*edit* apologies, a friend has apparently been having some fun with my xanga/AIM. said friend has been duly taken care of...

but i do rather like the picture of the platypus :)

bwahahahahahahahahahahaha

AN EVENING WITH CHAMPIONS

7 Olympic gold medals.

Ilia Kulik and Ekaterina Gordeeva

it's gonna be beautiful.

to raise money for children with cancer.

only $7

http://hcs.harvard.edu/~ewc/

My darling girls:

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Thank you, thank you for the summer of luscious joy, life-giving songs, times of dream-like technicolor brilliance, times of slow molasses enjoyment like floating, for the peach schnapps/peppermint schapps that cooled and burned, for the balconynights, the food delights, the frozen lips, the heated bodies slippery and wet, natural and perfectly comfortable next to each other like we were born to dance and dance forever, and choreograph in an instant the limbs of the world.

Thank you for the rivernights, for the fires on our breath, for the things that are only tangentially sensical, if even that, but essential. Thank you for the heartbreak, thank you for the shoulders to lean on, the Kong food, the movies, the emails, and thank you, before all else, for the release into a life that I neglected, and forgot existed.

Thank you-- and how I cannot properly express this-- for love, and not love but fun.

I used to want to go to Paris and London more than anything. They were all I wanted: safe, beautiful, cultured, and European.

Last night, I realized that I crave something else. I want Nepal, Tanzania, Peru, India. I want to see cities, like Prague, Rio de Janeiro, Pamplona, Marrakesh, Kathmandu, Bangkok. I want to see mountains, and water, and a sky bigger than I have ever known. I'm not sure that I would choose wandering around the Louvre over horseback riding in Mongolia. I definitely would not choose the beaches of French Riveria over the caves of Elephanta. The thought of traveling in luxury is, for the first time in my life, a bit repugnant. What I want to do more than anything is hike and climb and claw my way to the top of a mountain, and discover...something, anything... with every pained but awakened nerve in my body.

Maybe this is my midlife crisis. Maybe I'm terrified that before I die, I will look back on my life, on my 12-hour work days and my mediocre existence and think "I have never felt pain. I have never felt glory."

Maybe it is wrong for me to try to atone for being born into middle-class life by dipping shallowly into third-world countries, with the full security of a Visa Platinum in my backpockets. Maybe it is wrong for me to try to seek peace by following the footsteps of Larry Darrell. In all likelihood, this is just as fake and silly as my former desires. 

But, (this is may be first time I have ever said this, and perhaps the last) I need something more to live for than money.