CURRENT MISSION

At the moment, to make paper out of daylilies. In general though I'd say that my mission is to learn as much as possible about life and all the ways people choose to live their lives; everyone has something interesting to teach about what's valuable.

ABOUT ME

I like to travel. I like to build stuff. I like to help people.

PHILOSOPHY

I adore humanity. For all our flaws: I am proud of us. I love our warm blood, our living birth, children that play with blocks and words and are curious, like we all were once; I love the satisfaction of curiosity, the heart-swell of noble sacrifice, the stomach-dropping elevation of pure love. I love our lights and our cities as I love the forests of the Earth, though the two may never learn friendship. I love to watch us dance and build and pray, back beyond the gilt shroud of antiquity and forward and up into the jeweled blackness ahead of us.

When I watched 2001 for the first time, back in middle school, I was somewhat under-prepared for how forcefully I would be affected. I'd been acquainted with the introduction for some time, with the apes and the bones and the fuliginous door. I'd had terrors as a young boy growing up, not more than five or six, imagining as if I was awake that monolith appearing in my room. So facing it was easier than I'd expected: what was harder was the thought that we were mere up-jumped cretins, the risen ape shed of his rags.

I had to think about it. I worried about it. I can remember nights staring out an open window, watching raccoons and skunks and furtive cats, fighting and yowling and rutting endlessly, and hoping that somehow I could conjure for myself a raiment out of reason. But we are no better, are we, than they—we kill, we despoil, we consume, we breed and die—but perhaps we, out of them all, were lucky. We get to be aware of our smallness. We can learn.

I love that we are learning. I love that we are getting better. I hope that we learn wisdom before our knowledge erases us. I hope that we learn virtue before our hatreds undo us.

Pourquoi je suis sur Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I'm new to the CS community but I am always willing to get coffee or a drink with people when they come to whatever town I happen to be in at the time. I'm big into building community and would like to participate in (or start) a weekly CS meeting when I figure out where I'll be settling next.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I'm pretty independent when it comes to travelling, so it's always nice to meet someone on the road (or off it) who's up for a good chat! My favorite experiences have been when I've had a chance to cook for my hosts; I make it a point to be able to do wonderful things with almost any combination of ingredients in any size kitchen you could name, inside or outside. I love good conversation, good company and the chance to make new friends.

Centres d'intérêt

Books (both for reading and for collecting), records (both for listening and...), being outside, longboarding, biking, wilderness exploration, climbing/bouldering, live music, good food (making & eating), museums (art, historical and science!), architecture.

• cats
• arts
• books
• architecture
• dancing
• dining
• cooking
• coffee
• running
• drinking
• gardening
• reading
• traveling
• bouldering
• music
• live music
• cycling
• rock climbing
• teaching
• history
• logic
• mathematics
• physics
• science

Morceaux de musique, films et livres

Oh gosh. Movies, recently I've watched: Encounters at the End of the World, Sweetgrass, Winter's Bone, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Mosquito Coast, Paris Texas and Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris. Books, I've been reading John Crowley's Aegypt books, as well as "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet" by David Mitchell and some collected essays by Wendell Berry, Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, John MacPhee, etc. My favorite all-time authors are Vladimir Nabokov, Ray Bradbury and Mikhail Bulgakov. Music, jeeeeeez: I listen to just about everything I can get my hands on.

Enseignez, apprenez, partagez

I'm not sure if this falls under the heading of esoterica or practical knowledge, but I'm a pretty experienced papermaker, and I'd be willing to run through the basics and make the basic tools with you. I enjoy dyeing I am an expert cook, specializing in improvisation; my favorite traditions are East Asian, Arab and Levantine. I enjoy gardening and am always willing to learn and help out. I am a practiced dyer and know a little about how to make dyes from natural/easily found ingredients. I like to think I'm a pretty great tutor, being something of a polymath and having quite a bit of experience with the teaching of grammar, spelling, history, physics, logic and (basic, up to calculus) mathematics.

Pays que j'ai visités

Mexico, United States

Pays dans lesquels j'ai vécu

United States

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