city of pecadillos
Although I had a miserable time in Las Vegas, this was less due to outright sordidness and grime than boredom and waste. I'm not good at admiring large fountains in the desert and I couldn't help noticing that my hotel, ostensibly referencing the English legend of Arthur, had a great deal of Fleur de Lis scattered about. I started writing several stories while there, which leads me to believe that anyone with a bit of an imagination and less than 20 dollars to live on for a few days will end up a writer. None were very good, although one allowed me to appreciate Vegas as an illustration of Platonic ideas. If I ever teach the Phaedrus, I am going to talk about how the mini Eiffel tower at Paris, the trevi fountain at Caesars Palace, the mini gondolas at the Venetian all merely reference the real thing. It's not, upon reflection, a very apt metaphor. Vegas does something to each piece in its replication- statues which in the original pointed to the beauty of corporeal existence look a little more like stripper under the neon lights. And the vegas me, out of place and unimpressed, is equally skewed.