Aurora Or Aura Mixed Media on 30X40 Canvas, Rachel Robbins 2024
"Welcome illusions know maiden’s delight...."
Temporal lobe epilepsy can be controlled to some degree with medication, but aspects leak through in day-to-day as you go about trying to mind your own business. Déjà vu, the taste of color, the smell of sound, an earworm from a nonexistent song, a sense of rising from your body and looking down to see everything washed in water. Intense dreams, You know, life. Sometimes if your brain “zigs when it should zag” you get pieces which need to be set down someplace so you can go along your merry way until next time. I paint focal seizures and intense dreams. I don’t paint tonic-clonic seizures. I used to, but they scared me and made me cry.
I also used to write down whatever annoying phrase was repeating itself (such as “Welcome illusions know maiden’s delight”) in hopes that would stop, as we sometimes listen to a song if one line just gets stuck on repeat in your mind. Only recently I found out that phenomenon –particular to temporal lobe epilepsy—is called palinacousis. The more you know! Before writing any story which feels familiar, it’s a good idea to Google, and sometimes you learn something new. A group of artists is called “an illusion of painters.” Just wanted to share. We’re also called “a madder of painters,” but that just isn’t very nice, is it?
“Palinacousis” is the poem (song?) which goes along with my painting, Aurora or Aura. If the chorus gets stuck in your head, I apologize. Welcome to my world.
Palinacousis
Welcome illusions know maiden’s delight
Color tastes, common shade
Layers of recognition
Reveal release in stab of ice
Daughter to mother to grand
Forger overflow
Cloudy gown ice into air
Crest never in sleep.
Keeper of crossroads
Private in deep
Ice fishing
Locked, stocked, dropped
Cast a prayer before dying
Memory wiped
How cathedrals veil
Flesh open wounds
Chase the final tale
Unlock, trade, empty rejoice
Welcome illusions know maiden’s delight
It is the winter’s trick.
Merged with kisses,
Alchemy pure as mountain gale
Forces glimmer beneath sleep
wicked blue
Magic carpet ride. Sky
Hags know their crystal bones
Strike fear. Never goodnight
A fairy tale fervor to enter
Clocking final charms
Welcome illusions know maiden’s delight
Gobbled by darkness or pierced by the light
Wisdom of slumber or quivering night
Undaunted by depth nor staggering height
O’er guarded lake comes sorcery bright
Delusions will house in hospitals
Women not above little things
Bursting under singing ice
Bubbling tonight strikes
Transforms horizon’s final gift
In the wrong bed
Revealing release in stab
Of ice.
Enchanted stone and fire
Buried impossible treasure
Inflamed deep water
A fairy tale fervor
Flavor of color
Splendid hearth
bioluminescence
Fire in air
Borealis above.
Welcome illusions know maiden’s delight.
~~ Rachel Robbins
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