this has gotta be fast … tonight i fell asleep on th go train to pickering and woke up in ajax …
for those who don’t know (and really why would you) … ajax is past pickering … = … i’m a freakin tool sometimes … bodes well for the next year eh 
so i gotta go to bed, as tomo promises to be more exhausting …
TO is great … i love this city more and more every time …
YCI is amazing … i have spent the past 2 days getting to know my future everything-mates (apparently spending 24 hours a day with the same 3 people for 2 months can be a bit challenging ???) … they seem like pretty great people, and i can’t wait to find out what adventures lie in store for us …
also been getting a fly-by orientation of YCI, HIV/AIDS, development work, amharic, challenges overseas, etc… lots of learning and lots of emotions… we spent the morning today getting a crash course on the science of HIV (nice refresher, as it’s been a few year) and then the afternoon hearing from a couple toronto-nians living with the virus … i have never met someone who is positive before … and it was NOT what i was expecting … he had an intensely intimate presentation style, and really grabbed you by the heart and took you on a whirlwind tour of his life over 15 + years … through the ups and downs and frustration and heartbreak .. and … sheer inspiration … and the light at the end of the tunnel …
my mind is already flying at 1000 miles an hour, my heart has already been tossed for a loop … and we are only on day 2
i gotta go to bed … thanks for birthday wishes and support … i am the luckiest person on earth to know the people i know and to be able to call them friends …
i will miss a lot of things … comfortable beds … hot showers … youtube … and obviously my friends and family …
but there isn’t much i will miss more than my music …
i was just sifting through my collection trying to pick an album to listen to while i write this … realizing that it will be the last that i listen to for next 12 months … (i picked The Strokes – Is This It, by the way … zippy and cheerful without actually being either) …
i mean … i have an mp3 player with about 14 albums on it … mostly classics from the late 60’s through mid 70’s … the kind of CD’s that were made when artists were making music instead of entertainment … the kind of albums one can hear 100 times and still find new things to love in the hidden corners of the random 7th song … that never had a hook to make it on the radio, but have more heart and soul than everything on modern top 40 radio combined …
that list, for those not inclined to lurking on my facebook page, is as follows (coz i’m so damned proud of it … watch me get it stolen within the first week … pride go’eth before the fall):
Albums
1. Mozart – Musical Masterpieces (we share a birthday … he got all the talent, and i am still jealous)
2. Charles Mingus – Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
3. Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited (was a tough choice … freewheelin’ is probably by favorite ALBUM ever … but not quite as … great … as highway 61 … which is probably why i like it … it was dylan before he was the greatest)
4. Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground and Nico (listened to it compulsively while reading “on the road” … so it is intertwined in my dreams of roaming the highways of the world)
5. Jimi Hendrix – Are You Experienced?
6. The Beatles – Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (i have never actually listened to it … i was going to put on Revolver, but i wanted at least one album to discover for the first time while i travel)
7. The Band – Music From Big Pink
8. Neil Young – After the Gold Rush
9. Marvin Gaye – What’s Going on?
10. Joni Mitchell – Blue
11. Led Zeppelin – IV
12. The Rolling Stones – Exile on Main Street
13. Pink Floyd – The Dark Side of the Moon (i like the wall better, but it’s huge, and that would have meant cutting out marley)
14. Bob Marley – Legend (won’t you help to sing, these songs of freedom)
Random Songs
1. Bob Dylan – Girl From the North Country (all time favorite song)
2. Billy Joel – Piano Man
3. Sam Cooke – A Change is Gonna Come
4. The Who – My Generation
5. The Clash – London Calling
6. John Lennon – Imagine
7. Queen and David Bowie – Under Pressure
so i guess i have music … but it’s not the same … that music is designed for long rides on buses and trains … it’s not the kind of collection i can turn to no matter how i am feeling, and find something to make me feel … like me …
and i think that’s what music is to me … something that is always there to remind me of where i am … how i am feeling … how i am never alone … my favorite time of day is taking long walks in the middle of the night with my headphones … it’s when i do all my best thinking … and it defines eras in my life …
on the bright-side … i am confident that no matter where i go … there will be music … granted it may not be mood specific … but one can’t deny that music seems to be a human universal … there is something about it that beats at the soul of what it means to be a human being … it has inspired up-tight conservatives and loosey-goosey lefties for a hundred generations to get up and move their bodies in absurd ways … from backwoods tribes dancing to the beat of tribal drums to irish folk bobbing to a fiery fiddle … to horny post-adolescents sweating on each other in dark rooms to machine made beats … music is essential to humanity … and i am sure i will find it wherever i look … so i guess i am busy bitching about nothing …
i will still miss having nick drake and elliot smith and death cab to keep me company when i am sad …
and coldplay and radiohead to sit with on rainy days …
when i am inspired, i will yearn for ani difranco and tupac and dave matthews …
when i am angry with the machine, rage against the machine and the nightwatchman will be half a world away …
and while bob and neil and joni are musically brilliant … so are john mayer and sufjan stevens, the grateful dead and justin timberlake …
[le sigh]
i leave for the regina airport in less than 6 hours … and the journey begins …
i planned to write this whole post about how amazing it has been spending time with my family, and how hard it is to imagine leaving them again … after being part of their daily life again for the past 2 months …
but i think that thinking too hard about that might break my heart … and i don’t feel like being in despair just now … it is something i have been dreading for months … and now that it is upon me … i wish nothing but to turn away from it and think about other things …
[funny ... i planned to discuss something impossibly hard ... and instead talked about music ... once again, music provided welcome escape in the most unexpected way]
i love them … and i will miss them … and there is nothing i wish for more in the entire world than to see them again … ”the pain of parting is nothing, to the joy of meeting again” – Charles Dickens …
sadly … that doesn’t make this any easier …
next post from toronto …
Filed under: Canada | Tags: Bigotry, Human Rights, Humanity, Ignorance, Israel, Love, Torture, U.N.
a friend of mine told me i was anti-semitic for criticizing israel …
i get this a lot … mainly b/c a) i am not afraid to speak my mind and b) i don’t think anybody benefits when we DON’T talk about things … jane goodall says it’s our ability to communicate that separates us from the apes … so why waste it ???
it always boggles my mind though …
how does criticizing a COUNTRY … equal … HATRED directed at members of a religion ???
if i don’t like India’s policies … am i anti-Hindu ??? (note: i don’t have problems with India, and really admire Hinduism)
if i disagree with Nazi Germany … am i anti-Christian ???
- Israel is in possession of hundreds of undeclared nuclear weapons, though they have signed no treaties regarding their use (or lack thereof) …
- Israel condones the use of torture on its enemies – foreign and domestic …
- Israel condemns Iran for wanting to “wipe Israel off the map” … which is fair … except that if you look at a map from the 1950’s … Israel was called Palestine … and Israel wiped Palestine off the map …
- Israel has violated 68 separate U.N. resolutions, yet every attempt to curtail their blatant abuses of human rights has been vetoed by the United States …
- Israel has used decades fear, violence and war to herd the people of Palestine into territories, built walls of Apartheid around them, and now apparently is starving them …
- etc.
i disagree STRONGLY … with all of this … (Note: i am not saying the Arab people of Palestine are correct, nor am I saying i have the answer … i am saying only that i do not believe nuclear weapons, torture, apartheid, human rights abuses, etc. are EVER justified)
but if i SAY that i disagree … i am anti-semitic … i am racist … and i clearly hate “the Jews” …
you know who i do hate ??? … assholes* ….
for the record …
i love people … all people …
i love jews and muslims and atheists and even nihilists …
i love homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals, transgendered individuals and everything in between (though i think categories are arbitrary, and nature does not categorize itself) …
i love cat-people and dog-people and even fish-people …
i love people with skin … the colour of that skin seems highly irrelevant to me, because inside we all have the same things going on … and i love people without skin … if they exist …. b/c that’s gotta hurt …
i love the guy on the street corner with his hat out on the ground … and the guy who owns the building he is leaning against …
i love the guy driving my taxi, the guy in hamilton who built that taxi and the woman in china who assembled one small piece of the headlight of that taxi …
i don’t care who you are … who your God is … who you dream about having sex with … what you eat … or what you do for a living …
we ARE all the same … and we are all entitled to the same things … encapsulated best in the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights … “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”
as long as you are not deliberately hurting anybody (like the state of Israel) … stepping on their rights (like the state of Israel) … removing their dignity (like the state of Israel) … or treating them like somehow they are worth less than you are … (aside: how can one person … ANY person … possibly be worth more or less than you … really ???) …. then i love you and you are my brother (or sister) …
hating the leaders of a state, because they don’t declare weapons that can kill millions, because they torture their own citizens, because deny the inhabitants of their country their basic human rights and dignity … does not make me, or anybody else anti-semitic …
and slinging loaded rhetoric and negative labels at people who happen to challenge your beliefs proves only your own ignorance … *(note hypocrisy: “you know who i do hate ??? … assholes” = Brandon is ignorant)
Filed under: Canada | Tags: Africa, Knowledge, Life, Planning, Poverty, Talent, Time, Travel
i have just released this blog wide … for the first time ever more than just my closest friends can read my thoughts …
not sure how i feel about that … i naturally lean towards privacy … oh well … too late now … i would love your comments if you want to leave any …
people who i don’t talk to often keep asking me why i am going to africa for a year … here is the short version …
as i see it … in this life, we have 2 resources to spend …
1. Time – an undefined quantity of minutes and hours and days, with which we can do whatever we want … good or bad, happy or sad …
2. Talents – each person has a unique set of things that they and they alone are good at … when you mix up this unique combination of skills it equals one thing … one thing that each of us is better at than anybody else in the entire world … (that means you) …
if you can identify your unique talent, and use your time to take advantage of it, you can achieve your maximum potential … and the sky is very truly the limit …
the easiest example is Wayne Gretzky … 99 was arguably better at playing behind the net than anybody in the history of the world … something about his skills lent him naturally towards anticipatory vision in a dynamic environment and play-making and confidence under pressure … he found his skills, honed them to a fine art through thousands of hours of practice at something he loved … and re-wrote the record books in doing so …
i spent the first 23 years of my life lusting after money and power … then one day, i had a little talk with myself in the mirror … i started asking myself hard questions about what really mattered to me, and what i wanted … and who i was … and i realized the sheer selfishness of focusing all my energy on bettering MYSELF …
wouldn’t it be great if i could instead focus all my energy on improving the lives of others, and improve my own situation in the process ???
but how do you “improve” anything ??? … i don’t know how much i buy into universal ethics or morality … the idea of “saving the world” would be impossible if it wasn’t totally ridiculous …
but i know that i love my life … i love the act of living it and i know how real my emotions are for me … how amazing it feels to love and be loved … and to laugh and to cry … i know that all organisms primary purpose is towards life and procreation … that this quest of life is the miracle of our earth …
so to me … to provide the opportunity to experience LIFE itself … to those who would otherwise certainly die … is to give the greatest gift i have to give …
so now i have a goal … “though my life’s work i will provide the opportunity for life to as many people as possible” … but how ????
what do i know about anything ??? … i am a middle class white kid from canada, with a degree in psychology …
i knew i needed to learn … so to learn, i designed a trip … a trip that would take me as close as possible to the heart of poverty and death … where more lives are snuffed prematurely than anywhere else on earth …
they say you must “know your enemy” …. the quick answer to “why are you going to africa” is “to forge a personal relationship with my sworn enemy … so i know how to beat him … “
i HOPE … that after a year in africa … and then a 2nd trip in 2009/2010 through eastern europe, south asia and south america … that i will understand in a personal way the plight of those who have been encased in poverty and disease since their very conception …
with 2 years of first hand knowledge … i hope to understand in a real way how i can optimize my time, and my talents in putting one piece of the poverty puzzle in place …
how i can maximize my potential in achieving my goal … and have fun doing it …
how i can provide the opportunity for life and love … to as many people as possible who would otherwise know only pain and death …
then i can come home, go back to school, and …?…?…?…?…?……………….
that’s why i am going to africa …
since planning the trip, i have worked 75 hour weeks for 16 months, given up my social life, walked away from the girl i loved, volunteered full time for 2 months, spent thousands on medication and equipment, begged everyone i know for money, lived in 4 different cities/towns and spent hundreds of hours researching …
and now …
more than 2 years since i set out on the quest for knowledge …
i am off … chasing my dreams …
Filed under: Canada | Tags: Africa, Disease, Horror, Life, Poverty, Statistics, Travel
journey begins in 5 days …
5 days …
in 13 days i will be on a plane … best part about that trip ??? … 19 hours on planes an in airports from Toronto to Addis … yippie doo …
small price to pay i suppose … as 2 years of work and planning comes to fruition and the journey begins …
8 weeks in ethiopia … teaching kids about AIDS and how to start businesses …
8 weeks in sudan … helping a community to crawl out of the grip of poverty …
kenya looks a bit unstable … so perhaps i will head around the other side of Lake Victoria for a couple weeks in Uganda … where, thanks to a keen government in the early 80’s HIV/AIDS was stopped in its tracks … poverty doesn’t die quite so easily, it would seem …
then maybe into rwanda … the home of the genocide that turned neighbors on each other … 800,000 people died, because suddenly non-existent racial differences became more important than common humanity … not unlike the british terror attacks a few years back … bill clinton calls this the “central psychological plague of the 21st century” …
then maybe a few weeks in tanzania … dar es salaam has exploded thanks to foreign investment (another word for ‘rich people from other countries make money on the backs of locals’) … the people have food … and the NGO community has thrived in the safety net of the almighty dollar … much to learn there … then maybe a quick visit zanzibar and relax on the beach … and drink until i forget the horrors i have seen … (and by this plan, i skipped the slums of nairobi, said to be the face of the devil himself) …
i’m 5-6 months in now as i move through mozambique … down the coast where surfers frolick in the sand … inland … where the africa’s favorite sons rise and fall like the tides … war … famine … drought … disease …
now where ??? … maybe down into south africa … where the average person make 10 to 15 times what most africans make … but racial hatred still makes much of the country unsafe …
or maybe up into zimbabwe … the land of Mugabe … savior of his people from colonial rule … a fucking ruthless corrupt bastard …
but who knows … by then who will i be ??? …
will i be broken ??? … or just cracked a little ??? …
standing strong … marching forward ??? … or on my knees … seeking refuge in opium dens, or worse … hiding among the wealthy on package tours of botswana wildlife ???
everything i know i read in books, or online … ever read a description of a flower ??? … or a song ??? … or a starving child ??? … how does a description compare to a picture ??? … how does a picture compare to reality ??? …
i’m going because books and pictures are not enough … to change something you must understand it … to understand it you must live it … smell it … taste it …
it must become one with you …. and you with it …
shake hands with the devil … stare him in the eyes …
half the world lives on less than $2.00/day …
1 billion people have no clean water
2.5 billion people have no access to sanitation
1 billion people are starving right now as you are reading this … as i am writing this …
what the fuck use are statistics ??? … 1 death is a tragedy … 1 million deaths are a statistic … what does that make 1 BILLION ???
statistics don’t breathe … statistics don’t cry … statistics don’t wake up with empty stomachs and still find more love and laughter in every day that i do on my throne of temperature controlled luxury …
1 out of every 4 deaths are caused by AIDS (preventable), TB (preventable), Malaria (preventable) and diseases related to dirty water (preventable) …
how do you prevent them ??? … with money …
80% …. EIGHTY PERCENT … of those deaths are in children under 5 …
WHO HAS MONEY ??? … the farmer who’s son is dying of AIDS and requires more than he makes in 5 years to save his life ??? … or me ??? … and you ??? … and everyone we know ??? … who let 5 year olds die so that we can have that TV we really want …
everyone knows … nobody does anything … words are not reality … and only reality can really move you …
BOOKS … BOOKS … BOOKS …
i can read about history … geography … politics … infant mortality … education rates … impact of HIV on primary enrollment …
books don’t tell me what is going to happen to me though …
books don’t tell me what i will see when i close my eyes … what i will dream about at night …
everyone is so worried about my health and safety … ‘did you get all your shots?’ … ‘make sure you have emergency money!’ …
health and safety i can handle …
it’s … the horror … that scares me in my soul …
what happens … when the devil stares back ???
worse still … what happens, if i chicken out ??? … if i take the easy road … the tourist road ??? … if i fail myself ???
