The Nickish Invasion - September 25th, 2008

Hey all, just a quick note.

I landed yesterday in Grey ol' London, at the final end of a seven day cold I have held off with massive amounts of pharmaceuticals, tobacco, and nicotine. As expected, my organs are desperately attempting to flee the sinking ship, but in a last rallying cry we're trying to blow up the life rafts and toss the kids overboard and really focus the crowd on the problems at hand. Mainly phlegm, really.

So the point is that I am currently, simultaneously, insanely, cold-turkey on:

No Booze (for the lovely beer-tummy I built up at home there)
No Meat or Dairy or Sugar or Junk (for the ethics lost along the way)
No Smokes (for the last chance at restoring my poor, battered lungs to minimum capacity.)

As you can guess, I am losing my mind.

Amidst all that we're in Sunny London, wandering through ancient streets whilst a culture somewhat friendlier than Stalin's Russia pervades my every interaction. I'm not in much of a hurry to put up photos though, since they all look like garbage with the grey sky, and I'm going to be here for enough time not to rush around clipping shots of every ancient edifice. Maybe tomorrow, the only real pressure is just wanting to change up the blog to represent my European headspace. Which means, of course, there is a washing machine under the kitchen sink, and you have to hit three switches to get hot water. Apparently our flat is like a mini-kingdom by British standards.

More to come as we settle, and I get a job, or something along those lines. Maybe I'll just post a list of common prices, because frankly, that's something you will never believe.

Nick, across the pond, out.

The House of Blues - September 22nd, 2008

This one's for you pop.

To the brim, bottoms up - September 22nd, 2008

Why didn't anyone tell me to pack shorts?

Man, it's glorious weather here, or maybe just the glow and shimmer of being with my dear friend, but never the less the time here is Golden. It is rare and beautiful, and what we can grasp turns not to dust but instead solid and weightful. So I feel we are bucking the trend, and buying postcards for our own mantles.

As Mark worked today I wandered the foreign and weathered downtown of Chicago, finding amazement not in the skyscrapers, but in the overwhelmingly massive towers of brick and stone, something I had forgotten a country once has the audacity to construct. After lots of being lost and some really cool help from Chicagans, (Chicagoans? Chicites? Chiclets?) I found my goal at the Art Institute, which is their word for a gallery.

And so followed four hours of heart-filling, soul-breaking, mind-rending beauty. Paintings from the year 1300 shared endless hallways with the artifacts of humanity's birth. There lives Nighthawks, American Gothic, Rainy Day in Paris, George Slaying the Dragon, Fork by Andre Kertesz, and the thousands of breaths in between that leave you empty in the end. I ended up with a pretty dry mouth after holding it open for so long. Gasping like I shouldn't be in a public space.

It was more than anything a surprise, I wasn't ready for so much, more than ever, and to have Jessica's most upright tenant of the appreciation of beauty thrumming in my ears left me ready for the weeping lounge. In a fit of brilliance the gallery has placed a room for "touching" near the end of your by-now tactilely starved escapade, and I damn well molested some bust in an effort to cross through to all the art I'd been able to see, but not touch.

Afterwards I managed some wandering, very incorrect train rides, and now late night drinking, so all is well.

Thanks for reading all, I miss you,

Nicholas

One day at a time, sweet jesus - September 21st, 2008

No really, just one more day, I beg you my frail, fickle organs. I'm so loaded up with viruses and germs that I'm actually consuming water of my free will, but I need just a couple more days of sentient thought here in wicked Chicago until I have the time for my imminent and gruesome death. I'm like a Stay In School commercial here, wandering the bricked streets hacking up ornamental appendages out of my lungs while alcohol sweats from my pores. Mmmmm..

Anyways, had a super wonderful night here last evening with my dear friend Mark, mainly because it feels so comfortable to be here. I could move in tomorrow to this apartment (partly in a drive to reduce the "I'm going to make your skin into a lamp" vibe that Mark appears to be going with in his interior (lack of) decoration.

I'll take some photos today of what is going on in this sepulchre of American Culture, but mainly I'm just writing now to alleviate some of the intensity of the posts here as of late, and decidedly not bitch about going to London, as I need all the street cred I can can muster for the coming weeks when I start gushing endlessly about how cool that city will be, and everyone is all: "Oh really? I thought were actually a whining douche."


-Nick.

August - September 20ish, 2008

Exhausted, seeming haunted, I am drifting the paved lino of Seattle's airport, the rain beating heavily against every glass surface, a day so intent on greyness that you can see the colors bleeding into the floors and fleeing the scene.

I left home this morning, very morning, and amidst my yawns the powerful thoughts and mists of such a new departure run strong in my heart, perhaps the only strength that I can conjure between airport bench naps and drooling planes of which I remember nothing.

I am sad to leave home, so soon, and so unfinished. The words do not trumpet complexity, but perhaps I need not always the confusing method when the meaning is simple. I am sad to be here in the States, as always, and I am sad to be traveling again to places like my own, and not a million other locales more vibrant and different. Mostly I am worn out and emptied by the past month. I feel like there is nothing I can do more but offer my deepest apology to everyone for the shambled time we spent together.

I cannot think of a moment I spent with any of my loved friends and family that was not incredible, but rather the lack of time was the cruel insult. I managed to blow off Sarah, Nick, and my Oma in Toronto completely, and for what passed as time spent with everyone seems to brief to be respectful.

The truth is simply that I am a very, very, very tired young man in an airport on a grisly day, and just about everything is too much for me right now. I should write nothing to avoid whining such as this, but I have written so little in the last few weeks I wanted dearly to do something now.

I am in Chicago until Tuesday evening to see my friend Mark, and then to London, towards no matter else, the arms of my beloved.

Sorry for the ranting, I need another bench nap.

Love, and fidelity,

Nicholas

Bubblebubblebubble - September 8th, 2008

Well, a long time without word, and probably without surprise.

I've been at home here in Edmonton since the 13th or so, and the trend towards emotional intensity has most definitely not waned. My deep apologies to Denji, Matt, Eric, Michelle, Sydnie, and all the rest who have been socially left by the wayside so far during this visit, but I beg you sheath your ire as I've got oodles of time left for some dedicated hanging.

I'm off tomorrow morning to work on a friend of the family's farm for a week, some dedicated time doing some loose construction jobs entailing a very overdue attempt to exchange labor for money, a concept I've been without since April. Actually, I'm more proud than bothered, I mean really, that's a good chunk of time to skip the ol' Marxist cycle.

I'm back in town Friday evening, and then in the city until the 20th, when I aim to fly to Chicago for a couple of days to see my friend Mark, and then I'm off to London to join Jess; who, with only the slightly occupying tasks of preparing for Law School, will have hopefully found us an apartment. (or flat, if you're a Limey butt-puppet.)

So what I mean is: That's the plan, and I promise I won't bail on anyone before I leave. Oh, except Sarah and my grandmother, who, residing in Toronto, I am 100% bailing on, thereby making me an enormous asshole of titanic proportions.

Right-o, off to the farm, or what have you,

Nicholas.

Too much, and too often - August 12th, 2008

Forgive me beforehand, as I will begin, I think, too indulge perhaps too much in the following...

One week, more or less, in the arms of the West, and I am emptied.

Too tired to be a guest, dirty and worn for the show, I feel like I am nearing the end of my capacity for reunion. Every day forms the complicated and electrified bonding of wires between old friends and expectations, something universally difficult, understandable, and nevertheless painful.

I am seeing again all the walks of life from my past, especially as they have convalesced in this hub of humanity, Vancouver, feeling as if the curse of Christmas Specials have descended upon me, "No more Miracles!"

I guess I get it now. No one should have to, or opt, to walk their own past, to feel the streets not as living or faded, but vibrant and twisting, to see friends not in photos, frozen, nor alive and painted, but instead amongst the celluloid carousal of blurred emotion. I know I'm not being clear, I suppose that's the point of catharsis, but maybe it's clearer than I'm making it. It is the normal turning of the tide for us to see the past ebb away, made clearer and more potent as it pulls farther and farther to the horizon. Through this process we see our pain, and promise, draw crisp against the remaining sea, while our minds stay firm amongst the beating waves of today.

Here in this city I have reconnected with so many of my most intense friends, day after day, in a process I can only only recommend as grueling. So I have drawn up the distant waters and pulled them against the tide to this grainy beach, the fearsome fisher, petrified with what reflection I would find.

And I have seen my friendships lasting, and fierce, but in so doing, have walked the wearied paths of my past as they still live. Hence, the vibrant and furious presence of all that which is supposed to remain distant. It is the proximity which is the pain.

Yet, of course, the passion is the point, and in the rolling tide of this re-developed friendships are found the same pleasures, made anew, and with a new host of promise.

So tired...

I leave Vancouver tomorrow at 6pm, and I'll be home Thursday morning. To home.

-N