Koko misses Las Vegas

From space:

At dusk:

During an electrical storm:

Today's miscellany of missed things:

Sunlight on the southeastern mountains at seven p.m. in the summer

The quietly outrageous spectacle of snow on Mt. Charleston in April, viewed from across the valley while driving north on Maryland Pkwy

The guarantee that you can reach any destination in the valley from any other destination simply by following right angles--a geometer's comfort

Walking across the dusty lot adjacent my apartment complex at four in the morning to buy crackers and root beer from the old man at 7-11, who looked surprised that I knew what a sarong is and never inquired about my motivation or state of mind when I routinely wandered in, disoriented and hungry, at the universally recognized pothead hour

Getting funny looks from the counter folk at the video store on Flamingo and Pecos every time I rented anything by Andrei Tarkovsky

Traversing the great divide--Las Vegas Blvd--looking at my watch every thirty seconds, swearing, and cursing the last ten minutes of NewsRadio for causing me to postpone my trip to the WOW center until 11:30, knowing that it closed at midnight

Dejectedly walking to my car after finding the doors to the WOW center locked, or, returning triumphantly after locating the correct MC Solaar or Serge Gainsbourg CD at the back of the store in fifty seconds flat, one minute before closing--and consoling or congratulating myself with a burger and fries from In-n-Out.

Knowing that whatever I needed, whenever I needed it, I could buy it.

I never thought I'd say it: the dry air.

The sterilized doctor's office smell circulated through the Lied Library on campus.

Sitting outside the campus CBC complex at dusk and watching the Strip lights come on, the air turn red, and then violet, and breathing in the dusty clean desert air.

Visiting the free video section of the public library branch on Escondido and feeling like a pedophile buying kiddie porn, thanks to the shaming design of the library, which punished corneal stimulation by image rather than word, I guess, by hiding the videos way in the back, past a panopticon of two hundred pairs of migrants' eyes (God bless that little barrio), the checkout desk, a funky velvet curtain, and a Dante's "last chance" of books on tape. That branch once staged Oleanna for a bunch of old people.

Lightning that jumps from cloud to cloud for an hour and never strikes the ground.

Wind that hurts, physically.

Excessively wide streets and intersections.

Living beneath mariachi aficionados.

Nearly giving Megan a heart attack by walking into her office, hearing Scott Walker, and asking, "Isn't that Scott Walker?" (We spent the rest of the afternoon exchanging emails composed mostly of quotes from Tilt.)

Having nothing to do but read, because Las Vegas is extremely boring.

Coming to believe that the preternatural nighttime purple of the sky there is normal. (After a few years this actually does happen to you.)

Seeing the city end abruptly, but always twenty feet farther than the day before.

The secluded park on Whitney Ranch where I played basketball nearly every afternoon during the summer I first started to read Paul de Man. I remember lying back on the bench, in the shade of the trees, exhausted and sweating in the way that only a mammal in the desert can sweat, watching the distant planes overhead. That was the summer I began to see the moral and metaphysical value of Wordsworth's poetry, and I thought about it a lot as I lay there during those relaxed, pleasantly unpleasant evenings under the trees.

Serious peace and quiet.