CURRENT MISSION

Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas

ABOUT ME

I live for stories, for places, for mysteries. Travel offers all three in abundance.

I tend to muse and dream more than is perhaps normal or healthy. But if, like me, you write fiction, dreaming is an occupational hazard. Werner Herzog offered an insight in an interview about his film on the Chauvet cave paintings:

"I want the audience with me in wild fantasies – in something that illuminates them. You see, if I were only fact based, the book of books in literature would be the Manhattan phone directory. Four million entries, everything correct, but it dusts out of my ears and I do not know: do they dream at night? Does Mr. Jonathan Smith cry in his pillow at night? We do not know anything when we check all the correct entries in the phone directory. I’m not this kind of a filmmaker."

...and I, Dear Couchsurfer, am not that kind of a person.

PHILOSOPHY

I don't have a 'personal philosophy'. I try - with varying degrees of success - to follow the 'Golden Rule' : to treat others as I would like others to treat me.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I believe in the exchange of goodwill.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I've surfed once in Mozambique, but am pretty much totally new to the Couchsurfing world...

Interests

I love reading (and talking about reading), writing fiction and essays (and talking about writing), and most other subjects about which one can read or write. Between the ages of 9-15 I was a magician, juggler, and unicyclist. When I see a magician, I cannot help but look, though my own performing days are over. If my interests weren't already strange enough, I enjoy oil painting (portraiture in particular), filmmaking, and craftwork. Through my school years, I built a workshop and taught myself how to make knives by hand (see link to guild website). My interest is not limited to knifemaking, however, and I have a deep interest in craftsmanship in general. As a teenager I built cameras and made films. While I no longer make films, my interest in film remains strong.
In my spare time I enjoy going to the cinema. Subjects that form the basis of exciting conversations for me: English literature, history (history of philosophy), aesthetics, music, film, mysteries, dreams, secrets.

• writing
• books
• literature
• film making
• movies
• reading
• traveling
• juggling
• painting
• music
• history

Music, Movies, and Books

An abbreviated list in no particular order...
Music: Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Beach House, Bob Dylan, The Dubliners, Arcade Fire - not in that order, nor a full list.
Films by: Michael Haneke, David Lynch, Francis Ford Coppola, Hayo Miyazaki, Lars Von Trier, Werner Herzog, Federico Fellini, Terrence Malick, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Altman, The Coen Brothers, Luchino Visconti, Paul Thomas Anderson.
Books by: Cormac McCarthy, J.M. Coetzee, Jorge Luis Borges, Kafka, Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov, Martin Amis, J.D. Salinger, Joseph Mitchell, Ian McEwan, Don DeLillo. T.S. Eliot, Auden, Dylan Thomas, etc.

Teach, Learn, Share

I could teach you how to make knives... But that may take several years. Perhaps it would be easier to show you how to juggle. I'm currently practicing five ball cascade.
I love words and language and am a keen and interested learner. If I don't get the word right, I'll at least put on the right accent.