Las Vegas Spiritual

    I’m scribbling idlely into my notepad as the plane soars to a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet above the Earth, tearing in a mad dash through the sky towards Las Vegas. Not my first trip out, but sitting here, looking at the strangely fashionable Quebecoise woman reading next to me, something feels just a bit different.

    Many times before, I’ve sat reading high-brow literature in airport terminals, hoping on some off-chance that someone will be able to identify the book and then identify me, the reader of the book, as somehow noteworthy like some double-secret handshake between like-minded spirits. I’ve really ceased to give a fuck anymore. Not in a bitter way, but its just really not important. I can identify with myself and in a lot of ways, that’s all I needed the entire time. I’ve begun to feel anchored in this world and in this life. I feel connected to reality but still made buoyant by a fantasy and by a dream. This is real. Life. And I’m honestly not doing a half bad job of living it lately.

    I’m reading some Henry Miller as the stewardess passes out drinks and snacks, but it doesn’t last long. I’m tired, very tired. I nearly missed the flight this morning after staying up until the wee hours of the morning, talking to Her. I’m finding myself placing more value on her conversation than sleep lately.

    I pass out to ‘Nature Sounds’ on my headphones and immediately being having colorful dreams….

    I wake up just long enough for the woman from Quebec and her husband to offer me a sandwich. Hungry, I accept and chat briefly with them to find out they aren’t actually from Quebec as I had guessed, but rather from Trinidad, which sounds like a quaint but interesting place to be from, as they tell it. I finish the sandwich and politely wrap-up the chat as the nature sounds sweep me back into the strange realm of dreams…
We touch down. McKarran Airport. Las Vegas, Nevada. I awake cranky and in desperate need of a cigarette, so I book it through the terminal, hitting the fresh dry desert air, light a smoke and hop a cab to the hotel. I’m surprised to find the springtime climate in Nevada to be perfectly pleasant, particularly in comparison to the dank Miami humidity I’d just escaped.

    The cab takes me along the strip towards my hotel, and I pass by all the splendor and decadence of Las Vegas Blvd., hardly noticing it and instead, sneaking glimpses of the mountains in the horizon between buildings. Suddenly, I’m at the hotel, telling the doorman that I’ll carry my own bag.

    I hurry through the casino floor, past the ring-ding-dings and blinking lights of the slot machines, the whirl of the shuffling cards, the clack-clack-clack of roulette wheels spinning and the clattering sounds of piles of chips changing hands all around me. I find my father at his spot in the poker room, where I always find him every time he flies me out. He’s engrossed in a and, but pauses just long enough to give me a quick hug and a genuine smile before handing me the room card and the car keys before turning back to his game.

    Having the keys in my hand sets off a rush of anticipation and I quickly hit the room, drop my stuff on the bed, shower and prep my camera.

    Then I’m off.

    Whipping the rental out of the parking garage, I feel like this entire day, these past few weeks, this last eight months and five days without injecting heroin, the last ten years of junky hell, this life, like its al been this entire design to spit me out at this exact spot, this exact pace and time. The light at the end of the tunnel everyone always speaks of is so fucking close that its damn near blinding me.

    On I-15 Northbound, I’m stuck in Vegas Friday afternoon traffic and its not Miami, so there is no HOV lane to cheat in, but I weave in and out, finally emerging as the cars thin and the buildings in my peripheral disappear, to face nothing but a long straight stretch of desert freeway. Looking at the horizon with blue sky atop dark mountains piled upon bleached yellow sand, sliced through by black road and then glancing back in my rearview as Sin City fades into the distance, I’m jarred by the contrast. The world of men and their lust and greed and their Las Vegas playground seem so trivial looking out towards the immense voided expanse before me. I feel relieved as the city drops out of sight. Out of mind.

    Here I am, barreling at 120 mph along some desolate highway, hurrying like I’m rushing towards some great unknown conclusion. Somewhere along the way, I shut off the electric noise of the blaring radio to hear nothing but the tires humming along the road, the engine running and the wind whipping into wide open windows. About a hundred miles outside the city, a single sand-blown sign instructs me to make a right turn to reach the Valley of Fire. As I do, I pass a lonely little diesel gas station and truck stop that is so covered in dust and bunkered into the sand that it looks like some post-apocalyptic relic of mankind gone extinct.

    I drive down the dusty road until I reach a safe distance from the truck stop to preserve my isolation. I pull over and step out of the car. The silence shocks me. It surrounds me and descends upon me unseen, undetectable. Yet it feels so palpable that I feel as if I could reach out and hold the silence in my hands. The sky forms a perfect blue dome around me. The hills are the only thing I can see in any direction. The desert sand and the brush don’t even so much as sway.

    All is still. I can hear nothing. The sound of my breathing. The muted crunch of gravel under my footsteps. I’m deafened.

    Driving again, the road weaves back and forth, bring me slowly closer to those magnificent hills that not long ago existed only along the horizon. The road winds around and through and up along steep rock faces. Suddenly, just after a sharp bend, the valley drops out in front of me.
I pull over to sit on a rock ledge. The empty expanse unravels in front of me. Hills scattered with green brush, like the backs of monstrous beasts covered in mange. I refocus my eyes; my cluttered little mind scrambling to absorb the magnitude of the view.

    I drive through, pay the park ranger at the toll booth and hurry greedily down, camera in my lap, parking and snatching photos as quickly as I can. I’m hurrying and rushing along.

    Frame. Composition. Lighting. Snap.

    Frame. Composition. Lighting. Snap.

    Frame. Composition. Snap.

    Frame. Snap.

    Snap.

    Snap. Snap. Snap.

    I’m not even looking anymore. Not breathing. Not admiring. Just snap, snap, snap, snap away. I’m hardly even taking stock of the pictures I’ve taken because I feel in such utter terror of the one that I’m going to miss if I don’t point the camera and click as fast as fucking possible.
Mountains are wiser than men. In their still majesty, they erode my defenses, erode my anxiety, erode all that mental chaos, like the eons have eroded them.

    Finally, up on some ledge, finger tired of clicking film away, I simply stop. I stop concerning myself with the next photo. I stop feeling the need to capture it because I realize no matter how many pictures I take, I can’t do it. It all begins to stop. The camera, the cell phone, the clock, the casino floor, the dinner arrangements, the hotel accommodations, the flight itinerary, the paid time off from work, the bullshit sales sheet, the rent, the credit card payment, the lack of clean time, the track marks I can still barely make out, the relapse this time and everyone before it, the pain I still feel and never speak, all the bitter memories; everything. It stops.

    I just look. I see. I feel. I just am.

    I’m a man. A young one. Twenty-four years old, officially in eight hours. I’m blood, I’m flesh, I’m bone. When I’m gone, I’ll be a few grains of dust in the desert. The mountains and the sky and the desert don’t care; I’m hardly more than a blink of an eye to them now.
I see the men before me. Natives, living on callused foot. Man, woman, and child, living at the mercy of the land, the elements and the Gods. I see a righteousness that exists today only as some ghost of the past.

    I realize that laid out before me, in sprawling red rock formations, is all the evidence I’ll ever need of God or my own spirit. Some great creative hand sculpted this landscape before me. The same source that blew breath into my lungs and the same source that charted this breakneck course my life seems to follow.

    She comes into my thoughts. It’s strange because out of every human being I’ve ever come in contact with, she stands out to me as the one who I’d most want to share this moment with. She’d get it. I find myself wishing she’d show up and sit here on this rock ledge with me. Wishing I could hold her hand and cry for all the beauty.

    After some time lost in contemplation, the sun begins to burn on my skin. Saturated in wonder, I decide its time to climb down off my ledge and return to the car. I pull out slowly, taking my time to exit the park and grab some last minute snap shots. Looking at the map, I begin to feel its only appropriate to exit the park the back way, along Lake Meade, and take the long route to Vegas.

    Coming out of the park, the entire landscape changes sharply. To my left, I can see the rich blue waters of Lake Meade and instead of sun reflecting off long hot stretches of sand, the ground turns to large lush green hills. The road, instead of a straight shot desert highway is a long two lane trail snaking through the hills.

    After a couple miles, I realize that there is absolutely nobody around. Not a soul. The more comfortable I become with this realization, the harder my foot presses on the gas. Soon, I’m at warp speed, gripping the wheel with two hands, feeling the tires grip the pavement in turn, as I push harder and hug the winding bends of the road. With complete, unbroken attention to the task of driving like a maniac, I’m totally free.

    I drive on like that for nearly an entire hour, until the road drops me out in a North Las Vegas area that looks strangely similar to Calle Ocho in Miami, expect for the fact that the residents are a darker shade of brown.

    I return to the hotel. I’m different, in a way nobody in the world could ever notice. I enjoy a heavy meal, spend the weekend gambling casually and meandering around the strip, smoking cigars without much enthusiasm.

    Sunday, the plane lands back in Miami. The cocoon remained behind, lost somewhere in the desert. The new spirit stays glowing in my stomach. I figure its just my kind of luck to find God on a trip to Sin City.