mood: transcendental

Things the appreciation of which seems to have not been merely a phase:

• ikebana
• dark chocolate (in a multitude of forms and combinations)
• vodka (hey, it's not laudanum or opium)
  
• Italy
• Southern Spain
• Moorish architecture
• good sushi
• this surely unhealthy but incredible cream of celery soup (not in soup form) with rice and tender chicken breast
• the humanities
• genetics
• archaeology & paleontology (my longest relationship outside of family, and Mimi)
• mermaids, their imagery when done well, and other bits of folklore
  
• the sea
• Vikings
• ducks
• willow trees
• Scandinavian and Japanese design
• Voltaire, Thomas Paine, etc. (Freethinkers)
• going fast
• climbing
• heights
• flying
• candlelight
• thunderstorms
• tornado-green skies
  
• these two paintings, and pre-Raphaelite paintings in general theory, at least to look upon (they're too lush to outgrow apparently)(although the one on the right, "Flaming June," is by self-proclaimed anti-PRB'er Leighton, fine, fine):
  

• this excerpt of a Lord Byron poem I had on my wall when I was fifteen:

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more...

(Then, cut off the rest, which is below.)

From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.