April 28, 2005
April 24, 2005
Overheard: Computer #8 at the Logan-Hocking Library
Ohio has plenty of rain. Especially in April. It was pouring down and spouting out through the seal in the windshield and dripping down over the new gas gauge. It was sagging the soft top and blowing in through the open doors. As we passed the Logan-Hocking Library, I told my dad to pull the jeep over. i needed to write an email and wait for the rain to ease up.
"Number 8" the librarian said.
I walked into the children area and sat down in a row of little primary colored plastic chairs. My wet knees stuck up above the table. i logged onto my account. the girls on either side of me were taping their keyboards, Instant messaging about 8 different people each.
"Hey Tiffany" the girl in the green chair looked up from her chat session and asked the girl on the other side of me in the yellow chair, " Are people from Germany called a .........nassi?"
"Yeah, Tiffany answered quickly and quietly, barely taking her eyes of her screen. "People from Germany are called nassis."
"Okay, the first girl said. and continued typing.
April 22, 2005
Good-Night Omaha
I was walking in the backyard barefoot. the moon hung low over the 101 like it was on a wire dangling on the backdrop of a vaudeville act. the lemon tree hung heavy with fruit over the fence, the branches bowing down as if to give me some privacy as I talked.
Out on the great plains she was falling asleep. She whispered slow and low through the hotel pillow in tiny increments, as if to remind herself she was still awake.
Like love isn't complete bliss, silence on a cell phone isn't completely quiet. They both have some interference, especially at long distances.
i told her the news of some friends who had gotten engaged. She was expressing her surprise and bewilderment. we were there the day they met, and she was having a hard time understanding how things happen like they do.
I certainly couldn't offer any answers.
Somewhere just off an exit on interstate 80 in a hotel bed in Omaha she stopped talking and grew another day older.
The lemon tree remained courteous. Even Prada allowed me some privacy. She walked out into the grass and lied down facing the moon as it dangled down over the 101. i stood up on top of the picnic table in the backyard, hoping somehow every little bit of signal strength could keep her awake and listening to what i began to say.
growing up isn't a number or place. growing up isn't even getting tired of the way i am living right now and wanting to change. growing up isn't hindsight or slowing down or getting over anything or lowering my expectations or diluting my ideals. it isn't coming to the conclusion that most things you always thought were big events are now happening. growing up isn't a target salary bracket or a mortgage payment. growing up isn't getting tired of trying. growing up doesn't even mean you have to stay in the same place.
growing up isn't anything, except wanting to do so.
and in some cases, wishing someone else born in the same few years of written history wanted to do so around the same time.
I kept talking like i was sailor sending out an SOS into the silent sea. felt like a singer singing their heart out in their encore. like convict in the execution chamber. like grand finale of the 4th of july fire works show. like for the first time i just wanted to get it all out of my system. like i just wanted to grow up and be done with playing all these games i'll never win.
I threw my last punch, caught my breath and stopped talking, and finally found an answer for her. i finally realized that all growing up involves is standing on top of a picnic table alone in the dark beside a lemon tree, with a cell phone cycling silence through a satellite from a quiet hotel room in Omaha Nebraska.
April 19, 2005
Las Vegas Left
The boeings above us were filled with high hopes and anticipation. They hung in holding patterns above the Las Vegas McCarran International Airport, flying in figure eights like fireflies above the dark Mohave Desert.
We stayed in the passing lane and Clark County blurred by in the dark as we exited southbound on Hwy. 15. The weekend in Las Vegas- like all good weekends there- felt like it took a week to complete. I was energy drinking and barely thinking as my mind flickered like flourecent lights in false ceilings.
Chris Orwig told me Las Vegas is the second most visited destination on earth. The first, he said, was Mecca. As the planes full of pilgrims lined up above us in the black sky, she sped towards Barstow while the rest of the world headed in the opposite direction.
We acended on vegas 48 hours ealier for michelle's birthday, pool-side drinks in plastic cups, 25¢ slots (from which Leanne won $95), and all you can and can't eat buffets waitressed by women in strange accents laced up in old world dresses.
Nothing in vegas is exactly as it seemes. The rocks usually aren't really rocks. The trees really aren't trees. In fact, anything that was alive or appeared to be alive, or was partly alive - as was the case with the tiger in the glass box at the Mirage - had to be severly altered and moved to exist in the middle of the largest desert in the western hemisphere. That includes many women's faces and body parts i saw. The best thing to do in Vegas is to smile a lot and look directly into the lights. Everything there is fun and pretty so long as you don't look too close or try to understand what is happening, or look in your wallet.
I sat down at roulette table on the first night with Greg and Steve to demonsrate the joys of gambling all of your money, all at once, on a completley arbitrary and random game of inconsistant chance. The man beside me reached into his shirt pocket and unfolded a magazine ad he had torn out of a magazine and proudly showed it to me. It read:
"Always bet on Black" -Kenneth Cole.
He then pulled out $900 in cash from the same pocket and stacked it on black.
It hit red.
Everything in vegas is fun and pretty so long as you don't look too close or try to understand what is happening, or look in your wallet.
On the second night we passed a woman on the walkway to the Barbary Coast panhandleing. She was postitoned well for a panhandeler, sitting in her wheelchair right at the very top of the esclators.
An hour later she was sitting beside us feeding change into a slot machine.
Everything in vegas is fun and pretty so long as you don't look to close or try to understand what is happening, or look in your wallet- ever.
On the third day, Cousin Vinny the limo driver took us to Old Town, past the drive through wedding chaples, liquor stores, and strip clubs with their signs held high and turned on at all hours of the day.
In Old Town the old ladies chain smoke on stools in front of nickle slot machines wearing latex gloves and heavy ear rings that pull their skin even farther down their faces.
Everything there is fun and pretty so long as you don't look to close or try to understand what is happening, or look in your wallet, - ever.
The sign for Barstow read 68 miles. I still hadn't looked in my wallet. I still wasn't thinking too much. And I was still alive. At least partly.
I looked over at her driving through a night as black as a $900 bet. And for the first time in several days and nights, i looked closely at something. She was singing along to the radio barefoot with both hands on the wheel. The moon roof was open and the desert pulled her hair around the inside of the car.
And i was glad to be leaving Las Vegas with something so fun and pretty. even when i looked at it closely.
