harold_maude's journal

The leaves are turning different shades of color, and their falling like petals off some spring flower that is dying.

The weather outside is beautiful. Warm and crisp, all at the same time.
It's the kind of day that having a picnic would be a great way to spend an afternoon. And staying until sunset would be wonderful.

I love these kinds of days. Indian summer, is what I remember it being called. I don't know if it's still refered to as that.
I haven't heard anyone talk about an Indian summer in a long time.
Maybe it became something that was politically incorrect to do.
Who knows...

It's the season of change. The landscape around me is taking on the hues of a glorious sunset that gets more brilliant with each passing day, and soon the world here will turn into shades of blues, brownish blacks, greys and white.
I heard some geese flying overhead a couple of weeks ago.

The rythems of life, that happen every year. Telling me what ballet of nature is around me, and it tells me what's comming.
Over the last couple of years I've been too busy worring about things that end up working out fine, even it it happens at the very last minuet.

I've been caught up in the fringes of the savage tug of war of working for people who I didn't want to work for, except one.
Loosing my life along the way.
I've missed the rythems that tell me what is happening.
It runs on a different clock than people who are consumed to some degree by the job that owns them.
Their lives, their free time, their world spirals around doing this thing just so they can live where they do, and if they have a job that pays better, they are consumed by that job just to make payments on things they hardly ever get to use, let alone enjoy.

For the last month and a half I've checked out only two jobs.
I've been fighting the idea that at some point I have to look for an open space in the blurr of workers and hope that I can time it just right and not get bounced off the flow of people and slam into a wall.
Not my idea of something reasonable to do with my life, any part of it for that matter.

I want to live in a world where bartering is the main way of getting what you need to live the life you choose.
Bartering allows each person to use the gifts and talents they've been given to make a true living from.
And there's less goverment interfearance.
You arn't a slave to the goverment by being required to give them money in the form of taxes, while working for some company that sees you as little more than a production drone.
When you pay your taxes, part of thoes taxes goes to keep the machinery of goverment alive.
It is a beasty that has grown fat and grosteque. It's main function now because it is so mamoth in size is to consume, consume, consume...or maybe that's not a very fair picture of
the goverment.

And maybe it's a more accurate picture of goverment that has gotten way too big.

In a world where batering was the means of getting what you need, you get to know the people your trading with.
It can be done across the street or town, it can be done with someone halfway around the globe.

But I know that with things the way they are, bartering will always be something that most people do once in a while.

Wouldn't it be awesome if you could trade the guy at the gas station a bunch of homemade bread or cookies to stock his shelves with in exchange for so many gallons of gas.
He'd have something that people could bring what they had in and trade with him for.

You could spend winters making things. Spending time with your family, eating food that you had stored in the fall.
Being able to take long walks and spend time actually getting to have fun, and getting to really know the people you live with.

You could take up new things, like brewing beer. Or making sculpture, or wood carving, and funiture making. Or how about making shoes or clothes, or printing books one at a time.
All of the above and many more things could be used as currancy in stead of money.

And you could learn new things, like watching the stars, and learning more about the natural world.
You could make fires where you and your family and friends could gather and tell stories and eat together and probably have the best evenings you could ever immagine.

If you needed to go to the doctor, you could take what you've made with your hands and use it to pay for his services.
And everyone would get what they needed.
You'd get to know the doctor you went to see because you'd actually have to spend time getting to know him or her.

I hate living in a world where money means way more than it should.
And having it or not having it decides your place in society, and wether or not you are a contributing memeber of the human race.
But to be a part of this world, one has to have money.

How did we ever get to this place? What wrong turn did we take to end us up in a place where people look at other people as wallets with legs?
And children as little more than market statistics?

I really really don't want to go back into the work world that exists.
It kills people at an early age. It runs their lives and takes nice people and turns them into something unreconizable.

If I can't figure out soon how to make a living from what I love I will have to go back there.
I feel like a frightened kitten hanging from a branch screaming for someone to come help me and at the same time too terrified to let go.
Stuck in limbo.

I wish I could just wish what I want into existance and open my eyes and there I would be...
That would be a magnificant day...

This post was edited by harold_maude on Oct 14, 2005.

I have a kitten in my pocket. Little Annie. She's still small enough to fit in my pocket and she's quite comfortable there.
She's almost two months old now and she still fits in the palm of my hand.
She was the runt of the litter. We saved her and her two sisters from death by opposom.

She's a strange one. She loves to check out people's faces.
She gets very close to look in the eyes and then gently pats the face, as if she's looking for some familiar memory of someone she once knew.

Everyone who comes here gets the same treatment from this little one.
It kind of reminds me of an old woman who has brief moments of clairity, reaching up to touch the face of her children and grandchildren.

She also snores, which is quite funny to listen to. She's sound asleep right now and snoring away like someone sawing logs.
I suspect that's where they got the term sawing logs.

It looks to be a fairly decient day outside, cool crisp fall air with a good does of sunlight.
A perfect autumn day.
The kind of day that is suited to long walks in the park or the woods, depending on where you live and how close to any woods you live.
I may go collecting leaves today or just go find a place to ponder for a while.

Winter is on it's way, and soon there will be snow and short days and long nights. It makes me wish we had a fireplace here.
There's something comforting about sitting in front of a fireplace when the wind is howling outside and the snow is dancing in the wind.
A fireplace is what's missing in this house.

The foundation of this house was built in 1909, and a potbelly stove sits in the basement.
It would seem that the orginal owner of the house thought that was the best place to put a stove, as it would warm the whole house.
I was talking to the landlord and he told me about some of the history of this place.
One of the people who owned it worked for the railroad, and he built all the outbulidings in miniture so to speak.
The pig barn is the size of a small garage.
The lambing barn was orignally about 1/4 the size of a normal one.
The grainery is another tiny building and it makes me wonder what the guy was thinking.

Last year we found some very old newspapers in one of the walls leading into the basement, they were dated 1922.
Fun reading.
They had a fur coat for 49.00. And french linen dish towels for .49 cents.
I guess it's all relative.

There was an aritcle about a judge who had died. And some social events, and even an aritcle about a football game.
We've kept the papers and would like to take them to someone who can frame them without distroying them.
Their fraglie.

The staircase going upstairs is narrow, and like other old houses, it's quite steep.
I guess back then they designed staircases based on the idea of a ladder, which was what people used to get to upper floors before they put in staircases.

I find myself wondering about all the people who lived here.
What they were like, and if they were ever as discontent as many people are now.
I'm sure they didn't know what bordom was as their life was more dependant on taking care of the nessities of life, instead of filling their lives with toys to keep themselves amused.

The basement of this place reminds me of pictures I've seen of some of the houses in the english country side.
There is even a couple of tree trunks that were used as support beams.
I've been in only one other house that used tree trunks as part of the basic support system in a house.
It was a very cool old house as well.

If we are all still here, when it reaches 2009 we're going to throw a party to celebrate this place being 100 years old.
Not bad for a house that stands in tornado ally.

Well, the day is just getting started and I've got some art that is shaping up to be interesting.
I just need to find someone who's marketing skills are good.
The kind of person who could sell icecubes to an eskimo.
They are out there somewhere, I just need to find them is all.
I would market my work but I really suck at marketing, and can't sell anyone anything.
I really actually suck at it.

Maybe today will be the day I find that person. I can hope for that, and see what happens.

I watched some of my favorite movies yesterday. The ones that every so often I have this need to watch.

Among them were "Jaws" "Dick Tracy" and "Jurassic Park".

They have these great moments in them, ones that say something about something.

I love the discourse in Jurassic park where they are discussing the park it self and the two scientists and the mathamitician are voicing the basic problems with trying to bring something back that has been extinct for so long.
It makes me think about how I feel about the amount of technology we have and how little wisdom we have to use what we've created wisely.

Then the whole ego thing in Jaws. Men trying to best each other by proving who's better.
The thing that finally causes them to have some respect for each other is a night in the galley where their comparing scars
and we all get to find out why Quint is the way he is.

I love the idea in Dick Tracy of a woman who is seen as property of what ever mob boss is in control taking things into her own hands in an attempt to change her world and have the man she wants.

What makes these moments so great is that they reflect at least in someways real life.
Things we all face at sometime.
Feelings of being out of control. Feelings of desperation that drive us to our own desperate acts.
Proving who we are.
Doing things that should never really be done.
And the concequences that follow.

I like the Lord of the Rings for the same kinds of reasons.
One of my favorite scenes is at the end of the fellowship of the rings where Boramere is dying and he has come face to face with himself, and realizes how stupid it was to want to control something that would have distroyed him.
He regained his honor just before he died.

I love the scene in Cassablanca where Humphry Bogart says to Lauren Bacall that she will regret not getting on the plane, maybe not today, but soon and for the rest of her life.
How amazing to understand that while the want is so strong, what's best in the end is to walk away.
How painful to know that even when you love someone it's best for them if that love is lost.

I love satisfying endings too. Ones that leave you feeling somehow completed at the end of the story.

I love Hitchcock movies. But the ending of the Birds made me feel like he'd got to the point where here is this great story but how do you end a great story?
So for me the ending of the birds is disapointing.
It leaves me hanging with the idea that this was the best he could come up with after almost the whole movie is this intense string of moments.

I love the sixth sense because it shows how it's possible to over come the deepest fear that no one will believe you and finally you find someone who does and it gives you the courage to live without fear.

I love the matrix for the idea that it's possible to be a prisioner and find freedom. Even at the cost of your life.

Great movies with great scenes that reflect back on who we are as a people.
Fraglie, heroic, humans with failings and frailties.
And sometimes, just like in the movies we get to win too.

It's monday, by the clock. And the house is still, except for me.
It's not a bad thing, to be awake when everyone else is asleep.
I've spent alot of time thinking this weekend about so much.
Thinking about days that turn from summer into winter before you know it.
The color of morning as it grows from dark to light, and how much, if anything at all, that means right now.

Right now. This moment. Being etched into history even as I write.
I've been thinking about the road ahead, how ever long that will be, and there have been moments in the mist of all the wonderful that this weekend has been that I find myself face to face with what's out there ahead of me.

I was thinking about winter, and wondering if it's going to be as crazy weather wise as the last few weeks have been.
There's a part of me that wants to take a huge leap into the abyss of the unknown, and part of me that feels the same way it feels when the air is so cold that it hurts to breathe.

This is a very weird time. A shift in things. I know it's not connected to how old I am cronologically, because that has never mattered to me.
That's only the movment on calanders.
That's all.

Maybe it's the uncomfortable feeling of the guilt of having to ask for help, when all I want to do is take care of things myself.
If I do, I know I will get done what needs to.
I've struggled with this thing for a long time. Falling short, needing help, and having to finally ask for it.

Maybe it's the need to see people just do when they see things that need to be done.
Being a part of something that flows with ease, instead of waiting and waiting and then getting tired of waiting and doing it myself.

Maybe that's all this is.

The question that keeps comming up is this: If I wasn't so able to make things run smoothly for everyone around me in ways that makes their lives easier, would there be any reason anyone would need to be around me.
Or want to?

If I look at the past of my life, I would have to say no.
The requests, the wants and the needs.
I've taken care of the things about me that I need.
I've waited for people to notice and step up and just do, but it doesn't happen.

Maybe that's why all of this has been feeling so strange.
Maybe not.

Maybe it's what happens when you pass through this right of passage.
The disjointed feeling that comes with being joyous over reaching this age.

Again I don't know. There have been so many times I've wished that some brilliant sage would just show up and they would be able to walk with me through some or all of this, so that I could just accept this with mountians of grace.

There are so many times I feel completely alone. Even when I'm in the mist of company, no matter how many people are in that company.

I feel like I'm climbing up a never ending ladder. Up and up and up...having lost sight of the ground a very long time ago.
It's a weird kind of discomfort. unlike anything I've ever felt before.
In someways it's a kind of relief when I come here and find no evidence that anyone has read the things I've written about.
It gives me the sense that it's ok to dance in the dark and fog covered corners of my thoughts.

It's like a sounding board where I can see what I'm thinking as I write and hopefully find some answers.

..to bravely go where I've never gone before.

I write for my own sake, to keep my thoughts from making my brain explode.
It's part of my approach to my own health.

..in the desert does where you've left footprints matter?
or even the ones you've left in the snow?

This post was edited by harold_maude on Oct 10, 2005.

Friday I entered into what I can only describe as a right of passage.
I've had a few in my life. Not at the time that people normally think they will come, but that's ok. I'm weird and things for me happen on the time line their suppose to.

The first one happened when I turned 28, it was suppose to be when I was 25.
It's the quarter century thing that everyone gets close too and then it hits and whoahhhh!!!
"I'm here...now what?"

I never had one of those when I turned 21, I was too busy trying to be a mom to a very brilliant child.
And I think I was still getting over having a child at all.
When I was 16 I had surgery because my cycle was really messed up and they did tests and told my mother I was sterile.
I just proved them wrong.
It's funny how things like that happen, and what that does to a persons head and life.

The next right of passage came when I hit 35. It was an awesome year. It was a great time of learning and comming to terms with the idea that my life was more than my children.
I'd had my second child at 26.
He was on the other end of the specturm of things from his sister.
He was brilliant too, but just in some really unique ways.
He, like einstine, didn't talk until he was three, and to him the world was this place where...it's hard to explain...he thinks in extreem abstract ways.
He did this picture of the titanic. From the front you see the ocean and the boat going down.
Turn the paper over and you see the ocean and part of the boat that's under the water.
That kind of thing.

So here I've got two kids, both of these people amazing in their own right, and I've been given the privialage of being their mom.
So here comes 35, and it hits, my life is more than being just a mom to these two people, one of which is eventually going to be a vet at 24.

The next right of passage happened when I turned 39. My father died and I found out that I spent my entire life waiting for something that would never come. I was very pissed off.
I spent my whole life waiting for him to tell me that he loved me and was proud that I was his daughter.
I found out 3 weeks before he died.
When he died, I started on the journey to finding out who I was, and he was no longer there to tell me I couldn't or that I would do nothing but fail, etc. etc. etc.
It became clear at that time how much time I'd wasted waiting for something that never came.
To put it mildly I was pissed because I felt completely ripped off in the worst way a person can.
And I'm not going into the comparison of what being raped feels like because I've been there too, and that doesn't come close to what this felt like.

The next right of passage happened when I finally did what I should have done at 19, that is leave your home town.
I was 43.
My children were completely comfortable with me leaving, which doesn't surrprise me.
I got a divorice and it was very peacable, we parted on good terms.
They thought I'd lost my mind, as what I took with me isn't the normal thing a person takes with them when they go.
I took the bare essentals, as far as I was concerned. Things I could use to make a living with based on my talents and skills.
I was headed into the unknown and was on the road to find out who I was, how I liked my eggs, so to speak.

Then last friday, I came to the newest one, turning 47. I'm excited about being 47, I've made it this far. I'm comfortable in my own skin finally, and death is something that will happen at some point.
I've learned that people love to hide, mostly from themselves.
Their too scared to be honest and dig deep inside and deal with the crap that all of us carry around.
I've learned that today is all we get. So it's to our benefit to make it the best day we've ever had.
Even when it's a total shit day, it's still been good.
If you live indoors and got to eat it's a damn fine day.
If you've got toilet paper it's a good day, because having no toliet paper makes the bathroom experience a good one.
I've been without, and it really sucks.
If someone has smiled at you, or you survived the day it's been a good day.
Even when you loose a job, or wonder how your going to make the bills.
Even thoes days have something in them that's worth something.
That's what I've learned.

I've decited that I'm celebrating this entire month. 47 comes only once. I don't feel 47. I doubt I ever will. I don't know how I'm suppose to feel because I've never been here before, and that's completely fine.
There is an incredible year ahead of me. And I'm looking forward to it. Even if I end up in another accident. I was in one last sunday, and the driver was young, I would say barely 20 somthing. She slammed into me comming around a corner doing about 45 at least.
The front of the car she was driving was demolished, and I saved myself from having to be pried from my car by slamming on the breaks so only the front side panel of the car got twisted.
The head light still works and now my lights have a marty feldman thing going on.
I saw her about 3 feet before she hit.
If I hadn't she would have hit the driver's door.
She was in a borrowed car of which the owner had let his insurance laps for 3 months, and she has no insurance, so I have this thing I can't fix.
But the good news is no one got hurt.
There were 5 people in the car with her, and they were all older, and it's curious as to why all thoes people weren't smart enough to drive instead of letting someone who was in too much of a hurry drive.
Go figure.

So now, here I am, a week later, two days into being 47 and the sun is shining, I got to play with this incredible puppy last night named betty.
And it's a great day.
I ate cake sometime after midnight and it was really good.
Apple pie filling as part of the frosting...good stuff.

What ever this year brings, things are new, all of them because each day from here on out is new. All the monster thoughts, all the moments of disapointment all the celebrations, weddings and funreals will be seen in a different light...and that rocks.
It's the right of passage that changes us. It's designed to.
And I am so greatful for that...I would hate to spend the rest of my life in the same place doing the exact same things over and over and never learning anything new.

Here's to the next right of passage that will come. I'm looking forward to it.

It's been a few days since I made it here last. The computer has gone sideways and then got righted up.
Yeah for that!

It felt like summer for a few days and then fall reminded me that here, fall is a series of days that differ in extreem temps.
Some of the questions, all of the questions are now resting, brewing and I'm sure that at some point they will come close to
threating to blow my brains up again.

I'm glad for the break. My brain was in pain for a while there.
All my side notes are safe.
At the moment I'm trying to find the geometric structure for certian gemstones.
I wanna see some pictures of some things.
But so far I haven't been able to find what I'm looking for.

I wish there was a program or something out there that you could type in a very specific set of requests and get the answers to your questions.
It would be awesome if you could just turn on the computer and ask it a question without going on the net and having to do alot of rummageing around through pages and pages of sites.
Only to find that what your searching for isn't there.

I must be asking the wrong questions in the search.
I've looked under the crystal line structure of gemstones...nothing.
The geometry of gemstones...and I get things that don't answer my quesions...

I would love to see a simulated building of different stones based on the geometry of the crystals that make up the different stones.
Then I would imput the 5 platonic solids and the archimedian solids and have it match up to each gemstone.

I wish Lenardo was here, he could tell me I'm sure what was what.
The man definately had an inside track to alot of things.
Last night we watched a show on him.
These people built two of his inventions.
The hang glider was amazing, although the cross bow got muddled up by the people thinking if they just streamlined what he put on paper it would work better.
It didn't.
So they went back to the orginal drawings and it worked alot better.

They said that only about 1,000 of his papers have survived.
That's still an amazing amount of information.

Anyway, I'm stuck for now. I should be used to being stuck in something that I can't find the answers to.
I keep going back to the flower of life books trying to find some more clues.

The hunt goes on...and on...and on.