crossing a border

He talked to Irish women on a Donegal bus.

“My family, while emotionally cold, distant and abusive yet well intentioned, kind and loving were rather dysfunctional, trying to understand my vagabond nature. They had no choice in the matter. By now they’re used to receiving strange word-strings full of mysterious symbolic metaphorical tragic truths from twilight zones. They receive illustrations as I transmit between crystals and gringsing decorated with universal binary codes.”

“Really now?” said Mary.

“Yes, I gave my folks a world map for their anniversary. They loved it, inviting friends, neighbors and strangers over for trivia games using postmarks, stamps, decals, flotsam, thread, needles, bark, cactus fiber, beads, charts of tributaries, topographical maps, animal skins, hieroglyphics, and Tibetan prayer wheels with Sanskrit characters. They caressed burned broken shards of Turkish pottery, Chinese bamboo brushes dripping blood, torn out pages from esoteric Runes, Paleolithic fertility symbols, vitreous writing, and one of my favorites, a Quetzalcoatl image full of written narration based on the oral performances of myths in Central America.

“Fascinating,” said Deirdre.

Essay test questions

Tomorrow is the Big day. Grade 4 kiddies take their end of the year sale unit test. The focus is on reading comprehension, listening and language arts. The speaking opportunity is next week. Everything must go!

It covers the final two chapters - history, time lines, bar graphs, maps, giraffes, gaffs, staffs and laughs.

Language Arts Essay Questions

Instructions. Read the questions. Answer the questions using complete sentences.

1. Why do you think it might be good to know your street address? Please explain.

2. When might you need a map? Can you tell why.

1. It's probably a good idea to know my street address inside the heavily fortified gated community on the old banana plantation because that's where older moronic perverse pedantic people take care of me. Actually two of them, the ones who connived me during a lustful interlude ten years ago leave early to make money. They take me shopping on weekends to reduce their abandonment guilt.

The other two - a comedy team from Vegas - do all the heavy lifting: washing, cleaning, cooking and rearranging antimatter. They pack my lucky lunch and tons of textbooks in a rolling suitcase, drive me to school in a black shiny SUV - the place surrounded by bamboo pavilions - and leave me alone to play with my catatonic friends and yell at high decibels.

I love noise and confusion and yelling. It's the only way to get people to pay attention to me!

2. The map is not the territory.

I hope I pass this test. My parents promised me a fantastic new toy if my score is higher than a bird can fly.

Metta.