CURRENT MISSION

Learn about myself through the world and people. and about people through myself and the world. and about the world through myself and people.

ABOUT ME

I really like too many things to sustain maximum development in all of them, so I settle for bits at a time here and there. I'm pretty tall, but not abnormally tall. I like sharing spaces and times present and past. I like being around people, and I love experiments. One of my recent experiments has been to drink zero coffee for a week. It's been crazy! It made me drink a lot more water, which is good. And then the next experiment will be to drink coffee again.

PHILOSOPHY

I live my life because I'm alive and figure that, even when I'm uninspired and "bored" and "stagnant," it's all a new version of the same thing. I like the idea of becoming myself more and more each day. Music, physical activity, and reading&writing have been the central areas for my steadily and sometimes slowly becoming more and more myself.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Unfortunately, I don't have a regular living place right now, so I have no couch to offer. I have yet to surf my first couchwave because I'm new to the ocean. I'm eager to meet people and jump into the couchsurfing world as it exists outside of a computer.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I've never *officially* Surfed a Couch. One of my most memorable experiences involving the warmth of the human soul and a couch as the soul's warmth's vector occurred in Seville, Spain. My friend and I practiced with the Sevillan Frisbeellanas, whom we had found on the internet, and we had no place to stay as we were a day from embarking on a backpacking trip. After practice, we searched the park for a place to camp for the night. One of the players on the team saw us (I spoke no Spanish at the time), asked what we were doing, and REFUSED to let us sleep outside. He took us back to his house, he and his wife cooked us (total strangers to them) a meal, and put us to bed on their cozy cozy pull-out couch. This kindness has resonated since.

Interests

I'm super-interested in learning from other people, from the land. I love playing music with or for people (with especially). I love talking with people about what most interests them, because then, even if I'm not interested in what interests them, I'm interested in what inspires them, or what's inspired or inspirable, in the idea of interest. Dreams. Any kind of hike or walk or run, though sometimes the runs are too much for me and they turn into walks. Water, I love jumping into cold water. And drinking it.

• writing
• coffee
• running
• drinking
• reading
• socializing
• music
• hiking
• backpacking
• camping

Music, Movies, and Books

I very much respond to the book Harold and the Purple Crayon and to the author David Foster Wallace. I just saw the movie Fantastic Mr Fox and it made me laugh out loud several times. I cry easily in movies, and I think that's because I'm able easily to imagine myself as the main character and feel, from my seat, his/her joys and sadnesses. I really like imagining. Books have helped keep imagining alive and important and glowing in me.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

One night while hiking I slept in a pasture under the stars. I woke up to a bull sniffing my feet. I jumped, naked, out of my sleeping bag and ran for the stone wall (the bull was more shocked than I was). I slept on a big bull-proof rock in the field next to the bull's field. When the sun came up and woke me, the rock was surrounded by goats with clanging bells around their necks. They weren't scared of me, so they nibbled my backpack as I tried to walk past them to get my sleeping bag back from the other field.

Teach, Learn, Share

Iodine-treated water tastes much worse when you use the extra tablets that are supposed to get rid of the iodine taste.
Your sleeping bag circulates your heat more efficiently if you sleep in it naked.
You balance your body from your ears.
The heart of a blue whale is the size of a family car, and it beats 5 times a minute, and each beat channels ten to twenty thousand gallons of blood.