A Day in the Life of Chaos

Today I received a sad piece of news.  No, no one is sick and no one has died.  The news was simply that a certain place has now been officially filed away as a memory because it will soon no longer exist.   Photo by Steve Marcus In a previous blog sometime back I recalled this place in Las Vegas, Nevada.  Las Vegas is an ever changing monster.  Little is ever permanent yet what vanishes often leaves nostalgia in its wake.  The city is like the shifting sands of the desert that surrounds it and if they don't figure out a way to get more water there the whole damn thing might disappear.   Las Vegas is fascinating on so many levels but one of the things I find the most interesting is the fusion of local degeneracy and poverty with visitors from around the world and at times opulent wealth.  Both coexist almost as if battle lines have been drawn around the city separating one from the other.  There is a kind of invisible Berlin Wall.  The old core of the city on Fremont stree

There I was, tired but satisfied. I soared above the clouds at thirty thousand feet wedged into my chair next to a bronzed middle-aged couple.  Wait a moment, I am middle-aged just minus the bronze.  Does that mean they remember me as a seemingly unconscious white guy?   I flew half asleep, a victim more of dragging myself out of bed at 3:30 am then a hard night drinking and gambling.   I was suddenly awakened by a snort that I summarily tried to conceal by executing another one with with eyes wide open.   The woman beside me didn't seem to take the bait as she examined me trying to determine if I was dying.  She was nervous in her own right.  Apparently she hadn't flown in twenty years and sleeping did not seem to be on her agenda.  She clutched her husband hand and likely wondered how I could be so relaxed during such a frightening moment.   Reluctantly, I was on my way home.  Just a few days earlier my seat companion had been a red neck man in his 30's.  He was