I'm a

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I have long-time experience with CS, both as host and as guest. Please ignore my poor response percentage. While living in New York I was flooded with requests, and couldn't possibly have responded to all of them.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Over the years, I have couchsurfed both formally and informally in various capacities. I spent multiple nights in Calais, Aberdeen, Brighton, Heidelberg, Pune, Chennai, and the Valais in this way. I also hosted in the UK & at home in my family town in France. In my view, when it is used with respect and conscience my people allergic to the commercialisation of hospitality, couchsurfing is a tool for social change, a sledgehammer to suspicion and prejudice. As well as a form of 'eco tourism', I guess.

Interests

writing, politics, theatre, revolution, kink, dance, political ecology, psychotropics, conversation, friendship, critical theory, self-defence, transfeminisms, afropessimisms, and food based around aubergines or mushrooms

• writing
• dancing
• dining
• cooking
• meditation
• politics
• blogging
• ecology
• tourism

Music, Movies, and Books

Books? I used to love literature and poetry but, tragically, an English Literature BA took that pleasure mostly away. It's coming back though ... I devoured the entire Neapolitan quartet by Elena Ferrante in just a month and a half. I still live to read, and I have written things for The New Inquiry, Jacobin and Mute (plus you can find an interview of mine with Drucilla Cornell in Jacobin magazine). Since my teens I've loved the words of Emma Goldman, Karl Marx, Frantz Fanon, Victor Serge, Sylvia Wynter etc. however nowadays I don't know which great writers to list as most influential to my day-to-day because I consume so many articles, rather than books and novels.

I like listening to Radio FIP, an eclectic mix of everything: [http://www.fipradio.fr/]
I pretty regularly also listen to friends of mine discussing politics from a fairly radical perspective: [http://novaramedia.com]
And I'm currently enjoying podcasts at The Heart Radio [www.theheartradio.org]

I'm a Criterion Collection kind of grrl when it comes to movies, I suppose.
Three films I have loved in the last two weeks include: My Own Private Idaho; Hitchcock's "Rebecca"; David Mamet's House of Games.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I've helped several of my friends shed their defensive shells.

Teach, Learn, Share

I blog extremely irregularly at lasophielle.org.
I made the journal occupiedstudies.org.
I colluded in http://radicalx.ox4.org/opensauce.

Vipassana meditation showed me the enormity of what I usually ignore. When the time comes I'll do another ten-day silent retreat.

What I Can Share with Hosts

As a guest, I bring an open mind and an open heart; investment in conversation and connection; sensitivity to boundaries/spatial privacy; a good sense of humour; passionately held political beliefs *and* an ability to be laidback; trustworthiness; gratitude; abilities in cooking and text editing.
I always take on, of course, some of the burden of domestic/reproductive labours during my stay.

Countries I’ve Visited

Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Kenya, Morocco, Netherlands, Russian Federation, Slovenia, Tunisia, United Kingdom, United States, Vatican City State

Countries I’ve Lived In

Austria, France, Hungary, India, South Africa, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States

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