ABOUT ME

I've spent the last 4 years between Istanbul and different parts of France. Now, I live in Paris, where I teach English at a local university. Luckily, I am a dual citizen of Canada and Italy, so I am free to make my home in France, which I happily intend to do.

PHILOSOPHY

I reserve the eternal right to rearrange my thoughts until I see fit; and then to rearrange them still. And I try my best to stay lighthearted.

"Placet Experiri...A fine maxim"...By now his morality coincided with his curiosity. Probably always had.
-Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

There's nothin in the world
That you can do
You gotta come on up to the house
-Tom Waits

When the whole human race is rocking with laughter, laughing so hard that it hurts, I mean, everybody then has his foot on the path...Nobody can persuade you at that moment to take a gun and kill your enemy; neither can anybody persuade you to open a fat tome containing the metaphysical truths of the world and read it. If you know what freedom means, absolute freedom and not a relative freedom, then you must recognize that this is the nearest to it you will ever get. If I am against the condition of the world it is not because I am a moralist - it is because I want to laugh more. I don't say that God is one grand laugh: I say that you've got to laugh hard before you can get near to God, that is, get nearer to myself. That's why it doesn't matter what road I take. But music is very important. Music is a tonic for the pineal gland. Music isn't Bach or Beethoven; music is the can opener of the soul. It makes you terribly quiet inside, makes you aware that there's a roof to your being.
-Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I've surfed and hosted and have always been very lucky and grateful for the people I've met. Especially when I've surfed, the generosity and kindness of some people has been overwhelming, and I've tried to adjust my own approach to relating with others in the same way.

Interests

Reading, cycling, hiking in the city and the country ("Sometimes I live in the country/Sometimes I live in the town/Sometimes I take a great notion, to jump in the river and drown!"), good food and drink, music.

• writing
• dining
• drinking
• reading
• magic
• music
• cycling
• hiking
• surfing

Music, Movies, and Books

Off the top of my head...

Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Joanna Newsom, Beethoven, Chopin, the Hawkins brothers, Stars of the Lid, Brian Eno, William Basinski's Disintegration Loops, Patsy Cline, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, U2's Achtung Baby ,Emmylou Harris' Wrecking Ball.....

Malle, Chaplin, Tarkovsky, Bergman, Sorrentino, Kubrick, P. T. Anderson, Wes Anderson, Allen, Fellini, Yorgos Lanthimos.....

Élie Faure, Henry Miller, Nietzsche, Cavafy, Whitman, Durrell's travel books, Baudelaire's Spleen de Paris, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Salinger's Glass family stories, P.G. Wodehouse, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg Ohio, Mann's 'Magic Mountain'...

Countries I’ve Lived In

Canada, France, Turkey, United States