Who does he love?

I feel blessed because 'a friend' has nominated our address to receive the special holy handkerchief [on loan]. It came all the way from Oklahoma along with a sealed bible prophecy and instructions to sleep with them by bedside, send the handkerchief and prayer request and donations to the church the next day, and-- only after then please-- open the sealed bible prophecy.

Along with that, a certain guy named Jack T. has come out with a new cartoon tract called, "Fairy Tales?" In it, little Harry kills two classmates cuz they told him that the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny are lies. He goes to juvie hall and then later materializes on the F.B.I.'s most wanted list along with Osama Bin Laden. I won't spoil the ending for yas.

So I am indeed truly uh, blessed. I hope that the god of the gaps isn't too put out by me opening the special sealed bible prophecy before bedtime. Then again, they knew I was gonna do it.

I did the J-trip in high school during breaks from street drugs. "Lift Jesus higher." "Fill my cup Lord." And all of that. "Fill me up buttercup."
My buttercup Jesus turned into a field of dandelions from which I made some kick-ass wine.

Days gone by.
Some say the good ol days were better.
Not necessarily. Mine weren't.

That squeaky clean family of kids the high school gym teacher and her husband had-- one was institutionalized getting denutified and another went through a family 'exorcism.'

I s'pose they looked better on the outside.

To those of you who will tell me that Jesus loves me anyway and he wants me in heaven, read up: If Jesus wants me in heaven, I don't eat no lamb chops. Nice juicy steaks please, baked potatoes dripping with butter, broccoli, and loads of ice cream.

Or I ain't going.

sapphoq on life

A Brief Intro to my High School Memories

I hated high school. I wasn't especially fond of elementary school but high school really bit the fat one. In a last-ditch effort to indoctrinate and inoculate me, I was sent to an all-girls Roman Catholic High School.

Ninth grade: The last religion class before summer vacation.
Priest: What did you learn in this class?
sapphoq: I learned I don't want to be catholic anymore.

Tenth grade: Anytime when we could get away with it.
Peggy: Let's go steal some of those wafers from the chapel.
sapphoq: Okay.
Or alternately.
sapphoq: Let's go steal some of those wafers from the chapel.
Peggy: Okay.

Eleventh Grade: The night of the school play and a bottle of Boone's Farm Grape Wine.
sapphoq: (barfing fluently into toilet in upstairs girls' bathroom)
Clueless woman: Oh my god, someone's having an abortion.

Twelfth Grade: The first week of school.
Carolyn: (coughing up a lung) This isn't pot. This is oregano!
sapphoq: Oh. I been smoking it all summer.


sapphoq on life

Dawn 5/22/07

This morning I got up at 5:23 a.m., threw on some clothes, and waited impatiently for husband to finish his routine game of Civ III so he could follow me in the broken car down to the place where the car supposedly had an appointment "first thing." I got there. I could see the three mechanics inside the building. The one I had spoken with on the phone Sunday morning, so I thought, came out insisted that he hadn't been there on Sunday and he is "backed up" today. It left me scratching my eczema-filled scalp. I know who I had spoken to on Sunday. I've known the head mechanic for years, since before his dog was hit by an errant car whose driver was in a hurry to get away. I left my car there anyways.

I got dropped off back home and took Her Delightful Self for an early morning walk. There was little to no traffic. That was really nice. Just lots of birds chirping away, a couple of lone joggers, one or two people backing out of their driveways leaving for work I guess. The dog was Ecstatic With Happiness to be out so early with the dew still glistening on the grass and the sun like marmalade in a clear sky.

Yesterday, the water department was draining some of the fire hydrants. Ecstatic witnessed their gushing into rivulets pulsating down the dusty streets. There was none of that today, save for the one yard where the pool [must be nice] has been draining through a hose along the grassy boundary into a waiting sewer.

The news flashes pictures of Katrina and Kansas. The kitten, the youngest and most confident of the three felines in residence, pounces on his favorite green "mouse" and then stalks off to do battle with a spider plant whose only crime is also being green. Weather will be sunny today here but rainy again in Kansas. I had grieved long and hard for New Orleans after the rains came and the levees broke. I remember her bright shining like the sun. Years ago, I had walked somewhat stoned and drunkenly up and down her streets with some people who I used to call friends. She had captivated me then. New Orleans of the zoo with the white tiger, Bob Marley and the Whalers playing before the crowns at the Warehouse, glittering things discarded in the gutters the morning after. One morning, we sucked the heads out of crawfish and swizzled beers headed to the Blues Festival where we saw Z.Z. Top. Another, we had dropped acid. I freaked out cuz the youngest woman of the bunch was obviously pregnant. I wrecked her trip, I guess. Did she care about the stuff in her veins flooding the placenta barrier and bringing physical distortion or possible death to the developing fetus inside?

When death stalked those streets last year, I felt the death cries of the vodousaints rising up as one. The dikes have been patched. A shiny casino went up along the wetlands, once again defying the Earth our Mother to do her damnest. Wetlands are nature's defense against flooding. The French had build New Orleans on the wetlands years ago. We who have harnessed technology as our slave have not learned from that mistake. After Katrina, I wanted so to be part of the volunteer rescue effort. But I could not. Physically, I was in no condition to help. Knowing that, I wept bitter tears and stayed home. I convinced husband to send a pittance off to the Red Cross. I made a photolage on one of my blogs and wrote bad poetry. None of those things were enough.

New Orleans was re-built with the sweat of illegal aliens. There are so many jobs there now. Jobs going begging. Not enough people willing to live in a zone where Katrina is bound to happen again, any year now. Maybe this year. Maybe next. Within the decade for sure. Thanks, army corps of engineers for the information. Taco stands replace steaming plates of red beans and rice. Spanish supplants Creole. The destruction of one culture and rising up of another. This is the way the world goes. Knowledge does not always make things easier to bear.

Construction crews all over the States have their share of illegals working on them. When in Illinois, I heard about locals not being able to get those usually higher-paying construction jobs. Better pay than the tire factory even. The bosses were hiring wetbacks at lower wages. More ummph for the buck. In a train cresting the Rockies, my dinner mates concluded that we "have to" provide prenatal care for those women who are bearing United States citizens in their wombs. The Senate is debating the annexation of Mexico and Texas this month. Newt Gingrich read the Mexican Immigration Laws and the mediacs jumped all over him, accusing him of discrimination. They didn't know. Mexico does not want illegal aliens crossing the border either. Unlike the United States, Mexico takes meaningful action against those who would flaunt her boundaries. Time spent in a Mexican prison is time spent courting death, Mexican style. We imperialistic Americans forget that we are subject to the laws of the territory that we travel in. Our "rights" to violate the earth, trample over her sacred lands destroying the delicate balance between flora and fauna stops at our sovereign borders. We citizens of the United States forget.

We have forgotten how to live. We have forgotten the sheer joy of movement, of a dog delighting in an early morning walk. We have forgotten how to live. Broken cars aside, life is rich and succulent like the juice of platanos dulces running down our chins. The kitten warrior is strangely silent, staring out an open window at paradisio. The dog, sated, sleeps on top of the coverlet with the lilac print on her back, feet in the air like some strange apparition. It seems I've forgotten my breakfast napkin. I do not get up from my chair.

sapphoq on life

PAPER WASP NEST 5/17/07

During the first summer in our home together, husband and I discovered that our property was a magnet for bees and wasps and hornets. We had sweat bees that lived in the ground under some bushes in our backyard, white-faced hornets, huge bumble bees, and paper wasps. [And a dog who delighted in targeting bees mid-flight and then gulping them down live. I was never successful at breaking him of that habit and he never got stung.] There was also a huge growing paper wasp nest hanging off of a cellar window.

One day the following winter, my husband and I were outside together. There was maybe an inch of snow on the ground. I walked over to the paper wasp nest and kicked it. "Oh, good, there aren't any wasps in there looking to sting me." I said as the nest disintegrated into shreds. "You mean you didn't know?" husband asked, slightly paler than his usual skin color shade. "Nope."

Husband did not have such great luck. One day while mowing his mother's lawn, he managed to piss off a bunch of sweat bees who retaliated by stinging him. He thought that perhaps he had mowed over the entry to their ground nest. That may be why he decided that we needed kill off bee spray when a friend and I tore up the backyard bushes a few summers later. I filled up the resulting holes with rocks and one tree. Between the bee spray and the rocks, the little bastards never came back. We still do have some bees flying around but the paper wasps and the white-faced hornets and the sweat bees have pretty much left our yard alone now. I am glad for that and husband is ecstatic. Current dog does not attempt to eat the huge bumble bees which still visit our yard and that is a bonus as well.

In the local news here, there is some talk of "Colony Collapse Disease" which has to do with dead honey bees and apple trees. In the immediate area, it does not seem to be a problem however. I like local apples as well as anyone else here so that is a good thing.

Years ago, my cousins were keeping some bees. I got to go out to the hives in a goon suit and watch as one of my cousins scooped out some honey cells for us to eat. He gave me a glob to hold and a bee "hatched" in my gloved hand. Even that did not leave me terrified of bees. I did get stung by a hornet or something once and my instantaneous reaction was to slap the nasty thing off of my finger. I slapped it so hard, that the little horn-like stinger was left in my finger sans insect. I removed it. I had a scar there for a bit but it has now faded.

sapphoq on life

INDIAN DOLLS 5/6/07

My step-grandmother used to go see relatives in Canada. She used to bring me back Indian dolls. They were made of plastic, with blinking eyes and black hair and leather outfits with little beads for decoration. A few of them came with papooses. One time she gave me a little wolf. I think it had a stand. I do not recall what its' "fur" was made of, though it felt smooth to the touch. I also remember a yellow travel cup which screwed into a small yellow plastic can. To use it, you slid the links up. There were three links. Also a blue travel cup which worked the same way. A zip change purse.

One time she took me with her to meet her nephew Benny and his wife and two sons. We went on a bus. It went through Scranton Pennsylvania, that I remember distinctly. The two kids spoke English, French, and Italian. They were both fluent in all three languages and played soccer. Soccer was big there. The family lived in the Canadian city Niagara Falls in a brick house on a corner with a little yard and we stayed for a week.

Years later, Bennie and his family went back to Italy to live and they all got killed there. "Volcano" may have been what I was told, only I don't believe that is what it really was now. My step-dad cried for many days for his cousin Benny.

sapphoq on life