missouri highlights

i feel like i kinda shorted you, so i guess i should write something about my reactions to mo. in general, i had a really good time. i loved st. louis. it was the cuteist little city. and i would have to say my fave part was the city museum. it was amazing. d and i had gone to the cathedral, which was amazing too, but i said to her, all that money and time that went into making that huge piece of art- i gotta say, i think jesus would be more impressed with sandwiches for the hungry or microloans for the poor than thousands of golden tessalae. i guess i found the grandeur kind of upsetting. but the city museum! it was such a labor of love, all this spectacular art made out of TRASH! industrial waste turned into jungle gym, and not just jungle gym but ART. it was wonderful and beautiful.

there were more mosaics there, but they were out of chipped tiles and old gears and plates from printing presses. and they were fish and dinosaurs instead of jesus. or teepees.


on the other side of the scale, waynesville was hard. i expected the children to be the diffucult part, but really i was fine with them. it was more the country that upset me. we didn't eat one meal but breakfast in the house, and so it was impossible for me to find a vegetable beyond onion rings or iceburg lettuce. i was so sick of fried foods, i never wanted to see another grilled cheese again. this made me grouchier than i would have otherwise been. i tried not to be whiny, because no one likes a vegetarian that makes her diet an ISSUE, but it's hard to be consistantly cheerful when you are being so poorly fed.

our second night there, i was really starting to feel the country closing in, and we were "going out" with arthena and tony. what do you want to do? they asked. what are our options? we replied. there's not alot to do for fun in waynesville. we ended up going to tony's mom's bar in devil's elbow to play pool. we pull up and there's a HUGE bald eagle painted on the side, with a flag painted in the middle. oh yeah. we go in and order drinks and arthena's joking with an oldtimer sititng at the bar and he starts heckling me about my pink hair. i'm like whatever and go to the bathroom, i hate drunk people. so we get our drinks and our pool table and everyone's apologizing and making excuses for this guy, and i'm like, please, they have old drunk guys in chicago, too. it's the general air that's hard for me to breathe. can we just let it go and not make me stick out any more than i already feel like i do? and d comes over to me and starts touching on me, what's the matter baby? we can leave soon. and i was SOOOOO uncomfortable. and i said, "please don't touch me here." she was of course hurt and we finished our drinks and our game and left. when she was so aloof in the car home, i started to cry and cry and cry, and she softened, and then we talked about it that night. she felt she had nothing to hide, and she doesn't care what anyone else thinks. i felt very very vulnurable. there was no public transportation to get me home if things got hairy. i wasn't a person to these strangers, i was just a symbol of all sorts of things they don't like or feel threatened by. there is so much hate out there. d said tony and arthena wouldn't let anything happen to us... but i guess i've seen too many movies and read too many books to take much comfort in that. (when i told christopher this story, he said, "girl, i've seen the laramie project!")

so that i can safely say was the low point of the trip. and even that had it's good moments- the music was FABULOUS, totally appropriate for the scene, these old old country songs back when contry had more in common with folk than pop. and it was totally the bar out of ani d's untouchable face, though i couldn't find any recognizable constellations when we were playing. and that one incident didn't color my whole trip- the joys of st. louis, and the b&b, and the brazillian restaurant, and the museums and the sightseeing overrulled it all. it rocked. i really love traveling with d. i wish real life was like that. coming home to reality is always so hard.