Saturday, April 1st. I've worked open to close the past two days and came into a breakfast place before work both days. If I recall correctly. I back this morning. This is where I get a bowl of mixed fruit these days. Along one wall is a series of coat hooks. At a table against this wall are a couple of guys, one with grey hair and the other with white. Each has hung his light jacket on one of the hooks. One of them hung a hat which has "Coast Guard" along the brim. It's a quick six-hour shift before I'm out on the trail home. This is the second day this week with a high in the 60s F. The past couple of days, everyone and their grandmothers have returned to the bike and pedestrian trail. At the trailhead I can see a couple and their small child up ahead, all on bikes. It isn't long before I'm behind them. Just then, they pull up to another couple and stop. The second guy alerts them that I am preparing to pass. Sunday. The sister called yesterday after I got home from work. Once again, she's driving. She says she needs to practice. Just like that, we're back to our old Sunday adventures of eating out and grocery shopping. We grab breakfast back in her old neighborhood. It struck me, the 7 years she lived there, as one of older rural homes surrounding a big deal condo/shopping center complex. Across the highway is the same franchise supermarket as my own not far from here. We hit it up after breakfast and I unload at a register which is void of any customers. These days, I hardly get anything and it doesn't take long for my stuff to get checked. I'm piling it on top of the big bag in my cart when I notice a woman perhaps older than myself behind me. She pushes my last item out of the way of her own before I pile it in my cart. There's suddenly a line of customers behind me, including her significant other. He's loading their groceries into canvas bags as fast as he can. He tells me that I need more bags because I'm holding up the line. I load my stuff into my own bag as they make their way past me.
I'm home later in the evening when my coworker calls me. She wants to know if I can come in a hour earlier than the hour earlier which I am already scheduled to come in. She tells me that, earlier in the week, she was diagnosed with trouble with nerves on one side of her face. She was told in the emergency room that they believe it's due to stress. She mentions in passing that the vision is blurry in one of her eyes. I ask her if she feels safe driving to work. Her response is, "Well, no." i suggest that it isn't safe for her to drive. She agrees that I should work for her tomorrow. I then call and speak with my boss. I end up working Monday and Tuesday, my 4th day working open to close. i expect to do the same tomorrow, and possibly Thursday. She told my boss that she would be back on Friday. It's just that, I've heard of what she is diagnosed with. It strikes me as something which takes weeks to recover from. And, though I know she may be able to get a ride to and from work at least some days, she's also embarrassed about the way her face appears, and that she now drools. If she's too embarrassed to come to work until this clears up, if and when that is, I may have see the last of her. The boss refers to this as his "Plan B". On Tuesday, I somehow stay up too late and yet have the best sleep I've had since working this open to close schedule. I awake to the alarm from my Lego Darth Vader alarm clock. 'Tis a spittin' snow, and I decide to ride to the bus which takes me all the way to work. It's not accumulating on the streets which is nice. It's dark and quiet at 5 AM. So quiet that as I approach the boulevard upon which my bus runs, I pas close to the interstate. The din of traffic is apparent even this early in the morning. The sun is not yet up, but the surrounding stop isn't exactly in the dark. I debate digging out a light from my bag, but in the snow and cold I decide it's not likely necessary. The bus appears to be on it's way early. As it approaches, it doesn't appear as if it's going to stop until I wave my arms. It pulls up past the stop. At this hour, of the first run on this route, I expect the usual driver who talks to himself and is always in a bad mood. It's a completely different driver. His next two mistakes are in my favor, When I put in my fare ticket, instead of a transfer, he gives me a day pass. This happens sometimes. A day pass costs more than my simple fare ticket and is good until 2:59 AM tomorrow, a little more than 21 hours from now. Which means that, should I need it, I have free fare home after work. When we get to the corner with my stop, he literally lets me out on the corner, instead of the stop a few yards ahead. This means I don't have to walk to the corner. I realize that he's unfamiliar with this route.
The country's largest network of food producing community gardens...serving over 40,000 Coloradans... Denver Urban Gardens (DUG)...has 192 gardens across the metro area. - colorado parent, 4/2023
The 16th Street Mall has long gotten a bad rap...but that's (finally) beginning to shift as more local business owners opt to open new concepts along the stretch [such as] a welcoming all-day cafe that's the perfect place to post up with a laptop while enjoying a pastry and espresso, meet with friends for happy hour or take down a healthy lunch. [Or listen to the sound of century-old homes being torn down.] - Westword, 4/6-12/2023
...the politics of Shroud [of Turin] research. The clerical head of the Centrodi Sirdonologia ... [The Centro's] science advisor [was a] key figure... There was also the Communist mayor... There was the priest of the chapel in which the Shroud was kept... Finally [an] Archbishop...had, along with the king ultimate authority over the Shroud. "Wheels within wheels within wheels. Sensibilities will have to be watched very carefully." - Report on The Shroud of Turin, by Dr. J. M. Heller, 1983
The conjunction of wonderful voyages with utopias of long standing, a writer [has] their protagonist [either] lecture and listen to lectures [or has] them menaced by or menacing local equivalents of flora, fauna, and Homo sapiens. It may be that we still have need of utopias Or it could be that the belief...causes misery by the falsity of its assumptions. ...we revere the great utopias as attempts to improve our lot, on paper [or perhaps even on the internet] if nowhere else. Their intentions are generally moral or political. - Aldiss
It's the Saturday before Easter. I'm riding to a stop for the bus which will transport me directly to work. I'm off the short trip down the trail, over the hump across the highway and train tracks, and past the boulevard along the way. I'm coming up a busy residential street through a neighborhood filed with tall trees. A couple of students from the nearby private university are perhaps on their way back to their residence upon the early morning. I'm working to get up a slight incline, past a community center. A collection of belongings spread out on the lawn facing the street catches my eye. Bags, articles of clothing and blankets. Sitting up under a sleeping bag is a young, bearded guy in a knit hat. He looks at me as we both pass in the morning. Some 12 hours later, I returned home from work and am now at my usual supermarket. The place is full of local shoppers, and I'm still not used to the handful of obvious Caucasians in here. Yet everyone in here appears odd in their own way. I notice more than one shopper with the same kind of plastic Addidas sandal. There are those who may be gang members. And all the Caucasians appear to chase their own brand of bohemia. There's a young woman in high heeled boots and a Nirvana T-shirt. An overweight woman in sunglasses is in a T-shirt with "Playboy" on the front. She shops as if she considers herself hot stuff. I check out at the U-scan, use some coupons from the mail, and per procedure hand them to the attendant. This evening, she's a manager. I tell her my story about last Sunday, out at another supermarket in this same chain. About finding a checker with no customers and, seconds later, having a line behind me and a guy telling me I'm holding up the previously non-existent line. She replies that she just got off the phone with an irate customer who was complaining that there's not enough staff in this store.
Time-Travelling Shopper
Then I'm at the bus stop outside. A middle-aged woman sits down next to me for the 15-minute wait for the bus. She has a small, wrapped Easter bag she tells me is for her granddaughter. The first question she asks me is if I'm homeless. The second question she asks me is if I've ever been homeless. Nope and nope. She says she's headed for a barbecue tomorrow, that she wants a traditional Easter dinner, but her sister has to control everything. In the next sentence, she just as matter-of-factly tells me that she time travels. And I'm sitting here with my Brian Aldiss book in my bag. As UI listen to her, I watch the shuffling pedestrians beyond the bus shelter. Angrily herding her three children across the middle of the busy avenue is a woman I saw just coming in to the store. Her oldest appeared to be overweight and in grade school. He wore a gold chain and looked at me with a pinched scowl. Outside, next to the shelter, in a passenger sitting on one of the granite boulders rocks around this stop. The space woman is looking at her phone and mentions that the bus is a minute late. The guy on the rock says, "Fuck." He collects his collapsible shopping cart with groceries and walks toward the boulevard a few blocks away, saying, "Fucking RTD [abbreviation for the transit system.]" A minute later, the bus arrives. It picks us up and then stops again around the corner. One middle-aged guy gets on, dressed as if he may be a gangster. He's gesturing with his fingers and saying that this is his "territory." At the next stop, we pick up some folks in front of a bingo parlor, including a couple of little guys who look as if they are stoned. One of them haggles with the driver before taking a seat next to his pal. Space woman is on as well, and when she gets off, she tells the pair that she didn't recognize them or she "would have said hi."
This week I notice that the front tire is wearing the same way as the back one did. the tube is coming through a crack in the tire. I have an Easter lunch out with family before taking the bike down to the sporting goods supercenter. I'm told by a tech that the chain is well past due to be replaced, along with the cassette, tire, and shifter cables. And he tells me that there are gears which are so caked with grime, he "can't even see any teeth," as if it's my duty to already know this. It's scheduled to be done in 8 days for a couple of hundred dollars, parts and labor. I leave the bike and hike back to the train. Today is the first day I'm out in shorts. The high is in the 70s F. The following day at work, my coworker asks me if I will work for her the following day. Sure. The weather has finally turned a corner. Overnights are far from freezing or below. this week. Wednesday. I ended up staying up an hour late last night. And still I caught upon my sleep. And I'm out the door to work early. I don't know what the secret is when the weather turns temperate. My trip to or from work by bike is usually an hour and 40 minutes. Yesterday evening, I cut 20 minutes off my ride home. This morning, I sliced a full half hour off my time. This bike I'm on, the one I first go to for a stand in, I think it simply performs better than my newest one. I turn onto a connecting trail, and I immediately see a young woman dismounted from her own bike. She has no helmet on but has her camera out. She appears to be taking a shot of a bird high up in a tree. Just past her is a homeless cyclist. From a distance, I can already see he's on a bicycle with a cart hitched to the back. A second cart is hitched to that one. As I pass him, it appears as if he's on a decent enough bike. He's way down in low gear. Later on at work, an old friend shows up. I have some history here at the store where I currently work. I worked for both successive owners of the same company which previously owned it. It's complicated. The friend used to be my boss both when I worked here and also the year and a half I made the crazy commute several municipalities north and back from where I live. It's good to see her.
Thursday. I'm called into work, by phone at home, by my coworker. Today is supposed to be one of the three days during which I don't go in early now on a regular basis. Instead, I will be there the now customary 2 hours early. At this point in the morning, it means making yet another bee line for the bus to work's doorstep. In no time, I am once again pedaling through a residential neighborhood with trees next to a private university. I'm back at a recreation center where a different homeless camp has replaced the previous one. This one has pieces of tarp over some kind of frame. And the occupant is a much older guy, with long wild grey hair and a long grey beard. Walking away from him is a younger guy in a Hawaiian shirt and an unlit cigarette between his lips. In his right hand he carries an open bible. A big banner near the roof of the building reads in Spanish, "Church of Christ". After work, I'm at home when I get another call from my coworker. Can I work for her tomorrow? Sure. I stay up an hour too late watching a documentary before I get to bed. My trusty battery-operated alarm clock wakes me up the next morning. I decide to make a break for the bus to work. The stop where I catch it has an ornate metal trash can. It's right next to a private university. The can has been knocked over and is at the bottom of a grassy incline. I decide to pick it up before I spot the bus coming. It strikes me as being too early. The driver turns out to be the one who talks to himself, instead of the guy who didn't appear to know where the stops are. This morning, the driver is silent. The following day after work, I'm on my way home during a waning snow/rain shower. Saturday, I'm caught up on my sleep and, since I'm on a bike which cuts a half hour off my commute, I decide to ride to work instead of return to the bus. I make it in a hour and 15 minutes, and I arrive just about when the bus would have dropped me off. I have time to hit the breakfast place in the shopping center. I'm seated next to a mom in a sweatshirt which reads, "Colorado Needs an Ocean".
"...drinks are incredibly important... But what really needs to be good is the way that people feel when they're there. ...white and zippy acidic wines and seafood-forward bites..." ...nourishing creatives through...running a hospitality group... "Everything [was] backwards. ...all this talent...is at the hourly level and is suppressed and then your leadership is usually not your best people." "[We're] bringing culture and nightlife into [a big deal neighborhood where I used to live,] in the most difficult place..." "...the most desirable neighborhood, for many people, closes down at 9:30 p.m. every night, there's a problem. ...people consider it walkable, but walkable to what?" - Westword,4/13-19/2023
...golden silk...with...panels outlined in gilt. ...classical frescoes with cherubim and seraphim... In the...room...for testing. ...the floors were of magnificent parquet. ...Renaissance-style frescoes of...allegorical figures, clouds, sunlight, flying swans, cerulean sky, putti...troupe l'oeil in each corner. ...silver, and carved woods inlaid with more woods and ivory. ...caught between dumbstruck admiration...and the need to plan experimental layouts... The supports of the...floor could not carry a dead weight of eight tons in the middle. - Heller
"You Mean Upstairs?"
Monday. After an 11-hour shift, I ride from work to a supermarket on the way home. It's a place which has a few items which my regular supermarket does not. Inside, I'm waiting for someone to come "from upstairs" to sell me another book of transit system ride coupons. Someone arrives and is immediately buttonholed by an elderly woman who does not want to pay full price for a vase full of flowers because they appear to have begun to wither. Someone rings her up at the register at customer service, before speaking to myself, where I do my best not to wither myself. The elderly woman gets her discount. I ask Someone if they are the one coming from downstairs. Someone replies, "You mean upstairs?" I get my ride coupons. Someone lets me know that, though I have been told at my own supermarket that I don't yet qualify for senior discount ride coupons, that I do indeed qualify. I get my own discount...because I am withered. I grab my items, check out, and I'm leaving when Someone alerts a customer that he cannot be inside the store when his infant is still in the car with the engine running. He blows her off until she threatens to call the police. He's off to get his infant. When I get home, I have an email from the sporting goods supercenter. My bike is ready. The following morning, I'm across the street at a stop for the bus to the train to the supercenter. I'm looking back across the street at a 30-something street person. He's attempting to walk along the sidewalk, but appears as if he's having trouble bending his ankles or knees. He's holding his jeans up with his hands. The bus collects me and deposits me at the train station, where a new black chain link fence separates the previously unfenced sidewalk from the previously grassy slope down to the train platform. The train whips me to the north end of downtown where I disembark. I can only see this end of downtown, but it appears that there is a security officer on every corner. I have what I usually take to and fro work, along with what I Velcro to the bike frame, along with my helmet. They are all inside a couple of larger bags which I haul off the train and up and over the steps across the tracks. I have a coupon in the mail for $40 off a purchase of $200 or more. My bill is $216. I can't use it as it doesn't cover bike repair labor. Due to time constraints, I ride back to the train. Onboard, we pick up one guy at a stop. He slowly climbs the steps with a tall cup in hand and says, "Don't mind me, I'm drunk." He gets out at the next stop. Now, that guy is withered.
Wednesday. I get a call around 7 AM. My coworker needs me to come in as soon as possible. So, I'm out the door and headed for the bus to work's doorstep. No time for breakfast. It's considerably cooler today than the highs we've had in the 70s F. I leave a few minutes later than the full half hour which I'm comfortable with making the ride. So I literally put the pedal to the metal. I reach a busy boulevard which is the halfway point. I would otherwise simply go one street north to get across, but rush hour traffic is backed up past that point. I ride an extra block just in time to catch a break in the traffic going both ways. Riding through a residential neighborhood, there are dog-walkers and moms with strollers all over the place. I negotiate my way around a delivery truck, another vehicle, and a student on a private university campus before I reach my stop. On time. By Saturday morning, it's still snowing from the evening before. Two days before, I was pedaling underneath the train overpass above the connecting trail to work. Beneath this overpass is the popular homeless camping spot. Or at least it used to be. Just a few yards behind me, I passed a handful of homeless and a shopping cart piled at least two cart height's high with clutter. In front of me on the trail is a local police cruiser. Just past him is a delivery truck with an open bed in back. The camp has been evacuated. Those guys I passed must have been rousted. The following morning, I was on my way down the trail to work. Without thinking about it, I tuned off the trail and was headed for the bus to work's doorstep. I was but a few yards from the trail when I realized that I didn't need to catch the bus this morning. I've been covering so often for my coworker that I forgot today is a normal day. They're rare anymore. It's not long before I'm back underneath the train overpass where the homeless camp sits newly vacated. There are a couple of cheap "signs" which appear perhaps glued to the concrete pillars supporting the overpass. One warns that the area is under the jurisdiction of the "railroad police". The second warns anyone not to venture up and onto the train tracks. When I get home, it begins to snow before I go to bed, and in the morning, small flakes are still coming down. Luckily, it's a wet snow, and the streets are clear. I elect to ride the distance to work.
Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), helps users...with...increased self-awareness, emotional and social functioning, empathy and creativity... Before healing centers and swanky mushroom mountain retreats can take off...elected officials have a lot of work to do. ...working as an unlicensed facilitator...established the Center of All Directions... ..."holding space," or conducting a psychedelic facilitation...the John Hopkins playlist...instrumentals and soft melodies... "...live and recorded music, chanting and...the exploration of...our lives, with the medicine..." ...being legally protected..."stripping away the mystical experience... You can't really pathologize...stuff-ness, this opaque lens through which they are...not taking in the totality of their experience." ...there's a muddy line between trained therapist and spiritual healer... "How do you help someone when they're in an altered state of consciousness.? They might express love to a therapist, when it's not about the therapist but the experience..." - Westword, 4/20-26/2022
...I had the honor of being named a legislative champion by Mental Health America. ...to reduce the...time between a patient with serious mental illness (SMIs)...prescribed ...treatment and when they...actually begin receiving...care. - Denver Herald, 4/20/2023
...a psilocybin healing center...starts with 15 appointed members of the Natural Medicine Board. ...therapists, a sheriff... An Arizona doctor... "...professionals,...the underground workers, the clinicians, the scientists," Natural Medicine Board Member Skippy...of Aspen says. ...the psychedelic regulatory board... ...the natural medicine administration session, and the integration sessions. - out front magazine, 4/2023
Tuesday. I hit my doctor's clinic for blood work and a prescription. The way home after work is rainy. I ride to and from the bus both ways. I can't remember during which, to or from work, that I see someone pushing a bicycle backwards. The following morning, I'm on the way to work and just turning onto the trail. At the trailhead, next to an outhouse here at a corner of a golf course, is a homeless guy. He appears to be using both hands and one of his feet to turn an extra pair of pants right side out. On the ground is a belt with what appears to be wires from a set of earbuds wrapped around it. The last day of the month is Sunday. It appears as if this cold Spring is throwing off the last of its chilly days. During this week, I passed three different and distinct stolen shopping carts along the way to work. One almost appeared as if it had been submerged. It stood on a corner down my street and across my boulevard, and was covered in what a film crew may use to make a shopping cart appear spooky. It had dried muck hanging off of it. In the child seat was a stroller which appeared to be rotting. Ladies and gentlemen, meet...DRACULA'S SHOPPING CART. I was out on the trail and across the river when I spotted a half-submerged shopping cart in the water. If I recall correctly, somewhere down the trail was a second cart also in the drink. My memory has been adversely affected by all the hours being thrown to me by my coworker. My memory of this week is one of a succession, of opening the living room drapes to the same sunrise. I'm hoping somewhere in these extra hours to secure the funds for next year's homeowners' insurance annual premium, and while I'm at it, next year's life insurance annual premium. I don't ask for much. My monthly mortgage payment has dropped a few bucks. It fluctuates along with the company's never-ending estimate of the following year's property tax escrow requirement. And my property value assessment, done as I recall every couple of years, has gone up another ninety thousand dollars. Today is a busy day. I'm not meeting with the sister as she has other commitments. I still must get to the gym, which I do on the bike, which I haven't been on during Sundays because the sister has been driving us. I decide to do grocery shopping from the gym, with the option of taking groceries along with the bike on a bus home from the supermarket. I end up purchasing flowers today and elect for only one 12-pack of caffeine-free diet soda. Time is doing what it always does, which it to get away from me. Instead of wait for a bus, I elect to sling this bag of supermarket items onto my back and do the short ride home. It feels as if it weighs well over 100 lbs. I mostly worry about keeping my balance. I make it home in jig time, and I'm spotted by the clerk from a gas station across my street. After dropping the groceries home I run over there to grab some quick cash and a soda. I attempted to withdraw cash from a branch of my bank across the street from the supermarket. The ATM claims it's out of cash. Were they robbed? The clerk at the gas station asks me how much the bag weighed. He tells me I made it appear as if it was no problem. The strap was cutting into a shoulder. I hope I don't feel it tomorrow. From there, I hope to squeeze in another haircut, which I do. I have time to plant the flowers outside before a lady comes to pick me up for a date. We sit next to each other and talk and laugh and take selfies for three hours. She promises to make a swimming date when the waterpark opens. Now, she must get some rest before her overnight shift. Tomorrow I must return to work, two hours early.
