CURRENT MISSION

"There is not a single moment in your life when you do not have everything that you need to be happy. Think of that for a minute. The reason why you are unhappy is because you are focusing on what you do not have rather than on what you have right now."

ABOUT ME

my essence and being defy description (outside of that last descriptive statement)

PHILOSOPHY

I identify as a Christian Anarchist (it sounds pious *and* badass!) with the backbone of a Buddhist. What I mean by the former is I endeavor to follow the teachings of Jesus in the way I live my life without the pretense of religion or church. These teachings are summed up in the Sermon on the Mount; concisely, it was expressed when Christ was asked what the greatest commandment was, and he said to love God above all with all you have, and the second was to love your brothers and sisters as yourself. For me, at least, these two commandments are interdependent.

By the latter I mean my backbone is like a reed in the wind: it bends but does not break (e.g. if one practices Buddhism and progresses along the path there eventually comes a point in development where Buddhism can and/or will actually become a spiritual hinderance and an obstacle to practicing Buddhism unless non-attachment to the practice is attained).

Succinctly put: be of service to others, always love, identify with the Divine inherent within all creation, remain forever teachable, and for the love of God don't take yourself too goddam seriously.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I have been on this site for more than a decade. Initially I signed up while volunteering with a neighborhood non-profit as a site-leader gutting houses in New Orleans post-Katrina. After the summer months the amount of volunteers coming through dropped off considerably, and I was in a house that accompanied ten people with only one other fellow, and some guy mentioned it one day so I created a profile. New Orleans is the type of crazy city where people of every and all sorts come through, so after the experience I left it open at our next house and we had sixty or so people pass through in six months. It's been amazing, and from over a hundred experiences traveling and hosting and surfing on this site, I've had uniformly excellent experiences (yes, even that annoying surfer "Say bro...." mooch who only ended up asking for everything, even him I cherish......in retrospect).

Interests

• cycling
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

'Confederacy of Dunces' is the funniest book of all-time (New Orleans! Hot dogs! Faux-pirates! Pants!), but 'The Complete Calvin and Hobbes' is far and away the greatest piece of art ever created (take *that*, Sistine Chapel!). 'The Perennial Philosophy' is the best book I've read (I adore Aldous Huxley), and 'The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello' and 'Awareness' (same author) also had a profound influence on my life. Also, like a prophets from the Old Testament, Jung and Dostoevsky are fucking giants striding over time to kick your soul in the fucking teeth (ribcage?).

'Peep Show' is the funniest tv sitcom of all-time (it's a British comedy...except, you know, funny). I adore 'Futurama' as well.

Listening to Radiohead's OK Computer as a teenager was a seminal moment in my life. The most sublime composition I've ever heard is 'Moonlight Sonata' (play it while visiting the website 'rainymood'). The National tops to me, too.

Even though I haven't been able to watch it in a decade (at a house where I lived in KC we literally kept it on repeat), 'The Big Lebowski' is perfection, and the only time I've absolutely balled twice during a movie was 'The Lives of Others.' (well, that and 'Supertroopers')

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

-I witnessed my own birth and don't even remember it.

-Went to Colombia with no money knowing no one with no place to stay and knowing no Spanish to write a novel on a coke-bender even though, in the ten times I've tried them, I do not much care for cocaine or the writing of novels. Crazy shit happened that I'll remember forever, though by the end I learned that, well, hell, I just can't recommend writing novels.

-In the fall of 2014 I cycled across the country in the shape of a mustache. The journey began in the Atlantic Ocean at sunrise in Portland, Maine, and ended at sunset outside of Portland, Oregon, when I cycled straight into the Pacific. En route I interviewed many mustachioed men about the origin story of their mustache for a segment called 'Every Stache Has a Story.' I also performed stand-up along the way, sharing and swapping stories with all and sundry. A filmmaker followed in a van and shot a documentary called 'Mustache Across America;' our tagline is

A man
A mustache
America

In short, the idea is to illustrate the mad wonder of following your heart into madcap, quixotic adventures. I was showing how it can be done on the cheap (for instance, I made the resolution not to pay for lodging and rarely plan where to sleep and wound up in trees, parks, cliffs, a church, the rooftops of McDonalds and Taco Bell, as well as two CSing couches and five hosts from Warmshowers--a long-distance cycling site that saved my life in the middle of a blizzard in the mountains of Oregon, and overall did not pay for a place over 19 months and developed a philosophy of life from it). We performed a condensed version of the trip on stage and it was mildly successful (we made money!) though we're still working on the doc (we're losing money).

(UPDATE: the project is dead; hearts were broken and lives derailed. I regret nothing.)

Teach, Learn, Share

With my hands I know how to make train-noises that sound like a bird singing, give high-fives, and hug with both arms and even heart-to-heart, and I'd love to show you how to do all three (maybe even at the same time!)

What I Can Share with Hosts

I know how to cook. At the very least there should be some exchange, even if it's but a trinket or scribble note of manic-fleeting genius (never appreciated in its own time, mind you), but I'd love to buy you a beer and hear your story and listen to the sound of the surf at our feet realizing that the sun is always shining and I love you, I really do, because you are my brother and you are my sister and the same as me, dispelling that illusion of separation and continuing on and on like your favorite song coming on strong in your ears again like it did when you were 17 and didn't know better and we can still get there, old enough to know better but young enough not to care, mon fraire.

Now let's write poems with our fucking lives.

Countries I’ve Visited

Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, England, Ireland, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States

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