The Sparrow's Nest

I was studying the "Come Follow Me" book from my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and I was brought to Isaiah 53. It's about the sorrows and sins that Jesus Christ bore for us. It said that while I'm reading, to replace "we" and "our" with "I" and "my." So I did, and here is a snippet of what it looked like. 3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and (I) hid as it were (my) face from him; he was despised, and (I) esteemed him not. 4 Surely he has borne (my) griefs, and carried (my) sorrows; yet (I) did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for (my) transgressions, he was bruised for (my) iniquities; the chastisement of (my) peace was upon him; and with his stripes (I am) healed. After I read the whole chapter like that, I felt like a worthless punk. How could He love someone so cheap as myself? As soon as I thought it, the clea...

Heads up, I hate the heat. It doesn't agree with me. Too much of it means fire season and danger of evacuation. Everything wilts and everything gets dusty. When it's cold, it's called a jacket. When it's hot and you have no AC...uh...get naked? I'm not about that life. Having lived in Arizona heat down in Mesa, with nothing but a swamp cooler was like, how am I even alive and lucid today? Okay, maybe not too lucid, BUT... I've realized something. Where I live, heat is a harbinger of weather conditions. People always say the old Natives know about the weather no matter where they live or what sort of climate. My grandpa used to be able to tell the weather and he was always right, unlike the weather station. One day, legit, they thought there wasn't a cloud in Arizona. They said this while a snowstorm was blasting outside my window. For any of you who don't know, Arizona has cold parts with pine trees and mountains. Many think this weather knowledge is los...

Fun facts about "Toni's Land." The story takes place in Whiteriver, Arizona, on the Fort Apache Reservation. At the time that I wrote this story, a meteor actually did fall in Whiteriver. "Toni's Land" is in a trilogy involving "The Cowboy Cabin" and "The Hairy Man." Marlo's make-up is based off of a random girl's make-up I saw at a gas station. I thought the story was hilarious, so imagine my surprise when it was picked up by a horror magazine. The editor of the magazine later unfriended me under mysterious circumstances on both Twitter and Facebook. "Toni's Land" was the only story I wrote that year, and the only story that got published. The name Zena Antoinette Alfonsina Jun was inspired from a bunch of Apaches who named their kids some seriously random names. Zena calls Marlo Mrs. Baylish, using the last name of Marlo's crush. The concept came from my high school years in Alchesay, when girls would call them...