Blue Sloth

History Of Love

If you remember the first time you saw her, you also remember the last. She was shaking her head. Or disappearing across a field. Or through your window. Come back! you shouted. Come back! Come back!

But she didn't.

And though you were grown up by then, you felt as lost as a child. And though your pride was broken, you felt as vast as your love for her. She was gone, and all that was left was the space where you'd grown around her, like a tree that grows around a fence.

For a long time, it remained hollow. Years, maybe. And when at last it was filled again, you knew that the new love you felt for a woman would have been impossible without her. If it weren't for her, there would never have been an empty space, or the need to fill it.

Of course there are certain cases in which the boy in question refuses to stop shouting at the top of his lungs for her. Stages a hunger strike. Pleads. Fills a book with his love. Carries on until she has no choice but to come back. Every time she tries to leave, knowing it's what has to be done, the boy stops her, begging like a fool. And so she always returns, no matter how often she leaves or how far she goes, appearing soundlessly behind him and covering his eyes with her hands, spoiling for him anyone who could ever come after her.

Happiness Is

Happiness is complicated. Sometimes when I can't get a grasp on the big picture and I find myself getting lost in the details, bogged down in work, mired in the sticky-sweet focus of working on both my projects and the blossoming projects/ideas/needs/demands of three very vibrant children I force myself to slow down for an hour and sit outside. I pour myself a cup of coffee, or buy one at the coffeeshop. I concentrate on clearing the negativity that clings to my energetic spirit, I let the mass of tangled worries slide aside. I smile. I force myself to breathe. Deep slow breaths. And then I think about what is making me happy right now. 

Like many complex matrices, trying to see the whole often means missing out on thousands of details that are intrinsic to the successful understanding of the mechanism. And even when staring right at something 'good' and peaceful and wonderful - familiarity often means you look right through it, take it for granted, perhaps stop noticing it's even there. Like a favorite painting on a wall. You need to move it to a new spot to "see it" again. You need a new perspective.

My littlest climbed into my bed this morning and put her head on my chest and sighed, "Daddy, I don't feel so good."

I put my arm around her and told her I'd take care of her. I packed lunches and got the older two out the door with a hug and a kiss and then set to fussing over my little girl. It's one of those days where she feels just sorta blah, not really sick - maybe just needed a day of my attention - and we are enjoying each other's company. These are some of my favorite days: one-on-one attention with one of the beasties, days where I can slow everything down to a simple pace and take care of them.

We are sitting outside the coffeeshop, drawing side by side in a Taro Gomi doodle book (Now feed the Crocodiles . . . with a picture of identical crocodiles with their mouths open and blank space above on facing pages) and sipping hot chocolate and cappuccino respectively.

Fat clouds swing overhead, the wind swirls around us and leaves skitter past. Tiny observations come into sharp focus, I actually *see* the people walking past, I can read their faces and imagine their stories. Bit by bit I feel the cracked armor unbuckle, slide to the pavement as I sit here. I can feel crusty layers of stress hardening on my bones like molten lava and finally reaching a point where they've hardened and contracted too far. They crack and fall, clattering off the discarded armor and shattering into a thousand pieces. The little ruby shards are almost pretty glinting in the sun.

I look at my daughter, so intense in her work and right this instant, this is what happiness is. 

Standing in the Palazzo

I am alone at the center of my universe, solitary with my thoughts for a week, immersed in the Age of Glass and Silence. 

I am standing in the Palazzo on a compass set in the center of a giant map of the world. My life has been re-created in mosaic form, each individual ceramic tile beneath my feet a separate experience. At this point in my life I am able to walk in any direction, but stand quietly watching, waiting. Choosing not to move.

Thousands of people and experiences walk around me, strangers, possibilities, new directions. I feel terrible pain but for the moment it is abstract, like the memory of a nightmare that still lingers after awakening. The pain passes through me because I have not yet unfurled my sails, I have not yet chosen a course. And it howls through the rigging, unable to find purchase, unable to capsize me. I am a ship rigged for storm, and anchored in shifting seas.

Observations and memories:

1. I am carrying more money in my pockets than I have ever touched, owned, or possessed at one moment in my life.
2. The Age of Glass requires one to become silent. Too many things are breakable. The Age of Glass becomes an age of observation. And as one watches - just simply watches without waiting for someone or something - the differences between loneliness and solitude crystalize. And for once in my life I find that perhaps I am not lonely but simply alone. 
3. Toward the end of my trip, I stopped sleeping. I woke up Friday morning and had an amazing omelette, fresh hash browns, sourdough toast, a pot of coffee. And then I just never went back to bed. The need for sleep seemed to vanish with intense concentration on baccarat, with long walks through gorgeous hallways, losing myself in a great novel, long conversations with people I never expected to meet. I suspect I caught a cat-nap on the chaise lounge by the pool on Saturday. It's all a lovely blur of faces and experiences. I just kept walking back to my room from time to time, depositing chips in my safe and brushing my teeth, gargling a bit of mouthwash and looking at this strange person in the mirror who appears to be me - though I feel strangely disconnected from the form I see. Then I would shrug, smile and walk back to the elevators.
4. 'A Bronx Tale' performed by the author Chaz Palminteri was an amazing experience. In a small theater, fifth row, watching one man act out his entire work doing all the characters was something I won't forget.
5. I walked out of that play to find that my enormous wager on the Yankees had still not been decided. I strolled through the casino for an hour and counted brides - seven, all in full bridal gowns - and the game simply would not end. I thanked the gods that I wasn't getting married in Vegas on a Saturday night and dragging my beloved through the Palazo looking for a bar to hit.
6. I began writing again during this trip. Not just jotting down notes and little asides, but actually wrote first drafts and chapters, long dialogues. I had moments where I had to immediately stop what I was doing, find a pen and write on whatever paper I could scrounge out of my pockets. 
7. I had dinner in a restaurant where during my appetizer, the walls dropped into hidden recesses and the ceiling opened to reveal a vast Cathedral opening like Hogwarts and castle walls rose up from the depths and the paintings all slid aside to reveal new art. Twenty minutes later, it changed again to something completely different. And then every twenty minutes . . . If the food hadn't been amazing it would have been a gimmick. The Colorado lamb chops were exquisite and the tomato goat cheese tart was sublime and I simply sat with a happy smile on my face, waiting for the next switch.
8. I strolled into a bar that I hadn't visited since I was in town with my best friend T.J. some ten to fifteen years prior. Within ten minutes the Yankees won and the ticket in my pocket was suddenly worth five thousand dollars.
9. For almost five hours on one particular night, I had a person sit beside me and watch how I played baccarat. They were there obstensibly to watch the game, to understand my theory of play, to learn. But mostly it was a silent observation. The chips clicked in my hands as I stacked my winnings. The cards were rolled, turned, torn, thrown down in jubilation or disgust by other players - many playing for three and four thousand a hand - but simply turned quietly without fanfare by me. Fortunes rose and fell, but through it all I had someone watching. It felt like proof of my existence, someone seeing what I do here. Even if it was only fleeting.
10. iPhones are like the Polaroid cameras of my generation - they take middling pictures, but you get very attached to them.
11. What the eyes don't see the heart doesn't feel.
12. Fools and weeds grow without rain.
13. For a long time I've known that being a good dad means doing good things that help people without anyone ever noticing you. Sometimes I let other good deeds slide - I am doing enough, no? There was a man here this week who would roll out in his self-powered wheel chair each day, find a shady spot, and read a book. He had women with him, he was not alone. But on my last afternoon, flush with the joy of the book I have been reading I had a thought - perhaps this man finds all his joy from reading. What if he never finds this book? I was in a rush. I had let too much time slip by and I was late to get inside, place my bet on the football game. And I was suddenly self-conscious; who was I to "help" this man? I stopped. Turned. Waited two breaths. I stared at the Magnolia tree. It would take only a moment to give this remarkable book to him. It would only cost me, at most, a moment of embarrasment, an awkward introduction, and the lingering sense that I must be very arrogant indeed to presume so much. I introduced myself, I told him about the book, he asked what the premise was, and I tried to explain. He thanked me and I left without further ado.
14. The first woman may have been Eve, but the first girl will always be Alma. Maybe the first time you saw her you were ten. She was standing in the sun scratching her legs. Or tracing letters in the dirt with a stick. Her hair was being pulled. Or she was pulling someone's hair. And a part of you was drawn to her, and a part of you resisted - wanting to ride off on your bicycle, kick a stone, remain uncomplicated. In the same breath you felt the strength of a man, and a self-pity that made you feel small and hurt. Part of you thought: Please don't look at me. If you don't, I can still turn away. And part of you thought: Look at me.

Wednesday Night

I took my time, lingering by the pool yesterday. The novel is just that good, the sun that warm on my shoulders, the babble of voices around me that soothing. 

By the time I had showered and shaved and gotten my chips out of the room safe, I found that I had only minutes to get downstairs and get to the sportsbook, which is a pretty fair clip from the Encore.

I walked swiftly, fingering the yellow chips in my pocket. I thought of how close I had come to missing the kickoff of the Monday night game, that in fact I had forgotten what time it was in Las Vegas and was surprised when the ticket writer said you have just a few seconds.

I thought how those few seconds could have saved me from that particular losing bet, and wondered if there was perhaps some reason I had lingered by the pool, that perhaps my sense of what was to come was making me slow down the pace of my actions.

I continued walking and resolved to neither dally by the expensive storefronts, nor hurry myself along. I would trust my karmic fate.

I stepped into the dark, cavernous space of the sportsbook, with its huge digital displays looking like Mission Control for a 1970's mission to the moon. I glanced at the board and saw that Boise State had slipped to minus nine and the moneyline had dipped to minus three-thirty.

I placed four yellow chips on the black granite and placed my wager. Fate determined, I walked to the baccarat room, pulled up a chair and sat down to play.

I made 500 before dinner and walked down to the Country Club where I watched the US tie Costa Rica in soccer. I felt content to not watch the football game and enjoyed a fabulous dinner. Angela is still working the bar, and we caught up on life stories. I will have to go back and get the name of the wine I had, it was amazing. Big robust Cabernet. Way too expensive, but worth every penny.

I took a glass with me and strolled down to the Terrace Point Cafe to pay off a 50 dollar bet I made with Michelle the last time I was here. It's been too long since I have been here: she has gotten pregnant, had her baby and he's five months old now. She almost giddily showed me the pictures. 

I walked back toward the casino, happy for my friend, thinking of my own children and remembering them as babies. I smiled.

Ten years, the best, of my life. And every day a blessing.

I glanced at the television - drama in the Boise State game. I shook my head and ducked around the corner to the shoe shine station - best in the world. He took care of my Robert Wayne shoes, tutting at the state I had let them get to.

I watched the people slipping past. I paid the man, tipped him outrageously and walked to the sportsbook. Winner. I pushed my ticket across the counter and accepted a white chip and some cash in return.

I decided I wanted to play baccarat the rest of the evening in Encore, and strolled down the esplanade linking the two hotels. I stopped in and decided to buy the gorgeous blue jacket I had my eyes on. The tailor was there and he adjusted the sleeves and promised it by Saturday. I paid for it in cash. 

I continued my stroll, happy that I had purchased something tangible to take home with me - a physical reminder of my stay here in this surreal play land. Each successful trip, I bring home an object d'arte, a piece of sculpted glass, a coat, something to tie my memories to that specific visit.

A glance at the black glass Toucon on my shelf, or the Kosta Boda head - like smelling freshly mown grass, or hearing a favorite song - brings the memories flooding back.

I walked between the giant peacocks into the baccarat room and was pleased to see Francesco from Australia and Kim from South Korea still playing. I pulled up a chair, was greeted by the dealer and the pit boss by name. They bent to their touch screen and entered my initial stake in their computer and stood up to say as they always do: 'Good luck.' 

I accept a scorecard and the two-sided black and red pen and I make a note on the heavy paper: Wednesday, Session Two, Shoe One, start time 9:03. I sit back in the opulent green chair, cross my leg and gaze at the chandeliers overhead.

Despite my winning night, despite the amazing wine in my almost-too-large-to-be-real wine glass, despite the feeling that I'm surfing along on the crest of a gorgeous dream I wonder if I'm numb, or simply adjusting my emotional resonance to best serve my current situation. 

Being calm is good. Making money is good. I'm writing again - in part thanks to this amazing book I'm reading that just fires my imagination - and that is good in ways I can't even begin to describe.

I am numb by way of survival, I think. I am burrowing into another part of my mind while fissures in my body heal. Waiting for my heart to stop gasping - like my lungs did when I entered the steam room yesterday. Why was hot humid air so hard to breathe? I felt like I was suffocating, yet there was oxygen, yes? I found myself sucking air through the ice cold washcloth that an attendant had handed me.

I am making money - and focused solely on that effort - like I sucked cool oxygen through a cold towel. I am making money as an artifice. As a way to not lose my mind. Or my heart.

I pushed a black chip onto the felt and let my eyes flick across the table to the patrons, the dealer, the pit boss, the bored dealers at empty tables. I am most certainly invisible in this place.

Which is why I come.

I'm in the high stakes baccarat room, but I'm betting 100 next to men betting 5,000 per hand. I am no threat to the casino. My play is consistent, boring even. Profitable, yes. A careful and happy grind for me. Of no consequence to them.

I turn my stack of black chips into stacks of purple chips. I occasionally turn a pair of purples into a yellow. I am polite, talkative, witty. I am careful not to make a fuss, or dally over turning the cards. Not when I have 2% of what the other players have at stake. Though as I quietly intone from time to time, my hundred dollar win is probably a higher percentage win to my bottom line on any given hand than their 5k win is to theirs.

The dealer nods when I say this - they know - and the Australian blinks at me. Nice fellow. Kim is silent. The pit boss taps her screen. I can freeze these moments in my mind and replay them later. 

Invisible in a very visible place. A good thing.

Encore

The high-end slots and baccarat room at the Encore

I'm sitting by the European pool tucked back behind beautiful palms and magnolia trees at the Wynn Encore. It was windy and cool yesterday but has warmed up nicely today and is supposed to be in the 80's tomorrow, which will be nice. 

I am just starting to get woken up completely from last night's marathon baccarat session that wrapped up around 4 am local which is 7 for my internal clock. Thank goodness for the heavy drapes that shut out *all* light, and the very quiet interior spaces here - I slept like a log.

Had Lobster Benedict and lots of coffee and a Mimosa to start the day.

Encore is gorgeous, the casino smaller and more intimate than the sprawling Wynn. It's also very *red.* There are these massive red glass chandeliers that are almost retina-searing that hang everywhere over the casino floor. They dominate the rods and cones in your eye, so that other colors seem to fade from view, and almost seem like giant sea creatures reaching down from the ceiling to pluck unsuspecting gamblers off the floor. It's taken a few days to get used to.

The room is massive and beautiful, with a separate sitting room and sofa and features a much more masculine black and natural wood feel than the very pink, red, yellow spectrum of the Wynn. Everything is one step further than the Wynn, automatic buttons for the drapes, privacy, doorbell, lights, even "clean room now." Service is spot on, and the little details are all just right.

The baccarat room is gorgeous and set up several steps in its own room-within-a-room area, beneath a gorgeous glass atrium. The red is absent from this area, and giant peacocks guard the entrance and are featured in the decor everywhere including the beautiful chandeliers. I love this part of the casino.

I had three sessions at the baccarat tables yesterday, all successful - the last one starting at 10 pm and lasting six hours. Interesting people around, though only a couple spoke English. I was the only Westerner playing, which is fun for me. 

Had a great dinner at Daniel Boulud on Monday night - the short ribs there are worth the trip alone - and tried a new spot 'Switch' last night and had Colorado lamb chops that were amazing. The walls, art, and ceiling all change every 20 minutes there, and sitting inside it is quite the experience to watch it happen. Two entire walls literally drop into the ground, and a castle wall rises up to take their place. I noted how pretty the upside down jellyfish chandeliers were, only to find that they were the very bottom of a much more massive trio of chandeliers that are revealed as the ceiling parts and opens up like a cathedral. Impressive. Of course it would all just be a gimmick if the food wasn't great, but the tomato and goat cheese tart and aforementioned chops (baked with cherries and pepper glaze) were very special.

I had a great massage yesterday, and for the first time lingered in the spa to really take advantage of all the other rooms. I tried a Water Therapy routine that had me start in the steam room (my first time in a steam room, I thought I was going to suffocate, was very strange!), then the dry sauna, then a 80 degree soaking pool, then a hot tub, then a 70 degree freezing cold soaking pool, then sitting on these reclining mosaic stone chaises that look so uncomfortable, but are really so relaxing - hot water is pumped through them so they are warm. I could have fallen asleep there as I dried off.

It really set me up in a relaxed frame of mind for the night ahead.

In a very nice way, the days are blurring together, and my stress melting away - I have only raised my voice once, in a great cheer as ULM closed out the win last night - and I'm reading the baccarat patterns with confidence. I have no plans, no where to be, and nothing more pressing than to stroll into the sportsbook by 5 to place a bet on the college game tonight.

I hope everyone is having a good week as well.

Sitting Still

This morning I got walked through puddles on a busy street, carrying a suitcase. I walked through two pairs of glass doors into a loud, open-aired atrium where the voices of many people echoed in steel girders far above me. I studied tumbling letters on a giant black board and walked through security checkpoints and arrived at a large plate glass window where I set down my bag and watched rain drops splattering on the tarmac.

I sat in my narrow, straight-backed seat and studied the slats and flaps and spoilers of the giant, silver wing outside my oval window, felt the roar of acceleration and the sudden departure of bumps as the plane was sucked into the sky.

For a long time I gazed at nothingness and wondered why I felt like thick syrup trapped at the neck of an old bottle. I made several resolutions only to discard them as I stared out the window at the hazy white clouds and the pale blue curve of the sky stretching off well past my line of sight in both directions.

I thought I had left my anger on a park bench some weeks ago, thinking that if I just walked away from it, my pain would be left there too. Discarded. No longer wanted. Maybe the trick was I just had to set it down.

It was no longer mine to carry.

Or perhaps it’s the pain I set down and hoped the anger would disappear shortly thereafter. I can’t remember which.

Anyway, it didn’t work that way.

It’s like the anger and the pain are tin cans tied together by a string. Leave one behind and try to walk away and you only get a few steps before the other jerks off the park bench and starts clattering behind you. Everyone stares. You’re the idiot who thought he could leave his pain behind on a park bench and it would just disappear like the morning fog.

I try to hide the cans, holding onto one in each hand – burying the anger and the pain. But then I can’t get anything done: my hands are full with these stupid tin cans.

So I hold one can in one hand and let the other clatter and dance behind me, causing a racket, and work with my one free hand. Half of my attention is better than none at all, at least that’s how I try to reason it when I'm talking to myself.

I go for days without eating; that ties up one hand and leaves another free. But that only works for a few days.

I try to sneak around carrying both my tin cans where no one can see them. Or else I set them down for a few hours when I don’t have to be moving and working and doing things, and I pretend they’re not mine. “What these? Someone left them here. I just sat down a moment ago.”

I have a glass of wine. I write some lines of fiction or paint something on a canvas. But eventually I have to move again, and the cans clatter along behind me.

This week I am going to a place where I don’t have to move. I will, more or less, sit on a bench for six days and simply read books. I will let world make its busy way around the sun without my direct efforts. I will pretend the tin cans were left here by the person before me, that I am just watching them for a bit until the person returns. 

On the Water

October is a glorious time to live in the Carolinas: the air is clear and crisp, the sky deep blue. The days are warm and the nights just cool enough to make you want to curl up under a blanket and light a fire. This week I took a day off work to move my sailboat out of the water where it is moored all Summer long, get it up on its trailer and clean it's hull for the Winter. The job only took a couple of hours and afterward I could not resist getting out on the water, so I hopped in the Chaparral and headed upstream, instinctually heading toward the little place that serves onion rings and Coca Colas in glass bottles.

Apart from a fisherman here or there, I was the only person on the water - the lake was calm and smooth. I opened up the throttle and let the wind pull at my hair. I listened to the snap of my flag and the steady roar of the engine. I stood up and leaned forward into the steady force of the air, one hand on the steering wheel and smiled, noting that I was traveling at exactly the same speed on the water as I do when I soar: 50 mph.

The dockside deli was open and I filled my tank with gas and ordered some greasy onion rings. I watched the birds flying through the maze of masts at the marina and slowly munched my crispy lunch. 

I took a long slow ride through a part of the lake I haven't visited in some years, enjoyed looking at the houses and docks and landscaping, then turned back downriver and pushed the throttle as far forward as it would go, curving back through the markers like a raptor soaring just over the surface, dragging a talon lazily in the water beneath it.

Fight Gone Bad

Three rounds of:

Wall-ball, 20 pound ball, 10 ft target (Reps)
Sumo deadlift high-pull, 75 pounds (Reps)
Box Jump, 20" box (Reps)
Push-press, 75 pounds (Reps)
Row (Calories)

In this workout you move from each of five stations after a minute.The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. This is a five-minute round from which a one-minute break is allowed before repeating. On call of "rotate", the athletes must move to next station immediately for best score. One point is given for each rep, except on the rower where each calorie is one point.

Add your points

My score as kept by my trainer on the concrete wall