Four years ago, a twenty-two year old version of me strapped on an overweight and brand-new backpack, and started hitchhiking down the QE2 towards what he hoped was a better life.
The years that have stretched since that day have passed as zephyrs, bloated with experience, passed by now as slow symphonies, which remain above, curling, silently portraying the life lived within.
I have lived on different continents, upon islands ringed in sand, others born from frozen seas, some adorned with green, have found peace atop ponderous mountains, above forlorn storms, have pressed among crowds a million colors and more. Slept amongst predators and prey, in the smoldering ashes of northern fires and under the perfect clarity of the southern stars, upon the floors of countless bathrooms, countless couches, countless hearts with countless dreams. I have passed through the fingers that held danger, with luck and with scars, have seen a final reflection of myself in the eyes of another, the days which hold promise and the nights which forgive, the passing of friends unto their deaths, the passing of deaths into their memories, the passing of days, and hours, and breaths.
It is difficult to believe that so much has been lived in so few years, that when looked upon in remembrance it brings such a great pain, such a deepening sadness of memory, for the dearest ones who now live so far.
For the beginnings, the innocence, the shorn and somber boy of Vancouver that first winter, who was the first time away, and yet overwhelmed with the daily joy of living. The first winter in the far north, frozen and vulnerable, a summer without darkness, and the heart bent to burst upon the rocks of the east coast. A house of dreams, with friends whose eyes held poorly-hid fires of beauty, when the heart burns so bright, and the flames lick the walls.
And then one day for the forever, a choice to pursue the only choice there ever was, and suddenly a country so far away that even the sunrise spoke time zones. The movement on a city of tracks, a culture of coins, the nights of buildings within buildings, a city of secrets. And then and forever, finally and with invitation, a cause for crusade and sacrifice and poetry: love.
And then the peaks and the shock and the height, a place without breathing and without compromise, where the people spoke foreign volumes and blew dynamited holes in convention. A place with deep jungles wherein lay deep madness, a place for the roof of the world, and then upon that, the attic of the sky. And finally, something of peace.
And on, and on, and on, upon the white cliffs I have found to dash myself, upon the emerald hills, the ancient city, the lonely deserts of the arab winds, and on, and on, towards everything and nothing, towards promise and fatique, from and back again, a circle, where I live spinning, chasing, fleeing, haunted and haunting, alive and asleep, a man on fire, the future made bright.
I was writing the names of you. But they are in all the same, but one name, the same strike of longing within my chest. How I miss you all, how I wish you the best, how I shall see you again.
-nicholas
.jpg)
