MySpace a place for friends

My "about me" section here used to be written in such a way that people thought I "had a real zest for life." At my most grounded and peaceful, I feel like I'd like to have people around who are energetic and spontaneous, but the truth is, people with that much energy and a lack of predictability tend to exhaust me. On good days at work, I sometimes behave like an enthusiastic, outgoing person--what I like to call my barista mood--but more often than not, I'd rather sip coffee or a drink and have a really engaging, calmly-paced conversation. People have found me charming at times, but I'm best at being intense and awkward. I start on a gender studies PhD program this fall. It took me a long time to see the value of studying something that probably won't lead to a lucrative career, but I've found something I enjoy. One of my favorite quotes from a favorite author: "Grandmother and I sat face to face over the sepulchral plastic of the breakfast bar. Common and rare, to sit face to face like this. Common that people do, rare that they understand each other. Each speaks a private language and assumes it to be a lingua franca. Sometimes words dock and there is a cheer at port and cargo to unload and such relief that the voyage was worth it. 'You understand me then?' "I wanted her to understand me. I wanted to find a word, even one, that would have the same meaning for both of us. A word not bound and sealed in dictionaries of our own." -Jeanette Winterson, _Gut Symmetries_ Jeanette Winterson is brilliant. She says these unbelievably incisive things and says them in the most poetic ways. She's expressing with precision and poetry my persistent fascination with the chasms that separate people and with how difficult it can be to communicate concisely. Or at all. When I'm feeling the desire to do something creative, I tend to pick up a camera. If you want to see what that's turned up in the past, you can check out my flickr page.

This quote seems really appropriate lately: "The men on the dance floor at 1015 could have been having lots of fun; maybe they even had personality, individuality, depth. All I could see were muscular men with no shirts on." Aiden Shaw, _My Undoing: Love in the Thick of Sex, Drugs, Pornography, and Prostitution_, (183). Nevertheless, I have faith that there are boys out there who aren't afraid of engaging with other people. I'm looking for people (of any sex and/or gender) who want to talk and to listen. People with a nascent sense of what they're doing with their lives, trying to sort the rest of it out. People who see things from multiple perspectives, or from an original perspective. Kind, gentle people. Affectionate people. And, of course, poly-kinky-(smart) queers.