Koyaanisqatsi – Page 2 – Espiritu en Fuego/A Fiery Spirit

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

Dissonance as a Creative Art Form

Koyaanisqatsi – Life out of Balance, Crazy Life, Life disintegrating.

Ah yes deliberate dissonance, discordant tones and harmonies that somehow weave themselves together to create a beautiful sensory tapestry.

I’ve seen this done in dance with Twyla Tharpe and in a recent performance by the Shen Wei Dance Artists at the Met and also in music with composer Philip Glass who can be a bit extreme.� I think that is also what appeals to me in photo collage, taking things that seem to have no relationship and making one or items that have a logical relationship and changing the way the viewer sees them.

Dissonance strikes its own particular cadence making sense only to the viewers who are tuned it. In fact it strikes out at the viewer engaging him in a seemingly one side fight. I bring together those elements innocuous in and of themselves but joined together create a whole art form. Dissonance is taking the everyday mundane fashion an entire new creation.

It all flows together. It rattles. It shakes. It demands to be heard.

Hit the note on key, then threaded, spread it, flip it and bounce it off the wall a few times. They bob, weave and pirouette.

All together in one tiny room they create a cacophony of what appears to the layman’s ear noise but is actually a symphony of everyday items and the sounds they emit.

Life is woozy with interconnectedness. Word Dance and images assault the five senses fighting for dominion.

It is a cacophony reaching the very core of the brain’s cerebral cortex arriving at a level of distortion where all becomes clear and melts into one. It is the kinetic frenzy of acoustic violinist Lorenzo LaRoc.

How can one in a place of seeming quiet reflection experience the luxurious of a racing mind with images and sound vie for dominance with our core senses? How can we filter the stream and use it to our advantage?

Let the mind wander through the galleries independent from the body and see what happens.

Normal is the mutually created state between self and Goddess whereby you repeatedly step out of one state of being into a personal universe of goals, dreams and fantasies without having a complete psychotic break with the reality at hand. Living inside ones head with the ability to return to the Three dimensional worlds for discourse with earthly flesh and blood. Some forays take you over to the dark side but one must always have a plan or a way of escape or you will be consigned to dwell in the nether regions ruled by the Tormentor and populated murderers, sadistic rapists, and demented of the worst sort. I’m fortunate in that my ancestral angels have not only pulled me back but accompanied me, overshadowing my being with a golden celestial aura.

Anytime I’m dissatisfied with the present reality I retreat to my “Happy Place” π a parallel universe populated by created forces over which I have total control or at least most of the time. Occasionally the inhabitants may get out of hand but my fellows are allowed to stray from their appointed pathway only in the greater scheme of further ends I’ve already predestined for them. π Sometimes the Angels assigned to guide have me morph into alternate beings, with the ability to inhabit the glories of past and future worlds both terrestrial and celestial.

Each chamber of my mind has a doorway that opens to Flights of Fantasy Realms with many alter-egos and avatars each vying to pilot the “Dream Ship Taijhena “!

These dreams and fantasies become my true normal. Normal is the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt coupling with Flappers of 1920s America producing a race of superhuman beings and biomorphic forms who populate the fourth dimension world of Modern Art. The dissolute household, Isis, Ishtar, Nzingha, Makeda, Storm, the Borg Queen Lilith, Juan de Pareja, phantasms from the paintings of Tanguy and Carrington, the Wizard of OZ, Star Wars, all meet in a Great Celebration!

Visiones de Juan de Pareja

Juan de Pareja plays ethereal music upon a 17^th Century Italian Harpsichord accompanied by musical voices that have taken the form of African drums, old Negro Spirituals, Baptist Hymns, Native American, Gregorian and Buddhist chants.

Juan’s soul once held captive within the painting is now free and he romances a young African American Woman transporting her through the portals of time into his world, making all her dreams of romance and adventure come true. The Lover has come to claim his Beloved undaunted and undeterred by the passage of time across centuries and continents. Taijhena became his model, his muse, his lover. Her reward; his full Moorish lips joined to hers. Her slender fingers reweaving the tangle of his thick, knappy, kinky curly hair.

The Kaleidoscope Turns

Dwellers from the off center worlds of Yves Tanguy and Lenora Carrington dance a ghostly minuet strangely in time with the aforementioned harmonies. Umberto Boccioni mechanical cubist forms shape shift as each civilization raises its songs of praise to their nation’s way of life. Rumi and Hafiz recite poetry in Old Persian. Surreal images of Magritte and villagers from Chagall mix and mingle in a charged atmosphere.

From shattered bits and broken pieces I recreate Eden. A forest populate with animals, plants, perpetual sunshine; all manner of jewels and precious stones. In the middle a clearing there is a slow moving stream, its banks alternately sandy with smooth rocks dotting the coastline. Looking across I see Beloved transitioned family, friends, even pets from long ago childhood. My suffering now over, Our reunion begins.

All happily exchange and converse within the Stream, that unconscious subtle system of verbal and non-verbal communication. Empaths guided by cues, pheromones, and inner thoughts, dreams and visions.

Always remember, “A Unicorn seldom this way comes to a locked Garden.”

Yes! Normal is the reality I create for myself!

Excuse me but my Creator Mistress signals me to re-enter the story from which I was summoned. π

Contrary to popular belief sensory deprivation rather than sensory overload may be the root cause of alienation. Not enough intellectual stimulation to the cerebellum causes the thought processes to wither and die much like a paralytic who no longer has use of his limbs. On the surface chaos is the semblance of order. Chaos is the first order of discipline.

Life as a collection of items, things, pieces of a whole, separate they are in conflict together they

Hallucinate baby Hallucinate because the world you once thought was real has been challenged by the authentic. I am one with the mad woman who lives inside me.

{Experiments’ in Dissonance}

Suddenly We have a new murder here and it’s wasting along the page.
The make dissonant movements damning the reader or the writer to make any sense of the dialogue. As in Jazz the worlds bob and weave along the page, not necessarily making any sense. Suddenly I’m fight with a perfectly black keyboard. tHIS IS A VIOLENT NEIGHBORHOOD. jUST GOT HIT oVER THE hEA[D WITH a cLEF NOTE.

Pitted where it should have been potted. keys at irregular lines and angles.The keys are diving in hollowing out, making messages peck as peck can. Someone follow J and tell me where he goes. You know that J cannot b trusted. And K, well K is all over the streets timing every Hookah House we know and some we don’t know.

Trouble nothing but trouble just like Q. Not enough known about Q. He’s the fakir in the group.
Hell’s Bells Messers ipad, ipod and laptop we still have to take the all in the questioning.
Found M laying out on the courtyard floor. Was it booze or nose candy? S came by in a sexy outfit hoping to distract the other two B & Y can talk business in the rather mode cyberspace combination of bar mixed drinks complete with Merry Go Round. Suddenly B, Y found R who in the interim met up with P. P left the car idling waiting for us to get in, while we all pondered could we even fit in that rebuilt British MG Midgit.

Y&R&P settled the debate by plying into an old VW bug. We’re leaving here whether you want us to or not and we’re taking the stash with us. B highly upset by this change of plans refused to fix the aerobiplane or the ramshackle ships our only two hope of getting off the island.