South Las Vegas Boulevard, Looking West. Day One

the writer; the west

The familiar sensation of hot sun and cold shade of the American West.  All in a passing moment, as you move from dark to light.  I felt this twenty-five years before; I feel it again.

Las Vegas at its outskirts is spare to the east coast eye.  It is a patchwork of chain hotels and fast food restaurants, parcels of sand, stunted trees, and trash.  Like the adjacent lot of our hotel; all is still upon arrival, but on the next day on the way to breakfast, there is a collection of bags, and a lump of blankets.  A homeless man is sleeping under a crooked pine. While we slept one-hundred feet away under over-bleached comforters, in view of the heated pool, he wrapped himself up in our scraps and crashed on our abandoned earth.

This matters but what can I do but turn away?  I am not here to save a person. The morning air is cool and dry with a sting that is not altogether unpleasant.  It is a token of warmth to arrive later, wisps of cold that vanish as the sun climbs.  In the immediate distance there are  empty plots of sand, desert plants and human debris. Then a low building in the far distance.

Behind that, a tan haze, and a curtain of mountains to the west, which I now learn is topped by Mount Charleston, which at 11,916 feet is capped with snow.  The face that is turned to us is dusky white.  It remains white even on our return trip, when it reaches 86 in the Las Vegas Valley.  Such extremes are strange to an eastern man, settling oddly upon the joints and bones.

In this immediate moment, Las Vegas raps the forehead with its obvious incongruities.  The patches of sand, the homeless man, the  rows of personal injury lawyer billboards... this is the skelton

the Las Vegas valley

that holds up an incomplete occupation of space, carved up in the cruel dichotomy of this city.  Like the waters of the Bellagio Hotel. This very idea a “lake” and choreographed water, and all accompanied by dancing light, is a nod to the concept that money enables us to disobey the laws of nature – at least for the present.  At least while the water holds out.

Then more: less than a mile from the strip are rows of bail bondsmen, car washes, pay day loan storefronts, cash check outlets, and yet more personal injury lawyers. From mere appearance, Las Vegas is highly litigious. But I won't dwell on the incongruities of this town.  The purpose of this trip is not to condemn Vegas (besides, it is low hanging fruit). No, what I want from this trip is a genuine experience of the West.  Of the Outdoors.  Of a place where Space is both a physical entity and a metaphysical Truth.  I take this very seriously.

Ironically, Las Vegas, a city of rags and patches, begins this serious pursuit. It is captured in the photo above  We see the long shadow; the patch of gravel and sand; the boulder, incorporated into the liminal zone where parking lot meets South Las Vegas Boulevard.  Beyond that, as if cut from another picture, a triangle of tan earth, and further still, Mount Charleston waving and sparkling through the thermals.  What this says to me, and not too subtly, is that this city is breaking apart.  And this is good.  For not too far away, in the line of our sight, is a greater and higher reality.  It is even snow-capped.

That is "reality" to me.  We carve out a bit of sense in the swatch of nonsense that we hear and see all day.  We experience an event, a trip, a love, and it fades to memory.  We can't leave memories alone.  We toy with the damn things, the done things, insisting that they abide by the rules of our own narratives.  And in the process, it all gets lost.  We loose the thread of our story.

But at least we can run away!  Here, in this picture, is revealed the key to that very forgivable human impulse: the sanctuary of the highlands in the distance... of Space without end.  Here, it is cool, snow-capped, simple.  It is probably a lie, but it is a lie that we can feel on the air, in the crisp breeze of the desert shadows.  In the hint of greater warmth in the morning sunshine.  It is the sense that if we don’t like what we see, where we are, what we are doing, we can leave and remake or rebuilt that part of the self that is cracked, broken, or empty with longing. Our country is big enough for such ventures, and there are precedents in our history.

This is, at least, a sliver of the American Dream that I embrace, despite it shade of pathology.  It dovetails neatly with my religious and spiritual ideas.  It resonates with the tune beat out by my mind and heart.  We should not put down enduring roots! Our tabernacle should be portable.  We must exercise caution in what we choose to grasp, for it may grasp us. Everything passes away.  This is freedom.

sunrise over a Vegas sandy lot