June 2018, "I'm a minister of the truth! You look black to me, nigga."

     Saturday is the second day of the month, and my younger brother's birthday.  In his tribute, it has been a drawn out ordeal.  Story of my life.  The previous ordeal, the hacking mucus cough throughout the night and dried mucus boulders during the day, has perhaps taken a back seat to a more functioning metabolism.  In the morning I manage to complete a workout without any problem.  After a phone conversation with the bike shop, I'm on my way to pick up a bike which is so worn out, it is no longer safe to ride.  The cost of new parts is now in the vicinity of the cost for a new bike.  Perhaps I miss the 20-mile ride to work and 20 miles back again more than my bike does.  I't the best bike I've had.  I would like to donate it to a shop who will fix it up.  But I also desire to make another trip to the waterpark.  The only way to realistically accomplish this is to ride the old bike there, my life in it's hands not withstanding.  Sometime after noon I am on a packed shuttle headed along downtown's pedestrian mall.  At one stop, the driver puts down the handicapped ramp for a wheelchair.  A guy with a cane uses it to get onboard before realizing that it was for the wheelchair.  Both passengers are African American.  The one with the cane begins sermonizing about judgement against the gentiles.  I realize that I've seen this guy before, on a downtown street corner.
     A Caucasian guy behind him asks him who the gentiles are.  He replies, "The whites."  The cracker asks him what he knows about the whites.  "What?" the dude with the cane exclaims.  "I'm a minister of the truth!"  The pale face backs off.  The guy in the wheelchair speaks up, announcing that he identifies with the gentiles.  "I'm white," he mentions.  "You are?" cane dude asks.  "You look black to me, nigga," he observes.  The wheelchair guy says that he has a grandmother who was white.  i don't know which is more powerful, the truth or its minsters.  I grab lunch and then head out toward the bus to the bike shop.  But I must walk for six blocks and run for half of the last one to make a bus.  The boulevard is closed around the capitol for a street fair which I hope to attend tomorrow.  I pick up my bike for one last ride.  For the first time in the two and a half years I've owned it, the seat is raised almost too high for me to reach the pedals.  This is going to be an interesting (meaning ridiculous) afternoon.  A kind of abomination to the memory of the performance of this wonderful bike.  Even having been so abused by the mechanics, it still gets me where I am going.  I suppose that i will achieve a new skill in the process.  I hop on a bus which takes me to the train station.  I must transfer to another bus on the same route which continues further along to the waterpark.  For a few minutes, I am standing at the train station where I used to come from work, the last time was some three and a half years ago.  I haven't been here since then.  I remember cold days waiting for the bus here.  It reminds me of a decade's memories, of a company with 19 locations which are now all closed, and most of its employees.  The memories blow through like a fog.
     The next bus takes me to the waterpark.  I have my swim before returning to the corner to catch the bus home again.  The sun casts a shadow behind the shelter onto a grassy patch.  It's strewn with some trash.  I'm not there long before a guy shows up.  I immediately recognize him from another bus route I haven't ridden in almost a year.  He's in a black T-shirt a couple of sizes too big for him, and dark shoulder-length hair which appears to be naturally wavy.  He paces and talks to himself.  He spots the trash and asks me, "Is this mess your doing?"  Some time later, another guy comes wandering along.  He appears perhaps older than his years.  Is he sixty?  He looks like he's ninety.  His skin is red and looks like worn out leather.  He carries is both his arms a cardboard sign, a radio, and a cigarette.  In the sunshine he sits down on the bench in the shelter, he shakes his head back and forth from side to side, and he bangs his left hand against one side of the shelter.  He then rises and shuffles away.  The bus arrives and we crawl up the boulevard.  At the last minute I realize that the bus is in proximity to a 24-hour diner.  I'm out of the bus and shortly thereafter sitting surrounded by the orange polyester cushions of a booth, and orange sun shades on the windows.  In a little while, I am approached by a waitress from another age.  1970?  She takes my drink order before promising to return.  A guy then comes out of nowhere to ask me if I want any water, before disappearing again.
     During the night, I awake unable to cease coughing over and over, before falling back to sleep.  It's become a familiar routine of horror.  When I awake in the morning, I've had the first full night's sleep in about a week.  I'm glad I chose yesterday to swim, because today is overcast, gloomy, and the morning has an edge of a chill.  Not exactly exuberantly enticing summer memes.  I head downtown to attend the year's People's Fair.  Denver's Cinco de Mayo is the first festival to arrive in May, but June's People's Fair begins the summer's outdoor festival season.  I stop at the homeless central deathburger on the pedestrian mall, where I see a usual parade of mental troubles.  A guy in line to order is waving around an empty water bottle.  He says out loud, "I've been kissing ass for fifty-nine years."  Apparently he expects to continue doing so in the process of ordering fast food.  I order, collect my food, and take a seat in view of the downtown street through the window.  A white-haired slowly steps along the bike lane in the street.  He is slightly bent forward and headed the wrong way.  He wears a black Atari T-shirt, presumably from some three decades past.  Someone inside the deathburger rushes toward the door with a start.  he is hauling a suitcase on wheels with a handle.  He exits the place and makes a beeline for the other side of the street.  In the process of hurrying across the middle of the road, he knocks over a plastic newspaper stand.  It's like watching a Terry Gilliam movie.
     I attend the fair, which has a booth with info about the ship which goes out to sea to confront whaling vessels.  And then, it's time to go bike shopping.  A sales dude convinces me to get one with three more speeds than my old one.  It's also my first bike with disc brakes, which he claims will last longer.  I take it for a test spin.  It feels solid.  I have them put slime in the tubes and forgo the water bottle cage.  I don't find myself drinking from it lately anyhow.  I ride home, and am stopped along the way.  At a corner just outside of downtown, a woman honks at me.  She pulls over to tell me that she is staying at a hotel just nearby and asks me "if it is safe to walk into downtown from there?"  I tell her not to trip over the homeless, or their shopping carts, and she should find nothing less than a city of health and joy.  Just as the mayor promises.  The following morning, after another night of god awful coughing, I'm on the bus up the street to work.  A middle-aged guy gets on.  He has an old tattoo on his forearm and a cigarette behind his ear.  Another passenger begins telling him about a new hotel which is hiring.  He replies, "I can't do it for less than $10/hr., bro.  How many dishwashers they need?"  "Three on the weekend," he replies.  I change buses.  On this one is a guy who answers his phone.  He is telling someone that he is in the process of checking up on a new job, but for now, he must donate blood this morning.  He needs cash, bus fare.

     Many people define a livable city as...safe neighborhoods with a diversity of people...a sense of place...economic prosperity, social stability...stimulus in moving to urban centers...  "The old way...cities and towns sat back and let the market dictate how a community should be grown must come to an end."  - natural awakenings, 6/2018

     ...how then do you incorporate that into society...  It's not like you can get a prescription for psilocybin and go to CVS or Walgreens...  [...ego was spread out before him like paint on a vast canvas.]  ...ego dissolution...occurs on a high-dose psychedelic experience or during a successful meditation experience..   - Boulder Weekly, 5/31/2018

     I have long waited to write about gentrification...if I could contribute meaningfully...after attending...the Denver metro Association of Realtors (DMAR), I'm ready to give it a go.  Most of the attendees were...professionals...in real estate, so the discussion lacked the...emotion and volume that a public meeting...might contain.  ...gentrification...benefits those in the industry...  ...in 1991...a journalist...was my profession back then.  ...you can't have revitalization without...the displacement of low-income residents.
     [One Jefferson County homeless man's] panhandling...shift generally began at about 1 p.m. and lasted about two or three hours.  He was used to people...yelling at him for panhandling...as this was his routine for the past four years.  "I've had people throw things at me."  ...last year...a man...got out of his car, yelling..."get out of my city"...and...shoving or chest-bumping [him and] nearly hit him with hi car.  "The majority of  the 9homeless0 [the Jefferson County Sheriff's office encounters] want to be left alone."  "...alcohol, drugs and mental health issues are much more prevalent among Denver's homeless population then Jeffco's."  Homeless campsites are more hidden away and less controlled by the authorities, plus many are docile...  "Getting a job is generally no the problem, it's finding affordable housing."  - Arvada Press, 6/7/2018

     "We just have to understand that...to do things...that would truly benefit the community, they haven't been accomplished without community input.  We're far too familiar with what the process looks like.  We've had to press and press and press.  [The Denver Police Department union] suggests that they're quite satisfied with...the old-school, let's-get-tough-on-people-of color approach.  I've had experience with [my choice for the new Denver Police Department chief.  He is] in favor of interactions with people...who suffer from substance abuse and behavioral health issues that don't involve arrest."  - Westword, 6/14-20/2018

     Tuesday evening.  The first bus home after work pulls up to the stop where I get out.  On the bench is an old guy who appears homeless.  He's wearing a jacket with a Denver Police Department patch on the front.  Across the street is a DPD cruiser stopped with lights on.  It's next to another bus bench, this one with a young guy laying sown on it.  Next to it is a folded wheelchair.  I hop on a connecting bus.  Down the way a young couple get on.  The lady asks the guy if he will see her later on.  he tells her that he has "group" tomorrow.  a "house meeting is at six."  He tells her that he is aware of her UA.

     By 25 November...all the...great cities of Afghanistan - had been lost to...the Taliban...  ..they decided to give me a visa.  ...a young Taliban...stamped "Entry" over my visa... Far away across the Kandahar desert, I could hear that drumroll again, the thunder of B-52 bombs.  "...the Americans are bombing the centre of town."  ...a refugee with a cracked face...he looked seventy but said he was only thirty-six...  "The Americans just destroyed our homes," he cried.  "...a big plane...spat smoke and soaked the ground with fire."  For a man who couldn't read and had never left Kandahar province in all his long-short life, this was a chilling enough description of the Spectre, the...AC 130 "Bumble Bee"...  And down...poured hundreds more refugees...  "There was a plane that shot rockets out of its side."...  Suddenly, being the last reporter in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan didn't seem quite romantic...  An American F-18 soared..above us...  Out of a dust storm came a woman...  "The Americans bombed our home in Kandahar and the roof fell on...my daughter..."  Amid the chaos and shouting, I did what reporters do.  Out came my notebook and pen.  Age?  "She was two."  I turn away.  "There wasn't much ;left of my son.  Whe the roof hit him, he was turned to meat and all I could see were bones.  He was a year and a half old."  U.S. Marines landed at Kandahar's sporting club [where] Saudi princes [used] to hunt animals wit the Taliban.  The end was coming.  They came out of a blizzard of sand, these people each with their story of blood.
     ...black mountains rose from the ocean of sand...below the bomber contrails, came those changes in air pressure to remind us that the War for Civilization was only a few miles away.  The river of [refugees] was CinemaScope obscenity.  First, they needed to state their reasons for entering Pakistan to a soldier sitting atop a concrete bunker.  ...to produce documents...  Then they had to face the press. ...a man...dared to speak...who - in a second - becomes the centre of...wires and lenses and notebooks...  [An] Afghan girl, perhaps five years old...is begging from a soldier.  ...the sheer mass of people.  They came like this when the Russians invaded in 1979, but somehow they have become too familiar..."banalises" as my colleagues from France 2 would say...  The poor and the dispossessed and the terrified are background...to out drama.  - Fisk

     Thursday.  On the bus up the street.  There is one guy in sunglasses in the front seat on the left.  There is a guy in a wheelchair in the space for the stowed front seat on the left.  The sunglasses guy says, "I've been up since three 'o clock this mornin', tryin' to get a ride - 'cause of his old lady."  Wheelchair guy mentions that he "got stabbed seventeen times, out in that field."  We arrive at the train.  He gets up out of his wheelchair and the pair get out.  Wheelchair guy turns to the driver and says, "I just got through a $400,000 surgery."  Friday.  I'm at the deathburger next to work.  An elderly mom and her middle-aged daughter come in.  A girl comes out from behind the counter to ask the pair if they need help ordering from the new touchscreen kiosk.  "Oh, we have to do this now?" asks mom.  It could have been my own question.  A couple of senior guys are laughing as one tells the other, "You can eat two sandwiches.  I can eat two sandwiches too."  Try saying that ten times quickly.  On Sunday, I take a bus up the street, for the first time to the end of the line...at 112th Street.  I'm headed to the company picnic.  The ride from here should be considerably shorter than some 120 blocks.  We left the city and entered what appears to be farmland around 80th.  I cross the boulevard and spot a coffee shop.  It's my only hope for breakfast this morning.  I enter the open front door.  It's one of those local places with leather furniture.  By the door, a woman plays '80s hits on a dulcimer.  I order a slice of quiche and tea for eight dollars.  I eat it on a mosaic table which wobbles.  The "picnic" is actually nice, despite the 97 F degree temp.  After an hour and a half I ride back to the bus stop for another 100-plus block ride back south.  Somewhere around 70th, a drunk/mental/high guy gets on.  He complains about the heat.  Perhaps if he was in shorts instead of jeans.  Looking at his long, greased hair, I don't see any perspiration.  He sits in front of a pair of female passengers, who he refers to as "sistas."  He gets up to stand at the front, before sitting behind me, before getting up to stand at the front again.  When he gets out, he struts around in a circle.  I jump out at the train which I take through downtown.  I decide that I'm hungry and grab lunch.  Though I've had my suit with me, it's too late to swim.  I take the train to a stop closest to the camera shop.  At the shop I exchange a roll of used film for a new one, before a hot trek to another bus.  I lived in this neighborhood for 16 years before departing in 2007, as (I've read) the recession was just beginning.  I stop at a gas station with a broken ice dispenser.  Across the street is a Subway.  Where else can I find a soda machine with Vitamin Water?  Power to those who don't need to purchase fossil fuel.  Was it less than a couple of weeks ago when I was wondering when it would be enough to swim?  Today it's pushing 100.

     "This is the white-collar spiritual path."  Much of today's upper class is engaged in a frenzy of self-improvement.  They want to be skinnier, healthier, younger-looking, smarter, nicer, more loving...  They may eat more vegetables, but this age seems more narcissistic that any before...and has put many individuals in the grip of an uneasy self-image...  "Vanguard"...was the leader of their philosophical movement.  ...his first student was "Perfect"...  ...a number of colorful sashes hung on hooks.  Each color in the hierarchy was...a higher state of self-awareness...also reflected a member's ability to recruit more members. ...what was important to know about [Vanguard, according to him,] was that what he does every day i simply walk and think...about how to solve humanity's problems.  "I'm like a nerd who has...thought too much."  men are repressed and do not enjoy the same rich experience of existence as women, but they have an understanding of right and wrong: women [believe] "the crazier I get, the more I get."  ...most of the women had been indoctrinated...and thus believed that men were inclined toward polyamory and women not...  As [Vanguard] was driven away...in a police car...the women gave chase.  If they let him loose, perhaps they would be exhibiting weakness or hitting against an emotional problem that needed attention.  - The New York Times Magazine, 6/3/2018

     "' The City of Angels...virtually an ideal climate...natural beauty, and...economic prosperity...few demonstrations...little trouble from militant factions.'"  ...KTLA-TV's "telecopter" was the first of its kind.  [This, the first helicopter filming and broadcasting from the air showed] so far mostly...shots of the swimming pool where Marlon Brando's maid had drowned...  Now...  Los Angeles black citizens were burning down their neighborhood.  So dynamic had the American economic engine become that it was fashionable to presume that prosperity could fix any social problem.  "I'm sick of all the...talk about the things we can't do.," Lyndon Johnson had told an aide.  When the people who felt like losers united around their shared psychological sense of grievance, their enemies felt somehow more overwhelming, not less...  Martyrs...not really martyrs, oppressors...not really oppressors: a class politics for the whole middle-class.  - Nixonland, by R. Pearlstein, 2008

     Monday.  After a workout and a swim, I am at the deathburger next to work.  On one wall is a decorative map, complete with street names.  I don't recognize any of the names and I realize that it's not a map of this neighborhood.  At a table is a senior guy with something which I've never seen.  He has a pair of matching camouflaged water bottles.  Wednesday.  I'm waiting for my last bus home from work.  Evening finds me at the bus stop out from of the Muslim doughnut shop.  There is a woman who does not appear to be even remotely Muslim here.  She is furiously sweeping up the broken glass and cigarette butts into uncollected piles.  She's in a black T-shirt with a logo on the front.  It's for either a heavy metal band or some computer game.  She has a brunette perm and a seventy-year-old face.  "Got to keep the doughnut shop clean," she declares.  I tell her that I wonder why it smells like gasoline out here.  She takes several sniffs before letting me know that the shop does not use any gasoline powered machinery.  The following evening, I am off work and at a stop for my first bus home.  This is a different stop for the bus than my usual one, but it has its own unexpected characters.  Standing right next to the sign for the stop is a single, solitary twentysomething.  He has a metal cane which he continues tap-tapping on the concrete.  It makes a ringing sound.  He confesses to me that his phone "just died."  He wants to know if this is the stop for a particular route.  The numbers of the routes this stop serves are posted on the sign.  He then hands me a small piece of paper with written directions.  One arm has a sleeve of tattoos.  At he top of this scrap of paper is the bus route and a "7", presumably a general reference to the time it arrives.  "I don't know what the seven means," he mentions in his slow, quiet voice.  He's yet another someone who is going from somewhere to somewhere else, on a route which he appears not to have been on before.  The bus arrives, and we make our way back to my own boulevard, where I hop out.  My last bus home arrives, with the bike rack full.  A passenger hops out to take his off the rack, making space for me.  After I put mine on the rack, another passenger rides up, just a second too late.
     Friday.  After work.  Bus stop in front of the Muslim doughnut shop.  I either get here just in time for a connecting bus...or I have a 30 minute wait for the next.  This evening I wait.  Toward the end of the wait, a Mexican guy 9who I've seen here once before, about this same time0 comes along.  We exchange greetings.  A bolt of lightning flashes overhead, from a dark cloud.  Then I watch a woman, perhaps 40 years old, cross the middle of the boulevard.  Her hair is bleached almost white.  She has "ample bosom," as I've heard it said, and she's in a summer dress.  I turn to the Mexican guy and suggest that she perhaps is a lady of the evening.  He agrees.  She's the second I've seen on this corner this year.  The following Tuesday morning, I step out of a bus to work, on a corner where I catch a connecting bus.  From around the back end of this bus comes a long grey-haired guy in a headband.  It's an odd combination with his buttoned down shirt.  He is pulling a collapsible shopping cart.  He moves slowly and speaks weakly as he raises his hand and says, "Wait."  He is the very definition of invisible.  When the driver takes off, I listen to the wheels of the cart against the sidewalk.  The day after, I am coming out of the sports complex after a workout.  As soon as I get on a bike trail, I see a guy sitting on a bench.  He has a cat on a leash.  Some ten hours later, I am on my last bus home form work.  In the back are a couple of guys discussing the prisons which they have been locked up in together.
     Friday again.  Fridays are my...Fridays.  I'm at the bus stop across the street from where I live.  Even when a minivan pulls into the parking lot of the liquor store, full of middle-aged and senior Caucasians, all dressed as if they are office workers out on lunch.  It's been a little while since I've been at a bus stop visited by Jehovah's Witnesses.  A blonde in a skirt comes out of the front passenger side to hand me a Watchtower.  I admitted that I had no idea what Caucasians were doing on this street.  When she laughs, I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing.  When the van is able to back out onto the boulevard, I flash them a peace sign, and she smiles.  With Jehovah on my side, who can be against me?  My bus arrives to collect me.  At couple of stops along, a mom and her daughter get on.  The mom recognizes another mom.  This other mom is in a red T-shirt from a car wash.  Her hair is the same color as her shirt.  She asks the first mom if her daughter missed the bus, and this is why they are on public transportation.  The daughter appears embarrassed.  If she is sixteen, she appears younger.  She's cute, with her hair in braids and a headband.  As the moms converse, the daughter watches me as I write these words down into a notebook.  The girl's mom gets out at a stop.  Only then do I notice another guy, perhaps nineteen.  He's siting across from the girl, and he is wearing the same kind of shirt from a car wash.  The other mom then begins talking to him, only in Spanish.  He moves next to the girl and put his arm around her.  Okay, so...she's his girlfriend?  She's in school and he's not?  She speaks English and he does not?

     One doctor compared...the Bible...to...using a textbook from the 1920's...  A skeptic might even ask if you would use a manual for an old computer...in using a new...computer.  Why...use such an ancient guide in today's modern, high-tech world?  ...websites and blogs [blogs indeed...] send out...the latest...guidance.  TV pundits and talk shows feature...knowledgeable psychologists, lifestyle gurus, and authors.  With...up-to-the-minute information...why turn to the bible...  People still want ti find meaning in life...a reasonable measure of happiness and security, good family relations, and rewarding friendships.  - The Watchtower, No. 1 2018

     When I caught sight of the Koranic library burning - there were flames 30 metres high...I raced to...the U.S. Marines' Civil Affairs...  An official shouted..."This guy says some biblical library is on fire."  Half an hour later there wasn't an American at the scene...  The flames...now shooting 60 metres into the air.  ...shards of paper...blowing in the wind...  ...a request to protect a camel convoy...  ...the cost of...military horses...for the Ottoman armies...  ...the opening of the first telephone exchange in the Hejaz - soon to be Saudi Arabia...  This...was the tapestry of Arab history - all that was left...which I picked off the road...  And I remember those who have died.  Margaret Hassan...who distributed medicines to the dying children of Iraq.  Kidnapped, videotaped in tears...and then shot in the face...  Marla Ruzicka, who would sit by the pool of the Hamra Hotel collating the number of Iraqis...killed since the invasion.  Fifty...  A hundred thousand...?  Marla was roasted alive...a suicide bomber exploded...  I have watched many times Ken Bigley's face as he pleads...to Tony Blair.  Then comes his...decapitation.  - Fisk

     Saturday.  I'm on my biannual pilgrimage to the central branch of the Denver Public Library.  Today is the last day of a four-day used booksale.  The first bus to arrive is northbound.  I step up behind a short grey-haired guy in a sleeveless jersey, sunglasses, and sucking a toothpick.  I can already tell this motherfucker is going to be a pain in the ass.  He tells the driver that he didn't see him and his pals waiting for the bus in the shade.  The driver tells him that he thought he and the others "were just chillin'" rather than waiting for a bus.  Looking at this prick, I can believe it.  He's too school for school, fool.  He responds to this by suggesting that the driver had better "learn the difference.  I'll call [the transit system] on your ass."  He takes a seat in the very back.  Alone.  He doesn't need anything from anyone but his toothpick.  I have my bike on the rack and my bike gear on, including a mirror on one wrist.  The bus is full and I'm standing up front.  Sitting next to be is a guy twenty years younger than myself.  He has a couple of kids with him and his wife.  Or his mom?  She appears to be older than him.  He asks me, "Is that a hand mirror?"  I acknowledge this.  He makes a face as if this is the dumbest thing he's ever heard of.    Several hours after the booksale, I'm having a late dinner at the Vietnamese place behind where I live.  It's always full of the only Caucasians I see in my neighborhood.  A couple of women and a guy take a table, all white.  The guy has short hair and a long beard, and a tie-dyed T-shirt with the NASA meatball on the front.  A couple of young Caucasian women are at another table.  They reek of college.  A waiter brings a plate of mint leaves and limes.  One of the women makes a face like "ew," and recoils.
     Monday.  June is waning.  Advertisements for July 4th sales abound.  It's been alternating between heat and rain.  Last Sunday felt like October.  In a couple of days, the forecast is for 101 degrees F.  It's after work now and I'm at a stop for my first bus home.  It's a bit late, and I call the transit system number.  They alert me that it's broken down.  I take another bus east.  This one takes me to a station for a new commuter train running between here and downtown.  My bus home is more than a half hour away.  I decide that this evening is my chance to step onto a new commuter train for the first time.  The interior reminds me of the shutlecraft from Star Trek.  The bikes hang from the front wheel on a pole with something to absorb any shocks.  It's a short ride into Onion Station.  In one fell swoop, thanks to a broken down bus home, I've learned everything I need to know about taking my bike on the new commuter train.  Thank you Jesus.  I disembark and roll past downtown Denver's swinging Caucasian restaurant nightlife, and catch a train to my boulevard.  At my street I decide to ride home, neglecting to so much as glance behind me.  I bus which I could easily have caught rolls past.  That's fine.  I decide to stop along the way at my old deathburger.  I'm hungry.  behind the counter, a high school goofball chats up a teenage girl on the other side.  The computers have been down and there is a bit of a line.  An employee takes an order to a table, where sits an elderly guy making loud grunting noises.  They converse in Spanish.
     A couple of evenings later, I am back rolling up to the stop for my last stop home.  I spy a passenger wit his own bike.  If the bus arrives with only one open slot for a bike, he was here first and will get the space.  I immediately head north to the stop before this one.  Every time I do this, no one appears to suspect what I am doing.  We could otherwise race each other to be first to the bus.  I get to the stop before the other one, and the bus arrives indeed with only one remaining slot for a bike.  Which I get to use.  We roll up to the next stop, and the other guy doesn't even ask the driver if he can bring his bike in the back door.

     The Peace Corps could go off and build dams in India of schools in Bolivia, but it was the War Corps...battling Communist guerrillas...  Most [U.S. Marine recruits] came from the ragged fringes of the Great American Dream, from city slums and dirt farms and Appalachian mining towns.  ...the words "2 yrs. high school" appeared in...service record books...  The scene at the batallion area...  Enlisted men were running...in full battle dress [,some] still in civilian clothes...others in only their underwear, odd bits of equipment slung over their naked shoulders.  Could it have been only a year since I was discussing..."Tom Jones" and "Joseph Andrews"...since my roommate and I were listening to Bach and Vivaldi...  What a waste of time that all seemed now.  - A Rumor of War, P. Caputo, 1977

     Thursday.  This has been a bad week for my first bus home from work.  This evening is another no show.  It's been a good week to learn how to ride the new commuter trains, and to get to know one driver, who shows up today on another route.  My own bus arrives after she does, more then 30 minutes late.  I calculate that I may get home sooner on the other bus/train route.  I recognize the driver of the bus which is late.  She's cute.  The other driver tells me that this one was in the transit system class ahead of her.  The classes require learning such a volume of information that some drop out.  This driver was only one of two graduates in her class.  She tells me that she had to be "worked into" the graduates before and after her, and that the transit system has a shortage of drivers.  My own bus has been late due, in turns out, to baseball games downtown.  The following morning is a cool and beautiful one.  Cloudy with a gorgeous view of the tail end of the Rockies from this stop.  I watch a little street racer go past.  Mounted on his roof is the top half of a shopping cart.  The cart car accelerates up the street.  I'm out early enough to get a swim in before work.  I'm locking up my bike when a woman comes out to unlock hers.  She introduces herself.  Susie has the same name as my sister.  We talk biking before she bids me farewell.  After my swim, I'm out on the trail when I come upon a woman walking her dog.  She's looking at her phone.  She appears perhaps to be a runner; great legs.

     ...beyond the popularity of brunch in this city.  The restaurant feels comfortably hip, with a retro-industrial vibe fueled by cartoonish pop art, a glass-lined mezzanine and light-blue banquettes.  It's a great place for groups, and has a full bar...  ...one of Open Table's Best Brunch Restaurants in America this spring...picked up by "Forbes" and "Travel & Leisure"...  - Westword, 6/28 - 7/4/2018

     Saturday.  I'm out to get stamps during a brief three-hour window when the post office is open today.  It precludes my having breakfast until I have stamps in hand.  With my stamps I head from the post office and stumble upon a bus headed toward the camera store, where I need my pdf file changed by magic technological spell into jpegs.  The bus will take me as far as a 24-hour diner, where I grab breakfast.  The clientele appear to include Caucasian twentysomething hipsters.  Among a pair of couples is a guy of intellectual affectation, with long bleached hair and Tivas, and a girl of delicate appearance in a sundress with tattoos.  Another young couple takes a seat at the table in front of me.  She's in a T-shirt from a local brewing company.  From the neck up, he looks like Jesus.  The hostess is cute and her accent sounds Russian.  She has blue bangs and her name is Lulu.  I learn this when the owner shouts at her, "Lulu, any room at the counter?"  After breakfast I make the trek across town to the camera store.  Pdf is now jpegs.  I head out for the swimming pool, a pool where I went swimming when I lived in this neighborhood sixteen years ago.  The day has warmed up from the sixties, and is much better than six days ago, when an October rain descended upon late June.  It actually has turned into, if a cloudy one, a beautiful day.  After a short but refreshing swim I trek back the way I came, stopping at the shopping mall which I lived up the street from, for some sixteen years.  I grab a late lunch at Tokyo Joe's, where I hear both an Australian and a Middle Eastern accent.  The Aussie is a grey-haired guy who orders wine with his meal.  It isn't clear to the employee serving him if the patron understands he is not to take his wine outside the eatery, into the shopping mall.  The mall itself appears to be host to a collection of teenage neo-hippie weirdo/wannabes.  And guys is athletic shirts with the state flag as a design, and gay men.  With a reference to gay men, I ask, where are the gay women?  Perhaps they shall appear during another month...
   

May 2018

     Tuesday.  I'm on the bus to work, just up the street from where I live.  The guy from last night, who has trouble making his feet advance more than inches at a time, comes onboard this morning.  As well as the drunk from yesterday morning.  I change buses, and we pick up a mental guy in a yellow reflective jacket.  He carries with him a boxed weed whacker, a "straight shaft gas trimmer."  He chats with the driver for a bit, as they know each other.  He sits quietly for a while before exclaiming, "Fuuuck!  I forgot my lawn chair!"  Eleven hours later, I am back on my last bus home.  At one stop, we pick up at least three people.  A woman is arguing with a guy as a second woman takes a seat and stays quiet.  For several blocks, the woman is complaining to the guy that he has been treating their home like a "fucking whorehouse," inviting people over "on a school night."  He has no answer for this but sounds apologetic.  She calls him a "drunk ghetto motherfucker."  The second woman doesn't say a word until we arrive at the train station, where a couple of transit system security officers tell her that she must disembark the bus.  She replies that she doesn't "give a fuck what" they want, they are "plastic cops," but she gets up and gets out.

     There's something about...dealing with...people who lie about having trendy food allergies that makes servers want to get stoned.  After dropping out of grad school...I ended up working at a...brewery...and quickly adjusted to a world of aggressive drinking, chain smoking and never having to buy groceries again.  Everyone from the teenage hostess to the general manager was smoking weed [on] their shift.  ...servers are on the complete opposite schedule of everyone else in the world.  When most people are heading home from the office, servers are just going in.  ...I was living month to month and had no idea what kind of impact I wanted to make on the world.  Weed helped me [with] not...overthinking everything I was doing wrong in life.  -  Boulder Weekly, 4/26 - 5/2/2018

     Jumping the sewer...is a pastime for the kids [, their] irises ivory-white with malnutrition.  ...a bright, pretty woman in a black robe with a white headband - introduces her eight-year-old daughter...  Then suddenly says, "Please take her with you."  ...just thirty-three - and she is ready to give away her own child.  At the end of the street there is a tooting trumpet, a fat man with a drum and a stooped old soldier [and] thirty-three middle-aged...men...in shoddy uniforms.  These are the local Dads Army...preparing to withstand the might of America.  They march around a traffic island while the children sing the Iraqi national anthem...  Then the kids go back to sewer jumping.  And this, I remind myself, is the country which, according to Messrs, Clinton and Blair, threatens the whole world.  Grind down the people to this abject level and survival is more important than revolution.
     For twenty-five years now the most fabulously designed [munitions] have been hurled in my direction by some of...the most moral armies on earth.  In a quarter century I've seen thousands of corpses - women and children...blasted, shredded, eviscerated, disemboweled, beheaded, lobotomized...and otherwise annihilated by the multi-billion dollar arms industry...  ...our ability to kill Muslims - and to help Muslims kill other Muslims - with our weapons.  - Fisk

     I'm not a politician.  I'm a dad, husband, a local business owner, a Colorado native, a volunteer and proud...citizen.  Most importantly, I am a neighbor...  After more than 20 years in the corporate world, I made the decision to work for myself...  Like you I want to see our city continue to grow...  To me, getting involved at the local level of politics is about the desire to improve...community identity...  As a businessman and parent, not a politician...  Any of my friends will tell you, my passion is to...do the right thing because it is the right thing to do.  ...we need to be smart about land use while continuing to be business-friendly.  ...to be understanding of the social issues...  ...current residents, and just as important, those who come after...  - Englewood Citizen, Summer 2018

     ...go visit countries with people who don't look like you.  Don't go to a resort that was built to cater to your specific needs, but to where real people live.  There is nothing less sexy than a bitter white guy...  As a space maker, I spent the last twenty years creating environments where people could work out their humanity while eating and drinking.  My goal was to momentarily soothe the collective consciousness, to offer up an affordable restoration treatment.  We built successful restaurants without meat or TVs.  Nobody wants to talk about old Denver.  You look like a crybaby...  ...a boring conversation...  Perhaps I miss the danger of a city that was not yet a luxury brand.  ...kitchens were staffed with guys on work release and recent arrivals from south of the border.  Now ruddy-faced kids  who are $40,000 in debt to a culinary school are cutting onions waaaaay too slowly, wondering why they aren't chefs yet.  In '98 it cost $30,000 [the author's restaurant.]  No permits, no problem.  Today, $30,000 will get you a crop-dusting from a passing developer and a scale drawing of what you can't afford.  Even if you add another zero, you're still far short of what it takes to open a restaurant in this town.  ...the problem of luxury Denver: It's too risky to open interesting concepts.  - Westword, 5/10-16/2018

     Wednesday.  Rain.  I'm on the bus up the street to work.  Onboard is one of these guys: he sounds drunk, he says something, and he laughs at it.  A kid with an afro gets on the bus.  The guy says, "Hey Afro."  the kids turns.  The guy laughs.  We arrive at the train station and a passenger gets on who appears bedraggled.  "Yea!  I don't have to stay in the rain anymore."  He's in a U.S. Army battlefield dress coat.  He gets on his phone and begins a conversation about "programs for vets" and mentions a "program for the Humane Society."  He tells whoever is on the other end that navy vets are "in much better need."  His sleepy voice says something about "much better perspective."  After he hangs up, he almost whispers, "God, does the woman ever shut up?"  We arrive at the stop before I get out.  A stooped passenger steps through the door.  He has a long grey beard and an enormous tumor on his nose, and his hands shake with neurological trouble.  He asks the driver if this bus goes past "the police station?"  The driver is unaware of any police station on the northbound route.  He takes forever digging out the coins for his discounted fare.  He hands the driver directions to the police station.  They appear to have been printed in a desktop printer.  A passenger in back says, "What the hell is goin' on?"  The street the guy mentions sounds familiar.  I believe he is looking for the station sixty blocks south, and a few east of here.  The passenger in back says, "{I} need to get to work..."  Indeed the driver tells him he needs the southbound bus.  The guy is surprised, even though he has instructions.  The passenger in back says, "Fuck!"  The driver announces into the microphone, "If you're in a hurry you're welcome to come up and assist this gentleman."  The Army/Navy/ Humane Society guy comes forward...and does nothing before taking his seat.
     After work, I'm on my last bus home.  A couple of guys in back are very loud.  "We need more nigga!"  "Us too nigga!"  This is the only comprehensible part of the conversation.  A guy gets onboard.  He notices that I have a book and asks me if I "like reading."  I respond by staring at him.   He turns around to converse with someone else.  "You need to get one nigga!" someone yells from the back.  The following evening I am on my first bus home after work.  We pick up a young guy in a martial arts T-shirt and with a chain on his wallet.  He talks to the driver about trying to sleep on the street last night, during the rain.  He had found a place out of the downpour, but the police twice woke him up and told him to move along.  They were going to confiscate his expired ID.  I change buses.  At one stop past two or three police cars with lights flashing, three passengers come through the door.  A young woman enters and takes a seat.  A young guy follows her and mentions something about the woman being the victim of an assault.  An elderly woman enters and takes a seat.  The guy finishes speaking to a police officer outside and then hauls in several plastic bags full of groceries.  He puts them on the seat with the elderly woman.  As we get going the bags fall on the floor.  A grey-haired guy sitting next to the woman picks up her bags.  The guy is spotted by another passenger.  This passenger can barely speak except for noises, reaches to shake his hand only with difficulty.  He shows the passenger his ankle monitor.

     ...a former hostel...now houses [on] the second floor...studios for graphic designers and marketing types.  And a couple of craft-beer joints are just a block away.  All of this...within the past two years...exemplary of...certain urban neighborhoods in Denver.  ...the refurbished buildings...scrubbed of their grime, they've lost a little of their soul.  ...a last bastion of [Denver's] Five Points [neighborhood] that existed just a few years ago...is quickly being resurfaced or erased altogether.  Not long ago, venues like [these] peppered Five Points, competing...on the strength of their soul food, the price of their drinks and the loyalty of their crowds.  ...light-rail construction swallowed...business...  ...the community was changing.  Property values were rising and more affluent families were moving [in and] buying up houses from longtime residents...who were disappearing to the suburbs.  "The reason I continue [in business is because] my customers...ask me to.  There's no place for the black community to go.  ...people...come into town...to see Five Points, and they're going to be shocked to see it like this.  It ain't that some of it's changed; everything has changed."  Five Points and adjoining Whittier were the first neighborhoods to extend beyond...Denver's original grant from Congress...during the silver boom of the nineteenth century...  In the '20s...the city's moneyed set moved to Capitol Hill...90 percent of the city's African-American community resided in Five Points, having been excluded from other neighborhoods.  ...it was dubbed the "Harlem of the West."  "The Rossonian...the crown jewel of Five Points.  ...was a hotel for African-Americans who'd perform for white crowds downtown but weren't allowed to stay in those hotels."  "Many third-generation Hispanic families still live in the area; during World War II, it hosted a Japanese enclave.  ...African-Americans moved to new neighborhoods...by 75 percent between the end of the '50 and the mid-1970s."  ...in the late '80s.  ...FIve Points...had lost its...reputation.  "There was a time when if you lived west of Downing, people thought you were trash."  ...African-American-owned businesses continued to define the place and keep it going..  ...seven years ago...residents were less concerned about...the prospect that groups who'd long lived there might be displeased - than they were about the neighborhood's revival.   Denver's first light-rail route...in 1994, ended in Five Points [and] was supposed to revitalize the area.  It didn't.  Five Points was named the city's first historic cultural district in 2002 [which] was supposed to do the same.  It didn't.  '...in the largest economic cycle of Denver's history, it became harder to maintain the character of African-American ownership."  Many of Denver's urban neighborhoods exploded over the last decade...  - Westword, 5/3-9/2018

     From 1958 through 1964, the CIA trained Tibetan resistance fighters...west of Leadville...  - Elevation Outdoors, 5/2018

     ...an Instagram hashtag full of people posing in front of murals, maybe...  "This is typical gentrification behavior.  Move into a neighborhood with a historically significant name and rename it..."  River North...is a district...where...owners contribute extra tax dollars to fund...the neighborhood.  The district also overlaps...several blocks of...Curtis Park.  "...we have...the...new name developers came up with...that...divides us up...to...sell the area as something new."  - Denver Herald, 5/17/2018

     Friday.  I'm on my last bus to work.  We are at the transfer hub.  I hear a train horn and look across the lot  toward the tracks, and what to my wondering eyes does appear but a test train for the new line to work.  A short time later I am off the bus and at the corner.  I hear a guy yelling at the opposite corner.  When I look across the intersection I see an elderly guy in his sixties on a big tricycle.  He's wearing an orange vest and has a pole with a claw at one end.  There are plastic grocery bags tied all over his tricycle.  He is bent over and yelling to the driver of a car stopped at the intersection.  "If you have something to say...!" I think I hear him yell.  Some nine hours later it's after work.  I roll up on the stop for my first bus home.  This evenings random rotating character at this stop is a young guy with a girlfriend on the bench.  Black T-shirt, skinny black jeans, black Converse All Stars.  Silver chain around his neck.  he is eating a "party size" bag of Doritos by himself.  He gets up to ask me what they all want to know.  "You know what time the bus comes boss?"  His arm tattoos appear when he lifts his arm in some kind of heavy metal gesture.to a passing vehicle.  By "the" bus I assume he means mine, headed east.  And it is late.  He doesn't notice when it sneaks up the road and turns to make its loop back toward where we sit.   The bus for another route rumbles past without stopping.  I don't know how many come through here without stopping this time of evening.  He watches it and stands up with his arms outstretched.  He looks at me and asks, "What's that about?"  I explain it as simply as I can.
     When the bus does stop and pick us up, I hear him tell the driver where they are going.  They are two more in a line of wandering souls who are coming from way up here, within spitting distance of the mountains, headed for reasons again unknown across the 100 some blocks to downtown.  I suppose all roads lead there.  He tells the driver that he's "not familiar with the bus routs ['round these parts.]"  Something compels them to travel the hobo jungles, strewn with plastic grocery bags and wasted minds.  Guys out of prison, women off work who cherish their apartment balconies, mental patients looking for "the nearest hospital?"  We pass through an artery of the defeated.  I get out at the corner for my last bus home.  I grab some food from a deathburger before rolling up on my stop.  Standing in the shelter is a girl, perhaps a teenager, with a bike.  She's in a winter coat, short denim shorts and striped knee socks.  When the bus arrives she doesn't take it.  But, along the way, a woman with a mop gets on board.  If I'm not mistaken, she asks me if I can move over so she can sit sown.  I ask her if she wants me to move to the right.  She walks past me as if she didn't hear me.  Further along, we pick up Army/Navy/Humane Society guy.  At the train station, another passenger I recognize comes through the door.  He travels with his possessions in a laundry basket and talks to himself.  At the stop before mine, I see through a window a guy with blood all over his face.  The door opens and a woman gets on.  She tells the driver that this guy has been "harassing her."  The guy tells the driver that he "just got beat up," doesn't have fair, and just needs a ride down the street.  The driver tells him to get lost.  I get out at my stop and head to the Chinese place for more food  Out front is someone other than the usual panhandler of late.  This evening, it's a young man.
     Saturday.  Cinco de Mayo.  I stick my head outside the door around 7 AM to check the temperature.  Across the small courtyard, two hip-looking police detectives or private investigators are at a neighbor's door.  One of them has sunglasses and his hair combed up into a peak.  "You're nineteen?" the other one asks a Vietnamese girl leaning out from behind her screen door.  "Do you know the girl in the picture?"  I should have gone out and done my Inspector Clouseau routine.  "Ah!  A beekeeper who has lost his voice.  A cook who thinks he's a gardener.  And a witness to a murder.  It is obvious to my trained eye...that there is more here than meets the ear."  I'm sure that not a one of the three has even heard of any of the Pink Panther movies.  I'm on the bike and up the street, to catch a bus to get some blood work done for my next doctor appointment.  Along the sidewalk comes a woman of perhaps forty.  She's in a tube top and a hoodie with a logo of a tattoo parlor on the back.  She has golden dreadlocks, a chain around her waist, tight camouflaged pants and a scowl on her face.  Her skin has the hue of being out on the street.  Her body looks great.  She takes both of the same buses I do.  I get out at a train station where I used to go on my way to work.  I would get here before 5 AM during the week.  Now I almost never come here anymore.
     My doctor is way across town, requiring a trip on the train.  I arrive and wait in line for an hour.  The blood work takes about a minute.  The Caucasian blood techs are unimpressed with my Spanish.  The one in charge is moving the patients along.  The young Hispanic woman at the front desk, however, is quite thrilled with it.  The it's off to IHOP for a late breakfast.  The place is hopping this morning.  My wait for a tale is twelve times shorter than my wait to get blood work done.  There are many families of color here, and a couple of balloon artists are performing for the kids at tables.  At one booth is one Caucasian couple.  The guy looks like Charles Manson.  At the table next to me are four friends.  It becomes apparent that two of the women are engaged to be married.  One of them mentions being "blocked on Facebook" by a FB friend, who she messaged that she "would always be there for her."  The other one mentions a "candle ceremony" planned for the wedding.  I wonder if they are Jewish?  After breakfast I head downtown to the Cinco de Mayo fest.  Then it's home for dinner at a deathburger.  The one I used to go to in morning before catching the bus to work.  As I am eating, a couple of grey-haired police officers come inside.  They are not in metro uniforms but what almost appear to be pale green jumpsuits.  They almost look like sheriff's deputies.  They are handing out Slurpee coupons to kids, asking them if they like Slurpees. A homeless guy comes wandering inside.  He asks me if I know what time it is.  I tell him that I don't have a watch.  There is a pause before he says, "You don't have a phone?"
     Tuesday.  I woke up way too early and I've had only four and a half hours of sleep.  I'm on my first bus to work and my eyes are closed, and my head is slumped.  This morning, I'm sure that I appear as many of the passengers who I describe.  A young woman sits behind me.  At first, I assume that I am listening to her speaking on her phone.  I listen to her say very quietly, "What are you doing?  What are you doing?  You are not supposed to do that.  Jesus Christ."  I open my eyes to see the driver making a multiple point turn amidst the traffic loop of the transfer hub.  After the turn is complete, the young woman is on her phone texting.   The bus drops me off down the street from a breakfast place.  After I eat, i am looking at my bill to figure the tip.  The hostess is a character.  She asks me, "Why do you look at it {the bill]?  You get the same thing every time."  She tells someone else that if I "fall down I will need to be fed."  She's lost me but I play along.  I try not to alarm the locals up here in northwest Denver.  This place flies an American flag outside, and it's next to a gun shop.  I'm off toward work, with a quick stop at the bank first.  In the shopping center is a Subway.  Outside stands an elderly guy.  I notice him when I hear him say, "Nine!  You open at nine.  It's after nine."
     Wednesday.  Bang.  I've had some sleep.  I'm out of the door and on an earlier than usual bus to work.  Sitting behind me is a woman who sounds tired.  I was there yesterday.   "Does this bus go north?" she asks someone.  I wonder how she otherwise gets up north.  I hear her asks if it stops at a certain street, the one where I get out.  I think this driver is ahead of schedule.  At a couple of bus stops, he waits for a couple of minutes before moving along.  I hear the tired woman ask, "Why the fuck does he keep waiting?"  I'm out at the corner where I change buses.  I run into the Sinclair station for a snack.  I ask where the girl from Ethiopia is.  I'm told that she went back to school and is very smart.  On my connecting bus to work, we come upon a homeless-looking guy pulling something small on wheels.  Though the avenue has a tree-lined sidewalk, he is strolling  on a street lane dedicated to bus traffic.  The driver does a quick jog around him.  I'm off the bus and down the street to grab breakfast.  After I eat, I am inspired to scout out a trail to work I discovered on the map.  It winds through a forest scene out of The Hobbit.  I can feel the twists and turns becoming programmed into my brain.  This trail passes through both neighborhoods and borders of economic class.  The following evening, it's after work as I roll up on the stop for my first bus home.  As I am unpacking the rack on my bike, I see tonight's random rotating character.  He is crossing the middle of the parkway.  He's middle-aged and in a skinny-brimmed hat, blue tank top, grey shorts, and a khaki backpack with a band across the chest, connecting the shoulder straps.  With a grey beard, he strikes me as some kind of stylin' rebel retiree.  The bus comes along to collect us all.  Along the way, we pick up a couple perhaps In their sixties.  The Mrs. appears to be in charge, quizzing the driver about the direction of their destination.  Satisfied that directions are adequate, she then instructs the guy to enter the bus.  They both hobble to seats, where the guy repeatedly opens his eyes and mouth in a kind of bewildered amazement, looking up above the windows.  His eyes appear bloodshot.

     ...watching a TED talk...  "This guy had an LED drone...  ...the lights dim to...dramatic lighting.  I thought it looked like a sermon.  Like a...candle in his hand..."  When the drone left the speaker's hands [, the crowd] "looked completely blown away...  It looked like...when people would be very wide-eyed looking at this very mystical thing happening in front of them."  - Boulder Weekly, 5/3/2018

     BEARDED DREADY GUY  ...committed to selling river rocks and necklace beads made of quartz.  He makes his own clothes and will dance exactly the same - the smiling hippie sway - no matter the...music...  He responds to "Jah."  CARGO SHORTS GUY  He may pair his...shorts with a braided leather belt...  He may be wearing one of those giant, techy sun hats the size of a satellite dish.  THE HEY, I KNOW YOU GUY  He doesn't know you, but the 37 beers and whatever else he's downed make him think otherwise.  ...he pushes past your personal space bubble to close-talk you.  He will...try to convince you that you know each other.  Many stories will be told, many stories.  Still, this guy does not know you. INFLATABLE HAMMOCK GUY  ...he runs about in attempt to inflate one of those giant blow-up hammocks that look like the subject of a Georgia O'Keefe painting...   RED AND BLACK FLANNEL GUY  ...has super duper skinny jeans on and his Red Wing boots have never seen dirt.  He is Instagrammably adorable.  His manicured shadow beard may have glitter within it...or smells of cinnamon and nutmeg.  BACKPACK GUY  Find him...at a packed post-fest bar or waddling and bumping through the hordes of a late night concert.  SSSHH GUY  ...ponytail is tied a little too tight.  He never dances.  His arms are almost always crossed.  "Ssshh," he says.  - Elevation Outdoors, 5/2018

     Friday morning. I step onto my crosstown bus to work.  An elderly guy in front looks at me with his mouth open.  The lenses of his prescription glasses make his eyes appear too large.  I disembark at my stop, run into the supermarket for a bottle of soda, and then I am off on the newly discovered trail to see if I can find an indoor waterpark on the way to work.  Find it I do.  And I discover that, with my "Tier Two" level municipal gymnasium membership, it will be only $2 each time I use the gym...as well as the waterpark.  I never thought I would be able to swim before work again.  I get back out on the trail to head to work.  The trail is beautiful, in the middle of open space.  The following day, I'm at the stop out front of where I live.  It's misting rain.  I watch as a couple of tiny Vietnamese women cross the intersection.  The pair comes over to the stop and the bus arrived.  When they get onboard, one of them attempts to hand her fare to the driver.  He motions for her to put her bills and coins into the fare box.  He then points to the transfer just printed by the computer.  I get out and head over to my weekend breakfast place.  Out of the door comes a weathered guy.  He notices my umbrella and says, "Good thing to have today."  His bike is parked near the door.  A cigarette butt lays on the rack on the back.
     At some point this week, a truck with California plates showed up in my parking lot.  It has a rowboat over the bed and on the hitch is a mirror-silver camper.  Around the camper is a black frame speckled with green paint.  A couple of times, an elderly Hispanic guy came out to polish the camper.  He had a purple bandanna around his head.  On Tuesday, I am home from work and listening to local TV news.  There is a report of a woman in a metro area municipality, arrested for damage she did along a sidewalk in front of multiple businesses.  In her mug shot, she appears to be in her sixties.  She is accused of pulling flowers out of twenty big planters ans throwing them on the concrete at 2 AM.  She made the statement that she wishes the city spent as much on ending homelessness as it did on planting flowers.  I watch the reporter laugh as he reads her statement.  Wednesday is a beautiful morning with sunshine in place of rain clouds.  I board my crosstown bus to work.  Sitting up front is a guy who is perhaps my age, talking to a friend, telling a story about something coming into contact with his mouth.  Whatever this thing is was, he claims, "150 degrees," and he had to go to the hospital.  He is wearing overalls rolled up at the cuffs.  In the pockets of his bib are an assortment of pens, including neon highlighters.
     Thursday.  Either today or yesterday, I notice that the silver camper and truck are gone.  I step out of my door shortly before 8:30 AM.  I see a guy who appears homeless.  He is barely able to say "good morning."  He is placing some kind of advertisements on each doorknob of my townhome complex.  An hour and a half later I am rolling down my newly discovered trail to work.  I approach a bridge behind a guy running.  He comes to a halt as a golden colored lab aggressively approaches him.  The dog's owner is a blonde woman in a neck brace.  She has trouble corralling the dog.  Eleven and a half hours later, I am rolling up to the stop for my last bus home.  I watch as a yelling drunk is stumbling toward the stop, carrying a can.  As loud as he is I can't make out what he is saying.  He reaches the bench and, with a big swipe, knocks off whatever debris wan there.   I decide to roll up to the stop before this one.  I get to that stop just in time to catch the bus.  Last night I rode this bus with a screaming young woman, presumably with mental challenges.  She was displaying photos on her phone of her family.  This evening, we roll past the drunk at the stop in front of the Muslim doughnut shop.  he is passed out on the bench, the can in his hands on his lap.
     Onboard, I have a seat behind a guy with grey hair down his back.  He has a cap with the word ENEMY sewn on the front and a T-shirt with an image of Jesus in sunglasses.  Seated behind me is a derelict woman in her sixties.  She is matchstick thin, in a black tank top and a camouflaged hat.  Behind her is a derelict guy.  She is talking to another younger woman seated directly across from her.  The younger woman appears odd, her skin pale and waxy.  Her face has a couple of scratches on it.  She mentions to the older one that she has a roommate who is headed to rehab.  Then, I hear the young woman tell the other, "I'm dying."  She mentions it in passing, as if the older one already knows.  Perhaps those are sores on her face, not scratches.  The young one tells the older one that she is getting out, and asks her if she wants anything to eat.  She asks her several times, and each time the older one declines.  The young one, having pulled the cord to signal the next stop, tells the driver, "I'm not getting out, she's not hungry."  When she does disembark, someone outside asks her, "How you  doin'?"  She replies, "Fuckin' terrible."  The guy in the Jesus shirt and ENEMY hat also gets out.  I then notice that he carries a bright orange walking stick.  If the power of the blind Jesus fails him and his hat fails to menace, the traffic will surely spot the stick.  Another guy gets on.  He's drunk and complaining all the way to my own stop about how the police have all the rights and citizens have none.  "Charges that are just bullshit.  Tresspass, open container..." he complains.  After him, a guy gets on with his shirt off.  He puts it on as we roll on and he gets out at the very next stop.  I get out at the very next stop and head over to the Chinese place.  I watch out of the window as the usual panhandler slowly, slowly makes his way across the parking lot with a confederate.  He has a seat in his usual spot.  His pal disappears.  As I head home across the street, I watch him approach a minivan pulling into a spot.  The driver hands him some money.
     Friday.  I'm on my way to a doctor's appointment before work.  I ride up the street to my old bus stop, around 7:30 AM.  I arrive just in time to catch it.  Down the avenue we come upon a stop with a couple.  The guy waves the driver on but he stops anyway.  The woman asks if this bus goes to the train.  If the transit system is not a primary mode of transit for them, then why are they catching the bus?  Therefore, if it is a primary mode of theirs, they don't know where this one goes?  The only other route on this street also goes to the same train station, but that bus is far less frequent.  Would the guy be familiar with the less frequent route and not with this one, and this I why he waved the driver past?  The residents of these streets can lead a bystander into an H. Mobius loop.  Perhaps this street should be renamed H. Mobius.  They enter and take a seat.  The guy has a pair of construction helmets.  The woman had purple hair held back with a clip and a black hoodie covered in skulls.  And they're headed for the train.  I catch the train at the station, which takes me to the opposite end of town.  I have a couple of hours before my appointment.  I head up the street to an IHOP for breakfast.  I enter behind a family, and just before I pass through the door, a guy on a bench outside turns toward me.  He asks if I have any spare change.  And yes, he refers to me as "Bro."  The hostess asks the father how many in his family to be seated.  He jokes, "Nineteen."
     After work, I'm off the first bus and on the last bus home.  There is an obvious Caucasian, a twentysomething who enters and takes a seat.  He is on his phone and speaking in that groovy, know-it-all voice of a future leader here today.  In shorts and tennis shoes, he looks like he wants to be recognized as from the street.  He's on his phone, however, talking about having a business meeting.  What he's been doing on the street is tracking down leads, having lunch with a potential lead at a university,  He meets a "woman who's ready to buy.  Okay, catch you later," he tells someone on the phone.  "Sweeet!" he exclaims after he hangs up.  Another guy gets onboard.  He's carrying two speakers, each in a plastic bag from a dollar store.  In his pocket is an open can inside a paper bag.  I think it's Tecate.  A third guy gets on, who the second knows.  The third has just arrived from Texas.  Both Caucasian guy and the guy with speakers get out at the train.

     The grand opening of Denver's Four Seasons Hotel had...the $325 admission fee...  OneRepublic played...while aerial performers fluttered above and stilt-walkers stooped to serve hors d'oeuvres.  Guests took turns riding a mechanical bull, sampled...the Willy Wonka dessert room...  ...the...rooms...would command...even $1,000 a night, and speculated about the multimillion-dollar private residences not ye completed.  ...the year being 2010 - back when the Denver Post could still afford the luxury of a society columnist...who left the newspaper sixteen months later and died in 2016.  ...the Mile HIgh City had finally landed..one of the most esteemed brands in the world of luxury hotels.  ...ready to take its place among the truly cosmopolitan cities of the globe.  ...had emerged from the Great Recession of 2007-09 stronger than ever, with a...cultural scene appealing to...trust-funders and tech kings - the kind of folks who stayed at the Four Seasons...  "From 1979 until 1982"...most developers still scoffed at the notion that people might actually want to live downtown.  "Denver was on fire in the early 1980s...until the savings-and-loan crisis."  By 1985, Colorado led the nation in business failures.  [It was] 1988.  Downtown Denver became known for its procession of empty office buildings...and super-cheap rents.  - Westword, 5/17-23/2018

     [With] Police...warnings...some...say it's pointless to comply.  "They gave me several warnings.  I needed a place to sleep."  ...to avoid police and parks rangers, [homeless are] fleeing...to a vacant patch of woods beyond the county line.  "We were able to camp right outside the Denver border...for two or three month."  Others are going to Federal heights, Englewood and other suburbs...  {Homeless] people are moving into less safe places.  "They got pushed off of well lit, well trafficked, policed areas..."  - Denver Herald, 5/17/2018

     Approximately 5,000 of Denver's 700,000 [county] residents are homeless..
     Denver experienced a boom in recent years that was fueled by tech as companies...began looking outside...Silicon valley and Boston...  ...with fast-paced growth in high-wage industries come...new concerns about visible poverty.  In the same month that ChooseColorado.com touted Denver's ascension, Denver Out Loud documented a 500 percent increase in...homeless sweeps..
     Denver came to a place...of  Billions in economic growth...  ...in an urban setting, the poor...are stepped on so people can make a buck.  It's the tory of 21st Century cities...  ...Denver...acted like an invading army.  [The homeless were told] 'if you leave, this will stop.'  After all the buildings have been built, and everyone's stocks go up, they try to put a different face on it.  You got a guy walking around, typically a veteran, with a couple of pictures of his mom and maybe a cellphone - his last connection to his support system.  The police will come and take his phone, property, and trash it.  [Denver Homeless Out Loud] hit the streets at 5 a.m. to find witnesses.  They take declarations in back alleys.  America has a really weird relationship with private property.   - Denver Voice, 5/2018

     Sunday.  After yesterday's goose chase to track down an address from the internet, which hasn't actually existed for six years. I am on my way to a library which I am confident still exists.  My computer is on the blink.  What I will discover at the library is that, though other computers will allow me to access this blog, the computers at the library will not.  And my camera is exhibiting behavior which I have never seen before.  So I am first off to the only camera store I know of in town.  I find a way there which I believe is the quickest from the train.  It takes me through streets which I rode on my way to and from work a decade ago, when I lived in this neighborhood.  I cruise past the John Paul II Center for Evangelization, which I assume is closed on Sunday.  The clerk at the camera store assures me that my camera is not misbehaving, and before I know it, I am having lunch at Denver's famously hyped Union Station.  I sit in front of an open fountain which smells like chlorine.  The only thing on the menu which is in my diet is an appetizer.
     Tuesday morning.  The crosstown bus to work is headed for the transfer hub.  On a bench along the way is a cardboard sign which has been left behind.  It reads, "2 honest 2 steal 2 ugly 2 strip."  Tuesday evening.  On the crosstown bus home, we pick up a passenger who the driver appears to know.  She asks him about his daughter and tells him to hang in there.  He appears to be a quiet guy.  I arrive at the stop for my last bus home, where three passengers wait.  After a glance through a window at a clock, I conclude that I have missed the last bus and have a half hour until the next.  I make for a deathburger and some food before returning to find that all three have gone.  Picked up by a late bus?  I can't say.  A young woman comes along who is altogether different than the usual parade of wandering ghouls.  She is Caucasian, in cute denim shorts with shoulder length combed hair.  It isn't dyed a neon color.  She strikes me as a college student.  Instead of asking for money, or a cigarette, she need me to break a ten for the bus.  When the bus arrives, she and I get onboard.  Not far down the road, the passenger from the other bus comes inside, the one who was chatting with the previous driver.  He has a seat and gets on his phone, and is much more forthcoming with whoever is on the other end of the phone.  He mentions being a former gangbanger who is currently studying to be a doctor.  He's in a custody battle with his ex over the daughter and claims his ex abused both of them.  He mentions that she lives with her parents and that she doesn't have a job.  He complains that she has custody because "she's white and I'm black.  I'll try the courts," he says, "If that don't work, there's gonna be a lot of dead judges."
     The following morning I am on a bus up the street.  This driver's lack of expression makes it seem as if he has seen it all.  He picks up a passenger who I see in the morning all the time.  I suddenly realize that he may be a guy I've seen riding this route one recent and rainy evening, when he acted verbally menacing to a driver he accused of driving recklessly with his kid onboard.  He's a young guy with a couple of kids along.  The driver tells him to fold his stroller, which he does and puts on the flat surface above the right front wheel well.  The driver looks at him in the rearview mirror and shakes his head.  "Why you shaking your head bro?  What you shaking your head for?  You just told me to break it down bro."  In a quiet voice, the driver tells him that he as a driver is responsible if he brakes hard, and the folded stroller goes flying off and impacts another passenger.  The guy takes it down.  "Happy now?" he asks.  His oldest child, perhaps four, sits quietly on the seat directly in front of me.  His hands are folded and he wears a Superman shirt.  Before we get to the train station, a woman gets out at a stop.  before she does, she tells the young guy that he could have stowed his stroller where a woman is seated, next to an open space.  She says that the woman should have moved for him.  This woman is speaking Spanish on her phone, does not appear to notice the other woman, and perhaps would not have understood her anyway.  When we do arrive at the train, passengers get out, along with the guy and his kids, and more come onboard.  The door closes and the driver pulls up to a red light.  A young, tall, bald Caucasian guy with tattoos on his neck knocks on the door.  The driver ignores him.  He flips off the driver.
     After work, I'm at the stop for my last bus home.  There are four people all perhaps in their thirties here who appear related.  There are a couple of men who are both bald and a pair of women.  One of the women is wearing a blouse with Hussey Queen on the front in pink letters.  The other asks me if I have a phone she can use.  The group has a toddler with them.  They walk off.  An older guy comes along.  He asks me if I have a cigarette I "want to sell?"

     ...my...car heading south, the neat little American towns looked like they were on a Hollywood set.  The soft green countryside and the clapboard houses sailed past.  How neat those little gardens were with their flowers and children's swings.  Was I only 6,000 miles away from Lebanon - or on a different planet?  There were Episcopalian churches and smart Georgian courthouses and towns called Cornelia and Magnolia Acres flicking past, and a gun store...  And so many flagstaffs...  And so many...American flags snapping...  There had not been a war in these parts, I thought, for 150 years.  ...for almost thirty years...  I have sat on my balcony over the Mediterranean...  I came...when I was just twenty-nine years old...doing the same job ever since, chronicling the betrayals...of Middle East history...  I am still twenty-nine.  - Fisk

     ...the term "visionary" art feels a little pretentious...  More bluntly, [compared to visionary art] is psychedelic art, often [created] while on hallucinatory drugs...to bring that vibrant parallel world back to the rest of us.  "I was a closet psychedelic artist.  It wasn't something that was thought of highly by my peers.  I went to this show and saw...guys do psychedelics, make art, and...celebrated for that, where I had been kind of demonized for that.  So I decided to switch teams then and there.  This group of people was more in line with my values and the things I believe in."  ...a search for collective meaning...  ...LSD's role...is to filter out the noise...that keeps us from hearing our inner voices and each other.  "Art is...the most accurate technology you can use to try to communicate [psychedelic experiences]."  - Boulder Weekly, 5/24 2018

     This year's Memorial Day weekend is all about having a cold and no sleep.  This week, my shifter cables have been doing a funky dance, never coming out of gear.  I stop into a drug store up the street.  Though it isn't 8 AM yet, which is when I thought they opened, they are open.  It turns out that they now are open at 7 AM.  On a Sunday.  Swee-hee-heet.  There are two people in this store, myself and a grey-haired guy in a powder blue Polo shirt with the store logo on the breast.  He moves as if, rather than through air, through invisible molasses.  I'm here to fill out an envelope for a roll of film and the only pen in the entire store is behind an unknown counter, or perhaps locked in a safe.  I approach the guy behind the counter.  "Can...I...help...you...sir?" he eventually finishes asking me.  I ask for a pen.  "A what?"  Outside it's a beautiful morning.  My options to a train are a bus east or a bus north.  The first is forty minutes away.  The second is less than fifteen, but I will have to switch trans.  I decide that I can make it to a train fastest on the bike.  Along the way, I stop into a 24-hour breakfast place.  One waitress takes my order.  I pull out a pen to write these words, and a second waitress asks me if I have her pen.  I originally decide to ride to the bike shop instead of on a train and then all the way through downtown.  It's 9:30 AM on a Sunday.  I'm never out this early on my bike but I hope to hit the shop when it opens, which ain't 'till eleven.
     I approach downtown from the south, rolling past old Victorian homes owned by Caucasians.  One guy is out in his front yard, with what appears to be a small cement mixer.  It makes noise like a car which won't start.  He appears to be bent over looking at it.  I roll past the bike shop, which won't be open for another hour.  The weather has turned warm and I head for the homeless central deathburger, past old apartment buildings to the north of the state capitol.  There are twenty-something women, possibly single, walking their dogs.  I imagine this same tree-lined street a century before Taylor Swift, the same women walking their dogs.  At the deathburger I grab a soda and have a seat.  Through the window I watch a young guy hobble along the pedestrian mall with a black spirit stick.  I head back to the bike shop, where a clerk cranks the wheels and measures my chain with a caliper.  The shifter cables are shot.  It's time for a new bike.  This one's been with me for the past two and a half years, over many miles.  The day is quite the adventure.  I'm trying to get out to the opening weekend of the water park where I had last summer's adventure.  I grab a bus to the train station, where i spot the bus I used to take to work before 6 AM several years ago.  It will take me to the water park, and i can find someplace to grab lunch along the way.  We crawl down the street, through one train station, and back down the street.  I spot a place called the Full House Bar & Grill.  It's more bar than grill.  I'm locking my bike up next to the patio when a bald Caucasian guy with a red bandanna around his head says, "Hey man, no one's gonna touch your bike."  Inside it's mostly loud grey-haired guys at the bar and pool table.  The decor is circa Pizza Hut and Applegate's Landing from four decades past.  The cook introduces herself.  She a skinny woman in her sixties.  She's in U.S. flag socks, a U.S. flag socks, and on her head are a couple of stars on springs.  She introduces me to the bartender, a woman perhaps in her thirties in short denim shorts.  Both are very nice
     I have my swim and am on a train north back home.  We pass over a highway where I see a black SUV upside down in the westbound lane.  Glass from the front windshield is all over the road.  There are three police cars blocking oncoming traffic.  From the train to a bus, I am coming down a "residential" street in my neighborhood.  I pass a home with a street racing car parked on the street.  A bald guy dressed in a black tank top and black pants stands next to it.  Two other bald guys, dressed all in black are in the front yard.  The front of the home is tagged with graffiti and Mexican music pours from the open front door.  The following evening I am even closer to home.  At dusk, I have just stepped off the last bus home from work.  A guy who I have never seen before rides up to me to tell me that I have "a nice bike."  The bike I have been lumbering upon today, with a head cold and not enough sleep since last Friday, is a $99 bike from Walmart.  He has mucus running down his face from his nose.  Nice face.  Then he says, "Here's my story..."  I ride off, to which h replies, "There he goes."  The following morning, I am on a bus up the street to work.  I got some sleep last night, for the first evening in almost a week.  I take a seat behind a guy in a sleeveless shirt, on the front of which is "Do me a favor and stop talking."  A woman gets on wearing a winter coat on a warm morning.  It has a couple of patches.  One is a black and white American flag.  The other is a gun sight, around which are the words, "This is my peace sign."  A guy gets on and stops in front of an amusement park employee.  Her name tag apparently reads Essence.  "Is your name really Essence?" he asks her.  Unless her tag is stolen, I imagine so.  "My dog's name is Mystery," he mentions.  That's a good name for him as well.  The bus heads over a bridge over the interstate.  On a pole is one of those radar signs which reads, "This is your speed."  This particular sign is seriously fucked up.  It starts at 19 mph, then immediately goes to 35 MPH, then back down to 20.  I wonder if it's getting interference from the traffic below the bridge.  A middle aged guy gets on board.  He's in a Star Wars T-shirt and has a cross around his neck.  It is with these visions that another month comes to an end.