harold_maude's journal

I thought that I was finally over what ever I managed to catch here not too long ago, but I managed to have something else invade my body.
So here we go again.

I'm tired of being sick. I know that because after the first bout of illness I was not completely well that when the bug decited to hit, it hit hard.

I'm exausted now, and I hope that what ever this is gets over soon. Everything aches again, even my hair. I feel so weird, and I'm sure I'm running a fever again. I took some stuff to help with the ache, but it isn't working so good.

Deep sigh....

The last time I spent so much of one month fighing illness was when I was a kid. Me and my sisters and brother seemed to be sick all the time. We caught everything, including several bouts of the three day measles.
My parents, both being in the medical field, would over load us with various drugs, and vitamins.
The house I grew up in was poorly insultated and being around that many sick people the illnesses would go round and round and round. Even into summer time.

I hate having to take anything. If I can ride something out with out the aid of anything I will. But over the last couple of years the family diseases of arthritis and algeries and other fun and entertaining things have forced me into taking over the counter meds so that the pain is manageable.

Anyway, I think the over load of stress I've been under for such a long time is very likely a deep contributor to how easily things can nail me.

I just wanna curl up and sleep for a long time. And wake up with no unnessary worries to have to deal with.

It would be nice, but that's not the world I live in.

deep sigh...
I'm gonna go to bed now.

Sleep well everyone

For the last few nights, there has been a re-occuring theme in the things that are discussed here.
The frustration at the stupid madness that exists.
Acually it's been going on for months and months. The same patterns, the same unresolved conclusions.
And nothing is changed.

I woke up this morning feeling a little off balance. And as I struggled to make it up the stairs and give my self a chance to wake up, the taste of last night's discussion and all the other discussions of similar flavor decended in one big lump.

As I watched the sun rise and saw that the color of the sky was blue, and that today would be at least in part, a sunny day,
I realized that people can get stuck in the same unsovable holes to the point where even a sunny day in the middle of winter gets lost.

I've participated in several of these discussions and the person on the other end of them has usually been in a state of drunken haze.
I should know better. But they need to vent. They've needed to vent and vent and vent....

What we talk about, politics, teachers, the school system, corporate crap, and how angry these things make this person, never changes.

Last night, it started again. There was another person in the room who got involved talking about these things, and when I realized where all of this was going, I left the room.
I could feel the depression decend like a heavy blanket.
And the anger, and the madness that comes with seeing things go on and feeling the only power you have is to talk about it.

I heard bits and peices of what what was said, and the person who's depth of frustration gets unlocked and poured out was challanged to do something instead of just talking about it.

Now this comes out of the mouth of a person who talks about doing all kinds of things and never does anything about what they talk about.

A kind of crazy lets beat up what pisses us off without actually doing anything kind of thing.

I'm glad I left the room. I was exausted. I've been in the state of exaustion for months. And this morning I realized that one of the major contrubitors to this exaustion has been these kinds of discussions.
They have taken my energy, what there is of it, and have taken my life, and nothing is changed.
Except that I end up feeling worse.

I realized that I want to be able to enjoy the day. Simply for the sake of being able to see the sky. And feel the excitment of spring just around the corner.

I have my own frustrations that I deal with at work. The madness I see that will never end as long as the manager that is there is in power.
I'm looking for a new job. That's the only answer that makes any sense to me.

It's hard when you see things that are changeable and you challange them and are told that's the way the real world is.
I don't believe that down in my bones.

I believe that change that stays starts with one person, choosing to live different.
There is a time for talking. But that can only go on for so long before it becomes easier to bitch and moan than to do something.
And it's an adiction.

The problem arrises when the person who this pours out of is so entrenched in a state of depression brought on by frustraions that won't go away, so they end up drinking themselves into a stupor night after night, that they end up talking about blowing themselves away, or setting themselves on fire.

I've watched this person running head long into what is shaping up to be a huge wall.
I've listened and made suggestions as how to deal with the frustrations at things that arn't changeable, but nothing happens.

So this morning as I sat and this huge collective mass of months of this hit me and all I wanted to do was go back to sleep, I realized that all of the discussions have been completely pointless.

It takes a while sometimes to get to the point where you realize that nothing you do or say will help.

I want to see the world change, and thoes who have the power to change things from the top, have compassion and wisdom as the shoes that they wear.
But I realize that certian things have now gained so much momentum that trying to stop and do something different is like trying to stop an out of control plane that is about to crash.

I have the power to change my world by changing how I live in it.
It may not make any differece in how businesses run. It may not make the war stop. It may not do anything other than make it easier to live here.
But at least it's doing something. And that is better than just talking and talking and talking and getting more and more angry at everything.

It's going to be a beautiful day. I'm going to spend some time looking at it, and just enjoy the color of blue up there.

The first thing that hits you is the smell. Kind of a salty fresh fish smell mixed with cedar and pine.
That's even before the curtian of trees gets pulled out of the way and the end of land comes into view...

The ocean. That wild untamed lady who puts the whole of your world in perspective.
That's where my brain is this morning.
On a particular stretch of beach with one very large rock that goes up and then hits a slant. That's the top of this rock.

There are smaller accompaning rocks, almost attendants to the big rock and then there is the ocean.

When everything in your life feels like too much food in your belly, being there and seeing how it washes over everything puts what you feel, think and worry about in perspective.
The rythem of the waves is calming dispite the reality that they can wash away every standing structure in a heart beat.

If you look out into the blue grey mystery you can see it build.
Gathering momentum, and with each statement of water that crashes and sprays, it gets bigger and bigger.
Then it rolls, huge, white, and beautiful.
It slams against the rocks and makes this incredible deep bass tone that holds you.

It's so beautiful and so perfect. The life that exists in tidal pools has to be strong. There is constant motion when the tide is in. Thoes little individuals are stuck tight to rocks that stay submerged durring high tide and then, only for a brief time do thoes rocks ever get exposed to air.

Hermit crabs. Star fish. Sea anomies. Sea weed. Mussells. The occasional red rock crab. Even more strange is to see a dungeness crab bumping around in one of thoes pools.

Life. In a place where there is no calm. Tough. Existing. Living and dying. Making way for new life. And becomming part of the next generation of what ever species exists there too.

The feel of sand on your feet. The prints in the wet sand that show your journey as you wander. Home.
This place where life is carved out by water and wind makes you aware of something fragile about yourself. And it's ok.

She talks to you. If you listen. She tells you that you are part of her and she part of you. The same thing happens in the mountians by the way. They've been around for alot longer than any of us, and will be standing when we go.

She caresses your soul. Kisses tears away by giving you her's every time the spray of her breath settles on your skin.
She plays with your hair. And you feel her eyes setttle in on your heart.

And with the wisdom of the universe she will wisper to your heart "this too shall pass."

I wish I was there now. I miss her. I miss home.

This post was edited by harold_maude on Feb 22, 2005.

It's Sunday night and I'm spending some quite time here, trying to unwind the corkscrews in my brain.
It usually takes a few hours after the weekend of busting chops to plow through the mountian of work that's always waiting.
The mountian will never get done.

It was cold out this morning and I'm looking forward to a more consistant weather pattern. I want so bad to have a huge bon fire where we can be a lot tribal and watch the night sky.

Alot of people at work are as frustrated as I am. Several are doing what I started doing, looking for a new job.
One person who watches alot of things asked me how many hours I get, and when I told her she replied "and they expect you to do all this stuff?"
"yeah" was my reply.
"That's nuts" was her reply. It was nice to be validated in that area.
Makes me feel a little less crazy and not so guilty when I'm moving in a little slower manner to finish something that requires some extra time.

I made some tomato cheese toast when I got home and put some garlic sauce on top. It was yummy. As I ate it, there was a flow of requests that I join everyone in the front room....I stayed in the kitchen. I wanted some quite time.

So many people wanting all the time....and there are so many times I want to lay my head down and have someone just take care of me for a little while.
I don't want to do or say anything or fix anything or make anything alright.
I just want someone to pat my head and let me fall asleep.
I feel like the rock that keeps the dam from bursting at the seams sometimes.

If I could be a four leaf clover for a little white,
and just sit in the sun, vanished in a field
it would be awesome.
Or a pebble on the sand next to the ocean, non discript and let the edge of the waves just wash over me, it would be awesome.

I guess I'm just way over tired tonight. Just like a lot of other nights.

Sleep well everyone.

This morning I was continuing on a painting that has been in process for over a month and the frustration at it not going anywhere or showing me the direction that would take me to the end of the story as it were, caused me to take up a very point pen and begin to try to fix it.

It was fine until I began to realize that if I continued much longer I would end up distroying it.
It dawned on me that I needed to take a break. A big one. From several things.

In looking for a different job, my hope is that part of the intense frustration I feel will subside. If it doesn't, well then there is something else that needs to be changed.
What that is, I don't have a clue at the moment.
My suspicion is that I'm too close to so many forests all at once to see clearly at all.

At least it's not pitch black anymore. Now it's just deep shades of dark and their fuzzy so I can't tell what I'm looking at.
I think I need a vacation from me. But since there is no zipper on this body that I can just unzip and walk away for a while, then I have to figure my way out.

Looking at everything that surrounds me in my life, and looking at it for what it is, I'm very aware that what hits my senses and emotions is all problems.
Things unsolvable, and raw.

There is no gentleness about what my emotional state has been like over the past 6 months.
What I see happening in the goverment, and the lack of regard for the earth and the stewardship that we humans are suppose to be emersed in.
The corporate world and it's lack of regard for anything but money.
The people I see who are terrified of their own creativity, and need a babysitter to give them enough confidence to do anything of the simplist nature. Like using a stencil, or paint, or finishing a peice of prefab resin cast plaster.
Or even looking at raw materials and thinking about what's possible.
I don't see life. I don't see children being given safe childhoods anymore. That's been going on for years. Children are looked at and studied and bombared with immages and products that they shouldn't have to deal with.
Adults shouldn't have to deal with being bombarded with so much crap.

I call it crap because what it ends up becomming is just one more thing that will end up in landfills and polution in the water making everything that much more of a mess....

See what I mean? My head is full of all of this. More and more all the time. I see some people struggling to fight back, but because we have been so anestized when the ideas of change and simplifing hit us in the face there is no interest. Just give me another fix of t.v. or junk food or new clothes or plastic entertainment and shut up. I can't hear the latest gossip from hollywood....

I see farms that infected with so much chemical crap that it's a wonder we all don't have a meriad of disease going on in our bodies.
We eat this stuff that comes out of chemical drenched ground that's been genetically altered to the point where it's dead.
The majority of the food that is available to us in supermarkets has been irriated, changed over salted, over sugarized over done and filled with things that we don't need.

Everyday there is a new pill that you can take for something that is sympomatic that your body isn't getting what it needs, and the side effects are worse than what your suffering from.

If all this stuff we take or eat or wear or watch really did any good, it would put big business out of business.
If a person went to a doctor and actually got well there would be no need for the doctor anymore.
If a pill could truly fix what's wrong the pharmacuticle companies would go out of business.
It's to their advantage to keep us in at least a somewhat diseased state.

This is the kind of stuff that I see that frustrates me endlessly, and I can't seem to stop seeing it.
I need to somehow change the movie. But there in lays the problem, I don't know how.

I feel like I'm screaming with all my might and there is no sound comming out....maybe I'm going mad....

madness and genius are twins and just to mess with our comfort zones they change places on a regluar basis.

The last few days I've been watching comedy movies to try and lighten things up. But it's not working.

I feel like I'm standing on the sand and watching a wall of water comming at me that there is no escape from.
And the reason there is no escape is because even though there are helecopters just over head, no one will throw down a rope.

I'm expendable, and momentary, and of no use to their adgenda.
So their watching and eating while I stand below waiting for death to come.

That's how I feel. And I don't know how to escape what I feel, so that I can enjoy the day.
I can't just walk away from myself, like I did with the painting this morning.
I feel like I'm being distroyed by all I see and there is no escape.

Maybe all it will take to escape is for the weather to settle down and become spring. Maybe I have major cabin fever and just don't reconize it.
Maybe I'm so over tired and so exausted that what I really need is about 3 days sleep.

Maybe I need to just stop debating what I can't fix and stop driving myself crazy...
The people who know what their doing and how harmful it is arn't listening anyway.
Their too busy being concerned about how much money their going to make to day to listen to reason.

...after I watched Donnie Darko for the first time, I was overwhelmingly inspired to answer with a series of small drawings. One of them says:
"Wake up.
Are you so deaf
Are you so blind
that the things
that really matter
you don't take the time
to really mind?"

That's what's screaming inside my head, every day, and when I sleep it screams inside my dreams.
It screams at me when I pick up a newspaper or read a magazine.
It screams at me when I see people terrified and rushing around in circles doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
It screams at me when I see brand new, never been used products being destroyed because they haven't sold.
It screams at me when people let the whims and latest fashions dictate to them who they should be.
It screams at me when I see more and more generations wandering around aimlessly with no purpose.
It screams at me every time a farmer drenches his fields with more chemicals.
It screams at me when they herd buffalos up and kill them because their are in the way of feed lots and might just infect the over chemically infected cows that we get our beef from.
It screams at me when hospitials over charge the poor.
It screams at me when the man who sits in the most powerful office in this country shows just how little he values human life by giving companies that are responsible for the majority of land being distroyed, the land we live on and get our food from, more and more money. And by these actions tells us that he doesn't give a rip about us, we are expendable, momentary and the only things that truely matter to him are money and power.

Yeah it screams at me all the time. And I don't know how to make it shut up.

I think it screams because my heart is broken over all the unessiary loss that takes place ever day.

That's all I can see anymore.
And I realize that the in the last few posts I've been screaming,

Wake up.
Are we so deaf
are we so blind
that the things
that really matter
we are too busy
being numbed
to have the strength
to be able mind...

Very early this morning there was a conversation that took place.
It was about art and it's value.
Now what made this conversation interesting to me was that it took place in my head.
And as it happens when thoes kinds of conversations take place where I'm just the listening end of it and the people who are talking are people who I know and voices that are generated from articles and observations, I listen and often find that I too have my opinions about what's being disgussed.

I save my replys for my journals. It's the one place where I'm the only voice I'm dealing with.

The conversation went something like this "you should do something with your art" and "Your really good at that, you should sell your art" and "To achieve reality in your paintings you must do a,b and c" and "the only true artists are the one's who've gone to school to learn how to do art properly"
And this, "we only want to see your art if you have all thoes letters behind your name"...

The status quo. The right way to do it. This the only way to do it. (People who are in the position of teaching,who don't realize they are simply guides who are there simply to help people to find the art well in themselves, who should never be allowed to teach. Their true intrest is in reproducing themselves.
They need to be in a factory somewhere doing assembly line work, and deal with their inscurities that one of the students or several may surpass their ablities in creating.)

I have this crazy notion that simply by participating in the act of creating a person is doing something with their art.
They are doing it.

I think the next time someone says thoes stupid words to me, that I should be doing something with my art, I'm going to look at them and depending on if they are male or female, I'm going to say, hmmm, you have sperm/eggs, you should be out there doing something with it.
See what kind of reaction it produces.

I'm so tired of people looking at the creative process in terms how much money it can make.
I'm tired of artists denying how the art really wants to come out and enslaving themselves to what will be marketable or not.
That makes for nothing more then a bunch of great technitions.

If you really sat down with some of these people and asked them what kind of art they would be doing if what they secretly loved doing could make them money, I wonder what kinds of answers they would give.

There are so many works of art out there that are dead works because there is nothing of the artist present in the work other than the trained skill on the canvas.

The ones that are alive are the one's that grab you and shake you and make the insides of you do things.

It's a lovely thought that what you love others would too and get it in their head that what you love to create is worth money to them.
But if it never happens, is that any reason to stop creating and stop loving the act of creation?

I read a passage in a book once, the title is "Bird by Bird" I can't remember the authors name, but she was talking about the students that take her seminars on writing.
They always ask her about publishers and getting published.
Her response doesn't make them happy at all.
She says that they need to write for themselves above all else, and that they shouldn't think about writing to get published.

Many of them, she says, leave very disapointed. Somewhere in the mix, they have come to believe that this awesome gift inside them only has value if it gets published.

What a waste. And it's the same with thoes who do visual art.
We are told by galleries, magazines, jurried shows, that if we don't have something that is done a certian way so it can be marketed, what we do is of no value.

Children are taught this, unwittingly by their parents, and then by the school system and then by the market place.
And the really sad thing is they really believe it's true.

This giant machinery that decides if what you have in you has value or not. And if it doesn't then you need to stop doing it, or if you persist in doing it, call it a hobby.

How dedraging is that.

So here I am, flying in the face of the machinery, screaming with my life, that if you love it, and you participate in it, and flow with it and dance with it, and no matter how it looks to the rest of the world, it has value.
It's precious. It's beautiful and is worth just as much as the Mona Lisa.
Or Stary night. Or Falling Water. Or the statue of David.

It's priceless because it came from the same pool as thoes other works of art did.
The heart and the soul and the spirit inside a human being.
What you create is amazing.
And to look at it and compare it to anothers act of creation and deem it valueless is a sin against yourself and what you have inside you.

All of this self devaluation is a direct result of a realitivly few individuals with certian tastes who have for what ever reason been elevated to the position of deciding a work of art's value.

Did you know that a critic once told Van Gogh that his art was dog shit?

Immagine that. Immagine what would we would have missed out on if Vincent had listened to that crack pot.
If he had not been so emersed in the act of creation that was flowing out of him like a continual flood and listened to that critic he probably would have gone back to his flat and distroyed all the art and all the tools he used to create it.

That critic was part of the machinery. The same stupid machine that is still up and running today.

Do yourself a favor and stop listening to the machinery, and all it's agents.
If you love writing poetry, then do it. If you love to finger paint then do it, if you love writing novels that never get finished because you get too side tracked, do it.
If you love writing music, even if you never learn how to transcribe on paper what that music is, do it anyway.
If you love sewing and quilting and kniting because it's a joyful thing and makes you happy, keep doing it.
Don't ever let anyone convince you that what you create has no value if it's not marketable or doesn't look like the picture in the magazine.
If you love to cook or build things out of legos or design things that fall apart, and the fun part is watching it fall apart, or anything else that makes you an active part of that creative process inside you, do it.
And keep doing it.
Do it becasue it's a gift inside you. Do it because that's part of the creative package that you got when you were concieved.
And if it all comes down to you being the only audience you ever have, do it anyway.
You'll be a better, happier person because of it.

It's so hard for me when I listen to people who are terrified of their creativity. They are afraid of making a mistake.
They want it to look like the one in the magazine.
They can't draw because it doesn't look like this or that, or it's a waste of time.
It breaks my heart. It tears me up inside. And everytime I meet these people they tell me stories of what they used to do.
And when I ask them why they stopped they give me a long list of reasons.
And I want to scream and weep for the loss. I want to grab hold of them and tell them that who ever told them thoes things was wrong.
And that making mistakes is a learning process, and tell them about all the peices of art that I thought were mistakes at first and when I decited to see what would happen if I continued are the works that have blown me away in what unfolded in the end.
I want to take all thoes people who out of ignorance have done so much to kill the beauty of the creative process and flush their heads in several toilets until they stop doing the damage they do.

I want to take all thoes frustrated artists who are in teaching positions because they got rejected by galleries because what they were creating wasn't in vogue or wasn't a nice decorator peice, and tell them stop making your students pay for someone elses stupidity.
I want to tell them that they are only guides. That they can't teach creativity because it's as individual as the person and it's a gift that each human has.
That all they can do is show people the tools that are used and how they work and after that it's their responsiblity to encourage them to explore the creative well inside them.
And blow off the lid and tear away the box it's in, because it's the biggest christmas gift they got when they got created.

I want to tell anyone who will listen that just because how you create isn't what's popular or marketable, that doesn't mean that you should stop.
It just means that you have something that is rare and beautiful and something that no one else can take away from you.
Give yourself permission to aprove your art, what ever form it takes, and give your self permission to love the act of doing it smiply because you can.

What a waste it would be, if at the end of your life, you had missed all the wonders that are part of that gift simply because you had listened and believe someone who doesn't get to live inside your shoes or taste how good your creative cookies are.
They were and are created first for you, and then for anyone else you care to share them with.

That I believe is the fundemental essence of participating in the act of art.
Everything else shouldn't direct what you do with it.
And one final thought, if you have let thoes around you and the world tell you that what you create has no value because your not "doing" something with it,
do your self a huge favor and tell them to go stick it where the sun don't shine.

This post was edited by harold_maude on Feb 16, 2005.