harold_maude's journal

I just finished a 3 day run at work and have come to the conclusion that working 8 plus hours a day several in a roe, is a very exausting thing to do.

Last night I was so wiped out that I started getting sick to my stomache.
I get there and go hard and no stop until I clock out.
I don't get paid enough for as much as I end up paying physically and metnally every time I clock in.

enough bitching about work...

It looks like winter has finally started thinking about settling in on this part of the world.
I would love the snow better if it didn't go in the streets and make dangerous weapons of other wise somewhat safe vehiels.
Not that would keep the people who drive like they are some deserted road from being out there, but at least it wouldn't have the option of becomming a skating rink out there.
I love to drive, except for in the winter.

That truely sucks.

Anyway, it's that time of the year and people are getting cranky and short tempered now, and so I would love to spend the rest of the winter being a bear and sleep in some cozy cave until spring.

But now is the time when we put on our heavy coats and seveal layers of clothes and wonder when the next dumping of the white stuff will take place.
It's not like when your a little kid, and the white stuff rocks and all you wanna do is play in it. Make snowmen and snow angels and go sleding.
Even the big kids like it, you can snow board and ski, and sled and make snowmen and snow angels too, although they are bigger due to the fact that you can reach higher and have longer legs.

Finished another painting this morning, but I think I'm going to
do a kind of frame to put it on. I'm thinking do a second painting that's a bit larger underneath and then put the first one on the second.
It will be the first I've ever done like that and it may look really awesome and open up some interesting places to explore.

The more I think about it, the more I don't want to teach the three classes I'm commited to.
I don't think that anyone who doesn't have the drive to commit to persuing watercolor should take an off hand one time class.
That doesn't do the media justice and most people who take a class in something you can spend a life time exploring and still not learn all there is, walk away with what ever from.

I know that's just my opinion, but shit, I see it all the time.
These people who get a wile hair because they are bored and need a new pastime so they decide their gonna take a class.
So they go buy all this stuff, and then never use it after the class is done.
It kind of pisses me off, but I guess it's not my problem.

I've spent the majority of my life studing art and emersing myself in the wonders of it, and I'm over the top when it comes to being passionate about it. I know what doing it ever day produces.
Inspiration comes so rarely. And when it's not there and your working your ass off anyway to keep your skills honed and tight, when it does come, it's amazing.
Your so ready for it and it's like an orgasm.
But it doesn't get like that if a person only does it when their in the mood.
Fuck that shit. You can't only do it when your in the mood.
I've never met a musician who only played when they were in the mood.
Waiting around for in the mood is like only writing when you have maybe a workable thing.
You have to discipline yourself to do it every day. There is no other way to approach art or music or writing.
Anything else makes all that a hobby.
And if it's only a hobby then it doesn't matter, you might as well be out fishing or going to the movies, or playing parchesy.

I know I'm a fanatic when it comes to art. I'm not ashamed of that.
I love it even when I'm so dry I have to force myself to sit there and put the hours in.
I've had so many dry times. And it wasn't until I got into watercolor that I finally understood the value of daily painting.
I used to ride waves of inspiration. They would last for about six months and then I'd move on to something else.
And the new thing would always produce this thing,
an excitment and that would be the inspiration that would be the driving force.
Then I hit that ten year block where I did no drawing, but alot of quilting and beading.

After I stared in watercolor, there was such a huge flow of creative force behind the work. I was producing lots and lots of work. Then I hit my first dry spell. It's scared the shit out of me.
I couldn't deal with another 10 years of no drawing or painting.
So I painting everyday. Did alot of geometric work.
Just to keep painting.
I didn't care if it looked like shit, I didn't care if I had to do it that way for the rest of my life. I wasn't going to loose something this good.
And it payed off.
The next time of ispiration hit and it was amazing. I was right there.
What a rush. What a ride.
And the finished work was amazing.
It kind of looks like something related to tolkens world.

It convinced me why it's so important to do every day. No matter how much you don't want to, or don't feel like it.
And the really amazing thing about it is that anyone, I mean anyone can take any thread of the arts and do that.

All it takes is learning how to use the tools and then find out where your creative leadings are and go for it.
In the beginning when your first working with it, your going to do alot of things that will look not so ok.
but that's ok. Your learning a new thing.
Save that stuff.
Use it to see how far you've grown in six months, a year.

There is this quote from a guy named balzac:
"Waiting for inspiration is an act of vanity, one must
pick up the materials and get one's hands dirty"

That's where it is. Just doing it. No excuses. After a while it will become a passion.
I get tired of hearing from people that they arn't creative.
I'd like to shove that shit down some dark hole,
because it isn't true.
We are all creative in one way or another.

I've heard this too in defining creativity, I can't draw a straight line, well that's what rules are for.

People are so scared of making mistakes, and they want it all perfect.
It doesn't happen that way. You make lots of mistakes. They have a lot to teach you.
There is so much that you can learn from those things.
But people don't see that.
They want their errasers and trash can handy so they can get rid of some of the most important work they will ever do.
They want to look polished and perfect and I want to scream when I hear all that comming out of people's mouths.

I say, learn to love your artistic mistakes. They are like the road map to learn about your creativity.
With out them you won't get to be polished.
With out them you don't grow, you just sit there, still in that same stupid scared state, and wish they could paint like that.

I guess this is the night for airing pet peeves....

Just once I would love it if someone who said they had no creative ablity would decided to persuse some art venu, and do it every day. And even if their stuff looked like junk to the rest of the world, they would do it anyway.
Just once I would love to see some ordinary person do that.
It would make me think there are people out there who are breaking out of boxes their teachers as small children put them into.

I figure if more people did art of some kind there would be less people fighting about things that have nothing of value.
There would be less aimless people out there.
And you could take anyone with stress in their lives and teach them how to relax by doing art.

Another thing that really frustrates me is people who try to reproduce them selves artisticly in the people they teach.
That's just wrong.

A teacher, a good one is simply a guide.
that's all.
You can't teach someone their creativity. You can only show them how the tools work.
that's all.
and it doesn't matter if the student ends up being better than the teacher. In fact, I think the theacher would do right by hoping and expecting the student to supass them.
Look ,
we're here for just a little while.

You get to do only for a little while. It's part of the deal to pass your stuff on.
You can't take it with you, so why not aim to make the next person or people comming up behind you better than you were able to achieve.
Why be greedy?
What does that get you except the personality of scrooge and who wants to die a scrooge?

I want to find a student that I can teach all I have learned to, show them everything and then tell them find your own voice, take the tools and go for it.
Makes a lot more sense than it dying with me.

I know far too many suspicious artists out there who refuse to share their knowlege except if they get paid alot of money.
And then they want to reproduce themselves in someone else.
As if they really owned it anyway.
I don't own my gifts or talents. I'm just a caretaker of them.
I love it when someone I've shared things I've learned with takes it and goes where I hadn't even considered the possiblity of going.
I've never charged money to teach anyone. And I think that's part of the reason I don't want to teach thoes 3 classes I've commited to, there is money involved.
It almost feels like I'm prostuting my gifts by getting paid for teaching how the tools work.

I don't mind selling finished works. Not that I charge alot for them. People keep telling me I don't charge enough.
what they don't understand is that I don't feel right about charging all kinds of money for something I love.

I've given away work. I used to do give it away because I felt like that was all it was worth.
I didn't think it was worth money.
I still struggle with that issue. It's hard to put a price on my art.
Not that I'm attached to finished work. I'd have no trouble burning it.
I've distroyed several works just because I felt like it.
I've had people get mad at me for doing it.
They seem to think I'm very talented. And they also seem to think it's worth alot of money.

It still blows me away when people buy my art, or prints.
There was this woman who gave me $80 a print instead of what I was asking, one was ten and the other 3 were 15.
She then appoligized for not paying me more for the prints but that was all she could afford.
I thought she was nuts. And told her so.
I even tried to give her back the extra money. But she refused.
She insisted.

I still can't understand why she would think they were worth that much.

geeze...I'm rambling again...
talkin to myself.
got motor mouth of the brain...it's a good thing this is just a journal and not a speach I'm giving at a convention or something...I'd put everyone to sleep by now.

But that's why journals are so awesome...you can write as long as you need to and when your done, you can walk away and it's ok.

Well, I guess I'll close for now...enough babbling for the night.
See ya tomorrow.

It seems that I have a preferance for keeping certian things in my life out of public eye when I am present.

Today at work I spent two hours being very vunrable in an area of my life that up until a month ago, I had no intention of publicly displaying.
I did what I did so that the corporation would have the idea that I'm working to fill empty spaces that they require filled.
I wish I haddn't.
I felt like a performer on a stage with no hiding place.

It felt like this part of me which is very personal was laid out there and the people passing by were some how disgusted by it. Or found it to be somthing they didn't want.

I realized that it had no value to anyone but me. I felt exposed in a way that no person wants to be exposed in.

It almost felt like I was laying part of me out there to be trampled on.

I was so glad when the day was done, and now my hope is that no one will want to take the classes I've signed up for over the next month. I don't want to put this part of me out there again.
It dosen't mean anything to anyone but me.

It's a huge part of my private world. The one I retreat into when everything around me feels like it's in the toilet, and there is no one to help me out.
In a huge way I feel like I dishonored myself.

That was how the day ended.
How it started was an encounter with one of my managers disgussing different things related to the corporation and a very distinct feeling that I've just been handed more pressure, and that sucks because I already feel like no matter how hard I try it isn't doing any good.
No matter what I do, it's all too little.
Too much lack for too long.

How do you change things when what your facing is a long time of a failed experiment?
I keep thinking I need to find someone who can do this job better than me.
Someone who has the fire and the in depth know how to turn things around and make it go in the right direction.
I can't shake the feeling that they picked the wrong person for the job.
At the same time I know that no one wants the job I have.
That in this area where there is an undertone of apathy the reason no one wants this job is because it's hard to convince people that don't care that what you have to offer them is worth while.

I keep thinking that I'll stay until after the first of the year and then hope they find someone to fill this possition who really can do everything that the corporation expects of them and do it with a smile.

I'm an artist, not a business monger. I don't love money, and I have a hard time with thinking about money, money money all the time.
Everything of value to this company has to do with money. Nothing more.

I know that. It's simply business. But it sucks.
I was told by someone who had the job I do a while ago that there was lots of freedom with this job.
But I can't see it. All I see is that I'm a monkey doing the monkey song and dance.
And for what?
So the corporation will get richer off my labor.

I wish I could win the lottery, then it would matter if I did a great job or not. Not that it matters now, but the difference would be that if they got rid of me I wouldn't have to deal with the stupid routine of doing the monkey dance for some new employer who doesn't care about anything but my performance and how much money it will make them.

So here's to the lack there of, may it never distroy thoes of us who live two paychecks away from homelessness.
May it never crush our spirit and cause us to give up and lay down and die.
No job, no business, no corporation is worth laying down who you are and giving your life away to make some corporate mucky muck richer.

...I am so glad that this day is over.
So glad.

This morning when the alarm went off it sounded, in my state of being jarred into the waking world, like something that was out of place.
I know that's the idea of an alarm in the morning when your lost deep in sleep, is to sound out of place.

Like a hand reaching down into some murky soup and searching and then finding what ever it's owner is looking for and then, jerk and pull.

...good morning....

Some mornings I wake up and it isn't until sometime a bit later that I'm aware of anything.
Some mornings I wake up and can remember bits of the dreams I had, and was wandering around in just a few moments earlier.

Yesterday I felt like the life was smothering me, and when it cleared, the thoughts that led to yesterday's journal ended up showing up.

I like mornings. When no one but me and my journal are awake.
I call it my think time. It sounds like as good a title as any other that I could give it.
I tend to give words to things of my own view.
And thoes words are only discriptive to me. They often arn't the words that the rest of the world gives thoes things.

That makes them my world words.
In music, when I'm wandering around looking for sounds and notes that work for me, and find things that hit just right, I call that a great soup base.
I know soup has nothing to do with music, but a good music line to work with is as satisfying as a bowl of hot soup.
Hence the name.

I think maybe lots and lots of people have their own world words, things that they understand and explain things in a way that makes sense to them.

Maybe that's how catch frases get started. Or words that end up being reconized by a lot of people to mean a certian thing.
I can think of several off hand.

Cool. Hot. Gay. Tanked. Bombed. Blown away. Burned. Toasted. Baked. Or how about something being "the shit"

All words that mean things. All words that have become references for certian reconizeable things. Like a signal.
Some where, at some time before thoes took on the meanings they have now, someone had thoes words as part of their world.
And they made senes to them.
A personal reference point. Other people heard them, and it made sense to them, and then it spread out.
And pretty soon alot of people everywhere began to use thoes words to define something or someone.

And then they ended up as a definition in the dictionary.
Part of the social language of a certian time that helped and helps define us as a very specific era of time.

The power of thought. Mix in the power of words.
And all of a sudden you have something new. Something that defines our social place and understanding and currantness.

Makes me wonder what other words ended up being common catch frases to other people 300 years ago.
Or a thousand years ago.

And somewhere, back in time, how did the people communicate then, so that other people knew what they were talking about.
And what of language it's self?

What was the first private word that became a common group word so that people could communicate with each other and feel like they were connected...

Was it ug? Or a certian way someone grunted at another person?
Where did the word fire come from? Or rain. Or love or hate.
Before dirt was refered to as dirt, what was it called. Way back before people learned that makeing pictures could be used to communicate things?
Where did the origins of language start?

...hmmmm...
just a few wandering threads in the wind that have given off the sent of another creative moment.
So many facets to think about. So many.
Wonder where my thoughts will take me tomorrow...

This post was edited by harold_maude on Dec 04, 2004.

What is the difference between a person who finds contentment in what would seem a boring continous never changing life and a person who doesn't?

What is the difference between someone who is content no matter where they are and someone who constantly needs something to make them feel alive?

Why is it that when someone has an experience they think that the same experience everyone else should have too?

Every person is different.
How they view the world.
How they See the elephant under the rug, or the parrot.

There in lays the problem. What makes one content may not make another content.

There are commonalities between all humans.
Threads that join one to another.

That's where the road begins to splinter. Break of into chunks and do it's thing.

The flow of life is what takes us where it will. How we fight aginst it or go with it could possibly be the answer to the question of why some people seem content or so completely discontent that they are in a continual search mode. Or at least part of it.

I wrote yesterday about the importance of finding the purpose of life in relation to your life.

Why is it that some people know their purpose and then run hard and fast to get away from it?

Is it the same need to know the answers to what if?

The problem is....and the winner is....

Every morning I spend time wandering through this quiet space and thoughts come.
Because they are fresh in the day, not colored by my experiences of the day, they often make me think about things that are more than the currant events of this time of life, or work or what needs to be done.

Somedays I feel like life is crushing me. That there is no point to anything. After all the work of life. All the imitating our primal anscestors of gathering things instead of food, that it means nothing, because it's in a constant state of decay.
This morning was like that. Then I remembered lamentations.
There is a feel when you read it that comes down to this: I denyed myself nothing and discovered that everything was vanity...
That we are dust. That the greatest joy in life is to be content in the simple things. Being able to work, and eat because your labor has provied food.

Simplicity. A child's view of the world. Of life.
Simple.

that's where I want to live every day. No matter where I go, no matter how exciting things are in the beginning, after a while the discontentment that is in me will surface.
The external is still the same, the problem is in me.

That's where the problem really lays.

Not in my job, how much money I have or don't have. Or anything else. Wether I'm thin or fat or short or tall or have all my teeth or don't.
Or how long it's been since my last vacation.
Thoes are momentary things. All of it. It's all passing.

The only thing I carry with me is what's inside me. If I'm not content, the place that needs adjusting is inside me.
If I am content, then the physical place has little baring on whether I wake up happy or not.

Simple. Difficult to change what I'm comfortable with.

Ahhhh...my comfort zone...am I comfortable in a state of discontent? Do I really and truely want to leave and disgard thoes things that make me miserable inside of me...or are thoes things so much a part of my comfort zone that leaving them would be like loosing a precious treasure to me?

Mirror mirror on the wall
who can complain the loudest of them all?

And the winner is....

The moment of a truth. A passage of a book, a single framed immage on the landscape, or someone's face. A line from a movie.
All touched by the human spirit. And the human spirit is connected to the universe.
I have come to belive that thoes moments of truths are keys.

Keys to many many things...and many times we don't understand completely, but they feel and hit us in a way that stays and there is a reason.

I believe it's because they are important to our life journey.
The questions that follow us our whole life until they come into crystal clairity.

Who are we, and why are we here. What is our purpose.
Without an understanding of purpose we wander like blind men trying to find our way out of a maze.

I believe we are ment to know our purpose. Unfortunately we are so bombarded by things ment to feed the appities of instant gratification that end up leaving us still empty inside.

If each of us truly understood who we are, many of the things that entice us with the lure of instant gratification would loose their grip. They would fall away like so much dead skin.

We would do things differently. And all the clutter and crap that we fill our lives with trying to satisfy something deeper inside of us would and could be bypassed.

The choices would be based then with focus and purpose, and many of the problems that stem from this aimless wandering we spend much of our lives in would vanish.

We could walk away from unnessary trappings. Simply because they would no longer hold anything for us.

Oh to find the path of my life.
To hear, with unstuffed ears
the song that the universe sings
and to know my place in it's choir.
To sing the song of life
to know completely
what my spirit knows
then I would be complete.
I could fly then.
Touch both earth and sky
and speak the language
that is byond time.

The harmonics of universal truth wait for us, for our vision and sight to stop shaking.
We are like a car careening out of control and nothing is clear.
We are desperately seeking, but don't reconize that we are.
We stumble about.
Making choices with out considering where they might lead.
We have no sense of the power of our words.
We have become numb. Desensitized. Aimless.

Watch a child at play. See how freely they play. How the simplest things bring them joy. Learn the ways of children before the greed of the world contaminates them.

Watch the devistation of war on the precious soul and spirit of a child and you will see the reflection of our own aimlessness.
You will see the the reflection of the effects of what our technology without the wisdom nessary to fully understand the technology has done.

Technology is neither bad nor good. Just as money is or any other object for that matter.
But without wisdom to bring balance to the power that comes with thoes things, the end result looks like a child holding a bazooka that's armed.

We are the most brilliant and creative inhabitants of this planet, and we are the most distructive as well.
We have the power to distroy the world we live on. And these things have not kept us from setting in place things that will lead to our own demise.

If we only truly understood, I think, no I'm very sure we would stop many of the things that we do.

The really sad part of all of this is that the children that are comming into the world are being taught that how we do things is the way things are suppose to be, inspite of the fact that each of us are ment to know who we are and what our purpose is.
The corporate world and world goverments don't want them or us to know. It keeps them in control and us in the state of slavery.

I hope with all my heart that there will be a revolution that stops the madness before we end up completely distroying both the planet we live on and our own existance.

In the movie "the seven faces of dr. Low", there is a line that goes "the whole world is a circus if you know how to look at it"

It's profound. Simple and profound. Just like the line from "harold and maude, "oh how the world dearly loves a cage."

Truth and simplicty. It's so clear. It's the kind of clear that feels like a morning that's too cold.

I had a dream last night about a strange circus. There was a midget dressed as the cartoon chacter little lu lu, and a giant man who were preformers in this odd scene.

The truth about the giant just being a man who was short and fat wearing lots and lots of things to make him look huge.
And the midget's true ideanty was only revealed behind the scenes.
A man dressing in costume. The illusion was competed by the world outside the office was a twisted array of sights and sounds that would come just long enough so that the person watching would be completely convinced that what they were seeing was real.

Once a person stepped through the doors, it was very different. Like a huge office, any office of any corporate company anywhere.

The bottom line was to keep the people on the other side of the door completely convinced that they were at the most unusal circus that ever existed.

They came by the hundreds. Spent money like crazy and when it was done, they were hooked and had to keep comming back, even to the point where it was the most important thing in their lives.

I finally at last understood something. Very real. Most of the things we own are because of this circus. It's got us convinced that we need this or that and none of it that we spend our lives enslaved for has anything to do with the basic needs of our lives.

What circus am I refering to? The answer is very simple. The corporate world.
To them the human population is nothing more than wallets with legs.
That's all.
So they cater to our whims, and convince us that our lives are going to be less than if we don't buy what they are selling.
And if we don't, what happens to the majority of stuff that fills millions of shelves in millions of stores, it's distroyed.
Thrown into the trash and that in turn is taken to some landfill to further cause harm to enviorment...

When I realized that nothing I could do, or would do in my job would ever make any kind of difference, everything changed.
The stress stopped. Completely.

I stopped thinking about all the what if's, and all the ways that I could make what I do make a difference.
The bottom line is that the corporation is looking at me to see what kind of numbers I will produce for them. Translated how much money am I going to make them?

The very top level of the corporate world only cares about if they will get to buy that new what ever, or go on that trip, the one of a life time, like all thoes other trips of a life time, taken year after year.
The perks. The rewards. The very expensive toys. The rich food.
The money....

I realized I really don't matter. Only how much money I can make. That's all.

I'm a performer that is required to be on all the time. Never sad, or frustrated or anything else for that matter.
A replaceable object if I don't make them money.
I have only so much time to prove that I can make them money or they will replace me with another object until they find one that makes good money for them.

A sucess.

But today is a new day. You can't sit on how good you did yesterday. That doesn't matter. How well will you perform today?

A circus. With lots and lots of things that shine and sparkle so that you will just "have to have it"

Yes, you will cease to exist with out the "thing".
Yes, you will no longer be on the cutting edge of the lastest fad, whim, want, obsession.
You have to be there. In the front....where everyone can see how it's awesome being you....

The circus of the corporate world. Invading our lives one day, one hour, one minuet, one second at a time.

The really sad part is....we know it, but don't give a shit as long as our "need" is fed.