harold_maude's journal

Here it is almost the end of Febuary and change is in the wind.
Change is good. Things get shifted, moved out of the way, and the road becomes all that is ahead of you.

Tomorrow we find out if we have a new place to live or not.
This next week one of the guys here who has been here a little longer than us is leaving this city.
I'm both happy and sad at his departure. Happy for him because he's been dancing around this decision for well over a year now.
And to finally see him make the decision to go forward is good.
All of the months of frustration at knowing he needed to move forward are done.

I told him if he comes back after a month with his tail between his legs I was going to kick him in the butt.
And I will. To watch someone struggle for so long working through every possiblity again and again and then to see them back down once they start going forward is enough to drive you crazy.

That aside, this change that is before is tenative right now.
And if it goes through and we have a new place to live, then all of this that has gone on here can be finally put to rest.
I want it to be. I don't want to face any thing that will remind me of the things that have gone on here, and the subsequent end result.

I need spring to happen in my life. There needs and will be time to really recharge.
So when the next step comes in the journey I will be ready to just go.

When I leave somewhere I don't ever take a trip down memory lane.
I hardly do that now with the places I've been or the things I've done in the past. Sometimes it's hard for me to remember things of childhood.
They seem so far removed from where I am now.
And ten years down the road this place will seem very far away.

I am learning very quickly that to spend life looking back and dreaming and wanting what was back there is somthing that costs you being able to see what is right in front of you or even ahead down the road.

I can't take back anything of the past. I can't hold the things I used to love or talk to the people who are dead and burried again.
I used to spend hours lost in thoughts of adventure, and arguments with people who pissed me off.
Telling them off again and again. But that is something that has disapeared from my life it would seem, that need to self justify my particular perspective no matter how tangled it was or even how accurate it was and ended up being.

I have for many years now seen things down the road, seen inside of people where the truth is about who they really are, completely stripped of any and all masks that people so often wear to protect themselves.
I have know lots of things, and I have learned that what most people want isn't the truth about what they need to change inside them, they want to know about tomorrow. They want to have someone validate their disorted self dillusion that they are wonderful and in control.

I've wanted that. We all do at some point and often at lots of points in life we want that.
We want to have the assurance that we are strong, and masters of our world, and that we are the very best we can be.
And that we are loved, and thoes we believe love us really do.

The idea that our problems and phobias and fears are more in control than we want to admit is aborrant to us because it means that we are just as capable of really bad shit as the asshole that we want to beat the crap out of when what they are doing is really, really unnessiary and stupid.

The biggest problem is that the truth really often does hurt.
I don't know if it would hurt so much if we were brought up from childhood with the notion that to be the best of who we are capable of being means that life is often filled with things that will challange our very nature and when we overcome and come out stronger in the end is just the way things are.

But we want the fairytale world we have been surrounded with day after day through advertising and through everything else that is an illusion that surrounds us.
Gives us a false sense of belief that we are invincible and that if we have so much of this or that we have arrived at the pinicle of everything....

But life doesn't do things that way. Somedays life is good, somedays it really sucks from the moment you wake up.
And thoes days are the berometer days of what's inside you, in need of attention.

I've learned that because of all of this, people really don't listen. They are too busy thinking about what they are going to say next.
Our lack of real communication makes us strangers even to ourselves, hopelessly drowing in the desperate need to have someone really understand us and the hope that when they do get it they won't run away in horror at what they see.

We fill the hours of uncomfortable discomfort with things that will soften thoes places and at least make them not so loud.
We busy ourselves to fight bordom. To get through the hours when we are alone.
Sometimes even in a crowed room we are alone. We are distant from the people we should be closer too, and sometimes too close to thoes that are nothing more, in reality than just filling space in our world.
So we don't have to spend time looking in the mirror and not having a clue as to who we are, and how the hell did my face and body age so fast kind of thing.

So I have come to the place where I don't say a whole lot anymore about what I see. If someone asks me I will tell them don't ask if you are looking for anything other than my view, and my observations, which may not be pleasant or even seem kind.

..and please don't be pissed if I tell you that big elephant you've got in the front room has just taken a really big shit and it stinks...
your the one who brought it in the house in the first place and then expected the rest of us to live with it...or something like that.

In all of this, through all of this, I have found that I have a hard edge to me now. Self protection more than anything.
I've wondered if compassion still exists at all in me now.
Or if I've become this hard bitch that looks at tough things that life throws at people and says "this is your opportunity to find out what's inside you. Don't whine about it. In the end it has the power to change you into someone you never thought you could be. A more decient human being, and someone who is no longer sleeping through life."

...it will be interesting to see what the next year unfolds, and how many scars remain after this place is behind me.
And just everything else along the way.

I don't expect everything to all of a sudden become smooth or perfect, what ever that is.
But I'm up for change, and everything that comes with it.
I'm game, even if everything just blows up every 5 minuets.
Even if at the end of the road I'm sitting out in the middle of nowhere trying to decide what direction to head off in to.
After all I can always change the direction simply by turning my footsteps some other way....

Another day, exausted peices of something. Me, I think. Payday. Money already earmarked for this and that
and the search for a new place to live is underway.

I being the traveler that I am, looks forward to something different. Something away from the madness and the feel
of a mortuary that this place has become.
Am I bitter about seeing something that had life enter a phase of death? No. Death comes to all things living.
When it settles and becomes the thread of days, then I have to say that the person exuding the throws of death
needs a good swift kick in the butt.
Either that or they need to get into a job suited to their energy. Embalming corpses. Because at that point they
have everything in common with a dead body and nothing in common with the bodies that are still up and walking around.

But soon we will leave this scene of deathism and go on. And I will finally be able to put this all to rest. It's hard
when you have to come back to it to sleep at night.

We went to a diner tonight. A fulfillment of wanting to completely feel the words of Tom Waits in some kind way,
being as we have at this time no way to go to where he could be doing a live concert.
It would be nice, to sit in a semi-darkened room listening to a story teller who I could listen to all day, and never say a word.
Except a few drifting sweet mumbles here and there.
He is one of my all time favorite artists.
The more I listen the more he becomes one of the parts of my decompression at the end of the day.

The diner. A small counter only place with stools set at the counter and one table for any over flow that might happen.
The cook was a big guy. The kind you would expect to see in a place like this. The food, like all diner food was good.
It was served on a plate, the white kind with some kind of pattern common to places like this.
The other cook, or cooks were round the corner in the fry kitchen.
And the waitress was a young girl about 22, I'd guess, maybe a bit younger with something in her eyes that said this
was a place she liked to hang out at and that's why she was working there.

Phone calls came in and she answered on from a guy named Larry. From the sounds of it, Larry was a regular.
The kind that orders over the phone and spends a half hour after he gets there bulshitting with who ever is on at the time.
Tonight Larry couldn't make up his mind what he wanted.
He kept changing his mind.
He called back to change his order. Onion rings instead of slaw. The 4 peice dinner with onion rings on the side was his
final word on the subject.

She and I carried on a disconnected conversation while Larry was trying to make up his mind. A couple of times she said "Larry...
Larry are you there? She could hear him talking to someone on the other end through a hand covering the reciever. And I commented
that it appeared that Larry was having trouble making his mind up. She said he does this all the time.

I must admit that I wanted to see the starched white aprons covered in food stains on the cook. It would have completed the ideal
immage of the diner for me.
I wanted to see the waitress in the familar white uniform that defines diner waitresses of the past.
But this is now, and everyone behind the counter dressed casually.

So much for the notion that diners have this thing that makes them diners. Out side of that the food was what I expected to get,
and yes my stomach was in need of help once we left.
It was a good night, stomach and all.

I'm off to bed now. I have to go sling pizza tomorrow. Working in a hot kitchen running my ass off and wishing that I was doing art.
Loving the crazy moods that place gets, and the insanity that invades the kitchen with the lunch crowd.
And after that, dishes that will take the rest of the time I'm there to clean.
Another day another dollar, and when I get my next paycheck, I'll do the same thing I've done for a while.
Just sit there and look at it and wish it was fun money just for once instead of watching it vanish into other people's pockets.

...I'll stand in the wings and wait. That is something that I've been feeling this morning alot.
Playing spider solitare and trying to win at least one game.
A wake up ritual to get my brain functioning.

Last night I actually got to work for a while in peace. Which was something that was wonderful. Something I haven't
had in so long.
The need to do art and then having any time inturpeted by constant requests for this or that has made the time
I do get very limited.
There was a time when I could do art with people around. I let their energy tap into the flow of the work and show
me what the end result was.
And it was good for a while, but as the months progressed it got harder and harder to work.
People constantly wanting to talk.

So now it's all battered and broken. And I'm wanting a quiet space to work in, to get back to the privacy of working
with no one but the sounds of dead composers telling me their stories through their music.
I dance with them while their music wraps around me and infuses me with their life.
The majority of my teachers have been dead people, their work. They made this statement and hundreds of years,
or years later here I am listening and learning from them.
Wandering through their place in the fields of what they knew of the creative fire that exists.

One of the important lessons that I have walked away with is that creativity can not be taught, the only thing that
can truely be taught about when it comes to art is what the tools are and what is possible to do with thoes tools.
Unfortunately so many people out there don't understand that they have this creativity inside them already,
they are terrified of this unknown and believe that they can't be creative, and so they look to someone to tell them what
to do.

A good teacher is simply a guide. That's all. A teacher is not a parent who is waiting for people in the form of clay to
reproduce themselves and so insure their immortality.
The people who have ended up in front of me asking me to teach them are told that all I can do is show them the tools
and what's possible with thoes tools, and the rest, finding their own voice is up to them.
It's always my hope when this happens that some brilliant spark will catch their eyes with in their own soul and they
will pass me by with works of power and beauty.

If that is accomplished then I've been a good guide.
I do what I do. It's my path and job on that path to keep exploring, pushing what I know further and further and hopefully
find lots of brilliant sparks that catch my eye.
The only thing I could ever want to reproduce is children from my flesh and I did that.
I don't want students who paint just like me or draw just like me. That's an insult to both me and them.
That negates both what I do and what they are capable of.

I say let them take what I've laid out there in front of them and go as far as they can with it. And I hope they suceed, and are
set free into this powerful place of creativity, and who knows, maybe years down the road or sooner I will be seeing their work
gracing the covers of magazines or on tour around the country.
That is an awesome possiblity, because it means that the doors have been opened and they are free.
Yea for freedom!

Someone else's sucess will never stop mine. I have my own voice and there are so many people in the world there is enough room
for all the voices being spoken in the language of art.

I'm not against art schools, but what I am completely against are thoes artists who are standing in the role of teacher who
are so insecrure about their own voice that they see their students as potential rivials, so they teach the studen to be a copy of themselves
but never give them the confidence to find their own voice.
Many students have dropped out of art school because they keep running into these kinds of teachers.

Each of us are only passing this way, we are not the stone monuments that stand in front of great halls or even the halls themselves.
We are only passing through. And we have to understand that the torch was passed to us only for a little while, and the responsiblity
of getting the torch passed to us comes with the understanding that we have to pass it on at some point.

The part of the world I was born into is full of artists who don't trust each other, simply because of the accepted types of art that
sell and are promoted there.
It is only a tiny fraction of the art world that is accepted there. Charles Russel, Thomas Kinkade, Norman Rockwell, Bev Doolittle
and the works of many famous and very dead artists, many of whom spent their lives living in poverty because they were trying to
make a living off of the one thing they loved more than any other.

The rest of the art community that exists in that place are in fierce compititon for the remaining money that is dangled like an impossible
to reach carrot in front of them so they become bitter rivals against each other.
Instead of it drawing them together to give each other the support and encouragement that artists need from each other, they view each
other as the enemy of the almightly dollar.
It's a sad thing to watch, and an even sadder thing to be around.

What ends up happening is that many of the wonderful artists who could be the leaders in a huge art explosion in the area end up
leaving for greener and more lucritive pastures. Cities known for being art centers of the world. And when they become
sucessful their art finds it's way back to that area and the people who buy it see only that the artist is from this city or that.
They don't realize that the artist who's work they are buying is the same artist they wouldn't give the time of day to while
the artist was right in their mist to begin with.

While I was still living there I heard this story about a couple who had an open house for a painting they had bought in another
city.
They bought it because they believed they had the work of a very talented artist who must have been from that other city.
All the people who came to see the work oohed and ahhhed over the work.
Things were going swimmingly and this couple was so proud and even arrogant over what they had...
then a funny thing happened.
One of their neighbors who was at this big deal said to them, "I know this artist, they used to live right down the street."

The couple was instantly horrified to learn that they had actually bought something from a local artist who had just
left because of the attitudes that persist about the local artists.
They were embarressed and humliated.

When I heard this story it reverberated what I knew and had run into so many times when trying to get into the galleries
in that town.
I thought, how sad.
The artist was an awesome artist. It shouldn't have taken them moving away to have their work appreciated, and then when
it was discovered where they were from, the attitude about the work changing from being wonderful to being somthing of
shame.

Since I've moved away I've had two one woman shows. Both of them I had in a state of major reluctance, due to my past experiences
from the town where I grew up in.
I was shocked to discover the response of people here. They were blown away and lots of work sold.
Since the last one I've had lots of people pestering me about doing another one. Waiting for my next show. I have a feeling that
if someone from the town where I grew up came and bought a peice of work, thinking about it like what thoes other people thought,
that the same thing would end up happening.

Because of the way things have gone here in my personal life, I'm getting ready to move on. To another city, one with a bigger art
communtiy than there is here. More acceptance of different kinds of art. A place where the people living there both support
their local artists and just simply love art.
That's what defines a real art center. The artists are accepted and encouraged because the people there just love art.
That's the kind of place that seems more like home.
A place where artists arn't fighting each other for something that that other people in other walks of life fight less over.

When I get there I'll find out if the stories I've heard are true or not. And I'll find out if the artists there are supportive of each
other and encourage each other and are glad when someone's work sells, even if it's not their own.
That's a place I want to be a part of.
Yes, I get thrilled when someone else's work sells. It means that art is getting out there. And the creative fire that burns in all of us
is still being heard, and it means that the push from the machine that desires that we all becomming lemmings is still being
fought against, and each time a peice is sold that machinery is being denied and told no.
That's why I am happy every time a peice of work that goes outside the box of what the machinery says is the frame work of "True art"
gets sold, and that artist makes it big.
Yea for freedom!

Every artist who stands against the winds of the status quo is my hero. More power to them. Keep up the good fight, keep speaking
the language of art the way your heart and spirit and soul are desined to.
It helps the rest of us who struggle and fight the same fight from the trenches. It give us the courage to keep going and not
conform and not give in, and not compromise our own visions.

This morning one more of life's little ordinary occurances took place.
A flat tire. One more expense on a very long list of things that I don't make enough money to even begin to try to figure out how I'm going to spread what is already thin even thinner so that things still work.

I know from the recient events that there is no way that asking any of them to take a few minuets out of their lives to give me a lift to a gas station to get some temporary fix for this tire until I can get it fixed is likely, so I call work and let my boss know what's up.
I can hear in his voice that tone of frustration because of the endless list of people who before me have given excuses why they can't come in or just don't call and don't show up.

I make my way down the driveway that is sheet ice with the occasional streak of sand or cat litter and some salt to the flat on the drive way and make my way up the hill to where the road is.
It's biting cold and I didn't think to find my gloves or hat.
All I could think about was what I needed to do.
Walk to the nearest gas station, roughly a mile a way so I could get what I need and get to work as soon as possible.

All that walking and running my ass off at work is paying off.
I realize that I could probably have walked the 10 or so miles to work and have been tired but would have been able to work a full shift in shoes that are falling apart.
Another thing on the list.
It's waiting for a while with the hopes that they hold together long enough to make it.
I've got boots, but after a couple of hours they make my feet feel like I have steel rods with spiked ends boring into my feet.
so wearing them for any length of time is really not a good idea.

I get about half way to the first light and a van pulls up and the guy sitting behind the wheel looks likes Santa clause.
I'm not kidding.
This guy is a dead ringer for the jolly old elf.
(who says that elves arn't real)
And he asks if I need a ride.

I think about this for a minuet and the possiblity that I could end up in some really nasty circumstances by taking a ride with someone I don't know.
But with the way things have been lately, I figured that if it was my time to go and this was the door well ok.

So I say yes, and he opens the back door, moves a sack (yeah, a big one, but it's a garbage sack, but other than the color it looks like it had boxes in it,*smiling* this guy is looking more like santa than just in the face and body)

And we talk abit on the way to the gas station. I tell him why I'm on my way there and about my flat tire, and he asks if I work there, and I tell him no, but at another place.
And he drops me off.

I get my stuff and make my way back here to fix the flat and then take off.
I get to work and the boss has gone on a delivery and the people I work with durring the day smile and greet me, and one of my favorite people there says to me "How are you sunshine?"
And both she and I just bust up laughing.

This woman has been through everything from a crazy bad marriage to her house burning down, and she is one of thoes people that are so down to earth about life that they are really cool to be around.

When I came back to work the following monday after I tried to vacate the earth, she treated me normal. It made me feel so good that there was one person who wasn't holding a microscope to every move I was making ready and willing to call the guys in the white coats to come and take me a way.
This woman is amazing.
And I'm glad I get to work with her.
My life would be less if I had never met her.

This morning, when I was on my way to the gas station, my ears freezing in the breeze, and this guy, who I am convinced is santa shows up in a white van to help me when I needed it.
Pretty cool.

....I do believe there is a santa clause...for many years I thought of him as an idea of what people should be like to other people and not just for a few weeks out of the year, but all the time.
We are fragile creatures, and we as a race do such stupid cruel shit to the earth we live on and to each other.

People hurt other people, often for no other reason than they are scared of the people they hurt, or want to control them, or are jealous of what someone else has or are just plain cruel because they can be.

And to me the idea of christmas and santa and every other symbol that we celebrate should be a reminder that we are capable of really good things, honorable things things that show our fellow memebers of the same species that we understand that we need to be there for each other and not spend so much time shitting on each other.
There is enough shit that happens with out humans being dick heads to each other.

so I figure it this way, my life has been a real war zone for a while, and I have no energy to keep going, but I do, and I have to deal with all the mess in private, and for a brief moment I got to be in the company of someone who didn't have to give a shit, but did.

that was santa. No one can convince me other wise. I got a belated christmas gift in the middle of a very long and exausting personal war.

...and my heart isn't so heavy tonight because of that one act of kindness out of the blue on a very bitter and windy winter mornning in January...

October 1 of last year I was in an accident. It wasn't my fault. There were witnesses.

If the driver of the other car hadn't been in such a hurry to get around the corner (she saw me comming
and so instead of slowing down and letting me get through the intersection and then going,
she sped up to about 45 miles an hour. Her thinking was she could get around the corner before I got to
the intersection.) the accident wouldn't have happened.

Now my insurance rates have gone up almost $40 a month because I was in that accident. I called
to find out why they had gone up if the accident wasn't my fault.
I found out that I have to get the police report and take it to the insurance company and if the report
has been filed in the state captiol, then I have to get ahold of the state captiol and have them send
a copy of the report to the insurance company.

I don't know what happened to the girl who was driving. She wasn't insured. And she was driving a borrowed
car from a friend who lives in another state, and the guy had let his insurance laps on the car that she was driving.

My insurance which is already expensive and takes a good chunk out of my income, isn't enough to take
care of the damage which includes a bent axle so I'm basicly stuck with something that I can't get fixed.

I heard someone call insurance, just in case something happens, instead of insurance.

The guy I talked to said it used to be innocent until proven guilty. Now your guilty until you can prove
your innocence.

I'm looking at a huge hospital bill as well for the few hours I spent in the phsych ward. If the people here had
listened and the guy who is truely responsible for making me so angry because he wouldn't leave me alone and
take no for an answer, that friday wouldn't have happened.
If the guy who brought him into the house wouldn't have been so caught up in getting another roommate in here
so our rent would be a few dollars cheaper, in other words, greedy, and we would have all had a chance to meet this
guy ahead of time, he would never have been here.
It doesn't take long with this guy to figure out something isn't quite right.

About 6 years ago I had major surgery. 16 months later I had to have the surgery again because the first doctor
didn't put mesh over the place he repaired.
Although he charged me for it.
The second doctor did, but I got double charged for everything for that surgery. And that I found out is perfectly
legal in this country.
You get charged by the doctor for the surgery, and then by the hospital for the same surgery, because when the doctor
does the surgery the hospital looks at him as an employee, how ever temporary.

If the first doctor had done his job right, the second surgery wouldn't have had to be done.

So what have I learned from all of this? That in this world that very often it doesn't matter if you do the right thing
or try to, the person who does bad shit often never has to take responsiblity. And you get screwed in the ass for someone
elses screw ups.
You get to pay for their shit.

What I've seen in this country is a larger picture of these kinds of things. The goverment does stuff that is screwing up
alot of people's lives.
And we get the tab.
And that is screwed up.

The guy who brought this recient problem into the house had surgery last night. His gal bladder went bad.
He survived. I found myself, when I herd about it, not feeling any kind of compassion for the man.
Every time I've accomidated this man I get screwed. I've lost work because of this man, and the asshole he brought
in here and then refused to listen as I was telling him and one of the other roommates that there was a serious
problem with this guy not leaving me alone, and wouldn't do anything about it.
There are other things as well that have happened.
But thoes haven't ended up costing me as much as this recient crap.

I'm glad he survived. But I don't care how long it takes him to heal, or how much work he looses because of this,
and how much financial crap he has to go through because of this.
Or even if the company he works for fires him because of this, and he has to go find another job.
I don't even care if he ends up homeless, although he's got family here so that won't happen to him.
They will take him in.

But he loves this place, and the way things are in the world, I could easily see him getting fired over this.
Especially in this state. A right to work state. It should be called a right to get fired state because an employer
can fire you on a whim.
No good or valid reason.

In many states it's that way. And us, the american public has to just go on, and try to keep from ending up
on the streets.
While the corporations and the businesses keep doing things that are screwing with our enviorment,
the goverment supports the corporations and businesses by continuing to reissue business liscenes to
corporations which violate enviormental acts.
Like dumping raw sewage into rivers, crap like that.

The senator who was drunk while driving and killed a guy on a motorcycle and only got a hundred days jail time.
This isn't the first time a senator killed someone and got off lightly.
The experiemnts payed for by the goverment that have ruined lives, because life is expendable to the goverment.
Congress giving themselves pay raises while the rest of us can barely afford the tab of living in this country.
And lots of other wonderful things that keep going on, and we the people have to keep paying the tab.

The only hope I can hang on to is that at some point it will all collapse and there will be no way to reconstruct it.
All of it makes me want to move to another country.
And get out of here, while my car is still working.
I love this land, but this land isn't the land of the free anymore, and when it sends men to fight against a people
when there is no other reason than there is oil and money at the bottom line, then this country is nothing more
than a degenerate self indulgent cruel place to try to live.

But I don't suppose any place else is much better. That's the way of the world in this time in history I suppose.
People who get in power who only want control and power will do terrible things, and let terrible things happen,
and support the criminals who commit them.
And the rest of us, well we get to suffer needlessly and pick up the tab for all the loss of life, loss of freedom
and anything else that comes up.

Is it any wonder then, with all of this, that there is a growing number of people who are so angry and so disgusted
by it all that they have gone haywire in someway.
No one is listening, and if they are, they arn't doing a thing.

So much for a wonderful future. If the future is now, it sucks big time and it's only going to get worse.

I broke yesterday and after comming home I spent some time writing about it. I went over the edge completely, and my intent was to stop the pain and agony that has been growing since the arrival of the newest person in the house.

When I was much younger I made some attempts to commit sucide, yesterday was the closest I have ever come to suceeding.
It was the only answer that I could come up with because no one was listening to anything I had been trying to tell them.

I just wanted the house to be at peace once more. A place of sanctuary, and a place of true healing.

This is the account of yesterday. I am doing better. The place where I put the knife to will heal and leave very little scar.

December 30, 2005

A fragile awakening. Snapping in two. Light years pass, in just a few hours. Traveling at the speed of waking up
in some place you know you don't want to be.
And that's pretty damn fast when just a few moments earlier you felt fine.

So many thoughts. Too many to count. Brusies to the soul. Deep gashes in the heart. All of them.
the past. Both recient and distant.
Exploding inside me, and the only thought that mattered at that moment was this:
"Peace. That's all I want."

It's most likely a good thing that I couldn't find the small box of exacto blades, because the next thing I knew
I was standing in the kitchen, with a knife pressed against my wrist.
Wanting to stop all the insanity.
Wanting to stop all the anger.
Wanting to stop feeling like natzi germany was taking root in a place that just a few months ago was a sanctuary.
Wanting to stop having to scream to be heard. And then having what I needed ignored.

I heard my self shreeking, maybe thinking if I yell loud enough the deafness will be broken.
And finely someone will listen, and do somthing.

The cops came. It was a good thing. Finally someone who was impartial would hear and do something.
Finally someone with the authority to do something that I had failed to do.
Stop the madness that had consumed me.

Take this man away, and make him stay away. He has driven me quite mad.

The ride through town was quiet. My guide, dressed in blue was a man named Paul. He had kind eyes.
He watched over me. I know it was so I wouldn't escape, or try to harm anyone or my self.

But I choose to look at it as this: He was my gardian for a few hours. A kind of hero that helps someone
who has fallen down get up.
And tell them with out saying anything, that it's ok. We all feel things sometimes too much, and don't
know what to do.

It was a nice feeling to have someone to trust for a little while journeing into a dark place.

Everyone I met was so kind.
And even still, the place was the most frightening place I have ever been in my life.
For a few hours I was a prisioner in a place that could deem that I was unfit to go back out into the world.

Some journeies are ones that change you.

No matter how long or short they are, they change you.

The birth of my children changed me.

The death of my father changed me.

My divorice changed me.

Finally leaving the home town I spent the first 43 years of my life in.

Going along a path where my life was suddenly mine.

Learning to be homeless.

Learning what it means that the work you do means whether you eat or keep from freezing at night.

Learning the hard lessons of being alone at the most terrifying times that come into any life.
Surgery. Not being sure I would wake up.

Not being close to my children at that moment, and not knowing if I would ever see daylight or them again.

And today, spending time in a phsych ward.
I don't understand how they can believe that an enviorment like that can make a person well in the mind.
There are locks everywhere.
Double paned glass.
Cameras watching you.
Having to ask someone if you can use the bathroom in your room because it's locked and has to have some
one who is watching everything you do unlock it.

no matter how nice and gentle they are, they are the guards, and you are in a place that makes you crazy.
How can you focus or think, or rest or even heal in a place like that.

They want to make sure that you don't do anything to hurt your self.
I felt my mind breaking in a different way this time.

Not good.

Madness added to madness. And no one listenes completely. No one has time. Everything to a set schedual
with the times your not eating left to you to decide what to do.
It's as though a chess board is set in front of you and you have no chess men and you are told that you need to play
chess.

It's your job to figure out how, so that the guards watching you know if your insane or not.

I have no idea of how I felt other than I wanted to just come home.
I was terrified.

Broken. Alone. Blind in a thousand lights.
Searching for a thread of something concrete to hold on to.

Talking to social workers, doctors, nurses, and other people.
You can talk really quiet to the other patients and they can hear every word you say.
There is no noise in that place, but the pain is overwhelming.
It's funny how I could feel the brokenness of the patients around me and I understood that they all wanted
just to go home.

Home. A place where it's safe to be who you are. Surrounded by familiar things, and people that you love,
and animals.
And you realize that all you wanted was peace. That you were at that place where the only answer you could
come up with was to stop your life.

Stop the pain. Once and for all.

I find myself walking in short measured steps, legs as close to gether as possible.

When they told me I was released, it was so awesome.
Free.

They got me a cab, and the driver was awesome. A hippy. *Smiling* Someone who was very relaxed and easy going
to take me home.
Another gift.

I feel so fragile tonight. I'm ok. But I need to heal. I need quiet. I need to not have to perform. I need seclusion right now.
And a place where it's truely ok.

And so here I am. so many things broken inside. And I have to pick myself up and keep going. There is no time to rest
in the way I need to, so it will become work and quite at home.
Solitude.
In familar surroundings.

I've written much durring the road to this place. Right now, that's enough said about things. They will be looked at when
the time is right, to remember and be able to see more clear from a distance.

All I want now is to go forward. Gentley. And see where the road takes me. The light at the end of the tunnel.
And that is all I can ask.

And it will be ok. I'm ok.