The Lens Part 3: Those Jobs

I work with a fella who claims to have worked in 47 restaurants. I mean, what? Really? Wow! You'd think that one might get the idea after half of that amount of restaurant gigs, that maybe, it would be time to do something else.

I work a restaurant job. I do not work very hard, nor do I work very many hours. Sometimes I wish I could have one of those 'regular' jobs, the 9 to 5 and all that, but I doubt I'll ever get over the nonsense that goes along with the working world.

I have had a number of jobs in my life. I have had those office jobs, the suit and tie jobs, the executive positions, the salaries, the teaching gigs, the manufacturing jobs, retail gigs and I once spent a year framing pictures and another year changing light bulbs. As I think about all the jobs, the 'regular' jobs, the salaried executive jobs brought the most amount of pain and misery. I have to admit that some of my office jobs, like my time with both Colorado Department of Health and Standard Insurance were both good jobs because I spent most of my day at my desk writing in my notebooks. It's always nice to get paid to write.

The Lens Part 2: A Question of Space

Surprisingly, I do not write about fire. I don't write about starting fires, running from fires, the fear or joy that fires bring. Truth is, there has been so much fire in my life, it is amazing that I have not tried to exorcise it from my mind. California was on fire much of my youth. The Middle East was on fire during my time there. In 1995, February 10, I crawled out of a burning building with my friend Heather. That last one was the fire of fires.

The apartment house fire left me homeless for about eight months.

What Happened When I Finally Got Around To It

She had been a voracious reader in those days. I have no reason to believe that she is any different now. The two of us have not seen each other for more than sixteen years. There is no reason for us to see each other now, nor has there been since the day it ended.

She was a voracious reader, have I mentioned that? She was also the loudest page turner (SWOSH-t-FISHT) I have ever known. She would sit in the other room, on the bed, legs propped up in a 90 degree angle with one leg crossed over the other. The look on her face (SWOSH-t-FISHT) when she read was the look of sheer joy, fascination, amazement.

The Lens: A Question of Geography

It is erroneous to say that there was not place better to live than in Denver. It's erroneous to say this because at the time of the story, there was NO other place to live than Denver. And if there were, why the fuck would you want to live there?

There was something in the dirt, the dust, the crusted over granite dusted road plowed snow or in the blue summer lightning storms that made it clear, and I mean clear, that this was Denver and outside of her borders there was nothing else. Nothing.

The traffic along Broadway once it left downtown heading south went into a second, or third reality that was every bit as real, as real as Englewood or Littleton might be. During afternoons, all three lanes were packed, RTD buses and cars and that was that. There were traffic lights on every block. After crossing over 6^th Ave, the bookstores/porn shops/gun shops began. Crossing over Alameda it was the antique shops. Post WWII was everywhere in post commercial despair. To the west, a distance away, the mighty mighty Rocky Mountains, but at the time of the story, they were just a backdrop. To the east, the entire world sloping forever down to the Mississippi, a place where you'd never see—unless your built a raft and escaped the homeless encampments along the South Platte river.

LSD was everywhere.