Queer Mail

Navajo. <3 That's so beyond awesome. I'm an utter whore for cultural learning.

If you wanna contact me, drop me an email at captain[dot]tuberculosis[at]gmail[dot]com! Hope to hear from you~

From:

hi there!

i would like to contact you (for interest in "friends"..., making friends, and being friendly); but, i'd like to know a few things about you first: are you a politician? Are you family? Are you a classmate? Or are you the serial killer in my stairwell? ;-)
...I assure you, all legitimate questions.

:-)

From:

I assure you, I am none of the above. :D I'm very friendly, and I do have my own bio-thing on the comm if you'd like to check it out: http://community.livejournal.com/queermail/41226.html

From:

in truth,
i still don't know if you're:
purple/green,
pineapple/mango,
black/white,
water/oil,
smooth/rough,
mean/kind,
male/female,
warm/cool,
soft/hard,
rough/gentle...

;-)

From:

Purple.
Pineapple.
Grey.
Water.
Smooth.
A bit of both.
Androgynous.
Warm.
Soft.
Gentle, with a little roughness on the side.

Happy? :3

From:

a pet peeve of mine:
people who choose a 3rd option (that DOES NOT exist):
i.e. "Do you prefer WHITE or BLACK?????"...
their answer:
"GRAY."

initially,
"gray" wasn't even a choice.
ha ha ha ha.

actually,
it's either "white" or "black" -
"A" or "B"...
"1" or "2"...
"right" "left"...
or even "yay" or "nay??"

right?

From:

Not necessarily.
It's never just one or the other -- there is always a spectrum.
So asking me to choose between one or another when neither applies is just silly.
That's a pet peeve of mine.

From:

sure.
however,
the contraction "or" is asking you "..." OR "..." -
leaving you with ONE choice of TWO selections.

in a question that supplies ONLY 2 options,
either 1 of 2 possibilities applies...
so i don't think it's silly.

it's like asking you,
"would you like to supersize it?"
your choice in the matter is "YES" or "NO" -
not: "i'd like to only supersize my beverage."

From:

Okay, there's no need to be rude or condescending. I was not in any way mean to you, so I don't think my response warranted your being an asshole, so quit getting all butthurt at me because I didn't answer your idiotic "questions" the way you wanted. Get off the Internet and take a chill pill, buddy.

From:

wow!!

calm down.

in no way was i being/or trying to be an "asshole."
i was only responding to what you stated earlier.
don't get all rude and snotty...

ha ha ha ha ha!!

whatever.

From:

hey there. you really intrigue me. your mixture of cultures and languages is terribly charming to me. I'm Saara, 21, a Finnish girl-I-suppose (though genderlessness seems more fitting at times) currently back to Finland briefly, but spend most of my time in Scotland, learning to live with rivers instead of the sea. I study French, and languages are my guilty pleasure and will lure me to elsewheres. I dream of speaking dead tongues, relative languages whose names we don't mention & words someone might share with me. I'm restless. I'm charmed with everything. I like your language-love, your actors, your cultures & something nameless.

might we become friends?

From:

hi there Finnish Saara! :-)

yes, let's be friends.

i looooooooooooove French, but still unable to speak it fluently. what a shame.

have you ever heard Navajo being spoken? if not, you can hear a recording of my voice in a previous entry (i think this is the link: http://jonasdl520.livejournal.com/39169.html). i didn't know how to post it properly, so i attempted 3 separate ways.

cheers!!

From:

brilliant!

I'm not fluent yet, either, but I hope in a year I shall be closer, since I'll be off to France (or Belgium or Canada) then.

oh I haven't. that is incredible; it gave me chills. you have a wonderful voice and the sound of Navajo is beautiful. it is at once utterly strange and oddly familiar (I imagine it's the double vowels -- Finnish has plenty of them, as well, and so do Saami languages, (spoken by the indigineous people of Northern Europe) which are related to Finnish). thank you, that was beautiful.

have you been brought up bilingual? what kind of a place does Navajo have in general? do people use and teach it actively? (I find it so painful when languages fade or die -- Finnish comes from a fairly small language family where many of the relative languages are spoken merely by a handful of people. knowing that makes me want to learn those languages before they flicker out, though I'm well aware that it would not really help, since it is the surrounding, living culture that is needed to keep a language alive.)

and what has drawn you to China? have you been living there for a long time? do you like it there? (I love Scotland and France is a thrilling idea, but I can't wait to see where in the world I'll end up after I graduate.)

oh, and -- what would you prefer: paper letters, emails or lj friending/messaging? I'm up for anything.

From:

yes i was brought up bilingual. at home we spoken Navajo (and English) while at school we spoke English (and Navajo), so it was all around.

when you imagine Navajo country, think red sandstone. think Monument Valley, Arizona.

i've been living in China for 3 years now. it has been an amazing experience! originally, i thought i'd remain here for a year, but obviously that wasn't enough. so, here i am - 3 years later! i miss home a lot, but it's my work that brought me here. i enjoy what i do: teaching, reading, and writing.

i LOVE written letters, but emails and anything else is cool. :-)

From:

I find bilingualism so interesting. I'm fond of the idea of languages giving one new worlds, new ways of looking at things, signs&sounds for things one didn't know how to describe, ways of expressing nameless emotions and discovering new ones.

how beautiful and utterly unfamiliar to me that sounds.

your work sounds wonderful, and oh, China, I can't even imagine. it's one of the places I most dream of going to.

I adore written letters as well, so I'll message you my current address. just in case, my email is sairen (at) gmail (dot) com

From:

oh & would it be alright if I added you on lj?

From:

hi there!

thank you for the message. :-)

YES, add me as a friend. i would appreciate that again. and i'll write you right now. :-)

From: