Optical Illusions

On March 31, 2014March 31, 2014 By dancingpalmtreesIn Autism, Back Alleys, Better Homes & Gardens, Broken Angels, cacophony, Catharsis, Damaged Goods, DeBorah, Depression, Developmental Disabilities, Diabetes, Disability, Dissonance, Edward Palmer, Fallen Angels, House Beautiful, Images, Inner-City, Inscriptions, John 21:18, Kinky/Nappy Hair, Koyaanisqatsi, Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous, Lyrical Family Memories, Mable Elizabeth Palmer, Mable Palmer, Optical illusions, profane, Rheingold, Sacred, Scars, Schaefer, soul, Stephen Vincent Palmer, Stigmata, Tattoos, Under belly, Unloved, Unwanted1 Comment

When I was a little girl during the 1960s my mother had a love affair with Better Homes & Gardens and House Beautiful magazines. However try as she might and my Mom was an excellent decorator (I believe she missed her calling) with two kids, a husband who smoked and various dogs our house was never as clean or as orderly as those pictured in the magazines. Periodically my 4’11” 95 lb mother would move those big heavy 1950s furniture from one end of the living room to the next causing my father great consternation when he tripped over tables or chairs that seemed to magically appear usually around Midnight when he got home from his late shift.

Though the houses and rooms were beautiful, they were only beautiful in an anti-septic, unlived in way. Pure white living rooms untouched by jumping muddy dogs, kids with drippy Popsicles, or cans of Rheingold and Schaefer beer cans making little rings on the end tables.

Everything is arranged, after all those pictures are photo shoots put together for maximum impact to the readers. Kitchens where nary a fried chicken or pork chop popped grease or soup boiled over. No cans of Crisco sitting on the counter-top. No spilled glasses of Kool-Aid, Orange Crush, Coca-Cola or Pepsi.

No smells of fish and chittlin’s being cleaned or bugs flying in from the holes in the ratty screens we put in the windows during the summer because we had no air conditioning. The pop and sizzle of the steel straightening comb being pulled through my Ultra Sheen saturated nappy kinky hair on a Saturday night in preparation for Sunday school in the morning.

Too perfect and we all know that life is not perfect. I like furniture to have character. Those little cracks, dents and chips give an openness and appeal that utter perfection cannot rival.

My family’s lives were not perfect. We were and are real people with real lives. Nothing is staged. My mother was a functioning schizophrenic alcoholic, my Dad was in a job that he found not fulfilling, my brother was born with Autism, I’ve battled depression since my teen years. No there are no picture perfect lives here. But now I’m no longer afraid or ashamed of my battle scars. I wear them proudly. I’ll take the nitty-gritty, those who society has deemed damaged goods, the unloved, the unwanted, the back alleys and the under belly of the business district at night, inner-city over Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous any day. I’m Blessed to be a Broken Angel.

As for disability Jesus said it best, John 21:18
Common English Bible (CEB)
18 I assure you that when you were younger you tied your own belt and walked around wherever you wanted. When you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and another will tie your belt and lead you where you don’t want to go.”

http://www.upworthy.com/a-gorgeous-woman-shakes-her-body-on-stage-and-the-crowd-goes-wild?c=reccon1

Jephthah’s Daughters

On July 14, 2012July 14, 2012 By dancingpalmtreesIn Ambien, Battle, Black Unicorn, Bridge, Cat fights, Catharsis, Cathay Williams, Delusions, Dreams, Ebonics, Education, Edward Palmer, Elements of Style, Ethiopian Goddess, Eurydice, Eyesight, Facial Hair, Family History, Family Tree, Fantasy, Fears, Female Divinity, Feminine Divine, Genetic lineage, Gifted & Black, Goddess, Grace Slick, Green tea, grief, Hallucinations, Hamlet, Health Food Stores, Henry V, homeless veterans, Hood Stories, horror, Hypnos, Icelus, Images, Inscriptiona, Inscriptions, Insomnia, Instability, Intellectualism, Jacob's Ladder, Jesus, Kinky/Nappy Hair, Knowledge, Koyaanisqatsi, Law of Attraction, Loss, Love, Lyrical Family Memories, Mable Elizabeth Palmer, Mable Palmer, Madonna, Manufacturered Reality, Maternal lineage, Menopause, Midnight Marauder, Mind Altering Substances, mitochrondrial DNA, Morpheus, Mother, Mozambique, Mystical Creatures, Native American, Nature, New Age, Night Bird, Night Sweats, Nightmares, Nirvana, Noah's Ark, Ohio, Oneiroi, Orpheus, Paradise, Phantaso, profane, Protean, protest, Redemption, Rejection, River Styx, Romance, Royalty, Sacred, Sages, Scars, sci-fi, Sexual Fantasy, Shakespeare, Sherlock Hollmes, Short Stories, Skeptic, Songs of Solomon & Sheba, sorrow, soul, soup kitchen, Soy milk, Spirit, Spirituality, Squatters, Stigmata, Suffering, Suicide, Surrealism, Tattoos, The Secret, Thracian King, Trail of Tears, Understanding, Vision, Vision Quest, Visions, wage slave, War, Wisdom

Jephthah’s Daughters.(Click here to read more)

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.

Listen to My Voice

On June 30, 2012July 1, 2012 By dancingpalmtreesIn African American Queen, African Goddess, Carnal, Colour of Beauty, Erotic, Ethiopian Goddess, Female Divinity, Feminine Divine, Ferrari, Kinky/Nappy Hair, Love, Romance, Sexual Fantasy, Songs of Solomon & Sheba, Spirituality, Thracian King, Uncategorized, Visions

Listen to my voice

Listen to my voice. Listen to the sound of my voice.

Leda began her hair color ritual in the usual way. She carefully laid out the tools of her trade on the bathroom sink and the top of the commode. Being a small bathroom there was not much space but Leda made do within her sanctuary. Hair color, towels, mirror, comb, gloves, check. Now Leda was ready. Using a wide tooth comb she divided her thick unruly curls into sections applying even amounts of color first to her roots then all the way through to the ends. Pulling the comb through her mane Leda envisioned Radu’s well groomed hands entangling themselves within the kinks and knaps of mother Africa all the while gently massaging her scalp and kissing the nape of her neck. Leda massaged the remaining color through her tangled tresses then set the timer for 25 minutes walking the short distance to her bedroom to meditate while the process worked its magic.

During the 25 minutes of meditation Leda visualized her lover Radu sitting next to her on the bed speaking softly and gently in his Eastern European accent all the while kissing her brows, the bridge of her nose and finally her lips. She could feel the bristle of his closely manicured beard against her face all the while falling into a deep blend of olive skin intermingled from Slavic, Romanian, Turkish and Macedonian blood lines. From his lips issued the voices of ancient Kings worshipping the Queens of Africa, Sheba and Candace.

He sometimes stopped to look deeply into her eyes mentally willing the both of them to become one flesh.

Suddenly the buzz of the timer interrupted her reverie and off she went to turn on the shower preparing to rinse out the excess color treatment. As Leda stepped under the powerful flow of the water Radu’s spirit stepped in with her and they were transported to the thunder of Caribbean waterfalls, enveloped in thunder of the cascading streams. Radu’s hands were like the streams of water entering into every sensitive place of her temple. She could feel his lips and hands as they worked their way down from her neck, breasts to that soft mound of flesh above her pubic area where he loved to rest his head after a night of lovemaking. Water and color ran down over all the nooks and crannies of her curves.

Ring, ring, ring, the sound of the phone brought Leda out of her fantasy and quickly toweled off and managed to answer before the machine kicked in.

“Ello Layda. I just arrived at JFK. Taking a taxi to your place. See you in a few minutes.”

Leda rejoiced. Her fantasy was about to become real. Her Lover was almost home. Her thoughts wandered to a romantic tryst in the hot tub at their friends chalet.

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Sirocco

On February 16, 2011January 4, 2015 By dancingpalmtreesIn Female Divinity, Feminine Divine, Goddess, Kinky/Nappy Hair, Mother Goose, Nature, Sacred, Spirituality

Canadian Snow Geese -- Rochdale Village — Canadian Snow Geese — Rochdale Village

Sirocco

Canadian Snow Geese grazing on hoarfrost pre-Spring grass

Gust filled kinky kinaps whipped by February’s foretaste of March’s bitter winds.

Whipped by winds I sink deep into muddy rivers of melting snow so lightly trod upon by winter fowl. Wishing I could remove protective shoes from freshly pedicured feet feeling cool frosty mud oozing up between bare toes.

Primordial bog clay slime squishing up between exposed toes. Reconnecting to Mother Earth. Rooted like a tree into the receptive ground. I lift my hands and arms high as branches of worship to the Great Earth Mother Goddess of the Universe.

Swaying in the mild Sirocco.

Colorstruck — The Colour of Beauty

On July 4, 2010 By dancingpalmtreesIn African American Queen, African Goddess, Colorstruck, Colour of Beauty, Dark Skin, Ethiopian Goddess, Female Divinity, Feminine Divine, Kinky/Nappy Hair, Royalty, Spirituality1 Comment

The Colour of Beauty

Please take time to view the above link.

Colorstruck

I feel you Brown girls.

I just wanted to say to my Brown Skin/Dark Skin Sisters that I had many issues and insecurities concerning my skin color when I was younger.

Especially coming up and going to school during the 1960s, Black was not Beautiful. It still took some convincing even after James Brown declared “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud”. I can’t tell you how many times I was called “Tar Baby” and various other insulting names by the other Black kids on the playground and in the neighborhood.

I used to go home to my Daddy crying. Daddy used to tell me, Deborah, “The Blacker the Berry the Sweeter the Juice, if the Berry’s too light it has
no use”. My Dad was dark skinned like me and he soothed me as well as
instilling self-esteem and pride within his daughter.

Well the 1970s came along. Soul Train, Watu Wasuri use Afro Sheen.
Black Power. Famous Black Models gracing the covers of fashion magazines such as Vogue.

Props to Beautiful Brown Skinned SisterGirls:

Grace Jones

Bethann Hardison

Beverly Peele

Naomi Sims
Toukie Smith
Roshumba Williams

My current favorite: Alek Wek

Essence magazine came into being.

Suddenly it was a good thing to be Dark Skinned. My Dad and I wore our Afros proudly.

Ethnic looks, fashion, the flavor of the month. All Cyclical. Especially in America a nation caught up in the youth craze. America, a nation that equates youth with beauty. America, whose standards of beauty change with each passing fad.

Now that I’m middle-aged I thank God for this dark brown skin. Why   because many of the white women want to know what I do to look the way I do. As soon as they hit their late 30s, 40s the wrinkles and lines appear. Why do you think those anti-aging creams and formulas are so popular? Botox. Restylne.

Those things are not being marketed to us. For the most part we don’t need it. I’m 51, look 41, if I colored my hair could pass for 35.

This dark brown skin I used to curse; now I celebrate every day when I look in the mirror.

My baby cousin Veronica, age 15 showcases the beauty of African, Hispanic and Native American in one gorgeous package. Yes she has the light skin coupled with the shoulder length hair.

Years ago I would have been jealous of someone like her. But many years have passed and I’ve been her caretaker off and on since she was a little girl so Veronica is my defacto daughter.

When I see Veronica I feel love and joy, not because she’s light skinned and pretty, but because she’s smart and talented. Roni just has a different type of beauty than mine. My family has mixed heritage from many branches. If you saw all of us together, you’d see a living human rainbow bound by blood. Even though we are on two shades of the skin color spectrum when my friends, neighbors and co-workers see us together they assume that’s my daughter. As far as I’m concerned Veronica is my Daughter. One of my goals is that when Roni is around me to teach her not to capitalize on her looks. Not to manipulate men or people in general.

I want Veronica to get her education. I envision her receiving a BA,
then a MA in whatever discipline she chooses. Leave the boys alone. They’re no good anyway. She is a girly-girl. Loves the latest looks but young women dark and light skinned need to get wisdom, knowledge and understanding in their heads.

I still get plenty of attention from men. All men Black, white even some from the Middle-East. Some unwanted but that’s another story.

So, Thank you to both my African and Native American Ancestors for dark brown skin, high cheekbones and Nappy/Kinky hair. I am the best of all worlds.