harold_maude's journal

I've got a short shift today, and I'm pleased about that. What ever there is that I've got to do when I get there I'll only have to think about it for 4 hours.

That's not alot of time in a 24 hour chunk of time. Even an 8 hour shift isn't alot of time when you think about it.

It's just something that exists durring the cycle of the world rotating around the sun.

I'm still trying to figure things out. Maybe there was something to what people like Jack Karoac did, I don't know if I spelled the man's name right, but at this point it's not a big worry on my list of things to worry about.

When things went black at the beginning of august there was a question that kept rolling over and over in my head. It never found an answer and it's come back again.

The question is, "for what?"

It's a huge question, one that takes up many hours, days weeks and sometimes years for some people.
For me it's now one of the things I keep bumping into every few days.
It's the one that makes you take a look at your life and gets in your face, messes up and feelings that feel good and stares at you and asks "why are you doing what your doing, and for what?"

It's here again this morning and the effect it's having reminds me of the all of the games of spider solitare that I have played where nothing makes sense and the lines just keep adding up and no matter how I try to shift things around it just ends up looking like one huge mess.

I find myself wishing that another person would show up who's been through this and sit down with me and just listen and then show me the road that would be best to take.

It's a strange thing when you feel like life is a messed up package that makes no sense, and there is this crazy quesion that drives you nuts and makes you feel like shit because you have no answers that make any sense at all.

I watch people going about their lives. It's almost like they have some kind of program going that gives them the next thing on the list and they just do it. And believe their lives are full and complete.
While other's go about things like the wind was their dancing partner and what ever flies, flies.
And they seem very content in the uncertianty of things.

Last night I was talking to one of the guys here and we were talking about health insurance and for a long time I've been at the place where I fight wanting to go off somewhere and wait for death. See what happens when the elements beat me up. See how long it would be before my survival instinct kicked in.
What I'm made of and how strong I really am, knowing that I would most likely end up dying in the fight.

From my perspective going out like that, where it doesn't hurt anybody, or doesn't cost any body anything is reasonable.

Anyway, we were talking about it, and I told him that I didn't want health insurance. And it made me wonder if I'm following in my father's footsteps. He spent the last 12 years of his life waiting for death.
He'd done everything he wanted to do. Was retired and done with life.
And it sucked watching him. All he did was get up eat, stand at the back window and watch things in his back yard, then eat lunch and take a nap. Get up in time to eat dinner and watch a little tv and then go to bed.
Sometimes the patterns would vary a bit, but basicly that was his life for the last 12 years before he died.

What a waste. I thought it then, and I think it now. But I find myself being pulled into the same mentality and it sucks.
I don't want to spend how ever long I've got left on this planet waiting for death. And for the last 4 years it's been there off and on, like a monster waiting to eat me alive.

So here I am now, caught in between looking at the way that the world is, or at least this country with all it's vast waste habbits and that thing looking at me and demanding I answer the question "for what?"
And the other thing of "there is no purpose in getting up and going to work just so you can eek out a megar living and have nothing to show for your life, so why not just stop, get in the car and go off somewhere and die."

I don't have any answers, I need answers, but there is no one able to walk in my skin so that they can see what I may have missed in the equasion.

Ya know, living in this skin is sometimes a very lonely place.
Even when you have faith, it still feels awefully lonely sometimes.

it feels like glass that can't stop being shattered.
It's headed for the wall, because something bigger than it picked it up and sent it flying.

it feels like a storm that won't go away. And no matter what you do, when you go outside your gonna get beat up by the storm.

I wish it felt like spring inside, all the way around the garden instead of the after math of a massive on going dust storm.

Oh well, I need to get ready for work, another day another dollar I guess. Another month inside under a roof instead of living up close and personal with the trees.
Oh well.

Today is a day off. My head is still in a strange place, but then it usually is after work, but the effects of work last well into any day off I have.

It's a strange thing to feel like time gets rubbery.
I've had discussions with one of the roommates here about time and space and the theory of relativity.
I had been wondering if it was possible for a person to fold time.
Seeing as how we use only 10% of our brain, I wondered if, with enough focused concentration a person could fold the time frame they were occuping and move faster through the surrounding space.
The example I had to offer, which by the way is one of many experiences I've had over the years, was this:
I've had an appointment at a certian time and had to travel a certian number of miles to get there.
From past experience the time needed to arrive on time was say 30 minuets.
There have been several occasions that I have left my point of origin in half the time needed and never exceeded the speed limit and arrived early.
I had no way according to the known laws of relativity to explain how this occured.

So with this in mind and with what happens at work and time and the on going effects after I wondered if it was possible that under certian conditions that time could become elastic and pliable.

We discussed what time was and what the laws of relativity were and according to the frame work of what science understands there is nothing to support what I've experienced.

But how do you argue with experience, espcially if it's reoccured more than once?

If we were able to increase the amount of brain activity we used what would that do to our relationships to the known 4 dimensions?

At the moment what I'm experiencing is a strange spacial phaseing.
Things in this place seem to move at different paces, the sounds of people voices, people themselves and the movement of the sun.
At times it seems and feels almost surreal. And no I'm not on any kind of hallucigen, if anyone is wondering, so I don't know how to explain the experience.
I suppose it could be termed as spacing out, but I'm extreemly aware of all my surroundings.

Another effect that occurs durring this experience is that things that people say don't always regester and I end up with this blank look on my face as if I've been listening to someone speaking a foriegn language.

If I were to discribe what it feels most like I would have to say it's almost as if I step out of time completely and are both here and somewhere else, but am aware of both places at once.

Another thing I've noticed is that I will see things in the same way that happens when you look at thoes three-3 pictures that you have to look at and then as you do things shift so that you can see the immage with in the immage.

Maybe it's just me. I don't fear it, or feel like I'm loosing my mind or touch with reality, but it's an odd repeating occurance that makes me wonder if it's possible that time does things that are outside the laws that science says govern it.

I know there have been on going experiments done by people who connect their minds over great distances and from what I've read about people who have acivated their merkaba they have seen things that there was no physical way possible for them to see.

There is so much we don't know, so many unanswered questions, and even with all the discoveries made by brilliant people out there, it's still very limited.

I know there will be some questions raised as to maybe this is all just my immagination, and I've considered that, but when I've had the experiences I've discribed and I'm fully awake and arrive early in just a few minuets rather than the full amount of time it takes given the millage and going the speed limit, I don't know how else to view it.

Is time different that what we know it as?
Is relativity just an expression for what we see but have no acurate and true language to discribe what it really is?

I know by tomorrow the side effects of what happens at work will stop, and everything will go back to normal.
I just wish when I go through this I could grab someone else and pull them into the same space and let them see what I do, maybe they could explain what it is and why it happens.

I don't think this is normal, at least not the normal life experience for most people on the planet.
Maybe I've found a way to escape time and just don't realize it.
Wish I knew the answers to the questions.
Maybe then all of this wouldn't be so strange.

He sat watching the clouds passing. The stars were still there as was the moon.
It reminded him of something he'd read so long ago as a child.
A nursery rhyme.
Somthing about a wooden shoe and going to sleep.

Sleep was the last thing on his mind tonight as he felt the place where just a few hours earlier the sharp teeth of a wild dog had been planted.

It still burned. The pain won as he let loose a deep howl. It seemed to catch the animal off gard for just a moment. That was all it took for him to break free and knock the animal away.

Of all things to encounter on a late night walk, a dog was the last thing he expected. It was bigger than most dogs that he had ever seen before.
Even as the dog attacked him, the color of it's eyes burned through him, as though it wasn't interested in his skin and what lay beneath.
In that moment right before the dog bit, he was sure that it wanted the living thing inside him. His soul.

He could still feel the eyes burning through him. That terrifying gaze that held him motionless in time.

Hours passed by. He dozed in and out of jagged sleep, jumping awake, heart pounding so loud he heard it in his head.
Somthing made him believe that the animal would come looking for him. What it was after it hadn't gotten, and so it would find him.
The knock on the door woke him with a start. Sitting straight up but not answering, he could feel the sweat trickling down his forhead.
He looked down at his leg, expecting to see it swollen and red.
But to his amazement there was no sign of the wound.

He must have been dreaming he thought, after examing his leg.
He heard the knocking again, and this time a voice followed.
"Mr. Glass, this is your wake up call, just as you requested."

He answered that he was awake, and heard footsteps walking away.
Was he dreaming? Had he been asleep all night?
It had been so real.

...to be continued as the story unfolds. If anyone would like to continue and take it further before I do, feel free to.

In the movie "The runaway bride" there is a conversation between Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in which he asks her, "how do you like your eggs?"

The reference being of course was that she defined who she was by the man who was in her life.
Outside of that, she had no idea who she was or what she wanted.

In life there comes points to which we loose all defintion of who we are, what direction we are going and the question of "is this all there is" generally tends to come up somewhere in the mix.
When a person gets close to or somewhere in their 20's it's often refered to as figuring out what you want to do with your life.
When a person hits their 40's it's refered to as a midlife crisis.

But I tend to think it can happen at any age. Somthing bigger than the ordered world you live in and are surounded by comes along and smashes it all to peices and your left standing there not knowing how to deal with it.
And nothing makes sense, and there is nothing but questions that you can't escape from.

Life crisises. Those wonderful moments when you get to find out how you really like your eggs, or even if you like them at all.
It's easy to and very normal I think to want to try to flood the space with stuff. It's far too painful to look square in the eye and say "ok" to.

Thoes who are fortunate enough to not be able to flood their life with stuff and have to deal with every unrulely emotion that pokes and prods us get to find out tons of stuff about themselves.
What is real, what's crap and what is important.

It doesn't feel like a good thing at the time. In fact outside of a few events that cause a life crisis to occur, it hurts deeper than you can stand most of the time.
Sometimes it feels like life is over and there is no point in going on.

But if a person can get into the mindset that it's ok, and not only ok, but important, then you can survive it.

If you think about it, everything is suddenly moved out of the way and you get to find out about you.
That's something alot of people try to figure out alot of time while their busy doing things that they think will answer that question.

The truth that I've found out it that the only way to get the answer is to not try to fill the space with crap or deversions, but face it, feel it, and find out about you.
The pain is going to be there. And the confusion will pass, and what you have a choice about changing you get the opportuntiy to make the choice whether or not to change.

If you can see it that way, than it's ain't so bad. You get a fresh start in a sense. And get new socks and maybe new shoes too, so to speak.

I'm pretty sure when people go off and do what seems totally nuts to those who love them, that's what's happening.
Their taking their sabatical from "the way things are suppose to be" and going to a place where all the nets are gone, and doing battle with everything inside them.

They may or may not come back. If they do, people tend to say, "you've changed" which is translated, "I'm pissed at you because you were part of my comfort zone and when you left you fucked my world up."

Granted it's not always that way, but it's part of it.

Crisis forces change. Life forces change. It's not static.
Even if we go our whole lifes and there are few life crisises that come, when thoes we love die or leave it happens. It happens, and there is not alot we can do about it.

Except maybe embrace it, and let it do what it's designed to do, help us figure out how we like our eggs.

The really amazing thing about people who are passionate about anything is that it's a part of of their lifestyle.
It's as natural as breathing.
And it's awesome to watch. It's very infectious watching someone who is passionate about something. Makes you want to do something yourself.

Thoes who take up causes on the other hand, seem to be only really functional when they are part of a group,
outside of what ever cause it is, they just seem to wander aimlessly.

They kind of remind me of the mom's you see who have their kids in all kinds of programs and when their not busy running all over the place they belong to every kind of what ever they can.
I wonder if they ever sleep.

Passion feeds the soul. Causes make people overly zealous, and obnoxious.
They are the salesmen that you hide from when they come to your door.
They are the people who get offended when you try to lighten things up a bit.

Passionate people are often a bit eccentric because they view the world through the filter of their passion. That, I do believe makes them far more interesting to hang out with.

There have been times of both in my life. And I have to say without hessitation that when I was involved with a cause, no matter how good the cause, I was exausted all the time.
In the times when I have been lost in my passions I have tons of energy, and can loose all track of time.
I may not get a lot of sleep, but I'm a whole lot happier, and I tend to get things done, and somthing else I've noticed,
people like being around me more when I'm lost in my passions than when I've been caught up in a cause.

Passions stay almost always your whole life, causes simply fade away and become part of your past.
I've met a few people who's passions have become their causes, and they are really different.
In a good way.

On thinking about it all, I think I'd rather live in the mist of my passions any day of the week than in the lastest, most desperate cause that anyone could ever come up with.

I woke up this morning, as I do other mornings and found that pain is usually the first thing that greets me after the alarm.
Since, by nature I tend not to lay in bed after the alarm, I get up and my body is not wanting to do what it used to.
It's somthing that I've been dealing with for a while now and it sucks.

The problem with age is that you have all this great stuff, like skills that take years to aquire, patients, the wisdom not to react so fast, stuff like that, and your body is at the point where it doesn't move as fast as you need it to so that you can do as much as you know you should be able to do, or at least think you should.
It sucks.

It's not fair, and I know that life isn't fair. But the things that require time to learn take so much time that by the time your proficciant at them your body is in the state of massive revolution.
But by this time you are so steeped in all this stuff that you can't quit.
You just go forward. And all the time you know that each day makes you one day older in the process and there is only so much time left before you don't win with getting out of bed so easy.

It's the nature of life here on this planet.

Now don't misunderstand me here. I'm the type of person who wants youth back so that I can do it all over again, or the type of person who is freaked out about getting gray hair or wrinkles or whether gravity has it's way or not. Thoes things to me arn't important. They happen.
But fighting my body is a problem.

I'm comforted by the knowledge that my mother who is 86 this year is still incredibly mobile and up until a few months ago was climbing around on step ladders and into things somewhat like a monkey. Her knees have finally stopped her, and the pain in her body that she has fought for years is finally making her slow down.
She still does lots of the creative things she's done for years, but it just takes more time now than it did before.

If I'm doing that good when I get to be 86 it won't be too bad.

There are times I find myself wishing I could go back to be 19 again, but have all the skills and wisdom time gives you, intact.
It would be nice to have that time again with the focus about things I do now.
I wouldn't want the emotional crap I had back then, just the skills I do now.

But time travel of that kind doesn't happen. At least not in real life. So I'm doing the best I can with what I've got,
and hoping when all is said and done, that I will be able to not have any regrets about my life.