Title: Possibility in Motion

Gender: Male

Age: Ageless

Sun Sign: Leo

Chinese Sign: Wood Dragon

Location: Reno, NV

philosophical orientation
idealistic.  curious.  adventuresome and inquiring mind.  politically korrrukt (if you get my drift)… a “shopping cart” collector of spiritual and philosophical ideas.  not sure what religion or spiritual school of thought I could really fit into.  I trust the human ability to discern truths and principles that work best for one's own journey through existence. Despite fundamentalist fears of not adhering to absolutes, the fact that one can “self-evolve” and find meaning for oneself seems right to me.

Beliefnet.com has a “spritual personality” quiz in which you choose the closest way you believe on various spiritual topics and rate how much importance you place on each of your choices.  Then you get a list of top religions and schools of thought with percentage ratings showing how closely your beliefs fit with each religion (per Beliefnet's definitions).  I took the quiz four times, varying the answers I felt “variable” on, and consistently the top four were the same set:

1) Neo-Pagan (3 out of four times 100%)
2) Unitarian Universalism (in the 90's%)
3) New Age (in the 80's 90's%)
4) Mahayana Buddhism (in the 80's %)
5) varies between Liberal Quakers, New Thought, and Hinduism

guess that makes me a
“Woo woo UU that stirs the pot while waiting for the lotus to bloom” (Yeah, that has a good ring to it !)

My Aikido practice helps me think about balance and flow and how to create harmony with whatever happens. Aikido is primarily a physical, flowing, non-attack oriented martial art (or rather an art of transforming an attack into harmony), but its principles definitely have implications in the mind realms (i.e in the way you work with thoughts).

Making music is another big part of my life, though it doesn't pay all my bills. Being the Music Director of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Northern Nevada is an enjoyable side job that I have.  I like picking out songs and anthems that contribute to the topic being talked about during Sunday services - as well as leading the choir.  Choir directing seems to be a natural extension to my many years of experience participating in singing groups.

When making music, I primarily sing and/or play piano and keyboards. Sometimes I as make musical arrangements and very occasionally compose music.  I was classically trained on the piano and have sung in choirs, madrigal groups, opera chorus, open mics, and sundry shows since I was 8. Styles I have sung and/or played range from classical, jazz(y), many off-the-wall forms of rock and pop, opera chorus, operetta and show chorus, church choir, chant, acappella with tight harmonies, and so on.  Though I can and do learn music from written form, I tend to copy rock, pop, and jazz by ear - which is my primary talent - and often create my own arrangements.  Only if the music is very complex and structured (like most classical pieces) do I rely on written music to learn and play.  Among my current goals is to go deeper into composing as well as arranging.

When listening to music, I absorb atmospheres in music that attracts my attention.  My favorite musical artists consciously and actively create their own musical atmospheres when composing, rather than plugging in to a mediocre expression of some worn-out style.  Often music will evoke images in my head of some kind of scenery or buildings of a particular architectural style. Unless the words are put very up front, like many Suzanne Vega songs, I may not even notice the lyrics until the umpteenth time I heard the song, or until I finally break out and look up the lyrics when I want to see if I want to learn the song by ear.  I use my MySpace site (http://www.myspace.com/crnel) primarily to connect with musical groups and artist.

The “atmospheres” of individual people - male and female - often draw my attention.  Through their features I may pick up (or conjure up) impressions about personality and lifestyle.  Sometimes a person may give me an impression about a character in an imaginary setting in another time and place, perhaps a past life impression.  I generally seek what is good inside people, because it feels a lot better than fretting over what I don't like.  We're all human, so foibles come with the package. 

When it comes to my attitudes on sexuality, I live in a dreamworld of sorts that still at times seems challenging to reconcile with society's “reality”.  Social challenges during my school years motivated me to deeply examine how and why I feel sexually turned on or off.  I found that my turn-on's are not always gender specific (and a male or a female may turn me on), nor are they always “good-looking-body” specific (though it often is part of why I'm turned on), nor even person specific.  Rather, my best turn-on's have a lot to do with my emotional states as I'm interacting with people or situations.  This complexity feels the most human and natural to me.  Being only gender specific (gay or straight) seems so limiting. (On the Kinsey scale, I'm in the 3-4 zone…)

I would rather be honest with myself about my whole set of feelings towards whomever, male or female, without labels.  What side of the fence am I on?  Bonobo chimps don't worry about such fences. 

So, shall we get together for a nice cup of tea?

When on walks, and I love long walks, I absorb my surroundings.  I notice a lot of things - architecture, trees, bushes, rocks, geography, the sky. I “travel” with my mind when I'm not able to physically travel.  Maps and geography hold a lot of interest to me.  I'll stare at maps and imagine what the landscape might look like.  Learning about different cultures and peoples is fun and adventurous.  I also love pictures of the cosmos, imagining what the night sky on a habitable planet located on a remote edge of the long arm of an oddly shaped galaxy.  How would you do the astrological charts for someone born on the moon?  or in a whirling spaceship between star systems?

I like foreign language and am fluent in Spanish and Esperanto.  Esperanto? That's an invented language that's been around for over a hundred years, which has a simple, Lego-block-like structure that's fun to play with. I use it to connect with people around the world (http://www.esperanto-usa.org/).

I like to research ways that children are taught their native language and learn their “take it for granted” type knowledge and see how some of those ways might apply to help adult non-natives learn the language more effectively (especially Spanish and Esperanto - as well as others).

(Si quieres, charlamos en castellano.)
(Se vi volas, ni konversaciu Esperante.)

Politically, I tend to be “north of center” - not right, not left, but towards minimal and smartly administered government which allows maximum personal and economic freedom. Take the “World's Smallest Political Quiz” at http://www.self-gov.org/quiz.html. ; I'm not an absolutist in that direction.  Perhaps Classical Liberal fits me best.  

But wait! There's more! See below…

Member Since: Wednesday, March 15 2006

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