Snow Covered Soul

“It was still summer nonetheless and there was still greenery, which was so lush and overwhelming it was something of an argument for optimism, a reminder that I had to be alert to the beauty in excess, the beauty in things that quietly endured despite their unbeautiful contexts. If I admired my own abundances, my own little rebellions against subjugation, I reasoned, I could learn to be as alive as possible.”

“You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering.”

“Breathe. It’s only a bad day, not a bad life.”

“This is what I like about photographs. They’re proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat, everything was perfect.”

Almost everyone notes that there is no “time” in Las Vegas, no night and no day and no past and no future (…); neither is there any logical sense of where one is. One is standing on a highway in the middle of a vast hostile desert looking at an eighty-foot sign which blinks “STARDUST” or “CAESAR’S PALACE.” Yes, but what does that explain? This geographical implausibility reinforces the sense that what happens there has no connection with “real” life; Nevada cities like Reno and Carson are ranch towns, Western towns, places behind which there is some historical imperative. But Las Vegas seems to exist only in the eye of the beholder.

“The aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive.”