me on the phone for the first time and wished me well. I was one my cell phone an hour later in a room waiting for osme high tech xenon-gas breathing examination, asking a friend of mine if he could guess who just called me, the person most in the world I would want to call me. Just as he guessed it and said Sally Acres, a nurse poked her head around the corner of the room three of us in wheelchairs were in and called out, "Mr. Acres, you're next." It looked like she was looking at me but she was actually calling the guy next to me. I asked if Mr. Acres had a relative named sally but he said no.
Anyway, when I got back to my room I checked the phone book annd there were less than ten people with the last name Acres (or her real , just as unusual, last name) in a phone book of a million or more.

Though Sally seemed to think highly of me, I never asked her out because I didn't want to ruin a friendship...especially considering I was probably older than her father. At any rate, she had not had a boyfriend that I knew of for a few years, but she was getting ready to go on a summer vacation to the Bahamma and I teased her that I hoped she wasn't running off with some Don juan without asking her friends permission. She said that she wasn;'t. But as it turned out it was very shortly after that, possibly on the vacation itself, that she did meet a guy that she started going with. To get to the point of this particular connected event, it was about a week before Valentines Day and I ws walking down the aisle at the discount grocery store where I shop. They have a lot of cheap dollar items that would have mad e a nice valentines day gift for Sally. But I didn't get one, because I felt it owuld be worng now that she had a boyfriend. So I picked up my big sack of potatoes, which is about all I was able to eat, and heade4d home. Several days later, the night before the last time I would see Sally before Valentines day, i reached into the potato sack and pulled out the last potato. I was shocked. It was in the perfect shape of a heart. I showed it to many people and even took a picture of it (which I'll put in here when I get home) and no one had ever seen anything like it. I still wasn't going to give it to Sally, but I told the story to her cousin and he said I should give it to her. So I told her the story behind it and gave it to her and told her she should cook it and her and her boyfriend couldd each eat half.

Another connected event with Sally, I discovered her boyfriend lived two house from where I was born..and like I said St. Louis is a big plac. So I dared the think that just maybe Sally would osmeday breakup with her boyfriend, who I happen to have gotten to know and is a very good guy and I'm sure will make Sally happy. He's actually 6 years younger than Sally. But just a number month ago Sally announced they were getting married in June of this year. IOn one hand I was happy for Sally, because I know she loved her boyfriend and he loved her..but on the other hand I felt selfishly dissappointed that htere was to be no light at the end of the tunnel with an angel I had admired for 4 years.

And that realization that those connected events were meaningless and I was indeed going to spend the rest of my life alone , along with Pip's health problems has made me more depressed than usual even though I know for sure Pip and I could never have made her as happy as she will be with her boyfriend whoI wil leave nameless. And thats part of the reason I quit going to the club meetings after so many years, because to see Sally each week was just like pouring vinegar onto an open wound.

But there are many more, more interesting connected events to be be related, some hasving to do with the girl I held as an angel for the 40 years before I met Sally. I'll relate that series of events tomorrow, then get back to the curious events that started even befoe i was born, hoping this entire subject of connected events doesn;t become to belabored for both the reader and myself. I plan to eventually relate even those connected events which will make want some of you to burn me at the stake for being a witch, which I might think I could be if I believed in such things. But, on the other hand, many of these events very extremely good things. Out of concentrating and battery getting low. Talk to you later my diligent reader if you or any others are indeed still there.

 

Sunday, May 8, 2005- It's been two days since I 've wriitten, and during that time I've tried to make a list of as many connected events from the past that I can remember. But I can only recall a snall fraction of the thousands. Anyway, I'll get startd telling you about the angel Susanna that preceeded Sally and the few but very interesting connected events that happened involving her.

First let me jump back. I remember a couple other events regarding Sally. Last year it was Sally's birthday and I went to a club gathering where she arrived and I met her boyfriend for the first time. I really didn't know it was her birthday but felt that day like giving her a littler gift. When I left home I found it on a kitchen shelf and washed it up real good. When I got to the gathering and discovered it was Sally's birthday I gave it to her as a birthday present. She loved it and her eyes twinkled as only they can. It was just an old glass mug in he shape of a cowboy boot with the name of some diner in Arizona on it. When I explained to Sally how I had acquired it she was amazed. I told her how I had taken a motorcycle ride to California just a few days after seeing Easy Rider in 1969. She asked me when it ws in 1969. I told her it was the middle of the summer, July. She said that she was born in July of 1969.

Additionally, the day of the gathering when I gave her the mug was the day after I had gotten mugged myself. My vicorious battle with Charles hervey was on a friday night and I called my cousin Joel a couple hours after it, on my way home from the ordeal after tsalking to the police and everyone, and told Joel about it and told him that the only thing I regretted was that Sally had not been there to see me in action.

Anyway, the next Tuesday at the cklub meeting, Sally asked me I could guess who she had seen monday evening. I said I had no idea. She said she had seen me and Pip walking out at Forest Park. For a couple years, I had always wished Sally could see me pushing myself to walk as fast and as far as I could and sure enough she finally had, just days after I tiold Joel I wished she could have seen me fight off the mugger.

So that's about all the Sally coincidences I can think of right now. So I'll get back to Susanna, as I called her when I briefly alluded to her in the first or second chapter of this bio. She was the girl that I sat behind in 9th grade for 3 hours a day and fell in love with but later discovered she only considered me a friend, or maybe even less. Anyway, like I also mentioned early in this writing I had been president of my 5th grade class twice, and they had to chchange the class constitution to elect me the second time. But a third term was forbidden, so the guy that finally replaced me I'll call Rob. Rob was a nice guy and actually a friend.

Let me point out that Susanna went to a totally different grade school in the district of maybe eight or so grade schools. But there was only one high school. And when Susanna started dating, she of course wasn't interested in me, but of all people she did chose to date Rob. This time he didn't replace me, he simply was elected instead of me....out of a cou