Las Vegas Zen

The partial contents of a monk’s notebook found left behind in his room in Flamingo Hotel, Las Vegas.:

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The question is not “Did you win or lose?” the question is “How long did it take you to get rid of all your chips?”

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Do not ask what the strip can do for you or what or who you can do for or on the strip. Ask instead of yourself what your room number was.

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You don’t shake a pint’s round, plump hand, you grab onto it because it’s the only thing that keeps you from falling into the abyss that opens like a maw underneath.

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As the bottle empties into you, empty yourself into the bottle.

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Do not be the rock that stands in the river’s way, be the pebble that is carried by its current, then all will be according to your whims: your will is the will of the river, and the river’s will...yours.

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Let the assholes talk, their comeuppance will soon descend upon them from above.

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A departing Koan:What do a Samurai, a heroin addict and a compulsive gambler have in common?For all, their daily routines are marked by a strong sense of purpose: The Samurai trains hard to master his sword, as his life might soon depend on this mastery. The heroin addict must procure his daily fix or suffer the dire(hattic) consequences. And the gambler has to gather the money to place the next last bet that everything seems to depend on: all three lead strongly purposeful lives.

Just a Perfect Day, part 4

Is it predestination that wraps itself in the cloak of chance, or the irreversibility of choice that causes the illusion of determinism, or is this question itself the barking of a delusional dog up an illusory tree: an invalid question asked by an overgrown brain that at first evolved as a supremely adaptive tool for hunting and gathering, and the passing on of genes but somehow, as in a differential equation, this evolutionary solution overshot, went beyond the intended goal, and not only invented condoms, thereby defeating its very purpose of existence, but also started asking questions that were not meant to be asked, that nothing in nature had thought of an answer for, that didn’t even exist outside of its web of neurons?

But if it is so, and the human brain is an evolutionary flaw, or anomaly, was its creation a matter of blind chance or predestined fate, etched into the womb that was the big bang itself, if there ever was such a thing?

Be it choice or fate, the present reality is one of many possible permutations and is only distinguished from the others by the fact that it is indeed the one that is “real”ized. So one could easily imagine how it could have been that Bob’s mother, who plays the lottery religiously, could have called him at 7 a.m. on the Sunday morning following that disastrous Saturday night to wake him up, startled, not knowing for a second or two where he is exactly, the bitter aftertaste of last night still clearly present in his mood, to inform him that her combination of digits arranged sided by side on a small piece of paper turned out to be the winning combination and that they are now millionaires, and how upon hearing this Bob would rub his eyes and ask if she’s alright to which she would say that she knew he wouldn’t believe her and “here’s your dad, talk to I him, what are the chances that we both went mad on the same day?” and Bob, once reassured by his dad of loads of cash awaiting impatiently for his arrival, would hang up the phone, throw a swift uppercut in the chill Sunday air of the room and yell “YES!”, all caps.

However, it is merely a tautology that things that are not probable, don’t usually happen, and Bob had had a whole night of unusual occurrences just the night before and now, unfortunately, it was back to normalcy. So there was no phone call to announce winning lottery tickets, which means that he did at least get to enjoy an uninterrupted Sunday morning sleep. Also, not to leave him in too bad a shape, he did eventually end up getting more that enough money from the insurance company to fix his car.

Just a Perfect Day, part 3

Twenty minutes of a night of precarious suicidals dodging your car, followed by being jettisoned by your friends, quote unquote, the moment the costs of staying with you outweighed the benefits, twenty minutes of such night, sitting in the car’s silence watching streams of rainwater ski down the slope of the windshield, waiting for a tow truck that now seems would probably never show up, was enough for Bob to say the magic words: “FFuck it” he said with two capital F’s and drove the car on the tore remnants of tires to a Safeway parking lot across the street before calling for a cab.

Take a long hot shower Bob, you deserve it, you do. The almost narcotic effects of something as corporeal as standing under a downpour of water warmed up to just the right temperature on something so apparently ethereal as the mind are amazing. He got out of the shower and wrapped a thick towel around him and walked over to the bedroom’s window looking over the street outside just in time to see a car pull up right in front of the complex. The passenger side door opened and Mary, Bob’s aforementioned girlfriend, stepped out into the four thirty a.m. street. The rain had slowed to a drizzle that was only visible as it sped by, slanted, under the yellow street lights. She walked around the front of the car to the driver’s side and bent her head down and through the car window for what seemed like one last goodnight kiss, one last one for the road.

She wouldn’t have done this had she known Bob was watching. She knew her relationship with him was over but she had no intention of being cruel, which is why she had already eliminated the possibility of Bob being home and standing at the bedroom window at that very moment based on the fact that his car did not occupy its usual parking spot, and was nowhere to be seen.

Bob watched this with a calmness that even surprised himself, despite the pang of pain he felt somewhere through his chest. He understood. He had had dim hopes of restoring a pulse in the cardiac arrest of their relationship, but even he knew that describing such hopes as anything more than dim would be naïve optimism. Something inside had seen this coming and had subconsciously prepared itself. Perhaps, had he been more lucid, had he had more insight into his own emotions and thoughts he would have paused to consider whether his aspiration to revive this relationship was anything more than the force of habit. Maybe he would have asked himself whether it would not be better to step aside and stop spending the energy needed to prolong the reverse osmosis of feelings, and instead let the human chemistry take its natural course, even though it would mean it wasn’t meant to be.

However, no need for a pointless, late night fight, he understood that much. So pillow tucked under arm, blanket dragging behind him, Bob journeyed to the living room, where the sofa suddenly turned into a very valuable asset, especially because of its ability to transform to a bed upon the pulling of a strap.

Just a Perfect Day, part 2

Of all the possible metaphorical paths that Bob had to pick to get to such problematic position this was not one of the most probable, assuming free will. Normally he wouldn’t be at Tim’s party. The reason he was there tonight was the “on the rocks” status of his relationship with his girlfriend, who had told him earlier in the day that she will be going out with friends tonight, without a hint of invitation.

Now the reasons for on-the-rock-ness of the relationship are very complex, suffice it to say that they include a phone call last Saturday at 9 p.m. initiated by Bob’s girlfriend during which she reminded a forgetful, drunk-with-a-friend-at-a-downtown-bar Bob, at length and with no little effort to obviate her derisive tone, of the fact that he had been supposed to be home at 8, that they had made plans a week ago and that she had made reservations at the restaurant which she had already cancelled before calling Bob, so there was no need for him to rush home anymore and she was even nice enough to wish Bob a good time with his friend: “hope you have fun” she had said, her tone loaded with sarcasm as a rocket with a nuclear warhead.

This however was only the nail in the coffin of the camel of their relationship which many straws had helped break the back of on many nights of petty arguing and days of cold detachment, the source of which arguments, Bob only sometimes remembered to remember, was not what it seemed: their differences of opinion about how each of them should behave and be, but rather their disability to entertain each other, and hence the complexity of the reasons for the deterioration of their relationship, because who can put his/her finger on that x-factor that makes one entertaining to another and then luckily visa versa.

At any rate, facing the wraith staring into the beams of his headlights some part of Bob’s brain, deep beneath what constitutes the self-conscious part, decided to completely ignore Jen’s screaming from the backseat and Tim’s banging on the dashboard and solely concentrate on turning the stirring wheel to the left with remarkable speed, allowing the right corner of the bumper to barely miss the standing figure’s knee who had apparently changed his mind last-minute and had jumped to the side even though the car had already cleared him. But this caused the car to hit the curb at too exciting of a speed for the tires to hold their breath and so they popped loudly, as the seatbelts tightened on the three law abiding passengers’ chests.

It took Bob a few moments to gather himself and get out of the car. He saw the crash’s cause running at full speed, already half faded into the empty street’s darkness where he had emerged from as if from nowhere. Tim got out of the car and said “what the fuck was that?” staring at the back of the running figure. Jen got out and said “oh my god” in a weak voice, eyes staring at nothing in particular.

Both front tires were shredded so there was no point in using the spare tire. To his disbelief, as Bob listened to Vivaldi’s Summer playing over the phone while he waited for someone at the towing company to pick up he saw Tim calling for a cab. He was looking all around except in Bob’s direction, trying to avoid eye contact. The cab got there before the tow truck. “What if I had no money with me to pay for the two truck? they didn’t even offer to help or stay. fuckin’ assholes” Bob said to himself with quiet rage that almost felt good. “sorry man, good luck” Tim said as he was getting in the cab. “Fuck you” Bob almost said but didn’t, he just kept quiet and looked away. “This is going to be a good day” he thought, so when it started to rain just as the cab was taking off it was no surprise at all.

Just a perfect day, part 1

When Tim said “Hey Bob, can you do me a favor?” he could smell the faint odor of trouble: it was an innocent question that reeked with something unpleasant, like a cute toddler who has made plans on taking a shit on your lap.

The party was running on empty. Most girls had left, and the ones who had stayed had not stayed out of choice: they were either too drunk to perform the complex acrobatics of walking, or were waiting for their rides like a famished African village awaits rain.

Sometimes, if it’s a long night, the hangover starts while you’re still drinking. It’s not that bad, it really depends on your agenda for the next day. Naturally, if it includes any kind of work for which you get paid, which implies that it would not be your preferred method of passing time, you are somewhat fucked. The degree to which you are fucked depends on the nature of your job, and whether it involves a monitor or not.

Bob however is smarter than to imbibe to such excess when he knows he has to work the next day, so he was nursing a Corona, trying to push back the rising tides of hangover over the Atlantis of buzz when Tim asked that ominous question. Bob is a nice guy though, he answered “Sure, what is it?” to which Tim said “well, Jen says she left her bag on Capitol Hill, she thinks she left it on the park bench when her friend went to use the park bathroom, she was asking me if there is anyway she can get a ride up there, she has all her cards and everything in the bag, so I was wondering if you mind giving us a ride up there man?”

Bob had once watched his friend’s bag get snatched by some guy on a bicycle on Cap Hill, right by the soccer field where they were playing. His friend had given chase and had fallen on his ass trying to run on asphalt with soccer cleats. That was 6 p.m. on a Tuesday, now it was 3 a.m. on a Saturday. The bag is gone, even if you had a pink semispherical force field from the future buzzing a finger-melting, limb-severing buzz around it, it would still be gone. The chances of retrieving a bag left on Capitol Hill are as good as a Bigfoot sighting in the Big and Tall section of a department store. But, Bob is a nice guy and he said “sure, I don’t think it would still be there, but sure, I’ll give you guys a ride” but thought “fucking Tim, why do I have to suffer your buzz murdering demands when it’s you who wants to get some ass, and from who? From Jen … that snobbish whore” because unlike most, some nice guys do know what’s up and Bob was one of them.

The car was filled with the black on black hum of tire on asphalt, that acted as a backdrop for the noises of KEXP that was itself a filler for the occasional silences in the three way conversation between the passengers. The theme: party gossip. “Dude what was up with Dan’s girlfriend, I mean is she antisocial or what?” Jen asked with a zealousness the source of which is beyond natural at this hour of a purse abandoning, heavy drinking night. To which Tim answered from the front seat without turning “Nah, I’ve seen her before and she was pretty normal and nice. I think she was as high as fucking kite this time though, that’s why she seemed a little off or weird.” And Bob concured “yeah dude, they were basically crawling on the ceiling they were so high, I mean Dan and his girlfriend.”

What they did not know as they gossiped (some actually prefer to call it “character analysis) the night away in the car was the futility of their journey. Jen’s purse had indeed been snatched. Around 2 a.m., and not by a homeless bum as the stereotypical, and usually true, scenario would be, but by a 25 year old, self-proclaimed anarchist with black horn rimmed glasses, who was strolling through the park on his way home from the bars on Pine street wearing his favorite black leather jacket and a pair of jeans that seemed like they were half a size small for him, out of the back pocket of which a small paper back peeked its head, and whose bottoms just touched a pair of black Converse All-Star’s high tops.

He spotted the fashionably big, white and yellow handbag sitting on a bench, stopped whistling “La Vie en Rose”, walked over and picked it up, and with one hand still in his pocket, used the other to throw the bag in the air so that it would rotate and caught its bottom causing the bag’s opening to face the earth, whose gravity helped disembowel it, its content hitting the park’s cement: several lipsticks, one thin box of eye shadow the door of which was a mirror that shattered upon contact, cell phone, various cards, a black purse and many other small things that Jen kept in her bag and had probably forgot about. He picked up the purse and kicked the bag and walked on.

In a few months he would ponder what he had done that night and would feel bad about it, not so much because he felt like an asshole, but more because he had acted like a badass wannabe, like some thug who has seen too many Hollywood movies where kicking stuff around with a cigarette on the mouth’s corner and a face like you don’t give a shit somehow has a transcendental quality to it whereas, he thought now, it’s nothing but a power high induced by exerting force over small, inanimate objects, of a women’s handbag in his case.

But that doesn’t matter right now. What matters is what drives a person to suicide: The ultimate triumph of the central nervous system over evolution which ironically causes the demise of the former and not the latter. The reason it matters is because just as Bob turned right to get on the I-5 north freeway entrance ramp that night, his car’s headlights suddenly revealed a human figure standing in the middle of the road as still as a cardboard figure, waiting for his knees’ appointment with the front bumper, which would probably send the rest of him flying into the windshield.