Have you been into that bathroom yet?” asks busker Dan Fister, “It is cold, and clean, like a Pacific schooner.” And we wonder what films he has seen today that would make him talk that way. We are in the @CTION party. It is lavishly decorated, perhaps like a Pacific schooner, and the music is rocking. A guy is tearing off his shirt on the dance floor and the door’s only been open five minutes. We should probably begin at the beginning of today, which has been a killer day, a day which has not killed us, which we are miraculously enduring, troopers, as we are, of the True/False Endurance Festival. It is only Friday. Help us. Get down here.

“I had red beans and rice, and a chicken wing, and a mini-scone thing.” Dan said earlier, leaving Reality Bites at the Picturehouse theater. A beautiful, hand-woven shirt, made of native fibers by visiting artist Taylor Ross, hung in a cedar teepee on the lawn outside the picturehouse. Dan touched it. He said it felt wonderful. Most people were not touching the shirt, though the sign said, “Touch, please.” We did, and it felt better than anything we usually wear, and it was made entirely out of native-plant fibers. We don’t think there is any place else in the United States where we can touch a beautiful shirt made of native plants. This festival is macroscopic. It includes everything. “Touch it. Feel it. Feed it. Celebrate it,” says Nina from The Pearl in reference to what she calls “the gender gift.” We won’t forget it.

At the same time, young Afghan boys were raiding a caravan in the Vimeo Theater at the Blue Note. The Land of the Enlightened, shot in breathtaking 16mm, depicts a boy with a prosthetic limb removing a land mine from the ground. He softly talks to the land mine as he removes it.

It’s hard not to mention the virtual reality experience we had in the Picturehouse. We strapped on a virtual reality headset and we were immersed in blindness. Sounds were represented as dense constellations. We heard a city park as a blind man sees it.

We saw Sonita and then we saw Sonita, in the lobby of a hotel, listening to her iPod. We wonder if she saw us as we were, struck with awe. We will never be as cool as Sonita. Claire Bauffaut, the volunteer with us, said she was calling off movies for the day after seeing the film Sonita. We understand how she feels.

Sometimes the movies we watch make us want to build a little fire in Peace Park, huddle alone there by our little fire, and just think for a few hours. The problem is we can’t. There are stories being told everywhere, stories we’ll never hear anywhere else.

We watched The Pearl and all of the stars were in attendance. In The Pearl, we watched a transgender woman hold on to her wig as she is lashed by the surf in Hawaii. Nina, a star of the film, told us, of seeing her film screen for the first time to a live audience: “It was intense. It was intimate. It got so bad my fingers were tingling.”  Nina flew in from Vancouver, where she’s “retired,” working six days a week as a pizza-delivery driver.

We asked Nina what she would say, if she could say one thing, to people who are still in the closet. “You are normal,” she said, “I would tell you you are normal. I would say you are not alone.”

We are walking up coming down Ninth Street. We hear a soundscape from where Ninth hits Broadway. We see a tree woven with rainbow lights. Everything feels neon in Columbia. The sunset is beautiful again. The weather is getting more perfect.

At the March March, a pug with a pink scarf around his neck was the star of the show. The pug with the pink scarf is not with a film, as far as we know, but it is obvious that this pug is somehow involved. A golf cart with wooden legs came pedalling down the street. The pug barked at it. This pug is connected. That much is clear.

There are beautiful people everywhere. This is fashion week. We try on clothes, take them off, put other clothes on. We saw the singer Lee Fields last night. He was looking perfect. He wore a coat that looked like a disco ball. Lee Fields has a song, “I still got it,” that makes it seem like there was a time he didn’t have it. We can’t imagine, after seeing him play, that Lee Fields ever didn’t have it.

We went to the Cafe Berlin, where Lone Piñon was playing. It brought us somewhere we have never been. We are traveling space and time. Every place we go transports us somewhere new. We re-emerge into daylight, after the film, and we get our bearings.

True/False 2016 Daily Digest: Friday, March 4, 2016