Letters To Australia

I’m not sure if the world has gone completely mad or if it is normal, in northern Missouri, to have weeks and weeks and weeks of ice and snow and coldness and days below -24C, and then all of a sudden to have several wonderful days of warm weather with temperatures reacing as high as – I kid you not – six degrees celcius. Woohoo it got to like 3C today. Heatwave.

However, having survived two months of rain in Vancouver and several weeks of cold coldness in Missouri, I managed to get sick as soon as the good weather came.

It’s interesting that the last time I was here for christmas, a couple of years ago, everyone got super sick with a stomach thing and threw up everywhere and I got it last and least severe, and the exact same thing happened this year. Even as relatively mild as I got it, it hasn’t been fun and I feel sorry for the Griego clan who got a full hit of it.

I’m feeling a bit better now. After having eaten only a few bites of salad and a bowl of porridge (which I failed to keep down) in the last few days, I’m looking forward to a fabulously unhealthy dinner of curly fries and pizza tonight.

As a celebration of being well again, I am feeding myself food from a diet that makes people ill.

I am grateful though that it wasn’t a respiritory thing because Missouri smells BEAUTIFUL. It’s funny that I never payed attention to the smell of the place. It’s been frozen for so long that I guess I stopped being acclimatised to it, and now that the land has thawed I notice it more than I ever have. The state smells like perfume.

The smell, even though I never noticed it when I was with her, reminds me of  Lindsey so it’s a little bitter sweet. It makes me happy because it reminds me of when we were together, and sad because I haven’t forgotten how it ended or what I lost… It’s strange to miss something you don’t want back.





Christmas was great, even though everyone was sick and the weather was being mean. I had a bit of a self revelation though when I unwrapped my self-chosen gifts. I chose a dumbbell and some boy shorts as my christmas presents and on christmas morning it dawned on me exactly how butch I never realised I was. I shared this with my mother who made a crack about buying a checked shirt for me – but I already own one. I wear it pretty much everyday.

Now I guess I’ll have to buy a ute (that’s a ‘pick up truck’ for you Americans) and start wearing wife beaters.

I haven’t written too much about Pennsylvania and you might get the impression that it’s because I don’t care about Pennsylvania, but that would be the wrong impression. It’s because I’ve been doing that stupid thing where I want to hold off on blogging until I’ve put my photos on the computer and I can’t be bothered actually PUTTING my photos on the computer so I just never do anything except eat chocolate and watch TV.

Anyway I’m back in Missouri again but PA was fabulous.

I spent a week chilling with Dana in her huge old farmhouse, walking her friendly, noisy dogs, and having adventures with her friend Julie.

For those of you who haven’t read all of this blog – I haven’t even read all of this blog – Dana is a friend I made at fest. We met after we camped next to each other in the solo collective, and had all sorts of adventures that centered mostly aroud the massive amount of stuff she brought to the festival, and my need for a decent haircut. At the end of the week she gave me a necklace that I loved even though I haven’t worn a necklace since I was like ten, and asked me to come visit sometime. I promised to try and eventually the stars aligned, the universe smiled down on us and I ended up in Pennsylvania.

Dana said to me once ‘Tae, we just need to trust that the universe is nfolding as it needs to’ and lo and behold, it did.

At the end of the week Dana had a whole bunch of friends over for a clothing swap, which is an idea I am ABSOLUTELY going to incorporate into my life just as soon as I stop being a vagrant and begin being a real person who has a bed and a job and a cupboard full of clothes I don’t want or need.

I was reading about clothing swaps in an old issue of VegNews yesterday, and the article suggested a complicated system of tokens and bidding but that’s lame. Here’s how Dana’s clothing swap worked – you brought things you didn’t want and put them in a big pile, then Dana took things from the pile and held them up and people said they wanted them, or yelled they wanted them, or flat out dived across the room and rugburned themselves to get the item/s before anybody else did.

*Cough* Chrissy! *cough*

If two people wanted the same thing the rule was that they had to draw a card from a game somebody had there and do the dare on the card. But nobody argued over stuff because nobody was stupid and/or drunk enough to risk those cards.

Then at the end Brooke said her school was doing a clothing drive and took a bunch of the clothes and I’m not sure what happened to the rest but I’m assuming they will either be donated to the Salvos, added to Dana’s impressive collection of clothing, or stuffed into every available crevice of her car to bring to fest next year.

Dana and Melissa trying to convince somebody to take this awful sweater. The fact that everybody there remembered when those were actually popular made me feel super young, but I figure missing out on a trend like that is nothing to be ashamed of.

Chrissy showing Syd some affection. Dana, to the left, seems to be getting ready to tackle her. I don’t think Syd actually minded, she’s such a weird cuddly little dog. And by little dog I mean big dog.

I forget this kid’s name, but randomly a bottle of alcohol ended up in front of him, he ended up with an ice pack and Chrissy had the presence of mind to snap this while he was looking a little frazzled. She took it and then literally fell over laughing, and everyone looked worried about her until they saw the picture and understood. I could hardly breathe.

This is how lesbians raise children – a steady diet of open mindedness, love and alcohol.

In front of the Salvos (Salval?) rockin some pink sunnies.

Pimpin’ ain’t easy. Yvonne made me buy this hat. I wore it into taco bell and she suggested I do a pimp walk, but when I tried she told Dana I looked like I had been hit by a car. My dreams were crushed that day, and I vowed never to pimp walk in public EVER again.

Dana’s house. To the right in a field is some sort of structure housing a cutout of Colonel Sanders from KFC. I forgot to ask what the hell. (Dana, what the hell?)

Dana and Yvonne!

Dana and Tae!

I tried to take one of Yvonne and I but her face broke my camera. It just turned off when I pressed down.

You Scored as The Student DykeYour entire life is defined by two things: your intellect and your sexuality; moreover you often merge the two to lure in women. The Student Dyke 80% The Granola Dyke 75% The Magic Earring Ken Dyke 70% The Bohemian Dyke 70% The Vaginal-Reference-Making Dyke 65% The Little-Boy Dyke 45% The Hipster Dyke 40% The Pretty-Boi Dyke 40% The Femme Fatale 40% The Quasi-Gothic Femme 35% The Stud 25% The Sprightly Elfin Femme 20% The Surprise! Dyke 20%

I actually took this quiz to prove that I was a granola dyke, but hey, whatever. Who needs labels?

The ‘Vaginal-Reference-Making Dyke’ made me snort my soy chai latte through my nose… I guess I am a student dyke.

I love love love that the picture that came with it was Darlene… oh Darlene. If I’d realised why I liked you so much on Roseanne I might have figured out things much much earlier.

Here are some photographs:

Watching american football in central Pennsylvania with Julie and Ben Jumper and Crayjack (sp?)

Later we played Didgeridoo.

The ice skating rink was closed so we went BOWLING. Hellz yeah.

Julie hopeful:

Julie dejected (notice gutterball on the right):

Julie angry:

Yes that is a chair.

Dana risking her life for christmas lights

Can you say, Righteous Babe?

Then she tried to strangle me. It was festive, at least.

This is her dog Sydney.

Very Happy Dog.

Plans for the day:

Message from: Julie
12:31 pm 11/12/08
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Pina coladas and ice skating?
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Message from: Tae
12:33 pm 11/12/08
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God yes
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I feel like I should blog more, so here’s the low down on what I’ve been up to the last few days.

I sleep during the morning and Dana works during the day, so mostly we chill at night and eat Oreos and chocolate soynut butter while we have deep and meaningfuls about love and life and fest… mostly fest.

Tonight she dug out some astrology books and sorted out my life for me, which was helpful. And I’m not even being flip.

Dana freaks me out, sometimes, when she’s like ‘Let me look at these cards and tell you about your problems’ or ‘Let me consult this chart and explain your personality to you’ because there are no carnival Tarot reader warnings about strange men, and no newspaper horoscope promises of career advancements.

As an atheist, to have a book tell you that having planet x in sign y means you react to criticism by doing x, and realising that the whole page is you more perfectly than even you could describe yourself… it’s scary.

I mean that in the best possible sense, of course. In a shaking up your world view, making you think analytically and keeping your mind elastic and open kind of sense.

Good stuff.

The last two days I’ve been hanging out with Julie (of the christmas tree decorating) and her girlfriend Monica. Monica is friendly and sane and says things like ‘We probably shouldn’t drive to Baltimore to play arcade games.’ and I’m grateful for that. Julie… Julie sings Queen songs at the top of her lungs, explains honestly that she has never killed anybody with her car and tries to talk me into last minute jaunts to stripclubs.

‘No, seriously, they LOVE lesbians there.’

They seem to balance each other out and for some reason, even though I manage to be stunningly unfunny and socially awkward for no particular reason around them, they still hang out with me.

The other day we went to Monica’s sister’s school basketball game – complete with real live cheerleaders. They both apologised for ‘dragging’ me there, but seriously I loved it. Hanging in the halls in my skinny jeans, chilling outside with Gay George and Black Sam, or whatevertheir names were. I felt like I was in a movie.

Americans don’t seem to understand that things that seem normal and boring to them – yellow school buses, cheerleaders, white christmases, grape soda -  blow my freaking mind.

Today we went to a funky op shop and then got some burritos. We almost went bowling but I decided instead to come back and hang out with Dana who is, after all, who I came to visit. At any rate, my amazing lack of co-ordination and fear of public humiliation probably would have led me to decline the invitation anyway, even if for some reason I didn’t actually care for Dana’s company.

But of course I care for Dana’s company because she’s practically a saint. Case in point, this morning, she made me macaroni and cheese. I didn’t even ask her to. In fact, I wasn’t even awake. She just did it, out of the goodness of her heart, and left it warm in the oven for me for when I finally decided to drag my ass out bed. Macaroni and cheese, there ought to be some sort of award for that.

I’m being jocular, but I’m totally serious.

Woohoo I made it to Pennsylvania!

Dana’s place is even more fantastic than I imagined it would be – it’s full of dark wood furniture, and houseplants and tapestries and celtic knots and books about astrology. My favourite thing in Dana’s place though is Dana, it’s so good to see her again.

Last night her friend Julie came over and we decorated the christmas tree. Today I am apparently going to see a basketball game with Julie… or maybe it’s a party. Whatever it is, I agreed to it, because she made it sound like fun.

Spontaneity ftw

I held off on posting because I wanted to put some photos up. There’s no real reason I didn’t put the photo’s up and follow it with a post, I just wanted to do them together but I was too lazy to find my camera cord so I didn’t.

Now that doesn’t sound like me at all, does it?

Whatev, I’m back in the US of A now. Vancouver seems like maybe I dreamed the whole thing, but my mediocre bank balance says I must have done at least some work.

I’m writing these words from Missouri, and as I type I have to keep stopping to smash off the layers of ice that are forming on my fingers. In fact, I’m sitting in a house made entirely of ice, under fifteen feet of snow, and I’m so cold that I’ve actually set fire to my jacket and my pants to stave off frostbite.

Actually it’s only snowing a little bit, but  FUCK IT IS COLD. Seriously, I was in Vancouver and I was all like ‘Nerrrrr, the rain, it’s so rainy, my shoes are wet and I will never be warm again. Nerrrrr.’ … Did I just FORGET? Honestly I do not understand why anyone would ever live anywhere it snowed. Rain is my favourite.

Tomorrow is an exciting day. Tomorrow I’m going to Pennsylvania. PENNSYLVANIA.

The response I usually get when I say that is a screwed up face and the question ‘Why?!’ But there is a simple answer to that question: Dana

I’m going to go and visit my fest friend Dana for a whole week and I’m HELLA excited. It’s going to be fabulous because she’s the best, and also because it’s not snowing in PA (WOOHOO), but mostly because she’s the best.

It’ll be weird, though, because when I think of Dana( or any of my fest friends) I think of us running around in the woods with thousands of women covered in body paint, with no electricity, tents for shelter and wild blueberries for food – which is a fabulous state of existence, let me tell you, but a world away from chilling (warmly) in a nice house with walls and appliances and technology.

The end.