when I was eight my parents went to vegas on a roadtrip and took me
along. maternal as she was, my mother spent 3 hours in circus circus,
allowing her child to win an endless supply of candy at the penny toss
despite her newfound faith in healthfoods ability to solve the world's
problems. Colors and sounds and animals and clowns everywhere, I regarded
vegas as a magical place for years, a nirvana my grandparents
disappeared to yearly on a tourbus and beautiful girls who looked like peacock
Barbie went to make their fortune.
adulthood left a slightly different impression: the smell of endless
cigarette smoke, the incessant hum of generators and the alarming lack of
clocks and natural light. Flat escalators to allow for exploration of
the new strip without the nuisance of walking, curiously placed under a
glass dome creating a greenhouse effect that which silently earned the
label "people cooker" in my mind. However, walking out on our balcony
to the citywide broadcast of "luck be a lady tonight" and the image of
people milling past the pyramid, the Eiffel tower and misplaced zoo
animals and Elvis impersonators still brings a smile to my face.
sometimes places can lose their shine, without losing their magic
2 comments:
that's lucky and nice. I find that I am somewhat reluctant to revisit very special places from long ago. I worry that I or they might be horribly changed from the earlier times and I might not appreiciate what I used to. There are places in New Mexico that are like this for me, especially in Santa Fe.
yeah, I mean I'd hardly consider las vegas my "special place" (lord, no) so much as a place that has imagery and import...hell, it's symbolic for a lot of people
but I was thinking about how, when we are younger, space has a personality much like people...there is more of a relationship often, a symbolism as well
perhaps thats why so many children's books are about going to a far away land or planet or kingdom
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