We are in Love with the idea of Love but Reality is oh so different. Romance is a broken down heap in an unused garage with a drunken clipped wing Cupid splayed out beside it swilling in his own vomit. The illusions of Cupid were shot down by his own arrows. Arrows tipped with poison that turn healthy beating hearts into gangrenous rotting putrid shells. Love is anxiety, disappointment, hurt, pain and stress coupled with fear. Vitreous Spears of viperous snakes slithering from brain to core corrupting of part of human life.
Last night I spied Venus and Mars exiting the House of the Rising Sun on their way to the local dive bar. Yup Love and War. Two sides of the same coin.
Cupid and his mother Venus are thinking of getting their own Reality show called Life’s Broken Dreams. Broken Dreams lead to Broken Hearts. Walk in the Light of Truth and kick both Cupid and Venus to the curb! The Steel Iron Armor has sealed my Amore and the key has been thrown in the River Styx.
It’s a risk to admit you’re broken and possibly beaten or just plain tired and hurting inside.
Risky to say you hurt both physically and emotionally because then the Pharisees and Sadducees appear with knives, razors and spears ready to slash you because you’re not the image or the person they want you to be.
Crying and tears are considered character flaws.
Once you fall out of the House of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm in essence you’re Fucked! Already down on your luck scavengers come to pick at your last bits of self-worth beating you down further than you already are.
Let’s be truthfully, Life is a Roller-coaster Ride. You slowly inch up higher and higher then drop quickly to precipitous lows. But once you get down in that valley here come the Happy Police demanding for you to get out. Comparing you to others who are 25-30 years younger with circumstances unlike my own. They want you to live lie. Be a fake or a phony. Being Sensitive is a crime. For me there is no refuge or sanctuary just rejection. Justice is sentencing to a lifetime in Social Media Wasteland. A judgement and sentence I refuse to accept.
Seems these people never remember the times they were down and out. When someone reached out to them with kindness and compassion instead of criticism and judgement. But for me the prescribed remedy is to rip the scabs off my scars yet still expect healing. I’m a Stigma, a failure because I’m not running through fields of tall grass and flowers singing tunes from the Sound of Music.
Even Jesus had to get away from clinging needy people with their hands out always wanting his miracles but not his teaching. Jesus went up to a mountain or to a desert place all the while knowing his disciples, his friends would desert and betray him. Yup they threw the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords under the bus. In these Techie days folks just label you a Social Media Loser.
Broken Angel
But he embraced his broken places but not their false expectations and I will do the same. If you only accept me in my happy up times but not in my broken sad times why say you’re my friend at all? Unfortunate to say, But there exists no Love or Respect for Broken Angels.
Lord I Believe Help me overcome my unbelief. Father please remove all fears, self-doubts and my nagging sense of failure from my troubled heart and soul. I am the broken winged sparrow lying shivering cold, bereft of hope, hungry for acceptance, on yon forest glen. A Woodland Tragedy. Will Jesus the Gentle Woodsman gather up my shattered heart and bind up my bloody infected wounds? Lord Hear my plaintive cries.
Which voices do I believe? The Judging critical voices of men with ravenous sharp toothed dogs or the brutal voices of women holding sharp knives ready to strike and drive men into grave ground. Or Dear Lord your Tender Still Small voice as you Cradle me in your arms, safety bound. Oh God comfort the descendant Daughters’ of Jephthah and Tamar that we may find solace, peace and sanctuary in a weary heartless land.
I couldn’t build a proper 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 in a womb like nook Mother Nature had carved into a tree that had been struck by lightening. Eventually I decided to construct another Tipii twig abode to store my few belongings I had gradually began to sneak away from The Family Residence.
These Tree/Tepee/Tipii/Twig aka T3 structures became my holy sanctuaries and safe havens 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 were a tepee shelters without the buffalo skin covering all exposed bones and framework.
Tipii-Hut
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 voices incessantly chattering inside my head versus the declarations of the Family. They created a dissonance tear in the time frame continuum of my thoughts.
You see our house, The Family Home if you could call it that is a ramshackle structure; a hodgepodge mixture of stone, wood and stucco additions 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, thefts of food and personal belongings 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 utter desolation of the place crept into your bones and took root nourished by hopelessness.
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. The few who weren’t dashed to pieces by the razor sharp jagged rock formations tried to climb up to safety but were thwarted by the steep incline.
Forest Hiding Place
So I periodically retreated to my exoskeleton asylums 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 last straw that broke the camels back came when my moronic addled brained cell-mate Pearl kept throwing her nasty, dirty towels, underwear and flip-flops over to my side of the room. When I returned from the canteen or our common dining area there were moldy wet towels plastered to the floor like throw rugs that accosted the dividing line between our two living areas. Pearl was known as the filthiest female in our wing tossing food and drink to and fro fully expecting that a squad of personal maids and sweepers were following in her wake. One night after I returned from my many woodland sojourns I decided that I had, had enough and soaked all her grimy towels in gasoline and lighter fluid obtained from an unlocked supply closet near the motor pool. Pearl had a tendency to drink like sailor on shore leave and sleep just as soundly so she never had an inkling as I piled the towels around her bed, built a kindling fort for good measure and added effect, led a fuse from a doorway to an open window, climbed out and lit said fuse.
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.
Shall we regard our girl children as Jephthah’s Daughters? How long will we continue to perpetuate the adage, “Women love their sons, but raise the daughters.” Every child deserves the opportunity to succeed in life but success comes through accepting responsibility and learning to be accountable. Any child male or female who constantly lashes out at authority figures in a bid to always be “right” is a child bound for prison or the graveyard. Stop making girls the sacrificial lambs!!
Ladies, let’s love our girl children and stop putting them on the altar in order to save a son who does not wanted to be saved and does not think he needs help or worse some no account man who should not even be a part of our households to begin with. Let us not return to ancient times when girls and women were thought of as little more than chattel or commodities to be bought and sold. (See below for more details on ancient economies)
“One of the unusual things about the Bible is that it preserves some bits of this larger context. … It would seem that the economy of the Hebrew kingdoms, by the time of the prophets, was already beginning to develop the same kind of debt crises that had long been common in Mesopotamia: especially in years of bad harvests, the poor became indebted to rich neighbors or to wealthy moneylenders in the towns, they would begin to lose title to their fields and to become tenants on what had been their own land, and their sons and daughters would be removed to serve as servants in their creditors’ households, or even sold abroad as slaves.
“[This is what the biblical book of Nehemiah is referring to in the passage,] ‘Some of our daughters are brought unto bondage already: neither is it in our power to redeem them.’ One can only imagine what those words meant, emotionally, to a father in a patriarchal society in which a man’s ability to protect the honor of his family was everything. Yet this is what money meant to the majority of people for most of human history: the terrifying prospect of one’s sons and daughters being carried off to the homes of repulsive strangers to clean their pots and provide the occasional sexual services, to be subject to every conceivable form of violence and abuse, possibly for years, conceivably forever, as their parents waited, helpless, avoiding eye contact with their neighbors, who knew exactly what was happening to those they were supposed to have been able to protect. … http://www.delanceyplace.com/view_archives.php?2009
Donations to this Ministry for the Housing Fund can be made in U.S. Funds via money order or bank checks made payable to Rochdale Village Inc. 169-65 137th Avenue, Jamaica, NY 11434, Account No. 083-11G-16924 or directly to deborah.palmer280@gmail.com via Paypal. Thank you and God Bless.
Espiritu en Fuego/A Fiery Spirit 