* * * I am currently not in Canada but further down the Pacific, in an African pocket of Mexico, where I am living for a few months and where I could welcome the right fit. My space on Saltspring is free. My heart could welcome you there on behalf of my body.
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Life mission : have courage and be kind.

I am a breather a breeder and a feeder.

And an endless learner of the appropriate balance between them all.

I am nothing but all. I write and I sing, I dance and I cry. Mostly I love, sometimes I fall, in between I move and remove. All in all I travel inside and out and about. And keep on being in crazy tender love with the beautiful mess of being alive.

I pledge for truth.
In all of her forms.
Vulnerability, openness, rawness, bareness, authenticity and integrity. Whatever your eyes allow you to see and your heart beats to feel, that is what's worth sharing. Knowledge grows from experience, love grows from shared presence. I believe wisdom and wildness to be sisters and the purest of hearts to wear the dirtiest of hands. I also believe breaking is a gift that allows us to remain permanently open, and so I try to welcome all breaking points and tides and fixed forms, through travelling creating or connecting, for I know it is them that will mend me in the end.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

"Sanskrit has ninety-six words for love, ancient Persian has eighty, Greek three, and English only one. We are close to dying of loneliness because we only have one word for love" : I am here, in this life and this community, to learn the full alphabet of loving.

I feel there is much more than a couch that I can share at one place or another ; it's all about spontaneous meetings, experience of energies and adaptable space to freely be in a new environment. Couchsurfing grew way wider than a simple way of travelling : it has become an intimate part fuel mirror and metaphor of my whole way of living, just as other practices of non-violence or presence would. I love how this community allows and often generates connections of all types and depths in an equanimous way. This is very precious in the monetized, standardized and fearful world most of us live in, and many of us are trying to live out of.

The stays, moments and encounters I've had over time have engraved rich memories in me. I am fuller and wealthier from all beings who have opened their world to me, some in deep and breathtaking and unforgettable ways. I have also met interesting people through hosting, mostly at right place right moment and right intensity.

I have come to see hospitality as the way of life, simply : both a big deal and nothing really, sacred yet extremely mundane, undeniably precious yet plain normal. Through practicing her, we grow back into our real nature. We can directly embody non-judgment, union and generosity. And get to soften the borders between what we call ourselves and others, private and public, home and the world.

(My heart currently pulls me towards : Iran, Palestine, Bolivia, Sri Lanka, Cabo Verde, Albania, Congo and Mozambique. If you feel the song, know that I always love to meet people who can feed my tides.)

Interests

Breathing.
And growing what grows.

• literature
• poetry
• beauty
• yoga
• walking
• thrifting
• minimalism
• languages
• nature
• buddhism
• intersectionality
• silence
• hospitality
• vipassana
• ayurveda
• art therapy
• travel writing
• multiculturalism
• antispecism
• herbalism
• mycology
• gratitude
• zero waste
• alternative living
• phenomenology
• literacy
• remote working
• second-hand
• anthroposophy
• nonviolence
• grace
• panafricanism
• embodied consciousness
• slowness
• mixed practices
• hypogamy

Music, Movies, and Books

Watch : Amour. Her. Billy Elliot. Into the wild. Frances Ha. Mon roi. D'amore si vive. Nomadland. Before Sunset / Sunrise / Midnight. Mary and Max. Dancer in the dark. La tortue rouge. C’mon c’mon. Ben-X. Dead poets society. Maudie. Baraka and Samsara. Lars and the real girl. Blue valentine. Take shelter. 127 hours. Paterson. Lamb (both). Wild. Tracks. Boyhood. Pina. Mister Gaga. Women are heroes. Tout ce que tu possèdes. Notes on blindness. The tree of life. The salt of the Earth. Captain Fantastic. L'auberge espagnole. Call me by your name. The kindergarten teacher. Anything by Miranda July, Charlie Kaufman, Steve McQueen or Agnès Varda. Human (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdb4XGVTHkE), 7 billion others (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQLZCrIbGvo) and Woman.

Read : Annie Dillard. Elif Şafak. Gloria Anzaldua. Etel Adnan. Hinemoana Baker. Alejandra Pizarnik. David Abram. Marguerite Duras. Alessandro Barrico. Erri De Luca. Barry Lopez. Nicolas Bouvier. Sylvain Tesson. Réjean Ducharme. Sylvia Plath. Eduardo Galeano. Rainer Maria Rilke. Christiane Singer. Henri Michaux. Marie Uguay. Naomi Shihab Nye. Maya Angelou. Georges Didi-Huberman. Anne Dufourmantelle. Claire Marin. Julio Cortazar. Clarice Lispector. Deni Ellis Béchard. Toni Morrison. Mary Oliver. Marguerite Yourcenar. Ada Limon. Louise Warren. Henri Meschonnic. Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Rebecca Solnit. Pico Iyer. Terry Tempest Williams. E. E. Cummings. Charles Juliet. Mahmoud Darwich. Wendell Berry. Hafiz. Rumi.

Listen : Leonard Cohen. Patrick Watson. Franco Battiato. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. Adrianne Lenker. Beirut. Alexi Murdoch. Lykke Li. Sufjan Stevens. Sigur Ros. Danit. Natalia Lafourcade. Lhasa de Sela. Adrianne Lenker. Tom Rosenthal. Ludovico Einaudi. Caetano Veloso. Cesaria Evora. Gilberto Gil. Charles Aznavour. Édith Piaf. Jorge Ben. Gino Paoli. Ismaël Lo. Harry Manx. Bob Dylan. Joni Mitchell. Bon Iver. Corneille. Richard Desjardins. Simon and Garfunkel. Avec pas d'casque. Tire le coyote. Elisapie. Alanis Morissette. Lana Del Rey. Salif Keita. Owen Pallett. Angus and Julia Stone. Billie Holliday. Tiken Jah Fakoly. Mambazo. Matt Holubowski. Tracy Chapman. Blick Bassy. The National. Gregory Alan Isakov. Geoffrey Oryema. Eddie Veder. Francesco de Gregori. Fabrizio de André. Amadou et Mariam. Valerie June. Pomme. Gabo Ferro. Francis Cabrel.

Look : Sebastião Salgado. Emil Gataullin. Josef Koudelka. Spencer Tunick. Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Rebecca Norris. Robert Frank. Marina Abramovic. Sophie Calle. Agnes Martin. Jenny Holzer. Mari Andrews. Kiki Smith. JR. Louise Bourgeois. Jean-Christophe Béchet. Georgia O'Keeffe.

And stop making sense ; understand (en français on dirait : plutôt que de comprendre, connais).

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I don't believe in a duality nor separation between big and little, peculiar and regular, extraordinary and ordinary. To me the astonishment rests in the very fabric of our daily lives if we (re)learn to look with freshness gratefulness and curiosity.

So, more importantly : The truth in your eyes. Your open heart. And laughing tears.

But, also : Learning to read. Building and rebuilding a sense of home. Living the zem life in Benin and the island life in Bahia and the train ways around India. Being healed with ashes and oils and bones and soups and sweats and songs. Writing on waters, hiking barefoot and swimming nude. Eating wild chicken with an open heart. Daily picking up breakfast from mango trees. Fostering a meditation practice and watching its impacts unfold. Daily agreeing on yoga moving me. Watching loving hands harvesting soaking roasting and packaging cashew nuts for me in an African dawn. Simultaneously falling in love with a person and a place. Understanding that a heart can be a tomato. Resuscitating a library. Babysitting fires. Meeting the upside down smile of the moon. Witnessing turtles reclaiming their lives and men hiding inside dogs. Translating a nonna's heart through the language of her garden. Tending a wounded heart through a global pandemic. Being secluded while feeling free. Buying roots and wings on the same day (twice). Climbing down the darkness. Forgiving. Stopping to smell the flowers. Unconditionally internationally endlessly finding treasure in trash. Being granted the miraculous legs of elephants, horses, camels, donkeys and dogs. Cooking tortillas, chapatis, adapted asados, over-sugared deserts, tea leaves salads and dolmas and precious peanut sauce with around-the-world-mamas. Walking through the Nepalese monsoon and the Indian summers and the Mexican heats and the Burkinabé dry season and the Canadian winters with / just like / held by everyone else. Being hosted while I was hosting and hosting while I was being hosted. Joining two countries, oceans, rivers, continents, seas, with my only body. Going to old places with new eyes and to new places with a sense of home. Taking, breath-taken, the migrants route. Hugging for one hour. Navigating the academic world without compromising on wildness. Being lost while found and becoming found while lost. Purposely overstaying visas. Regularly getting high on natural life. Opening windows on the world through languages in my mouth. Writing secretly and publicly and everywhere in between. Saying yes to long-lasting love on a Brazilian highway. Instantly trusting strangers. Witnessing my mama's multiple recoveries. Rising from the starved. Dancing with the dead. Becoming the river. Never turning my back on life.

Teach, Learn, Share

I’m a certified yoga teacher, we can play.
I've been cooking veggies for years, we can always play.
I enjoy encountering unusual, hidden or soulful spots, either within people or in their environment, you might help me play.
I'm drawn to learning new languages, teach me your play.

I love exchanging about how authors touch us and books shape us and words accompany us.
I love equally the vast and rich country of silence and absence of preference and opinion.
We can share both, because "I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really ? The answer must be in the attempt."

What I Can Share with Hosts

With surfers I can share : Tranquillity. Space. Lovely land. Free-styled soups homemade hummus and crunchy whatevers. Walks and talks. Silence and words. Memories. Cues feelings and impressions. A rainbow of books. Soft sweaters. Nuts unheard of. My sweet watermelon obsession. Inclination towards eating from heart with hands. Tendency to fill rooms with singing. Shared readings. Forresty beachy or artsy outings. And endless love for hanging worn out clothes in the summer sun.

With hosts I can share : myself, nothing more nothing less.

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Belize, Benin, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, France, Georgia, Greece, Guatemala, India, Italy, Jamaica, Mexico, Monaco, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Togo, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Canada, Italy, Mexico

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