World AIDS Day
I feel ignorant. I am ignorant. But I am less ignorant than most of the world. I don't mean large areas of the developing world where there are HIV/AIDS rates of up to 35% in one nation. These people have witnessed the devestation of AIDS on their own. They know the dangers, but there may be social stigma, financial problems, lack of medical facilities, or male/female relationships that allow a virus that people know about to spread. I believe education is vital but I also know there must be something more. You can scream at the top of your lungs that AIDS exists but it doesn't cure anyone and maybe no one will listen. That is why journalism is increasingly hard for me, because without this profession people might not even know about AIDS devestation, but it still continues, exists and isn't going away and I don't know if talking about it and not doing anything is where I should be right now.
But here in Canada do people really know? Do people care? There are 58,000 Canadians with the virus. When I spoke to people at the AIDS Committee of London for a radio story they told me that immigrant populations are at increasingly high risk because they think that Canada doesn't have an HIV/AIDS problem so they contract it here because of unsafe sex. Females are also increasingly at risk. And everyone makes bad decisions and gets into bad places in their lives, but we know about it, we have an obligation to help those at risk.
I have been home from Africa for about a year now and I still think about it every single day. I want to go back, see how things are changing, see all the positive things that have emerged. I read the BBC and all it talks about is death and devestation, which may very well be true, but maybe because of all of this many of the people I met have a voracity for life that I have witnessed nowhere. Because they have had to fight for it and we haven't, at least not in the same way.
So I guess World AIDS Day is a reminder for people to keep trying. I don't have HIV or AIDS myself so I cannot judge or pretend I understand but I pray for courage for those affected. For children born and unborn, for mothers, for fathers, for grandmothers who are holding down families. I want to tell everyone affected here in Canada, or India, or Africa or the many other places affected worldwide that no one is giving up. Not here. So you all can't give up either. I'm not an optimist by any means, but there is hope.
No Fears of Flying
I am reading a book by Salman Rushdie called The Ground Beneath Her Feet and I came across a passage that I just loved. I kept re-reading it and I thought I would write it out here if Mr. Rushdie doesn't mind. I might help explain a bit about how a lot of us feel right now.
"For a while I have believed...that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached if you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race; that there may even be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers, perhaps; that, in sum, the phenomenon may be as 'natural' a manifestation of human nature as its opposite, but one that has been mostly frustrated, throughout human history, by lack of opportunity. And not only by that: for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identites beneath the false skins of those identities beneath the false skin of those identities which bear the belongers' seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveller, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.
No sooner did we have ships than we rushed to sea, sailing acorss oceans in paper boats. No sooner did we have cars than we hit the road. No sooner did we have airplanes than we zoomed to the furthest corners of the globe. Now we yearn for the moon's dark side, the rocky plains of Mars, the rings of Saturn, the intersteallar deep. We send mechanical photographers into orbit, or on one-way journeys to the stars, and we weep at the wonders they transmit; we are humbled by the mighty images of far-off galazies standing like cloud pillars in the sky, and we give names to alien rocks, as if they were our pets. We hunger for warp space, for the outlying rim of time. And thi si sthe species that kids itself it likes to stay at home, to bind itself with- what are they called again?- ties.
That's my view. You don't have to buy it. Maybe there aren't so many of us after all. Maybe we are disruptive and anti-social and we shouldn't be allowed. Your'e entitled to your opinion. All I will say is sleep soundly, baby. Sleep tight and sweet dreams." - Rushdie
I feel like every small decision we make changes our lives dramatically but we just don't know it. That there is some special channelling of destiny that changes everything. I also believe you have to make it happen, you have to dream and have ideas and you need to follow them because you only live once. Cliche but true. So that's what I say to anyone reading, do it, work it, fly there, jump without a net, try.
The Emerald Isle
I don't know what it is about Ireland, but it just seems to run through my blood. I feel at home there.
It may be the mass amounts of pints I ingested in that country but it just made me happy. I couldn't understand half the people there, making it a little hard to figure out what was going on at times, but that made me laugh all the more.
It rains a lot and the weather changed four times a day, requiring one to bring an umbrella, a sweater, and waterproof shoes everywhere. Don't even get me started on the problems this caused for one's hairstyle. Why even bother with a hair dryer? Nothing ever dried- not even in our lovely dry summer. The clothes we hung in our living room (you couldn't possibly hang anything outside with the unpredictable clouds that float over the island) would take at least three days to dry.
And I can't wait to go back. It won't be the same because I won't be living in a house with four other girls. I won't be getting right drunk four nights a week either. I will actually care about my job this time. But I'm excited. I don't think I'll ever permanently live there- well at this point I can't see myself living anywhere permanently- but I think I could spend a lot more time there. When your distant cousin invites you out to their farm and gives you a wine glass full of brandy how could you not love it?
The memories come back to me all the time. Mostly in pubs. But nothing equates to the craziness of things that occur there.
So in January I get to spend a month there. And it might be cold or rainy or not amazing. But it will be amazing to me. The Irish Sea does something to me (knock the wind out of me) but there is something so comforting about a lovely Irish day and lovely Irish accent.
And I can't wait to get started... on a flight... in a different place... feeling something different....
My love for Eddie...
Words cannot even express how I feel about Eddie Vedder. I don't research him, I don't really look up the band's website. I'm not one of those fans. I just memorize the words to every single one of the songs he sings and feel happy. Or sad. Or whatever emotion he brings out in me that day. Sometimes it's anger. Mostly a happiness. I can probably play every song in my mind but I couldn't tell you their bio. I don't even know if he writes all the songs himself. I really hope so. Because there is something about his voice that just grips me in every way.
Pearl Jam has been there for me through the thick and the thin, through the bad and the good, to speak in pure cliches.
I've listened to their music through breakups, in emotional moments, when I was running along the Grand Canal in Dublin, on a bus in Ghana, all since my older sister first introduced me and it was instant. There is something about his voice.
I just love them. I saw Pearl Jam in concert and it was one of the happiest moments ever- mind you I had drank a lot- and I was so far away I could barely see Eddie, but just the fact that he was there made me happy. He has a beautiful soul. There is something so serene about him. If I look at Pearl Jam's photos I don't find Eddie incredibly attractive necessarily but there is just something so enthralling about him. Like there is a spirit running through him as he drinks red wine onstage. Like he would be my husband in another life where he wasn't a million miles away from the life I lead and I wasn't the anal retentive stresscase I am. You know?
I have taken to listening to Pearl Jam almost every day. When you're drinking a bottle of wine there is no one better. Seriously. And I'm not obsessed with them in some Beatlemania kind of way like I want Paul McCartney to take me on a date, I just love him from afar for his art.
But I feel like usually I watch musicians and they make me feel a bit awkward, like they are trying way too hard to fit into some random bad boy or lame-ass teen boy image. But not Eddie. He just jams. And I like that. And I don't think musicians are my type either, they seem entirely too emotional. But he does it for me. He is someone that could transform my life in an amazingly positive way.
I once said I wouldn't marry anyone unless they could play Yellow Ledbetter and I think I just might stick to that. It's a sign I think.
