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.

"Creative people, as I see them, are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of the 'divine madness,' to borrow the term used by the classical Greeks. They do not run away from non-being, but by encountering and wrestling with it, force it to produce being. They knock on silence for an answering music; they pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean." - Rollo May

Although a traveller, a doctoral student somehow, a struggling philosopher trying to save humanity, and a passionate atheist and liberal, my only real ambition as a kid was to find love and create a warm home. Really. i know "romantic" is an archaic sexuality to have in these liberated times, but what i find extremely attractive is passionate constancy, uncommon integrity, shared trust on the basis of oceanic empathy and uncompromising introspection, and impractical adventures exploring the world from that foundation.

On a break from teaching and travel to write a dissertation about the future of truth and meaning from a perspective merging existential philosophy with evolutionary psychology (*spoilers*).

...although i'm still in San Francisco roughly twice a year.

i am 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 step back and make conscious, definitive, heartfelt choices, then i defer to okc's "y'all got issues."

i've got something called 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 tends to saturate me, including people. Please be thoughtful, open, heartfelt, and authentic (better described in the award Mags gave me [moved to journal]). 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.

(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, Belle and Sebastian, 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

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

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.

Heart before body. Just sayin'.

i am also willing to admit that i believe enduring, passionate love is possible, but that it is both rare and difficult, and seems to require three ingredients:
1) dedicated maintenance (which means both a willingness and an expectation of introspection, communication, honesty, growth, play, commitment, and compromise; people who do not do these things already are not likely to start for a relationship.)
2) discerning attraction (it is much easier to be attracted to a simplified narrative of someone and the way that makes us feel than to be attracted to the actual fragile, fallible, multifarious heart in front of us.)
3) acceptance of love (the world as it is produces surprisingly few people who are actually able to accept mutual joy, devotion, and caregiving, without some level of self-sabotage.)

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

MIND THE GAP: Many who message me end up disappointed because i don't entertain them the way my profile had; i'm not here to intrigue you and won't try... that's consumerist dehumanization masquerading as human connection. If "interesting" and "sense of humor" are the most important virtues you look for in other human beings (or, for that matter, if you prefer guys to be emotionally inept, aloof, and to keep you guessing [be honest]), then i could probably play that guy, but who in the world would want to?

"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, kind, honest, humble, 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?

...or if you have a question to add to my FAQ:

"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.

"What do you mean by 'heart before body', specifically?"
> i think that people often base their relationships on convenience and physical attraction. Although physical attraction is ultimately essential, it can lead to some terrible choices initially. In fact, it can completely reshape what we hope for in relationships, based on our past success/failures. Since i'm generally saturated by sensory experiences, i have to really care about someone before i'd do anything at all. i don't employ the physical (and subsequent oxytocin) to aid the initial falling for someone, although the norm.

"Will you marry me?"
> Maybe. Let's get through a few conversations first, shall we?