Reading harold_maude's journal

The leaves are turning different shades of color, and their falling like petals off some spring flower that is dying.

The weather outside is beautiful. Warm and crisp, all at the same time.
It's the kind of day that having a picnic would be a great way to spend an afternoon. And staying until sunset would be wonderful.

I love these kinds of days. Indian summer, is what I remember it being called. I don't know if it's still refered to as that.
I haven't heard anyone talk about an Indian summer in a long time.
Maybe it became something that was politically incorrect to do.
Who knows...

It's the season of change. The landscape around me is taking on the hues of a glorious sunset that gets more brilliant with each passing day, and soon the world here will turn into shades of blues, brownish blacks, greys and white.
I heard some geese flying overhead a couple of weeks ago.

The rythems of life, that happen every year. Telling me what ballet of nature is around me, and it tells me what's comming.
Over the last couple of years I've been too busy worring about things that end up working out fine, even it it happens at the very last minuet.

I've been caught up in the fringes of the savage tug of war of working for people who I didn't want to work for, except one.
Loosing my life along the way.
I've missed the rythems that tell me what is happening.
It runs on a different clock than people who are consumed to some degree by the job that owns them.
Their lives, their free time, their world spirals around doing this thing just so they can live where they do, and if they have a job that pays better, they are consumed by that job just to make payments on things they hardly ever get to use, let alone enjoy.

For the last month and a half I've checked out only two jobs.
I've been fighting the idea that at some point I have to look for an open space in the blurr of workers and hope that I can time it just right and not get bounced off the flow of people and slam into a wall.
Not my idea of something reasonable to do with my life, any part of it for that matter.

I want to live in a world where bartering is the main way of getting what you need to live the life you choose.
Bartering allows each person to use the gifts and talents they've been given to make a true living from.
And there's less goverment interfearance.
You arn't a slave to the goverment by being required to give them money in the form of taxes, while working for some company that sees you as little more than a production drone.
When you pay your taxes, part of thoes taxes goes to keep the machinery of goverment alive.
It is a beasty that has grown fat and grosteque. It's main function now because it is so mamoth in size is to consume, consume, consume...or maybe that's not a very fair picture of
the goverment.

And maybe it's a more accurate picture of goverment that has gotten way too big.

In a world where batering was the means of getting what you need, you get to know the people your trading with.
It can be done across the street or town, it can be done with someone halfway around the globe.

But I know that with things the way they are, bartering will always be something that most people do once in a while.

Wouldn't it be awesome if you could trade the guy at the gas station a bunch of homemade bread or cookies to stock his shelves with in exchange for so many gallons of gas.
He'd have something that people could bring what they had in and trade with him for.

You could spend winters making things. Spending time with your family, eating food that you had stored in the fall.
Being able to take long walks and spend time actually getting to have fun, and getting to really know the people you live with.

You could take up new things, like brewing beer. Or making sculpture, or wood carving, and funiture making. Or how about making shoes or clothes, or printing books one at a time.
All of the above and many more things could be used as currancy in stead of money.

And you could learn new things, like watching the stars, and learning more about the natural world.
You could make fires where you and your family and friends could gather and tell stories and eat together and probably have the best evenings you could ever immagine.

If you needed to go to the doctor, you could take what you've made with your hands and use it to pay for his services.
And everyone would get what they needed.
You'd get to know the doctor you went to see because you'd actually have to spend time getting to know him or her.

I hate living in a world where money means way more than it should.
And having it or not having it decides your place in society, and wether or not you are a contributing memeber of the human race.
But to be a part of this world, one has to have money.

How did we ever get to this place? What wrong turn did we take to end us up in a place where people look at other people as wallets with legs?
And children as little more than market statistics?

I really really don't want to go back into the work world that exists.
It kills people at an early age. It runs their lives and takes nice people and turns them into something unreconizable.

If I can't figure out soon how to make a living from what I love I will have to go back there.
I feel like a frightened kitten hanging from a branch screaming for someone to come help me and at the same time too terrified to let go.
Stuck in limbo.

I wish I could just wish what I want into existance and open my eyes and there I would be...
That would be a magnificant day...

This post was edited by harold_maude on Oct 14, 2005.

I was talking to some more people who are politically minded than I am last night. We got on the subject of socialism (not communism). And what would happen if all the benefits of government and taxes and support programs were actually spread out equaly.

...Maybe we should just move to a different country. Like Canada or the UK.

Please contiune to vote AND post.

We've gotten into disgussions about that here too. And we've all seriously condsidered it.
Even if it's just for the health care, so that if someone needs to go to the doctor they can afford it.

A couple of months ago I was having some weird things going on, and I was going to go see a doctor, then I found out how much a visit was, and changed my mind.
There is no way I can afford what they were asking, just to see if everything is ok.

A month after we first got here, I had to go to the emergancy room, because it was either go or die. I had a hole in my stomach the size of my fist, something that was supposidly fixed two years before.
The doctor who did the orginal surgery was suppose to have put mesh in to add protection, so it wouldn't happen again.
I went through hell the first time. My body temp went below 98 degrees and I was puking up shit for 3 days every couple of hours, until I couldn't deal with it anymore, so I ended up in surgery.
The doctor neglected the mesh so I found myself in the hospital again, and when all was said and done, the bill for two days was 16,000 dollars.
Insanity.
Since I'd just arrived here, I hadn't had time to find work, let alone find a place to live.

With that in mind, the idea of socialized medicine is something that would be worth leaving this country for.

There are other things as well, but that would be enough, the other things are just bennefits of living in Canada.
I'm not sure about the U.K. though, we'd need to know more about the economy, that kind of thing.

Oh by the way, speaking of Canada, I talked to this guy a few months back from monteral and he said that there is a huge computer industry there and lots of jobs.
We checked it out on the net and found alot of good things about that city and several others.

I'm thinking some certian things have to fall into place here before that can happen.
So we will see.

sorry about the discription, it's gross, it was then it still is now, anyway, I made the decision to go the emergancy room.
I had surgery, and this time the doctor did it right.