So I’m sure it’s unnecessary to draw attention to the reality that this blog has in fact… kicked the proverbial bucket. However, I figured I’d provide closure for those of you who were hoping for some sort of conclusion…. This leg of my journey is over.

A little over two years ago I left Peterborough which is to say here I am adorning Peterborough’s landscape a little over two years later. I have to say I’m impressed with the longevity I was able to muster out of this project at all. I feel like my efforts to keep this kind of thing going are habitually futile. The truth is, in part at least, that you haven’t heard from me in the last seven or so months because I really haven’t been traveling all that much and this is a travel blog after all.

After leaving Mexico, I basically made my way to the promised land that is San Francisco where I proceeded to live for the next six months. In short, I built myself a community, I raised funds for non-profit charities, I fell in love, I bought myself a motorcycle, I drove said motorcycle to Ontario… in that order. I would elaborate but how do you really sum up six months of living to a sufficient degree… I suppose you don’t.

I will say that upon returning to Ontario, I finished the journal I’ve been maintaining for the duration of this journey. Having done so, I allowed myself to return to the beginning and rehash the journey my mind took over these last two years. Over the course of this blog, I feel I’ve revealed a little of that journey but in summing it up, I felt it was most accurate to say that I spent these few years looking to love and looking for love in the wrong places. And when I think about it, it’s really taken my entire lifetime to figure that out. Anyway, I’m going to leave that as an ambiguity and if you want a further explanation, you’ll have to track me down.

So basically, whoever you are reading this, I probably love you at least a little, at least on some level and I hope you’ve enjoyed peering into my brain for a short while. Perhaps we’ll do it again sometime.

Chris Jardin.

More about my present situation to follow…

Despite these thoughts, I had filmed a christmas post wherein I gift all of you, my faithful readers, with song and speak of my recent adventures… but for the life of me I can not get it to upload on this computer. So, as such is the case, I will instead gift you with videos produced not by mine own hand… enjoy. Much love you to all, hope your Christmas is a splendid one.

1. This video has the highest production quality of any sunday school pageant… ever. Not to mention the fact that it’s entirely endearing….

(care of my good friend Amy)

2. This video presents a decidedly different take on a familiar story and was created by one of my favourite writers, Neil Gaiman.

Happy Christmas everybody!

Reading… I’m quite fond of it. What began as a child with the love of such works as The Hobbit (a book I’ve read more times than is probably necessary) and the collective works of S.E. Hinton (I know, right), was detroyed during highschool due to the entirely much too thorough dissections of such masterpieces as To Kill A Mockingbird and Hamlet (and did anyone else loathe The Stone Angel as much I did?). This moratorium on reading lasted for a good 4 or 5 years but was finally rekindled when one of my nearest and dearest friends, Shannon Culkeen, bought me a book for Christmas when I was, I believe, in the second year of my university education. Despite the aversion I had developed for the written word, this book being a gift, I felt obligated to read it. The book was Killing Yourself To Live by Chuck Klosterman. Klosterman writes in a completely readable fashion and this specific work of his, has as its subject matter, music and travel… other things I am quite fond of. It is the tale of how Klosterman, then a writer for SPIN magazine, is given an assignment to determine why it is that musicians who would have likely faded into obscurity have been immortalized due to the fact that they commited suicide. In order to to solve this riddle, he travels the United States to the graves of such aforementioned musicians and chronicles said journey. In the end the novel really doesn’t comprehensively address the riddle at all but serves simply to record the strange introspective voyage that was taken in search of the answer. Suffice it to say, I loved it and I’ve been reading furiously ever since.

All of this preface to say that traveling brings out the reader in me like nothing else does. Probably linked to the fact that I am granted ample amounts of time on my own with no one but dead or absent writers to keep me company, I read… a butt load. Of note, I recently read 18th century French novelist Joris-Karl Huysman’s A Rebours or Against Nature. It is the “poisonous yellow book“, (for those of you familiar with Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray), that Lord Henry Wotton gives to Dorian Gray who upon reading it found that “it was the strangest book he had ever read” and eventually serves to lead him down his path of excess and depravity. It is a book where nothing much of anything happens for it is comprised almost entirely of elaborately thorough descriptions of an aesthetic hedonist’s eclectic, decadent and often bizarre tastes in literature, jewels, textiles, perfumes, art etc. etc. If you’ve read chapter nine of The Picture of Dorian Gray, you will have an idea of what this novel is comprised of.

All of that further preface to say that there was one portion of this novel that I found particularly intriguing… so much so that I have reproduced it in blog form. This was really just an incredibly long-winded way of saying have a read and tell me your thoughts…

It was some years ago now since one evening in the Rue de Rivoli, he had come across a young scamp of sixteen or so, a pale-faced, quick-eyed child, as seductive as a girl. He was sucking laboriously at a cigarette, the paper of which was bursting where the sharp ends of the coarse caporal had come through. Cursing the stuff, the lad was rubbing kitchen matches down his thigh; they would not light, and soon he came to the end of the box. Catching sight of Des Esseintes who was watching him, he came up, touching his peaked cap, and asked politely for a light. Des Esseintes offered some of his own scented Dubeques, after which he entered into conversation with the lad and urged him to tell the story of his life.

Nothing could well be more ordinary; his name was Auguste Langlois, and he worked at making pasteboard boxes; he had lost his mother and had a father who beat him unmercifully.

Des Esseintes’ thoughts were busy as he listened. “Come and have a drink,” he said, — and took him to a café where he regaled him with goes of heady punch. The child drank his liquor without a word. “Look here,” broke in Des Esseintes suddenly, “would you like some fun this evening? I’ll pay the piper.” And he had thereupon carried off the youngster to Madame Laure’s, a lady who kept an assortment of pretty girls on the third floor of a house in the Rue Mosnier; there was a series of rooms with red walls diversified by circular mirrors, the rest of the furniture consisting mainly of couches and wash-basins.

There, petrified with surprise, Auguste as he fingered his cloth cap, had stared with round eyes at a battalion of women whose painted lips exclaimed all together:

“Oh! the little lad! Why, he is sweet!”

“But, tell us, my angel, you’re not old enough yet, surely?” a brunette had interjected, a girl with prominent eyes and a hook nose who filled at Mine. Laure’s establishment the indispensable rôle of the handsome Jewess.

Quite at his ease, and very much at home, Des Esseintes was talking familiarly in a low voice with the mistress of the house.

“Don’t be afraid, stupid,” he turned to the child to say; “come now, make your choice, it’s my treat,” — and he pushed the lad gently towards a divan, onto which he fell between two women. They drew a little closer together, on a sign from Madame Laure, enveloping Auguste’s knees in their peignoirs and bringing under his nose their powdered shoulders that emitted a warm, heady perfume. The child never stirred, but sat there with burning cheeks, a dry mouth and downcast eyes, darting from under their lids downward glances of curiosity, that refused obstinately to leave the upper part of the girls’ thighs.

Vanda, the handsome Jewess, kissed him, giving him good advice, telling him to do what father and mother told him, while her hands were straying all the time over the lad’s person; a change came over his face and he threw himself back in a kind of transport on her bosom.

“So it’s not on your own account you’ve come tonight,” observed Madame Laure to Des Esseintes. “But where the devil did you get hold of that baby?” she added, when Auguste had disappeared with the handsome Jewess.

“In the street, my dear lady.”

“Yet you’re not drunk,” muttered the old woman. Then, after thinking a bit, she proceeded, with a motherly smile: “Ah, I understand; you rascal, you like ’em young, do you?”

Des Esseintes shrugged his shoulders. — “You’re wide of the mark! oh! miles away from it,” he laughed; “the plain truth is I am simply trying to train a murderer. Now just follow my argument. This boy is virgin and has reached the age when the blood begins to boil; he might, of course, run after the little girls of his neighbourhood, and still remain an honest lad while enjoying his bit of amusement; in fact, have his little share of the monotonous happiness open to the poor. On the contrary, by bringing him here and plunging him in a luxury he had never even suspected the existence of and which will make a lasting impression on his memory; by offering him every fortnight a treat like this, I shall make him acquire the habit of these pleasures which his means forbid his enjoying; let us grant it will take three months for them to become absolutely indispensable to him — and by spacing them out as I do, I avoid all risk of satiating him — well, at the end of the three months, I stop the little allowance I am going to pay you in advance for the benevolence you show him. Then he will take to thieving to pay for his visits here; he will stop at nothing that he may take his usual diversions on this divan in this fine gas-lit apartment.

“If the worst comes to the worst, he will, I hope, one fine day kill the gentleman who turns up just at the wrong moment as he is breaking open his desk; then my object will be attained, I shall have contributed, so far as in me lay, to create a scoundrel, an enemy the more for the odious society that wrings so heavy a ransom from us all.”

The woman gazed at the speaker with eyes of amazement. “Ah! so there you are!’ he exclaimed, as he saw Auguste creeping back into the room, red and shy, skulking behind the fair Vanda. “Come, youngster, it is getting late, make your bow to the ladies.” Then he explained to him on their way downstairs that, once every fortnight, he might pay a visit to Madame Laure’s without putting hand in pocket. Finally, on reaching the street, as they stood together on the pavement, he looked the abashed child in the face and said:

“We shall not meet again after this; do you go back hot foot to your father, whose hand is itching for work to do, and never forget this half divine command: ’Do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.’ With that to guide you you will go far.”

“Good night, sir.”

“But whatever you do, do not be ungrateful, let me hear tidings of you soon as may be, — in the columns of the Police News.”

“The little Judas!” Des Esseintes muttered to himself on this occasion, as he stirred the glowing embers; “to think that I have never once seen his name in the newspapers! True, it has been out of my power to play a sure game; that I have foreseen, yet been unable to prevent certain contingencies, — old mother Laure’s little tricks, for instance, pocketing the money and not delivering the goods; the chance of one of the women getting infatuated with Auguste, and, when the three months was up, letting him have his whack on tick; or even the possibility of the handsome Jewess’s highly-spiced vices having scared the lad, too young and impatient to brook the slow and elaborate preliminaries, or stand the exhausting consummations of her caprices. Unless, therefore, he has been in trouble with the criminal courts since I have been at Fontenay where I never read the papers, I am dished.”

He got up from his chair and took two or three turns up and down the room.

“It would be a thousand pities all the same,” he mused, “for, by acting in this way, I had really been putting in practice the parable of lay instruction, the allegory of popular education, which, while tending to nothing else than to turn everybody into Langlois, instead of definitely and mercifully putting out the wretched creatures’ eyes, tries its hardest to force them wide open that they may see all about them other lots unearned by any merit yet more benignant, pleasures keener and more brightly gilded, and therefore more desirable and harder to come at.”

“And the fact is,” went on Des Esseintes, pursuing his argument, “the fact is that, pain being the effect of education, seeing that it grows greater and more poignant the more ideas germinate, the more we endeavour to polish the intelligence and refine the nervous system of the poor and unfortunate, the more we shall be developing the germs, always so fiercely ready to sprout, of moral suffering and social hatred.”

Some clarification and by that I mean a brief history lesson… second lines date back to an old jazz funeral tradition originating in 1783 when African slaves taking a page from their history came together in New Orleans to form the first Social (aide) and Pleasure Club. These clubs were designed to reflect the concept of tribal society, the idea that if a member of a club was in need or died, the rest of the club would come together to support that member and their family. It’s basically the idea of coming together, especially in times of need, for the collective good. These clubs initially provided loans, assistance, legal counsel and a means of “education”, meaning reading, writing and learning skilled trades. As mentioned, inevitably there would be deaths in these clubs, and acting as one of the first forms of “insurance” the clubs would come together to pay for funeral costs and put on jazz funerals. In the late 1890s brass bands began to emerge in these communities as musical instruments had become more accessible and so often these bands were asked to play at said funerals. When the church service was over and the march of the mourners began from the church to the cemetery these bands would play slow, sad funeral dirges to reflect the struggles and hardships of life. However, on the way back the music would become more upbeat breaking out into highly spirited tunes symbolizing the dismissal and interment of the physical body and of the spiritual bodies release into heaven. This is when the second line would show up… friends, relatives and acquaintances would follow along dancing with abandon. Fast forwarding, at this point in history the parades have become more of a preservation of cultural heritage and a bonding agent for communities more than anything else. So every Sunday a different neighbourhood throws one of these parades and everyone is welcome to join in. I know I can’t think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Exhibit B:

p.s. This seems to be post one hundred. Goodness…

1. A feat of intellect.
Last winter I was cruising the aisles of the Edmonton farmers market, a favorite destination of mine due in large part to the kim chi vendor that existed there. Wandering about I caught sight of a large orange bulbous object in my periphery which, as I’m sure you can guess, was a pumpkin, though a pumpkin of considerable size and girth. Upon closer examination of this fruit(?) it became apparent that this pumpkin was the subject of a challenge, a challenge of intellectual prowess, that being to discern said pumpkins weight. I collected my thoughts, placed them in order, ran through mental formulas and algorithms, stretched my mental fortitude to the limits of my very sanity… and wrote down my answer, the sweat dripping from my brow at the sheer exertion of it all. A few days later I received the call… I had of course, answered correctly. Ten massive buckaroos in my pocket. Cha-Ching!

2. A feat of artistry.
A few days ago I find myself in Montreal in the presence of some of the most lovely of my friends, including one Benjamin Tyne and one Sophia Darling. We hear tell of a local pub that host a weekly arts and crafts night. Possessing in our persons both the love of arts and the love of crafts, we decide to investigate. Walking in we are greeted with the spectacle of a myriad of young adults feverishly engaged in pumpkin carving. We are promptly informed this is a competition… “Hmmm,” I think… “a contest involving pumpkins… my specialty.” And so with the aid of my dear friends Benjamin and Sophia, we obtain a pumpkin and wreak sweet beautiful havoc on its visage. Initially at a loss for ideas we proceed to contemplate what the figure of our fruit(?) might resemble. Being an honorable man I must give credit to where credit is due and provide adequate props to one dapper young gentleman with the name of Derek Colley, an exceptionally fine lad by any consideration, who suggested a pregnant woman’s belly. To which I responded “A fetus!… but not just any fetus… an evil fetus!” , “Terrifying” Benjamin responded. And so the stage was set for the most horrifying of jack o’ lanterns. At this present juncture a dialogue was entered concerning which of our party should design said fetus. Not one of us apparently blessed with any sort of artistic ability, we all seemed hesitant. Eventually, fatefully, the short straw fell upon myself whereupon I mustered ever last iota of artistic strength from within my soul and set to pumpkin what had previously only existed within my mind. Generally there has been a significant disconnect between what exists in my brain and what my hand is able to produce… but this night… this night things were different. For on this night there was a contest involving pumpkins. To the beats of the illustrious and renowned Doctor Dre’s award winning thesis work on Chronic in 2001, I had my way with that pumpkin that night. The result, nothing short of a masterpiece. After my work was done and Benjamin and Sophia had imparted their expert craftsmanship to this glorious work, the stage was set for a heated competition. We went about our nights events with this large gourd ever present in the back of our minds. And finally… finally the judgement was passed. The outcome can of course be guessed… we reigned supreme to the cheering and well-wishing of the infinite masses. The free beer was ours!

The point of all of this… if you find yourself in a contest involving a pumpkin… drop me a line… I have a gift.

Seriously… babies… everywhere.