But I don't really like that color.
Yellow: You are very in touch with your inner
child. Fun loving, carefree and optimistic,
you are playful and will do what you can to
help others. It is all about laughter and
being free and spontaneous. You love nature,
people and animals. You are intelligent, open-
minded and reflect positive energy. Your
weakness is procrastination and planning.
Secret emotions: Idealism and Excitement
What color is your aura?
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No, I'm serious. I look like I have liver damage in that color.
Spending today researching Jon Krakauer and his books. Last night I read until after midnight (crazy-living, for me) finishing up his "Into Thin Air," which I got at Goodwill a few weeks ago. It's about his trip up Everest as a reporter researching "yuppie climbing," in which anyone with a little experience and $65,000 can hire a guide to try to make it to the summit. Something like nine people died up there that day; one of the guides, stuck all night without oxygen in a blizzard near the top of the mountain, stayed on the radio with friends and colleagues below for hours until he stopped sending. Can you imagine? Just thinking about that, hearing his voice in the storm, talking to him, being part of the exhaustion and hypoxia and utter tragedy, I really got a sense of how alone we all are. It was like looking out into blackness.
So then today, I'm reading an article Krakauer wrote (which inspired a book I have to get) about a kid who trekked off into Alaska to live off the land, who managed 113 days before succumbing to starvation. It's a brilliant character study. Trying to understand why he would do this... remembering, myself, climbing the side of the Rio Grande Gorge, alone on an icy day, no other human in sight. Free-climbing hundreds of feet with no experience whatsoever, picking my way around the clumps of snow and patches of gravel, which kept sliding out from beneath my feet to fall into the river below... I don't know. Why did I do it? I needed to, somehow. It was retarded, of course, but I feel better to this day because I made it to the top (and back down again, since the only place to go from there is 30 miles across the mesa to Tres Piedras. Well, or the the road that winds down from the mesa to the hot springs parking ledge outside of Arroyo Hondo, maybe a ten minute walk, but. You know.)
I guess it was like some kind of Rite, so I understand it in others, but it really is too bad when some people don't understand or learn in time that preparation is the best way to bring luck with you when you're heading off into the unknown.
Really not this somber of a day! Just some musings... now I must wash dishes and do laundry, a sure antidote to peeking over the edge.