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.

The Passive-Aggressive Washing Machine, or: Who Ya Gonna Call?

Amongst the features in our still-new apartment is a passive-aggressive washing machine. You put in your detergent and your clothes (or vice-versa), turn the knob to the setting you want, and then it locks the lid, to "sense" how much water it has to spurt into the tub. This takes about an hour and a half.

Then, after spit-taking water into its tub for 2 hours, it says, "Okaaaay. Okaaaay. I'll get staaaarted." It does, turning and turning in an annoyed, gun-metal mechanical sound, quieter than our other machines. So it has that going for it, and a dryer that, thanks to having gas in this apartment, only takes 20 minutes to dry a large load. But it still remains the passive-aggressive washing machine. Or the Ghostbusters washing machine, being that when it "senses" how large a load is in the machine, it bangs around like a ghost inside the Ghost Trap.

Blinky

In the bathroom across from the bedroom/den belonging to my sister and I in our family's new apartment (she has the bedroom side, while I converted the den side into my bedroom. Smaller, but it has all the space I need for my books. We moved on Thanksgiving weekend, and I'm sure I'll have more to write about in the weeks ahead. There's just been no time while working and writing book reviews and trying to get my own writing projects going), there's a green light over the toilet that she and I call Blinky. It's convenient at, say, 4 in the morning, not having to turn on the bathroom light because that small light on the quiet, ever-running fan keeps blinking whenever someone's in the bathroom. Sure, it goes on and off and on and off rapidly, but there's enough light there to do what you need to and wash your hands afterward.

To some, it might seem like using the bathroom during an acid trip or a Vietnam flashback. But at that hour of the morning, the bathroom can be as green as it wants. I only wish there were a few Alice in Wonderland elements within it to make it more fun.

Nevertheless, I'll do my best to post more here.

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.

Passover, Las Vegas Style

(Originally, I was going to call this post "Passover, Nearly Las Vegas Style," since we're in Henderson, and while Sunset Station is a casino, with a buffet, and slot machines, and a comfortably wide bowling alley, we're still in Henderson, even though we're very close to Las Vegas, down the street. But casinos and buffets in this region did start in Las Vegas, so it is Las Vegas Style. No need for me to be pedantic about such a thing. It is what it is and what it always has been.)

We haven't had the full-on, Seder-driven, Haggadah-reading, Why-Is-This-Night-Different-From-All-Other-Nights Passover experience in years. I can't remember the last time we did the Four Questions. But I don't mind that we haven't, because it takes a while. You have to wait and wait and wait and wait before you eat, and yes the history as it is believed is important to me, but I can read about it elsewhere because I want to eat!

That's why I like Thanksgiving. You say a prayer or two, you tell Aunt Gracie to give it a rest for five minutes, and you dig in. Well, we have the same thing coming for Passover the Monday or Tuesday after next. In fact, it was a shock to us to see that our existence is actually acknowledged, after nine years of nothing of the kind in the Santa Clarita Valley in Southern California. A Kosher section in a supermarket, just to see what's around? Are you kidding? You get maybe a shelf, maybe even two shelves if management is feeling generous. Otherwise, you're on your own. Go to Gelson's in Encino. Maybe they'll have more.

We had gone to Sunset Station yesterday afternoon because they're doing a promotion called "$1 Million Scratch and Win." If you earn 300 points on the same day, you receive a scratch card that's guaranteed a winner, for $1,000 cash, up to $100 in free slot play, up to 50,000 points, free buffets, or other prizes. Dad originally thought you only had to walk right in and you'd get one, or maybe he thought that you only had to play a dollar. They may say they love locals, but it's not that easy. It was only when we got there that he found out you had to earn 300 points on the same day. Oh well. Meridith had to go to the bowling alley anyway to see about bowling balls, since she wants one, but hasn't found the right one yet.

We had to go to the Boarding Pass Center, as it's called, for some matter related to our cards, possibly seeing if our address had been changed from the one in Las Vegas to the one in Henderson. I don't know, since I was standing further back, doing what, I don't know. But as we walked by the buffet, we saw a sign for the upcoming Passover buffet, and we were stunned. We had been well ignored in Santa Clarita, so what could we possibly expect from the rest of the West, despite such luminaries as Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson being in this region? It's not so much Las Vegas itself, but our immediately local area that we wondered if there was anything for us, related to us. And there it was. There, on the posted menu, hard-boiled eggs, salmon with figs, matzo ball soup, charoset (a dark fruit-and-nut paste meant to harken back to the mortar our enslaved people used to built the pyramids), beet horseradish, and so much else I've already forgotten. Dad went to the front counter at the buffet to ask the price. $10.80 with a Boarding Pass, the membership card. $20 otherwise. We're bringing our cards with us. And Mom noted that gefilte fish wasn't listed on the board. But maybe that was only part of what will be offered. Maybe gefilte fish will be there. However, it doesn't matter as much because we can always get gefilte fish for ourselves at home (actually, for Mom, Dad and Meridith since I don't like it), and we have to be part of this! I've never really liked the Station casinos because they've always struck me as stingy with generally tight slots even here in Henderson, and Palace Station has the worst buffet in Las Vegas. Granted, we haven't been to every buffet in Las Vegas, but I highly doubt it'll fall lower in the rankings, even though the buffet at Arizona Charlie's is just as bad. While I will never go back to Arizona Charlie's on Boulder Highway, that buffet did have sausage stuffing, which was actually very pleasing, and I won't forget that, whereas the Palace Station buffet had nothing redeeming about it.

You have to drive just a little to get to Sunset Station, but I still consider it part of our community. And we have to support our community, we need to support our community, we want to support our community with what's been offered, because we exist! After all this time, we are acknowledged! And I just hope this Passover buffet is a lot better than Palace Station's buffet. Since they've gone to this length to present this buffet, it means they're making some kind of effort, and I hope it shows. For so long, I've wanted to support a community I can call my own, and with this, and so much else it is, this feels like the one. We already do that with Food 4 Less essentially next door to us, buying one or two things or more every week because we want them to stay open. Not that they're having any trouble staying afloat, what with the parking lot being nearly full every day, but every little bit helps. Even though I don't really like the Station casinos, I like Sunset Station a little more because of this. This means a lot in a time when we're still trying to find our place here. There's progress, and this is a major boost.

A Momentary Meeting That Spans a Lifetime

It's usually enough to walk into a casino on the Strip, see crowds of people, and know that the world's big enough. But sometimes, that's not enough of the world. Sometimes you need another person in front of you, asking for directions, to truly see the sheer width of the world, someone you'll never see again. Not that I planned it that way. It was a brief exchange, completely unexpected, which makes for life's most interesting moments.

Yesterday, my family and I went to a consignment store directly across from two runways and various taxiways at McCarran International, which meant that most of the time they were inside, save for when I was needed to give my opinion on a bookcase Meridith wanted for her room (much better than the one she had found at another consignment store, made up of alternating shelves, one above another, one on the right, one slightly above on the left, one slightly above on the right, and so on) or to see a lamp Mom thought appropriate for my room (A three-bookcase set from Macy's Home Store is being delivered on Thursday, and my new, and first, reading chair, from Big's Furniture, is being delivered on Friday), I was outside, watching Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Westjet, Allegiant, Volaris, and other commercial jets take off, as well as many private jets. I was in heaven. My heaven. If the owner of this consignment store would hire me to simply sit on one of his padded, stylish stools outside the store, bringing in people simply by my presence, I would be happy. And in fact, I brought two people in, or at least I think I did. One woman, for example, parked, looked at the store, and asked me if this long length of the store was the entire store, or two separate stores. I replied, "It's the entire store. You'll have to go inside to find out."

But that's not the meeting that inspired this blog entry. An hour passed of Mom, Dad and Meridith looking inside the store, then an hour and fifteen minutes, but I did not mind that at all. I was happy right where I was, and even though the uniform blue and orange and red color scheme of Southwest 737s bore me, I smiled every time I watched the nose gear retract on one of those 737s after take off, and watched the nose gear door close. I love how quickly it closes, and it was the same with the 757s and 767s I saw, as well as the JetBlue A320 and the American Airlines MD-80, which is longer than I remember, but it had been a long time since I had seen one.

An hour and fifteen minutes, maybe. I don't know. I only looked at my watch to see if it was getting closer to the time that a 747-400 might land. There were enough flights coming in from the west coast on the runway on the left side of my view, and planes coming in from the rest of the country on the route that passes over the mobile home park near Sam's Town that I used to live in, and I didn't even know there was a runway that far afield, but there is. I understood where those planes landed after flying over my former mobile home park and then banking. According to the website FlightAware, a British Airways 747-400 landed at McCarran at 7:49 p.m. yesterday evening, long, long after we had left that consignment store, and a Virgin Atlantic 747-400 landed at 2:48 p.m., which was an hour after we had left that consignment store.

As I sat on that stool, watching a lull in the takeoffs, seeing an American Airlines MD-80 get a pushback from the gate, and a Delta flight waiting on the taxiway to head for the left-side runway, a car pulled into the consignment store lot about three spaces from me. A guy got out, short hair, wearing a Motley Crue t-shirt. The car looked new, in better condition than many cars are where we used to live, and about average for our area of Henderson. He came up to me and asked if I could help him, speaking with an accent I couldn't place, but knew right away it wasn't English, it wasn't Irish, it wasn't anywhere in Spain, but it was somewhere in Europe. Czech, maybe? I don't know. I wasn't going to guess, or ask him, because I wanted to learn what he needed help with.

I replied, "Sure, what's up?" and he, not understanding my American vernacular, said, "Yes, thank you," and asked me where the rental car places were.

I wasn't entirely sure. I needed a few seconds to think about it. I knew that he couldn't go back the way he came since that was only more of the field of the airport. It didn't lead to the terminals or Avis or wherever he rented the car. I told him he had to circle the airport the other way and he would eventually find it.

He thanked me and walked away, and as he did, I noticed that the back of his t-shirt heralded "Evening in Hell," which is the name of Motley Crue's residency at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino here. I called out to him and asked him how it was. My fault, because he thought I meant the car and told me it was fine, and I replied, "No, no, I noticed your shirt. How was the show?" He smiled and gave me two thumbs-up. Like wine, Motley Crue does not interest me, but it does help boost our economy, so I wanted to know.

After he left, I thought of two things right away. First, I should have told him to drive past the McCarran Marketplace shopping center, where Walmart is, because passing that, he'll eventually see the digital terminal boards which would tell him where to go. Unfortunately, I remembered that after the fact. And secondly, I'll never see him again. And that amazed me. As he pulled out, I noticed either his wife or his girlfriend was sitting on the passenger side in the front, so I thought that their luggage was probably in the trunk, and they'd return the car and take a shuttle to wherever their terminal was for their flight home, somewhere in Europe. It had to be. I'm sure of that.

Years ago, I met people I've never seen since, like that attractive girl about my age in 1994 when my family and I were at Universal Studios Orlando and there was some kind of juice survey we were invited to take and she was with her family. And there was also Bridget, who I met in line at Kongfrontation on that same day. Brief conversation, and then gone. Just like that. Same with that guy. I'm a little disappointed, because I wanted to know more about him, if it was his first time in Las Vegas, how long he had waited to take this trip, what his first night was like here, and also more about his own home. But it looked like he had to get going, had a flight to catch, so I just told him what he needed to know and he was off. But I also realized one of the blessings of living here, that as transient as it is, and as hard-edged as it can be, you sure do meet a lot of interesting people here, and he was one of them. Silently, I wished him safe travels home. People like him are the reason that Las Vegas continues to exist, that they put money into our economy, but to me, they're more than that. I'm always curious. And I was glad to meet him for that brief moment, to know a little bit about him, including his love of Motley Crue. The world is vast, but with moments like that, it's never boring.

Addendum: Looking at the departures from McCarran on FlightAware in the hours after I saw him, I noticed that there was a Condor Flugdienst (Condor for short, of course) flight to Frankfurt International in Germany at 5:43 p.m. The Boeing 767-300 is still in the air, with 3 hours and 53 minutes to go, for a total flying time of 10 hours and 19 minutes. That could be him, since it was a little past 1 p.m. when we briefly met, and I think it's advised that for international flights, you arrive four hours ahead. There was also a Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747-400 bound for London Gatwick that departed at 5:20 p.m. But I don't think that was him. Everything else before those flights were domestic routes.

Politicians talk about international turmoil and strife all the time, but I wonder if they really mean international turmoil and strife amongst themselves. There I was, a regular guy, an American, talking to possibly a German guy. No problem there. No conflict. Certainly one of the most interesting experiences I've had here of late. I liked the little I knew of him, and I hope for more experiences like that.

Still Here

Still here. Still living. Still in Southern Nevada, this time a resident of Henderson for two weeks now. I should write more, and I will, eventually. Nothing's keeping me from it. I'm just exploring my new home, figuring out what to write about it, what to wonder about, what to exclaim about, what to think deeply about. There's a lot, and it will all come soon. Actually, it feels easier writing here than it was when I wrote in the mobile home park in Las Vegas. Life feels easier here, even while still waiting for a job to come, even as I continue to send out resumes. It's a little worrisome, but it doesn't poke at me constantly. It's because of this place, this apartment complex, this neighborhood, the fact that the Green Valley Library is on the same side of the street as this apartment complex, and I've walked there and back twice in two weeks and loved it both times.

More to come soon.

Wandering in Primm

Tonight, I'm at the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas in Primm, directly on the Nevada-California border.

Well, I'm not actually there. Depending on what I'm doing on a given evening, usually when I'm writing, I go to different places in my mind: The Nevada Room and then the fiction section at the Boulder City Library, the Student Union at UNLV, the World Literature section at Lied Library at UNLV, downtown Henderson which is also known as Water Street, the main drag of Boulder City, the Cosmopolitan on the Strip, and even back into my past, such as the shopping center across from Grand Palms in Pembroke Pines, Florida that included a Winn-Dixie and Regal Westfork Plaza 13, as well as the Fashion Bug store that Meridith loved, but which is now sadly gone, just like the one here in Las Vegas.

Tonight, having finished the freelance writing newsletter for which I compile job listings, I'm feeling slow. Not lazy. Just slow. I've got a few details I could research for one of the plays I want to write, but I sit here watching clips from The Hunt for Red October on YouTube, one of the most intelligent thrillers ever made. It's not because I don't want to write this play; it's just one of those nights, especially with the vastly uncomfortable heat in this desert, which has become even more relentless. I don't think I'll get used to it, but next year, I hope to be able to at least tolerate it. And with the heavy rain that roared in last night and Friday night, what can we expect tonight? Anything? I hope not. I'd like to not have to shut down the computer yet again while jagged lightning flashes outside.

Oh, I could finish At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon, the first in the Mitford Years series, which I previously read in September 2010, but apparently hadn't paid as much attention to it as I am now. I'm certainly enjoying it more than I did then. Plus, I want to see what the rest of the series is like. But I'm not quite there yet, to get off the computer just yet and finish it. Nor do I feel like stocking the new 400-slot DVD binder I bought from Fry's yesterday. I had to because yet again, I don't want to haul in moving boxes more DVD cases with the DVDs in them. I don't need the cases. I know what these DVDs are about.

And strangely, I don't feel like going back to the first season of Boston Legal yet, which I checked out from the library, along with two canvas bags full of books, including A Light in the Window, the second in the Mitford Years series. And two books about President Reagan are in there too because it's presidential history, and I like to skip around. Lately, I've been reading about Harry S. Truman. Not wanting to continue just yet with Boston Legal is strange because I could listen to James Spader do great honor to the English language for hours on end, even to the end of time. I love listening to him talk and I proudly place him as one of my major inspirations whenever I'm feeling blah about my writing. Him, and Tony Kushner's screenplay for Lincoln lately, the reason I bought the movie on DVD and the published screenplay. My favorite character in that? The lobbyist W.N. Bilbo, played by...James Spader.

Whenever I go somewhere in my mind, it's just me. No one else. Wherever I go is empty. I haven't felt like writing anything lately because some of the days blend into each other pleasantly here, and what do I pick out first? Or, rather, do I pick anything out or just let the entire block push through, looking ahead to the days following? I've been to Ellis Island twice this month, nothing unusual, just the usual $5 in free slot play, the disappointment being that on my latest visit, someone was on "Montezuma," my new favorite slot machine and would not get off, judging by them playing 40 lines at a time, their takeout boxes from either the barbecue restaurant or the cafe sitting on an adjacent swivel chair. With the $5 in free slot play, I play 90% for pleasure and 10% for more money. My favorite there used to be "Coyote Moon," which remains my favorite slot machine overall, but being that they took out the machine that was the friendliest in payouts and left the one that's tighter than a prostitute's first day, it's not as fun because there was a flow to the other one I liked. Even if I wasn't poised to win a couple bucks, it at least let the bonus round come a little more often so I could watch the coyote approach the campfire near the Indian blanket and crouch down when the fire sparked up with the message about the spirits giving me 5 free spins. I always hoped I'd win the bonus round because the graphic there was the coyote watching the shooting star before the reveal of how many credits were won, and then throwing back its head and howling. I love that.

"Montezuma" is my new favorite there because of the theming, which is not IGT, my favorite slot machine company, this time. It's Williams, which used to make pinball machines before deciding that slot machines would now be more profitable. Aztec theming, with temples and feathered headdresses and eagles and gold. I love this one because as the roulette-like wheels that indicate the forthcoming bonus round come up, there's a drum boom that sounds and the machine vibrates. I love that drum boom, as well as the Aztec music that plays during the bonus round, although I wish it would play throughout the entire game. There's no music during regular play, not like there is with "Coyote Moon." That's my only problem with "Montezuma," but I can just sit at that machine and stare at the theming and imagine different stories, or even use it to think about my own writing. That's really my only motivation for playing slot machines anymore, and even so, I don't use my own money if possible, such as with that $5 in free slot play. Only if it's a machine that I absolutely must play and there haven't been those in quite a few months. When you're a tourist, gamble all you like. But when you're a resident, you can't keep up the same tempo. It's taxing on the energy and wallet, and if you don't keep a regular schedule of some kind or have strong aims for what you want to do in your life, this city will eat you up. It nearly did me when we first moved here in September and there were those first five nights sleeping on the floor, when we moved in and before our custom-made mattresses were delivered.

Ok, so maybe there are things to write about even when the days blend into each other. After all, if you can't find anything to write about in Las Vegas, quit. It's not that I can't find anything to write about, but I haven't felt that driving need lately. So I wander. Let's wander.

One side of the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas has a red, wavy metal sign that juts out steeply in the middle, like a flag flapping and then freezing mid-flap. The letters for "Fashion Outlet" undulate on it.

To the right of that sign, almost poking into its doorway, is the Welcome to Las Vegas center, with guidebooks and ads and flyers and history all around in framed pictures, and people there who have either lived in Las Vegas for a very long time or have lived there all their lives, which is how it was when we went back here two months after we moved to Las Vegas. To me, it's closed tonight because I can't top the guy I met behind the counter who not only knew so much about Las Vegas because he was a native, but he remembered the UNLV basketball team when it was coached by Jerry Tarkanian, who led it to a national title. What Las Vegan wouldn't remember that? But then, this guy was clearly into his city, and not just for the sake of a paycheck. You can tell who's really interested and who's not when they talk about Las Vegas, and this guy was, going all the way back in its history through our conversation. Besides, in these wanderings, I walk alone.

Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas is closed, but all the lights remain on, and select stores are still open for me to peek into. Pass the Welcome to Las Vegas Center, and you find the entrance that my family and I have used the times we've come here. Walk in, and you find that it's in-the-round. Start in one spot, walk all the way around, and you'll return to that exact spot.

To the left is Williams-Sonoma Marketplace, the discount outlet for the chain, and it's open for me because I want to see if they have any new mustard. I love mustard and I still want to write extensively about it. Plus I like to see if there are any interesting condiments. The only thing I have with me, though, are quarters, and those are for the food court. No mustard I haven't seen before anyway, but I hope they get something new in, being that they're on the Nevada-California border, and that invites a lot of interesting possibilities.

Walking out of Williams-Sonoma Marketplace, I notice again the shiny grayish flooring, which actually doesn't mar the mixed-up style this mall has. There are tall electric lampposts throughout, right inside! And the floors are nothing more than utilitarian. After it closes for the night, it's an easy buffering, ready for foot traffic again. Who comes out this far? You'd be surprised, but since there are so many bargains here, they come, by car, by hotel shuttle, by bus, by taxi. People stop by on the way in from California, like we once or twice.

If I go to the left now, I pass Coach and Tommy Bahama and Cole Haan and the Gap Outlet, and I eventually hit the entrance to the Primm Valley Resort & Casino, which is not where I want to be. But if I go to the right, I reach the food court and the arcade buried inside it.

So I take a right. And I pass by that entrance, which has, on each side, huge swimsuited statues of a man and a woman holding up white globes. Then the Banana Republic Factory Store (bargains for everyone, as you see), and Fossil, Inc., the Old Navy Outlet, Le Creuset, the Ann Taylor Factory, and so on. There's no straight line here. It curves. And it eventually leads to the food court, which includes Subway, Villa Fresh Italian Kitchen (which never looks so fresh), Hot Dog on a Stick, Kelly's Cajun Grill, and the family favorite, Tea Zone, which offers all kinds of boba teas and smoothies and slushes. To the right of that, a little further, in a near-cubbyhole next to the restrooms is the arcade. There's a basketball throw game and a racing game which may be The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, but I don't remember, so that's what it will be until the next time I actually go back.

Against the left wall, in the back is one of those Namco arcade machines that offers, together, Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga, my Valhalla. This is the reason for the quarters. This machine is far better maintained than the one at the Pinball Hall of Fame and thus far the only reliable one I can find in Southern Nevada. This is the one on which I finally got past level 10 after losing there every single time. I worship this machine for that and also because I love playing this. I love coming up with potential reasons for this alien bug invasion in outer space, or where they come from, or what kind of war this is. I always wonder.

A couple of games, 20 or 30, since I also have unlimited energy in these mental wanderings, and I go out to the food court to sit down for a bit and enjoy the peace. I wish there was a library here, which I know is impossible because it's a tourist attraction. I don't think I could live here, and it's a bit of a drive so it can't be done as often, but if they had a library with deep enough armchairs, with one always reserved for me, I'd go for it because there is a shuddering kind of peace in Primm. There is such transition because of the Nevada-California border, people coming and going, people shopping on the way in and shopping on the way out, people you might never see again, and you probably won't. It's a bit of a jolt at times, but then things always settle. You wander through this shopping experience--and yes, I consider it an experience--and you can browse with ease because it strikes a kind of balance between high-end shopping and then shopping for the rest of us. There are the ritzy kind of stores and then there's the Viva Vegas souvenir store, where I like to be, to see if they have any worthwhile shirts and magnets. The last time we went, no. But when I went to the Viva Vegas store at Las Vegas Premium Outlets South, I found a magnet with the Cosmopolitan on it, and you bet I bought that. I'll bet the next time I actually go to Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas, I'll find that same magnet there.

I get up from the table at the food court, and walk back the way I came. I don't need the Discount Smoke Shop, or Wilsons Leather Outlet, or Bauer Fashion Eyewear, or Silver Post, or even Crocs. I could go to the Character Outlet Gift Shop just off the food court, but they don't lean as heavily toward Disney stuff as the Character Depot in Las Vegas Premium Outlet South's annex property, on the same land. The last time I went there, I found a gray Walt Disney World t-shirt with Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, Daisy, and Pluto in front of Cinderella Castle, and Tinker Bell above, and naturally it had to be mine. The time before that, it was the Tron: Legacy junior novelization and a sticker book that included a sticker of Kevin Flynn, which, to me, was a sticker of Jeff Bridges, one of my heroes, and where else would I find a sticker of Jeff Bridges? I don't think I can wait for the The Mirror Has Two Faces sticker book, after all.

This is the end of my time here. I've done what I've come to do. Just down the street, adjacent to the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas, is the Primm Valley Lotto Store. Since there is no lottery in Nevada, this is just a whisper across the border in California. In fact, here's something really cool to do: Stop your car just past the stop sign on the way into the parking lot, or on the way out, if you want. Your back tires will be in California. Your front tires will be in Nevada. Or just get out of your car after you park and do the same with your feet. Doing it at Hoover Dam, one foot in Nevada, one foot in Arizona, is cool, too, but you're at the Lotto Store. It's not as large, but it is quick. Back in May, when the Mega Millions jackpot was $600 million, a lot of people did just that, though further back, as the line to buy those tickets was monstrous.

Now I'm back in this living room, in this mobile home, eight miles from the Strip, and 44 miles from Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas. It's not like going back to boredom after having so much fun, like it was going back to the Santa Clarita Valley from anywhere during those years. Everything is interesting in Las Vegas, even the small things, because they may portend a bigger, more detailed story. However, I don't go to Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas as often in my mind as I do the Nevada Room at the Boulder City Library, or the main drag of Boulder City, especially the half-bowl-shaped park located beneath the Bureau of Reclamation building, or the UNLV campus. You'd think my love of Galaga would trigger more visits, but there are still a whole lot of books in the Nevada Room that I haven't read yet, still a lot of titles to linger over. And, when I need to write, what better peace for it? But I still do appreciate Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas, because I'm not like my parents, who went between Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York so easily. I never knew close borders like that when I lived in Florida. That's why that Nevada-California border is so fascinating to me. California's jurisdiction ends right there, and Nevada's begins. Just like that, just by that border marked so with those signs. It isn't just how smooth the roads quickly get when you drive into Nevada, though that does show an interesting difference in state governments. It's that there is my past, and here is my present and my future, so close together. I will not revisit that past by going back, but whenever we're at Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas, I like to look out at California, relieved that that part of my life is over, that there is no such thing as boredom here in Southern Nevada. There is always something to see, something to hear, something to smell, something to taste, something to touch, something to know. And then the stories come. And the mental journeys begin again.

Only in Words and Photos

On Friday, my sister had a job interview at M&M's World on the Strip that turned into two, which is a good sign. They liked her enough during the first interview that they had her do a second with someone else higher-up there. Or at least that's what it sounds like.

The directions given to Meridith for this interview said to park in the Showcase Mall parking garage. Obviously, not only because it's right there, attached to the building that houses M&M's World, but also because we couldn't park in the garage at New York-New York and walk across the street, or park in the garage at MGM Grand and walk through the casino to that sidewalk and then walk the length of the sidewalk. It was way too hot, and it was even hotter yesterday at 115 degrees.

It costs $3 to park in the Showcase Mall garage, and that may be the reason it's so clean. Few people park in there because the Showcase Mall isn't the only place they want to go. You only park there if you want New York-New York and MGM Grand and Monte Carlo at the same time, with the parking garage a central location facing all of those. If you want to walk even further, you can reach Aria and the Cosmopolitan. In cooler days, that would be reasonable. Not that day, or rather not for us. The tourists were out and about anyway, no matter the heat. Can't waste time when you're on vacation.

We parked on the fourth floor of the garage, the top floor I think, because M&M's World reaches the fourth floor with a full-size NASCAR car and various merchandise. It's a quieter floor than any other there. Meridith had to be on the fourth floor because that's where the interview would take place. When we got inside M&M's World, and Meridith asked an employee standing near a costumed red M&M character, she was told to wait on the left side, near the door marked "Authorized Personnel Only." Even with how compact the Showcase Mall appears to be, with a smaller Coca-Cola store and a Half Price Tickets kiosk, there's still room for offices in the back. Amazing.

I thought the big thing for me during this visit would be the free 3D movie, "I Lost My 'M' in Vegas," shown in a tiny screening room on the third floor. Not so. We parked and walked to the double doors that were an entrance to an enclosed walkway that would lead us to M&M's World. We opened the doors and I found the cleanest, the most peaceful, and the most low-key walkway I've ever seen in Las Vegas. White tile flooring, framed posters of upcoming movies at the entrance to the walkway and at the end of the walkway, courtesy of the nearby United Artists theater, and above, a wavy metal ceiling structure with small holes all throughout, and above that structure, wavy red neon lighting embedded in the ceiling. If there is a Heaven after this life, this is the walkway that I hope will be there. But more than that, I knew right away that I had to use this walkway in my first novel. And things changed because of that.

Originally, I wanted my two main characters to go to the Buena Park Downtown mall after eating at Po Folks, a Southern restaurant I grew up on in Florida, which had only one branch this far out, and it closed some time ago. But in my novel, it's still open. Now, I loved Buena Park Downtown, with its slight gloom, its gray color scheme, its mostly low ceilings because it felt like it had history, it had a semi-lived-in feeling, and it seemed to keep memories of those who walked through and who worked there. Not necessarily in soda stains, but just the feeling of the place, like if you stared hard enough at a wall near the entrance to the Walmart there, you could actually see who was there before you. Something like that.

The scene at Buena Park Downtown would have involved the duo going down to the first floor, to John's Incredible Pizza Company, where there would be a frantic search for the rare pinball machine on the massive arcade floor, a fervent belief that it's there. But after finding that walkway, and considering the information that my characters would be given along the way, across the country, in this search, wouldn't it be enough that the final piece come from the source they meet in this walkway? I'm not going to reveal why this source is there, but I like how it may play out. And because of that, because they can just go right to where they need to be after eating at Po Folks, it makes Buena Park Downtown an extraneous scene. It adds nothing to my story. But I feel ok about it. No regrets about not being able to use it. The story leads.

I was thinking about all this while watching an indie film called Littlerock on Amazon Instant Video. A brother and sister, two Japanese tourists, wind up in a Southern California desert town called Littlerock after their rental car breaks down. There is nothing to do in this town, and as Atsuko (Atsuko Okatsuka) observes, the stores are so far away. I'm trying to watch it, and it's not that it isn't good. It captures that disembodied atmosphere perfectly. But I'm not as interested in it as I originally hoped. I want to keep in mind Buena Park, Anaheim, Baker, and San Juan Capistrano. I need the first three for my writing, and the latter for my own memories. But the rest of Southern California, such as Victorville, Palmdale, and other places that mirror Littlerock? I don't want them anymore. I don't think I ever wanted them, but I needed them for nine years, to know them a little bit, for survival, to keep my head on straight during those nine long years. Now that I'm here in Las Vegas, they fade. I'm glad they do because I have so much here to fill me up, so much to explore every day. It's not that bad memories come to the surface during Littlerock, but the question of why I'm watching this when I've left it all behind. That's not my desert. It never was. Originally, I think I wanted to see Littlerock because I wanted to see how a filmmaker saw what I had known for all that time. Could they find some new revelation in it that I hadn't known? So far, no. It is what I once remember. Same as it ever was.

And yet, I have King of California in my DVD collection, and that's set in Santa Clarita, though it wasn't entirely filmed there. Why that? Why a movie that's meant to represent a valley in which I existed for nine long years? That's different. King of California is a Quixotesque story that is only partially about place. It is mainly about a frantic search for buried treasure. And it moves. It never dwells too long. Plus, it's not the actual Santa Clarita I knew, because there's no Santa Clarita Department of Mental Health. Plus it serves as one of many blueprints for my novel.

I don't read anything about Southern California anymore that's not research-related. I spent more than enough time there. But what I do read, if it's a novel to inform my own novel, or a book about, say, Anaheim or some aspect of Anaheim, I can handle that. I don't mind that. I think it's because for me, words don't take as much time as some movies do. Granted, Littlerock is only an hour and 23 minutes, but a chapter in a book about Anaheim would take far less time to read. I can get the information I need and move on and that's all I have to know about Southern California until I need something else, or something else comes up in my reading that I want to include in my work. It's the same with photos I find online, of Baker, of Buena Park. I can look at them for a minute or a few minutes if necessary and then move on. I don't need the atmosphere anymore. It's lodged in my memory for when I write about it. I don't need that mess of mountains and freeways. I don't even need the trains because our future apartment complex is located near the railroad track and I can have those trains. To watch Littlerock and be back in Southern California like that is too long. Maybe for me it's the kind of movie to watch in pieces, to fast forward, watch a few seconds, see where it leads, and go to another section. I got the gist of the movie in the first five minutes, so anything else to come would not be anything so new to me that I'd have to go back to previous scenes, scenes that I possibly hadn't watched, to know what's going on. Nine years is a long enough time that pieces of Southern California will always be with me. If not in my work, then the rare pleasant memories I had there, such as that day of research at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills. But it doesn't mean that I want to dwell, as Littlerock would have me do. Though that's not the actual purpose of the movie, it's what I take from it from my own personal experience. And yet, when I write the Buena Park section of my first novel, and write extensively about Anaheim in a later novel, I will be dwelling. The difference is that I don't mind being in either city in my mind. I don't need what doesn't matter to me anymore. Let it remain distant as it has for these past eight months and counting. As I watch Littlerock it's a reminder of what I'm glad to have left behind. After those nine years, to the point where I was trying not to lose hope of ever getting out of there, I made it out. In that way, perhaps Littlerock is a victory lap for me. I can watch what I want of it and it doesn't affect me like it used to. I've completely detached myself from it. For that, I'm relieved. It'll always be in me, but it's not me.

Changing, Permeating, But Never Disappearing

Every time we drove back to Santa Clarita from Burbank, from IKEA, or Ventura from Ventura Harbor Village, or Buena Park from Po Folks and Buena Park Downtown and Anaheim from Downtown Disney, I was always deeply disappointed and even a little down because my reason for living that entire week, to reach that day when we could go to those places, was over. We were going back to where there was nothing to do, nothing to connect to, nothing to want to think about in relation to the area, such as its history or its weaving roads. I experienced all those and it was time to move on from them as Santa Clarita approached. Not forget them, of course, but not think about them as much because there was the next day. What the hell was I going to do with the next day?

Two months ago, Meridith won tickets from Sunny 106.5 to see Shania Twain at the Colosseum, choosing May 31st, yesterday, as the evening to see her. I had been following news of her show back in Southern California, when it was a rumor at first, and now I was going to have the chance to see it for myself. I was excited, I was looking forward to it, but I wasn't breathlessly anticipating it as I did a day trip to Burbank or Ventura or Buena Park or Anaheim. They were all day trips. It took that long to get to each. There were other things to do in Las Vegas leading up to the concert, such as my weekly library visits, and subbing as a library aide at various elementary schools, and reading, and writing, and visiting casinos, and visiting Henderson, and going to a buffet (the one at Terrible's lately), and grocery shopping, and so much else that never disappeared like those days did. They last. They become part of my own personal universe here, what makes me what I am in Las Vegas, and what I feel about all of it.

Even when there are places we haven't been to in such a long time, I always remember the first time I was there, such as with Caesars Palace when we went last night, our first time since we were tourists. When the elevator doors to the casino floor opened, we were overcome by the Cher Army waiting to get to the parking garage after leaving the Colosseum. Cher's show was over, so they were invading. This was in May 2010, I think, and I remembered Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill being a lot smaller. And wasn't the entrance to the Colosseum much bigger than that? Maybe Cher's glassed-in costumes at the entrance made it seem bigger. I think Bette Midler was there at the same time, part of the Colosseum rotation, which now features Celine Dion, of course, Shania Twain, Elton John, and Rod Stewart, with one-night-only dates from Jerry Seinfeld popping up occasionally. Those are the major players, as well as Luis Miguel every September to celebrate Mexican Independence Day, which is great for us for tourism.

This time, when the elevator doors opened to the casino floor, no Cher Army. She left in February 2011. And then when we saw the entrance to Mesa Grill, I thought that it had been smaller. I was sure of it. But things always seem bigger, grander, awe-inspiring when you're a tourist. That's not to say that Las Vegas isn't awe-inspiring for me anymore. Going to Caesars Palace last night was walking through another dreamworld. There's a lot of those here. Sights you'd only expect to find in dreams exist here. Seeing Shania Twain in concert might well have been in a dream because if Meridith hadn't won those tickets, I'm sure it would have been another two years before I would have been able to see her. We can't readily afford those tickets. It would have taken a lot of saving.

After seeing the Shania store (which rotates the merchandise depending on the act. Her merchandise was front and center and then after her final show tonight before she leaves for the summer, the store will close briefly and Celine Dion's merchandise will be placed front and center and more prominently throughout the rest of the store, with Twain's and Elton John's merchandise threaded throughout), and having dinner at the Cypress Street Marketplace food court, the nicest food court I've ever been to, Meridith and I left Mom and Dad and went inside the Colosseum, taking an escalator to the second floor, to our seats, which were still first-floor seating, but rising way up near the back, one row before the seats against the wall in the back. Row O, seats 425 and 426, and center-stage for us.

There are all kinds of dreams to be experienced in Las Vegas and this one began with strips of curtain that had a forest digitally projected on them, in which fireflies appeared and a black horse appeared and then faded out. It was such a beautiful scene with the appropriate forest sounds and flute music to match. And then the show began with a video of Shania Twain on a motorcycle, riding in the desert toward a tunnel and once she reached the tunnel, the real Shania Twain was lowered from the ceiling on a motorcycle, the motorcycle steering to match the motion onscreen and then she finally landed gently to begin the show, to huge applause. I don't remember what song she started with, but I was still floored that I was here, seeing Shania Twain live.

There was an outdoor Western set, as well as a Western bar set for a few songs, and besides watching Twain perform, I like watching all the behind-the-scenes business in action, such as the changing of the sets. I probably pay closer attention to this than most, and I enjoyed watching special effects end and begin according to the song. My favorite part of the concert was on a campfire set, with dry ice fog simulating a campfire, with a gentle fake flame in the middle, and rocks around the campfire for Twain and randomly-selected audience members. Before this, during two songs separated by another song, she walked off the stage to the bottom sections closest to the stage to meet and greet the audience while she sang.

Then for the campfire set, she chose a girl who was there with her mother for her 18th birthday, a couple from Brazil who had seen her in London in 2004 when they were dating, an enthusiastic Brazilian guy who looked like he was wearing his country's flag as a shirt and a beanie hat, and most touchingly, a girl possibly younger than the 18-year-old one, 16 or 15 it looked like, who was overwhelmed and started tearing up on stage because she had been singing Twain's songs since she was 5. Twain had just finished tearing up reminiscing about her late mother and the greatest gift she gave her, her sister Carrie-Ann, and she started all over upon meeting that girl. She had the birthday girl and her biggest fan sit next to her on stage and there were two acoustic songs sung. Twain's love for her audiences is genuine. She is so appreciative of her good fortune in being this major star performer, and despite it being her second-to-last show before she leaves for the summer (her final show is tonight and then she's back in late November), she gave it her all for the entire show.

The final third of the show began with her singing "Still the One" to her white horse on stage, and then "From This Moment On," closing the show with "Man! I Feel Like a Woman." I loved the entire show, but I was especially fascinated by the musicians, the harmonica/piano player, the electric guitarist and the other musicians, because they were clearly in their zone. They have a plum gig with this show and they know it and they love performing as much as Twain does. The harmonica player in the song on the outdoor Western set became the piano player in the Western bar set, and he was jumping around while he was playing the piano. They clearly love what they do.

I was disappointed that "You've Got a Way" wasn't in the setlist, but that was tempered by the Colosseum being the crown jewel of Las Vegas. Meridith said that going to the Colosseum to see a show should be on everyone's bucket list. But I amend that to limit it to those who live in Las Vegas and who visit Las Vegas. She's right. It was built in 2003 solely to entice Celine Dion, and it has become a mega-entertainment venue. It's rightfully celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. I've been to a few showrooms in Las Vegas, with many more to come for sure, and I don't think any can type the Colosseum for class, for beauty, for gentle history. Everyone at Caesars Palace involved with the Colosseum take such loving care of it and it shows.

Now it's 5:09, the next afternoon. Michael Bolton is performing at Eastside Cannery at 8:30 tonight, and Mom and Meridith will be there since Mom won tickets for it on Sunny 106.5 on Thursday. I'm not thinking as much about Shania: Still the One beyond what I wrote, but living here, it'll always be in mind in some way. It colors my view of Las Vegas being a continuous waking dream. It makes me wonder more about those musicians, about what they do for work when Twain goes back home to the Bahamas for the break. I'm sure they find work somewhere, but do they already have it lined up or are they waiting until after the final show tonight? And where do they store those sets at the Colosseum? Do they truck them off to a nearby air-conditioned, climate-controlled warehouse, or is there plenty of room backstage? How does that work?

This time, and in previous times, I'm not disappointed that the experience is over. I'm still here, and will always be here, so it's still here. No matter how many years down the road Twain performs until she decides to leave, it'll never leave. I like that. For once, it's not about having to go back to real life as defined like it was in Santa Clarita. It fits squarely in my memories, in my imagination, and that's important to me. I can look at the Colosseum and know I was there, and also wonder what will happen next. Elton John is coming back to the Colosseum in September and October, and I'm hoping Sunny 106.5 gives away tickets. Because it's him, and after being at the Colosseum, I'm going to bang the phone away for those, trying my damndest every single time they're announced. But hopefully not every single time. I hope I win them the first or second time.

I know that it's partly because I'm local and not having to go through mountains and freeways that the show will never leave me, that I can always reference it any way I need to in heart and mind. But it's also because I'm finally home that I can do that, that I care enough to remember, and without regret, as it was for all those years, regret at having to leave pleasure. Here, it's always mine. That's how it should be, and I finally have it.

The Pleasure of Local History

In Florida, I learned about Ponce de Leon, and the Fountain of Youth, and St. Augustine in my history classes. But there I was in South Florida, and there was St. Augustine in Northeast Florida. I could read about it, but I couldn't readily see it. We went there sometimes during my childhood, but the last time I could remember going was when I was reaching my late teens, when my paternal grandparents were with us on that trip, and even then it was relatively brief, although I do remember seeing the fort. But if I wanted to know more about it beyond those visits, there were the books. We didn't always have reason to go back and if it was a choice between that or Walt Disney World today, I would choose Walt Disney World first and then see if there was time later to travel on up to St. Augustine.

The biggest disappointment of moving from South Florida to Southern California, before nine years' existence in Southern California became the biggest disappointment, was that I only got to see Tallahassee, my state capital, once, and that was when we were driving out of Florida. That's where the legislature meets and that's where the governor's mansion is. I don't think I saw the governor's mansion on the way out, but I saw the Capitol. And that's all I saw of my seat of state government. In years to come, I want to go back to visit, to see how my old haunts have changed, and I'd like to see Tallahassee again, to spend more time, to have a closer look at what remained far away as we drove by.

It's because of that missed opportunity that I hold more dearly to me the pleasure of having history nearby in Las Vegas, some in Henderson, and in Boulder City. Mostly Boulder City, since it's my favorite place in Southern Nevada. I have here a book called Hoover Dam & Boulder City by Marion V. Allen, whose family lived in Boulder City, and who also worked on the construction of Hoover Dam (Boulder Dam back then). I always love receiving books from the Boulder City library because it's my favorite in the entire Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, although it operates differently in many ways from the rest of the libraries in that cluster, with a separate website for one, and you're given two extra days with any books you receive from that branch because of the distance. Boulder City is close enough to Las Vegas, closer to Henderson, but when you drive there, it feels like a different world, higher up in the mountains. Unlike the trapped feeling I always got in Santa Clarita, there's so much more to see here, so much more to wonder about.

Besides reading Hoover Dam & Boulder City out of my fervent desire to know more about the history of all that's around me, I'm looking for more information about Boulder City manager Sims Ely, who ran the town single-handedly during the construction of Hoover Dam. He was hired by the government to do so, to be sure that their investment did not go to waste, and I think there's more history of him to be found, more stories that should be told. To some, he was a despot, but that may be only because he didn't allow gambling or alcohol inside Boulder City. He strikes me as having been fair-minded, but there's not as much to be found about him as there should be. I hope to rectify that in time.

But more than any of that, I love reading about living conditions in Boulder City and Hoover Dam construction and know that I have been to both. I read these details and I know exactly what's being referenced, where it is, and what it looks like today. I'm not good yet with directions in Boulder City, which streets intersect and the easiest way to get to the Boulder City library, but I'll get there. I have lots of time for that. To be able to go to those scenes of history, to be there and remember what I have read and picture it right there is new to me. As mentioned, I didn't have the chance all that often in Florida, and there was very little history of Southern California that I cared to know, outside of Buena Park and Anaheim, and even then, I didn't get as deep into Buena Park, where other history might have been. So this is pretty much all new to me, always fascinating, and I don't think it will ever waver. Nor will the sheer novelty of the California-Nevada border being merely 35 minutes away, albeit with long stretches of road empty on both sides. Both my parents came from New York and therefore it was nothing to them to go into New Jersey or Connecticut and back again. The biggest thing for me in Florida in terms of travel like that was that it took only an hour to get from the east side of the state to the west side, from Pembroke Pines, where we lived many years before we moved, to Naples. Only an hour! And yet, there were no states to cross until you get to Northern Florida, and then out. The only time I had ever crossed borders was from the air, when we flew on Delta from Ft. Lauderdale to Newark in 1994, and all I noticed were mountains we flew over. I didn't even think of borders.

Now, when we're in Primm, especially at the lotto store to the left of the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas, I can look right out at the roads and see the border and the signs right there, one welcoming drivers to California on the right, and the other welcoming drivers to Nevada on the left. That I can see that, and I can see where history happened wherever I want, and see what it is today and if aspects of that history have been preserved (beyond Hoover Dam, of course, and the Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum all the way in the back on the second floor of the Boulder Dam Hotel), at times means more to me than seeing the Strip just as often. I love knowing that others have been here before me and I always want to know what brought them there and how they reacted when they first saw it, and what they wanted to do when they got here, what they were looking for. Just another way of knowing that I really am home.

Save 80 Bucks. Audition for Wheel of Fortune.

The renamed Venetian Theatre was where Phantom - The Las Vegas Spectacular performed for six years. The centerpiece chandelier, which fell during every performance, is now permanently locked into the ceiling, its computer programming long since disconnected. It's not the first thing I noticed in the somber, gothic-themed, weighted-with-ghosts theater at 11:40 last Saturday morning, but the reminder was there when I looked up at it, along with the knowledge that preeminent Broadway director Hal Prince stood in this theater many times.

The theater had been remodeled since the show closed, with more seats extending to the stage, which I don't think could have been done before. The music of the night needed more room.

I wondered where the Phantom was now, what he was doing now. After the show closed, Anthony Crivello, our Phantom, went back to Broadway to audition, and I think he landed in one show. Maybe he's still in that show or maybe that show closed too. Nevertheless, he was a great supporter of Las Vegas like former Playboy Playmate Holly Madison, even gamely appearing on Wheel of Fortune during those Phantom years, whenever it was in Las Vegas for a few weeks.

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill's Soul2Soul is there now for a little while longer. Then they'll leave and be replaced with Priscilla Queen of the Desert. I don't know if the balcony seating on both sides of the theater is still used (I couldn't see the seats up there, if there were any), but with those offerings, I don't think they need to. There had been some buzz about Soul2Soul before it started, naturally. But it doesn't sound like it was a major hit. McGraw and Hill don't live here, instead flying in when it's time to perform on weekends, and that's understandable because they have other business in their careers to attend to.

I think if the box office take had been monstrous, Venetian officials would have tried to entice them with everything they could have ever wanted to stay longer. And guaranteed, Vegas Deluxe (www.vegasdeluxe.com), led by Robin Leach, would have had all the details of those negotiations. But there's nothing. As it is, the only big thing besides the impending remodel of the outside of New York-New York to build a park modeled on Madison Square Park, with shops and restaurants and a Hershey store, connecting it and the Monte Carlo and to an eventual 20,000-seat sports stadium, is that Olivia Newton-John will begin her mini-residency at the Flamingo possibly at the start of summer, performing when Donny & Marie aren't.

It's said that Tim McGraw wants to go back out on tour, and that's reasonable, but I don't think this show is going to come back. There's no word on what will follow the limited run of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, though that box office take will likely determine if they extend it, but I think they need something fresh, what with the Strip beginning to change in various places, such as the old Sahara becoming SLS Las Vegas next year, and an Asian-themed resort called Resorts World Las Vegas under construction for a 2016 opening.

But at that moment, at 11:40 in the morning, I'm sitting in a mostly empty row, across from an exit, next to Meridith, Dad and Mom. We're part of the audience for auditions for Wheel of Fortune. We filled out the small yellow applications outside the theater, while waiting in line, and dropped them in the tall box outside the theater. As we learn from the Jim Carrey-influenced, pop culture-loving host, whose name I've long forgotten, the applications are placed in a wire mesh drum and spun around and around, with applications chosen at random. Those names called go on stage, first backstage to sign in and have their photo taken. Then they stand on one of the five X's placed diagonally. The host interviews them, asking about their jobs, their hobbies, their passions, and it's there that they must be at their most enthusiastic, their most charismatic because that's what they're looking for in future contestants. Those contestants on stage would find out in two months either by a letter in the mail or by e-mail that they've been invited to the final auditions in Las Vegas. If they make it through those, they're on the show. Factoring in 6 weeks of shows being taped in July and August, which is five shows in a week (taped in one day, of course, which means the production will be here for six days), that's 30 shows. Three contestants per show is 90 contestants total. The odds are long, but we are in Las Vegas. We still hope.

Then the host spins the wheel on stage to determine what prize all the contestants will get (t-shirt, hat, mini-pack with a black shoulder strap and a keychain and "blinky pin," as the host called it, inside; or a "Surprise" that includes all those prizes and either a duffel bag or a smaller cooler bag), and then the contestants play the Speed-Up Round, which is the round when time's running out on the show and Pat Sajak gives the wheel a final spin, led by Morgan Matthews, who fills the Vanna White role for the Wheelmobile events.

The first show began and the host introduced himself and explained all this, and then introduced Morgan Matthews, who spun the drum and took out the first five applications, handing each to the host as she went along. I was surprised when Dad was called to the stage, and then I was called right after him, causing the host to comment, "A double shot of Aronskys!"

Originally, I didn't want to audition. When Mom heard about the Wheelmobile coming to the Venetian, Meridith immediately wanted to, and then Dad did too. I didn't, because while I'm not a stiff personality, I'm not that charismatic or demonstrative. I can get lively in conversation, but usually with one other person or a small group of people. It was Dad and Meridith's thing, not mine.

But then, I went to see Jeff Bridges, one of my heroes, in concert on Friday night at the Chrome Showroom at Santa Fe Station. Front row seat. Well worth the price ($88.50 via Ticketmaster, immediately when tickets went on sale), and my seat was right where Jeff Bridges stood while he played his guitars and sang, and directly in front of the keyboard on which he performed a few songs, including two from The Big Lebowski. When he played that keyboard and sang, he loomed over me at that angle and I watched him the entire time, his eyes closed throughout most of the songs he sang at that keyboard. I was in awe of the clear passion he had for his music, and on the way home, thinking about all that Jeff Bridges does in taking photos on the sets of his movies, drawing, writing his first book with Bernie Glassman, his Zen master, working to eliminate childhood hunger, attending Zen conventions, making movies of course, and now music, I thought to myself that I wanted to be a renaissance man at 63 years old like he is. But then I thought, "Why not start now?" I decided in the car that I would sign up for the chance to audition for Wheel of Fortune, but not for the purpose of becoming a renaissance man like Jeff Bridges. Mom has been watching Wheel of Fortune since Chuck Woolery hosted from 1975 to 1981. I wanted to increase our chances of getting tickets for at least one of the tapings, besides fighting like hell to get them when they become available in June, so why not increase them three-fold?

When I dashed down the steps to the stage after my name was called, following Dad as he did the same, I felt like I wasn't in my body. Was this real? Was this actually happening? I thought Meridith would be called first. She wanted it the most. But there I was, reaching the stage after figuring out how to get there, since there was a curtain in front of me that I thought led backstage (I didn't go behind it, though), and then three stairs immediately leading to the stage. I took the latter and was led backstage to a long table to sign in and then one of the production assistants, wearing a shirt that said "Spin This.", took a photo of me. Before that, I joked, "This is better than the DMV!"

I took my place on stage, the last "X", closest to the audience. I waited as the first three contestants were interviewed by the host, and then Dad, and I was a little nervous. But once called upon by the host, I went up there, told him and the audience that I'm a substitute elementary school library assistant in the Clark County School District, hoping for a full-time position. He asked me what I like to do, and I said, "Reading, writing, movies, pinball, presidential history and....more movies." (I think I got it all, because that comprises my life.) He zeroed in on presidential history, asking me who my favorite president is. "43 presidents and you want to know right now who my favorite president is?" I joked to him. In hindsight, I know there are 44, but I blanked by one.

I quickly thought about it and said "William Howard Taft," mainly because I'm reading about him right now and he does fascinate me. The host asked why and I said, "Because he didn't want to be president. He wanted to be Chief Justice of the United States and later on, he got his dream when Warren G. Harding nominated him and..." I'm not the lecturing type, but maybe I was still a little nervous because the host sensed I was going on too long and amiably moved me along with, "He really knows his presidents." I didn't mind that he moved me along since he had a show to run. I wished I could have compressed Taft's history fast enough, including the fact that he ran for president because his wife, Helen "Nellie" Taft, wanted to be First Lady, and he was devoted to her. I knew I couldn't include the fact that Taft was responsible for the Supreme Court building as we know it today, wanting a separate, grand building for this separate branch of the government, but he died before it was completed. That would have been impossible, but I wanted to get to Harding nominating Taft to be Chief Justice. Nervousness overpowers all, though, even when you don't actually feel nervous while on stage.

The puzzle began. The category was "Event." I think I guessed "L" or "M," but neither were in the puzzle. I knew what it was about a minute later, but the host was back to the beginning of the row and the fourth person before me in the row solved it: "Toga Party." As the host put it, just because you're on stage does not guarantee you a final audition, and just because you solved the puzzle does not guarantee you a final audition. They're looking for the whole package, with charisma, energy, and puzzle-solving ability all together, which flummoxed Mom after we had left the Venetian later in the day because all the time that she's watched the show, most of those people seem very subdued, so she doesn't know exactly what they're looking for if they seem all the same.

After leaving the stage, I went back up to our row, and we watched the rest of the first show. By the end, Meridith still hadn't been called up, so we went back to the elevator, downstairs (Mom uses a cane, so we don't use stairs), and got back in line for the second show where Meridith filled out a blue application and put it in the tall box outside the theater. We went back to the elevator, back to the second (or third?) floor, back to our row. Second show, no luck.

We got back in line for the third and final show of the day and Meridith filled out another application, a different color. And no luck again. After the final names for the second show were called, we got up and left the theater to get back in line before everyone else not called did the same thing. And after the final names were called for the third show, we left. What reason was there to sit for the rest of that show? Mom gave Meridith the option of going back on Sunday for those shows, for the hope of being called, but Meridith said she has three chances with those three applications, so that was enough for her. The host also said that those who aren't called on the stage still have a shot. During each show, he said he's going to take the remaining applications with him back to Los Angeles, pick a few at random, and those chosen will get the letter or e-mail inviting them to the final auditions. Meridith filled out each application differently, with her interests worded differently in each, with different drawings on the border of the applications. You have to stand out somehow to hopefully catch their attention.

There were a few people I saw during all three shows that I would happily give up my spot for in order to see them on the show. They need to be on the show. Based on what Mom said about people on the show seeming subdued, I may have a better chance than I think I do.

And the phantoms remain in the Venetian Theatre. The ghosts of Phantom of the Opera and soon Soul2Soul and future productions that will arrive and then leave either months or years later. Things always change in this city. But one thing that will never change is my happiness at the opportunity for free events that let me see places for which I would have to pay exorbitant amounts. This was the best way to save 80 bucks or more to see the Venetian Theatre. And the main feature on the stage is a "C" with its rear in the air and the arms of the C on the stage, lit in blue. That looks like the centerpiece for the Soul2Soul show, the one thing that couldn't be removed from the stage since it looks like it's attached to it, that is if Tim McGraw and Faith Hill use anything else besides that. Stools, of course, but I think that's it. For me, it's enough to have seen this theater, the only time I ever will like this, just like when we waited along with the rest of the crowd in the 1 OAK Nightclub in early March at the Mirage before we were all dispatched to the Beatles LOVE theater for the live broadcast of American Idol. If I make it to the final audition and then am invited to be on Wheel of Fortune, I'll do it. It means Mom would get to see the show live, and that's the only reason for me.

Sometimes a Neighborhood of Grace

While I do feel that I'm finally home here in Nevada and particularly in Las Vegas and Henderson and Boulder City, I sometimes forget what it is that makes me feel at home. It's not anything that I believe that causes it, but rather what happens around me.

Last weekend, during the day, the house to our left exploded in argument, and since we're so close to it, we could hear everything that was being said. There was shouting inside, and someone stormed out, got in the truck in that driveway, and started the engine, then gunned it out of there. And then diagonally from us, there's a house that routinely erupts in fights, usually between the eldest adult son of the household (that is if there are any more children than just him, which I'm not sure about, and I don't ever want to make sure) and his girlfriend. A few weeks ago, it happened right outside and I could hear the whole thing from my window. Of course I listened from on my bed, where I was reading. I'm a writer, after all. But I don't like any of this. This mobile home park isn't necessarily so bad on this side all the time. I hear stories about drug dealing going on on the far opposite end, and the occasional squatter, and conflicts elsewhere in the park. At least it doesn't happen every day, but it's still jarring when it does. You startle, and then you settle. Just another day in the neighborhood, hopefully far removed from the previous day that it happens.

Las Vegas is a jittery city. It's the 24-hour lifestyle. Anything can happen at any hour of the day. There are separate blocks of time for different people. For example, my street is populated with those who have day jobs. They're sleeping right now and they'll get up in a few hours, do what they need to in order to face the day, and then go to work. The middle of the mobile home park are where those who leave for work at 2, 3 in the morning, live because there's not much of a risk of waking anybody up, being that those houses on each side face the pool area, the playground, and the basketball court.

And yet, there is balance. Sometimes the scales are tipped in favor of anger and shouting and recriminations, but eventually, there is grace. Not always from the people, but at least from the pets. The cats. The dogs.

At night, the cats on my street walk from one end to the other, uninterrupted, unruffled. They're used to whatever they've seen in their lives. But I feel sorry for some of the dogs. Not in Southern California, and not in Florida, did I ever see dogs simply walk away from wherever they live, probably needing a break. Many of the dogs in my street are mostly outside, behind tall gates or behind smaller, squat gates placed at the top of front-door stairs so they can't get out. But some do.

For example, yesterday afternoon, when I was walking Tigger, a small, furry, off-white dog walked from wherever he lived, a perpetual grin on his face. Maybe he had done this before. I didn't know who he belonged to, and especially where those people were. Wouldn't they notice that their dog was missing? Probably not. It's just that kind of neighborhood. He came closer to Tigger and I and I knew I had to pick up Tigger because I didn't want to deal with these neighbors beyond their dogs, whoever these neighbors were.

The dog simply looked at me, smiling. Was it a smile of relief at being away from whoever he lived with, or just at seeing someone new? I don't know. However, he looked like he knew where he lived, and there's not much of a chance of strays here. None can get in with the front gates and walls there are around the property. The dogs and cats here do belong to those who live here.

I didn't feel so much worry for the dog. Mild concern that it had gotten out, but understanding that some people aren't fit to own dogs, and maybe his owner wasn't. Some people may like dogs, but they don't know how to take care of them or care enough to take care of them.

I liked the look on the dog's face, contentment that you don't see often in Las Vegas. That's not to say there isn't pleasure, but you won't see many of my kind in a casino. I walk around, feeling completely at home, despite the cigarette smoke, depending on what casino we're at. For example, at the Rio a few nights ago, I looked down at the banks of slot machines from the second floor and yet again couldn't believe that I'm a resident here. To me, it's a waking dream all the time. But most want to win. They think a casino is a bank and they can withdraw money accordingly. Faces furrowed in concentration, hoping that the slot machines hit that magic combination, that the cards at the blackjack table are the ones they wanted when they got here. I'm fine with it because that's our economy. I must be the exception and also persona non grata to the casinos because I don't gamble as much as I did when I was a tourist and certainly not as much as I did in our first few months as residents, which is to say not much anyway, but I still put in a dollar or two or more. Now, unless it's free play given occasionally because of having a casino club card, depending on the casino, I usually have a book with me, and I read while Mom, Dad and Meridith are at the slot machines. I'd rather save my money for books and other important things. (That reminds me that not only do I have to deposit the check I received yesterday from the school district for the day I was a substitute library aide at Dean Petersen Elementary three weeks ago, but I also have to withdraw $10 to give to Mom for the newspaper fund we all contribute to in order to keep up our subscription to the Review-Journal. $10 monthly to cover the months already in progress and to have a little extra to renew the subscription when it comes time.)

I know people are having fun in their own ways and that's all I expect from those who visit. But I mean pure contentment, not that mixed with intense concentration, hoping to break a casino for all they're worth. It's interesting to me that the first time I really saw it was on the face of that dog. Maybe the dog has an inkling that he's in Las Vegas, but his Las Vegas surely isn't as detailed as my Las Vegas, and that's probably better for him. There's already enough troubles in this city to wade through and choose what matters to you and discard what doesn't, not out of heartlessness, but survival. I don't mean to say that Las Vegas is a dangerous expanse of rogues and slot machines, but, you know, it can be strange at times. Sometimes a good strange, sometimes the concerned strange such as in my neighborhood. It's not necessarily all over this valley, though. You just do what you can, and find where you feel you belong, and make good on that. In Santa Clarita, I used to be so frustrated with everything that was so awful about that valley, and it was, what with there being absolutely nothing to do, and you could try to find things to do but they soon ran out. In Las Vegas, you learn to let things go. If not today, then tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then some other time. Of course, that doesn't apply to the rent and your job, but to mostly everything else, it does.

And then, before American Idol began, Mom told me that she killed a snakelike bug in her bathroom that was silver. I knew exactly that it was a Silverfish, the third most common Nevada pest. I hate hearing about these things, and Mom said that I would have to spray for bugs again. I thought about waiting until later today to do it, but it's been warmer than usual this past week, and it's obviously cooler at night, so what better time? I took the Raid Max Bug Barrier spray out of the cabinet below the kitchen sink and went outside. I sprayed around the back door, then went down the three steps, opened the gate to our rock-and-pebble-laden backyard and sprayed around the house, including around Mom's bathroom window, hoping that this would do it. I circled the entire house and suddenly, a dog approached me, a shaggy dog at that. Unlike the dog from earlier in the day, I didn't have a clue about who this one belonged to. I guessed one of the houses further up the street, toward the front gate, and it was apparent that this dog needed a break. It was friendly as can be, and went up on the section of rocks under my window and Meridith's window and peed a few times. It trotted off and then I went back to the back door area, planning to go back through the gate to look at the high-up electrical wires a couple yards away, from the backyard, but then I looked down and the dog was right next to me. I couldn't go back inside because I didn't want it to follow me. I didn't shoo it away, because I'm a dog lover and I don't do that. But what could I do? What did this dog want? I gently told it to go home and it trotted away, to the front of the empty lot to our right, and that seemed to be it.

Two dogs approaching me in one day. Am I well known among dogs in this neighborhood and I just don't know it? Do they somehow know about Tigger and Kitty and how well I take care of them when they walk them and they want to meet me or something? I've walked the rows of my mobile home park before, and whenever a dog barks at me behind a screen door or behind one of those screened gates at the top of the stairs, I always say hello to it or them. I figure it wants to talk for a bit, so why not? It may be suspicious of me, but perhaps curious too since it probably doesn't see many other people. But I never saw those two dogs before. Well, maybe the white one. I think that may be the dog of the neighbor directly across from us, kept behind that looming gate in the back. They don't seem like the sort who let the dog in all that often. So maybe that's why the dog took to me: A friendlier face and one not likely to be so stern about where they belong. But since we have Tigger and Kitty, I can't do very much for those dogs anyway. Not that I'd want to anyway because everyone's business here is their own. I do feel sorry for those dogs, though, if they got out because they needed a break from where they live. Obviously they're back in wherever they came from because when I walked Tigger and Kitty over two hours ago, I didn't see them around, and I'm sure they would have gravitated to me yet again had they still been out. Could have been the warm weather, though. With how bothersome it's been this week without the cool of Spring, it wouldn't have surprised me if those dogs got out because they needed to move around, needed to feel some air as they trotted about. It's halfway stifling if you're sitting in one place.

So at least there are the dogs, a balance provided after those overheard arguments. There are bad situations in Las Vegas, yes, but there aren't only bad situations. Not that I thought there were only those, what with the creativity that this city has inspired me to want to achieve in my work, but sometimes a gentle reminder is necessary of grace existing where it doesn't seem possible. And yet, in some cases, the further you get from Las Vegas, the more easygoing people are. I think of our new apartment complex in Henderson where we'll be moving in Henderson, that interpretation of a wispy, whispery forest with all those thin trees. I think of Boulder City where people are happy because they're living the lives they want to live, pursuing the passions that wake them up every day, and finding their ideas of peace. But then, it's the same of any major city. I disliked every minute I was in Santa Clarita, but it was quieter than it would have been living in Los Angeles. It's said that the closer you live to the Strip, the higher your insurance rates are. When we move to Henderson in September, the car insurance rate and the renters insurance rate will drop because we'll be further from the Strip, but it'll be no less accessible to us. One thing I really like about Henderson right away is that we'll be closer to Boulder City than we are here. Closer to home for me.

A few minutes ago, during that previous paragraph, I heard sirens outside our neighborhood, sirens that echo in our immediate area, stretching from the Rebel gas station at the intersection, to Sam's Town. Police sirens or ambulance sirens or both, it doesn't rattle me. It happens every night. It's balance. Bad with the good. I don't know if I'll see those dogs again tomorrow, but they are a cheerful reminder that this isn't so bad. And what makes it unpleasant won't be of concern much longer anyway. I wish I could take those dogs in because they obviously deserve better homes, but just like this mobile home park, there's a two-dog policy at our new apartment complex. I hope for the best for those two dogs, and I also hope that the dogs I'll see in Henderson are better taken care of than what seems to be the case here. For some. Not all.