Skip to the first heading below to get straight to the pictures and events.
We’re not gonna beat around the bush here. A lot has happened since the last update, and one thing has become abundantly clear: This ain’t a daily blog. You know it, I know it, and the screaming man inside my head knows it. It started as a project about the pictures–one a day–and a brief little description for each moment. Only thing is, photography is an interest, but writing is my life and who I am. As the year went on, the posts got longer and the pictures became ornamental to the descriptions, rather than vice versa. I couldn’t help myself. My greedy little hands couldn’t stop typing, whereas my sad, dejected index finger found every excuse to avoid engaging that shutter on my little fujifilm camera. And don’t get me started on those days where nothing happened. Then BeReal stole my idea and came out. It’s all a wash.
The other thing is, though, I like remembering how I’ve actually lived, and even some of the little memories that would have otherwise faded into the ether. It’s weird that whoever I was in those moments is actually gone, forgotten and dead. So I want to keep some unimportant non-highlights too. The point? Yeah, this is just gonna be a normal photoblog going into 2023. Probably monthly updates, sometimes weekly, maybe even some dailies. It’s fun and I like sharing all the funny things that happened with you guys, the insultingly small number that you are.
My other goal: the goddamn novel. Okay, okay, I overestimated myself. But in my defence, a new plot line evolved that has required a lot more research if I want it to be as funny and absurd but also as engaging as I want it to be. I’ve been reading GWF Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit and its attending secondary sources. We’ll see what happens. But this project is still going, and I can’t wait to share it with everyone, for better or worse, when it’s done. Let’s pray even one editor returns my phone calls.
So, thanks for sticking in there, and seeing what old nardi is up to. I hope it’s been an entertaining year, and of course there is more to come. But to celebrate what has been accomplished, peep this post, and stick around until the end for some end-of-year blog stats.
And now on to the show. What the hell has happened since October? Could anyone possibly still care? I present to you the finality of autumn and Halloween, past Christmas, and in between:
October 10 – December 1, 2022
Halloween, baby!
November, baby!
Mainz, baby!
Halloween was great, and November was cool too, until I got crazy sick. Woke up with my heart in my throat, and my stomach in my ass, shivering like a madman, exhausted beyond measure.
But just when I thought I was down and out, days after this terrible flu had finally subsided, a cherub descended upon me in the shape of my friend Marky, who you can glimpse in the first picture above, among many. I used to call him Daltski, but that isn’t his name anymore. Anyway, Daltski was in Israel on a work trip and decided to stop over in Germany on a whim, because that’s just who we are now. Went to an Eintracht Frankfurt game, and in good timing, he happened to show up in the country at the start of the German carnival season, whose opening ceremonies haven’t popped off since the pandemic.
It got dirty. I’m talking durty. Serious Purge vibes on these cobblestone streets. One of the town squares, named Schillerplatz, after german philosopher and playwright Friedrich Schiller, whose most famous aphorism is roughly translated as ‘one is no true human, unless one plays’, looked like this:
I know I know, it looks like Halloween, but trust me when I say it’s not about spookies, scaries, demons or goblins. Carnival season is about wishfully pretending that Germany is one big cartoon, a whimsical society based around the German agrarian yeoman, the true mensches, the guy you look at and say “he’s good people”, and a society in which, fully unified, just before catholic lent, lets its citizens go buck wild and piss in their own boots. It’s about getting hype to 40 specific songs that all sound like they were composed by The Wiggles. Every song is some strange sing along from a Lynchian nightmare. I’m serious.
Want a taste?
Go ahead, take as much as you can stand. I sequenced them in the way someone like me will usually experience these carnival parties: you hear the first song, something like Joana, and while you admit it’s got that German, over-produced twang on it, you don’t hate it. You could drink to this. Then you get to the deep, deep routes of the polka folk, and you start to wonder if you can possibly out-drink the absurdity of the music playing for thousands right now. Then, by the time you get to the red horse… my god. You’re either laughing hysterically to yourself as you leave the party, or you’re just blitzed enough to jump into the crowd, wearing a kermit costume, singing with the best of em’.
Ok, so we weren’t singing to the red horse, but you still hear what’s going on. Mama Laudaaa, red horse, it’s all the same when you have to party to it until sunrise. Thank you Dal- Marky, for validating literally all these thoughts while you were here. Walking home at 5 am, just you and I, playing King Krule to the empty, foggy streets from your iphone speakers… Won’t forget it. You don’t read this blog, which makes you a bad friend, actually, but visiting gives you enough brownie points to last until the summer, I guess.
December 1 – 31, 2022
Before Christmas dinner, my girlfriend’s niece was in a little religious themed play in the church in the first picture above. This ended up being my worst nightmare.
Immediately I was separated from the group, as the pews did not seem to be prepared for a theatre-going crowd. I got seated, by myself, behind a giant stone column. All I heard for the entire 40 minutes was squeaky children’s voices booming from acoustically unsound speakers not made for such dialogues. About halfway through, I realized that, for some inexplicable reason, a guy on the side bench against the outer stone wall was letting me sit next to his wife and kid, while he sat separately. No offence to this guy, but who does that? Then, as the proceedings wound to a close, the German priest called for everyone to rise, and the woman next to me, this man’s wife, held out her hand. I quickly looked around the room, but everyone was wearing coats, so I couldn’t tell if people were holding hands or not. In a moment of panic-laden stasis, I only looked down and back up, then faced forward. Obviously, everyone was holding hands. I apologized in english afterwards, which only made things worse, and then I ran out.
The rest of December was the usual smatterings of holiday cheer, Christmas markets and dinners, and gifts and wine. Then, after Christmas, I was in Austria winding down into new years, prepping to get this monstrous thyroid nodule in my throat (which I’ve decided to name Rik) taken out at last, in January.
January, 2023 – 1 Year of Photoblogging (for better or worse)
Caught some kind of flu/cold on new years again, which you can see in my eyes in the second photo above. But all things considered, this was certainly not indicative of the year just had. Maybe thanks to this blog, or finishing grad school, or getting an actual job, this year was the first in a long time that felt longer than the year before, not shorter. That’s all I wanted man, honestly.
And now to those promised stats. If you’ve read every post, or close to that, then who knows, maybe these will be of some interest to you. Otherwise, it’s all ego fuel for me, baby. Win win.
- Words Written (including this post): 55,426.
- If this blog were a paperback, it would have been around 222 pages. Sorry for dragging it out so long.
- Photos Published: 353
- So close to 365. I was almost able to convince myself I actually completed my goal, almost able to sleep at night. Oh well.
- BUT, I uploaded 1,093 photos, often not knowing beforehand which I would choose to share. So you’re welcome, for curating the experience.
- AND, if we say that 2 images would make one page in this imaginary paperback we got going, that brings us up to 398 pages. Yeah. That’s what I call content.
- Views: 1,513
- For a blog? In 2022? Written by some hack ego-maniac? Hell…I’ll take it
- Downloads:
- Yeah, I didn’t expect this either, but that song from Ferris Bueller that I used in the post about that museum trip in Baden Baden (this post), was downloaded 37 times. Which should have been impossible given that I turned the download feature off. Then I read online that if a site on wordpress is public, its media library is also public, and will show up in google searches, so I have unwittingly become the fluted wind in some pirates’ sails, all of them desperate to download an instrumental version of Dream Academy’s “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want”. Well, they got it.
I think that’s about it. Thank you again for somehow reading a blog in 2022, and hopefully still in 2023. I guess I have to retire my usual sign-off, which was the very ambitious “see you tomorrow,” but I truly will be seeing you, and soon. We got trips and operations and even newer goals all in the works, and now that I’ve tasted the sweet nectar that is turning one’s life into fodder for outward validation, I won’t be stopping anytime soon. Hope you had a great 2022, and hope you have an even better 2023.
I’ll see you around.
Nick
Nick Denardi 