If I were going to describe one major change in who I am now, compared to who I was two years ago, I would say that today--the world around me seems full of beauty. Constantly. It's magnificent, and I'm glad of the change.

I sit zazen fairly regularly.

I am absolutely honest. I try to be so without venom.

I had a truly bizarre childhood. Excellently different in some ways, horribly different in others; all in all I have a great deal to be grateful for.

I think I might actually be something, nowadays, that qualifies as 'adult;' my demands for such a state are perhaps a bit odd, though. It's been really nice to learn how to leave some things behind without gaining wounds from it.

I took my handle here from an old Japanese legend about a fox-spirit, not from any dirty suggestion that might spring to mind.

I have a sharp sense of honor. This is not an exaggeration. I hold my friends to high standards--not of any Judeo-Christian moralistic system, necessarily, but to what I think is right. This is open to some discussion, but some things are firm.

Capacity for language is something I find unbelievably sexy, and the intelligence and pattern-recognition that come with it are terribly attractive to me.

I love knowledge, and the joyful seeking of it, and being taught, and teaching. There is little that is as attractive to me in this world as someone who can teach me something new, and who will do so with eagerness.

Kendo. It's easily the best thing I have ever done for myself, because it makes every other aspect of my life better. Downside to this is that I do have a bit of a tendency to yammer on about it.

I'm currently working at a library, and studying Japanese. Come January, I am taking up Korean; eventually I want Mandarin and Tagalog as well, at the very least. From there, I am going to become a translator-- stories are my passion, second only to language.
(if in fact they are second to anything; it is debatable that I might only have come to love language so well because knowing the words enables me to learn the stories.)

As for major goals--I'm going to do a lot more traveling. I'm probably going to live in Japan for a few years; regardless of where I end up, I'm going to build a strong and fierce and happy place for myself in this world.

Triumphing through sheer will, after even cleverness has been exhausted. Finding the energy to help someone else out. Cooking and baking, particularly cookies and pies from scratch, anything with potatoes, and chicken. Video games. Talking--particularly if I need to be persuasive. While I'm not overly skilled at any sport in particular, I'm athletic enough, and tend to walk between ten and thirty miles a week. I'm alert, and I pay attention to pretty much everything pretty much all of the time, which can unsettle people. I recognize patterns that other people might not see, and have a tendency to mention them offhand since they're so obvious to me, which can weird folks out; I do not obsess about almost anything, I'm just open-eyed.

I'm quietly exotic--the mixture of Filipino and Irish and a half-dozen other things makes me hard to shove into any particular pigeonhole. I'm in really good physical shape, and long-legged for my height (which is not tall). My arms and shoulders and back are more muscled than those of the average girl my age and size; not masculine but well-defined because of kendo. I laugh with my whole body, and loudly. If I'm still, I can be invisible. If I'm angry--which actually happens very rarely these days--I'm about six feet tall.

Books? I am built of books. I read a lot. If you're looking for the books that helped make me who I am--and bear in mind, I was reading novels at the age of four--The Hero and the Crown, The Last Unicorn, Tanith Lee's Tales of the Flat Earth and a very high number of silly Mercedes Lackey novels did a lot of the work, as did ElfQuest, Nausicaa, Appleseed, and dozens and dozens of different manga titles and Romantic poets. As a kid I had a strong love for Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars Tales, and Sherlock Holmes is damn-near my perfect man; I spent my entire adolescence totally infatuated with him. These days I tend to read whatever falls into my hand, regardless of its worth. I'm reading a lot of nonfiction right now.

Television--Oh, Avatar: The Last Airbender made me very, very happy. General Iroh is something. Intelligent things grab me. However, I do not own a television. I've enjoyed House, what I can grab online, and a good chunk of Boston Legal, but I don't honestly miss what I can't find.

I see a lot of movies, but they don't affect me as much as books--Laputa: Castle in the Sky was pretty important to me when I was growing up, and if I'm down I'll still put on Totoro or The Wizard of Speed and Time(if I can find it, I haven't a copy of my own anymore).

I tend to listen to one or two albums obsessively for a stretch, and then not touch them for a year. I like music with strong lyrical content, and songs that tell stories; I often wake up with Patrick Wolf stuck in my head. I clean house to Kylie or metal, I cook to Fruits Basket soundtracks and I chill out to the Mushi-Shi OST, I paint to anything at all. Right now I'm in love with the Chinese band Mayday.

As for food--I love fruit and vegetables. I never got too many as a kid, so now they're like candy to me, which means that when I make a fruit salad it can cost me thirty bucks. I like complicated recipes, and I rarely go more than two or three days between baking things. I make a really good apple and pumpkin pie from scratch, and my comfort food is lasagna. If I'm going out, it's probably to Bangkok Balcony in Squirrel Hill, or to one of twenty little Chinese or Thai places between the South Side and Oakland.

Aside from the obvious, cliched 'oxygen, protein, skin,' I can't think of anything I absolutely couldn't do without. Humans are resilient creatures.

I am, however, happier when I have fine company and sunlight and enough to read. And food, interesting food is good.
('Interesting' does not necessarily mean 'complicated.')

Six things that please me beyond all reason:
--Cold, cold whole milk(preferably in a black mug)
--The way that the closed-off Dewey stack in the Carnegie Library's Main Branch smells like sweet things
--Fireflies, which I'd never really seen until I was 20 years old (they sound like wind bells!)
--Anything--anything at all!--to do with kendo
--Summer rainstorms
--Making food for someone else
(this list is subject to change several times a week.)

Language. The tops of clouds. Whatever book I'm currently reading; whatever video game I'm currently playing. My friends. Secret plans.
I spend a lot of time thinking, really...

Friday doesn't necessarily have to be different from any other night. I might be reading, or playing a video game(alone or with someone else). I might be trying to write, I might be practicing kata. I might be cooking some elaborate meal, or happy with a bowl of farina. I might be asleep by eight, or I might still be up at eight the next morning. I might be giving a foot-rub, or receiving one, or eating popcorn and watching some new anime. Any night has the chance to be much like any other night, and generally I go to bed satisfied by my day...but there's always a lot going on.

Um. Howabout...I am synaesthetic--my brain is deliciously crosswired, and my senses are sharp and strange. I'm not a grapheme-colour synaesthete, though, which is probably the kind that you know about.

I am not, really, a private person. I can talk about just about any topic without discomfort or embarrassment--if there's something you want to know, ask. It would likely please me to answer.

You know something that I don't know, and are willing to teach me. You like dinner parties filled with artists, writers, and fans of various fandoms. You like languages. You like learning things that might not directly benefit you right at this instant.


And I'll be terribly honest with you, here: I'm 26. I am not interested in a romantic relationship--and unlikely to be interested in a sexual relationship--with anyone more than, say, five years older than myself. I just think it's unlikely that anyone that much older than me would enjoy my company as an adult, and I'm at a place in my life where most of my partnerships need to be with people close to my age.


I have plenty of really quite close friends whose ages range from ten years younger to thirty years older than myself, so if you're looking for conversation and maybe an interesting dessert, fire away. If you're looking for a love match, though, be aware that I'm unlikely to be interested if you're older than your early thirties. Or younger than twenty. I should mention that. I keep getting messaged by cute nineteen-year-olds, and guys, you really are attractive, but I don't know that we'd have a hell of a lot in common.