OK... maybe it was just the experience of slogging through PrepCom 3... or maybe it was reading Nick's copy of "Children of Chaos".... But, I think that someone needs to organize a massive rave/dance/party in Geneva for December 12 as a wrap-up event to WSIS.

The fact is that all of the linear, logical thinking of the negotiations (ok, let's just agree to pretend it's a logicl process) just wears me down after a while. It just seems like the information society could/should be so much more fun and spontaneous, but the WSIS is dulling it down. So, I started thinking that we need something much more experiential to tie things together in December... some way to level the hierarchies, celebrate what we've achieved, and to dream of what's possible for the future. What better way than good techno music, good lighting, multimedia and a couple thousand people dancing until 4 AM?

Does anyone know any Swiss rave organizers who could make this happen as a WSIS side-event (non-Palexpo.. heheh). They could charge whatever entrace/bar fees they want, as far as I'm concerned. And with 4000-20000 guests in town, I'm sure we can market it well enough to scare up enough people to cover costs.

Thoughts? Ideas?

Has anyone else ever read (or seen) Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes”? Something about this merry-go-round in Geneva totally reminded me of it. Fantastic and frightening all at the same time.

Maybe it was that the ride kept speeding up as it went. Or maybe it was that the top and bottom were going in different directions at the same time. Or maybe it was the funky 1970s psychadelic rock blaring from the loud speakers.

The strange thing about travel is that the more you do, the more that space and time begin to blend and slip away.

Look! There is Cathedral Rock (No… wait. This is not the road to Banff. That is France and I am on a boat.)

Gee… the lifeboat is beautiful. Is that Orion overhead? (No… wait. This is not the Caribbean. This is Lac Leman and it is daytime)

Watch out for the railing, Ninoy! (No… wait. That little boy is not Joy’s cousin. They are half a world away. This must be another Filipino boy, so many of them scattered around the world).

The outside blurs, leaving you with only a glimpse of intense emotion. A rapid mental collage of the smell, sight, sound, feel of a hundred moments rushing together.

I read an article eight years ago in the Wolfson College library in Oxford. It attempted to respond to the question as to whether human rights could exist in a postmodern world. If we are not coherent “I”’s, what is it that can have a right? The answer, the author proposed, is that each individual is the unique shifting narrative he or she tells about his or her life. We are our stories. No one else could tell the story I do.

To tell stories is to claim the most basic element of our humanity. Is it any wonder that so many groups are advocating for the right to communicate within the World Summit of the Information Society process?

I actually wrote this on Saturday, but didn't have access to the Internet until today...

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Is it possible to be in love with a day? To never want it to end? To be so overwhelmed with how beautiful the world is that you can’t imagine ever going into an office or dealing with unpleasant people ever again?

I got up this morning and just started walking. It’s something I used to do much more of. In university, I used to get up on a Saturday, pack my backpack full of books and just start walking. I never really had a plan. I just followed whatever direction felt right. Out the front gates of Georgetown, up to the National Cathedral, down towards the Mall, around the monuments, up onto Einstein’s lap, over to the Arlington Cemetery. Sometimes I’d eventually sit down and read one of the books in my bag. Sometimes not. Sometimes I’d just grab my notebook paper and start drawing instead. Sometimes I’d sit and watch people. Mostly I just walked.

I walked in Costa Rica. Up form Los Bajos de San Luis up to Monteverde, down to Santa Elena, back up to the cheese factory, up to the park entrance, back down to the house. Sometimes I stopped in at the Quaker School to borrow a book from the library. Sometimes not. Sometimes I’d stop and strike up a conversation with someone else who was walking along – sometimes going somewhere, sometimes not.

Today I had plans. I swear I did. I was going to write the YCDO Action Plan. I was going to meet Robert Guerra and Derrick from the University of Michigan, catch a boat to Montreaux and work along the way. But, it seems like everyone in the apartment last night has a rough time sleeping. Up and down. Coming and going. Phones ringing. Seemingly all night. By the time I woke up, it was 9:30 AM. Derrick was gone from his room. So, I set out looking for Robert. Walking.

I walked down Rue du Lausanne, remembering that Robert was supposed to be at the Hotel Suisse across from Cornavin. Ran into Nick and Alberto along the way. We lost Alberto to his search for the Italian delegation – renting bikes for a ride. Nick decided to walk with me for a while… in search of Robert, in search of a computer, in search of a plan for the day. We never did find Robert. According to the man at the hotel front desk, he didn’t exist. We sat for a while outside, hoping he did exist. That maybe he would appear. That a cell phone would fall out of the sky with a SMS message from him. No such luck.

So, I started walking again. A parade came by. Or a political protest. It’s hard to tell which is which when there’s a man dancing with a trombone in front, children laughing, and other’s handing out leaflets in French, which I just couldn’t decipher without having some caffeine in my body. I lost Nick around there. And just kept walking.

Over to the Old City. Up around a hill. To St. Pierre’s Cathedral where I sat and listened to the rehearsal for tonight’s pipe organ concert – Bach, Pachabel, ….. I don’t think I meant to go to the church. It just seemed to happen. So I sat there until life made sense and I knew what I had to do. Knew that it was worth the effort to bring others at IISD around to understanding why YCDO is important and to refuse to accept indifference as something that just has to be lived with. Knew that there is a difference between conflict and passion – fighting against something and fighting for something.

Then I could walk again. To catch a boat and to be swept away by the beauty of it all….

Sometimes you just have to do things in order to prove to yourself that you are able to do them...

Like yesterday when I was part of Prairie Fire Rowing Club's Perimeter Row. We rowed 40 km on the Red River from the southern edge of Winnipeg to the northern edge. It took us just over 4.5 hours, including the time we hung out and made Kinder Egg toys after one of the sculls flipped (no we're not hard-hearted... the two coach boats helped the capsized rowers).

It was a lot of fun and far less difficult than I had thought. Mostly, it was my lower back that was sore... and my hands. I developed calluses over the season, but I still ended up with new blisters anyway. That's ok. I proved to myself that I could do something if I set my mind to it (which is a great feeling).