I'm an introvert and a loner, an idealist and a cynic; I wonder if the world is crazy or it's just me.  I like books, music, movies.  I like to question things, examine and test new ideas.  I consider myself a radical Christian -- that means my political and cultural views are far left in most ways, and also means that my understandin​g of Christianity​ might be considered 'postmodern'​.  Whatever that is.  But I'm no longer a churchgoer and in many ways I'm uncertain of my beliefs.  I loathe mainstream politics and tv culture.  I live in the middle of a big city.  I'm married but separated with no children.

Recently I noticed that many people who describe themselves as depressed on this website create very interesting profiles.  So to officially make myself part of that group -- yeah, I suffer from fairly mild depression, anxiety as well.  Life hasn't turned out the way I wanted it to, you know?  I tend to respond to problems by becoming excessively rational and detached; people think I'm arrogant and aloof.  Um ... no.  I'm not aloof; just the opposite, but it might take some doing before I open up.

I'd like to be in contact with a small number of people who are willing both to write and read long e-mails or letters (it doesn't matter which) dealing with difficult subjects in thoughtful ways.  I'd like long-term corresponden​ts who won't be upset if I disappear occasionally​ for no apparent reason (it isn't your fault, believe me).  I would like to be able to discuss personal issues, abstract ideas, books, music and movies, all at the same time if necessary, with both passion and intellect.  And I'd like to be able to do it as a dialogue -- I'd like to listen to you express yourself in the same way.  Does that make sense?

If that's too hard, just chatting will be fine!

If you're desperate for financial assistance, please feel free to contact me, as I'm a naive wealthy American eager to part with my riches.  I'm also entirely open to marriages of convenience with as many women as possible from anywhere in the world.

literary fiction, crime fiction, theology, philosophy, radicalism, anarchism, tarot, spirituality​.  Mostly uninterested​ in 'the new age' but I'm more open to postmodernis​m and alternative subcultures,​ though in my own life I'm boringly mainstream except in what I think and read.  I tend to have far more interests than I can keep up with, so I have ended up knowing a little about a lot things.  Among the things on the periphery of my consciousnes​s, I'll list: Myers-Briggs​ typology (I'm INTP), Thomism, poetry, Renaissance-​period music, nonviolence,​ intellectual​ history, especially of the Enlightenmen​t, St. Bonaventure,​ patristics, Medieval mysticism, phenomenolog​y and existentiali​sm, most major philosophers​ (e.g., Aristotle, Kierkegaard,​ Levinas, Ricoeur, Voegelin), Irish history and culture, schools of Catholic spirituality​ (e.g., Ignatian, Benedictine)​, understandin​g the history of US imperialism.​.. etc., etc., etc.

From 1981, the year I heard my first Ramones track, through about 1992 I listened to as much music as I could afford to buy, or what I heard on the radio.  That was a combination of punk, indy, folk, classical, 'early music' and sometimes classic rock.  But I never had much money and by 1990 the alternative radio station I relied on (WHFS) had turned mostly to crap.  Essentially I then stopped listening to most of the music I had learned to love, and I got rid of a lot of my albums.  It didn't help that everything changed over to CD and I couldn't afford to replace my decaying cassettes and albums.

In 2003 I met a redhead with a gorgeous body who told me about Radiohead -- I'd heard of them but never heard much by them.  I bought OK Computer ... and the rest is history.  I went in search of more.  In 2006 while living in Dublin I had access to broadband for the first time, and someone told me about file sharing.  So I began collecting lots of pirate versions of music I'd loved, as well as music I'd never heard post-Nirvana​.  The list below is some of the stuff I've been listening to obsessively over the past few years.  Rapidshare has changed my life!  (And for the record, I buy more legal music NOW than I ever did before.)

I still wish I knew how to thank that redhead.

Mission of Burma
Fugazi
Jawbox
The Frames
Radiohead
Sam Phillips
Beatles
Bob Dylan
Al Green (pre-gospel)​
Rod Stewart (pre-schlock​, post-faces)
Gorillaz
Sonic Youth
The Clash
Television
Pixies
Husker Du
Sugar
The Minutemen
U2
Can
Jimi Hendrix
Bruce Cockburn
Belle & Sebastian
Allison Krauss

Magnolia
Capote
Juno
The Butcher Boy
Dogville
Schindler's List
Hidden (Caché)
Amores Perros
American Beauty
Adam & Paul
American Splendor
Three Kings
The Hours
The Constant Gardener
Secretary
In the Bedroom
The Sweet Hereafter
City of God
Y Tu Mama Tambien
The Squid and the Whale
Lost in Translation
Before Sunrise/Befo​re Sunset

I also like Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Mamet, Altman and old noir movies.  And heist movies.  Ever see Topkapi?  or Rififi?  Wow.

My prime guilty pleasure is Terminator 2.  I've seen it dozens of times.

A lot of people hate tv, and for good reason.  But I think tv has improved immensely over the past fifteen years.  There's still plenty of garbage, but more 'good' and 'great' shows than when I was a kid.

Sopranos
Homicide: Life on the Street
Law & Order (I'm an addict, alas.)
Extras
Fawlty Towers
I expect The Wire to be on this list when I get around to watching it!

Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore
A.S. Byatt - Possession
Plato - Republic, Apology, Phaedrus
Czeslaw Milosz - New and Collected Poems
Phillip Roth - The Human Stain
J.R.R. Tolkien - Lord of the Rings
Joseph Conrad - Lord Jim
Joseph O'Connor - The Salesman
Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse
P.D. James - Original Sin
Thomas Hardy - Jude the Obscure
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Dispossessed​
St. Paul - Letters
C.S. Lewis - Letters to Malcolm; Mere Christianity​
George Orwell - 1984
Dallas Willard - Divine Conspiracy
Shaine Claiborne - Jesus for President
Ignacio Larranaga - Sensing Your Hidden Presence

If one keeps loving faithfully what is really worth loving, and does not waste one's love on insignifican​t and unworthy and meaningless things, one will get more light by and by and grow stronger. Sometimes it is well to go into the world and converse with people, and at times one is obliged to do so, but he who would prefer to be quietly alone with his work, and who wants but very few friends, will go safest through the world and among people. And even in the most refined circles and with the best surroundings​ and circumstance​s, one must keep something of the original character of an anchorite, for other wise one has no root in oneself; one must never let the fire go out in one's soul, but keep it burning. And whoever chooses poverty for himself and loves it possesses a great treasure, and will always clearly hear the voice of his conscience; he who hears and obeys that voice, which is the best gift of God, finds at least a friend in it, and is never alone.
--Vincent van Gogh

And when people cease to believe that there is good and evil
Only beauty will call to them and save them
So that they still know how to say: this is true and that is false.
--Czeslaw Milosz, "One More Day"

I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of man's pride, if you give them time. The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed. So I am against all big organization​s as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful​ way, under-dogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on top.
--William James

My Lord, I loved strawberry jam,
And the dark sweetness of a woman's body.
--Czeslaw Milosz, "A Confession"​

Only connect ...
--E.M. Forster