Anchored, But Adrift

I haven't written as often here because I'm starving, and I'm hungry. Starving because of the limitless emptiness of the Santa Clarita Valley, unsuitable for anyone whose health is bolstered by happiness and imagination. With Las Vegas coming soon, I can ignore it well enough, but what had only been just part of daily life in the years before this upcoming move becomes more vivid when thinking about what lies ahead in Las Vegas. Hungry for my new home, which is coming soon, and so I fill myself with bananas and other healthful foods for my physical being, and books and the occasional movie for my mental and spiritual being, currently reading Star Trek and other sci-fi books, and the rest of my Las Vegas book stack.

I could write about memories made during our most recent trip back in January, being stunned by the discovery of healthy-looking people at the Galleria at Sunset mall in Henderson, compared to the emasculated, miserable-looking masses here. And that private screening of Beauty & the Beast 3D at 9:30 at night with my sister, just downstairs from our room at Fiesta Henderson. Just take the elevator, walk a few hundred feet upon reaching the ground floor, and there you are in front of Regal Fiesta Henderson 12. I will get used to movie theaters being inside hotel-casinos, but my fascination with that will never fade. I want to write more about the latter and in fact have written part of that entry, and will write it in full soon.

I should write more, though, about Brooklyn Bagel, about Popcorn Girl (their nacho cheese popcorn is dead-on. Are you in a popcorn shop or a madly wonderful laboratory?), about Smith's supermarket in that same Henderson shopping center where I got my toy flour truck (brown with model bags of flour stacked in the back) in 2007, and my toy fast food truck most recently. I haven't felt a sense of community in a supermarket in years, and there it was, part of a neighborhood, part of meaningful lives.

I've written at length about what I plan to do after I become a resident of Las Vegas, and compared Santa Clarita and Las Vegas enough. I feel like there's not a great deal of energy while waiting for that momentous day of finally going home. I've never been more excited about anything in my life, truly, so maybe not writing as much is a way of building up my creative energies to burst when I finally arrive, constantly replenished by the unreal-yet-so-very real sights, sounds, smells, and tastes I experience, and then experience again and again in a city in which I hope to spend the rest of my life.

Even with my hesitancy to believe that I have more in me to write about on here when there sure would be based on that recent trip alone, and of writing projects I'm pursuing, something slips in like our visit to the Goodwill store yesterday, where I saw enough VHS Emmy consideration screeners to make me even more happy that I'm leaving this valley. I've been too close to Hollywood in this valley and I don't like it. It's funny to think, though, that parts of King of California were filmed here while I was living here and I didn't even know about it, because I still didn't have an inkling of what this valley was all about, until finding out that it was about nothing, that anyone could come through here, turn this valley into anything they please, and it would fit because it has no personality of its own. But I've said that before, I know. At least I found one useful screener in that collection, of Don Quixote, starring John Lithgow. I want to write a modern-day adaptation of it, and it serves as some of the research I have to do for it.

Creative energy should not only come from place, but it's damned hard to be inspired where you don't like to be. Nevertheless, I'm always thinking about Las Vegas, of all the streets I've yet to see, all the casinos I've yet to walk around in, the buffets, the restaurants, the arcades, and going back to the Pinball Hall of Fame on East Tropicana Avenue, of course.

Yesterday, I thought about a novel I really want to write, about a famous Las Vegas historical figure's encounter with a famous visiting historical figure. The famous visiting historical figure actually did visit Las Vegas, but his encounter with that famous Las Vegas historical figure is an urban legend, hence my desire to turn it into a novel. I received a book in the mail about that famous Las Vegas historical figure that I originally thought was a biography. I found out that it's a novel, but I'm encouraged by this, because its author had to have done some research on the figure before writing this novel. I can read it and get a feel for this figure in this historical fiction and go from there. And perhaps this author even wrote about that encounter, however briefly. I can't write any part of that novel right now because I need the newspaper archives at a few key Clark County libraries, in addition to ransacking the Nevada history sections for my own knowledge, as well as research not only for this novel, which will take place in either late '40s or early '50s Las Vegas, but also for another book I want to write about a certain aspect of Las Vegas history. Nothing shady, although some of the figures around it were shady, but that's not the overall emphasis.

Still, inspiration doesn't come easily while waiting, though I should ignore all that because really, I can write anything I want here. I'll try to do better, even when the errands are the same ones we always do. I won't have to deal with this for much longer. It's why my mom bought a snowglobe with the Luxor pyramid inside, and "Luxor Las Vegas" on the side. It's her beacon of hope. It's mine too. We'll soon be there, and I'll be writing more than I ever have. Best maybe to just do it leisurely for now, much like that 2:30 a.m. walk through the casino floor at Fiesta Henderson on our first night there, totally empty, Sara Bareilles' "Vegas" playing on the overhead sound system, and me not reacting to it in any way because I knew I was home. Yet when I got back to our room, I went to Amazon on Dad's laptop and downloaded the song to my cloud drive on there, to be downloaded and put on my MP3 player when we got back here. The endless energy will come.