i’m passionate about many things; like bicycles and real conversations and cnidarians and e.e. cummings and tea and other people who are passionate about things that I don't know about yet.

I love staring icicles and find divinity in the way silver maple trees stretch their arms. Real beauty grounds me.

I’m fascinated by words and their relationship to reality.

I appreciate well-tailored clothing and well-spoken/well-read people.

I spend a lot of time playing in the woods, but not enough.

I cut my own hair and I’d like to make my own shoes.

I play the trumpet and hand drums; sometimes I pretend to play the harmonica.

Occasionally I see the harmony and unity of all things. I like finding random connections that remind me of that. Connections between people are especially divine. I suppose i'm a bit of a romantic. i want love that makes me feel like i am in a poem.

I spend a lot of time studying how to live naturally. To me, this encompasses everything from learning local wild edible and medicinal plants and starting fire with sticks to consensus work and group training to building my own house and pulling my own firewood. In particular, it involves listening to birds and walking barefoot in the woods. some people call this area of study primitive skills, which i think is a bit daft, because it implies that they are somehow not also modern skills, which i disagree with.

I want to realize that I am meeting God every second of every day, because I am.

(please don't mistake that for some sort of strict theism... )

i'm growing and learning. I'm playing and climbing trees. I'm working on respecting myself enough to maintain the motivation to live my own vision while always seeing the humour in this marvelous dance. I'm seeking reality. I'm realizing that the differences are really much less important than the similarities.

skipping stones, whistling, teaching, fixing bicycles, canoeing, low-budget low-impact construction, massages, making tea, drinking tea, and starting fire with sticks.

the scent of cedar trees and enlightened dragonflies. (?)

i love both books and music. since i live in the middle of nowhere, books meet my need for new and innovative thought much of the time. if anyone would like to discuss either, than typing this list of some of my favourites will be entirely worth it.

Books:
The book on the Taboo against Knowing who you are, Alan Watts
Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak
Zen mind, Beginner's mind, D. T.
Stories of God, Rilke
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Idiot, Dostoevsky
The Rubyiat of Omar Kayaam
Midsummer Night's Dream, Ol' Billy S
DMT: The Spirit Molecule, R. Strassman
Kim, Rudyard K
The Tracker, Tom Brown Jr.
The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
e.e. cummings' collected works
Siddartha, H. Hesse
The Once and Future King, White
Slaughterhouse 5, Vonnegut
The Clan of the Cave Bear, Auel
Power of Myth, Campbell
Cat's Cradle, K. Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut
Sexism and God-Talk, Ruether
Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand (but not in the crazy libertarian way, she is just an amazing author)
The Prophet, K. Gibran
Gnomes, Poortvliet/Hyugen
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Bach
Illusions, Bach
The Forager's Harvest, S. Thayer
The Art of Sexual Ecstasy, Anand
The Bee Book, Kit Williams
The Lorax, by the Good Doctor
This is It, Alan Watts
and anything by Sheldon Brown... i also adore italo calvino.
And Rumi.

movies:
princess bride
princess mononoke
Labyrinth
Pan's Labyrinth
Donnie Darko
The Dark Crystal
Waking Life
Waking Ned Devine

anything by guy ritchie or tarintino.
i don't watch much tv, but i get a kick out of Dr. Who

Music:
The Books
Krishna Das
the Libertines
The Mountain Goats
Defiance, Ohio
Zepplin
Gogol Bordello
tortoise
Miles Davis
daft punk
Beatles
Ani DiFranco
Strokes
Cream
kings of leon
gorillaz
Streetlight Manifesto
baby shambles
the Doors
Red Hot Chili Peppers
donovan
tool
George Clinton and Parliment
Explosions in the Sky
Against Me!
Philip Glass
Grateful Dead
Neutral Milk Hotel
Leftover Crack
Chumbawumba
Nirvana
st. germain
Ravi Shankar
the shins
Norah Jones
Bach
MC Chris
presidents of the usa
Joshua Bell
Doc Watson
Explosions in the Sky
Ben Folds Five
Regina Spektor
Mos Def
Flogging Molly
Sublime
Brian Eno
Shpongle
postal service
Amoroso
Dylan
Simon and Garfunkle
Iron and Wine
death cab for cutie
Decemberists
Sufjan Stevens

food: local, organic vegetables; preferably ones that we grow. and sushi.

community
innovative thought
expressions of beauty (be they poems or a flowers or kisses)
contrast (night and day, the seasons, laughter and tears)
touch
surprise
appreciation

communication, sense of self, community, forest spirits, my relationship to my ecosystem, education, the nature of reality relative to our perception thereof, canoes, peace, anger, patterns, coincidence, my house and its construction, gender issues, orgasms, bikes, what other people are thinking,consumption, motivation, sleep schedules, perspective, whether or not I can build functioning wind turbines this summer, books, people I like, what i am thinking, poetry, and the philosophy of bare feet.

(have you heard of the Wild Rumpus?

it looks a little like this

http://mistybeagle.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/09-07-wild-rumpus.jpg

but the smells are lost in the image. and it's too dynamic and freeform to be expressed by anything other than it's self anyway....)

i believe in magic.
i'm not kidding.

If you love moss and watching fiddleheads grow, ice crystals and the cycles of the moon, if you see real Beauty anywhere.