* In Sicily for the winter.

Hi. Here is both a planet and a galaxy. A star and a black hole. Here is the prayer and the prayer. Here is both une personne et personne en particulier.

The more I live the barer and deeper life becomes. Where there used to be adjectives and desires, now I just want to be a gentle primate, intimate with all parts of life, close to nature. I doubt there are words for that, but I'm curious to keep trying. While everyone around me grows up, I seem to be growing down, back to where I belong. It feels like a good use of my days.

I love making a big deal of : beauty, the disregarded, elements touching, textures, webs, what's waiting to be unfolded, what can't be labeled. I love being around people who make a big deal of what matters to them too. In the end I would like to have been astonished, lived mostly from the heart, made people feel safe and seen, be equally awake and patient, and be courageous enough to start again.

I spent a lot of time welcoming, knowing and loving all the animals in me. Wisdom grew from befriending this wilderness. It brings me a lot of joy when they recognize yours and all feel beautiful and free.

I am more interested in raw and real than niceness and comfort. This brought me to literature, yoga, buddhism, living in the woods, and Couchsurfing, with all the risks they ask of us. I believe breaking is a gift that allows us to remain permanently open and so I try to welcome all breaking points and tides, through travelling creating or connecting, for I know they will mend me in the end.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

In my mother tongue, the host is also being hosted and the welcomed is simultaneously welcoming the welcomer. It could be considered a mistake by many other languages. I love and promote all of that.

Couchsurfing is embedded to my life. Not sure where it ends and begins any longer, in the same way other practices of non-violence or presence like yoga, vipassana or veganism do. I love how this community allows generates and sometimes sustains 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. I could say I am here, in this life and this community, to practice what I love.

The stays, moments and encounters I've had over years 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 lovely people through hosting, some of whom now have a permanent room in my heart.

I have come to see hospitality as the way of life, simply : both a big deal and not much really, sacred yet extremely mundane, undeniably precious yet quite basic. 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.

Interests

Breathing. Checking out. Checking in. And growing what grows.

• poetry
• beauty
• yoga
• walking
• thrifting
• minimalism
• languages
• stargazing
• buddhism
• silence
• vipassana
• ayurveda
• travel writing
• antispecism
• mycology
• ecofeminism
• degrowth
• wabi sabi
• phenomenology
• waves
• sensations
• ahimsa
• second hand
• remote work
• anthroposophy
• panafricanism
• scarves
• slowness
• mixed practices

Music, Movies, and Books

Watch : Her. Billy Elliot. 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. 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. 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. Vinciane Despret. David Abram. Marguerite Duras. Erri De Luca. Barry Lopez. Nicolas Bouvier. 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 Limón. Louise Warren. Henri Meschonnic. Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Rebecca Solnit. Pico Iyer. Terry Tempest Williams. E. E. Cummings. Ursula K. Le Guin. Charles Juliet. Mahmoud Darwich. Wendell Berry. Hafiz. Rumi.

Listen : Leonard Cohen. Patrick Watson. Franco Battiato. Adrianne Lenker. Beirut. Alexi Murdoch. Sigur Ros. Natalia Lafourcade. Lhasa de Sela. Ludovico Einaudi. Caetano Veloso. Cesária Évora. Gilberto Gil. Charles Aznavour. Édith Piaf. Jorge Ben. Gino Paoli. Ismaël Lo. Harry Manx. Bob Dylan. Joni Mitchell. Bon Iver. Corneille. Richard Desjardins. 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. Adib Alkhalidey. Niki de Saint Phalle. Georgia O'Keeffe.

(Mot de passe : connaître.)

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 (a few times). 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, farinate, agrodolci, 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. Living off-grid in lingerie. Burying bodies. 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 eating plants 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, whether with or without words, 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. 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. Rare nuts. My sweet watermelon obsession. Freedom of eating with hands. Tendency to fill rooms of songs. 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

Albania, Australia, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Fiji, France, Georgia, Greece, Guatemala, India, Italy, Jamaica, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Mexico, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Netherlands, 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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