harold_maude's journal

The word hog when I see it looks really funny. The image when I see it reminds me of mud and pigs and slop and all the other things I find hard to go to the pig barn at any county fair over.

It does have the same kind of prolonged punchiness that yelling the words "IN COMMING" does. It's pushy and stinky too. And when you put hog with ground, it conjours up all kinds of immages...pigs running around with lit dynamte, that kind of thing.

I know that groundhog is one word, but because I like humor, even my weird sense of humor works good here, taking the word apart and then letting the images fly around in my head is a good thing this morning.

It's gone cold snap here again. It's all white out there and I'm thinking that the polar bears or penguines would love this town.
We have enough snow to go around. There is no threat of having a snow shortage this year.
I keep looking at the piles of snow that are a common sight in winter here, and I can't help but think how amazing it would be if the bugs could go skiing. ,,bug olympics...

The new job continues. It continues to be a source of amazment as well. That's not in a good way. It's been a grand display however of lessons in why it's important to use common sense in planning something.
I cannot, no matter how hard I try, find any good reason these people decided to open a business at the beginning of winter and expect that people would over run the place.
If this town was in a place where the weather didn't play such a major role in determining how often people go shopping, then it wouldn't have mattered when they opened it.
The floor, which is concrete is being severly affected by the friged temps we have been having for the last two months. It's cracking and chipping, and it's a brand new floor.
I look at that and wonder if it ever occured to them that this might be a seious problem in a short amount of time.

All the personal drama that goes on there is just what it is, personal drama. It's not affecting my ablity to work, so it's just a kind of entertainment that exists there.
The work itself is boring and frustrating because it is boring.
But it's work and I do get paid for it, so I guess that's a fair trade off.

In other parts of life, I'm still doing art. However, due to the lack of funds for new materials, I have taken to looking at garbage as source for materials.
As a result of this, I have taken a great interest in both upcycling and recycling.
I've looked at so many amazing things people are making out of garbage. So I know I'm in good company.
It's been nice to not have to wonder how I'm going to get new paper.
So I've been exploring and experimenting with my new found materials. What blows me away is how much of it there is out there and that it's free for the asking.
Now all I need to do is learn how to work with glass and fire.
I so want to work with metal and glass and do some sculpture with these two materials, but space and lack of equipment has kept that just a want. I'm moving into paper mache to try to answer the want to do sculpture.
I know I'm going to need to find recipiants of finished peices because I don't have the room in my house for alot of sculpture.

Aside from these things, I'm looking forward to spring. I'm counting the days until it gets here.

It's gotten cold which is normal for this time of year. It's been kind of dreay out there too, which would be fine if there were a gothic castle and there were large fire places and all that, but it's not so the dreary isn't alot of fun.

I made some Scottish shortbread this evening and it turned out good. I wasn't sure when the recipie called for corn starch, but I went ahead and put it in there like I was suppose to and now that I've enjoyed a peice of it, I am putting it on my list of cookies to make.

I really have been trying to get into some kind of holiday mood, but it's been work trying to get there. My want to went with the wind some years ago, mostly because there really wasn't anyone who wanted to join me in making it a fun and festive time.
I know too many wet blankets when it comes to doing decorating and all that. But this year I decided I really needed to do this if for nothing else than to help me get through the dark of winter.

Depression seems to love winter that's why it visits so many people. The studies show that it's the lack of sun that makes it easy for depression to move in.
I think it's more than just the missing hours of sunlight. I think that part of it is that at this time of year if a person is pretty much alone that gets more intense and it hurts more.
For those who run on survival mode all the time, winter is hardest because your fighting off freezing and it's hard to think about happy celebrations when you can keep yourself warm while trying to figure out how your going to eat each day.

Many people in the world live day to day in terms of finding food, staying warm or cooler if they live near or at the equator. Survival, when you really live there takes up all your waking hours. On the rare occasion that you can seperate yourself from trying to make it through the day, there are happy moments that can be had.

Living at survival level really does some odd things to you. It beats up your emotions for a long time. Then, after awhile, you stop really feeling anything at all. You just live and hold hope up as the one thing that keeps you from going completely mad or trying to do something really stupid, like trying to kill yourself because no matter how you work things out, it all ends up being the same.

Having lived in various states of the above, and having made it this far, there is a subtle change over that takes place somewhere along the line.
Things can still be the same or worse or better, but you notice that not alot bothers you any more. Most everything that what I call normal folks worry about doesn't touch me anymore.
I live day by day, trying to go forward, but now I find that along with hope, laughter makes the struggle alot easier.
Laughter really is good medicine.
The problem is for most people who are worried about how they will make it through the day, fear has still too much room to beat them up.

The first thing you gotta do is kick fear in the ass and out the door. Fear is not your friend. It doesn't like you. It wants to hurt you by making you it's prisoner and stopping you completely.
So you gotta deal with fear first off. That takes time, because I found at least in my own life, the things we fear are often things we've either been conditioned to fear or things we don't understand.
Sometimes I'm pretty sure that moving into fear mode is a habbit more than anything.

Here's a thought that I don't know how common it is, but it doesn't matter how poor or rich you are, habbits are something that are free to change, and that starts with changing your mind.

After you get to a place where the fear isn't so fearsome anymore than there is room for laughter even when your hungry and your stomach hurts because you arn't eating very often.
Laughter does something good to you inside. And that's good medicine for the mind and soul.

When things start threatening to roll over the top of me, I have taken to looking for things that will make me laugh. It just feels good. So along with hope, laughter has become an anchor for me.
I am a survivor. And the cool part is, I'm getting pretty good at it.

I was wandering through my e-mail this morning and opened on of the peices which brought me to one of my currant favorite sites.
It's a scrapbooking site, and although I am not into scrapbooking, it does have alot of things on the site that stir my creative fire.
The reason being is that among the different types of art that I do, I make jewelry. It's classified as beadweaving. My particular view of jewelry of any kind is that I don't want to feel it when I'm wearing it.
So my jewelry tends to be rather no intrusive at least in weight.

Anyway, the charms and picture frames are what I've been looking at. They always chatch my attention and make me want to make some romantic jewelry.
So I get this idea to check out this bead site that I know of.
I go looking and don't find the same kind of thing, which I was hoping for so that maybe I could get a larger number than two in a package.
I know in the back of my mind that what I'm thinking of I'm going to have to make myself. I won't find what I'm thinking of, which is a hybred of the charm and picture frames I've seen on the scrabooking site and the findings on the bead site.
I've been in this place before, and I know I can do this.

Anyway, I decide to go to the gallery of designs because I'm looking for some examples of this new clay that is now avalible which is a glass clay that gets fired, and I want to see if it looks like what I think it does. But no pictures. Just alot of information.

Then a picture caught my eye. It's of this woman I knew years ago that ran a beadstore in the town I lived in for most of my life.
Seeing her picture reminds me of a particular thing that happened that created an offense in my head that never went away.
I read the stuff that's written about her, as I'm remembering this exchange of words I had with her years ago.
I start giggling when I read her accounting of how this type of bead weaving that I was doing the same time as I knew her, was new to her now.
All I can hear as I'm looking at and reading all this stuff, is that I was doing this before you, and before alot of other people too, and now your making it look like your the first person to ever do this, bitch...

In all fairness I did learn some things from this woman before the exchange of words. But what I did with what she taught me was to take it where it led me. And that was out in a field where there were no visable foot prints.
This morning reminded me of other things I've done and explored years before they have become main stream.
It never occured to me to try to cash in on any of what I was exploring, I was just content to be exploring.
It would seem that I have this habbit of being way ahead of my time and so at the time what I'm doing isn't anything more than me exploring and the people around me looking at this stuff and thinking it's really weird.
My timing isn't real good with any of it.

I suppose I should just be thrilled that finally the ideas are getting out there. And in part I am. But there is part of me that this kind of thing drives me a bit nuts.
It explains why at least in part that I feel so completely out of place in most every kind of situation that exists.
I think I was definately born at the wrong time. It's been more painful and more lonely than anything else.

I've learned to treasure the place where I create and explore even if no one is there with me. The evidence that it's not just me who ends up here, is the stuff I see when it finally hits main stream.
It's also why I've had fans when I've been doing this stuff before anyone else. Never enough to make it be all I do for a living, but enough to tell me that even when dancing in these places, there are people who do get it and who want it.

Instead of feeling put out by what I saw, I'll just do what I do and it will be from that place. I've had to learn not to care that people don't get it or me for that matter. It's the only way to keep from getting lost in a horrible place of depression.
I've accepted the reality that I am so completely out of place.
It brings comfort to know that I'm not the only person who has ever been or is out of place now. I have read about quite of few of these people and I know that I'm in awesome company.
And that makes me smile.

I had an apointment today. I saw and felt something while I was out that I haven't felt this strong before.
There seemed to be this unrest and this disquiet something growing stronger as an undercurrant that is rising to the surface.

I wondered if what I was feeling was my own struggles and feelings, but the faces of the people I saw today told me other wise. I saw what I felt last winter when all I could see was nightmearish landscapes and pits of hopelessness that I had no idea if they would end.
Every skill for emotional survival was used to help me keep it together.

I've wondered if the wall I hit about a year before the mess fell on us and the economy went floaty side up for a while, was a prelude as to what was just about to hit.

I think because we are part of this world we can see what has been called psychic as a normal part of life for the rest of the animal kingdom.
Animals know when danger is comming. If you watch them and move when they do, the chances are your going to be fine are very good.

So maybe my awareness is getting really tuned in to the rest of the human race and the storms that come I feel ahead of time.

I've wondered alot what it would be like, what it would feel like if I was isolated for a while on an island somewhere.
Would everything I feel stop after a while or would it stop abruptly, or would nothing happen.

These questions which have been in the back of my mind for a while now, really came to mind durring the day.

I don't know what to think about any of this. I don't know if it even matters whether I do or not.
The reason is that in nature by the time you see it, it's already where you are.
So if it's not me and I can feel it, that means that other people are feeling it too. The knowledge that something is happening is growing with alot of people. If that's right, then there's no way now to keep it from hitting us.

A couple of months ago I helped a friend do yard clean up and her neigbor has a walnut tree. There were shells everywhere.
I was so intrigued by the shells that I asked her if I could collect some.

All I could see was weirdo aliens..

She said yes and so I got a bag and collected shells. I brought them home along with a bunch of sticks that had fallen off of some of the other trees there. I put the sack in a place where I could get to them later.

So this evening I'm trying to figure out how to consolidate more of my art supplies and I came across this bag with the shells and sticks.
They still look like weirdo aliens. What went through my head at the time came back to mind and so I'm going to build my weirdo alien tribe of the walnut head people. Then I want to take pictures of the tribe as they travel.

I'm thinking this is going to be like that traveling shoe group that I read about a few years back. Someone took several single shoes or was it pairs and took them to the park and took pictures of the shoes and then wrote about it. When it was all said and done the shoes traveled all over the place and it was unique and fun to read as well.

I've got these little grey suction cups from a key board I tore apart and I've got various different odd things that will make great body parts for my tribe.
This should be fun. I've been thinking I'm missing fun in my life diet.

Time is just flying by. The end of the year is so very close and it's a little hard to believe.

The last couple of days have been very warm. A true indian summer, and it's been wonderful. It feels like a repreve from things just going frigid and staying there.

I'm going to do something I haven't done in a while, I'm going to make cookies this week. It's been over a year since I made some and I really miss doing that. So cookie time it is.

I'm also got a bag of onions today because I want to make carmelized onions and do enough that I can freeze some of them for dinners on down the road. I'm getting in the mood to cook:)