CURRENT MISSION

I don't want to be the only one here.Filling up all the bowls at this party, Taking all the laughs. I would like you To start putting things on the table That can also feed the soul The way I do. That way We can invite A hell of a lot more Friends. -Hafiz

ABOUT ME

Since retiring it has been years of travel and skiing. Srs advised me to do the physically rigorous parts of the bucket list first since you don't know which mind or body part will give out when. Good advice! I will eventually get back to art and writing. Maybe. Since everyone is sure I have nothing to offer. Sure.

Judging from miscellaneous profiles here's the deal breaker: My total cumulative consumption of alcohol in a year is usually under one cup. I drank half a cup with Ms. Herberg so there is half a cup left to go in 2008. Okay, that does it. No place to sleep now.

Right now, in 2020, the coronavirus pandemic drove me back to Abiquiu. I am staying with a former landlady in a small house with 3 rescue dogs and 2 cats, grateful to be safe and have a roof over my head. Thank God for the Rescue People.

PHILOSOPHY

Personal philosophy changes. I never get to entrench in any viewpoint and am sort of surprised at how others get away with that. As soon as I believe in something, even obvious things others have no conflict with, I get emphatically shown about three other sides and then three more tangents.

You still have to do the best you can in each situation. Wishy-washy rarely works.

A lot of situations aren't even interesting until you try to figure out God's Will. (Just lost the last remaining couches with that one.)

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN When people want to know what I am doing to build a community, as this section addresses, I plead that that's a major undertaking (having spent 10 years as a Community Organizer in Chicago I feel like I did my time) outside my current interest but when I am home (where is home? Planet Earth is home.) Couchsurfing didnt allow logins when needed in Van, Turkey so from now on I ask well in advance or that's the goal anyway.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

A few couchsurfers have stayed here. I have stayed on a few couches. Overall, positive experiences.

Neighbors are very protective of each other.

If you cause me any sort of problem it will be mentioned in review.

Interests

Stone sculpture. Tried to cut back on travel but life feels lacking in exploration without it.

Goldilocks tendency to explore buildings, countries, neighborhoods or parts of buildings like the attics of old hotels I wasn't invited into. I have never crashed through a ceiling. City infrastructure. Exploring bridges, transit, sewer systems and canals.

Don't worry. My exploration does not include invasion of people's medicine cabinets, attics, basements, drawers, closets or journals.

• arts
• architecture
• running
• traveling
• hiking
• canoeing
• skiing
• tennis
• engineering
• film

Music, Movies, and Books

Music: An unsophisticated, non-hostile vibe. Listen to this and I'm back in the early 70s dancing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzmf7ZJRI9M clean, simple, but maybe it is hostile. Jazz, say Thelonius Monk, is beyond me. Too soft doesn't work either. Mika, Jacques Brel, Gorecki, Evelyn Evelyn, Fleet Foxes and The Apocalypsos are in the car CD line up. Oh wait, I sold the car with all the CDs in it.

It's pretty good when people at work spontaneously burst into song. Pop songs of any decade, the more unlikely the better. Singing around the campfire. Streets of Laredo, I've Been Working on the Railroad... Sweat lodge songs when I was sweating a lot.

I sing around the house and while working but you don't have to listen.

Movies: Currently watching art and architecture documentaries on Netflix Instant. Used to like "fiction" but now want films to have to come up with footage to prove their points = Audience from Hell.

Babe, Pulp Fiction, Brother From Another Planet, Fight Club, Ripley's Game, Jackie Brown, High Art, Marion Bridge, Man on Wire, Into the Wild, Zentropa, Groundhog Day, The Razor's Edge, Dogville, The Maid, Teshigahara's Antonio Gaudi, Factory Girl, and Run Lola Run are in the top hefty baker's two dozen ever. Seven Samurai is exactly what life looks like and what happens if you have a warrior personality. The Big Lebowski or Archer when I want to laugh, Grindhouse: Planet Terror when I want to scream. Pathfinder (old Lapland movie of a group crossing mountains), A Most Wanted Man (Do I care that critics thought it was nothing? Not a bit. Watched it in the theater then four times on an airplane). Animation faves: Grave of the Fireflies, Aeon Flux. A quote from Aeon Flux:

Trevor: One wish, and it's yours.
Cybil: Anything?
Trevor: Just no heads on plates. I'm going to get a drink, would you like one?
Cybil: No, no thank you.
Trevor: Right, that would have been it you know.

2012 favorite films: Argo, Midnight in Paris, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Elena and This Must be the Place.

Books: Hafiz poems. Last novel read was The Sirens of Baghdad by Yasmina Khadra, very insightful about Iraq and has a mindblowing ending. Retirement reading has included Moby Dick and War and Peace which has become my go to manual about war. I would happily take a semester long class discussing War and Peace even though I am so opinionated about parts and what I got out of it, it would annoy the teacher.

Last non fiction: After traveling in Pakistan I am struggling through Three Cups of Tea. By the end of chapter 4 enough things weren't in sync with my experience I googled to see if it was challenged as a fraud. Yup. The author might not even have climbed K2.

Art: (not that anyone asked)... Gianlorenzo Bernini and Rodin make me shake, Fra Angelico blew my mind once I saw the real thing instead of reproductions. If you are in Houston the art museum has Fra Angelico's souls ascending and descending from the higher worlds. Art preferences are 400 years too late but I look at everything and get obsessed.

Architecture: Eames' house in Santa Monica, Louis Kahn, John Lautner, Norman Foster, Neil Denari, Gaudi, Frank Gehry, Ra's cave dwellings, Tibetan monasteries, Matisse Chapel, Norwegian cabins with grass roofs. The Spring Green, Wisconsin FLW houses totally charge me up. This FLW house in Detroit: http://curbed.com/archives/2011/03/23/call-it-a-comeback-restoring-frank-lloyed-wright-in-detroit.php,. WPA lodges.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

While running in the desert a huge, solo elk charged past. If it was a race he won. Made me feel like it is fine to go through life alone, and now that I am doing a lifetime worth of pent up projects it is double fine.

Being old and everything, my peers seem to think I should relish the chance to spend my retirement taking care of them but it is my chance, finally, to travel and that is how it is. An almost impossible miracle that God gave me. The price was taking an ego hit: worth it. Everything has a price. Not complaining. Got bit by the travel bug.

Teach, Learn, Share

Local pre-Spanish ruins. Great hikes. Since young couch surfers who have stayed here want to be farmers I discussed it with a farmer and can pass on what he said about entering the field if you didn't grow up on a farm.

What I Can Share with Hosts

Clean, respectful.

Countries I’ve Visited

Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Côte d'Ivoire, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Ethiopia, France, French Polynesia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Netherlands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Nicaragua, North Korea, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Romania, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Viet Nam, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Countries I’ve Lived In

Chile, Mexico, United States

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