comrades, it's nice to drop a line or 223

Naetron, Denver CO 9/21/07 12:36 am_ The last of the previous day’s caffeine burns out of my system after capping a paper on “Multimedia Team Management”. My brain is making up its own language as I doze off: stuff like, “prizmaticulnatriusnict saft frampen dislascious….”, remarkable mostly because the dialog has never been more perceivable, and sounds like my voice, at least the one I imagine I have before it plays back on tape. 6:30 am_ Alarm goes off. Back to sleep. I dream those half-awake sequences where your conscious mind is interfering with the signal. The most lucid part was being up and about in my apartment and deciding to trim my houseplants by eating the leaves (I could taste ‘em too!), 7:41 am I wake up for real, and make an espresso noticing the plants. They trigger the memory of the dream. 8:11 am Walk to class because my bike needs the crank bolt tightened, and feel a lot of space. I think the city is shrinking. The ipod plays out the end of some old-school break tune (like Herbie Hancock old-school), and starts up with a DJ Dan exerpt. I smile as thoughts of this writing project and memories of our dancing days come back to mind. Passing the bike trail on Speer is like “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” where everybody’s having such a wonderful time on their bikes. I figure these things happen for reasons beyond my control, forcing me to slow down and enjoy the waning of summer. 8:37 am A bit late for a class in advanced multimedia, and someone brought some excellent bagels. Emmelyn and Christopher give a presentation on web usability- worth mentioning because Emmelyn is smart, attractive, artsy : probably my next batch of trouble. A majority of my classmates including la professora are dressed in black, although my friend Candice is wearing hot pink (which is basically black too right?) Emmelyn is in green, and just to be fair Chris is wearing some god awful product of his mid college crisis. 9:22 am Class is over, still too shy to make the first move with Emmelyn, although it’s probably best being that I’m twenty-eight now and she’s like twenty or something. Walking everywhere reminds me to get my bus/light-rail sticker renewed. I take the light-rail south to work. 10:05 am Grooving to this jazz fusion arrangement of “What the world needs now, is love, sweet love…” with melodies that remind me of the tunes my parents used to do together. Mom’s voice comes to mind as it usually does a few times a day. For those of you outside the “Nate bubble,” we lost her to breast cancer a couple years ago. Eventually I’ll get over the sad desire to call her. 10:20 I get to work where the adjoining office is doing a live-link camera interview (for the talking heads you see on the news) of this well-dressed gentleman from a gold company who is being interrupted by someone at the Bloomberg stock report. Del bumps through the headphones. I’ve had trouble enjoying him lately, something about his rhythms and inflections only work with skate/snowboarding. 10:30 am By now the computers are warmed up and I’m chopping and flopping images for this “Salon d’ Arts” client we build web pages for. They’re organizing a show of 20-30 artists, so I’m posting bios with submissions to the show/sale. There’s some good work, some bad- I just know I’m in need of music. I dig itunes radio, especially ABF, a pretty good French house/techno stream. I hear that Underworld song from Trainspotting- those beats still rock! 10:34 am Ok. Sick of techno already. It’s definitely to be taken with a similar moderation as the drugs techno music reminds me of. Switch streams to Magnatune, classical music and more classical music for my nerdy ass. The uplink camera guy Kurt is chatting with an unidentified gray-haired gentleman in the adjoining room at a table (probably about old guy stuff). Kurt drives a yellow trans-am once in a while, otherwise it’s a 4Runner. Magnatune starts into a choral work quickly getting replaced with the Beatles’ “Ain’t She Sweet” from my ipod. 12:24 pm All the artists have their works optimized for web, and I’m starting on the bios when the computer bugs out in MSWord, presenting a good time to eat and get this bike problem taken care of. 12:45 pm Taking the light-rail north back into downtown, I noticed a stencil tag of the famous self-igniting Buddhist protester still hasn’t been buffed after months. Soon I’m on the 16th Street Mall headed to the bank for some lunch money. Late lunchers are lined up for pizza and Taco Bell. I’ve been so broke lately I forget what supa-fat tastes like. A hand drummer is keeping a nice “boodoo-doodacka-dacka” as people in dark glasses mill around on those smooth tiles surely thinking about MacDonald’s. 12:57 pm I’m a few minutes away from the great monolith super structure of Republic Plaza where my bank is, and more drumming becomes audible as I approach Civic Center Park. I notice an arrangement of black and white marble blocks, supposed to be functional art or something. Five seconds later I pass a foxy business lady composed of the same color scheme sitting on a concrete half wall. 1:12 pm The sick bike is retrieved and taken to Salvagetti’s Bike Shop down the street. A blond-haired punk rocker-like dude works on my bike as a couple bearded and slender bike messenger types dig on a catalog. Bike shops always have a weird vibe. I often feel like this dumb-ass yuppie scum in my computer geek button-up with the way mechanics eye me down, but I’m not falling into this new hipster culture of riding around on track bikes in mid-day traffic in nothing but a retro-vintage bike cap just to fit in. The punk rocker dude has me rolling ten minutes and a $2 tip later. 1:25pm Since the Great Expiration of my debit card, I’ve discovered how expensive it actually is to fuel my body every day. With my $6 budget I score a filet of rockfish (which is really cod I think) two liters of soymilk, and a block of mozzarella. 1:35pm My rockfish ends up getting basted, and I discover it is definitely cod. Somehow this goes well with a second run on the morning espresso beans. 1:52pm Back at work after a nice little sprint on the freshly-tightened crank, and I’m in the mood for more techno. ABF is bumpin’ some nice acid house, and I’m quickly set pointing and clicking again. 2:15pm Techno gets irritating again. Back to classical where they’re playing the Prelude of Suite no.5 for Cello by Bach, it’s like a spiritual sermon for musicians, I get chills from it. Right after that they play Ave Maria by Josquin Deprez, the last lines before the “Amen” of this choral work never cease to move me to tears, something very connective and emotional in the harmonic structure. A couple tunes later, this Schumann piano piece once played by a love interest comes on and I decide music school made me into a pussy. 3:30pm Deep into pointing and clicking, now to the jams on the ipod, I’m thinking about this Emmelyn girl again. I attribute my condition to hours of working alone at a computer, in an empty office, to music that’s most often about all that love crap. 4 something pm I need a diversion, more coffee, and sex. Two of these are immediately manageable, guess which ones the monkey figured out. 5 something pm Still formatting HTML pages of artists, this shit requires patience as the final product rarely has any rewarding or remotely visceral qualities. By this point the music starts distracting me from my task, and I’m reduced to babbling to myself while I copy and paste lines of code around. Fortunately the content is somewhat inspirational. 6 something pm I wanna go home, but I also need money, dammit. The speedbike of freedom is calling to me, must….focus….. 7:30 pm Debugging and systems check complete, initializing system shutdown protocol, 364-035 niner blahhhp…bleep.. 7:33pm It’s pretty dim out, riding through the Baker district feels like those movie neighborhoods in the Midwest. It feels good to sprint. I speed through a couple red lights before one’s actually covering a car (yeah that’s Denver for you). It feels pretty sweet to skid out from 25mph to .3mph in few seconds too. 7:41pm Back at the Batcave, we find our hero with disabled communication, modest rations, and a bottle of wine with no corkscrew (this could be a metaphor for my life). Peanut butter and honey with soymilk is far more delicious than captivity, and soon the spirit to create returns. 8:11pm I’ve moved from one computer to another in a matter of minutes, this happens all week every week it seems like. I write into this piece a bit, and begin to wonder what happens in the meadow at dusk. 9 something pm The rocket bike convinces me to knock off a bit and solve this wine bottle problem. I allocate $1.50 or so in change and roll to the liquor store . When was the last time you heard the theme to the Pink Panther? It was playing there fool, I ain’t playin’ or foolin’! 9 something and .32.05 seconds My perception of this timeframe becomes blurred from within the torments of a body of matter traveling at extreme speed. 9:30pm I considered drinking all my cooking wine myself, but think, “Why not see if my friends would like some shitty wine too?” Back on the Bat bike and nearly simultaneously I’m ringing up Darren’s callbox with no success. 9:33pm As somewhat illustrated above, I am without plans, cellphone, money, friends or lover. I realize I must have traveled so fast on this rocket bike I penetrated the fabric of time and space and returned to the third grade, where riding bikes around the neighborhood was about all there was to do aside from finding a kid with a tramp or Nintendo NES or something. 9:45 pm Cruising south of I-25 on Broadway, on a bike is dangerous. Streets can be rated with IQ’s. As soon I feel the IQ drop below 62, I change direction or get off and walk. 9:55 pm Trying out the fresh concrete south of Washington Park and I’m approaching the DU area. I must quickly develop a plan to avoid this seasonal haven for physically-fit, well-educated, rich white and Asian girls. 10:47 pm After getting mixed up in a little traffic, riding to the corners of downtown in search of familiar bikes, and taking a short visit to Denver’s own wanna-be Starfleet Academy Bridge-building Theme Park, I realize women don’t throw themselves at cyclists (you have to crash into them). 11:35 pm I’m at the computer, finishing this thing and surely enjoying it more than being inebriated and surrounded by people I don’t know or necessarily like. I miss Denver being a mystery. I miss life being an adventure. I must get to NYC or I’ll become a fat suburbanite with a computer job. You are all remarkable and talented people and I’m very proud you’re all out there doing “it”. Shouts to Gavin the robot for the concept, and best of luck to Joel, Gabe and his family, and anyone "under the radar" with their coming challenges. -nathan