CURRENT MISSION

to explore, learn, paint, share good food, eat...and compost

ABOUT ME

I enjoy exploring rich wicked problems, the complexities of our world, and learning from others about their efforts to experience 'the rapture of being alive. I am passionate about compost, growing daikon radishes, synthesizers, jazz, and community building. I am nearly perpetually hungry and jovial, and eager to learn many hands-on skills, languages, and share ideas.

Over the years I have mucked around building school gardens, taught bike mechanics, and greased many a ball bearing, and am currently practicing woodworking and mending moth-hole bullet-ridden garments. I love teaching and learning about growing plants, social justice movements, antiracism, cooking, sewing, and creative reuse. I also am quite keen on talking about Brush Turkeys, politics, and the thrills and frustrations with the practice of Dumpster Diving.

PHILOSOPHY

Compostarian

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

One of the keenest ways to experience a place is making connections with the people who live in said place. To this end, I appreciate Couchsurfing's premise of reciprocity and sharing my home, showing people around my town, and in turn having the honor of being hosted.
As either a host or a hostee,I'm always down for going on adventures with CS networks or just simply sitting and chatting over tea and kumquats.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Enjoyed my first CS experience in the Fall of 2012 with art collective folks and a welder extraordinaire in Paris, and subsequently hosted a felafel vendor in SLC, Utah, and a traveling physician from Poland. Since then, I have stayed with radical poets in a small military town in Norfolk, Virginia, befriended a cool Jet plane engineer in South Carolina, and an astrophysicist in Denton, Florida. Most recently, between May-June 2017, I toured with a bike that I pieced and spoke-laced together through Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands. Across both paved and bone-rattling-cobbled bike paths, I met some amazing folks and had the chance to explore forests, museums, breweries, punk DIY bike shops, ancient and modern city constructions, and exercise my tongue and messy brain in German and a bit of French and Dutch.

Interests

I have a passion for food justice, social-ecological resilience, pen art, Gin and honey, bicycle-based economies, syncopated rhythms, Radiohead, film noir, cilantro, stories about the absurdities of life, minor chords and cathartic releases, and sharing شيرينى نخودچى which are my favorite cookies made of chickpea flour. **Best downed with bergamot tea**. I also love cooking, foraging, wood carving, eraser carvings, stamp making, colored pencils, collages, calligraphy, building and composting things, films, film critiques, bookbinding, wild gesticulations, bio-mimicry, artisan bread baking, garlic, tying ties, and atomic red carrots.

I also admire Vandana Shiva, Flannery O'Connor, Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers, Kurt Vonnegut, Charlie Chaplin, Colin Greenwood, Bill Nye, and Rachel Carson.

I like poetry and extemporaneous dance, especially Breakdancing...the scissors

• arts
• poetry
• dancing
• dining
• cooking
• recipes
• baking
• gardening
• flowers
• politics
• movies
• traveling
• painting
• calligraphy
• ecology
• bicycles
• radiohead
• composting
• nihilism
• nina simone
• portishead

Music, Movies, and Books

I like many documentaries, dramas, comedies, , animation, and thrillers. I love the films by PT Anderson and Lynn Ramsay. Fav movies: "Oversimplification of Her Beauty", The Corporation, Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood, Fish Fall in Love, Nights of Cabiria, Incendies, The Hudsucker Proxy, Return to Oz, The Man in the White Suite,

Books: all of John Steinbeck's works, ''Why Zebra's Don't Get Ulcers''. Favourite Podcast: Throughline

Music: I adore dulcimers and deep synth bass, and glass harmoniums. Calexico, Fourtet, Portishead, Bjork, Pj Harvey, Radiohead, Timber Timbre, Night Sweats, Palace of Buddies, Joy Division, Manoochehr Sadeghi, My Brightest Diamond, Bill Callahan, New Order, Nina Simone, Alice Coltrane, Franz Liszt, Touname Diabeti, Moderat, Madlib, Kareem Higgins, Matthew Dear, Get Well Soon, Sigur Ros, St. Vincent, Television, Orange Juice, Lou Reed, David BOWIE, Lila Downs, Caetano Veloso

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I conspired and orchestrated the first mass garlic field planting extravaganza atop an ol' race track at an ivory tower institution and expanded it nearly 1 fold every year for 3 years.

Teach, Learn, Share

Sharing recipes, cooking skills, share gardening and bike repair advice, conversations about many a thing, community organizing, invigorating uprisings,

What I Can Share with Hosts

Humorous company, and usually skin-cracked yet dextrous hands to chop fruits and vegetables. I am most excited to swap life tales with friendly people and savor delicious food with jovial company

Countries I’ve Visited

Belgium, France, Germany, Iran, Israel, Mexico, Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Germany, United Kingdom, United States

•