"We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage." - Camus

i find that most human relationships are guided by context and utility to a disheartening degree, and then we paint over that reality with romantic narratives. i've got a profile here because i prefer to seek the darker and more authentic romance of reality in those rare meaningful connections with old souls who appreciate human nature honestly, while still passionately pursuing authentic and thorough investment in others.

In short, i'm here for the rare ones. The thoughtful. The heartfelt. The unintentional outsiders. i'm here for the wise, the playful, the generous, and the self-aware. i'm open to thinkers and feelers awash amid the vast and ephemeral nature of existence (if you're not a little dysfunctional, you're not paying attention) - people who try to pull together a modest swathe of solid ground through tenderness, compassion, and authenticity, and then defend that ground with tenacity and devotion. If you are shy, bold, eccentric, awkward, goofy, sappy, corny, quirky, artsy, and/or nerdy, so much the better; i'm hoping that anyone else has stopped reading by now.

Writing a dissertation about the future of truth and meaning from a perspective integrating existential philosophy with evolutionary psychology (*spoilers*).

...being wildly, impractically intentional. When i originally read Thoreau's "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately..." i thought i had found a kindred spirit, because i read it literally. i strive for a life that is thoroughly investigated and chosen - emotionally, intellectually, introspectively, and intersubjectively. If you prefer to be swept away or seduced by people and things rather than to step back and make conscious, definitive, heartfelt leaps, then i defer to okc's "y'all got issues."

i've got low latent inhibition (LLI), meaning that the connection inhibition found in most neurologies is weakened in mine. Thus: intense sensory responses, porous intellectual and emotional immune systems, and an incredibly expansive sense of time. Everything meaningful and experiential tends to saturate me, especially people. Please be thoughtful, open, heartfelt, and authentic (better described in the award Mags gave me [moved to journal when okc ended awards]). i couldn't get by without a lot of laughter, existential humility, and unabashed silly, but there is also so very much inspiration for meaning, thought, passion, profundity, and genuine sorrow. Fair warning: i tend to invert social graces and lead with the latter, which has served as something of a filter.

(books) My inner monologue lies somewhere between Adams, Hornby, and Dostoevsky.

(movies) Reality Bites, The Muppets Take Manhattan, Kicking and Screaming (1995), The Fifth Element, Animal Crackers, Inherit the Wind, Before Sunset, Moulin Rouge, A Bug's Life, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Last Time I Committed Suicide, Everyone Says I Love You, Bicentennial Man, Brazil, Garden State, Waking Life, To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, Deconstructing Harry, 12 Monkeys, The Wedding Singer, The Feminine Touch, The Pompatus of Love, Return to Neverland, Josie and the Pussycats, The Tigger Movie, Wall-E, Synecdoche, New York, The Brothers Bloom, The Art of Getting By

(tv) Cupid, Get Smart, Invader Zim, Red Dwarf, House, Monk, Mad About You, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, any Star Trek, Firefly, Doctor Who, Big Love, Lie to Me, Community, 30 Rock, Leverage, Raising Hope, Mad Men, The Late Late Show, Charlie Rose

(music) John Mayer, A Fine Frenzy, Counting Crows, Lisa Loeb, Fiona Apple, Eels, Third Eye Blind, David Gray, Sarah McLachlan, Duncan Sheik, Ben Folds Five, Indigo Girls, Regina Spektor

(food) strawberries, hot chocolate, milkshakes

(other things i like) cloudy skies, the smell of autumn, kind gestures, grand gestures, people who wear glasses, a well-used vocabulary, a poorly-used vernacular, great lyrics, children, the implied infinity between stars, working pencil erasers, singing along

authenticity. love. play. exploration. thought. growth. ...Pandora.

The one thing I would rather never do without
That moment when you share something so uncannily good that it both humbles and beatifies the rest of everything with someone who you know will thoroughly comprehend the impossible significance in a milieu so seemingly prosaic, and they look at you as though you have just given them the entirety of existence in a moment, before you both gradually but quickly forget again.

Galileo Galilei had an unparalleled view of the stars from his telescope and tried to share it with anyone he could. His colleagues refused. In a letter to Johannes Kepler he wrote, "Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?" This is, in general, how i feel about human nature.

movie-watching, play-watching, people-watching.

i'm a demisexual heterosexual, which is one of those few sexualities that don't necessarily have mirror counterparts, as the traditional heterosexual male role is to shoot first and ask questions later. Still, most of my significant others have been some combination of bisexual and demisexual — rarely traditionally heterosexual, which often seems somnambulist and dehumanizing to me. On the other hand, 'demisexual' is something of a misnomer in that it indicates nothing of intensity.

...you have a huge heart & an intensely introspective mind and a brave/desperate willingness to invest them in deeply meaningful human relationships.

"It is by an extreme capacity for defiance that certain very rare people who have everything to hope and everything to fear from each other will recognize each other." - Andre Breton

...or if you can buy me a bookstore in Providence or Annapolis.

***i have a love/hate relationship with the internet as communication, so i very rarely send unsolicited messages. The most likely way to reach me on here is to say hello (esp. in IM conversations, which are harder for me to put off).***

And, on the off-chance she's out there:

The person i'm looking for is really (perhaps neurotically) good (careful, authentic, reliable, brave, loyal, open-minded), both in her loving, impractically high standards of caregiving, and in a deep, thoughtful, overanalyzing sort of way. She pounces on all moral dilemmas, philosophical problems, and psychological dissonance (in herself and in others) as puzzles to be worked out. She loves to explore - places, experiences, ideas - as though keeping a mental checklist. She can be a bit of a perfectionist, but not in the usual ways. She has a profound, intuitive, humbling awareness of the infinite nature of existence, which leads her to make choices with thoughtful, heartfelt commitment, not from any existential certainty, but because it's our choices that make us who and what we are. She is old in her wisdom and young in her play. She thinks (and loves) to the point of eccentricity. Do you know her?

"Hello, dq, I notice that you refuse to capitalize the word 'I'. Please explain what this choice means to you."
> Douglas Adams once pointed out that human beings tend to superstitiously capitalize things they don't understand.