February 2012
2 posts
All Fours
Life has a hard edge always And it screws into me In a place I can’t reach Or anyone else Because it’s not there.
You can’t notice it for all the days That start and end the same way For all the days that didn’t really hurt Or hurt enough to wash the guilt I get when feeling something that’s not there— The ghost-touch of life Pressed too firmly Too hot and...
He Is Sick Again And Can Only Think Of Being Sick,...
Being sick is all I can really think about right now, being that I am sick. Enjoy?
It is gross, the fluids and sweat pouring out of me. Coughing that sounds like gravel in a blender. The pile of used tissues piling around me. Ya. Gross.
That’s the external bit. And I guess there’s a lot going down internally that’s equally gross and will not be elucidated here (you’re...
January 2012
27 posts
Terrible Bit Of Melodramatic Oversharing Below
This is just the eve of a one-year anniversary of a bad thing. The piece was supposed to be some sort of letting-go, to read it again and share it. But that didn’t work. Instead I read the thing, swore at myself a little bit and rewrote most of it. Without track changes.
So much for catharsis.
I’m still too close to this to even be an effective editor. I wrote it maybe 14 months ago...
The Small Apartment
The silence was thick enough, so I figured it was my turn. I stared at something away from her, the black decorative decals of leaves and branches that grew out from behind our bed. She performed the tedious task of adhering them sometime before I moved in a year ago and they were perfect. I wondered if when the bed was moved I would find that each sprouting branch began at different heights, or...
Nick Has An Intimate Conversation With That Gotye...
Nick: You seem full of shit.
Gotye Guy: Wha?
Nick: I mean specifically on the song "Somebody That I Used To Know."
GG: Oh?
Nick: Great tune by the way.
GG: Urm, thanks?
Nick: Ya anyway. You seem full of shit
GG: You said that already.
Nick: I mean specifically with that "I don't even need your love" bit
GG: ...
Nick: Because I'm assuming you are trying to be genuine there.
GG: ...
Nick: I mean, you aren't trying to express how much you really do need this person's love by saying the exact opposite in order to display the pain you feel in missing them through how hollow it feels and sounds to say you don't.
GG: ...
Nick: Because given the context, that would tough thesis to pursue.
GG: ...
Nick: Well let's just look at the status of this relationship when it ends.
GG: ...
Nick: It's such a CLEAN break. It's so easy for this person to become that "Somebody That [you] Used To Know." Just get her friends to collect her records and off she goes into the ether.
GG: ...
Nick: It just doesn't happen like that.
GG: ...well it did...
Nick: Something did. But that thing wasn't love.
GG: ...
Nick: Love is so much messier. Really I think you go off lucky for that to happen to someone you didn't really love, or from someone who didn't really love you. Because fuck, if one of you did feel it, shit gets MESSY. Which is all well and good, but you're using this feeling of dejection, labeling it love and making a song about it so we can all feel bad for you/with you.
GG: ...
Nick: Did you really love this person?
GG: ...
Nick: No you didn't. Because you didn't run after her. Even KNOWING that this wasn't going to work, if you love her you still run after her. You run after her because you regret, with every ounce of you, letting her leave in the first place. Even if you hate yourself WHILE you run after her.
GG: ...?
Nick: Because love has nothing to do with rational behaviour. It's knowing something is right or wrong and doing the opposite out of service to that love. When you say "I don't even need your love," and you're NOT chasing after her--to make this a messier, sloppier more emotional fuck-up than it already is...well that is NOT love.
GG: ...
Nick: Because love is always in excess of itself.
GG: ...?
Nick: It's like that snake eating its own tail.
GG: Actually that's a symbol of...
Nick: Who cares what it's a symbol of?! It's a fucking metaphor unto itself in this instance. Don't interrupt me. I'm in the zone.
GG: ...
Nick: Thank you. So the snake eating its own tail. What do you think happens when he's finished?
GG: ...
Nick: When the snake eats and eats until there's nothing left but to eat--until it eat its head with its head, its mouth with its mouth, at once embracing and yet ignoring the impossibility thereof.
GG: ...???
Nick: The thing in excess of itself. The snake that has eaten its own tail, its own head, its own mouth. Of having already eaten itself and still eating.
GG: ...
Nick: THAT'S fucking love.
GG: ...
Nick: ...
GG: ...
Nick: Good tune though.
GG: ...thanks.
Forgetting How To Sleep
If you want to sleep The sun is your best teacher. Its practiced slow rhythm Its casual arcs that crash into a darkness You can see and then can’t see. You can sit there on a park bench At Minto reading something beige dull But the sun can teach you sleep Through the dog-eared pages Of your periphery. It knows you will never look Like any good teacher knows So it stretches its shadows To its...
Two Things About Winter
There is nothing colder Than what cold does to the 7am air Thinning it and sharpening its edges So that sounds speeds through its Opening pores And ripples between the apartment buildings The sound of my boots Heel-toeing the stale snow Nothing more alone Than when night glows copper And I watch my feet as they follow A winding trench Cut by a Ford F150 On either side of Greenwood The...
“Let’s suppose that the person who didn’t come was Jacques Henric. While J.-J....”
– “Labyrinth,” by Roberto Bolano. Whole story available here at The New Yorker.
I’m not going to pretend to fully understand what is going on here, as I wouldn’t pretend to fully understand any of Bolano’s work. But it’s little moments like these that get you...
After Flirting With Sleep And Sparring With...
But what to do? What to tell? I was going to take a picture of myself, for context. Horrifying. Fucking terrible idea.
Insomnia? Sure.
I used to tell myself that I had insomnia, as an undergraduate, particularly in my second and third years, where I worked as a Residence Don (otherwise known as Residence Assistant).
And I’m calling bullshit on 20 year-old me. Fuck him. He loved sleep and...
Your Author Is Sick, Sleep-deprived And Thinking...
Most songs are about love. Most love songs are about love songs.
Wait what?
What I mean is, our love songs are lyrically fixated on being love songs. There isn’t much terribly different from, say, Elvis’ 1953 song “Love Me Tender” (an adaptation of an 1861 civil war ballad) and say Bruno Mars’ 2011 “Just the Way You Are.” (Full disclosure: I just went...
That Black Vulture Luck
—American Motorcycle, September 1960 “Troy Lee 50 Mile Champion” Johnny’s black vulture luck Flat center master The fast slick flipped Four five 100 miles an hour running super tooled making contact for that ten buck prize money blown up at the finish
Because It's Late. Because Your Author Can't...
So I changed the name of this thing. Seemed like the reboot deserved a new moniker to commemorate the occasion.
I don’t know where the phrase came from. It just crept up on me one day. I had no idea what it was doing in my head, but there it was. So it couldn’t be mine. I had to have heard it somewhere. So I turned to the Google machine for answers.
And really there weren’t...
Your Author Stands Corrected; He Indeed Wrote A...
Man I remember this one. It was June and I was unemployed again after a series of events that left me battered and directionless. I was at a coffee shop and adapting my resume and cover letter to reflect the few months of work experience I had gained since the last time I was unemployed, battered and directionless. One of my cover letters turned into this. I think it was for some admin job that I...
Music of 2011: Still? Come On, Man. Okay, One More...
Can 2012 be the year where we hold our hip-hop superstars to a higher standard? Specifically I’m referring here to the dearth of real quality verses we have heard from our marquee acts over the last 12 months. I’m going to pick on two because they’re two of the biggest, and I don’t have the patience to listen to the latest Lil’ Wayne offering.
Yes I’m looking...
“Right. It’s Friday night. I got my flannel dog-print PJs that my nanny...”
– ENWB III, esq, on the eve of January six, in this year of our flying spaghetti monster, two-thousand and twelve.
2011 May Have Been A Year Where Your Author Wrote...
I wrote this poem in late 2010, after reading a whole bunch of David Foster Wallace’s Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity. I don’t think I ever finished the book. It got hard as concrete after the first 100 pages. It’s probably his most difficult stuff, but the prose is really clean and he takes these moments to be encouraging and charmingly self-deprecating and...
More On Music of 2011: Wherein Your Author Talks...
One of my favourite songs this year was Tyler, The Creator’s “Yonkers.” It’s just so grimy. It’s dark. So dark that it’s barely a song. A rail yard creak on repeat. A slow four-note baseline you feel in the floor more than you hear and a refrain of two eerily synthesized scratches. Oh and an kidnapper’s voice to represent some sort of alternate...
December 2011
5 posts
For Your Amusement: A Severely Abbreviated List of...
1. Thing I did: Coach my old high school hockey team.
Thing I learned: If I’m going to be around adolescents for any extended period of time, it has to be in a situation where it is acceptable for me to scream at them. Example: dinner with extended family and hockey games.
2. Thing I did: Intern with a literary agent.
Thing I learned: Oh Sam. You taught me that if you were an...
“That left a large contingent of people majoring in English by default. Because...”
– Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot. Christmas gift. Currently reading and enjoying because at least the first 150 pages are about failed love, fledgling love and deconstruction. And what to do with your English degree. Relevant to all my interests.
Music of 2011: Wherein Nick Anoints The Weeknd's...
Monday March 20th was a good day to start following Drake’s twitter account. A retweet from the OVO account led to the OVO blog led to the free download of the something called The Weeknd’s House of Balloons.
At what was then over 2 million followers, this was probably the cheapest, easiest and most affective promotional campaigns you could ask for. The inevitable speculation on who...
Back from the Dead
My last post was from October 2009. At the time I had finished my last internship in publishing. I had been commuting 5+ hours a day to gain experience in an industry where I had zero chance of finding a job.
To pass the time I would read on the buses, the subway and while waiting for my dad to pick me up at the station to come home. I would read and think and write quirky things in my head on...
October 2009
10 posts
AHWOSG: The Verdict: Part Eye of Eye-Eye. Wherein...
I finished AHWOSG last week and I have been thinking quite a lot about what drew me into reading this book for a second time. I don’t typically read novels more than once. Frankenstein, sure, but you need to read it at least four times to get through your English undergrad. Anyway, what I sought out in re-reading this book was all the pain and indecisiveness that comprised the memoir’s...
Buck 65, “Blood of a Young Wolf.” From...
“What the fuck does it take to show you motherfuckers, what does it fucking take...”
– Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (final passage).
Volcano Choir, “Island, IS.” From...
Cooking with Nick.
I realized today, after being faced with the nearly impossible task of cooking myself dinner, that when left to my own devices, I quickly revert back to the culinary simpleton of my undergraduate days. The shame and the immaturity and refusal to grow up and give a shit is laid bare when I’m desperate and hungry and completely unsupervised.
Let’s cook with Nick—in the second...
Patton Oswalt, “Grocery Robots.” From...
Hi again. Sorry for the lapse, but I just spent...
—ENWB III, BA (hon), MA, esq.
September 2009
24 posts
“And then they look at me and squint.
They are scared. They are jealous.
We are...”
– Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Currently re-reading. I read this book probably four years ago, when I would have been about the same age as Dave Eggers, the narrator. And obviously I loved the book for many reasons, most notably was probably the way it allowed me to...
Alexisonfire, “Little Girls Pointing and...
A few weeks ago, I had been discussing with a friend those perfect moments you have when you are listening to the perfect song, be it live band, or car stereo or a set of headphones. I started doing a bit of a mental catalogue and I think for the next little while I’m going to write about these moments, starting with probably my most significant moment in this regard. It gave way to a whole new...
Your Author Describes His First Encounter With A...
I remember how obsessed I was with Alexisonfire. I still like them and still listen to them when the mood strikes, but it’s more in nostalgia than anything else. But from 2001-2004 I was completely obsessed. I wasn’t contemplating getting a tattoo or anything, but I’d go to a lot of their shows and fuck, I knew the words to their songs. And if you are familiar with this band, then you know that...
Hot Chip, “We Were Made in the Dark.”...