Shadows of Angkor

Happy Halloween folks!

This is were I live now, 1,100 meters up Mount Pilat in the Rhone-Alpes region of France.

I am in cold Denmark now thinking of my family sweating in the jungles of Angkor.

Despite any ambivalence towards my pending move to Europe, nothing I feel right now compares to the astonishing level of arterial agony and grief I felt but a few brief months ago.

I do not casually leave my magical home Cambodia where I learned to be loved.

As despotic and dusty as my home can be, it is also a place full of unaffected humanity engaged in a heartbreaking struggle against itself.

It is precisely the exquisite struggle of life in Cambodia which compells me to abandon what has become so familiar in exchange for a life in Europe with only the certainty of love.

Wow!  I almost do not want to believe it.  In less than two weeks, I will depart my jungle home of the last six years to persue a life with my love somewhere between the North Sea and the French Alps.

...Picture this, Olympia, Washington, 2010:

A rainy sea-side village of lively sin and blasphemy, a veritable Sodom & Gomorrah, full of pretty exertions on the bureaucratic stage; a thrusting, violent, vibrant, lurid, smoke-filled bedazzlement; a sensual ravishment full of petty intrigues, danger, and perhaps more than a little gay romance?

Lonely hound dogs singing to the stars about the whims of a self-loathing mad man with erotic and political desires for more; attacked by a hoard of illiterate stage-mothers.

This show ain't over 'til the thin man in drag screams. But let's shake out that bad double girl fantasy, because we're not doing Peking Opera here!

Step right up and snitch the life out from under your former mentor and friend... and win a cotton candy goat!

The finest mail-order surveillance equipment the OPD has to offer.

Prepare your brain for razzle dazzle!

If there was a sponge which cleaned up broken dreams, Woolworth's would still be in business. But, he had attached himself to youths with hope, and now they failed him more than age and despair.

The dark side of ambition without the promise of redemption.

You may be shocked, or agreeably surprised.

Can your heart stand the shocking story of the miserable souls who survived? Only a person of undaunted optimism would embark on such a venture. Unfortunately, we have.
What follows, is history...

The world can be an amazing place which should never be taken for granted.   Destiny will one day lead you to discover the most precious thing this world has to offer - a real love – and by how I feel, I think that it already has done this for me. 

 So come what may, I must never give up the love that I feel; once one has that love, once one has that love in your life, one must never give up, never let it go without a fight, and never let that most precious of things be taken away.

Things happen for a reason, so it is best not to dwell within the past. I came to Cambodia for a reason and I need to let my experiences strengthen me, not hold me back.

Guess who just asked me to marry him once I get to Denmark? The love of my life of course! I am so giddy right now my head is spinning. I want to go design the rings now and have them ready before I leave Cambodia on July 25th. I am thinking square cut amethyst set in white gold or platinum.

A caricature of my brother-in-law Horn. He is just as sweet as his brother, Narorn.

For the first time in what indeed has been months, I have laughed and felt at peace, thanks to my lovely brothers-in-law who are in Siem Reap for the Khmer New Year celebration.