Reading: The Hero and the Crown

Moving: walked 2.7 miles

House: bought some bookshelves, painted some window trimbought some flowers

20 June 2000: Reflection

It snowed last night. In the mountains, not here, but visible from here, and all is right with the world.

All was not right with the world last night when it was too cold to swim, but it did rain a little bit anyway, and in the mountains that rain was snow.

In May I realized that the snow on the mountains visible from the city wouldn't last the summer. Sure, if you crane your neck you maybe can see some cornices hanging onto Summit County, but those most prominent from Denver--Mt. Evans and its littler buddies--were nearly nude.

When I moved here I was kinda hoping that I'd live in view of snow-capped peaks all year long. I thought Denver would be liked Boston except with mountains.

Hmm. Well, no, but we do now live near Capitol Hill, which is the Bostoniest neighborhood in town, kind of like South End. There's no place like Back Bay and the downtowns are nothing like.

I was more realistic to expect mountains, but too optimistic in expecting year-round snow.

Anyway, this morning I walked into CoolBoss's office and was distracted from whatever vital point I was going to communicate to her by the dusting of snow on the mountains. It'll probably melt into nothing by tomorrow and won't last until September brings proper snow, but it sure was refreshing.

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This morning I met the director of the Denver branch of American Lung Association on my walk to work. The building with the pipe organ chimney isn't the ALA's building, but the ALA's brick Victorian does have a lovely carriage house. I was admiring it when a woman walked by and asked if she could help. Perhaps I looked like a vagrant despite the clean REI backpack and sound Tevas.

I told her I had taken photographs of my walk to work the other day, and explained about why I remembered the pipe organ building as the ALA's. She understood the breathing analogy, thank goodness, and asked if I was in architecture or photography. Um, no.

I didn't ask if the American Lung Association had ever wanted to beat up the American Library Association for taking the best URL. I just typed lung.org into Navigator, which turned out to be--when its excessiveness loaded--the Sun Coast Lung Center. That looks like it should be a .com. Aha, lungusa.org. Pity.

We had a pleasant chat. It turns out their building was constructed the year the ALA was founded (1904), so it's most appropriate for them. She offered to give me a tour sometime. People are so friendly here; it's bizarre.

On the next block a bloke lounging against a chainlink fence, a bloke whose appearance put me on my guard, asked, "Do you got the time, ma'am?" I hadn't, but it was probably about 7:30 and I told him that. Grammar, inadequate; manners, passable. (At 32, I hope I can accept the "ma'am" as courteous, but he didn't say please or thank you.) He was definitely loitering, but friendly.

It's a good walk. I'm learning its usual players. Bike-commuters pass me, but I'm the only walk-commuter (unless everyone else exactly my same speed such that we never pass one another). I'm the only one on the sidewalk who isn't going for a jog or walking a dog or watering a lawn until I get to where the pay parking lots begin--about ten blocks east of Broadway, the official beginning of downtown. There, as people join me, I further hasten my stride, joining the frenetic pace.

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Speaking of my walk, Lynette, PLT, and Jessie have each filled me in about Kevin Mitnick.

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There are things I want to write about in Speaking Confidentially that I don't write about because of privacy. Then I don't write about it privately because of validity: writing about something for an audience does contribute to the catharsis and therapy that're such important aspects of journaling for me, even though it's mostly an audience of me. Do I need an audience of LIM and PLT and untold strangers or do I need just myself as an audience? I think rereading my journal when it was still mostly my own private paper angst and ennui did help me more. I didn't reread my navel-gazings as much after I began to write electronically, and I firmly believe that rereading the journal in its paper incarnation used to help me recognize patterns, repeated mistakes. Now I can reread my online journal, but because it's online I don't write about the sort of thing I used to write about.

I reread Mandy today because I just got Dora to read it. I ended up in tears at lunch, of course. Now, sitting in another meeting, I'm thinking about wanting to cry (because of Mandy) and not being allowed to (because of work) and being able not to (because I'm not miserable). Which led me to remember--speaking of events best not dwelt on--a day Trunkie brought her four grad students--SSP and me and two others--to Cup o' Sun for some purpose and I sat there with tears threatening and choking and finally streaming down my face. Pray goddess I never sink so low again. I could not lean on people again as much as I did then.

* I had Trunkie for art history as an undergraduate with my bud SLH. She was professing about how perceptions of the body and standards of beauty have changed over the years. When she was in college, she said, the ideal was of the model Twiggy, whose form she (herself admitted) did not share. SLH named her Trunkie on the spot.

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I thought of something nice about NCS today. Walking to work, I passed a rock dove and a mourning dove. They looked cuddly, or at least the pigeon, which looked male, acted amorously. I might not have thought anything of it except that I saw the same pairing in the same place yesterday.

This reminded me that in 1988, a bull moose in New Hampshire or Vermont fell in love with a cow cow. He courted her, even if he never attempted to consummate his feelings. Coincidentally, it was also this, my sophomore year, that I began to pile on weight, or that my muscle began to atrophy and be replaced with fat. I felt like a cow. Whenever I expressed such a sentiment, NCS would put his outstretched hands on either side of his head like moose antlers.

(Which reminds me, a Zilpha Keatley Snyder I recently read, A Fabulous Creature, concerns a boy who wants to protect a prize specimen of a buck from becoming a trophy. From the first paragraph, Snyder uses "horns" and "antlers" interchangeably.)

And another thing about NCS. I don't know if I always thought this or if I merely recognized the sense of his idea, but he always said that if any part of a cookie or similar treat fell on the floor, he was always convinced that that morsel would have been its tastiest bite. Last week a company in the building gave away ice cream as a promotion. Two coworkers and I went downstairs and each selected a Klondike bar (original, unfortunately: vanilla not chocolate ice milk). As we nibbled, a slab of chocolate coating fell from my bar to the floor. "Poop. Best part, that," I mourned as I picked it up.

One coworker, Landscape (an epithet I now regret assigning him) mentioned he hasn't seen me at the Y recently, and I said that I had lapsed my membership at the end of April. We discussed exercise and weight loss. Landscape disparaged my use of Cybex weight machines instead of free weights. I thought he was being superior and chauvinistic and didn't say so. Egg, being such a good Egg, diverted the conversation at that point, saying she's been the same weight for 15 years. Recovered from restraining myself, I contributed one theory for that. "One reason you both are slender and I am not is that I eat so fast." My Klondike bar had long since disappeared and they each had more than half a bar left. Several sentences later, Egg looked down at the third of a bar loose in its wrapper in her hand. "I think I'm done with this."

"And that's another reason you're slender and I am not," I continued, relieving her of her burden. She laughed.