I'm in the checkout line at the supermarket, on the first Sunday in December. A couple of lines over is a guy with oiled salt and pepper hair, glasses with a lot of tape on each hinge, and half his teeth on the way to where his previous half went. As my groceries are being checked, he is searching for some cash, or a check, or a credit card. He never finds it. In the early evening, I am waiting at the front entrance of my townhome complex. Someone is going to come by and pick me up. As I stand there, one of my neighbors, a kid with my neghborhood's version of a hot rod, appears to believe that, instead of looking down the street for my friend's car, rather that I am looking in the sky at a bright star. He tells me this, "See that star. I've waited for four years. I saw that star through a telescope." He then wanders back to his place. It's another 'what in the motherfuck' moment. My date and myself and up at a deathburger. Shortly after I take her hand in mine, we hear a commotion across the place. Female voices are criticizing a family member. He is rushed out of the place, by what I presume are the rest of his family, as if he was the President of the U.S. being hustled out a back door surrounded by the Secret Service. I hear someone say, "I knew my Dad would try and start some shit." A couple of mornings later, I am at my usual deathburger. Outside, I see a couple of young guys sitting against the building, engrossed in their phones. A third is standing outside, also concentrating on his phone. I rarely see anyone waiting outside the deathburger at 5 am. I can't remember the last person I saw, inside or out, much less three at once who were all using their phones. This morning, we are visited by the technological present. The two on the ground are now inside, still staring at their phones. One is at the counter. "Yeah I heard on the radio that you guys have free coffee?"
Another couple of mornings after this, and I am downtown to grab some breakfast before a late shift at work. On one corner of the pedestrian mall, under some shelter are standing a couple of guys. One is younger and appears to work for an establishment, the entrance to which they are in front of. It strikes me as if he is tolerating the other one, perhaps my age or younger but with deep lines across his face, wild and dirty blond hair, and wearing his coat unzipped in single digit air as he smokes a cigarette. Tolerating him perhaps as long as he does not ask anyone for money, in which case he will not actually be panhandling. Someone passes by, and the older one says to him, "Hey bud..." as if to asks for some change. He immediately stops his request. I don't hear the other guy next to him protest, but this guy acts as if he did. He responds, "Okay, man, ok, ok, ok..."
Saturday morning. 5 am. I leave my house and spy a guy ahead of me. In single digit temperatures, he has nothing on his head. But he does have a briefcase. I hear him exclaim, "Woo!" before he crosses the boulevard. When I get across, he is headed back the way he came. At the counter of the deathburger is a young guy shuffling back and forth. On the counter are numbers, 1, 2, and 3. He asks the employee, "Is there room for three trays here?" I debated wearing my snow boots this morning. He spots them and tells me, "Those are some nice motherfuckin' boots. I bet you could climb a mountain in those things. I take a bus to a train to a bus. On board are a couple of bundled up middle aged white people. They could be man and woman or two women. The one who does appear to be a woman takes off a boot, and the other one apparently touches her foot to see how cold it is. The other has a collapsible shopping cart with a cloth bang at the bottom, full of food items. They are some kind of urban campers.
It's a Tuesday morning. I am working a schedule where I start a couple of hours later than usual. So I am in the deathburger a couple of hours later than usual. This morning is my opportunity to discover who I assume is the usual crowd, who comes in an hour or so after I usually am gone. There is at least one guy, Mr. foot-long grey goatee, who has been here by 5 am. Today, he's in a DEA cap. He goes from his seat up to the counter, and comes back unhappy. He is sitting next to a friend, who asks him, "I she (employee) messing with you?" An interesting interpretation. I go up to the counter myself and tell the employee in Spanish that 'the drunk does not like you.' She tells me that he wants real sugar, and all they have is artificial sweetener. Others begin coming in, and the place starts to fill up. A couple of transit drivers, a white-haired guy with horn-rimmed glasses. The friend of foot-long grey goatee guy begins talking to the white-haired guy, about a neighborhood up north. I know the neighborhood well. I used to participate in art exhibitions there, and I know someone there who owns a restaurant. He is complaining about developers scraping homes, and putting up condos which appear mismatched with the rest of the neighborhood where he lives. This has been a topic of conversation throughout metro area neighborhoods for over a decade. I lived in a prominent neighborhood and watched it change over the course of sixteen years. Yet I was in the neighborhood he is speaking of less than a week ago, and I saw not a single home being demolished. He claims that "They're building like crazy." As I am leaving, I say hello in Spanish to an employee, ask her how her Thanksgiving was. I turn around where a white haired guy is sitting alone at a small table, with a coffee. He says to me, "Are you alright?" I reply, "Yeah, why?" He says, "I meant well..."
Gates Rubber Company stands as one of the most important commercial enterprises to ever set up shop in Denver. For decades one of our city's largest employers, Gates was a major positive influence on the development of many of our beloved south Denver neighborhoods. Drive down Broadway, and you'll see demolition crews tearing down the last of the buildings left from gates' golden age. In late November, demolition crews began tearing down buildings 10, 11, 13 and 41 of the once vast industrial complex that since the 20th century had spanned Broadway from Arizona Ave. to I-25, going west to Santa Fe Dr. and east to Logan St. ...the gates site had drawn interest...as the perfect location for a vast transit-oriented multi-use retail, office and entertainment complex. ...Cherokee Investments, lost control of their property, and the project's major developer...headed for less-complicated pastures. ...the west side land has sat untouched... - Washington Park Profile, December 2013
The mayor has declared that he wants to "activate" the parks, in much the same way that he talks about activating the neighborhoods, the downtown core and the South Platte; his tenure has bee a daily scurry in search of buttons to push and levers to pull. ...the notion of an outdoor extravaganza in Denver's busiest park...fits neatly with his declared mission of creating - sorry, "activating" - a "world-class city." "We don;t need to have the city dictate what...constitutes 'activation' and what we need to achieve it." ...Denver's parks and recreation areas now generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year in economic value... ...Denver Parks and Recreation...ever-rising annual budget, now at $51 million, has prompted a...look for ways to use the parks to produce cold cash...and left neighborhood groups in the position of defending local parks against the schemes... - Westword, 12/19-25/2013
...the city has started...a multicultural neighborhood watch...there is more trust to reach out to law enforcement. "People are shocked at having new people. They don't understand them. It's very frustrating..." ...the city held its first ever...ceremony...displaying the flags of 25 countries inside the lobby. "There weren't many white faces, there weren't many long-time black faces, and there weren't many long-time Hispanic faces." - Denver Post, 12/22/2013
The next morning, I am across the street from where I live, at a bus stop. A truck with a snowplow on the front is parked along side. A guy in a safety vest is replacing the bag in the trash can. It's an old, dented metal can. The guy puts one bag inside, ties it tight, and then put a second one inside. He does a quick sweep. I am now sitting in what feels as if it is like a new bus shelter. After work, I am waiting for a connecting bus, at a stop across the street from a district police station. It appears as though someone is being loaded into an ambulance. Behind me, a couple of guys who may be high each have a squeegee. They are meticulously cleaning every inch of window, both inside and out. The following day, I am on a bus home. A young guy gets on, and begins talking to someone about running into others local to the neighborhood. He is out of prison after a four year stretch, working at a fast food place. He sounds to me as though he is someone who, prior to "being put up" as he puts it, learned his own rules of the street. I hear him say that he is not a 'tagger' (someone who spray-paints graffiti, or 'tags'). He had a confrontation with a group of them. He told them not to 'dis(respect)' him, which they did before pulling a 'strap' (a gun) and firing two shots into the air.
The morning after, I am back at the deathburger. Mr. foot-long grey goatee comes in, greets someone at the counter, begins looking in a couple of trash cans. The bus takes me to the train, from which I get off and head to my bus stop. A young guy, just a kid, comes up in boots and with a hard hat. He tells me where he works, asks me where I work, how much I make. He tells me what he makes working construction. It's a dollar less than I do. We get on the bus with a couple of other guys, one of whom is talking to the other about his opinions of life in general as a young man. He used to work in sales, and hated it. He's now in some kind of hospital internship. "You know, seeing women having given birth; giving their babies a bath..." With his confident use of the work "fuck", it's almost as if he feels the need to sound experienced beyond his years. He conveys a life of frustration.
It's my day off. I am returning from a holiday shopping trip downtown. My usual route home from downtown is a train which I take to a bus stop. I have taken this bus before, when one former convict comes on and recognizes and greets another, asking him how he is doing. This afternoon is another one of those scenes. When I get home, my local news channel has preempted national news for ongoing coverage of another shooting at a metro area high school. The school is just down the street from where I work most of the time. One student was shot point blank in the face. She will eventually be in a coma.
White kids with your hands in the air
I think I better beware I think you better beware
White kids with your hands in the air
Don't tell me that you're goin' nowhere
Life as Love
"There I was without my body or any physical traits, yet my pure essence continued to exist. ...it felt far greater and more intense and expansive than my physical being. I felt eternal, as if I'd always existed and always would... I was filled with the knowledge that I was simply magnificent." "My entire neo-cortex...was entirely shut down. I had no language, emotions, logic or memories..." ...being granted a grand overview of the invisible side of existence. He also had a lovely ethereal companion that floated along on a butterfly wing, telepathically teaching him..."there is nothing you can do wrong." Today, he works at returning to his NDE state of oneness and unconditional love by using meditation and sacred acoustics. ...the brain blocks access of knowledge to higher worlds. "We need to accept - at least hypothetically - that the brain itself doesn't produce consciousness. ...a kind of reducing valve or filter...dumbs down consciousness..." A Ph.D. Harvard-trained scientist specializing in anatomy of the brain suffered an exploded blood vessel i
n the left hemisphere and
experienced an inability to visually distinguish edges and boundaries between herself and the outer world. "I could actually see that my skin was not my physical boundary. She now understands that she is part of the cosmic flow of energy, which she characterizes as a tranquil sea of euphoria. Upwards of 8 million people that have experienced...NDE are trending toward a tipping point into the comforting awareness that anything is possible. - natural awakenings, 12/2013
He...even invented a machine that projects hallucinatory images directly onto the retina of the eye. ...subjects couldn't tell the machines images from reality.
The experiences recorded by people who have allegedly suffered a clinical death and...resuscitated are virtually identical with hallucinatory drug images.
"The sensory-isolation experience should be part of...personal growth." ...my journey began with a gradual movement away from the sense of physical self. My body will become a neutral vessel... I find any self-concept fading away. I have lost any notion of having a body... ...I must get back into my body. - The OMNI Book of the Paranormal and the Mind, ed. by O. Davies, 1982
The start of another week. 5 am. The bus stop across the street from where I live. The same guy, with the same truck with a snowplow is back at the bus stop. This morning, he has just completed a power washing of the stop. Up the street, at the deathburger, is a guy who I have not seen in months. He is sitting at a table with his hands in his pockets. I don't see him with food or drink. The last time I saw him, he was sitting here with another guy. They were both making pencil drawings on typing paper. He was drunk and got up to take his shoes, which he had just removed, to put them on a chair under a table. When asked to put them back on by the manager, he attempted to tie his shoelaces around his ankle. After 5-0 was called, I headed out, only to look back and see a couple of police cars and a paramedic vehicle from the fire department. They had all been called out for little old him. He is back this morning as if it all never even happened.
By the middle of this week before Christmas, in what surely must be a gesture of goodwill toward men, the transit system has elected to have its stops power washed this morning. My usual bus stop is on the list. The same guy cleaning the stops is here this morning, and will be back again tomorrow. I wait for the bus upon a damp patch of concrete wall. Along comes shuffling a little middle-aged guy with a neatly-trimmed goatee who I don;t recognize. He's in a hoodie, and with his hands inside the sleeves. What strikes me about him are his dress pants and loafers. He spots the trash can shortly before he runs into it. Is he wasted? Has he been awake for who knows how long? I watch him disappear as he zig-zags toward the deathburger. The following morning, I am back at the same stop. Here comes the same little guy. I don't recognize it's him until he stops to say to me, "Hey, bro...". He asks me if I am alright. Is this a new hustle, or could he the drunks who are asking me how I am think that I am homeless? I do carry a large bag to work, I may appear so, especially to the wasted ones. Why else would they talk to me in this 1970s television dialogue? I am eating some food. He replies, "Okay. You just getting your grub on?" I get on the bus, and a few stops down, either a police officer or a transit system security officer comes on after some passengers. She alerts the driver that another passenger is waiting to be picked up down the street, and who was reported to have been acting erratically on another bus. She will follow us, and if he has any trouble with her, all he has to do is stop and turn on his four-way flashers, and she will come back on to take the passenger away. Because that's life in the big city. Some twelve hours later, I step off the bus back across the street from where I live. Who passes me but the little guy in dress pants. He has with him a plastic bag with a couple of big cans in it.
It's the end of another Saturday, four days before Christmas. The only person to be shot at the high school, besides the shooter who took his own life, lingered for a time. She was 17 years old and beautiful. She passed away this afternoon, was it 4:27 PM? I stop into the drug store to drop of some film for one hour processing. I wait for it at the deathburger next door. At a table are a couple of guys with a box, with what from a distance appears to be some kind of nail gun or caulking gun. Perhaps it's a salad shooter. One guy is quiet and sober, the other is loud and drunk. The quiet one is apparently complaining to the drunk, who replies that he "better quit crying. You're going to piss me off." He gets up once to get in the quiet one's face, before getting up a second time to yell, "Quit your crying motherfucker!" The deathburger must be used to such behavior, as an assistant manager immediate dials 911. In the meantime, the quiet one has walked out, and the drunk one has gone back to his burger and fries as if nothing happened. Someone else yelled to him to watch his language, because "there's kids in here!" (Duh.) The drunk apologizes to everyone. When the quiet one comes back inside, he announces in Spanish that the guy is his friend, and to "give him whatever he wants." Shortly thereafter, 5-0 is in the house. When the drunk sees them, he says, "Yeah, what do you want? Did someone complain?" The customers watch as he gets patted down. He sits back down and mumbles something about police brutality. He then points at an officer, and says, "And you..." The officer has his stand, cuffs him, and takes him away. Another officer takes the box, before coming back inside to ask the quiet one if it belongs to him. The officer tells him that his drunk pal has no receipt for it, so it will be checked in at the jail as his property. And with that, a couple of police cruisers are away with his ass, caulking gun and all. I pass his quiet buddy outside. I hear him say that he's "had it with this police brutality." Happy holidays, strange hardware bedfellows.
You know what I wanted. Reagan, Reagan, Reagan. Reagan, the one American poet who could sing outdoors, and torchlights down the street to the end of the world. Europaralysis? Young Europe's blues? Tired of socialism and its heavy hand? Now is the time, in the eighties...to get the dead hand of the state off the necks of your people... "...pro-growth policies in one country enhance the economic well-being of 'all' the world's citizens...all the markets of the world are enhanced. There is a destabilizing force in the world - and it's not the democracies of the West." - Noonan
...he asserts that I need to cut my hair. ...as if he has...to lead me to...looking like a standard dude. ...it's as if this guy and others...are telling me I need to get my act together. To "man up" if you will. I've had an instinctual desire to experience powerful aspects of motherhood, such as breastfeeding. I also have an
uncomfortable reaction to being labeled [sic]
a man. The author
"was once described as a 'militant homosexual' by the official right-wing publication...of the University of Illinois..."
...Salt Lake City on a weeknight... Everyone had Anthrax goatees, some had implanted horns...and I was wearing this white jacket with a gigantic unicorn with a rainbow on it... We start playing for these metal heads. One guy is in a wolf mask... - Outfront, 12/16/2013
...Colorado will bring shuttle buses to the state's first recreational marijuana shops... At least three pot-themed tourist companies...are preparing to welcome their first visitors... - Denver Post, 12/31/2013
It's two days before Christmas. I am standing at a train station at a community college at ten to six AM. I am listening to someone running as fast as he can from the parking lot, trying to catch a train which is pulling to a stop at the platform. He has to make it down a couple of flights of steps and across the platform, and he would have made it if he had gone straight to the nearest door on the train. Instead, he turned and went to the door at the end of the train, just in time for it to close. He has something in each hand. In his right he has a briefcase or a laptop, and in his left is something small, such as a pair of glasses. As soon as the train takes off without him, he throws his glasses on the ground with a big swing of his arm. The entire scene somehow appears scripted. The following afternoon, I am on a bus home. I am visited by three spirits. The first is a woman in a trench coat, and a scarf tied over her scalp. It's red, white, and blue, and well worn. It had a heart shape of the stars and stripes followed by "America." The second spirit sits next to me; a skinny Caucasian teen nerd who talks about "not going back to jail." The third spirit is another woman who gets on at the train station. She has a Kleenex up her left nostril. Alas spirits! I will keep Christmas in my heart all the days of the year. Christmas Day. I grab a sandwich at the gas station across the street from where I live. On these days with cold nights, the regular panhandlers are nowhere to be seen. Yet, today there is another guy who I have never seen wandering out of the alley, into the station, and back into the alley once again. The day after Christmas, I am at my usual bus stop at 5 am. At the bus stop on the opposite corner is the same guy from the same pickup with the same plow on the front. It appears as if he is cleaning one bus stop each day.
It's the Saturday before New Years'. At 5 am, it's a very quiet one. I'm across the street from where I live, at a bus stop. In front of the shelter is a shopping cart, from a Mexican supermarket several blocks down the street. Why push a cart past more than one stop just to leave it at one way up the street? On the bus to the train station is a pair of young Caucasian adults, both with little beards. They stick out among the middle-aged service and construction workers. When one gets up to get off, they give each other a kind of fist bump. When I get on a train, I see a guy on his phone. At first glance, his cap appears to have an emblem from a police department or security agency. It has a star outlined in yellow. When I see it clearly, it reads, "Havana Yacht Club." He's in a black sport coat over a forest green T-shirt. It's an interesting look. After work, I am downtown at a burger place which I've never been in before. The kid behind the counter has a face so thin that it appears collapsed. It almost sounds as if, at some tables, a line of twenty-somethings, or younger, are making fun of this guy. I order and sit, and my burger shows up smelling like char. Tiny fries are in a paper cup. A guy appears and asks me to let him know if there is anything else he can do for me, before he vanishes. People outside wander past the windows. A thoroughly bewildered, grey-haired guy with shopping bags, a young couple, a couple of pedicabs. Both inside and out, there are folks with a hippie vibe. I hear someone on a mall shuttle say that Phish is in town. I wait for the train home across from a row of downtown condo units. The sun has gone down, and I can see into one room on the third floor. A big screen TV is mounted to a wall. It must be like living n a hotel room. My train move away from these steel and glass blocks, and heads toward the west. Toward another land.
It's New Year's Eve. Yesterday, my boss told me that I could stay and work an extra hour, because today would be a short day. It turned into a ten-hour shift, during which I ran over to a deathburger. Inside was a skinny guy behind the register who appeared to be an assistant manager. Over his shirt and tie was a long-sleeved sweater hiding his tattoos. He accented his greetings with a bit of a fake Midwestern accent. On a bus home I spot a homeless guy whose entire head and face are covered in snow white hair. He has with him a full garbage bag. I wonder if anyone besides myself recognizes his shoes. Between each of his socks and shoes are a plastic bag. It's an old trick to keep your feet dry, which I learned when I was ten. The problem is that your feet can't breathe, and they perspire.
