this is my second vacation this year. my second in four months. my second in five years.
when I go on vacation - vacate my usual routine – the truths about my life emerge. They stand up. They streak down the street and shimmy naked across the stage.
this is appropriate. I am in Las Vegas, which might be the official world capital of shimmying. (My people!) Our plane rejoined the earth in the evening and the city lit up the Nevada sky. It shimmered. It knocked me out. Long ago, my visit to the Vatican made me angry. The accretion of wealth in the hands of the few and the selfless selfish made me seethe through the Sistine chapel. My visit to Las Vegas – with its worship of the quick buck and its fake Venice and copied ceiling murals and faux Paris and wannabe New York – has me dazzled. There is something pure about pure money love. It is primal and visceral and naked when it is naked. I respect naked. That’s the truth.
and as I sit on the balcony of my gorgeous suite surveying the incandescent strip, I’m thinking about money and vacations and luxury.
vacations teach me about luxury. they teach me about essentials and sometimes the two are one.
once I had two babies less than two. when I gave myself permission to fantasize, my fantasy was this: to check into a hotel with a great bed and soft sheets and cable – oh cable – and sleep for eight hours, uninterrupted. mmmmmmmmmm.
and this vacation echoes and underlines that the reality of that fantasy. the most essential luxury in my life - besides love – is to sleep until I wake. unprompted. rested.
Amen! As a mom – and apparently the only humanoid in the house capable of preparing breakfast on Saturday mornings, I share the fantasy of sleeping late. Interesting perspective on the Vegas/Vatican authenticity, troubling to me b/c it does seem to ring true. Is Vegas really more authentic than the Vatican – and if I disapprove of Vegas and admire the Vatican, am I buying into an artifice created by image makers? Yikes. thanks for sharing, I’m gonna go hang my head in shame.
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I’m going to Vegas in May…any particularly awesome thing you did there?
kiss Elvis?
Oceans 11 a casino, or at least take some chips?
get married?
jump in a pool with all your clothes on?
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Carlos Velez
replied:
on December 12th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
also, would you like an invite to Google Wave (https://wave.google.com/)? I have some and am sharing them with people I want to suck up to…I mean people that are really interesting and would probably do great things with the great responsibility that comes with great power. Wave is power.
I assume you’re protective of your email address as I was not able to find it on your site, but if you’re interested I’m sure we could figure something out….like you could set up a crap address that you could then invite yourself to wave with or some such nonsense.
have fun in vegas!
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