An excerpt from an abandoned writing project

“Well, first let me say, your daughter’s eyes are probably going to be fine.”  Silas dropped his chin to his chest. Marianne grabbed his hand and they fidgeted with relief.  "It’s probably just a blocked tear duct or allergies. Does she have any other symptoms?”

The condition that began in Poet’s eyes, that had brought her the curious glances of strangers was the incessant glistening of tears gathered around her eyes and dripping into whatever she was doing. When she played with Solly, chattering in the pretend world under the thick leafy branches of the neighbor’s magnolia, her eyes watered. As they sat at the table eating scrambled eggs and apple slices the tears stood in her smiling eyes. Staring expressionless at high soaring birds circling far away as she held a handful of goldfish crackers, drips splashed on her wrists.

When Silas tucked her in at night the tears streamed down the sides of her head. How many times had he asked her, “What’s the matter sweetie?” and she would answer, “Nothing, Daddy,” and wipe her eyes on the sleeve of her pajamas. Then she would smile at him authentically and say, “See?”

“Were you crying before?”

“No.” She sighed, becoming tired of this repeated questioning.

“Are you sad about anything?”

“Only about sad things. I’m always sad about sad things.”

“What sad things?”

“I dunno,” she said looking bored and wistful. “Sometimes I have sad dreams,” tears running into her ears.

“I know, honey. Everyone does.”

“Sometimes my sad dreams are about you.”

“About me? Well, yes I think I remember one last year.”

“Yes. I’ve had it lots of times” He didn’t want to ask about the dream, but it seemed unavoidable.

“Do you want to tell me the dream?”

“Oh… I dunno. No. It was just a dream,” her moist eyes smiling reassuringly at him.

“Sure there’s nothing wrong?”
 
“No, daddy, it’s just my eyes.”

Besides the dull pain in her eyes, the other symptom which took some time to figure out from Poet’s description was that she frequently saw halos. The doctor said it could be something common like allergies, although there was a very small chance that it portended a rare condition that, after a roundabout technical explanation, ended in the prognosis of blindness. At home Poet laughed and played with dolls while droplets splashed on the Barbie beach cruiser. “Let’s go play on the swing!” She pushed Solly on the swing with pathetic streams running down her cheeks like rivulets of the woe of the disconsolate.

It became difficult to tell when she was really crying. Her parents learned to cautiously ignore the tears. If she was not sobbing, they did not know if she was upset. At times when she truly shed tears of calm sadness without huffing and bawling as most children do, they offered no comfort, unaware that there was a problem.
One Saturday afternoon Silas found her sitting on the curb shedding copious tears. She had something cupped in her hands and held close in her lap. Haloes glowed in her watery vision. Silas hauled hoses and sprinklers around irrigating the shaggy pile carpet of grass. He plucked weeds in his frumpy old shorts, glancing at her occasionally. She hung her head. After a lengthy period of letting her be, not wanting to nag about her eye problem, he finally approached her. He sat down next to her with a contented stretch and a sigh of one taking a well-earned break.

“What a beautiful day.”

She sniffled. He looked at her sideways.
 
“You really are crying this time.”

Her head continued bowed, dangling brown curls hiding her soggy eyes. Without a word, she gently held out her cupped hands to reveal a dead bird. Silas gasped.

“I prayed that God would bring it back to life, and he said OK. But it didn’t come back to life.”

She turned and looked up into his eyes darkly, and he grimaced at the broken animal freshly fallen from the sky. It was still supple and moist from the steady flow of her tears, sprinkled on the bird in hopes that it might aid the healing like a magic potion, or prevail upon God’s sympathy, or merely anoint it for burial. He backed away from her coughing and warbling about germs and filth. At last he persuaded her to put it in a box and wash her hands. They buried it dutifully and stood by the gravesite in silence for a moment.

“Do you want to say a prayer or blessing or anything, sweetie?”

“No. I don’t want to pray.”

Leaving Las Vegas

The way I came to find myself in Las Vegas again is,

my company is creating a partnership with Cisco, and we must have a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) on staff to qualify.  That’s me.  We must also have a CCDA (D for Design) on staff, and I am again in Sin City to endure a class which will attempt to fill the water balloon of my head using a fire hose of information.

With this additional certification, I will be the Cisco kid, so to speak; the key to lots of new business for our company.

But the part that is blog-worthy is the surreal nature of the entertainment district of Las Vegas and the swirling entropy that encompasses the frenzied vacationers.

Where else does an ambulance whiz past my hotel window every 20 minutes?  Where else are there so many pools of vomit on the sidewalks?  Where else can you be accosted by hordes of Mexicans hawking flyers for prostitution services?  Where else can you find such fabulous shows as Barry Manilow, Gladys Night, and Cher? or all-male dance troupes, like one the called “Thunder Down-Under” featuring topless, chiseled presumably Australian men with tousled hair and oh, so serious eyes.

How odd I must look:  a single middle-aged man in something other than a captioned T-shirt, reading a book over dinner.

How taken-aback are the faces of fellow bus travelers pumping their fists, women stretching down their necklines, giddy as children on Christmas morning, when I tell them I’m not planning to gamble, and in fact never have.

The people I can simply pity.  But what is more malaise-inducing to me is the institutionalized paltriness, not so much the helicopters constantly circling overhead giving tours over the city such that I cannot make a phone call outside, but the stretch SUV limos, the flat-bed trucks with lighted marquees of girls in mid-remove of their narrow patches of bikini, the $100 per plate dinners while homeless people (illegally) sit shabby and silent in the dark corners.  One has the sense that everything here colludes to fleece the willing despoiled, to shut out the quiet desperation of everyday life, hiding from the darkness in an even greater darkness, and eviscerating many good earthly gifts in the service of the basest passions of the unimaginative, overfed, heedless, feckless, reckless middle class.