harold_maude's journal

A very good friend of mine is going through something that is tearing her apart. Her sister accused her husband of doing inapproate things with her daughter, which is not possible as I know her husband.
And why did she accuse him, because instead of the phone calls comming through my friends cell phone, they used her husbands phone to talk to their neice.

Pretty stupid reason for accusing somone of doing something they would never do, especially when the distance between the two familys is several thousand miles apart.

It would be more possible for a duck to become a moose than this man to do anything inapproate with any child, let alone his neice.
He's a man of honor. I've known him for over 20 years and there is no way he did anything that he shouldn't have.

My friend is heart broken over her sister's stupidity.
I hurt for my friends, they are more than friends, they are family to me.

I do know what she is going through. Reading the events in her blog tonight, brought back the mess at the farm, and more reciently, the two people who broke my trust this year.
Both of them I helped, and listened to. One of them spent alot of nights crashed on my couch.
I fed both of them.

And both of them turned and ran me through, my trust that is.
When it happens to you, you need people who say they love you to stand up with you, beside you.
When that doesn't happen, the world feels cold and hard.
You get beat up. And there really isn't anything you can do, except ride it out.
In all the times that my trust has been ripped to shredds, the person who says he loves me has left me hanging.

So why do I stay with someone who has left me hanging so often?
I've asked myself that question so many times, and the answer is always the same, so he can see what love that is real looks and feels like.
It finally got to the place where it didn't matter how many times he sided with someone who has thrown crap at me or broken my trust, only to find out later that I was right about the person, that always happens along with the crap that comes first, he has never appoligized for his stand.

He tells me he can't understand why I love him. He's seen me go through so much, much of it has happened and he had a chance to stop it, but didn't.
He tells me he is glad that I love him. And I do.
The option to that isn't a nice thought at all, and I don't want to go there, even with the people who have broken my trust.
I'm not interested in revenge.
I have no desire for anyone to go through the things I did.

Having them be responsible for their actions and admit they did something they shouldn't have would be nice, but with the exception of only one person who broke my trust, the rest haven't.
I don't hold my breath waiting for it to happen.

I go on because that is the only thing I can do. I continue inspite of everything going on in both aftermath of the last two people who broke my trust and now the physical stuff associated with metapause, because somewhere deep inside me I know it will catch up with them.
It will catch up to the man I'm with as well.

And when it happens, I will hear about it. I'm not sure how I will feel about it, but I do know I will hear about it.

As to my friend, time will work it's hand on her heart and she will heal, but it will take time.
In the end she will be ok.
She is a survivor and she is strong, just like me.

This post was edited by harold_maude on May 26, 2008.

This morning I woke up with bits of my dreams still clinging
to me, like sheets covered in lines and threads that had some how durring the night, invaded and planted themselves deep.
All while I was sleeping.

It started doing things while I was awake. Immages, loud and quiet started moving in front of my eyes, as it were, I think it's called the third eye.
Anyway, these immages are going all over the place and a few stopped and went further with more of their own sub immages.
Fractile of the brain.

Kind of like a brain freeze when you eat icecream too fast.

Immages of people, and places. The giant who comes into work and keeps trying to get free food from everyone there.
He's a car salesmen by the way.
I know where this guy works and you can bet that if I ever need to buy a brand new car it won't be where he works that I will go to.
The man is constantly trying to get us to give him something.
He wants to take as much as he can.
He's a greedy, sleezy car salesmen. From his behavior when he comes in, I would say he lives his life away from work very similar to how he lives it at work.
I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
Too many ear marks of someone who has filled their live with trying to see someone on a bill of goods with a few hidden extra's tacked on.

After his immage and that discussion faded another was waiting there to take it's place.
A young man I met about 9 months ago. For his own reasons which unfolded just reciently, he decited to target me.
I remember that smile, it was hypnotic and over whelming.
It made me think this kid has a thing for me.

I shrugged it off.

Fast forward to halloween last year. We had our first halloween party. And like with most things that are entertwined in my life, this house knows how many people it can hold comfortably.
Without fail, all night, the house maintained a number of six people.
When one would go, with in minuets there would be a knock at our door.
It was interesting to watch.
Anyway, very early on in the evening, this young man and his girlfriend at that time, showed up.
She was striking and I could understand how he could be so attracted to her.
Then, she opened her mouth.

I thought to myself, she is spoiled, she comes from money, and is a controler.
There were as I found out a few other add on's.

After that, he started comming by himself.
The weeks passed and he was here alot. I found out very early on several key things.
Thinking back on it I realize now that it's a good thing this kid has only had a relativly few years to work with this thing.
Add ten and I would have lost the battle, the war and everything else.
This kid has a natural ablity to hynotise people.
Or he read about it in some magazine and figured out that using it he could get pretty much what he wanted.

When he wasn't here, I was under constant wave after wave of thoughts and feelings that I knew I didn't want.
That's the amazing part about all of this. Everytime that there is a strong attraction to someone, the over powering kind, I seem to know it's not what I need or want.
So I fight it.

And I did that with this. It was not easy to fight it.
If I had let go and given in, there is the very real possiblity that it would have ended up in some kind of twisted romanic involvment.

After two months of this stuff going on, him commming here all the time, he started targeting another girl at work.
Her true nature started to show up, and he started comming here less and less.
The emotional state changed and started slamming into me harder.
I couldn't see clear enough to get a handle on what was going on.

I reacted violently to the emotions. In other words, I was pretty much pissed off most of the month of december.
In my anger, I focused all my energy and all my will and planted her firmly in her home town a couple of hours away, until her children come of age.
She hasn't been able to leave that town since I did that.
She has tried to come back for a visit, but even that fell through.

Thinking back on it, I shouldn't have interfeared. I interfeared for other reasons as well. But I'll not go into thoes right now, what I'm putting out here is already into some pretty deep stuff, and I know that there may be people who read this who are thinking that I've lost my mind or something else like that.

To thoes who are thinking that, I have this to say, the universe is bigger than you can even begin to fathom.
We are more than we are told we are.
I will go into this more, but at a later date.
I don't want to get too sidetracked here.

After this girl departed the picture, he started comming here with more and more regularity.
He was back to what every it was that he was doing before.

The difference being that he started comming later and later at night, to see my honeybunnie.
I started getting the distinct feeling that it was no longer me he was comming to see.
Being a good hostess I would stay up as late as I could and then just go to bed.
I spent most of the time just sitting there, sometimes I would just do art, doodle and draw stuff.
Sometimes I would write about things.

Then about a month ago, he showed up at work to pick up his paycheck.
There were 3 of us there. He walked in the door. I smiled at him, and he looked past me, and walked around the counter and stood face to face with one of the other people and that same smile that was the one I discribed earlier, was being focused on her.
At the same time, the energy ball that hit me was hard and clear, he wanted nothing to do with me.
If I had been the only one who saw this, I would have discounted it as just a lingering effect of what he had been doing for the past 8 months.
But the other person who was not his target saw the same thing I did.
She thought it was really odd that he would react like that to me.

Again it's a good thing that this kid isn't more proficiant in the stuff he does.
I could actually see him using this stuff to control an army.
But he's sloppy, and lazy as well. And as long as that doesn't change, the world is safe, at least from him.

I do know this, unless he stops doing this, he will end up doing it at the wrong time and with the wrong person and then he won't be able to slither away.
It will bite him hard.

If he survives, maybe he will learn some things and change.

He was an education that I am still sorting through.
Learning from it. Going through details and making note of repeater patterns, so I can watch out for them from here on out.

I've also been doing alot of reading in the last few weeks on hpnosis and taking it back to where people actually started reconizing that it existed and started studing it.
I am learning and it's changing how I listen to people, and it's making me more aware. I don't trust people as much as I used to and after the last couple things that happened,
I'm really in a non trust mode.

As all of this unfolded this morning, I began to think about masks.
The kind people hide behind and although I'm not sure what percentage it would be, I'm guessing that the majority of people who wear them, have some secret adjenda or somthing to hide.
I don't want to wear a mask. I have strived to live in this place in a way that what you see is what you get.
An honest existance of being who I really am. I'm working in that direction anyway.
I am learning that in order to keep myself from harm or getting hurt that I have to be wary of almost everyone I meet.
I know there is a balance in there somewhere.

I do think that as I deal with the things that are showing themselves in that need to change, that I won't have anything to protect anymore. Nothing to hide. Nothing for anyone to hook on to and then start taking at will, even when I don't want it.

I'm learning to say no as well. I'm learning about what it is what I truly want, and what I don't want.

Masks are distructive to the person who wears them, but they don't realize that as they keep putting them on.
Masks take energy to maintain, they suck life out of you.
And after all is said and done, they end up falling to peices when the truth finally comes to light, and when that happens it's usually with the people they don't want knowing the truth.

So masks are for the most part, as far as I am concerned, pretty pointless.
The only value that masks have are as symbologies and parts of costumes that are worn for brief periods of time.

They do make great wall art as well.
I'm thinking in their place and proper use they are powerful tools that a person can look to as a mirror for their life.
Maybe in that arena, they are of great importance.

Well, that's about where it's at this morning.

Now it's a rare thing for me to write poetry anywhere but on a particular site on the net that is an interactive poetry site.
I've been signing my first name to the peices I have written lately.

And since I woke up with words and immages flying through my head and the remenants of my dreams flashing here and there, I knew it would be a good time to take that mix and see what happens, poeticly that is.

I'll think up a title later...

You lay there decorated in peices of sheet and blanket.
A still life titled "My Lover's Dream".
The somewhere where you are is filled with majic.
The kind that that wispers secret things
delicious and horrible things that vanish with daylight.

Do you remember me there? Am I the venus of your dreamscape?
Your face motionless, speaks only of a raptured stillness.
Sleep is your lover now.
Hypnotized by it's warm embrace, you lay there
drenched in the sweet mercy of sleep.

I watch, mezermized by bits of the sun
temporarily tatoo'd on your skin.
Ink made of light, pierces you skin and holds you fast.
Sleep's oblivion holds you now,
the death of waking hours.
And someday sleep may not give you back to the daylight.

For a few brief moments, in all of our history
daylight will share you with me, drinking in your footprints
along with mine, following us, taking notes of us,
our words, what we share, what we argue about.
And maybe the only reader of our book will be the universe.

Snap shots and bits of recorded conversations play in my head.
Famous words, fancy titles and romanic declairations
encircle, decend and dance on the immages.
Suddenly, like a cliff diver, they plunge throuh the air
falling into a sea of everything we are and have been.

My eyes, detectives of detail, study your frame.
They memorize you with focused determination
so I won't forget in the days where I feel how cold it is
when your not here, or how empty and big the bed is
when I'm lost and alone in it's frame work.

But for today, this hour, this moment
the rythem of your breathing tells me
that at some moment, sleep will finally let you go.
Releasing you to daylight,
the shroud of sleep's silken magic will fall away,
vanishing into nothingness.

And for this day,as daylight holds you
so will I,
feeling sleep's kiss still fresh on your skin.
I'll drink you in while dayligt exists
as long as we exist, in each other's presence.
As long as my waking hours find you are here with me.

--------------------------------

Well, I think it's done, at least as done as it feels.
I love having two days off durring the week and I will miss that when I leave this job.
For the most part, they are mine. I can do anything I want
on thoes two days.
I end up spending at least some of the time on house work, but I can do art too, and play music and watch a movie or two if
I want. I can make cookies if I have all the ingredients.
And if I don't, I can go to the store and buy them, money
available, provided.
I can do all these things or nothing at all. I can go for walks
when the weather is nice. And for a couple of days I don't have
to punch a time clock or make a sandwhich for anyone,
or handle hot food, or someone else's money,
or be nice to people when they are in a bad mood and
I'm getting sucker punched by fly by emotions,
because I'm there doing my job and they are having a shitty day.

On my two days off I don't have to slice meat or cheese, or fill and flip a make table or clean a steam table that looks
like an abstract painting, only this abstract painting can
burn and scar skin. But the thing I love the most about what this job has been, has been the freedom to work as hard as I can simply because I can,
and push myself as far as I can just to see just how fast and efficant I can be.

I keep comming to this place,when one job ends and before another one starts, that it's
an opportunity to leap off the cliff and just go for selling
my art, having another show. But the details of when
and where are still something I haven't figured out.

I just looked at the time, and it's closing in on 8:30, and I have a full schedual today. It's the first of my two days off
and like most first days off there is a huge list of stuff that
I have to do and need to catch up on so I can sleep in tomorrow.

It's a funny thing, even with all thoes things I can do,
I never seem to be able to do them for two full days
and when I think about it, the last day I actually spent
doing art all day was Easter.
So even though I have two days off from my money producing job,
I'm doing another full time job here at home.

I really do need a vacation.

This post was edited by harold_maude on May 25, 2008.

It's friday night, and for a few brief hours I am floating here in this space.

I turned off all the noise as much as possible because I was thinking again about some really peculuar things about my life today.
Everything that works happens backwards. I learn best that way too, after all is said and done, then the learning why it happened always unfolds so easily, clearly and it makes sense.
For the last few years every time something wonderful happens, on the heals of it comes something hard and fast to try to knock me to the ground....I think there is a journal post somewhere about that thing.
It happened again this week. I got this really great care package for mother's day from my daughter and when I got home, there was this guy waiting to hand me a somons for something that happened about 7 years ago, somthing that was done and over with.
But apparently not.

For several years now I've tried to help different people and they end up screwing me over.
It's all backwards.
It's crazy to screw someone over who helps you when you need it right? Or is that how the world really works?

Is it normal to get a gift and then get clobbered in the same day? Is that how the world works?
As far as I know everyone who has ever been kind to me in anyway I do the same back. When someone gives me a container of food, I return the container with food I've made.
I've given things away with out expectation, I've listened and cared for so many people along the road, doing it because it was a good and right thing to do, no expectations of some reward somewhere for being honorable.

So my question is this, did I fuck up by even being born?
I don't know why this keeps happening to me, getting slammed, knocked around by life, and generally used by people.

I've gotten to the place where I want to just go off somewhere and vanish for a while. But there are too many things that require my presence to do that, so I just end up wishing I could.

I was thinking about all of this again today and still am so puzzled as to why things in my world exist as they do.
It's not in my nature to take revenge against someone who has hurt me. The thought of getting nailed while seeing some kind of responsiblity on their part, nailed by karma keeps me from doing anything.

I really need some insite here. So this weekend I am going to do some deep meditation and look for answers. I just simply want to understand it.
That's all. Understanding it might not stop it from happening, but at least the frustration from it happening without knowing why would be eased.

I plan on painting this weekend as well. It's been a while since I painted. And I think that would be a good thing to do, something healthy and restful.

I'm hoping by the end of the weekend I'll have at least some insite as to what all of this is about. I can hope for that anyway, but as with all of life, there are no gaurentees.

In roughly two weeks this job I have now will be done.
I put in my notice on monday because the manager is leaving.
She put in her three weeks notice last friday.
I can't and won't become the only person in that place who knows what to do without being told.
And I certianly do not want to become a glorified baby sitter.

She is the best manager I have ever worked for. I made the decision months ago that I would stay working for this company as long as she was there.
She has worked for this company for 7 years. She is the only certified manager that exists for this comany in this town.
The store I work in has been the top store in this town for as long as she has been in the position of manager.
She has her stuff togther.
She works hard and sets the standard for everyone who works in the same store as I do.

When I got hired on I asked for a certian wage, the owners didn't quite give me what I asked, but came close enough that I took the job.
My cat sort of sealed the deal. She went through all the applications I had picked up, found the one to this company and pushed it aside and peed on the rest..I'm not kidding about what the cat did.
Smart kitty!

Anyway, when my manger told me she had put her notice in, I followed suit. Without her at the helm, the store will loose it's status as being the best, and although I know I could keep it there, I work circles around everyone else that works for her, including the assistant manager.
I have no desire to be the only person doing that.
And I know that's what would happen. I've worked with everyone else and when she is not there, to make sure they are doing their job, they don't do their job.
I work morning crew. And every morning, without fail, she and I are faced with doing alot of the night crew's work simply because they arn't doing it.

In food service the only people who have set work hours are management. I am the exception to the rule. I work the same schedual every week. I have a set number of hours per week.
And why do I have what no one else has, because I earned it and this manager gave me the opportunity to do it.
I also work all days and no weekends. That's something that is rare in food service, especially for a crew memeber, as the crew members are shifted around as the weekly schedual are made.

The woman who is the assistant manager is consistantly late, one excuse or another always exists.
She fails consistantly on doing the job she has. She runs night and weekend crews.
The other two women who are interested in the managers job are equally not up to what the currant manager does.
Both of these women are supervisors.
In the beginning when they stepped up to the plate, for a very short time did what they were asked to.

But both of them ended up falling into the routne of not doing their jobs.
One of them likes to take lots of smoke breaks and sit on her ass in the office area and talk on the phone durring her shift.
She has been talked to repeatedly. But nothing has changed, and the only time I have seen her actually work is when she works day crew. She needs a baby sitte in other words.

The other woman has too many personal life problems that keep invading work for her to step up to management.
The peice of crap she is living with will see to that.
But that's her problem.

Since I started working there, and proved that I have the goods so to speak, we have seen so many people come through the store.
And without exception they end up flaking out and end up showing their true colors, lazy and irresponsible in their jobs.

My place will be up for filling as well. I have no doubt that it will no longer be something that is consistant in hours and certianly not free of weekends.
It will become like the rest of the crew jobs, changing from week to week.

So the owners are loosing two of their best. They already know that her shoes are going to be hard to fill.
In this town finding good help for food service jobs is next to impossible.
I have seen that I am part of a group of people who are of a rare group, the people who do the job with an attitude of doing it the very best they can.

As in the past I have no doubt that word of what goes on with this place will reach my ears.
I have complete confidence that the store I work at will end up falling down from it's place as the best of the three stores, and the owners who are great at promising lots of things and never following through on their promises, will have to come down here more and more to fix problems over and over because the two people who make sure the store is run right will be gone.

There is justice in that due to what they did to the general manager they screwed over.
The general manger of the three stores that entered into the picture when these owners bought all three stores. They made him promises that they never kept.
He got tired of trying to do the impossible and having no support from them.
Not only was he expected to be at all three stores everyday, but he was also expected to run one of the stores, go out and advertise all over town.
He was expected to do the job of three people.
And of course he failed. There was no way to suceed, and my manger told them that.
But the owners didn't listen to her.

The new guy they brought in started screwing things up from the get go.
They thought because this guy was corporate and knew what corporate wanted, that he would be able to do the job.
This guy is a great motivational speaker. But as a general manger, he sucks big time.
In food service, especially at the level that we exist at no one makes over 8 bucks an hour, unless they have been there for years. And I do mean years. Getting raises is like trying to swim up stream.
But the new general manager set out hiering people above that mark.
And the woman who likes to sit on her ass on her shifts he decited to give her nine bucks an hour. The owners rather exploded when they heard what he is doing when he hires people and when they heard about her new wage, they went through the roof.
I don't know if they have told her yet, but her wage will end up being cut back, and that alone will send her out the door.
They won't pay that wage. They have made that clear.

So with the new general manger who keeps spending lots of money and has no qualifications for the job requirements over seeing all three stores down here, when the manager and I leave, it's going to fall apart fast.

Oh well. Won't be my problem or my managers anymore.

It's Thursday morning. It's gone grey outside again. And for today that's not a bad thing. I saw the lilacs in bloom yesterday so unless the temp does a major drop I think it's safe to say that spring is here.
Another day of thousands that have passed before it.
Funny thing is about the days that are passing by, is how fast they are moving.
May is almost done.

It almost feels like the days are becomming strings instead of thick blocks of hours. Not so long ago, the days seemed to move at a slower pace. Time seems to be turning up the speed of the passing days.
This feeling about how fast the days are going is not something that only I am awhare of, everyone I have talked to says the same thing, that the months are flying by.

I think the phrase "time on my hands" would be better said durring this fast moving portion of history "time running through my fingers".

Time is no respector of anything, it just does what it does, and does it well.
Efficantly, and very throughly.
It's almost like watching foot prints in the sand being swallowed up by the ocean.
The sand remains, but the foot prints disapear from view.
Yesterday is history, and in a few days time only highlights of it will be prominate in my mind. After that most of it will be stored somewhere in my memory and other days and their significant events will take up the slack of my thoughts.

My dreams have been very distrubing lately and even though I can't remember them, the details, I feel the lingering effect for a while after I wake up.
I'm not sure if they are so disturbed because durring the waking part of the day I am having a great deal of difficulty in figuring out how or what to do.
Many things sit waiting for me to address them and do them, but I'm having trouble answering the demands.
To be sure at least some of the problem lays with this metamorphsis that I am undergoing.
And some of it lays with the frustration I feel continually with the way things are.

Last night after meditation, I thought about what I had seen there durring my time there, and a question formed up and sat there getting louder and louder, "why do I do the things I do?"
The last question that came up and unfolded was "what do I want?"
Questions. And me sitting there not really knowing how to answer them.
I really don't know the answers yet. I've been too busy trying to survive everything that just seems to keep steam rolling forward.
But the questions persist.
With time doing this thing of getting thin and turning days into strings, it's really hard to find answers.
I would love to stop time for awhile and have time cooporate and let me catch my breath long enough to really answer the questions.
But time is no respector of me.
Someone said it's happening because of the quickening, a phrase coined by terrance mckenna I think.
More later, work is calling my name and at least for now I have to answer.

Be at peace and be well.