CURRENT MISSION

Live life in such a way that I will be satisfied when I die.

ABOUT ME

Impossible to state accurately in brief!

Real version: Come drink some coffee etc. with me and we'll swap life stories. (Too long here.)

Short version:

grew up in Fairfax, VA
MK in Ukraine 14-18 years old
boarding school in Germany junior + senior year of highschool

Currently have severed ties to pursue doing something I have an obligation to develop in myself.

PHILOSOPHY

Two quotes borrowed from Wendell Berry's A Continuous Harmony:

"A person dependent on somebody else for everything from potatoes to opinions may declare that he is a free man, and his government may issue a certificate granting him his freedom, but he will not be free. He is that variety of specialist known as a consumer, which means that he is the abject dependent of producers. How can he be free who can do nothing for himself?... ...What is the first Amendment to him whose mouth is stuck to the tit of the 'affluent society'? Men [and women] are free precisely to the extent that they are equal to their own needs. The most able are the most free."

"...by this awkwardness and this partial success we can see that we have not got to where we are by anything so simple as deciding what we wanted to do and then doing it- as if we had shopped at a display of lives and selected one. We have, instead, in the midst of living, and with time passing, been discovering how we want to live, and inventing the ways."

*Update: Life is shockingly short... keep that in mind and live like I know it.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I'd be glad to show you or point you to a few of my favorite highlites of Austin. I'm new here myself, but in a short amount of time I have hunted out some jewels. I'm also great for a conversation in a city of strangers.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Last summer I couchsurfed on my soul-searching expedition to the west coast... I was impressed by the kindness and hospitality extended to me. My couchsurfing experience is very limited, but I've traveled a lot over three continents, mainly during my highschool years, since I lived overseas. Now I'm almost broke, so it's not an option for a while... though I guess being in Texas is pretty much a new experience for me.

Interests

Making things- books, ceramics, photographs, clothes, ideas; learning how to farm; sustainable and off-grid living; fashion design; rock climbing; cooking; hopeful or life-changing art; slam poetry (a new interest I've poked into); story-telling; and holding hardcore screaming practices while driving in the car... sh...

• arts
• books
• poetry
• singing
• design
• fashion
• cooking
• chocolate
• coffee
• drinking
• clothing
• crochet
• pottery
• knitting
• guitar
• rock climbing
• business

Music, Movies, and Books

Books:
The Razor's Edge (and other books) by W. Sommerset Maugham
A Continuous Harmony, by Wendell Berry;
all of J. D. Salinger;
Peter Pan;
Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, & The Book of Laughter and Forgetting;
Why Christianity Must Change or Die, by John Shelby Spong;
No Country for Old Men -Cormac McCarthy

Movies: Baraka, Pan's Labrynth

Music:
The Smashing Pumpkins
Norma Jean
Death Cab for Cutie
The Deftones
Iron and Wine
The Killers
Ray La Montagne
and my own darling, John Roy Jenkins

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Obscure castle ruins in the forest 20 minutes from my highschool dorm in Germany.

Recently decided for the first time to leave people I love on purpose... a very hard thing to do, but sometimes you have to grow and to do that, you must be transplanted... I've been transplanted before, but never my my own chosing.

Teach, Learn, Share

I can teach you to sew, knit, crochet, make books, cook KILLER pancakes, or decent chapatis and dahl.

I (someday) want to learn how to make a house in a tree, or any kind of straw bale, cob, or otherwise green building.

I can sing a play a song for you on guitar (but remember I am totaly an AMATEUR).
I can talk to you about the twisted fashion industry and how I wish a business could work instead.
I can make you fabulous banana chocolate chip pancakes.
I can help you be hopeful about life without discounting all the tragedy of it.

Countries I’ve Visited

India

Countries I’ve Lived In

Germany, Ukraine, United States

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