Where Are You in Your Mind?

Last night, while trying to get to sleep, I fretted about having so many ideas for nonfiction books and adult novels and YA novels and picture books and still more, and yet I haven't made much headway on any of them. Not out of laziness or ambitions being bigger than my abilities, but I guess it's the paralysis of choice. At least in the way I saw it before thinking about it more this morning.

I wish I could live in a library. Not necessarily a public library. Probably a college or a university library on a sprawling campus (the best kind), with enough space for regular exercise, walking and perhaps eventually even jogging, and a supermarket nearby, maybe some fast-food joints, a bookstore here and there (not only on the campus) to see what's being sold in the area based on what's continually in stock, and perhaps a movie theater or two. In this, I think about Lied Library on the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) campus, which is all on Maryland Parkway, which I consider the most vibrant corridor in Las Vegas, which, if continued to be developed properly, could be one of the great hopes for the city perhaps being known a little more for something else than what it already is and always has been. Further down is the Boulevard Mall, which includes 99 Ranch Market, Goodwill, Ross, Seafood City, which is the local Filipino supermarket, and a Wing Stop Sports bar which, if you know Wing Stop, is much larger than your average Wing Stop, with lots more individual tables, TWO soda dispensers, an honest-to-god bar with alcohol, which is considered amateurish by Vegas standards, and big flatscreen TVs all around. I would have wanted to live at Lied Library, if not for the extreme desert heat and cold that I endured for five years. But that library, my god. Not only was there always more than enough room to walk the UNLV campus, but in the two times I was there as a substitute library aide at Paradise Elementary, which is also on the UNLV campus, I got lost on my way back from Lied Library to the school, before starting work there at 10:30 a.m. Both times, I didn't think I'd get there on time.

The stacks inside Lied Library are so massive that they're located on three successive floors, four if you count the serpentine design of the Leisure Reading section on the first floor, which I never noticed until the final time I was there, as part of our family's farewell tour of Las Vegas, which was cut short at the Wynn on another day when the movers called and said they were going to come to move us out on Sunday, and it was Friday. I was impressed by the sheer number of interesting titles in the Leisure Reading section, which, being in a university library, was far more extensive than Ventura College has in its Leisure Reading section, but it's no less interesting here.

The stacks with call numbers A-HJ are on the third floor, HM-PR on the fourth floor, and PS-Z on the fifth floor, all under the jurisdiction of the Library of Congress classification system. And with what they have, with all the presidential history books I could ever want, translated novels from different countries, every subject that could pop to my mind on a given day (from architecture to music history (especially 1970s music) to various biographies and memoirs and still more), I could easily spend the rest of my life there if such a thing were possible.

And yet, there are other libraries throughout the country, too, such as the New York Public Library (the main, famous one) and other university libraries which very possibly hold as much, if not more as Lied Library. Chances are many of them do, though. It would serve to make me indecisive, but there are considerations which limit me, such as weather. Nothing on the east coast since it gets too cold in winter. Same with the Midwest and in the Great Plains, tornadoes and such, so I wouldn't want to root myself there either.

But that's what it comes down to: Roots. I don't have any. We moved so many times throughout Florida, twice in Santa Clarita (although we did end up in Saugus for eight years, after our first year in Valencia, but there wasn't much in Santa Clarita that made me feel rooted, although I do miss Stater Bros. supermarket), and five times in four years in Las Vegas, owing to various bleak circumstances, such as neighbors next to us and above us smoking constantly and the smoke seeping into our apartment, which caused us to move out after that year), as well as last year at Via Ventura here in Ventura, which ended with our dogs having a massive flea problem because they never properly treated the grounds, and now at the new Island View Apartments, behind the Ralphs supermarket. It's interesting, what with a fourth-floor rooftop deck that takes in a lit-up view at night of Oxnard and Camarillo, further to the west, that's far more impressive to me than the Las Vegas and Los Angeles skylines.

Therefore, to be connected to a place? To know it intimately? To feel a sense of civic pride in it? I don't know how that works, nor do I think I'd want to learn. Not that I think we'll move again so quickly, although I hope we don't, as it would be interesting lately to be in one place for more than one year, and by that I mean one apartment complex, but we didn't have a choice from Via Ventura to Island View. We had to get out of Via Ventura, which looks progressively worse and more desperate to bring in tenants since we left. Maybe there's a chance with Island View. There are a lot of problems within the apartment, which are actually much better than what we came from at Via Ventura and before that in Las Vegas. But they do take their sweet time in addressing them. When the Santa Ana winds howled through recently, an incredible draft blew through the gaps in the front door, which made the vertical blinds in front of the sliding patio door billow and I really felt it, since I sleep in the living room, my bed there and my bookcases nearby, towards the back door (it's a two-bedroom apartment, so my parents have the master bedroom, and my sister has the other bedroom). I like it because my TV serves as the living room TV and I've got the kitchen right there. What more could I want for a room? But that front door, which is actually considered the back door by the complex, since what is actually our front door, with our number on it, faces a hallway that leads to doors that open into garages also for rent by residents, needs weather stripping. I'm guessing right now, even though the manager of the complex came with the head maintenance guy last week to look over exactly what we needed adjusted and repaired, they'll run out the clock leading up to Thanksgiving and then let it sit until after Thanksgiving. Hopefully they'll address it afterward, but it's been sitting for so long. Even so, still better from all that we came from, including a bungalow in nearby Henderson, Nevada that had shoddy, stringy carpeting, black mold behind the washer and dryer, and a leaking air conditioning unit from the ceiling that not only required us to put a bucket underneath to catch the drops, but which broke down before the hottest day of the year that year, after a few times in which the shitty maintenance crew there insisted that nothing was wrong with it. It seems to me that matters of shoddy maintenance, as well as delayed maintenance, seem to only exist in the western United States. Never had that in Florida. Can't go back, though, what with hurricanes getting worse, and as a native Floridian away for so long, I've most likely lost my immunity to the humidity.

Anyway, through all of this, it took many years to realize that books, and moreso libraries, have always been my home. I seriously considered a career in aviation, first as a commercial pilot, and then an aircraft mechanic, and then a mechanic for Air Force One, before then trying journalism, which, even though I'm proud of what I did there, I left because I didn't want to live on an ulcer farm. And it was afterward that I realized how much libraries have been there for me. I started reading when I was two years old, and I particularly remember, before Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida in 1992 (we lived in Coral Springs, and only got the feeder bands, but they were fierce), worrying about not being able to return The Little Mermaid soundtrack on audio cassette to the Coral Springs Library, since they had closed right before it was due, and any fines that might accrue because of that. Fortunately, I don't think there were any after they reopened. I also remember ignoring my math homework from Broward Community College on Friday afternoons when I was in the Southwest Regional Library in Pembroke Pines, diagonally across from the then-tiny campus, in favor of looking for movies to watch on the weekend, which was how I discovered The Fabulous Baker Boys, starring Jeff Bridges, one of my favorite actors, which became one of my all-time favorite movies. In fact, since my dad dropped me off early at BCC before he went to work as a computer and business education teacher at Silver Trail Middle just down the street, I was always there before the library opened at 7 a.m. and spent my entire semester there before we moved to Southern California. Subsequently, I failed that college Algebra course and had to retake it when I registered at College of the Canyons in Valencia.

There are lots of other stories like that, and libraries have always been my one true home like that. Oftentimes, in my head, in my imagination, I go to those libraries I've loved. I spend time in the stacks at Lied Library, I walk through the Whitney Library on Tropicana in Las Vegas, proud at how they always consistently met the needs of that at times-downtrodden community, and reluctantly ignoring the awful, distracting tile flooring at the main Clark County Library on Flamingo, also in Las Vegas, to admire their paperback collection, as well as their eager interest in so many other subjects in the hope that others will be interested, too. I also look at photos on Yelp of the New York Public Library, as well as photos from inside other university libraries and imagine myself there. In each one, I feel like I'm home. It's why I like living in Ventura. The Ventura College Library is my favorite place in Ventura and between that and the holds I always have from various locations in the Ventura County library system, I'm never short of books.

All this helps me to not panic so much over all that I want to write and haven't begun yet. Those works can be a second home for me. Characters to meet and follow, ideas to expand on. Places in my imagination to explore, unusual things I've thought about that I wonder if others think about, and the only way to find out is to write them and see who reads them. It's more difficult, more challenging than simply opening up a book and reading, but I want to try. Our main computer here in this apartment doesn't feel as much in a dungeon as it was in that apartment at Via Ventura, so that's a start. Plus there's a lamp next to it and it actually becomes cozier at night. So there's some encouragement. Just try. Get up and try. And with enough effort, these stories I want to tell can come to feel like my life with books and libraries. Another place in my life to fondly call home. And I know it will never move.

Desire, Long After a Meal

As a Las Vegas resident, it was often difficult to get to absolutely everything that the city offered in food, at least that which interested me. There'd be that long stretch of summer in which practically hibernating in one's apartment with the air conditioning running 24/7 was critical, at least until 9 or 10 p.m., when you'd strategize about what to put in the cart at Smith's or Vons that wasn't so critical in refrigeration, and then try to get deli last so that it wouldn't be so affected by how warm it still was outside. Ice cream you'd have to rush home, and forget doing that during the day because it would immediately melt. It's why we never bought cans of shaving cream during the day, and then even when we were looking toward summer, we'd stockpile them so we wouldn't have to buy them as often. Otherwise, they would have exploded when bringing them from Target to the car. And in winter, sure you could stay out a little longer if you were bundled up enough, but the desert cold is still uncomfortable enough to make one laser-focus enough on what's already known. In most cases, it would be a long, pilgrimage drive to IKEA with the heater on full blast in the car.

So based on the weather in Las Vegas, and how hard it was to live there most of the time, in apartment living and in work, options were comparatively limited, but no less interesting or reliable. Vietnamese iced coffee came from the VeggiEAT Express counter in the small food court at 99 Ranch Market on Maryland Parkway, near Ross and Goodwill further down, which backed right into the Boulevard Mall on the same property. Although I've heard since we moved that VeggiEAT Xpress closed at 99 Ranch Market, I worshipped it. Every time I went there, I knew I was getting heavenly Vietnamese iced coffee and always the warning when I ordered it without ice that it would be too sweet. I didn't care! We went to 99 Ranch Market once a month, maybe twice, and I wasn't wasting the chance. I knew I could go there and it would always be excellent.

And then there was roast pork from #1 Hawaiian BBQ on Eastern Avenue, which was next to the street that was the main artery to the Walmart shopping center, next to the back of one of the runways at McCarran International. This particular Walmart was one of three options for us. There was the one on Marks Street in Henderson, a slightly sprawling shopping center, which always had the Sunset Station hotel tower in full view, as well as a 99 Cents Only store further down to the right that had more books than I've ever seen at any other 99 Cents Only store, in Santa Clarita and in Ventura. I think it was because this store, as well as the Whitney Library on Tropicana and the main Clark County Library on Flamingo, was attuned to people's needs during the summer. Being that we couldn't go out much, if at all, during those torturous hours, they knew what people might want and they supplied it. I got the sense that more people read in Henderson, even in Vegas, than they seem to here.

There was also the one on East Serene Avenue, which had a Wienerschnitzel nearby, an Office Max next door, and a Home Depot on the far right end of the property. That one was the more serious of the Walmart Supercenters in Las Vegas. It didn't loom like the one on Marks did, and in fact, I have an idea for a novel set in that one. And it didn't have the momentary distraction of planes taking off next to you at the McCarran one while you got out of your car and locked up before going inside. You simply joined the subdued herd and went in to get whatever you wanted. That was the domestic game, though. If one Walmart didn't have what you were looking for, you went to the next one, and then the next one, and always kept track of which Walmart had what, in case you didn't want to spend too much time in one.

Anyway, about the roast pork, I knew that was the ultimate for me. They did it well there and it was the only place I'd swear by for roast pork. Same with Capriotti's Sandwich Shop and their Bobbie, with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and mayo. Once in a while, I'd drift to the Slaw Be Jo (roast beef, provolone cheese, cole slaw, Russian dressing and mayo), but 90% of the time, the Bobbie was for me. I love Jimmy John's here in Ventura because they don't show off like Jersey Mike's does, and their sandwiches are often better, but I still miss my Bobbie. However, I never want to go back to Las Vegas, for anything, so the Bobbie will remain a fond memory.

It's different in Ventura and its relatively nearby environs within the county. Take tomorrow, when I have to go to the Ventura County Community College District office in Camarillo for a test for an Office Assistant position. The office is on East Daily Drive, and about a block or two from it is an intimate strip mall that contains Basil & Mint Vietnamese Cafe. Now, when we moved to Ventura, I swore by the Vietnamese iced coffee at Pholicious, which has since been renamed Pho & Tea, in the food court at the Pacific View Mall. But the first time I had to go to that district office for a test for another job I didn't get, we discovered that strip mall, that Vietnamese restaurant, and I was curious. Could they possibly have Vietnamese iced coffee? And what was it like?

As it turns out, if I must compare Vietnamese iced coffees between the present and the past, the iced coffee at Basil & Mint is worlds better than the iced coffee at the VeggiEAT Xpress counter at 99 Ranch. After the second or third time, I learned from my favorite waiter there that they make the iced coffee every morning, using Cafe du Monde coffee from New Orleans and condensed milk of course, and it's the coffee that makes it because of the chicory. Now, I could buy the coffee and the condensed milk and try to make it myself, but I prefer to anticipate it. I don't need it all the time, and I know, having been to Basil & Mint four times, that there is absolutely no chance I could be disappointed by it in the future because the owner of the restaurant is entrenched in Camarillo, as his cousin owns Bigstraw Boba on Verdugo Way, in that leafy shopping center, near the Old New York Deli & Bakery. And there, at Basil & Mint, I always get a Vietnamese iced coffee right when I arrive, and then another, to go, on the way out. That's my tradition there.

I also think about the sandwich I had from Westridge Market in Ojai a few weeks ago, when my mom, my sister and I went up there for the day. It was a baguette sandwich, from Boars Head, an Italian sub, as they called it, with Genoa salami, pepperoni, capocollo, lettuce, tomato, their deli dressing, red onion, and provolone cheese. I'm not into Italian subs, and I only try a bit if someone else in my family gets it, but this was the most perfect sandwich I had ever had. I didn't know much about baguettes before this, but I think it is the perfect sandwich bread because it requires the sandwich maker to be subtle, not to overload it, to offer flavors not often considered, and to meet the demands of the bread. It all has to work together and not spring apart because there's too much between the baguette slices.

I won't ever forget that sandwich and I'll hope to have it again the next time we go to Ojai, if we don't end up at Ojai Pizza Company again, or even Bonnie Lu's, a country cafe that has pico de gallo that I swear was made by fairies. I've never tasted other pico de gallo so fresh like theirs is. That sandwich taught me that it's not enough to simply make a sandwich. You have to think about the bread and you have to think about the ingredients you want to combine. My other favorite breads for a sandwich is straight rye and marble rye. I can't imagine any other kinds for a sandwich and the only time I make an exception is for a standard peanut butter and jelly sandwich with whatever bread we have in the house, which is usually wheat bread. But even with that simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich, that baguette sandwich still looms in my memory.

I know it's the consistent weather here that allows for such ongoing desire to have what one loves in food. The second best Vietnamese iced coffee, to me, is at Boba Smoothies in what they call the Rose Shopping Center on North Rose Avenue in Oxnard, that strip of stores facing, yes, a Walmart. In fact, we go to that Walmart because our own, much smaller Walmart, doesn't have everything we need, although our own Walmart is still our go-to for disposable razors, toilet paper and paper towels, and I hope they stock Producers Egg Nog this year, although they don't stock much else of the Producers brand anymore, which is still around. It helps that we have it across the street from us, along with Trader Joe's, and our apartment complex is located directly behind the Ralphs supermarket.

That particular Vietnamese iced coffee from Boba Smoothies is sharp and involving like Vietnamese iced coffee should be, whereas the one at Pho & Tea in the Pacific View Mall is sometimes drowned out by the condensed milk they overuse. Even at the Pho & Tea at The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks, where the prices are higher, there's still the risk of getting the same kind of Vietnamese iced coffee as at the Pacific View Mall, namely because the same company owns both malls, and it's the same owner for both locations.

There's a contrast to all this, of course. Last night, we had takeout wings from Wing Stop, and I decided on an order split between their Louisiana Rub and garlic Parmesan, instead of all garlic Parmesan like I usually get. I'm not fond of Wing Stop. It gets boring and the only reason I got a different order than usual was just to see what the Louisiana Rub was like nowadays. Not out of genuine curiosity, but just something different to look at and get it over with. After I finished, it all disappeared from my mind. No further thoughts like the Boar's Head baguette sandwich from Westridge Market in Ojai, no anticipation for it again like the Vietnamese iced coffee from Basil & Mint. Wings don't interest me much, which is probably it. Give me pork, give me turkey. In fact, with turkey, it always interests me how different places roast it, what they use. We don't cook a whole turkey for Thanksgiving. We generally order a roasted turkey breast and it looks like this time it will be from Sprouts, provided my father orders it by the end of the week, which is what he wants, but man, we're getting down to the wire on that. Even so, I never get tired of turkey because of the different ways that I can find it. And I think I know why all this continually fascinates me.

I never knew who made the Vietnamese iced coffee at VeggiEAT Express at 99 Ranch Market, since it was always already in containers in that glass door refrigerator on the wall behind the register. It had likely been a while since we'd been there and I just wanted it. With the roast pork at #1 Hawaiian BBQ, I sometimes thought about when they might have put it in the oven to roast, what might have been done to it beforehand, but that was it. Once I got my order, I didn't care any more about the methods to my dear madness.

Here, I know. I can imagine them making the Vietnamese iced coffee at Basil & Mint after the waiter told me all about it. I can imagine the care that went into it, because I can taste it. I don't know who made the Italian sub that I bought at Westridge Market, but it's clear that they love sandwiches. In fact, that sandwich is what shifted my list of my favorite foods. My top two are quesadillas and nachos. My third used to be Fettucine Alfredo, but that one sandwich is what put sandwiches at #3, knocking Fettucine Alfredo to #4, if I even still go for it. I know it was also the setting at Westridge, when we found a table nestled behind a sharp "U" shape of bushes outside the store, that looked out at those majestic Ojai mountains that always make me think, "Who the hell needs TV?" For that lunch with my mom and my sister, there was also deviled eggs and orange milk that Meridith had wanted to try from a glass bottle in that refrigerated section. She and my mom had had sushi, but all that mattered to me was that sandwich.

Here, within food, it's also the people. Here are people in Ventura County who care. In Camarillo, the rest of the Basil & Mint Cafe menu, besides the Vietnamese iced coffee, is phenomenal. I love their sandwiches there, especially their pork offering, and I can sense the dedication from the kitchen, the pride in their work. Here in Ventura, there are good people. The ones at Jimmy John's are not only fast, but they know exactly what's wanted in each sandwich. They must glance at that order receipt right away and then commit it to memory in a split second.

Oh, and CJ's Barbecue in this Ralphs shopping center! I nearly forgot about the rib tips and the black-eyed peas there! Pork rib tips, which was already a plus with me, and they do some magic to those, too, but it's clear that whoever does it has been fascinated and completely in love with barbecue for years. And their deep, rich, salty flavoring for their black-eye peas makes it my favorite side.

See, we're not a demonstrative town. We won't hype anything up like Los Angeles hypes things up all the time, from movie premieres, to expensive Apple store openings, to whatever else requires media coverage. You have to look for what might interest you and then decide, on your own, what's worth your time. There are no outside influences, and that's what I like here. And when you find it, you hold onto it. I don't know who actually makes the ham and cheese croissants, for another example, that Master's Donuts sells across the street from me, but they're the best I've had in Ventura County. If it's actually the ones who run the store, more power to them. I'm not entirely sure because when we ordered one of their enormous donuts in order to thank the movers that we had on the morning we moved from Via Ventura to Island View Apartments, behind Ralphs, it was a croissant box that looked like a shipment box, from somewhere deeper in Southern California. So maybe they do order the ham and cheese croissants to sell in the shop. Even so, they know quality. They're aware of what's wonderful, what would raise their profile even more than it already is.

It's also like Luna Grill, which is in the Vons shopping center, which I worshipped when we lived nearby at Via Ventura. I haven't been there in a long time since there's been other, closer (and not so close) distractions, but besides their gyros quesadilla being one of the best quesadillas I've ever had, they have baklava wedges that I swore by. In that small kitchen, though, they definitely don't make those. They come from Baklava King in Santee, in San Diego County. And this is another example of people here caring, of wanting what matches the quality of what they already serve. Someone probably fielded offers from different bakeries that make baklava, and decided which one would be best for Luna Grill. And it is indeed as if they made it themselves.

It'll be the same with Thanksgiving. Yes, we're likely having the roasted turkey breast from Sprouts, and the cornbread stuffing from the Trader Joe's box, and the cranberry sauce from the Trader Joe's jar (the best I've had in so long), and probably green bean casserole and the usual candied yams, as well as pumpkin pie, wherever that might be coming from (I haven't decided yet, although I did like the pumpkin pie we got last year from Vallarta Supermarket in Oxnard, which came from the Jessie Lord Bakery in Torrance, but I might want to try a different one), and very possibly apple pie, too. But I will still read up on how others are celebrating Thanksgiving, what they like, because there is always an interesting combination of flavors to be found in any Thanksgiving feast and actually, despite quesadillas, nachos, and sandwiches being my favorite foods, my favorite meal is a Thanksgiving feast. Not even an hour and a half at Golden Corral (which had its grand opening in Oxnard today, so we'll be going soon) can top that. And there again, I wonder about all those who make this possible. The knowledge. The passion. The care. That's what it means here in Ventura, and I'm glad to have it.

Sondheim Through Time

On Sunday, January 26, 2014, my family and I, two years into living in Las Vegas, with three years to go, went to the Stratosphere for free admission to the Stratosphere Tower, being offered to Nevada residents for that day. We had gotten there in the early afternoon, bypassing the long, snaking line of tourists waiting to pay to get in, with the intent of staying at least through the early evening, to see a Las Vegas sunset from that vantage point and how everything begins to come alive from that point. Knowing that, I decided to bring along the biography Stephen Sondheim: A Life by Meryle Secrest, writing about one of my heroes.

Today is Sunday, January 14, 2018, 12 days shy of it being four years since I started reading that biography (I remember this because my Goodreads account, on my Currently Reading shelf, still has the listing for that biography all the way on the bottom, with that date, the oldest listing I have on that shelf). Not that the biography was bad from where I stopped (All told, I read about 30 pages while we were in the Stratosphere Tower, distracted by the 360-degree view), but since then, it's been for lack of trying, distracted by other books, wanting to stretch out what I don't know yet about Sondheim, watching Six by Sondheim countless times, as well as DVDs of two productions of Company, the original staging of Into the Woods as well as the movie, Sondheim: The Birthday Concert and a few others. It's a lot more fun to see his work in action, which has been the distraction. But still, I want to know how he came up with all those musical treasures. I've given this long weekend over to reading about some of my favorite people, and books by some of my favorite people: Phil Collins, through his memoir Not Dead Yet; this Sondheim biography (I have Sondheim's own two books, Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat, and I might delve into those afterward), Armistead Maupin's memoir Logical Family, and possibly The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard by David A. Goodman and Uncommon Type: Some Stories, Tom Hanks' first book, all short stories centered on typewriters.

This particular Sunday is time travel in memory at its most head-snapping. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon today finishing Not Dead Yet on the patio of our apartment here in Ventura, in unseasonably warm weather. On weekends, when we're not out, Dad tends to watch marathons of The Golden Girls and while a great deal of it is well-written, I get sick of hearing it all the time. So to the patio I went, unfolding the sole brown lawn chair we have out there.

And yet, on that Sunday in 2014, I had a jacket on, even inside the tower because we were planning to go outside, to where some of the tower's main attractions were, namely Insanity, which dangles riders out over the Strip while furiously spinning around, and X-Scream, which plummets riders to the edge of its tiny track, and then rises up and pushes them back, doing it a few times. Next to the exit of Insanity is the best view of some of the rundown apartment buildings surrounding the tower. By that time, we had moved twice already, from the Valley Vista All-Age Mobile Home Park on Cabana Drive in Las Vegas, to the Pacific Islands Apartment complex in Henderson, all the way in the back, blessedly removed from traffic noise, but cursed by heavy smokers in the apartments above us and next to us, which seeped into our apartment. The complex did nothing about it because "everyone has the right to do whatever they want to do in their own apartment." However, after the remodels they did of the apartments as they became vacant, which surely cost them a pretty penny, I wonder how they feel about that now.

I started reading Stephen Sondheim: A Life when we had found seats in front of one section of this view, in the distance the screams of those bungee-jumping from the top of the tower (we got near to that area, too, and watched the process over and over and over. The ones who set up those were jumping were impressively precise. This wasn't a careless, cigar smoke-filled attraction. There were real lives involved in this and those employees were aware).

The view was overlooking Dad's school then, Fremont Middle, and this is where we would be for a while. Because of the offer, and the visitors in that long line coming up here, the tower was crowded, so you get seats where you can find them. And this was good enough. I was paying attention to what I was reading about Sondheim's childhood, about the indeed separate lives of his parents, but not as attentive as a fawning fan should be. Of course, it was the view, one that's impossible to see anywhere else like this in Las Vegas. I didn't imagine myself as Godzilla, stomping all over the city. I hadn't gotten to that point yet, when living in that valley became harder. I was just amazed at how far the concrete horizon spread. It didn't feel as crowded as Los Angeles looks from a similar height, but it was insistent. Bring in the tourists, let them leave, but try to pen in at least some of the residents because a great deal of them will still get away. As it was for us.

This Sunday, in 2018, I began rereading the beginning of the biography on our first patio, on the left side of our apartment (the one on the right side of our apartment gets too dirty too quickly, with pigeon feathers from those nesting in the crevices that the roof line of these apartments offers, as well as the pigeon shit that falls onto the patio from up there. This complex is none too quick to try to rectify the apparent health problem that could result from that), a corner view that faces part of Telephone Road, as well as a view of those walking on the sidewalk across the street, in front of the Peppertree Condominiums. When the temperature is as warm as it was today, and the wind is wispy and just a little bit talkative, it's perfect. Yesterday had the best weather we've had in five months of living here, and today was just a bonus.

It's quite a distance from trying to grab seats wherever they became available in the Stratosphere Tower. This town is much quieter than Las Vegas could ever hope to be in certain parts, so besides why I started the Sondheim biography this weekend, it's also the perfect atmosphere for it. I can concentrate here. I'm not distracted by any such view, nor any potentially drunken souls (none of that either where I live), nor any constant clamor to buy souvenirs (I had my fair share even while living in Las Vegas. I had two t-shirts listing the names of all the casinos on and off the Strip, myriad sets of playing cards, and I still have my Cosmopolitan t-shirt from before the faceless new owner, the Blackstone Group, killed off its confident, artsy spirit). Sure, walking around the inside floor of the Tower and outside where those rides are is not exactly the best place to be reading a significant biography of Sondheim. I know that. But for that many hours, usually seeing what there is to see in less than an hour and then picking out what I like the most to spend more time with, it just seemed reasonable to bring a book in case there was a stretch of time that I wanted to say that I had read a little something in the Stratosphere Tower. I might well have been the first person to bring a book there, knowing the tourist value of the place. That always worked better at Siegfried & Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at the Mirage, where it became my tradition to bring Paper Towns by John Green with me to read (I wasn't as into the place as Meridith was because of the dolphins, but I loved that relaxed atmosphere that encouraged visitors to sit a while if they wanted and worry about nothing), but here, why not have the chance to sit in front of one of the windows offering that expansive view, read for a bit, and have that view to look at for a while. I think it could elevate a great many novels.

I know that's not what Las Vegas is for, for pretty much everyone who comes to visit. In fact, it's not even what it's for for most of those residents. But for me, it was just to have a moment of artistic accomplishment in front of me in the way of that biography, to read about how someone else did it. I don't have the same ambitions as Sondheim, although I do want to write a few plays, but my admiration for him is boundless.

And here, in Ventura, it feels like a universe away from Las Vegas, and that's how I like it. There's more time in this town to simply be, to explore whatever you feel like in books, in being on the beach, in strolling downtown, whatever you can think of. Vegas always threw everything at you, all at once. It wasn't as frenetic as Los Angeles, but if it wasn't work you were worrying about, it was the weather (it was frigid that January, hence the jacket), or when to go food shopping (especially in the summer at 110 degrees, when you had to go as late into the night as possible so the milk would last until you could get it home), or the cigarette-smoking neighbors on their patio whose smoke always drifted right to where you could walk out into the rest of the neighborhood, and so much else. This town is better for the rest of Sondheim. I can read about his life more seriously here.

Perhaps one of the reasons I hadn't read much of the Sondheim biography that Sunday in 2014 is because it was the one time in what became five years in Las Vegas that the city felt completely calm to me. I could look at it from above and feel like maybe, just maybe, I could manage to live here. Of course, that was before the cigarette smoke in our apartment got worse, and before we moved a few more times within Henderson. But for that one day, it was possible, although I do think it was the first time I had seen any city from such a height, 1,149 feet up. It even made Las Vegas seem reasonable. Seem. The reality never matches it. It's at least better here.

Westgate Book Exchange

I was only at the Westgate Book Exchange, on West Charleston Boulevard, next to M&M Soul Food Cafe, once, which may explain why it's gone now. We went to West Charleston here in Las Vegas to try M&M Soul Food Cafe, and when we left, I drifted next door to Westgate. I am always pulled to stores that have extensive book collections, including the Goodwill in downtown Ventura, which I count as half a bookstore because of the huge wall of books it has near the register.

This one had rows upon rows of well-organized paperbacks, and there's even a photo on its old Yelp listing showing exactly that. I loved how whoever ran this shop had the mysteries organized so well, and while I don't read them often, I always want to find something markedly different when I'm in the mood. Hence this one that I'm reading right now which came from the Westgate Book Exchange: Flamingo Fatale: A Trailer Park Mystery by Jimmie Ruth Evans.

In our first year in Las Vegas, we lived in a mobile home park way down the street from Sam's Town, and though that's not quite the same as the trailers featured in this mystery, I know the atmosphere. I know the people. I know how loud the irritable, battling Lundys got toward each other diagonal from us. They didn't even have to be in their screened-in patio, and you could hear them. But they were history. They had been there since 1992, when Valley Vista All-Ages Mobile Home Park opened. It's under new ownership now, a different name, but I'll bet that the Lundys are still there, still sore at each other, still sitting in that screened-in patio on those rare quiet nights, looking over their tiny kingdom.

I know the Christmas decorations, how elaborate some of the neighbors got, and especially before, at Halloween, when one mobile home made it positively atmospheric. Not just the usual cobwebs and the fake bats, but dry ice fog for that night, with an almost-supernatural tinge.

So this mystery is definitely for me, but this is the first time that I've opened it since I bought it, an eventually futile attempt to read a great deal of what I have that's not part of my permanent book collection before we move. We're looking to move with as little as possible, not just for cost, but because Ventura has so much to offer for us, from antique stores to the bookstores I will most certainly frequent. Right now, I have a yen for world-class pianist Oscar Levant's books, but I don't want to search for them online. I've done so much of that in the past four years and had so many books shipped to me, simply because the only available bookstore nearby was Barnes & Noble on Stephanie here in Henderson, and my absolutely local library (located on the same side of the street as my apartment complex, though about 15-20 minutes to walk there) doesn't offer much that's truly adventurous, and certainly not that.

I want to browse those bookstores, seeking nothing in particular, but keeping Levant's books in the back of my mind on the off chance that I happen upon them. I want to give my money to the town, to support these businesses so they'll stay open. Salzer's, which has its music store on the left side of the turnpike, and its DVD rental store on the right side of the turnpike, has been open since the '70s, and in its current location since 1985, at least the video store side. Its owner, Jim Salzer, looks like if Derek Jacobi had spent his entire life in Southern California. That's where I want to be, in person, always in person. I'll rent from them once in a while, surely, and browse as often as I intend to haunt those bookstores.

Mostly, I carry over my experiences. I'm hoping for bookcases as well-organized as those that were at the Westgate Book Exchange, but a cozier atmosphere. I want to disappear into those lined-up books again, only emerging when I've found what I think will suit me. I think about G.W. Bookstore in Palm Springs, when we visited in October 2006, staying at what was then Hotel Zoso (now a Hard Rock Hotel), for the California Business Education Association conference for my dad. I remember walking in and finding a Vintage International Edition copy of The Remains of the Day from October 1993, when the movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson was released. I looked at the receipt I still have from G.W. Bookstore, an otherwise blank receipt, without the name of the bookstore, and I find that I bought it on October 9, 2006. I remember that the owner of the bookstore looked like he lived there, and it wouldn't have surprised me. I want to live like that.

Since Westgate closed, a few other independent-minded bookstores deep in the Las Vegas Valley have also closed. This is not a reader's town, I know, but it's still disappointing, given all the possibilities for when people are forced indoors by the horrid heat such as we're dealing with right now. Libraries should be even more open at this time of year, and some are, I've seen, but still not enough. This should be a storyteller's town, too, where people gather to tell their stories from places they've lived. Perhaps contests. Perhaps not. But just to gather around and fill this desert with memories of other places, other experiences, other excitements, other anything. I never had the ambition to try to establish anything like that here given all that we'd lived through in these four years, these four hard years that have seemed so long and yet, just the other day, I was thinking about when we first got here, and the next minute, here I am. Four years older. Surprised at the speed now.

Unfortunately, most of the stories I've seen here take on the same themes, in gambling, in drinking, never much in wonder, in creativity, in eccentricity. The Electric Daisy Carnival, which is happening this weekend, is the place for it, but I'll wait for the YouTube clips, and finish watching the documentary Under the Electric Sky, about the 2013 Electric Daisy Carnival, which I saw from my mobile home, at least the lighting being tested a few nights before it started. Huge beams of light flashing on and off and on and off and in different colors, and waving around, and it was like a promise that here you will find the freedom you seek, the life you've always wanted but never had the courage to go for. You can have it there, at least for three nights. It means many things to me, and I love the at times ethereal music, but I couldn't go out there as those hundreds of thousands of brave souls are doing at this very moment, trekking out to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway while it's well over 100 degrees today, and set to get even worse during the weekend, with 112 degrees and 113 degrees. Even in the dark, it'll still be 95 degrees. I don't envy them that, but I look forward to seeing how it turned out in photos and in videos.

No, my life now is in these bookstores, these libraries. I will be more mindful of my collection because there will likely be times I head there on my new bicycle (hopefully to work as well, which I plan to after I buy it in Ventura), and can't carry as much with me as a car trunk can. It establishes priorities, though. What do I want the most right now? Besides everything? What do I want to read right now? What's important enough for me to shoulder in the bag I'll be carrying with me while riding? Not many 900-page epics, I'm sure.

I wish the Westgate Book Exchange was still around, so I could see it at least one more time. But maybe, in light of these lifestyle changes, it's probably better that it isn't. I would dive into it again and come out with more than I should have before moving. At first, I will miss those days, but this is teaching me to relax with it. It will be there, but just be sure to visit often so it stays open. I will gladly support all the bookstores and libraries in Ventura. It's a start, on the way to knowing more about the town.

The End of a Tradition

This Sunday will likely mark our final visit to Siegfried & Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at the Mirage, ahead of moving back to Southern California. It will also be the first and only time we'll pay for parking on the Strip, which I still maintain was a huge mistake, considering that that's where the majority of tourists in Las Vegas go, and it doesn't pay to be greedy about where or how long they park their cars.

This visit is once again courtesy of the Clark County School District, which has on its Teacher Appreciation Week page coupons for various activities, including free admission for a teacher and a guest at the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat. As with the last two times, the people at the ticket booths only care that you have a CCSD ID and my dad, a high school teacher, does, as well as me and Meridith. So we four will have no trouble getting in.

I think this is mainly for Meridith, who loves dolphins, but it's also for the rest of us because it's quite possibly the most relaxing spot in Las Vegas, the one place I've found here that is complete peace. I like seeing the dolphins, and even glancing at the tigers and other animals in the Secret Garden section in the back, but I love just sitting at a table in the shade, preferably near one of the dolphin pools, reading. And I've done that in all the times we've been there. In fact, this post follows a tradition I started in 2014, which you can read here.

Briefly, back then, I read The Fault in Our Stars, which got me hooked on reading John Green's other novels, and Paper Towns followed, on the day that we were celebrating Meridith's birthday at the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat, in which she got to paint with the dolphins. Of course, I was there to see that, but in the other blank times during the day, I was reading Paper Towns, sitting exactly where I wanted to sit, reading in one of my favorite places in Las Vegas.

The next time we went there, I brought Paper Towns with me again, and I think by that time, I had my own copy. That next time was before the movie was released in July 2015, and of course I saw that in theaters. And I like the movie as equally as the book.

So here we are again. As is my tradition, I will bring Paper Towns with me again. And just like those other times, I'll probably read it cover to cover yet again. Thinking back to those other times with Paper Towns at one of those tables near a dolphin pool in the shade, I realize that my experiences at the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat, with that near-spiritual peace, with Paper Towns, was rare stability in this valley. It wasn't just an hour, or an hour and a half, or two hours. It was the entire day. And in fact, it's why we plan to get there before 10 a.m. when they open. They're open from then until 5 p.m. and we're going to be there the entire time. It's one of the few places here that has meant so much to us, and certainly one of the flew consistently reliable places. I don't know yet how the rest of the Mirage might have changed (we considered it our home casino, what with all we had done there before we moved to Las Vegas and afterward, which can be found in that previous linked post), but I'm absolutely sure that the atmosphere of the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat has not changed. It'll be a proper farewell for us. And my copy of Paper Towns will always bear these many happy visits.

Back to a Musical Hobby

Last Monday, the first day back after spring break for the Clark County School District, I looked at my pile of vacation days and, since I'm leaving at the end of the year, I decided to take the remaining Fridays of the school year off. That's 7 of them.

Then, in the middle of last week, I thought, "Well, why not Mondays, too?" That way, I'd have a four-day weekend. Therefore, with Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday being the days I'd work, I'd have three days on, four days off. Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday would therefore be "Saturday-Saturday-Saturday-Sunday" and Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday would be "Monday-Thursday-Friday," likely the only time in my career that I'll be able to do this.

I thought about starting the Mondays off at the beginning of May, but then, you know what? It doesn't matter anyway. Teachers at my school are already counting down to the end of the school year, there's the hassle of the SBAC testing, and in submitting my letter of resignation about two months ago, I've already been replaced. My successor has been hired and is ready for next school year, so I'm old hat. And I can't be sure that these vacation days will transfer to my next job, being that there's a slim chance I'll be part of another public school district. That's way down on my list of jobs I want. I want to be a member of a staff this time, not just working with one person all day.

So taking off Mondays, too, begins tomorrow, the last week of the month. And tomorrow is also the end of my first four-day weekend. In this first weekend, I've finally been able to read a book again in one sitting, the first time in many months (The Calamity Cafe by Gayle Leeson, which was so-so). Then I did it again today with There I Go Again: How I Came to Be Mr. Feeny, John Adams, Dr. Craig, KITT, & Many Others by William Daniels. Oh, I want to do this again and again and again with the weeks remaining in which I'll have these four-day weekends, but I can't do it all the time. I have another book to review for BookBrowse, I have to update my resume and scan my letters of recommendation from librarians and my former newspaper editor (This week, I'm also going to contact the first reporter I interned for at The Signal, what with all the tapes I transcribed for him, and ask for a letter of recommendation from him as well), and update my profile on EDJOIN, which educational institutions across the country look at, especially ones in California. Since we're going to be living in Ventura, those are the libraries that I want seeing my information and resume and recommendation letters.

There are also a few movies I want to catch up on, though I've grown restless with those in favor of reading. I have to dig through the many DVDs I've bought sight unseen and pull out what I want to watch this very moment. And it has to be something that really interests me, else I'll be restless again.

But one thing I finally have time for again is a hobby I started when I saw The Cosmopolitan on the Strip going downhill before Deutsche Bank sold it to the Blackstone Group, which has a reputation for buying up properties, revamping them, and selling them off again. That's what's happened to my beloved Cosmopolitan. The digital art, sculptures, paintings, murals, and music were all important in creating a unique, inspiring experience that made you want to explore more of what they had all over, wanting to see that intricate spaceship sculpture by Kris Kuksi on the 3rd floor, after the secret pizza place, down the hall, next to the piano, before those conference rooms, and wanting to go to the Art-O-Mat vending machines to see what different artists there were from across the country with different pieces of block art being sold.

I found out on a visit a few months ago that the art has become an afterthought, most of the flatscreen TVs used for the digital art are gone (save for the ones at the blackjack, roulette, and craps tables, which are used to show football and basketball games), and my dear playlist had changed over to what you hear on FM radio all the time.

So, I'm creating a playlist which, to me, represents the Old Cosmopolitan on the Strip. I listen to KUNV, the University of Nevada Las Vegas's radio station, which Mom has on during the day. Sometimes I hear a piece during the smooth jazz hours that I want to use.

But mainly, I get my titles from the Music Choice Channels on Cox Cable, particularly the Sounds of the Season channel which, when there isn't a holiday like St. Patrick's Day or Mardi Gras or Christmas, they play "The Pulse," which is all dance music, chillwave, dubstep, and other types of electronic music.

So far, I have 10 titles, six from Music Choice, two from M83 (one from their "Oblivion" soundtrack), "Roses" by The Chainsmokers, and my latest favorite, "Walk with Me" by Wamdue Project. I wish I could describe this kind of music better, but all of it recalls for me the Cosmopolitan I happily walked through, imagining owning it all, and keeping it exactly like this. In creating this playlist, I'm also imagining on what floors these songs would have fit, such as what would have worked on the casino floor, what would have worked in the hallway leading to the Wicked Spoon buffet, just before Rose. Rabbit. Lie., what would have sounded right on the shopping/restaurant floor, and what would have worked for the convention hall spaces.

Strangely enough, the last two times I went to Green Valley Ranch, which, to me, is Henderson's only palace, I walked through their vastly remodeled lobby. In the wide, semi-carpeted hallway with the doors looking out on the pool area, leading to the lobby, I heard exactly the playlist I heard at The Cosmopolitan, which makes me think, and even hope, that whoever programmed The Cosmopolitan now works at Green Valley Ranch, that my musical heart and soul lives on.

Even after I move back to Southern California, I'm keeping this playlist with me to also remember the parts of Las Vegas I need for the novel or two, and a play, that I want to write that are set here. Despite the hell many times over that I've been through here, none of these works will rant about Las Vegas nor rail against it. That doesn't fit my characters. There may be a gripe or two in the play, but as for the novels, my characters just exist here, and at the end of one, simply leave, never to return, which is what I'll be doing, too.

And here it is so far, with its working title: The Old Cosmopolitan Las Vegas fantasy playlist.

The Bridge to Southern California

In the next few months, my family and I will be moving back to Southern California, from Las Vegas, though not to Santa Clarita, where we lived for nine years before we moved to Las Vegas. This time, it's Ventura, where the beach life is less crowded than, say, San Diego, which works for my father, who wants to retire at or near the beach. Based on the prices we've seen for beach houses and even condos on the beach, it'll probably be near the beach, particularly one street my parents found near Ventura College, with beautiful gardens in the front yard so many of the houses, and a Little Free Library at one of them. One of the comforting things my parents found out in Ventura was that one of the employees at the Welcome Center in downtown said that she's a third-generation Venturan. Historical longevity. That's what I seek. Another thing is that the owners of the house with the Little Free Library, in a profile online about it said that they've lived in that house for 44 years, and no one has taken pictures of it. But with the Little Free Library, people stop by all the time to see it.

44 years. After living in an area where one of the biggest stories last year, broadcast live at 2 in the morning, was the implosion of the Riviera, I need to know that I'm following the many who have lived faithfully in one place. Perhaps I can find my place there, too. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm cautious. I have some minute hopes, but I'm leaving them to the side until I see more, until I learn more, until I experience more.

However, this doesn't count only for Ventura. It counts for the whole of Southern California, which I had for nine years, but didn't really think as fondly of it as I do now. First, I was in my 20s during those nine years, so I didn't know a whole hell of a lot back then. What was I to think when I was busy attending classes at College of the Canyons, interning (and then being an editor for a time) at the Signal newspaper, and at first being bored by the usual Friday errands of going to the Pavilions supermarket and then Sprouts, and on Sundays delivering empty bottles to the Target in Golden Valley for the CRV money back. It turns out, after four years in Las Vegas, that those were among the most stable times we had.

When we moved from South Florida to Southern California in 2003, we went sharply from one world to another. Different coasts, immensely different lives, overwhelming freeways. There was no bridge from one to the other, no transition to make it easier to know and get used to. Same with going from Southern California to Las Vegas. Each region keeps to itself.

There is, however, some small part of the Las Vegas valley that gives to those who are leaving. Maybe it's something that was meant to be eventually discovered, something that has always been in our subconscious. So yes, I know about coffee, as I am part of a coffee-drinking family. Not to an extreme degree, but me, I'm a hardcore tea drinker. French vanilla iced coffee from McDonald's, sure. Something every once in a while from Starbucks, yeah. But not a Starbucks devotee. Not a household with a constantly burbling coffee machine, or even a Keurig. I have at least 100 teabags in one of the kitchen cabinets, but nothing coffee-related. That would be my mom, who has Trader Joe's Instant Coffee Packets in the cabinet. I have a hint of coffee in my daily memories, but not total, undying devotion.

And yet, as is said, it's never too late. It wasn't Starbucks that did it, nor a certain variety that McDonald's introduced, nor what any other coffee place in Las Vegas has. It was an unassuming counter at the 99 Ranch Market on Maryland Parkway, an Asian market that caters to all different cultures there, and at that particular counter, they were offering Vietnamese iced coffee, which according to some hasty research, either a dark French roast is used, or a Vietnamese-grown French roast. Combined with sweetened condensed milk, it is my new promised land. Besides books, it's what I live for, although I don't pursue it often here because we don't live near 99 Ranch Market, and there's no other places like that vegetarian counter near me.

We went this past Saturday because we were thinking about where to eat out, and Seafood City, the Filipino supermarket across the street from 99 Ranch came to mind, especially its Jollibee fried chicken joint, which is far better than KFC can ever hope to be now. So we ate there, and then came a visit to Goodwill because my mom wanted to see if there were any tea light holders, as we're into those fake tea lights, battery-powered or otherwise. Turns out that Goodwill had a 50% off the entire store sale on April Fool's Day, so we took advantage of that for sure, even though we're moving in the coming months. Yet all that we got will fit nicely into our new household.

99 Ranch Market came after, and this was my second time having that Vietnamese iced coffee, second time in two weeks. I'm a slow learner, and it took my sister to introduce me to it. Some can meditate sitting cross-legged in total silence, but I can't. This coffee is my meditation, my calm, my zen. I've actually gone back on my diet faithfully so I can have the coffee a few more times before we go.

And yet, this is a strange city. At the same time it's kicking you in the stomach, making you double over in all kinds of pain, be it having to live in an apartment complex with more batshit crazy neighbors, or a school district that's hard to work in, it actually recognizes what you're going through, though not often enough. It only gives you a little bit of relief at an instance and then ignores you the rest of the time. I think in this case, perhaps knowing we're leaving, it threw up its hands and gave me something I can take with me to Southern California, a bridge to Southern California as it were. Because after my first time of having that Vietnamese iced coffee, I began doing research on where I could find Vietnamese iced coffee in Southern California, and found a few places, although I will not go to Rosemead. And someone told me that the Westminster area of Orange County has Vietnamese iced coffee on practically every corner. I'm there.

I just never expected this generally heartless valley to offer anything like that, to offer a bridge like this, to get me into learning at least a little more about my new area right away. Not as much as when I studied Henderson, because with all I read about Henderson, I thought it was going to be nice, going to be community-oriented, and it was nothing like that. Whatever I find about Ventura will be when I'm there, when I'm tooling around on my new bicycle. I know about CJ's Barbecue, I know about Andria's Seafood Restaurant at Ventura Harbor Village, I know about Ventura Harbor Village itself, and Salzer's music and video stores, and a few more things, but I'm only digging insofar as the job I want and where we're going to live. Everything else can come after.

I appreciate what the Las Vegas Valley has done in this, in making Vietnamese iced coffee my new heaven, in giving me something to look to in our next place. But once I cross that bridge to there, I'm burning it. I'm never coming back to Nevada for anything, nor do I want to. I hope Las Vegas understands at least that. I think it will.

Four Taxing Years for Roast Pork

Factor in the rush to get to a mobile home park set back from the heart of Las Vegas for a teaching job, my father's teaching job, beginning very soon, from a house-looking condo in Saugus, California, in the Santa Clarita Valley that went for $430,000 when purchased in 2004, and left behind for a little under $200,000 in 2012, just to leave.

Add in that frustrating struggle to apply to be a substitute anything in the Clark County School District, how many months and phone calls and resubmitting documents that were correct the first time, before finally being accepted in January of 2013.

There was that terrible first job at that elementary school closer to the gloomy heart of Las Vegas, that poorer heart than what the Strip lets on.

That vicious elementary school librarian who clearly hated her job and lashed out at anyone with even the slightest notion of being happy in a library, including students, not too different from the full-time job there is now, as an aide to the same kind of elementary school librarian.

Remember to pile on that first apartment in Henderson, a year after the mobile home park in Vegas. The neighbors upstairs who smoked inside, and the neighbors next door who smoked inside, and the smoke that came through the vents, and the front office that claimed they couldn't do anything about it, or wouldn't. People are free to do whatever they want inside their apartments, they said. Who cares about the health of those affected by it? It could have been one of the things that led to the cancer that Dad has now nearly fought off entirely.

Remember the second apartment, going south on Green Valley Parkway, billing itself a "country club" when it was obviously nothing of the sort. That first apartment there with the noisy kids from upstairs screaming around on the grass in front of our windows, who used our car as a scooter ramp and scratched it up. Another front office that wouldn't do anything about it except offer us another unit, a bungalow, almost directly across the street from that current apartment.

The bungalow. Drafty. Terrible that winter. Badly-installed, trash-quality carpet that got too dirty too fast. Leaks all over the place, including from the overhead air-conditioning unit next to the washer and dryer. 11 leaks. All the maintenance guys that trooped through denied that anything was wrong, even the 11th time. And then the air conditioning broke down the night before the hottest day of the year, and it took them hours to fix it enough the next morning, into the afternoon.

The apartment now. The same complex as that secondhand smoke apartment. The front of the complex now, although the back was better because you couldn't hear the Green Valley Parkway traffic at all, only see it from a distance.

It's not much better here now. The upstairs neighbors who stomp around, and we can hear them in surround sound down here. Maybe they're pissed that the apartment we took, the woman upstairs hoped that her granddaughter could move in below her with her great-grandson.

Oh, the great-grandson, the tyke, who the grandmother and others in the family have turned into a little asshole just like them. The most this complex did this time was replace their worn flooring so that less noise could be heard from down here. It only made all that noise much clearer.

The shitty jobs. That first full-time year for me at that elementary school near Tropicana and Boulder with the psychotic principal who would scream at the staff about anything, even the most innocent thing. The same principal who screwed with my dad's payroll after he, a resource room teacher, and I left that school and he moved on to teaching again in high school for the first time in 30 years. People in Las Vegas cause only headaches, strife, and much undue stress.

I was a resource room aide at that elementary school. I'm a library aide at this elementary school here in Henderson, which I always wanted to be. But I burned out of this job back in September, the beginning of my second year there. If I had been working with an infinitely better, vastly more dedicated, highly qualified elementary school librarian, I would have burned out a year or two later, and gracefully.

I can't see hawking Charlotte's Web for the rest of my career. I want to go higher the next time. I know now, completely, what kind of libraries are home.

After all this, with one foot out Nevada's door, pointing to California, were these four years worth it to reach the one thing that was as close to heaven as I will ever get here (The Cosmopolitan, formerly my favorite hotel-casino on the Strip, would have been that, if it had kept the open, welcoming, cool artistic vibe it fostered for five years before it was sold off)?

At #1 Hawaiian Barbecue on South Eastern Avenue, across from Walmart, all next to the back end of McCarran International Airport, I've always been a menu wanderer. BBQ mix one time, with beef, short ribs, and chicken; the Chicken Lover plate another time with chicken katsu, BBQ chicken and mochiko chicken. I did try the Hawaiian BBQ beef plate another time, and I think loco moco was what I had the first time we went there, not that I hadn't had enough of it already with L&L Hawaiian Barbecue near that mobile home park that first year.

I never felt as attached to anything as my mother and sister are to ahi poke, and seaweed salad for Mom. I always went with whatever struck me in the moment.

Yesterday, I zeroed in on roast pork. Compared to how hard they push chicken katsu and and the barbecue offerings, it seemed like an out-of-the-way menu item, and I always like walking quietly past the rush.

Loco moco has gravy all over it, which is fine. That's just one element and there's no element of it that rises above another. The hamburger steak, the eggs, the rice, they all work together.

In Hawaiian culture, it seems, brown gravy goes over roast pork, too. You can use the rice to soak it up, along with any juices from the roast pork. But, to me, not that much gravy is necessary. To me, it feels like an insult to Hawaii to insist that, in much the same way it would be to jump behind the grill at a Benihana and insist to the chefs that "I've got this." This is Hawaii. This is who they are. I respect that. But, I suppose, being in Las Vegas, and hours and thousands of miles by plane from Hawaii, it shouldn't be as much of a factor.

In other words, the roast pork at #1 Hawaiian Barbecue is a revelation. I've since learned that the crust of a roast pork is the crackling, but to me, this wasn't so much crackling. Perhaps because there was so much brown gravy all over it, it softened the crispness of the crackling. Even so, there is a romantic confluence of flavors in the crackling alone that is merely the introduction to beautiful, beautiful pork, beautifully colored, beautifully roasted in the oven, to the exact point where you just have to touch the meat with a fork and it separates into heavenly layers.

I know photos would do it more justice, but I wonder: Having bowed down to the revelatory temple that is this roast pork, was it worth these four years to get to the point where I had this roast pork? Does it make up for the Lundys, who were diagonal from us in the mobile home park, fighting all the time loudly enough for a block of the mobile homes around us to hear it? Does it lessen the sheer number of police that always showed up in the complex of the noisy-kid apartment and the bungalow? Does it make up for The Cosmopolitan truly becoming a shell of its former self? In other words, does it make all the crap that we went through bearable in hindsight, even forgivable?

It doesn't. Not by a mile, not by infinity. This is not a friendly city for anyone. This is where people who can't make it anywhere else go. This is where those who would be fired within a week at any other school district in the country can reign supreme here. This is where various services can be neglectful in their individual missions, and nothing of consequence will come of it. The neighbors you do know in passing you would not want to know any further because they're making so much goddamn noise upstairs, and it seems impossible that they actually sleep. It's where apartment complexes can also be neglectful, and unscrupulous, and lie to your face, and nothing will happen to them either. No real apologies from them. No consequences either.

If it hadn't been here in Las Vegas, I probably would have found this roast pork in another form somewhere else. But I wouldn't have found it like this. I might have eaten it somewhere else, found it good, and then moved on without giving it a second thought. But after four years of these hardships and so much neglect, being knocked around left and right by so much shit in a given week, to find this even after all of that is incredible. To even recognize something as phenomenal as this after four years of shit stew gives me hope that I can recover all of my true self after we leave Las Vegas. And, as Sheryl Crow sings, "And I won't be back. No, no. No I won't be back." I've listened to that song for years, since it's on my favorite album, "Tuesday Night Music Club," but only in the past year have I fully understood it. And related to it.

It's because of The Cosmopolitan and The Wynn that I've become more interested in architecture and interior design. I appreciate that. I loved seeing Jeff Bridges, one of my heroes, live at Santa Fe Station one year. I'll never forget that. I'll also never forget Lied Library at UNLV and the Boulder City Library, two libraries I would live in if I could. And especially not the Pinball Hall of Fame, with its extremely rare Pinball Circus prototype machine, one of only two in the world, the other residing overseas, which is partly an inspiration for a novel I want to write.

But whenever I got home from these experiences, back to the mobile home park, or the secondhand smoke apartment, or the bungalow, I'd think to myself, "This is all there is?" Walking around The Cosmopolitan and The Wynn, seeing such inspiring elegance, or walking amongst the stacks of Lied Library and the Boulder City Library, and knowing that that's where I belong for the rest of my life, it was hard to land back at home and feel nothing of any of it then. None of it carried over to my daily life. It was still a grind. The feeling like a balloon blowing up inside me when I was at The Cosmopolitan and The Wynn, and even at Green Valley Ranch (which I call Henderson's only palace), never was there at work, nor even at my local library, where I still volunteer after three years. Was it that I couldn't make it happen in those places like I could at The Cosmopolitan or Lied Library? Or is it that where I lived and worked each day could not possibly compare to those sights?

However, the roast pork from #1 Hawaiian Barbecue stays with me. It's been two days and it's still on my mind, and it will always be on my mind. Not always as big as it is now. There are other things to do in my life after all, including more writing, and definitely more reading, including poems, which I discovered are a tonic for when you're in between books and get frustrated at not every book working from the start after you've finished a really great one. I've discovered that I get cranky afterward.

I want to know all about the different ways of roast pork, how it tastes elsewhere, certainly what recipe would work for me if I decide to make it at home one day. Not here, but after we move. Perhaps the roast pork is a culmination of everything I've loved in Las Vegas, while still loathing the entire city and the entire valley. Maybe it has all led up to this. But what an awful path to get here. Nevertheless, this is what I'll take with me from Las Vegas. Like that slice of pumpkin pie I had at Six Flags Magic Mountain on the day of free admission for the Holiday Toy Drive many years ago that I'm still searching for elsewhere, this will be with me as strongly as that.

It's not all that I'm taking with me of Las Vegas. There's a book of short stories I want to write that's set in Las Vegas proper, and a novel that goes between Henderson and Las Vegas. I'm sketching out the preliminary emotions for all the stories here, as well as research I need, so I can still write it from where I go next, and still be able to recall those feelings, at least the good ones I had in the places I liked. I believe, though, that you can only write about the Las Vegas you lived, either as a tourist or a resident. I'm sick of those journalists who swoop into Las Vegas for two or three nights, make blanket statements and assumptions about the city that are supposed to stretch backwards and forwards, and then leave. Make statements and assumptions in your moments, and only your moments. Don't speak for everyone. Me, anything I write about Las Vegas in the future, all fiction, will be set between 2012 and wherever I stop in 2017. Well, maybe not, because I don't like what Las Vegas is becoming with the corporations on the Strip now charging residents for parking, and how the quality of many places on the Strip have precipitously fallen. So probably 2012 to about August 2016, before The Cosmopolitan as I knew it ended. But that's all. I won't write about Las Vegas in the 1950s, I won't write about Las Vegas a year or two before I got here. Only when I got here, only based on what I experienced, what I knew every day.

Perhaps the roast pork, in the final few times I'll inevitably have it again, and in memory, will be a conduit to all this. Back in California, I can think about that roast pork (which, if we don't go back to #1 Hawaiian Barbecue before my birthday, if we're still here by then, will be my birthday dinner) and immediately be reminded of all the good experiences I did have here, that I can use for my own work.

Over the next weeks, I may delve into those experiences, as it feels like the time for reflection before departure. Even though I'm definitely less happy than when my family and I moved here, I am grateful for the experience I've had at work and volunteering at my local library that has gotten me to the point where I do qualify for at least one library position where we're going next. But what else have I gotten out of these four years that has nothing to do with the continuous problems we deal with here? That's what I really want to examine closely. You know, before relying on masterful roast pork as a gateway to it.

Listening Through the Static and Hoping

In July 2014, Pulse 96.7, an exclusively dance music station, apparently came on the air in Las Vegas. I thought it had been a few months ago, but according to an interview with programmer Joel Salkowitz, it was July 2014.

From my room in this bungalow at Green Valley Country Club near Green Valley and Wigwam here in Henderson, when I first heard about it a few months ago, I couldn't get it at all. I could hear it in the car, but barely a signal in my room. Hold the antenna up a little, and it was only minutely clearer through the heavy static. Drop the antenna and it dropped too.

Now, a few months later, with the antenna still below, there's dance music through the static. The sound rises and falls back on its own, but I can hear more of it. Not like the crystal clarity of one of the omnipotent Clear Channel stations, but it's there.

This coming Friday, my family and I are signing a lease back at Pacific Islands, past Green Valley and Robindale (which I walk every weekday morning, up Robindale, to get to work at Cox Elementary), near the holy intersection of Green Valley and Warm Springs, just before the train track. At that intersection, you take a right, and you get to the rest of Henderson. A left, and you start on Las Vegas. It's the best crossroads for us and one of the reasons we're moving back, after the cigarette smoke in our apartment from above and next to us chased us out well over a year ago.

At our new apartment, which will be at the front of the complex, we have a dumpster across from our patio, behind the carport parking, the recycling dumpster to our left, next to the smaller second entrance, and the front office directly to our right, which means the mailboxes are right there, and the small gym my sister uses. We're more exposed than where we were last time, but the front of any apartment complex is always taken care of better than the rest. Pacific Islands is also remodeling the apartments with new paint jobs, new appliances, new lighting fixtures. Even the carports have been repainted and new street signs are blue with white lettering. Sure the rent's gone up a bit because of this since the last time we lived there, but one of their new policies is that if they either spot someone who hasn't picked up after their dog, or one of their neighbors tattles on them, they're charged $50. I hope this will lead to a policy about smoking inside the apartments, especially considering the hefty investments they've made in the remodeling. One of our new neighbors, across from our building, smokes on her patio. So be it. She has 11 grandchildren and is quite the formidable matriarch. She's earned it, and it's not that often during the day. Plus, there's significant space between the front door of our new apartment and her patio.

It's in this setting that I hope Pulse 96.7 comes in clearly. I don't go to nightclubs in Las Vegas, I don't attend DJ shows, I've never been to the monstrously profitable Electric Daisy Carnival at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. But I love the music. It expands my imagination. I've loved it since the mid-'90s, listening to Power 96 in South Florida when I was in middle school.

Even putting the transience aside, this town is hard to get used to at times, still after two years, because people aren't that open, maybe because of the transience. But I need some stability now, especially after the year of Green Valley Country Club having to fix the overhead air-conditioning unit 11 times (they're awful about fixing anything here), and it crapping out the evening before the hottest day of the year. We had to fight with them on the phone to get them to come fix it the very next morning, and they did. It took about 4 hours after 9 a.m. hit and they began work. There were a lot of soaked t-shirts in order to keep cool, a lot of spraying our two dogs and two finches with water to keep them cool, and it's why I'm used to summer here now. Not just tolerating it. Used to it. I know even moreso what to expect when those temperatures hit the high 90s and well over 100. I can live with it now, hopefully with better air conditioning this summer. But then, the air conditioning units are far better at Pacific Islands, since they're on the ground and not ridiculously overhead, so I know it'll work, just like it did last time.

Add to that the leaking shower faucet in the bathroom my dad and I use, and having to move from the first-floor unit of a two-floor apartment building across the street here because the upstairs neighbors were very loud, and the kids in the neighborhood used to scream around the grass across from our three windows, and they even used our car as a scooter ramp, scratching it. Thankfully, the insurance covered that, but we couldn't handle it over there. Unfortunately, we traded all that for a drafty unit. Terrible in winter, whereas the previous apartment actually held heat, and when it rained, you couldn't hear the rain at all.

So yeah, I'd like some actual stability, and I think it starts not only with the fact that this is the last place for us here in Henderson, but with music that I've always loved and have never been able to find easily here until now. Online, sure, but I don't like to be on the computer all the time. Being that there's no hill after Green Valley and Robindale, hopefully that will help in Pulse 96.7 coming in clearly. For now, I will listen through the static. I will make it the station I wake up to every morning until we leave for Pacific Islands and hope that I can make it the station I wake up to every morning over there. Recovery from moving. Recovery from having moved five times in a little over three years. Time to start living again. Music that I've always loved and should listen to more, and a new apartment to actually live in, to decorate the right way for us (instead of all these boxes, which we're finally going to get rid of), is a proper start.

The Center of the Las Vegas Universe

The center of the Las Vegas universe is not the Bellagio fountains. It's not the marbled entrance to Caesars Palace. It's not even any part of my beloved Cosmopolitan, despite many of its unsettling changes under new ownership (UFC-style fights in The Chelsea? It worked better solely as a classy music venue).

To find the center of the Las Vegas universe, you have to enter the Miracle Mile Shops just outside the parking garage entrance nearest to the doors that open onto the hallway that leads to the Saxe Theater. Just past the eggshell-colored shutters, on the left side, you'll find an unusual sight, a calm oasis. You'll find Street Corner News.

At this tiny hole-in-the-wall, with just enough room to walk past the racks of snacks up to the refrigerated cases full of whatever bottled concoction you want, there are some magazines as well, and when I was there a few months ago, the proprietor said that they used to sell books, but no one was buying, so they stopped selling. The two most popular places to buy books in Southern Nevada are still the Barnes & Noble on Stephanie Street here in Henderson, and Hudson News in Concourse D at McCarran International Airport. The former because once in a while, you discover a book that you need right then and there, that you just have to pay full price for just to have it (On October 21, when the USA Today was published with the Back to the Future Part II wraparound cover, and I'd reserved a copy at that Barnes & Noble, I found Out on the Wire: Uncovering the Secrets of Radio's New Masters of Story with Ira Glass by Jessica Abel), and the latter because some people like to browse and find a magazine or a book that can help them ignore their flight. The last time I went to McCarran, I was impressed by the sheer quality of magazines, and the books, too. Hudson News really respects readers.

The most important feature at Street Corner News at the Miracle Mile Shops, what makes it the center of the Las Vegas universe is an iced tea dispenser called Miami Iced Tea. I'm a Florida native, but it wasn't the Miami part that drew me to it. I always seek great iced tea. I hope for it. I crave it. And just like the water dispensers in the MGM Grand hotel lobby toward the beginning of the summer, this one also had lemon slices and orange slices pressed against the glass, holding back the onslaught of iced tea absorbing their flavors.

If you're feeling overwhelmed in Las Vegas and you need a breather, this is where you go. Vegas barely allows these moments, and should be treasured even more than some of the awesome sights here, such as....that Walgreens! And that one over there! And that one being built as the largest one ever in the history of the Las Vegas universe! And of course the one downtown!

Of course, there's more than that. But that iced tea dispenser, and a peaceful, slow stroll around the Miracle Mile Shops--returning to Street Corner News for refills at various intervals--can do wonders in restoring the equilibrium of frazzled tourists. Residents, too. I want to go back there some time soon.

Where Am I? Am I Here?

When my family and I went to the Whitney Library on East Tropicana Avenue every Sunday in Las Vegas, when we lived near there nearly two years ago, I always stopped in at the art gallery just off the entrance, which was also where the library's restrooms were. The library was in a somewhat dicey location (though dicey enough for the cops to visit often enough that I always jokingly thought they were avid readers come to pick up another stack of books), and to me, as dingy as the library felt over the year that we visited, as much as it seemed more an escape from the area rather than an adventure into it, the art gallery saved it. There were paintings, and there were 3D graphics on display, and there were photos from various contests.

The latest contest, before we moved to Henderson, I think involved young photographers. There was this one photo, amidst a train and the Bellagio Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, that I've never forgotten, so much so that I took a photo of it on my cell phone and transferred it to my flash drive. I wrote down the photographer's name and tried to find him online, but no luck. No information. That name is now lost to whatever landfill took in that sheet of paper after I threw it away. I wish I had it now, because that photo embodies the life I like to have. It would seem to be part of a river, but being that a river is generally wider, it looks more like a stream, with slanted banks of grass on both sides (less so on the right, with more bushes without anywhere to sit), and thin-trunk trees on both sides of the stream, leaning into the sky, creating an effect that looks like an A at the far end of it, without the bar that makes it an A.

I thought about this photo on Tuesday while I was talking with the security guard at the Green Valley Library, where I still volunteer twice a week, also on Fridays. I expressed to him my amazement that here we are in the desert, there further down is the Strip with all its casinos and all the reasons that people come to visit, there are all the plants to see all around us, and yet, we think of other places, other things. We don't really study this valley, really get into it, or at least I haven't to a great extent yet.

We talked about his desire to visit his native Philippines again, to go fishing there, to buy an RV and travel around the country, to visit Oregon and the massive redwoods there. Here we were, standing in the lobby of the Green Valley Library, a few people passing by at a time, probably from different states as well, and yet in conversation, we were in the Philippines, where he told me how big the fish are in the rivers, in Oregon, where I could imagine those redwoods, in that RV, me telling him about the cross-country trip we took in five days when we moved from South Florida to Southern California in 2003, and my regret that even though we drove through Louisiana, we couldn't stop in New Orleans because we had two dogs and two birds in the car, and Dad had to get to the Santa Clarita Valley to begin his teaching job at La Mesa Junior High. This was two years before Hurricane Katrina.

I also told him how I wanted to travel throughout New Mexico because of The Secret of Everything by Barbara O'Neal, how evocative she makes it in that novel that makes me want to see it for myself. And yet, we also drove through New Mexico, briefly, during that cross-country trip, and I knew nothing about it then. I don't think I remember anything from that stretch.

To think of other states, other places, instead of right where you are, instead of looking up at that big night sky and connecting it a few miles down to the Strip, it must be all that desert, all that space. The ghosts of the past, the good and the bad, can have immediate room and board there, and while wandering one's own piece of landscape, be it an apartment complex or a sidewalk on the Strip in between a barrage of delights, they come. They remind. They ask you where you are, where you have been, why you are here, out of all the other places you could live in.

Or maybe it's the license plates. Montana, North Carolina, New York, New Mexico, Florida, Arkansas. Southern Nevada, particularly Las Vegas, seems to be the one spot in the nation where you can see all those states on license plates, as well as those who moved here from elsewhere, and then leave again. The transience is staggering. But man, it fits what I've always called this region: America's Waiting Room. Most people here don't necessarily wait, because you can't. You have to do something right away. But they do take time. They move here from whatever didn't suit them, and they spend the first year figuring out if this area is for them, be it in Las Vegas or Henderson. There's the disturbingly barren Pahrump, and Laughlin too, but it takes a special kind of hardened soul to live in either of those places. Clark County is where a great many of the resources are, so the majority live here. Laughlin is considered part of Clark County, but not in the way that we know Clark County. If you want to shop for groceries or do any other kind of shopping there, you have to drive over the border into Bullhead City, Arizona. The traffic over that bridge is terrific.

We did the same thing. We figured out if Las Vegas fit us, and with the high renters' insurance and car insurance, and the dangerous neighborhood we lived in (though it could hardly be considered a neighborhood in the traditional sense because of how everyone shrinks away into their own world there for their own safety), it didn't. We needed to be somewhere else. And now, for nearly a year, we're here in Henderson.

It's not that Henderson lacks interesting sights. Downtown Henderson, also known as Water Street, is one of my dearly favorite places in all of Nevada. Not only is City Hall there, and the surrounding benches and subtle trees that make it so peaceful, but the Henderson Convention Center is the smallest convention center I've ever seen, and perfect for Henderson, because unlike its neighbor down the street, it doesn't strive to be as big and loud. It's a break from Las Vegas, certainly, but less so than when Ventura, Anaheim, Burbank, even Palmdale were breaks from the empty monotony of the Santa Clarita Valley. It's more like recharging for the next experience.

I think it's an overall combination of the above. I do like it here, and I especially love nighttime when I'm walking the dogs, how the stars sparkle even more down here in our part of this apartment complex, where there's some light, but not as much in other sections. I've never seen a sky this big in Florida and California. I don't think of myself as a mere speck in the universe when I look up, but rather where I can go in this sky that gives weighty pause. Not only under it, but through it, at least in my imagination. What can I explore? What can I write about? What can I write about that would be inspired by this sky? There's so much that's possible, and even with the summer's rentless heat (being landlocked, it's much hotter), I don't mind it because of those moments at night when I look up and just float. I've looked up at those enormously, shapely clouds at night whenever they drop by, and I want to write exactly like those clouds are. I will some day.

I can't help thinking about other cities, other towns, other landscapes because this is what Southern Nevada has become, what it might always have been. People come from all over the country, as tourists and as residents, and they're always welcome. Some of them leave too quickly for my liking, but that's the nature of this region. People figure out where they want to be, if it's here, and if so, they stay here, or they go elsewhere. But in a way, I think Southern Nevada provides a rest for them, like a waiting room does. We won't be entirely disappointed if they leave, maybe just a little bit or more if we know them well enough in the time that they're here, but we want them to know what they truly want, what would make them truly happy. It's a hard valley, not only in weather, but in making our lives work here, but that's what life is. It embodies life in that way, but it also gives us options to turn away from the hardships for a while, to indulge in our individual pleasures, and they certainly can be found here, or they can arrive by mail. Our bases here may be solid when we arrive, or shaky, but we work at them to whatever we desire and hope that it works. Sometimes it works, and so we stay, or it's so unworkable that we have to go somewhere else that works for us. It's not the kind of region you can go to and feel at home right away, unlike other historically-laden areas or neighborhoods that have been around for decades. You have to work at it, and yourself, from the start. I remember a tenant further down, where I walk the dogs, who seemed to be the only one who lived in an apartment that's near the end of our parking lot, facing Green Valley Parkway, which is still further down (we're set far enough back from the traffic that we can't hear it, and it's wonderful). I saw him a few times, always when he was walking into his apartment in the evening. Now, he's gone. Last night, I saw that the lights in the apartment were on, a ladder in the middle of the living room, the maintenance guys having left everything as is. Maybe one or two of them were coming back later in the night to do more work, but more likely, they just left it for the next day.

That guy's gone. He's wherever he wanted to be next, wherever he felt life would be better. I wonder where he's living now, if he thinks about what he left behind here, if he thinks about that apartment being empty, if he figures that that apartment is still empty, or even if he cares about it at all anymore. Probably not, because he didn't like whatever was here for him, whatever he was while he was here, and he moved on.

Things change more quickly here than anywhere else I've lived. That's not just the Strip talking, but all the people moving in and out. Possibly there are less vacancies in our apartment complex than there have been in the last two months (the upstairs apartment on the right, in the building directly across from our front door, has new occupants), but consider that one side of our apartment building, the side containing my window and my sister's window, was painted a milk chocolate shade of brown to see what color the owners of the complex might want to paint the entire property next. I think it should be left the off-white it always has been. Sure parts of it look aged with the dirt that's there, from wind and occasional rain, and sprinklers at ground level, but the way it is now shows that this property lasts. It's not trying to cover up something unsavory. It has been here, and no matter how many people move in and out, it will still be here, still decently maintained. It tries in the midst of constant upheaval.

Ultimately, I think that's why, even though there's much to see here, and much to do, I think about the photo of that stream with those trees over it, wanting to be on the bank of it, just sitting there, looking at and listening to that burbling water, and developing an interest in rivers that I'll pursue with books that I can find on the subject. It's not that I don't want to be here. I am here and I like it here.

It's not that I read about New Mexico and Florida and am working on a few writing projects set in the parts of California I lived in and visited (I also have a few writing projects set in Vegas and here) because I want to be in those places instead of here. I like it here, and besides, I'm not widely-traveled, not least because I don't have that kind of money, and I'm not sure I'd spend it on that first and foremost if I did.

It's because with all the relative instability I see around me, with people moving in and out, with different license plates seen all the time, with the face of the apartment probably changing (it's the first time that something's changed while I've lived somewhere. Usually it happens after we leave), I need stability from elsewhere. I take some of it from downtown Henderson, and from the elegant, quietly ritzy sections of the hotel lobby at Green Valley Ranch, and sections near the rooms, but I also take it from what I've known before, what I still want to know, what I want to explore more. I only think of other places to shield myself more against the transience, to not be as surprised and somewhat disheartened by it. It helps, and even so, the variety of people here also helps, especially those I help when I volunteer at the Green Valley Library. Where else can I help a new medical career arrival from Kentucky, a retired Air Force officer, a Paris enthusiast, and a seasoned traveler who wanted the huge books of maps, likely to plan out the next leg of his trip, Henderson being a stop along the way? There's that too which ironically produces stability, interesting people you come across who you want to know more about, and probably won't, which is where imagination comes in. It's where writing comes in. I'm here, and yet I'm everywhere.