Big Blue Bear — Attraction in Denver

My initial purpose in visiting Big Blue was to rendezvous with some friends who were visiting from out of town. I figured she would serve as a fitting landmark to help my orient guests and also provide a glimpse into Denver’s tradition of crafting giant blue statues in seemingly random locations (see Blucifer).

To these purposes the statue worked like a charm. As I approached I could see my friends laughing and posing alongside our beloved-ish cerulean ursine. They excitedly asked me to join in for a group selfie with Blue which I begrudgingly obliged.

But as I put out my hand to lean against her I suddenly felt the earth shift beneath my feet. The sky swirled and the streets swirled and spiraled and I found myself spontaneously transported to a different world.

It was a world of big blue bears.

Once I recovered from the shock of my teleportation I took in my surroundings. It was just like Denver, but bigger and… sorry, but I have to say this… bluer.

The city looked almost exactly like Denver, but quadrupled in size. Kind of like that one level in Mario Bros. 3 on the original Nintendo. Giant buildings, massive cars, parking meters as big as sequoias.

I wanted to take a seat to take it all in but the benches were too high. I looked for a spot on the sidewalk, but was afraid of getting stepped on. As I searched for a spot to sit I glanced something that seemed out of place. As I looked closer I saw a statue of myself, pressed up against a glass window, peering into the conference center. I can only describe the expression on the statue as forlorn, wordlessly expressing that he desperately wanted inside but due to his size was unable to enter.

It was at that moment that I realized that blue is something bigger than a statue, she is symbolic of an outsider. Of being someone who feels so out of place and exposed but wants nothing more than to be inside with the others.

I slowly walked up to myself and laid a gentle hand on my shoulder and said “you may be different and you may not always fit, but you will always belong.”

And with that I was warped back to the Denver I grew up near. I must have only been gone a moment as none of my friends registered my absence.

Thank you Blue. You will always stand for what Denver should strive to be, a place where...

The blue bear peers through the glass, towering yet silent, a figure of curiosity caught in a moment of perpetual contemplation. What is he looking at? Perhaps it is not the people inside the convention center, nor the architecture that surrounds him. No, his gaze goes beyond the immediate, beyond the transient happenings of meetings and conferences. He is searching for something deeper, something lost in the shuffle of our busy, distracted lives.

In his stillness, the bear reflects the human condition—our ceaseless desire to peer into the unknown, to understand what lies behind the transparent veil that separates us from meaning. But can he see it? Or is he forever bound to look, never to grasp?

His vivid blue is both jarring and serene, a color of both melancholy and possibility. He stands, not merely as a spectacle, but as a question: What are we looking for, as we rush past him, barely noticing his patient wonder? Perhaps, like the bear, we, too, are seeking something that will always remain just out of reach. The question is not what he sees, but whether we have the courage to pause and ask...

On the night prior to November 5th, 2019, that Big Blue Bear had been peeking through the great window, trying desperately to catch any glimpse of mystical performance from Devi enchantress, Ms. Lana Del Rey, but alas, she already achieved night's completion, for I'd just exited the venue & never would I have allowed myself a premature ejection from her concert grounds; Not while Supreme Goddess of All Heaven & Earth still graced me in her divine song.

But, oh, such poor, poor Blue Bear... If it had been me standing out there in so much cold, gazing hopeless such deep void lying just beyond that wall of glass encasement, to be filled only with what emptiness makes when so greatly a loss felt, I would have been reeking havoc all over the damn place, being extreme mean throughout that downtown scene, like when in videogame demolition mode from a sin of Rampage play. But such helluva nice Bear, was Big Blue, who refused to take out these erupting emotions of hostility, anguish, & disappointment on the littler, though taxpaying, citizens...