Reading harold_maude's journal

If you drop a pebble into the water, there is a splash or a plunk depending on how high you hold your hand above the water.
Then there are ripples, and any reflection from the sky or trees becomes distorted.

For a time, nothing looks right, but from the place your standing or sitting at you reconize why.

If the water has a chance to still and quiet, barring any wind, the reflection will, at some point regain the mirrored surface and the immages reflected will again look as they should.

But if you never let the pool rest, but kept dropping pebbles into the water, two things are likely to happen.

One, the pool will be in constant motion from the pebbles hitting the surface and making waves, distorting the reflection of the sky and trees.
Two, under the surface there will be a pile of pebbles that will begin to rise to the surface and after awhile if you kept dropping pebbles into the same spot, the pebble would break the surface and become a permanent disturbance to the mirrored surface.

After a while the pile of pebbles would become a place where insects could land and stop, and if you kept dropping pebbles into the pool there would come a time that the edges of the pool would be too limiting for the water.

Now water is an interesting thing.
It's one of those unique things in nature that can assume many forms depending on the conditions in which it exists.
What it's made up of, one atom of hydrogen and two atoms of oxygen stays the same.
But the conditions that it comes in contact with changes how it looks.

Liquid. Vapor. Ice and it's various forms, that is snow, frost, or chunk.

All this condsideration for a simple thing. Something that attracts a child more than an adult.
The fascination with water, the pebbles and what happens.
Somewhere along the line the pool changes.

Adults drive through them on the street, walk around them in parking lots so as not to get their feet wet, and build colverts so that the water can go somewhere other than just stand there and be in the way of what they are building.
In summer, pools of standing water are places where mesquetos lay their eggs and those pesky bugs that drive most of us crazy are reason enough to pour oil of somekind into the pool.
It kills the larva of the mesquetoes, and makes going outside more pleasant.

To a child though, the pool of water is something entirely different. It's got something to offer.
A whole world of things.
It becomes a lake for bugs to take a holiday at.
It becomes the place where you can take a flying leap into just to watch the water spray.
And depending on how hard you jump, you can make the water go pretty high.
Children are delighted by this.
They jump from pool to pool as hard as they can, and if there are many pools they can resemble frogs in clothes lost in the sheer enjoyment of making the water fly.

Even when a pool gets oil on it's surface something happens that can make a child stop. It's the rainbow thing.
Something that happens to look like the pictures I've seen of the nebulas and star clusters that we'ver only relativly reciently have begun to see pictures of.

I remember watching oil slicks on water for hours. It was like looking at a bubble that was flattened out.
I loved the colors and how they swirled and curved and the longer I watched the more beautiful it became.
I didn't know at the time why it did what it did, or anything about light waves, or how light when it hits the surface of something will reflect back one or two colors because of the molectular density of what I was looking at.

It was just this magical thing. The same with frost. Both on the trees and on glass.
Cool stuff. You could press your fingers against a glass covered in frost and leave your hand there. Or at least the print of your hand.
It was cold, but it didn't take long for the warmth of your hand to melt the frost and then after pulling my hand away, I would get close and inspect the lines, what I could see of them, and ponder with amazement that that's what my hand looked like.

I spent long hours lost in those kinds of things.

It seems now though, that the choas of nessity has taken much from me, those things included.
It's not that I don't want to get down close to a pool of water that I see and dream as I watch the reflection and see the little bugs walking along the edges trying to find the end so they can keep going, but I haven't been able to.
I miss that.
Terribly.

To not be so over loaded with requirements to be an adult in this life would be wonderful.
But that's what happened.

I still get time to do those things, but it's not near enough anymore to let the world and it's screaming fade to black so I can relax enough and clear my head enough to be content at the edge of a pool.

I've thought about my perfect world alot. A place where war dosen't take center stage.
A place where people haven't lost their humanity.
Except when something disasterous happens. Then there is all kinds of human things that go on. Some good, some not so good.

In my perfect world, there would be room for everyone to be who they were ment to be, and childhood, would last longer because the best parts of being a child would survive through out all of life.
The ablity to be amazed. The ablity to have adventures, the kind that don't involve a movie that stirs that stagnant sleeping pot of immagination that gets pushed to the side because the need to work so the bills and toys of adult hood can be fed.

In my world, it would be as easy to become robin hood as it is to put on a work uniform.
More so.

Bartering would be more important than money. Bartering involves the skills and talents that each person has.
It makes each person involved valuable.
And it takes away the nessity for money. It also has the power to shut out the greedy hand of the goverment poking into your labor stealing what it believes is it's share of your life.

This world we live in, it's all screwed up. Things are so backwards. Money is the most important thing.
And possition in a company or the family you belong to, meaning old money that has power attached to it means the most in this world.
And the jewels of childhood? Well, they get lost, distroyed, set aside for more adult persuits.

And we become swallowed up as we grow older, or up, or become "responsible" contributors to society. Good consumers.
Buy lots of stuff and die in debt. And pay your taxes like a good upstanding member who contributes to society should.

And it stinks. Really really bad.
It feels grimey, and gross, and alot like being stuffed into a very uncomfortable suit that makes you sweat like a pig and act like a rat fighting over crumbs of food.

Each year that I exist here on this planet, I see more and more children being stripped earlier and earlier of any semblance of childhood.
They are shoved, pushed, stuffed into the world of being a good greedy consumer.
The world of immagniation is crowed out. Children are told to grow up, act their age, to stop playing with this or that, and do their chores, or homework, and then handed controlers to video games or movies that do the imagination work for them.
They are carefully groomed to become box dwellers.
And they loose, and loose and loose.

The most important gifts of life, the ones that make bordom something that doesn't have a chance to take hold, are smashed, crushed and otherwise thrown out.

I've seen parents telling children as they sit down to create something that everything has to match, the colors have to be this way or that, and to hurry up because "we have to eat lunch because we have lots to do"
What the hell happened to parents sitting down with their children and getting as messy as the kids while making something wonderful, and doing something really novel like laughing and suddenly being amazed because it's fun?
And getting the chance to see how wonderful it is to just get lost in some story that a pool of water can tell?

I used to tell people I was an escapee from neverland. And they would laugh.
I thought about that last night. What I was actually saying.
And I thought why would I want to escape from the most wonderful place in the world?
Why would I in my right mind want to leave someplace where the world is as it should be?

I'm not an escapee from neverland, I'm one of it's residents.
I will always be a resident of neverland and fericely defend it's borders.
Why?
Because I love neverland. I love my immangination. It's powerful and well fed. And it makes for a great vaction that you never have to go anywhere or pay any money out to get there, it's as close as letting your thoughts wander.
Letting your thoughts get out of the city as it were, and take the path through the woods or fields and suddenly your wearing the clothes of neverland, what ever those might be.

Today maybe your a pirate on the highseas off to burry more treasure.
Or maybe your a fairy dancing from flower to flower, grabing hold of the tail of a dragonfly that takes you on some wild ride.

Maybe your a king wandering around in the woods of some forgotten part of the kingdom and you come upon a really odd tree that has gold leaves and you eat one and fall through a door that leads to somewhere else.

That's what neverland does to you. That's what it offers. But it's so much more.
It keeps you young. Inside where no frame of time can touch you.
No matter what your body is doing, neverland keeps time away.

That's what I realized last night. And I'm sorry I thought it was ok to say I was an escapee from neverland. It wasn't. But I was stupid and didn't understand.
But I do now.
I'm a resident of neverland, and my fondest wish is to infect every human I come incontact with the desire to return there.

So boys and girls of all ages, if your game, lets go wandering, and see where the day takes us, shall we?
There is adventure to be had, and wonderful and marvelous things to behold.
And all you have to do to get there is just believe and let go...
before you know it, you'll be there.

And the biggest surprise is, that you can go there anytime, anywhere you want to.
So what are you waiting for?

I'll see you there. Look up and you'll see me flying with peter and tink, dancing in the clouds playing king of the mountian...:)

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