***i need good people. People who are saturated with the vast, ephemeral, and illusory nature of existence (if you're not a little dysfunctional, you're not paying attention). People who are looking to pull together a modest swathe of solid ground through tenderness, compassion, and authenticity and then defend that ground with tenacity and devotion. i'm new to New York, but i'd prefer to avoid workaholics and the clubbing/bar scene... Anyone left?***

Let's see... Summary, summary... i am a relentlessly eccentric liberal-elite hostel-hopping hippie beatnik atheist humanist existentialist with LLI trying quite desperately in my old age to find that traditional romantic dream of true, devoted love in the direction of a suburban nuclear family - but, of course, you can't hurry love (or some other optimistic determinism). :P

"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind."
- Bertrand Russell

...and also, grad school.

But you don't have to take my word for it... (this was written about me by someone i love very much)...

"that lost and scared and alone feeling. the bottom-falls-out feeling. the cry out and no one can hear for millions of miles feeling. i know that feeling. everyone knows that feeling on some level even if all they know is that they are running from something dark and intolerable. maybe people like us know it better because we weren't held close enough as children or maybe we know it better because our ears are just closer to the heart of the universe. i don't know. it is deep and ancient. it is in the empty spaces inside our bones. it is not in our heads. but i do know one thing about you: you feel everything very, very deeply.

when i feel that lost feeling, it is completely overwhelming to me and all i want in the world is for someone to come and make it better. to hold every inch of me close. for you, i can scarcely imagine how that lost feeling must feel. i ache for you to think of it.

you look at the world and you see everyone as a child who wants nothing more than to be held close. how can you help but love them? how can you help but want nothing more or less than that for them? how can you see anything mattering more than that? you want that world. the world in which everyone is held close by someone, everyone told goodnight. in which everyone is touched gently and kindly and every smile returned. in which everyone does all they can to pad the sharp edges of the whole world for everyone else. if you think about how badly you want this for everyone, about how many people there are suffering in so many ways, how you are helpless to give them that world, it overwhelms you. and you cannot stand it that they are doing it to themselves. hurting themselves. it makes no sense." - juxtaprose

(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

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

(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, Belle and Sebastian, Regina Spektor

(food) strawberries, hot chocolate, milkshakes

other things i like... cloudy skies, the smell of autumn, kind 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

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

(WARNING) The six things i CAN do without
image. ambition ($). functional optimism. fights. fickleness. dishonesty.

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.

If you've ever seen House, Monk, Numb3rs, Lie to Me, The Big Bang Theory, etc... you know that "genius" isn't always a compliment. People with 150+ IQs are notoriously hard to live with... and i may be the worst kind, because i tend to focus on everyday things like love, morality, and psychology.

If you are constantly humbled by the vast, ever-changing, overwhelming nature of existence and often let down by the fickle, dishonest, and egocentric nature of all these crazy monkeys, don't hesitate.

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

The person i'm looking for is ***good***, 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. She is old in her wisdom and young in her play. She thinks (and loves) to the point of eccentricity. Do you know her?

...or if you can buy me a bookstore in Boston.

***i have a love/hate relationship with the internet as communication, so i very rarely send unsolicited messages. If i've viewed your profile and not written you, it's not a rejection - feel free to message me.***