harold_maude's journal

It's dark out there, just past the doors. The moon is full
and kevin is out playing music by a fire that he and the other kevin who lives here built.

He built himself a didjeirdu out of pvc, it was handy and he was on a mission after obtaining several tracks of aborignal music that he has been listening to rather intently for a while now.
I love the sound he makes as he gets lost in releasing his soul music. He sometimes goes into one of the silos that has long since lost it's covering and plays there.
It fills the need he has for the sound and feel of base. It's enegized him.

We've talked about the tribal music that sometimes takes place at the fires, usually just drums that people bring, along with the few that we have here.
I play sometimes on a barrel and loose myself in the beat that comes.
Like a heart beat.
or several, depending on how you look at it.
Now we will have more music and I've been thinking about taking some of the dead branches to fashion some other primitve instruments so that we will have more music still.
On occasion I will howl, but it's usually when I'm a good distance from the fire, since it can be rather loud and long when I do.

Maybe the answer I've been searching for has been in the journey into the deepest part of my soul, the most primative, maybe that's why I was so angry this morning out of the blue.

Everything in my life right now seems to be disgarding things,
stuff that doesn't matter.
Even with all the "needs" that we are facing which are difficult to have right now, maybe even thoes arn't as important as I have looked at them to be.

I'm sure when I get down the road a peice things will begin to make more sense, and the answers to why all of this occured will present it's self.
I don't know if I will like the answers, or if I will be scared because of how things could have gone, if there had been different choices made.

But I'm on a road, traveling somewhere, I don't know the destination yet, I do know that all thoes half started things are probably going to be given away, I'm loosing the need for them more and more each day.

I still can't see down the road. And that still bothers me.
It's like there is nothing there.

But maybe that in itself is an answer, that there is nothing there, until we need to see it.
I wish that thought would make me less uncomfortable, and give me the resolve and focus I need to plow ahead.
But even that thought doesn't.
I guess it's just my time for massive discomfort...
kind of reminds me of what a mother eagle does to the nest when it's time for the babies to learn to fly...

I woke up this morning feeling a mixture of things. First, not so pukie, which is good. And second, pissed off.

It's been growing all morning long and since I need a place to dump this anger, which is fast becomming rage, this is a good place to dump it. I wish I could take all the rage I feel right now and dump it into the trash and be done with it, but I can't.

I'm angry about the stupidity of corportate america, and how there is this determination to make everything so fucking uniform, fuck indiviuality. Gotta make everyone the same.
Shit, we might as well all be stepford pukes.

Take a look around at what you see the next time you go into any large store. Then go to the next one. And the next. It's the same, shoving this plastic, fall apart, designed for the landfills crap that is completely worthless.

Look at the cars on the road, all the same stupid shit, nice shit when it's new, but with insurance being so outrageous the best most people can hope for is to die in debt trying to pay off the car, or the house, that their never there to enjoy, or the boat. It's america! The land of opportunity! Where the streets are paved with gold! There are people out there from other countries who are fed this stuff and believe it.
I've talked to several who have come here, because they believe that mess.

The ultimate bennifeciaries of all this mass buying is corporate america, to which I gladly and proudly give the finger to.
I hate the mess, and feel helpless to do anything about it.

All of this started with this job I got. Well it started before that with the invantory service I worked for. I saw the stuff of store shelves and how people are when they shop, and managers who are only interested in how much people spend, and wear plastic smiles, and do the monkey dance because the corportate head quarters requires it, and if they don't there is always someone else out there who will.
We, the people are the ultimate waste product of this magnificant machinery. Which we support and encourage every time we buy stuff made in sweat shops from around the world.

There are places where people are crammed in to dormitories, some with bathroom facilities, many with out. They work 12 hour days, and make any where from 8 cents and hour to 23 cents an hour. They ship this stuff here, mark it up several thousand percent and then it gets stuffed down the american throat. Ahhhhh the good life. Nothing like it! We love our crap. Hail to the CEO's who wear armani suits and drive BMW's all on the backs of slaves.

The television is crammed full of reality crap shows which have absoulty no redeeming value, but they are addictive. And a waste of time. And if that doesn't tickle your fancy, then hey go to the nearest liquor store and buy something, get drunk and drive all over the fucking road! It's road klll season folks! Open all year. Never any waiting. Just get behind the wheel of your fancy car that you owe up the ying yang for and if you get in a wreck, just hier some fat glutonous lawyer to get you off the hook. It doesn't matter. They will lie for you! They did for OJ.
They did for Bill Janklo, an illustrerous pollitical leader that was driving drunk and hit and killed a man on a motor cycle. He got 100 days jail time. This wasn't his first offence, but hey, we the american people paid through the nose and ass for the car he was driving.

No wonder mother nature is going nuts on us. We are like a bunch of lemmings and as our rights our being taken away one by one with out our consent, and we are slowly but systematicly being turned into slaves, we don't know how to fight back. We don't give a shit....just give us our toys and leave us alone. Give us our designer clothes, our fast food, or instant gratification and fuck the rest of it.

Now I know some one is going to come along and point out exceptions to everything I've said. I know the damn execptions, I'm one of thoes exceptions, I don't shop at walmart or k-mart or any other super dupper super sized incedious store like that. I make my clothes when I can, and the stuff I have to buy, I go to the thrift stores for. I'm living off america's junk.
I shop for groceries at the little mom and pop stores because they are the places where the little guy is.

I drive an older truck, one that's almost 20 years old and am trying to do everything to keep it in running condition. I don't go out to dinner, I can barely afford to buy groceries, it's been about three years since I bought my last pair of shoes, the ones I have now are starting to get holes in the sole, and when they do, I will put newspaper in the bottom until I can save enough money to get another pair.
I do volunteer work and help out where ever and when ever I can. So don't talk to me about exceptions.
I'm pissed this morning at so much stupidity and so much waste and so many places that arn't safe, and the devistaion that's being done to the human race because corporate america is in league with the goverment of this country to destroy every natural resource we have.

And it all centers around money. I hate money. But in order to live in a house or an apartment or eat, it's required.

Deep sigh....I think I was born about 100 years too late...
I would have put this in my other on line journal, the one no one ever reads. That's where all this kind of stuff normally goes. But someone from here said something to the effect of not being afraid of letting all of me show. So here it got put.
anger and all...
my appologies in advance to thoes who will be offended by this.

I left work early today. I was sick when I left and came home and slept most of the afternoon. What ever it was is still kind of there, my stomach is not so good and I'm still lightheaded.
I know my boss didn't like the idea, but it was either come home or puke everywhere and then pass out.

I had some more rather disturbing dreams and these were even more strange than the one that woke me up this morning.
I'm beginning to wonder if they are related in some way and some how connected to August.

The first sequence was set at a peir at the mouth of a large river that dumps out into the ocean. The two sides of the river were joined by a draw bridge with a center station that controlled both sides of the bridge.

On either side of the center station the bridge was split in two sections, and only one half raised while the other half retracted into the station, so subquently only one side of the station was set in motion at any given time.

Again I was with a group of people who I didn't know and we had been on one side of river and had crossed the bridge past the part that was raised up when the alarm started sounding and the bridge started seperating.
It caught us off gaurd and we all started running. The retractable part started moving faster and so we had to haul ass just to get to the center station and when we got there there the wind started to pick up and it was like the center of a tornado.

We each grabbed on to what ever railing was close enough and hung on. One of the women grabbed on to a railing and was lifted off the ground until she was completely upside down. It was at this point that I noticed that everyone had really dark hair and they were completely pale. Like they had never been outside.

I was hanging onto a rail and I was lifted off the ground until I was completely sideways. I managed to look into the station and it was completely empty. Which was strange because in my dream this station was a tourist attraction and it had several operators present at all times. But no one was in there.
Then the dream sequence just stopped. Like stopping in mid sentance.

The next sequence of events were strange too. I was at work, but not my job in waking time, but in an office. I was walking down a hall and I came to a room with glass panels so I could see in. There were six people in the room. Kevin was one of the people. The other five people I didn't reconize. There was a t.v against the glass and the way everyone was seated was there were two people sitting on couches that were really long oposite of each other and kevin and this girl were sitting in a chair at the end of the room facing the tv.

The four people sitting on the couches were dressed in black and were very pale with dark hair. The girl sitting with kevin had blond hair and she was wearing a flowered dress that was very short. She and kevin were in the process of feeling each other up and I walked into the room.
I felt nothing at seeing him with someone else. And he didn't notice I was there. I waited for him to look my way, but he was completely engrossed in the girl. She was unfamilar.

It was almost like this was a room where the people in it were being observed. Then the dream just stopped.

Both of these sequences were very real, just like last night, even in how surreal they were. The color black as I think about it was very prominent in all the dream sequences I've started having over the last few days. That's why I think their related to what happened at the beginning of August. Everything going totally black.

More than anything I wish I could talk to someone who understood threads of things when they are all related like I'm sure these are.

All I can do at this point is keep recording the events of the dreams as they come and if it keeps up, which I'm thinking it's going to, try to sort through all of what's going on.

In waking time, meantime, I still feel very vacant, like there is nothing. The black is still there, it's just moved to a place just out of view. But it's still there. I can't seem to shake it.

I wonder if this was the bad that Drift was talking about...
He was the man we spent the month with that told us about our past and about things comming. There was no way he could know all thoes details about our pasts, since we had never met him before.
He's dead now, and so there is no way to call him and talk to him. I've told kevin about the dreams and he doesn't know what to make of them either. Or why everything went black in August.
If there is anyone out there who understands threads like this I would appreciate hearing from you with your thoughts.

I normally can sort through dreams and different things come clear, and there is always a reason that dreams that disturb come. In this process, because it's been over several days and I'm sure is some how connected to what happened, I've been unable to make any sense of it.
If I have no more dreams like this, then I will just write all this off as a bad bump in the road and go on. That seems the most reasonable thing to do.
If it continues, well then I hope someone shows up with something, a peice of all of this that will make sense.

It's about 5:45 am and I know I should go back to bed. I have a long work day a head of me in about 5 hours, but I had a strange and disturbing dream that made me wake up and then sleep was gone.
So here I am. Having this vivid dream still racing through my mind and having all the questions that it raised running through the inside of me.

It was about choices, and the ablity to make different ones at piviotal moments in time.
I was with some people and we were doing these strange things, only in my dream the things we were doing were normal. The scenery was surreal, like a movie that is filmed in yellow and black and parts are seen as negative photographs.

We were eating at an off road diner and talking about things. I couldn't hear the conversations around me only mumblings and wisperings even though everyone was talking in normal tones.
The sky was angry looking, like we were in a break in a series of storms, it was differnt shades of grays and purples.

Why this point in time was so important, I don't know, but as I sat there among these people who I had been traveling with I remember thinking that my life was not so good. That all I was doing was wandering aimlessly with no point to any of it.
I remember wishing that I could do something else, anything and that would some how make it all better.

All of the sudden, at that moment there was this huge series of bolts of lightening that were everywhere. And when they stopped my life was back somewhere else. I was experiencing dajavu like crazy. Everything was familar. I couldn't understand at first, then it started making sense. I was being given a chance to make different choices about the road I was going to take. And for what ever reason, this was the moment that would effect the out come for many years.

I made different choices, ones that I thought were better. But then as I did, I saw and felt the end result and it was horrible, worse than what I was living. People got ugly and nasty and committed murder all because of the choices I made, people I knew and cared about. It was horrible.

Then all of a sudden I was back in the diner, like nothing had happened. The people around me were still talking in low whispers and smiling and laughing, like people do, and my life suddenly seemed ok somehow.

I woke up. I couldn't go back to sleep. It made me think about choices I've made in my life, and how I've wanted for a long time to go back to places in my past and do something different. I've thought about if I'd never gotten married the first time. If I'd gone to the school I had wanted to and never married the father of my children.
I've tried hard to immagine my life, alone, as alone as I felt in so many things, like a family memeber that shows up at reunions and funreals that no one wants there but they tolorate their presence there anyway, simply because they are blood.

I've thought about what it would have been like if I had realized years ago that my father was full of cruel intentions that I was never going to hear him tell me that he loved me until about 15 minuets after he died, and how if I had realized it sooner than I would never have stayed in the city where I spent most of my life. I would have left and never returned, even for his death, or the death of my brother, or any other realitive that has happened over the last ten years.

I would have gone out into the world and gone to art school and would have taken or tired to take different roads. But where I was at the time I probably would have made some stupid choices that would have ended up disasterously.
I was bent on self distruction and I was living in fear deep inside years ago.
I lived in fear inside for years even after I got married the first time. I was nerotic and definately not ready for parenthood. I was unable to love my children as I should, and the only redeeming grace they had was their father.
A very stable man who was so ready to be a parent. But not so ready for a life with me.
His views of marriage and mine were different. He believed from the beginning that first you have children and then after they leave then you work on getting to know the person your married to.

All that does is make strangers who have had children together.
That's what we were when we got divoriced. I had become this cold empty woman who was living in a house with these other people who were fine individuals, but I was an observer to their lives.
My daughter was disgusted by me, I could see it in her eyes, and was planning after college to move to another city, but when we told the kids that we were getting a divorice she changed her mind.

I remember what she said the day I left. It was the first time I ever saw any kind of tears in her eyes in reference to another human being.
They were brief tears. She said to me, I would love you to stay, but I think it will be good for you to go out there and take care of yourself.

My son hugged me and just said something to have a good life mom. That was all. Nothing more, nothing less. It took me being gone a few years for him to actually begin to miss me being there. I don't think other than having them, my life made any impact on them, except maybe them not wanting me there most of the time.

We talk now, long distance. And it's always good. My son, who is still this very laid back individual who watches life drift past him, still has not decited what he wants to do with his life.

After I left their father began to make his life more comfortable and actually go on vacations and do things that he would never have considered while I was there. I'm glad he's finally gotten to the point where he actually is going on vacation. I don't think he'll ever marry again. I think the kids have always been his life and always will be.

I live with guilt much of the time, because I didn't stay, because I left. I didn't ask him for anything in the divorice. I felt that the house was his, that was his home, and even though I had every right to ask for half of everything, I asked for nothing.
I felt that I owed him room and board for all thoes years. That's what a stranger feels about someone who has taken them in when they are down on their luck and have no prospects.

I still feel like I owe him room and board and some day, when I can I will send him money until my debt is paid off. I don't know how much I owe him, but maybe until the guilt goes away.

I know this sounds probably really screwed up, but then my thoughts and ideas are often not normal.
That's why I'm in the middle of the country, married to my best friend and working in a job that may prove to cost me more than I'm making.

This life I have now, and am a part of is costing me in so many ways. I won't know the full cost for a long time. But if I had made different choices I might not be here today.
I had a plan b. If after comming half way across the country to meet my best friend, and if he chose not to come with me, I was going to head for the coast and abandon my car, leave a note for who would ever find it, find a sea cave and wait for death to come.

It was another time of calm decision. It was something I was completely prepared to do. But there were other plans for my life in the works and my best friend left his home town to come with me.

This dream I had made me think about all thoes things. And made me wonder how different my life would have been if I had known and understood a few things way back when.
There was no one I could talk to, no one who I could go to who cared about what I was doing with my life.
I've met a few people since I've left the town where I was born who fit into that catagory, but they have been in my life very briefly.
After Kevin dies, and I know I will out live him, I don't know what I will do. There is nothing that I can see ahead of me.
I've wondered if what happened at the beginning of August was showing me what my life is when this part of my life is done, when he's gone, and there is no one left who will be in need of a flag stone, or someone who will just be there and listen.

With very few exceptions, the things in my possession right now mean very little to me. I could abandon it all and it wouldn't affect me.
It's all in the process of decay anyway.

I hope when the time comes, that I make good choices. The best choices I can. The only problem is that hindsight only comes after you've done something, and usually not before.

To bed, to bed, little sparrow, to dream as you will.
Tomorrow will come soon enough and will take care of it's self and you.

So many nights when I sit down here to write the things that go on in my head, I try to stay focused. That doesn't always work. Sometimes it's a crazy battle for the mear act of concentration that can be so elusive. It's maddening sometimes.

But tonight as I ponder over a journal entry I just read I find that the act of concentration is easy. Reading from the pages of someone's life as though it's just you and them sitting in a room and talking about the things of life have a way of pushing everything else out.

There is a good chance that many of the people here I will never have the oportuntiy to ever meet face to face.
It would be nice to think that maybe someday that might change, but for now at least, I find that reading these pages at the end of the day is a good time to think about thoes who have written them, and now their a part of my life.

If any one has seen the movie phenomon you understand the scene where John Travolta is talking to the two children about sharing the apple. How it becomes part of us and lives on forever.

That's how I feel. Like the pages I read and the lives I have enteracted with have become part of me...
and if the road takes us in two different directions I will always carry you in my heart, for you have shaped places there that are your own.

Have you ever had one of those nights where you keep waking up because you think you've over slept?
The last two nights have been like that for me. I've been having these crazy dreams and I keep waking up looking at the clock to see the time.

The dreams have been disjointed pictures and sound which haven't made alot of sense. Kind of like a movie that was going along fine and all of the sudden the everything goes haywire.

Out of sinc, out of time, like a circus where everything is backwards, even the music. Kind of like life right now. Everyday is still a struggle. I'm making slow progression from the two weeks where everything was black and there was nothing.
At least now I'm having dreams, how ever crazy they are.

Everything seems distorted lately. How fast the days go, or how hard I work and how slow time goes, how time seems to be doing this strange dance and can't make up her or his mind.
It's like watching a woman with too little money or too much money go shopping. They pick up everything, and then as they figure out what they want or don't want, things are disgarded along the way.

It's comical actually, and when their done, and I'm standing right behind them at the check out, they can be heard muttering about having to get to here or there, and being late. And there is always a sense of impatients when this kind of shopper is done going through and making a mess of racks of clothes and shoes and what ever else.

I used to work for an invantory service. It was facinating to watch the shopping habbits of these women. Both young and old alike. Men are different when they go shopping. They, for the most part spent time wandering, looking rather lost and some of them, if they came with their wives or girl friends would get this look in their eyes, a mixture of fear and impatients, and you knew that what they were wanting was out of there.

Everthing we do as humans seems to make time change from our perspective. If we love what we're doing than there never is enough time. If we hate it or find it distasteful, time drags on and on. No matter how busy we are in what we're doing.

But time is time. As a person ages time goes faster. It's kind of difficult to deal with because as you get older there are realizations that make you wish you could turn back the hands of time and regain time again so you could have more time, more focused time, so that you could have the strength of youth and the stamenia while having the wisdom from the life lessons you have in the present, or the increased expertise of something learned so you could finally accomplish something worth while. Or create the perfect master peice. Without your hands or eyes getting tired from concentrating so hard.

it seems just a few short years ago I would spend sixteen to eighteen hours painting, taking a break only after being lost for hours in color and motion. The passage of time was marked by the night sky growing light and how tired my body and mind were getting. I would do this for months. I had between seven and ten paintings going at the same time all the time.
As a result I have a huge portfolio, even with all the paintings that are now in different places in the world.

Last year when we spent four months house sitting in a small town where there was no work, time changed again, there were no clocks in this house, as there was no electricty for three and a half of thoes four months, so time was almost non existant for me. The only changes I was aware of was the movement of the sun and the moon. As far as the days of the week, it got to the point where I couldn't tell because of being clock deprived.

Over the last few months I've found myself wishing that I could go back to when I was nineteen again. Know everything I know now, and spend another strong twenty some years more learning about art. There is never enough time, and now I can feel the effects of age on my bones. I feel like I'm racing against time and what it's doing and taking from me. It's kind of a crazy mad dash to accomplish something, don't quite know what yet, but the need to do is strong, or was until about two months ago when everything went black.

Now I'm finding that as I'm struggling day to day to hang on to life, making that choice everyday, that time is not my enemy, but rather like an alarm clock, that I can't shut off.

I've been working on a new painting. Well it's more of an act of discipline right now, the point is to keep painting, exercising the skill so that it doesn't get rusty. Thinking back to when I was nineteen I didn't understand that when things get hard you have to do things simply as a matter of choice. I was more driven by mood and insperation.

Inspiration is very rare, most of it's disiplined action that makes a talent good. Writers are that way too, the ones who are really accomplished and can write cold, write everyday, even if what their writing is not so good in the middle of writers block. Artists get artists block, and musicians get musicians block as well. Nothing is comming out of what was only a few short days ago, so it seems, a flood of ideas and this wonderous stuff. Now the thing is damn near dry and terror sets in that you've lost it.

Learning to work through things is part of age too, I think, maybe even a gift of time. Through all of this I've opted not to drink to try and make things go away. I know that it would be easy to drink and get so shitt faced that I would become a bithering idot and wake up with a raging hang over.
Then guilt would set in and I would spend time beating myself up for my stupidity.

So I've come to the conclusion to just ride it all out, and to keep doing things. To work inspite of how much I would love to just stay in bed and sleep the days away. It's painful most of the time. But this pain will subside, at least that's what I'm hopeing for. Even if it doesn't I know for now anyway that I won't be guilty of wasting time.

And that maybe is the point of going through all of this.
Not to waste what is so fleeting, to make the most of it, even when you don't want to and don't care about much of anything.
Maybe that's the life lesson I've been being taught...could be.
Maybe. I hope that's it.