Finding Leah - January 16th, 2006

Gil and I and someone else whose face I'm not remembering, were driving on the outskirts of a town looking for a place to stay while we visited. We were looking for an affordable but decent place for a one week stay.
There was a building that looked like a commercial bldg for some other use but it had a vacancy sign outfront so we checked it out. The apartment available was smallish, but clean and well lit. We happily took it.
A day after we moved in, a large but friendly family with loads of kids moved into the apartment above ours, though in dreamscape their apartment was actually next to ours. They asked me in one day..Their apartment was considerably larger than ours and a good bit fancier too., but I imagined they also paid a good sum more for it. I noticed that their apartment had beach access, a sort of attic pull down staircase, only that it was a drop down and the dropdown put them straight out onto the beach, facing the water. I was kinda envious because I love going to the beach and the easier the access the better, BUT I didn't want to leave this family with the impression I was envious so I didn't use their beach access staircase, I only peered through the gap in the floor where it was, to view where it led.
When I dipped my head through the gap I looked over toward the underflooring on top of stilts where our apartment was and noticed that it too had a square door that might open to beach access. Cool! I returned to our apartment and located the door to the beach on the floor of one of the closets.
Made sure I had my suit on and went to the beach. It wasn't quite as killer hot as I prefer. There were many many kids playing, too many, lots of noise and racket so I tried to figure out where I could swim to get away from the busier shores. There was a manmade hill, or atleast it looked manmade, that kids were sliding down, this faced the shore and was in the water, a sort of slide. I saw that it had a pipe as the source of all the water and figured out that this lake's water ALL came from that pipe. I was happy about having the immediacy of the beach at my disposal but the beach itself wasn't any great shakes.
When I returned to the apartment Rosalyn had just entered coming from some study appointment he'd had..I told him about the beach access and went on my way exploring. There was a next door rooftop that had bird coops on it. The bird coops held various live grotesquly deformed human beings. Huge adult heads on fat baby sized bodies, bad puffed out scarred skin, limbs that didn't operate etc.. I spoke to one of them a bit. A lady with long black hair stuck her head out of a nearby window to tell me that these creatures weren't abandoned and that she and her husband were the caretakers. She said they were lepers.


Pause- I can't write any more of this dream out until I get coffee into my system, or I will fall back asleep. (Not that part two will be any more interesting..)

Hmmm...lepers...I thought, I'd always wondered what lepers look like, and although this wasn't what I'd imagined I accepted what I'd seen as possible and went on my way, back to the apartment.
Rosalyn was finished with his jaunt at the beach and I told him that I'd made an appointment with Brett, who was also in town. Brett arrived and I told him about the place next door and the lepers and the beach access door in the closet etc.
He said, 'I know of this bus service that tours the history of the neighborhood, if you're interested. I said,"great what time?".
" I believe the bus leaves at twelve, we can catch it out on the street, I'll call to confirm." And he did.
I asked Ros if he wanted to join us and he said,"sure." So we all boarded this cool sightseeing bus that took us past the buildings a few blocks down the road. What was great was the bus took us through history, and so whatever we saw was what was happening 75 years earlier...
Out of the seaside opening doors of the big building which had become the one I was staying in, poured a procession of many frocked religious people, priests, nuns, monks etc., some holding candles or books. Some were Jewish, some Christian.
After we'd seen that, a bus train rolled past us, it was in more recent history, 40 or 50 years or so ago. Modestly attired women, but many with long loose hair down, were shouting slogans and fighting for their rights. I thought to myself how beautiful many of them were-perhaps because they weren't trying to appear so.

One very kind stranger replied to an email I'd sent. The person had offered to use their pass for an internet research site, if someone needed help locating someone so I emailed them asking if they would look up Leah on the site, and they did!
This is what they found; Leah M McFarland (remember that Leah Michele Mcfarland was most currently researched living in Rio Rancho near Albuquerque) born June 19th 1964 in Los Angeles County, mother's maiden name Ibbitson.

As far as mother's hunches go, she's SURE I'm onto something. She says Leah had a french middle name either Marie or Michele and that she'd definitly lived in Los Alamitos, CA (the Leah Michele Mcfarland supposedly living in Rio Rancho nowadays, once lived in Los Alamitos too-for sure-says Mom)
I think what's also in Mom's surety is the fact that the hair stood up on her arms when I told her of the newest Leah find near Albuquerque.

working on it...btw nevicatosotto finally posted again..