What. A. Time. It. Is. As we continue to wrap our heads around our first officiated pandemic, not that we aren’t the victims of other, more abstract pandemics such as racism, colonialism, and free-market capitalism, but hey, morality/philosophy will have to take a backburner today. No, today we’re dealing with a vicious strain of fluContinue reading “Love in the Time of COVID-19”
Category Archives: Travel
Do You Shampoo? Curry? You Can Thank Sake Dean Mahomed – On Influential Muslims
I’m endlessly fascinated by the storied history and culture of food. If you think about it food, with all those various customs, colloquial nuances, simple and complex, erotic and understated, is truly our greatest and most intimate experience with the world around us.
On the Road Less Traveled : A Personal Essay on the Path of Most Resistance and the Adventure That is Life.
Don’t be victimized by the culture of fear. Our planet is waiting to be explored, to reveal it’s secrets to you, to me, to any who dare ask, it will expose you to the raw truths of life. To the quarks of distant cultures and alien tongues. To disgusting foods and delicious cuisines, to dangerous and countless blessings.
Interview with Maria Rochelle
Get to know Nicholas over this discussion on travel, literature, writing, life, love and losing oneself in the beautiful madness of modern life.
On Arabic Sweets and the Middle East: Kunafa
All of these things are true… I had been in Jordan for several weeks and my love affair with Arabian sweets had reached a lofty peak. In fact, I would begin and end each day with a platter of pastries, smothered in honeys and syrups that would flood through heaps of pistachios on my plate. Then it happened… IContinue reading “On Arabic Sweets and the Middle East: Kunafa”
Fundraising for the Wandering Scholar Educational Program
Your generous contributions will directly support tuition and tuition alone. I will update you at a later point as to which institution I’m accepted into – aiming for Dharma Realm University. As a student, I am at the mercy and heavily dependent upon the financial generosity of others — for which I am endlessly grateful.
Habits of the Mentally Strong: Meditations on Manifesting Your Best Self
Practicing gratitude? Perserverence? Taking Responsibility? These are just a few of the tools for maintaining a strong mind. Check out my newest article for tips of fulfilling your goals. In other news, applying for scholarships and glaring starry eyed towards Naropa University.
The Way Things Are
The Way Things Are – Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arise from thinking of the self.
#taoism #taoteching #mindfulness
Kansas City Travel Guide: The Locals Take on Restaurants, Bars, Shops, and More
No longer the Midwest’s flyover town, KC is striding forward with newfound vigor and a burgeoning sense of self which has the world watching — as if to say, ooh, what’s all this? When juice bars replace steakhouses and the maker movement is now commonplace, you know something interesting is brewing.
Appalachian Road Trip and Terrible Photo Journal: From the Archives of 2014:
from the archives of 2014: “With only enough time to unpack from our trip to Portland Jaclyn suggests we rent a jalopy and drive our tired souls to North Carolina for the High Point Furniture Market.”
To the One Who Never Will
Our story is never-ending.
That to say, I will always love you.
Aware of this dream state which is my tendency to romanticize the past.
Where Are You Going? An Interview with Quo Vadis: On Journaling, Travel, and Memoir.
On the art of journaling, note taking, and recording the world around you. These are my favorite notebooks for daily musings and painting.
New York City and the Hunt for Turkish Shoes.
It was during my long and dusty sojourn in the Middle East, wandering collapsed, ruined villages, haggling through ancient markets that I first encountered the yemeni, or Turkish slipper. Now, i’m not the most fashion-driven or even fashionable guy, but the effortless, dare I say, timeless cool.
Travelblogger and Novelist, Nicholas Andriani takes on fashion and time honored crafts from the ancient villages of Istanbul to Manhattan New York.
El Violin: Valencia ( A Love Poem to the Spanish City of Oranges
Bohemian nights in Valencia where the gypsies shred violins into the coming dark
“Rhythmic swells reverberate trough my lungs. The back streets of Valencia.
Back street Europe.
Romani enclaves and gypsy parts of town.
We’ll sit here in the Plaça de la Virgen with our stiff sangria, smartly bashful in red-faced delerium.
For it is Spring and the blossoms have begun to sing.
A nod to blanco nerium”
A poem to the City of Oranges. An Open Love Letter to the City of Valencia, Spain.
Sketching Sights: Istanbul, City on the Edge (Art. Travel. Writing. Islam. Architecture)
The Bosphorus splits Istanbul in two parts. A rift in the madness of Europe and Asia, drifting between bodies of fresh and salt water cooling the heated passion of a most ancient urban jungle. The hot, hot, heat of human movement generates organized chaos as this great strait, this rift, cushions the blow, keeping thisContinue reading “Sketching Sights: Istanbul, City on the Edge (Art. Travel. Writing. Islam. Architecture)”
Spontaneous Combustion: #1 ($99 Dollars, Almost Free: Life Coach. Copywriter. Thief)
I’m not here to pretend to be some guru or act like I know anymore than you do because, believe me, the older I get, the less I know.
Funny how that works when the world is running wild with “twenty-somethings” peddling Nirvana and life-coaching: really just give me $99 and I promise you’ll feel better. Go ahead, try it.
In My Heart of Hearts, I Will Always Love You. | An Open Love Letter, Deep in Memoir: The Boy Meets World, the Conflicted Future Self.
“My sudden love of these two women came into existance upon two separate planes of thought
Like a split in the multiverse that is the self.
Shay. Shay is stability. Comfort. Success.
Whereas Ingrid. Ingrid claims the part of me which belongs to the world. A manifestation of my desire to roam freely and simply be.
But, I know in my heart of hearts these two worlds can not coexist.
For they, separately, are everything. Yet together, in the folds of life, they cancel each other out.”
–In Another Country
From the Rooftops of Granada — an excerpt from my manuscript for ‘The Outsider.’ A Confessional Memoir/Novel on Identity, Love, Travel and Revolution in the Arab Spring.
I mean, it’s not cheating if nothing happens. Oh, but emotions run deep. Which begs the question: What’s worse, an emotional or a physical affair?
Opening lines: A Story About Identity, Revolution, and What it Means to Be a Modern Human. A Work in Progress #LiteraryFiction
Excerpt from The Outsider: A Memoir?
“The sky out my window is that fiery red which makes the heart swell with life and there it is again: that sensational expanding within my chest, rising to my throat, gripping and stinging my eyes.”
One: I Could Kill Myself | Two: I Could Go To Africa –scene from The Outsider, A Novel.
*unedited from rough draft (The Outsider: A Novel) I woke up one morning in a state of complete despair and found myself debating the absurdity of carrying on like this when I had options. They were clear as day and night and manifest out of who-knows-where: One, I could kill myself. Two, I could goContinue reading “One: I Could Kill Myself | Two: I Could Go To Africa –scene from The Outsider, A Novel.”
