All the News That's Fit to Print

So...

So you log onto The Washington Post website and see that the Middle East is sort of going insane. Air strikes. Bombs. 300 dead in two days.

And then you think to yourself, Well thank God I don't know anyone who lives there!

However, I do know people there.

Not only that, but chances are in a few weeks I will be there too.

If the State Department thinks it's safe enough. 

You see our government is here to protect us (stop laughing) and they won't let wee little me throw myself into a maelstrom. No matter how much I want to go.

See the ironic thing is that everyone who hears about all this is basically scared for me and telling me not to go. But the whole point of this documentary is to end this kind of violence and hatred. So by not going, I am doing a disservice to the very thing I am trying to create and all that it stands for. By going, I will be aiding in creating a meaningful coda to the story of six young people who are trying to come together and stay together in the face of a climate that almost demands they hate one another.

So come on. I can't be the only altruist out there. 

If the ones in power still want me to go, I'm going. I understand the risk. I know the dangers. But I also know how important this is.

There are those who live there. Those six people I filmed over the summer live there. If they live in these kinds of conditions, who am I to say its too dangerous over there just to visit?

What Dreams May Come

Finals have hit hard.

My drinking has not helped. Nor has the deluge of personal issues that anyone who knows me has been forced to listen to me slovenly meander over in my usual articulate manner.

It is my firm belief that these things, plus a general sense of unease about my future in this world, lead to a dream that has been haunting me since I had it on Wednesday of last week.

(Some parts of this won't make any sense to some of you. I'll do my best to expound certain things.)

I was in the basement of my friend Tony's house. His father was teaching me a school lesson about something of great importance, but I wanted to get the hell out. A fire alarm gave me this chance, and I sprung out of the basement and up into the living room, opening the back porch door and running down the stairs into the woods between the houses. 

In the woods I saw many a majestic animal, and began taking pictures with my camera, stalking a small deer until it lead me into a great open banquet hall flanked on all sides by trees and gardens. I was mesmerized by the place, and could see the houses of my childhood over the tree tops. I needed to know what this place was, and why the deep forests of my youth had been razed in order to make it.

A jogger came by, and I recognized her as the older sister of my own sister's best friend. She didn't remember me, and I made no mention of how we knew one another. I simply allowed her to show me around the place until I came to a small clutch of tents.

From one of these tents stumbled a girl who I had had a crush on in the second grade. Maybe the third grade. Who knows. Unimportant. What was important to me in the dream was that she was obviously under the power of several controlled substances, and began throwing herself at me in the most debasing and disturbing sexual sense.

When she tackled me into a bed of bleeding yellow flowers and took off her shirt I saw something disturbing. Across her back was a sort of black tattoo, like the floor plan of a stadium, all small squares and cross hatches created out of a series of small lines. But I as I got closer I saw they were actually cuts, old and new, thousands of them. 

In her slurred dialect she informed me it was ok, that she was better now, on better drugs, and the demons were gone. I stared at her as she ran her fingers over them scars and scabs.

And then I woke up. 

I suppose the purpose of this is just to give an insight into my mind at the moment. My attempt in this blog is to be as honest and forthcoming as possible. And this dream has been working on my mind since I had it that night. 

I'm not one to put an importance on dreams where I lunch with Hunter S. Thompson and sing the Beatles with a small cat, but this one seems to actually have a psychological genesis.

Feel free to disregard this post.

I know I am.

Things I know for sure about the city of Jerusalem

Not much really.

A note on friends

The response to this endeavor among my friends has wavered between the ecstatic, the nervous, and the jealous. 

Come to think of it, the first and the third could be combined into one solid group. These are the people who are green with envy over the fact that I have a chance to do something so interesting and in a place that many have never been (ha! it's my turn now!). These are the people who clap me on the back and tell me to have a good time and stay safe and do something completely asinine. 

Then there are the other people. The nervous ones. 

These are the people this blog is for... oh who am I kidding, I also want to shove my time overseas in the jealous people's faces (ha! it's my turn now!). 

Allow me to expound. 

There is a belief among a certain contingent of my friends that I do things that are willfully dangerous, and putting me into a could-be-a-war-zone type of situation is like setting  a rabid, starving, ill-tempered wolf with no self control and a sweet tooth loose in the sick ward of an orphanage after dusting all the little children in sugar. 

For those of you new to the world of Brian Roan, yes, I take incredible risks. 

One time while I was hiking in New Mexico we found a rock formation called Lover's Leap. It's basically a huge stone diving board that drops many hundred feet. I'm afraid of heights. So obviously I had to hand my camera to someone and walk all the way to the edge, hanging one foot over the edge while the other balances barely on the lip of the drop. Then, after I got my picture, I walked back with my camera to lean over to prove how far down the drop is.

That was when I was 17. 

Now, at 21, I've had time to compound my lust for madness. So yea, that could be a problem.

However, as a journalist who takes my career seriously and who understands this is a big thing for my future, I won't be running down the street with a gun looking for a fight. Though reenacting that last siege scene from Children of Men sounds awesome...

That's probably not helping my case.

Anyway.

Then there are the people who will miss me terribly. As in "You're going to leave a void in my life." 

As far as I know there are only one or two of these people.

This blog is especially for you. Thanks to this wonderful piece of technology you can imagine that every day I am chilling out with you, drinking whiskey out of a bottle, and telling you every little thing that went wrong/right/insane in my day. Just like I would if I were there.

Sure my physical presence will be missing, and as such so will my wild hand motions, crazy voices, syntax, manic energy... all that rot. And the rants. Oh the rants. How will I ever transcribe them? Still, this is the best I can do, and I do it for you. 

For one of you specifically.

So you better be reading this.

....

Well? Are you reading it?

What follows does not occur in realtime.

The furor that my mother unleashed was only matched by her concern and fear.

She's one of those people who views the Middle East like some kind of bullet festival. In her mind's eye, I am sure, she sees me ducking as I cross the street as a near endless blur of gunfire goes on. My car will be attacked by rockets. I'll wind up on YouTube with some congenial men with hoods over their faces and a large knife. 

Small subtitles will alert the world to my plight. 

However, that's not how I saw it.

I saw it as a great opportunity to expand my worldview, gain some experience, maybe launch a career, and see a few people I became close to over the course of two and a half weeks of filming their every waking moment. 

My father agreed with me and began telling me I should try to stay longer so I could catch some history and religion. Stay in a hostel. Take lots of pictures.

The only sign of my mother's acquiescence was when she agreed to send me my birth certificate so I could apply for a passport. When I asked her to send it rush mail she said, "Right, you can't wait to get killed."

I love that woman.

I paid upwards of $170 dollars at the post office so I could get my passport rushed. Two weeks they said. I tipped my hat at them and thanked them for their hard labor, wondering if they ever prayed for a day when email would make their menial labor obsolete. 

One week later, and here I am, waiting for my passport, waiting for my plane ticket, waiting for the adventure to begin.

My name is Brian J. Roan, and this is how it begins...

The phone started rattling against my nightstand, an epileptic fit that rocked plastic against wood and created a sound akin to a small animal gargling marbles.

I opened one eye and felt my head pounding as the whiskey from the night before continued to party on in my soggy blob of a brain. It was two hours before I needed to be awake for my internship, and I had no intention of answering any calls before it became a dire necessity. 

I went back to sleep.

Over the summer I had agreed to help my friend Dan McGregor with a project. He was interning for the State Department and was asked to help film a documentary in Massachusetts. I had never had any real experience filming anything. I was an amateur photographer - which is to say I owned a camera and could shoot something beyond a group of friends smiling while discreetly hiding their drinks from the lens - and a student of journalism. I had an internship with a senator.

I got two days off of my internship so I could go for an extended weekend just to show him the ropes, which was a funny idea because at this point I'd never seen the ropes either.

In Fairhaven I met three Israeli and three Palestinian teens who were brought to the States so they could live on a tall ship (a large sailing vessel). They were to be taught conflict resolution and team work both on land and on sea so they might foster a kind of understanding.

Long story short, on my way driving home from my four days of pretending to know what I was doing I got a call. I was driving through the Bronx in the rain. They wanted me back. Now. 

By the end of the week they'd talked the senator's office into letting me go, and I was back on the road.

Two weeks later the teens were gone and Dan and I were back in Maryland.

Fast forward.

Middle of fall semester. Hung over and tired, I dragged myself from my bed and showered, a long hot soak. After I dressed and slugged down some orange juice I climbed into my car and drove while listening to my messages. 

Bob from the State Department. Would I be interested in going to Jerusalem to film a reunion between the Fairhaven teens?

I called him back. My mother would need convincing, my father probably not so much, and I would need to know some particulars. It was all within the realm of his understanding.

I hung up the phone and gripped the steering wheel tightly.

I had murders to cover for the paper I was interning at, papers to write for class, orders to take at my job as a server. I had things to do. 

In just a few months I would be going overseas. I had to get a passport.