It's May 1st. Shortly after 1 PM. I'm at a bus stop on a corner within walking distance from my house. A pickup pulls up to the light. The driver, with grey hair and a beard, leans out of the window to spit. The bus comes and takes me to the train station. A kid gets on. His black hair and beard make him look just like the caveman in the TV commercials. What's left of his voice sounds like sandpaper. "I jumped on 'cause I thought you were gonna leave without me, you know?" Not really, and there's a line of passengers behind of you. After sundown, I'm on a bus back to my neighborhood. A young couple puts their scooter on the bike carrier on the front of the bus. A short distance later, it falls off. The next day after work, I am sitting on the cement at a bus gate in the train station. Along comes a young man with curly, blonde hair. I look up at him surrounded by sky. Crucifix tattoo on his bicep, cigarette in his mouth, paperback in the outermost pocket of his backpack. He wants to know if I have sixty cents to give him for the train. That's not enough for the fare. He tells me that he was kicked off one train. I wonder if he means that he was kicked off for not having fare. Right behind him is a guy who looks way to young for his dirty skin and defeated countenance. He wants some change for food.
It's Thursday night of the following week. I've worked three 12-hour-plus days. It began raining last month and has yet to dry out. This evening, I hear distant thunder which sounds like gunfire. From the bus stop, I see the entire black sky periodically lit up by lightning flashes. I don't have to wave the bus down. After I get on, I spend the fifteen minute ride listening to a passenger speak loudly into his phone, a young guy with an accent I can't place. Western? Louisiana? He's telling someone that neither he nor his roommate enjoy doing the dishes. "We clean everything else, but the dished pile up." He mentions being enrolled in college. " Man, I just gotta keep that C average and I'll keep that scholarship. Otherwise, I gotta pay two grand. It's not hard to keep a C average. I just gotta do my homework. Man, my homework's gonna be tedious." An hour later, after a fifty minute layover watching it pour, I get on my last bus. Before we take off, a guy gets on. His long salt and pepper hair is soaked. He's joined by a much younger guy, to whom he relates a story of a time when he missed the last train home. He claims that he parked his bike next to someone else's Rolls Royce, and he climbed in the back seat to spend the night. When he woke up, he says, his bike was gone. As we head toward my neighborhood, a window is open and rain drops are flying inside.
Friday. Force of habit takes me to a particular light rail station. On the platform is the skinniest girl who I have ever seen. She is on her phone and she sounds pissed. After several seconds, she switches from Spanish to English. "'Cause her fuckin' shitty-ass car is gonna need new tires. And it's gonna take twenty Mexican ladies to clean her fuckin' shitty-ass house. I told her that she was a fuckin' shitty-ass principal..." On the train is someone else on their phone, mentioning something about "theft by deception." The train takes me to the bus, which takes me to an outdoor table at a bakery in the shopping center where I work on an overcast day. The bakery has a clock on the wall. When I glance up at, through the window I see a customer who looks exactly like Donald Rumsfeld in a sweater vest. Slowly coming down the sidewalk is someone pushing a shopping cart from a clothing store in the shopping center. If I had to guess, I would say that he (or is he a she? He or she is wearing a coat and a hood.) has mental health issues. He or she looks at me as if not quite sure just exactly who or what I am. Perhaps my own gender is less than obvious. The shopping cart runs into an unoccupied table by mistake, knocking over a chair before pausing to slowly pick it up. He or she turns and disappears with the cart into the parking lot. Just a few minutes later it begins to hail and white peas of ice bounce under my table.
Saturday. 5 AM. New deathburger. The groovy twenty-somethings are here. The make-believe street kids in their clean clothes and jewelry and fanny packs with no holes in them and fasteners which are not broken, who come to the deathburger to act out their bohemian urban fantasies. To feel what it means to be "down and out." And yet they carry no plastic grocery bags or cloth bags or backpacks, and they have no shopping carts outside overflowing with blankets and sleeping bags and clothes and items which look like random garbage. I hear an employee behind the counter sympathizing with them, telling another employee that "someone's gonna get their bubble burst" when she tells them that they have to leave unless they purchase something. At another end of the deathburger, however, is someone perhaps a couple of decades older, who appears not to feel so groovy, but rather silent and brooding. And perhaps someone not here by choice. His mug has an expression; memories of lost time and perhaps other things lost. Of these younger patrons, there are three, one of whom is female. Her wardrobe is vintage 1970s, complete with big, tinted glasses. Don't get me wrong, I like it. She appears as a character from the 70s who may have been created by Tracy Ullman. She talks very fast. She orders two breakfast sandwiches. Her two pals are in a booth, and I guess they aren't hungry. She says to me, "Hey man, you hungry?" I gave her the lowdown. I was waiting for my own order. Bummer. "Just thought I would ask. That's cool." As long as everything is cool. I am staring down a 9-plus-hour day at work, which won't begin for another hour and a half. In the end, it will go longer than twelve hours. Another young guy comes in. He sits down in a booth next to mine. His arms are inside of his hoodie. He hasn't purchased anything, he's just chillin'. I've never seen him before. As I get up to leave, he asks me, "You leavin'?" I tell him that I am going to work. I hope this does not ruin his plans. I'm at the rain station across the street for fifteen minutes before something takes me by surprise. I say out loud, "Holy Christ, am I imagining things?" At the other end of the platform. There is a tiny woman who appears to be of Asian descent. At 6 AM on an overcast morning, she is wearing sunglasses. And she has a plastic bag holding pieces of bread which she is dispensing to some pigeons. Who is this succubus? Behind her, the skyscrapers appear as lighthouses, their energy-efficient bulbs holding vigil behind rain-laden mists. Thunder rumbles softly in the distance. When the 6:20 train pulls to a stop, I climb the steps inside. A wave of marijuana odor slaps me in the face.
...the conquest of reality by economics and technology, the statement of what urban society has done to rural peace... The technology is a miracle of the age...the social and political influence is believed to be all but dominant. -
About Television, by M. Meyer, 1972
...the upswing of gang violence may have been precipitated in part by changes in neighborhoods...long...dominated by residents of color but now...seeing an influx of wealthier Caucasians. "Back in the day...there was room for each of [the gangs]
to occupy territory. Now, the whites are consolidating, boxing in [other races]
who are trying to hang on to this little bit of space - and that's forcing them to get closer together, and it's causing a reaction. That's reality. ..these gangsters...feel they're being smothered. Then one thing leads to another... Some of my kids have been used to sitting out on weekend nights...and they think it's their 'hood. But now...the white people are coming in with their strollers and dogs, and they see these kids...and they're not used to it. They want the city to do something about it, and the kids are reacting to that." - Westword, 5/7-13/2015
At the end of next month, the Denver Voice will loose its home. The building has been sold. Denver has been talking about revitalizing Arapahoe Square, our corner of Five Points, for a few years. Arapahoe Square is also home to many of the organizations that serve people experiencing homelessness. Most vendors rely on public transportation ... It's important for us to distribute papers somewhere convenient for them. Our office...it's also close...where many vendors go to sell their papers. .we can't afford our neighborhood anymore. Finding a new place to go has been difficult. - Denver Voice, 5/2015
"The May District 4 Commander's meeting will be held..."
"...there's...an exponential rise in hit and runs. The excessive speeding...is major annoying and...primer-dome posters littered the area unnecessarily"
"One member...concerned that a child will be hit by a car...talked to police officers the response was less than helpful." - Westwood Neighborhood Association FB page, 5/11/2015
...advertisers are reluctant to pay more because the audience is younger and richer, but will gladly knock down the price if the audience is older and poorer. All any medium has to sell is its audience...and the nature of the audience must offset the price. The rash of "relevant" programs that broke out...in the fall of 1970 - junior lawyers and interns and such, Helping the (clean) Poor - spread from a demand by salesmen for...younger audiences... - Meyer
...the escalation continues, implacably. Hate grows on both sides as the immense means at the disposal of the United States comes into play. Certainly, The Pope has spoken out, and the Ecumenical Council of Christians has not been friendly. During the recent colloquium in New York, there were protests from religious figures... This has serious implications for the future of Christianity among the huge number of pagan masses of Asia and Africa. How...will the missionary of tomorrow be able to preach...in the face of such serious actions by Christian countries? ..these masses...already identify Christianity with the white races which claim to be the defenders of Christianity... Militarism...was designated by Pope Paul VI...as being responsible for many excesses. An effort has been made to create the impression that this war has the approval of the people...the rural people, who are often victims of misdirected shooting...also the city youths, who try by all possible means to escape conscription... There is, evidently, a bourgeois group, city residents who profit from the war... There also...catholic refugees for whom this war has become part of a crusade... Have they considered...that they are in conflict with the Gospel and the spirit of the Second Vatican Council...? ...this is a war in which whites are implicated (as...mercenaries...)... Then it is high time...that the United States renounce its "false pride"...words used by the Ecumenical Council of Churches... There is nothing to keep the United States from so doing, as it...constitutes the greatest military power in the world. ...to the "man of good will"...peace was promised two thousand years ago. - Raskin and Fall
Tuesday. It's closing in on noon. I'm on a bus to work as a woman in the back yells to the driver, wanting to know if we have passed a particular avenue. It sounds as if the driver tells her that it's coming up. Several passengers correct him, telling her that it's miles behind us. Some nine hours later, i take the same back the other way with a couple of employees of an Olive Garden. They are discussing who is going out with who. The following day around 11:30 AM, I am at the bus stop across the street from where I live. An Oldsmobile from the 1980s goes past. It has extra huge rims and individually adhered letters on the back window. The window has an old broadcast radio antenna built into the glass. The letters spell out "TECHNYNE," a reference to a little fully automatic machine gun. It suddenly hits me why I am seeing, out on this street, cars which our parents drove thirty years ago. I realize that they must be considered classics. I get up the street to my old bus stop. Someone is kind enough to share a cigarette with a drunk who is complaining that so and so "is a bitch." A street guy shuffles up. He's got clean clothes and hair from 1976. Across the street are a couple of police cars parked next to each other. The street guy suddenly says, "I didn't want to talk bad about anybody, I just wanted to tell you a police officer got killed." He's referring to where the police cars are parked. "I saw him dead and buried. Well, I just came by to smoke some weed and wish everyone a Merry Christmas." He shuffles away when the bus shows up. Nine hours and forty-one minutes later, I am at the train station, waiting for my last bus home. I watch as a couple of young guys quickly go to the opposite side of a partition. I hear something hit the ground. I hear one say to the other, "What did you drop my fuckin' shit for bro? You fuckin' broke my shit bro! You fuckin' dropped my shit bro!" Just then, across the platform, a Caucasian guy in a navy blazer and khaki pants roll up on a bike and turns a circle. He gets of and takes a selfie with his phone of himself and another guy in a blue buttoned down shirt and bike helmet.
Thursday night. I'm out of work an hour earlier than I have been lately. The sun is setting on falling rain sheets just beyond the treetops. Lightning reaches all the way across the entire band. When the wind picks up, I smell fresh cut grass. In an instant, it's 30 years ago and I am back in Oklahoma. The lightning is in front of the rain sheet, right in front of me. It's a crystal clear bolt of orange and looks like a filament. The sun appears to switch off like a light as it disappears behind the Rockies. As the bus shows up, I think that I may hear a siren in the distance. Is there a funnel cloud behind rain wrap? I looks behind us as we head north of the rain. The sheet has turned as black as night. Where I disembark, at the train station, the drops are big. At a train station a couple of blocks north, I make it just before the rain comes blowing in. When it does, I move my umbrella over a couple of young teenaged girls. The bus takes us west, far from what the local news is calling "ribbon lightning." Back on my boulevard, a bus comes right away, packed with people who appear to be up to no good. A guy standing up front has what appears to be a can of Heineken.
Saturday mornings are bleary-eyed. Saturday is the one day of the week when I revert to my old early morning ways. Between 5 and 6 AM, I'm at the deathburger across the avenue from a train station. Inside are a couple of Caucasian guys, each with a walkie talkie on his belt. They are identically dressed in black sweaters over button down shirts, dress pants and shoes. I can't read what is embroidered on the breast of each sweater. They are joined by the wannbe "street kids," none of them the same ones as were here last Saturday. I wonder if a different handful will come in each Saturday. Their designer clothes smell of money. Are they from condos, perhaps on the river?
It's Monday around a quarter to noon. I'm at the bus stop across the street from where I live. A middle aged couple comes by, sits down. They are both dressed head to toe in black. First the lady gets up to go to the liquor store next door, before returning with cigarettes. Then the guy gets up and goes there before returning. After he lights up a smoke, another middle aged guy comes cruising up on a bicycle with an electric motor on it. He has on what appears as if it could be a jacket from some kind of car club. It has a big ace on the back. He tells the couple that he got the bike at Walmart for $130. "You give me a bike, I'll put a motor on it," he tells them. His next moves convince me that he couldn't so much as hammer a nail. And if he can't then this is just a scam to steal bikes. When the bus shows up, he has a hell of a time lifting it up on to the bike rack. We haven't gone more than what seems to be a few feet before he runs up to the driver to tell her that he has to get off. He forgot his backpack. When I get up the street to my usual bus stop, I sit in bench with a guy who has grey hair, no teeth, and a brown weather-beaten face full of lines. Along comes a younger guy with long oiled black hair. He has a cane and a cloth bag with "American Medical Response" embroidered on the side. The name belongs to an ambulance service. The two appear to know each other. I hear the guy with the bag talking to the other, saying something about being in jail and having a student loan. The bus arrives. Sitting in front is a short woman who is attempting to navigate her travel aboard the transit system with a small map from Avis Rent A Car. At the train station, I step out of the front door. Directly in front of me is a woman who appears and sounds as if she could have, at one time, travelled with the Hell's Angels. She is speaking, not on her phone, but to it directly. "I don't have all day! C'mon goddamn it. Stupid phone."
I get out of work shortly before 8 PM. A woman comes walking up to the stop. She appears Hispanic. I strike up a conversation in Spanish, which we continue on the bus. We work in the same shopping center. She works at a dine in pizza restaurant, though she doesn't like pizza. She is from El Salvador, with a son back there in the 12th grade. She describes her native country as, "No work, no money." I ask what part of the city she lives in. The street she mentions is perhaps the last citadel of low rents in any county. Her trip home must be more than an hour on two different buses. I watched her cross the wet parking lot, shining in the rain with reflected light. Were it daylight, would she be any more visible to the locals here than she is now that they are gone and tucked in their homes. It makes sense for her to go crosstown further north, closer to downtown, than it does to try and take a bus east or west down here. They run less frequently here in this comparative transit desert island. I know a little about both her neighborhood and this one. I know a little about both her language and mine. The train takes me a short couple of stops north to the station where I keep my nightly 58-minute vigil each evening. I have a layover from 9:21 to 10:09. I could take the train to another station, and transfer to a train which will take me to my street. But I would have to wait for that bus I don't know how long, and then it's twenty blocks or more home. I'm not sure that I can do all that in 58 minutes, even if it wasn't after 9 PM. It's all about the numbers. I used to be able to leave my house, catch a bus, and in just under an hour be standing inside our furthest store west. Plenty of time before we open at 7 AM and a beautiful view of the foothills within walking distance. I used to be here, at this very station, at a quarter to six AM almost every day to catch a forty-minute ride south to our plant. For six or seven years. But with the sale of my company, I haven't seen my friends there in months. And not all of them chose to stick around. Much has changed, and is changing.
During my vigil, I usually see assorted people on the platforms. As a transfer point between the two long train lines north and south out of downtown, this is probably the transit system's largest and busiest station. At this time on night, if you see people on the platform, they are probably waiting to go south of downtown somewhere. Everyone else coming off a train is headed to their cars parked in the lot, or to catch a bus. I see a couple in some kind of matching white hats with brims. Another guy is digging in a trash can, crushing cans with his foot and wildly looking around for some kind of imaginary gestapo. I watch the couple with the hats get on a train. Along comes a bus with a driver who is not sure which gate to turn into. The gates are at islands which all appear the same. I watch the occasional bus slow and stop at the same place, trying to decipher where their gate is. A northbound train pulls up and empties out. Yet another couple gets off, also with white hats. i always wonder what party or holiday I am unaware of. It's drizzly here in the middle of May, and getting chilly. I put on my own hat.
Tuesday. 11 AM. The sky is laden with grey cloud, like a head of long hair upon the homeless. All but a lonely butte of the Rockies is concealed behind a shroud. On a bus to the train station, we cross a bridge over a river so close to the top of its banks that it threatens to spill down onto the interstate. I take the train to a station on a private university. It's graduation day, and families are everywhere. When my bus comes, we pull out into graduation traffic. The whole scene takes me back. Eight and a half hours later, I am on a bus pulling into the very same station. After sundown, the traffic has not ceased. I get out and on to a train to the second station north of here. Between 9:30 and 10 PM, young adults are laughing on the platform. I believe that more than one graduation ha happened today. I sit next to a ticket kiosk, which is next to a small scanner where you validate your transit stub. A woman attempts to activate the scanner by touching the screen. Nothing happens. She asks me if the scanner is where she may purchase a ticket for the train. I let her know that the kiosk is right next to it. She gives me her thanks. There are small groups of young adults standing on the train platform. Each group alternately laughs. No doubt these are college students. The women all have little-sized purses. The men all have an obvious kind of confidence. It's how they roll. When I get on my bus, I am listening to some young people in the back. These are young adults outside the the lexicon on student/faculty mixers. I hear them discussing working 13-hour days at a franchise-owned buffet. The restaurant is preparing for an upcoming comics convention. "We're only working 28 hours 'cause of Obamacare or whatever," I hear a young woman say. "But they don't have enough people." They speak of undeclared tips, of bonus money not promised.
When television was new it seemed...best suited to...Ibson and Chekhov...the gradual unfolding of characters under stress. ...television would be the domain of people at home...shifting perspectives on character. - Meyer
Wednesday. My old deathburger. I am sitting behind some kind of caseworker. She is sitting with her case. The worker is a plainly dressed young woman who sounds a bit like a real estate agent. "You can hang out there, play games," she relates to a woman sitting across from her, dressed in sweats. "If you're interested in working, they have a great program where you can work there." The case replies, "Well, I'm garnished, so it makes no sense for me to work over the table." She looks at least fifteen years younger than myself. The two women appear closer in age than either is to me. "Well, there's ways to work around that," the case worker reassures her. "Let me talk to Sandy and Julia." This woman's fate is in the hands of someone named Sandy and Julia. The case is very appreciative. The two ladies discuss Section 8 housing, donating blood. The case says that she is O negative, "so I'm a universal donor." She relates to her case worker that she has worked in construction and speaks a little Spanish. She mentions that she is currently staying in "Rat Alley" with the other "Alley Rats." Stands to reason, surely. The case worker asks where this is, and the case mentions an alley behind an address. "That's the address of the house, and the alley is behind the garage. I'm the white girl among a bunch of men, and when they start yelling, I try to keep up. (Keep up comprehending Spanish?) At the conclusion of this meeting, the case worker walks away from the deathburger. Is she parked on the street? Some nine hours later, I'm on a bus home. There's a young guy sitting next to an older guy hidden inside a coat with a hood. His accent suggests he is from India. The young guy is talking about making the world a better place. The guy in the coat is giving him advice which sounds as if it's how to live as a responsible citizen. When we get to the train station, the kid jumps out of the front door, and is already across the tracks before he turns around to grab his bike from the rack on the front of the bus. The train takes me just a couple of stops north to another station. This evening finds the platform occupied by a group of seniors discussing who may be their grandchildren. "That kid's gonna be tall, " I hear one guy say. Someone then says, "I just farted." A woman laughs nonstop. These life-infused seniors strike me as the consumers for whom the city's arts and leisure continues to be produced.
A film series would be bought not as an idea nor as a collection of talent, it would be contracted for on the basis of a pilot which could be audience-tested and improved to suit. "Good storytelling almost always starts quietly, but if you start a television show quietly, the...report says that it starts slow." "A dramatic show has to have a real threat, and a hero who overcomes it. In these "Young Lawyers" shows, the guy did it...and the viewer doesn't know whether he wants the guy to get off or not. He doesn't turn on the set for that. You have to give him a gun or a scalpel or a law book..." - Meyer
Thursday. I am up the street at a train station. I'm sitting next to a guy who is rummaging through his backpack. I see him with a small scissors and a box of latex gloves. watch him as he takes all the gloves out of the box and puts them in a pocket of his backpack. He asks me if this train goes downtown. Nine and a half hours later, the sky is still overcast. Tonight it reflects the city lights. This is the first day in a month and a half in which there has been no rain. A lone kids rides a skateboard the entire length of the train platform. Three people materialize . Two are a middle aged couple, dressed perhaps for dinner out on the town. The third is a younger guy. He has on a bright blue windbreaker, shorts, sandals and a white visor. He looks like he should either be on television or shopping at Walmart. He acts drunk. I hear him yell, Step on a crack, break your mother's back." He tried to give a fist bump to the lady, who reluctantly obliges. I watch him get on a train. He acts as if he thinks he's in a TV commercial. My bus comes and spirits me to my own street around twenty to eleven PM. As I am walking home, past the bus stop across the street from where I live, I notice a couple of things on the floor inside. One is some kind of stuffed animal under one of the benches. The other is a big, smooth stone, so heavy that I am sure I can't lift it.
Friday. Almost 2 PM. Almost time for me to go to work. I hear a woman in the parking lot. She is calling out to a stranger to help her find where she parked her Lexus. Seven hours later, I am back on my street again. It's dark as rain comes down. A voice catches my attention, and I turn my head to see a young woman in a hoodie with a backpack. She's watching for oncoming traffic from a median before she makes it across the street. I am convinced by the quick way she moves that, she ain't drunk, she's tripping. She makes exaggerated moves with her hips and back, shoulders and arms swinging out. She bends towards backwards. She is swaying and dancing and tripping. On my side of the boulevard, she stops under a tree to get her space together. I try to keep the trees between myself and wherever she is. In the rain, she lights a cigarette before she sees something on the ground which has her interested enough to stoop down. She's behind a car in a parking lot. It honks at her and she gets up and walks past without ever looking at it. Whatever she found on the ground, she holds it above her head and sizing it up. We are in front of a big Vietnamese shopping center. The entrance has a huge arch with a red top, which looks like a pagoda. At our end is a Vietnamese restaurant, lit up inside. In front is a bench covered by the roof. She sits and smokes. Behind her is an electric menu with letters which dissolve back and forth between red and purple against a black background. Outside, rain comes down in the dark. It's some kind of scene from Apocalypse Now. In front of the bench is a bronze statue from some dynasty long past of a lion. From where I stand at the bus stop, I watch as she walks out and embraces it. My bus shows up and I take one last look at the mystical dancing love tripper. She is staring right at me. Through her eyes, I escape.
At 5 AM the next day, I watch the very beginning of a sunrise which will quickly disappear behind clouds. Pools of water are everywhere. I recall the tripping girl from the previous evening. In a half an hour I am at my new deathburger. Coming out of the front door is a guy who asks me if I "have any matches or anything?" There are no groovy kids here this early Memorial Day weekend morning. Only a couple of girls in neon, and they did not bring with them any bohemian vibe. They don't stick around. At one table is a guy with a grey beard. He appears to be using his phone to access the wi fi, and keeps going outside and coming in again. His clothes are interesting. He has on one of those fashionable down jackets sewn in thin stripes, over a zippered Patagonia jacket. There's also a nervous guy. He leaves a bag on top of the trash can as he goes outside with another. He walks around before coming back inside to collect the second bag. He disappears. At another table are a couple of guys with white beards. One is a little guy in overalls, who has a face which is a ball of white hair. As he lifts a cup, his hand shakes.
Memorial Day. I'm downtown to purchase some clothes for work. I have lunch on a patio off the pedestrian mall. It's an absolutely beautiful day. Between now and next May, there will not be a more perfect day. The trees no longer drip with rain, but are bright green against a deep blue sky. I hear a couple of wait staff discussing it. Soon, rather than reports of flooding, there will be protestations against the heat. What seems like an endless coming and going of servers passes my table next to the door to get inside. There is one young, skinny guy taking a break under a sun umbrella. He's dispensing practical advice, such as the best place to find an inexpensive apartment. I hear a lone voice out on the sidewalk next to the patio. A young guy is acting as if he's having a conversation with someone eating on the patio. He is greeting one pedestrian after another. I also spot another guy on the sidewalk. They are panhandlers with a captive audience of restaurant patrons. The mall is dotted with homeless, all with signs, backpacks. One group sitting at the corner of an alley has a dog on a leash, one is in a black raincoat. A couple of guys in matching uniforms go past. The both have walkie talkies, both walking slowly along, and both smoking. Here's a guy with a sign which reads "free prayers." Memorial Day is the final day of the Comic Con. I see the occasional character from comic books and sci-fi movies strolling by. On a mall shuttle, a young couple get on. The guys asks someone next to him if he can purchase his convention pass. The guy just gives it to him. The young guy then asks if anyone else wants to sell their convention pass.
Tuesday. 9:30 AM. I've been called into work early. I first saw the temporary No Parking signs, on the street in front of my parking lot last week. This morning, I step out of my door to find a flag man holding a stop sign and speaking Spanish into a radio. Across the street, where construction goes on at an urban renewal site, some kind of tanker truck with an enormous reinforced hose is vacuuming something. I get across the street to the bus stop, where a guy is chewing with his mouth open. A couple of hours later, I am sitting in a sandwich place next to where I work. In come three guys who are joking about being rednecks. Behind them come a couple of young women who meet a third inside, all of whom strike me as lesbians. They also are speaking Spanish. One of the ladies puts her arms around another. When my day is done, I am out of work shortly before 9 PM. It's twilight. Moving away to the east is a big ass thunder storm. Its base flashes with huge bursts of orange and green lightning. There's more lightning to the south. The smell of wet grass is in the air. When the bus comes, it takes us just past the next avenue. The driver pulls up to a stop to answer a question for a passenger I can't see in the dark. From the voice, it sounds like a woman with mental health issues. She wants a particular intersection. It's directly behind us. She wants to know which bus to take there. He tells her to walk a few steps. "So, turn left, and I'm there?" Just a lost, lone figure in the dark, surrounded by distant glowing lightning. A guy next to me, who appears as if he works in an office, is watching Pawn Stars on his phone. The bus takes me to the train. The train takes me to my final station. I see a girl carrying a yoga mat on her back. On my last bus are a couple of kids in back, talking about tripping and road rash. What is it about tripping in the rain that I don't know? Sitting up front is a guy who is pretty blasted. He's drinking something out of a sport bottle and laughing and smiling as he looks around and talks to himself.
Wednesday. I'm leaving my house the same time in the morning as yesterday. Only today, there is a police officer instead of a flagman directing traffic through the single open lane of the street in front of my parking lot. Orange cones have blocked off both the other lane and one entrance to the lot. A huge tow truck and a backhoe are both parked there. A rectangular strip of road a few feet long is missing out of the street, leaving a hole. When I get up the street, I wait to cross as a skinny, bald middle-aged guy walks past, smoking. He has on a leather jacket and striped beach shorts. He looks like he lost his pants. Outside of my old deathburger is another bald, middle-aged guy. He's sitting on the concrete at one corner of the building. He looks just like a guy I saw here last month, screaming in someone's face that he was "gonna blow your fucking head off!" I watch a big guy with long hair come striding over from across the street where he lives. I've seen him in here early in the morning. He comes inside and orders. When he gets his food, he goes outside where the bald guy gives him shit. The big guy tells him off, and the bald guy dismisses him with a wave of his hand. This morning, it's already warm enough for shorts. A guy comes in wearing a leather jacket over a hoodie. He moves a couple of chairs at a table, looks behind a wet floor sign, and leaves. Over at my old bus stop is a guy on a bench who is nursing a 40 oz bottle of beer. He keeps getting up to walk over to another guy on the other side of the bus shelter, to tell him about god. He says to me, "How you doin' brother? Enjoying the day? That's good." The bus approaches a waiting group of passengers. He decides to take his shirt off before smoothing back his hair. The bus arrives and he grabs his bottle and shirt and meanders along. Down the avenue, we stop to pick up a guy in black boots, camouflaged pants, and a black shirt. His head is a brown-red from the sun and the street. As we roll along, he searches for his fare. "You got it , guy?" asks the driver. Got it he does not, and the driver pulls up to the corner down from the train station to let him back off before he takes us further down to the train. This is where the temporary bus stops for this station were for a year during construction. A woman gets up and asks the driver to open the back door because she thinks that this is where he's letting us off. From here I grab a train to another bus, and we roll past the private university. Smack in the middle of my morning is a young woman who can only be a student. Her shoulder-length hair. It isn't necessarily styled, but it's golden. After a typical insane morning, I am suddenly taken back to the days when I was her age.
I get out of work at the same time as last night. Only this evening, there is a thunder storm to the west. Same orange and green flashes at its base. I can smell rain in the air. A half an hour later, I am at my last train station. Rain is lightly falling. Lightning is all over the sky as thunder rumbles softly. Pacing back and forth on the platform is a middle-aged guy with horn-rimmed glasses, a yellow down coat, and matching yellow knit hat. He carries in his right hand a broken down cardboard box with pictures of assorted kinds of snacks. In his left is a plastic grocery bag with a newspaper. He spots me reading in the dark with a flashlight. "Got a flashlight too?" he asks. He shows me his. "Comes in handy, don't it?" he tells me. He wanders over to the ticket kiosk as, behind him, an arc of lightning rips 180 degrees from east to west. Thunder continues to softly rumble. He's some kind of mysterious Frito Lay watchman. I am beginning to feel as if I am in a David Lynch movie, and he's the Log Lady. Across the tracks, on another platform is another bald, middle-aged guy. This on is in dress slacks and shoes, and a coat with white sleeves which have "U. S. A." on each one. On the back is a big American flag.
Thursday. I'm out of work when we close, a rare happening. I am having dinner at a sandwich place. Some twenty-something guy is inside, speaking with a clerk about bread. "I just got here from Chicago," he says. "I don't know any of the suppliers." The clerk offers him a free sample of bread. "Oh, it's so soft," he replies. He has on sweat pants pulled up his calves, and a girlfriend who, guessing from her T-shirt, either graduated from or is going to school to study design. A couple of young women have brought their dog along and tie it up to a column. While they are inside, the dog begins yelping. The girlfriend, holding a loaf of bread, looks at it through the window. The women eventually come outside. They sit with "Prada," who continues to yelp until they decide to take it home. This is a shopping center rife with families, SUVs. It's a neighborhood I may have grown up in myself.
We have a Scientology church downtown. (Did you know that?) ...since the summer of 2012. Currently, its sign calls it the "Church O Scientology." ...the Church of Scientology offers tours... ...I went to the website... ...you can RSVP to a film showing, sign up for a free personality test, and set up a tour of their Public Information Center. These forms didn't work, though, so we just showed up. We arrived around 4pm to desolation - the receptionist wasn't even there. ...he came scurrying over and...led us to the info center, which is essentially just a room filled with several paneled screens, like a museum. This place is fancy. Scientologists must be really rich. ...this is nicer than most of Denver's museums, and way larger than it needs to be. I zoned out when he stumbled through his pitch, but I did catch him say, "It's freakin' mind-blowing, man!" It was a self-guided tour, but he kept popping up front, behind the panels to check up on us... ...he enthusiastically asked, "Hey, would you guys like to watch a movie...in a 'theater?'" We declined. Instead, I asked if he could show me the strange machine...under a sign reading: See A Thought. He explained it was an e-meter...essentially a device that reads your negativity by analyzing your body's reaction to certain words. He played with some knobs while I held two metal cups in my hand... He told me not to move. Nothing happened. Then he told me to squeeze. Nothing happened. Then he realized the machine wasn't plugged in. That crap was weird. - Out Front, 5/20 2015
Friday. I'm at my old bus stop. There is a grey-haired guy on the bench. He gets up. He moseys into the bus shelter. He proceeds to urinate in a corner.
