Holy Trinity vs. the Trifecta of Terror?

On November 23, 2013 By dancingpalmtreesIn A Rose for Emily, Anne Rice, Bela Lugosi, Body Snatchers, Borg, Boris Karloff, Busby Berkley, Cat People, Cat Woman, Creativity, Dr. Phibes, Evil, Explore, Folklore, Frankenstein, Goth, Innovation, Inquisitive, Jeanette MacDonal, Lon Chaney Jr, Mary Shelley, Nelson Eddy, Rod Serling, Stephen King, The Modern Prometheus, The Twilight Zone, The Walking Dead, Trifecta of Terror, Vampires, Werewolves, William Faulkner, Zombies11 Comments

Holy Trinity vs. the Trifecta of Terror?

Horror is a literary and film genre I’ve always loved from a child. Give me a good Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Jr. or Boris Karloff film above the over sanitized song & dance Busby Berkley movies any time, any place or anywhere. Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy drove me nuts with their bursting into song at the most inopportune moment during the story. I’ve never had any external or internal conflict concerning my Christian faith with my fondness for Vampires, Werewolves or zombies. Why? Because I know that they are not real. Just scary entertainment and nothing more.

Albeit back in my college days there was a Goth girl in my school who drank human blood. Believe me I gave the Goths a wide berth but then again since I was an older (36 year old) night time student we never crossed paths so she and her minions never had the opportunity to access the quality of my veins and arteries.

Like many women I’ve dated a guy with a hairy back. Poor fellow had more hair on his back than on his head but at no time during the months that we were together did he become a snarling libidinous ravenous Wolf Being after Midnight. If he had made some sort of hirsute transformation in the midst of our eating dinner or watching a play then I would have become Cat Woman.

No, not the Cat Woman most of us are familiar with from television and movies but the old school Cat Woman in the film, 1942 flick “Cat People” where the woman upon sexual arousal turns into a real cat! A Panther! Yes I know there was a 1982 remake of Cat People but I did not like that one. The original 1942 version was much better. Did you get that visual of the Cat People Woman and the Werewolf changing during their most erotic moments?

The Trifecta of Terror: Vampires, Werewolves, and Zombies all came from the overly active imaginations of writers mixed with folklore from various parts of the world. Bram Stoker created Dracula based on myths and legends from Eastern Europe coupled with a healthy dose of hidden references to repressed sexuality. Mary Shelley gave birth to Frankenstein or as was in the original title The Modern Prometheus which may have been a possible response to the debate on evolution and of course the forbidden realm of the occult.

As for Zombies, I’m not really too keen on them but I see Zombies aka The Walking Dead in my daily dealings with the general public who display a shocking lack of basic historical knowledge, good manners, common sense and a lack of respect for the rest of the visitors or for my hardworking fellow co-workers. The Walking Dead is also an accurate description of our government, i.e, the Congress and Senate as well as an apathetic public that believes the hype and drinks the Kool-Aid. Unfortunately with the advent of modern media such as personal computers, tablets, the Internet, the Web, Smartphones, Laptops, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social media perhaps the true horror and terror of the movie, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” has come to pass. Many have been sucked into the mindlessness of Reality TV resulting in assimilation into the Borg Hive.

My favorite Horror sub-genre is psychological horror. It’s that seemingly, quiet, peaceful mundane happenings in small towns and pastoral villages across the globe, that have a hidden under current of evil. Stephen King and Anne Rice are Horror Masters. You know those small towns that exude normalcy but are really the Belly of the Beast. The late great Rod Serling hit the name on the head with the unexpected with the classic TV series, “The Twilight Zone.” A television favorite of many viewers’ decades after his death. I’ll leave you with two links to Two of my favorite disturbing Tales of Understated Terror.

A great literary example is the Shirley Jackson short story, “The Lottery.” http://sites.middlebury.edu/individualandthesociety/files/2010/09/jackson_lottery.pdf

AND

A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/wf_rose.html

My Secret Hiding Place

On November 2, 2013February 15, 2015 By dancingpalmtreesIn Ambien, Battle, cacophony, Catharsis, Chia, Delusions, Dissonance, Dreams, Evil, Expectations, Fallen Angels, Fantasy, Fears, Female Divinity, Feminine Divine, Grim Reaper, Hades, Hallucinations, Hotel California, Hypnos, Insomnia, Instability, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Koyaanisqatsi, Kudzu, Lighthouse, Limbo, Lost Souls, Malevolent, Manufacturered Reality, Mark of Cain, Memory, Midnight Marauder, Monday Meme, Morpheus, Nightmares, Nirvana, Orpheus, Paradise, Phantaso, profane, Protean, Purgatory, rabbit hole, Redemption, Refuge, Rejection, Rescue, Ritual, River Styx, Sacred, Sanctuary, Scars, Shawn Bird, sorrow, soul, Spirit, Spirituality, Squatters, Stigmata, Suffering, Surrealism, Thánatos, Vision, Visions, Walking Wounded, Wicked3 Comments

My Secret Hiding Place

I couldn’t build a tree house. Too high up and anyway I’m afraid of heights, so instead I built this little fort of sorts as a place to gather my thoughts after a hectic day. Made my best efforts with whatever materials the forest floor offered up as building materials. There were enough twigs and branches to construct more ground level tree houses or make my current enclosure larger but I chose to save some for kindling for warmth against the chill night air and the rest I kept stacked as a type of cord-wood not too far away.

It has become my sanctuary and safe haven I return to again and again to re-connect with Mother Earth and nature. Too small to stand upright clicking my heels together three times was not an option so I was forced to remain seated. With some degree of discomfort I could lay down in a fetal position while I imagined myself re-entering an alternate womb to be reborn into better circumstances. Mine was a tepee without the buffalo skin covering all bones and framework.

Sometimes I’d hug my knees and rhythmically rock back and forth while repeating what I thought were calming mantras, occasionally wishing that the earth would open up and swallow me whole transporting me some place free from pain, misery and cruelty. Like a shaman I chanted using my homemade rituals attempting to silence the drumbeat of squatter voices incessantly chattering inside my head versus the declarations of the Family. They created a dissonance within the time frame continuum of my thoughts.

You see our house, if you could call that ramshackle structure; a hodgepodge mixture of stone, wood and stucco addendum and afterthoughts as different parts of the building were constructed at different times upon the whims the directors and caretakers.

I was forced to share this mishmash cottage with twelve other inmates, bordered on this expanse of woods providing me a refuge from leaky roofs, busted walls, peeling wallpaper, lukewarm baths, moldy musty scented showers, not to mention all the yelling, screaming, arguments, fights and constant disagreements of a house too small to accommodate the number of people residing within its creaky ramparts. The Family nicknamed it the Hotel California. You know the place where you check in but never check out. The nails across chalkboard voices of The Family were constant knife thrusts to my brain making daily life a constant battle that did not end even has the diurnal gave up residence to the nocturnal for they all snored, wheezed and gasped through the night abyss. The Family’s house sits on an oddly place piece of land, our house gives way to forest which in turn after several miles gives way to craggy, rocky shores of a steep cliff, where if one sits perfectly still you can hear the violent waves crashing against rough jagged rock formations that looked as though they were designed by the devil himself. It is said that in olden times there used to be many shipwrecks where sailors were either impaled on the razor sharp Stalagmites. Sometimes you can even hear the shrieks, moans, cries and groans of the unfortunate wretches mixed in with the howling winds.

So I periodically retreated to my exoskeleton asylum as a sentry medium between earth and sky. I can never turn my mind off completely but within my secret hiding place the voices were kept to a low roar and bid to change direction and pace.

The Kindling delivered me from The Family’s vocalizations. I tried to warn them before. I tried to silence the voices through escape, but it was not working so I had to try another plan. The crackles and pops of my campfire seem to be in sync with the screams and cries for rescue from the patients locked inside their rooms but eventually those voices will die out also, and then sleep. Blessed sleep. As I drifted off I thought I heard sounds creeping up on me. Maybe it could be…. Naw. How would those deviant mutations get all the way out here.

While pyrotechnics roared and exploded beyond the glen my dream state thoughts went to Calista and Cassandra those Kudzu Chia matronly tumbleweeds who wreck havoc and chaos wherever they spore and spawn and their equally troublesome and problematic one-legged Siamese twin cousins Morton and Milton.

Love,

Cassandra

Germ Warfare

On September 6, 2013September 6, 2013 By dancingpalmtreesIn Azithromycin, Body Snatchers, City MD Urgent Care at 336 East 86th Street, Cold Virus, Cornucopia, Dr. Phibes, Evil, Germs, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Kefir, Malevolent, Records, Vincent Price, Vinyl, Vitamins, Walgreens, Walking Wounded, Wicked2 Comments

Germ Warfare

After a fruitful and pleasant visit to City MD Urgent Care at 336 East 86th Street I was diagnosed with yet another sinus infection. I seem to get them every 3 to 4 months. Why I don’t know?! CityMD Urgent Care are very efficient using Google Maps to locate the Walgreens in my neighborhood Fulton & Nostrand send them the prescriptions so all I had to do was pick it up.

Carnival Cruise 2004 — 2004 Carnival Cruise

Now I’m back to being a pill factory. A veritable cornucopia of pills, ear drops, nasal spray, and my buddy Azithromycin. Damn! There’s no escaping old age, body decline & being tired, exhausted and drained, no matter how much healthy organic foods I eat; water, juice, and Kefir I drink, yogurt I consume or daily exercise. Guess I’m just a magnet for germs.

Ah the joys of living with Acute Sinusitis! Since last Thursday I have drunk more tea with honey and lemon and eaten so much garlic that even though it did not kill the germs I was not visited by any Vampires. By Labor Day I was so wiped out by hacking and coughing the previous night I had morphed into a raccoon. I do believe I left behind a lung, kidney and parts of my diaphragm at my workplace. I looked like I had gone a few rounds with boxer Muhammad Ali in his prime or spent three weeks without sleep since I had two black eyes. I could barely speak and became a raspy voice Joe Cocker harlequin at the Annual Palace Ball!

Being a soldier I fought these invaders to my system with humongous amounts of liquids, eventually consuming cloves of garlic in a nearly raw state so much so that I could have repelled an Army of the Undead. By Monday Labor Day I was pushed into the role of Zombie Guard at my workplace. Tuesday I stayed home to recover and felt well enough Wednesday to attend an outing in Central Park with friends.

For several days now, Mr. Nasal Congestion, his wife Missy Mucous invited what sounded like an entire team of Flamenco dancers to torture my right ear. The clickety clacking sounds were so loud that obviously the Flamenco dancers were using extra loud castanets! The accompanying pain was like Flamenco dancers were driving a nail, spear or knife through my right ear ala the Vincent Price, Dr. Phibes! Enough! Thus my journey to CityMD Urgent Care for relief from pain, congestion and coughing. Now I’m about to put these ear drops in my right ear and murder all those inconsiderate castanet playing tap dancing Flamencos!! Die you evil bastards!!!

Folks it is like being a host for the Germ Factory Club. Gonna make you sweat with a delightful roasted body fever. You feel the Invasion of the Body Snatchers partying inside your body doing the Cha, Cha, Cha, Tango, Rumba and Foxtrot all up and down my sinus cavities! The beautiful static noise inside my right ear reminds me of the point when the needle touches the vinyl on old fashioned records.

Today I may be a member of the Walking Wounded but I will repel these nasty malevolent trespassers away from my being! Next in my arsenal, super duper strength vitamins! Get back you wicked virus! My sword released from its sheath and I will win the battle and the war!