Amber and I arrived back in Los Angeles last night. On her layover from Utah there was a long stop in Las Vegas. It was shocking for us, as we just left the Norman Rockwell life of Utah. Amber exited the airplane and stood silent, and helpless as she was blinking over the footlights of a gambling city airport. The blinging and dinging of the machines, the hustle and bustle of the people, and the lack of eye contact, and quickness of it all left Amber realizing that she had left her heart in Utah. Something happened there this trip, that she will hold with her forever. She suddenly knew. deep down where home was, and it was buried deep in the mountains of Utah. She felt like she had been left outdoors overnight and rained on, again, as she looked at all of the strangers, who ignored her teary eyes. Instead the people of Las Vegas airport read the promise of failure in each other, and Amber had been in the position of hopeful carnality too -- years ago, when she got caught up in all of the lights of the stages there, where men fumbled in the dark for money, and perfumed women with plump promises skipped about.
Amber was haunted at that time with a million depressions. Years ago, Amber had forgotten to be afraid-- and she was swept up into that lifestyle as quickly as she exhaled her first fag of a smoke. It seemed like everyone was paralyzed with a formal smile, and empty crunching coils of failure. Amber couldn't turn back on the years, and she couldn't turn back on her flight home. Instead she just sat in a corner, waiting for the next flight home, clicking her zippo- wondering where the years had gone. Wasn't it true, that everything in life from the point years ago that she tried on her first stilletto, that she had done all the things she hadn't really wanted to do? Taking a hopelessly endless job to prove she was not a failure, but a new and improved self supporting traveler. In the end however, her life was on the defensive, her dreams were six inches too high, and her aristocratic spirals of smoke were fading. She boarded the plane, and buried herself in a book, ignoring the passenger in the next seat over fumble over each other. Finally she landed in Hollywood, and her friend picked her up at the airport. There was a birthday present waiting for her, messages of love from friends, and a genuine similarity in her home here, matching what she left in Utah.
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