Profile

Language is my mother, my father, my husband, my brother, my sister, my whore, my mistress, my checkout girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square, or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God. Language is the dew on a fresh apple. It's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning light as you pluck from an old bookshelf a half-forgotten book of erotic memoirs. Language is the creak on a stair. It's a spluttering match held to a frosted pane. It's a half-remembered childhood birthday party. It's the warm, wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy. The hulk of a charred panzer. The underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl. It's cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot.

That, surely, is a thought to take out for a cream tea on a raining Sunday afternoon.

-Stephen Fry
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Here are some other things you might like to know about me!

I am 24 and have high hopes of someday making it to 25. I am 5'11 and this has sometimes left me feeling like I can crush cities beneath my mighty feet, and sometimes feeling as though I am a very very small person in a very big person's body. After a false start during which I attempted to be a Classics major, I got a BA in English on the basis of English being easier to study than Ancient Greek. I somehow managed to get myself accepted to graduate school (Politics/International Relations) despite mediocre grades and test scores that place me in the top 2% for verbal and written work, and well below the 50% mark for quantitative.

While I have never held a job for more than seven months, I have worked and interned in some interesting places at home and abroad. I love museums and travel and sights and hiking. I love food more than I love anything else on the planet, and it was really my stomach that gave me my burning desire to see the world. You could take away everything but my eyes and my stomach without changing anything integral to my person. I want to see interesting things, and then I want to put them in my mouth and eat them.

To date, the coolest thing I've ever done was moving from my home in Washington DC, to Prague, Czech Republic. It was amazing. I taught English and made great friends and ate amazing food and partied too much. I was there for seven months, and when visa issues sent me home in June 2009, I was devastated. It still feels like I'm missing some Prague-shaped internal organ. I want Prague like I want afternoon naps - I can get by without it, but the world seems grayer, so why bother?

I have an odd fascination with cephalopods and parasites. The octopus is my favorite animal. My totem animal is the falcon, because they are traditionally the only animals that can look directly into the sun, so they can know even hidden or uncomfortable truths. I admire truth over tact, science over feeling, and wit over kindness. I am an atheist, ask me how! My favorite activity is arguing (or possibly reading). My favorite color is green. I like bridges and books and audiobooks, and if napping was an Olympic sport, I could nap for America.

My fears include flying in airplanes, sharks, and that failure-to-launch syndrome whereby people never really get away from needing their parents to take care of them. I fear that I might actually be addicted to the internet. I am moody and sometimes paralyzed by my inadequacies, which are mostly caused by my being paralyzed by my inadequacies.


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Working on filling these in the rest of the way...