CURRENT MISSION

Write! Go to interesting places, meet pleasant people, get to know new landscapes and new ecologies, and write about it all.

ABOUT ME

Most of my friends have described me as fun, friendly and clever, with a bunch of random knowledge and lots of stories to tell.

PHILOSOPHY

"My versions of politics and ethics have to do with taking some really basic, simple values — such as love rather than disconnection — and applying them to situations that I encounter in the real world. The strange thing is, this tends to yield what look like views a lot more complex than you’ll generally see coming out of a complicated string of mental widgets. That’s because of the “real world” part of it — the real world is actually more complicated than any mental widget could ever be, and applying a simple principle or two to the real world yields results a lot more complex-looking (when taken as a whole) than erasing the real world in favor of a complicated (but not as complicated as the real world) mental widget."--Amanda Baggs

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

For now, surfing. Hosting may be a thing in the near-to-mid future though; my living situation is slowly becoming more conducive to it, modulo some renovating and negotiations with housemates.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

In a couple of weeks, it'll be my first time surfing with a host in SF.

Interests

I read voraciously. Nonfiction interests include virtually anything under the sun, though lately I've had a special fondness for ethnography, geography and stuff about cutting-edge low-tech methods in a variety of disciplines. Fiction interests bend toward the speculative; I've been reading a lot of SF by Indigenous authors lately (both North American and Australian), catching up on the New Wave, and getting to know the works of Octavia Butler.

Culture and social justice, and the places where they make contact. Disability and mental illness, queer/trans identity and Indigenous issues are the most familiar. Big on theory, tend to find praxis just follows from there.

Other things...history. Geography. Paleontology. Biology. Beekeeping. Body art. Llamas. Caving. Tai chi. Sand collecting. Inventing languages. Writing novels. Writing travelogues and geographies. Sericulture. Growing gardens and edible mushrooms. The works of Donna Haraway. Tea.

• arts
• culture
• writing
• body art
• ethics
• politics
• technology
• reading
• spelunking
• surfing
• biology
• geography
• history
• languages

Music, Movies, and Books

Everything ever written by Octavia Butler or Donna Haraway. Most anything with Hayao Miyazaki's name on it. Buffy Sainte-Marie, Shiina Ringo, Tagaq, Kongar ool-Ondar, Regina Spektor.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Caving in Australia at Jenolan -- the oldest known caves on Earth. I had to crawl in a few places, but it was so relaxing to be deep within the Earth. The crystal formations and underground river were beautiful.

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Canada, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States