This is It.

This is my last post prior to moving to Japan. This is the last night I will spend chillen on the downstairs couch thinking about crap, packing, and contemplating my impending fate.

It's nuts. I'm standing on the precipice of a freefall and though I have every thing I need to land on my feet, it's hard to believe that I am really about to jump.

When I was up in that plane, it didn't even occur to me what I was about to do until I was standing at the edge. While I was falling, I had no idea what was going on, but as soon as I figured out how to breathe, I took a look around and the beauty of it all far outweighed any fear I might have had. I envision this trip to be much the same.

I will admit, however, that this soon after my jump, it will be weird going up in a plane and then not jumping out of it once we hit 14,000 feet.

Wish me luck. I won't need it, but it's nice to know the world has my back.

Oh, and go Sox. 3-0, after 5 innings of overtime.

I will leave this with a question posed in Vladimir Solovyov's The Meaning of Love:
"It is well known to everyone that in love there inevitably exists a special idealization of the beloved object, which presents itself to the lover in a completely different light from that in which outsiders see it. I speak here of light not merely in a metaphorical sense; it is a matter not only of a special moral and intellectual evaluation, but also of a special sensuous perception: the lover really sees, visually perceives, what others do not. And if for him too this light of love quickly disappears, yet does it follow from this that it was false, that it was only a subjective illusion?"