Tag: Nightmares

My Secret Hiding Place

On 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

The Hiding Place
The 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

Ode to Insomnia

On 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.

 

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.

 

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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Insomnia Kitty
Me, Sylvester & Weezer. My cats my night time companions.

 

Pharmacia Cornucopia

On By dancingpalmtreesIn Alice's Restaurant, Ambien, cacophony, Delusions, despair, Dissonance, Dreams, Fears, Grace Slick, grief, Hallucinations, Insomnia, Instability, Loss, Love, Mind Altering Substances, Nightmares, Pharmacia Cornucopia, rabbit hole, Sacred, Scars, soul, Spirit, Spirituality, Suffering, Visions, White Rabbit2 Comments

Pharmacia Cornucopia

Alice’s Restaurant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjKF7aQthcQ&feature=colike

Like the words of the famous song Alice’s Restaurant today’s prescription drug addict “You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant”. Why risk getting arrested and possibly spending any time in jail when you can go to a variety of doctors and easily get prescriptions for Xanax, Celexa, Zyprexa, Ambien, Wellbutrin, Zoloft, Paxil, Oxycotin, etc…..  After all it’s legal.

Go Ask Alice

White Rabbit ☮ Jefferson Airplane ♥ 1967

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsvILKyxfsU&feature=colike

Thanks to our pill cure obsessed society along with the greed of Big Pharma who consistently bribes most physicians to distribute their pills like they were M&Ms in the Candy Shop to unsuspecting patients who need relief from pain, anxiety and depression.  Very few people are suffering from psychosis which most of the aforementioned drugs are designed to treat.

How do I know this? I am a recovering prescription drug addict. Shocked? Surprised?  Never would have suspected someone like me right? A church goer, Bible student, Cum Laude College graduate, hard worker, one who has always been able to hold down a job and be success in the workplace. Well now you know. I’ve come out from behind my mask. The mask I’ve been hiding behind since 1999 the year after my Mom Mable Palmer passed away.  Nineteen Ninety Nine was the pivotal year when I made my descent down the rabbit hole of grief, depression, anxiety and pressure to get past the pain of my parents deaths which occurred within three years of each other.  I had to keep the charade going. I could never reveal to anyone how really devastated I was by their untimely loss.

Nineteen Ninety Nine was the year I started seeing a psychiatrist. It started off well enough. At least I thought so in my troubled mind. She had me watch a video on mental illness, specifically bi-polar disorder, asked me a few questions then sent me into a journey and eventually a slide into the land of Happy Pills.  What I probably most needed was a mild sedative and extensive talk therapy but no I received Celexa and eventually was promoted to stronger more debilitating prescription drugs.

Mind you because at the time I had a good job and good health insurance there was no problem in me obtaining in number or manner of pills to satisfy my growing reliance on these medications.  In fact my doctor enabled me by reaching into one of her office drawers and dispensing free pills she had obtained from the many pharmaceutical agents who visited her offices, and most likely plied her with dinners, trips, etc…. if she would promote their “medications”.

What Dr. Pill Happy failed to ask me was if anyone in my family specifically my parents had any addictions.  If she had asked me that I would have told her my mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was an alcoholic most of her adult life.  But then again who knows, given the fact that the Big Pharma Drug Pushers were greasing her palms she would have ignored the obvious connection between my behavior and my mother’s and continued adult candy.  Then again I can’t just blame this doctor, most doctors just indiscriminately dispense mind altering pills with little regard as to whether this will cause adverse reactions’ in their patients.  I also blame myself.  I wanted the pain to go away.  I wanted to be ten feet tall all the time.

The only thing that stopped my downward slide was I lost my job in 2006 and my health benefits in 2007. Suddenly I had to confront the ugliness in my life and everything I hated about me.  I couldn’t hide anymore.  Not that I didn’t try. By 2008 I had a new job with its own particular stresses and pressures.

To bring this saga up to date within the last few years I’ve developed severe back, knee and foot pain. My current profession requires me to be on my feet over eight hours a day and the natural ravages of age and time have taken their toll on the lower half of my body.  Many times the pain was so bad I couldn’t get out of bed to accomplish simple housework much less stand on my feet for eight hours.  Not only was I taking medicine to combat pain I also had to take sleeping pills so I could at least get enough rest to deal with the daily challenges of the workplace.  I was going to different doctors getting various prescriptions for physical pain.  I took all my prescriptions’ to the same pharmacy. It would seem a large chain pharmacy would see that the combination of drugs I was taking would cause certain negative interactions within my body.  They didn’t.  At least once or twice within the last four years I nearly lost my life.

Finally I told myself I must climb out of the rabbit hole.  I might be ten feet tall outside but inside I felt only two inches tall.   I hurt not only physically but emotionally and mentally. The poison that I tried to suppress inside began to seep out.  I knew I couldn’t hide behind the mask anymore.  My problems lay not just with my parents’ deaths but with sexual abuse I suffered from the time I was 19 up to and including all the sexually abusive relationships I had been in until I was 48.  Now I’m in the process of confronting my fears.  This is not an easy journey.  I’m in my 50s now.  Life has definitely changed and not always for the better but change is the only constant in life.  I’ve had to make many adjustments and accept my physical limitations.  I may fall off the wagon during my journey but nobody’s perfect.  But whether or not I have the mercy and compassion of people is neither here nor there.  Most of all I have God’s mercy.  I have God’s compassion because He knows what I’m going through.  God has not judged me for mood swings or depression.  This is an illness and I know when I get too tired to go on anymore God in His infinite mercy and wisdom will take me Home to Paradise.

I also knew I had to write this piece clean and sober. My Valentine’s Day piece was written while I was spaced out on Ambien. Strangely this piece was very well received. I mean I got a lot of great feedback from LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter fans. At the same time all the adulation was scary because I knew I could continue as a functioning drug addict or I could make a clean break. As a chronic insomniac Ambien is a very difficult drug to break free from. Taken in its proper dosage you sleep. However take two pills instead of one your body sleeps but your subconscious is still awake, still able to function. In a psychedelic way Ambien has an effect of enhancing talents already residing within you but at the same time with the capacity to kill you.  Obviously I don’t want to die but I do want to obliterate the emotional and psychological pain that threatens to rip apart my very soul. But the realization comes that pain can never be totally erased only dealt with on day by day basis. Small doses of healing dispensed over time.

No matter what I have fulfilled my purpose in life because I share this story with others, not for you to understand me but to at least have understanding and empathy others struggling along the rocky path of prescription addiction.

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Dreams vs. Visions — Inspiring the Muse

On By dancingpalmtreesIn Ambien, Black Unicorn, Dreams, Fantasy, Hallucinations, Images, Mind Altering Substances, Mystical Creatures, Night Bird, Sacred, soul, Spirit, Surrealism, Visions, Wisdom1 Comment

Dreams vs. Visions

Inspiring the Muse

 

Flying Dream Unicorn
Flying Unicorn Dream

I entreat the nine muses to come to me once Hypnos and Morpheus have sprinkled their poppies, my eyes close and I imbibe the potion for nightscapes.  Brothers Phantasus and Ikelos open the threshold for the Nine Muses to enter in.  Each Muse wears a ring with her attribute inscribed therein by Nyx Goddess of the Night.

  • Calliope was the muse of epic poetry.
  • Clio was the muse of history.
  • Erato was the muse of love poetry.
  • Euterpe was the muse of music.
  • Melpomene was the muse of tragedy.
  • Polyhymnia was the muse of sacred poetry.
  • Terpsichore was the muse of dance.
  • Thalia was the muse of comedy.

Nyx leads her daughters into my psyche causing my pen to trip lightly across the page at dawn.

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.  Insomnia is the antithesis of a peaceful night.  Insomnia is the antithesis of a peaceful night.

The dream space is physical as well as mental.  It can be a war or collaboration between the conscious and the unconscious mind.  As a child I would sit in class in daydream of where I wanted to be other than in the boring classroom.  As an adult my daydreams consist of where I want to go in life and formulating ways to get there.  I would call where the mind goes in the waking hours Vision and while asleep Dreams.  My Vision is the business, idea and service I’m giving birth to.  Dreams are just flights of fancy my mind takes to escape unattractive realities.  Vision is the mental outline, framework and building blocks of my pathway towards lifelong goals.

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?

Are parents or grandparents able to 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.  Portals in the mind normal closed are open causing the user to sleepwalk and sleeptalk.  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 in control of all my visions.

If I was able to jump inside your subconscious in what landscape would I find myself?  Could I understand the scenery generated by your mind or would I just be a stranger in a bizarre and frightening environment trying to escape?  However my vision can resonate with your vision thereby creating a shared vision that empowers us both.

Insomnia

On By dancingpalmtreesIn Delusions, Dreams, Fears, Hallucinations, horror, Instability, Nightmares, Surrealism

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

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’s reality. Am I living the hallucination or is the hallucination really me?

Life begins to implode.