CURRENT MISSION

See everything, meet everyone, learn anything, find poetry.

ABOUT ME

Escaped San Jose (now Silicon Valley) to the beach town of Santa Cruz, which also grew too big, and have since been hiding behind the Redwood Curtain in northern California. My book, Song of Six Rivers, published by Humboldt State University Press, is based on the Humboldt Bay region. Spent two years in North Carolina where I earned my MFA, but returned to lovely Humboldt County. I intended to be a college prof, but have ended up teaching poetry to thousands of kids with California Poets in the Schools. I also do some editing on the side. I walk daily in the woods outside my house, get down to the Bay Area for concerts and museums, and travel the world when I can. I've learned bits of languages from my travels, but am not nearly adept enough to list them as navigable here.

PHILOSOPHY

Borders are rather fictitious. I like the idea that we're all of one organism, peering at, and sometimes recognizing, ourself through different pairs of eyes. We live in invisible cities.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

To start with, I attended a very fine potluck put together by one of our fellow couchsurfers here behind the Redwood Curtain. Afterward, I stayed with lots of excellent hosts in New Zealand and Australia. We local couchsurfers occasionally gather to keep this community strong.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Before joining this site, I belonged to a hospitality exchange or two (before we were all surfing online). I had stayed in a couple of different homes in the US, and had pleasant experiences; and I've also had travelers stay with me. While traveling the world, I had definitely stayed on all sorts of couches, hammocks, beds, what-have-you. I joined CS before heading to New Zealand and Australia and stayed with several amazing hosts, and also met up with other good surfers along the journey.

Interests

Travel, music, literature, arts, hiking.

• animals
• arts
• books
• literature
• poetry
• singing
• architecture
• coloring
• concerts
• potluck
• shopping
• traveling
• music
• cycling
• hiking
• surfing
• muslim
• boxing
• languages
• tourism
• beaches
• rivers

Music, Movies, and Books

Rock, metal, middle eastern, world, unexpected junctures—recent concerts attended include Willie Nelson, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Rush, Judas Priest. Movies?—I'm open. Writers: Calvino, Tolkien, Wallace Stevens, Borges, British Romantics of 19th century, Shakespeare.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

A young man in Marrakesh brought me to his friend's music store deep in the suk in order to see the picture his friend had taken of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant when they were performing in Djemma el-Fna in 1994. No picture there, but I was then led to the shop-owner's home where my guide left me. Still no picture (I was told I would see it later, but never did), though Tariq, the owner, of Berber descent, brought me and his boom box to the top of a nearby, abandoned mosque and played me a recording of Page and Plant along with Moroccan musicians, apparently rendered by a fire under the desert night sky. The song—Plant was actually singing clearly enough in Arabic—told part of a legend, The Cascade of Sand, of a time when water flowed across the country as the sand now sifts restlessly, when crops flourished like cedars in Lebanon and all children knew the way of rivers; and then came the tale of a wise and generous king and his queen, battles fought and won, into another verse and still another, the song unfolding though a darkness crept in as the land began to dry up, the seas receding.

The song broke off, there was nothing more. I looked at Tariq, who smiled sadly and shook his head slowly, then shrugged.

“It goes on, of course,” he said. “That was only the beginning. Perhaps you have heard of the Kaskad Ramly—or, more formally, Shalal Ramly—the ancient epic predicting the return of water and glory to Morocco? No? Not many have. It is said that your musicians are completing the entire cycle, traveling our country and learning variations on the song, according to each tribe. Nobody possesses the saga in its entirety. Not yet.”

Laughing at my vehemence to find all the pieces of the song, Tariq told me that he was sworn to keep this to himself until he had been instructed otherwise. But he said he could help me begin: I must find the oldest musician in the village of Imlil. Once there in the High Atlas, I found that old man and found him to be of little use, although he pointed me down to the sands of Zagora, not far from the uncertain border with Algeria. From there, I consulted the Librairie Coranique in nearby Tamegroute where the old librarian Ziryeb produced a book that referred to The Cascade of Sand and the Saharan painted caves of Al-Aïn.

Ziryeb said that the cascade cascaded from sources far beyond the memory of Islam, that there is a connection even with Catholicism—as with the Arabic script around baptismal fonts in Spain, the words, according to this book, "becoming, across time and space, the Mother’s name, wada lubim beneath her feet and dark robes, Guadalupe with outspread hands, offering: hidden water. Some say the fountainhead, the womb water, originates where the desert begins," in these caves, that this tied into the time when the waters of the Mediterranean Sea dried up—this was when the great mountain chain still blocked off the Atlantic Ocean, before it eroded, leaving only Jebel Musa and Jebel Tariq—Gibraltar—separated by just a dozen kilometers of ocean. I was able to find a driver who took me to Al-Aïn in southern Morocco. In these caves, the paintings alone, dating to pre-Islamic times, hold interest for their color and imagery, as animal and human forms are forbidden in Muslim art and architecture and can hardly be found anywhere throughout Morocco. A portion of the fable of the sand “waterfall” is depicted upon the walls. It is said that a hermit dwelled there during the reign of Moulay Abd al-Hafiz and was considered either prophetic or insane.

I myself, for the time being, because of what I found next, am forbidden to tell you the rest of my own story, though I can say that afterward an errand awaited me in Marrakesh, to which I headed straightway before I set off for the islands of music in the Maghreb. Yet by the time you and I meet, who knows what changes may have occurred? Pouring me another pint might at least get me to share some exquisite details which I could not reveal here.

Teach, Learn, Share

I can always share a poem or two from memory, my own and others', and can share lore of poets.

What I Can Share with Hosts

Stories of travel, of course. Perspective from the United States after having been to many other countries around the globe. A wee bit of music, and a good smattering of poetry.

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Austria, Bolivia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Laos, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, Vatican City State

Countries I’ve Lived In

Israel, United States

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