harold_maude's journal

It's sunday morning. My head is running on overload again this morning.
When this happens, as it does quite often, I will try to focus on one idea. Kind of ignore the rest of the stuff going on and just focus on one thing and sometimes it helps to get things a bit more focused and generally makes the day a bit easier.

this morning this thought went through my head:
artist: an accomplished master of any given discipline, or acitvity.

A simple definition.
That's what that is. Tear away all the add-on words and that at the bottom of all things that define one notion of what an aritst is.

The Oxford dictonary has, like all dictionaries, a group of pages that give you instructions on how to use the dictionary, a preface, and the tools to help you the searcher and reader understand how to decode the words that are in the dictionary.

I decited to read through this section a few months ago.
I read the story of how the oxford dictionary came into existance.
It is an amazing story.

In the year 1857 there was decision made that all the dictionaries that existed were incomplete due to the fact
that the english language had changed so much that a new dictionary needed to be made.
The first 22 years of collecting definitions produced almost two tons of little 4x6 inch peices of paper with a single word on it and a definition of that word.
That's alot of little yellow peices of paper.

In 1878 it was decited that a 4 volume 6400 page work would
be completed in ten years.
Ten years to organize and sort and edit and spell check almost two tons of little yellow peices of paper.
I'm not sure that would be a job that I would want.

To skip ahead to the end here are the statistics about this book called the oxford dictionary:

It was finally completed in 1928.
It was bound in 12 large volumes
contianed 15,487 pages defining 414,825 words
with 1,827,306
supporting and illustrative quotations from Anglo-Saxib tunes to the twenthieth century.
There was a 127 miles of typeset material.
The whole thing took 70 years to complete.

This and a whole lot more is written in a brief history of how the oxford english dictionary came into existance.
The numbers alone stager the mind.
How can so many words exist and yet many times it's so hard to define what we want to say?

That's amazing, that even after that many words sometimes finding the right one never seems to happen.
Enter the thesaurus.
That cool book that helps you make up your mind what word would be good to use to help you get your meaning across.
It's awesome, but in the currant existing languages spoken in
this country alone, the different dialects that exist in this country, not to meantion how many other countries with how many varried language dialects and meanings to thoes spoken languages, it's really hard to know if they have the same definition of a particular word as you do as their main definition.

All this leads me to believe that Terrence was right about our need to find a different way to communicate with each other so we can actually understand each other.

There are languages that I listen to, the words are in english, but understanding them has proven difficult.
When I hear people speak strings of words back and forth, I watch the body language as the conversation goes on.

There are whole expressions of body movments that accompany the spoken word.
And there is a term that someone came up with to define all of this: Ebonics.
And from what I was told as a definition of what ebonics is, I gathered that it is a mixture of words that orignally started as a seperate language group among african groups in this country and then mixed with the melting pot of languages called americanese, that's seems a good term for what is spoken in this country.

It occured to me that we all have our own personal language in additon to all of the above.
I have no idea how many languages actually exist right now.
Is it any wonder that we have trouble communicating clearly?

It seems a right of passage almost for a generation to create it's own language as well.
Trying to bridge the generation gap might be better said this way: trying to bridge the language gap and the language barriers.
The previous generations find themselves in this situation,
they must learn the new language in order to be understood by the group that created and is speaking the lanugage.
New pages are written in memory and I would guess that someone somewhere is writing this stuff down so that it becomes the written expression of definitions for the new language.

I'm not sure how long it would now to make yet another version of a common , common meaning used by all who use linguistic expressions to communicate ideas, dictionary.
With computer technology probably not very long relativly speaking.
With the ablity to take photographs to act as a support for the definitions, it would be a very large set and number of books.
It would be huge.

It boggles the mind.
but I think it probably needs to be done. Just so that at least there is some kind of record of the evolution of language.

gonna stop here.

I'm writing this tonight because maybe someone who needs to hear what this feels like so that they can understand themselves with it hits or they can maybe gain a different perspective when someone they love is going through it.
Every woman experiences it differently, but all women do go through it, there is no escape.
And for better or worse, the men they are with go through it by vertue of being with a woman who is going through it. I hope that made sense.

I've been living with this for almost a year now.
The last couple of months things have gotten harder all the way around.
Up until tonight when I talked to my best friend who went through this early in life due to nessiary surgery, I believed that because I am allergic to synthic hormones that anything containing a horome effecting or generating substance was off limits for me, in short I was condemmed to ride this ride without help.
I'm doing research and hopefully there will be something I can take that will help.

In light of this place, I decited to write this.

Metapause Madness

Somedays I feel like my mind is already left home
without me.
somedays I feel like the equator disolved inside me and is radiating out into the world from my guts.
somedays I want to leave everything behind and go off
like animals do when they are ready to die.

I feel like I need to appoligize for sounding like my mind has
taken a headder.
What I know about this place:
It feels strange, off the wall and for get lunch.
It's physically and emotionally draining and exausting.
To make it harder I have extreem allergies to hormone replacement.
I'm wading through information and trying to keep a clear head while doing it.
My sense of humor is becomming cynical and biting now.
My patients is thin.
And I'm exausted.
this can last for up to 10 years.
10 years. A life sentence if it were behind bars.

some hours are like being thrown into a thick fog bank and yet I have to keep going and keep working because if I don't it will get worse, I'll be living on the streets.
Even though I'm with someone who says they love me and really does try their best to show it, that does not mean that they will ever see the need to take care of me at all.
That is the reality that does exist.
Yeah you heard right, there are no gaurentees baby.
Never. You just accept that things are ok for right now, and hope that who ever says they want to walk with you isn't just blowing smoke out of their ass.

I know people who are in reasonable health, years away from anything like this who are living like me.
Both men and women people, not just women, but men as well.
( I bet you thought I was going to tell you that men never have to deal with shit like this.)
It's a hard place to live.

If you've never had to go through this in any way shape or form, condsider yourself blessed.
If your with someone who genuinely loves you, i.e. wants the best for you and has proved that by how they live and if they stay and if they support you when the shit hits the fan in your life, that no one avoids completely.
Somewhere and at sometime the shit will hit the fan.

You'll know at that time how much you mean to another person when you become something resembling an unfixable you, and still they stay and step up to the plate so you can stop long enough to help yourself uninterupted. Give you grace to find your way at the very least.
That's how you'll know.

When I write here I try hard to keep my private life just that, private, the kind of private that only a few people know about.
This place for me is not about ranting or rejoicing about my private life, this is a place that I have the illusion of a secret world that no one bothers.
I know in reality that some people at some point read this stuff that I ramble on about.
But the illusion persists.
I like some of my illusions. I like my private dreams too, where everything is better all over.
Where I am ok all over the board and I'm doing everything just right and every peice of work is a masterpeice of living art.
Not for the purpose of parading around like some kind of self asborbed peacock, but for the very sake of being able to create my best everytime I go to create.

In my dreams I'm strong all the time. Impervious to everything that can distroy the soul or mind.
I'm doing a job that is designed for me so it never ever feels like work.
I never get depressed or have to find a soultion to any more problems.
This is ok to put out there too.
I'm sure it won't offend anyone.

That's another thing that keeps happening, I find myself doing things that seem to offend people and it's not like I'm planning to offend them, I just end up doing that very thing.

In this place where everything is crumbling at one speed or another, nothing feels solid.
And there is this voice in my head that keeps telling me how lazy I am and to work harder, how wrong it is of me to expect mercy and how wrong it is to need rest or to expect anything good because I don't deserve it....my life keeps reflecting that last part. Over and over.
I must have been a real asshole in some past life to feel this way and keep experiencing it.
It has gotten better, there was a couple year run back a couple of years ago that it seemed that anytime I was given something good, on the heels of that came some kind of bad crap to beat me up.
It got to the point where I was scared to accept any kind of gift, I was sure that something was waiting to slamm into me...
and it kept doing just that.
For at least two years it went that way.

Now, I cling to hopes. They are anchors for me now.

I really must have been a monster in some past life...
and I appoligize with all my breath for being an asshole or monster or what ever.

I work to keep my focus now days. since all drive to accomplish is becomming dust, more and more, it's sheer determination that keeps me going...mind over screaming matter.
The end result is that I am close to just stopping completely and letting everything in my life crash as much as it needs to or as much as I deserve and just lay there and take what ever is comming and close my eyes and just let it roll over me.

That's how I feel most days anymore.

I've been reading stuff to try and find my answers and what my body needs to help myself.

on some level I see this as a kind of right of passage.
Maybe I'll get a tatoo to mark the seasons of this place.
One for each place of dissasembly that I can get a clear handle on.

I feel like a stranger to me. I'm fighting as best as I can to keep a grip on things.
I have no choice. I have to.

This place makes all the flaws I have known for years loud and annoying.
When the hot flashes come I want to rip my skin off. It's gotten so bad that I have come close to passing out from the heat that my body is generating.
My thoughts go fuzzy and I feel like I've become stupid.
Sometimes it makes me feel intoxicated.
It doesn't respect anything about me or the fact that I work for a living.
It doesn't give a rat's left foot if I'm using sharp tools at work.
My concentration is shit most of the time anymore.

I keep my tears at bay as best as I can. They like to come with no warring.
I feel like a painting that is melting and morfing.

I'm genuinely not ok.
I want to be ok.
But the truth is that for a while at least I'm not ok.

This post was edited by harold_maude on Apr 20, 2008.

I just finished watching Kill Bill and Kill Bill 2.
I'm not sure how many times I've seen them before, but each
time I've seen one or both of them, I have, as with all movies
that become the stock and trade of my favorite movies, walked
away with something different, each time.

This time was no different.

I thought about the story, the characters in the story.
Them being symbolic types for different people I have either met,known or have wanted to be like, for real.

Since I seem to spend more time in the phsychology department of life than any place else, I really don't find it out of the
ordinary that this view would finally get here.

After watching both of them in order, in one night, I couldn't get them out of my head. I kept seeing scene after scene of the different meetings, the bits of explaintion dropped into our laps, like bread crumbs to lead you
all the way though the story.
A good juicy story line.
Lots of blood everywhere, but done with style and class.
With purpose in other words.

The story unfolds, we get to meet the sojourner
and the meter of justice
and the sinners who are deserving to die
.
We get to listen and watch mini stories unfold and see why things are the way they are in the world according to Beatrix Kiddo. Bits of inferance here and there leave the story even after two installments, open ended enough that if Quinten Terrento decited to make a prequal and a sequal to the whole thing, he definately could.
But I can't see that happening, and in actuallity I wouldn't want that.
The story has just enough of the complete story so that you undestand why everything happens, that it's all you need.
If you want any more from this story you have to think about it and look for what you want from it.
But it's a good juicy story and it has lots of stuff to show you.

I guess that's because it's very japanese honor centered in so many ways.

But back to Beatrix Kiddo. I didn't look at the credits to see if that's how the name is spelled, because at this point, I'm not worried about spelling things correctly.
Individual language expressions is something I want to address but not here just now.

So, once again, back to Beatrix. She is the story teller.
She is the one who dies first,and ironicly the only one who surivies death to come back and as a result, completely stop a group of very highly specialized killers.
We get to see life from her perspective, and the drive that comes with the want for revenge, or from a very old view that mankind has opperated in until actually very reciently with the invention of the judge and jury and judicial and legal system
which is good to a point, but has become bogged down and over crowed with pointless activity.

I think it might be of better benefit if everyone on the planet were allowed the freedom to deal with people that offend them, themselves. They would take revenge or justice how ever you view it themselves with the understanding that they take all the risks, including the very real possiblity of loosing their lives in the process.
No interfearance or societal demand for justice.
Just acceptance of it.

Think about it for a minuet. Put yourself in place of Beatrix for a minuet here. She doesn't go to the justice system to get justice, she goes and takes care of it herself.
She assumes all risks, including the knowledge that if she fails, she dies.

Her ablity to keep her emotions and her purpose seperate allows
her to do what she came to do and nothing more.
The conversation between the second person on the list of death
shows that it's simply unfinished business and nothing more.

Beatrix responds to the question of wanting things to be even by saying basicly this statement of purpose:
"If I was going make things even then I would kill your daughter and your husband and you, that would make things square."

My appoligies for not remembering the names of the people, I have a hard time with remembering names.

The first person on the list, we get to hear the story of how she came to be someone who is feared and respected.
Her path to power begins with her witnessing the assination of her parents.
The immage of her mothers blood dripping like rain from the matress on to the little girls face,is so powerful, it implies the cry of the innocent for justice to the only one who understands what has been lost and is willing without hesitation to answer justice.
Something the legal system tries but so often fails to accomplish.
She, the little girl, is very much like Beatrix in the beginning.
And when she exacts revenge for the death of her parents, there is a sense of "YES!!!" that we feel for her.
She is a hero for all children who suffer and are wounded by someone bigger than them.

We watch with admeration as she takes control of the mountian.
She has earned our respect.
But she becomes the enemy when Beatrix and her daughter become the vicims.
But as we find out, at the end of the first movie, that her daughter is still alive, but Beatrix doesn't get to find that out until almost the very end of the second movie, a surprise that she must not let over take her.
She keeps her focus and purpose.
The japanese phillosophy that in order to exact revenge you must feel no compassion, no mercy, just taking a life for a life.
There can be nothing to dissuade you. Other wise your honor will not be regained.
Something like that.

Beatrix has to go through an army to get to the one.
But the death battle between the two women is in a setting that is beautiful and peaceful.
How ironic that it should be a garden where the snow is falling.
It's so quiet, and the white of the snow speaks of pure intent, and innocence.
The spattering of blood, a breaking of innocence.
Both women set out on the path of revenge, but we only see one end result at this point.
A life that started with revenge and became something deep and dark in it's nature.
We see the other life, Beatrixs' at the beginning of the path of revenge.
For her that is all there is.
Her life before she gets pregenant, is about taking life.
She learns how to be an efficant killer.

The knowledge that she is now carring another life within her
makes her change course so that the innocence with in her will be protected from seeing and being a part of the dark world of death by assination that she has spent so much of her life apart of.

The half japanese half american woman who is the first on the death list of Beatrix is a symbol or archialtype of intent changing course and taking on a new persona.
I've wondered over the last few days if this character continued
to see her self as a bringer of justice, the hand of justice metering out revenge for other people.

The the third person on the list is someone very likable at the beginning.
Easy. Laid back. Not at war with the notion of hiding at what is comming.
We find out about somethings that are in place as his story unfolds.
We find out along the line, that he is the brother of Bill who is the primary and ultimate target for justice and revenge.

We find out that he is not so charming and gentle and willing to just lay down and take what's comming to him.
We find out that he understands that he must do his best to kill Beatrix if he is going to keep living.
There is no way around it. We see the acceptance and the willingness not to run.
We see his strength and his ablity.
We also see his greed at work as well.

We see him attempt to kill Beatrix a second time by burring her alive.
We understand the intent to cause further harm and pain in this process.
The we get introduced to a teacher by the name of Pi Mae, I think that's how you spell his name.
A very cruel teacher.
A very nessisary teacher for the training of fine tuned assins.

We see the whole story. The discipline and shapping of Beatrix into a warrior.
We understand her pain. We see her war with her body to not listen to the pain and exaustion and brutailty that she faces to learn the ways of the samari.

This makes her as she takes up the path of revenge, the most deadly person on the face of the planet.
We watch as she proves that she is the warrior hero of the story.
She faces death again and again and prevails.

I found it elouquint that her symbol of the black mamba is brought in by the fourth person on the list to kill Bill's brother.
The mixture of money, information and the black mamba offers a view of truth about greed and self servatude, and the end result.
The fourth on the list of death is probably the person who I wanted to die the most.
The chacter is played by Darrly Hananna.
One of my favorite actresses. She plays in this movie someone I want to hate.
Someone who I am glad ends up blind and alone with a deadly snake.
We hear the hate pour out of her in shreeking rage.
We have come to understand that she hates Beatrix because she is in love with Bill.
He owns her. Lock stock and barrel.
She wants to be Beatrix, she wants Bill to feel about her the way he feels about Beatrix.
And the only way to get there from her perspective is to kill Beatrix and make her suffer durring the process.
She, infact would probably have tried to kill Beatrix if this story never existed the way it does.

That's what we learn as the movies unfold.

The we see the meeting between Bill and Beatrix.
And we hear the reasons that everything in the story took place at all.
Unfinished business.
At this point, there is no room for mercy, no place for compassion or love.
Even that has not stopped for Beatrix. Her love of Bill.
And her hate for what he did to her.
The fact that he is her daughter's father doesn't keep her from completing her journey.
We see at the end, that it's done in her heart and soul and mind.
The whole life of taking life is done.
That her world now is making a life for her self and her daughter.
That's where the story ends in the movie.

Over the last few days it has been going through my head in big bold immages.
And I have come to realize that I want to be like Beatrix.
I want to be strong and focused. I want to be just in what I do.
I want to move like she moves too. I want to be able to move like the wind and never need anyone to take care of things for me.
I want to be at peace with being all I need to take care of me.
That is something that has been a driving force and war for me over the last 7 years now.
I think maybe that that's why I want to be like her.

She has not come to make things even.

This post was edited by harold_maude on Apr 19, 2008.

Another week done, from the work perspective.
It wasn't a bad day outside of the crazy winter weather we are still suffering under.

Spring is just a dream at this point. I've come to terms with that.
For all I know it may stay winter here forever...just like in the movie groundhog day.

I have so little energy and no ambition, so I try to keep busy to counteract this.
I noticed that I'm writing alot lately, trying desperately to keep from sucumming to the feelings.
I got a letter from a sister of mine and I'm two behind. It made me feel horrible that letter writing is so hard.
Far easier to sit down here and just write about what ever is in my mind and on it at the moment.
I've been reading alot of the entries here, and that stirs my mind, but beyond that it's been one long hard road.

In two days time I will be getting ready to go back to work monday morning.
The truth is that I don't want to go anymore. I don't want to do anything anymore. I wish this would lift away, and then it wouldn't be such a deep struggle.

In a short time, I'm not sure how long, this job will come to an end as I am there for one main reason, to be support for the manager there, to help her keep going until she is ready to leave.
After it's done I have no clue as to what is next.
Maybe all I really need is a good long cry. I wish I had some strong onions in the house right now because that would help.
I'm very glad that most of what I write is taken no notice of, because most of it tends to be a draining of the overload that my mind tends to be in most days.

I wish I could turn on humor and let go and laugh until everything I can't do anything about would melt away like the snow.
But even that has become a difficult task lately.
Yesterday held thoughts of jumping off the mortal coil so to speak. I don't listen to thoes thoughts, as it's not as easy as it sounds, and it would end me up in the one place that would take away any sanity.
So we don't go there.

My hope is this, that a tomorrow morning will come and it will be different. Things will fall into place, the path will be clear and I will feel the excitment at going forward.
That is my hope, always.

I've been looking up things on the net. Something that can end up getting one caught up in chasing something for days.
I heard about this book, only one in existance, the vonynich manuscript, so I typed in the word and found lots and lots of information about it.
I started bookmarking everything. I don't know if I will be able to wade through everything, it is truely like a sea of information. I wonder what drowning in words would look like.
Maybe something like this:

There I was, minding my own business, just walking along and something hit me on the head. It bounced off just as I got hit by another thing, and yet another.
I looked down as it started to rain things, and discovered they weren't things, but words.
They started falling faster and faster. First by the hundreds then more.
All the words I knew and could think of and ones I'd never heard.
The wind started to blow and pretty soon I couldn't see anything.
I was word blind by now. Groping around hoping to find my way to some place safe, I was stumbling over words.
If I coulda just kept my balance I think I would have been ok, but I couldn't, so I went down and thoes words just kept comming.
Painful ones and ones that induced laughter, which isn't a good idea because then they start getting in your mouth and you have to spit them out because they like it in there, and will start dragging other words in there with them.

After awhile, I stopped struggling. I lost conciousness.
The next thing I remember is someone talking about the words and how they were everywhere, and I was just another victim of word drowning.
There were words embedded in my skin, my hair and even some in my eyes.

:) Seems words could be dangerous, and often are. Sometimes it would or could seem that words over take everything...after all we are a very wordy species.
Ah boy, I'm thinking literally here. Not symbolic, but literally. It would be strange to see if when a person said somthing what came out of their mouth was a literal thing instead of just a word or series of words.
Visualize it. A traffic jam, curiousity killing a cat, it's raining cats and dogs, going off the deep end. That one in particular could come with the question, what end are you going off of?
Biting off more than you can chew could be a good one.
How about making a point. I don't think I want to be close enough when someone makes one of thoes, I might get poked!

I wonder what elbow grease actually looks like. And then there are thoes lovely oximorons. They would be fun to see and not just hear about.
Goverment intelligence is the first one that comes to mind.
I know there are others, I just can't think of any at the moment.
I think I'm going to have to illustrate some of this for BPC.

I sit here reading a conversation that is encapsulated in a few words, written a couple of years ago.
I wonder what happened.

I started looking through the pages of people that have come to this place, and I noticed dates of last visit.
So many people, so many lives, voices that still echo off the walls.
Pages of a book that is a world unto itself.