"The Whole of the Moon" The Waterboys

Another Theme Song for Me. Brings back so many memories. Do you know this one? Sounds like me and my lust for challenges and terrifing adrenaline- induced activities!

THE TEACHER , who was a true confession, introduced me to lots of Irish/Scottish/UK bands and put them on mixed tapes for me. He was of Irish descent and proud of it. Lost his Dah when he was a boy and never truly recovered from it. We dated casually and watched Quentin Tarantino movies together. He was a gentle soul. We are still in touch via the Facebook--a good egg!

I am not sure when my lust for attempting things I couldn't or in most cases, SHOULDN'T started. There has always been a bit of a daredevil in my system, but I certainly didn't get that from home. Today's crazy happening *might* get me arrested. Or in a fight. Or both. I will be running through the trails and streets of IU campus with 28 other hashers all of us decked out in crazy red dresses. You will see everything from full blown ball gowns to scantily clad dresses on grown men. We generally meander around ( well, the Hare's lay trail before hand) and run through Little 5 parties. One year we ran around the football stadium as well.Talk about a rush. Nothing like it. I have noticed that this year is particulary active with parties and police presence. Students basically blocked Kirkwood last night and the police were called to disperse the crowds. So today will be interesting!

It has been over 10 years since I have been to a Hash and I can already feel the adrenaline rising.

I also like to check out houses that are for sale without the help of a relator. It is especially easy to gain entry after an open house, where the relator shows people around and forgets to lock the back door. Of course the front has the lockbox, so no dice, but the back-- they often forget about it. I got into this house-- boy oh boy--- if only... https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/870-S-Woodscrest-Dr-Bloomington-IN-47401/94519150_zpid/

I think part of the reason I do these things (and so much more) is that I HAVE to experience everything in life possible before I no longer can. Somewhere inside of me knows that I have a short shelf life and to quote The Flaming Lips, "all we have is now."

It's ok, I am totally fine with it. In fact, I almost got into a fatal car accident last night (my friend was driving and she felt SO bad). I was unphased. I just said, "Becca, it's not quite my time. Still too much to do."

I don't know if I will go so far as to jump out of a plane, but I am always loooking for the next experience that will light me up like a pinball machine. The Mini next week will be a mental and physical challenge that will test every part of myself. It scares me to my core-- but my will is undaunted.

What are you doing that scares you to your core?

"Vienna" Billy Joel

Slow down, you're doin' fine You can't be everything you wanna be before your time Although it's so romantic on the borderline tonight, tonight Too bad, but it's the life you lead You're so ahead of yourself, that you forgot what you need Though you can see when you're wrong You know you can't always see when you're right You're right

I was recently asked, for the first time that I can recall, what do you need?

What do I need from you? What can you give to me that I currently don't have? Something that I am lacking in my life or with myself that you can offer?

What do I need?

I found that simple sentence to be the most selfless thing a person could say to me. It was like surrender. You would be willing to give me something that I need. Not just something that I want, but something that I am without that would make things better.

It would be selfish to answer that question. I am not a taker; I am by nature a giver, so the very idea of someone else giving me the thing that I need was in itself the thing that I needed.

Would you do that for me? I am not worthy of even sharing with you the thing that I need even if I knew what it was.

I suppose when you go without the thing that you need most you put it aside. I want to know what YOU need from me.

I think that what we both need from each other is Emotional Intimacy. No?

"Quenacho" Erik The Flutemaker

It's Official.

I booked the tour today. 7 days. Ollantaytambo Ruins, Huaca Pucllana, Sacred Valley, Sacsayhuman Ruins, Kenko and Tambomachay, Machu Picchu and more. This will feel similar to my Pilgrimage to Guatemala, where I communed with the Indigenous People of Chichipate and learned of a Guatemalan genocide that took place there (Maya Genocide). I have a fascination for how populations or even civilizations disappear-- I explored Poland and Germany to experience the most heinous death camps of all time. I visited the place of Christ's birth, torture and crucifiction. And now, the Spanish conquest of MP.

I was re-baptised in the River Jordan. I rode a camel within feet of the pyramids. I rappelled into a cave of water in the Yucatan. It's the Year of the Fire Horse and I am feeling it!

I took some excerpts from one of my favorite Chiliean poets, Pablo Neruda, from his Ode to Machu Picchu here:

VI

Then up the ladder of the earth I climbed through the barbed jungle’s thickets until I reached you Macchu Picchu. Tall city of stepped stone, home at long last of whatever earth had never hidden in her sleeping clothes. In you two lineages that had run parallel met where the cradle both of man and light rocked in a wind of thorns. Mother of stone and sperm of condors. High reef of the human dawn.

This was the habitation, this is the site: here the fat grains of maize grew high to fall again like red hail. The fleece of the vicufia was carded here to clothe men’s loves in gold, their tombs and mothers, the king, the prayers, the warriors. Up here men’s feet found rest at night near eagles’ talons in the high meat-stuffed eyries. And in the dawn with thunder steps they trod the thinning mists, touching the earth and stones that they might recognize that touch come night, come death.

VII

And yet a permanence of stone and language upheld the city raised like a chalice in all those hands: live, dead and stilled, aloft with so much death, a wall, with so much life, struck with flint petals: the everlasting rose, our home, this reef on Andes, its glacial territories.

VIII

Come up with me, American love. Kiss these secret stones with me. The torrential silver of the Urubamba makes the pollen fly to its golden cup. The hollow of the bindweed’s maze, the petrified plant, the inflexible garland, soar above the silence of these mountain coffers.

IX

In this steep zone of flint and forest, green stardust, jungle-clarified, Mantur, the valley, cracks like a living lake or a new level of silence. Come to my very being, to my own dawn, into crowned solitudes. The fallen kingdom survives us all this while, And on this dial the condor’s shadow cruises as ravenous as would a pirate ship.

X

I question you, salt of the highways, show me the trowel; allow me, architecture, to fret stone stamens with a little stick, climb all the steps of air into the emptiness, scrape the intestine until I touch mankind. Macchu Picchu did you lift stone above stone on a groundwork of rags? coal upon coal and, at the bottom, tears? fire-crested gold, and in that gold, the bloat dispenser of this blood?

"Le Temps de l' Amour" Françoise Hardy

I just happened upon this song and WOW. The words! The sound!

This song totally describes me and my adventurous spirit. You gotta take this one in!

I have the travel bug again and happened upon some money to pay for it. I've been researching lots of places but landed on Peru. So, in September, if all goes well, I will be checking another place off my bucket list. Lima, Cusco, Yucay/Sacred Valley and-- best of all-- MACHU PICCHU!

It has been a dream to hike it for over a decade when I read a National Geographic piece featuring MP I was determined to go. The Incas, The Mayans and the Aztec Empires are of great interest to me and I have been lucky enough to visit Uxmal (Yucatán), Cobá (Quintana Roo)and Chichén Itzá (Yucatán). I've also visited Tikal and Lamanai in Guatemala! The last on my list from Mexico is Tulum (Quintana Roo). That will happen some day..before my knees give out. In the meantime-- I'm Machu Picchu bound!