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

Woodland Green ~ Equine Redeemers

On October 26, 2013 By dancingpalmtreesIn Ambien, Black Orpheus, Black Unicorn, cacophony, Catharsis, Delusions, Dissonance, Dreams, Fantasy, Female Divinity, Feminine Divine, Grim Reaper, Hades, Hallucinations, Hypnos, Insomnia, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Koyaanisqatsi, Limbo, Lost Souls, Morpheus, Mystical Creatures, Nature, Nightmares, Orpheus, Paradise, Pegasus, Phantaso, Protean, Redemption, Refuge, River Styx, Sacred, Sages, Sanctuary, soul, Spirituality, Stigmata, Surrealism, Thánatos, Vision, Vision Quest, Visions, Wisdom, Woodland Green ~ Equine Redeemers, Zion

Woodland Green ~ Equine Redeemers

While walking the Woodland Green I paused to admire a luminescent mossy patch upon the ground when a preternatural calm descended upon the forest glen. Caught in a vortex the earth began to spin.

Then came a vast rustling of leaves and branches so strong that I thought the mighty Looming verdant giants would come crashing down. Whilst caught mid-spin I kept my eye on light shone down from the jagged Oculus mid the canopy of trees. Forms free-falling started to take shape. A veritable multitude of amalgam multifeatured animals like none seen in God’s Natural Kingdom.

Seemingly Middle Earth had exploded skyward hurtling forth a cornucopia of imps, fairies, hobgoblins, and satyrs, gremlins with their symphony of resounding bleats, howls, and shrieks. As they struck twig strewn ground at once began leaping, frolicking and gamboling in a macabre dance, a bier simultaneously appearing in forest clearing. Such a cacophony of squeaks, squawks, hisses and moans that assailed my senses that I shut up my ears attempting to block the imprisoning noises.

Foggy Misty morn over Central Park in the ball field

The Bier seeming to be the only source of calm called me forth from this forest den of iniquity bidding me peace, calm and tranquility from the storm. I answered Bier’s call to lie upon its violet flowered shroud surrendering to dreams eternal of the Babes in the Wood.

Before Hypnos rendered his potion and twin Thanatos grasped my hand in final repose, I heard on nigh the beating winged hooves, snorting of frenzied galloping hooves. Redemption, Salvation and Deliverance arrived in the equine forms of Royal Unicorn and Winged Pegasus. Equestrian gods breathed life upon whisking me away to Utopian shores.

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.

Ode to Insomnia

On April 7, 2012 By dancingpalmtreesIn Ambien, Delusions, Dreams, Fantasy, Fears, Hallucinations, Hypnos, Icelus, Insomnia, Instability, Koyaanisqatsi, Midnight Marauder, Morpheus, Night Sweats, Nightmares, Oneiroi, Orpheus, Phantaso, rabbit hole, River Styx, Sacred, soul, Stigmata, Suffering, Surrealism, Visions, White Rabbit2 Comments

How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.
Bram Stoker

Insomnia

Insomnia: the passage to uncharted realms between wakefulness and sleeplessness.

Charon ferries me across the River Styx into disturbed realms. Dimensions where time, space and eternity no longer exist as we know them.

My insomnia is paralyzing. So paralyzing that I find myself drifting. Dissolving into the walls and the furniture. Becoming one with inanimate objects. A force of nature living outside herself. Voyeur to my uncharted dreams. My inner world merged with the world at hand. Imagination gone wild.

Insomnia is God’s younger brother satan sent to torment me.

God’s way to torture sinners and test saints.

Koyaanisqatsi (Hopi) – crazy life, life in turmoil, out of balance, out of sync

I feel disconnected. My life is one where toys do things that toys should not do.

The bane of a troubled mind.

A form of earthly eternal damnation.

Insomnia opens the door to insanity

I’m one of the chosen.

Tonight when Morpheus and Hypnus spread the poppies of

Stardust upon you, the Fallen Angels will render unto me phobias and

Phantasmagoria. I see doors where there were previously no doors. Doors that open to the netherworld of demons with outstretched claws ready to drag you into the abyss.

An uneasy mind dangling off a precipice ready to let go.

Disturbed, deranged, distortions, disorientation becomes a part of everyday reality. Am I living the hallucination or is the hallucination really me?

I lose myself in the madness and surrender to the psychosis.

Life begins to implode.

An implosion shaped hand circles it claws around a jar of Ambien

I fought writhing on the bed all night long with the gods of sleep, dreams and death.

Morpheus, Oneiroi, Icelus, and Phantaso surged forward over me along with the attendants of Hypnos.

They all had their way with me and once stated I smell the dusky layer lilies over my nose. The smell of jasmine sharp in my left hand. The prickly pain of red roses in my right hand. Sheaves of vanilla spread out over both my legs.

Life begins to implode. HYPNOS, Give me the sleep inducing opium straight from the poppy that birthed it.

A hand shaped implosion grabs for a bottle of Ambien.

I fought writhing on the bed all night long with the gods of sleep, dreams and death.

Morpheus, Oneiroi, Icelus, and Phantaso surged forward over me along with the attendants of Hypnos.

Pamperation for the Queen of Slumberland

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
Henry David Thoreau

The Midnight Marauder once again prowls the airwaves. Oh Blessed Sleep where are you? And why do you continue to deny me the rest I so deeply need?
Wish I could wind down. I always seem to be wound up!! Where’s my off switch?

No Sleep. Only the sound of my own thoughts ticking in the night, like the hands of a clock going around the dial and never resting.

Crickets?

I’ve been banished from Tranquility Base. Tried listening to some soft quiet music but I’m still awake. Looks like the gods of sleep have cursed me. Almost time to get up for work anyway. Too bad I didn’t have some Valium, Demerol, Percocet or Xanax. Then I could get some much needed sleep! Should be a fun day at work today. Guess I’ll just be in Zombie mode all day.

Sleep thou elusive bird of paradise why dost thou no longer grace my bedroom door? Alas the night has past and day begun and the time for work is now at hand.

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