28 if.

today is nick's birthday. i almost wrote today was nick's birthday, but his passing (july 03) doesn't change the fact that october 27 is the day he was born. so i celebrate it with this post. ok, maybe i'll throw a dash of reflection/mourning in here as well, but it will be mostly celebratory.

first the dash, though, so i can end on definite high notes. that photo of us above, from the surprise birthday party my mom threw for me senior year in high school (winter 97), was not my first choice for the photo on this post - when i recently decided i would do this post. my first choice was a nice photo of us from prolly within two years of his death, that always seemed to be lying around my mom's old apt. i assume it's still there somewhere - buried within thousands of photos - and will one day be found, but i couldnt find it when i looked recently. i prefer it b/c it's more indicative of what we each looked like towards "the end."

but anyway, i think that's a fairly good metaphor for one of the conditions of losing someone. namely, you dont really get to choose which memories you hold onto, and which fade away over time. it would be nice if my memories of him were mostly a veritable highlight reel of our best shared experiences, rather than a smattering of good, bad and mostly "normal" things we did together, but there seems to be an arbitrary logic to what specific episodes you hold onto.

so your memories largely morph into composite images and feelings of spending time with each other. for instance, i have deeply ingrained memories of us walking to his apt. after school at dalton, all through growing up.

then again, this is quite fitting, as nick and i often talked about how we both agreed with the philosophy behind ray bradbury's short story The Last Night of the World, which we read in mrs. siegel's english class in sixth grade (or was it seventh?). namely, if it was the last night of the world, we'd want to have a fairly normal night, rather than a blow-out, so we could go out just as we lived. so i embrace the "normal" memories of him.

now onto some lighter fare. nick was a wonderful writer, most of all b/c of his voice, which was easygoing and highly articulate, and absolutely unique. i am grateful for having dozens of his emails saved on my yahoo account, and i was debating whether or not i wanted to copy something he wrote to me here; is that too intimate? should i keep his emails to myself, so that they remain something only i possess, and thereby become "extra"-special? well, i dont think id be nullifying these ideas by copying just a snippet. i was scouring his emails for something "appropriate," when i came across the following. it made me laugh out loud, so i knew it was right.

nick was in nepal, responding to an email in which i beseeched him to take an online IQ test i had taken myself:

Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 03:06:08 +0000

Hey what's up. Let me just say my computer does not feel like opening
emode.com, for some reason, which I have to say doesn't bother me all
that
much. I always fuck up things that are supposed to measure your
"intelligence," so I'm sure I would have just fucked that one up and
then
brooded over it. Also, from the fact that you keep hounding me to take
the
test I have to infer that your score was very high, and naturally I
cannot
give you the satisfaction of knowing you have beaten me. Thus, the test
remains untaken.

honest, insightful, and above all, witty. par for the course.

lastly, i want to end by linking to some songs nick loved. we didnt agree on most music, but our musical taste overlapped with these. give em a listen, they're timeless classics.

heart of gold, neil young
woman in chains, tears for fears
senses working overtime, xtc

that's it. happy birthday, man. rip.

(and jesus is it trippy to write those letters.)