So our heroine Chloe is well situated in Australia. Cairns actually. Hint: Look to the North/East quadrant.

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/mapshells/australasia/australia/australia.htm

Apparently the wild one has gone and died (oops that's dyed) her hair a mahogany color. Trying to get in touch with her Kali I surmise.

After a series of foiled attempts, I managed to get ahold of her on the phone. I thought I was super slick. I had found a Call Australia for 2.5 cents/minute deal. Turns out it only works on a landlines, not cell phones. Fiddle-sticks. My $10 deposit was gone in like 10 minutes. The rates for cell phone calls are in the 18-20 cents/minute range. Plus no computer for her, so no Skyping.

Worse there is that crappy voice delay, where you keep answering the other one's earlier question as they are waiting for you to answer the question they just asked. And Vice Versa. Then silence because no one knows when to talk. She made me laugh by adopting a trucker-dialogue tone: How are you parents, Over?

I love her to pieces. I would not advise following the CJ-Chloe model of relationship. It would be something like the following:

Live down the street from one another for the first 5 months of relationship. She would put the children (she was a nanny) to bed and then come over. We would eat or she would try to seduce me away from work (not hard incidentally), watch a film. It was a good test-run of the real thing.

Then lose your job (through no fault of your own), lose your ability to live in her country, and be shipped back to the USA. Spend a month in a monastery trying to get your head straight, fly back out there for a week visit, have a huge argument and for a short time put the relationship on hold. Have her bounce back, reunite (over the phone and email), have her come visit your family in July for a week, then she ships off to the Outback for a year.

You look for engagment rings in the meantime. I happen to like the following:
http://www.antiquejewelrymall.com/aqfilrinin141.html (Readers...all 3 of you: Any thoughts?)

Then plan to go see her in Thailand in April. Attempt to engineer a move to graduate in Toronto from Ohio, get a Student VISA, or otherwise begin the process of a Fiance Visa (called a K-1) wherein we would have 90 days to get married from the date of her entry into our great land.

Meanwhile, you don't have a job, are spending your days writing like mad, test-taking GRE prep, and sending out notes for applications to schools, reference letters, and scholarship opportunities.

Meanwhile you finally get interested in the whole I actually have someway to afford all of this--so you begin money visualizations, affirmations, and that whole scene. Why not, what the hell have I got to lose? You cork board is now peppered with such request for aid from the Great Beyond.

And then meanwhile she may get a job at a restaurant where she has to wear a short-fitting Catholic school girl outfit. I don't know which thought is worse: thinking of all those dudes drooling over her or how jealous I am that I won't be there for it. As a bona fide Catholic school boy I know the deep, archetypal resonance such clothing calls forth.

She's not the typical future clergyman's wife.

So the summary version: Stay together for 2 years, but only in the same city (hell country or even continent) for 6 months of it.

But wildness aside, or alongside, she is the sweetest being. She brings such light into the lives she touches. She knows how to say just the right thing--to annoy, calm, strengthen, heal, and intensify. She knows how to burst my egoic bubbles with the slightest bodily or tonal gesture.

The only thing I can say for the Chris-Chloe Model of Relationship: You get to fall in love over and over and over again. It's crazy. Each time its deeper. The Distance forces the couple to learn very early how to communicate. Or the enterprise is headed for doom.

At this point it isn't even a "she makes me feel so good" kinda Love--although that's true enough. It's a slow-burning, deeply passionate. It just radiates. When I hone in on it, I can actually feel my face start to emit heat. All of these distractions and difficulties of distance, time differences, schedules, global communication rackets, governmental statues, and the like, are a pain no doubt. But when we do manage to simply hear each other's voice, even for 5 minutes, it is the feeling of home. It's like there is so much to say, we don't really say anything at all. On one level there is so much to discuss, but on another there isn't a thing to say. We just look at each other, or hear the other's voice, and already know.

She is an amazing creature. The Good Lord, has nothing, if not a damn fine sense of humor.

I didn't know it was possible to connect with another human in this way. I hoped; I imagined what it might be like; I theorized. Funny too, all the imaginary scenes, the authentic ones anyway, actually are met--and more--just never in the way I expected them to.

I've got a good deal on my plate right now: the travel plans, the ring, applying to grad school, getting a job, finishing this book, the Yoga of Finance.

Since this partial awakening at the Dzogchen Retreat, I found the momentum with which I deal with these things is changing. Becoming a joyous and peaceful (not always fun) engagement. Simple. On its own terms. Just becoming clearer in what I want, what is a legitimate request, how to ask for help.

The great gift I've experienced over this year is to taste life--however partially--without the searching. Without searching for anything beyond. Without the immediate categorizations, models, charts, and going on mental auto-pilot: have assessed the situation, how can it be improved, what is missing. Then never following through.

Now I feel a greater simplicity. Coming to terms with deep unconscious issues around healthy power, healthy boundaries, confidence, self-esteem, and trusting there is an infinite intelligence to this whole creative experiment, and that in some small way, I am it. I am an expression of that intelligence and it has a purpose and knows how to achieve its purpose.