Osiris and Isis

Fallen – She is the stranger who walks in darkness beyond the campfire of redemption’s sweet light.

My astral soul travels back to the warrior. My spirit merges with his psyche piercing my body subsuming my mind.

My Beloved was rent in pieces, then scattered across the continents. Diligently I searched, gathering all that was him and laid him upon the altar.

Sweet earth lay under his head. The Book of the Dead on his chest. Anointed with tears of joy and sorrow he arose ever the mighty warrior. I gave succor to his rod of life restoring his spirit. His temple ablaze with anagrams and inscriptions from chest to thighs.

I lay at his feet his body on mine. My fingers explored the forests that grew on his chest and around his pure saber. We wrestled throughout the starry night all the while he gave me a new name as I birthed all the nations of the earth.

King Africa reigns supreme with the joined twin sisters of North and South America.

Eva & Xuela – Misanthropic Maternal Monsters?

 

“We Need to Talk about Kevin” by Lionel Shriver is sadistic, sarcastic, sardonic, yet riveting.  Are there bad mothers or are some children just born evil. Kevin is Damien in the movie The Omen to the Nth degree.  If Kevin’s head were shaved would 666 be engraved into his skull?

 

Lionel Shriver strips away the blither and blather of ideal mother/child bond relationships to get at the gritty core of a malformed twisted dance between two beings who intrinsically hate each other from conception and birth.

 

Ms. Shriver is an excellent storyteller and I’m enjoying the novel.  It is written in the form of letters from Kevin’s mother, Eva to her ex-husband, Franklin. I’m captivated.

 

This book will have you hooked. It shows the psychology of the parents and of the son who went on a “Columbine” in his school.  This book really digs deep and brings up a number of parent/child issues most of us would like to ignore.  I call it the ugly side of mother hood.  What happens to the young white upscale people in the novel is only six degrees away from a poor Black or Hispanic woman living in the inner city.

 

The mother Eva is writing her ex-spouse Franklin about her feelings about their marriage relationship and what lead to their son Kevin turning into a mass murderer at his school ala Columbine.  To say that Eva is the antithesis of what is a mother is an understatement.  Eva is the living breathing definition of a woman who can get pregnant, give birth yet not be a mother.  She is woman who on the surface seems to have no maternal instincts whatsoever, yet with the birth of her second child a girl we see a change in Eva.  Eva is a sociopath who has merely reproduced one of her own kind. For her having son Kevin was a disastrous experiment gone awry.

 

Like many couples from all walks of life and economic levels they do not count the cost of having a child. Eva and Franklin based their decision to have Kevin as a requirement, duty and human/marital obligation. However as one delves deeper into the book Kevin is not a sympathetic creature.  In fact as we delve further and further into Kevin’s psyche via his mother’s letters we find him to be incorrigible from infancy right up until the time of the massacre.

Children as they are to discover are neither an accessory nor a fun hobby.  They demand time, attention and they have their own unique personalities. Children also innately know whether or not their parents or caretakers love them, which causes them to respond, react, cling unnaturally or lash out at family, friends, teachers & schoolmates.

 

It also brings up the issue as to whether a child can born without the ability to empathize with or care about other human beings even for the parents who brought them into the world.

 

A few months ago I read The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid about a woman who is emotionally disconnected on many levels from nearly all the humans she encounters.  A comparison between the two novels and the two alienated characters, one seen the other grappling with a ghost.

 

A common thread running through Xuela and Eva is how they view children, not as a desired blessing but as possessive alien beings or unwelcome parasites.  Children in their minds are an interference with normal life.  Xuela chooses to extinguish any life form within her even before gestation has begun.  Eva transmits her resentment and disgust to Kevin from the time she discovers she is pregnant.

 

Eva is haunted by a imp she has given birth to whereas Xuela is haunted by the mother she never knew, yet still feels responsible for her early death.

 

Xuela and Eva did not lose the capacity to love children; it was never within them in the first place.  Both women represent types of women as non maternal figures, something that frightens and challenges the status quo in societies that have predefined places for women.  How can women be sexually functional yet negate the very qualities that should be inherent to the female species.  The hypothesis being if you lay down with me, you should not only want my seed but the child that results from that seed.  Xuela represents an extreme nonconformist type as she not only rejects the seed but rejects the man and the notion of male superiority.  The men who become involved with her sexually somehow know this on a subconscious level.  Those men might possess her body but not her soul.  Xuela’s only focus and secret torment is the mother she never met, yet sees in her dreams.  It is significant that Xuela only sees her mother’s back and feet as she descends down a ladder.  Many psychological theories can be read into this however I believe each reader should come to a conclusion of the dreams meaning on their own.  Xuela unlike Eva is also in a fight to keep her identity in a world, place and time in which women were seen exclusively as sex objects and breeders.

 

Neither book has a tidy ending much like life and relationships in reality.

 

 

 

The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid

 

The key to great writing is great story telling and Jamaica Kincaid is a great storyteller.  Her prose is beautiful, spare, blunt, compact and to the point. Her writing cuts you to the heart. Of course I’m biased because I love Jamaica Kincaid. She is one of the best raconteurs ever!  So engrossed am I in her storyline that even though I’m eager for the next development I’m saddened by the ever expanding vignettes because I know that the book will end and my foray with the characters will end.

The title itself is intriguing since an autobiography by definition is an account written by him or herself since the mother in the story is deceased everything is seen through the eyes of the daughter, Xuela.

This immediately sets the story on its head providing an inverse tale of a mother/daughter relationship without the mother being physically able to tell her story.  This novel introspection of a woman haunted through a lifetime by her own guilt at perhaps killing her only opportunity to have experienced true love.

Xuela continues to search for love always via the mother she never knew, the mother whom though she never directly comes out and says so, Xuela believes she killed just by being born.

Xuela experiences a dichotomy of self. Surrounded by others, in the midst of a sea of humanity and even during intimate relations with various lovers she is disconnected from other humans in a way unfathomable for most of us.

Basically unloved and unwanted by an indifferent father Xuela disassociates from every other man in her life.  Xuela never developed the ability to experience love fully with soul as well as body, even with men who become her “lovers”.  Her lovers and the people she interacts with are like ghost figures, much like the mother she envisions in her dreams, never quite fully accessible to Xuela’s heart.

Ms. Kincaid explores the many levels of Xuela’s dissonance with her fellow humans through the race and gender restrictions of the time period. In fact she rather struck me as having a sociopathic personality. Xuela appears incapable of having any positive human emotions towards others around her except when doing so might seem to benefit her.  A hidden barely reveled guilt surfaces in these two women causing them shame in what might have been

 

Annie John

Ms. Kincaid’s books deal with many mother/daughter issues.  The always seems to be that undercurrent of sadness, pain, and displeasure in the midst of island paradise.  The Autobiography of My Mother is a narrative on the mother the daughter never knew and Annie John, the novel I’m currently reading is a tale of the deteriorating relationship between a mother and daughter who know each other perhaps all too well.

Both protagonists in The Autobiography of My Mother and Annie John are women whose lives are rhapsodies with discordant notes and chords.  Both novels are in-depth psychological studies of young women on the edge.

 

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@Dancingpalmtree

Writer, Educator, Researcher, avid book reader and Tattoo enthusiast

http://twitter.com/dancingpalmtree
Pinky: “Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?”
The Brain: “The same thing we do every night, Pinky—try to take over the world!”

 

Random Dream Space Thoughts via Gaps in the Universe

Origin & Inception

Inception had a bit too many layers which made it difficult to follow but overall I enjoyed the movie very much.  What baffled me was the idea that the same person could occupy different spaces and time zones depending on whose dreams they were in.  The film definitely plays with the idea of reality as a perception as opposed to a given fact.

Leonardo DiCaprio is a great actor.  His body of work is excellent.  I loved him in “Who’s Eating Gilbert Grape.  If you really want to be thrown for a loop check out DiCaprio in Shelter Island.  That movie is scary, disturbing and unnerving.

Dreams have been defined as successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.  Dreams are populated by subconscious thoughts and wishes.  Often my dreams are a hodgepodge of things that happened during the course of the day, past childhood and my secret desires.  A good night’s sleep can help clear the stress and pressure of the day.  For me I often discover the answer to complex problems via dreams or receive reassurance and comfort from my parents.  Sleep can bring regeneration, healing and inspiration.

The dream space is physical as well as mental.  Can those dreams, thoughts and ideas exist after death?  Specifically do the dreams of the dead influence the living.  Can messages be given across time, space and eternity via one’s dreams?  If on my deathbed I had a dream in my heart and a vision in my soul and I kissed that person on the mouth would my soul transfer into that person’s soul?

One idea not fully touched upon can parents or grandparents transmit their dreams, thoughts and ideas after death via DNA.  Also can children inherit or remember the memories of their parents and grandparents?  Is it possible for any person to recall the memories or their ancestors?  Supposition: Aunts & Uncles would be let out of the picture because they are offshoots, not a direct lineage.  Or like in Kindred the possibility of being pulled back in time to assist that ancestor with some pressing problem becomes alarmingly real.  At night does my spirit travel the astral plane searching for answers, solutions, explanations’ for my physical plane?  And what would happen if the silver umbilical attaching me to my body were cut?  How would I reconnect to myself?  Whether in the body or out of the body I know not, yet still receiving the revelation of God.

My quarks and leptons become baryons synthesize into hyper-force exploding into the universe.  Fermions and bosons are no longer constrained by the complexities of theories but burst into being.  Spun higher and higher faster and faster developing from antimatter into mater.  I become the superconductive dreamscape able to transcend all and become all.

In my mind during times of slumber my astral body goes to meet the beloved and is comforted in his arms.  Is the dream only a desired illusion?  Yet it feels so real, so for now I luxuriate in his touch and together we enter the dream space capsule.

It is an interesting hypothesis that memories could be extracted from another person’s mind, but dreams are not linear because the mind is a labyrinth.  The laws of physics do not apply within a dream.  Because there are many little rooms residing within each individuals psyche, dreams can be manipulated via brain injury or the use of sedative-hypnotics like Ambien.  I can attest to the fact that misuse or overuse of Ambien will cause sleepwalking and sleeptalking.  Portals in my mind were opened that should have remained closed.  Even though I still take Ambien I’m very careful with my dosage.  Another side effect of Ambien is hallucinations.  Hallucinations are an alter state of being that I never want to experience.  It is interesting to note that Ambien is used as a treatment for persons in a catatonic state.  Think “Awakenings” with actor Robin Williams only back in the 1920s the drug of use was dopamine.  Many cultures have a history of taking mind altering drugs to stimulate and/or induce visions but if you can’t control the vision you might be getting more than you bargained for.  Personally I want to be awake for all my visions.

A frightening aspect about jumping into another person’s subconscious is that you can’t control what goes on in someone else’s mind.  If that person had escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane you could find yourself within the dreams or memories of Freddy Kruger!

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Book Review:

 

Bitch is the new black by Helena Andrews

Finally ended my suffering at Chapter 13. How appropriate.

First impressions. Ms. Andrews is crazy. Her stream of consciousness writing is akin to reading prose from a demented Valley Girl on a bad LSD trip.

The fact that she writes in some kind of secret code language for Black women in her age group or social strata was off-putting to say the least. I do like the fact that the chapters are presented as vignettes of her life story or rather life problems but that’s where it all ends for me.

Ms. Andrews book contains too many weird acronyms that my old fogey butt will never figure out, nor do I wish to do so. She would have done better to leave out the texts, twitters and tweets and just use plain English.

The only two things in the book I could really relate to were her experience with “the boss from hell” which we’ve all had and when she had an abortion at age 19.

She seems to blame or at least relate a good portion of her relationship problems to the fact that her mother is a lesbian and a bad parent.  She never seems to focus on the educational privileges she had as a child or relate her failed relationships to her nutty behavior and her inability to take responsibility for her own bad decisions. We could all play the dysfunctional family card. My mother was a functional schizophrenic but any failed relationships I had after the age of 18 were my own fault, not hers. After all once you are an adult you need to take ownership of your life and not blame your parents, childhood or external circumstances.

Part of Ms. Andrews problem is that she seems to be ruled by her hormones. Must you sleep with or arrange booty calls/texts with guys who you know don’t give a rat’s ass about you, your feelings and are poor candidates for marriage! Stop having sex! Get to know the guy first.  Being celibate won’t kill you and in the long run it will force you to be accountable for your actions.

Yes I love sex but I can wait for the right man.

Just because a guy makes your panties wet does not mean he will make a good life partner.

Sex partner perhaps, but not a life partner. 

Helena Andrews needs to sit down for a counseling session with Steve Harvey and watch documentaries on love, sex and relationships that are readily available on Netflix.

I have to admit I’m not a religious person nor am I one of those right-wing, Bible thumping Christians, but I do believe in God.

I’ve had several spiritual crisis but I always come back to God. I have to admit my parents were for the most part secular or what the church calls carnal Christians. However they did have a moral base and fairly conservative values which they transmitted to my brother and me.

Unlike Mom & Dad, Stephen and I have chosen to stick with the church but we don’t ram our beliefs down other’s throats nor do we believe that our faith has all the answers.

It does not matter whether you are Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, etc..

But at least have faith in something greater than yourself.

Ms. Andrews purports or tries to position herself as an elitist making all these black bourgie statements and liaisons, however her mask cracks time and time again with each failure or challenge in her young life.

She is so cynical that her satirical style reveals a deep self-hatred.

 She is desperately in need of some spiritual guidance.  She seems to have little value or worth for herself as a woman or even as a human. Ms. Andrews also needs to try getting some new friends. As the expression goes, “If you lay down with dogs, you’ll get up with fleas!”