Reading harold_maude's journal

This morning I realized that I need to start getting my ducks in a row, as it were.
There are way too many things I have wanted to do and haven't done them.
And along with that, I realized that I am having a really difficult time remembering my past, before I left everything I had known for 40 some years. It's another life time.

I was doing some writing about my favorite things, and I had a horrible time remembering things.
It was a really bad struggle. I don't know what that means.
Mabye it's because I spend most of my life now trying to go forward, trying to make getting from one paycheck to the next as smooth as possible and as peaceable as possible.
That seems to pre-empt everything else all the time now.

Ok. Enough of getting side tracked.
I'm trying hard to be focused today so that I can start getting some of this stuff done that I want to.

One of my many projects that is in a construction stage is something called "Brown Paper Comix".
The history of brown paper comix starts down in Missoury where we spent 4 months house sitting without getting paid for it.
It sucked in a lot of ways, no electricty for 3 and a half months, we did have running water, mutant mice that I'm sure were plotting our demise, and lots and lots of time with no work and lots and lots of time spent making candles so that when it got dark we could still see.
Anyway, the guy I'm still with grew up in that area southern Iowa and Northern Missouri.
It's economy is really crappy, and the towns that exist there are small.
The one he spent several years in is 320 people total.

Small towns have more down sides to living there than up sides.
The kids in the town have nothing to do.
There isn't even a library there, you have to travel a ways to get to the nearest town that has one.
The country side is beatiful and very much like the pictures I've seen of the English country side.
The feel of the area is horrible, very life distroying and life sucking.
Lots and lots of back roads.

So there we are, and I've been watching him with his friends who are still all living in that area too, and I'm thinking as I'm watching these guys be guys that they are all in different stages of going crazy and in the mist of all of that, this immage comes into my head, this kid with all kinds of neurotic stuff going on. I knew instantly his name was stanley.
He is the first charater of Brown Paper comix.

The names that come remind me of the kids in school that every body picked on because they were not cool or not this or not that, didn't really fit in, had a few friends, Rupert, Wolfgang, Donald , Herman, Stanley, and so on.

The immages I started drawing are single frame cartoons. There is an explaination underneath, the same kind of thing as the far side cartoons.

I've got several done. And then there is the fine art division that sprank up somewhere along the line. All done in ball point pen.
I have several of thoes.
So what I ended up deciding to do with all of this is start my own newspaper called Brown Paper Comix.
I've got the first page of the first issue underway, but am having trouble deciding how to proceed.
I'm thinking that if I can get a copier and a printer then I can just print up a bunch of copies and give them away just to get them out there, sort of like a trial issue, and if there is interest, then take it further.

The other thing I've been thinking about is just putting up a website, I have no clue as to how to do that, I'm pretty unschooled in the art of web type stuff and limited knowledg of computer stuff, so that means that I either have to find someone who is really good at this stuff and work out some kind of deal with them, or figure this stuff out myself.
I'd rather do the latter as I am a firm believer the more you learn how to do for your self the more you can do for yourself without having to wait on anyone and their schedual.
It's about being free.

Then there is all this art that I have. I've sold alot and given away alot and I just keep making more.
I'm doing paper mache now because I have this thing going on with this need to sculpt. It's making me crazy.
So, I'm trying to answer that thing with paper mache.
I've done three so far, and I'm not sure what I'm really doing.
I'm studing how things dry now and what mixtures that I can make myself make the most solid finished peice.

The first one I did is now a very elaborate insense and clock holder.
It's pretty big and looks abstract.
I realized that I don't know how to be an artist, I just am one because I can't help making art all the time.
I don't know how much actually is that good, but from the continued reaction to what I've done, I'm guessing that I'm doing something right.
People see lots of things in my paintings, and funny thing about that is that it changes for each person who looks at it.
I've watched people stare at the stuff for a very long time while they tell me what they are seeing.

I've been looking for an agent, because I really suck at marketing my own work.
I've gone door to door literally trying to sell the stuff I've done and I did sell some stuff that way.
My work never seems to work in galleries, so the one woman shows I have done have been in non gallery settings, an empty room/gallery in an art store, out at the farm, and at a university for three nights.
All of thoes were sucessful, I sold several peices of work at the second and third.
I've been looking for another place to host another show,as people keep bugging me about when I'm going to do another show.

I've thought about self publishing, but once again, my mind feels fried from all the stuff that has gone on in rapid sucession over the last couple of years....I really do need a vacation.

A nice long vacation with a personal massuse at my beck and call...that's the day after I win the lottery. :)

Back to the duck thing.

Then there is all the writing and research that I have done on communication and the chemistry of language, yes I said chemistry. I've been doing research on letters and numbers and names and the energy frequencies and time and all kind of other things, and I need to gather it all together and decide what to do with it.
I'm learning alot, and trying to answer questions that come up.
I've tried reading A brief history of time a couple of times, but I'm over whelmed by it.
I've been reading food of the gods for a couple of months, but he has so much to say, and I need to read some and then ponder it and let it really register to where I'm pretty sure I understand what he is saying.

Somedays I feel completely brain dead.

That's another problem with trying to get my ducks to behave and get their little feathery asses in a nice neat row and then maybe I can teach them to quack in musical order and I can be the first duck band leader, we'll do pink floyds comfortably numb followed by the 1812 overture....
I'm getting side tracked again....
Some one please slap me for me...no, don't do that, I'm not into pain.

Then there are the walls of this place.
The walls are covered in part with mossaic work.
There is art by a friend who just reciently died.
There is art by a friend who is still alive.
Kevin's got a section he's been working on here and there now and again.
I just started on the kitchen cupbords.
I've painted the refrigerator, and one of the windows too.
I'm artifing the bathroom.
I will end up doing the ceiling as well.
Everything in this house, the floor too, will be artified when I'm done.
The house that art built.

My human storage unit that keeps me dry in wet weather. It's not a pleasnt place to be in either summer or winter.
I have to weatherize this place, and I want to do something with it other than just keep it here in this trailer park until I have to leave because the sojourn is telling me it's time to hit the road again.

I really want to find a peice of land and move this place there.
Build on to it, and make the kind of house where it's a place that people gravitate to because it's so weird, and so cool and so peaceful that it's becomes their sanctuary from the insanity of the world that is eating them alive.

The peaceful sanctuary exists already. Where ever I go that happens. That's not because I'm special at all, it's the gifts that I'm caretaker of that does that.
It makes me giggle when I see it happening to the people who come here.
We will be talking about stuff and after a bit they start yawning and yawning.
They come here stressed out and aparently it's so relaxing here that it's like they've taken valum, and they have to go home and go to bed.
One of the guys that comes here, just stretches out on the couch and crashes here.
He said he has trouble leaving this place.

Sometimes, here lately, I've been getting the distinct feeling he's becomming addicted to what is here.
He's been here almost every night for a about a month now.
I've had to stop taking his phone calls for a while because I know what he wants and I need some time here with out people showing up and wanting to talk.

I do feel like an unpaid therapist alot. They come and unload, the gifts do their thing and all I want to do is more art.

A peice of land would solve alot. I want to build little mud type huts with a bed area and a fire pit outside that is away from the main house.
That way if someone comes who needs to do some soul searching there is a place for them to go that's safe and they are close enough to the house, with in walking distance that if something happens that they need help, it can be done.

I want to build a large green house, or several and raise organic vegies, and show people what good food actually tastes like.
The raw food in the store is pretty tasteless unless you buy the expensive stuff, and who actually has that kind of money that they can keep a really good stocked kitchen?
It sure isn't my house.

I want to build a little store on the place so that I and others like me can make and grow stuff to sell and make our living that way and live a life that is not controlled by corporations and mad rules that are impossible to follow because although they look great on paper, that's not the real world.

I want to be able to have bonfires and drum circles again.
And go outside and look at the stars and talk about how beautiful the sky is and stuff like that.
I want to play in the dirt and make mud balls with people who need to touch something simplier so that they can stop for a while and at least catch their breath.

I don't want much do I? Geeze, I want alot and it seems that if I'm going to see these things happen I have no choice but to figure out the how's to get from point a to point b.

...oh yeah, and then there is all the sewing I want to do. And more Beadwork jewerly.
And I want to learn how to blow glass.
And work with the new metal clay, so that I can do glass and metal art.

I wish I was smarter so that I could brain storm my way to some answers that had substance to them.
I still haven't found an agent, so I just keep looking.

No wonder I'm so exausted. Too many unfinished things in my life. And the thing that is happening now and has been for a few months is that my energy is next to nothing and it takes determination just to get through each day now.
I feel the need so strong that I have trouble sleeping most nights, except this last week.
I crashed every night after work.

All I want to do is sleep.

but there is way too much to do, and I can't bring myself to give myself permission to sleep in on my days off or even sleep the whole weekend away, which is what I really do need to do.
But again, there is way too much to do.

So what's a body to do?

Just keep on keeping on I guess.
Until I win the lottery...:)

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