Departing DIA

Pardarar is Persian for storyteller. I am the Naqqal which means ‘the transmitter’ in Persian.

Our sky ride bus left at 1:07 which allowed time to walk around the parking lot soaking up ultraviolet rays of light across from Jose.

5 passengers zoomed down 6th and into central city. The skyline was approaching a space station terminus in the universe, Aurora campus, past construction sites for sports and Market street - lofts, renovations, old bricks painted with cowboys, tight parking out west these days...Wynkoop brew pubs, and the trendy LoDo or is it DoDo bird land? make over shift makers, shift shakers.

Construction crews of Black guys hauling metal beams, welding, pouring concrete as suited office workers wait for pedestrian walk permission lights to click and green them go. Then we left the open space and gradually were swallowed by looming skyscrapers touching blue sky and cold shadows in the remains of the day not with Sir Anthony Hopkins mind you, but with ghosts of the silver, cattle driving rustlers bygone eras, transporting ourselves into a tunnel leaving light behind and stopping at the bus market.

People got off and people got on. A man mopped swaths of wet glistening water in shadows as a woman's back pressed against hard glass wearily waiting as we rolled out and to the greyhound station, past courthouses where years ago a skinny 19 year old stood up and recited the pledge of allegiances in a room and Candy said goodbye and I started toward Ft. Leonard Wood Misery and the Latin on the building is still there speaking in tongues about honor and service, duty and loyalty and never coming back potentials from humid jungles full of land mines hovering choppers and rice paddies as we rolled into five points and the carnage of the homeless with a Black man on the corner and his shopping cart was silver and his carefully folded cardboard boxes were stacked on the lower level of his rolling life and bags of cans and various treasures were arranged in no particular order and his beard was black and he was in the shadow on the corner surveying his options toward new beginnings.

And the landscape was TS Elliot Where the Wasteland Ends and our spaceship turned into the Five Points and we were surrounded by home boxes with heavy metal bars on their windows, trash blowing in the wind, cracker jack shacks of homes crammed into lifeless vegetation crying children weeds prowling junked cars, trucks, alleys full of discarded tires, haphazard fences, narrow passageways between bricks and HUD estates with children playing and Black women beating carpets and watering patches of soil a zone of tolerance living on the edge, the periphery of America’s dream and it may have been 32nd ave a new east flying toward old Stapleton air fields full of bulldozers and plastic bags on barb wire and moire passengers -- Somalia woman and daughter, cowboy hatted traveler, and then to the DIA - gleaming tent city spires, the white needles -- a space station of proportions and checking through -- mid-day is the least busy and then frisked down by some guys at security -- they may have been from Ghana or Somalia, or Ethiopia but I suspect Congo or Zaire as their dialect was different enough and they were young and laughing at the never ending task of waving detector wands over people and the one doing me was young & angry and exasperated at having to do anything so far removed from his country, his family, his brothers and sisters carrying water on their heads in cracked plastic pails from distant valleys drying in the heat of perpetual summer’s drought and his tie was askew and his white shirt against his thin black neck was frayed and his blue blazer looked severely uncomfortable on his frame and the Asian woman came over to my small red bag and she is missing many teeth and smiling and asked about the harmonica in the bag and would like to see it and I am surprised and laughing and joking with her and she turns and points to the Hispanic woman watching the telepathic screen as bags convey their contents past her tired brown eyes and she’s lost her remote and the Asian woman says the other woman doesn’t know what a harmonica is and so I pull it out of the small pocket in the key of D and she holds it up and shows it to the woman who nods and I ask the Asian woman if she would like me to play her something and she says yes and so I play a few rifts of a Christmas carol on automatic pilot and she laughs and the passengers flow around us in their definite hurry and mothers manage baby carriages that look like three tired tiered birthday cakes with burning candles and their long lonely joyful responsibilities and then the music stops and I thank the Asian woman and she laughs and I put the harmonica back in the bag and take the escalator down

to the train and watch the Hispanic woman mop the floor and women in furs and designer jewelry waiting impatiently for the train to Concourse ABC...train zooms through tunnels as though amusement parks rides are free with silver spinning windmills in the cement walls whirling the wind tunnels as people get off and on and a white woman with her Black husband holds her child his black curly hair all ringed around small ears and he looks bored and she is not sure if she made the right decision and they are going east to see her folks and he never smiles and they share no words and the United Crew woman has a child in one of those gigantic baby things and her bags are utilitarian and she knows what she is doing and has the right lug-gage and is well organized and a man in a suit checks his watch and his family is far away and he is trying to catch a plane so he can get to another city another meeting, another cab another hotel and maybe, if he is lucky, get home to his family for xmas and at the concourse I eat some pasta with spinach watching the line grow at macdonald had a farm French fries, food to go go go and the Hispanic woman squeezes her mop out and slowly mops the area down collecting fragments of footprints dissolving in the yellow dirty water
as blond women in black yak their business calls on cell phones connecting with clients, customers and we board the metal canister and my window is on the left and we take off north and the turbulence hits us at 4000 feet through 11000 feet with the Silver City of Dreams skyline below us and Platte valley a silver streak of small Amazonian proportions east of orange skies sun sliding away and we bounce up and down and grit our teeth preparing for the fall to earth as Icarus or a Phoenix with wings of wax but somehow the metal rivets, bolts, nuts and slender wings hold as the pilots must be silently cursing the 125 headwinds of the heavens and mountains are a dream below us and then we are in the rolling gray clouds with tomato juice and an hour brings us south of Salt Lake and the great salt lake water is a silver reflecting pond and lights from human homes out of designer magazines glow through blackness and a single light on the end of the wind illuminates particles of snow flashing quick silver fish of water flying

we change planes in the LDS zone of polygamy listening to people complain about being stuck in Atlanta since dawn trying to get somewhere somehow, someday...and a rolling airport shuttle cart comes by driven by a young woman with passengers and there are two boys on the cart and a young boy, about 7 or so, looks like Harry Potter, with the big coke bottle glasses and his colorful day pack and he says, Do they have a bathroom at the gate? and she says it’s close by and they drop off a woman and because they stop the boy figures the ride is over and he says to the driver, Do you need some money? I have 5 dollars right here in my bag and he starts to reach for it and she smiles and says, no and she turns the cart around and they stop at the bathroom and he runs away smiling toward the mosaic tiles and she smiles....and on the flight to Pasco I sit next to a young student from Walla Walla who attends the university of Virginia majoring in French and pre-med and she calls her mother on the cell phone before they close the doors and asks her to get some muffins for breakfast because she hasn’t had any for four months and she is desperate for muffins and she doesn’t say I love you or I miss you or I’m looking forward to seeing you and her father is a dentist and her teeth are perfect for muffins and she talks to the woman next to her, a stout girl majoring in math and physics near Bakersfield who is going to Spokane and Idaho for a wedding as her mom is getting hitched to a man the girl in seat 28A has never met and she’s never been to Idaho and she wears a large brimmed straight black cowboy hat and they talk about cramming for finals and the stress of studies and eating pizza cramming for travel on standby and they have a break now and the woman from eastern Washington uses the word excellent a million times in her conversation and I read poems from Dogen in Japan about seasons

it’s cold in the Tri-Cities and a couple of my cactus plants on the balcony need CPR and so I go to the club and it’s quiet and I tend to mens’ night tennis listening to the men complain about the change in court reservation policy and how they are going to file a letter of complaint with the management and boycott classes and I listen and make notes and it’s nice to be back with the silence of the small flat cleaning up so yesterday I worked and did some errands, new library books including JUMP TIME about universal potentials and found a new fern, had the watch man check out Da’s watch and its the kind you wind as the internal mechanism is self contained and so I used the turtle magnifier to see the fine print and checked out the Girard-Perreqaux web site and the history is quite good from Jean Bautte in 1791 who started the watchmaking business when he was a young man and he sold the company to a man named Girard who married Marie Perreqaux in 1854 and both their families were in the business -- mergers and the brand was established in 1856 and in 1880 they invented the wristwatch with 32,7681 Hertz and a triple bridge mechanism and their company is a manufactory which means they make everything in one place, no parts form other suppliers and so, I’m guessing the watch is from the 30’s or 40’s so thanks very much for letting me have it and we put a new black band on it and the watch dealer at the store said it’s a fine piece with old glass and it keeps excellent time.

we have continuous snow now and I am a lone wolf again in my lair for the winter preparing to breed and go hunting on this the shortest day of the year and winter solstice is a blessing and you are beautiful and kind!

(end of transmission)