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    • What Doesn’t Happen in Las Vegas

      Las Vegas keeps growing, and growing more crowded. If your desire is to immerse yourself in thick waves of people looking for their moment that stays in Vegas, it may be just what you’re looking for. To be fair to the city, the Strip has never looked so spectacularly lavish. Every time I visit they’ve thrown up another massive structure. Casinos and arenas grow bigger and more elaborate. The classic older casinos remain the familiar smoky maze that brings comfort to a certain crowd. The new casinos draw in the hip, young, and beautiful with their seemingly unlimited bank accounts. To walk through one and then the other is to see almost the entire history of this place. One can become almost invisible to the throngs staring in wonder at the visual display around them.

      Finishing a dinner at the Paris Casino, a business associate and I chose to walk back to the casino we were staying at. Our other associates chose to take a taxi back. We beat them by twenty minutes. That doesn’t speak to the briskness of our walk, but the crush of traffic from one to the other. The sidewalks might be crowded too, but at least you can keep moving along. I shudder at the gallons of fossil fuel burning wastefully as the long line of cars awaits the next light. But that’s part of Las Vegas too. Building a city in the desert necessitates an embrace of wastefulness. Water, electricity, gasoline and lives drift away in unison.

      Las Vegas has built itself up to be whatever you want it to be for yourself, so long as you’ve got the money to fund your life choices. Gambling, fine dining, shows, sex, drugs and alcohol are all here awaiting those who choose to embrace it. Some of these choices will be lifetime memories, some will be things you’d like to forget. Always choose wisely. No matter what the slogan says, some things don’t just stay in Vegas. Being a prudent practitioner of what doesn’t happen in Vegas is a sound way of having just enough fun to make it out unscathed.

      This may read like an indictment of Las Vegas. It’s not meant to be. Simply put, it’s hard not to have fun in this city, and I always find it enjoyable, just in more moderation than the majority of people around me. This has always been my way. Give me quiet places in abundance, and the madness of this adult playground to remind me of why I choose those quiet places far from here.

    • Words

      “Every word is a messenger. Some have wings; some are filled with fire; some are filled with death.” — Mary Oliver, Sand Dabs, Six

      “A word is no light matter. Words have with truth been called fossil poetry, each, that is, a symbol of a creative thought.” — Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way

      Some of us admit to being word geeks. It’s not the complexity of the word, not even its origin (itself a delicious riddle), but the meaning packed into the deliberate placement of that word that draws us in. We become more deliberate readers as a result. This is where the magic in poetry, in music, and in prose resides. Surely something to aspire to in our own writing, and in our very conversations. Words matter a great deal.

      When someone says they would like to have a word with you, why does it have a negative connotation? Is it the singularity inferred in the statement? It’s not a conversation, it’s a word. What they mean, of course, is they want to tell you something while you actively listen to them. We have two ears and one mouth: we should always be actively listening more than we talk. The loudest talkers are rarely the most powerful people in the room, would you agree? We should learn to find the clues hidden in plain sight. Active listening is a superpower.

      As it is with people, so too with words. If writing has taught me anything, it’s to read more deliberately. Every word, placed just so, means something to a great author or poet. So it should mean something to us.

    • The Chill Lane

      “Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes angry.” — Euripides

      Commuting was never my thing, but sometimes you’ve just gotta do what you’ve gotta do. When I was not very much younger, I used to grow angry at the neat rows of brake lights in front of me. Likewise, a red light when there was nobody else at the intersection would drive me crazy. My bride rolls her eyes when I detour a different way to avoid some particular egregious traffic lights. I still have a deeply engrained habit of active avoidance of traffic lights, and have stated I’ll move out of the town I live in the moment they install them. I may just be posturing, but still, there’s a grain of truth in every jest.

      Really, it’s a control thing. Traffic and traffic lights are mostly out of my control, which hints at the deeper truth that most of life is out of our control. So what’s the solution? Amor fati — Love of fate. Simply put, focus on the things that you can control, accept the rest, and stay in the chill lane.

      Anger is weakness, displayed. It will be our undoing if we let it be. So don’t let it be. As we learn and grow we come to see the world differently, and see the folly of the angry life. To reach our potential in this life we must remain clear on our purpose and avoid the petty distractions some bad commute or bad civil engineering might stir up. It’s all relative, of course, and none of this matters when we look at the bigger picture. Amor fati, friend.

    • Where Love and Need Are One

      My object in living is to unite
      My avocation and my vocation
      As my two eyes make one in sight.
      Only where love and need are one,
      And the work is play for mortal stakes,
      Is the deed ever really done
      For heaven and the future’s sakes.
      — Robert Frost, Two Tramps in Mud Time

      When people ask whether I’m traveling for business or pleasure, I sometimes pause a beat to ponder the question. Business travel is a trade-off of obligation and discovery. We can be productive and explore the ripe potential of place. This blog was born of an inclination to wander about during business travel, and I’ve been the better for having closed the gap between work and my curiosity about the world around me.

      And what of the work itself? I hear the laugh of a friend who thinks of work as nothing but a means to an end. It’s called work for a reason, she would tell me. What’s love got to do with it? But looking back on every job I’ve ever had, even the most tedious and miserable of jobs, I still found delight in discovery. Like Robert Frost finding joy in splitting wood, the joy lies in learning new tricks in our trade. We each have our verse to write in this world. There ought to be joy in finding ourselves in it.

    • Later is Too Late

      “Später ist zu spät.“ (Later is too late) — Peter Altenberg

      If there’s one theme we ought to have learned from living in the aftermath of the unexpected, it’s to make the most of the moment we’re currently in. We may never pass this way again, as the song goes. Memento mori. Carpe diem.

      If there’s a theme I’ve worked to embrace this spring, it’s living with urgency. We must do what we can in the time we have. This means prioritizing the important and deferring the trivial to later. There’s simply no other way to get to the most important things.

      This week I surprised myself at what I was able to do with a relatively short burst of creative energy. What might I do with consistent and sustained output? There’s never been a better time to find out than now. For later is indeed too late.

    • Insist on Color

      “I don’t trust the answers or the people who give me the answers. I believe in dirt and bone and flowers and fresh pasta and salsa cruda and red wine. I don’t believe in white wine; I insist on color.” ― Charles Bowden (Via Outlawspoetic)

      There are surely shades of gray that warrant discussion, for there’s a place for nuance in this complicated world. But give me color. Give me personality and vibrancy. Give me that jolt that knocks me off my complacency when I encounter something out of the ordinary.

      There’s a reason humans seek out sunsets and the aurora borealis, knock down doors to see Van Gogh or sing about pink houses. We humans crave brightness and a rich color palate. Life is full of enough muted living; give us bold.

      This blog was started as a lens on a particular corner of the world I happen to love. It’s grown as my attention shifted, as I’ve changed. What comes next is anyone’s guess, but expect colorful wherever we go.

      Early Morning Orange

    • Art With a Spritz of Lime

      “Art is art and life is life, but to live life artistically; that is the art of life.”— Peter Altenberg

      A close friend has a flare for living well. He’ll spritz lime on a potato dish and make something extraordinary of what was moments before thought to be disparate produce. He’s always looking for the exceptional in an otherwise average day. And he drives many people mad as a result. Like that burst of citrus in a starchy dish, I find his perspective punctuates life perfectly.

      This business of living artistically is something to aspire to. Capturing moments with a bit of magic and moving through the ordinary with je ne sais quoi, these are the things that matter very much in a world that wants you to fall in line and fit right in. Certainly, we must do our job and do it well, but why always settle for vanilla?

      We each live on both sides of ordinary. It’s a gift to be human at a time and place when you can express yourself freely. We ought to use that gift and add more flavor to our days. Like every gift, we must choose to use it. Art is a deliberate act, expressed uniquely. What might we bring to the table if we have the gumption to try something new?

      We all know the expression: when the world throws you lemons, make lemonade. There’s another clever expression I once found on a kitchen magnet that adds a twist: when the world throws you limes, make margaritas. To this I’ll add, don’t forget to save some lime for the potatoes.

    • See the Changes

      She has seen me changing
      It ain’t easy rearranging
      And it gets harder as you get older
      Farther away as you get closer
      — Crosby, Stills & Nash, See the Changes

      I have a place along the shore that I’ve visited countless times. The hardscape hardly appears different from visit-to-visit, it’s the bay and the sky, the trees and the characters who surround this spot that change. I’m just another changing character in the history of this shoreline, witness to the changes around and in me. Here today, gone tomorrow. What are we to do, knowing this, but linger in the now?

      Like the bay, I return to the CSN song often. It remains the same, it’s the listener who changes. It will last longer than me, like so much in this world, and that’s as it should be. We are players in the game, writing our verse before we hand off to the next. We should celebrate this, not for the small hold we have on living now, but for our awareness. For we know the score, don’t we? It ain’t easy rearranging, but the truth shall set us free.

      Buzzards Bay

    • Others

      “In order to be the person I want to be, I must strive, hourly, against the drag of the others.” — Mary Oliver, Sand Dabs, Four*

      Some of them mean well, wanting nothing but the best for us. Some don’t care a lick about what we want, only that a glow might reflect on them. Some mean us nothing but harm in their own devious way, feelings born in some moment of contempt. We learn who some of these characters are over time. Some we go to our graves believing are one but are really the other. In the end they may scarcely matter, or they may matter a great deal. It depends, always, on us.

      We must find our own way. Sometimes this is with the help of others, sometimes despite them. We can’t be carried to our potential, we must reach for it ourselves. This is how we grow into the person we want to become.

    • Keep It Simple

      “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” —Jack Kerouac

      Simple seems so complicated some days. Mondays often openly mock the very idea of simplicity. Want to do big things in this lifetime? Meet your wrestling partner, complexity. Complexity usually doesn’t play by the rules.

      Of course, Kerouac danced with eloquent simplicity in his writing through applied effort. For him to point out he too was a work in progress is a generous gift to those of us fighting the same battle. If there’s a takeaway, it’s to do the work anyway. It won’t write itself, no matter how complicated our lives are. Simple isn’t easy, it’s only meant to appear that way.

      My own rulebook states I click publish every day. I always aim for morning, but that’s negotiable, while publishing daily is very much nonnegotiable for as long as life and luck allow. We all have our lines in the sand and our own idea of what simple means. Writing every day, each day becomes an incremental step towards our own version of simple.