Reading harold_maude's journal

It's Thursday morning and somewhere along the way I've already had a full day.
I could go back to sleep right now and when I woke up have another day in just a few hours.
Which brings me to the subject of how time is viewed, and how much of life is spent running by a clock.

I was watching some of the cats this morning, and few random bunnies in the grass eating. They know the day as dark and light.
How beautiful and simple that is. Not to have to think about how to balance what is required to keep a roof over their head, or if they need to go to the grocery store, or if they have clean clothes for work.
They just live. In perfect harmony with each day.

A while ago, a couple of years actually, I was in a place where there were no working clocks. The house we were staying in had no electricty, so along with being without several modern convineces, like being able to turn on a lightswitch and having refigeration and a stove where we could cook without much thought, the clocks in the house were run also on electricty.
We did have water and a toilet that flushed for which I was very greatful.

At first it was maddening. We had to come up with ways of dealing with the lack. There were problems to say the least.
Cold showers on hot days isn't bad, but when the weather began to get cold, that was a different matter.
We made candles so we could see at night.
We did have one modern convience that we came to charish greatly, a radio.
We listened to national public radio alot. Mostly because nothing else would come in very clear, but I think even if we could have gotten other stations to come in clear, the calmness of public radio was like an sail through days that seemed difficult, and sometimes almost impossible to get through.
Depression was never far away.
And then there was the sense of bordom and hopelessness that was a problem too. But it got less and less as the days passed.

After awhile, I noticed a change in how I viewed time. It lost it's secondhand and minuet face and became this rythem of light and dark.
We spent our days heating water over a fire pit so we could do a couple of things, wash a few clothes or take luke warm showers, and occasionally cook a frozen pizza or two in a pan.
Yes, you can cook pizza over a fire. The best way to do it is to have two pizzas and put them face together so you can turn them and they won't get burned or loose their stuff. We did some other normal over the fire cooking.
Trying to make cinnamon rolls is a little harder. It's hard to find the right height above the fire so they don't get burned black on the bottom.
If that does happen just eat the part that's cooked and throw the burned parts into the fire.

We learned that eating out of cans was a nessity since there was an overload of mice in the house. But you get used to those things.
I got to the point where going to see people who couldn't make the return effort to come see us where we were at, frustrating and it became clear that they didn't really care that we came to visit at all.
We talked more, and spent time sitting on the porch watching wildlife do their thing.
On occasion we would walk the few blocks to the local park and watch the wildlife there.
Going into town were we were was a few blocks further.
Durring the several occasions where we had flat tires from driving over country roads that the amish also shared and lost nails and those nails in turn would end up finding our tires,
we would take walks and talk about the different houses and dogs we saw, as well as the lady who had so many cats that we wondered if she had any room left to move around in with out stepping on one or two.

Durring this time, I slowly forgot about minuets, and second hands and scheduals and everything else that goes with clocks.
It just all became this flow, and every detail became something worth noticing.
I miss that.
Even with all the modern convinences we didn't have, I believe we got way more than we lost.

And I really wouldn't mind if we had to do it again.
I like days without clocks. It's more pressure free. And more peaceful.
It's something I would love to do again infact. I'd do a few things differently, like have a big strainer and some pot lids so ash wouldn't get in the water, and more clothes line, and a wash tub instead of just a sink to wash clothes in.
And less mice. :)

It only looks that way because your standing on your head.

This post was edited by harold_maude on Jul 21, 2005.