harold_maude's journal

Says one to the other, "Next year I'll have enough money saved to go on that vacation I've been promising my family for years"
Says the other "That will be wonderful."

The next day the first one on his way to work spies a car he's been in love with since highschool.
He cannot resist. And it takes all the money he has and more.
At that moment he has enslaved him self to two things, and given much more away than just a vacation.

He has given away part of his life to fulfill a want that should maybe have been left in highschool.

The next day, his wife and children are killed while driving to the market to buy food. They had been talking about where the ideal vacation would be. You see he had told his family that next year there would be enough money saved for them to take a real vacation and there would be no work attached to it, like the other "vactions" over the years where the cover for a few days here and there was that it was connected to business.
The driver who hit them was a business man in too much of a hurry and too busy talking on a cell phone.
He was discussing the next violent take over of the company the man worked for.

And in the dark shadows the monster grins, and rubs it's bony hands together.
And eats another and more. Death to all who oppose it, it knows what it has taken...it smells of money..

He hadn't figured out how to tell them about the car, and after buying it, was having regrets and trying to decide which was more important, the promise he had made to them or his own desire that hadn't died since he first saw that car.

Now it was too late. The car which he gave their vacation up for now represented so many terrible things. Each one was pre-empted by the faces of thoes he loved.
Now they were gone.

He hated that car now. How selfish he had been.

Too late.

The smell of money, the lure of it...that's where this all started. Thinking about corporate things. How it promises much and delivers only a shadow that is vacant when you get close enough. It enslaves you than robs you of yourself and your freedom. It is a selfish whore who eats humans and spits out bitter withered bags of bones.
Nothing left but to burry them all.

So it is with the man who gave it all to have something that made an illusionary promise in highschool. That he would be admired and wanted. That he would be cool.
It took from thoes he loved, and then he lost more.

All that is left, is the shell of a man. Alone. Given a few days to take care of business, and then is expected to return to work and perform so that the company makes more profit. More money.
If the man cannot do his job efficently he will be fired. There will always be another body to replace him.
The corporate world doesn't care if you face death, or loss.
The only thing it wants from you is your life's blood. That smells like money to the corporate world.

It loves eating humans. It gets fat off our lives and then when we are too old to be of use it disgards us.

The man sits at the bar. The first one says to the second, "I have nothing left, except bills, and a car that I hate. My bed is cold and the laughter of my children haunt me.
The company I work for is about to be taken over, and I'm about to loose my job. How much more can I loose?"

Says the second man to the first "Things may get better, you never know. You put in a lot of loyal service to the company, and they have to reconize that....don't they"

Meanwhile, in a plush office there sits another man who looks over the lists of empolyees of the company that is about to be aquired and sees the man who has lost the most important things in the world. Sees how old he is, and writes these words over the top "Although he is very skilled his age is an impediment to our sucess, we are interested only in someone younger who has these same skills. He will not be rehired."

...somewhere in the dark shadows the creature laughs...

Hopefully this will post. We've been having major problems with the computer and getting it do what it's suppose to.
It's just a machine after all.

Sometimes it acts almost human.

So here we are. Christmas in just a few days and then it will be New Years and all in a rushed few days.
Someone asked me if I was ready for Christmas today and my answer was whether I'm ready or not it will come. And how do you prepare for something that should be all year long?

Somewhere what it's suppose to mean got lost amid the turkeys and toys.
The idea of Christmas which I believe to be about giving of yourself without thought of yourself should be practiced all year long.
It doesn't need bright colored ribbons or lights or decorations to turn it on.
It should be there. All year.

Think about this: Everytime you do something for someone else your celebrating Christmas. A smile. Holding the door open for someone.
Talking to someone who is hurting and trying to comfort them.
Visiting someone who is alone. Baking cookies or anything and then give them away, just because, your celebrating Christmas.

When someone is ugly to you and you just let it slide, realizing that where they are is maybe just having a crappy day, you've just celebrated Christmas.

Every time you do something for someone else and don't think about you or what it's going to cost you, you celebrate Christmas.

So the next time you feel that by spending a ton of money or wearing your self out because you having finished your Christmas shopping, be kind to yourself. It's not about the money you spend, it's not about buying the perfect thing.
That's something else entirely, and somewhere along the line we forgot.

We get bitchy, and impatient and ugly and spend the holidays making the rounds, fullfilling obligations and hating the rushing around like crazy people, and we overload ourselves so much that we can't even begin to relax and enjoy the day.

I love the lights. I would leave lights up all year if this was our house and we owned it.
I would have strings going everywhere. Through the trees and decorations from every holiday up everywhere. I think their pretty.
But they don't make the holiday for me.

What made it for me this year was a couple of kids that come to class on Saturday morning and their smiles and the hug I got from the 4 year old.
They gave me a card that I will keep forever. It's an awesome treasure.
They said that I was a wonderful artist, and that I was a kind person and that they loved comming to the class.
It blew me away that they would give me this treasure.
How do you find that on a shelf? You can't.

That made my whole holiday season. I don't know if I will ever be able to tell them how it made me feel or that it made me cry and still does.

Over the years I've been given awesome gifts like that. They are the one's I remember. The pottery my kids made me when they were in grade school. The coupons for different things. I never had the heart to spend them, they were too special.
And the smiles and laughter, and the hugs.

The last Christmas my dad was alive. It was the first time we all were together that no one was fighting. Making decorations with my kids out of this and that.

The smell of the first snow, and pine trees.

And some not so pleasant memories. Setting my hair on fire accidently on Christmas morning because I didn't know your suppose to light the match and then turn on the gas in the fireplace of a place we were staying at. Having very little to eat and later that day having to drive myself to the emergancy room because there was a huge hole in my stomach.
And finding out I needed emergancy surgery, and being terrified that I wouldn't wake up from it.
Praying with a stranger for strength, and then waking up and the terrible days after, having no money, and being labled indegent by design.

That was just a year ago. Seems longer than that.
I will never forget thoes feelings and how alone and terrified I felt, and how cold my caregivers were.
When I think about it, I know that there were people who slept outside under bridges on that Christmas, or in tents, or wrapped in newspaper.
They were alone too. I wish I could have been able to take them in and I still do.
I wish we owned this property. I would have a place that's safe for them to be. And warmth and food too.
And great company, and it would be an awesome Christmas.
Maybe someday that will happen.

I can dream until then.

When the alarm goes off, there is a door that is slamed shut.
But it's still there. The lovely place of sleep.

Sometimes it seems that time slows and our perception of things shifts and bends and seconds take hours.
So it would seem. Maybe what's happening is that you've just entered into a twilight type zone of the waking world.

Sort of a hypnotic place of going through the motions, but never really being able to recount much of the day. A few highlights maybe, the same kind of thing as when we dream while we're alseep.

It would be interesting to find out if our brain waves are the same in both situations, and if this is what we experience in the waking type state of sleep that we fall into on some kind of regular basis, than maybe that would explain some of the experiences of thoes who loose time if you will.
Only in the people who are not so fratured the memories of the passage of time would be something they were aware of.

People who are fractured, i.e personality disorders, would more than likely not remember the times of waking dreams because they comparmentalize their experiences.
Somthing triggers something with an unusally strong bad feeling association to it, and the main person or the most constant personality of the fracture, the whole, if you will, or the house that contains much...
And the response is to retreat. Then the fracture surfaces, and takes over, and responds.
It could be looked at like a job where each fracture, or personality, takes a shift, and has a schedual according to the triggers.

The triggers are made note of at the time of the event. Our senses take it all in. Our brain which is the fastest computer on the face of the earth, records and stores everything.

Example: You smell something. It's sweet, and somehow familiar. But you can't put your finger on what it is. As you smell it, you begin to feel happy, but don't know why.
You feel comfort, and safe, at least you regester it, at least for a moment or two.
But what the smell is you can't define.

It's something your mind has on record. Maybe before your earliest memory you were in a garden where there were beautiful flowers and your parents were there and they were happy, and you came up to some pretty flowers that smelled so wonderful.
Everything about this is able to surface because of a single smell.
You don't remember the incident, but your mind does. It reacts to everything your senses records, and responds.

If we activly use only 10% of our brain, what is the other 90% doing?

What of de javu? I can't figure out how to remember to spell that word...
I wish there were a better word for it. The only time I've ever experienced anything to close to how it's been discribed to me is when I'm between the doors of waking and asleep.
That's when all the familiar things come back. Then they vanish.

And what about all thoes people who have memories of living at a different time?

The only thing that makes resonable sense is that what is going on in the other 90% would blow us away if we were able to see it all.

If we are made of star stuff, and we are energy housed in ever changing bodies, and they are only held together along with everything else that exists, by mear thought, and collective thought, it would seem reasonable that every cell in our bodies and every thought in our mind contains all the memories of everyone who has ever been here.

Maybe sometimes they surface, through all the layers, through all the confusion and order of our currant waking thoughts.

Maybe what's going on in our dreams, both waking and sleeping, is activity with in the other 90%.
That would be an expaination of why sometimes we have flying dreams, and when we wake up we are exausted.
It takes alot of energy to fly. Especially when the bones of the human body are so dense.

It would also explain why there are other experences we have that make us wonder.

Maybe, just maybe, we carry some of that back to the waking world of only 10% activity.

Maybe that's where brilliant human thought comes from.

...it all sounds so clinical. I guess I'm in one of thoes moments of overload...
well, maybe more than just a moment.

When bits of my dreams are so real that it makes me ask those who are awake if certian things happen, when I do come fully awake, I ususally feel a bit shaken.

This afternoon was no exception. Everything in my dream was in vivid color. Brilliant and real. What woke me was the sound and glimps of a man walking behind me and away from me. I was asleep and I saw and heard him.
My eyes poped open and I sat straight up. There was no one there. A few minuets earlier, as I found out, there had been someone there walking behind me and out the back door.

In my dream the house we are in was elongated sideways but when you looked at it, it was elongated from front to back.
An optical illusion for the mind, I think would be the best description.
We had somehow turned all the walls into gallery walls and every creative work I've ever done was there.
Some of the things, like the quilts, were folded and stacked on chairs.
The lighting was so bad on the main floor and the basement was all dirt on the floor and there was old lumber strewn about.
The beams that held the upper floors up were rotting.

It was hard to see the art on the walls where the lighting was bad, but everything was framed and behind glass.
The frames were very ornate.

There were two women trying to go through the basement to see the art in the darkest corners of the room, and they kept tripping over boards, and then I fell asleep in my dream.

I woke to find someone I work with waking me up and telling me that I needed to get up, and finish hanging up the art.
But all the room on all the walls were filled.
I asked her if the man who wanted to take the art class and because he was the only one, the class didn't go, was angry.

She said no as she began to unfold the quilts and hang them from the ceiling.
That's when I heard the man behind me.

As I think about it, I think the whole dream has to do with the stress I'm feeling most of the time. Everything seems like it's never enough, no matter how much I do.
It's kind of like having sheets on your bed that are three sizes too small.
All the time. There is no break. No way to catch my breath. No way to stop the feelings of falling so short.

I've tried. But it always ends up not enough. I wonder if the feelings of my father have come to settle on me.
That no matter what I did, or where I went, it would never be good enough.

Some days I feel like I'm being chased by wild dogs. Some days I wake up feeling like I'm being smothered.
It takes a while to get my self in gear so that I can go to work, or even do things around here.
I would love to find a key that would stop the feelings.

Another weird thing has been happening lately. I will turn the oven on to a certian tempature, and walk away, and no one goes near it, but when the time for what ever to be done, and go to take it out the temprature has been changed. Either lowered or highered.
No one has been anywhere close to the oven. I think we have a ghost or two in this house. I think they have been here a while and are just getting bold about the things they do.

The foundation was laid in 1909, and kevin found papers in the wall from 1923, and this farm has seen it's share of death. Unnessary death.
Like the sheep that someone tried to raise and neglected and the lambs got wet tail and started dying and then the adults got sick and then there had to be bon fires to take care of the dead bodies.

Just down the road, or up the road is a house. There has been at least two people who have commited sucide there. Maybe it's just some dead people passing through here who like to mess with things.

Maybe it's all nothing, or maybe it's all connected. I don't know. I know I feel at home here. And I love this farm. Maybe some things are comming back. Like doing things and not remembering. I hope that isn't happening. Out here it could be bad if that's what's going on.
One thing is sure, that sooner or later the answer will come.
Answers to why my dreams have been like the one today, why I wake up feeling like I do, and why the oven temprature changes on it's own. It just started doing this a couple of days ago. The oven is only a few years old and the nobs take a bit to turn them.

Anyway....I think I'm just really really stressed out. And too tired to do anything about anything.

The evening news is on. I couldn't watch. I can't stand the threads that dangle and we are suppose to just listen and wring our hands...or somthing like that.

All the what if's can make a person, well, a little nuts. No safe place to live, or go. No safe this. No safe that. Have you ever taken the time to count the number of bad news stories that are the first thing that slaps you in the face when you watch the news?

I would love to see good things make the news at the top of the hour instead of some last minuet after thought.
It kind of feels like eating bad food and then there is a great desert to top it off and your feeling really lousy by the time it arrives so you can't enjoy it.

Why is it that there is this insane zeroing in on bad stuff?

After pondering this thing, I can only come up with one answer, bad news sells.
Good news doesn't. No one would ever listen to a talk show where there was nothing but good stuff on it. And no one would ever buy into a reality show where nothing bad could happen.

We love misery. According to the entertainment industry who puts this mess together.
We love to see the cronic pain, dismemberment of anything or any body, that's why crime shows are so big. And we definately love to see people play games where there are all kinds of loosers and there is some big winner.
But no one remembers that when the new tale of soap opera live game show, thrills and chills come on.

The people you buy cars from, food from, clothes from, shoes from and anything else from sponsor this stuff.

I think somewhere along the line, when the sterile cookie cutter smiles got thrown out the attitude was we want to see reality....

But how much of it is "real" and how much is staged?
How much is edited out to give it that razors edge of throat cutting feel?

I don't watch the news. It's mostly entertainment. Or at least that's what it's suppose to be.

Walter Cronkite decited to get out of news reporting because he said it was no longer just reporting the news. It had become entertainment.
I tend to agree with him.

I quit watching everything but the weather several years ago.
I can read the news in the paper. That way if I get a few lines into it and I start getting angry I can just set it aside.
News papers are more useful than what comes out of the t.v.
You can line a bird cage with them, wrap messy moldy food in it, clean windows with it, put it on the floor for a new puppy or kitty.
And you can make paper mache with it or use it as a fire starter so you can have a barbq in the great out doors.

You can't do any of thoes things with a bad news cast on t.v. all you can do it turn the chanel or turn it off.
Nothing to show for the time spent watching bad news.

Well so much for the evening news. I think I'm gonna go paint for a while.
Then off to bed, and hopefully tomorrow will be blue skies and sunshine.

And I have to believe that somewhere some good news is happening. At least to one person in the world.

As it gets closer to Christmas the more depressed I feel. I find the rush to buy things depressing.
Even watching people do it is depressing. I would love to get a different view of how people behave when something this big is approaching.

But year after year, it's the same. And when it's over, as fast as you can blink, all the decorations are pulled down and the next big what ever is underway.

It's rush to this, rush to that, and if anyone gets in the way, scream at them and then if they don't move fast enough, shove them out of the way.

Driving is like that right now too. We were on our way back here the other day and some girl in a car smaller than ours almost took the part of the truck off. She missed it by about 3 inches and never bothered to slow down.
Kevin was crossing the street and almost got hit by a van who's driver was in way too much of a rush.

It was maddening to say the least.

In the Grocery stores and other places I've been since Thanksgiving came and went, the air of impatients has been building. I don't like how people behave durring this time of year. It would seem that scrooge is alive and well.

At the store where I work, people who come in seem like crazed wild animals. They are impatient and rude and just plain ugly.
If we have every register in the place going, and there are lines that go around the corner on every single one, they get pissed off because they have to wait.

Yet those same people go into walmart, which in this town is a super store, only a fraction of the regesters are going, they have to wait longer and they never get bent out of shape over it.
On the rare occasion I go to walmart, I've seen it go on.
I don't like walmart for several reasons, the least of them being they are way too big and very easy to loose your way in.

The ugly level of impatients is evident everywhere, in the parking lots, in the stores, and even just out on the street.
For once I would love to be around some people in a place of business where the meaning of the season would be far more important than how much money is made. And how much stuff gets sold that will in a short time be thrown into the trash, at least part of it anyway, adding to the over flowing landfills.

What a wonderful thought. Lets buy more stuff we don't need so that we can dump it on the land and in the water supply and then bitch and moan about the problem we've created.

For once I would love to see something different. I would love to see people care more about each other, durring this time, then making scheduals so they can tear through paper to get to stuff that other people have gone into debt for that they will spend the rest of the year trying to pay off.

The last 10 years or so, the Christmases I have experienced have been low key. I've purposely kept decorations up long into March simply because their pretty.
I've made the halloween decorations part of the normal decor in this house by the way. I like the funny faces of the pumpkins and kitties that remind me of the art of Frank L. Balum.
I will add to the decor with Christmas stuff and leave it up all year.

It's my way of protesting the attitude of the world. Of the market, of the rush of the american life style.

In my perfect world, everything would slow down. Money would be of little value in the big scheme of things, and bartering would be the norm.
People would be gentle with each other, and children would experience childhood without all the latest fads that make their rooms look like a store room for the leftovers from a stampeed at k-mart after some holiday sale.

Children would be allowed to have a childhood. Long into their teens, and parents would spend time getting to know these people from the time they arrive on the scene instead of having to worry about who the babysitter is going to be, because they have to work so many hours to pay the bills.

T.V.'s would be more of a foriegn word than a part of everyday life, and games that fuel the immagination would be normal.
There wouldn't be so much underlaying anger mixed with emense bordom that gives birth to intense impatients.

The children wouldn't have to deal with adult emotions, and the results of ignorance that ends up producing unwanted children would be rare.

There wouldn't be a need for hospitals to have adopted the policy of if you don't want your baby, you can leave it here, no questions asked.
And the ever growing incidents of finding new borns in trash cans would never exist.

Hospitals that double charges for thoes who can't afford care would be forced to do community service, and doctors who's fees are astronmical so they can live in huge houses and drive cars that are rediculous would be fined, heavily.

There would be a cap on lawyer's fees as well. And any public office, including that of the president would have a cap on their salary as well, Oh say 30 thousand dollars a year, instead of what they are.

And after a person left the office there would be no perks that the american people continue to pay for until the person dies.

Corporations would be required to do community service, escpecially if they were CEO's of a company.
If they failed to do that, they would be fired from their possition.
Some of that community service would be working in nursing homes and half way houses, and serving food to the indgent.
They would also be required to spend time homeless, so that they could have a better understanding of what that's like.
Especially if they were in a goverment job.

In my perfect world the things that didn't sell off store shelves that weren't parishable, would become availble to the poor and people living in towns out in the middle of no where.
The product wouldn't be distroyed and end up in the over flowing landfills.
Old coats would be recycled in a unique way. Thoes that weren't given to thoes that don't have coats would be taken apart and turned into useful items, like tent floor coverings and bed rolls, instead of sending them to places where there is no need of coats because the weather doesn't require them to have coats.

The energy put tord fighting wars over power and oil and other stupid things would be put into more useful things. Like making houses and buisnesses solar and wind powered. There wouldn't be the need for so much oil if the only things that required it were the modes of transportation.
And thoes too would under go huge changes as well. The freeway and streets would be changed into monorail systems. The tracks would be magnetic. Just like other countries who use thoes systems they would be brought here.
The millitary would be employed to build the systems, and that would keep them busy.

The chemicals used in farming would become obsolete as all farms would be required to become organic. And the clear cutting of old growth forests would be come illegal.
Responsible forest management, the thinning of trees would become the normal way of doing things.
Strip mining that scars the land would stop. And hemp would be legal.
It has been proven that the hemp plant puts nutrients back into the soil, and the uses for the plant are numerous. The products we import into this country alone generate 300 million dollars a year. Nothing to sneeze at.
Hemp is mold resistant, and so building materials made of hemp stand up longer to the test of time.
Paper made of hemp last longer than that made of cotton.

The plant it self is one of the most perfect plants that exist on the planet. It's nutrional value is amazing, and things that are made of non renewable recources can be made from hemp.
These things are documented.

But my perfect world doesn't exist. I know it will never exist.
As long as greed and coruption exists things will only get worse, and more people, our children and their children will pay a higher and higher price for the money mongers that are in control.
I greive for them and us. I see no bright future, only one of further destruction.
I can see how it's very possible that we will mirror the movie "Soylant Green" in a very few short years.
Where people will be bred to feed the masses of people.
There won't be anything left.
We will become canibles and never know that we are. Only those in power will know it.

...deep sigh....