CURRENT MISSION

To publish my book,
_darkroom retreat: deep rest for the self-healing psyche_
Free download of current version:
http://darkroomretreat.com

ABOUT ME

When I was 15, an intense yet calming feeling of joy overcame me for three months, then faded. It set me investigating its source and traveling for most of my life. After many years, I found a way to recover the sense of wholeness behind the joy I felt. It is darkroom retreating. So now I experiment, talk, and write about it while continuing to travel.

I'm a straight guy in recovery from standard American Judeo-Christian repressiveness, lately tuned into the natural masculine-feminine power dynamic at play everywhere all the time. Largely unspoken, often denied, the great taboo persists.

PHILOSOPHY

1. What is, is real
2. It is what it is
3. My job is to be aware of it in order to live.

Life has no purpose; it is my purpose. My motive is joy: deep, real joy in being and in being aware.

I view both the material world around us and the dreamworld we sometimes catch glimpses of as being real. Both are knowable by the senses, by reason (though the dreamworld has trippy physics).

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I surfed and hosted in Guatemala. Then, in 2011 in Athens, the couchsurfers/hosts were awesome. I gave them watermelon at my free talk about darkness and sold my booklet at cost. Very fun summer. Lots of riot police that year.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Positive.

It all started in 2008 when my housemates in Eugene, Oregon, USA hosted a cool guy from Argentina. A year later, three rad hosts helped me surf my way to Guatemala.

CS is obviously super helpful to me as a traveler. Then hosting people was fun and interesting. It warmed up my remote house on the big lake in Guatemala.

I don't think I mind the change to for-profit status of CS. People gotta eat, have relaxed families, take vacations, etc.

What I do mind is CS's puritanical anti-sex policy. How would it be to acknowledge the basic fact of human sexuality and its natural relationship to this site? We could learn to navigate it in the open rather than by stealth. CS's attitude about this feels positively medieval t o me. For crying out loud, it's the 21st century. See _The Mass Psychology of Fascism_ by Wilhelm Reich.

Interests

writing
philosophy
health
design
natural ways of life
music (voice, guitar)
dance (tango beginner)

• writing
• books
• design
• dancing
• tango
• dining
• politics
• traveling
• music
• guitar
• business
• emergency services
• logic
• physics
• psychology

Music, Movies, and Books

- Movies:
La Belle Verte
Rob Roy
Don Juan de Marco
Festen

- Music
Classical: Vivaldi and the three B's
Pavorotti, Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn
U2, Prince, Joni Mitchell

- Books:
Atlas Shrugged / Ayn Rand
In Search of the Miraculous / P D Ouspensky
(oh, those Russians)
Ishmael / Daniel Quinn
The Continuum Concept / Jean Liedloff
The 80/10/10 Diet / Doug Graham

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

- felt love
- lived among the Maya in Guatemala, 2010
- sat in presence of a perfect human being, Arnaud Desjardin, for 10 days, 2007
- rainbow US National Gathering, Idaho, 2001
- fasted (just water) for 23 days, 1991
- sought and found cause of intense joy I experienced at age 15

Teach, Learn, Share

Skills:
- handyman, bicycle repair, and some fine carpentry (but definitely not at production speeds...)
- building darkrooms, supporting retreats in them. Travel without leaving your home
- healthy food preparation
- design: alternative industrial and architectural design and construction.
- musician with voice, guitar
- operate computers fairly well
- some knowledge of business and politics (local and international). Have consulted a little.
- logic + unusually hopeful cultural criticism

I would like to learn how to market my services better.

What I Can Share with Hosts

See above.

Countries I’ve Visited

Denmark, French Polynesia, Germany, Greece, Mexico, Netherlands

Countries I’ve Lived In

Canada, Guatemala, Norway, Sweden, United States