Beauty, Corrymeela and my pretentious descriptions....

It’s a rugged kind of beauty, a grey, Irish form. The small cliffs to my right are covered in coarse brush and the remains of a structure of some kind sits, discarded, halfway between the lane that winds round to the house behind me and their curled edge. Whin bushes grow tall to my left, blocking the view and framing the scene, giving it a window-onto-the-world quality. The bench I sit on has been placed facing that window on a patch of neat grass that seems to end too suddenly, just dropping away to the road beneath which underlines the small rocky coastline. Small waves swell and break against those rocks, dominating the aural landscape, only now and then allowing a brief lull, an almost-pause, where for the briefest moment it seems they might quieten altogether, teasing me as the closer to silence they seem to get the louder the next break. Rathlin Island floats on the horizon, a dark slab on which the only sign of life is the spinning lighthouse on its eastern edge. The morning sky, the only show off in the group, attempts to conjure an atmosphere of foreboding, its layered greys topped with a smokey growl, but the softness of its cloudy edges and the rich variety within the attempted monochrome instils peaceful wonder instead.

I make my way in for breakfast and as the waves clap my goodbye I see two rabbits sitting, their backs to each other as if they’ve just had some sort of lovers’ tiff. They aren’t speaking to each other in the circle of grass shaped around a fire pit which the night before had taken on the role of music hall as a 20 year old blonde Swede (Do they come in any other colour?) strummed his guitar and sang Buckley’s Hallelujah. His choral backing came like a slap in the face as I had stumbled my way down the dark track to join the impromptu festivities.

They were dreadful. Terrible. Disastrous. A little confused, I made my way down, realising more with each step that I was embarking on that awkward, "I'm-looking-for-my-friends-but-its-dark-and-I-can't-see-
them-can-they-see-me-oh-crap-now-I’m-just-standing-here-gawking-
around-like-a-lost-idiot" social situation. Stepping confidently into the fire light I realised that the full-throated song was coming from the…well…fully singing throats of a group of young people with Downs Syndrome. Talent and tune were playing second fiddle to gusto and enthusiasm and fun…an order we understand better when sat round a fire than in a lot of other places…

TELL ME WHERE THE BOMB IS!!!

I just finished watching Season Six of 24 and man…how the mighty have fallen. The still somehow popular show sees terrorists repeatedly attack America, or to be precise the part of America which is in the immediate vicinity of the US government’s Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) in Los Angeles. You will of course note that I am still watching after six seasons so it couldn’t be that bad. Well, I guess there’s a few reasons – you always think the new season might mark a return to form and your curiosity and some pretty great action sequences keep you watching once you start. Oh yeah, and my unemployment ensures that I have time on my hands!! As each twenty four hour action fest has come and gone the storylines have gotten more convoluted, the twists and turns more RIDICULOUS and I stopped really caring about the characters ages ago (Well, most of them.) My brother’s comment is that the decline of the show is surely shown by the fact that he has wanted the terrorists to win for the last few series.

The latest season features terrorism of the Islamic fundamentalist kind (surprise surprise) and a bring-them-all-back attitude whereby the writers seemed to think we’d be bowled over by their ability to link the current story back to what has gone before…no matter how stupid those connections might be. What I find most unpleasant however is the way in which this show has come to depict torture. In the first half of this season the debate about civil liberties in the face of the war on terror is illustrated as some characters shout about the need to lock up all those pesky arab types on the off chance that they’re all crazed terrorists and others shout about the need for America not to lose sight of its self and its ideals in the face of blind terror. We get to see a bit of arab/muslim internment and suspicion is cast even on the seemingly most loyal American muslims (Who are so loyal and patriotic that once they have been put in chains and interrogated for no other reason than the five prayer sessions they embark on every day, they immediately help out those who had chained them up moments before...for the good of America.) But we also get to see the President assert the need to trust America’s muslim populace and view them as the first line of defence against those whose warped view of Islam would see them resort to violence. So far so clumsy.

What I find interesting and disturbing is the way in which no such debate or dialogue is ever had in the show about the use of interrogation (read torture) by our “heroes”. There have certainly been moments in previous seasons when the loved ones of those tortured have protested but these are usually passed over pretty quickly. In one particularly laughable moment a CTU employee is falsely tortured by a colleague and after scowling at him for a good second or two she just heads back to work as if nothing had happened. For the most part the message is clear and unpolluted by weak, liberal minded comment, things like human rights are important but not for people who are involved in terrorism, people who might be involved in terrorism or people who looked at us funny…kinda terrorist-like funny. In one episode the heroic President asks how the interrogation of a suspect is going. When told that the man remains uncooperative even though his family has also been arrested the President asks, “Have you threatened to kill them?”

The main argument given in favour of torture’s justifiability is it’s efficiency at getting results. Time and time again we are told that there is no time to do anything else and time and time again those tortured give up vital information that eventually saves countless lives and justifies their pain. If you ever get the chance to hear Clive Stafford Smith talk about the subject you will hear him dismiss this scenario out of hand. Smith is the charismatic legal director of Reprieve, a group which offers legal representation to those on America’s death row and those being held in Guantanamo Bay as well as campaigning against the death penalty and secret prisons. For Smith the real world does not throw up circumstances where you get your hands on a known terrorist and all that is stopping you from finding out the whereabouts of a bomb is his refusal to speak to you. 24 paints a picture of men and women who can be beaten and poisoned and drilled in the back but remain conscious and lucid. Smith suggests that when you start “interrogating” people in this way they will simply tell you want they think you want to hear rather than whatever truth they may be aware of. Push my head under water until I’m seconds from drowning and then ask me if I’m a terrorist…I’m pretty likely to say yes if that’s what it takes to get you to stop.

Bush talks a lot of crap about torture. In interview he was asked about whether or not American operatives used a form of torture called water-boarding. Bush replied saying that he would not talk about “techniques” as this would give the terrorists an advantage – they could “adapt” he said, they could train and prepare themselves for the ways in which they would be interrogated. He went on to say that his legal people and checked what the Americans were doing and decided that it was legal…but we would just have to trust him on that!! When the interviewer continued to press him on the issue Bush commented that this man had a family and that he, the President, was merely trying to keep his family safe. I was reminded of this distasteful exchange on watching the trailer for Robert Redford’s latest movie Lions For Lambs, in which Tom Cruise’s character, a Senator who appears to have a Bush-like take on foreign policy, says to Meryl Streep’s journalist, “Do you want to win the war on terror? Yes or no? This is the quintessential yes or no question of our time. Yes or no!?” If you say yes, if you want to protect your family, then you should trust your President, you should be willing to do “whatever it takes”. We have no time. We need answers now. We need to employ certain techniques…this is the only way…

I think 24, a hugely popular programme, compounds this logic in a genuinely dangerous way. It is of course just a story, just television, but there is well known power in such mediums. For those who are not shown the other side of the coin, 24 negatively reinforces what I would consider the hopeless message on which so much of the war on terror seems to be based – that you can fight fear with fear.

See Robert, Meryl and Tom here - www.apple.com/trailers/mgm/lionsforlambs/trailer/
Learn about Reprieve here - http://www.reprieve.org.uk/

A thought from a while ago...

I wondered to myself as we sat down – how is it exactly that I find myself in these situations? I was the only male at a table of seven girls, all hailing from different parts of America, all studying in Belfast. We were out for dinner to say goodbye to our dear friend Dayna, the first of our group of university friends to fly their way back to the wrong side of the Atlantic. Sitting opposite a New Yorker from Cuba and next to a Texan with a heart for Seattle, and Ireland in her blood, I smiled at the conversation which drifted from baby names to literature to language to celebrity to politics with much laughter and insight along the way. There’s an episode of the West Wing which sees the President, Leo and Josh stand back in one scene and marvel at the women around them. This is how I felt that evening as I sat amongst this smart, attractive and loving group of women…women I got to go to dinner with…

My friend Dayna, and I hope I don’t do her the disservice of misrepresenting her, has suggested to me before (Back in the days when glorious visits to coffee shops would see me gain an insight into the art of living wildly and notes slipped to me in class would ensure that I knew I was a tool for having a crush on the French girl… “I knew that’s what you were thinking from the moment she walked in the door…”) that the world would be a different…a better…place if it was run by women. Not women like Thatcher or Elizabeth, who had to act like men in order to gain and maintain the power they wielded, but women who were free to embrace the insight offered from within their femininity…and from their position as an oppressed group…

The feminist argument is an interesting one although, I would argue at least, it gains a lot of its strength from our own ignorance - we’ve never seen such a world so have nothing to base a judgement on - and from the fact that arguably falsifying examples can be batted away as more cases of women being forced to act like that pathetic crowd with the penises. I am swayed by the argument for the simple reason that…well…they could hardly do a worse job than the gender who have been running things up to this point, but remain dubious, feeling that perhaps it is power itself that brings out the negative traits that have been deemed masculine and not the testosterone that (though I am not saying it never plays a part) is blamed here.

What is true is that women have the potential to elicit wonder and so often live up to their billing. From my own mother to those like her all over the world, we find women at the centre of their families and their community, giving life and then holding it together. A couple of things people have said and some stuff I have read this summer has seen me think again about the place women have in the world, particularly, given the nature of my year’s study, the place women have in times of conflict. For it is women who are left behind to suffer…left behind when their fathers, husbands, brothers, sons go off to fight, left behind when their fathers, husbands, brothers, sons go off to die. Their vulnerable position sees them used and abused, their very bodies turned to battlefields where rape becomes a weapon of war. I am torn between feelings of sympathy (what a weak word) for the ill-formed caricatures my mind conjures as I think about such women and the crushing impact that life has had on them, and feelings of awe demanded by women, exemplified by Shirin-Gol in Siba Shakib’s “Afghanistan, Where God Only Comes to Weep”, who find a way to bear this, who find a way to cling to life and family…and maybe even a little hope…even though there are moments when they are overcome by despair.

This is one of those entries which I will be disappointed in…the words failing to conjure the feelings or shape the ideas…but I will let it stand since I don’t know if I could manage something better. When I think of the women who have played and continue to play roles in my life, briefly or otherwise, I am struck by real thankfulness for the lessons they have shared with me and the love they have offered me…as well as intense sadness that I wasn’t able or willing to be the better man that they so often deserved...in the colourful words of a character from a drama about a group of lesbians called The L Word, "I don't give a shit if I've made you a better man, it's not a fucking woman's job to be consumed and invaded and spat out so that some fucking man can evolve." And that sentiment doesn’t just apply to romantic interests but, possibly even more truly, to the other women in my life – friends and family, areas of my life where I have been beautifully blessed but not always realized it adequately.

Right, I gotta go and do something masculine now like climb a mountain or eat some meat or beat something weak up… I believe that men have the potential to be awe-inspiring too by the way and you can beat your ass we’re as hard as some kind of nail…although Leech has taken the weights home…

I’ve never really been the one looked to to walk the dogs…there is usually a Jack, a Gillian or a Stuart for that kinda craic…but for the last few days I have been wandering up Cave Hill with Fox and Sox in tow.

It’s beautiful up there, particularly at the minute when the first hints of summer have added a lush touch. It reminded me of when I flew in to Belfast after spending an amazing summer in South Africa… Cape Town had dazzled me with its mountain and its surf and its sun but flying up the coast on a gorgeous, clear day and looking down at home I couldn’t help but smile. There’s staggering beauty right here too.

I love walking round Cave Hill - within minutes you go from suburbia to the middle of a nature which crashes against the paths one moment and opens out to give wonderful views of the city below the next. There was a great moment yesterday as, rounding a corner and looking up the path that lay out in front, a magpie crept out of the grass, darted a look right and left, paused, and then shuffled his way across the path as if he was managing to undertake his covert mission, swiftly and unseen. He was back again at the exact same place at the same moment in my walk today, this time taking to the air as the dogs ran his way. It reminded me of a poem by Emily Dickinson which we looked at at school. I don’t know much about poetry, coming in to contact with most of the poets I’ve read when studying English in Room 6, though I’ve attempted to write a little bit of something like it a few times and I have always liked Dickinson in all her obscure glory. So the poem that entered my head…

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,--
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, splashless, as they swim.

"Never Again" ...of course not...

This is a copy and paste from an article I've been reading today for my course...Ms. Susan Willet is the source and at the end of the article she is described as an "an independent development and security analyst" which I think sounds awesome...

Okay...strap yourself in cus this gets depressing pretty damned quick... We all know this is the way the world works...but sometimes I reckon we need to stop and, by taking a long hard uncomfortable look, remember that this shouldn't be normal...

---

The latest G8 proposals will mean around $2bn debt relief a year. US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin made $17bn profit in 2004 alone.

The world spends around $6bn on education each year but spends more than 100 times that on military equipment & training.

The world's top 10 arms producers made more in profit last year than was spent in providing basic health & nutrition for the last five years.

To satisfy the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost around $13bn a year. The world spends that much on the occupation of Iraq every two months.

---

Commeting on a lyric in his song "Call It Democracy" Bruce Cockburn says that sometimes the only appropriate way of commenting on an obscenity is with an obscenity.

In which case we're fucking disgusting.

In Sierra Leone the average life expectancy is 34...

...more on this when I'm finished my assignments.

[ If you were wondering what the Cockburn lyric is...

"North South East West
Kill the best and buy the rest
It's just spend a buck to make a buck
You don't really give a flying fuck
About the people in misery"

It's a great song and when Martyn Joseph sings it live it instills angry inspiration... ]

The kids know how to get down...

It's sunny in Belfast. It's been close to beautiful the last while. The sun has also seen the arrival of the 'Summer Honey' which is a fascinating phenomenon enjoyed by the men of my nation for generations. And as I looked out my bedroom window the other day (while trying to resist the temptation of one of Leech's patented 'improvised rugby games') I saw that it had also brought out a number of my neighbours...sitting, playing, working in their gardens. I was struck by how close we all live together. All these little lives crouching right next to one another but in a nice middle class way which means we never have to make eye contact...or y'know...talk... A while ago when a neighbour had a problem with a light which we were leaving on at night accidently [She was being kept awake] she left us a note, pushing it through the letter box and skipping off despite the fact that we were all at home, a door away...

The contrast with where my brother lives, which is just up the road a lil, is interesting. I spent a wonderful little morning at his place the other day and thought about this while listening to stories of neighbours and seeing the kids playing in the street...it seems clear pretty quickly that there is not the same distance between people. They may even question your sexuality... (Not mine you understand...that's never happened... I mean, I've been hit on, but that's different...right?) So I'll make a nice generalisation and put it all done to class...?

Kids are different. They don't care about such things. Stuart and I spent a wee chunk of our afternoon playing with our lil neighbour and her wee friend...playing fetch with the dogs, laughing in the sun and even throwing in a little limbo :) When one of them started throwing stones at us (we were being bullied is what we're saying...by 7 year old girls...) we had to tell them off a little bit which led to this wonderful little exchange:

Stuart: Stop throwing stones.
Girls: Mumble mumble why? mumble mumble...
[Stuart then decided that this was a good moment to kick my butt]
Girls: Don't kick your brother.
Stuart: I can do what I like!
Girls: How come you can do what you like but we get told off for throwing stones?
Mark: It's because this is our yard. You can do anything you want when you're next door in your garden but not when you're over here with us.
Girls: Well then we'll go in to our garden...and throw stones at you...
Mark: Dammit...outwitted...

So basically we don't need each other. And we don't make the effort to pursue relationship for relationships sake. And I'm sure everyone has really 'good' reasons, as I'm sure I could dream up, for why this is the case. Meanwhile children just get on with it and throw stones at eachother.

Penny for your thoughts...

So I gave a lil speech at the Stop the Traffik event we had in the Mandela Hall with thanks to a wonderful team of student types, some great friends who mucked in and the delightful Juliet Turner...and wanted to expand on the thought a little bit. I was moderately encouraged recently while talking to a friend, who is growing dearer to me by the day, that blogging wasn't a complete waste of time...

Human trafficking is a global problem. The fastest growing form of illegal trade, the disturbingly simple laws of supply and demand see 2.4 million people, 1.2 million children, sold every year. There is a demand for children. What a horrendous sentence. As can be seen from my previous piece on the stop the traffik campaign, the idea of people being bought, being sold and being OWNED is what knocks the wind out of me. I spent my Easter Sunday largely entertaining two of my little cousins and one of their friends...I had a ball with these three little girls, listening to tales of their horse riding lessons, pulling faces and talking nonsense to make them laugh...their lives are so precious, so utterly priceless. I haven't been on the best form of late as life seems to be going through a colourless phase but spending that day with my family was the first time in a while that I felt really joyful. My heart swells in my chest as I think of them. And yet there are girls the same age as my little cousins whose very smiles have been taken from them. There are no words.

While manning the stall we had in the foyer of Queens Students Union over the course of our week of stop the traffik we urged everyone who went past to sign the petition that was at the centre of our campaign. Over two and a half thousand people did. But many didn't and slid past us with jokes about being in favour of slavery or mumbles about a class or some work that needed done. The most ironic of responses was this: "No thanks mate....I'm alright." My immediate response was to think to myself something along the lines of, "That's great for you but there are many who aren't" but as I thought about it more it became obvious to me that my response should have been this - NO YOU ARE NOT. None of us are. We live in a world with an appetite for children...an appetite which is allowed to be sated. This trade reaches my country, my city. We are not alright. We can not be alright. Children work essentially as slaves in the chocolate industry of the Ivory Coast, the country in the world where most of our chocolate originates (Fair trade = Slave free). Slaves make the chocolate which WE buy. We are NOT alright.

A number of students chatted to me about the campaign, seeing it as a pointless, hopeless attempt at a change which would never come. One guy told me that he disapproved of our methods so I pushed him to explain what he meant...fascinated by what his issue might be. Like another student I had spoken to earlier in the week, it turned out that he was a socialist and believed that nothing could be improved without a fundamental change in the system by which our world operates. This is a point of view I have come across many times before of course and I have much sympathy for the sentiment behind it but what I don't understand is why it is sometimes (as it was in this case) accompanied by this refusal to strive to better the imperfect system we currently live in the midst of. It may rest in the idea that left to its own devices capitalism will become so oppressive that eventually the masses will rise up and tear down the walls of the system which lies between us and utopia. I don't really get it. It doesn't seem to come from people who have totally opted out of taking part in any aspect of the 'system' since I wasn't visiting a hermitage when talking to these guys... Anyway...got sidetracked there perhaps...

What I wanted to draw out, as I sought to first at our Mandela Hall event, is the hope that change can be brought. Slavery was abolished two hundred years ago and though the subject of this post shows that the issue has not gone away it would be ridiculous to suggest that a massive change was not affected. Ian Lustick, a political scientist, talks about how all 'progress' ever sees us do is move from one problem to another but explains that that is what he terms a 'better problem'. I encouraged people at our event to think about the name of the hall they sat in when pondering whether change could be brought. Of course South Africa still has massive problems, one being the economic apartheid which continues to exist...but it's a 'better problem' than the monster that existed before. I believe that change can be brought. I believe that pressure can be brought to bear. Poverty may never be made History but what Bono calls the 'stupid kind' can be tackled.

We are not alright and maybe we never will be.

But we can be better.

Stop or I'll shoot...in your general direction...

There was a shooting in North Belfast on Wednesday as police tried to arrest a guy in connection to two recent murders. The BBC reporter stood on a cold Ardoyne street and tried to answer the questions of his studio bound collegues...the incident had only just happened and no-one seemed to know very much. What he was sure of however was that the suspect, "Got out of his car and ran away" and that the officers in pursuit had then got out of their vehicle and...wait for it...fired five or six shots, "IN HIS GENERAL DIRECTION". In his WHAT?? Not at the suspect...not towards the suspect...no...we couldn't be arsed with things like accuracy...

Once the dust had settled a little more the BBC reported that no one had been hurt in the incident...ahem...good to know that the guy being chased didn't get hit by a stray bullet...

'Ach lads...I couldn't be bothered runnin anymore...just shoot over there somewhere and lets be gettin back...the match is startin'..."

Stop the Traffik

An article I just put together for Students Union newspaper thing... a bit of a rush job but hopefully it is not completely devoid of merit...

---

During my History degree at Queens I studied the transatlantic slave trade with the late Martin Lynn. He spoke of the effect this trade in human beings had on Africa’s development and the significance of the moment when it was finally abolished. A moment in history. That abolition took place two hundred years ago and will be celebrated on 25th March’s ‘Freedom Day’.

Tragically however the buying and selling of people is not a thing of the past. The trafficking of men, women and children is the fastest growing form of international crime, earning the criminals behind it over 3.5 BILLION pounds every year! It is estimated that some 12.3 million people are currently victims of forced labour all over the world with 2.4 million of these being a result of human trafficking. 1.2 MILLION CHILDREN are trafficked every year. Such huge numbers can be difficult to absorb. Statistics can blur the faces and stories of those they represent…daughters, brothers, mothers, sons…bought, sold, owned…

On Monday, 26th March until Thursday, 29th March, Queens students will lend their voices to the growing cry for freedom that has taken the form of the Stop the Traffik campaign. Stop the Traffik is a global coalition of organisations determined firstly to raise awareness of this crime, which affects every continent in the world, most countries and even our own city, and to move governments to act. The main focus of the campaign at Queens will be the signing of a petition, which people can do in the foyer of the Student’s Union each day. This Global Declaration will be delivered to various governments and the UN later in the year and it states:

People trafficking is wrong. I support STOP THE TRAFFIK in its call to:
Prevent The Sale of People, Prosecute The Traffickers, Protect The Victims.

For more information or to sign the Declaration on-line go to www.stopthetraffik.org.

Turn the key.

Free the slaves.

Stop the Traffik.

Those crazy Planeteers...

Just watched an amazing short film on YouTube offering a wonderful insight into what life was like in my city in the very recent past...

You HAVE to check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQJrovKgrTw&NR

"Man...I must be miles into Protestant territory..."

Ramblings...

Snow Patrol played on the bus’s cheap radio and I sat on the top deck looking out the window at a Belfast night, enjoying the view far too much for a 23 year old who travels the same route to and from the city’s centre almost every day. On the walk home snow crunched under my feet for the first time this year.

I got a lil criticism the other day for having a poorly updated blog…and well…the criticism was fair, the comments accurate. Truth is I haven’t wanted to write for some time. Tonight though as I rode the bus home I had one of those quiet moments of contentment…not necessarily a feeling that all is well with the world, or indeed my world, but rather a flicker of something like hope…the feeling that really life can be beautiful despite, even some times amidst, its brutal moments and that the future, stretching out in front of us as it does, promises the potential for much... It’s during fleeting moments like this that I feel compelled to write, doubtless an attempt to savour a feeling that rarely sticks around as long as I would like… (Not that I spend the rest of the time under a dark cloud of depression...far from it...but every now and again I get struck with these little flickers when everything feels that much lighter...)

I watched An Inconvenient Truth recently and have been turning off lights and feeling smug every time I get the bus ever since. It should be compulsory viewing for all. One of the comments that Gore makes, quoting Winston Churchill, has stayed with me:

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences.

It’s a quote which could be applied I am sure to a plethora of issues – here of course Gore is using it as a call to arms for all those who might give a damn about the planet which they live in, which their children will inherit and which their Father made. I was in a naval gazing mood when watching this particular documentary and so, although being absolutely impacted by Gore’s environmental message and convinced by his argument (Not that I took much convincing…I earned a Green Blue Peter badge at the age of 7 and was a firm follower of Captain Planet…my brother, the bonefide master of ecology, has also been a strong influence regarding all things conservation-esque), I was left pondering the period of consequences I feel I have entered as I have grown older. Douglas Coupland talks of how, “we are the sum of our decisions”. I am now the man which the decisions of my life have seen me become. Quite rightly that is who I will be judged on by those I meet...but at the same time I am far from finished deciding who I will be...

I have been thinking a great deal about what it is to be a man…about the man I am…the man I want to be…feel I have the potential to be…am determined to become. My Christian faith tells me that that should be a man whose life mirrors that of Jesus…one of, amongst other things, extravagant love and grace, servanthood and sacrifice... I am keenly aware that these are qualities which I fail to live up to, but they continue to be ideals which I must strive for. The tragedy of course is that I often do nothing of the sort.

I have a friend who has a thing about people’s greatest fears. If you ever have the good fortune to meet her she may even enquire after yours. This leads me to think of a movie which will change the life of all who watch it given the deep insights it offers into the human condition…or not…Coach Carter. In a scene thoroughly laced with cheddar, the movie contains dialogue along the lines of the following quote:

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us…We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

I find my greatest fear hard to identify…but, and I realize that this is not exactly what the above quote is getting at, I think it might be connected to this idea of being “powerful beyond measure” – The fear that despite having the potential to do something or be someone that I might dream to do or to be…I might fail to do so or be so. The fear of not reaching whatever potential I have within me. But I am unsure of whether I am genuinely afraid of this or not… I am wary of the danger certainly but, at this point at least, that knowledge motivates me to search out my potential rather than fear that I will betray it.

A friend recently mused that boys become men on going to war. The question they posed was why those of us who would be men find it so difficult to do so in the absence of such an experience. I am yet to formulate an opinion I am happy with. It does see me wondering about the draw I feel to Africa however…not that I think that such a journey would necessarily make a man of me (Sometimes I even toy with the concept of being one of those already...although I never doubt that I could be a better one) but nonetheless I am left wondering what impact such an experience would have on who I am. I consider the mere two and a half months I have spent in Africa to date to have been pretty much life-changing… Who knows what I will end up doing post-Masters but Africa has definitely been calling...

There's a character in Full Metal Jacket called Raptor Man, a photographer quite new to Vietnam. Despite Joker's efforts Raptor Man's desire to "Get into the shit" sees him volunteering to do so. I wonder what it is that makes people want to do such things, see such things...but at the minute I can't help thinking about how much I want to get into the shit. For years I have been hearing about the problems of Africa, reading about them, even experiencing a little of them and…well...the desire to go is powerful…to see if a change could be affected in some way...in any way...or at the very least to see if the problems could be better understood... Listening to an aid worker speak last year I was impacted by her desire to remove the romance from the notion. She talked about how lonely it is and how difficult... But how can that stop you? It clearly hasn't stopped her - currently in Sudan if I remember rightly. But of course you wonder then is there anything you could actually DO to help on the ground...I'm not exactly a doctor or a farmer or a builder or whatever... But for now I will dream about it all the same…

"I'm a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That's what kind of man I am."

We shall see...