Hope Has Left Denver

Friday's weather: in Denver, dry and warm around 87; clear skies a little sooty in the morning but mountains clearly visible at sunset, going down to 60 tonight. Open windows night.
Friday's drink: Big Horn Blonde, 25 oz.
Friday's artist: video artist Bjorn Melhus. His website is crappy, and you have to really hunt for coverage of him. Check him out.

Friday night, 8:30pm Mountain Time. I'm in the Overlook Hotel.

OK, not really. I'm in the Savannah Suites hotel in Westminster, Colorado: a long strip mall that calls itself a town. With perfect green grass. We're right across the street from Avaya headquarters, in a building that could easily substitute for SkyNet headquarters.

This hotel, ahem, is but four months old say the staff. I think that's even pushing it. The entire place smells of fake Orange disinfectant. Yet, strangely, that's not what disturbs me tonight. You see, I'm the last one. The only one left.

Seriously: several members of the staff, seeing me bundle my dirty clothes to and from the wash area today, commented along the lines of: "Wow, I didn't know anyone was left! I thought the place was completely empty!"

Turns out it is. The hotel is completely empty, save for me. I could go naked bowling down the big hallway and no-one would be the wiser. Save the creepy hotel ghosts that hang out in the hallways.

Tomorrow I, like most of my colleagues today, head to Minneapolis. It's been a full week in Denver. Today was my first break in about 2 weeks. (boo-hoo.) I spent much of the day in downtown Denver - a significant chunk of that at the Denver Art Museum. A sidenote on Denver: it seems a town that gets the idea of civic space, planning and investment. I can't really say much having been here a week - and not even in the town for most of that - but I'm impressed.

The DAM features a slick and menacing new Libeskind gallery that every up-and-coming city wants:

a slick, weird, assault of a building that commands attention to itself above any sense of it's place. A building so out of human sense (standing on the fourth floor balcony and looking out over the cacophonous atrium is enough to induce serious vertigo) that being inside or anywhere near it diverts all attention from anything except the massive polished steel cuckoo-house that calls itself post-modern.

I went through a preview of the newly acquired Clyfford Still collection, which was intriguing, and the modern collection, which was provocative, as much modern art is. It was refreshing, but not nearly as much as the brief but encompassing exhibit of native Northwest Kwakwaka'wakw creations such as masks, house posts, massive story poles and more. The fragrance of old wood and fur and leather, mingling with the appropriate lighting and sounds of the Pacific Northwest were enough to transport me to a place I've never been to.

But I've been to Minneapolis, which is where my mind's eye is fixed now. Half way through a two week roadtrip, doing my thing all by myself, alone, on the road. I feel like I should go have some rough trucker sex.

No, I don't. But I do feel alone. Alone at work - where people either don't get what I'm doing, resent me for doing it, or feel they need to muck about and change it to their, i.e., 1973, tastes. Look at me now: I produce, shoot, host, edit and post-produce the whole shebang. It's too much. Or I'm not enough.

For those of you asking: my father has apparently returned home. I'm not inquiring more than that, as I am mostly unconnected other than that. C is well and I miss him, and I'm missing my close friends lately, also. Therapy has succeeded in what I set at it: melting the ice I stand on so I can access my past. Unfortunately, when ice melts it does so unevenly, and occasionally a foot pokes through the ice into the lake beneath at the wrong moment (work, gym, etc.) I'm hunting for a temporary shelter - a sanctuary where I can go to fall through the ice in safety.

I suppose I should put something in here about the week in Denver. What can I say? I'm immune to sweeping spectacle. More accurately: I distrust it in the realm of politics. I remember 1991 when EVERYONE supported the Gulf War (no they didn't.) I remember October 2001 when EVERYONE supported the Afghan War (not really.) And 2003? Forget it: it was show and stage and prodding the public in obvious but effective ways that before we knew it, we were at war.

I guess my take-away is that things can change for the better, and the government run by people who believe in its uses is much preferable to government run by people who hate it. But tempering that: a sense that many of us, again, are being swept up in something not of our making. Something that plays on our better angels, but that seeks merely it's own victory. All of us who were swept up in 1991, in 2001, and on: we bear some responsibility, also. In the end we always know we're being swept away by something: we go with it when it comports with our ideals and fight against it when it doesn't, but we go with it. But 'it' is not us. 'It' is not our ideals or aspirations: it is only a path to power.

So my thought as I sit, alone, in an empty hotel, ready to leave for another week of this is: we owe it to our nation to always examine, critically, those big things we feel to be right. After all, there is no harm that can come of it. Goodness welcomes good thinking.

On The Road!

Saturday's weather: moist in the air but still no rain, leaving the ground very dry. Alternately cloudy and sunny, warm and fresh - an end of summer day.
Saturday's drink: none except water, for the airplane
Saturday's link: www.usavotes2008.com

I'm 1 1/2 hours from planing up for my two-week work flight. Those of you who know who I am and what I do know exactly where I'm going. Those of you who don't, what are you doing reading this anyway? Just kidding, it's not hard to figure out. I will try to update from the road.

For all those who have responded with such warmth and support regarding my last post; your love means the world to me. It has helped as I navigate a difficult period. And in an unexpected way, once this period of intense work focus passes, I actually look forward to being still, looking at some things, emerging from my cocoon as one friend put it.

That's it for now. Bon voyage to me, and check out what I'm up to on the road!

Maybe This Time, They Mean It.

Saturday's weather: Only now a short rainburst has moved in: a little thunder but no wind, rain falling heavy and straight. Once it passes we'll be back to baking in the 90's for a while more.
Saturday's drink: None, except maybe Seltzer water. Maybe a Sam Adams with dinner.
Saturday's question: What ever happened to Mason Reese?

I'll say right now. This is not a fun post, but it is an honest accounting of where I'm at right now. Feeling blue? Tired? Gassy? Enjoy the posted video, stop reading any more, call it a day, and see you soon.



Two long-awaited packages arrived in the mail this week. One was STG's "Peticure" nail grooming thing. It's basically a dremel with some fancy stuff and lots of instructions to make pet owners squeamish about doing their dog's nails (me) feel much better. The battery's charging, and after dinner STG's gettin' herself some nail trimming. I hope.

That was the good package. Friday the bad one came, but one that I had also been waiting on. It was face-down on the floor by the mail-slot; a standard 8 by 11 manila mailer. But I knew, and turning it over to see my father's unmistakable handwriting confirmed that this was the letter (dum-dum-dum!) that had been in the works for some two weeks. Five pages inside, five pages my father must have labored over - with editing from mom - for days. His labor done, mine was now to read it.

It was two weeks ago nearly I phoned the parents to check up, catch up, and have a 1/2 hour of pleasantly passable conversation as part of my son-ly duties. Usually these things drift down the river until I wrap it up with a "...gotta go make some marinara sauce!" or something. Everyone seems happier for it.

But now and again, at unpredictable times but predictably once every 18 to 24 months, it's a bad call. Anger, yelling, often at the outset. This was one of those. I have been dreading these for...well, how old am I? I've never known a time longer than 2 years when I haven't had cause to worry about them, and often feel like shit in the process. Lesson to all young parents out there: do not use your children as garbage dumps for all your crap. They don't want it, but will likely accept it because they love you and feel this is helping. It isn't. It never does.

This time, very soon after hearing the precis of what this explosion was about, I calmly emphasized my continuing and unending love and concern for them both, and wishes for the fortitude to work it out. When one parent, who has angrily dragged me into their problems in the past, again started dragging, I put a stop to it. This time not in a calm voice. No, I would no longer take any part of their relationship. Thats theirs, and I do not want it.

The angry one hung up, clearly to mark me as a bad son. Fine. The calm but confusing one tried to do the...not active dragging, passive pleading maybe?...and again I put an end to it. What I did learn was that a divorce was now likely, and my father would write a letter unloading his soul.

The contents I won't go into, obviously. No need to spread compost around even more. Let's just call it a soul-baring confession of all his apparent failings, atrocities, and unforgivable conduct over the last 49 years of marriage.

Five pages, single spaced, plus a one page addendum.

The content of the letter was upsetting. In most cases, nothing new. In the remainder: nothing I needed to know. But there was something over all that which...I don't quite know. There's something odd about this letter. I'm not sure why he wrote it, why he felt I needed to know it. At moments I doubt I'm even the audience. And worst: I'm not even sure of its voice. I can't say what exactly, but there is an oddness to it all. Oddness, accompanied by waves and waves of nausea and ache.

Most of all I am convinced I am now supposed to say something. Perhaps proclaim my father unfit for the pits of Hell with my mother listening. I don't know. I know mostly that there's nothing I have to say at the moment, and I fear that is only going raise tempers higher.

I'm used to this. I've been disowned...twice is it? You stop counting. I've heard the divorce word a handful of times in the last decade. Maybe this time they mean it. I've been on the receiving end of these eruptions before: they're never good and they always come when your guard is down. I like to think I'm numb from it all.

But I'm not. The evening is approaching and I haven't been able to do a thing all day. Literally: I didn't want to walk, didn't want to drive away, didn't want to see anyone or talk to anyone. I just wanted to dissolve. "...melt, thaw, and dissolve itself into a dew!" as Elsinore's Prince once said. I could think of nothing else to get away from this renewed worry and ache for my parents; parents whose lives, hanging on this most recent fulcrum, seem to have been for utter loss. It's a rotten thing to carry in your head; worse to have it stuck there.

The rainburst has passed and it's getting brighter outside. So, too, shall it be with me. My big job now is to learn how not to let worry about future storms - and they may be bad ones - interfere with the good weather when it blows in.

I'm open to ideas.