Dallas first, then liftoff in 3 days

I need this.
Although a little nervous, I'm so ready. It's time I truly open my pores and allow my spirit to drain into the world, becoming one with the flowing life force I feel and see in everything around me. I'm so hungry- for experience, for knowledge, for exploration, for discovery, for peace, for balance, for evolution, for conquering fear, for probing (myself, esp.), for solitude.

Speaking of solitude...
Rilke can change lives.

From Letters to a Young Poet:

....Would a solitude be that was not vast; there is only one solitude, and it is vast, heavy, difficult to bear, and almost everyone has hours when he would gladly exchange it for any kind of sociability, however trivial or cheap, for the tiniest outward agreement with the first person who comes along, the most unworthy. . . . But perhaps these are the very hours during which solitude grows; for its growing is painful as the growing of boys and sad as the beginning of spring. But that must not confuse you. What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours - that is what you must be able to attain. To be solitary as you were when you were a child, when the grown-ups walked around involved with matters that seemed large and important because they looked so busy and because you didn't understand a thing about what they were doing.

And when you realize that their activities are shabby, that their vocations are petrified and no longer connected with life, why not then continue to look upon it all as a child would, as if you were looking at something unfamiliar, out of the depths of your own solitude, which is itself work and status and vocation? Why should you want to give up a child's wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn, since not-understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas defensiveness and scorn are participation in precisely what, by these means, you want to separate yourself from.

Think, dear Sir, of the world that you carry inside you, and call this thinking whatever you want to: a remembering of your own childhood or a yearning toward a future of your own - only be attentive to what is arising within you, and place that above everything you perceive around you. What is happening on your innermost self is worthy of your entire love.

I knelt in the tall grass outside of my new-old home yesterday, watching the drops of warm water hit and shift the blades of grass and weeds;summer is here. I can feel it in the hot, moist air. I'm sad to leave so close to the peak of greenbelt season, but I know it will still be here waiting for me...cool, serene, relaxed arms open wide and welcoming.