July 17, 2017:
There was a neighbor, upstairs, a young woman not much more than my age, who was very angry with me.
"Why do you have to play your music so loud! The neighbors complain that it's me!"
That was unjust. I played my stereo with doors and windows closed. The true villain was her boyfriend, who'd open their door and windows and blast the Grateful Dead. You could hear it in Los Angeles, it was so loud.
I didn't tell her. She was terminally ill. I knew it and I knew that her brittle anger came from a different emotional place than anyone's stereo.
I'd heard her one day, in her apartment overhead, right through the thin cheap ceiling. She was crying and praying. "Help me God, please help me," she was crying. It came from very deep and I felt for her. That's how I knew.
Don't think I ever knew her name.