"We're Not Together"
This morning, my ordeal along the way here included a stop at the downtown deathburger
homeless central, to grab breakfast. I order a biscuit with egg and sausage. I am handed a biscuit with egg and bacon and cheese. The guy ahead of me orders what I do, and also gets what I get. We both reorder and he asks for cheese on his. We both get our order with cheese. I let the employee know that I ordered what I did because it comes without cheese. She replies, "But I asked you guys if you want cheese." He reaches around me to grab some jelly and tells her, "We're not together." I leave the wrapper and take the biscuit with egg, sausage, and no cheese. It does not feel as though the biscuit has been baked. Wow, that is fast! I didn't need the largest size soda "here in the wealthiest nation on earth" and I end up "wasting" half of "it." I have fifty minutes left and grab a doughnut from across the street. I get to work fifteen minutes before we open and decide to swing by a coffee shop down the street. As I approach work, I discover a third employee has arrived. He has exactly the same concern I do. In his defense, the guy we're waiting for is only ten or fifteen minutes late. I call it a Saturday and I'm out the door.
The commercial topography of Anytown, America, is changing due to [the] buying power of large corporate entities and the low overhead of online retailers... ...adding millions of square feet of apartment and commercial space while...crushing the streetscape, parking and vibe, of the district. In addition of lack of planning for and management of projects, construction workers and developers have total control of the streets... At the "Cherry Creek North Business Improvement District's" December board meeting, BID officials once again contemplated trying to become "Beverly Hills." It was the third time the board has listened to Emzy Veazy III tell them how to...retake lost marketing chare and become a world class destination. ...another BID Board Member - has been transforming the district into something much more like New York's "Greenwich Village." …"several years of heavy construction"...parking shortages and constant lane closures...rent increases. Even "Wolfgang Puck" couldn't make it in [Cherry Creek. One] high-end furnishings brand was the only Adler store in the region. [They] also closed this year. Many residents and longtime state/regional customers are concerned about...what has long been a neighborhood hangout... ...the departure of...independent boutiques... - Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle, 2/2020
...moving to a new community after living...nearby...for a number of years. It's...intimidating...and sure, I'll have to plug every address into my GPS for a while. But I'll eventually learn the best routes to get around the city and, of course, get to know the neighbors. That's when the fun starts. Perhaps it's...the barista at your favorite mom-and-pop coffee shop around the corner. Or the neighbor who spends all summer knitting... - Life On Capitol Hill, 2/2020
The Dairy Block in LoDo has [been] moving away from the notorious sports bars and burger joints to...a market-style, central hub for independent restaurants...inside the Milk Market. The luxurious and modern hotel... ...a staple of customer flow...art deco-style...the now-well-known alley... A selfie haven... ...extremely enticing... ...appeals to every kind of fabulous foodie. ...flavors that would lift the eyebrow of a skeptic... - Outfront Magazine, 1/22/2020
Sunday. I offer to take the sister to a birthday breakfast, her birthday today. Not only is she thrilled with the book for her I picked up at last Sunday's library used book sale, but tells me that her friend will be jealous. I'm glad the effort was worth it. I'm doing my taxes over the weekend, and discovering issues which make me wonder how long I may have been able to deduct things I never knew I could. I'm coming back from the pharmacy at the supermarket, with a complete list of all the prescriptions which I purchased in 2019. I only today discovered that I can deduct all my medical expenses, if they come to more than 7.5% of my AGI. I don't know if this is new. Yesterday and today, the high is 67 degrees F. Tuesday or Wednesday has a forecast of seven inches of snow, an overnight low of -1 F, and a high during the day of only 11 F. This afternoon I'm riding my bike back home from the pharmacy past the home of the mother of an old coworker. The employee was laundry manager of the company where I was employed for more than 12 years. I stop by to see her. It turns out that her birthday is also today. She's 46 and a drop dead knockout. It's really great to see her. This week, our employee with the son who was murdered has returned to work. She continues to provide details about the shooting to the guy we work with. Odd details, crazy details. She shooter is 14. You have to imagine a 14-year-old boy with a gun and willing to kill, in a local park on a winter weekday around rush hour. Her son expected trouble and was wearing a bullet proof vest. The driver of the getaway car is 16 and took off after the other fired. For some reason, the shooter attempted to jump out of the vehicle as it began to move, and fell under it and was dragged. I also learned the purpose of T-shirts I've seen with deceased family members on them. Our employee had them made, along with candles, to sell at his memorial.
...Schuyler County, where all the men drive trucks and have facial hair, tattoos, and hunt deer. Schuyler County does not have a health food store. Schuyler County has a Cheese Doodle supply center - Walmart. Schuyler County is where, if you have an old bathtub...you throw it in the woods. [This] wasn't any year in Provence with charming quirky local characters eating French cuisine. It was barfing fat guys and [supermarkets with] insecticide in the beverage aisle. There were no shaved truffles or hearty cassoulets. The local diet is...twenty pound bags of sour-cream-and-onion potato chips. When...my boyfriend...leaves, there always little piles of his bullet casings on the windowsill, or on my underwear on the floor, and his rifles lean against the walls in every corner. ...if he's not carrying a rifle, it's a chain saw. He...wears T-shirts that advertise motor oil or say things like DEAD DEER WALKING. ...he puts on Aerosmith of "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy." [At Walmart] the men wait in the truck while the wives of girlfriends go in! He has to chop down trees or grind stumps or he's off to snowplow the shopping plaza parking lots for twenty hours. Unless its hunting season. ...I am fifty-seven! But when he grabs me by the arm and...my pants are down...and he's got me bent over a chair, what am I going to do, complain about it? - Scream, T. Janowitz, 2016
Bloomberg - the ninth-richest person in the world, according to Forbes - made his second official campaign stop in Colorado... ...the crowd at the local event...skewed older, whiter and - if the quality of the Oxford shirts and premium outerwear was any indication - wealthier than the average voter. They packed into the campaign's new state headquarters, a former Patagonia outlet that occupies some of the most sought-after real estate in downtown Denver, a far cry from the drab, remote digs typically leased by political campaigns. ...a career coach from Aurora who attended the rally, liked what he heard from Bloomberg and says he's excited to begin reaching out to some of the "over 1,500C-level executives" he's worked with... Like the candidate himself, [the coach] is not terribly specific about [what] he wants the next president to do, but he has faith that Bloomberg will get them done. …"New York City," he says. "That place was a cesspool, and he turned it around. He's that kind of guy." ...the Bloomberg campaign...compensation packages...pay even low-level field organizers $6,000 per month, with many senor staffers making $20,000 per month or more. Staffers receive new iPhone IIs and MacBooks upon joining the campaign and enjoy three catered meals a day... [Bloomberg's] "Colorado for Mike Advisory Committee," announced February 7, features local heavy hitters like [the] InterTech Plastics founder...and [a] private equity investor... ...says a campaign staffer, who supports, but isn't employed by, Sander's 2020 campaign, "We see that buying elections works." [A career coach gets the last word.] "Money is the stuff of life." - Westword, 2/13-19/2020
"Ronald Reagan for president."
On Tuesday, during a snowstorm, I get up and proceed with doing my taxes. I have to call my state health care exchange, the Monday before, to get the last document I haven't been sent in the mail. I need the old school hard copies because I need my monitor to display my tax windows. On Monday, the one at the other end of the phone begins by making it sound as if the state exchange can't mail anything. First tells me that the document will take up to 21 days to arrive. Then it will take 30. Then I may get it in the next two days. She does successfully walk me into my account with the exchange, which only my health care exchange brokers have previously seen. I write the figures down but I won't understand them until I get to work the following morning. Toward the end of my federal taxes I put the numbers in, to find that I owe the IRS almost $1,000. When I began my taxes this past weekend, I made a call to a tax preparer who gave me some help last year. I called her because I had a few questions unrelated to reporting my health care premium payments. She told me to drop by Tuesday or Wednesday. On Tuesday, I make the trip to her office, in the snow, by bike and train. Her receptionist gives her a call, and lets me know that she won't make it in until later because of the weather, and to give her a call this afternoon. It's back through the snow, cold enough for my ski mask, to the train. I'm off the train downtown, and along the way to work, I pass Mike Bloomberg's local campaign office. Among huge "Mike Bloomberg 2020" signs are a pair of smaller ones. One says "Protect transgender rights". Another reads "Private property, no trespassing". I make my way across the plaza along the city's pair of art museums. I stop at a crosswalk on the street between the two, and I think I see a waiting pedestrian on the other side. As the sign turns to "walk" I notice that he isn't crossing the other way. He stands there, waves at me, and asks me if I want to free 'the ocean from plastic?' It's somewhere below freezing out here and the plaza is empty. I reply that I would rather go to work.
Later on this evening, on my ride home in the dark, I will be on a residential street with Caucasian residents replacing generations of original residents. One of the transplants is crossing the street to a waiting car as I roll across the snow and ice. He does not appear to be as old as I am, and he tells me, "Ronald Reagan for president." This morning, I stop at a gas station and store a block from work. It's a major hangout for the downtown homeless and assorted street folk. Inside, the clerk asks me to remove my ski mask. Outside, a guy in a suit compliments my commute by bike. I make another call to the exchange, who is clueless about the meaning of these numbers, before I call my exchange broker's office. This is when I learn that I failed to report changes in my income to the exchange, what they refer to as a "major life event". My life has been a major event beginning the end of last year. There is a difference in what it turns out I have been making since I first began using the exchange and my AGI for 2019. I've been too busy to calculate my AGI or even look at my paychecks to see what I make. I take the opportunity to update this info while I happen to have someone from my exchange broker's office on the phone. Along with the fact that I'm no longer head of household with the passing of my mom. Which increases my monthly health insurance payments by another $53. Not including the two months I've already paid and may be aske to repay next month or any time until I do my taxes for 2020.
Wednesday. My coworker who's son was murdered has a new tattoo of him on her forearm. He appears younger than his 17 or 18 years. And on the tattoo, he is holding what appears to be an assault rifle, perhaps an M-16 or a Belgian Assault Rifle. He produced his own hip hop music, and this may be part of his brand. The end of the week is a cacophony of more snow. On Thursday, the flakes begin falling before I leave work. It begins collecting on the street as I'm headed home. An hour later, I'm home, and I can see the morning will bring another blanketing. Friday morning, rather than a citywide ice rink, it's snow rather than ice and something I can ride on. Saturday, the temps will climb well above freezing, and I am riding to work through melting slush. Where I cross a busy thoroughfare, it's in proximity to a stretch where homeless like to panhandle. A young guy approaches from the other side of the intersection. If I give some some spare change, he tells me, he can use his military ID to board a city bus. Again, I'm telling someone I have no cash. Or a lighter. Or a cigarette, which this week I've heard multiple wanderers of the city ask others for. Also during this week's end, who comes into work but the new landlord of our previous location. I'm told on a regular basis that he owns multiple dance clubs and restaurants, which he continues to open here in the city. One would not necessarily assume from his appearance that he has money. A second customer comes in who appears to know him. They embrace and the second inquires how the first is. He replies that he divides his time between here and California, as he has "sons in acting." The second asks about his real estate successes, mentioning the block upon which we stand. "It's changing," he intones on the way out of the door, "and not in a good way." I will mention to another employee that the guy who purchased our old building, and most of the block, is also a customer. The employee replies, "The one who looks homeless?"
Sunday. I'm back from grocery shopping with just enough time to throw what needs to be in the fridge, before I run out of the door to catch another bus across town. I'm headed to pick up some photos. I catch the bus in jig time. It drops me on the boulevard where I lived 13 years ago. It's a short hike down the snowy sidewalk to the photo shop. I'm out here these days on my bike, and it's a bit odd walking along this busy street which I used to drive upon, back when I had a car. I walk into the shop, and there she is. My tall photogenic hippie goddess. She has some kind of psychedelic keffiyeh. I whip out...a valentine for her. She says she prefers to open such cards in the presence of the one who delvers it. She loves it. I got it at some health food place, so it's artsy. Right up her statuesque alley. Who knows, perhaps she's even a vegetarian. The card matches the colors in her scarf. I compliment it and ask her from where she acquired it. She says her boyfriend's brother got it for her. Back when she and he and her boyfriend were living together. She mentions that the three of them still get together for Christmas. I'm confused. She no longer lives with the boyfriend? Or his brother? I don't ask. She fetches my photos and I ask her if I may sit at one of the chairs and tables with monitors, to peruse my prints. She invites me to hang out as long as I desire. I have other motives, besides being in her presence. I grabbed the least expensive lunch possible from the supermarket in this shopping center. Gone are the days (this past summer) when I was breezing into the Chilis just across the street for a meal while I'm out and about. I need someplace where I can sit down to eat and drink, albeit on the sly, preferably indoors. In this I am successful, in fact I am finished eating when my psychedelic Palestinian angel floats over to examine my photos. She's over my shoulder, which at our respective heights is not difficult for her. We discuss cameras and film. She likes my composition. I fill her in on some of my life, until she must help a customer. I enjoy listening to her voice. I pack up and, when she's finished, ask her if anyone will do something nice for her on Valentine's Day? She replies that she doesn't go in for holiday commercialism. Indeed, death to the capitalist infidels! We say our goodbyes. I step through the veil and she disappears behind it.
It's a short walk to a Target, which is only one of a few places I've found low fat cheese. At the corner I have a brief wait for a bus downtown, then a short shuttle ride to a train. The train whips me to a station where the last connecting bus home will be here in but a few minutes. On the train is a woman who asks me about a station we stop at. I mention the name of the station and she is blown away. She says she doesn't even recognize it. She hasn't seen it since years past, before the condominiums were built where the big drive and grassy areas used to be. I'm out at the next stop and standing outside of a bus shelter at the stop for my last bus. Seated in the shelter is a guy who appears oblivious to the geese waiting for food. I have my own flock surrounding me. As I hold court with my waterfowl entourage, I spot a woman approach another bench, which I had my eye on. I continue watching her. And watching her. Slowly, slowly it dawns on me. I know this woman. I haven't seen her in fourteen years, since I worked with her shortly after joining the company I stayed with for more than 12 years. I'm still not sure. I intend to tell her that she looks like someone I knew. I approach her, and as soon as I open my mouth, she speaks my name. We embrace. She speaks little English and we convers with my own limited Spanish. The bus soon arrives and we are both headed the same direction. During a previous decade, those times I worked at the same store with her, I pursued her romantically. In 2007 I purchased my first home, and I remember suggesting that she and her son move in with me. I think that I simply enjoyed being able to ask someone this, only because I had a home. She's married since 2012. Her son is now six or seven feet tall, like his biological dad. She's by no means short, but clearly she had sex with one tall guy. Where he is today, she knows not. Or she didn't when I asked her about it way back when. I imagine him travelling this earth, fathering very tall children. She and her husband live in my extended neighborhood, perhaps as close as my ex-girlfriend. Though it may sound as an odd coincidence, everyone appears to be moving this direction. We step off the bus at the same stop. We say farewell. She goes across one street at the intersection, and I cross the other. Amazing.
Monday. During my ride to work, I'm on a street to work when my wheels go out from under me. I land on my left side like a ton of bricks. I'm back up and riding again, but my lower right back is sore. It's one of my days at the gym, where I do okay, including the sit ups. They start out slow, but the pain appears to subside. After work, another ride home in a snow shower, and another is forecast for Wednesday. I awake on Tuesday and my back feels as if it's on the mend. I'm getting a late start to work and, in spite of my desire to conserve my transit system tickets, my only hope of being on time is the bus. I'm out of the door, at the stop, and on the bus. In back are a couple of guys discussing county jail and the west side (of town, my side), and discussing McDonalds and bringing $3,000 a week to "the man". On Thursday, more snow has fallen yesterday afternoon and overnight. Mercifully, the streets (at least outside my neighborhood) are clear enough to ride. As soon as I get to work, my coworker tells me she will buy me a cookie from a pizza place across the street, provided I get two for her and a soda. It's a pizza place with an extensive menu. I assume the employees are Italian. I pay for the snacks and sit down to wait for someone to bring me out a soda with ice. It takes a minute or two until I realize the freezer case. I won't be receiving any soda with ice. In the meantime, I'm listening to the head guy. He just waited on me and is now in the back, speaking to another employee. "You want to be a good Muslim?" he asks. "A good citizen? A good person? Don't pull the shit you just pulled." He repeats this a second time. The employee responds that he didn't do "anything bad." The employee persists. Whatever the issue is, is appears to be the way he pulled into the parking lot in back. "He was waiting to park," the employee says about an unknown driver. "Well, you could have waited as well," the head guy says. I take my coworker's soda and exit. Friday. I'm coming back to work with a snack from a gas station on the corner. A homeless guys approaches me and silently hands me a business card. It's for a "VP of Marketing & Innovator" for a beverage company. Then, he's on his way.
...to...help create more affordable housing opportunities. The way city law stands...only two unrelated people are allowed to live together in Denver. "It's the most limited code that we've been able to find in Western cities." One idea...proposed is to raise the number of people who can live together to eight. [One] Uptown resident...feels the city has been working behind closed doors... Eight, he said, is too high. He worries about...the cost of housing. - Life On Capitol Hill, 2/2020
Monday of a new week. I'm outside of my gym, waiting for the doors to open. Here also are a couple of regular seniors. One tells the other that he doesn't have to work out here today. He did that this morning at the YMCA. He's here just to "make coffee and water the plants." Then he will go home, where he says he will have "nothing to do but smoke a joint and go to sleep." Thursday. I'm on my way home in the dark after work. The nuts are out tonight. I pass a homeless guy o his bike. No helmet. He says to me, "Nice helmet." I acknowledge this. It's a $100 helmet, which may not sound like much, but it's a splurge for me. He's on his way with, "God bless." "If you say so," I reply. We both turn down the same street. I pass him and leave him in the dark. Around a corner, across two busy thoroughfares, and down another street, I approach an intersection where another homeless guy is walking in the road. I stop at the stop sign. He stops right next to the stop sign and stares at me in the dark. Then I am on my way. The other cyclist should be headed his direction. I'm sure they have a lot to stare at each other about.
"The War on Cars is not being waged just by the bicycle crowd," [the] president of the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association, wrote in an op-ed... …"in central Denver...you've see their strategy...Lanes for parking and driving are being turned over to bicycles and buses." ...Colorado's newly formed Freedom to Drive Coalition...also includes the Colorado Petroleum Association... [Critics of transit diversity] mostly want the state to fund widened roads and new bridges, "not extra pogo stick lanes or bike lanes." ...our fixation on certain narrow, highly individualistic definition of "freedom"... "I ride over I-25 on the way home on my bike every day, and when I look at that traffic, I think, "that's not freedom, that's imprisonment. I think a lot of people feel...There's no other charges... And we're just putting more cars on the road... "There are people willing to ride a bicycle in any situation, any condition, and I was one of those... I think...we have so many people honking at each other these days is that we go from our locked homes to our parking garage to our single-occupant vehicle to our parking garage at work to our office... From the New Urban iconoclasts of the '90s to today's hell-raising youth climate activists, proponents of alternative transportation really do believe...a revolutionized mobility network to break down barriers of geography and race and class...to rebuild a sense of community in a fractured, isolated country. - Westword, 2/27-3/4/2020
I also ride over I-25, both on the way to work and home again, four or five or six days a week depending. I'm one of those willing to ride in almost any situation or condition. It brings me into contact with the street, with the everyday otherwise sometimes hidden homeless camps, places I would otherwise never run across. I pass along what appear to be neighborhoods segregated between early 20th century homes or older, all wood and with front porches, and new steel and stone and glass boxes with balconies. Perhaps a kind of geographic perception is broken down, but the geographic dynamic does not appear to be one of community interaction underway. As I prepare to cross an off ramp from the interstate, I'm facing oncoming traffic from the sidewalk, and it's rare if the driver glances my way before turning onto the avenue. I'm the one with the larger perspective, on the outside of traffic looking in.
Earlier this week, I came home from work. I always arrive just before eight PM. If I'm not mistaken, I hear in the dark the voice of my neighbor who claims to hate the woman who lives next door to him. He's the neighbor who knocked over her recycle can. Our HOA president tells me he's always drunk and lives in his unit with a child. I usually see him sitting on a concrete berm in the lot or standing, while he has a smoke. Year round. If it's him this evening, he's with two other guys. They knock on another resident's door. I hear him say that someone owes him $20. I don't hear anyone answer the door. As the dynamic trio depart, hear him exclaim, "Oh yeah, we're gonna get this done!" Friday I have off. Lately my place of employment is cutting back on overtime. Late in the afternoon I go out to check the mail. Next to the mailbox is a wooden coffee table which no one appears to want. It's been there for a couple of days. Parked across from the mailbox is a Caucasian woman taking a big box out of her back seat. I ask her if she needs help and she declines. I introduce myself and ask her which unit she lives in. It turns out, this is the woman with the recycle bin which was knocked over by our angry drunk resident. Sitting on the table this afternoon is the angry dunk resident. he's smoking and on his phone.
