Around a corner, just inside the old house’s front door, we stood in space cut diagonally by an intruding stairwell. Tables were set perpendicular to one another, filling the long hall and the dining room. Glasses were filled with water and wine, and napkins were set across laps leaving the silver ware bare but not exactly catching the light. Gray skies had dulled what came in the window and it had been pushed open to fill the room with fresh air and cooler breeze to warm the room hot with body temperatures. I sat with my legs buckled under and my stomach pushed against the table. I talked to anyone close about how things were going and not being honest about it. No one wants to know the truth. The truth is only spoken in cafes among couples sitting across from one another, and lies are spken then too, no matter how clean or well-lighted the place. These are writers and designers, photographers and salespeople, and I’ve written about our gatherings before.

My objective is not to dissappoint them, that the compassionate person who authors what they see in print is not discouraging in the flesh, that the words are not clumsy. And they weren’t. They flowed as cleanly as the wine, bottle after bottle brought from the kitchen in slender steel cylinders. And it’s only a few who don’t make the connection bretween me and the words, and I was one of them, once. There is no disassociation, no incumberance. One is the other, and in some ways, I am the words, and I’ve been set free to find them and bring them back to the ones I love most.

I was living life as I always had, and it felt good to come from people who don’t have to care, but do. We ate orderves, bread with olives sliced and poured in the plates center, some croissaints stuffed with warm red sauce. The real feast was the comraderie. After a bit, I stood at the bar and spoke with Brynn, the bartender, and another woman at the bar who was gathering underwear donations for chasrity, and somehow it all made sense in the urban environment. The regular patrons had come in off the street and been greeted in the old two-story house by the proprietors, the walls next door close enough to touch by reaching out a side window, the sort of house where music spills out and intermixes on the back porches and is amplified by the wood panelling. And it’s always guitar music, electric, from another era the houses haven’t left, a time they weren’t built in but a time they adopted.

Some conversations were had about writing and my advice sought and I gave it, as usual, but I know that the less you know is as good in discovering brillance, in describing the world freshly with nuance not heard before. A younger writer said he compared his work to mine and that mine was better when in actuality, he was light years ahead of me at his right out of college age. There were mostly romantics among us and that is what I love about them. Love is hard to come by and when you find it, harder to believe it still. Love is a letdown as is the search for words, sometimes. Meaning can be found and made to sound complete, but descriptions can be fiction, and there is no explanation for it no matter how much these people look for it. The world is still filled predominantly with people who overlook its beauty, that never stop to see it for what it’s worth, and it is worth more than the time it takes to observe.

I had a few drinks to little effect though they almost came on strong. Consistency in craft and in being. Everyone was in good spirits and there was a different feeling in the air. We were passing it on, to one another, and the words just wrote themselves.

Kansas City’s turnaround downtown, often likened to an urban renaissance, has been measured by the flashy new buildings and foot traffic in the urban core. Christina Boveri has brought about a similar change in the way people feel about Kansas City. Each month in Urban Times magazine, she lets writers like me tell the city’s story with almost no limit on creativity – our only direction being to offer a true and level-headed approach to what’s happening around town. In that sense, she’s helped fashion Kansas City’s image as a cosmopolitan place to live. But what’s most inspiring is that Christina doesn’t fully know what a great thing she’s done or how contrary Urban Times is to other local news publications. She’s a real, natural person and her soul shines through in her work. Any notion of recognition or glory that someone with her accomplishments might pursue is buried by the care she has for her city. I am a better writer because of her and any of my own successes, in some way, will always be connected to the chance she gave me to write … and write real.

Urban Times publisher Christina Boveri didn’t mean to betray any lack of faith in me during our brief conversation this afternoon. In actuality, her words were intended as guidance – to clarify the direction I should take in writing the feature story for the February edition of UT. We’d just finished a long discussion about a potentially controversial feature story subject and her parting words on the issue were, “Remember … everyone is going to read this.”

Christina and I have worked on a number of stories together in the last two years. This wasn’t the first time we’d come down to the wire on a deadline before determining what direction to go. What she meant was to clarify that we should be fair to the person we are writing about, as usual. I didn’t take her remarks any other way. In fact, several hours later, I laughed when it occured to me that another writer might believe her to have betrayed her true thought that maybe the writer was somehow reckless.

Another point she was making with the same comment was that people actually read Urban Times. They don’t take if from the rack, pin it under their arm and intend to read it at some later point. They read it. They save them. They learn from the stories.

But as I think about it now, just a small part of me wonders if what she said was exactly what she intended and I’m just blowing off the pressure of needing to turn in another 1,000-word feauture story with high marks. I guess it could be seen as a blessing that some writers’ memories are just as poor as their verbal communication.

I watched the storm play out subtly from The Cashew’s second floor. Above me were the metal rails on which the windows roll back and open up the second floor to let in the summer air and city smells. This was a completely different view than it would be in June when those windows, which equated to the building’s sides, were rolled back for enhanced atmosphere and trendiness.

Flakes fell steadily while the party-goers sipped rum and vodka mixtures and chewed ice despite the cold barren scene they’d forgotten in conversation and the bar’s warmth. As gradual as the snow fall, intoxication came to us all. Discussions that began guarded or with an edge became open to flattery and bombast, honesty and blue humor.

People who’d begun the night with hands in pockets and folded arms were embracing and posing for photos all while the weather denied the prognosticators, buried the high-rises and skyscrapers, brought a silence to the streets that would likely last only a few hours after the storm dried up and the buses started running on schedule.

My intention was not to drink heavily and for the most part, I kept that promise, but after the white-knuckle driving to reach this place (it’d taken me an hour-and-a-half on a drive that typically lasts 35 minutes) alongside this sudden solitude on the new-coated streets around, I felt a strong sense of relaxation among the bleak scene. I sat at the bar with a plate piled with appetizers, which I hoped would absorb the vodka cranberry drinks I’d downed.

Usually public and disquieting, the streets were gentle and the safety translated to my company. This was a small band of friends, colleagues that were writers and designers, photographers and artists, editors and the occasional spouse pretending to enjoy us all. Any level of comfort at a bar can be dangerous, so more vodka cranberries went down – just enough, though, to make me jovial.

We talked about Urban Times, the magazine that a few of us contributed to from the beginning, a magazine begun in much different weather, spring almost two years ago, the debut coming in a steamy July. The times and the situation were different. The weather was different for the city then, too. To go from obscurity to writing material that is thoroughly read is a magnificent accomplishment. I wouldn’t have come out in this weather for just anyone or risked the drive home on worsening roads.

After the group photo was taken, I stepped out into the raw night and the still-falling snow. Another year – another unexpectedly successful one – for a new magazine was about to be put to bed and the people who had worked to make it what it was were all nursing sleepy heads, ready to be tucked in.

The latest edition of Urban Times is circulating at First Friday gallery showings in the Crossroads tonight. This month, I wrote the cover story about Julia Irene Kauffman and Tom Bloch, the heirs to two of Kansas City’s most prominent families. Be sure to pick up a copy if you’re downtown this weekend.