New to couchsurfing - hungry and excited for traveling lands, meeting people, and living life. Native Texan.

Also open to hosting!

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

To meet the wide world, and find myself linked into the network of eternal life.

Interests

• dancing
• cooking
• exploring

Music, Movies, and Books

Literature: Robert Frost, Seamus Heaney, Hemingway

Movies: most anything that plays at the Texas Theatre

Music: The National, Rainbow Kitten Surprise, Johannes Brahms, lots of things

Teach, Learn, Share

St Kevin and the Blackbird

And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird.
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
And lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

And since the whole thing's imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in love's deep river,
'To labour and not to seek reward,' he prays,

A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
And on the riverbank forgotten the river's name.

Seamus Heaney (Irish poet, 1939-2013)

What I Can Share with Hosts

A big listening ear, a hand in the kitchen, a song on the piano, a game-and-willing demeanor, an easy presence, and generally good manners.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Canada, England, Germany, Italy

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States