Hmmmm. The most beautiful night I've have on earth was a night that I was staying with a Berber family in the Sahara desert. They had one of those lovely houses that is all earth walls and floor, very sweet and bare, and there was a little courtyard with a packed dirt ground and a reed trellis with one strand of ivy. And I was out in the courtyard washing my laundry in a bucket while they were drumming. That's all. That was the living end.

I read, and dream of travel. I try to garden more. Then I travel and things in the garden perish. It's sad. How to balance things? Some day it will be different--I will have a good watering system. Then travel will be better. I spend my time dreaming of Samarkand. Can you couch-surf in Samarkand?