lines

Above my desk in my office at school I have hung up the entire Denver Light Rail map and timetable (well at least the Northbound routes, as Southbound ones are on the reverse). I picked this map up on our last trip back home. I always make sure to ride it several times whenever I return. I love public trains. And I love maps. Thus, this chart needed to go where I could look up from my computer screen, my books, my stack of essays to grade, and think about my favorite city, my favorite place. And how I would move around it, as if on air. Turbulent, loud, yet soothing, air.

In the day, when I moved into Denver from the south 'burbs, I would take the D line (green) to school from Evans Station. Now the thing runs all the way down to those South Denver suburbs where I grew up (the purple and red lines, E and F, respectively) and where my parents still live. I remember so vividly waiting in the cold, with headphones, and gloves, looking down at the spray-painted cyclist below the roughly textured, yellow warning track.. This was in the pre-smart phone days, so people read, chatted, listened to music, regaled each other with their words, or their eyes. Now these same people thumb endlessly at their screens, prodding at digital squares that lead them to different electronic pathways.

I am not old. But I am sometimes melancholic for things and for places. But not for times passed. I like the present. And I love what the future holds. Hopefully in two years time these worlds will collide: I can be with Leah, the one for me, the person for me, in the city I most belong. I am rambling, reminiscing. It is not a bad thing, I suppose, but it is not entirely productive either, or conducive to productivity. Forgive me.
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I start my Visual Rhetoric course this evening. In one hour.
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Today is Blip 700. I like the look of that number. It also means the two-year mark is quickly approaching.
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One of the best things about the Soderbergh Solaris remake is the Cliff Martinez soundtrack. Pure ambient skill and beauty. Suits the images in the film, indeed, but also works so well as a stand-alone orchestration for life. For relaxation. For reading. For making love. And even for riding commuter trains, perhaps.