harold_maude's journal

How deep does this go?
this love that holds me captive.
Where is the end of the universe?
That would be an easier question
to find the answer to.

the love I feel for you
transforms me
takes me so deep
and so far
that the ocean isn't deep enough
to compare it to.

the love I know
that is solid and real in me
gives me strength to go through the day
knowing that it will be more
than what it was yesterday.

How can you compare
a living
breathing
growing
life, which love is,
to something that
although brilliant
is so much less than.

Oh to be loved
with so great a love
as I know,
that is my wish
for all who walk to the earth.
For the whole world
to know
even for just a moment
how much rapture this holds.

I would gladly lay my life down
to be impaled a thousand times
by a thousand blades
than to have missed this
love that I share with you.

....I would love to know that in that way and know they love me back just as deeply in return.

It's not that no one has ever loved me, but this kind of love is something that dreams are made of.
Something we see when we watch some movie where it all turns out perfect.
And after long trials and tribulations, the lovers, seperated are now rejoined.

I know, it's called a chick flick. But that doesn't mean that guys don't want the same thing.
They do.
Every person does.

You wanna be loved with the kind of love that surpasses time, and every objection that time could
or ever would come up with.
It's not just a sexual thing either.

Sex is great, as far as it goes, but there is so much more to this than that.
this kind of love doesn't need sex to help it. Sex is just the icing on the cake, as it were.

This kind of love is deep. It's roots are lost in a friendship that goes so deep that if you followed them
you wouldn't be able to find the end of them.
And it's upon that basis that this kind of love grows.

That's what I want to know, at some point in my life, I want to know this kind of love.
To be loved so deeply by someone that it makes them feel like a part of them is missing when I'm gone.
I don't think that's wanting so much.
Or maybe it is.
Maybe in this world there is no time or room for that kind of love to exist.

I've met a few people who have loved other people that deeply. And what I've noticed that every other
person they come in contact with is a kind of waiting for that person to show up.
And when that person walks into view, everything else for the person waiting just stops.
Their face lights up like christmas and the fourth of july all rolled into one....

And they forget you are there, or that they were talking to you...

You are a poor subsitute for who they would rather be with....

I'm so glad that I have my art. If I didn't, I'm not sure what I would have been like, knowing and seeing that.
Yes, this has happened to me.
I've been in love with someone who settled, because they couldn't have who they really wanted.
Every time that person showed up, I could see it in their eyes, and their smile...
and yes it hurt like hell.
But I believe the choice to love someone is not dependant on them loving you back in the same way, or
even loving you at all.
So I have loved and gotten half baked love in return.
sometimes less than that.

I've gotten different kinds of love from different people over the years. And I'm still waiting for that
person to show up who will love me in the way I would love to be loved.
And I want it to be someone who I want to love back in the same way.

It won't be a smothering kind of desperate thing. That's not love. That's a wet blanket thrown over your face
until you can't breathe.
that's lust gone emotional.
I don't want that. I've had that, and it sucks. For a while it's wonderful.
It's the top of the mountian....but no one tied the ropes off so the fall and the subsequent crash was really
a mess.

It's hard to discribe completely. I know it's possible. I've seen it. And it's made me ache inside
watching two people who love each other like that.
You can feel the love between them.
It's so beautiful. And every time I see two people in love that way, it makes me ache inside for want
of having it too.

I want to share a bottle of bubbles with this person in the middle of winter. On a sunny day so we can
see the rainbow orbs floating and then comming to rest on the snow.
I want to eat popcorn in the middle of the night with this person under a blanket as we tell each other
ghost stories.
I want to be there when they loose someone they know. And hold them as they grieve.
I want to take long walks with this person and talk about everything with them.
And share stupid silly moments just because.
I don't want them to be afraid of me. when I see inside them and see their pain, I don't want
it to scare them.
If I want to hand them my world so they can know what I know I want them to understand what
it is that I'm giving them, and what it means that I'm doing it.

(I want the student to have the same understanding of the art and when I hand it to them, I do want
them not to be scared by it, or think I'm being weird. that's the part that I want to have in both places.
With the person I love and with the student I pass on my understanding of art to.)

And I want to see myself reflected in their soul.
And if they smile at me it's because they can see themselves reflected back.
I want to do the things they love and are passionate about with them, at least once.
More if it's not something that death is always a possible constant, like being blown out of
a cannon, that type of thing.
I'll try it once, but after that, I'll just watch.
Or blowing up buildings, or cliff diving....that kind of thing.

....sometimes I think that the art and all it is to me, is compensation for not having that....
and if it is, it will be enough.
more than enough. It has been so far in my life.

This is a long post...:)

a day of celebration. A day off.

This afternoon I sit here listening to Ruffus Waynright. A very talented aritst, who was at one point in his young life an
opera singer.
His voice is like listening to velvet that is dancing in the sun. And for all the ladies out there, he is as delicious to look at as the sound of his voice.
Enough to give Antonio Bandaris a run for his money in the view of a beautiful work of living art. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I reconize physical beauty. I know it fades, but just as getting lost in the beauty of a waterfall can capture me,
and the words of a poet who's heart is so on fire for the word that it aches in his bones.
And this same poet gets completely lost in the rythems and chords of dreams entwined with waves of electric sound, that the rest of the world is known as music.

So it goes. I love art. Everyone who has ever stopped to read my wanderings of the overloaded mind knows that.
I even went so far to discribe how deep this love goes and that I really am so passionately in love with art that I put
up 3 peices of art for all of you to get an idea of what the end result of this love affair with art has produced.

I love how it feels to draw a paintbrush filled with light drenched color and sparkeles that I put in the pain on purpose
to add to the work, across the softened skin of a sheet of white watecolor paper.
How it runs up and down my body like some tender caress that lets me know I'm home.

I love to get lost in the wonder of a journey unfolding before my eyes.

It's alot like getting the news that 9 months from now your going to me half yourself.
And the other half will be someone you shared a deep full filling passionate moment with. And if you are so lucky
to still be walking with that person, sharing their lives, learning to love them more everyday,
then you are rich beyond words.

So you begin. A journey about life. A journey of unknowns. And a journey of who you are. In a way that would
never have happened if you hadn't enjoyed that moment with someone you wanted to love right then, right there.

And it's magic really. Here are these two parts. Female and male. Two halves. And they come into contact and caboom!
Life. A beginning like no other in all the universe.
A new creation.
All at once. There it is. The two become one. And that creates the first platonic solid of sacred gemotrey.

That blows me away. It's a magnificiant reality that tells me that what I have known all my life in every cell
of my body is the same all over, everywhere.
In fact it's such a reality and truth that the whole universe does the same thing when something new is being created.

How small we are in the light of the cosmos.
A single thought.
For a brief moment
a shooting star
that blazes across the sky
making the eyes of the universe
stop and take notice.

This is what it's like for me when I paint. How quiet, how powerful and how magnificant.
Everytime. It's like this.
and all I want to do with my whole life is have that all the time.

There are other things I love too. Not as much. But just as strongly. Just as passionately, and it makes my life
an adventure all the time.
I don't remember the last time I was bored.

I can be all by myself for days and I'm so content and so busy in that place that even day and night disapear for me.
I love it.
I'm lucky too in that way. I love it when on the rare occasion someone does show up that stays around for a while,
and there is no pressing need.
Just hanging out, having a good time bulshitting, and talking about everything that means anything.

But at the same time, I'm ok if no one shows up. In my life I can count how many times that has happened.
And thoes that are no longer in my life, I remember them. Details and conversations. The color of their eyes,
and their laughter.
I remember tears and other bits of the important things about a person your getting to know.

and they are all still here. Right here. In my heart. My mind and they are part of my soul and skin too.
"Smiles....it's like having a box of animal crackers that you carry with you everywhere you go.
And any time you want you can pull out one of thoes animals and dream and remember.
(I know, you eat animal crackers...but it was a good illustration none the less.)

This is the problem with writing long entries. I get so side tracked. :)
It's all important. Things that matter.
Not stuff that you put in a box and hide in some back closet. This is stuff that makes up me. It's the same when
you write.
Everytime you put one word down on paper or on your journal, your putting a little bit of you on that page.
And because of that it's powerful.
A living thing. You can change the world one word at a time.

You can simply write the word "yes" And to anyone who reads that word they will immeadately thing of something.
What did you think of when you saw that word?

What that tells you is that what you write is powerful enough to catch the attention of people passing by.
Even if they are asleep they will see it.
Everything we see is stored in our brain. Sometimes that information goes into waiting.
Then something comes along and triggers that awake.
Boom! An explosion of power.

When you do anything that creates something new, wether it be a poem, a essay, a painting, clay pot, a song
a building, a house, a car...etc. we are releasing power.
The power to change things.
The power to make things better than they are.
The power to answer the question of a searching heart or a lonely soul.

And we go around, day to day missing it. We go to jobs and loose so much life there. And why?
Because the norms of the society we live in say that to be a good upstanding memeber of society we have to
have a job. And pay taxes.

That's insane. A true explain of what insanity really is.

Money, they say makes the world go round. Money, is the death of the path that leads to creative life.
That is unless you are one of the lucky to have a job that allows for the creative expression that exists
inside you.
I envy you. It would be like going to play all day and then get paid on top of it, everyday.
But at the same time I'm happy your there doing that wonderful creative thing.
You are the gatekeepers now.
And as long as in this world there are companies who need your services in anyway shape or form
the connection remains in the visual sight of the world.

I'm greatful to new film makers. I'm greatful that I'm alive durring a time when a man like Tim Burton
is making films.
And Jonny Depp is acting in them.
My world is lit up by watching their art. I get to see their dreams and visions. And I can do it anytime
I want.
I just have to watch a movie.

Everytime I read a post by someone, I get to see a little bit about them. I get a chance to hear someone
else's voice for a while.
It's nice. It's like listening to a really great peice of music in totall darkess.
No light to inturpt the voice.
Just me and that other person. Them, talking to me, from where ever they are. And although I know
they arn't writing for my soul bennefit, the written word has the power to make the reader feel that
the author is talking just to them.

that's the magic of words. And it's awesome. I love lines of books that start out by saying something
just as a simple statement. Like you walked in on someone talking out loud.
Like maybe there could have been a whole string of days and weeks that were all connected and they were
talking about it and you stepped into part way through....

when I read a poem that has been created by an artist lost in a moment
they are telling me about that moment.
And I can see by the look on their face that it is real.
Their eyes can't hide their heart in that moment.
And though they don't see me while the poem flows from their heart...
I am there.
Watching the tears fall from the eyes of a lover
who is lost in the depths of their heart breaking....

I'm seeing the clouds part
like great curtians that hold back the stars.
And as the curtians are drawn away,
the magnificant opera begins...

Their voice so beautiful, as to make me catch my breath.
They tell me things.....
And I am there.
At that moment.

And at that moment it doesn't matter to me if a thousand other people are reading it at the same time as me.
They are experienceing things too.

We are the captivated audience held in individual moments by the words of the poet.

And then there is music. Ah sweet surrender of the soul.
Harken to my voice oh muse
come to me and with honey in thy touch
sweeten the aching of my soul.

Again,
Oh sweet delight!
Again,
until my soul takes flight!

That is music. The genere doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if it's Beetoven or Def Lepord or Pink Floyd,
Or Jimmy Hendrix, or Chopin or Sound Garden, or Liz Story, or Marylin Manson, or Bach...
Or anyone else who plays music, or writes it or sings it.
All that matters is this:

that in the moment that music is released into the air and finds it's way to your ears, it carrys with it
the power to change your world.

The power to make you scream, cry, dance, laugh, feel like your riding a rocket, or that your lost in
some dream world.
That is music.

It is the eccestasy of the soul. The place where all of you gets emersed in a deep electric pool of liquid
velvet.
And it runs into every cell and says...."yes" :)

when I sit down and begin the journey of music on the keyboard, something happens to me.
I feel it penetrate me to my soul.
And it's like ...it's standing there...hand extended....a smile waiting for me....and says in that soft tone...
the one that makes me melt and go weak...
"common, lets take a walk"

Yeah it's that....

Each note takes me further and further away from everything. I can see the music in my head. Hear it in
my bones...
it's funny how sometimes when I'm searching through the notes it feels like going through boxes of color, looking
for that one color that showed up in this picture.
I'll know it when I see it.
And the horrible thing is I didn't make extra of that color and it's one of my favorites.
I should have kept a recipie book.

wish I could write music. That would be a recipie book for all the notes that have come together and led my fingers
on a really cool journey.
So someone who reads music could sit down and have the same experience I just had. Any time they wanted it.

When I think about people like Beetoven. How much music he wrote. And alot of it after he went deaf.
Can you immagine hearing and seeing the notes of huge complicated peices of music and knowing when you put
a note on a certian line that when it's played, the rest of the world will hear what you have?

And to keep all thoes different intstruments straight.....amazing.
Simply amazing.

All the people who compose music and can write it down as well as compose, are amazing. Just for the act of
being able to do that.

I wish I could actually write sheet music. But I never learned how. I can barely read sheet music.
A few peices that my sister who loves music and can play and read the stuff with such ease that it's amazing.
She taught music for a while.
And she loves duets. Classical peices.
And she worked with me for months to learn about 4 peices of classical duets.
I had to learn how to read thoes notes and traslate them to hand possitions to be able to play the music with
her.
When we see each other, that's one of the things we still do.
Sit down at a piano and play the duets.
And I have to read the music. And sometimes it's years between visits.
And it's just as hard now to read them as back then.
I felt most of the time like I was studdering through the peices.

She plays like I paint.

I've always wanted to learn to play the violin. And the harp, as well as the mandolyn.
And a gitar would be good too.
All very physcal instruments.
Part of it, is that you get to feel each note.
Like clay in the potters hands.

A rich delicious feeling. I can't play any of thoes insturments, but I've had the great fortune
of being allowed to touch and pluck strings now and again.
I love the feel of them, as the notes are released. I don't know what notes they are.
But each one feels like warm summer rain.
they run down my soul and make me smile.

All of this....comes from that place of art. The ancient language that ties all humanity together.
Gifts scattered like diamonds over time.

the eyes of the artist looks up
the sky
a brilliant azure...

unfold for me
the stories you hold

and change my world
by your presence...

change it forever.

I started out to say one thing, but like most of the stuff I post it ends up being way too long for anyone to actually read.
Those who manage it, and actually finish it, I'm amazed by, when I'm done writing, I can hardly finish it.

I write thoes kinds of posts that belong as chapters in some book lost in the back room of some antique store.
So I hit the delet button and hopefully this will be shorter.
We can only hope.

It looks like in a couple of days I'm going to be gone for a while.
Nothing bad.
I'll probably get to post a couple more times before it happens.
so this is just a heads up for who ever reads my stuff.

If your having trouble sleeping, just pull up one of the longer peices and I promise as your trying to wade through it will have the effect of a text book on you.
You'll sleep like a baby. :)

You'll know when it happens because I won't write any new posts. :)

November 24, 2005

The day they got Big Bird and sacrificed it, and what that all means.

Wild turkeys I'm told are very hard to track and bag. They are smarter than domesticated turkeys. Domesticated turkeys will lift their head in the rain and drown, same as sheep.
Somewhere along the line, some bright entrapenure got the idea that raising turkeys was a good thing.

So, as with everything else that people put into boxes and force to multiply, they ended giving them hormones and made birds so fat so fast that standing up is a challange.
They do the same to chickens.

But the birds are enormous. And I suppose that was the idea to begin with. To have an abundance of birds that are connected and somehow symbolize a day dedicated to survival.

Think about it, the very first thanksgiving was a celebration of survival. These people who had traveled across a really big ocean, and spent a year trying to make a new home in a land that was strange and filled with alot of things that could be potentially lethal.

There were these other people already in this new land who were familiar with the landscape and the animals and all the
other things that make living in a place possible.
These guys we know as native americans.
Anyway, they watched the newbies trying to do their thing. I'm sure they felt sorry for them. Because they came out
of the woods and said something that could be translated this way:

"Hey there, welcome to here. We noticed your having a little trouble and survival can sometimes be a bitch especially
when you don't know what kind of soil your dealing with and what kind of animals around here are dangerous and which
ones are good to eat.
So we got together and had a meeting and decited to lend a hand."

So, the native americans helped the newbies by teaching them how to raise corn. A very important staple in the new place.
And they helped them do other things too.

I think it would have been really weird for everyone when it came to checking each other's clothes out.
You have one group of people dressed in animal skins while the other group is dressed in knickers, and long layered dresses.
Oh yeah, can't forget the hat thing.
For some reason, the european thing has always involved a hat.
Now a hat is a functional object. It can keep the rain off your head, and the sun outta your eyes.
But mostly it seems that people will wear hats as a statement of fashion.

Anyway, so here you have these people who know the ropes teaching the newbies about life in the new land, and what
a harvest means and after all that is said and done, the newbies got together and decited that having a celebration
with their new friends and mentors would be a really kick ass thing to do.

So, immagine this, you have some long makeshift tables, outside in the weather, because they are too big to fit into one
of the crudely built cabins. Tools were not as abundant as today, and it's a given there were no skill saws or electric
nailguns or anything like that hanging about.

So the dwelling places these people built, although extreemly welbuilt and functional were definately not most people's
idea of luxery houseing.
But they kept the weather outside and allowed a person to sleep under a roof, as well as keeping any unwanted preditor outside instead of inside where the pickins for chow were easy. Kind of like shooting fish in a barrel.

So you have these long tables and the food is there and for what ever reason, I'm not sure what the consense was on this, but the turkey, or turkeys was the bird chosen for dinner that afternoon, for the main meat course.

It's a given that they were not eating at night, as it would have been way to cold and the lighting would have been a pain
to see by, as well as the smell of food would have drawn the native carnivors to supper as well.
That's not what they wanted.
So it was an afternoon supper.

I can hear the converstaions now: "We made it. A year of living here and yes, we lost a few people in our group, and we're sad they couldn't be here with us today, but they are with us in spirit and that's all that matters.
We made it because we have these new friends who helped us, by teaching us how to grow food and trap animals
to eat, and we just wanted to let you guys know that we are really greatful for all your help."

(future generations will forget, and they will see you as the enemy, in the way of taking over this awesome place, so they will hunt and kill you, put your children on things called reservations and make you live acording to their rules, and basicly take everything away from you that makes you who you are in favor of their own distructive culture.
And if you knew that now you would have killed everyone of us where we sit.
It's a good thing for us that you don't have forsight. We are really greatful for that)

After dinner, everyone with a full belly and great converstation spent that afternoon feeling many things.
Gratitude with the newbies, and I'm not sure what the native americans were feeling, maybe happiness that
a group of struggling people made it a whole year.
Thinking maybe these people would bring touches of their culture to the land and it would be ok.
They didn't see what was about to hit them, a few years down the road.

So there you have it, the day is here that we all gather around a table filled with modern food, eating like
pigs and watching t.v. and when we can't move anymore, we think about pumpkin pie, another tradition
that got attached to this day somehow, and not really remembering what this day really is about.

We talk about what we are greatful for.
We talk about so many things, the start of the christmas buying madness that starts the day after this,
and when that day comes round, I'll have a few choice notes about it as well.
In all the things that are said and done, we somehow forget why we are doing what we do on this day.

We forget because we are not in survial mode anymore.
Not in the way that they were. There are people who are in survial mode now, but what they have
to fear most is other people.

We have become the peditors as well as the victims.
We have shown ourselves to be the animals we really are. The animals in the wild are more at risk from
us than we will ever be from them.
We are busy distroying their homelands. We are busy conquoring and taking at will. Distroying the balance,
putting what is left of the natural world into parks, nature zoos.

I'm very sure if thoes first native people saw what this place is now they would have killed everyone of thoes people
on site.
It would have broken their heart to see the children of future generations being treated like cattle and
how, like the buffalo, almost completely distroyed.
That's not a human thing to do, it's a mindless greedy animal thing to do.
I appoligize to all the four beasts for using the word animal that way.

Animals in the wild stay with in the balance of nature. They take only what they need, never more.
Their survival depends on it.

We have no clue what it means anymore to be in that mode.
I wonder if the people who came across the ocean ever did have a clue what that ment. To take only what
you need and work to protect what remains so that you can continue to eat.

We have poisoned the water. Poisoned the land and desimated the forests. All in the name of modern living.
And it really, really sucks.

I think about all the bullshit that goes on daily. We are now emersed and consumed by the information age.
Newspapers are printed out on trees, I don't know how many of the newspapers are printed on recycled paper,
or if they just take new trees to make the stuff out of.

But most of what is printed on those newspapers is crap. Really bad entertainment designed to compliment the
crap being vomited out of a black box that so many people are so addicted to that they don't even know
they are addicted anymore.

I don't have to watch the news to see the effect of all of this. I just have to go out into it to see it.
People driving like mental patients who have escaped and driving around with cell phones attached by one hand
to the side of their head.

Exibiting impaitents as they rush about. Going to jobs that are stealing their lives, getting a paycheck that barely
covers anything, and eating processed, synthisized food that is irrated, pumped full of synthetic vitamins
and eating birds so full of crap, grown way too fast to be anything but a toxic explosion waiting to happen,
yes, the birds are grown so fast that sometimes they explode inside and die right there in the pens.

They are butchered and washed with more chemicals and packaged and sent out to grocery stores everywhere
and on this day they end up on the tables of americans everywhere.

No where in all of this, except in the remnants of what it's suppose to be helping us to remember, the remnants being
in the thanksgiving programs given in gradeschools, is there any shred of anything that first thanksgiving really
ment or was.
And it's sad.

No one really has any idea of what that first dinner felt like. How awesome it must have tasted. It was a huge celebration saying "we made it this far, we're still alive."
I immagine everything they ate that day was like eating the best dinner ever. Everything probably tasted magnificant.
And I know their hearts were in the right place on that day.
There were no distractions to take any space in that place. Only greatful hearts.

Family. Happiness of the people who's children had not died durring that first year, but were still there sitting now
beside them, celebrating the fact they were still alive.
That's what I believe the first thanksgiving was, and I'm very sure it's not what this day means to most americans
in this modern world.

We have lost much. This day would be more approately spent grieving at what has been lost and what we are facing.
The world is changing. Global warming is fact now. We are loosing species of plants and animals and we are now
in a race to survive the results of our stupidity.

I don't know what the children of the future will think of us, or the people who started all of this mess.
But I do know this, that if we don't stop what we are doing, we are going to sign the death sentance of the planet
and our own speices.
And everyone out there in the universe who is watching will shake their heads and wisper "and they had so much
potential. What a waste of life"

This post was edited by harold_maude on Nov 24, 2005.

This morning, I'm listening to wonderful classical music.
And as I listened the words began to flow with every note.
Ah how I love the creative process...and where it takes me..even when it's to something as simple as mud. :)

Sweet rain. bitter rain, fearful rain...a thousand types of rain.
Odes to their touch upon our soul and state of emotional existance at the moment.
Lover's rain. Pure rain. Rain filled with promise. And clouds pregant with rain.

The land starved and parched, unable to speak for lack of rain. Life giving rain.
Tormented rain, the face of a lost lover in every tear that falls.
Rain hiding the grief of one's soul. A tempered warm rain that makes you want to strip naked
and run free through the shower that fills the air, and takes dirt and makes mud.

An Ode to Mud

Oh glorious mud!
What squishing you offer
to loose my digintiy and defy
this thing called acting my age
and jump with abandon into your arms!
That is what you wisper
as you reflect the sky!

Oh glorious mud hole!
Deeper and wider than I expected
filled with possiblities!
To mud pie and castles
so fraglie
that when sun and wind come
and with brutish hand
deconstruct the creative act
that has caused me to build
with your guts and smile.

Oh glorious mud!
to you I sing praises!
To my tired bones
you are youth remembered
laughter with abandon
and an ivation to play.
Would that I take you up
in hungry hands
and let slippery sweet sucking noises
kiss my ears as I press you between
happy hands!

Mud!
What a great and wonderous thing you are!
Dirt, only just a while ago
Stodgey and dignified you sat
at my feet.
Reminding me with an air of properness
that dirt is not the thing to leave
on the kitchen floor...
And you would be right
if you were still just dirt.
But heaven said
"To day thou oh dirt
shall become a dream
and with rain I shall make thee fun!
An invation to loose adulthood
even for just one hour,
thoese people down there,
they take themselves
way too seriously!
So from dirt to mud
I speak thee changed!"
And poof!
There you are.
Glorious
Gooey
wonderous dreamy
shinie stuff
that makes that clean floor
alive with the memory of this day!

How I love thee oh sweet mud!
To roll in thy goo!
To stain with sweet laughter
your skin upon my flesh!
I am lost within your arms
sweet and glorious mud!
Ner to say upon this day
That I had missed your invation.
I do now, of sound mind
and freedom of body
jump high
so that I may land deep
and loose myself
completely
if only for a single hour
in thy sweet and cool repose!

I look in the mirror and see my eyes. Green. The color of pine trees.
The ravages of time are also there, but it's ok. I can live with it. I have to.
I have no abundance to do what other women do when time says this is what it is,
and go to some plastic surgon and plead for the return of youth.

I've been told that I'm many things. Alot of thoes things I can't see.
Alot of thoes things I'm told I get suspicious of.
I tend tord the belief that someone who is saying them isn't really being honest.
They are just being nice.

I don't hate the outside as much as I used to.
I used to burn every picture of me that I got my hands on. All I could see was this hideous
beast, something befitting the monster in a horror flick.
I've had people take pictures of me and hide them from me. Seriously and for real.

The truth is I'm kind of avarage in features on my face. But I like the color of my eyes.
And that's not a bad thing, seeing as how I didn't pick them out, but the color of my skin
and the color of my hair compliment the color of my eyes.
And since I like the color of my eyes, I tend to like the color of my hair.
Even though there are strands of silver that exist there now.

I've been told I have a pretty smile. I tend to ignor that. I'm terribly uncomfortable
with compliments.
They make me squirm. Leave me fumbling around for something to say.
When the only thing to say is thank you.
Saying thank you gives the person saying what they do acknowledgement that they
can see me anyway they want to, and not in the same twisted way I've seen myself
for a long time.
I've come to realize that I see me through a twisted and very broken mirror.
And seeing yourself in that mirror will distort your view.

I've been told that I'm beautiful. And I tend to think the person is nuts, and have said
so.
But as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I would prefer to have them get glasses so they could see me the way I do.
All of this stems from a type of self loathing that came from the house I grew up in.
Not a real safe place to spend childhood in.

I can easily see every problem, every flaw that exists externally. And because of that it
took alot of people seeing what I do and telling me how good it was,
for me to look at what I do, namly art and begin to see the value of it.
I used to see it as glorified refrigerator art. Nothing more. I am my own worst critic
in all areas of life.
I tend to think of it as being honest about me.
Others might think differently. What I do know, is that when someone sees me
or sees what I do and there is no reason for them to just be nice so as to not hurt my feelings,
and they like what they see or are drawn to what art they are looking at,
that it's ok to say thank you.
There are no strings attached to that.
Just a simple acknowledgement that someone has found something pleasing about me
and I don't have to do anything to make excuses or explaintions for it.
Doing that, I've come to the conclusion, is like trying to pay for something that someone
is handing you just because.
There is no need.
I can't earn my looks, how ever anyone sees thoes. I didn't go to the looks store and pick out
what I wanted for christmas.
I didn't go to the talent and gift store either and make my choices.
I'm a package deal. And I just have to live with the fact that somepeople find that they like
what they see and what I do.
And I can't talk them out of it. All I can do is say thank you when they say so.
That's all. And that's ok.