harold_maude's journal

What goes through your mind that makes you stop....
Makes you take a second look....
Makes you crazy....the good kind of crazy...

These things are the delicious thoughts. The chocolate silk of the thought world.

Have you ever found yourself in a place where what you are doing is so boring that you fight falling asleep?
The next time that happens try this:

Think about the one thing you'd rather be doing, and let it take you on a vacation.
If what your doing is something you've done a hundred million times before until you could do it in your sleep, it's time for a mental road trip.

The really amazing thing is that it makes time fly. You know the saying time flies when your having fun......well this will make time seem like a greased pig!

I had this job where all I did for 8 hours straight was pull out staples and make sure the paper had no folded or wrinkled places.
At the end of my first day I was so exausted from bordom that I thought how am I going to come back here tomorrow and do this again, for 8 hours no less?
I knew didn't have alot of options as it was the only job I could find at the time and we needed the money.

I got to work the next day. This place had no music to listen to, was bland in color and about as exciting as watching a snail move.
Anyway, I started pulling staples out and my mind began to wander....
I was still doing the job, just as effecently but now as my mind wandered and the thoughts got better and better the next thing I knew it was time for the first break of the day.
I hadn't been aware of anything except where I was in my thoughts....
I could have missed the break because I was actually having a really good time.

I got back after break and sat down and the thoughts picked up right where they left off.
This was awesome! I got more done than I had the day before, and found myself wanting to grab lots of boxes of stuff to take staples out of.
I was on vacation! I went and did things in my head that I have always drempt of but never got around to it.

By the end of the day, I was so full of energy that I realized I could have gone on for hours.

It was a pitty that the work ran out and the job was done.
I learned something through that experience, and it's been a great help when I'm doing things that are boring, I don't have to let the boring thing keep me from having a good time.

I wouldn't recomend this if you operate machinery with shap parts, or when your driving a car, but if you've got a job that is so routine where there is no possiblity of getting hurt in anyway, then by all means try this out, and see what a difference it can make.

You'll be having such a good time that you won't object any more and there is a good chance you'll get so much done that you'll impress your boss.

Oh thoes delicious thoughts.....the ones that make times of nessity so much easier to deal with.
Who knows, maybe someday you'll come up with a cure for somthing the whole world needs and it'll all be due to you letting your mind wander...

who knows....nice to think about huh....:)

It reaches up and suddenly grabs you. Shakes you until it's sure your awake and fully attentive.
It's that moment of clairity when all of a sudden everything is crystal clear.
And you understand at last the random actions that you've been performing.
A good day.

I had one of thoes moments last night, well actually several, and to have just one at this time in my life would have been awesome, but several? To say I was amazed would be an understatment, it was more like blown away.

Everything in my life as been like a pot of tangled noodles and I've been trying to untangle things and in desperation and frustration fighting the flow of my life.

The first ah haaa moment came when I understood why I've been drawn to mosaics and why the direction of my art is leading that way. Everything in life is a peice of something bigger.
It's like several puzzles that are in process and when each collection is done, it's drawn to it's place in the order of our place in the universe, and a wholeness flashes.

But it's not done yet, it's waiting for the other disconnected peices to be complete and take the place desitine for it.

I understood in that moment that the universe is not complete.
We help to complete it and our connection to it makes it more than if we weren't here.

If anyone has ever played any of the mario games, there is one where you have to find the keys to acivate the pads so that the paths that mario can walk on are complete.
then you go to the star road and complete the series of levels and then it gives you a message at the end. Your special, I think is what the message is.
What I learned last night is like that. But the message isn't your special, the message is the universe needs you, and you need it. You are part of something bigger than your self, and the pain of today is going to become part of the stones that are being cut to make the gemstones that grace their place in the universe.

The next ah haaa moment came when I understood what my dreams have been and why the blackness and why the fight for life.
That was the biggest ah haaa of the night.

The black was a brick wall. I hit it going full speed, and when that happens you tend to loose the ablity to see. It happened once before in my life.
After the first one hit, I stopped doing any kind of drawing, or creating any kind of art for a while, then slowly the art too me on a different journey, one into texiles and beads and other hands on venus of creativity.
I was convinced I would never draw again. I grieved my loss, but felt nothing inside.
For ren long years my life was emersed in several things, some of which faded into lesser things, and some of which changed over the years.

What had been waiting in the wings was something that was birthed durring that time, I didn't feel it being birthed, and was growing and getting ready to take me places I never immagined.
Watercolor was the door and being able to step behind the eyes of an artist, and the ablity to hear the artist talk to me.
That's only part of what was being birthed and secretly growing in that space.

My dreams were telling me about me. Different pictures, immages all telling me the same thing, but in different ways.
Each night, the dreams would follow a certian path, and it hit me, I was listening to and watching things I couldn't see when I was awake because in waking time there was too much going on and I was too close to the forest to see the trees.

The next ah haaa moment came when I was watching people last night, as several of them came and went, the people in our lives are like strings being plucked on a very large instrument, our soul and our heart. The sound, if in the right key, leaves us with a want for more, but if in the wrong key, making a sour sound, makes us want to back off.
Instead of wanting to find out why it makes a sour sound, we back off. It's uncomfortable and can be confusing because we're not sure of the unknown causes.
It forces us to take a look, hopefully, and, if we're the cause of the sour note, it makes us responsible to do something.
We are no longer the victims and the hero's and the valient what evers that secretly we immagine ourselves to be.
It forces us to get real, and start being honest.

After having said all of that, I realize that it may apaear that I think I found all the answers.
Well, sorry to disapoint, but having an ah haaa moment, is very personal.
I think they come in a way that is designed just for us. They may be the same thing someone else needs too, but first and formost they are personal, and their only a part of the learning process. They arn't the end.
I think they come so we can be in a place to understand more
important things that are comming.

Eternal truths are all about us. We spend our lives learning to see.
We make choices to remain blind or beomce sighted souls who love freedom, and strive to roll around in freedom.
It's our choice, it always has been, it always will be.

this morning was the first morning in a very long time I didn't wake up and find anger....
It's going to be a good day.

I remember the first time I saw a blood moon. It was like something out of the twilight zone. It seems that they are a common occurance when you get past the rocky mountians.
The blue moon on the other hand is a much rarer animal that occurs, well only once in a blue moon.

Why I decited to think about this tonight instead of the very currant and frustrating aspects of my job, is because it's something way off the subject and since when I try to get things straightened out I never seem to be able to communicate everything I need to so that my deepening frustration will go away.

So blue and blood moons it is. I could have just as easily thought about the lint balls you can make after your done drying clothes. And if you have some of thoes googlie eyes they sell in every craft store across america you and make seeing eye'd tribbles.

If you are familar with the very first 5 years of the star trek sagga that took place on T.V. You know what a tribble is and how they hated klingons and love vulcans and mulitplied at will.
And boy did they have the will to!

Then they started dying at an alarming rate, because the klingons were poisioning the tritakale grain and the tribbles being tribbles and always hungry or having babies, got into the grain and since it was poisioned they started kicking the bucket.

Actually the tribbles were born pregnant acording to Dr. Mcoy.
The ships doctor who the captin was always calling bones. Anyway thanks to the tribbles the day was saved and the plot was found out and even though we all felt bad about the little guys who looked like fuzz balls the bad grain wouldn't end up killing millions on some planet.

Anyway, so I could have thought about lint and giving it eyes after you roll it up into a ball, but I decited to write about blue moons, and yes blood moons. Seems that here where there is nothing to obstruct the dust in the air, the moon when it first rises looks like it's covered in blood. And what's even stranger is that face that is in the moon, takes on the apearance of a skull.

I think that's why the legand of the blood moon says that if you see one someone is going to die soon.
If you think about it, it's pretty acurate because people die somewhere everyday, it's just most of them we don't know. They just die and if they have family then they get burried, but what about all thoes poor souls who die with no family left to burry them?

There is a cemetary up near the town I grew up in and I was curious one day about it, so I tracked it down and found out that it was a place where they put thoes who died in the local mental instution in who had no family. Lots of unmarked graves. There are a few pioneer families burried there, but it's got a lot of bones from people who had no family to care for them.

Then I found out something really strange. In the town where I was born, there are streets in the city proper where houses are that used to be cemetary plots, and when it came time to build on thoes places no one bothered moving the bodies. The woman I talked to said that they should becareful how deep they dig when they plant their gardens, because it's unnerving to be digging holes for your roses and find bones.

That got me to thinking about how many places across this country where people were burried and no one kept a record and now everyone's forgotten. I heard that when the ohio river flooded it's banks in recient years there were alot of caskets that surfaced.

How easy it is to forget where the legecy of our past ends up, and how easy it is to just build, build, build because there are highrises and apartment buildings to fill and business that need bigger and better.

If you go into older cemetaries the ground is not level and the headstones are old and if you are into gathering information through rubbings of the headstones, you can find some cool old works of art still around.
You'll notice that when you walk through these places that the history that lays before you is overwhelming, and sad.

In the modern cemetary the bodies are put into cement vaults and the end result is level ground. When you walk through grounds it's almost as if there are only headstones there and the charm and mystery and history is missing.

I think being able to see the places that have risen and sunk over the years serves to remind us how fraglie life is, and that someone loved thoes people enough to take the time to burry them with care.
I know that's partly why I love cemetaries. That and the beautiful trees and the statues that grace the grounds. I know that there are cemeteries where I won't go because of the uneasy feel about them, while others exude rest and peace.

I'm sure to some this is all very morbid and not a subject that one talks about in such easy terms.
I used to feel that way, until when my son was in the 5th grade the class he was in had a field trip that was unusal. They were taking the kids to three of the cities cemetaries, where they would do rubbings of headstones and along with that they would get to ask questions of the caretakers, and there was the list they were given of people that fit into different catagories that they had to find.
The purpose was to dispell the idea that cemetaries were scary places associated with halloweeen.

It was a historical trip for the kids, and the parents who accompanied the kids it was a chance to see the cemetary at some other time than a time of greif and sadness, where no one talks about what they see, or if they have questions it's a bad time to ask them.

It was such a good experience that when they offered it again the following year to all the kids in the 6th grade, I signed up to go again. It changed how I viewed cememtaries.
Now I enjoy wandering through them for the most part.
But as I said there are some that make me uncomfortable so I tend to not go to thoes.

I think I got side tracked, happens alot these days. Not alot makes much sense, but I guess that it's better than thinking about a job that frustrates me to no end, and makes me want to become a hermet, and work where I never see people who can't figure out even the simplest things.
Yeah it is better.

We watched most of the debate tonight between John kerry and George.
It was annoying at best, but over all John was the more composed speaker of the evening, while George was shaking in his very expensive suit.
I wonder if it was an armani....

The main theme that kept comming up was George's retoric about terrorism and John's ever changing stand on things.

The things I would have like to hear them talk on was their view on the goverment project "Monarch", the skull and bones, and the rights that keep getting taken away under the guise of national security.

Thoes things that I mentioned above are all matter of public record and information on them abounds on the net.

I would have liked to hear George explain why the only plain flying over us skies after 911 was the Osma family plane as it was leaving Texas.

I would have liked to hear the explaination as to why the true numbers of casulties are never mentioned on us broadcasts, but you can get them on the bbc.

I would like to have heard them explain why Iraq is the main focus of the continued area where troops and army bases are being built, if this was just suppose to be a quick deal.
They did touch on it a bit, but it was the usual side track mess.

I would have loved to hear the explaination for why our goverment continues to strip away our freedoms gaurenteed by the constitution under the guise of it being done to protect the american people.

I agree with John's assement that if we are demanding that other countries not build nuclar weapons than we shouldn't either. Dispite the demands of the american goverment that other countries not build them, our goverment is now building and testing nuclar weapons that will be used on bunkers.

I'd also like to have it explained to the american people why we have weapons of mass distruction in our posession. We have a stock pile of deadly virus's in our posession. Thoes could be put inside a small bomb and upon impact it would kill millions of people. Does that or does that not qualify as a weapon of mass distruction?

Both of these men are in persute of the highest office in the country. It's about power. Not about governing the people in a way that honors the people.

After listening tonight, the only one of the two that had any valid things to say was John. But that really dosen't mean squat.
George said alot of things before he got into office, how much of what he said has he followed through on?
Will John be any better?
I know I don't want to live through four more years of business as usual.
I can't afford it.

I listened to what was said, and believed almost, none of it.
For me the proof is in the pudding.
And George has shown the american people and the rest of the world what kind of pudding he makes.
I don't know that John's will be any better.

It's just a strugle for power is what this whole thing really boils down to, and what that power can end up costing us.

I'm waiting. For everyone to leave the house so I can start doing the things I need to do. It won't be long. I want to be here, in solitude and quite, and do, what ever.

Last night the weatherman said that there could be a possiblity of frost comming and that will bring the turning of the leaves into a faster pace. It's almost october now. Almost a year since we left, or rather escaped from one of the most depressing places I have ever been to.

It was sucking the life out of me in a rapid hurry and I got to the point where I was ready to walk out, when my mother sent just enough money for us to escape.

Here it is, alnost a year later and I'm restless again. I feel time doing things and I feel my body telling me that winter is comming.
I can't remember a time when it felt like spring comming inside. Summer has for a long time represented pain, and the comming of fall for many years was the best time of the year for me.

Now, however, what I feel is a sense of lack. I feel uncomfortable in my own skin now. I wish I could take off my skin and take a long vacation from myself. But humans don't have secret zippers somewhere so when we want to get away from our selves we can.
Would be nice though if we could.

A couple of years ago, when this adventrue started in my life, I was full of wonderful pioneeric ideals of going off into the unknown and finding an abandoned house and making it not only liveable but comfortable. I knew that there would be alot of hard painful work, and that I would probably fail alot, but I was pumped for the challange.

I wanted to find people who were into bartering and leave money off somewhere and not be a part of this madness that gobbles up everyone and everything in sight.
Back to somewhere....anywhere, where life was more about people who's need were dependant on whether or not they gathered and hunted for food and used the time before them with wisdom rather than being like the grasshopper in the story of the ant and the grasshopper.

It's horrible to have a need so deep to know what your made of and all you spend your time doing is being sidetracked by things that in the end don't and won't matter.

I've come to the conclusion that when the time comes for me to actually get a shot at my dreams, my body will have gone on permeant protest against doing anything more difficult than making it to some kitchen and conquoring the morning oatmeal.

I hear people all the time who are young wanting this and wanting that, and who hate their job, but in the very next breath complain about the things they can't buy or the concert they can't go to because of money.

I hate money. Life is more than money, but it's the most focused on thing that slapps a person in the face all the time.
I know I was born far too late. I'm outta sinc with the present and like a disjointed rag doll, cast off because it's too old to be attractive anymore, I am left to wish and want but not able to do what it is that would make what I want possible.

So now, it's wensday morning, my focus is gone, and I'm wandering around like a man who lost left his house key inside, absentmindly locked the door, and now he's outside in his underwear hoping the neighbors arn't up yet.

Ah the joys of not knowing what your doing in life. Soon everyone will be off to work. I'm going to get laundry done today, and the dishes too.
Maybe thoes simple things will be the thing that has all the answers that I need right now...(where is the back of the box of cereal when you need one)

Wish me luck on my laundry. I don't know where I'm gonna put all thoes clean clothes when their done. There isn't enough draw space, as we have one small dresser for both our clothes and some bags that they usually end up in.
That comes from having no furnature to speak of and taking people's cast offs because it's all you can afford.

I guess it's better than having them stuffed in the back of a small truck. We did that for over a year when we had no place to live. The money thing again. No job, only selling bits of jewerly and paintings, enough to keep gas in the truck so that we wouldn't freeze to death.
Eating maybe once a day some days. If we had been in a bigger city, or close to one, finding the grocery stores with open dumpsters would have been a good thing. We could have lived off what people were throwing away.

I've known several people who were homeless at one point and survived by eating food out of dumpsters because it was the only thing they could afford to do.

The great and massive depression of the present hidden away in the mist of modern day society, where even thoes with jobs can't afford a decient quality of life, or a reasonable standard of living. And no one, not the goverment, not the agencies who are designed to help really give a rat's left foot what happens to the people who are drowing in this depression.
And why? Because it's so rampent. The middle class is fast disapearing, leaving only two groups, the rich and the poor, both the homeless poor, and the working poor.
I'm waiting for the complete collaps of the economy as we know it, and when it comes, and very few people remember how to live off the land, there will be more than just a fincial collaps that occurs, it will become the survival of thoes who are not nessiarily the strongest, but thoes who remember and are able to live off the land. The truely educated in what is out there to eat.

Bye bye mc donalds and malls and all the other useless crap that has been shoved down our throats as the nessities of life...

once upon a time, your neighbors were as familar to you as your own family, and it wasn't nessary to lock and bolt the doors, for fear of someone breaking in.
Crime existed to be sure, but it was somewhere else, not in your lap.

Oh well, enough of thinking about this for today. I'm sure it will still be screaming at me tomorrow morning or tonight when day is done. I've got an abundance of discontent....any one want to barter?

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...