Your Joking Right?

Andrea & I we like to go up on the hill for a hike. It's a nice break. You can see everything up there. Everything looks so small from up there,the little casinos, the tiny cars that have all these important errands to run,the little schools with the small bullies & microscopuc homework assignments. The fat jogger on the side of the road desperate to lose weight no bigger than the size of a potato bug, the tiny gamblers, drug addicts, alcoholics getting pulled along by their addictions, the little centipede behind on his house payment in the "nice" area who is contemplating suicide, and all the worries and pains and realities that trap people that look so amazingly small from up there. Sometimes I like to pretend what it must be like to a God and have one of these little microbes of which I am say, "How come there is so much pain in the world? Why do you allow wars?" Hey it's a good question even from a microbe. Good point. So I look around at these buildings that from up here look like fancy cardboard boxes with no real plan or forethought it seems at all and I think about how these tiny little guys give their whole short tiny existence to....this. And I say, "Your joking right?"

The best Xmas present is Nothing.

"Hoarder!" That's what my old friend Les yelled at me pointing his finger at me agitated. It was like a weird excerpt from "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers," where the man is found out by the alien. In his face was agitated and tensed and yes humorous and okay shocking. I wasn't a hoarder. Sure I collected things but they were cool they were important and they had value.

Les was tired trying to be polite to me about this he wasn't built that way. He was from a place where life was short and you had to fix you and your friend's problems so you can get a bit of happiness before you die.

But what was he talking about?

"I am tired of doing a dance to get just to get to the bathroom. I'm tired of wrestling with your shoes just when I want to go to the kitchen. Your going to take all this junk and your going to throw it away."

I felt a pain in my chest, a searing dull pain of a heart that had been broken a long time ago but it still felt some pain. And the thought of letting go of anything was terribly painful to me. These things they were my companions and they had never let me down. So I started to protest. And Les said,

"Oh really, so you need 10 empty plastic containers with one thing in them. Okay let me go to the kitchen and we will get you some more. Why not put a penny in each one. And these three pairs of shoes here when you only wear one. But you have these just in case."

"Well I need them in case of..."

"Hoarder!!!" He screamed. "Hoarder!!!"

Well nobody had ever said that before. They had tried to be "nice." They dance around the subject quite nicely calling me a "collector."

But now I looked around and it was like a veil started to fall away from my eyes. I began to see all this junk everywhere. He was right. I could barely walk to my kitchen and I could see that it was getting worse and I could see that it was going to continue to get worse.

So slowly carefully Les began to patieltly work with me. At first I could barely part with anything but when I got the first five milk crate loads out and it was painful. It felt like someone had cut off a finger. But I can handle pain. So the next day I looked around and felt a little better. It was at Christmas time and I could now walk from my chair in the living room to my kitchen without stepping on anything. And you know what? I couldn't remember what I had given to the thrift store. These things that I thought was so important. I couldn't remember. So the next day I did more cases and it was like getting another Christmas present. I felt freer. I felt lighter. I could think more clearly. The things that I was psychically connected to they were there anymore and I didn't have to worry about them anymore and it freed my mind up a bit. I was amazed. All this time I had been desperate to fill up my life and I had used stuff to do it. And now as I gave this stuff away I felt that I was getting my pieces of my life back. I could find things and all the things that really were precious to me I could see them now. At first this caused some panic because there was a lot more space. But after a few days the panic subsides. After a while I realized that the reason Les got so upset was because like me he had depression and he had these same problems only in New York where he had very nice possesions and his house was filled with the nicest stockpiles of high quality garbage. Much better than mine. Helena his friend came in and she started throwing things away. She made him realize what he was doing to himself.

"Now," Les said, "All I need is a fork and plate and a cup and a plate for my friend. I don't need a whole cupboard full of plates."

So now I'm filling my life with things that can't be seen or felt. I am filling my life with order and space and so many other things that most wouldn't consider because they can't see them.

I've still got a ways to go. I still have to ask myself. "Do I really need two of these?" When was the last time I used that? When will I use it again? Can I live without this? Slowly what is really important to me is appearing while the refuse the garbage of my life burns away. So many years wasted so many piles of misery on top of my already severe depression. I still have a lot of work to do. I was to five milk crates a day. I've slowed up to five milk crates a week. So my friend Les he did this for me he could've taken the easy way. But he knew that he could be in a better place right now and that this affected him too and saved me. Why don't people think about stuff like that anymore. Why did get so stupid? I don't try to do everything. I just do this little area here today so that I have gotten another little piece of my life back and claimed another territory back for the country of Himpshaw.

Work

Nothing is absolute but for some people, work is the only way to learn certain things like attitudes and responsibilities, the auto motor response, the importance of interacting with others, physical and mental exercise, the understanding that nothing is for free really, that all good things take work, the important method of mentally escaping from your problems through work. I've had people that in my weird situation on welfare that have literally begged me for work. The largest animal to the smallest organism work. All just want to know their place and what they are supposed to do. Some steal and lie but after time if they are competant they realize that it takes more work to do this and they might as well just go to work. They say that you should take your joy and turn it into your job but if it becomes your job then you may rob yourself of that secret joy. It may not be such a bad thing to learn to deal with situations that maybe you don't necessarily like. The first few times you have to do something difficult it's hard but after the 300th time... Marriage takes work. Work takes work. We can work it out. There are rich who's houses and lives are a mess because they don't work. There are poor who's houses are immaculate and their quality of life is impressive. This is because they work very hard.

So money is a symbol of work. We must feel sorry for those who just take money as "real" for their total lack of understanding. They don't see it as a tool like a hammer. I could be argued that a hammer could be as useful as money in the right hands.But people don't go crazy over a hammer like they do money. As they cannot see that it just a symbol and it is not real and Lives are going to fall apart. It will become a superficial symbol. Everything will turn green and they will find that it is though they are trapped, trapped in that pyramid with that eye staring at them like the judge that is their very selves.