Hotel Hangout. The most relaxed I've been all year. I heart Melbourne.

The self congratulatory capital of Australia.

I'm an east coast girl. I grew on the east coast of Queensland; transitioned to adulthood on the east coast of New South Wales; fell in love on the east coast of America...

For some reason though I've never really gotten to know Melbourne. I'd acquired the impression that it was a wanky, pompous kind of place - 'til now. I spent the weekend there and now I am in love. The galleries! The old architecture! The deciduous trees! The offbeat allyways where you get coffee, not stabbed! People grow magnolias in their front yards and you can buy peonies and rununculi at the markets like, whatevs. Magnolias! Rununculi!

Melbourne's my kind of place; chilly and gloomy. The city made it ok for me to prance about in a high-culture induced euphoria, swathed in a neoprene and leather jacket, harem pants slung low, pale throat wrapped in an exhorbitantly expensive silk contraption (a bitter-sweet reminder of east coast American love gone wrong), rich pigment on lips and flowers in hair, no quizzical stares from homely Queenslanders, nor cruel snickers of City Beach clad teens. What a lark! What a dream!

Most of all though, I got to hang out with my wonderful parents, who flew in a few days before I did. They're the greatest 'rents a gal like me could have been born of, and it was lovely being able to wander the streets with them in their low-key, dorky kind of way, recharge, even regress for a moment.

It's true.

"If God created us all in his image, and some of us are gay, then that must mean that God is a little bit gay. Makes sense, how else would you explain flamigoes?"

- Adam Hills

How come there weren't guys like Danny Zuko when I was in high school?

An artistic education

Life is messy. Gloriously messy. Like fingerpainting.

Love hustle

I was your mistress. Then you wrote me love letters and taught me how to drive. We played soulmates and self-destruction, painted a story on walls of our own, interlaced our fingers and traced our names in the sky. You called me LuLu and I stayed a while, now we go 'round with smiles on our lips 'cause the ride is still fun and fine. We were never that good at goodbye; Baby's got me by the hand and by the heart.