Vapor

One of the stranger qualities to my relocation to Las Vegas is the assumption that everything is going to go away. When visiting the strip especially, I often stop to marvel at the view and find myself desperate to capture it in memory or on camera, because it won't be there anymore. This of course is not based in reality at all, merely the learned habit that Las Vegas and everything it entailed was a temporary situation prior to my moving there from Ohio. And thus while on vacation, I had to cling to every moment with white-knuckled dread for fear of the time when I would lose it. Airport goodbyes became so traumatic that once I moved here, I refused to take Martin to McCarran when he had to fly to Reno overnight for work.

My evening commute from work allows for some of the more breathtaking views of Mount Charleston and the valley. Last night I watched as the clouds tangled with the mountaintops and stuck there like cotton balls. I found the urge to pull over and wrangle my camera phone into place to keep that image before it faded away. Even after nine months in Las Vegas, and feeling fairly established at that, the occasional burst of anxiety recurs. I don't want to lose this.

This morning I dreamed I was buying a house. I found a sprawling compound with doors that wouldn't shut, which caused worry over keeping my cats contained. Later in the dream, I “remembered” that I had two children with my ex, which sparked a dreamtime depression of a magnitude I don't think I've dreamed before. At the end, I found a great house, but was further upset that it was in Ohio and not Nevada.

I'm not sure if it is the New Year and preceding holidays sparking this surge of emotions and anxieties, or perhaps I've relegated the churning of emotions regarding my move to an unconscious level. Either way, a day does not go by without me admiring the mountains our home tucks against, or the sprawl of the golden valley at night, or the crazy denizens and happenings of Sin City.

New Years day, Martin and I went on a drive. And I, intoxicated from a hangover cure that involved more drinking, leaned back in the passenger seat and felt the hot sun on my face through the windshield, nodded to the stereo cranking indulgent rock and roll, and curled my hand over Martin's on the gear shift.

My resolution, so different from the year before, is to make 2011 the best one yet.