The day before, I had gone to work in the morning, as I do on Saturdays. And this Saturday, Halloween, customers hit me two hours after we opened and didn't stop for the next seven hours. Before work, I stopped into a pancake house to get breakfast to go. I hadn't been there since my doctor put me on a diet July 1st. It was odd to go in there on Halloween because the servers are mostly beautiful high school aged girls. But this morning, the wait staff was dressed in costumes. Costumes nothing such as other friends of mine, which I saw in pictures posted; as Kurt Cobain or an Hindu goddess. One waiter was a generic tennis player, and one waitress who I speak Spanish to was dressed a character I didn't recognize, from a cartoon perhaps? One was dressed in combat fatigues with digital camouflage, and another was a cowboy with a black handlebar moustache. It was less like a costume party and more like breakfast before a full dress rehearsal. So they don't read The Light of the Bhagavata. Neither do I. Just call me rakshasa. But I could see into the kitchen. There were a line of cooks all dressed in white jackets and blue caps.
The middle of the following week, I'm on the way home one evening on the trail. The wind howls in my ears as I rush downhill. Above a stream, steam or fog catches the lamplight as it slowly floats along. Much closer to home, I pedal past an industrial building some time after 8 PM. I listen to a heavy metal band holding a practice inside. The following morning, I leave early to go to the only bank near where I work. I travel through neighborhoods I haven't seen in years and streets where I've never been. It's a cold but a beautiful autumn ride. On the way home after work, I am moving swiftly along the trail. I'm headed for a high school football stadium when I watch a handful of folks get out of a truck. One is wearing a blanket. Further along the trail, off to the side, sitting on the grass is a guy with what appears in the dark to be his bike. I can't really tell, but there is a flashing red light, such as would be on the back. Only something's off. He has no helmet, but instead a knit hat. And I don't remember the last rider I saw repairing their bike by laying it on the ground. He asks for no assistance, and in fact appears to be in no hurry. An hour later, I'm headed through a part of the trail which has just been reopened after half a year's reconstruction. Coming the opposite way is a young guy on a bike. I his left hand is a tiny flashlight. He appears stymied by the refurbished trail. "Does the trail go through?" he wants to know. I reassure him as I pass. The following morning is so cold that I should have worn my face mask. There is fog on the Platte River, and closer to work my toes are cold. I am headed down a leaf covered trail through the wood when I am approached by a woman walking her dog. She is wearing a black hooded cloak. I want to explain to her that, despite the beautiful scene, she is not living in some kind of Norman Rockwell painting.
The following Monday I have the goddamned 24-hour flu. Tuesday I am back out on the bike, headed to work. As I go down a steep hill, around 11 am, I pass a kid on the sidewalk. He's in his pajamas, and has one knee on a skateboard as he pushed himself uphill. Wednesday. The city has its first snow of the season today this veterans' Day. I decide to take the bus to work, and I am making tracks along the sidewalk across the street from where I live at fifteen after 10 AM. Coming the other way are a couple of street guys. One carries something in his arms, a box of beverages? He wants to know if I can help him "out with a quarter, bro?" I pass without saying anything. "Bro?" I'm not off of my bike for 24 hours, and the "Bro?" Boys are back. From the bus stop, I can see my boulevard is rife with fresh rumbling pickup trucks burning their beloved testosterone, as both cars and trucks turn the corner by running over the sidewalk. Enormous pickups have attempted to squeeze into the comparatively tiny spaces of the small businesses on my street. An hour later, I decide to sit down for lunch instead of eating it standing up at work. I head to a bakery next to work, where a couple of guys come in, an older and a younger one. The older one takes off a Vietnam Veteran cap. When he speaks, I can barely hear him. His voice sounds like gravel. After work, I'm on a train for a short ride, around 8:20 PM. In one seat is a young couple. The lady takes small bits out of a blueberry muffin. She chews slowly and silently as she nodds off. The guy is eating what appears to be spaghetti from a plastic frozen dinner tray. He is yakking with the guy in the next seat, with a transit system security officer He eats with grimy hands. Next to the couple is a big pack and bedroll. He eats half of the spaghetti before he hands it to the lady. I step off the train to see a woman dressed as if she works in an ofice. Her face appears weathered and her mouth, no teeth as her lips hold onto a cigarette. She has on a wool coat which appears to have either mud or soup, or paint covering the entire back, from top to bottom. A half hour later, I am back on this my boulevard. The trucks are gone. The drunks have gone to bed. Tomorrow is...more of the same? Thursday. Twenty to 9 AM. I had breakfast at my old deathburger. I'm at my old bus stop, on my way to the dentist. A middle-aged guy in a Raiders Nation" hoodie comes along. He asks something of a guy on the bench before he turns toward me to ask for 75 cents.
...making...sandwiches...turkey and gobs of homemade stuffing. ...savoring the zip of sage... ...there will be...e-mailing and phoning... Aunts, uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents will all want to know what my children would like for Christmas. The irony...slaps me like a linebacker... The words of gratitude, the remembrances of all the plenty we enjoy, have barely died on our lips. The leftovers of...Thanksgiving...have yet to be relished... ...closets are crammed with... Bins of Polly Pockets, Legos and American Girl doll accessories cover the toy shelves in our house. Our two-car garage can only fit one car beside the bikes and outdoor toys.
Four Bookstores Kids Will Love
The Bookbar has a comfy new kids section with a nook for parents to chill with coffee or wine.
...I was prepping my 7-year-old daughter for her ski lesson. "I don't wanna go," she said. But the ski school reservation was already made. ...the 20-year-old skier dude...will...give them macaroni and cheese and hot cider and talk to the little ones like they're teenagers. Check your cell phone periodically but focus on your own ski adventure or a hot coffee and a book. ...you will end up hunched over...looking under benches for a sock. Your patience...plunges if you are overheated and sweating because you're wearing ski pants, a shirt, turtlenecks, hoodie, a neck gator and ski boots. - Colorado Parent, 11/2015
...I am a Goodwill Youth Development Facilitator working out of South High School. The work is...challenging - I help students...seeking work and employment that is meaningful and sustainable. ...helping their families... Powerful, moving stuff. Still, something was missing. ...I'm an arts and letters guy - my wife and I write poetry, we read...we wrangle with ideas. Perhaps my work at South put me in an open-minded frame of reference... Who knows... Consider your schedule, your budget and your social network... How have you served...the world beyond? This is an open-minded, work-ready neighborhood. Let's share the good news... - the profile, 11/2015
...where there is a rich heritage of...intrinsic worth and dignity... ...poverty, illiteracy and disease...bind men to lives of hopelessness and despair; these are the roots of violence and war. It is when men know progress is possible and is being achieved...can there be lasting national stability and international order. We must strengthen economic, social and cultural cooperation... ...we aim to build...a region...realizing its common destiny in the light of its own traditions and aspirations. The quarrels and ambitions of ideology and the...frictions arising from national fears and grievances should belong to the past. - Raskin and Fall
...they were a complete failure, despised by most of their own community... But, owing to the deeper inter-communal antagonisms, they produced an effect far out of proportion to their numbers. ...they...typified, at its most offensive, an alien invasion which, by its very nature, they found intolerable. ...the foreigners...were desecrating...their country...with their repugnant, subversive creeds, their quarrels and their violence. Repudiated by their own people, they were trying to convert them, the natives, and importing Communist literature in Arabic from Vienna... ...'the beginnings of industrial strife, previously unknown in the country; they saw strikes and labour demonstrations...they read leaflets...in which people were invited to participate in class war, and to promote anarchy and social upheaval'. ...in all they did the newcomers were arrogant and aggressive. '...strings of these young men and women, in free and easy attire, would perambulate the streets arm in arm, singing songs, holding up traffic...at variance with...decorum.' - The Gun and the Olive Branch, by David Hirst, 1977 [on Jewish Communists in Palestine in the 1920s.]
...he described himself as "one of the squad of infantry soldiers dedicated to protecting [his] great nation." He's...sent to "shithole countries" to destroy enemies, and "loves his job and comrades as a true American." He's...not into hookups...but is ready to love..."and be loved through the sun and the rain." I searched...finding...a link to a military blog with hundreds of enlisted women discussing dating scams... ...in the late seventies through a brief fling with Ritchie, adorable cute with...incurable sadness. He was a Vietnam vet. At night, his...body would curl up...next to me like a pet dog who couldn't get close enough to its master. Ritchie talked of his nightmares in a painful language I was ill-equipped to interpret. I wonder if he's still alive. Does the Highlands Ranch soccer mom...care about any of this? Airports, restaurants, bus stops, walking the dog, going to work, panting on a treadmill... Wars often are for nothing, except of course, for the...temporary control and influence of people and countries. ...that's...of what value? - Out Front, 11/04/2015
Turkey day...means you probably have family arriving in town and a huge menu to plan... get out and enjoy Downtown Denver's Grand Illumination... ...get out of the house, entertain your guests (and at the same time show off your great city) and keep everyone happy... ...Downtown Denver's Winter in the City program. Downtown Denver's Grand Illumination event will light up...nearly 600,000 lights from Denver Union Station... ...there will be special events... Throughout the evening, costumed yuletide characters...
Whole species of cafes and coffee shops replaced abandoned gas stations and chronically vacant storefronts... Sharing the street in a everyday way...is now a well-established expectation and a...powerful one, but what comes next? There are basic qualitative leaps to which a neighborhood can aspire... I recently found what appears to be a simple upgraded sidewalk that struck a balance between rigor, scale, texture and buildability. It may not be perfect for Denver, but...so transformative. Distinguishing between sameness and a shared sensibility in urban design...is an important balancing act. - Life on Capital Hill, 11/2015
By all measures of social class...location of residence, community reputation, style of life, standard of living, membership in organizations, use of leisure - the slums are full of...people...low[er class] according to...measures by which we locate people in our society and decide whether or not we want our children to associate with them. They tend to be isolated from...the integration of people in a dynamic, mutually reinforcing social and economic system. ...not merely separate from, but also against. They speak a kind of English, but not the kind that helps them move up in the world. The poor contribute very little in terms of...economic growth, intellectual leadership, scientific or cultural creativity, and just plain good citizenship. - Hunter
The community, rather than the stock market, is the better source of real wealth - both personal and global... ...investing our time and money in local communities. ...Well-Being in Business Lab, which works with the Greater Good Science Center... In socially abundant communities and nations, individuals don't have to earn as much money to be comfortable...
Finding and doing what "lights us up" will ring us abundance... ...finding our heroic purpose (that heart-centered thing we feel we were meant to do)... ..."poet and professional, prophet and profit, soul and success." - natural awakenings, 11/2015
It's one of those moments...when I have forgotten about all those deadlines...when I don't care that my phone has no service... A morning with no work, no races, no objective. I have been reading a lot of Whitman this past year. I also learned this year that one of my ancestors...fought for the Union at the battle of Chancellorville... Walt Whitman was there too...seeing how there was very little difference in the faces of the dead. For some of us, the...challenge...is how we will be able to fit a mountain bike ride into an over-crowded schedule. - ELEVATION outdoors, 11/2015
[What Neiderman says...]
"The millennials, they'll be back next year or at some point." That said, Denver has become the place to be, just as it was during the 1980s... "The restaurants, the arts, the culture - it's a wonderful place to live," said Neiderman. ...we see LoDo, then the Highlands and Cherry Creek. "..driving the Denver market. It's three populations. ...huge numbers of millennials who...now...want to buy [homes as opposed to rent them]. Then you have large corporate relocations...for the mix of talent and quality of life. ...third...is retirees who've discovered this is a great place to age. The beauty about Denver is the infrastructure. The rings of E-470 and C-470 mean you can get around town. For affordable housing, maybe you have to drive another 10 minutes, but it's there," he said. Neiderman...has seen the firm he purchased grow to $2.3 billion in sales in eight years...the company is planning a new $28 million, 75,50 square foot headquarters... "I call it a high-end jewel box, boutique-type building, a signature, double A building," said Neiderman. - "Denver Herald Dispatch", 11/12/2015
Hello fellow neighbors, tonight... Me and my husband heard a noise so he...ran outside... They ran away into a...car got in and told people to scoot over...5 or six people in the car. ...2 felmales [sic] maybe 18 or in their 20's and guys... When they got in they started shooting at us... The cops did find one shell casing...a 9 mm... - Nextdoor Westwood, 11/15/2015
Tuesday. I'm at my old bus stop. I just met my health insurance broker at my old deathburger. While there, one of the employees said hi to me, and my broker and I laughed about my obviously being a regular there before I began my diet. After successfully signing up for another year of health insurance, I wait for a bus to work across from a defunct medical marijuana dispensary. A week ago yesterday, my dad passed away. I was notified late last week. To say that these are strange times is to fail to mention anything surprising. There's a guy I've seen 'round these parts who has, for some time, walked with a cane. He's bent over as the afternoon has only just arrived, but is under his own power. He asks me for a light, which I don't have. Another guy comes quickly over to hustle some bus coupons. I'm not a black market discount card holder. Wednesday, I am on the trail to work in the early afternoon, battling gust of wind which, in some parts of the state, reach 102 miles per hour. Thursday after work. I'm taking the transit system home as I hit the library winter used booksale this morning, and I'm hauling more books than one bike can carry. I arrive at a train station around twenty to nine PM. It's a station which formerly served as a crossroads for the city's unwashed masses. On a bench are a couple, at least the lady of which is shitfaced. Her face is a mask of lines. 'Tis a chilly evening, and neither one is wearing a coat. A scant few yards behind them are a loud handful of young residents of the brand new condo unit, built atop the former drive for the bus and parking lot for train passengers. The kids have the grill going on a balcony, as they sometimes do. I've been wondering when the drunks and the kids would come to intellectual blows over incongruent worldviews. Tonight, the first shot I've heard is fired. "You pay $2,000 for a one bedroom," shouts the lady, "and you probably buy organic food! Little bitch." Interesting, but I still don't get it. She's a bitch because she doesn't eat out of the trash? Who's organic? The things I don't comprehend because I'm not drunk and without a coat on a thirty degree evening. I'm such a bitch. The kids have disappeared in the tentative blink of an eye which fights to stay open. The couple is standing up now. The lady has helped the guy into a reflective vest, and he has helped her into a big orange winter coat. If they are trying to confuse me, I'm the first to admit defeat. They embrace and make out in a dark, cold, empty, and now quiet train platform. The following afternoon I ride my bike to work, arriving just before tiny snowflakes begin coming down. Six hours later, it's back out on the trail home. Down the trail, snow begins hitting me in the eyes. I have to close one or both, open and closed. Closer to home, my high gear shift quits moving.
Sunday. I come out of the supermarket with my groceries and my microwave oven box which I use to put my groceries in to take home. I put the box on top of a trash can next to a little, middle-aged guy in a knit cap and tattoos all over his neck and arms. He looks like a character from Barney Miller. He wants to know if I am throwing the box away. Straight up no, and that's my word. Monday. I'm back out on the bike trail around 12:30 PM. It's a nice day. Down the first stretch, I pass someone who appears to come up from the riverbank. They have a backpack on with a jacket draped over the top. Around the corner is a guy in black neoprene on his phone. He's walking along the trail as four oncoming cyclists approach. Another passes me from behind. I hear him say something about, "Well, actually, they didn't speak much English..."
I know there have been...alerts for this women [sic]...with DPD. She has the same story about kid with ADHD tearing up the house and needing a little money to buy some medication.
A...Ford...swerved drunkenly...at 12:45 am on Saturday. The driver hit my car...totaling it. ...the only car that my wheelchair will fit into. I will have to go into massive debt and drive across country in a rental... - Nextdoor Westwood, 11/23/2015
...find themselves living in downtown Denver. "It's more like Moscow than Buffalo was. On Moscow, we lived around big buildings, and in the heart of the city like we do now." Living in the lively theatre district is perfect for these two adventurous 20-somethings. He fits right into life in the United States. A big fan of American culture...love their hoverboards. This futuristic mode of transportation is their top choice to get around the city. [He] depends on [a] fellow countryman... "I have a Russian car person, a Russian masseuse. He knows everyone!" - Mile High Sports, 11/2015
Tuesday. I'm back out on the trail, on the first half toward work, where I see all the wanderers. I stop to take a photo. Next to a bench is parked a stolen shopping cart, stacked twice its height with what appears to be garbage, and covered with a tarp. On the bottom is a big piece of foam and a rolled up slat wood and chicken wire fence. I've seen parks and rec guys use a shopping cart to pick up trash, but I wonder of the foam and fence are the makings of a portable bed. Along comes a middle-aged guy in a T-shirt, necklace, and missing front teeth. He wants to know if the sight of what apparently is his cart 'trips me out.' He tells me a story that the authorities allow him to live on the river bank as long as he picks up the trash there. He says that he "should be out of here in a couple of weeks." He has himself a new job. I wonder if his employer will give him a parking place for his cart. Wednesday. 12:15 PM. I'm at the bus stop on my way to work on the day before Thanksgiving. Across the street comes a young, hip, clean cut guy in his twenties. He asks me when the bus will be here. He wants to know if I smoke. He tells me that, most people he asks this of, "they just walk away." A middle aged guy comes up to me to ask if I "can help him out with change for the bus." The young guy decides not to wait. he is a few step from the stop when the bus arrives behind him. It picks me up and heads his direction, when he hears it and begins running to the next stop.
More and more peasants were loosing their livelihood; yet already...22 percent of the rural population were landless. Driven from the land, the peasants flocked to the rapidly growing cities in search of work. Many of them ended up as labourers building houses for the immigrants they loathed and feared. they lived in squalor. Such conditions contrasted...with the handsome dwellings the peasants were putting up for the well-to-do newcomers... ...uncontrolled immigration, produced...unemployment on a catastrophic scale. - Hirst
..."windows dirty, broken and patched with white or brown paper; curtains dirty and frayed, and blinds half drawn and often hanging at an angle. The street doors are usually open, showing bare passages and stairs lacking bannisters, while the door jambs are...rubbed shiny by the coats of the leisured class, whose habit is to lean up against them." High density among wealthier people may be desirable in terms of generating social relationships, variety in life, interest and excitement deriving from many people and activities, and a sense of society. The Marxists claim that...of...capitalist society...built in layers, if you are in the bottom layer that is where you will stay until the revolution. ..."the major outlines of the lower class cultural system"...defined by..."toughness"..."smartness"...duping the teacher..."excitement"...goading the authorities, participating in a rumble; "fate" - Lady Luck as reigning goddess and shaper of destiny; "autonomy"...overt expression of disdain and dislike for external control. ...a lack of interest in children as individuals...the extended family...concrete and anecdotal conversation; detachment from the job...negative view of white collar workers and bosses; a lack of trust in the outside world; a personalization of government ("the lady at the Welfare"); antagonism toward law and government. ..."classes are strata-with-subcultures that grow out of the structure of the national economy and society." Working class people...hold..."lesser concern for self improvement and education, and in their lack of interest in good address, high culture..." "He is...religious, though not so religious as his wife. He reads ineffectively...and is often suggestible, although interestingly enough, he is frequently suspicious of "talk" and "newfangled ideas." He is confused and without opinion...but has strong conviction in morality, punishment, custom, diet...and intellectuals. He frequently feels alienated and left out of society...and is antagonistic toward "big shots."" - Hunter
Citing a "perception that one has to be perfect in every academic, cocurricular and social endeavor"...students can feel..."demoralization, alienation or...anxiety or depression." "I had a picture of my future, and as that future deteriorated I stopped imagining another future..." ...of being less that what she thought she ought to be... ...judged her social life as inferior to what she saw...online... America's culture of hyperachievement among the affluent... ...dean of freshmen at Stanford...would ask what she considered simple questions and...students...would become...unable to express their desires and often discovering midconversation that they were on a path that they didn't even like. "they could say what they accomplished, but they couldn't necessarily say who they were..." - "The New York Times", 7/27/2015
Thursday. Thanksgiving. I have a Thanksgiving lunch with the family. Later in the evening, I head over to the Vietnamese restaurant behind my place for dinner. In a non-Caucasian neighborhood, no one closes for white holidays. The president was at he stadium up the boulevard to accept the Democratic nomination in '08, and down the street at the high school a few years after to speak about an education plan. Apart from our district city council member, I don't see any other politicians 'round these parts. A state senator rang my doorbell once. Her own district was redrawn to include my address. I don't remember her name. While I am eating, a ambulance crew of three paramedics come in to eat. before they even sit down, they get a call. I watch their ambulance lights disappear through drifting flakes of snow.
...the uprising...its heart lay...above all in that peasantry... The...religiously motivated...called themselves after the heroes of early, militant Islam. Others...were pert freedom-fighter, part-brigand, cloaking ill-gotten gains in the glamour of revolution. They operated without centralized control. They were...confederates...they would stay in their villages, keeping the rebels supplied with food...with information about the movements of the police and troops, and about villagers who worked against them. By the summer of 1938... The rebel government collected its own taxes and established its own courts. Their encounters with the British...ambushing, sniping, bomb-throwing, or mining the roads. It was conquest of the towns by the countryside...out of...local fiefs to secure...not just the villages...but some of the principal cities... - Hirst
"Provincial and locally oriented
Members only partially integrated into national institutions
Marginal people even though in the heart of a big city
People not members of a political party
People do not participate in...banks, department stores, museums, art
galleries, and airports
Chronic storage of cash
Use of secondhand clothing and furniture
Early sex experience
Free unions or "consensual" marriage
Present time orientation (live for the present)
A sense of resignation and fatalism...
A high tolerance for psychological pathology of all kinds
Hatred of the police
Mistrust of government
A cynicism...poverty...used in political movements aimed against the existing social order"
...the slum youngster "hangs around" somewhere. It might be in the nourishing atmosphere of a boys' club or a church group or a YMCA. It might...be with...a group [which practices] aimlessness, lack of enthusiasm for school, doubts that they will achieve the success symbols portrayed in magazine ads, resentment of the representatives of middle class life... "To the struggle of young verses old is added...of poor versus rich. The world becomes..."we" versus..."they." The "they" may mean...the rich and virtuous, the cops and the courts...money, power, and the dress and manners that go with these posts of status. The delinquent culture becomes an inner frontier, raising barbarians in our midst, strange and hostile to our own larger civilization." - Hunter
...the "kefiyyeh"...was a camouflage - for it made rebel infiltrators harder to detect - but it was also...symbolic... ...Armenians and the religious minorities fell in line too. Underlying it all was an...inspired intolerance of decadent, westernizing ways... Christian women had to abandon their fashionable European headgear...short sleeves and lipstick were outlawed. The rebellion...when the urban elite had no choice...they tried to bring it under their wing... ...the gulf between politician and fighter, between town and country was never bridged. ...it was not matched by...social, political and organizational aptitudes... The fighters were not encouraged to transcend regional, religious, or family loyalties... Warlordism flourished. - Hirst
The more complex, cerebral, and restrained the civilization, the more men's minds return to a dream of earlier times, when...a man could venture out...conquer his enemies, and win a kingdom... ...even though such an age probably never existed. ...brawny heroes of heroic fiction derive from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose idea that primitive men were superior to those of today is rooted in ancient myths of Eden, in dimly remembered Golden Ages, and a great deal of wishful thinking. When after his enemies capture and crucify him, a vulture flies down...Conan bites off the vulture's head. ...the days when..."natural" man flourished. - OMNI Magazine, 10/1980
In his book The Revolt, Menachim begin initiates his readers into the metaphysics of Jewish national redemption. "The ancient Greek story of Antaeus and the strength he drew from contact with Mother earth is a legend. The...strength which came...from contact with the soil of our ancient land, is no legend... ...the...policy of self-restraint (Havlaga)... A new generation...turned its back on fear... ...the two phenomena were interdependent... ...Descartes said: 'I think, therefore I am'... ...in the history of peoples...thought alone does not prove their existence. We fight, therefore we are. - Hirst
Monday. Last day of the month. I can't figure where another month went, let alone an entire year. It's been a long year for the world. I thought that the 1980s was a long and drawn out decade. Here we are living out the results of that decade. This morning, I leave a little after 10 AM on a bus to the bank before work. I don't remember the last month my schedule permitted me to go inside my bank. The past several days have been snowy and I'm waiting for the bike trail to improve. In the mean time, I'm sitting across from someone dressed as if they are a character from Green Acres. He is listening to a music on a mobile device held up to his right ear. No earbuds I guess. Where's Mr. Haney when we need him? He is singing along, "...turning water into space baaaaags..." We pull up to the train station. The driver says in a Russian accent, "Transwers awailable." We pile out and I head over to a bench down on the platform. Seated on the next bench, legs crossed, is a young woman in a fur coat. She reads a paperback about Hindu spirituality. On the other side of me is a guy inveighing against poverty to someone listening to him. The bus crossed a bridge over the train tracks. Walking across the bridge comes two men, a child, and a woman. I can hear the woman as they walk across the bridge and down the long steps to the trains. She is scolding one or all of them, something about the "fucking lightrail." The train comes and we all pile on. It's standing room only. The two men and child, and the woman. A frown is on her freckled face as she stands next to the poverty guy. I can hear Mr. Haney now. "Did you say poverty? I've got here a gen-u-wine book, written by Gahndi himself..."
Train to the mall shuttle to the bank. Bank to my favorite deli/cafe. I haven't been here since I started my diet six months ago. I discovered this place in the previous decade, when we my company had a store here in this office building, on the street level floor. My job included filling in for the driver. You had to know where to exit the interstate to find your way into the underground loading dock, and then to get back on to the interstate. When I order lunch, I'm asked to make a donation to Make A Wish. I sit next to a table with two middle-aged couples. One of the men has on a knit cap perhaps from Outer Mongolia. He's telling the others about the disappearance of newspapers and venture capitalists. When the quartet is ready to go, he says, "All right ladies..." They kiss and hug each other goodbye. The TV is tuned to local news. The anchors are busy "crafting for Christmas" but I can't hear the sound. 90's rock is coming out of other speakers. A female voice accompanies riot girl guitar as a woman in a commercial punches buttons on a home security system. A room of uniformed personnel sit in front of monitors, each keeping an eye on houses. Was it Jefferson who said, "Those who would trade their freedom for security deserve neither?" Catch her on the flippity-flip side. As I am leaving, the cafe's registers go down.
I take a mall shuttle back to the train. Where I get out, a woman in a long black wool coat and knit cap comes by. She's nursing a can of Miller High Life. It's an extra big can which, in Oklahoma, used to be called a "tall boy." She leans against the wall and watches passers by. "Is he Chinese?" she asks. Eight hours later, it's after work and I am at my last train station home. The temperature has plummeted. I now play cat and mouse around the landscaping of a brand new condo unit with a young guy who is approaching everyone he sees. "Hey, excuse me, man. Excuse me, man..." He must have found bus fare from someone, because he takes the bus with me all the way out to my boulevard. I'm sorry, sir, but those who would trade nothing for something end up on the flippity-flip side.
