I am an artist, ive been drawing and painting for a long time. I have two years left and i will have my Bachelors in fine arts, then two more for  my MFA. I hope to teach art and philosophy at the university level when i am finished.  Im not realy a poet per say but i find writing to be an outlet for certain things i cannot express through other means. Even before my art i would say reading comes number one for me, i enjoy books more than most anything i find myself doing. For the most part i read alot of fantasy but a friend convinced me to broden my horizons so right now im in the middle of a terry pratchette, the dali lama's interpretation of The Heart Sutra, The Road Less Traveled, and through painted desserts. The latter three being my attempt at something outside of fantasy. i pay little or no attention to grammar or puntuation... probably something i should get better at if i want to teach. course art teachers dont have to bother with that stuff:) 

I have one favorite movie, it is Harvey. Jimmy Stewart plays Elwood P. Dowd, a somewhat eccentric big hearted individual whose best friend is an invisible six-foot, three-and-a-half-inch tall rabbit named Harvey.

"My mother allways told me 'Elwood; In life you can be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant'. Well, for years I was smart; I recommend pleasant. And you may quote me". - Elwood P.

i am a huge fan of cartoons and of animated flicks, miyazaki's and alot of others. Ghost In The Shell is the greatest of all

 i hike and rock climb but right now thats taken a back seat to my painting.  Mostly because i just broke my foot, i took a lead fall on a 5.10c and my belayer dropped me 25 ft, I am glad all i broke was my ankle.

i seek out adventure as often as i can. i went on the camino de santiogo in 2007, probably my coolest adventure to date. it is a pilgrimage that begins on the french side of the pyrenese mountains. you cross the pyrenese on foot and walk 700 km across all of spain. the goal is the grave/cathedral of saint james. others and myself continued on to finestara. the medeaval end of the world. when you get there you are suposed to burn you clothes and swim in the ocean and upon exciting you are a new person. Allways bring enough money! i eneded up eating tuna and bagettes for four weeks... sometimes i splurged on cheese:)traveling poor is exciting though, it keeps you thinking and always makes for an unexpected turn of events

one of my favorite authors is Ralph Waldo Emerson, what follows is one of the poems i enjoy the most of those i have read. Also a short section from his essay on compensation.

Compensation
from Essays: First Series (1841)
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The wings of Time are black and white,
Pied with morning and with night.
Mountain tall and ocean deep
Trembling balance duly keep.
In changing moon, in tidal wave,
Glows the feud of Want and Have.
Gauge of more and less through space
Electric star and pencil plays.
The lonely Earth amid the balls
That hurry through the eternal halls,
A makeweight flying to the void,
Supplemental asteroid,
Or compensatory spark,
Shoots across the neutral Dark.

Man's the elm, and Wealth the vine;
Stanch and strong the tendrils twine:
Though the frail ringlets thee deceive,
None from its stock that vine can reave.
Fear not, then, thou child infirm,
There's no god dare wrong a worm.
Laurel crowns cleave to deserts,
And power to him who power exerts;
Hast not thy share? On winged feet,
Lo! it rushes thee to meet;
And all that Nature made thy own,
Floating in air or pent in stone,
Will rive the hills and swim the sea,
And, like thy shadow, follow thee.

~The league between virtue and nature engages all things to assume a hostile front to vice. The beautiful laws and substances of the world persecute and whip the traitor. He finds that things are arranged for truth and benefit, but there is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole. You cannot recall the spoken word, you cannot wipe out the foot-track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or clew. Some damning circumstance always transpires. The laws and substances of nature -- water, snow, wind, gravitation -- become penalties to the thief. ~Ralph W. Emerson