The Mark Dykeman Web Niche

I wrote this note some time ago during a trip.  I was awake far, far too early due to time zone changes which my body hadn’t adapted to.

Las Vegas and the hills of Nevada face me, not like jagged teeth, but more like crumbling brown molars surrounding the city in the jawbone remnants of gigantic beast of the desert. All else is flat, mixed of asphalt, sparce greenery, stone and brick buildings and huge towels of metal, more stone, and glass. The glass is smoky and inpenentrable, a fitting companion to the haze and wispy clouds in an otherwise clear and blue sky.

A needle-like tower pierces the scant space between two large hotel buildings. Its tip prepares to deliver stinging pain to the blue sky above. A small red rectangular band shoots upward, then falls back toward the base of the tip. A ride, perhaps? Certainly a rise.

Its name is Stratosphere, toward which that sharp needle points with eternal readiness.

Ye dusty, broken, gigantic jaw of Las Vegas. Ye have us trapped.

From the Las Vegas Hilton (Sept. 8/07, far too early in the morning)