Reading harold_maude's journal

I broke yesterday and after comming home I spent some time writing about it. I went over the edge completely, and my intent was to stop the pain and agony that has been growing since the arrival of the newest person in the house.

When I was much younger I made some attempts to commit sucide, yesterday was the closest I have ever come to suceeding.
It was the only answer that I could come up with because no one was listening to anything I had been trying to tell them.

I just wanted the house to be at peace once more. A place of sanctuary, and a place of true healing.

This is the account of yesterday. I am doing better. The place where I put the knife to will heal and leave very little scar.

December 30, 2005

A fragile awakening. Snapping in two. Light years pass, in just a few hours. Traveling at the speed of waking up
in some place you know you don't want to be.
And that's pretty damn fast when just a few moments earlier you felt fine.

So many thoughts. Too many to count. Brusies to the soul. Deep gashes in the heart. All of them.
the past. Both recient and distant.
Exploding inside me, and the only thought that mattered at that moment was this:
"Peace. That's all I want."

It's most likely a good thing that I couldn't find the small box of exacto blades, because the next thing I knew
I was standing in the kitchen, with a knife pressed against my wrist.
Wanting to stop all the insanity.
Wanting to stop all the anger.
Wanting to stop feeling like natzi germany was taking root in a place that just a few months ago was a sanctuary.
Wanting to stop having to scream to be heard. And then having what I needed ignored.

I heard my self shreeking, maybe thinking if I yell loud enough the deafness will be broken.
And finely someone will listen, and do somthing.

The cops came. It was a good thing. Finally someone who was impartial would hear and do something.
Finally someone with the authority to do something that I had failed to do.
Stop the madness that had consumed me.

Take this man away, and make him stay away. He has driven me quite mad.

The ride through town was quiet. My guide, dressed in blue was a man named Paul. He had kind eyes.
He watched over me. I know it was so I wouldn't escape, or try to harm anyone or my self.

But I choose to look at it as this: He was my gardian for a few hours. A kind of hero that helps someone
who has fallen down get up.
And tell them with out saying anything, that it's ok. We all feel things sometimes too much, and don't
know what to do.

It was a nice feeling to have someone to trust for a little while journeing into a dark place.

Everyone I met was so kind.
And even still, the place was the most frightening place I have ever been in my life.
For a few hours I was a prisioner in a place that could deem that I was unfit to go back out into the world.

Some journeies are ones that change you.

No matter how long or short they are, they change you.

The birth of my children changed me.

The death of my father changed me.

My divorice changed me.

Finally leaving the home town I spent the first 43 years of my life in.

Going along a path where my life was suddenly mine.

Learning to be homeless.

Learning what it means that the work you do means whether you eat or keep from freezing at night.

Learning the hard lessons of being alone at the most terrifying times that come into any life.
Surgery. Not being sure I would wake up.

Not being close to my children at that moment, and not knowing if I would ever see daylight or them again.

And today, spending time in a phsych ward.
I don't understand how they can believe that an enviorment like that can make a person well in the mind.
There are locks everywhere.
Double paned glass.
Cameras watching you.
Having to ask someone if you can use the bathroom in your room because it's locked and has to have some
one who is watching everything you do unlock it.

no matter how nice and gentle they are, they are the guards, and you are in a place that makes you crazy.
How can you focus or think, or rest or even heal in a place like that.

They want to make sure that you don't do anything to hurt your self.
I felt my mind breaking in a different way this time.

Not good.

Madness added to madness. And no one listenes completely. No one has time. Everything to a set schedual
with the times your not eating left to you to decide what to do.
It's as though a chess board is set in front of you and you have no chess men and you are told that you need to play
chess.

It's your job to figure out how, so that the guards watching you know if your insane or not.

I have no idea of how I felt other than I wanted to just come home.
I was terrified.

Broken. Alone. Blind in a thousand lights.
Searching for a thread of something concrete to hold on to.

Talking to social workers, doctors, nurses, and other people.
You can talk really quiet to the other patients and they can hear every word you say.
There is no noise in that place, but the pain is overwhelming.
It's funny how I could feel the brokenness of the patients around me and I understood that they all wanted
just to go home.

Home. A place where it's safe to be who you are. Surrounded by familiar things, and people that you love,
and animals.
And you realize that all you wanted was peace. That you were at that place where the only answer you could
come up with was to stop your life.

Stop the pain. Once and for all.

I find myself walking in short measured steps, legs as close to gether as possible.

When they told me I was released, it was so awesome.
Free.

They got me a cab, and the driver was awesome. A hippy. *Smiling* Someone who was very relaxed and easy going
to take me home.
Another gift.

I feel so fragile tonight. I'm ok. But I need to heal. I need quiet. I need to not have to perform. I need seclusion right now.
And a place where it's truely ok.

And so here I am. so many things broken inside. And I have to pick myself up and keep going. There is no time to rest
in the way I need to, so it will become work and quite at home.
Solitude.
In familar surroundings.

I've written much durring the road to this place. Right now, that's enough said about things. They will be looked at when
the time is right, to remember and be able to see more clear from a distance.

All I want now is to go forward. Gentley. And see where the road takes me. The light at the end of the tunnel.
And that is all I can ask.

And it will be ok. I'm ok.

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

I'm told the mark of genius is insanity. Historically, the Masters and meistros whose work is held exemplar to their craft have been alcoholics, addicts, or worse. They did what they felt they must to soothe those demons come with the finest of skills.
I have felt its sensuous grasp. I have been captive to its every will and whim. I have been made a fool in her honour, and loved every minute of it.

Home. A place where it's safe to be who you are. Surrounded by familiar things, and people that you love,
and animals.
And you realize that all you wanted was peace. That you were at that place where the only answer you could
come up with was to stop your life.
Stop the pain. Once and for all.

I could quote almost everything you wrote, but the above few lines hit the mark dead on. It's impossible to describre the landscape of insanity.
It's not enough to say it is the loneliest house you'll ever live in. There are no windows, nor any doors. No deposit, no return.

I felt my mind break in a different way this time.

I watched every bit of sanity excrete from my brain, like little bits of dandruff not stopping untill every thing I thought I knew was relegated to memory and nether reaches.
I watched every bit of sense and reason in my head drain out into the toilet, the floor, whereever, never to return.
I was completely lost; floating, adrift on an angry sea of thoughts and re-thought, feelings, emotions and chaotic bifurcations.
I felt my brain break in a way foreign.
I could not contain it.
Genius will not be contained.

At that time, 1992, I called a friend to meet me for coffee.
I tried explaining to him a piece of artwork I was working on. I had tried to map my insanity. I talked of negative feedback loops and chaotic bifurcations. I showed him what I was working on. It contained more words than pictures.
He was scared. He felt powerless. He could truly do nothing to help me. I was beyond any help he could provide. I imagine it was like watching a car crash from 50 feet away. All you can do is stand clear of flying parts, and dismembered apendages.

Now here I am 14 years later. I'm not 14 years matured. Those ghosts still haunt me.
They always will.
It's for that reason I freely admit to smoking pot. It's my medicine. It's not perfect, but it stops the voices. It stops the rage. For that little while, it lets my mind be at peace with the parts. It mollifies the angry Preta Ghouls--those beings which feast on our soul.

It is of such places where you visited that we're told the preta ghouls come from. In Tibetan Buddhist lore, these ghastly figures derive from the third ring of Hell--their version of it. It is the place where these ghouls eat away, gnawing your soul so it is raw and pink. It is the place where these blind, dumb demons live.
Those not pure of conscience are said to land there.

The place where I broke has only scabbed over. It's still there. Time can't heal everything. But by doing the right things, I can survive.
The variable is: "doing the right thing"...that's open to interpretation.

On my "normal" days I don't feel like surviving. On the days I don't smoke or m3dicate, I feel suicidal. All the rage, and hate, and hurt, and spilth well up and tears come to my eyes unbidden. I hurt. I feel the hurt and it stays with me. It's a filth that never leaves. It can't be cleaned off. No disinfectant can cleanse the efflvia of my soul that bubbles up through my pores.

One night of dire misery I started glueing pictures to my wall. No tape--I wanted these to stay.
Like the thick nylon straps used to restrain arms, I attached these pictures to my wall.
Drowning in a seas of fucking filth, and spilth, and dreck; when I couldn't keep my head over it, I started posting pictures of my family, and friends, and my pet puppo, Mr. Scrappy.
I filled half my wall with at least one picture for every person that is important to me. I needed this. I needed to ground me back to reality. Those we love help remind us of what is important.
Suicide is perhaps the most selfish act we can do. At the time it doesn't matter. We can't see beyond the pain, the hurt, the bottomless pit.
Death is the answer to the bottomless pit, or so it seems. But what is death? What if the final judge of your character is how best you acted while under the worse possible pressure? Could we possibly survive that calculus?
I know I'm condemned.

Originally, when I say this post I started thinking about suicide. That's the sub-text. The main story is about the abject insanity of the "get-well-places".
You were an inmate.
I was an inmate for 5.5 years.
Part of that time I was on suicide watch.

Simply staying sober/clean for close to 13 years didn't help my situation'/condition. Staying clean and sober, and going to A.A./N.A. meetings gave me a type of hope, but only in so far as I was willing to reach out for hope. If part of my condition is that if my condition of, well, depression, prevents me from using the phone cause of some type of funky phobia, then where am I?
Truth be told, I'm in more constant contact with my dealer than I seemingly ever was with people in the meetings (notable examples excepted).
That's prolly not true. But it feels so.

Once the ride stops, and you have to live in Everyday Land, things can become confused. The good advice of doctors can be supplanted by well-meaning advice of friends.
By advice of one friend I started smoking pot again.
When my THC level is in balance, I'm easy to be with. When it's not, I'm hell-on-wheels.

Eventually this medicine will go bad. I'll have to look elsewhere to control those demons. I'm sorta prepared...I know it'll happen one day. Untill then, I'll keep dreaming.

I'll bet that just took 5 years off my life--but GODDAMM if it wasn't worth every second

This post was edited by zen on Jan 06, 2006.

Thank you. ..for telling me, it's kind of like finding in the middle of ash and smoldering bits of life, someone who looks familiar because they are there for the same reasons you are...and all you have to do is look in their eyes and you know.

5.5 years....I was there so breif, and I knew that if I was there any longer I would have become truely mad.

Madness being something that is beyond insanity. Madness lobotmizes the soul, so there is only bones and skin and the depths of screeching and moaning that never stops...

I could feel everyone's pain...so strong. Being gifted with the ablity to see below the surface, and feel things...
I don't know that I would have ever made it out of sucide watch, or out at all.

I've been sucidal off and on since then, and before then for a long time actually.

I've know for a long time I'm different.

This time, why I did what I did, was for a completely different reason than I had ever tried before.
I did what I did to bring peace into a house where everything had gone into a nightmear that never stops, but just keeps going.

It's a strange and sad thing I came face to face with tonight,
that everyone here with the exception of the one person who has been driving me to friday, never stopped to think what all of this has done.
No one here, including the person who says they love me, has ever told me that they were sorry or that being willing to die for the quest of peace was worth anything.

The only person connected with this house, the landlord has appoligized for what I went through.

That's the deepest wound of all. My wrist will heal. But my mind, I don't know.

I learned that just because someone says they care about you doesn't mean shit if they arn't living what that means.

It's just words with shards of glass embeded in every part, and every time thoes words are spoken you get slashed again.

...it's a strange thing, but for a while I've been trying to find someone who understood and who would look at me and tell me they understood because they had been there too, and really ment it and it wasn't some patronizing bulshit, that makes you want to puke when you hear it.

I self medicate too. It's the only time I feel normal anymore.
It's the only time that I can stop long enough and actually take a breath.

The only thing that keeps me from going there again is what that place on the inside was like, and how I could feel my mind
bending and twisting and the agony of not being able to escape the black walls of madness swirling all around me, closing in.

There is this work I did before friday. It's called the shadow of the former self.
It's a skull, and there is still part of the face attached, and a screw runs from the top of the head down and holds the skull in place.
It's pen and ink. black and white. no color at all.

Anytime I'm around people I can't show any kind of real emotion because they go into this panic, and want to run and hide.
That makes me want to puke too.
If I cry they get scared now.
And I feel like I'm under some kind of microscope.
And all I want to do is beat the crap out of the nearest person, and say "fuck you, I'm fucking ok, as ok as I can be right now. Love me or hate me but get off my fucking back!"

...to be honest, I think, your reply is what I've been waiting for...
I don't feel quiet so alone now.

thankyou.

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

Poetry of the Insane : A Treasury of Poorly Understood iDEAS.

I've always known I was different. My mind has never operated in a way that is statistically normal. In the first place I'm bisexual, which puts me on the fringe. Battling the solution of this variable itself has led to much more chaotic and dischordant thinking and feedback looping of my head.


But to me the question is is my thinking more (or less) unhealthy than that statistical normal?

I think my mind first started going at puberty. I never chose to acknowledge a different, more "organic" part of my self. I was living a lie for many years. Part of that lie involved being forced to go to church and worship a God I have no interest in. I loved the people, but hated the religion...go figure.

Part of the cure for insanity is to be true to oneself, and be honest to those around you.

One of things I'm glad to have returned is the ability to form clear, concise sentences. It's nice to be able to talk and communicate reasonably and, heck, rationally. When I'm able to, I say things that are meaningful, and even helpful to people.
That's a gift that been returned to me by the Great All That Is. I'm thankful for it.
There was a point where all I produced was jibberish. Thoughts would not ....
This happened with much help of the chemicals I was injesting. The experimental "cough syrup" strangled up my mind. Bob Dylan's "railroad gin" was dissolving my brain cells.

It wasn't that much longer after that that I committed my crime.
The house Usher built fell, and great was the fall of it.
I found the place where people go when they can't control them selves. I was in the care of the state.
I had to get control over my mind. Basically at that point, I was alot like an animal. Perhaps closer to a vegetable.

At that time I felt alot of anger towards people who distanced themselves from me. They didn't know how to deal with a break that severe. I shocked them all...quite deeply.
And of course, there were newspaper articles. I've been featured on page on of the Region section about 5 times since them. Twice of those times I've appeared by name.
I don't think most of that is new to anyone whose known me on-line for any length of time (Hi Frank~).

The point I was making is that people have to adjust to these life-changing events in their way.
There is alot of misunderstanding of mental health issues. I'm legitimately nuts, and I even have my own prejudices.

I agree that if someone tells you they love you, and they've made a committment like marriage that they should stay there, and be there.
Most straight guys, however, have a very hard time dealing with emotional issues, or sickness, or mental health problems. I think it comes with the hormones, not sure.
Anyway, you should look into a support group for people who've gone through the same thing. Often times, the hospital/clinic will provide leads, or other support for groups.
You shouldn't be alone, I would agree.
And we're not alone. That's why I posted all those pictures on my wall to remind me that I am OK

This time, why I did what I did, was for a completely different reason than I had ever tried before.
I did what I did to bring peace into a house where everything had gone into a nightmear that never stops, but just keeps going.

It's still the same. I want peace from all the voices in my head. All we want is peace from the hurt, and pain, and struggling, and pain.

There is this work I did before friday. It's called the shadow of the former self.

You'll have to post a picture somewhere.

I'll bet that just took 5 years off my life--but GODDAMM if it wasn't worth every second

Genius and madness sat in the sunlit hall playing marbles one day.
Genius looked at the marbles and picked up one particularly beautiful aqua blue one, with tiny imperfections and held it up to the sun and marvled at how much it looked like a single moment of life captured in glass.

Madness picked up a rather clouded green blue one and ate it.
Swallowed the thing whole.

Genius looked at madness and asked why, and madness simply said "it was there so I ate it"

If life is like so many things, why do we eat some and just marvel at others?
Even in moments when swallowing the whole thing and knowing that in that simple act it isn't an act of sanity but the screaming inside that says "what more is there that can be broken?"

just a wandering thought at 2 am.

I can understand why you feel about the church the way you do.
It's the only institution that shoots it's own and burries the living and then runs over them backward to make sure that no one hears.

It would seem that anywhere I've ever been, including the different churches, I was always met with judgement as soon as I walked in.
Not because of my sexual orientation, but because of who I am, how I dress, and for what ever other million reasons that people can come up with.
Sometimes for no other reason than I am completely different.

And I have lived with that understanding most of my life.

Sexual orientation in this world seems to be a major reason to crucify someone.
Either that or turn them into some kind of hero for the rest of the wandering souls who know they are different but where they are at the time, have no one who can even remotly grasp the concept of what it feels like.

That's something I keep running into here, that no matter how plain and clear I try to make my self, they can't and don't get it.
I would love for once to be able to let someone see the world from behind my eyes, and let them deal with what I keep running into over and over again.
And the things I see. Inside where no one else is allowed to look.

Over the last 3 months, thoes months of being interogated not being listened to, trying to retain balance and at the same time dealing with a mixture of rage and unbelief that people who have known me for a long time would do the things they have done.

At times I was sure I was the only sane person left here, and at other times I began to doubt my sanity.
What I found out was that someone who is able to fuck with people's heads in such a way to make them look at you as though your completely nuts, and there is no one but you who sees it,
and you keep seeing what your saying happening, they can and will.

2 nights ago, one of the roommates, the one who drowns his over active mind in a drunken haze, tried again, to get me to talk to this asshole.
He kept telling me that there are people in this house who care about me.
That statement makes me want to puke and not stop until the person saying them is covered completely from head to toe.

He couldn't understand why I didn't want to talk to this guy.
After all he gets along with him fine.
All it takes for someone to do that is to drink with him and listen to his endless babbling about the same circular crap again and again.

Before this guy had too many beers in him, I, once again reminded him that if the asshole had been listening and had not kept persuing and had just left me alone when I asked him to, again and again and again, friday would never have happened.

What part of no is there not to understand?

The asshole does and has been doing things that remind me of my father.
The need to control, the need to be catered to, and someone who will do what they want.
Basicly make them into the be all end all and the center of who's ever world is available.

It seems that this is bothering the guy. And he can't figure it out.
Tough shit.

I told the roommate that I was talking to that this guy needs to just let it go.
And stop trying to get him and the other roommate who has been pestered by this asshole to get me to talk to him.

But this brain dead guy keeps at it. And they keep coddling him and accomidating him by listening when he starts and then comming to me and trying to get me to comply.

The biggest problem this guy has with me is that I have told him no.
Again and again. And what comes out of my mouth is basicly telling him that he is so needy and he's an energy vampire.

I refuse to comply. I don't have to. I have no responsiblity to do that.
And that pisses this guy off to no end.

I told the roommate I was talking to that this guy gives me the creeps.
And he keeps saying are you sure he doesn't remind you of someone, after I once again explained that it was the same types of behavior I see this guy doing that reminds me of my father.

I look at it now and it's hysterical now. Stupid behavior.
Stupid morons at work.

And I've taken up a new saying "love me or hate me but get the fuck off my back."

There are days where I know I am alone. That there is no net, no person waiting and watching over my footsteps.
And it's thoes days that I end up feeling most like a peice of paper that has fallen out of some window of a highrise building and is at the whims of the wind.

I find I want to be around people, when I want to be around them at all, who don't want anything from me.
And are content to just let me breathe.

There are people here who watch everything I do now. And this asshole has tried to bait me several times to try to get me pissed off.
But I just ignor the attempts. I reconize when someone is trying to get me angry and react.
And he can go fuck himself sideways with a two-by-four.

He's trying to prove that I'm too emotional. So if I won't play he will try to make me play.
This is one game that he's the only one playing at.

I finally understood something, at some point, that I have a choice to listen or to just not rent space in my already overloaded head to someone who can't have what he wants.

And I find I am taking great comfort in knowing that at some point all the bulshit this guy has inflicted on people will come and visit him.
that brings me comfort.

Not alot else does right now.

I spend very little time in the common area of the house now.
I spend most of the time that I'm here down here, trying to create, but it's not easy to do.

We will be leaveing this farm in the spring. I have no idea where we are headed, me and my significant other.
We have been rolling that around long before this guy slithered into the house.

And even if the guy leaves before we do, we'll still go.
I cannot live among people who won't live what they have professed as long as I have known them.

As to where we are going, well, I figure it will be better than this.
I've been homeless, and have lost many things, and I've been accused of all kinds of things.
And in the end none of it matters.

I'm still in my skin. I'm able to walk out a door with no locks and use the bathroom when I want without asking permission,
and most of all, I don't have to accomidate anyone.
And that's good.

I have to make a trip to kinkos and get the newest work on disk, something that has been kept getting down on the list of what is done, but I will do my best to get the work on disk.
And when I do, I will show it for the world to see...

Alot of the new work disturbs many people...and considering that the surroundings I'm in often dictate the story that ends up on the paper, it should make people realize what the world around me has become.
But that doesn't happen.

All they do is look and I can see in their eyes that they wonder how far off the deep end I have gone.

It's like they don't hear me when I have told them that I love to sit in a corner when there are lots of people around and just let the energy of what is going on lead me as I work.
All they think is going on is that my immagination is at work.
they don't get it that it's them, there on the page that they are looking at.
Or at least parts of them.

My own immagination and the pictures that are birthed there are something different.
I haven't been able to just be by myself for long enough for me to wander through my immagination in the last few years.

The stories for kids came from my immagination, and the story peices of art came from there.
but because the way I use the tools of art to do art, they can't see the difference.
And I really can't hold that against anybody. It just tells me that no one has ever really paid much attention to anything about me other than what I can do for them.

That's what I've known for a long time. I suspected it for years before I finally came to understand by observing how people are when I am with them to understand that my suspicions were correct.

So, now if I am still sitting in madness's shoes and eating that marble only the art will be able to tell.
And if I am sane, and genius is waiting at the door for me so we can go dancing in the sun, then the art will show healing and it will show my soul.
And the art will be void of anyone who doesn't love me simply because they choose to.

And it's ok either way right now.

I'm pretty sure I'm sane, but sometimes that boundery feels pretty thin.

I've been listening to alot of gentle music lately. And I got to hear something I haven't heard in a long time, "the carnival is over."
I can't remember who it's by, but I was told that the guy who wrote and sings the song did it after his 5 year old son died.
when I heard it, I could feel it inside me.

And in the mist of all the broken places I could feel the sad sweet comfort of it being all ok, and ok not to do any thing but just feel it.

I've been listening to alot of Tom Waits too. A poet who's music and words are like a pair of shoes that are so comfortable you could sleep in them.

there has been a few peices of intense music, but not much for right now.

And that's my choice as well.

I want to lay down
somewhere in a still place
look up at the sky
and just get lost in the blue.
Close my eyes and smell spring
eat summer strawberries
while I enjoy the dance
that birds do when they ride the wind.
I want to feel the dust
of a dry summer day
clinging to my feet, hands and face
and then experience the cool smile
of water as the dust is washed away.
I want to know it's ok
just to walk slow
so I can get lost in trees
and stand awestruck
as sunset paints the sky.
I want to dream again
sweet dreams
free of the clinging bits
of rage and hopelessness
and in the morning
wake up to the sun warming my skin.
Everyday I hope that's what I'm going to find
waiting for me.
Everyday that's what I wait for.

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

I've been having a hard time thinking how to respond to everything you said.
I sorta remember that time in my life when, in the midst of my insanity, nothing would fit. People were all over the place, and I had to deal with people I'd much rather not even had to know.

05/19/91 ... or thereabouts. (Something pulled from my journal from that time.)

This world is my hate and love. I do both, yet can not love as it won't forget or let me forget. I hate it.
So I look down--always down 'cause that's where I'm headed and I know it.
I can't look at you that long you know I can't, just accept that fact as who I am. I am too honest for you, that's why you really dislike me. How fake I would be to look up at you and smile--it's not me. Hate is I.

I also can't let you breath freely, if I did, I would be fake.
What's the sense sometimes? Sometimes it's so futile. I am always futile.
As I said before, I hate me---together we hate we + me.

Hate + We = Me

I'll hurt you to my death I hate we.
You and I could hurt me (and us, no less). I a shuttering explosion of excstacy meant to join us in a holy merger.

I looked at you but didn't like what I say--desolation, anarchism, love, confusion, emotion peace for me and contempt, hate, love towards and at me, confusion and more emotional babble.
I hate you and haven't even met you yet.

I remember that I didn't feel in much control of my circumstances, or surroundings. Everyday I had people in my house. Most were friends, and/or they were doing the same things I was. I hung out with them, got drunk, high, whatever; but mostly what I wanted was just peace. Maybe not even that--maybe what I was looking for is just to be left alone.
I have that now. Few people come over now. I don't get many phone calls. Almost all those people have moved on and found other places to party.
Generally, I'm left alone. But of course, I need to ask if I'm really better off emotionally. Realistically, we all need other people to survive in this world. We all live with, not without, people.
I'm forced to ask if I'm better of without people coming around making contact with me. I'm oh so bad at staying in touch with people. I truly am un-sociable.

Alot of the intricacies of what you're saying are situational. It was the same for me. I always figured that when I was outside of my setting, away from my mom, all these fucked-up people, untrustable friends, etc., I'd be normal. I could live a normal life.
I look at myself, 15 years hence, and think how litle has changed. I'm reminded of that time, that day, when I wrote those words. Most of my days were filled with the spilch and detritus of negativity. I reacted to it. I reacted to everything; subsequently, that put me at the whims of whatever breeze happened at that moment.
I didn't live for the moment, I was terrified of it. I had to try to please everyone else, and never got to know myself. There's only hate and scorn for me from myself for that kind of existence.

Alot of the new work disturbs many people...

I'm inclined to think that those works, scarey, terrifying, challenging, creative, rife with the metaphores of our pitiful, pathetic lives; those works that challenge us to redifine ourselves, that show the dispicable, desperate things we think or obsess upon, that represent the core of the very things we feel, think or believe are always misunderstood by those around us. The creators of such works are held as freaks, unstable, dangerous, what have you. There are any number of reactions that people have to such work.

...and considering that the surroundings I'm in often dictate the story that ends up on the paper,

The most unlikely result of others' viewing these works is their ability to reflect themselves in the work. There is a decided lack of introspection and reflectiion. In my experience, seldom do they see anything of themselves in the work. The "average person" distances him/herself from the work.
Therefore, it's a far-fetched notion that

it should make people realize what the world around me has become.

What usually happens is that they look at you as if you're even crazier than they thought you were.

I realize how important it is to express those deeper, more disturbing things. The most important part of it is not how others react to it (if/when we choose to show them), but it's about our quest to get the appropriate message in the work. It should never be aimed at other's thought, fears, projections, or the work is fake, and you are false.
By caring, or considering about others' neuroses (above your own) you listen not to your own voice. What ever "disturbing" thoughts you project, they should be true to your own vision.
Fuck them, and fuck him. You're your own person, and shouldn't care what any of them thinks. Take out your pain, and hurt, and whatever onto the canvas. Some of my best works have my blood in them.

Genius is madness in action.
Madness is undirected genius.

I'll bet that just took 5 years off my life--but GODDAMM if it wasn't worth every second

This post was edited by zen on Jan 18, 2006.

"Alice and the white rabbit are the same" wispered the mad hatter into a wiley looking butter dish
that he had slipped with the turning of the screw.

The march hare, quite lost in the notion of what vessels of unprotruded light might escape, so better to keep
your eyes closed going that fast that no one around you will notice that you've only moved an inch.

It must have escaped the mouse while his head was ticking to the left instead of the right, because right there
in the middle of a pile of cakes and half eaten fuses, the mad hatter stood atop the table and began to
indignantly announce his address that he had prepared for the Queen of Hearts....

Yes, this place, 15 years after you first wandered through, I find myself in, hidden so that if I show any emotion
it won't be a ticket back.
I was in the grocery store this morning and was watching people shop. I wanted to take things off the shelves
and just let them break.
What keeps me from following these courses of actions now is that place, where I could feel it all, unteathered
unhinged, this deep hollow fog of lostness.
I have struggled sometimes since then with feeling like I've gone out of focus, and wish I had a way to give a few
choice people the world of the last three months, no make it most of my life, and just watch as they feel and see
what I've seen and felt everyday.

Most people can't handle seeing things like that. Most people...I'm so outside the perameters of most things,
and the people I've met who are like me tend to keep to themselves simply due to the need to have quiet.

I know and man, or knew him, he's somewhere else now, who had deeper and clearer vision than I ever knew
was possible to have, and he spent the majority
of his life alone in a house, he had a job and family who loved him and friends who were fericely protective of him.
What he said of them and other people he knew was why couldn't they just be honest and be themselves.
And then he would shake his head at the silly games that "normal" society plays all the time.
wearing masks of illusion.

There's a line in a song that goes something like, "I finally felt my heart when my mind went insane."

Mine feels battered and ripped in peices most days. And I go to work where it's safe because all I have to do is work.
I've found out alot of things about people, thoes that professed to care who are in this part of the world at the same
time as me.
They don't. It's just an easy thing to believe that you care about someone.
It's another to live thoes words.

Sometimes late at night, I wake up and feel alone in a place where there isn't anyone close enough to hear the grinding
pain that hits the bottom and comes back up.
And sometimes in the dark where it's safe because everyone but me is asleep I let the tears fall, and very gingerly finger
the pain that is now a deep scar that bleeds.

the gravel around my soul is cold most days. And I've stopped trying to tell anyone about what I see inspite of how
much it looks at me most days.
I see the disasembling of this house and what it once was. And I see an ironic humor in why this person was brought here.
To get the rent lower than it already was.
And now it's going to backfire, because the majority of the people living here are leaving.
And then it will be just two people. The one with his greedy heart, and the other wanting to rule the world according to his
neurotic order.

I would love to be a fly on the wall and watch to see who drives who crazy first.
My money is on the neurotic control freak driving the other crazy and out of the house as much as possible just to escape.
then the person who is the person responsible for driving me to that friday will spend many hours pacing and obsessivly cleaning
waiting for the other to come home so he can have his fix of conversation.

I smile at the thought.

for me this place was ment as a place of healing. Where money wasn't something so important that getting the rent to the lowest common
denomiator was never a major thing here.
But that was the adjenda of one person here. One person. And what he brought here effectivly destroyed the peace and the sanctuary
this once was, and only in 3 months.
Pretty amazing, destructo human. Watch it spin, watch it bite, watch it want control, until all life is nothing more than a shattered
heap, bloody on the kitchen floor, which it just used a whole bottle of amonia to clean.

I can see using blood to work in, a very personal touch. I haven't gotten there, due to the simple fact that if I did, especially now, this moron
who is the control freak would call the cops again.
And again no one would stop him.

It is a consoling thought that somewhere sometime all the damage will catch up to him and he'll have no were to run from it.
I don't know if feeling this way is good or bad, but it's the truth.

Before all of this inspite of all that life has thrown at me, I was this calm gentle person, who only wanted to see the best in people
come about.
now....well, now I just look at people and realize that people are what scare me the most.
they are the deadliest creatures running around loose on the planet.

At least with most of the rest of the creatures when they do what they do it's mearly a matter of survival, no hidden adjendas
no wanting something for the sake of controling it, like a peice of furniture.
what you see is what you get.
An honesty that can't be beat.

Yes your right about people distancing themselves from the work. But that's ok. It doesn't matter. It stopped mattering
when I realized that no one that I know here really gives a shit anyway, so now I just do.
I've put much of the new work away. Only a few people have seen any of it.
The one with the kid in the death bunnie jammies in the middle of the nightmear of insane rabbits, and no one can figure out why
every time he wears them he has nightmears.

A twisted humorous view of what parents really know about their children while their immaginations are still unchained.
I'm not quite done with that one, but the look in the kid's eyes is something I understand.
All the kids in the brown paper comix have no mouths or noses, just eyes.
Everything is in the eyes.

Everything has always been in the eyes. Of every person walking around. The eyes tell what the mouth won't.
I don't let people see my eyes much anymore.
I won't let them close enough to. But I also realize that most people are so wrapped up in what ever they are consumed
with to notice much of anything.

I saw a little girl the other day, I'm pretty sure she was a cutter, and probably on the edges of anorixea and I am also pretty
sure that no one in her family knows anything is wrong. She wore baggy jeans and a very large over size sweatshirt.
No coat.
Her eyes, there was so much pain in thoes young eyes.
I'm guessing she must have been all of 11 years old.

I saw her get into a very new car and the woman who was driving looked to be her mom. All polished and impaitent because she had
to wait so long.
I saw the girl in the grocery store and she ended up in line just a head of me. I wanted so badly to look at her and tell her something,
but didn't know what to say.
I figured if I said something it would have scared her, so I didn't.
I have thought alot about her since I saw her, and wondered how long it would be before she does something so out there
that her parents do something really stupid like put her in a phsych ward so she can get "better"

I used to believe I could make a difference somewhere. I don't believe that now. I've come to the conclusion that the best thing
I can do is hide everything in the art, and call it good.

I've been told that a long time ago in tribal society that there was a place for everyone, even the people on the outside of the main
stream.
Now we just get processed and labled and looked at with sever caution.
And I find more and more as each day passes that I want to just find a place where there arn't any people and just try to live.

I don't know what all this will be like in 15 years down the road.
But tonight, I would love to lay my head down on someone's lap and have them just stroke my hair and say nothing at all.
and it wouldn't matter if there were a thousand tears or just a few, they would be ok with that.
And just let me rest for a little while, and maybe sleep too if that came.

but that's not going to happen tonight. Maybe down the road. I can always wish it, can't I?

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

I've been told that a long time ago in tribal society that there was a place for everyone, even the people on the outside of the main
stream.
Now we just get processed and labled and looked at with sever caution.
And I find more and more as each day passes that I want to just find a place where there aren't any people and just try to live.

Welcome to the Industrial Revolution.
In a tribal society, we have no choice but to use everyone. People did get, rarely, cast out into the wilderness, but only in the case of sever violations of the rules. Everyone had a part. That is the way of nature, there are no vaccuums, nor is there waste. Everything gets used, people included.
The concepts of waste, discarding, and garbage dumps are Western inventions. These come with the territory of "scientific" and "industrial" advancements. The concept of the commoditized human comes as a (un-)natural by product of the machine doing our work for us and "improving" our life.

There is no waste in systems of energy.
There is in systems of commoditization.

I'll bet that just took 5 years off my life--but GODDAMM if it wasn't worth every second

no matter how nice and gentle they are, they are the guards, and you are in a place that makes you crazy.
How can you focus or think, or rest or even heal in a place like that.

I know what you mean, my mum visits those wards as a nurse and what she saw seemed like a sterile, non-materialisted enviroment that generated atmospheric lonliness and seclusion for the saneist of men.

Thank you. ..for telling me, it's kind of like finding in the middle of ash and smoldering bits of life, someone who looks familiar because they are there for the same reasons you are...and all you have to do is look in their eyes and you know.

I can relate to your feelings and being locked into your thoughts sinking inside, but i never seen a doctor about it, i somtimes wonder if people think i should, maybe they tred easy and keep it to themselve.

Anytime I'm around people I can't show any kind of real emotion
And I feel like I'm under some kind of microscope.
And all I want to do is beat the crap out of the nearest person, and say "fuck you, I'm fucking ok, as ok as I can be right now. Love me or hate me but get off my fucking back!"

I fucking know mate, im there, but then i think im paranoid and under my own microscope, and if i do face then and tel them to fuck off, then i have to face an issue i pretend doesnt exist inside of me.

look into a support group for people who've gone through the same thing. Often times, the hospital/clinic will provide leads, or other support for groups.
You shouldn't be alone, I would agree.

I dream of help, the chance for people to say certain things to me i been wanting to talk about all my life but couldnt really bring it up to anyone initially, i can go from depressed on a bench with no where left for me than back up the road that led me there, and to the motorwaybridge thinkinghow easy it is to meet a dead end, then im in a place with a group of people i know enjoying myself laughing my socks off wondering what i was thinking back then but its all volitile and nothing remains how i want it to.

I've been told that a long time ago in tribal society that there was a place for everyone, even the people on the outside of the main
stream.
Now we just get processed and labled and looked at with sever caution.

In the words of Coorporate Avenger

Lie upon the lie.
And it all comes down to this
That a pig is a pig is a pig is a pig.
And they want to rule the world, but they can't have me.
Cuz I don't need this body.
I see the line traced back to my ancestors
And I hold on tight to that line
Which is before the fear induced religions that separated the world
And the one world government and the one world banking system
Through the world bank that issued the monetary illusion of ownership
And dealt it to the masses which caused a separation from that
knowledge
That knowledge and that connection to each other and to the earth

I got a lot of time for all you guys here especially in this thread and said that about you harold in my post recently

http://www.netalive.org/topics/41638#41638

Your not mad mate, what chance has intelligance got in this materialisted world bombarding us with slime, i swear if i could see through 3d eyes all i would pick up is rectangles and squares from house to town, and not greenery in sight, even if you see green your behing some form of screen missing the senses it generates, every corner tells you to move on, were trained to eat sitting down, shut up at night and only feel comfatable in social situations if we gave away more money of our earning for our clothes than the next guy? Eh!

Maybe the higher level of comciecness is kept for kings and queens and were told its madness so they keep the seat, who knows? not me, i dont know where the milk in primary school come from and if it killed of a part of my brain like an aspirin to a headache, maybe we really are like ants, imagine a nature program youve seen on tv, pretend you were an alien and watching one about us, we would look like all the rest. Maybe the fact we think while encroaching on each other unlike red ants and black ants who cant live together isnt right, maybe intelligance and feelings (now they are weird) are a severe weakness and a psycopath without emotion and remorse is the true human untapped by the structure of societys useless knowledge.

If i asked you to think of a specific date in history what would it be??? Do it! THINK OF IT NOW (Im in UK) but mostly people will say battle of hasting ten sixty six!
Fucking pathetic, rich schools are not taught that at all because its stupid shit, it was a crap war and why is it in the text book! how about teaching me some life skills like money management and being honest or showing kindness, because they fill kids brains up with sulphuric acid that burns into the psyche so when a soppy tv quiz is asking the question like what the capital of france and win yourslef one thousand pound, instead of realising 500.000 people phone it at £1.50 per minute (you do the math) they actually shout it " Its Paris, Its Paris" and credit theirself with intelligence soaking up the *ill talk to you like i talk to a newborn* attitude of big tits and smile presenting the crud.

But what can we do, i know, i see through it. But i dont even own my own body and neither do any of you because our rulers say so. Goverment approved lifestyles? Americans are not land of the free and neithers anywhere else, only free to do as were told.

Religion! Thats a goverment all in itself, the gods of each take in anybody with open arms and let you adapt your personality and live life like a ford mondae lives up to its manual, cant everyone just shut up for one fucking day and forget broadcasting for a complete 24 hrs, or is there billions of losers waiting to complain they missed an episode of observing a a guy pretending to be a made up charecter and they therefore had to talk to other people about stuff or maybe just chill out.

See noone justs shut their mouth nowadays always thinking of the next thing they can bring up, advertisers are terrofied that people might actually turn the radio off and flick off the t.v without strange people pretending to like you to get you to buy shit off them, terrofied well say nothing, theyd rather send out text alerts or men hangin on rope ladders from a hot air ballon knocking on you back door trying to make you feel lucky.

Ill shut up know.

themoreyouknowthemoreyouknowyoudontknowwhatyouknow

Yep. I have begun to suspect that most people walking around on the planet who have found themselves face to face with shit trying to sit on them have felt this same madness that crawls around inside you.
the one that says "this isn't right. This is really fucked up and it's so twisted that no one is doing anything about it."

I've been in a strange place for a while now. In my own survival mode. The one that makes the most sense. I've been limping along grabbing bits of time to do art in.
I'm working mostly in black ink.
It's simple and makes sense.

I love color with all my heart, I do. But things have gone so sideways and then tilted upright when I just do the routine of work and then come back here and have to face a list of things that need attention, so now it's all just black and white.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Insanity is living life like a washing machine, one with the change part that is broken, and putting quarters in it expecting it to work.

Madness is seeing what looks like something reasonable and not being heard until you have to scream.
then your told your too emotional.

Madness is trying to be generous and having greedy people want to own you and when you say no, your being a bitch or a bastard because you've said no.

Madness is loving someone more than your own life and them taking it for granted and not giving a shit.

Madness is working until you drop from exaustion just so you can take the money that is costing you your life and give it to someone who has the power to throw you out in the street.

Madness is working your ass off and then getting hurt and getting fired because you got hurt doing what your job discription is.

Madness is a farmer who puts poision on the land they grow vegtables on and then sells the dead food to people telling them how good it is for them to eat vegtables grown on their farm.

Madness is madness brought on by a world that is plugged into every electronic device that man can immagine until it's impossible to feel the human heart anymore.

Madness is making houseing so expensive that it's impossible to eat and live out of the weather at the same time.

...I'm not crazy...it just looks that way sometimes because I'm an ecclectic eccentric who walks to the side a bit while scratching my head because what I see doesn't match what comes out of peoples mouths.

What I have learned is that most people say lots of stuff they don't actually intend to follow through with.
A dangerous person is one who doesn't have anything to loose.

I can only take people for so long anymore, unless I'm playing invisible in the back ground. There is something to be said for dressing to drive people away.

There is something to be said for living in a place that isn't perfect or not having a lot of anything, people tend to over look you then.

When I feel the pressure build I tend to hide away and let my emotions run on paper or on my off line journal.
No one knows anymore. I don't tell them. I'm ok with seeing what I see and keeping it to myself and then watching what I've seen happen.
I learned that it doesn't matter how much I see or how right on what I'm seeing is, no one wants to hear about it.

They just want me to lay down and go "woof" at the approprate time.

...so I write and draw, and tell the truth there.

Inspite of everything I've been through I'm finding that I haven't lost me in the shuffle.
I still have a generous nature, and I still care about wounded people.
I just can't go near alot of people or have alot of people around me right now.

I've tried to put removed things in my journal as of late, the way that I wrote before all of this happened.
I did that mostly because my life is private, and I would rather write about things I observe than the crap I face day to day.
It never hurts anyone when I write about the sunrise tasting like a really sweet orange on my skin.
It hurts people when all you can see is the crap under the skin and that's what comes out of your mouth before you can stop it because that's the truth of where they are living right now.

And when you say stuff like that they get really pissed and then they set out to do two things, either own you because they reconize there is something you have that they want.
If they own what you have they can control other people by knowing what their weakenesses are and then they can be taken advantage of.
Or they want to grind you into a bloody pulp because you've exposed what and who they are.
Either way, your life ends up shit because something came out of your mouth before you could stop it.
Because what you've been given is ment to help people and sometimes helping people means that they need to hear the truth even if it hurts them at the moment....

That's why I try now to write the way I did before all this happened.

I still see things. All the time. In fact it's getting stronger with each passing year.
And I'm finding with the passing of time that I want to be alone more and more.

...I like the lirics, by the way. They make lots of sense.
clear, and to the point of truth.

So now I'll shut up. And maybe later write about feathers on the wings of birds that never have to pay rent, they just choose a tree that looks good and live there.

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