*
The first thing I noticed, or maybe just imagined I noticed, upon driving away from McCarran Airport in Vegas was the lack of dust in the air—if the dust can ever really settle in Las Vegas it would be now, as the Dow keeps on plunging and housing starts stop.
The last time I spent any meaningful time in Las Vegas was back in October of 2001—almost seven years ago to the day, a dreadful little epoch in my life. I had lost my apartment in Gramercy Park, NY after 9/11, the poetry classes I was teaching that fall didn’t fill (enrollment opened on 9/12), and there was a very large and very toxic cloud dangling off the bottom tip of Manhattan like an evil drool, so, partly because, as a single woman in the city, I was terrified beyond belief, and partly because my family made me do it (my brother and sister both lived in Las Vegas at the time), I flew to Las Vegas thinking I’d return to New York a month or two hence. Little did I know that the fall of 2001 until the fall of 2002 would be the worst year of my life.
*
When I got into the airport this time, I was possessed by a sudden urge to take pictures of various commercial and/or maniacal visuals with my dog-eared copy of Faust in the frame. Here are some pictures:
I suppose it was apropos, not only because Faust is one of the primary inspirations for the poems in my new book, but also because the story of Faust is really the structuring mytheme of my life (probably most New York lives)—a kind of maniacal striving, a willful and sometimes unethical insistence there has got to be more, a feeling of hideous dissatisfaction with the knowledge… the answers, really… that the current moment has to offer.
I am currently especially dissatisfied with the fact everyone (at least everyone in finance) saw the current financial crisis coming and no one really did, or maybe was able to do, much of anything about it (cf Ben Stein in the New York Times a day or two ago).
And I am currently especially terrified that we really have no control over or truly meaningful insight into the complicated systems (finance, the environment, international politics) that organize our lives. If we couldn’t stop the collapse of the world economic system, even though everyone knew we were, as a collective, aggressively blowing a shiny slick speculative bubble of historical proportions, how can we possibly think we are in any sort of position to stop the collapse of the global eco- or political systems (obviously all three of these systems—financial, environmental, and political form a sort of Triumvirate of The Apocalypse… people are one day going to be murdering each other over what will inevitably be exorbitantly priced bottles of water).
*
I had no control over my fate after 9/11 because I had no money. And so, between now and then—today and seven years ago—I got myself some money by working at a hedge fund. (As well as the material for a quizzically melancholy book about life in the cold, clinical, bodiless center of The Imperium…). “Las Vegas drove me to it.”
And when I got back to Las Vegas, I could see the dust had settled—in one of the worst hit real-estate markets in the country. Vegas, as everyone knows, is an industry town, and the industry is tanking… Hotel occupancy is down 10% since this time last year (which isn’t accounting for the precipitous drop in prices)… Foreclosure rates are at an all time high, and, unlike this time seven years ago, the air was clear of all that detritus of housing starts that had assaulted my nose and throat back after 9/11—when I was trying so hard to get away from the toxic cloud back in New York; yeah, it’s a system.
*
I stayed with my mother and her husband. Here they are at the reading:
The reading itself was hosted by the inimitable and brilliant Dayvid Figler, who had stayed at my place in Brooklyn just the weekend before to attend the launch party for the newest issue of HEEB Magazine:
He is the author of the cover story on LV mayor Oscar Goodman. Here is the issue of HEEB:
In addition to being a brilliant journalist and sometime poet, Dayvid is a hilarious commentator on Las Vegas NPR and Court TV (maybe not so “hilarious” on the latter, murder and more murder). He is also one of the best criminal defense attorneys (former public defender) in all of Las Vegas and a wonderful host to visiting poets. Here is Dayvid, who arranged to have the reading at a great new downtown gallery called Henri and Odette. (Speaking of exorbitantly priced bottles of water, you can see that the gallery’s mini-café purveys wonderful bottles of water (these are mostly glass—so not only could people murder each other over these bottles, but they could murder each other with the bottles as well)):
The gallery owner also provided a wonderful little tea and cookie spread for the reading.
Here is a rather intent audience member:
There were, total, 16 whole people at the reading, which is about three times more than I ever had for a reading back when I was living in Vegas back in 2001-2002. After the reading, we all went out to a great new bar (they served absinthe—too bad Las Vegas is a driving town and I am a responsible woman) and discussed the fact that Vegas has changed a great deal over the last seven years. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was an effect of the boom or more of a long-term trend for the city—then again, it’s not as if LA, San Francisco, or New York, where some of the new people came from, are faring much better.
One interesting tidbit: while I was driving around in Las Vegas, enjoying the newly cleared air, I listened to a lot of NPR. One of the shows featured a bit about “the hemline index,” which is basically shorthand for the fact that, as economic times change, so do hemlines (they go down with the Dow). Some of the other things that supposedly change: beer becomes more popular, carbonated sodas and waters less-so; the popular female “type” goes from big-eyed, full-lipped, and childlike to more mature-looking, smaller-eyed, and thinner-faced; and (my favorite): popular works of art go from being quick, jaunty, and vapid (example: “La Macarena,” barf) to being longer and more serious (“Bridge Over Troubled Water”). Seeing as my favorite art works tend to be morose, brooding, dark, and serious (the original of Solaris, all of Didion and Gaitskill, effing Faust), I am, at least in this one dimension, very much looking forward to the next few years!
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