My neighbor died today. I haven't seen him in years nor has he lived in his house in years. He has been in prison.

I remember him as a nice guy. I've learned that he wasn't exactly the nicest man. In different times, he was the cross bearer for a group of nut-job-nitwitts in hoods and sheets. I never knew that side of the man. Growing up, he was always nice to me and my friends no matter what color their skin was.

He had a stroke a few years ago and never was expected to live long. He wanted to come home and die in his house. He even went up for parole. He didn't get it and spent the last few years of his life in a bed in a prison hospital. He was guilty of his crime, sex with a minor. I believe she was seventeen, the daughter of the woman that was living with him.

Many years ago, my dad and the neighbor started the Dora Rescue Squad. They used an old car either like the Ecto in the Ghostbusters movie or one very similar. I used to play in that car when I was as old as I was in the picture on the front of my site. They started the Rescue Squad because there was a time when ambulances were either hard to come by or were hard pressed to come by here. Together, they saved a lot of lives and prompted ambulance services to come through here. Today, Dora has their own ambulance that does the same job as the Rescue Squad. The name has been retired, but not the notion or function.

It is a grey world. Seldom are people either good or bad. I'm intensely interested in why people do the things that they do. I spend of lot of time in my writings setting things up, paths and consequences for actions and their explanations. I never really knew my neighbor after childhood. I played in his yard a lot then, a tire swing that hung over one of those giant spools for cable. I used to jump off of that and hang to the swing. The tree is now gone. As soon as he went away, the tree died. It took a few years, but it slowly fell away. His son burned the stump down. It's practically gone now.

I hate that he died where he died. But I never felt bad for him being in prison.

Ironic. I'm editing Haunted. I'm just about to the point when all of a sudden somebody dies and life takes a slight curve. Life is full of curves. It's like there are no straight lines to anything, not even to death. Maybe it's all circular logic, looping and curving back on itself either explaining or setting up the good and evil of us and this world. Kind of like a cosmic/spiritual six degrees of separation but for actions and meanings. Then again things could be nothing but accidents and chances. I think that would be disappointing.

  ¶ 1:34 AM