I don’t know what to say first about Denver, Colorado. It’s been almost exactly 24 hours.
Keywords:

What do you mean “The mile-high city?” – Isn’t that just an expression? – does that mean you join the mile-high club just by…in the environs? – altitude sickness: being so light-headed I couldn’t stand up – going to St. Mark’s and The Thin Man with Sarah Rose and not needing to drink a thing to act weird because I was so dizzy – having a hot chocolate miraculously cure all my symptoms – meeting a Moroccan businessman who assured me he had stayed in all the cities of the US and Europe and preferred Denver to all of them “because you can live a relaxed life-” heatedly discussing civic policy and smoking bans – talking about Judaism and Islam and what it means to be religious – faith, doubt – I can’t go anywhere in this country without bringing up Israel – sleeping on S.R’s red loveseat in her apartment on St. Paul Street –

And today: riding heated buses down Colfax Avenue, which Sarah Rose says used to be the old road all the way to the coast, yes, my coast, passing bars and clubs and coffeehouses, all independent – downtown and the 16th Street Mall – tea and nervousness – walking through the archway of glass of the performing arts complex and realizing I was getting closer to the “theater” end when I saw a folding table propped up against a wall – there’s never anywhere to store all those folding tables! – S.R. dropping me off like my first day of kindergarten –

-and the whirlwind tour of the actual DCTC, in two levels, from administrative offices to scene shops, paint rooms and costume props – meeting new people in every shop, in every department, all so friendly and welcoming, all shaking my hand. And the ROOMS. The Rooms of Rehearsal.

Beautiful, naturally lit rehearsal rooms, color-coded by door (we’ll be staying in the Yellow Room) enormous, unfathomably large, clean, white and brick loft-rooms like eyries, like artists’ studios, like chapels, like the Room of Requirement in Harry Potter, the walls banked with pianos. I said to the stage manager, “I think I’m going to have a heart attack.”

I’m one of the few assistant directors this company has ever hired and I really want to do a good job so that they’ll feel interested in bringing future ADs back for outside directors. I know how lucky I am to be here.

Really lucky.

Getting my picture put on a badge. Memorizing codes and numbers. Getting keys cut. (The director and I have our own office that we share with the other visiting directors.) Being warned by an ex-cop about the dangers of walking down Colfax Avenue at night – being told Wild Denver stories about a beggar punching a car at an intersection and a gun being pulled – walking a mile in the cold to find a BofA ATM only to find it doesn’t take deposits – walking a mile back to Leela’s on 15th and waiting here, writing, to see Pride and Prejudice, if I can get walked in tonight.

High school students are drinking enormous mugs of hot chocolate. One says to another, “Just because it makes your teeth bleed to look at me doesn’t mean you can’t give me a hug.”

I love this town.