July 2012

     I was picking up some wine for my mom on the afternoon of the 1st of July.  Outside of the liquor store, on a working payphone, is a woman who sounds drunk.  It sounds as though she doesn't speak much Spanish, and is making a drunken effort to communicate with someone who speaks only Spanish.  I hear her keep using the word 'siesta'.  Later in the day, I see four drunk guys hanging out in front of the Chinese place, wandering back and forth from here to across the street.  I don't recognize them.  I see a pair, or three people at a time, hanging out here or at bus stops.  I don't recognize them, but they always meet people who they appear to know, wandering in from who knows where.  I couple of twentysomethings at a bus stop, both in sunglasses.  One is standing and looking cool.  The other is busting moves up and down in front of the benches.  A third guy wanders up and greets the other two with a cool handshake.  He looks like some kind of derelict wannabe.  They never do get on the bus when it comes.  If they are this mysteriously cool, why are they loitering at a broken down bus stop?
     The following day I am headed back to work.  I will have the next two days off.  It's been a couple of weeks since I have been on my old shift.  At the next stop after the one where I get on is a woman with no teeth and a cigarette.  She shows the driver her pass from last month, which expired a couple of days ago.  At the train station, I watch a young guy who appears as if he left his home right after waking up.  Hair a mess, needs a shave.  He's in cut-offs, a Guns 'n' Roses T-shirt, and he's holding his left forearm out, which is covered in what appears to be a green hand towel.  The day after the next is the 4th.  I go across the street for breakfast.  Coming from a gas station on the other corner, I see a panhandler who lives down the street in a little house with blue siding.  It has a fenced back yard in which I can see a wheelbarrow, as I pass to and fro on the way to the swimming pool.  His favorite place is on the side of a building, opposite the gas station.  This morning, I see him with two bags of something from the gas station.  Along with him, for the first time in five years, I see an older woman in a motorized wheelchair.  She is missing the bottom of her left leg.  Six days later, I am walking past this guy's house as I always do on the way to the pool.  Standing on the landing to his front door is a tall teenaged kid who looks nothing like this derelict guy.  What this kid's relationship could possibly be to any of the handful of characters who I have seen exit this delightful looking home is one of the mysteriums tremendum.

     ...the city is pushing a relatively new program called the Gang Reduction Initiative of Denver, or GRID.  "Miss, I got a question for you  Are you a cop?"  The pudgy ten-year-old last week told the class that he knew where to get a gun.  Sanchez is one of two Denver juvenile probation officers who work for GRID as prevention coordinators.  There are lots of ways to be initiated into a gang, she says...  If you date a gang member, Sanchez warns, he might offer you up to the rest of the gang.    That catches the attention of a thin girl in short shorts and a sparkly zip-up sweatshirt...  "Miss, can I talk to you?" she asks timidly after the class is over.  Sanchez pulls up a plastic chair.  "You're going to tell me you have a boyfriend who's a gang member, aren't you?" Sanchez asks.  The girl nods.  ...she's only eleven, and her boyfriend is twelve.  Sanchez asks if he's violent.  The girl hesitates.  He's beaten people up, she says, including another boy who slapped her butt on the light rail.  The Mental health canter of Denver is also part of GRID's intervention strategy.  MHCD has developed a trauma treatment program which teaches kids how to handle stress.  This makes "them even more at risk for joining gangs," explains Lynn Garst, MHCD's associate director.  - Westword, 7/5-11/12
     How do you bridge the cultural, social, and religious gap between the counselor (especially one raised in a middle class Christian atmosphere) and the client?  Bill Milliken in Tough Love says, "We strip off the first layer of the onion, and then we don't want to smell any more..."  The psychiatrist or counselor becomes a substitute god or savior...   ...our liberal friends have forsaken the Gospel to "wait on tables," so to speak...  Coffeehouses These are points of contact with hippies, runaways, tourists, students, and anyone who wants to talk.  The Gospel is presented to ghetto children who will become the addicts, alcoholics and muggers of the future...amid the slums, garbage, vices, and poverty...  ...Gregory was a Negro who had come to us...  It was unfortunate that...there happened to be several boys at the Center from the deep South, one of whom made things rather difficult for Gregory.  "I listen to jazz music all the time and go to dirty movies."  He had had several homosexual encounters in the past...  Chapter 5  The Addicted Generation  Tripping out with LSD  It's a groovy experience.  No one can psych you out once you reach this utopia.  You're immortal.  You think you are God and can judge, or fly, or float, or condemn or all four.  You're in a purple have where red stars and blue moons cover your feet.  The drug addict...must learn how to function without anti-social behavior, without anger, hostility, immaturity, or in whatever may he previously reacted to reality.  ...in a setting that...is patterned after a home.  It must resemble a normal situation.  - The Untapped Generation, by D. and D. Wilkerson, 1971
     I ride in a convertible with a group of teens I teach metaphysical philosophy to on Sundays.  ...we children of the '60s and ''70s had our own journey during the Civil Rights and woman's liberation movements.  I arrive at a place in my life in which everything has a spiritual undertone;...my connection to the gay community...  - Out Front Colorado, 7/4/12

     I'm at the train station around 5:30 AM.  This is the first time I have been here when I have been watching a guy running and doing some exercises.  The following morning, I cross the street to my usual bus stop in front of a small car full of teens.  The driver honks a couple of times.  I wave and they wave back.  I have no idea who they are.  They are listening to techno-rap with no bottom end.  What are they doing here of all neighborhoods?  Where's the guy who drove by and said, "Fuck you, bitch"?  I got off the bus, from a short ride up the street, with a white girl who swings her ass as she walks.  The morning after, I stop into the gas station for something to eat before heading off to work.  It's been a little while since I've been in this early.  I see a new guy behind the counter.  I grab a breakfast burrito out of the heated case.  The new guy takes it and holds it with both hands.  He looks at me without saying anything.  I ask if it's cold.  He tells me that the case isn't working properly.  He's middle aged, and strikes me as having had a former life before coming here.
     I'm waiting for the bus to take me grocery shopping on another Sunday.  A couple of guys come walking up, one of whom is talking about Slayer being in town tonight.  He realizes he has no change for the bus, when he says, "Oh fuck, I need more money.  All I got here are 50s and 100s."  Managing to get on the bus, he's telling the other guy about a friend of his who hangs out under a bridge.  "He's a big motherfucker.  He'll" (put a bullet in you) "if you ask him to.  He don't fuck around."  Hmm, good thing he stays under a bridge.  I'm curious about the white faces I see, both on the bus and in the street, in my neighborhood.  A guy in a T-shirt for a Kentucky high school reunion during the early 1990s, and a fishing hat.  A skinny guy with greasy hair.  A couple of guys in dress slacks, one in a sport coat over a Hawaiian shirt.  These guys don't look anything like the other folk I meet in my neighborhood.  Such as a guy who calls himself Richard Spotted Bird, who appears to live in what may be Section 8 housing, who is talking to another street guy I see around at the shelter where I am waiting for the bus on a day off.   I'm on my way to meet the fam for a lunch to celebrate the birthday of one of my brothers.  This is why I am sitting next to a shelter listening to a guy who effectively uses beer for mouthwash, and speaks (as well as does everything else) as though he is drunk every minute of every day.  He comes out to ask me for a cigarette.  He does not appear to recognize me, though it was dark a little while ago (last year?), the morning he wandered up to introduce himself and tell me a little about his relationship with his lady.  I answer him that I don't smoke.  He moves on to a guy sitting on the bench.  He stands in front of him until the guy notices him, before he asks him also for a cigarette.  The guy also replies that he doesn't smoke.  Richard looked back at his buddy in the shelter and said something about the both of us not smoking, making the remark that, "E'r'body smokes.  E'r'body smokes."
     It's a Thursday morning before sun up.   I get off of a bus with a giant advertisement on the side.  It has a photo of a young mom with her child.  It reads, "This is your moment."  It's an ad for condos, "Starting in the 240s."  As in $240,000.  Two mornings later, someone is blazing some "sacrament" at the bus stop while he coughs.  In front of the stop, an SUV comes to a stop in the street, right in front of a maroon Caddy.  As the Caddy goes around the SUV and down a side street, the Caddy's trunk comes open.  On my way here, I saw a group of five drunks in the bus shelter across the street from where I live.  This was ten to five in the morning.  None of them got on the bus.  After I got off, I went to a deathburger, which had a couple of interesting customers inside.  One guy in a button down shirt and jeans had on bedroom slippers and no teeth.  Another guy with a briefcase has his grey hair in a faux hawk.  The afternoon before, I don't take my usual bus home.  This one is standing room only.  I'm standing next to a guy who tells me not to stand too close to him.  A guy gets on that he appears to know.  He tells him he's a cook, and that he has had five operations.  At the next stop, someone sitting on the other side of me gets up and loudly begins saying, "Coming through, excuse me!"  At the beginning of another week, and I am sitting on the bus, across from a sleeping middle aged woman.  She's in a Subway T-shirt which reads, "It's sandwich night."
     The Colorado Black Arts Festival...has been described as a "family reunion," where our diverse community comes together.  The "Watu Sokoni" People's Marketplace is the heart of village gathering.  This is a nice festival.  I went on a mad cap Sunday, leaving right after grocery shopping, making three bus connections in jig time, and grabbing lunch to go at a downtown deathburger.  There are two deathburgers on the pedestrian mall downtown.  Both are meeting places for those who line out on the brick and concrete of the mall.  This particular establishment has a collection of small flat screen TVs.  These TVs display rotating scenes of the mountains.  Soothing music is piped through the place.  With the addition of the destitute, it makes for a creepy scene.  It's as if the homeless come in here to mourn, or to wait for their own deaths.  'Deathburger' indeed.  The Fest is in City Park, a huge place with a paved path on which white residents come to stroll.  I eat half my lunch at a bus stop, and the other half under a tree in the park.  When I finish, I look up to see myself surrounded by green in all directions, in different tones.  I never find myself in a place like this, and all of the sudden, here I am.  I examine the paintings and sculpture, clothing and adornments.  I am careful to navigate the signature solicitors, who are everywhere.  All this color and connection to traditional Africa is like an island, surrounded by a sea of marketing dynamics and production format, and an urban political infatuation.  After the fest, I was able to change a $50 to get the dollar I needed for a quick swim, before I had to water some flowers and then get some film developed.  As I waited for my film, I waited at another deathburger with a guy who was talking to himself, after remaining silent for a while.  He had been sitting in his seat with an old transistor radio, complete with antenna, in his hand.

     On my day off, I find myself on a corner with a brand new Jack In The Box.  It's across the street (as I am so fond of referring to it) from the high school where the president spoke at the very beginning of last autumn.   I stop in for lunch.  When I open the door, a blast of air from a fan goes off.  The staff appears to be all white.  A family comes in with a lot of kids.  One of the only two teenagers is a kid I recognize.  I first saw him at my usual bus stop at 5 AM.  He sat down and told me he worked construction, but couldn't go to work because he was "fucked up" because he fight with his girlfriend, who does as she pleases but he earns the money.  So, he told me, he deserves to get fucked up.  I later saw him drinking under a tree by a liquor store, with other kids and older drunks.  I also saw him hanging out at a bus transfer station up the street.  Here he is with this big bi-racial blended family.  His dad is getting him a chicken sandwich.  He and a sister appear to be his dad's kids.  A lady who appears to be his stepmom has I don't know how many kids. 4, 5, 6?  After my late lunch, I am off to get a few miscellaneous groceries from a nearby supermarket.  My main goal was more green tea.  Focusing on the extraneous, the tea slips my mind, and I stay on the bus home a little further to Walgreens, which also has tea.  Along the way, I see a man standing next to a parked police car.  What appears to be his bicycle is on the ground, and both his hands are behind his back as if he is in handcuffs.  I don't turn to see if they are.  This month, I have seen a police presence in my neighborhood as I usually do not, except during Cinco de Mayo.  There's one particular homeless guy I see on my street, once in a while, in a sleeping bag.  I never see him panhandling or drinking, just asleep in his bag or in the shade.  I saw him being rousted from his bag and arrested.  It's the first time I have seen any homeless arrested, much less noticed by police.  Was it the next day or another, he was back out on my street in his bag.  After that, one afternoon I watched (literally, if they ever were noticed by anyone else before) the usual suspects standing in the usual spot behind a corner of the Chinese dollar scoop place.  This time, there was a police car parked there, and an officer was talking to them.  When he left, the drunk panhandlers were still here.  So, yesterday, the last time I was out in front of my parking lot, the panhandler who lives half a block from me (in a house with flowers out front, fenced yard, completely normal-looking strapping teenaged guy in front of the front door, etc.) passed me with a 40 oz. bottle of Magnum in his hand.
     The following morning, I sit and watch the deathburger next to my usual bus stop.  They are supposed to open at 5 AM.  Employee after employee walks up to the door, only to find it locked.  As I watch this, I hear footsteps to my left.  Along comes one Richard Spotted Bird, Mr. "e'r'body smokes" himself, strolling down the sidewalk and on into the dark neighborhood without saying a word.  The week moves on.  I'm at a train station to catch a connecting bus.  A young couple is trying to navigate the transit system, looking for their route.  They get on my bus, and it's a ways down the road before I hear some guy behind me telling someone to "Quit!  Quit!  Quit staring at me, now quit!"  The only guy I think it could be is one who was otherwise asleep in his seat.  He's wearing a winter jacket in the morning of another day which will eventually reach triple digits.  I don't know who he was talking to, but at the next stop, a guy gets on who seems to know the angry guy.  They make small talk and the angry guy sounds completely calm.  At the following stop, the young couple get off...quickly.  At the stop after that, the angry guy's friend gets off.  At my own stop, the angry guy is sound asleep once again.
     At the weekend, I am off to the pool as usual. My walk takes me past the home of a local panhandler.  Today, he's standing at the end of his driveway, in sunglasses.  "Hey..."  (He always starts with 'hey'.)  "...have you got a cigarette?"  Yes, he's panhandling from his own driveway.  Is he zoned for a business?

     AURORA}}  Parents flung open the bedroom doors of their teenagers in the middle of the night.  Relatives drove by to see if a certain truck was in the driveway.  Boyfriends searched frantically for girlfriends lost in a crowd stampede.  Parents...woke others for help and called across town.  A cousin of a victim stood behind police tape at the southeast corner of the Town Center mall Friday afternoon, waiting to see if bodies would be removed...  She had been told her cousin would be among the bodies.  ...Rita was hit in the shoulder, elbow and left side.  Son Patrick was struck in the back, and the bullet had lodged in his stomach...  ...the Aurora Central students had more to look for.  Duran had been shot in the chest with a shotgun.  - The Denver Post, 7/21/12
     A passport is lost.  You come down with a sudden illness.  A lawyer is needed.  From pre-trip planning to finding an English-speaking doctor...  From sports, fashion, and fine dining to the visual and performing arts, you can treat clients and employees to extraordinary experiences...access to exclusive events that are typically not available to the general public.  - American Express Business Platinum Card advertisement
     ...in lieu of tofu and tempeh.  ...the ghosts of so many artistically brilliant guests.  It's been perfection since the prime time '80s...stashing the car for the night in favor of cabs and cocktails.  ...your overly chatty plane-mate...  In-between stories about his failed business ventures...all local brews priced by their popularity on that given evening.  You dart in and out of several seedy bars...some cute people and no exes in sight.  Sweet bliss.  ...making a mental note of all the cute shops you'll return to tomorrow for pre-flight shopping.  Your server gave you a run down of legitimate local secrets for live jazz.  - Out Front Colorado, 7/18/12

     I just got on a bus home from work.  This bus stops at a hospital just before it gets to my stop.  I sit down next to a guy who smells like urine.  He may be my age, and is wearing a black knit tank top, jeans, reading glasses around his neck, long blonde wispy hair, and some kind of rock and roll skull tattoo on the withered skin of his emaciated right arm.  He asks me, "You don't have a scissors, do you?"  I reply in the negative.  "A knife...?"  "No...no...," I say.  He's trying to remove a couple of hospital wrist bands, which he does with his own strength.  For most of the trip, his head hangs down as he clutches a bus transfer with both hands.  We both get on a train.  He sits across from someone who acts homeless.  The other guy gives him something I can't see.  The next thing I know, transit security is standing next to him, having a conversation I can't hear.  At my stop, the security guy helps him off the train and on to a bench.  Shortly thereafter, a fire truck pulls up with paramedics.  When I get off my connecting bus, I go to another bus stop where I wait with a guy dressed as a woman and another guy.  They both get on my bus when it comes.  The friend of the guy dressed as a woman knowns one of the passengers, a guy without a shirt on.
     On Saturday morning, I'm on a bus pulling into the station.  A guy on his cell has been discussing  nothing out of the ordinary, before I hear him tell the person on the end that he doesn't know where his cell phone is.  "My girlfriend fucking took it and smashed it against the wall.  Look outside for it."  The next day, I arrive at the bus stop to go grocery shopping.  There are three middle aged guys at the bench.  Two are bald.  The one with hair is responding to the conversation between them with "Yep..."  He has a constipated voice.  When the bus shows up, all the other passengers appear to be middle aged men with buzz cuts.  The one sitting across from me is wearing a T shirt which reads, "There's room for all God's creatures, next to the gravy and mashed potatoes."  The following morning, across the street from where I live, is a regular drunk.  It's ten to five in the AM.  I will see him there later in the afternoon.  A guy in a button down shirt is talking to him.  The guy then goes out to the middle of the crosswalk, turns back to the drunk and yells, "Viva la rasa! Que pasa!  What's hapening!"

June 2010

     ...the religious faith...is...a part of the disposition to make complete stories about the universe and about the tribe.  ...one of the most powerful forces in the human mind, this tribalistic, myth-producing force.  These stories are overpowering, they are magnificent, they are the source of many wondrous parts of our own culture, they can't be abolished.  But they are almost always false...  Science tends to wipe them out, one after the other.  Whenever science comes into contact with these more traditional mythologies they are destroyed...  The trick is to capture religious energies.  This is where I think the natural sciences and the humanities will really come together at last.   - E. O. Wilson, OMNI, 2/79
     If there is a religious worker on the staff...  A person's religious therapy is left up to him...  The chaplain...is shoved so much in the corner that he cannot instill faith into his clients.  Unless the person in need finds some outer force to enter into him...to overcome his problem, then the psychiatric approach is more harmful than helpful.  The psychiatrist...becomes a substitute savior...  The patient helping patient approach means they are using one another as priests and lords.  Coffeehouses.  These are points of contact with hippies, runaways, tourists, students, and anyone who wants to talk.  The Gospel is presented to ghetto children who will become the addicts, alcoholics and muggers of the future...  ...have staff live in the community and become fused with the people.  This method has been used with good results by the Young Life group...amid the slums, garbage, vices, poverty...  - The Untapped Generation, by D. and D. Wilkerson, 1971
     "Permanently homeless people...feel they...will always be homeless.  What should we do about this population?  This is where sociological perspectives are important to solve the problem"...  - Denver Voice, 6/12
     The doorbell rang on my day off, what would be the day that the first U. S. governor in history to survive a recall election.  It was the person who, as a result of shifting voting districts, my new State Representative here to introduce herself.  She is the second politician who I have ever met.  The first was Diana Degette, twenty years ago this year, who rang my bell at a home which no longer exists.  The woman before me today tells me that her old district is more conservative, and she mentioned to me that she won that district by more than half the percentage.  She also mentioned that the latest special session ran rather late for her, and that the House Leader (who like to send bills to the wrong committees) was rude to her.  She asked me if she could count on my support for an upcoming ballot election, which she doesn't understand why she needs.  Considering this a vague question, I answered with, "I don't see why not."  She put me down for a yes, whatever this means, and asked to put a sign in my yard.  I told her that, being in a townhome, I wasn't sure where my yard is; and belonging to an HOA, I don't recall what my covenant says about it.  At no point did she ask me if I am registered to vote.

     It's after work.  I'm on a bus waiting to pull out for home.  I'm listening to another middle-aged guy with a bandanna covering his head.  He's wandering the train station, yelling at I know not who.  Perhaps it is a cry for help.  "Do you know where the zeroes are?  I'm looking for the zeroes!"  He means the buses which run the route #0.
     I'm up on a Friday morning.  The streetlight, a few yards from my place, is throwing shadows of branches blowing back and forth, against the orange light coming through the animated leaves.  To the east, against the dawn, is the blue form of a thunderstorm with occasional flashes of lightning.
     What to say about Father's Day weekend?  Sunday I was off to Colorado's first ever Comic Convention.  At the Colorado Con, the focus is on the comics, although there were both a Stargate prop and a backdrop of the Millenium Falcon available for photo ops.  There was also the orange Charger called the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazard, and the car named Kit from Knight Rider.  I knew a kid in the 7th grade who would sit at his desk in Algebra I, and enact his own Dukes of Hazard scripts.  From the same town, I knew a guy in high school who met the actor who played Knight Rider. He told a story about slapping the Knight on the chest and asking him, "Want to trade sunglasses?"  Milling around the cars were young people dressed as characters which I didn't recognize.  They appeared to be more interested in the local Ghostbusters vehicle than the muscle cars each from its own decade.  I didn't watch those TV shows, but it was fun to see the cars.  There were costumed characters to take photos of, as well as everyone else who appeared to be the 2012 version of the nerd, which appeared to almost be its own kind of costume.  To be a nerd, it appears as though you must be a heterosexual male with facial hair, glasses and clothes which send the nerd vibe.  There were the popular zombies, including a zombie kid.  As I came in, I saw one kid who had made his own costume out of cardboard, a robot from the TV show Doctor Who called a Dalek.  A tall woman came into the hall.  She radiated self-consciousness and lack of security, almost as if she didn't even consider herself to rise to the level of the nerd.  She is by no means bad looking.  She just didn't have the nerd energy.  I sat at a table in the hall cafe, next to a young mom with her two small kids.  I asked her for the time.  Her son asked her why I wanted to know the time.  I said that I was taking time-release cold medicine.  She told him, "See?"  He told her that he liked Wolverine.
     I exited the Con, and made my way through record 100 degree F heat to the Pride Fest.  I would later read that the previous day had been a "cool" one.  Not today.  Someone puts a sticker on my shirt which reads "Shine your love.  Love your shine."  I get a pen for donating a dollar to something.  There appears to be no such thing as a gay nerd.  I see shirts for sale which have "Legalize Love" on the front.  I saw a booth for gay Jews and went to look at the photos they had.  One was of a crowd with the Star of David on a rainbow flag.  A woman came up to me and stood there silently.  I asked her if I can get one of those flags.  She shook her head no.
     I'm on an early shift for a couple of weeks, getting over a cold.  I have lunch over three or four days at a deli in a white bohemian neighborhood.  I'm sitting next to a chatty woman on her cell, setting up some kind of church conference.  When she gets off, she begins discussing the minutia of setting up a church service.  Pastoral prayer, at what point in the service to mention "the names," will it be minister led or lay led?  The last one "should be up to the board" (of directors), "but they have no clue..."  The next day, I am back here, this time next to three people closing a deal on veterinary equipment.  The day after, I am back again, this time next to a couple who is purchasing insurance from a salesman.
     Somehow, yet again, it's another Saturday.  There's drama on my street this early morning.  I'm headed up the street to the bus stop before sun up.  In the dark, I hear Spanish from an angry male voice.  I make out the word "all."  ("You can have it all!"?  "Take it all!"?  "I don't like it at all!"?)  He's walking ahead of a young woman in a black top which only covers her chest, and black pants.  When I get up the street, a car quickly goes by.  The passenger says, "Fuck you, bitch."  I pass a deathburger parking lot, where a truck is parked.  The weight of the entire truck is leaning way over on the front left wheel, which is resting on the edge of of the wheel well.  It has a dealer plate on the back.  Did it come from the dealership next door, which was the hookah lounge?  The truck's front bumper is also damaged.  I catch the bus to the train.  Where I get off the train, on the platform is a young guy, using "fuckin'" to describe I can't hear what.   He points at a sign displaying the time when the next northbound train will arrive.  He goes to a ticket kiosk and punches a button.  He ponders a ticket, gets a bottle out of his pack, takes a swig, spits over the rail of the bridge he's on.  I get on the connecting bus with a young couple.  The girl is wearing orange cutoffs and a lime tank top, and has a blonde perm.  The guy has a name tattooed on the back of his neck, and is wearing a cap from Walgreens.  On a bus home, I'm seated behind a woman eating chips.  She's banging her head to her iPod, and has a tattoo on her right bicep which reads "DANZIG."  A roommate introduced me to danzig in the late 1980s, and I listened to them through the 1990s.
     I've been working an early shift which I occasionally work.  To get to work, there's a stretch of street I walk to get to the train station.  It's always in the dark.  This morning, I hear voices in the direction of the new condos and old Victorian homes of a bohemian neighborhood.  Usually, at the end of the street this time of the morning, there is an ambulance parked along with a police car, or a couple of police cars.  I look in the direction of the voices, expecting to see a couple of guys on a porch.  In the middle of an open field of scrub brush and clay dirt are a couple seated on the ground, chatting and laughing.  They are taking in the view of...the ambulance and police car in an otherwise empty parking lot in the dark.  When I get to the train station, there is a young white guy laying on the grass.  He appears to be asleep.  It's no surprise, this morning is a beautiful one with a cool breeze.  He looks as though he could have stepped out of The Brady Bunch.  Down the drive to the light rail station, I see a mule deer trotting down the street.
     I take the bus downtown to the bank after work.  A couple of young guys get on.  The first one has a ponytail, a button down shirt, and bedroom slippers.  The driver is waiting for the fare from his friend.  he tells the driver, "He's my caregiver."  As he heads toward the back, he's telling his friend about where he purchases narcotics.  His friend is telling him, "Calm down, calm down."  What a caregiver.  I stop to drop off film, which I wait for at a deathburger.  Sitting outside, next to the wall, is a woman who looks like a bohemian drifter with a pack on each side of her.  She's reading a magazine.  A guy who appears to be her significant other, with a greying buzz cut and basketball short, looks as though he is attempting to turn on an outside water tap, unsuccessfully.  A customer coming in stops to talk to her for a while.  He gives her the change in his pocket.  Another customer comes in in a pink shirt which reads, "I'm a bitch.  Just not yours."
     Somehow, it's another Saturday.  Tomorrow is a new month.  I take a bus for the short ride up the street.  I get off at a corner where a car, with conversation going on inside, pulls up next to a police car.  The car with the conversation makes a U-turn in front of the police car, a passenger makes a dog noise ("woof"), and the police car ignores it. 

May 2012

     ...what, it asked would become of the stagnant, class-divided society of late Victorian England if allowed to evolve along existing lines into the indefinite future?  The Time Machine, like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, is one of the great parables of Western industrial man.  - P. A. Carter, The Creation of Tomorrow, 1977

     HI READERS,  ...there are many activities and events to enjoy downtown and in the surrounding neighborhoods.  So get out there...  Ice cream socials, outdoor concerts, fairs...5 & 10K races...  Love Samantha  - Denver News, 5/10 - 6/10/12

     After a closing shift at work, I'm on a bus watching the setting sun throw rays of light over newly blooming trees, green again on this May day after being completely bare only a month ago.  This scene, and this time of evening which I hardly see anymore, takes me far back in my youth.  I hear my past calling me to forget that I am an adult.  When I get to my street, I see a guy who usually panhandles across the street from me.  This evening, I see him lying on the sidewalk for the first time.  A guy comes down the alley, pushing a stroller, to ask him if he's okay.  he sits up and lays back down.  He acts as though he is drunk. 

     Throughout the story there has been an implication that persistence, courage, and imagination...have the moral edge over the paternalism, self-rightousness, and stagnation...  ...to assert that there is no human free will, and do what one must although the heavens fall, is existentially to affirm it.  Or to accept what Freud once said..."In vital matters...  The decision should come from the unconscious...the deep inner needs of our nature."  Such a perspective transcends socially defined good and evil, and goes beyond rational self-preservation.  - Carter

     I'm at a train station after work.  It's 8:20 PM.  A guy in a ponytail, shorts, and a polo shirt wants to know if I have ten cents.  Ten cents.  What is he going to do with ten cents?  A kid comes and stands impatiently waiting for the bus.  The guy asks him for ten cents.  he doesn't have it, but wants to know if the guy has any weed.  The guy says he's on his way to pick some up.  The kid wants to know if he will roll him a joint.  These characters all get on the bus, including a drunk woman who begs the driver to let her bring her dog on.  Sitting in the back of this bus, the kid believes that he has found a soulmate in this drunk woman with a dog on a bus.  He tells her tales of his young life.  I get off and run to catch a connecting bus home.  Some guy at the stop is shining a flashlight at me.  (WTF?)  As we head down the street, we pass stacks of small metal parking barriers, ready to be put out for the Cinco de Mayo cruise down Federal Boulevard on Saturday.  They won't be needed I would discover.  Rain and hail would discourage this year's cruise.  Three barriers next to a school got tagged with spray paint.

     Jack London had forecast something very like a Fascist regime in his trenchant political novel "The Iron Heel" (1908): "...the oligarchs emerged with a new ethics, coherent and definite, sharp and severe as steel, the most absurd and unscientific and at the same time the most potent ever possessed by any tyrant class."  - Carter

     I'm on a bus to work, waiting to leave the train station.  Another driver has come on to ask our driver if she's registered for a raffle.  This other driver is wearing shorts, and I can see a tattoo on her right calf of Michael Jackson.  On the ride home, as I am about to get off where I live, a guy in slacks and a polo shirt approaches the front door.  He opens his mouth to speak to the driver, and what comes out is completely unintelligible.  I've never heard anyone so drunk standing up.  I go to the back door.  Someone mentions that he left a bag on the seat.  It appears to be a plastic grocery bag with a single pair of underwear in it.  He stumbles down the steps, looks at me and hiccups.

     It's Cinco de Mayo.  After work, I am in a gas station, behind a guy who is behind a woman with grey hair. She is purchasing scratch tickets.  "A crossword.  I didn't know you had a crossword.  I also want that one."  After he gets a couple dollars in gas, I see his truck has a bupersticker which reads "Impeach Obama".  What do they call such a residential place, grassroots?  Every pickup has a lawnmower in the bed.  In a new truck with tinted windows, I can make out that the driver is wearing mirrored teardrop shades.  He must be either an albino or a vampire.

     The next day, I would get a ride downtown with my sister and mom, but not have the time to go to lunch with them.  They are headed to the opera.  I am headed to another movie, a documentary I read about earlier this week.  It's titled Hit So Hard, and it's about the drummer in the all girl '90s band Hole.  I have a half hour to spend at the second day of the Cinco de Mayo celebration downtown.  I live on the street where the big Cinco cruise happens every year.  I told a guy in my drug store that, this year, I one lonely car cruising the street, as opposed to bumper to bumper traffic.  He told me that on Saturday, "They tried."  First they got rained on, and then the hail came down.  There in the park the following day, it seemed as though multiple signature gatherers were out with their clipboards.  I don't remember them last election year.  The event was also conspicuously empty.  I would pass one concession booth where I would overhear someone say that they were waiting for everyone to get out of church.  The first signature gatherer I spotted, I wanted to see what her cause was.  Hispanic Republicans.  I told her that I was an Oreo.  She appeared to know what that was...fast.  On the other side of the park was some kid trying to sell me the Dish Network, because it had some kind of NFL package.  I had to cut him off.  The next day at work, I would hear a rock DJ mention "people still celebrating Cinco de Mayo.  White people are celebrating it more."

     "...we're pretty passionate about showing the world that Denver is the New Creative Capital.  We're excited to showcase the local Denver metro people...  We're celebrating a part of Denver's coolness and culture that is central to who we are."  - Denver News

     In "City of the Corporate Mind" by L. N. Schachuer, (ASI: 24, December 1939), one of the heroes describes the city: "This is the ultimate totalitarian state, the goal toward which Earth's evolution was obviously working...  A single corporate existence..."  - Carter

     ...eventually many moms make their way back to work - by choice or necessity.  Before you...gulp, "How can I compete?"...  ...companies that you want to work for.  Take in annual reports, press releases and other industry news daily.  When you have young children, it is easy to network.  ...talk to other parents...ask if they stay home and work.  Ask what they did before they had their baby.  ...Linkedin...  "It is the only tool that I utilize in recruiting.  There are many ways to leverage it..."  What SAHMs do in their limited time outside of the home should be  done with a mindful eye to the future.  As any parent knows, volunteering opportunities at your child's school are endless.  Volunteer for the school leadership committee, or nominate yourself to be the PTO Treasurer.  You can add these jobs to your resume, as well as provide you with rich networking opportunities.  - Colorado Parent, 5/2012

     ...Jesus...and his apostles had a common fund from which they gave to needy Israelites.  (Matthew 26:6-9, John 12:5-9, 13:29)  "Sell all the things you have and distribute to poor people..."-Luke 18:22, 23.  - The Watchtower, 5/1/2006

     ...baby boomers are a third of the population, and they own 70 percent of the nation's net worth.  In the 1920s, age began to be talked about as negative...that's when advertising took off as an industry, and a consumer society began to replace a kind of truth-oriented society that existed before the 20th century.  - Nexus, May/June 2012

     Once in a while, I stop into a deathburger before Sunday grocery shopping.  This morning, this particular franchise has enlarged photos on the walls.  Images of a kitchen table with the sun coming through the window.  Along with a salad in a wooden bowl and a wooden salad tossing fork, on a cutting board are six burgers on rolls, piled high with onion and tomato slices and lettuce.  Wrapped in paper and placed inside some kind of ornamental holders are heaps of fries.  In the top corner is the word 'Gather'.  On another wall are photos of five deathburger patrons, all in their early thirties.  They are enjoying salads and deathburgers, and sandwich wraps.  In the middle are enlarged photos of glasses of iced tea with lemon, glass dishes of ice cream sundaes, glasses of milkshakes topped with whipped cream.  None of which are served here in glass dishware or ornamented wire.

     A marijuana blood standard for drivers appears headed for approval in Colorado...  Sen. Nancy Spence of Centennial said "I'm just sick of the abuse that the state of Colorado has taken from the medical marijuana industry"...  The bill's sponsor is Sen. Steve King of Grand Junction.  "We are well on our way to a doped-driving epidemic that will match the DUI epidemic that we had 15 and 20 years ago," King argued.  Unlike alcohol, THC is fat-soluble, so blood limits can remain above the legal limit even when a user is not stoned.  

     Whether it is a custodian keeping our buildings clean; a motor vehicle employee helping to process your car registration; or a caseworker providing assistance to those in need...  ...committed to open accessible government and accountability back to the people...a strong fiscal conservative and believes that the role of a commissioner is to create a...business-friendly county...  - Aurora Sentinel, 5/3-5/9/2012

     So the righteous "new earth" that is promised to come is a society of people who have God's approval.(Mark 10:30)  - The Watchtower, 5/1/2006

     ...a questionable or nonexistent political worldview.  This "All-American guy" has some bland fucking name like Tyler Chadwick Josherson...looks exactly like Ryan reynolds.  Tyler Josherson was a business major, and has a high-paying job right out of college.  His favorite TV show is Tosh.0.  ...looks exactly like Chris Evans.  ...spends his weekend mornings lounging aimlessly in gym shorts, afternoons on the treadmill, and evenings with his buddies in the bars...looks exactly like Jay Hernandez.  - Out Front Colorado, 5/2/12 

     I am in another deathburger the following day.  It has three flat screen TVs tuned to news channels, and is in a white neighborhood.  What is it, I wonder, that white people are supposed to be monitoring.  One middle-aged women gets her order.  She's in a brown leather coat with a matching leather purse.  I hear her say, "This isn't what I ordered.  Fuck.  Shit.  This isn't what I ordered.  I've waited long enough."

     Do you believe that humans, who long for peace and happiness, are capable, in themselves, of such gross wickedness against others?  What forces drive men...?  Have you ever wondered whether some wicked, invisible power is influencing people...?  ...an intelligent, unseen person has been controlling both men and nations.  It says, "The whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one."  These unseen, wicked world rulers are determined to mislead all mankind...by promoting the idea of survival after death, even though...the dead are not conscious.  ...crystal-ball gazing, use of Ouija boards, ESP, examining the lines of one's hand (palmistry), and astrology.  ..promoting literature, movies, and television programs that feature immoral and unnatural sexual behavior.  - Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Britain

     There was an establishment up the street from my place, a 'hookah lounge".  It opened some time during the past five years.  Last year, it moved out of its old location.  It's become a used car lot.  It has the usual car lot flags, along with its old sign with the hookah pipe photo on it. 

     It's another predawn Saturday at my usual bus stop.  A kid with an almost empty fifth of whisky sits down on the bench.  He's chasing it with a tall purple can, possibly beer.  He begins to tell me about his landscaping job.  He tells me that his boss only wants hardworking people, "He says he doesn't want any women" is how his boss puts it.  "So I showed him I could do some hard fuckin' work."  His cousin showed him how to push a wheelbarrow full of cement.  He gets up and demonstrates for me.  He tells me that he deserves to "get fucked up.  I work from Monday to Saturday.  I'm supposed to go to work now, but I can't.  I'm fucked up.  I'll call in sick.  I deserve that to."  He said he had a fight with his girlfriend.  But he's the breadwinner.  His girlfriend "gets to do whatever she wants."  He gets on my bus and gets off at the train station.  I get on a train and leave him stewing in his boiler maker.  I would see him again, a few days later, around noon across the street from where he sat down this morning.  He will he hanging out with a group of what look like teenaged guys and older drunks.  I'm reminded of another predawn morning twenty years ago, when I met another guy next door to where I lived then who told me that his girlfriend threw him out of the house.

     He wanted to be alone with his mind and his fate.   We were living on the canyon's terms, with its flood rushing river.  ...he refused to leave.  The remainder of the week found me wondering at the interior life of an inscrutable man.  I once witnessed his standing alone, empty-handed, swaying, staring at the ground.  There is no sight lonelier than that of a man again witnessing his own departure - and bearing its hollow emptiness.  Though the mind can be our worst enemy, it is at times our only companion.  Oblivion with a heartbeat seems a cruel existence.  ...cabins crumble and carvings fade, as do our bodies and minds.  Succession...makes room for the next surge of songs and stories.  Whether writ on a canyon wall, heralded by an empty water bottle, or carried silently in the depths of one's soul.  - "Forgetting in a Landscape of Memory", by Jen Jackson, Mountain Gazette 188, May 2012

     On Mothers' Day, one of my brothers told me that he has "been doing some research" concerning panhandling.  He says not why.  What he had to say is that, one may hold a sign on the sidewalk under the law, but not first approach traffic for money.  One may ask a pedestrian or bystander for change once, but not repeat the request.  It's three days later.  There's a middle-aged guy at the train station before sun up.  He has sunglasses on.  A guy at my usual bus stop a couple of mornings ago was in his rimless shades in the first light before dawn.  What don't I know about a workin' man?  That the Lord loves one in sunglasses under the moonlight?

     Yesterday at a downtown bus stop, the driver recognized someone who he knew had no fare.  He asked her where she was headed, and when she answered he told her to get on.  She looks to be in her thirties, inebriated, and with a wry smile.  She sounds as though she is a character from some TV police drama from 4 decades past.  She's talking like some early '70s street character.  I don't understand why she sounds as if she is on a TV show which went off the air before she was even born. 

     This morning, I hop on a bus for a quick ride up the street to another connecting bus.  I sit in front of a woman with bright golden blonde hair.  She too is wearing shades, long before the first sunbeam will come over the hill.  I can hear her smacking her lips as she snacks on something behind me.  At my usual bus stop, a couple of middle-aged white guys come from across the street.  One is in overalls, and speaks to the other in a whisp of a voice.  They both get on, and then get off at a stop within walking distance of where they got on.  

     Mid-rapid the only time in my life I'm effortlessly in full conscious attendance.  On the floor, I see the great Green Room as it is.  A life-sized snow globe a zillion feet deep, antique-glass green water falls 360 degrees around.  ...waves that are Granite-of-the-Snake. 

     The southwestern cities that depend on the river , and that most of us depend on directly or indirectly for jobs, complex networks of finance and transportation and communication, a vast menu of entertainment...  The work today, a task finally being taken semi-seriously by the cities east of the Divide that have dewatered the streams, is to rebuild the rivers from which they have taken two-thirds of the water... ...from the engineers' sense in the 1950s and before that a river was just a sort of sewer system for excess water on the land, and straightening channels made it function more efficiently.  - Mountain Gazette 188, May 2012

     On this dark morning, I hop on a bus for the short trip up the street.  I sit in front of a girl with bright blonde hair...and sunglasses.  I get off at my usual stop, where I watch two middle aged guys come across the street.  One wearing overalls and a bandanna on his head talks to the other with a voice which is but a whisper.  They both get on the bus, and they get off after a distance which they could have easily walked.  My task at work today is to make a delivery to a women's shelter of clothes donated by our customers.  The woman who runs the clothing part of the shelter had her photo in a local neighborhood newspaper, at a charity event for the shelter.  In the shot, she is with our new mayor.  She used to be homeless.  He has stated support for a proposed bill banning the use of tents and other camp gear for overnight camping in the downtown area.  I ask not what strange bedfellows politics makes.  Yet, as I head down the street after making my delivery, I turn a corner and pass in front of the state capitol.  Seated in a row, on the front lawn, are Occupy protesters.  They have a long placard, upon which is printed a quote from the council person who proposed the bill, Albus Brooks.  Tis a bill which a spokesperson for the shelter has spoken against, that the council person of my own neighborhood has criticized for not being sent by the house leader to his committee but to a committee with those who have no experience in matters addressed by it.  Yet the mayor and governor have their own favorite bill, which the latter called a special session for debate of.

     ...the annual County Fair at City Park & the District 8 Old fashioned Ice Cream Social.  District 8's Councilman Albus Brooks has enthusiastically agreed to continue the tradition...  Participants will see the Denver Municipal Band...  Neighbors and guests are encouraged to wear period costumes to take part in the costume contest.  - Denver News

     Friday.  It's been rainy.  I left the house today, for the first time this year without a jacket.  The summer will be here after this wet spring.  It's the last half of May, around 8 PM on an overcast twilight, a cool breeze, and just beautiful at the train station this evening.  Low clouds are dropping rain between the city and the Rockies.  There's leftover snow on the peaks.  If it rains tomorrow, as predicted, there may be more snow in the "high country."  Lights are coming on, all the way up into the foothills.  One white guy, his forearm covered in tattoos, is telling his friend about his "bonus money" from tomorrow's overtime.  A train comes by, with several couples dressed up for some kind of graduation event.  I'm sitting next to a girl who asks a guy, "You're a gang banger, aren't you?"  He replies, "So?"  They and a third guy are teasing each other.  One is jumping over the bench.  Another is doing an imitation, "I'm on steroids."

     The next morning, I'm at my usual bus stop, watching a guy smoking under a street lamp.  He's in some kind of uniform.  Is he waiting for a ride.  When it begins raining, he heads for shelter.  Lightning is streaking across the sky, followed by thunder.  He comes back through the rain.  I suddenly realize, as it approaches 5:30 AM, he has been waiting in front of a deathburger where he works for the place to open.  On a connecting bus, a girl in a supermarket uniform is talking to a regular rider.  They discuss a boyfriend who "at least has a job...at least has a car."  Being aware when "red flags start going up."  They mention living in halfway houses, staying sober, getting married, stressing out.  Having a life; "What life?" 

     Ale - ...a brew made with top-performing yeast.

     Amber Ale, American Pie Ale - ...dry-hopped versions may be slightly

                                                     hazy. 

     Barley wine - ...malt flavors ranging from bready to biscuity...

     Lager - Any beer made by bottom-fermentation.

                                                                 - Special supplement to The Onion 

     ...I instantly decided to take up smoking and grow a beard.  ...it seems like declarative, vacation-y thing to do.  After a few days of this, you loose all sense of what you must look like to other people.  On the street there is no sense of personal space...  ...my hosts offered...endless wine, marijuana...  - Out Front Colorado, 5/16/12

     Four weekends in a row, I have been to brunch with at least the mom and sister.  The sun appears to be up so much earlier.  The birds are out.  Just a month ago, the trees were bare.  The freeze has turned to rain.  It feels as though time is in that sped up mode again.  Or is it simply that, with service cutbacks to the transit system, which appear out of nowhere, are but a mere veil shrouding nature's clock.  It takes an afternoon to go anywhere, do anything with the employ of the transit system.  In the process I collect local neighborhood newspapers, and I assemble a multi-class perspective of my city.  At the supermarket this morning, I'm in the greeting card isle.  A woman approaches me, and in heavily accented English, asks me for help in choosing a card for "a friend who is graduating high school."  I ask her if she wants one from the "humorous" section.  She replies, "I like funny."  I choose one with a pisture of a baby chick on the front.  Inside, it reads, "Happy Birthday from one of your peeps."  I explain to her that 'peeps', along with chicks, also refers to 'people.'

     On the way from brunch, I am downtown, walking past an outdoor patio.  Downtown is the territory of the white urban local.  Four of them are seated at a table.  I hear one on her phone.  "Hey hottie.  Come down and do some shotties.  Are you naughty, hottie?  I want to touch your body."  On the train to the health food store, back on it to the bus, to the supermarket which usually has the tea I like but not this afternoon.  Before brunch, I did my usual weekly grocery shopping, which doesn't include the ancillary excursions.  On the bus home, I heard the driver talking to the guy I've seen before, who uses a big three wheeled scooter to put his knee on and push with his other leg.  The driver was talking about having trouble getting to work.  He must be speaking of another "race."  These footraces, information about which paint them as mysterious, elusive, like the schedule changes.  I waited an extra half hour for the bus home, with some tea which is not the kind I like.  The following day, I saw a notice for the race posted on the train.  It was the Kaiser Permanente Colfax Marathon, and any delays it caused were scheduled to end by 2 PM.  I must live in a delayed neighborhood.

     When this bus appeared, it had a guy in a wheelchair wearing cowboy boots and a bandanna.  Across from him was a guy with a panhandling sign on the seat of his walker.  Behind him was a girl with her own panhandling sign.  All three were quiet, until the girl turns to me to ask when the bus would get to the transfer station.  The walker guy immediately answers her.  She then wants to know how to get north of downtown.  He tells her that the most direct way is by train.  She doesn't want to get on any train.  An argument ensues.  We get to the station, and the wheelchair guy begins complaining that the walker guy is full of shit.  It sounds, in the commotion, as though the walker guy is complaining that the wheelchair guy is drunk, and that he's tired of listening to him talk.  The wheelchair guy uses a bus ramp to disembark.  The girl is off next, and offers the walker guy the ramp.  The walker guy says that he doesn't need it.  An argument ensues.  One of the supervisors at this station, a long-haired blonde lady is slacks and heels, is letting the driver know that, to catch up, she's authorizing him to put the pedal to the metal.  That's what the driver behind him will be doing.  "He's gonna be movin'."  Sitting on the steps outside is the kid who sat down with me a couple mornings ago, and who I saw across the street with some dunks and other kids.

     The following morning, he gets on my bus and sits in back.  I hear another kid telling him what church to go to, and when the services are, so he can go in and have them pay for a birth certificate.  "They will give you a check for $17.85."  I get on a train with a couple of security guards.  It's about 5 AM.  "Slowest part of the day," one says.  A third comes up.  "Did you hear that they're hiring in Littleton?"  I wonder if you need your birth certificate?  It's the same time on a following morning, when I am at the bus stop across the street from where I live.  There's a white kid with an afro, in what looks like a long black leather coat, jeans and sneakers.  He's listening to his I Pod, which could be mistaken for a Walkman.  This guy has been transported straight out of the 1980s, into my neighborhood for reasons known only to the time lords.  He's as out of place here as a Swedish nudist.  Whatever he's listening to, what he's singing sounds like a hymn.  It's too early for such conundrums.  On the bus, for the short ride up the street, is the blinding blonde, complete with her predawn sunglasses.  I get off and cross the street to my usual stop, spying a bike pedal in the gutter.  Bus to train, to train station.  A pair of middle aged guys are waiting on the platform for their friend.  One of the pair sings, "I'm so lonely, nobody loves me."  It sounds as though they are discussing which train car they want to ride in.  "I tell you one thing, I'm going to be on that last car."  "I'm still with yall."  The next morning, I'm scheduled for a shift an hour later than usual.  Realizing that I have time for breakfast from the deathburger, I enter to see a homeless guy talking to someone else.  He says he's from Las Vegas, been here a little over a year, and can't handle these may mornings in the 40s F.  At the train station where I get off is a seated individual waiting for the bus, who begins coughng all of the sudden.  He's blazin' a reefer.  After my workday, I'm waiting for the bus home, watching a guy in a polo shirt and khakis, standing in the sun on the sidewalk.  It appears as though this is how he waits for the bus.  I realize that he has been waiting for a ride when he begins direting a car into a gas station lot with a hand/arm signal.

     There's something different about the little neighborhood street festivals of summer:  There's a communal block-party feel that connects people without overwhelming them.  ...catering directly to everyone - neighbors, sightseers, dogs, kids on scooters with fairy wings...  - Westword, 5/24-30/2012

     I'm working another late shift, and am back at the deathburger for breakfast.  The guy in line behind me, he keeps shifting around, never standing still.  When he orders, it's in a whisper.  When my bus comes, I get on with a couple of women who appear to be friends.  They both get off at the very next stop, each going the opposite direction.  One has a tote bag, on the outside of which is 'reading rocks'.  An hour and a half into my shift, I am on the way to a train to another store.  At the station, there's a young guy dressed in black, hair down his back, standing and staring into the distance.  A young couple is teasing each other, the guy saying, "I'm at peace with it, I'm at peace with it."  The long-haired guy has come up to the train platform.  Behind him comes another guy wearing black.  His neck is green with ink, coming part way up the right side of his face.  When I get on the train, I'm sitting across from a guy with purple shoes reading his bible.  These images in front of me are as though memories from some previous drunken evening.  I will spend the next five hours in front of customers.  The sky is broken clouds.  It's warm in the sun, cold when it disappears, and there is high wind.  It's as some kind of tale from Chaucer.  When I come out of work, it's seven PM on a beautiful cloudless late afternoon.  The sun is coming through newly sprouted foliage.  Couples are on bicycles.  This afternoon, in this neighborhood, reminds me of many an evening of my youth.  

     The bus takes me on a boulevard I lived on for fifteen years.  On the bus comes a white guy in a Raiders jacket with a small pack of beer.  At the train station, I hold the elevator door for a couple, the father waves and smiles.  Waves and smiles?  On the train is a kid with a nude female tattoo on his leg and a fish on his forearm.  When we get to where I catch my bus home, the happiness and innocuous tattoos give way with alacrity.  A kid in jeans and a denim jacket, and hair like some kind of late '60s actor, is unsteadily pacing back and forth along the train station platform.  Up and down, back and forth.  Staring at the ground, expressionless.  A girl asks him for a light.  He ignores her.  He's staring at his phone from a distance of a couple of inches.  The next morning, I see what I think is fog in the streetlight.  From across the street at my usual bus stop, an old guy is pulling the handle of what appears to be a small platform on castors.  He comes across at the light and continues out of sight.  He comes back a few minutes later, and goes back from the direction from which he emerged, making castor noise all the way.  He pauses mid way in the crosswalk to pick something up.  1) Who is pulling 2) what 3) at 5 AM?  On the Saturday before Memorial Day?  I take the bus to a train.  Where I get off, a couple of young guys are seated on a bench.  They appear as though they are headed to work.  One has a small cooler.  He asks me if I believe that the transit system security should be allowed to carry firearms.  I didn't mention to him that they already do. When I get to my bus stop below the train platform, I can see a couple of standing people up top.  Over a third person seated between them, they are arguing, I presume, about the same thing.  The seated person appears still, and quiet.  One of the standing guys points at the other one.  When a train shows up, the arguing guys get on, and the place reverts to the sound of birds hunting for worms and traffic on the other side of the train tracks.  As the sun comes up, I realize that what I thought was fog is smoke from fires from southern New Mexico.

     On a bus home after work, I'm sitting in front of a couple of women who sound as though they have issues in the mental department.  One of them is unintelligibly audible.  The other, in a deathburger uniform, is asking her if she has faith in herself.  She keeps asking the silent one, "who has been talking about me?"  She asks her if she wants some food.  The gabby one then gets up and sits somewhere else.  They both get off the bus together.  When I get on the train, a young couple comes and sits across from me.  It sounds like a blind date.  He's asking her what she does for a living.  She's a bartender.  She's wearing a knit tanktop of the state flag.  They surely are young enough to be my children.

     It's about the light.  ...light does things to glass, defining every fold...  ...experts said Denver couldn't support a glass gallery.  It's another world, one...customers rely on for access and insight.  ...inspired gift items, appointments for the home, and one of the city;s best selections of glass jewelry.  ..."the light and the glass - that inter-mix - it's just breathtaking here, and we have seen a lot of glass galleries.  ...there really isn't anything we can't get right here."  ...people are warm, easy to be around...  "This is one place in Denver on a level with major art centers, bigger cities.  ...they adopt you.  It's a family."  - Cherry Creek Now, Spring 2012

     Memorial Day was beautiful indeed.  I found myself with my sister in a white neighborhood, on the patio of a local ice cream shop where she first bought me a cone in the summer of 1985.  This afternoon, the temperature is 74F with a cloudless sky.  Unbelievable.  We are surrounded by tall, tall homes and green, green foliage.  A guy comes by in a Green Lantern T-shirt, flanked by a fat girl in a baby blue satin dress.  He is taking a photo of a second girl in a shorter dress, smelling a rose bush.  She asks to borrow my sister's cone for a photograph, telling us that they are on a "fairy tale scavenger hunt."  Strange magic; fairy tale aspiration.  Later that afternoon, I took a lady to dinner.  She works and lives in my neighborhood.  I've known her perhaps a year.  I let her talk as we ate.  She told me of the relationship between employee and business franchise.  We spoke of owners who appear not to know anything about their businesses.  She mentioned the dangers of working the overnight, or "third shift", at a gas station.  Guys come in and grab milk out of the case, or jump the counter to grab a carton of cigarettes, before running out.  Is it they who take advantage of a business, or consumer products which dictate their will (and perhaps business which takes advantage of them)?  She tells me of a kid she used to see come in and steal, and yet say hi to her.  She would see him when everyone else was in school.  She hadn't seen him in a while when, one day, he came in with a girl and a one year old.  He was so tall, she didn't recognize him.  She would next see him at Wendy's, surprised that he had a job.  She thought he only ran around the streets.  He told her that the girl was in jail, and social services took the baby.  My date expressed concern for his wife.  He told her, "She's not my wife."  She attempted to point out the significance of his child's mother.  She also told me about her parents who were teachers, her working food service at the high school down the street, where the president came to speak last autumn.  She mentioned the pregnant freshman girls, the kids who appeared as though "their parents have no idea what they do."  She herself talked about her four sisters, married at 15.  About learning English in Mexico, and coming here to discover that she didn't know the language at all.  

 

     It's the middle of the week.  Five AM.  A very slow-moving pair is meandering up the sidewalk.  As they pass in front of the medical marijuana dispensary, one of them heads for the front door.  What's the story here?  The one near the door takes the lid off an outdoor ashtray to look for usable butts.  The other is texting while waiting.  The one rejoins the other as they drift on their way.  At the train station where I get off the train, I see a middle aged couple headed for another bus.  The lady has her coat on against the chill.  The guy has his sunglasses on as the sun just barely has come up.  He's in a tank top and shorts, and he swaggers along with her as he finishes his butt before tossing it.

     I'm on a train home, sitting across from a guy in a cap which reads 'Seal Team'.  He appears to be well beyond 32 years of age, and as if he has never come anywhere near the 100 extra lbs he would have needed on any seal team.  Another guy next to me, a young guy, is nervously flipping page by page, quickly through a small apartment guide.  His eyes are wild and he's smiling.  He's tripping on whatever he sees.  Tiny pictures of homes?  On a connecting bus home, a quiet young woman gets on wearing a beach towel as a skirt.  When she gets off, the guy sitting next to me in a Vietnam veteran cap says to a guy with him, "Did you see that?  She's wearing a damn towel."

     The following day at the train station, the approaching sunrise is casting an orange glow on the Rockies.  A pair of teenagers are at a bench.  They appear alone, like rookies in a society which they somehow have just entered.  They are both staring forlornly in the direction of the mountains, as though they are waiting for someone to show up who will tell them what they are meant to do with their lives.