I feel weird about filling out this section. How do you summarize a person? Why would you want to?

I could toss out some of my labels (feminist, sex-positive, pagan, animist, geek etc). I could talk about my history (born in New Jersey, moved to London, then Tokyo, then Hong Kong, then back to New Jersey, then New England, then Seattle, but my family is from Cascadia and that has always been where my heart is rooted). I could list qualities (sense of humor, shy, ambitious, intelligent, sensual). I could toss out quotes or songs that represent me. However, none of these do justice to the person I am. I think the best I can do is hold out my hands with my passions, what moves me, what lights a fire in my head, and hope that you'll be interested enough to reach back and grasp them:

I’m interested in beauty, sustainability, sex-positive culture, paganism, kink, animism, indigenous culture, rewilding, riddling, cartography, Sufism, politics, the outdoors, body modification, pagan culture, geek culture, sci-fi, fantasy, movies, books, tv shows, astrophysics, math (although I suck at it), any cool science, interstellar travel, zombie apocalypse planning, mythology, storytelling, music (listening to), and wildness.

I enjoy reading, camping, hiking, watching movies, watching tv shows, aikido, metalworking, philosophical discussions, dancing (I just discovered blues dancing!), finding amazing music, exploring new places (local, national, and international), going to museums, going to libraries, book hunting, gaming (card, board, rpgs, console, pc), drinking tea, learning, and listening.

I love food and consider myself a superb eater. One of my favorite activities is hunting for new food sensations. Whenever I find a new place I feel like I'm in a kids novel about buried treasure. I like most foods (although seafood doesn't tend to agree with me) and I'll try anything twice.

Things I want to take up: creating beautiful masks, hunting, baking cakes, reading aloud to people, improving my wilderness survival skills.

I am intelligent, wild, and quirky

Working on a MA in Whole Systems Design. Working on a piercing apprenticeship. Trying to pay the bills. Spending time with chosen family. Contemplating the destruction of this civilization. Bit-o-dating.

Listening
Looking for beauty
Making people laugh (once I've manged to overcome my shyness with them)

That I'm male-presenting, white, and red-haired.

Books: I am a bibliophile and often find myself reading at least 5 books at the same time. They tend to be either non-fiction books about my current intellectual interests, sci-fi/fantasy mind candy, or poetry and lyrical works that help me grow.
Books and authors that have been formative in my growth: Ishmael, Story of B (really anything by Daniel Quinn), War and Peace, Dune, Rumi's poetry, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Stranger in a Strange Land, Dark Moon Rising, The Wayfinders, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, the works of JRR Tolkien, Joseph Cambell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Hyperspace (A Scientific Odyssey through Parallel Universes, Harry Potter, Ender's Game A Wizard of Earthsea, Octavia Butler, anything by Catherynne Valente.
If you want to know more about my book loves check me out here: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/658414-summer

Movies: Fight Club, The Cell, Serenity, Sympathy for Lady Vengance, Hero, The Last Unicorn, Princess Bride, Mononoke Hime, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Laputa Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Tampopo, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, The Wicker Man, Flight of Dragons, Equilibrium, The Fall, Secretary, Modify, Monty Python, Ringu, Battle Royale, Kill Bill, Hero, Mr and Mrs Smith, Office Space The Iron Giant, Ink, Scott Pillgram VS the World.
Also I love, LOVE bad horror movies.

TV Shows: Revolutionary Girl Utena, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Avatar: the Last Airbender, Angel, Dollhouse, West Wing, Jim Henson's The Storyteller, The Daily Show, Sons of Anarchy, Rurouni Kenshin, Dr Who, Torchwood.

Comics and webcomics: Sandman, Hellblazer, V for Vendetta, Watchmen, xkcd, Something Positive.

Music: anything, although I return again and again to folk, some rock, darkwave, and neo-medieval.
In particular:
Dead Can Dance, Niyaz, Irfan The Cruxshadows, Perfect Circle, Subway to Sally, Disturbed, Joan Baez, Solas, Clannad, Valravn, Zoe Keating, Warren Zevon, Stan Rogers, Dire Straits, Hedningarna, Kate Bush, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Zoe Keating, Voltaire, SJ Tucker, PJ Harvey, Gaia Consort, Loreena McKennitt, Rasputina, Portishead, Once More With Feeling, Einsturzende Neubauten, NIN, Tool, Rammstein, Peter Gabrial, Johnny Cash, Tori Amos.

Podcasts: Savage Love, This American Life, Planet Money, A Darker Shade of Pagan, Radiolab, TED talks.

Food: I love food. Sometimes I'll try something so good that it makes me cry. I like pretty much anything except seafood but Thai, Indian, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, anything spicy, anything with mint are safe bets for me.

Laughter, the animate world, stories, family (biological and chosen), music, myself.

Rewilding culture, stories, my next body mod, my next hook suspension, how not to take myself too seriously, my geeky obsession of the month, and mythology.

***2013 Edit: now that I'm in grad school I'm lucky if my Friday night doesn't consist entirely of homework, let alone doing anything fun. Regular expeditions to Shenaniganistan will resume in 2014***

Blazing a trail to Shenaniganistan. Where is this place, you may ask? It's a place that touches the rest of the world at every point yet somehow manages to be entirely separate.

What happens there? Adventures, magic, watching epic battles with possessed vengeful Thanksgiving turkeys, carving pumpkins with plasma torches, full tea service with clockwork velociraptors, and so, so much more.

My life is strange. I've wrestled with this for a long time because it means that I end up either needing to keep secrets or have people turn away from me. After years of shyness and living in a variety of closets I decided a while ago that I love my strange life and I want to share it with people who seem interested, quirkyness and all.

You are comfortable engaging with someone who is loudly and proudly kinky, poly, pagan, and geeky.

You want to hang out and: explore the other-than-human world, have tea, play a board game, rent a movie (I love walking around Scarecrow and talking movies), watch a sports event (roller derby or soccer please), go dancing, do something musical together, something else.

You find parts (or all) of my profile intriguing.

Note: if you're interested in dating you should probably go to FL and look me up (search for AsrikTashlin).