about me

What's new?

July, 2008. I'm housesitting in Spokane until late September.

FAQ
(Frequently Asked Questions, aFraid to Ask Questions, and Fun to Answer Questions)

I've just discovered your site. What should I read first to understand what you're all about?

Probably Best of zines, but that's all stuff I wrote years ago. For recent stuff, I recommend browsing the archives, linked at the bottom of the home page. To my knowledge I have the only blog archives on the whole internet that are edited down to the best stuff. After that, take your pick from my essays. Also here are some interviews of me by Tim Boucher and by Burn the Furniture, and audio interviews by Aaron (mp3, 40 minutes, 18Mb) and KMO.

How do you say your name?

My first name rhymes with Dan, not Don. Think of the Flock of Seagulls song, not the Kurosawa film. And I pronounce my last name like it rhymes with "free-er," but the French pronunciation is cool too.

Can you summarize your thinking?

The objective physical universe is a mental construct of limited usefulness. Reality itself has the structure of a dream -- and the Dreamer has depths that we cannot imagine. "You" and "I" are like two fingertips that don't know there's a body -- and that "body" is probably the fingertip of an even larger body, and so on...

So I agree with religion that our world arises from awareness, intelligence, and intention -- but I also agree with science that reality is improvised and full of experiments and mistakes. Sometimes the mistakes are epic. We are in one now. If the biosphere is a body, then industrial civilization is a cancer, in which disconnected selfish cells multiply and consume and destroy and call it "progress."

Civilization was not a fluke -- given human intelligence and mutability, it was inevitable that we would find a way to systematically extend our power beyond our wisdom. And civilization is not all bad -- it has led to valuable innovations and learning. What I don't know is whether we will learn our way out of cancerous behavior, and if so, how long it will take us.

I don't believe in Utopia, or perfection, or "progress" in an absolute sense. I suspect that everything that is possible already exists somewhere, and everything that exists will pass. Complex systems, good and bad, rise and fall and rise again. No matter what happens, you always have another move.

How about a haiku?

What are your goals, your purpose, your mission?

I am not goal-oriented. You could say I'm "process-oriented," or that I "surf the flow." I do have visions, like covering half my land with food-bearing trees and flowing water, or someday riding a horse across North America on the ruined freeways. But I let go of those as destinations, and think of them more like directions, while focusing my attention on the path in front of me.

The book of Ecclesiastes is a big influence on me -- everything is vapor, everything will turn to dust, but we can still have a good time and live a good life. "Whatever your hands find to do, do it with your might."

How do you live?

I make all major life decisions to minimize stress. I'm preemptively retired and independently poor, dodging rent through housesitting and couch-surfing. In spring and summer I usually have long housesits in Spokane, and go up to work on some land I bought in 2004. I don't plan to live there full time unless I have to, but I'm very slowly building a cabin out of indigenous materials and growing fruit trees. For more about that, check out the landblog.

What blogging software do you use? And why don't you enable comments on it?

There are three reasons I don't do comments, any one of which alone would be sufficient. 1) I love hand-coding my own html (so I don't use any blogging software), and comments are tricky to code. I feel a spiritual need to keep things uncomplicated. 2) Allowing comments would obligate me to read all the comments, and I spend too much time reading computer screens already. 3) I want to have only stuff of the highest (subjective) quality as permanent content, and doing it the normal way, with comments and permalinks, would make it impossible (or rude) for me to filter down my own posts, and all the reader comments, to the best stuff. A principle of permaculture is that anything in high enough quantity becomes a pollutant, and I believe the internet has been polluted by too much storage capacity -- if people can save everything, they forget how to know quality.

Do you plan on publishing your writing?

It's already published right here! And through the cutting-edge technology of the "printer," you can make paper copies yourself, and my creative commons licence gives you the right to duplicate and distribute them non-commercially.

Why don't you submit your writing to places that will allow it to reach a wider audience?

No one who understands fame wants to be famous. I like my small, smart audience. Hopefully in a few years someone will "steal" "my" ideas and go on the book tours so I don't have to. How about you?

Will you come speak at my class or event?

I give my writing away free, because no matter how much I give away, I still have it! I'm much less generous with my time. Also I don't have a car. If you want me to come speak, you'll have to pay all my transportation costs (ideally in cash), and if it's in another city, someone will have to pick me up and drop me off at the airport/station. And if I'm going to be staying the night, or in town for more than a few hours when I'm not at the event, I need a place to hang out with kitchen and internet access. I don't mind crowded messy places or sleeping on couches -- I'd much rather stay with real people than in a hotel. And if your event is so low budget that no one is being paid, you don't have to pay me. You just have to make it easy for me. I'm not saying I've earned that level of treatment -- just that without it, I'd rather stay home.

What's your email address?

My name as one word, and then gmail and the other stuff.
I read all personal emails and answer most. I like answering questions. If you send me a link, you'll either get a quick thanks or nothing. There is no chance of engaging me in a deep philosophical discussion. Sending me stuff to read is not doing me a favor -- it's asking me a favor. Now, if you distill out the key ideas so I don't have to read it, then you're doing me a favor. I often hurt people's feelings by not liking something that they like. There's a lot of fiction that I hate even though I agree with its ideology. If you just want to email me and say hi, I like that! You don't have to "bring gifts."

Do you take donations?

More photos?

Here's me at the permaculture class in April 2006. (Thanks Chuck!) And here I am on my land in Summer 2005.

personal links

100 things about me
Eyesight recovery
I bought land!
My July 2004 bike trip
Top 100 Songs
Top 25 albums plus Hawkwind