I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where
they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

- H. D. Thoreau

Nate is a couchsurfing ambassador to the city of Nashville, Tennessee. In the past year and a half he has had some sixty or seventy travelers from www.couchsurfing.com staying in his house for shorter or longer periods of time. He lives together with his girlfriend Sara and their three cats, the youngest of them just two weeks out of its mum. Unfortunately, we did not get to spend enough time with Nate to justify a full-blown portrait, but in the following I will try to do a little personal sketch, anyway.

We first met Nate and Sara in the drive-way outside their house. An inconspicuous if somewhat scruffy-looking couple, they were both carrying several armfuls of icecream rescued from a dumpster outside an organic grocery store in town. As the icecream was obviously melting in the late afternoon sun, we nodded a quick hello, and immediately offered to take them wherever they were going. That is how we ended up at the intersection of four softball fields in the beautifully laid out Shelby Park.

The team they rooted for turned out to consist of a bunch of former drug-addicts and homeless guys who now lived together in a commune house on a rehabilitation programme. They took some serious blows out there on the field, but when the game was over, we got their spirits back up with our free-for-all eat-till-you-burst icecream buffet. It was a huge success, and it gave me a good feel for the kind of activities that take up most of Nate's time.

Nate is 23 years old, educated in economics, and a professed anarchist. He agitates for open source computer programs, and endeavors to make www.couchsurfing.com a non-profit organization with public budgets. He swears by Henry David Thoreau's uncompromising manifest of simple living known as Walden (1854), and once he even stayed the night at the site of Thoreau's cabin near Walden Pond, Massachusetts, to read the book where it was written. I myself have been strongly influenced by Thoreau's views, and I still like to quote some of his one-liners such as "read not the Times, read the Eternities" and "they pay you to be something less than a man". All in all, I guess I consider Thoreau to be a kind of early day Unabomber substituting his own being for bombs.

Not surprisingly, Nate is part of Nashville's "Food Not Bombs" programme. They cook vegetarian meals from dumpster food, and give them out to whoever is hungry - and with a homeless population of some 2000 that actually amounts to quite a few. Nate, however, does not allow himself the luxury of being strictly vegetarian. "I don't like food being wasted," he says while munching on a slice of pizza fresh out of the bin, "so as long as it comes from a dumpster, I'll eat just about anything."

Nate's involvement with the homeless continues into his protests against expropriation of low income housing in East Nashville, and his fight for the rights of squatters to occupy empty houses around town. He is planning a big event to create awareness about the situation, and is also due to deliver a talk to the mayor and the city council sometime next month. And then, of course, there is the rally against the proposed completion of Interstate 69, a highway four football fields wide projected to go all the way across the US from Mexico to Canada. According to Nate, the prospects of I-69 are dire. Not only will it contribute to the erosion of the landscape, the pollution of underground water systems, and the extinction of rare animal species, it will also further the exploitation of workers from Central and Southern American countries.

Later in the evening, Nate takes us to his usual haunt to meet up with fellow activists. JJ's is a two-in-one convenience store and coffee shop. It has a large sitting space flanked by red brick walls with a rugged collection of photos by local artists. Students and other youngsters occupy most of the tables, talking and typing while enjoying Noah's Float, Schoppenhauer's Will, Studying Nietzsche, and similar pseudo-intellectual drinks. Sara drifts off to a radical women's meeting in the corner, leaving us behind with Nate and an oversized bottle of microbrewery beer.

"I'm not a revolutionary anarchist," Nate explains. "For all I care, capitalism can just rot on the vine. I'm here to create alternatives. Ideas that aren't implemented don't really interest me. Like Thoreau, I try to live as I preach. Who knows where I am in ten years? I sure don't. That's why I try to make the most of my idealism why I still got it. I mean, what else is there to do?"

Nothing much, I think as I finish the rest of my beer. At least, not if you want to effect changes. I know I want to for myself, but when it comes to others, I always start to falter. Can it really be justified? Can I really pretend to know better than they? Perhaps it is just my European preference for reflection without action that rears its ugly head. That is how I feel around Nate. In fact, that is how I feel around most of the Americans we meet. The distance from idea to implementation simply seems to be way shorter over here. The only remaining truly primitive society, French philosopher Baudrillard calls the US in his book America.

Nate is currently writing a book of his own. Its working title is The Economics of Isolation. A long kind of essay on alternative social organization, he tells us. He has got the whole thing set up and laid out in his mind, but finding time to actually put it on paper is a real hassle. Volunteering often comes in the way of researching and writing, but he does not complain. This is how he chose it to be - never to let thought get in the way of action.

Before I go to sleep that night, I remove an old-school typewriter and a box of research material from the mattress in the room at the far back of the house. Piles of articles, leaflets, and underground magazines cover the floor. A cat tray and a couple of partly assembled bicycles take up any remaining space. I sense chaos and creation. Just like I sensed it when I squatted with a punk band in an abandoned pizza joint in Melbourne, Australia. Back then I felt drawn to it. Now I feel somewhat put off by it. Still, I retain the romantic notion that a pure mind is best contrasted by an impure body. Apparently, without the latter I often become sceptic of the first.

I lie in the dark with my eyes wide open. Outside, I can hear the freight train go by, blowing its whistle over and over again. I try to adjust to the change from a sterile and personal motel room to a warm and friendly if somewhat unsanitary hovel. A passage from Alexis de Toucqueville's On the Democracy in America keeps popping up in my mind. He wrote it back in the 1830s when touring the US from France to conduct a survey of the American prison administration. Instead he wound up writing his magnus opus about the democratic institutions of a young nation.

I remember copying the passage from the chapter "Why great revolutions will become more rare" to my computer. Unable to sleep, I take out my laptop, and start browsing through my documents. The screen sheds a sharp light on the objects lying about in the room. I feel serene, sitting there all quiet in the dead of night, alight with the thoughts of the past. When I find the passage, I immediately read it out to myself:

As I stand amidst the ruins of our revolutions, do I really dare speak it? Do I dare say that revolutions are not what I fear the most for coming generations? If we continue to wander restlessly around our own narrow circles of domestic interest, we may ultimately shut ourselves off from those great and powerful public emotions which perturb nations - but which also develop and renew them. Seeing how property changes hands continually - how wealth is pursued with incessant ardor - I cannot but fear that we might reach a point where every new theory is considered a threat, every innovation an irksome toil, and every social reform a stepping-stone to revolution. Then the race of men shall refuse to move any further, afraid of being moved too far.

I dread the day when man shall no longer be able to control his cowardly love of passing joys, when he shall lose interest in the future of himself and his descendants - the day when he shall prefer to glide along the easy current of life rather than make an effort to change its direction according to his own will.

It is a common belief that modern society is a changing society. However, I am afraid that it will become too rooted in its own institutions, in its own prejudices and mannerisms, and that the evolution of man will stop in its tracks. The human mind will forever circle the same point. New ideas will no longer present themselves. Man will ultimately waste his powers on small, isolated matters of no consequence, and though in constant motion will cease to advance.

I close down my laptop, and roll over on the mattress. Again, darkness reigns supreme. I wonder if this is really what it has come to, if Nate is the incarnation of Tocqueville's hopes and fears. A non-revolutionary activist fighting to keep society alive and changing, yet refusing to tear down its walls. Is Nate part of an evolution that Tocqueville could not possibly foresee? Or is he just the last spasm before complete paralysis sets in?

Obviously, I do not get any answers. But the thought of it all slowly numbs my mind, and prepares it for sleep. Long, uninterrupted, dreamless, wonderful sleep. And in the morning, I once again postpone waking up.