As I had said, our trip started in Vegas, and while I joked about telling folks that to get a reaction, honestly, I probably had the most uneventful 'Vegas' time in the history of sin city. I met up with Hubs there for a conference for his work the day I'd delivered training to teachers in a school system during their post-planning. I was coming off of a week of Mach 3 urgency of work demands as well as the respiratory issues aforementioned. I flew in at midnight-ish on an airline that I wouldn't send my worst enemy to Hades on, and quite honestly, I couldn't have cared less that there was all the world at my doorstep - I was a slug.
I never stepped foot on the strip.
Confession: for the first day I was there, I had a 'Say Yes to the Dress' marathon.
My experience with 'bright lights, big city' was from the window. Exhaustion can do that to you.
So I watched Vegas from my window. What I noticed shattered my thoughts into shards like the broken glass in the empty lot beside my hotel. The place where we stayed was just off the strip at one end, with a large vacant spot where either a building used to be, or where one soon would be. It had a couple of trees spread apart from each other, a structure that looked like a construction dumpster and a grouping of billboards by the road. The rest was dirt and rock and desolation.
One afternoon, in the wavy heat of midday, I noticed a figure moving about near the grouping of billboard posts. Zeroing in on the spot, I realized there were other items beneath that display - boxes leaned to, and a tarp, and stacks of things to make a wall. Someone dwelled there, in the shadows of decadence - in a tarp-laden box. Imagining the oven that must be that small space and the grit of each day, I thought about what I could do, if anything, besides stare at the cruel dissonance.
For the next day or so, I found myself at the window, checking. Sometimes I would see movement, and often nothing. Finally, on the day we were to leave, we bought an extra pack of waters and took it over, hoping we would see someone to give them to. On this day, no one was out and about, but instead we approached one of the (yes, there ended up being SEVERAL) structures and called out, 'Hello? Anyone there?' A voice responded, 'Hello!' from inside the covering. 'We're leaving these waters out here for you!' 'Oh, thank you!'
I did try to upload a picture of the area from my phone but it didn't go through. Observations like that - the stark contrast of need and excess existing side-by-side, can not easily be documented in its fullness. The photograph does not capture the blast of heat when the dry wind blows, the grit, the lostness edged in a voice calling out from behind a pile of boxes. It can not possibly encapsulate the ache in my heart.
