Winter Stent Moon
The last sliver of the stent moon.
A day out yesterday. Took Ruth and SeoAh over to Red Herring Arts only to discover that, in spite of their web page, they opened at 1 pm. Since they’re only open on Wednesdays during the week, that meant we’d have to give it a pass. Red Herring is on Colfax, a really long street that reminds me of Lake Street/Marshall in the Twin Cities. The western part of it, where Red Herring is, was once the Orthodox Jewish center of Denver. My friend Alan Rubin grew up there.
Now it’s filled with cheap motels: The Bunny Rabbit, The Swan, The Western, The Rocky Mountains, marijuana dispensaries, tattoo parlors, many Mexican restaurants. Casa Bonita, a Denver landmark known for its bad food and cliff divers, shares a wall with Red Herring. Casa Bonita advertised this Sunday in the Denver Post for cliff divers. I’ve not been, but someday.
We drove all the way into downtown Denver on Colfax, some miles. I love the transitions of these long, older streets. At one point we passed a Russian/Turkish bathhouse. Next to it was the Pleasure Palace.
As we neared Broadway we passed Civic Center Park. In a colonnade there Ai Weiwei, the dissident Chinese artist, has a set of bronze heads mounted on poles. They represent the Chinese zodiac.
At Broadway we headed south to Meiningers, Denver’s largest art supply store. Ruth’s working on a portrait of SeoAh and Murdoch in black and white, so I bought her some oil paint. I picked up a few things, too. A palette I can clean, unlike the wooden one I’ve been using. A few brushes, some paint and a color mixing guide. “You have to have one,” Ruth said. An expensive visit.
Next stop Stanley Marketplace. It’s one of many repurposed aviation buildings in Stapleton, a new urban development project on the site of the old Denver Stapleton Airport. SeoAh, Ruth, and I all love sushi and the Stanley has Misaki. We got ourselves a table and ordered. Two wooden serving platters later we were all full. I went next door to Maria’s Empanada’s and bought Kate, as requested, two mushroom empanadas. I also picked up a couple of italian sausage and beef empanadas, too. Dinner.
While I sat in a large open air lounge, Ruth and SeoAh went shopping. Jon lives nearby so we returned Ruth to his house and came back home. I find these outings take a lot of energy these days. Specifically these days in a nearly 72 year old body.
A good day. SeoAh had fun, got out of the house. Ruth picked up some supplies, so did I. And, we all had sushi. Better. We had a few hours to talk, cement bonds, build for the future.
The stent moon is a crescent, 12% illumination, hanging over Eduardo and Holly’s. It’s been everything I hoped. Next, a month focused on getting Kate’s weight up. What would you name the moon for that month? I’ll take ideas until Friday.
I woke up. The air is cool. My body’s ok. Kate’s beside me with no nausea or cramping. Kepler’s wagging his tail, ready to go upstairs for breakfast. The power came back on yesterday after a long outage. The generator works. I didn’t even know it was on. The long road to DIA offered good conversation with our second son. He’s going back to Minnesota to spend time with a friend who’s depressed. That gives me joy. Ruth up here painting and giving me tips. Joy. Pure. Gertie’s kisses. Murdoch’s bouncy, smiley presence. Snow. Cold. The black clear night sky with stars and a crescent moon. A car that works. SeoAh’s cooking. Kate’s joy at her relief. Gifts, joys, and gratitude. Everywhere I look.
Are there challenges? Oh, yes. But our human tendency to scan the horizon for threats, be alert for danger often blinds us to everyday wonders. Life is not all about illness, or finances, or legal trouble, or separation from loved ones. Yes, these matters crop up in our lives just like the occasional predatory lion or tiger came upon our ancestors in the veldt or in the forests of India and, yes, we need to see them, understand them, respond. We do not, however, have to build our lives around them.
Here we are in another year. Took second son to the airport at 7 am. Big traffic jam about 10 minutes from the airport on Pena Road. Took 20 minutes to clear. Lot of pissed off people.
On the drive last night I thought about year themes and resolutions. Not a big resolution maker anymore. Nonetheless, I made some anyhow. In short form they are eat, write, paint, exercise, read, teach, cook.
Ruth has paint brush in hand working on a black and white version of a SeoAh and Murdoch photo. It’s so much fun to have her up here painting while I write this. Creativity bonds us. She’s using my oil paints, a medium with which she has little experience. She does have a lot of experience in acrylics, watercolors, photography. Her training has helped me a lot, too.
Aging brings with it an inevitable glance over the shoulder. Did I matter? If so, how? If not, why? Does it matter if I mattered? I suppose it would be possible to disappear into regrets or vanity or even anguish. But, why?
2019. The Blade Runner year. Dystopian time? Match. Authoritarian regime? Match. Police killing those marginalized to society? Match. The cinematography of our era may look different-though Hong Kong, Shanghai, Dubai-but the underlying premise of a dark future catching up with all of us was prescient, if not exactly surprising.
Dystopian futures, even ours from the perspective of 1982, have this seeming anomaly: Life goes on. Most folks make some accommodation, some compromise, and go on with their daily routines. Short of mass suicide, what other option is there? It is those very accommodations and compromises that are fertile soil for the demagogue and the populist. See Trump, Erdogan, Germany’s alt-right, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Brazil’s Michel Temer. Movies have to convey dystopian troubles cinematically, so we think if the visuals don’t correlate with ours that the movie doesn’t apply. Wrong. It’s the core cultural themes that are important.
Went to 
“Back there, where the Help Desk sign is, we have our inventory. Customers can’t go back there, but it’s all searchable and staff will bring you anything you want to see. 8 million comics in inventory. 2 million on display. 10 million all together.” He seemed sincere, but the numbers seem pretty damned high to me. Even so, there’s no doubt there were a vast amount of comic books.
In addition to the 10 million comics several different displays featured toys related to the various universes represented in the comic book world. A true multiverse of the mind. There were Star Wars toys with death stars and yodas, Empire fighters and Millennium Falcons. Star Trek toys with Data, Captain Picard, models of the Enterprise. A large Ironman statue. Intricate modeled scenes from Batman, Superman, the Marvel comics sat alongside small action figures. There were chess pieces made of comic book figurines, including one full chess set with pieces modeled from Batman characters.
SeoAh and I went to H-Mart yesterday. Not sure if I’ve written about it before or not. H-Mart is a New Jersey based, Korean owned Asian grocery chain. It has two stores in the Denver metro. An obligatory part of a SeoAh visit is at least one visit to H-Mart. These are huge stores, set up like a cross between a grocery store and a suk with many small shops set inside a standard mall large box. On any visit there are folks from India, China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam scrutinizing the produce, buying live lobster or clams or fish, Asian cookware and dishes, choosing from so many brands of soy sauce. There are, too, the occasional Caucasians, some in families with Asian kids, presumably adopted, a few just shopping for themselves.
My goal in going with her was to learn how she shops, what she looks for. I want to learn at least a few Korean dishes; but, I really want to learn how a Korean cook thinks. That way I can make my own Korean meals. Kate likes the food and so do I.
10 degrees on Shadow Mountain. A couple of inches of fluffy powder fell over night, a minor storm compared to what had been predicted earlier. The lodgepoles have white flocking. Black Mountain hides behind a gray blue cloud. The neighbor’s Christmas lights, now past their expiry date, still glitter.
The learning curve in both astrology and oil painting slopes almost straight up for me. My mind gets short of breath at times. I remember this from Latin. Slog. Slog. Slog. Oh! “Confusion,” I read, “is the sweat of the intellect.”
At almost 72 I’m no longer naive enough to think I can master anything, but I’ve proved to myself over and over that with patience (difficult for me at times) and either a good teacher or a lot of autodidactic effort, I can learn new things. Even new things that might seem unusual for me. Organic gardening. Beekeeping. Raising perennial flowers. Writing novels. Teaching Jewish religious school. Living at altitude. Cooking. The downside of this valedictory life, that’s a thing, is that I’ve not become Tolstoy or a commercial beekeeper or Top Chef, certainly no Latin scholar. But I have had the chance to peek behind the curtain of numerous activities I might have once thought, like German, beyond me.
Christmas and Hanukkah 2018 in the past. New Year’s eve coming Monday. 2019. The Blade Runner year: “In the 21st century, a corporation develops human clones to be used as slaves in colonies outside the Earth, identified as replicants. In 2019, a former police officer is hired to hunt down a fugitive group of clones living undercover in Los Angeles.”