Writings
39 pieces, 2001–2013 · Browse the full archive
Essays 16
My Writing Began As An Outlet To Ease Worry
My writing began as an outlet to ease worry. The only aspect of CF I severely dislike is the bit of worry that lingers as you combat the disease. In the beginning of the sixth grade secretly I began writing poetry, throwing my negative energy into words on a page. And I have kept at it ever since, writing in between schoolwork, volunteering, therapy treatments and part time jobs. I would never have thought I’d be acknowledged for my writing. In the ninth grade my first poem was published in an international anthology. I have since placed in the top three standing in numerous writing competitions, published in the Leaside Chronicle, Toronto Star, and received an honourable mention in Princeton University’s poetry competition. Author Lynette Roy asked me to write my personal story for her book about CF, apart of the “Scientists and Diseases” series. This summer I was an intern in the marketing department of St. Stephen’s Community House, a social service agency that helps disenfranchised youth. I had an opportunity to develop marketing strategies, write and design a newsletter and promotional materials for St. Stephen’s. This internship allowed me to combine the creativity of writing and practical business, and has given me direction and confidence to seek a career where I am able to use my creative flair.
Four Months Ago Adam Buschmeyer Was Undetermined
Four months ago Adam Buschmeyer was undetermined. Out of work, out of school, and on welfare he stood outside St. Stephen’s Employment and Training Centre. Pushed by failing ambition and a recommendation from his girlfriend he walked into St. Stephen’s; his life did a 360.
Canada became home for my parents who escaped persecution in Uganda
Canada became home for my parents who escaped persecution in Uganda during a revolution in the seventies. They did not merely feel relieved; they felt they owed Canada a debt of gratitude. I share their view. Canada has provided me with the opportunity to learn and grow while helping others in the process. I do not feel obliged to give back, rather, giving back seems to be the Canadian sentiment. In my experiences as a volunteer and intern, tolerance and understanding diversity have become essential skills. And as a Canadian citizen, these skills and ways of thinking have become instilled in me.
Alas, summer has arrived
Alas, summer has arrived, and with it those soon to be memorable symptoms of knotted stomach, feeling queasy and really bad heartburn. Someone has seized your heart and you’re in love (again). Not to worry, take the following steps that lead to the perfect love letter and lure the object of your affection.
When I Get Up
When I get up, I see the world as it should be. It is almost like a super power. I cannot bear to look out the window, even if there were windows. I cannot look at things that grow. Trees, flowers, grass, children. I am terrified.I think that maybe there was once something to my madness.
Details
For my grandfather in the hospital, who I imagine was a good man, who cannot understand the majority of who I am or what I do, except that which pleases him: earning money, academic success, keeping with tradition.What else is there to write. He will die. Just like I will die. In the same way they will cry at his funeral they will cry at mine. I imagine there is so much he keeps to himself.
Illness
Mom & Dad
In this book there is a past, present and future all at once.Let me explain…The idea behind this book was to create a reflection on what you have built together. It is to gather the voices of those who love you, whose lives you have touched. It is to give you a sense of the past, but only so you have a sense of where you might go in the future.
SPACE
SPACES THAT MOVE (INSIDE) US [PART 1]It’s easy to dismiss architecture, especially when job losses and the talk of pandemics turn us inward toward our immediate needs. It’s easy to conceive of spaces as existing for us to carry out our comings and goings, solely there to fulfill our needs.
the "not yet" in the "yet", or Driving to the Dry Cleaners with my Grandfather on a Wednesday Afternoon
"it's in the past", we say, by which we mean, "it's over and done with".but if my experience of my grandfather driving me to the dry cleaners three days before he died was wrapped up once i hugged him goodbye, then it seems hard to explain how I can, in the present, open back up that time to see it anew. there was something very significant happening that Wednesday afternoon, even though at the time i was mostly caught up worrying about a conference paper.
Blog 2
My grandmother’s in a nursing home. Stuff happens there: residents get wheeled to meals, sometimes they play bingo, sometimes they hobble around the halls.“What happened today?” I ask her. “Nothing,” she replies.And she’s right. Each day it’s the same meals at the same times. The same faces animated by the same pains. The same activities with the same motive: to occupy time instead of building something within it.
How Bingo Happens
My grandmother's in a nursing home. Stuff happens there: residents get wheeled to meals, sometimes they play bingo, sometimes they hobble around the halls."What happened today?" I ask her. "Nothing," she replies.And she's right. Each day it's the same meals at the same times. The same faces animated by the same pains. The same activities with the same motive: to occupy time instead of building something within it.
mopping + kissing + football: Living with Cystic Fibrosis.
This is a draft of a talk I gave on Nov 23rd to first year medical students at the University of Toronto, St. George and Mississauga Campus'. I spoke alongside my friend and fellow CFer, Shannon Price. The talk was a part of an annual lecture given at the University of Toronto by the Cystic Fibrosis Team at St. Michael's Hospital.
On a date
"I'm on a date," I say, looking up from my computer to answer the woman who has noticed something peculiar. It's Saturday night. The bar is a frenzy of intoxicated bodies. I'm on a barstool, having a drink and talking to a beautiful, spirited woman. She is making my cheeks flush, filling my belly with laughter and mobilizing my sexual organs. Her body is 11 feet away from mine. These separate us: a wall, several tables of patrons and the reality that if we touched, we might infect (and kill) each other.
introductions, punching, kicking, pushups.
On dreams
What about your dreams? I ask my father. Don't ask me about my dreams, he says. We are driving me back to the hospital. We're talking about my rapidly aging body and the uncertain future it brings. I am explaining why, though impractical, I dream of traveling to Vancouver by train: I want walk next to the ocean while I can still walk.
Letters 11
Portrait
It was very sweet of you to call on New Year eve. (if by chance it wasn’t you who called – as my sister sometimes mixes people up – let us pretend that you did)I hope you had a great time on New Years. Mine was quiet – I worked, watched a bit of the 2nd Lord of the Rings, got a bit sick, and fell asleep studying Beckett in my bed. In fact I woke up thinking of you, something you said once, although I can’t recall it now.
My Dearest Friends
My dearest Friends,I use to bloody well hate love. Not only was I convinced it didn’t exist (and yes, I could prove it), I believed it was a disease, a severe mental disorder, to take from Plato.And consider this: Britney Spears (in all her whore-like glory) pretended to get married last month, and her fake/temporary dick of a husband stuck his hands down her pants so the tabloids could get a good cover shot. Fast forward to George Bush (is all HIS whore-like glory) during his state of the union address. Good old I’m-A-Pit-Bull-On-The-Pant-Leg-Of-Opportunity said in his speech that he has a responsibility to protect the “sanctity of marriage”. Ironically, after her husband finished whacking her off and she threw him away, Ms. Spears apologised and said she believed in the “sanctity of marriage”.
I Hope As I Write This
I hope as I write this, you are sleeping peacefully. Iwould love to watch you sleep. Thinking of that bringstears to my eyes, that I just would like to watch yousleep, to watch you warm and safe in bed, our bedperhaps.I have not slept thoroughly at all, but I am happy that
Book of Secrets
Thursday, January 6, 2005Dear Dad,For your birthday, I got you THE BOOK OF SECRETS. But even if you don’t read this book – although I really hope you will – consider this a symbolic gift. The title is “The Book of Secrets”. This title is important, because it represents every story and every poem – books are filled with secrets for us to realize. These are secrets about ourselves. These secrets tell us about who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going.
In Response Your Poems…
With the exception of “For Hank,” your poems are very quiet. Like smalldroplets of water in a slightly irregular rhythm. If my poems push thereader out, your poems are quite the opposite – inviting and open, andnot simply because they are less oblique and more narratively driven.
Poem For Elisha Wagman On Valentines Day
Dear Ms. Wagman,Please marry me. I don’t believe in marriage, and Istrongly suggest neither should you. Therefore, itshould work out perfectly.The men you have touched, they come to you saying, Wewere wrong. We have become new again. Come inside usand we will serve you.
Poem For The Future
Dear,Life will probably be a series of looking for a good amount of control, and you will always be meeting new people, some good, others not so good, but you are a loving and smart person, and you have something a lot of other people are short on — wisdom. You have it in you to get what you need and want, to meet other people just as great as you. Think of how lonely they are tonight Think of how lonely I used to be, before I met you, and how very lonely you used to be before you met me, writing dark poetry in your basement. But now you are starting to live in the moment, and you have a world of wonderful things to learn, we will learn them together, you will learn with others. And most importantly, you will learn them on your own, and then share them with lucky people such as me.
Story For KK
Dear Lindsay,You wrote a story in your last letter, so I want to make my letter a story as well. All stories are true.“I want to be in love”, she said. “I am scared. I do not know what love is. All I know is that I want it.”She thought she was in love with him (even though she didn’t know what love was). He was just like her. Closing his eyes, he thought about her sharing his bed, misunderstandings in art galleries, uncomfortable pauses and a brief, gentle kiss. He was just like her. He too often put himself in a kind of self-inflicted internal isolation where the walls scream and everyone’s lives were suddenly.
Sadness Poem
My Dear Friends
My dear friendsSome of you did not know me in the time of my youth when I worked the late shift at the Cafe’ on New Years eve, kept the company of old lonely men, listening to jazz and sipping espresso – feeling full of purpose, feeling sad but with a touch of infinity.
Dear Lovely Friends
Dear lovely friends,I wanted to say something about my health, since things have changed for now. I’ve been in the hospital for 55 days. This length of time is unfortunate, but not really new for me. What is new, however, is that I don’t seem to be improving. My lung function sits stubbornly at 55% (baseline: 70%). I am coughing up abstract art. My white blood cell count (a marker of infection) is bouncing around. My lungs don’t feel great, especially at night.
Stories 6
A Sea Otter
A sea otter, a mallard duck and a fat African elephant decided they would have a picnic by the lake. The elephant was following the otter, who was following the duck, who was doing a good job of pretending to know where they were going.“I am so glad to have found such good friends”, said the duck. “Not only are we smart, but we are also very good looking”.
Ambulance
The tragedy lay not in the death of the trauma patient but with the driver who, after his wife left, hadn’t been doing his laundry and glanced at his mismatched socks – one brown, one black – as they turned the corner (it was still they at this point) and just before “patient” became “victim”, he realised that although no bullet wounds or third degree burns to show for it, he had died the day she left him.
Untitled Story
This is the beginning of a story that only you will read. It takes place in a house in a small borough where a man is sitting at his desk with a pad and pen making a list of some sort. The nature of the list is irrelevant. All you need to know that it’s a very long list, written in green ink. You also need to know that he is writing this list with the intention that only he will be the only one to ever see it’s contents.
Tea Time at the Cement Factory
As he looked up, Benjamin noticed Tiffany was still scratching her head. Nicky was under the table looking for something. This was before the event occurred. After the event occurred, Anna brought everyone tea, a celebration of sorts. But exercise some patience, because we’re not there just yet.
This Story Begins With An Ending
This story begins with an ending. An ending because it is only of what I can be sure. This is a story about me disguised as a story about you. The words came from somewhere in what I call myself, although I’m not sure were – it seems it always disappears once you examine it, like there is no self at all. They were then somehow formed in little pools of blood at the ends of my fingertips, which made me write them out. And now they are here. Until I decide they aren’t good enough, “that’s not something I would write”, and erase them.
Story
Notes 5
Tonight
TonightI thought about the chat thing again. I am lonelyI was sad tonight because I felt that we couldn’t be together. Because I have been spending more time with you, and tonight I realized all over again why we can’t be together forever right now. There is so much stuff you still need to work out. And you can’t fully support what I need, I have to do that myself. I need to find others. And I haven’t been doing a very good job of that have i?
Ideas
•How is it that the Imam or the Pope hold their responsibility – how do they wake up in the morning and go to the bathroom, and shave? How does the Imam sleep with his wife? What does his wife think of him?•A silverfish crawls across the ceiling. I want to kill it, but am afraid to touch or see it’s carcass. I hate silverfish. Sometimes I close my eyes and try to will them to all die on the spot, wherever they are, like the fundamentalist wills to anyone who does not believe.
Story 2 Hannah
i’m not sure what my story is today. i knew what it was yesterday. yesterday it was about fear. and since there really wasn’t anyone there who understood the fear, it was about being alone.but today it isn’t that people don’t understood – rather, it is that they don’t understand enough. but this leaves room from improvement.
Ideas
Mourning from a farWrite about trying to grieve both for oneselve, one’s own losses, and the strange distance of these losses.Kyle died. I cried about 48 secs. I timed it.
Notes On The Past Week
NOTES ON THE PAST WEEK:1) The woman I am in love with is seven years older than me, yet much too young. She was brought up by her mother who is fifty seven, yet younger than her. I wrote her a poem once, in which I painted her a mountain and placed myself, a pilgram, on it’s peak.
Script 1
Speech Arts #2
There is a frail homeless man at his deathbed lying in the center of the town. A gentle and learned scribe is writing in his journal unaware of the condition of the person beside him.A greedy king is taking his usual stroll around town. The town’s peoples bow to him as he crosses their path.
Philosophy & Academic Work
Jehangir’s philosophical work explored embodiment, illness and our relationships with others. This collection brings together his academic papers and a co-authored publication.
- The Experience of the Body in Chronic IllnessA philosophical exploration of embodiment and chronic illness, drawing on his experience of cystic fibrosis.
- Students as Members of University-based Academic Research Ethics Boards: A Natural EvolutionA co-authored article examining student participation in university research ethics boards.
- Hegel on Conscience as the Reconciliation of I and OtherA paper listed on his academic profile exploring conscience and recognition in our relationships with others.