I should not be writing this here. To look at it, in words, in words that have come from my own hands, seems shameful. To read it again with a bowed head and regret. To be dragged down again into a mire. That is what I am doing here. But still I am, still I hear the crank of the keys, still the thoughts become tangled impatiently in my head to be written.

I saw Ryan again today. I look back and ask myself if I wish I hadn't, if I had just continued my day lying under a palm tree in my backyard, feeling the sun beat down on me, read a few pages of Wodehouse before putting the book over my head and, smelling the musty glue and feeling my hot breath wash back over my face, go to sleep and listen to the birds sing.

But the sad, sad thing is that I still am glad for it, glad for the few moments even if it brings me pain and sorrow to dampen my eyes. We went ice skating today, him and me and Carrie and Cynthia and Casey and Kirsten and Ernie, and when I heard that he was coming on the phone today I felt that irrational rush of excitement, of fussing over my clothes and my makeup and my hair, and rushing out the door with that nervous flutter of the heart.

I got there and he wasn't there, but Kirsten and Casey were, gangly and models, both. Sometimes I feel insignificant before them. We got skates and then Carrie came, and she was happy that she got play from her boyfriend last night and I felt a pang of envy again, and of lonliness.

Carrie and I can ice skate well, but Kirsten and Casey couldn't and we led them around the ice, me hovering around and feeling out of place. My skates were too tight and when I asked to exchange them I told the man that they were supernaturally small. He looked at me and asked if I was from here. I was tempted to tell him that I was from Wyoming.

We soon tired of skating because the cheap skates hurt our feet, and we went to the concession stand to get hot chocolate and the phone rang. Carrie picked it up. It was Ryan and he was here. She looked happy and called him 'loverboy' and I was scared she liked him too, because he would fall for her in seconds and I would have to smile and pretend that I was happy for them.

He skated terribly well, all six feet of him, all blue eyes and sandy hair. He would put his arms around us, flirt and try to catch us if we fell, but it was to Casey he paid the most attention, and I watched him lead her and hold her hands and try to teach her how to skate and I flew away over the ice and tried not to look, though it seemed mesmerizing to me.

Kirsten's Ernie showed up late, and she screamed and fell into his arms and they both were smiling. I tried to smile too, simply because she was so happy. They were both horrible ice skaters, and soon abandoned us to talk alone somewhere. Ryan would flit his arm over me and grab my wrist, but it was awkward for us both and he knew it.

Cynthia came later, and I was glad to see her. I felt like the odd one out, Casey and Ryan skating together and Carrie floating around with everyone. We skated around, but she tottered and couldn't go very fast. Finally we all left to get lunch, and Ryan sat next to me and looked at me. We have a game where we stare at each other and see which one looks away first, and it's always me. I don't know why he does it. It looks like he's searching for something.

My contact lens kept coming out because it was dry from the cold, and I had to go back to the bathroom to put it back in, and my eyes became veined with red. A girl in the bathroom told me she liked my pants. I told her my contact lens came out so she wouldn't think I was crying.

I watched people play hockey with Cynthia in the rink opposite us, and one of them slammed hard into the glass, a girl. She left the ice limping and rejoined her teammates. I asked Cynthia if she thought Carrie and Ryan had a thing for each other. She said no, Carrie already had a boyfriend, after all. I didn't believe her. When they were cleaning the ice I sat on the side by Carrie and decided to ask her myself. She said they were only friends.

When Casey had to leave Ryan walked out with her. He was gone a long time, and I saw them in silhoettes against the candy machine. I would skate by them and stare at their dark figures. Once I almost ran into a group of small children because I was staring at them, jealousy fizzing inside.

I borrowed money from Carrie and got a piece of very old pizza. I drank her Coke, too. We would go back and skate intermittently, and finally by four we were cold and our feet were sore. Ryan offered to drive Carrie and me home. Kirsten and Ernie had long since disappeared, but Cynthia was still wearing Ryan's jacket and we had to walk onto the ice to ask her to give it back.

As I was getting my shoes on Carrie stood up to give Ryan a kiss on the cheek, meant only to be friendly. He immediately stiffened. I watched this with a certain amount of relief, and lowered my head to find my other sandal.

When I went outside it was so warm that my skin tingled, and Kirsten and Ernie were standing by his car. We told them good bye and wandered over to Ryan's truck, an F-150. I climbed into the back and Carrie in the front. He blasted loud rock music, and I stared out the window. I wondered if he looked at me and thought I seemed sad.

I gave him directions to my house and he pulled up in front of my driveway. For an instant I wished he would get out, say something to me, or just touch my hand in goodbye. I told him thanks for the ride and teetered out towards my house. I wondered if he watched me climb the steps.

I opened the door and smiled at my mom. She was doing work. I looked in the mirror and realized that it wasn't so much that I wanted him, it was that I wanted him to want me. I was selfish but only because I didn't want to be lonely. I went upstairs to my room and spread myself out on the bed and asked myself if it was worth it even though I had already decided that it was.

I believe that we are at the cusp of the world.

We are teetering at the edge of something great or terrible. Look at the evidence we have : in terms of a geological timescale we are in the midst of another great extinction and our climate is undergoing a massive change because of global warming.

From a human perspictive, we are entering a period of unprecedented technology and revolution of knowledge. We are granting women rights equal to men for the first time in thousands of years, reshaping the roles of family, the roles of the sexes, and the roles of our lives to achieving not rudimentary comforts of shelter or food but of happiness and spiritual fullfillment.

But at the same time we also find ourselves overcome with selfish desires despite our plentiful surroundings. In a time when we live in luxury for the first instance in history, when we can assign ourselves a higher purpose, we choose not to. We choose not to aid the poor or the dying, we choose not to spread the knowledge we have gained simply by being born into a position where it is accessable.

It arouses the suspicion that perhaps this is just human nature, and when the time has come to step forward and seek a higher level of being we instead step backwards because we are afraid. We step backwards into war, into disease, and into allowing religion to emphasize diplomatic decisions.

And so we dangle, on a precipice, into the breaking of the world. The only question now, unanswerable as it may be, is what the new horizon will reveal.