Living Ghosts: 2014

The City of Denver is quite an enigma. History is closely mingled with the present and the future. This is evident in the urbanscape of the city. A string of beautiful little houses and big houses that tell of a different era altogether. Gaylord Street was my muse today.

While admiring the architecture along with the iconic mountainscape I listened to the last few days of Randi Rhodes. I though about what she said about doing something more meaningful with your life. And not simply pursue money--was the gist of what she was saying with regard to her leaving. I thought you know she's right. We, as a society are addicted to entertainment. Every night I go home, the T.V is on. The radio is on. WE are playing with our cellphones. All the time we sacrifice to our God ENTERTAINMENT. How much time do we waste pursuing our selfish little pleasures. When will we cease to be merely consumers? You have to be productive to humanity. You must create something. I thought of the hours and hours of land coming across on the train. I thought not only of the beauty but the vastness and the beauty of the vastness of the North-American landscape. You feel the pull of the West more that the pull of the east. You feel that Romanticism of Abert Bierstadt must have felt when he painted his famous Sierra Nevadas. You get a sense of what it must have been like for the now infamous Donner Party as you're crossing over Donner's Pass through Oregan. You see the wildness and the vastness of the wilderness that enhances its lure and mystique. You feel the pull like Buck in Call of The Wild. Jack London's foray into the Northwestern wilds. That took you through the cold and forest. You watch all this while you're being conveyed through thousands of miles of winding railroad track dating back from as far as the late 1800s. Little hamlets here and there. Little houses with little chimneys. So cozy! You feel the country. Although in a way it's like you're watching it on T.V in the comfort of the train. Where you can't even open the window to smell the air of the thick luscious forests.