Sunday, November 30, 2008

My own, personal Jesus



When we moved into our house last December, the old lady that used to live here (or her lazy-ass family) had kindly left an assortment of crap for us to dispose of. There was a threadbare couch, colour: tartan. There was a linen cupboard full of mismatched pillow cases and random curtains. There was a plastic bag filled to the brim with Japanese school books (?) and Japanese medical supplies (these were pretty cool to look at). So far, so good, all of this stuff could be easily dumped to make way for our own collection of clutter. That was until I went to take down the holy pictures (Jesus, Mary, St. Anthony... all the gang) that were on almost every wall.
I put them all in a pile in the living room intending to hide them in the wheelie bin the following week. As days passed, they started to creep me out. Jesus, with his magicians cape, his heart pouring blood and spitting fire and thorns, his doleful eyes and his spindly fingers reaching out from the frame. Mary, with her know-it-all expression holding a baby with an old man face.
A little note in the corner of one of the pictures says, “I will bless the house in which the image of my sacred heart is exposed and honoured.” That’s a threat if ever I saw one. What he really means is “Take this down and some serious shit is gonna hit the fan.”
Other people agreed that removing them was a bad idea. There was talk of bad luck, curses, fiery pits and a Jihad on our house. The only piece of helpful advice we got was to deposit them in our local church and let them deal with it. This one I considered but it seemed to involve an awful lot more effort than stuffing them in the wheelie bin or just keeping them.
So they still live here, Mary propped up against a bottle of Bacardi in a bookcase and Jesus hanging out, leering at people from above the stove. We figure we’ll just leave them here whenever we sell the place, problem solved!

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