A governor committed to reducing power outages before elections. ...the cycle-taxis had raised prices... ..."the CIA. Every few years they come, always on time to give a man a suit and call him our president." The taxis were...usually full... A minibus slowed...I...grabbed a piece of the handle... Men and women pushed and crushed me but I held on, head inside, legs running outside the bus; then a woman let go, creating a space. I hauled myself in. The taxi had never stopped; it had only slowed long enough to fill itself with people.
"You probably heard that Kabila received new tanks from China. For the elections." Anderson had mentioned it. "Everything is hot now." I had never written a news story before, but my acquiring the job coincided with a string of Congolese airplane crashes. I became proficient at...identifying the type of near-antique aircraft...the usually drunk Ukrainian pilots... One story I wrote about was a moving army battalion that had contaminated twenty villages with cholera. And another was about Congolese soldiers kidnapped by Rwandan fighters... "Locals have no culture, no civilization. Okay for business, but how do you live with them?" ...just as he pulled into Victoire's Shell gas station two street boys jumped on his rearview mirrors and broke them off.
...the constant news of rape, death, child soldiers... The narrative that formed...for though it was broadcast across the country it remained strangely silent inside homes. The father...asked me to make his girl speak. She had been mute from birth, and he had heard of Indian magic. This was the reputation the Indians had in the country. ...the supernatural was daily conversation at the port. There had been a vampire visit... - Sundaram
Denver is no stranger to mass shootings. On this first day of a new month, a transit security officer was shot and killed by a guy from Texas. The guy made claims that he disliked police and also mentioned his interpretation of Islam. The officer was, ironically, a former pastor. The scene of the crime? Denver's premiere downtown transit hub. Out on my own corner was a three-car accident just last week. The following day I have off, and late in the morning I am crossing the street on my way home. There is a guy with a TV camera recording a group of people who appear to be relatives of one who perished in the accident. On the traffic light pole are taped a couple of photos and flowers, along with a candle at the base. The victim was a beautiful young woman. I will come to find out that my sister was driving past when she saw a car which appeared as if it had been folded in half. Later on, I watch a local TV news report about it. My sister's description is not an exaggeration. It appeared as if someone crumpled it like a piece of trash. The report makes it sound as if the perpetrator was street racing another vehicle, and that after multiple 'failure to appear' warrants, she was not held in jail after her latest court appearance. I look at many of the pickup trucks and SUVs racing their engines up and down this boulevard, in the traditional behavior of the male. It makes me wonder what the drivers look like, and when I can see them, many of them are women. It's odd that, with as much testosterone as there is soaking my street, that both perp and victim are females only three years apart. Two lives which took divergent paths, only to intersect on my corner. The street racing woman who caused this crash was driving a Cadillac. Who the hell races a car such as I used to see being driven by people my parents' age some three decades ago? Well Speed Racer, depending on how you plead and if the case goes to trial, ya got homicide on your list of racing accomplishments. To quote your tribe, "Y'all are a real one." What can a car expect from now on, making a right on red on my corner?
My sister awoke a week or two ago to the sound of one of her cars being smashed into. She lives just a short few miles to the west of me. I don't know how many of the parks in the greater metro area are like the one next to her home. By day, it's a meeting place for neighbors and their pets. By night, a meeting place for narcotic users and their suppliers. Instead of a scene such as I read on my neighborhood's social network, the driver didn't take off into the night. She then heard, "Come out with your hands up." An old and beloved car of hers was hit so hard it was pushed out into the street. Back end caved in. License plate peeled and folded. A stolen SUV had been followed by police from a motel. In back were a prostitute and the driver's boyfriend. The driver again was a woman, eighteen. Near my sister's neighborhood, the police turned on their lights. During the chase, the girl turned down my sister's street.
...the contract RTD security officer gunned down last week near Denver's Union Station...was shot in the head and killed late on the night of Jan. 31 as he gave directions to two women...
Denver prosecutors charged a 39-year-old woman with vehicular homicide...she had been drinking and...in a drag race... ...charged with vehicular assault and leaving the scene of an accident... ...less than three weeks after she had been arrested in Denver in another traffic case... ...driving a Cadillac... - The Denver Post, 2/7/2017
Founded by...a healing artist, poet...and transformational learning educator, the institute is grounded in...a universal field of consciousness. ...our true nature lives within us at an unblemished level. Words of the Threshold [is] a study of the nonsensical, metaphorical and paradoxical language and visions of the dying. ...language patterns related to the end of life... "Assume that levels of awareness exist in the dying... ...validate their vision. Don't pretend to intellectualize or explain anything." - Natural awakenings, 2/2017
The victim [of another accident] was stopped [not far from where I live] because two vehicles in front of him were stopped and preparing to street race... [The driver who hit the victim] is accused of rear-ended [sic] [the victim's] sedan, pushing it into one of the vehicles...preparing to race. He...later died. [The three drivers are charged collectively with] vehicular assault. ...manslaughter, leaving the scene of an accident causing death, leaving the scene of an accident causing serious bodily injured {sic] and reckless driving. They are each being held on a $50,000 bond. All three have posted bail. [Of the three mug shots, there are a boy and girl, who I assume are the street racers. The third is of a middle-aged woman, who appears as if she may be a housewife, not a street racer. Of the three, she is smiling in her photo.] - 9news.com, 2/22/2017
On Friday, I still am not back on my bike. I get a call from the boss. She will pick me up early to take me to work to cover the shift of an employee who needs to cash her paycheck. It's a full day at work. At 8:30 PM I am on a bus back to my neighborhood. Behind me is an elderly woman who begins an unsolicited conversation with me. Actually, she did the talking, in a Slavic accent. She asked me how I could read in the meager light from the overhead fixtures. "My students would not be able to see in this light. They get bored and fall asleep." Does she teach? Is she retired? I don't get a chance to ask. She asks me what book I am reading. It's about a journalist is the Congo a decade ago. She says that Congo is divided into two countries. I wonder if she is confusing Congo with Sudan? She also mentions the nation formerly known as Burma and its name change. Before I get out, she says something about the Coors Brewing Company and its owner.
Monday. After a dentist appointment, I find out that my boss has given me the day off. I make my way to a train home. On board are a couple with a dog. The guy appears to be young enough to be the woman's son, but acts as if he is her boyfriend. He's in purple Capri pants. When they disembark at the very next station, he has a half-smoked cigarette in his mouth. I get out at my stop, and I watch from the platform. An SUV approaches the intersection. As it passes the bus shelter, someone in the SUV is yelling "Fuck you!" over and over at someone in the shelter, who is reciprocating. I cross the boulevard to the stop for my bus home. Some yards away are five guys next to a big electrical box in the parking lot of an apartment complex. A couple of them have beers. It's 1:30 PM.
"We put offers on five houses in less than two weeks before this one...this home corrected the minor mishaps of the other homes." "We gutted this place. The home was built in 1999 and had white carpet, white appliances and a lot of pine. We felt like we were living n an asylum with all white appliances." The cabinets from IKEA are sleek and stylish... "The kitchen island seems to be the heartbeat of the house. We can get a massive group around here." ...they were living in Cherry Creek. Now their home revolves around quality schools... ...they...have settled into eating out at Carmine's, Sweet Willy's Pizzeria, Sushi Mango and Parry's Pizza. The Loft. "The 75-inch TV, coupled with the oversized sectional couch... ...we'll binge watch shows like "Shooter" or "The Blacklist"..." ...the couple found the perfect storage unit for...shoes from IKEA. - Mile High Sports, 2/2017
...city boosters like Visit Denver are recognizing the expanded scope of this city's vibrant scene... Shooting street photography creates deep roots in my relationship with Denver. Out on the streets, I feel close to the people... This is the beating heart of the urban core... People laughing, screaming, church bells...howling dogs, airplanes overhead - it's the city's symphony. ...I smile at the idea of us plunging into the bohemian life... ...when I see another Denver institution bulldozed and a set of wobbly condos set up in its place. ...we may be living in a...completely co-opted city... The city's slush fund is getting fed on the development going on, all of the market activity. The creative community is the lifeblood of Denver. People who don't believe that are part of the problem. ..we're bringing style off the streets and into City Hall...where we'll honor four of Denver's most iconic strips [including murals on my boulevard] as well as the city's best street artists. - Westword Winter Arts Guide
..."hummer homes" cropping up in...established neighborhoods as the wealthy crowd moves into their hoods. Duplexes, starter homes, bungalows and small ranches are being demolished...as affluent people move closer into the city but don't want to live in smaller, older homes. Residential scrapes have returned to Denver, hitting levels that haven't been seen in decades. The new units...distort housing prices and leave charming, older homes worth less than the land they sit on. ...Denver is seeing an unprecedented demand for building permits... ...there is a growing demand in the market for single family homes that provide more square footage than the older homes... "Neighborhoods are just being destroyed." - Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle, 2/2017
When I was elected nearly ten years ago, the "Great Recession" was just beginning. ...many were unable to keep their homes. Now residents are being involuntarily displaced and priced out of their communities. Hard working people don't deserve stigmas, just opportunities. One of my priorities is to help those who are homeless... By creating a housing and services-first model, we will create a more inclusive city.
[My street] is a 9-mile-long corridor in West Denver that marks the inequity in the City. With no distinguishing characteristics throughout the corridor, the gaps in amenities, safety and aesthetics from one area to the next are visually evident. In [a] 2015, Public Works...corridor-wide study. ...south of Alameda is the most dangerous part... - Viva District 3, Winter 2016-2017
[My neighborhood] had earned a reputation as a rough part of Denver in years past , nut recent redevelopment and new businesses have improved prospects for residents... ...the Westwood Food Cooperative will soon be in business.. "I have a lot of faith that this neighborhood is getting better." ...he welcomes the challenge of attracting new customers; it's part of the reason he chose the neighborhood.. ...a juice bar that would fit right inside one of RiNo's hip new watering holes... - Westword, 2/16-22/2017
Swat team [up the street from my home] trying to get a man to come out and surrender. Helicopter circling. - Westwood Residents Association FB page, 2/7/2017
All the shops were shut, rows of them. ...a lady said, drawing our attention "There is a riot!" It was a mob. They were street boys. ...the boys climbed over cars and perched on walls, on the road...a jumble of hands and legs. ...forty or fifty... The vehicles were stripped of radios, gear shifts, and seats. The boys laughed wildly and danced down the road, jeering at the barred-up...residents inside... "Sometimes they are a hundred, the Kata-Kata." ...which were said to decapitate people... ...that the boys possessed sinister powers. "The boys have nothing to do. It is so easy to start a riot."
It used to be an official designation, Evolue, conferred by the Belgians in colonial times to a select few families who had rejected their "primitive structures": the clan, beliefs, traditions, even dress code and language. It was an idea of human rights: to show the African could be as civilized as the white man. A special committee was tasked with visiting the Negro home, to check the standard of hygiene, the quality of visitors, the use of cutlery, and if the children had underwear on.
...the Lebanese, the Israelis, the Belgians and the politicians...form a small moneyed class that owned nearly all of Congo's GDP. Outside every sit-down restaurant ragged children hoped for sympathy. A new economics was invented... ...it became a basic human right to steal from those who had more. The system of theft evolved in a communitarian spirit... "Do not steal too much at a time," Mobutu told the people, "'Yubana mayele' - Steal cleverly, little by little." In town I found a missionary library of old books... ...imagining the colonial boats...bringing gifts and threats of war. The library had detailed nineteenth-century reports...on the conferences that carved up Africa between European states... The Maghrebis had burned the hood in Paris...he had gorren the car at half price. Containers full of these burned vehicles were coming to Congo from France... I bought a piece of coconut from a vendor carrying a plate over head. The pirogues were commercial vessels from the villages; and I realized...I had just witnessed the attaching of the city with the jungle. ...they relieved the traders of their city stocks. Negotiations sometimes lasted until the morning.
The new immigrants surrounded themselves with Congolese. They had been sent, as emissaries of the great immigrant-business communities; the Shiite Muslims, the Punjabs and Sindhis; the Chinese, Lebanese and Israelis. These were not individuals doing business - what mattered more was the intangible foreign tribe of which one was an extension. Here at the extremity of global commerce each exile was made outcast in the other's society. - Sundaram
I have a brother who lives in a neighborhood up against the foothills. He bought into the neighborhood some two decades ago, a brand new home. Upper middle class families. He's had trouble with more than one next door neighbor who trashes their rental property. I get an email from him about one of them. "Our hillbilly neighbors...have...(been kicked out.) The owner is going to...SELL - no more renters hopefully. Took a team of 15 people to pull all the junk out of the yard and gut the house. ...the flooring was trashed, there were holes in the walls and ALL the doors, and writing on a number of walls." - 2/18/2017 Writing on the walls? Wednesday. I have three days left where I work at this location. A restructuring plan will go in effect next week. I found out today for the first time that one of my customers here, from his name tag, is a "District Director" for the city's transit system. I will miss him. He smokes a pipe and always struck me as a 'most fascinating man in the world' kind of guy. A couple of days later I am out on the bike trail. This particular day will be my last taking this particular route to work. At least until who knows when. Tomorrow, I am off and Monday I am at another store. The same one where I was last summer. Only it's my understanding that I will be there from now on. Around 11 AM, I have just turned onto my first trailhead. Over my left shoulder, I hear growing louder as it approaches the sound of an old rotary telephone ringing. Another cyclist passes me with her retro ringtone. The temperature today is headed for a high of...80 degrees F. In the middle of February. I am in shorts for the first time since last autumn's Indian summer. There are cyclists everywhere, lines of them riding single file in their neon Lycra. I count four kayakers in the river, some in swimsuits. I take my turn onto a connecting trail for the last time. Halfway from there to work, I am passed by a woman on a bicycle with a basket on the handlebars. In the basket is a Terrier. After work, I am coming down this same trail, perhaps for the last time. So long forested trail. Around a quarter to eight PM, I reach the intersection with the bike trail which goes along the river. Facing the trailhead to the one I am leaving is a bench. There in the dark is silently sitting some guy in polyester fleece and a knit cap. On the other side of an underpass, on the bank of the river are perhaps seven people standing in the dark. I stop to take a shot of the full moon over the river with my new camera, which takes shots in the dark much better than my first digital camera, a short few yards past them. While I am parked off the trail, the mysterious group of seven lights off a roman candle over the river. I will discover the following day that tonight is, besides the full moon, a lunar eclipse and also a green comet with those who have magnification. I don't know if this accounts for these people in the dark.
Saturday I rode out to one of our stores out west, perhaps for the last time. It's closing two weeks from this Saturday. I can't figure out if I am needed there today, why will I not be needed there the next couple of Saturdays? I come to find out today that, in a month, I may be working for another part of the company anyhow. Earlier this month, I went to the trouble of finding a doctor near the store where I will be moving to beginning a couple of days from today. The following day, I get on a bus out to the gym mid-morning, and I sit across from a guy who appears to be down and out in this life. It's as if he is collapsing in his seat. Along the way, another guy come on who also appears as if he is dragging himself through this life. The pair greet each other and appear and, after the second takes a seat, the first reaches into a sack to give some chocolate to the other. "Here you go. Give this to Jennifer.," he imbibes. The second mentions that he got her something from Starbucks. The first reminds him, "Gotta have a little chocolate. Women love chocolate." They both prepare to get out at my stop. The first lets the other know, "I'm headed for my storage unit. I got kicked out [of where I presume he lives] for smoking crack." We are but a trio of regular fellows as we lightly go tripping off the bus. The one who dabbles in crack is off to his unit. I'm off with my gym bag to hit the weights. The third makes his way, with a cloth bag, toward the door of a church being held open for him. May each of us find, if not salvation...something n common with crack and the gym and church. I cross the avenue and pass people coming out of their homes and walking to the church. Some park in the lot of a middle school. A minibus leaves the lot with a full load for the church.
An hour and a half later I'm out of the gym and headed to the gas station for a diet soda.
...in China... Some children, who are desperate to appease their parents, even resort to finding fake partners for major occasions. ...women can choose...and reserve them for hours or days at a time by simply paying a deposit. The demands...peak during the Chinese New Year, when young people face the pressure of bringing a partner home to meet the family... ...regardless of the weather, the People's Park in Shanghai is crowded with mothers and fathers... On the walls of the avenues, on trees and on washing lines, hundreds of resumes are hung by parents often without the knowledge of their children. In 2007, Chinese authorities coined the derogatory term "leftover women" to shame or scare some urban professionals into marriage, with the ultimate aim of creating "high-quality" babies. - Asian avenue, 2/2017
...for many reasons. - social turmoil, drugs, rapid technological change...people...are able to insist on the truth of their own experiences, even when...reality calls these experiences impossible. ...the aura is a border of light...around the body... It changes color according to one's physical and emotional health. ...people with psychic gifts...can see auras... ...look at your hand against a blank wall in a semidark room. There's even what amounts to a church of the aura in east Hollywood...affiliated with the Japanese Johrei sect. In 1901 two theosophy leaders...collaborated on...a book with sixty-nine illustrations of...shapes and hues of mental energy... Around 1910...London's Dr. Walter Kilmer...claimed the aura could be made visible...with glasses stained in dicyanine dye, a coal-tar derivative. From the odic force theory of Baron von Reichenbach, the inventor of creosote, to Dr. Wilhelm Reich's orgone energy... In 1939...a Russian...Semyon Davidovich Kirlian...an electrical technician...at a psychiatric institute, he saw a patient getting shock treatment ... ...he decided to try to photograph...a tiny flash of light...between the patient's skin and the electrode... Kirlian photography...its findings...verify serious occult theory. - Freedland
Bars had lit generators; bulbs attracted flying insects... ...women...began to braise fish. Children came out and pissed over the earth... The women shouted at them to go inside. The smoke from the stoves attracted large birds...and observed...from electrical posts. ..somnolent, slumped over his hands. He said, "We're an honest family..." I looked up at the wires... The other houses were stealing current from alternate power lines. ...trying to take on corruption in his country alone? I filed the story from a neighbor's house...by making my phone a data transmitter.
"It is their trauma." The men had flirted with her the week before. "They made a fortune during the war, buying diamonds from the rebels and selling them in Antwerp. Then they lost their families to the violence. Every week they come here." So she was leaving - and she was going to the war. ...journalist millionaire...in Manhattan...his secretary...held out some pages. It was a copy of a magazine interview, with a Polish journalist... This was in the 1960s...when Africa was breaking free of colonial powers. ...Ryszard Kapuscinski, went from "revolution to coup d'état, from one war to another"... But on his travels...he never saw a writer. "Where were they? Such important events...?"
...virgin jungle... But new visitors had recently arrived, sanctioned by the Kyoto Protocol. The developed world had invested millions of dollars to preserve Congo's for rest. Thus buying...the right for their factories to pollute in the West. Conservationists subsequently moved into the forest...evicting tribes. In the middle of Congo, Equateur seemed like the sovereign territory of another country
We rode past men pushing wooden carts piled higher than their heads with green bananas. Women carried masses of honey combs... "Chinese make this road!" ...we passed a convoy of trucks loaded with enormous logs. A lot of Congo's wood went to Europe - fashioned into tables and bookshelves and sold...even back in Congo, at exorbitant prices. IKEA got wood from here. A cloud of butterflies rose, turning the forest effervescent...blue mixed with yellow - other butterflies... ...the restaurants were bare and food needed to be ordered in advance; the locals drank beer for lunch and dinner. Heineken operated a brewery on the city outskirts. I asked if the UN could help me get home. She made a grumbling noise and asked, irritably, for what reason. Here, in a remote part of the forest, almost a thousand miles from Rwanda and the center of the conflict, I had stumbled upon one arm of a network...of mass graves. It took several days to find a UN aircraft, with an empty seat, going to the war.
...three years earlier...the miners were mostly drugged... The Ugandan army had...lined gutters with corpses and blocked the main roads using human intestines. Such wars are familiar to the continent... But the crisis here is vaster: in deadliness and brutality - five and a half million dead. Fought in isolated jungles and hidden fro the world, this war has...machetes, knives and guns designed in 1947... So the killing proceeds slowly, and without much notice. Neighboring powers...trained and equipped by western nations - feed the ambitions of...warlords and sell them weapons. The warlords pay for the arms with...gold, coltan, tin and other minerals...to the world, for use in computers and jewelry. And so Congo's war...ebbs and flows with global consumption. ...the stories of war had, in the mind, built up the place; and one felt the burden of experience needing to confirm the myth. The UN airport... The few workers there looked miserable. - Sundaram
Tuesday. Yesterday I did a double shift at my old store. Today I am doing another double shift out at a store I haven't been to since before the sale of the company where I work, at the end of 2014. Before my company's sale, I came out here on a regular basis. This used to be a production plant, for stores which are no longer owned by us, where I have worked as well. Now this place is just another store. Strange days. Employees I knew, faces I remember, deadlines, skills I had which were shared with but a few, bringing me to different plants. Now I am spending much of my 10 1/2 hour shift sitting in a chair. Along with various employees and store managers, I have seen an area manager, a couple of general managers, and a husband and now ex-wife owner pack their bags. Even one of the two new owners is moving out of state. He calls me the last man standing. Standing with a trunk full of a decade of memories, of a business with nineteen stores at one time, of conversations with former employees who describe a company even busier than when I came onboard.
Between 7:30 AM and 8, I arrive at a train station to catch my last bus home. I sit on a bench as a skinny little guy in a hoodie comes along. He tells me his transfer has expired and he needs...a dollar to get home. Twenty-five years ago, a dollar was the fare for a one-way trip. Today, it's not even half the fare. When the bus comes, the driver lets him on without fare. And I got to keep my dollar. The following morning I am headed back out to the store where I was last Saturday, way out west. The bus service is such that, even during the weekday, I can get there only on my bike. Nevermind the hour ride from the train to the store. I make it past street construction under a highway to the train around 11 AM. On a bench is a guy who sounds as if he is speaking an African dialect on his phone. On his head is a plastic white cowboy hat. The following evening around 8:30 PM, I step off the bus after another double shift at work. I'm back at a corner of my own street, waiting to cross at the light with a young woman and a middle-aged one. The latter has in hand a pet-carrying case and a blanket, and she points out that "Anyone can grab you" at the unlit bus stop across the street. I assume that she is speaking to the other, and that the two are related. When we get across the street, the one with the cat case suggests climbing under the bus bench as the younger one walks away. I begin to realize that 10 the pair is not related and 20 the older one is nuts. With this realization, the older one says, "You're all going to burn in hell for what you did to us..."
The next day I decide to take my bike in to top a tire off with air, and price air pumps. Afterward, I ride to the train, which I take to a place for lunch near the store I was told I would be working at. When I call the store during lunch, to find out if they need me to stop at my bank to get us change (I'm the last of the nice employees) I discover that my boss wants me to work at a store further south. I look at my bike map, and after lunch I am out onto trails which I don't remember being on. Some of them begin to look the same after enough of them. After a shortcut turns out to be a private road requiring a climb up a grass embankment either not located or too tiny for my eyes to see on the bike map, I arrive at work...on time. The day after is Saturday, and it appears as if it is official. The ex-medical marijuana dispensary across the street from my old bus stop, shut down some years past in a SWAT raid for laundering Columbian drug money, is having its grand (re)opening. Remodeled with the exterior stile of a bank, the new business occupying the space turns out to be...another marijuana dispensary. "Premium Marijuana," sez the sign. It's sometime after ten AM here at said bus stop. I got a call from my boss an hour and a half ago, who decided to let me know that she wanted me to come in to work today. We should have been open a couple of hours ago. I watch as pickup trucks make a left at the corner, cutting each other off in the turn. One driver shakes his head, another flips off the guy ahead of him.
In the evening the traders...relaxed by their stalls to reggae and rumba. A pair of drums was used... ...or charcoal-stove fires and radio sets. There was no repose on the barge. Traders lay...limbs spread...one had to navigate them. The traders, I noticed, were poor city men. ...they ate cassava dough from their palms; their shirts were soiled from wiping their mouths... ...like on sixteenth-century ships with their crews of slaves and prisoners, Kinshasa had sent...its lowest elements as emissaries to the provinces. His uniform was typical, scavenged from enemies: the shirt from Kabula's guard, his hat from an invading Afghan army and his pants...belonged to eastern rebels... - Sundaram
Police responded to a Shot Spotter alert [on my street] about 10:30 p.m. When officers arrived, a man came outside holding a shotgun. ...the man was taken into custody without incident. - Westwood Residents' Association Facebook page, 2/21/2017
Keep an eye out for my daughter... [In a photo, she appears to be 16.] She was last seen at [the gas station across the street from where I work, a place one clerk told me, "This is a place someone could write a novel about."] with these two men. [There is a photo of two men. One appears middle-aged.] Message me or call the police with any info. Please reach out to local news... If enough of you call they will pay attention. - Facebook, 2/18/2017
[The father of the missing girl] admits his 15-year-old daughter has run off before. ...her father received a phone call the next evening. "Daddy I want to come home. Please come get me." [She was] in a park [I ride past every day time I go to work on my bike. He] told her to wait inside the [gas station across the street from where I live. He] missed her by about 10 minutes... "This guy walked past her, turned around and looked like he said two words to her. And these two words were enough to make her get in the car." - kdvr.com, 2/21/2017
I share on my Facebook page this story and photos of the girl and two men. I query as to why this girl would go off with them. Someone who sounds as if she knows the girl replies, suggesting that the girl may know these guys and have possibly called them. Monday. I'm back at my old bus stop. 10:30 AM. Across from the marijuana place renovated into something which looks like a bank. Standing outside are a woman in a pant suit with a laminated ID and a guy in dress slacks, a pin-striped shirt, and tie. They look like bank tellers, not marijuana clerks. I wonder if half of it is a bank. Arriving at my bus stop are a couple, each wearing a leather jacket with "Christian Motorcycle Association, Riding for the Son" on the back. The guy has other patches on his, including a Misfits one, and on the back of a cap on his head is "POW MIA." Hmm. Glen Danzig, Christian bikers, and soldiers missing in action. The lady is also in black tights and high-heeled boots, and she's using a walker. The bus comes along and swoops us all up and takes us to the train, where a middle-aged homeless couple come shuffling along.. The guy is in a winter coat, and the woman in what appears to be some kind of designer bomber jacket which has seen better days. She's carrying a panhandling sign made from half of a pizza box. She appears to have a black eye and scratches on her face. The pair converse, and she sounds drunk, telling him something about a particular item he didn't get for her and how he doesn't love her. He does not sound drunk. Myself and the pair of couples all catch the train to the next stop. I head over to the gate for my bus to the bike shop. I need to pick up an air pump before I go to work. I watch the homeless couple begin walking toward the exit to the train station. Yet, when my bus shows up, here they come. The guy asks the driver which bus goes to one particular corner, which is within walking distance. I have no idea that the Christian Biker couple even got off the train where I did, until the bus heads out and pulls up to a stop several blocks away. There is the couple, who made good time getting here with a walker. Though I don't know why they didn't catch this bus back at the train station, where I did.
I get out at the bike shop. In front of the bus stop is parked a fire engine. There's no fire. It turns out that one of the firemen is having a bike wheel serviced. I watch as he brings it out and hands it to someone through the fire truck window. While I'm inside the shop, a woman wheels in a stroller with a child. With a British accent, she tells one of the clerks that she is a nanny. It turns out that she needs a wheel fixed on the stroller. I'm outside watching the fireman with the bike wheel when she comes out pushing the stroller, wheel repaired. I didn't notice this inside, but her stroller has a pole on one corner. On the pole is a full-sized American flag, so large that it almost touches the ground. The next bus comes along, and I get on with a bent over guy with grey hair and stubble. As the driver alerts me that the back door is broken, I elect to stand at the front. I'm not going very far. When it gets going, I begin to topple before I catch myself. Someone behind me reaches out to catch me. This late morning downtown, I am among more homeless and mentally damaged. One guy who gets out has long grey hair and an unlit cigarette butt between two fingers. At the next stop, a guy in a hat with a brim and a bewildered expression gets out. I get out with the bent-over guy at a main intersection. The light is red where he waits to cross. "C'mon I got places to go," I hear him admonish the traffic. I cross the other way and catch a crosstown bus. From my seat, I spy through the window a young guy coming along the sidewalk. With a bundle in one arm, he swings his other with exaggeration as he quickly takes short steps. With each swing he brings his hand up to his mouth to take a bite of something. When it's gone, his next swing he uses to point at something to his left. The following day I have off. I am returning from the gym around 3 PM when the bus drops me off on a corner of my street. I've seen a homeless woman here, and this afternoon there is a homeless couple here. I suddenly recognize them as the couple I saw yesterday at the train station. Later on, I am coming back home from dinner at a place behind my home. There is a police car with its lights on over at the gas station where the girl stepped into a car with a couple of guys. At the entrance to my parking lot, an SUV is stopped. The driver is speaking to a crying girl on the curb. It sounds as if she is related to him and he would like her back in the car.
...two of the first American scientists to visit Red China as the Ping-Pong Thaw began...reported seeing acupuncture used...in...open heart surgery. The Russians already have an electronic device called the tobiscope which locates acupuncture points...on exhibit at Montreal Expo '67. ...Kirlian photos have been reprinted in "Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain"... In 1968 a research team...published a breakthrough report...describing how a Kirlian viewer hooked up to an electron microscope revealed that...organisms have semi-independent "energy bodies"... The...scientists...observed this energy body nourishing...on...the air we breathe. One of the most respected...psychic healers...the aura around his fingertips appears to become concentrated into something resembling a laser beam. ...what seems to be an amazing arsenal of psychic energy amplifiers...in a documentary film that hasn't been allowed outside Communist Europe. ...devices are recharged...sometimes by merely staring at special marks on the surfaces. ...will speed up plant growth, clean polluted water, or kill small insects. ...working under a Czechoslovakian government grant, claims 100 percent accuracy for a psychic generator that points at the symbol for an ESP card somebody is thinking about.in another room. Since 1963...the Unified Multiple Approach to the Unknown...holds...discussions...of Subud, body awareness...nudist group therapy, psychism, automatic painting... - Freedland
...the chief was certain the loggers could never wipe out the forest - "Just look," he said, "it goes on forever." ...I asked if his ancestors might have allowed the woods to be given away. He seemed to become troubled. "I will tell the spirit of the forest that his trees must be cut down," the chief said to me. Globalization reached even these villages...this global need. ...I heard of a woman...tilling someone else's field. ...she worked from 6:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m.... But she earned only enough to eat the leaves of beans. The woman struck me as something new in the world. She did not fall into any obvious category...she was not a refugee or...the victim of...violence. It seemed to me that by any system...communist, socialist, capitalist - she had no reason to be poor. ...in...the 1970s...Congo flourished and "the ferry boats...went all the way up the river." There had been working railways, public works, tourist agencies, and enterprises from India, Greece, Portugal. ...a row of old gas pumps. Defunct, their hoses in coils, they seem to have been replaced by...men seated together...holding...bottles and funnels. ...ex-militiaman...pushed the garbage barrow... ...a city in flux. Most residents had been displaced...and took refuge here. ...people came and went, shifted by the war. His calm tone seemed to suggest that people had become accustomed to...violent displacements, the war, the silence. "The refugee mentality makes it difficult. They think only of leaving, not of making a life." Some militias had become active... The AP took these stories, which were painful to write...one somehow felt one knew the villages - they had become imaginable. - Sundaram
Something about knowing that, after my boss making claims for the past few weeks that each of those past weeks will be my last, at the location where I have been working, I haven't felt like taking a final bike ride along the route which takes me here. I must be ready to get back on the path to another shopping center. At least for now, before my position there is filled, and I begin working back at the production plant where I worked more often than not for the decade under the previous ownership. In the middle of the summer, the company hopes to find a new location for this plant. Yes, it's all part of a recommendation my boss made to me about her impression, that the owners desire to abandon the paying customer part of the business and keep only the lucrative and recently purchased smoke damage restoration company. Her suggestion is that I jump ship, or perhaps only jump decks on the same ship, to that part which she sees them as maintaining. The rest they have been acting as if they want to eventually sell off. Financially, the company I worked for under the previous owner continues to sink. Once it was something of a small empire, of which I have memories, and some stories of which I have heard about even better days. I've been witness to a very long decline. How many stories like this, I wonder...
Wednesday night. I'm on my last bus home shortly after 8 PM. There are a smattering of us on board this evening. One of the passengers seated behind me is conversing in a loud voice with the driver. He tells the driver that someone called in a bomb threat to a neighborhood seat of government, which happens to sit at the site of a train station. The passenger claims that this caused the train station to be shut down since rush hour. The driver responds that the transit system usually doesn't bother to inform most drivers of any such news which may cause schedule delays. He says that the company has a message system for such alerts to operators, which he then checks. He replies that he doesn't see any information about it on his end. The passenger then comes forward to mention to the driver, that the guy who shot a transit system security officer on the first of the month, he used to see him on the train. Sunday. Around a quarter to 9 AM, I'm grabbing breakfast at a deathburger on the way to a workout. I'm sitting about the middle of the place as a guy walks in with insulated pants and a winter coat. I can smell urine on him strongly from where he stands at the register. He orders "whatever you're going to throw away." The guy behind the counter tells him that they don't have any such food at the moment. He pulls out a pocket full of change on the counter to add it up. A customer behind him hands him a bill to get whatever he wants, and tells him to "pay it forward." The urine guy drops some change on the floor.
Monday. I'm on my way downtown, for more transit system coupons and to the bank. I arrive at the train where, on the opposite side of the tracks, is an old guy in a leather buckskin jacket complete with fringe. And a cowboy hat. On my side of the tracks, a young guy is telling a middle-aged transient that he had better keep his mouth shut, and "quit talking shit before you get yourself into an accident." The transient leaves. I guess the Lone Ranger is not coming over to help. The young guy then asks me for the time, referring to me as "sir." I guess I don't need a six-shooter to get respect out on this here street. Speaking of this street, along comes another middle-aged guy. He sounds as if he really isn't interested in knowing where he's going anyway. He asks a woman on the bench if this train goes to a nonexistent corner of two perpendicular streets. The woman says, "Wait, those are perpendicular." She mentions the first stop south on a connecting train line, and he decides that this sounds good to him. Just then, the train shows up. He asks her, "Hey, that was good timing, huh?"
"Roast chicken from Kampala is what the militiamen eat...the amount of chicken they have looted fro me."
"The UN doesn't secure your convoys? Or the roads?"
"They don't even buy my cream." A layer of dust over the toys and video games... "You want to meet the militias? You know the problem here is the U.N.. The soldiers are all in illegal business. They take the gold from the militias. ...at the helicopter bases there are no X-ray machines. They don't want any competition. They are even selling water, man. ...selling their rations to the militias." - Sundaram
A lot has happened this month. A rest of a company which I have worked for, for twelve years now, is about to be handed over to someone else. After the current owners have had it for two and a quarter years. Instead of staying with the old company, I am planning to join the current owners' other company, under their relatively new ownership. It's a bit bewildering, I know. Yet the few
of us left from the old company are all headed toward this other company. When I get home Tuesday evening after work, I hear that the missing girl has been found. No details as to what she was doing, but yet another adult found her through one of the girl's friends. I don't claim to understand it, I don't have kids, but surely it's a hopeful ending to the month.
